Just before sunset Ireton sent a letter to the governor offering terms to the defenders if they surrendered. The officer he sent returned to say Ireton should have an answer the next morning.
Accordingly, Captain Bellew sent a courteous reply to him asking for a truce of three days, so that he might communicate with the Bishop of Dromore. This was granted, and Ireton went on to Waterford, leaving Sir Hardress Waller in command.
After a short cannonade he took the town, and the castle surrendered upon articles. The garrison received a safe convoy to Lea Castle, and a pass of ten days to reach Athlone.
In Carte’s “Life of Ormond,” he attributes the castle’s loss to treachery, but except in a local tradition this does not appear.
It is said that the garrison running short of water sent an old woman to the river to fetch some, but that she was taken prisoner by some of the soldiers, and brought to the hostile camp. She was promised her life and a reward if on the following night she would show by a torch on the battlements the position of the stairway where the walls were thinnest. The legend runs she fulfilled the conditions and that, the cannonade at once beginning, she was the first to lose her life through her own treachery.
The manor passed from the Earl of Thomond’s family, on account of an unredeemed mortgage, to a Mr. Hamilton, M.P., who, in 1729, brought his case before Parliament for having been deprived of the castle yard during the time of privilege.
The castle was leased in 1814 to a Dr. Middleton. This gentleman intended to convert it into a lunatic asylum, and endeavoured to enlarge the windows and lessen the thickness of the walls by the then little known process of blasting. The results were disastrous. One morning, at about nine o’clock, while the workmen were fortunately at breakfast, the huge pile began slowly to totter to its fall.
An eye-witness who had time to escape from the threatened destruction said: “After viewing the portentous and amazing nodding of the towers, the immense pile gradually disparted into vast masses, which broke with difficulty into fragments less mighty.”
| Authorities Consulted. |
| J. Ryan, “History of County Carlow.” |
| Brewer, “Beauties of Ireland.” |
| State Documents. |
| State Papers. |
| Book of Howth, Carew MSS. |
| Parliamentary Gazetteer. |
| Lord Walter Fitzgerald, “Kilkea Castle,” in Journal of Kildare Archæological Society. |
| R. Malcomson, “Cromwell at Carlow”; J. O’Meagher, “Diary of Dr. Jones”; E. Shirley, “Extracts from Journal of Thomas Dineley”; and J. Mills, “Accounts of the Earl of Norfolk’s Estates in Ireland”: all in Journal of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. |
| MS. Ordnance Survey of Ireland. |