Previously to the final catastrophe, however, when the insurgents had been beaten, Wexford retaken by our troops, and Keogh made prisoner, I did not forget my promise to him at Bargay Castle. He was a good man and a respectable gentleman, and I would have gone any length to save him. Many certificates had reached Dublin of his humanity to the royalists whilst the town of Wexford was under his government, and of attempts made upon his life by Dixon, a brutal chief of his own party, for his endeavouring to resist the rebel butcheries. I had intended to go with these directly to Lord Camden, the lord lieutenant; but I first saw Mr. Secretary Cooke, to whom I related the entire story, and showed him several favourable documents. I begged he would come with me to the lord lieutenant, whom the aide-de-camp in waiting had informed me would receive me forthwith. He told me I might save myself the trouble of going to Lord Camden; and at the same time handed me a despatch received that morning from General Lake, who stated that he had thought it necessary, on recapturing Wexford, to lose no time in “making examples” of the rebel chiefs; and that accordingly, Mr. Grogan, of Johnstown, Mr. Bagenal Harvey, of Bargay Castle, Captain Keogh, Mr. Colclough, and some other gentlemen, had been hanged on the bridge and beheaded the previous morning.
I felt shocked beyond measure at this intelligence,—particularly as I knew Mr. Cornelius Grogan (an excellent gentleman, seventy years of age, of very large fortune and establishments,) to be no more a rebel than myself. Being unable, from infirmity, to walk without assistance, he was led to execution.—His case was, in fact, most pitiable: he was decidedly murdered according to municipal law, but which at that period was totally superseded by “martial law,” which in many instances was most savagely resorted to.
I was at all times ready and willing to risk my life to put down that spirit of mad democracy which sought to subvert all legal institutions, and to support every true principle of the constitution which protected us: but at the same time I must in truth and candour say (and I say it with reluctance), that, during those sanguinary scenes, the brutal conduct of certain frantic royalists was at least on a parallel with that of the frantic rebels.
Immediately after the recapture of Wexford, I traversed that county, to see the ruins which had been occasioned by warfare. Enniscorthy had been twice stormed, and was dilapidated and nearly burned. New Ross showed melancholy relics of the obstinate and bloody battle of full ten hours’ duration, which had been fought in every street of it; when Lord Mountjoy fell, at the head of his regiment, by the fire of a rebel named Shepherd, who singled him out at the three billet-gate:—his regiment instantly retreated, and the triumphant rebel advanced and took his lordship’s watch out of his pocket. The man afterward showed it me in Dublin, when I took him as a witness on the attainder bill before the House of Commons. Lord Clare wanted to take it, and to send him to Newgate;—but I had brought him up on an amnesty, and government supported me. The numerous pits crammed with dead bodies, on Vinegar Hill, seemed on some spots actually elastic as we stood upon them; whilst the walls of an old windmill on its summit appeared stained and splashed with the blood and brains of the many victims who had been piked or shot against it by the rebels. The court-house of Enniscorthy, wherein our troops had burned alive above eighty of the wounded rebels; and the barn of Scullabogue, where the rebels had retaliated by burning alive above one hundred and twenty Protestants—were terrific ruins! The town of Gorey was utterly destroyed,—not a house being left perfect; and the bodies of the killed were lying half-covered in sundry ditches in its vicinity. It was here that Colonel Walpole had been defeated and killed a few days before.[[48]]
[48]. No man ever came to a violent death more unwarily! Colonel Walpole was a peculiarly handsome man, an aide-de-camp to Lord Camden. With somewhat of the air of a petit-maître, he fluttered much about the drawing-room of the Castle:—but, as he had not seen actual service, he felt a sort of military inferiority to veterans, who had spent the early part of their lives in blowing other people’s brains out; and he earnestly begged to be entrusted with some command that might give him an opportunity of fighting for a few weeks in the County Wexford, and of writing some elegant despatches to his excellency the lord lieutenant. The lord lieutenant most kindly indulged him with a body of troops, and sent him to fight in the County Wexford, as he requested: but on passing the town of Gorey, not being accustomed to advanced-guards or flankers, he overlooked such trifles altogether! and having got into a defile with some cannon and the Antrim regiment,—in a few minutes the colonel was shot through the head—the cannon changed masters—and most of the Antrim heroes had each a pike, ten or twelve feet long, sticking in his carcase:—“Sic transit gloria mundi!”
An unaccountable circumstance was witnessed by me on that tour immediately after the retaking of Wexford. General Lake, as I have before mentioned, had ordered the heads of Mr. Grogan, Captain Keogh, Mr. Bagenal Harvey, and Mr. Colclough, to be placed on very low spikes over the court-house door of Wexford. A faithful servant of Mr. Grogan had taken away his head; but the other three remained there when I visited the town. The countenances of friends and relatives, in such a situation, would, it may be imagined, give any man most horrifying sensations! The heads of Mr. Colclough and Harvey seemed black lumps, the features being utterly undistinguishable; that of Keogh was uppermost, but the air had made comparatively little impression on it! His comely and respect-inspiring face (except the livid hue) appeared nearly as in life: his eyes were not closed—his thin hair did not look much ruffled: in fact, it seemed to me rather as a head of chiselled marble, with glass eyes, than as the lifeless remains of a human creature:—this singular appearance I never could get any medical man satisfactorily to explain.[[49]] I prevailed on General Hunter, who then commanded in Wexford, to suffer the three heads to be taken down and buried.
[49]. It has occurred to me, that the very great difference in the look of the heads might proceed from the following causes:—Messrs. Harvey and Colclough were hanged on the bridge, and their bodies suffered to lie some time before they were decapitated. The effect of strangulation made the faces black; and the blood cooling and stagnating, this black colour remained. Keogh had been decapitated as soon as cut down;—the warm blood was therefore totally discharged from the head, and the face became livid, no stagnate blood remaining to blacken it. If the thing had not been public, it might have been doubted. It is now thirty years past, and I can divine no other reason for so curious a circumstance; and army surgeons in Paris (I suppose the best in the world) tell me that my conjecture is perfectly well-founded.