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HENRY PEISLEY L’ESTRANGE II AND THE RISING OF 1798
In Sir George L’Estrange’s manuscript recollections written in October 1868 the following account appears relating to the part played by his father, Henry Peisley II, in the Irish rising of 1798. (Following this account the present author has added some explanatory comments)
Shortly after my birth the Irish rebellion broke forth with all its horrors. My father was then a young man of about 30 years of age; a remarkably handsome well structured man of six feet. The Colonelcy of the King’s County Militia having become vacant in consequence of the resignation of Sir Laurence Parsons (who later became Earl of Rosse and the father of the present most highly distinguished truly patriotic and eminently scientific Earl).[ Sir Laurence’s politics do not appear to have been in unison with the then government].
I do not know whether at the time he entertained any unpleasant feelings or jealousy towards my father, but there did not appear to me to exist between them the same cordiality as I supposed there must have been previously as I see from the Family Bible that he was my Godfather.
My father was selected by the Government of the day as the most proper person to succeed him and was accordingly appointed Colonel of the Royal King’s County Regiment of Militia, Governor, Custos Rotulorum of the County. This a highly flattering mark of the opinion and esteem in which he was held at the time and when the government must have been well aware that a most critical period was before them. Shortly after this burst forth with a violence that shook the constitution of the country to its foundation. Lord Ross was at this period Lt. Col. of the Regiment. I conclude that he was not well pleased at my father having been placed over his head and from what I recollect of him I should think he had a strong bias towards the liberal, or more properly speaking at that time, the disaffected party He made some remarks favourable or not, I know not, referring to my father in the presence of my uncle Christopher, who was then Major of the Regiment, the latter remarked “That may all be very well, but you would have been glad to run a pike through his back”. This produced a hostile meeting and they exchanged “shots”. Shortly after Lord Ross resigned his commission.
My father appointed Herbert Rawson Stepney of Durrow now called Durrow Abbey near Tullamore to succeed him in the Lieut. Colonelcy, an active and very intelligent magistrate of the County of whom more hereafter.
The part my father had to act was therefore quite an important one, the loyalty of the Regiment he commanded was more than doubtful, the soldiers deserted to the rebels sometimes in sections with their arms and clothing. My father, however, appeared to be equal to the situation. The Regiment was ordered to Dublin and garrisoned there for the duration of the Rebellion.
It is not my intention to enter into details of the Irish Rebellion, that is already a matter of history, with all its horrors, bloodshed and devastation which marked the end of a melancholy period of Irish history. But there are some facts relating to it which bear upon my family and which I have never seen fairly related in any of the histories I have seen and which will come fairly into the family record. The first I will allude to is that remarkable transaction in which a Captain in the King’s County Militia took a prominant part. I allude to the melancholy fate of the unfortunate, misguided, and betrayed Sheares. Captain Armstrong, otherwise known by the name of “Witness Armstrong”, had a residence in the neighbourhood of Ballincomber in the King’s County. He unfortunately for them became acquainted with the family of the Sheares. He was very intimate with them, dining and visiting at their house and entering into all their family details and thus became in a certain degree mixed up with the United Irishmen of whom it is unnecessary for me to give any details. Matters however became so serious and he became so mixed up with them that he became alarmed for his own safety and resolved to disclose the whole plot to his Colonel, my father. The Regiment I have said before were quartered in Dublin which was almost in a state of siege as there were hordes of rebels in the surrounding country, particularly in the mountains a few miles from the city. He disclosed to him that the rebels had prepared a plan to surprise the Castle of Dublin at night, which was then defenceless, and take it (the castle) and all the records of the Country and later the Lord Lieutenant prisoner (as a hostage) up the mountains. There is little doubt that if this plot had been attempte it would have succeeded and have given a very different and perhaps fatal turn to the civil war that was raging.
My father lost no time in communicating this alarming intelligence to the government who were greatly astounded and nearly paralyzed. It was decided to get as much information as possible from Witness Armstrong and the Sheares were arrested on his evidence, through they were not aware of the fact, and when in prison they were visited by Armstrong who seemed to condole with them on their alarming position.
They opinioned that there was but one written document which they dreaded, and that it was locked in a certain desk in their house with which he was so well acquainted. They delivered to him the key to go at once and destroy it, but he reserved it for a far different purpose. He delivered it up to the authorities and hanged the unfortunate and betrayed Sheares, with whose family, whose wives and whose sisters he had been so intimate, and whose children he so lately dandled on his knee. A case of such unheard of villainy has scarcely been recorded, and when after some period the Regiment being quartered in Tarbert and Lt. Col. Stepney my respected and well remembered Father-in-law being in command, Captain Armstrong presented himself to join the Regiment again. A meeting of the Officers was called and Col. Stepney being of course the spokesman to convey the resolution of the Regiment not to receive him tho’ a very talented and highly educated man, was so overcome by his feelings of disgust that he could only say “you are the d---est rascal who ever drew breath of life”. He of course disappeared and enjoyed for many years and for all I know up to the present time a pension of either £500 or £700 a year for useful but degrading information that he had given to them.
When my father communicated the plans of the rebels to the then Lord Lieutenant, I forget whether it was Lord Camden or Lord Corwallis, the Lord Lieutenant shed tears when convinced of the danger that the country and himself had escaped. He offered my father a Baronetcy, which honour he thought proper to respectfully decline. From Dublin the Regiment removed to Loughlinstown Camp and shortly after took a part in the battle of Vinegarhill. They afterwards occupied Newtownbarry where there were two small field pieces attached to the Regiment.
Early one morning the rebels appeared in immense numbers in the surrounding hills. My father’s Regiment, now reduced by service and desertion to a small force, were in rather a critical position. The town of Newtownbarry, being situated in a valley surrounded by hills, was scarcely a tenable position.
My father therefore thought it prudent to retire with his guns up the road leading up a hill out of the town. The rebels, supposing they were retreating, headed as I have heard, by several priests in their canonical, who assured the rebels that they could catch the bullets in their hands, rushed into the town and commenced an indiscriminate scene of plunder and drunkenness.
The small force, on reaching the summit of the hill, faced about and fired a few shots and volleys amongst the indisciplined rabble, who took to immediate flight and were shot down in their retreat.
The outcome of this action I believe obtained my father a good deal of credit. Though I have scarcely any recollection of him speaking much of it in after life, I attribute it to his very sensitive mind and human nature, which I have no doubt revolted against such slaughter of his unfortunate and misguided countrymen, and which I know he lamented till the last stages of his life. My mother however, frequently described to me the awful scenes and hair breadth escapes which occured in these disjointed times, and it is from her descriptions that I recollect anything connected with them. I am also aware, that it was the object of the government to ‘force on’ prematurely the outbreak that was surely impending, and the Army was scattered over many parts of the country on what they called free quarters. My father had influence enough with the government to save his estate, from this cruel though perhaps necessary enactment. No dragoon or infantry marauder dared to pass the boundary of his estate between the Brosna and the Shannon rivers which bounded it.
I have little more to say on the subject of this miserable rebellion than what has already been the subject of many histories. It is well known how many bloody actions or rather slaughter took place in various parts of the country, how many burnings, and house wreckings occurred, how the French landed near Killala in County Mayo, where they were joined by innumerable hordes of indisciplined rebels, how they advanced towards Castlebar and Collooney in the County of Sligo, where they visited and sacked many gentlemen’s houses amongst them that of my brother-in-law Col. Perceval’s Temple House near Ballymote, paying particular attention to their cellars which were well stocked with wine in general.
At TempleHouse in an old vault in the old castle somebody having placed a layer of ‘contaminated wine’, obscuring the wine below saved a fine bin of Burgundy. On tasting the “wine” the French ‘sacred’ most vehemently and placed a mark upon the bin and thus I was able frequently at a later time to drank many a good bottle from the bin which had been concealed by the ruse.
The French advancing near Collooney met the 1st redcoats posted in front of Union Wood, which afforded them a good and safe retreat towards Sligo in case of reverse. The Limerick Militia (The Garryowens), under Col. Vereker, afterwards Lord Gort, showed so good a front and so much pluck that they checked if they did not defeat the invader, and the Vereker arms to the present day bear the word “Collooney” as a lasting mark of their heroic conduct.
The French penetrated as far as Ballinamuck in the Co. of Longford where the Downshire, Armagh, and Kerry Militias defeated them, on 8th September 1798.
The following comments may be made on the account quoted above. John and Henry Sheares were two young republican barristers living in Baggot Street, Dublin. Their philosophy was that of the French Revolution before it had degenerated into the Terror. With Lord Edward Fitzgerald, their commander-in-chief, they were members of the United Directory the aim of which was to overthrow by force the government of Ireland. Captain John Warneford Armstrong was an officer in the King’s County Militia stationed at the army camp at Loughlinstown outside Dublin. He was a free-thinker and shared the philosophical views of the Sheares brothers, but he was loyal to the government. The acquaintance of the Sheares and Armstrong was a matter of no more than weeks. During that time the Sheares, with unbelievable folly, confided in Armstrong as one who shared not only their philosophical views but also their immediate political objectives. In the opinion of the Sheares brothers; Dublin, and in particular the Castle and the Lord Lieutenant, could be captured by a rising of the disaffected troops at Loughlinstown together with the equally disaffected troops at the artillery camp at Chapelizod (without the doubtful assistance of the United Irishmen from the surrounding counties). This was a sad miscalculation. The rising was planned to take place on the 23rd May 1798. On the 19th May Lord Edward was arrested at what would now be called a ‘safe house’ in the Liberties in Dublin. The following day Armstrong dined with the Sheares, when Henry’s wife had played the harp to entertain the party and Armstrong fondled one of the children on his knee. This occasion, it is said, haunted Armstrong for the rest of his long life. On the 21st May the Sheares brothers were arrested.
The document the discovery of which so agitated the Sheares, was a proclamation found in Henry’s desk. It was in his handwriting and was to be published after Dublin had been captured by the rebels. It began:
‘Irishmen, your country is free. That vile Government which has so long and so cruelly oppressed you is no more. Some of the most atrocious monsters have already paid the forfeit of their lives and the rest are in our hands. The national flag, the sacred green, is at the moment flying over the ruins of despotism and that capital, which a few hours past witnessed the debauchery, plots and crimes of your tyrants, is now the citadel of triumphant virtue and patriotism...’ and so on.
At their trial Ireland’s foremost barrister, John Philpot Curran, defended the brothers. The proceedings lasted through the night, Curran opening his defence at midnight. The Sheares were convicted, hanged and apparently beheaded.
The rising in Wexford followed the failed attempt to capture Dublin. The rebels captured Enniscorthy and then, instead of marching north to join their comrades in and around Dublin, they marched south and captured the town of Wexford. There they divided into three ‘armies’. One was defeated at New Ross; another at Arklow and the third at Newtownbarry in the episode referred to by Sir George. (Newtownbarry has now reverted to its earlier name of Bunclody). The rebels whom Col. L’Estrange routed were commanded by a redoubtable priest named Father Kearns. This man was of gigantic in stature. When years before he had been in France during the Terror he had been hanged from a lamp-post, as priests frequently were. His weight bent the cross bar until his toes touched the ground so that he was saved from strangulation. When, at the close of the Wexford rising the rebels foregathered on Vinegar Hill and were routed by the government troops, Father Kearns at first escaped, but he was captured and this time hanged for good.
Whether or not it was the policy of the Government to ‘force on’ the rising is problematical. Certainly the policy of ‘free quarters’ referred to by Sir George inflicted much hardship. This policy was designed to compel the surrender of arms. A proclamation issued in each county gave the inhabitants ten days to hand over their arms. In the event of their not doing so troops were sent to live at ‘free quarters’ in the disaffected areas. They took from the peasantry their livestock and crops for their own support, and turned the peasants out of their cabins. The Irish were faced with starvation and death. A great quantity of muskets, blunderbusses and particularly pikes was surrendered, but at a fearful cost. One must, however, bear in mind that Britain was at war with France and with good reason anticipated an invasion of Ireland. Hoche’s arrival at Bantry Bay with 15,000 men in 1796 would have achieved success, at least in the west had not a ‘Protestant wind’ prevented him from landing. Humbert landed at Killala in 1798 with less than 1000 men but this was no more than a commando raid and by the time he disembarked the main rising in the south-east had been defeated.
In 1789 Henry Peisley II married Grace daughter of George Burdett (1735 - 1817) The families of George Burdett and his wife Jane Frend were Cromwellian by origin, George L’Estrange in his manuscript recollections writes of his Burdett grandparents as follows:
My maternal grandfather I have most lively recollections of. He was a fine specimen of the old English dragoon, having in his earlier days held a connission in the Green Horse, otherwise known as the 5th Dragoons and was very fond of telling us how he was for three days and three nights on the heights of Homburg with nothing but the canopy of heaven by (dash), bringing his fist down upon the table. He must have been a very handsome man which however, was rather marred by the loss of his right eye from cold taken on the said heights. He had frequently assured me that when quartered at Bremen he could have commanded the affections of any woman in that city, a boast which I cannot help thinking there was some foundation for when I remember the fine though mutilated countenance and upright soldierly carriage of this fine old gentleman in the last period of his life which was also a very prolonged one.
He was a member of the Irish Parliament and I have heard him say that his was one of the last votes given against the Union.
My grandfather’s house in Dublin (he had previously lived at the Heath, Queen’s County) was always open to me during my half yearly journeys to Westminster School and I was always certain of the customary tips, and the old gentleman was rather proud of me and I have heard of his saying that I was a remarkably fine boy and exactly what he was at that age by (dash). I well remember and hope I have profited by the advice when my grandfather and grandmother picked me up at Mrs. Boniface’s school at Portarlington on their way for Christmas at Moystown, where the road after passing Pallas Park and the Blueball enters on an extent of upwards of six miles of bleak and dreary bog, being met by a fearful snow storm right in the teeth of the horses and the eyes of the wretched postboy, who being very nearly blinded, could scarcely keep out of the ditch, a very unpleasant place to have passed the night which was fast closing in. My grandfather came out in a thundering voice and in the language peculiar to a trooper of that age with violent abuse of the postboy. My poor timid grandmother on the other side whispered into my ear with tender solicitude for my future welfare, ‘it was a bad habit he gave himself in his youth and he has never been able to break himself of it’.
The good old lady was of the name of Frend and I believe in her youth had been called the beautiful Jenny Frend, though there were no reminders of it when she tended to me her goodly warning.
The war in which George Burdett was engaged as a young man was probably the seven years war (1756 - 63). Most of the European powers were involved in it, but its lasting effects were the defeat of the French by Wolfe in North America and by Clive in India. The place spelt Homburg probably refers to Hombeg in the Southern German State of Hesse.
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