On the 9th of the month, William encamped at Crumlin, and the next night between the Ness [Footnote 201] and Rathcoole. It was well for the inhabitants of the line of march that the king commanded in person.
[Footnote 201: Naas was anciently the seat of the kings of North Leinster. The word means a fair or a commemoration. Rathcoole implies a lonely fortress.]
"Little hapned remarkable except the king's great care to keep the souldiers from plundering, and every night it was given out in orders that on pain of death no man should go beyond the line in the camp, or take violently to the least value from Protestant or Papist. The 11th the army marched to Kill-Kullen, Bridge, the king this morning passing by the Ness saw a souldier robbing a poor woman, which enraged his majesty so much, that he beat him with his cane, and gave orders that he and several others guilty of the like disobedience should be executed on the Monday following. People were so wicked as (to) put a bad construction on this action of the king's, but it had so good an effect upon that part of the army, that the country was secured from any violence done by the souldiers during that whole march. Two of the sufferers were Iniskillin dragoons."
Had General Douglas acted thus the worthy chaplain would not have had to record so much cruelty and injustice inflicted upon the harmless country people.
Story takes occasion, on Colonel Eppingar's proceeding with a party of 1,000 horse and dragoons [Footnote 202] to Wexford, to inform his English readers about the people in the south of the county.
[Footnote 202: In 1660, Marshal Brissae, fancying or feigning dragons to be in the habit of spouting fire out of their mouths, get the muzzles of short muskets adorned with the effigies of these monsters, and therewith armed some troops of horse. The early dragoons discharged the duties of infantry and cavalry. The Scots Grays formed in 1683 were the earliest British dragoons.]
"Hereabouts were the first English planted in Ireland. They were a colony of west-countrymen, and retain their old English tone and customs to this day. I am credibly informed that every day about one or two o'clock in summer, they go to bed, the whole country round; nay, the very hens fly up and the sheep go to fold as orderly as it were night." [Footnote 203]
[Footnote 203: The people of "the barony" are the descendants of a Flemish colony who had settled in Wales at the invitation of Henry I. Beans were the favorite crop, and dry bean-stalks furnished their chief fuel. If the gossip of the inhabitants of the northern part of the county could be credited, the barony of Forth formerly furnished priests for all Ireland.]
Good Mr. Story was as fond of a bit of picturesque or romantic hearsay as Herodotus himself. The well-to-do farmers really indulged in a siesta, but as to the degeneracy of manners among the hens and sheep we are altogether incredulous. Some time before the Ninety-Eight, household and village councils were held for a month in a townland of the barony to decide whether a farmer, to whom a legacy had been left in Dublin, should relinquish his right to it, or encounter the risks of the journey to the city. At last it was decided that prayers were to be solemnly offered up for his safety in all the neighboring churches and chapels, and then let him in God's name brave the perils of the way.