Nor is it correct to infer that the Vicar-General charged Lieutenant-General O'Byrne with conniving at murders. A verdict of guilty was recorded against O'Reilly, but not as Miss Hickson has printed the record: he was found guilty of being accessary to the murder at the Black Castle,' of which murder Edmund Duffe Birne was found guilty. That the Government of the day felt the impossibility of connecting the priest with the alleged crime is clear enough from what followed. In her seventeenth-century zeal, Miss Hickson so far overshoots the mark as to imply a charge of complicity against the Cromwellian rulers of Ireland. Assuming that O'Reilly had been guilty of murder-or, what is not by any means the same, found guilty by the High Court Judges-it would, on the part of the Lieutenant-General of the Commonwealth and his Council, be most criminal complicity to allow the convicted to escape on any pretext such as is suggested in the following in continuation of that cited above :

Carte and other Royalist historians assert that the real cause of mercy shown to Vicar-General O'Reilly was that he had secretly betrayed the Irish and English troops of Ormond and Purcell at Baggotrath' in 1649 to Michael Jones the Parliamentary general, by inducing an Irishman to offer himself as a guide to the Irish-Royalist troops, and to mislead them on a midnight march. Father Walsh, the Franciscan friar, who certainly had peculiar opportunities for detecting such an act of treachery, assured Carte and Ormond that O'Reilly had been guilty of it. The charge may have been true, for it is certain that about that time the Jesuits and a section of the Roman Catholic clergy were endeavouring to come to secret terms with Cromwell and the Independents finding that Ormond could not be won over to change his religion [she here refers to vol. i., p. 386]. O'Reilly was appointed Archbishop of Armagh by the Pope in 1656, and died in 1669.

We shall presently see what Carte and Father Peter

''The Royalist camp at Rathmines,' it ought to be.

'What opportunities? The friar may have heard such nonsense among the hangers-on of the Duke.

3 Who tried to induce the Duke to return to the creed of his earlier days, except Father Walsh himself, when both were nearing the grave? The Duke then twitted Walsh with being very slow in tendering the advice if he thought it so important.

Walsh have to say in the matter. But where could the two men have met in the flesh? Father Peter Walsh died in 1688, in which year the biographer of the Duke of Ormond was no more than two years old, having been born in 1686. (I take these dates from the Dictionary of National Biography.) Father Peter may have hinted something of the kind to his great friend the Duke, but he could hardly have broached such a matter to baby Carte. This recalcitrant Franciscan friar certainly had peculiar opportunities for endearing himself to the bitterest enemies of his Order and creed. He has deserved well of those who are ever ready to honour the maligner, however virulent or stupid, of the priests and people of Ireland. He is not, however, by any means so definite on this particular point as Miss Hickson represents, and, as a matter of fact, Carte complains of his author's vagueness in respect to the disaster to Ormond's army. The allegation is altogether foolish; but Carte was ready enough to clutch at anything which might serve to cover the disgrace of his hero; and Ormond himself was not likely to discourage so acceptable an excuse for that ignominious and ruinous defeat. As this unfortunate affair is made to hang so heavy on the fair fame of Dr. Edmund O'Reilly, it may be well to point out that in the usual accounts of the Ormond disaster two events are mixed up, which in reality ought to stand apart. The failure at Baggotrath Castle was a trifle compared with the surprise and rout at Rathmines. Even if we accept the story of the guides, it affords no reason why the camp at Rathmines should be left open to such a surprise. Referring to Ormond's design against Baggotrath, Carte says:

Before any resolution was taken, Lord Castlehaven, General Preston, Major-General Purcell, and Sir A. Aston were sent to view the place, and see if it was capable of being so strengthened in one night's work as to secure the party to be there posted. They returned approving, as in all respects fit for the purpose. Orders hereupon were given to Purcell to command thither in the beginning of the night 1,500 foot (the number advised by those who had viewed the ground) with materials to fortify. He accordingly began as soon as it was dark to march with that party, but met with so ill guides, that, though it was within

half a mile of the leaguer, he had not got thither a full hour before day. P. Walsh says (History of Remonstrance, p. 609), that Edmund Reilly, who had carried on the treaty between Jones, Antrim, and O'Neill, then Vicar-General of Dublin, and afterwards titular Archbishop of Armagh, betrayed the Royal camp at Rathmines to Jones, which he pleaded by way of merit, when, in 1653, he was under prosecution for being the chief author of the burning of the Black Castle of Wicklow, and of murdering those in it, during the Cessation; and thereby saved his life. He does not say in what particular this treachery consisted, but it is not improbable that it lay in instructing the guides (who were under his spiritual charge, and could hardly mistake the way) to mislead the party ordered on a work so likely to hasten the reduction of Dublin.'

Now this explanation is no more than surmise of the most frivolous character. What great need could there be for guides when Purcell and his colleagues in command had been over the ground in open day, only a few hours before the night expedition set out? The short intervening space was then an open plain, and, even if wooded, might have been traversed in half an hour by the leader who ought to have taken full note of the place earlier in the day. And how vague is the attempt to connect Dr. O'Reilly with the supposed guides! They were of the diocese of which he was then Vicar-General, and therefore he must have tutored them so and so! The allegation that he pleaded this as a merit, when on his trial in 1653, seems at first sight a serious matter. The fact is, there is not a trace of such pleading in the existing record of his trial. The note of his defence is more than usually ample and detailed. Had he made any allusion to such service to the Cromwellian party, it had appeared in some shape on the judge's abstract. The accused made a good defence, and had no need to introduce so irrelevant a plea. That the Government ultimately came to the same conclusion, is much more to their credit than their latter-day lady apologist would have it. The Ormondist party may, in their desperate efforts to put some face upon a military bungle of so disastrous an issue, have set afoot some such

1 Life of Ormonde, ii., p. 79.

rumours as Father Walsh hints at rather than mentions. But if there was treachery in the affair, it would be within rather than without the camp; and no attempt has been made to show that Dr. O'Reilly was in or about the camp at the time. Let it be kept in view, that Ormond first settled down at Finglas,1 on the north side of the city, that he crossed the Liffey, and pitched his camp at Rathmines, and was all the time-from the end of June till August 2nd-within an hour's march of Dublin Castle, and under the eyes of the Parliamentary Governor, Michael Jones, who, we may be sure, watched Ormond's every movement, abiding the time when to fall on with effect. At the head of the 'Intelligence' department, then and for years after, was the Governor's brother, Dr. Henry Jones, who had put aside his mitre of Clogher to take service under the Puritan party-one of the most active and unscrupulous instruments that have ever borne part in the degradation of the native race in Ireland. With such a Governor and such a Scoutmaster, watching his moves, the excuse made for Ormond is to this effect: That worn out with watching and fatigue in connection with the abortive attempt to possesss himself of the old ruined castle at Baggotrath, he had sought some repose. But had they all gone asleep in his camp that morning? Or did Ormond imagine that the man to whom he had given over Dublin

Ormond, intending to besiege the capital, marched his army, in June, to Finglass, a village within two miles of Dublin. The garrison, commanded by Col. Michael Jones, was reinforced by some troops from England. These troops consisted of a regiment of horse and two of infantry, under the command of Colonels Venables and Hunks, well provided with provisions and warlike stores. The city being difficult of attack from the side of Finglass. Ormond crossed the river above the bridge with his army, and encamped at Rathmines. By the advice of his council he seized upon an old castle at Baggorrath which commanded the entrance to the harbour. This gave him a twofold advantage, viz., it facilitated his approach and prevented any succour arriving by sea to the besieged. He next sent workmen to repair the castle, and a force to protect them. This manœuvre greatly alarmed the garrison, and allowed the Governor to see into its design and consequences. On the morning of the 2nd August he made a sally in good order, retook the castle, and put the troops who were guarding it to the sword. This first success animated the garrison, the remainder of which marched against the camp. In vain did Sir William Vaughan oppose the enemy with a body of horse; they were routed, and he himself killed, and the panic having reached the rest of Ormond'sjarmy, he himself, his cavalry and infantry, were all shamefully put to flight.'-MacGeoghegan.

in 1647, would now return the compliment, and quietly await his Excellency's conveninece to retake the city? What excuse, I ask, was the alleged treachery of the guides on the way to Baggotrath, for the negligence of Ormond and his staff in leaving the camp open to a sally from the garrison? They invited the disaster, and meanly sought to shift the blame on one who had no faith in Ormond.

The description of the camp at Rathmines by the author of The Warr in Ireland, 1641-1653, an officer originally in the regiment of Sir John Clotworthy, and in 1649 on the Royalist side, ought not to be overlooked :

For, such a Camp for plenty of all things, and rich withall, was never seen in Ireland before, so as it might well be baites to poor soldiers close besieged. This Army was called the Army Royal, and well it might be so, and for riches and number may well be paralleled to King Darius's Army when they fought against Alexander the Great: who being so numerous and confident, undervaluing their Enemies, that the most of them never thought that fighting would come their turn, and so were gaping on till they were Routed without fighting-I mean the most part of his Army.-(Pages 82, 83.)

But it is time to introduce Father Peter Walsh, o.S.F., in his own character:

It was at last whispered during the first Cessation (of Arms) about the year 1644 or '45' 'twixt the Marquess of Ormond as the King's Lieutenant, of one side, and the Irish Confederates, of the other, that he the same Edmund Reylly, Vicar-General of Dublin, had been the chief Author of the late horrid both breach of publick Faith and cruel Murders too committed by some Irish within the English quarters in seizing the King's Castle at Wicklo, and burning it and all persons that lived then in it both Protestants and Catholics.

2

In the notes of the trial there is no indication of such a holocaust. The name of the keeper, Joyce, is the only one that appears in connection with the burning of the castle, and the burning would seem rather to be the outcome of

'The dates must refer to the whisper,' not to the Cessation, which was in 1643. The burning of the Black Castle was in December, 1645.

2 These extracts are taken from Walsh's bulky volume, The History and Vindication of the Royal Formulary, or Irish Remonstrance, printed 1674, pp. 608-9,