his Majesty's predecessors, were altogether void in the above counties. Two of them gave judgment that the Letters Patent were void only as to tenure. On the 13th of July, 1635, judgment was given by the court in favor of the annulling of the Letters Patent.1 The fashions and customs of the citizens in these times were rather singular.2 In the course of his journeys in 1636 to and from Connaught, Wentworth, on the 19th of August, paid a visit to Limerick-he remained nine days, and was entertained by Dominick White, the mayor. A guard of fifty young men of the city attended him. John Meagh was captain of this guard-John Sexton and Pierce Creagh were subalterns. Wentworth left the city by St. John's Gate, and in doing so knighted the mayor. He bestowed on the corporation a silver cup, gilt, valued at £60. The impression made by his visit, notwithstanding the flattering evidences of municipal favor which he received, was anything but agreeable. To this our own day his name is used by nurses in Leinster to frighten wayward children. His black and ferocious appearance was commented on by Dr. Arthur. His friend and councillor, George Radcliff, too, made the same hostile impression, as the nervous satire of Dr. Arthur was also used to indicate the estimate which was formed of his character by the people. One of the articles of impeachment, however, 1 Writing from Portumna shortly afterwards he says, "No Protestant Freeholder to be found to serve His Majesty on any occasion in this county (Galway), being in a manner mostly compounded of Papists, with whom the Priests and Jesuits (who abound in far greater numbers than in other parts) have so much power, as they do nothing of this nature without consulting them."-Ibid. 2 1636. A wedding present in this year will no doubt be a curiosity in the eyes of my lady readers. It was given by Bartholomew Stackpole Fitzjames, Esq. to Miss Mary Arthur, daughter of Dr. Thomas Arthur before their marriage : "A small goulde cross; a goulde ring weighing 22 carats; 2 small gould rings 5 carats each; £6 in silver; a small case of instruments; a payer of imbroadered glowes; 4 yeardes of satten rybbine; 2 yeards of broad satten rybbine; i yeard and of boane lace, worth 8s. per yeard; i blak hoode of duble currle; one payer of whyte glowes; i payer of Spannish leader shooes; x yeardes of blak pynked satten; 9 yeards of skey colored tabbey; i whyte fann with a silver handle; i crowne lowe hood; 6 payers of whyte glowes; 4 yeards of 8d. broad satten rybbine; 4 yeardes of French sarge with 3 vnces of silver lace; i large taffeta hood; i crowne lowe hood; 6 payers of whyte glowes; 2 ivorye combes; i payer of pfumed cordouan glowes; a small silver seale."-Arthur MSS., p. 133. 3 White's MSS. A physiognomic anagram on the name of Thomas Wentworth, a truculent and nefarious character; a few letters of the name being changed : : Thomas Vaentvoorth, (Grim-visaged fellow Satan thou.)—Arthur MSS. I publish the following twenty anagrams, with the change of a few letters, on the name of George Radclyffe, in which are clearly explained his origin, habit of body, mental character, the offices and duties he fulfilled, and his probable future exit :- Georgius Radclyffes Sic Fera gregi dolus. So a wild beast is treacherous to the flock. George Raclef, Fera gregi colus. A wild beast is a torture or whip to the flock. Georgio Radclife, O fera gregi dulci. O wild beast to the sweet flock. Georgius Radclyfes, Fera disclusio gregi. A cruel abridgment to the flock. Georgius Radclyfes, Alluding to his evil counsels to the Lord Deputy not to receive appeals or complaints from the people to the King.-Arthur MSS. I give the above as specimens of the twenty. against Wentworth afterwards was his having enlisted a large number of Catholics in the Royal army. There is no doubt he did enlist Catholics, and that many of the Catholic as well as Protestant gentry got commissions from him.1 Dominick Oge Roche Mayor of Limerick, in 1639 was created Baron Tarbert and Viscount Cahirivhalla by King James II. titles which were never acknowledged by the House of Hanover. He was grandfather of the celebrated Sir Boyle Roche who died without issue in 1801. The same troubled state of men's minds, the same apprehensions, imaginations, &c., which occupied the attention of the people in earlier times, continued to disturb them now in 1640. We have a singular evidence of this in a letter preserved in the R. I. A., among the Smith MSS., which relates a curious story of the " enchanted" Earl of Desmond, and his appearance under the form of a Black Horse in the Castle of Castle Connel.2 1 Sir John Browne, Knight of the Hospital in the County of Lymrick, was indebted in a comparatively small sum to Dr. Thomas Arthur by bond dated 13th July, 1639. Sir John became a member of Parliament, and immediately after became a captain in the army of Lord Strafford. Soon after the wars began, he went into England, where being of the King's party, upon some quarrel between him and Mr. Christopher Barnwall, he was killed in a duel.Arthur MSS., p. 119–120. 2 Limerick, the 13th of August, 1640. This was sent to the Archbishop of Armach now in Oxford: ffor newes wee have the strangest that ever was heard of, there inchantments in the Lord off Castleconnell's Castle 4 miles from Lymerick, several sorts of noyse, sometymes of drums and trumpets, sometimes of other curious musique with heavenly voyces, then fearful screeches, and such outcries that the neighbours neere cannot sleepe. Priests have adventured to be there, but have been cruelly beaten for their paynes, and carryed awaye they knew not howe, some 2 miles, and some 4 miles. Moreover were seen in the like manner, after they appeare to the viewe of the neighbours, infinite number of armed men on foote as well as on horseback. What to make of this neither my Lord, nor the best divines wee have can tell, they have had many consultations about it. This hath bin since St. James's tyde; much more could I write of it, and more than this had I tyme to wryte; but one thing more by Mrs. Mary Burke with 12 servants lyes in the house, and never one hurt, onley they must dance with them every night; they say Mrs. Mary come away, telling her she must be wyfe to the inchanted Earl of Desmond; moreover a countrey ffellow going off Knockiney ffaire,* to sell his horse, a gentleman standing in the waye, demanding whether he would sell his horse, he answered yea, for £5: the gentleman would give him but £4 10: 0, sayinge he would not get so much at the ffaire, the fellow went to the ffaire, could not get so much money, and found the gentleman on his return in the same place who proffered the fellow the same money; the fellow accepted of it, the other bid him come in and receive his money. He carried him into a fine spacious castle, payed him his money every penny and shewed him the fairiest black horse the fellow had ever seene, and told that that horse was the Earl of Desmond, and that he had three shoes alreadye, when he had the fourthe shoe, which should be very shortlie, then should the Earl be as he was before, thus guarded with many armed men conveying him out of the gates. The fellow came home, but never was any castle in that place either before or since. Uppon a Mannour of my Lord Bishoppe of Lymerick, Loughill hath been seen upon the hill by most of the inhabitants aboundance of armed men marching, and these seene many tymesand when they come up to them they do not appeare. These things are very strange, if the cleargie and gentrie say true. God willing to-morrow or next day I purpose to go to the Castle, better to satisfye myself, this was but amongst other business to the Towne to averr the truth of the same. JOHN HOLME. And I procured the loan, whereoff this is a true coppie. I understand this Holme is a gentleman to the Lord Bishopp of Lymerick.-Smith MSS. in the Royal Irish Academy. The Fair of Knockany appears to be one of the oldest fairs of which there is record, It is first mentioned under date 777 years before Christ, in the Annals of the Four Masters, and is noticed several times at more recent dates. It is not so anciently recorded as the Fair of Pilltown in Meath, but this latter has been disused since the English Conquest, so that Knockany appears to have the high distinction of being the oldest Fair on record in these countries, or indeed in any country. Fairs were about the earliest institutions mentioned, and they played a most important part in the history and civilization of the human race. It is not a little singnlar, then, that we should in Ireland have such early records of them, established, as they were, in all countries and CHAPTER XXIV. THE CIVIL WAR. THE CONFEDERATION.-REFUSAL OF THE CORPORATION TO RECEIVE THE PAPAL ENVOY.-CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE MAYOR AND THE ENVOY.-OCCUPATION OF THE KING'S CASTLE BY THE CONFEDERATES.-MURROUGH OF THE BURNINGS. THE causes which led to the desolating civil war of this century have been already explained. The intentional non-enrolment in chancery of the new letters patent, the evasion of the ministers of Charles to carry the graces into effect, and the repeated plantations, discoveries and other means of depriving the native proprietors, at last produced their natural effects, and we shall have shortly to describe another dreadful civil war, which was to be followed by another, both being attended by a repetition of the favorite scheme of confiscation. The acts of Lord Strafford in Ireland, where he is still known amongst the people by the name of " Black Tom," have been pronounced by the Historian Hume to be "innocent and laudable," but independently of the fact that he was the chief means of destroying the woollen manufactures of Ireland, he is known to have advised his royal master to violate his promises to the Catholics, though he publicly rebuked those who doubted his majesty's "gracious regards." The means by which he enforced his schemes of plunder, by fining, pilloring and branding those jurors who refused to find for the king, are in themselves enough to refute these shamefully untruthful statements of the English Historian Hume. These means were indeed much more vexatious in their character than those persecutions which drove the Scotch Covenanters into a rebellion, which brought about those results that began with Strafford's execution, and which ended in the establishment of the Cromwellian usurpation. Wandesford' the successor of Strafford was himself succeeded by the Puritanical Sir William Parsons, and Sir John Borlase, both bitter haters of everything belonging to Catholics except their property, and it was the opinion of no less a person than king Charles himself, that but for these men's disobedience to his commands, the terrible Irish rebellion of 1641 would not at all have happened, or would have been quickly suppressed. These commands of the king were to pass throughout the remotest ages; and still more remarkable is the fact, that in the Irish Fairs ceremonies and customs were performed almost identical with those described by Herodotus, as practised in the ancient Fairs of Persia and other Asiatic countries. Indeed there are many most interesting facts connected with this subject, which have met with attention from antiquarian writers. I need not add that Knockany Fair exists to this day in fully its ancient importance. In reference to Christopher Wandesfoord (sic.), I find a curious entry in Dr. Thomas Arthur's diary, which I translate : "Christopher Wandesfoord (whom I had previously attended) now Justiciary of Ireland, has been seized with a malignant fever this 14th day of November, which I predicted would end in his death, and he died on the 6th day : ... ... £1 0 0 Idem, 15th November, ... 0 10 0 Idem, 20th November, on which day he succumbed to the sickness Sir James Ware mistakes when he states that he died suddenly. 1 0 0 * Curry (and his authorities), Civil Wars, 147. the bills for the securing of the estates of the natives, and for confirming the other "graces" before referred to, which Strafford's own biographer Macdiarmid admits were certainly moderate, relating as they did to abuses arising from a defective police, to exactions in the court of justice, depredations committed by the soldiery, monopolies which tended to the ruin of trade, retrospective enquiries into defective titles, penal statutes on account of religion, and other evils, for which, to borrow Moore's expression, these wretched people were obliged to bribe their monarch. To this misconduct on the part of the government, and to other acts of oppression may be referred the atrocities of the great rebellion which now broke forth-a rebellion which ended in another sweeping confiscation, and which, according to Sir William Petty, cost the lives of no less than 36,000 persons. The insurrection at first was confined to Ulster, but the barbarities of the soldiers of the President of Munster, Sir William St. Leger, soon compelled the gentry of Kilkenny and Tipperary to form associations for the protection of their lives and property. Several noblemen had remonstrated against the cruel and indiscriminate vengeance exacted by these soldiers for certain robberies and outrages committed by some of the lawless natives; but these remonstrances were heard with contempt, in consequence of which Lord Mountgarret and others of his friends became convinced that a conspiracy was being formed against the interests of the Catholics, and a general defection took place, which resulted in an appeal to arms, the immediate consequence being the reduction of all the towers and forts in the towns of Kilkenny, Waterford, and Tipperary. The turbulent factions of some branches of the O'Briens were not as may be imagined idle on this occasion, though the Earl of Thomond exerted his influence as far as it extended. But, on the other hand, the anti-national Government was served with an energy on the part of another member of this family which had most important results, and which has branded the name of Murrogh O'Brien, Lord Inchiquin, with indelible infamy, under the popular soubriquet of Morogh an Tothaine, or, " Morrogh of the burnings." In the December of 1641, a coalition took place between the Anglo-Irish Catholics of the Pale and the ancient Irish. Out of this coalition sprung the Catholic confederation, whose object was to establish their religious independence, and to recover the estates which they had lost by the sword, or the not less fatal instruments of legalised plunder. The confederation of Kilkenny consisted of two hundred and fifty-one members, including eleven spiritual peers, fourteen temporal peers, and twenty-six commoners. The members returned for the county and city of Limerick were O'Dwyer, afterwards Bishop of Limerick, William Bourke, Baron of Castleconnell, John Baggot of Baggotstown, Mark Fitz Harris of Cloghinat-foy, Thomas O'Ryan of Doon, George Comyn, Patrick Fanning, John Haly, Daniel Higgins, and Bartholomew Stackpole, all of Limerick. Lord Mountgarret was President of the Supreme Council. The death of the celebrated leader took place at this time at Kilkenny; his place was supplied by the Earl of Castlehaven. Garret Barry was nominated General of the Munster forces, Owen O'Neill of those of Ulster, Thomas Preston for Leinster, and Colonel John Bourke for Connaught. They commanded all persons to bear faith and allegiance to the King. They assumed to themselves the administration of justice, assigned Carte's Ormond. seven hundred men as a guard of honour for the assembly, sent for aid to foreign governments, petitioned the King and Queen for a redress of their grievances, and assumed the regulation of the currency. While Parsons and Ormonde were exerting themselves to restrain the mutinous dispositions which were at this time evinced by the soldiers under their command, the Irish national cause, which had sustained some reverses in Leinster and before Cork, were counterbalanced by the capture of Limerick. In the beginning of June a numerous but ill-disciplined body of troops sat down before it, including Lord Muskerry, General Barry, Pierce Butler, and Viscount Ikerin. The citizens evinced the strongest desire to receive the confederates, to whom they at once opened their gates. An attack on the King's castle was immediately decided on, and Captain George Courtenay, who commanded the place, prepared to defend it. This officer, who was the younger son of Sir William Courtenay, had sixty men of his own company, twenty-eight warders and others, in all amounting to two hundred men, to maintain the defence, but they were much distressed for provisions, which they could only procure by stealth from the city. They had only sixty muskets; the rest of their arms were petronels, pistols, carabines, and fowling pieces, and only five or six casks of powder. The confederates commenced their attack by making a boom across the river opposite a place called Mockbeggar-Mear, within musket shot of the castle. It was made with long aspen trees fastened with iron links on the Thomond side to two mill stones, and at the opposite or city side to the tower of the Quay. The object of the boom, the completion of which after several interruptions was at last effected, was to prevent Sir Henry Stradling, who commanded some parliamentary ships on the Shannon, from throwing supplies into the water gate of the castle, and notwithstanding Courtenay's guns, the object was attained. The Irish took possession of St. Mary's Church, on which Muskerry ordered a gun to be mounted, from which they kept up a steady fire upon the castle; but though the surrender of the place was expected to take place immediately, owing to want of provisions and ammunition, the Castle still held out: they accordingly resolved to undermine it. 2 On the 21st of June three mines were completed and ready to be sprung; the first mine was begun near the churchyard of St. Nicholas, and when it was finished and a sufficient quantity of earth carried out, they set fire to the timber, which propped the cavern they had made, when a great part of the bulwark sunk down. They made two other mines with less success, but they continued working until the 21st of June, when a breach was made in the main wall of the castle; Captain Courtenay capitulated, and the city of Limerick was in the hands of the confederates. Muskerry, Garret Barry, and other officers, took possession on the next day. This was the most important advantage as yet obtained by the confederates; indeed the news of the capture of Limerick is said to have broken the heart of Sir William St. Leger, who died shortly afterwards. On his death the military command of Munster was conferred on his son-in-law Lord Inchiquin, "Murrogh of the Burnings," Vice-President of the province, David Barry, Earl of Barrymore, being joined in commission with him to take care of the civil government, In Ferrar's time a large piece of this boom fastened to a rock, supposed to weigh three or four hundred pounds, might be seen at the time of low water near the then House of Industry, now the County of Limerick Royal Regiment of Militia Barracks, on the North Strand. 2 Carte's Ormonde, vol. I. p. 341, from which Ferrar's account is taken. |