The Caulfield family.
Dungannon, Mountjoy, Tanderagee and Newry taken
Bishop Henry Leslie.
While his English servant was ploughing at Kinard, Sir Phelim O’Neill was on his way to Charlemont with an armed party. He had invited himself to dinner and was hospitably received by Lady Caulfield and her son, who had not long succeeded to the peerage. In after days there was a family tradition that the butler, an old and trusty servant, was alarmed by the attitude of Sir Phelim’s followers and imparted his fears to his mistress. His advice was neglected, and when the meal was over he left the house and made the best of his way to Dublin. The Caulfields and the unsuspecting men who ought to have defended the fort were surprised and captured, and O’Neill occupied Dungannon the same night. Next day the O’Quins took Mountjoy, the O’Hanlons Tanderagee, and the Magennises Newry. All were surprised, and there was practically no resistance. In the course of the day a fugitive trooper came to Lisburn, where Henry Leslie, Bishop of Down, was living, with news of the disasters at Charlemont and Dungannon, and four hours later another runaway announced that Newry was taken. Leslie at once sent the news on to Lord Montgomery, who was at or near Newtownards, and to Lord Chichester at Belfast; and they both wrote to the King.
Chichester said only one man had been slain, which has been adduced as a proof that there was no massacre, but he knew only what Leslie had told him, and there were no tidings from any point beyond Dungannon. Other districts could tell a very different tale.[290]
Fermanagh. Rory Maguire.
Murders at Lisgoole and elsewhere.
Lord Maguire was a prisoner, but his brother Rory raised Fermanagh before any account of the doings in Dublin had come so far. The robbing and murdering began on October 23, and very soon the whole county was at the mercy of the rebels. Enniskillen was never taken, and it will be seen that walled towns, if well defended, were generally maintained. Alice Champion, whose husband was killed in her presence on the first day, heard the murderers say that ‘they had special orders from Lord Maguire not to spare him or any of the Crosses that were his followers and tenants.’ About twenty-four others were murdered at the same time, and Mrs. Champion afterwards heard them boast that they had ‘killed so many Englishmen that the grease or fat that remained on their swords might have made an Irish candle,’ ninety being despatched at Lisgoole alone. The latter massacre is also sworn to by an eye-witness. Anne Ogden’s husband was murdered in the same way. She was allowed to fly to Dublin with her two children, but all were stripped on the way, and the children afterwards died ‘through the torments of hunger and cold they endured on that journey.’
Treatment of the English Bible.
Edward Flack, a clergyman, was plundered and wounded on the 23rd, and his house burned. The rebels in this case vented some of their fury on his Bible, which they stamped upon in a puddle, saying ‘A plague on this book, it has bred all this quarrel,’ and hoping that all Bibles would have this or worse treatment within three weeks. Much more of the same kind might be said, and the events sworn to in Fermanagh alone fully dispel the idea that there were no murders at the first outbreak.[291]