Waterford.
Limerick did not at first take any decided part, but stood upon its defence. Clonmel and Dungarvan admitted the Leinster insurgents in December, a few days after St. Leger’s raid. A party commanded by Ormonde’s brother Richard came to the gate of Waterford on the day after Christmas, but the mayor, Francis Briver, refused to let him in. Two other attempts were made before Twelfth Day. The mob of the town and a majority of the corporation were opposed to the mayor, but he held his own for some time, received English fugitives within the walls, and kept them there till shipping could be had for themselves and such property as they had been able to carry away. His own life was frequently in danger, and his hand was badly bitten by a rioter who resisted arrest. On another day, says Mrs. Briver, who took an active part, ‘when I heard so many swords were drawn at the market cross against my poor husband, I ran into the streets without either hat or mantle and laid my hands about his neck and brought him in whether he would or no ... This and much more the mayor has suffered seeking to let their goods go with the English.’ Mountgarret was excluded, but in April his son Edmund was admitted with 300 men, and the townsmen gave up their cannon.[4]
State of Connaught. Ranelagh and Clanricarde.
Events at Galway.
Hesitation of the Galway gentry.
Roger Jones, created Viscount Ranelagh, was Lord President of Connaught, and lay at Athlone with only a troop of horse and two companies of foot. The government of the county of Galway was vested by special patent in the Earl of Clanricarde, who positively refused the request of the Roscommon gentlemen to take command of their county, and thus ignore the Lord President’s authority. Mayo was entrusted by the Lords Justices to Lord Mayo and to Dillon, Viscount Costello, who were both at this time professing Protestants. Sir Francis Willoughby, the governor of Galway fort, was in Dublin when the rebellion broke out, and his son Anthony, who was young and violent, commanded in his absence. Clanricarde was at Portumna when he heard of the outbreak, and he at once warned the mayor of Galway to be on his guard. The Lords Justices refused to send arms from Dublin on the ground that the passage was not safe, but told him to take what he could find at Galway. A hundred calivers, many of them unserviceable, and as many pikes were all that could be had. His own castles of Portumna, Loughrea, and Oranmore were in a defensible state, and he came to Galway on November 6. Richard Boyle, Archbishop of Tuam, took refuge in the fort, and Clanricarde’s castle of Aghenure, on the western shore of Lough Corrib, was seized by the O’Flahertys. On the 11th a town-meeting was held, and the citizens resolved to hold Galway for the King. During the next three months there were frequent acts of violence on both sides, Willoughby treating the citizens as conquered, and they retorting by capturing and confining his stray soldiers. On December 29 the lords of the Pale invited the nobility and gentry of the county of Galway to join them, urging the legal grievances under which Roman Catholics laboured, and the severe measures of Coote and others. This did not make Clanricarde’s task easier, but he came to Galway on February 5, and patched up an accommodation. On the 11th he left the town for a fortnight, and during the interval an outrage was committed in the neighbourhood which rivalled the worst of the Ulster atrocities.[5]
The Shrule massacre, Feb. 1641-2.
Humanity of Walter Burke.
According to the Rev. John Goldsmith, there were about 1000 English and Scotch Protestants in Mayo, many of whom tried to save themselves by going to mass. He had a brother a priest, and it was owing to the Jesuit Malone and an unnamed friar that he escaped with his life. Several Protestants, including one Buchanan of Strade, and John Maxwell, Bishop of Killala, sought the protection of Sir Henry Bingham at Castlebar, but he refused to admit Goldsmith, who was a convert from Rome, lest his presence should increase the animosity of the Irish. Lord Mayo promised to convoy the whole party safely to Galway fort, and they set out on February 13, Malachy O’Queely, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, ‘faithfully promising the Lord of Mayo to accompany them with his lordship and several priests and friars, to see them safely conveyed and delivered in Galway, or at the Fort of Galway.’ The first night was spent at Ballycarra, the second at Ballinrobe, the third at the Neale, and the fourth at Shrule, where a bridge joins the counties of Mayo and Galway. Lord Mayo seems to have declined all responsibility outside of his own county, and on Sunday the 17th he dismissed his followers except one company commanded by Edmund Burke, who proposed to go with them a few miles, and hand them over to an escort of the county Galway. Burke’s men began to plunder the unarmed fugitives before they were out of Lord Mayo’s sight, and he sent his son Sir Theobald to keep order; according to Theobald’s own account he ran over the bridge with his sword drawn to help the English, but was fired at and afterwards ‘conveyed away for the safety of his life.’ The promised escort, consisting of two companies of the O’Flahertys, then came up and joined the Mayo people in an indiscriminate massacre of men, women, and children. The Bishop of Killala and a few others were saved by the exertions of Ulick Burke, of Castle Hacket, but those killed were not far short of a hundred, including Dean Forgie of Killala and five other clergymen, of whom John Corbet was one. Thomas Johnson, vicar of Turlough, escaped to the house of Walter Burke, who treated him kindly and defended him. Young priests and friars asked Stephen Lynch, prior of Strade, in his presence whether it was not lawful to kill him as a heretic, and Lynch answered that it was as lawful as to kill a sheep or a dog. The insurgents threatening to burn Burke’s house if he kept Johnson any longer, he managed to convey him to Clanricarde’s castle at Loughrea, and he ‘ever after that time lived by the noble and free charity of that good earl, until of late his lordship sent him and divers other Protestants away with a convoy.’[6]
Murders at Galway.