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Protestant persuasion. William Neale had another son burnt at the barn of Scullabogue.

"Charles Davis, a glazier of Enniscorthy, and of the Protestant religion, fought against the rebels in defence of that town, but was afterwards made a prisoner, and conveyed to Vinegar hill, by a party of rebels, who informed him that as he was an Orangeman, he would be put to death. On his arrival in the camp he saw about forty bodies lying dead, quite naked, and very much mangled with pikes; among which he perceived the body of Mr. Henry Hatton, port-rieve of the town of Enniscorthy. The rebels desired him, insultingly, to lay Lis hands on his deceased friends, whom they called hereticks, and told him that all the heretics in the kingdom should share the same fate. They then put him on his knees, in the midst of the dead bodies, and shot him through the body and the arm, and gave him several pike wounds; after which they buried him, covering his body lightly with sods. He lay in that situation. from seven o'clock in the evening till five next morning, when he found a dog, who had scraped away the sods, licking his wounds. A party of rebels, who were near the grave, perceiving the motion of his body, exclaimed-" the dead is coming to life; and that Davis should have a priest, as he could not obtain salvation without one." Father Sutton, of Enniscorthy, who was in the camp, administered the rites of his church to him, and told him, he was sorry to see him in that situation; but as there was no prospect of his recovery, he was glad that he was to die under his hands. He was then delivered to his wife, who conveyed him to his own house, where, with the aid of medical assistance, he recovered. These facts have been verified by affidavit, and are universally known. Charles Davis, who is now living, shewed me his wounds.

"John Mooney, servant to Dr. Hill, and a Protestant, was taken prisoner, and conducted to the wind-mill prison on the top of Vinegarhill, the 31st day of May; and found there sixteen Protestant prisoners, with some of whom he had been long acquainted. They were desired to prepare for death, and soon after a ruffian entered the prison, with a drawn hanger, and began to torture the prisoners by way of amusement; but the rebel centinel stopped him, and said, that as they were to die soon, it was cruel to torment them. In a few minutes, one of the prisoners was dragged out of the mill door, and shot; and soon after the remainder were. executed in the same manner. Among them there was a well-dressed respectable looking man, and his son, a boy about thirteen years old. The father seemed to bear his approaching dissolution with great fortitude, supposing that they would not injure his son on account of his tender age; but what agonizing pangs must he have felt, when his child VOL. I. [Prot. Adv. September, 1913.]

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was butchered in his presence, and he, when led out to execution, was obliged to step over his bleeding corpse, which fell across the door!

"Neither youth nor age were spared by these sanguinary ruffians :feeble old men, and blooming boys, alike fell a sacrifice to their brutal ferocity; and the tender sex were frequently violated, and then inhumanly butchered. To such deeds of blood, the deluded rebels were urged on by their designing priests, and were taught, by their spiritual guides, to believe that the only true road to heaven was over the bodies of heretics.

"It was to be hoped and expected, that the concessions made to the Roman Catholics, for above twenty years, would have attached them to the State, and would have united them with their Protestant fellow-subjects, in the bonds of brotherly love, and Christian charity and yet, not only the late rebellion, but incidents which daily occur, afford incontestible proofs, that the tenets of their religion, and the conduct of their priests, will always make it impracticable."

"Massacre at Scullabogue.

"I contemplate with horror, and relate with reluctance, an occurrence which took place on the day of the battle of Ross,* which will remain a lasting disgrace to human nature, and an indelible stain on the county of Wexford. During the encampment of the rebels on Carrickbyrne-hill, a party of them were posted at Scullabogue, within half a mile of the camp, where a barn was converted into a prison for the confinement of Protestant prisoners. Bands of assassins were sent round the adjacent country in quest of Protestants, whom they meant to extirpate, when they accomplished their final purpose of overturning the Government. On the eve of the thirtieth of May, Captain King, the proprietor of Scullabogue, was advised to abandon his house and to carry off what valuable effects he could, as a camp was to be formed the day after on Carrickbyrne-hill, which is within half a mile of Scullabogue.

"Next day he made his escape, and the rebels took possession of his house. It appears on the evidence of different persons, that one hundred and eighty-four Protestants were burned in the barn of Scullabogue, and that thirty-seven were shot in the front of it. The following circumstance appeared by the evidence of Richard Silvester, a witness on the trial of Phelim Fardy, one of the wretches concerned in that horrid

The 5th of June 1798. On the approach of the Rebels to the town of Ross, & great number of Priests with their vestments on, and crucifixes in their hands, by moving through the ranks, and animating them by their harangues, kindled a degree of enthusiastic ardour in them, which nothing but fanaticism could inspire.

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affair: that when the rebels encamped on Carrickbyrne-hill marched towards Ross, on the fourth day of June, the Protestant prisoners were left at Scullabogue under a guard of three hundred rebels, commanded by John Murphy, of Loughnageer, a rebel Captain; Nicolas Sweetman and Walter Devereux, who both beld the same rank: that when the rebel army began to give way at Ross, an express was sent to Murphy, to put the Protestant prisoners to death, as the King's troops were gaining the day; but Murphy refused to comply, without a direct order from the General: That he soon after received another message to the same purpose, with this addition, that the prisoners, if released, would become very furious and vindictive: That shortly after another express arrived, saying, the Priest gave orders that the prisoners should be put to death: That the rebels on hearing the sanction of the Priest, became outrageous, and began to pull off their clothes, the better to perform the bloody deed: That when they were leading the prisoners out from the dwelling-house to shoot them, he turned away from such a scene of horror; on which a rebel struck him with a pike upon the back, and said, he would let his guts out, if he did not follow him; That he then attended the rebels to the barn, in which there was a great number of men, women, and children; and that the rebels were endeavouring to set fire to it, while the poor prisoners, shrieking and crying out for mercy, crowded to the back door of the barn, which they forced open, for the purpose of admitting air; that for some time they continued to put the door between them and the rebels, who were piking or shooting them; that in attempting to do so, their hands and fingers were cut off; that the rebels continued to force into the barn bundles of straw, to increase the fire. At last, the prisoners having been overcome by the flame and smoke, their moans and cries gradually died away in the silence of death.

"It was proved on the trial of John Keefe, convicted by a court martial on the fourteenth day of April, 1800, on the evidence of Robert Mills, that, after the bloody work began, he saw the prisoner with a pike, the point of which was broken, and the top of the shaft or handle was bloody; that he carried it to an adjoining forge, whetted it on a sharpening stone, and then proceeded to the front of the dwelling-house, where they were shooting the prisoners. Among the persons most conspicuous, we find the names of Fardy, Sinnott, Michell, or Miscally, who trampled on the dead and wounded bodies, and behaved otherwise in such a ferocious manner, as to obtain from the rebels the appellation of the true born Romans.

"William Ryan, a farmer, about three miles from Scullabogue, had a daughter who was kept by a Protestant gentleman at Duncannon. The

rebel guards at Scullabogue, thinking that they might extract from her some important information relative to the plans of the loyalists, as her paramour was of that description, and dreading that she, and her friends, who were Roman Catholics, might betray some of the rebel secrets to her keeper, sent a body of pikemen in quest of her; but not being able to find her, they were of opinion that her sister Eleanor, who lived at Mr. Rossiter's, would answer equally well. They therefore led her to the barn, and her father having shortly after gone there to solicit her liberation, they committed him and his poor old wife, who went there also in hopes of being able to move their compassion; but she shared their fate, having been thrust into the barn, where they were all burnt.

"No less than twenty-four Protestants were taken from the village of Tintern, about eight miles distant, many of them old and feeble, and were led in one drove to the barn, where they perished. Thomas Shee and Patrick Prendergast were burnt in the barn, both Romanists, because they would not consent to the massacre of their Protestant masters.— William Johnson, a very old man, though of the same persuasion, shared a similar fate. He gained a livelihood by playing on the bagpipes, and was so unfortunate as to incur the vengeance of the rebels, by playing the tune "Croppies lie down."

"William Neil, another Romanist, who suffered there, was by trade a tailor, and had worked for some time in the garrison of Duncannon. Having occasion to return to Camolin, of which he was a nalive, he procured the pass of General Fawcett for his protection, but it turned out to be the means of his destruction, for having been intercepted by the rebels, who considered the pass as an emblem of loyalty, they com mitted him to the barn, with his son Daniel, who happened to accompany him, and they both perished in the flames.*

"Some persons have contended, that the persecutions in the county of Wexford, were not exclusively levelled against Protestants, because a few Romanists were put to death in the barn, and at Wexford; but the sanguinary spirit against them was so uniform at Vinegar hill, on the bridge at Wexford, and Scullabogue, and indeed in every part of the county, as to remove any doubt on that head.

"The witness, during this dreadful scene, saw a child who got under the door, and was likely to escape, but much hurt and bruised, when a rebel, perceiving it, darted his pike through it, and threw it into the

* They burned the wives and some of the children of the North Cork Militia in the barn, who were Roman Catholics; but it was sufficient to provoke their vengeance, that they were connected with the soldiers of an heretical King.

flames. While the rebels were shooting the prisoners in front of the dwelling-house, a party of men and women were engaged in stripping and rifling the dead bodies; and the prisoner, Phelim Fardy, called out to them to avoid the line of the fire, (as he was busily employed in shooting the prisoners,) and, in saying so, he fired at a man who was on his knees, and who instantly fell and expired.

"The barn was thirty-four feet long, and fifteen wide, and the walls were but twelve feet high. Suffocation then must have soon taken place, as so great a number of people were compelled in so small a space; and besides the burning of the thatched roof of the barn, the rebels threw into it, on their pikes, a great number of faggots on fire.

"Richard Grandy, who was present, swears, that the prisoners in front of the house were led out by fours to be shot, and that the rebels who pierced them, when they fell, took pleasure in licking their spears.

"A gentleman present, who had a narrow escape, assured me that a rebel said, he would try the taste of Orange blood, and that he dipped a tooth-pick in a wound of one of the Protestants who was shot, and then put it into his mouth. Whenever a body fell, on being shot, the rebel guards shouted, and pierced it with their pikes. '

"Thus, one hundred and eighty-four victims were burnt in the barn ́at Scullabogue, and thirty-seven immolated in the front of it, with every circumstance of savage cruelty that hatred and fanaticism could devisemerely because they were PROTESTANTS."

"Massacre on Wexford Bridge.

"I shall now relate the dreadful massacre of Protestants, which took place at Wexford, and which has cast such an indelible stain on that county, that every Irishman, who feels for the honour of his native country, should wish that its very name was expunged from the map of Ireland. From the sanguinary spirit which the rebels manifested on all occasions during the rebellion towards that sect of Christians, there is not a doubt but that they meant to extirpate them, as soon as they had obtained a decided superiority over the government; and their leaders never failed to practice every artifice they could devise to make them believe they were in a fair way of attaining it. But when their delusions were removed, and they saw a very numerous and well-appointed army march into the county of Wexford, they were stung with despair, and resolved to indulge their fanatical hatred against Protestants, by murdering such of them as were their prisoners.

"Joseph Gladwin, the gaoler, declares, that Thomas Dixon, mariner, went down to the gaol about the hour of two o'clock, mounted on a large

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