‘The besieged being in danger of suffocation from the thickness of the smoke, resolved to quit the house, however perilous it might be, and this they were encouraged to do by Father Murphy, who assured them they should not be injured if they surrendered themselves without further resistance. Relying on his promise they quitted the house, on which the rebels treacherously murdered Mr. Burrowes and seven of his parishioners, and gave his son, a youth of sixteen, so severe a wound in the belly with a pike, that it subsequently caused his death.
CAROUSAL AND PLUNDER AT THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF FERNS
George Cruikshank has seized this characteristic incident for one of his graphic pictures. It will be remembered that Murphy’s father came from the parish of Ferns. The illustration is in itself sufficiently graphic, and filled with pictorial details descriptive of the incident. Maxwell has related, in reference to the plunder of the bishop’s palace, an anecdote connected with it, which marks the total subversion of principle, religious feelings, badly excited, will produce. An orphan boy, whom the bishop had found naked and starving at the age of seven years, and whom he had fed, clothed, and instructed afterwards, was the leader of these marauders, showed them every valuable article of furniture, and assisted them in breaking open the cellar. The bishop’s fine library was plundered of its antique folios; these the rebels converted into saddles.
CAMPS OF KILTHOMAS AND OULART HILLS
The first consequences of the Wexford rising was the assemblage of two large bodies of insurgents, the one occupying the hill of Oulart, ten miles southward of Gorey, in the direction of the town of Wexford; the second taking a position nine miles westward of the former place, on a ridge of the Slieve Buoye mountain, called Kilthomas hill. Camps were established on the heights, and an immense number of the peasantry, including every age and sex, flocked immediately to join the rebels.
Both camps were attacked, but with results painfully different. The garrison of the little town of Carnew, consisting of nearly three hundred yeomanry, mounted and dismounted, marched boldly against the insurgents collected on Kilthomas, roughly estimated at about three thousand men. Although, with favourable ground and enormous superiority of numbers, it might have been expected that an attempt to dislodge the rebels from their position would have failed, nothing could have been more successful than the attack, and the royalists obtained a bloodless victory. Here again, the unrelenting spirit of the times appeared, and a very gallant and daring exploit was sullied by impolitic severity. The attempt to disperse the second camp at Oulart was attended with consequences not only disastrous to the troops engaged, but its results caused afterwards an immensity of bloodshed. Through the imprudence of an incompetent commanding officer, a very gallant detachment perished, while the insurgents, encouraged by accidental success, acquired a false but dangerous confidence which involved a fearful amount of atrocity, with a reaction, in many cases to be excused, and in more to be lamented.
On the morning of the 27th of May, Mr. Turner of Newfort arrived at Wexford and announced that his own house had been attacked and robbed of a quantity of arms, previously surrendered, and that the insurrection had unequivocally broken out.