“On July the 23rd at about eleven o’clock at night,” Anne Devlin told Dr. Madden, “Robert Emmet, Nicholas Stafford, Michael Quigley, Thomas Wylde, John Mahon, John Hevey, and the two Perrotts from Naas came to the house at Butterfield Lane. She first saw them outside of the house, in the yard; she was at that moment sending off a man on horseback with ammunition in a sack, and bottles filled with powder. She called out, ‘Who’s there?’ Robert answered, ‘It’s me, Anne.’ She said, ‘Oh, bad welcome to you, is the world lost by you, you cowards that you are, to lead the people to destruction, and then to leave them.’ Robert Emmet said, ‘Don’t blame me, the fault is not mine.’ They then came in; Quigley was present, but they did not upbraid him. Emmet and the others told her afterwards that Quigley was the cause of the failure....
“They stopped at Butterfield lane that night and next day, and at night about ten o’clock, fled to the mountains, when they got information that the house was to be searched. Her father, who kept a dairy close by, got horses for three of them, and went with them.
“Rose Hope, the wife of James Hope, had been there keeping the house also. The reason of their stopping there that night was, that Emmet expected Dwyer and the mountaineers down in the morning by break of day, but Dwyer had not got Emmet’s previous letter, and had heard of Emmet’s defeat only the next day, and therefore did not come. Mr. Emmet and his companions first went to Doyle’s in the mountains, and thence to the widow Bagenell’s. Anne Devlin and Miss Wylde, the sister of Mrs. Mahon, two or three days after, went up to the mountains in a jingle with letters for them. They found Robert Emmet and his associates at the Widow Bagenell’s, sitting on the side of the hill; some of them were in their uniform, for they had no other clothes.
“Robert Emmet insisted on coming back with her and her companion, he parted with them before they came to Rathfarnham, but she knows not where he went that night, but in a day or two after he sent her to take a letter to Miss Curran; he was then staying at Mrs. Palmer’s, at Harold’s Cross.
“The day after ... a troop of yeomen came with a magistrate, and searched the house. Every place was ransacked from top to bottom. As for herself she was seized on when they first rushed in, as if they were going to tear down the house. She was kept below by three or four of the yeomen with their fixed bayonets pointed at her, and so close to her body that she could feel their points. When the others came down she was examined. She said she knew nothing in the world about the gentlemen, except that she was the servant maid; where they came from, where they went to, she knew nothing about; and so long as her wages were paid she cared to know nothing else about them.
“The magistrate pressed her to tell the truth—he threatened her with death if she did not tell; she persisted in asserting her total ignorance of Mr. Ellis’s acts and movements, and of those of the other gentlemen. At length the magistrate gave the word to hang her, and she was dragged into the courtyard to be executed. There was a common car there—they tilted up the shafts and fixed a rope from the backband that goes across the shafts, and while these preparations were making for her execution, the yeomen kept her standing against the wall of the house, prodding her with their bayonets in the arms and shoulders till she was all covered with blood, and saying to her at every thrust of the bayonet, ‘Will you confess now; will you tell now where is Mr. Ellis?’ Her constant answer was, ‘I have nothing to tell, I will tell nothing.’
“The rope was at length put about her neck; she was dragged to the place where the car was converted into a gallows; she was placed under it, and the end of the rope was passed over the backband. The question was put to her for the last time, ‘Will you confess where Mr. Ellis is?’ Her answer was, ‘You may murder me, you villains, but not one word about him will you ever get from me.’ She had just time to say, ‘The Lord Jesus have mercy on my soul,’ when a tremendous shout was raised by the yeomen; the rope was pulled by all of them except those who held down the back part of the car, and in an instant she was suspended by the neck. After she had been thus suspended for two or three minutes her feet touched the ground, and a savage yell of laughter recalled her to her senses. The rope round her neck was loosened, and her life was spared—she was let off with half-hanging. She was then sent to town, and brought before Major Sirr.
“No sooner was she brought before Major Sirr, than he, in the most civil and coaxing manner, endeavoured to prevail on her to give information respecting Robert Emmet’s place of concealment. The question continually put to her was, ‘Well, Anne, all we want to know is, where did he go to from Butterfield lane?’ He said he would undertake to obtain for her the sum (he did not call it reward) of £500, which he added, ‘was a fine fortune for a young woman,’ only to tell against persons who were not her relations; that all the others had confessed the truth—which was not true—and that they were sent home liberated, which was also a lie.”
Dr. Madden said to her with pretended seriousness, “You took the money, of course.” Her indignant answer, accompanied by a look to which Dr. Madden felt only a painter could do justice—was “Me take the money—the price of Mr. Robert’s blood! No; I spurned the rascal’s offer.”