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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/ ► fe>vJ \(oO ^^*^ ?&arfaarli College fLibrarg BOUGHT FROM GIFTS FOR THE PURCHASE OF ENGLISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE ** Subscription of 1916 ' Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by VjOOQ IC DONAL O'SULLIVAN, PRINCE OF BEAR AND BANTRY. BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT BY T. D. SULLIVAN (author of " DUNBOY, AN HISTORICAL POEM ; " " MEMOIR OF A. M. SULLIVAN ; " " RECOLLECTIONS OF TROUBLED TIMES IN IRISH POLITICS;" "EVERGREEN;" "SONGS AND POEMS;" ETC.) If CfteAi CAti c^eAt Ati ctteA6 fo 61aoi^ gAe-deAlAib CtieA6 -00 cfteAd te C|teiA6A c-ftioi 6i|teAnn C|teA6 HA 5ctieA6 Ag clAtinA Ati filAon-cf A05A1I. — CA165 gAe-oeAtAi 6 SuitleAbAiti. DUBLIN: SEALY, BRYERS AND WALKER Middle Abbey Street 1908 Digitized by VjOOQIC I^li;02;i>..2/ HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY SEP 27 1917 SUBSCRIPTION OF 1916 PRINTED BT SBALT, BEYERS AND WALKER, MIDDLE ABBEY STREET, DUBLIN. Digitized by Google TO THE MEMORY OF DONAL O'SULLIVAN, PRINCE OF BEARE AND BANTRY, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR Digitized by Google EVERGREEN, A Neb) Volume of Verse^ By T. D. SULLIVAN, Crown 8vo, 1/- WHAT THE PRESS SAYS:-^ " They have the true Hibernian flavour." — Scotsman, " The writer of those stirring verses has certainly given us value for our money. . . The author has an ear for rhyme and rhythm — a ready wit, a light touch, and a distinct sense of fun — an equipment which many a would-be poet lacks." — Cork Constitution. *' The contents of * Evergreen ' deal with various topics of current interest, and are written in Mr. Sullivan's usual happy \ein:*'-Ulster Herald, " A charming little volume, containing a splendid collection of verses ; written in a bright and racy style, for which the author is justly famous." — Waterford Star, ''Light and tuneful pieces. . . Noting the dates appended to the songs and squibs, we are struck by the appositeness of the book's title, for the same freshness and raciness is to be found in the latest pieces as in the verses that delighted Irish readers and audiences in the long ago." — Irish Independent. " The charm, ease and grace of T. D. Sullivan's poems are too well-known to be mentioned at this stage of his literary career. His verses appeal to the popular taste, and live in the memory of the people. . . . One of the neatest and best printed books we have seen for a long while." — The Kerrynian. ** Genuine poetry, clever rhyme and good-humoured squib." — Daily Express, " Will give much pleasure to lovers of poetry and good- humoured squibs." — Galway Express. SEALY, BRYERS A WALKER, Middle Abbey Street, DUBLIN. Digitized by Google PREFACE. In Ireland, every part of which has been the scene of stirring events, and whose people have experienced many vicissitudes of fortune, the publication of local histories relating to the affairs of minor areas — such as counties, baronies, and parishes — conversant also with the public life and actions of the leading families and personages in those districts, would, I have often thought, possess much interest, and be generally ser- viceable in the way of our national education. They would be useful materials for larger works, and facilitate their production. There still exists among the masses of our people (though, happily, matters are improving in that respect) a lamentable degree of ignorance of the history of their country. Generations have come and gone, "lived, moved, and had their being," amid scenes rich in historic associations, knowing Uttle or nothing about them. Our land is thick sown with memorials of a troubled past, of times of mixed sadness and glory ; but our young folk tread historic fields, and see in every landscape the relics of stately towers, castles, churches, and monasteries, having but hazy notions — ^many of them having none at all — of the tales connected there- with, and rarely seeking to acquire any knowledge on the subject. Digitized by Google vi PREFACE This work is intended as a contribution to a class of national literature in which, as I conceive, we are somewhat deficient. It is nothing in the nature of a guide-book; has nothing to do with routes or fares, and does not expatiate on the scenic beauties of the regions with wliich it is concerned. It has much to say of an Irish Sept, who, for a long period, were the owners and rulers of a famous territory. I hope it may have interest for Irishmen generally ; but, at all events, if all the O'Sullivans, at home and abroad — or even a tenth of their number — show a practical appreciation of the work, the publisher will have a great deal to do, and the author will be much pleased. In the appendix, at the end of the Volume, will be found many items of interest that could not well be brought into the text. But it will be for the reader's convenience that I should here make a few explanatory references to persons and circumstances mentioned in the course of the narrative. Coming to the Elizabethan period, the "Lord President," so much in evidence, was Sir George Carew, Lord President of Munster, afterwards Earl of Totness. It was under his governorship the desolation of Munster was carried out, the Castle of Dunboy captured, and the O'Sullivan Sept dispossessed and overthrown. He was the compiler of the valuable historical work entitled Pacata Hibernia (Ireland Pacified), the manuscript of which he left amongst his papers for publication after his death. The first edition was Digitized by Google PREFACE va issued in London in 1633. It is an authentic narrative of the campaign, but written entirely from an English point of view. Of recent editions the most interesting is that of Mr. Standish O'Grady, published in 1896. " The Earl of Thomond" was a member of the O'Brien family, some of the heads of which had early attorned to English rule, and rendered important service to the new masters of their country. The Earl of Elizabeth's time is spoken of by Irish writers as " the most active and violent of all the Royalist partisans." " Lord Mountjoy " was an Englishman named Charles Blount, who, in 1601, was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, and who did the work usually expected in those times from holders of that ofl5ce. We have his name conmiemorated in Mountjoy Square, Dublin. The fate and fortunes of those O'Sullivans of the olden time would seem to have had attractions for Irish writers from their day to the present. Far transcending in historic value all other treatises on the subject is Don Philip O'SulUvan's Catholic History of Ireland, admirably translated from the original Latin, and annotated by Mr. Matthew J. Byrne, published by Sealy, Bryers & Walker in 1903. It is a good counter- blast for Carew's Pacata Hibert^ia. Several articles on the O'Sullivan history have appeared within the past few years in Irish periodicab. The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, Ireland, in its quarterly numbers for December, 1906, Digitized by Google via PREFACE and March, 1907, has a paper by W. F. Butler, M.A., F.R.U.I., entitled " The Lordship of MacCarthy Mor." which is largely concerned with the affairs of the O'Sullivan Sept. The Ulster Journal of Archaology for July, 1905, has a portrait of Donal O'Sullivan Beare, and an account of his career, by the Right Reverend Monsignor O'Laverty, M.R.I.A. The Journal of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, in its number for April-June, 1901, has a paper entitled "Don Philip O'Sullivan; the Siege of Dunboy, and the retreat and assassination of O'Sullivan Beare." Other such articles are : — " Beara's Last Defender," signed " T. B. C," m the, Record of the League of St, Columba, Maynooth, for years 1902-1903." Many years previously the late Mr. John George MacCarthy, of Cork, published a historical novel with a similar title, " The Last Lord of Beara." " The Sword of O'Sullivsm Beare," by Michael Conway, in The Irish Rosary for September, 1905. All those publications have been helpful to me ; and to the writers and publishers I gratefully acknowledge my obligations. Digitized by Google CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGB Arrival of the Milesian Invaders in Bantry Bay. — Bere- haven Harbour called after their Queen, Beara. — French and English Naval Fight in the Bay in 1689. — The attempted French Invasion in 1795. — ^Wolfe Tone's Account of the Expedition . . . . • • 1 CHAPTER n. The Elizabethan Wars. — ^The Battle of Kinsale. — ^The Spanish Commander's intended Surrender of Donal O'Sullivan's Castle of Dunboy. — ^The Castle retaken by O'SuUivan's Men. — Letters of O'SuUivan to the King of Spain .. .. .. .. ..9 CHAPTER HI. The Desolation of Munster. — Descriptions by English Writers. — ^The Siege of Dunboy Castle. — ^The Massacre in Dursey Island. — Capture and Destruction of Dunboy Castle. — Fate of the Garrison • . . . . . 14 CHAPTER IV. O'Sullivan commences hit famous retreat to the North. — Unparalleled sufferings of his Followers. — Fighting all the Way. — ^A Brilliant Irish Victory. — ^Thomas Davis's po«m8 on the O'Sullivans. Some other Quotations . . 22 Digitized by Google X CONTENTS CHAPTER V. '^AGE The English Market for Irish Heads.—The Price List issued by the Lords Justices at Cork.— O'Sullivan Escapes to Spain. — Is welcomed and honoured by the King. — Is Assassinated by an Englishman at Madrid . . 31 CHAPTER VI. Religious Troubles. — Endeavours to Protestantise Ireland. — Settlements of French and Dutch Protestants en- couraged by the Government. — ^Lord Deputy Strafford and his Foreign Artificers. — A Huguenot Settlement at Berehaven under Jacques de la Fontaine, and what became of it . . . . . . . . 36 CHAPTER Vn. How the Irish suffered for their Loyalty to King Charles I. *-The Cromwellian War, Confiscations, and Planta- tions. — Dispossession of the Native Land-owners in Cork and Kerry. — ^Their Properties acquired by English Adventurers.— Whites, Brown es,Herberts, &c, . . 42 CHAPTER Vni. The Romantic Career of Morty Oge O'Sullivan.— His Shooting of Lewellen Puxley. — A Military Force sent from Cork to capture him. — ^Their Attack on his House. — ^Morty Shot Dead. — His Body towed at the Stem of a Sloop from Berehaven to Cork.-^His Head set on a Spike over the Jail. — Poems of Lamentation . • 46 CHAPTER IX. General John Sullivan. — A Leader in the American War of Independence. — Captures the First Fort in the War. — Honoured by George Washington. — Helps to rout the English Army out of Boston. — American Counties called by his name . . . . . . . . 55 CHAPTER X. The Admirals Sullivan of the British Navy. — Gunner John Sullivan of Bantry at the Siege of SebastopoL— The O'SuUivaos in Literature.— Don Philip O'Sullivan the Historian.— Tadh Gaolach and Owen Roe O'Sullivan, Gaelic Poets.— Sir Arthur SuUivan, Mus^dan, etc. . . 61 Digitized ed by Google CONTENTS n CHAPTER XI. PAGE The Grand Grabber, Sir William Petty. — His Acqnimtions in Kerry. — He is publicly accused by Sir Jerome Sankey of Enormous Frauds. — ^The Prosecution fisiles out. — Petty's Down Survey, — His Property now " the Lansdowne Estates." — Scandals of their Management in " the fifties."— Stewart Trench's Rules and Regula- tions. — The *• Lansdowne Ward " in a New York Hospital •• •• •• •• ..68 CHAPTER XII. The White Family.-^The Lords Bantry.— Lord Clinton's Purchase of Bere Island. — ^Extraordinary Scenes. — Descriptions of them by John P. Prendergast, Author of The Cromwellian Settlement of Irelani 7D CHAPTER XTII. Concluding Ol)servaiions . . . . . . 83 Appendix .. ,. .. .• .85 Digitized by Google A Book for Irishmen to Road, Recollections or Croubiea Citnes In Irisi) Politics. By T. D. SULLIVAN. Crown 8vo^ Cloth^ 3s, BA ** The volume will be read with interest by all who are concerned with political life in the Emerald Isle." — Dundee Advertiser^ " For those who desire a brightly- written survey of the varying phases of the Nationalist movement in Ireland during the past sixty years there is nothing better than Mr. T. D. Sullivan's book."— Pdt// Mall Gazette. ** This is a chatty and interesting volume, written in an anecdotic style, and covering a period which goes back sixty years. ... As a repository of anecdote, of des- criptions of events and men during stirring times, we must award the book high praise." — /risk Times, *\ . . His style is lucid and concise, his tone is moderate, and he has a gift for apt quotation, of pungent political verse and amusing anecdote." — literary World, ** , . . Mr. Sullivan's volume must be read to understand aright the Irish question of to-day. To Irish people it will not only have a value, but a fascination." — /Reynolds* Newspaper, A New Edition in Paper Covers will Mbortly be issued by the Publishers. SEALY, BRYERS ft WALKER, MIDDLE ABBEY STBEET, DUBLIN. uigitized by ^ joogle Bantry, Berehaven AND The O' Sullivan Sept CHAPTER I. BANTRY Bay comes in for honorable mention at an early period of Irish history. It is recorded that its shores were the first landing place of the adventurers who came from Spain under the command of Queen Scota, widow of Milesius, and captained by her sons. In a note to an edition of Smith's History of Cork published by Guy and Co. of that city, we read : Ancient accounts differ much from each other, some making only three sons of Milesius to land in Ireland ; but the landing of these, as well as of Partholanus, they all place in the Bay of Bantry, which they call Inber Sceine. Bearhaven is said to have come by its name in this way : — ^An Irish chief named Owen the Splendid, having been defeated in a great engagement by " Conn of the Hundred Battles," fled to Spain, where he married the King's daughter, Beara. Returning after the lapse of some time at the head of a powerful force, his vessels put into a commodious harbour on the south-west coast B Digitized by Google 2 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND of Ireland, with which he was so pleased that in honour of his wife he called it Beaxhavefi. The haven in later times gave its name to the extensive district now known as the barony of Beare. The Bay is a great inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, about 28 miles ifi length, varying in width from five to eight mQes, free of shoals or rocks in any way perilous to navigation, and of great depth. On its northern shore are three harbours, Berehaven, Adrigoole, and Glen- garriffe, with Bantry harbour on its eastern or landward end. Two islands, like great breakwaters, make and shelter the harbours of Berehaven and Bantry. Sir George Carew, in his ** Pacata Hibernia " thus describes the place: — The haven of Beare is situated twelve miles to the northward of that promontory or foreland, so well known by the name of Mizzenhead, or Carrowhead. That which we properly call Bere- haven is the sea which entreth between the great island (before mentioned) and the main, or country called Beare, or O'Sullivan's country. At the entrance of the harbour it is not above a musket-shot over, I mean from the castle of Dunboy to the great island ; being entered, the tides are slack, good anchorage, and convenient places to bring ships on ground, smooth water, five fathoms deep at low water mark. Towards the north end it groweth much larger, at the least a league over, and of capacity sufficient to contain all the ships of Europe. The writer, it will be observed, calls the district *' O'Sullivan's country," and as such it was then known, and had been known for a long period. But it was not the native ground of the Sept ; they came from a district in Tipperary, from the neighbourhood of Knockgraffan, Clonmel, and thereabouts, where they had been lords of the soil, but whence they were dislodged by the spreading power of the Anglo-Norman invaders. Then they moved south and joined their Milesian kinsmen in the wide district in which was comprised the south- western parts of Cork and Kerry. There the sept segre- gated into two great divisions, separated by a range of Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 3 mountains ; on the northern or Kerry side of the Kne was the O'Sullivan Mor tribe, on the southern, or Cork side, along the shores of Bantry Bay, were the O'Sullivans Beare, Whether this settling down of the newcomers was peaceably effected or not does not clearly appear from the record ; but the resistance, if any, to their intrusion must have been only slight and desultory. The over-lord of those districts — ^and of a much wider extent of territory — at that time was the MacCarthy Mor. The O'SuUivans came in under his sovereignty, so to say, and like the other septs under his almost nominal headship, they undertook to pay him his customary tributes — ^to furnish him with a prescribed number of fighting men for his service in time of war, and with a stipulated amount of supplies for himself and his followers whenever he had occasion to go on hostings or visitations through his territory. Anti-Irish writers refer to those " cuttings and closherings " of the Irish chiefs on their clansmen as if they were tremendous exactions — ^an intolerable burdeil ; but they were nothing of the kind. The clansmen lived in rude plenty ; they did not lack food or clothing ; there were no evictions for non-payment of rent — ^and no shootings of landlords. They loved their chiefs, to whom they paid a moderate amount of tribute in money as well as in kind, but nothing pomparable to what is extracted from their class in our time by Irish landlords and England's ingienibus system of taxation. The town of Bantry, we are told in some old topo- graphical works, was formerly called Ballygobbin; other accounts state that at a more remote period its name was just what it is to-day — " Bean-traigh," — the white strand. In the time of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, son-in-law of the *' Lord Protector," had a fortification erected about a mile to the south-west of the present town. A number of the small traders Digitized by Google 4 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND of Bantry, thinking they could do better business in the vicinity of the fort, built some houses there, which came to be called " Newtown," but after some time both the fort and the new settlement were deserted and the traders returned to their old location by the water's edge. Several projects for the construction of new forts at Bantry and Berehaven were devised from time to time by the English governors at Dublin Castle, and recommended to the higher authorities in London, but they were not carried out. In the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the reign of William and Mary, published in 1906, we get a specimen docu- ment in the following letter: — 1694, April 10, Dublin Castle. The Lords Justices of Ireland to Sir John Trentchard. Experience every day shows us how well some forts (now demolished) were placed ; and how much it would contribute to the pubUc peace and safety if they were restored. The town of Bantry is seated in the bottom of a large and well frequented bay and in the borders of Bearhaven, Glanaroghty and Muskerry, where for nearly twenty miles there are no Protestant inhabitants. This is a den of Tories who molest the country round about here ; the Popish natives harbour them, and, corresponding with the French privateers, betray to them merchant ships, so that within these two years above twenty ships have been taken from thence by the privateers. The wisdom of former times built a fort in this plax:e, by which that wild and rebellious country was kept in awe by a small garrison. And the Irish, when it came into their hands in 1698, demolished it, that it might no longer be a bridle upon them. The re-building of this fort nearer to the sea than it was. will secure those ships which shelter there, prevent this correspondence with France, unkennel those thieves that from thence do so much mischief, and every year save more than the whole charge will come to. The reader will notice the assumption in this paper — which indeed runs through all the Anglo-Irish Hterature of the time, ofl&cial and unofl&cial — ^that the only people Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 6 who had no right to Kve in Ireland were the natives whose fathers had been there from the dawn of history. Bantry Bay was more than once the scene of a visit from a French fleet on anti-English purposes intent. Every one knows of the expedition under General Hoche and Wolfe Tone in December, 1795 ; but more than a hundred years before that time — ^in April, 1689 — a sharp engagement between French and English war- ships took place in those waters. The details, sum- marised from Campbell's Naval History, read thus : — The 29th of April (1689) Admiral Herbert, being on the south coast of Ireland, by his scouts discovered the French fleet, and next day had intelligence that they were gone into Baltimore, being forty-four sail ; but on pursuing them the scouts had a sight of them to the west of Cape Clear, and upon steering after them, found they were got into Bantry Bay. The admiral lay ofE the bay all night, and next morning stood in, where he found the enemy at anchor ; but they soon got under sail, bearing down upon them (the English) in a line composed of twenty- eight men of war and five fire-ships. When they came within musket-shot of the " Defiance," who led the van, the French admiral (Perrault) put out the signal of battle, which was begun by firing their great and smaU shot at the " Defiance " and the rest as they came into line. The English made several boards to gain the wind, or at least to engage them closer. Finding that way of working very disadvantageous. Admiral Herbert stood ofi to sea, as well to have got his ships into a line as to have gained the wind of the enemy, but found them so cautious in bearing down that he could not get an opportunity to do it, so he continued battering upon a stretch till five in the afternoon, when the French admiral stood into the bay. The (English) admiral's ship and some others being disabled in their rigging, could not follow them, but continued for some time longer before the bay ; and the admiral gave them a gun at parting. In this action Captain George Aylmer, of the " Portland," with the lieutenant and ninety-four seamen, were killed, and about two hundred and fifty wounded. On the 7th of May the admiral got into Plymouth with the fleet. Clearly this was a French victory; but English writers do not like to call it by that name. The fleet despatched by the French Directory in Digitized by Google 6 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND the latter part of December, 1795, with a military force designed to aid a projected Irish rising against English rule, met no enemy on their way, but were dispersed and wrecked by tempestuous weather. Such vessels of the expedition as got into Bantry Bay remained there for nearly a week — ^and a week is a great deal in war time — trolling and straining at their anchors, without attempting to put on shore the soldiery they had brought with them — they were awaiting the arrival of one of their missing vesseb, the " Fraternitie " in which was General Hoche, the commander of the expedition. On board the *' Indomptable," in the bay was Theobald Wolfe Tone, almost heart-broken with anxiety and vexation as day after day went by without bringing in certain of the ships which had left Brest on the i6th of the month, but had parted company in the furious storm which burst upon them. A few extracts from the diary penned by Tone at this time will illustrate the situation : — December 22nd (1795). — This morning, at eight, we have neared Bantry Bay considerably, but the fleet is terribly scattered ; no news of the Fraternitie, ... AH rests now upon Grouchy, and I hope he may turn out well ; he has a glorious game in his hands, if he has spirit and talent to play it December 2 yd. — Last night it blew a heavy gale from the eastward, with snow, so that the mountains are covered this morning. . . . It is to be observed that of the thirty -two points of the compass the east is precisely the most unfavourable to us. . . . Oh, that we were once ashore, let what might come after ; I am sick to the very soul of this suspense. ... I am now so near the shore that I can, in a manner, touch the sides of Bantry Bay with my right and my left hand, yet God knows whether I shall ever tread again on Irish ground. ... I could tear my flesh with rage and vexation, but that advances nothing, and so I hold my tongue in general, and devour my melancholy as I can. Next day came a gleam of hope to the heart of this well-nigh despairing and desperate man; but it did not last long. The wind, with what an Irish Nationalist Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 7 might regard as a malignant persistency, continued adverse, — as if it were English manufacture, and had been sent straight across from London. The diary thus continues: — Dec. 24th. — Well, at last I believe we are about to disembark ; God knows how I long for it. But this infernal easterly wind continues without remorse, and though we have been under weigh three or four hours, we do not seem, to my eyes, to have gained one hundred yards in a straight line. Dec. 2$th. — . . . The wind continues right ahead, so that it is absolutely impossible to work up to the landing place, and God knows when it will change. Dec. 26th. — Last night, at half after six o'clock, in a heavy gale of wind, still from the east, we were surprised by the admiral's frigaite running under our quarter and hailing the Indomptable, with orders to cut our cable and put to sea instantly. . . . Certainly we have been persecuted by a strange fatahty from the very night of our deparfure to this hour. We have lost two commanders-in-chief ; of four admirals not one remains ; we have lost one ship of the line, that we know of, and probably many others of which we know nothing ; we have been now six days in Bantry Bay, within five hundred yards of the shore, without being able to effectuate a landing ; we have been dispersed four times in four days, and at this moment, of forty- three sail, of which the expedition consisted, we can muster of all sizes but fourteen. Dec. 27th. — . . . At half after four, there being every appear- ance of a stormy night, three vessels cut their cables and put to sea. The Indomptable, having with great difficulty weighed one anchor, we were forced at length to cut the cable of the other and make the best of our way out of the Bay, being followed by the whole of our little squadron, now reduced to ten sail, of which seven are of the line, one frigate, and two corvettes or luggers. So miserably ended the French expedition to Bantry Bay.^ The subsequent career and tragic fate of Wolfe ^To memorise the expedition and honour its Irish leader, the Town Commissioners of Bantry, in 1898, — ^the centenary jrear of the Irish insurrection — gave to the market square of their town the name of " Wolfe Tone Square." The motion was made by the Parliamentary representative of the district, Mr. James Gilhooly ; it was seconded by Mr. Donovan, T.C., and cordially adopted. Digitized by Google 8 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND Tone, and the outbreak of the Irish insurrection in 1798, do not come within the scope of this work ; but numerous recent publications, at popular prices, bring the record within the reach of every patriotic Irishman. Here I turn back from the period of those naval operations to deal with the events of an earlier time, when, in the later part of the i6th century and the opening years of the 17th, Ireland was being swept with fu-e and sword by the soldiery of England, and the part of the country with which these pages are specially concerned was made the scene of horrors and sufferings indescribable; Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT CHAPTER II. THE story of how the territories of Bere and Bantry passed from the hands of the O'SuUivans forms a chapter of Irish history which I propose to outline briefly in the following pages. The overthrow, dispossession and dispersion of the Sept date from the closing years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. From the beginning to the end of that reign there was an almost continuous tangle of wars between France, Spain, and England, largely due to events arising out of the " Reformation," then in its earlier stages ; and Ireland, refusing to accept the new doctrines and form of worship proffered to her by Henry the Eighth and his daughter, was inevitably drawn into the trouble. The suppression of the monasteries and seizure of the Church revenues in England had enriched whole swarms of needy nobles, sleek courtiers, and adventurous soldiers ; and there was still a field for such profitable operations in Ireland. The opportunity was availed of to the utmost. Of the ultimate result — ^as regards the shock of conflict — there could hardly be any doubt. England was a consolidated country, under a centralised government, with an army, a navy, and a national exchequer ; Ireland had none of these things ; she had chiefs, and bards, and learned churchmen ; she had warriors too, but their prowess had been for the most part exercised in inter-tribal or provincial conflicts, and as regards military science they were behind the age. Touch England — even in those days — ^at the remotest point of her territory, coast, creek, or headland, and the thrill was felt at the centre of her national b'fe : Digitized by Google 10 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND the head was turned round and the fangs were bared to bite whatever trod on the tail; while in Ireland, Connaught or Munster might be invaded and raided again and again without Leinster's or Ulster's troubUng their heads about it. The struggle between the two countries was Uke a collision between an iron pot, all of one piece, and a composite article of really finer material, but whose several parts were ill-cemented and some of them but slightly stitched together. Or, to vary the illustration, I would say that when it came to a quarrel and combat between a bard armed with a harp and a manuscript and a semi-savage wielding a hatchet, the bard was bound to have the worst of it. The northern chieftains, O'Neill, and O'DonneU, made a noble stand and achieved some brilliant victories before they were finally broken down and overborne. In the south the most splendid resistance to the Elizabethan forces was made by Donal O'Sullivan of Dunboy, Prince of Beare and Bantry. When O'Neill marched with an army from Tyrone to relieve Ireland's Spanish aUies, under the command of Don Juan de Aquila, who were besieged at Kinsale by an English army greatly superior to them in number, O'SuUivan brought a strong contingent of his clansmen to join the national ranks. On the night of the 23rd of December, 1601, the Irish forces and the beleaguered Spaniards made a badly concerted attack on the besiegers. They were defeated, thrown into disorder, and put to rout. Shortly afterwards, the siege continuing, Don Juan capitulated and surrendered the town on terms compat- ible with the honour of his army ; but he undertook at the same time to deliver up to Lord Mount joy,^ the forts of Dunboy, Baltimore, and Castlehaven, into which Spanish garrisons had been put by arrangement with their owners. O'SulHvan, on learning of this ^ Sir Charles Blount, who had been made Lord Deputy for Ireland and Baron Mount joy by Queen Elizabeth. Digitized by Google THE O'StriUVAN SEPT 11 proposed handing over of his castle to the enemy, was furious. His view was that the Spanish commander had no right or power to do an3^hing of the kind ; and he resolved that it should not be done. But the first question was, how to rid his castle of the Spaniards, into whose possession he had given it when he thought they would defend it to the last against the English. Finding that they considered themselves bound to act on the terms of their commander's capitulation, and were resolved not to yield the castle except to the English, O'Sullivan decided to treat them to a process of summary eviction. He had some of his men inside the castle to work an opening in one of the walls without exciting the suspicions of the Spaniards, and when all was ready he had eighty of his followers, in the mid of night, to pour in through the breach and seize the place, to hold it, as he alleged, for the king of Spain. O'SuUivan's men, acting on the instructions they had received, offered no violence to the garrison ; but some of the latter fired on the intruders and killed three of them. The affair, however was quickly composed, the Spaniards agreeing to accept transport from the place by sea to join a party of their countrsmaen at Baltimore. A few of their number who were expert gunners were induced by O'Sullivan to remain to aid him in the defence of the castle, which he knew would shortly be besieged by a powerful army. Letters in explanation and justification of his conduct were then sent by O'Sullivan to King Philip and to two of his ministers — docmnents at once forcible and pathetic. His letter to the King, somewhat abbreviated, reads thus : — My Lord and King, . . . Upon the landing in Caatlehaven of your generals with a fleet and men from your Greatness, I came to their presence tendering my obeisance unto them in the name of your Highness . . . and yidded out of my mere love and good win, without Digitized by Google 12 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND compulsion or composition, into their hands, in the name of your Majesty, not only my castle and haven called Berehaven, but also my wife, my children, my country, lordships, and all my possessions for ever, to be disposed of at your pleasure. . . . Notwithstanding, my gracious lord, conclusions of peace were assuredly agreed upon betwixt Don Juan de Aquila and the English — a fact pitiful, and (according to my judgment) against all right and humane conscience. Amongst other places whereof your Greatness was dispossessed in that manner — which were neither yielded nor taken to the end they should be delivered to the English — Don Juan tied himself to deliver my castle and haven, the only key of mine inheritance, where upon the Uving of many thousand persons doth rest that Uve some twenty leagues upon the sea coast, into the hands of my cruel, cursed, misbeUeving enemies, — a thing I fear in respect of the execrable- ness, inhumanity, and ungratefulness of the fact, if it take effect as it was plotted, that will give cause to other men not to trust any Spaniard hereafter with their bodies or goods upon these causes. . . . My lord, in that I judge this dishonourable act to be against your honour and pleasure, considering th6 harm that might ensue to the service of your majesty, and the everlasting overthrow that might happen to me and my poor people, such as might escape the sword (if any should), I have taken upon me — with the help of God — to offer to keep my castle and haven from the hands of mine enemies until further news and order from your highness. Don Juan, presumably a brave soldier, but apparently a somewhat theatrical person, was much incensed by O'Sullivan's re-capture of his castle, which he regarded as compromising his own honour, and he offered to re-take it for the Lord President, who, replied, in effect, that he would prefer to carry out that business himself. We read in the " Pacata " that :— When report was brought to Don Juan de Aquila (then in Cork) of the surprise of Dunboy, he took it for a great affront, and would presently have drawn from Kinsjile the Spanish companies there yet remaining, and march to Dunboy to regain it by force, and deliver it according to the composition into her majesty's hands, but the Lord Deputy and the President (who were desirous to see his heels towards Ireland) wished him not to trouble him- self with that business, as, when he was gone, the President should take order for the reducing of it into his own hands. Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 13 It does not appear that King Philip found any fault with O'SuUivan for what he had done ; on the contrary he continued to be a friend of the Irish chief to the last day of his life. In " ^4 narrative of the state of Ireland from the Spanish landing in Kinsale till the end of May, (1601) by Father W. Bath, S.J., Spiritual Director of the University of Salamanca, we read : — Don Juan made peace with the English, and delivered to them the strong places which he had retained. One of the Irish nobles, O'Sullivan, learning this, turned the Spaniards out of his castle of Berehaven, seized the munitions, and to prove his loyalty to the King of Spain, sent his son to him as a hostage. His majesty was greatly affected by this conduct, so much so that he con- ceived a lasting esteem for O'SulUvan. The favours and friendships bestowed on O'SulUvan gave great offence to the English government, and were protested against by one of their Ministers of State. Here is an extract from a letter of his to the English representative at the Spanish Court : — As touching O' Sullivan, it is very fit that you let them know that the report of the honor they did him hath come unto his Majesties ears, and that although they will alledge that in the time of hostility betwixt England and Spain it may be he did them many services, and may then have deserved well at their hands, for which they have just cause to reward him, yet since by his Majesties happy coming to these crowns those differences have had an end, and that there is a perfect League and Amity betwixt them, his Majesty cannot chuse but dislike that they should bestow upon him any Title or Dignity, which only properly belongeth unto him towards his own subjects ; that, therefore, he would be glad that they would forbear to confer any such titulary Honour upon any of his subjects without his Privity. From aU which it appears that even in the time of his overthrow and exile the English kept a close watch on the expatriated Prince of Beare and Bantry, and did their utmost to prevent his being accorded in other lands the recognition to which his patriotism and his valour had entitled him. Digitized by Google 14 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND CHAPTER III. THE storm of war which O'Sullivan expected soon burst upon his castle and clansmen at Dunboy. He made such preparations for the reception of the enemy as were possible to him, strengthening the outer walls, excavating some trenches and setting up obstacles to a hostile advance. But Dunboy castle, Hke most of those existing in Ireland at that period, was but ill-fitted to withstand artillery. The walls indeed were thick, but the masonry was poor ; and once a battery was placed within range of them and allowed free play for even a few days, the ruin of such structures was assured. To provide a place of retreat in which to make a last stand for the national and catholic cause, in case of defeat at Dunboy, O Sullivan sent a party of his men with three pieces of cannon to hold possession of Dursey island and, if possible, prevent a landing of the enemy there. The island is at the extreme end of the Beara promontory, and is divided from the main land by a great cleft of the mountain, of which evidently, it at one time formed part ; a deep and narrow channel is thus formed through which the tide runs with great force, and in which the swells tmnbling in from the Atlantic toss iip huge waves, rising to an extraordinary height. The place is thus described in the " Pacata " : — Near unto the haven of Beare there is a small island called the Durseys, which is very strongly seated by nature, by reason of the difficulty of landing, which is but in one narrow entrance, which may be defended with a few hands; and besides it is impossible for any boat to arrive at this entrance except it be in a dead calm, the least gale of wind raising such billows as do en- Digitized by Google THE CySULLIVAN SEPT 15 danger any boat as shall come near the shore. This impregnable place was selected lor their extreme refuge if Dunboy should be won by the English. The English commanders in Munster could now turn their almost undivided attention to O'Sullivan's country. They had harried, ravaged, and devastated all the rest of the province. To say they had made a desert of it would be to use an inadequate form of words, for nature's deserts are peaceful places with no indications of having been the theatres of murderous strife and cruelty of every form and degree : the desert made by the soldiers of Elizabeth was strewn with corses, studdied with the ruins of castles, mansions, churches, schools, and peasant homes — ^the fields black from the burning of crops, dotted by skeletons of the victims of the sword, fire, and famine. English writers of the time, some of them witnesses of the scenes, give harrowing accounts of the condition of the country. Thus the historian Leland writes:— The southern province seemed to be totally depopulated, and, except within the cities, exhibited an hideous scene of famine and desolation. In the "Pacata" we read:— Sir Richard Pearce and Captain George Flower, with their troops, left neither com nor horn, nor house, unbumt between Kinsale and Ross. Captain Roger Harvie, who had with him his brother Captain Gawen Harvie, Captain Francis SUngsby, Captain William Stafford, and also the companies of the Lord Barry and the treasurer, with the President's horse, did the like between Ross and Bantry. Several other English historians give painfully horrible descriptions of those scenes, amongst them the poet Edmund Spenser — a private s^retary in the employ of one of Elizabeth's chief governors of Ireland, snugly located on part of the confiscated property of the Desmonds, and Uving in a castle robbed from its rightful owners. This litterateur, place-hunter and land-grabber. Digitized by Google 16 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND who had himself advised and recommended the policy of starvation to be employed against the Irish, penned in his View of the Present State of Ireland (and with an affectation of pity) pictures of the desolation of the country and the murderous destruction of the people so shocking, so repulsive, that even at this day, one cannot read them without a shudder. I quote but one specimen, and omit the most revolting part of it :— Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of com and cattle, yet, ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would rue the same. Out of every comer of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spake Uke ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them ... in a short space there was almost none left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast. The reader will note the admission made in this " Spenserian stanza," as it might be called, that Ireland under the rule of its native chiefs, before the English came upon them, was " a most populous and plentiful country." In the ruin of it this dainty sonneteer was only too glad to take part. The fair lands and castle of Kilcolman were not sufficient to satisfy his greed. In violation of even such English law as then existed in Ireland he managed to take possession of a large tract of land owned, not by the natives — as legal ownership went then — ^but by one of the Anglo-Norman proprietors. Lord Roche, Viscount Fermioy. Legal proceedings to recover the land were taken against hun. with the result that the *' gentle ptoet " was compelled to relinquish that portion of his ill-gotten gains. His end was to die, landless and hungry, in London. After the capitulation of the Spaniards at Kinsale and the dispersion of the Irish forces. Mount joy drew Digitized by Google THE O* SULLIVAN SEPT 17 his whole anny together and set out for the reduction of the last fortresi on Irish ground holding out for the Irish cause. But he resolved to proceed cautiously. On the 9th of March, 1601, he instructed one of his commanders, the Earl of Thomond, to march with a large force into Carbery, " and from thence into Beare, there to view in what manner the castle of Dunboy was fortified, of the incredible strength of which much was noised." The "Pacata" tells us that "the Earl marched as far as the Abbey of Bantry about three score miles from Cork, and there had notice that Donal O'SulUvan Beare and his people, by the advice of two Spaniards, an Itahan, and friar named Dominic Collins, did still continue their works about the castle of Dunboy." He also had notice that T5Tell, one of O'SuUivan's most trusty captains, with considerable forces, was prepared to dispute the passage of his army through the rugged ground lying between Bantry and Berehaven, whereupon the President resolved that he would have his troops transported by sea to Beare island, whence they should cross to the mainland and proceed to the reduction of the castle. The Abbey of Bantry, above referred to, was founded in 1540 by Dermot O'Sullivan for Franciscan Friars. During the Elizabethan war it was sometimes occupied by Irish and sometimes by English soldiery, but its end was to :o ruined and razed to the ground. An incident in its history is thus narrated in a letter of Sir Warham Sentleger to Mr. Secretary Fenton, written at Cork, March 24, 1582. " Good Mr. Secretary, — The best news I have to advertise you is that your brother James escaped of late, a very narrow escape of being taken by the western traitors ; he not knowing of the defeat of his soldiers, nor yet of the abandoning of the Abbey of Bantry, sent certain boats from Bearhaven thither with • provisions for the soldiers, who, mistrusting nothing, came to C Digitized by Google 18 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND the Abbey, thinking to unload their provision, and th^ men being landed, the traitors lying close in the Abbey issued suddenly out and took the men and boats with the victuals, and hanged the men. Your brother coming after in another boat, not knowing the traitors to be in the Abbey was unawai«es unto him pursued with four boats full of tratiors, who had taken him if night had not favoured him, whioh being dark, he entered in among the rocks where he was forced to hide himself three days and three nights without any sustenance ; and so with great toil the fourth day he reached the Castle of Bearhaven, where he remaiueth sick, by the great toil he had upon the sea and the cold entertainment he had upon the rocks." The site of the Abbey is now the chief burial place for people of the town and district. In it was dug the great pit into which were cast the cofiinless remains of hundreds of victims of the great famine of 1847-48. Over the pit stands a large granite cross, erected to their memory in recent years by the brothers Tim and Maurice Healy. It bears no inscription or lettering of any kind other than the ScripturaJ words, " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." The siege of Dunboy Castle practically commenced on the 6th of June, 1602, and lasted until the i8th, both days included. The little garrison — only 143 men — made a heroic defence, but they had against them an army numbering over 2,000, with two batteries of artillery, so the little fortress was doomed from the very commence- ment of the operations. While the siege was in progress the Lord President took measures for the destruction of the intended last refuge of the O'SulHvans in Dursey island. He had a force of 160 men, with some pieces of cannon, embarked for the invasion of the island ; this they effected, and, after a stubborn resistance, made themselves masters of the place. How the defenders, after they had surrendered, were dealt with is briefly told in the " Pacata " :— Of the rebels four were killed, two hurt, who, with all the rest were brought into the camp, and after executed. Digitized by Google > THE 0*SULUVAN SEPT 19 But this is not the whole story ; the fate of a number of the islanders, as well as of the garrison, is more fully told by Don Philip O'SuUivan Beare in his Catholic History of Ireland. He says : — The inhabitants were terrified by the sudden arrival of the enemy ; some sought the protection of the altars, some ran to hide, some betook themselves to the fort, which the few armed men surrendered on the enemy's promise of seifety, as it had no cannon or fortifications. The English, after their wonted manner, committed a crime far more notable for its cruelty than their honour. Having dismantled the fort and fired the church and houses, they shot down, hacked with swords, or ran through with spears the now disarmed garrison, and others, old men, women, and children, whom they had driven into one heap. Some ran their swords up to the hilt through the babe and mother who was carrying it on her breast ; others paraded before their comrades little children, writhing and convulsed, on their spears ; and finally, binding all the survivors, they threw them into the sea over jagged and sharp rocks, showering upon them shots and stones. In this way perished about 300 Catholics, the greater part of whom were retainers of my father Dermot. Hideous as this picture is, it is quite of a piece with the ordinary operations of the English soldiery in Ireland during the periods of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian wars. Of this abundant testimony has come to us from the pens of English writers. It may be asked did the Irish not seek to take revenge in kind for these atrocities ? Did they never attempt to follow the evil example set them ? My reply is, they would not be human creatures if they could take such usage tamely. The race of men who could do so have not yet been bom, — ^and never will be. But as a matter of fact during the whole course of the war which desolated Munster, the cruelties, the savageries, the inhumanities of the campaign were almost entirely the work of the English party. The Irish " rebels " as they were called, were in their own country, on their own lands, the territories of their fathers for many generations — ^in their own homes, in the midst of their Digitized by Google 20 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND families ; the crops were of their sowing, the flocks and herds in the fields were their property. Amongst them, therefore, a numerous and well equipped army of marauders were able to carry out with comparative ease a long campaign of spoliation and slaughter. And if sometimes the harassed natives availed of opportunities to give the Englishmen a taste of their own quality, was it any wonder ? On the 13th of June an attempt to relieve the besieged castle of Dunboy was made by Captain Tyrell, one of O'Sullivan's chief ofi&cers ; it was ineffectual, because the small force under his command could do no more than give a somewhat hvely alarm to the English camp. Nothing can rout and defeat one army except another army ; and O'Sullivan had no army in the field. The siege of the castle went on ; after a cannonade of seven days duration the building was beaten into ruins. As the masonry was tumbling about their heads the defenders sent out a messenger to the Lord President with an offer of surrender if their lives might be spared and if they were allowed to march out with their arms. The response of the Lord President was to hang the envoy. The besiegers soon after effected an entrance into the ruined building ; hand-to-hand fighting of the most desperate character ensued, the defenders being gradually beaten from one point to another till they were driven into the cellar, where they made their last stand. A few of them managed to get outside the walls, where they were immediately cut down; eight men rushed to the sea shore and attempted to swim acnoss to Bere island, but the English captains, judging that something of the kind might be adventured, had three boats with armed men on board waiting for the chance, and the unfortunate swimmers were shot or speared in the water. The final scene is thus recorded in the " Pacata " : — The eighteenth (June) in the morning three and twenty more likewise rendered themselves simply to Captain Blundell, who Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 21 the night before had the guard, and after their cannoniers, being two Spaniards and an Italian (for the rest were slain) likewise yielded themselves ; then MacGeohagan, chief commander of the place, being mortally wounded with divers shot in his body, the rest made choice of one Thomas Taylor, an Englishman's son (the dearest and inwardest man with Tyrell, and married to his niece) to be their chief, who, having nine barrels of powder, drew himself and it into the vault and there sat down by it, with a Ught match in his hand, vowing and protesting to set it on fire, and blow up the castle, himself, and aU the rest, except they might have promise of life, which being by the Lord President refused, his lordship gave direction for a new battery upon the vault, intending to bury them in the ruins thereof ; and sifter a few times discharged, and the bullets entering amongst them into the cellar, the rest that were with Taylor, partly by inter- cession, but chiefly by compulsion (threatening to deUver him up if he were obstinate), about ten of the clock in the morning of the same day constrained him to render simply. . . Sir George Thornton, the sergeant major. Captain Roger Harvie, Captain Power, and others entering the vault to receive them. Captain Power found the said Richard MacGeohagan l)nbtig there mortally wounded (as before mentioned), who, perceiving Taylor and the rest ready to render themselves, raised himself from the ground, snatching a Ught candle, and staggering therewith to a barrel of powder (which for that purpose was unheaded), offering to cast it into the same. Captain Power took him and held him in his arms with intent to make him prisoner, until he was by our men (who perceived his intent) instantly killed ; and then Taylor and the rest were brought prisoners to the camp. . . . The same day fifty-eight were executed in the market place . . . The whole number of the ward consisted of one hundred and forty-three selected fighting men, being the best choice of all their forces, of the which no one man escaped, but were either slain, executed, or buried in the ruins, and so obstinate and resolved a defence had not been seen within this Kingdom* " So obstinate and resolved a defence had not been seen within this Kingdom." Notable and memorable words By members of the O'SuUivan Sept they should be for ever borne in memory as a testament of glory. Digitized by Google BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND CHAPTER IV. THE fall of Dunboy caused the abandonment of a second expedition which King Philip had intended to despatch to Ireland. Its arrival was for some time expected by both the Irish and the English, and desultory fighting went on in various parts of the South, — ^in all which operations 0*Sullivan and his friend Tyrell were active participants. They achieved some small successes, but by degrees they were overborne by the foreigners, aided, unfortunately, by Irish allies, the corrupted and rotten refuse of once noble clans. Castle after castle was captured and destroyed ; the homes of the humbler folk were sought out in all directions and unsparingly burned ; and a fresh sweep was made of all the live stock that could be gathered in from districts previously wasted, — ^this, of course, with a view that such of the natives as might escape the edge of the sword should perish of starvation. Under those desperate circumstances O'Sullivan decided on withdrawing from the wasted and desolated South, and, with the small remnant of his forces, and a number of the members of his immediate family, making the best of his way to the territory of his friend O'Rourke — ^an irreconcilable " rebel " like himself — ^in the county of Leitrim. It was a desperate venture, a terrible march, or rather flight, the little party — still fighting for their lives — being hunted almost every mile of the way by bands of denationalised Irishmen, mercenaries of Anglo-Irish settlers and recreant Irish Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 23 families. A detailed account of those operations is given in Don Philip 0*Sullivan*s history ; the " Pacata ** thus briefly tells the story : — As they (O' Sullivan's party) passed by the skirts of Muskery, they were skirmished withal by the sons of Teg Mac Owen Cartie, where they lost some of their men, and most of their carriage ; in passing by LiscarroU, John Barry, brother to the Viscount, with eight horsemen and forty foot, charged their rear at the ford of Ballaghan, where he slew and hurt many of them ; and of his part one horseman was slain. When they came to the river of the Shannon, they, finding the river high, and no boats nor troughs to pass them over into Connaught, they killed many of their horses, and made shifts with their hides to make certain little boats, called in Irish nevogs, in the which they transported their men and baggage. Nevertheless, before all were passed the river, the sheriff of the county of Tipperary fell upon their rear and slew many of them. Being in Connaught they passed safely through the county of Galway until they came into the Kellys' country, where they were fought withal by Sir Thomas Burke, the Earl of Clanrickard's brother, and Captain Henry Malby, who were more in number than the rebels. Nevertheless, when they saw that they must either make their way by the sword or perish, they gave a brave charge upon our men, in the which Captain Malby was slame, upon whose fall Sir Thomas and his troops, fainting with the loss of many men, studied their safetys by flight, and the rebels with Httle harm marched into O'Rourke's country. The next morning, being the fourth of January, 1602, Sir Charles coming to seek the enemy in their camp, he entered their quarter without resistance, where he found nothing but hurt and sick men, whose pains and lives by the soldiers were both determined. What a feat to be recorded with a smug sense of satisfaction — the killing of sick and wounded men, not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood, in a deserted camp which the English had entered without resistance ! This wonderful retreat of O'SulUvan's has been expatiated on in terms of admiration and sympathy by many writers of our own time, as well as of earlier dates. It has frequently been compared to the retreat of the 10,000 Greeks from Persia under the command Digitized by Google 24 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND of Xenophon after the battle of Cunaxa. The Greek warriors had a longer route to traverse, involving, of course, a longer period of danger and suffering, but as regards endurance, courage, and valour, the men of Beare and Bantry were fully up to that high example. O'Sullivan's little party started from Glengarriffe on the 31st of December, 1602. With privations of every sort, as well as with the swords and spears of the enemy, they had to contend all the way. Half-starved, footsore, weary, worn out by constant fatigue and want of sleep, some dropped out and others died on their toilsome journey. Their chieftain raUied, cheered and encouraged his men as best he could. One of his little speeches to them is thus recorded by his cousin Don Philip, the historian : — Since on this day our desperate circumstances and unhappy fate have left us neither wealth, nor country, nor children nor wives to fight for, but, as on this instant the struggle with our enemies is for the life that alone remains to us, which of you, I ask, in God's eternal name, will not rather fall fighting gloriously in battle and avenging your blood, than Uke cattle, which have no sense of honour, perish unavenged in cowardly flight ? Surely our ancestors, heroes famed for their high spirits, would never seek by a shameful flight to shun an honourable death, even when they could fly. For us it will be honourable to follow in their footsteps, especially as flight offers no salvation. See the plain stretching far and wide, without hindrance of bog, without thick woods, without any hiding places to which we could fly for concealment. The neighbouring people are no protection for us. There is none to come to our aid. The enemy block the roads and passes, and we, wearied with our long journey, are unable to run. Whatever chamce we have is only in our own courage and strength of our own arms. Up, then, and on them, whom you excel in spirit, courage, achievements past, and holy faith. Let us remember this day that enemies who have every- where attacked us have heretofore been routed by the Divine mercy. Above all, let us believe that the victory is the gift of God. Let us think that Christ our Lord will be with his servants in their utmost need, and that for His name and holy faith we join issue with heretics and their abettors. Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 26 For the rhetorical form of this address the historian probably is responsible ; but it may readily be believed that the chieftain spoke in that sense, and in the native tongue, which would carry his words straight to the hearts of his clansmen. Scarcely had h% concluded his speech when the royalist cavalry " were down in full tilt upon him," and a protracted engagement ensued, resulting in a brilliant victory for Donal*s little band of heroes. In this battle, says Don Philip, "about loo royalists fell, the flower of their forces, their general, Malby, Richard Burke, three standard-bearers, as many adjutants, more sergeants, - and the rest were Irish, Anglo-Irish, and English gentlemen. O'SuUivan, collecting the enemy's arms and colours, fled that evening and following night through a host of surround- ing enemies through O' Kelly's country, with such haste that he left some soldiers worn out on the road, and overcome with sleep. After three more days of such toils and sufferings, all that was left of O'SulUvan's little band reached the territory of the friendly chief, O'Rourke, by whom they were welcomed and hospitably entertained — for O'Rourke was a veritable " brother in arms," as resolute a " rebel " as Donal himself. When setting out from Glengarriffe they nmnbered about one thousand, of whom only 400 were fighting men ; — the rest were followers who feared to remain in the country after they had left ; amongst them were a nimiber of women. When they entered O'Rourke's castle there remained of the fighting men only 18 ; of the non-combatants, (sutlers, helpers, etc.) 16 ; and only one woman had survived the hardships of the journey. The incidents of this woful but glorious march seem to have had a special attraction for the muse of our national balladist, Robert Dwyer Joyce, who has given us three poems founded on them. From one Digitized by Google 26 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND entitled " Crossing the Blackwater," I take the following stanzas: — We stood so steady. All under fire; We stood so steady, Our long spears ready To vent our ire — To dash on the Saxon, Our mortal foe. And lay him low In the bloody mire ! •Twas by Blackwater, When snows were white ; 'Twas by Blackwater, Our foes for the slaughter Stood full in sight. But we were ready With our long spears. And we had no fears But we*d win the fight. Horses to horses. And man to man — O'er dying horses And blood and corses O'Sullivan, Our general, thundered ; And we were not slack To slay at his back Till the flight began. Oh, how we scattered The foemen then — Slaughtered and scattered And chased and shattered By shore and glen — To the walls of Moyallo Few fled that day. — Will they bar our way. When we come again ? Of another of the defeats inflicted by the hunted chief on his pursuers, the same patriot bard Digitized by Google THE O' SULLIVAN SEPT 27 has given us a poem of nine verses, two of which I here quote: — The ambush was set in the Passage of Lightning, And now in the moonlight sharp weapons came brightening ; The lance of the Saxon from Mulla and Mallow, And the pike of the kern from the wilds of Duhallow, Soon clashed with the swords of the men of Berehaven, fill the echoes rolled back through the Glen of the Raven t Then O' Sullivan burst like the angel of slaughter On the foe by the current of Geerath's wild water ; And the brave men of Cork and of Kerry's wild regions Were his rushing destroyers, his death-dealing legions ; And onw^ard they rode over traitor and craven. Whose bones long bestrewed the lone Glen of the Raven. Thomas Davis was profoundly impressed by that touching episode of Irish history, and made it the subject of several poems. One of these has reference to the secret return of O'Sullivan to his native place to bear away to Spain his wife and infant son, who, during his absence had been lovingly cared for by one of his faithful clansmen, McSwiney. Of Davis's ballad of eighteen verses I can here quote only the following : — " A baby in the mountain gap— Oh ! wherefore bring it hither ? Restore it to its mother's 1^, Or else 'twill surely wither. A baby near the eagle's nest 1 How should their talons spare it ? Oh! take it to some woman's breast, And she will kindly care it." ** Fear not for it," McSwiney said. And stroked his cul-fionn slowly, And proudly raised his matted head. Yet spoke me soft and lowly. — " Fear not for it, for, many a day I climb the eagle's eyrie, And bear the eaglet's food away To feed our little fainr." Digitized by Google BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND An hour went by, when from the shore The chieftain's horn winding Awoke the echoes' hearty roar — Th^ir fealty reminding ; A moment, and he faintly gasps — " These — these, thank Heaven, are left me,"- And smiles as wife and child he clasps. — " They have not quite bereft me." To Spain — to Spain he now will sail. His destiny is wroken — An exile from dear Innisfail — Nor yet his will is broken ; For still he hints some enterprise. When fleets shall bring them over, Dunboy's proud keep again shall rise And mock the English rover. I saw them cross Slieve Miskish o'er. The crones around them weeping — I saw them pass from Culiagh's shore. Their galleys* strong oars sweeping ; I saw their ship unfurl its sail — I saw their long scarfs waven. — They saw the hills in distance fail — They never saw Berehaven ! Davis, indeed, claimed kinship with the family of O'Suliivan Beare, and was quite proud of his title to do so. In Sir C. G. Duffy's Life of Davis we read : — His father, James Thomas Davis, was a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, and served in the Peninsular War, with the rank of Inspector of Hospitals. His mother, Mary Atkins, descended from a good Anglo- Irish family, which traced back its line to the great Norman House of Howard, and — what Davis loved better to remember — to the great Celtic House of O'SuUivan Beare. In a footnote Duffy adds : — From a family genealogy I learn that Richard Atkins married Anne, only daughter of the O'Sullivan Beare, and by her left Digitized by Google THE (y SULLIVAN SEPT 29 John Atkins, who married Mary, second daughter ot Robert Atkins of Fountainville, and had two sons and four daughters, the fourth of whom was the mother of Thomas Davis. The writer of the present pages published in i860 a narrative poem on the siege and fall of Dunboy, and the subsequent fortune of O'Sullivan. It follows very closely the historic record, and closes with the following passages, descriptive of the chieftain's final departure from the land of his fathers : — 'Twas summer night, the rude winds slept. As o'er the bay a vessel crept. Two muffled forms went pacing slow Along her smooth deck, to and fro, Watching betimes the far-stretched spars Sway back and forward through the stars ; Pausing to hear the watch-dogs* bark From distant fields come through the dark; And hear the heaving waters snore Along the old familiar shore. Whose headlands only met the sight As gloomier patches of the night. On passed the ship with easy glide Unto Bearhaven's tranquil tide ; Her low black boat in calm profound Bore on one form to Beara's ground. He moved about with moody pace ; He travelled o'er and o'er the place. Then, when the brightening of the day Had warned him from the scene away. He sought the sacred spot of all. The ruin — once a castle tall — And wept upon the broken wall. On board ! on board ! fair blows the wind, The Caha hills sink down behind ; Beare Island dips ; tall Hungry, too. Melts down into the sea of blue. No more, except in dreams, to rise To Donal's or to Eileen's eyes. Like winter rain, fast fell her tears. And he, whose heart through troubled years Its inward griefs in silence kept, Bowed down his head, and wildly wept. Digitized by Google 30 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND In Spain, high-placed beside the King, The wearied exiles rest at last ; If honours, wealth, and peace could bring A charm to hide the painful past, 'Twas Donal's now; but annals say His heart was by his native bay; His words were of the gallant men Whose good swords flashed through pass and glen Where'er he led ; and when he thought O'er all the wrongs the Saxon wrought — Their treacherous arts, their faithless words. More deadly than their guns or swords — Their thirst for blood, their greed of gold ; Their rage that spared not young or old ; Their myriad crimes that heaven must hate And God will punish, soon or late — Oft did his thoughts break out aloud^ And many a time he firmly vowed His race, though now proscribed and banned. Would have and hold their native land, And guard with patriot pride and joy The very stones of old Dunboy. From a Map in the PaccUa ffibernia. Digitized by Google THE CrsULLIVAN SEPT 31 CHAPTER V. IN the midst of all this wrack and ruin the she- dragon, Elizabeth, died (March 24, 1603) ^md James the First came to the throne. By that time the Irish war was practically ended. The few Irish chiefs who until then had been keeping up a sort of desultory resistance, gave up the hopeless strife, and sought to get terms from the new monarch, praying that they might be admitted to the peace and allowed to retain possession of their lands. With some a settle- ment was made, but for O'Sullivan and O'Rourke there was no pardon. Life in their own country having thus become impossible to them, they were compelled to seek shelter in foreign lands. O'Sullivan sailed for Spain, where he was cordially welcomed by the king, who conferred on him rank, titles, and high honours, and accorded to him a considerable pension with which to support his dignity. While O'Sullivan was carrying on his brave and des- perate but vain resistance to the overwhelming forces of the English crown, Her Majesty's Lords Justices issued at Cork a proclamation setting a price upon his head. The following is a part of the document : — And it is also proclaymed that if any psn. or psons. of what degree or quaUtie soever that shall unto the Lo. President bring the live body of that Wicked and unnatural Traitor, Donell O'SuUyvane, als O'SuUyvane Beare, shall have sum of Three hundred pounds ster., and for the saide Donnell's head ^{200 ; and for tiie bodies of the persons undernamed, alive or dead. Digitized by Google 32 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND rateably as the same is laid down upon them and every one of them : — For Mac Morris Uveinge ;£300, for him deade ;f 200. For Fitzthomas Uveinge £100, for him deade, 100 marks. For Donell O'Sullyvane Uveinge ;£200, for him deade, 100 marks. For the Knight of the VaUey Uveinge ;£ 100, for him deade. 100 marks. For John O'Connor ^£100, for him deade 100 marks. For OUver Hassey 100 marks, for him deade 050 marks. It does not appear that those offers of large rewards for assassinations produced any notable results. The authorities never got hold of Donal O'Sullivan " Uveinge or deade." But the life of that heroic chieftain had a tragic ending. The manner of it is thus related by his cousin Don Philip/ who was a witness of the occurrence, and to some extent, unwittingly, the occasion of it : — But the last stroke of adverse fortune befel thus : — On the 1 6th day of the same month (July, 1608), O'SulUvan, Prince of Beare, in whom all the hopes of the Irish at that time were placed, unhappily perished in this manner : John Bath, an Anglo- Irishman, and one whom O'SulUvan held in very high esteem — even to the extent of taking him under his personal protection, bestowing many favours upon him, and even admitting him to his own table in the circle of his most intimate friends — quite ungrateful for such high favours, carried his presumption so far as that when a discussion arose touching some money ad- vanced by O'SulUvan as a loan, he, Bath, dared to make unfavourable comparisons between a family, one of the most illustrious among the Irish, and the English, from whom he, himself, was sprung. PhiUp, the writer of this history, a cousin of O'Sullivan, unable to endure this insult, expostulated with Bath upon the matter. The dispute proceeded so far that they attacked each other with drawn swords, at a royal monastery not far from Madrid. In this contest, Bath, terror-stricken, kept retreating, shouting at the same time. PhiUp wounded him in the face, and, as it appears, would have slain him, had not Edmond O'Moore and Gerald McMorris (sent by O'SulUvan) and two Spanish Knights, protected him, and Philip would have been arrested by a constable but for their interference. When many were attracted to the spot by the quarrel, among others came ^ See Appendix Digitized by Google THE O* SULLIVAN SEPT 33 0*Sullivan, a rosary in his left hand. Whilst thus incautious, fearing nothing, and looking in quite another direction, Bath approached him through the crowd, struck him through the left shoulder, and again piercing him through the throat, killed him. So perished one of the noblest Irishmen of his time. Of the members of his family who had accompanied him into exile an account is given by his cousin Don Philip in a Latin poem prefixed to his Catholic History, from which it appears that his (Philip's) father Dermot, uncle of Donal, died at the age of loo years and was buried in the Franciscan Church at Corunna ; his mother followed soon after, and was interred in the same tomb ; his sister Helena was drowned on a return voyage to Ireland, and another sister became a nun. Philip had in him the sea-going instinct that one might expect from a native of Dursey Island, and was also gifted with literary talent and a love of learning. He entered the Spanish naval service, in which he rose to the rank of commander, and much of his literary work in defence of his race, his cotmtry, and his faith, was written on board ship. He must have been a lonely man towards the end of his Ufe, his mind filled with memories of the past. Thomas Darcy McGee sketches the situation in a pathetic ballad, from which I take the following verses : — All alone — all alone, where the gladsome vine is growing — All alone by the bank of the Tagus darkly flowing ; No morning brings a hope for him, nor any evening cheer, To O' Sullivan Beare through the seasons of the year. He is thinking — ever thinking of the hour he left Dunbuidhe, His father's staff fell from his hand, his mother wild was she ; His brave young brother hid his face, his lovely sisters twain. How they wrung their maiden hands to see him sail away for Spain. One sister is a black- veiled nun of St. Ursula in Spain ; And one sleeps coldly far beneath the troubled Irish main. — *Tis Helen bright, who ventured to the arms of her true lover ; But Cleena's stormy waves now roll the radiant girl over. D Digitized by Google 34 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND All alone — all alone, where the gladsome vine is growings- All alone by the banks of the Tagus darkly flowing ; No morning brings a hope for him, nor any evening cheer, To O'Sullivan Beare through the seasons of the year. McGee gives to those pathetic verses the title of " The Last O'Sullivsui Beare"; and Mr. Standish O'Grady, in a note to his edition of the Pacata Hibernia, bestows on Donal the same appellation. From the point of view of the chieftaincy it is quite correct, but not other- wise. It may be that there is not now a lineal descendant of the hero of Dunboy in the world ; but his relatives were a numerous group, and in the O'Sullivan line were entitled to keep the afl&x to their names if they so pleased — as many of their descendants did up to recently and some do still. The kinsmen of Prince Donal did not all quit the country after his overthrow ; they were not all killed ; what Impp^ied was that they were robbed despoiled, disinherited ; poverty and servitude were made the lot of men who had previously owned the fields they tilled, the pastures on which they grazed, their cattle, the vessels with which they fished the seas and traded with foreign countries. Some few members of the stock attorning to the new conditions, managed to retain portions of their former property, not indeed as chiefs, or proprietors, but rather as middlemen or small land- lords. But, however twroken their fortunes, they were still O'SulKvans Beare, and as such their names are written in various State papers and legal documents for more than a hundred years after the time of Donal of Dunboy. As time went on adverse circumstances told upon them all. The loyalty of the Irish gentlemen to their legitimate king, James II., their fidelity to the Catholic faith, their resistance to the infamous penal laws, wrought their ruin. The insatiable greed, the intolerable arrogance, the exasperating insults of their new masters, broke the hearts of the best men of the old race. They Digitized by Google THE O' SULLIVAN SEPT 35 sank in the social scale at home, or left to live under happier conditions and seek fame and fortune in other lands. Of those disinherited and expatriated Irishmen it can truly be said that evidence of their fine natural qualities is supplied by the fact that many of them achieved distinction and won high honours in their adopted countries. Sir Bernard Burke, in his most interesting work on " The Vicissitudes of Families," thus S5anpathetically writes on the subject: — " An Irish ' Peerage ' gives a very inadequate account of the ro3ral and noble blood of Ireleoid. But few of the Milesian races have found their way into the peerage, though some still inherit a portion of their ancient possessions ; and it is in the Austrian. French, or Spanish service, among the middle classes or perhaps in the mud-walled cabins of the Irish peasants, that search should be made for the real representatives of the ancient reguli, . . . Many of the descendants of the minor dynasts could probably be discovered under the frieze coats of the peasants ; and a genealogical enquirer might trace in the sun- burnt mendicant the representative of the O'Rorkes, the O'Reillys, the O'Ryans, or the O'Sullivans, who were of fame • Ere the emerald gem of the western world Was set in the crown of a stranger.' " Digitized by Google 36 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND CHAPTER VI. AFTER each of the great Irish confiscations — those of Elizabeth, James I., Cromwell, and William of Orange — many of the new lords of the soil sought in a variety of ways to supplant and crush out the native race. Not only did they seek to surround themselves with an exclusively Protestant tenantry, but even with regard to industrial occupations, they gave special encouragement to Protestant craftsmen to come in groups and little colonies from foreign countries, settle down and ply their trades in Ireland. There was much religious ferment and disturbance throughout Europe in those days ; the " Reformation " was fighting its way and being fought, and some of those who had adopted the new doctrines, finding that life had become unpleasant for them in their own countries, moved away to lands the rulers of which were more tolerant of their opinions. Naturally a number of them sought shelter in England, and many located in parts of Ireland where conditions were specially favourable to them. The majority of those immigrants were Dutch and French Protestants, and their special industries were the weaving of linen and silks. They worked with improved machinery and on new methods. It is true that the manufacture of " silks " as they were called, of fine linen, of beautiful woollens, and of artistically wrought articles of gold and silver was carried on in Ireland long before " Norman foot had dared pollute her independent shore," but in later times, while the Irish people were fighting for their lives, a great advance in all the industrial arts was taking place in countries Digitized by Google THE O^SULLIVAN SEPT 37 more happily circumstanced, and Ireland was left in the rear. The introduction of those foreign artificers would have been a good thing had the scheme been devised and worked in a friendly, or even merely com- mercial spirit ; but in point of fact it was made part of a war against the native race. The chief promoter of that policy, in his time, was Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who had been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland by King Cileries II. Strafford was an able man with large ideas and despotic notions. He thought he could mould Ireland as if it were potter's clay in his hands, and fancied he could shape it into an image and Ukeness of England. One of the instruments he reUed on for that purpose was, curiously enough — ^the linen trade; but with the manufacture kept exclusively in Protestant hands. He had in his favour an Act of the so-called Irish Parliament entitled, " An Act for encouraging Protestant strangers and others to inhabit Ireland," which had been passed some years before his appointment. The promoter of this measure was the Duke of Ormond ; under its provisions he and Strafford — who seemed to be quite in love with the scheme — ^were able to set up a number of those un-Irish — and it may fairly be said, anti-Irish — settlements in various parts of the country. But inspired by such an un-national and unnatural spirit the project did not work very well. Enmities, arising from a variety of causes, against King Charles and all his friends, were gathering force in England ; a revolt against the despotic power of the crown was being concerted by men who have ever since been regarded as the fathers of English liberty ; and when they commenced operations for the ruin of the king, one of their first blows was struck at his handy-man and favourite, his Lord Deputy for Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. They managed to bring him to trial for many high crimes and misdemeanours, the chief of which was an alleged Digitized by Google 38 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND design to raise in Ireland, an army for the service of the king which His Majesty might import and employ against his rebellious subjects in England. He was brought to trial, and had his head cut off on Tower Hill, on the I2th of May, 1641. He was a brave man, and died courageously. Mindful of the fact that his royal master, whom he had served with only too much zeal, had made little or no endeavour to save his life, he pathetically quoted as he mounted the steps of the scaffold the scriptural injunction — " Put not your trust in princes." One of those anti-Irish settlements was at Bandon in the County of Cork ; and the tempCT of the dwellers therein may be judged from the inscription set up on the gates of the town : — Turk, Jew, or Atheist May enter here, but not a Papist. A proud proclamation, no doubt ; but its somewhat too confident authors were not able to live up to it. Early in the course of the Williamite war (in 1689) a Jacobite force entered and held possession of the town. What ensued is thus told in the Cork Remembrancer : The Bandonians having heard that the Earl of Clancarty was marching with six companies to reinforce the troop of horse and the two companies of foot then in their town, commanded by Captain Daniel O'Neill, disarmed the garrison, killed some soldiers, took possession of their horses and arms, and would have done much more if they had been assisted. They then shut their gates, and generously refused to gve up any of their leaders ; but in the end they purchased their pardon for jf 1,000, with the demoUtion of their walls, which were razed to the ground, and never since rebuilt. An endeavour was made to establish a conununity of those un-Irish people at Berehaven ; but it was on a minor scale, and did not last long. The organiser of the Digitized by Google THE O^SULUVAN SEPT 39 project was an adventurous Frenchman, one of the Huguenot refugees, named Fontaine. This gentleman was the son of a French Protestant minister. Having fled from France, he lived for some years in England, where he managed to support himself by carr5dng on some small industries ; he then adopted his father's profession; became a Protestant clerg3anan, and in the year 1694 crossed over to Ireland to minister to a small Huguenot congregation in the city of Cork. After having served in that capacity for some time he took the idea that he could do better for himself by engaging in the fishery business at Berehaven. He rented some land there as a basis of operations, took houses and farms for a number of workpeople, got up a fishing company, and went to reside in the place himself. Had he confined himself strictly to this business he probably would have done very well, but he soon became a Govern- ment tool and made himself odious to the people of the locality. He was appointed Justice of the Peace, and in that capacity busied himself about many things having no relation to his commercial enterprise. He was alert and active against that class of dispossessed and desperate poor Irishmen who, living an unsettled life, occasionally taking spoil from the enemy, and ready for any anti-English adventure, were known by the name of " tories," and he was a vigilant agent for the detection and suppression of contraband operations on the southern coast. Aware of the enmity with which he was regarded, and having some knowledge of the art of fortification, he set up around his residence a line of earthworks meant to be serviceable in case any attack should be made upon it. And his foresight was soon justified, for his " Sod Fort," as it was called, was more than once made an object of attack by parties from some of the privateering craft that were continually hovering round the coast. Two of those affairs are described with some fulness Digitized by Google 40 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND of detail in Smiles' History of the Huguenots in England and Ireland, from which I quote the following (abbreviated) passages : — In June, 1704, a French privateer entered Bantry Bay and proceeded to storm the Sod Fort ; when Fontaine, by the courage and ability of his defence, showed himself a commander of no mean skill . . . the engagement lasted from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, when the French decamped with the loss of three killed and seven wounded. . . . When the refugee's gallant exploit was reported to the government, he was rewarded by a pension of five shillings a day for beating oflE the privateer, and supplied with five guns, which he was authorised to mount in his battery. . . . In the year succeeding the above engagement, while Fontaine himself was absent in London, a French ship entered Bantry Bay, and cautiously approached Berehaven. Fontaine's wife was, how- ever, on the look out, and detected the foreigner. She had the guns loaded, and one of them fired off, to show that the Uttle garrison was on the alert. The Frenchman then veered off, and made foi Bear Island, where a party of the crew landed, stole some cattle which they put on board, and sailed away again. A third and more serious attack was made on the Sod Fort about two years later, with a different result. We read : — On the 7th of October, 1708, during the temporary absence of Fontaine, a French privateer made his appearance in the haven and hoisted English colours. The ensign residing in the fort at the time, deceived by the stratagem, went on board, when he was immediately made prisoner. He was plied with drink, and became intoxicated, when he revealed the fact that there was no ofiScer in command of the fort. The crew of the privateer were principally Irish, and they determined to attack the place at midnight, for which purpose a party of them landed. Fontaine had by this time returned, and was on the alert. He hailed the advancing party through a Speaking-trumpet, and. no answer being returned, he ordered fire to be opened on them. The siege that ensued was vigorously conducted and lasted some hours. Its end was the surrender of the fort and the capture of its garrison. Fontaine and Digitized by Google JHE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 41 his two sons were taken on board the privateer. The former was released on Madam Fontaine's undertaking to pay ^100 ransom for her husband and handing in £30 as a first instalment. As security for the remainder the French captain took away with him one of the boys, but he too was released after some time without his captors making any demand for the unpaid balance of the ransom. By this time Pastor Fontaine had got more than enough of Berehaven, and he resolved to have done with it. His fishing company had turned out a failure — it could not possibly thrive under his management, and in the midst of such conditions ; his Sod Fort was soon in ruins, his little colony of foreigners scattered to the four winds, and he himself, a broken man, but withal a picturesque and interesting character, a traveller in quest of employment. He came up to Dublin, got some engagements as a teacher of languages, and ended his days in peace. Digitized by Google 42 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND CHAPTER VII. FOR some years after the death of Queen Elizabeth the condition of South Munster continued to be what it has been pictured in the foregoing pages. It was a ravaged and wasted land, in which some remnant of the native race still managed to eke out an existence. There came, in fact, in the earUer part of the reign of her successor, James I., a period of comparative quiet; things were settling down some- what, and the new and the old occupants of the soil were learning to tolerate each other, when a fresh trouble came on, and Irish affairs were again thrown into the melting pot — ^if indeed they can be said ever to have been out of it. In the reign of Charles I., son of James I., a section of his English and Scotch subjects, after much wrangUng, complaining, and protesting, revolted against his rule; and went into armed rebellion. This was the outcome oi reUgious and political contentions, too complicated to be dealt with here. Ireland was inevitably ckawn into the strife ; her chivalrous people took the side of their legitimate king and co-religionist, though neither in the field of religion or politics had he shown them any favour. They promptly organised what might be called a national government — ^the Confederation of Kilkenny — ^and raised an army to fight for the royal cause in Ireland. But both in Ireland and in England the King's enemies, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, proved victorious, and then it was, indeed, for the Irish people a case of " woe to the conquered." The lands of all the Irish who had loyally stood by the cause of the late King Charles (beheaded on the Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 43 30th of January, 1649) were now declared forfeited, and were divided into portions for a great aux:tion and lottery to defray the arrears of pay due to the Crom- welUai soldiery, and square accounts with classes of persons called " adventurers " and " undertakers " who had raised troops or advanced money for the prosecution of the war. Those operations, of course, took some years to work out ; the applotments were made by commissioners appointed for the task, and himgry claimants swarmed forth to clutch the portions of the wreck available for them. The soldiers had to draw lots for theirs, and were often greatly dissatisfied with what fortune brought them — some acres of rugged ground in many cases, and of little value. The better lands were bought up, at a small figure, by English companies and persons of means, who could look forward to, and wait for, improvement in the value of their property. In this manner the lands of the O'SuUivans in Cork and Kerry passed away from them. On the southern or Bantry side of the Beara range of mountains a great tract of territory came into the possession of a family named White, of whom the follow- ing account is given in a standard work entitled British Family AntiquUy, by William Playfair, Esq., published in London in 1810 : — The original founder of this no^le family was Sir Thomas White, of Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1655 '» founder of St. John's College in Oxford, and brother of John White, Lord Bishop of Winchester in 1657. On the restoration of King Charles II., Sir Thomas White settled in the South of Ireland, where he became a purchaser of some of the land debentures granted by OUver Cromwell to the oflScers of his army during the civil wars, and had a son, Richard, who resided at Bantry until his death in 1730 ; having previously married a Miss Hamilton of Scotland, by whom he had an only son, Richard, who was bred to the law and called to the English Bar, but never practised. He married, loth of December, 1734, Martha, daughter of the Rev. Dean Davis, of Davistown, in the County of C^k, and had issue by her, one son and one daughter. Digitized by Google 44 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND viz,, Simon, born 8th of May, 1739, and Margaret, bom in 1738, who married, 8th of November, 1756, Richard, Viscount Longue- ville, by whom she had no issue. Simon married, in August. 1766, Frances- Jane, daughter of Richard Hedges Ejrre, of Mount Hedges and Macroom Castle in the County of Cork, Esq. (by Helena, the daughter of Thomas Herbert, of Muckross, in the County of Kerry, by the Hon. M. Browne, daughter of Lord Viscount Kenmare), and dying in 1776, left issue, Richard, the present Viscount Bantry, who was bom 6th of August, 1767. and married, loth of November, 1799, Margaret- Anne Hare, eldest daughter of Lord Ennismore, by whom he has had issue, Richard, bom i6th of November, 1800 ; William Hare, bom loth of November, 1801 ; Maria, bom loth of November, 1805 ; and Simon, bom loth of March, 1807. This spirited nobleman became entitled to and received the honour of the peerage, in being created a Baron, 31st March, 1797, and a Viscount, 29th of December, 1800, by the best of all possible claims, intrepid and unshrinking services in defence of his native land. When the French appeared in Bantry Bay, in January, 1797 ... his lordship's determined activity and loyalty were so singularly exerted as not only to compel the departure of the enemy's fleet, but most probably save Ireland from serious disasters, torn asunder as she then was by intestine divisions. Considering that it was a storm of adverse wind that broke up the French naval expedition and blew theit ships out of Bantry Bay, it is rather too much of this obliging biographer to ask his readers to believe that Mr. Richard White was the organiser of the whole thing, the elements only doing his bidding. What this gentle- man did was to send all the information he could collect to the authorities in Cork, and to co-operate to the utmost of his ability with their somewhat belated action after the departure of the French ships. His house became a sort of headquarters for English officers and offidab of all kinds, he kept a sharp look out for any S57mptoms of disturbance in that part of the country, and took part in a skirmish against a number of peasants who had assembled to bar the way of a tithe-collecting expedition in the pass of Keimineagh. For these services Digitized by Google THE O' SULLIVAN SEPT 45 the loyalists of Cork presented him with a gold medal, and the Government conferred on him the titles above recorded. The White family spread, and several of its members got on to handsome properties in south-west Cork. But there were only four Lords Bantry. The first, above mentioned, married Lady Margaret Anne Hare, daughter of the first Earl of Listowel ; the second was their son Richard, who married a daughter of the Marquis of Thomond, and died childless ; the third was a brother of his, named William Henry Hare White ; the fourth was another William Henry Hare White, son of the foregoing ; he died without issue, and the titles became extinct. The second daughter of the third earl, Lady Olivia Charlotte White — married, in February, 1871, Arthur Edward, Baron Ardilaun (the famous Dub- Un brewer). The present possessor of the estates is the Hon. Egerton Leigh White, who took on the family name and arms of White by royal license, in July, 1897. A female descendant of those Hares-Eyres-Hedges- Whites, married in 1885, Major Charles William Bowlby of the Connaught Rangers. Their family reside in the new " Dunboy Castle," built — ^not far from the ruin of the old one — ^by one of the Puxleys, a relative of him who was shot by Morty Oge. Digitized by Google 46 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND CHAPTER VIIL IN the great period of grabbing and gambling for Irish lands which followed the Cromwellian conquest, when Ireland came nearer to the condition of " a corpse on the dissecting table " than ever she did before or since, a Welsh adventurer named Puxley acquired a tract of land at the mouth of Berehaven Harbour, in which were situated the ruins of Donal O'Sullivan's old Castle of Dunboy. He built himself a residence in the locaUty, and for some years managed to get along tolerably well in his Gaelic environ- ment. On his demise a near relative who had previously given the benefit of his presence to the County Galway, succeeded to his property in Berehaven, and, with encouragement and aid from the Government, set himself up to be a high exemplar of British law and order, a propagator of true religion, an apostle of modern civilisation, a shining Ught to the benighted heathen. Forthwith he applied himself to the suppression of popular illegalities, the chief of which was the sanuggling business, then in a very lively condition, between Ireland and France. The export of Irish wool to any country but England being prohibited by EngUsh law, and France being a much better market than England for the commodity, a contraband trade naturally and inevitably sprang up. Fast sailing craft, with the forbidden goods ingeniously stowed away, plied between the two countries, taking out Irish wool and " wild geese " (recruits for the French armies), and bringing back wines and brandies, and other articles liable to duty. Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 47 without letting England's revenue officers have any knowledge of their existence. The local gentry winked at this state of things, and were glad to keep their cellars stocked with such excellent vintage at so small a cost. They did not cordially co-operate with Puxley, whom they regarded as making himself entirely too busy in these matters. Thus he came to be at once out of touch with those loyal gentlemen and detested by the peasantry. But Puxley was a man with a double dose of " unctuous rectitude ; " he stood for English " law and order," and was either unobservant or contemptuous of the signs of coming trouble he might have seen gathering round him. One of the most skilful and daring of those free traders, as they might be called, was Morty Oge (young Morty) O'Sullivan. A member of the dispossessed family, by right one of the chiefs of his sept and inheritors of its property, thrown landless and poor upon the world, his possessions being a clever brain, an adventurous spirit, and a store of bitter memories, he became in turn soldier, sailor, " smuggler," and avenger, and ultimately fell in a fight for his life with the agents of British law. In 1742 he served in the army of Maria Theresa, the brave Austrian queen then fighting for her crown and dominions against a group of the European powers, and was honoured by her majesty by the presentation of a handsome sword. In May, 1745, he was at the Battle of Fontenoy — one can imagine with what deUght he bore a part in the winning of that important and brilliant victory. In April, 1746, he was with the Stuart Prince Charles Edward, the so-called *' Pretender," who suffered irretrievable defeat at CuDoden. His military career being thus ended, he returned to his old favourite, the sea, and still fought " against the government " by operations greatly to the detriment of the British ex- chequer. Being a skilful seaman, knowing every creek and cranny of the coast of south-west Munster, and Digitized by Google 48 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND beloved by his kith and kin in those parts, he was able to carry on his risky, but enjoyable and profitable, business for years without falling into the clutches of the authorities, though Puxley was on the watch for him all the time. As to the smuggling trade, under the circumstances, it could not rightly be called unpatriotic, immoral, or dishonourable. It was a very natural endeavour to evade and defeat EngUsh laws made for the ruin of Irish industries, the pauperising of Irish manufacturers and merchants, and the transfer of their business to English rivals. James Anthony Froude, a writer who had caught up — or it may be inherited — the Cromwellian antipathy to the Irish race, but who sometimes could blurt- out candid sayings and show a sort of contemptuous com- passion for the cruelly oppressed natives of Ireland, gives a good sketch of England's war against Irish trade in his novel. The Two Chiefs of Dunboy. Picturing one Patrick Blake, a prosperous Franco-Irish merchant and ship-owner of Nantes — ^an imaginary character, perhaps, but typical — ^he says : — His patriotism was as ardent as his father's ; but his eye was keen, and he discerned that there were ways of assisting Ireland's cause in which he could combine his country's interest with his own. He became the agent of the Irish Brigade. He set on foot the organisation for recruiting the young Catholics who were impatient of English rule, collecting them under the name of wild-geese, and bringing them over into the French service to learn their trade as soldiers. . . . While thus engaged, he discerned in the unfortunate policy which destroyed the Irish woollen manufactures an opportunity for disorganising the Irish administration, of combining all classes and all creeds there, peasant and landlord, Catholic and Protestant, in a league to defeat an unjust law, and, while filling the pockets of his country- men, to build up his own fortune at the same time. Irish wool, at the opening of the last century, was supposed to be the most excellent in the world, and commanded the highest prices in the natural market. The English woollen manufacturers, afraid of being beaten out of the field if the Irish were permitted to compete with them, persuaded the Parliament to lay prohibitory Digitized by Google THE O* SULLIVAN SEPT 49 duties on Irish blankets and broadcloth, which crushed the production of those articles. Not contented with preventing the Irish from working up their fleeces at home, they insisted that the Irish fleeces should be sold in England only, and at such a price as would be convenient to themselves. The natural price, which the French were willing to pay, was three or four times higher, and the effect was a premium upon smuggling, which no human nature, least of all Irish human nature, could be expected to resist. . . . Before the century had half run its course, four-fifths of the Irish fleeces were carried underhand into France, in spite of English laws and English cruisers. Irish lawlessness for once had justice on its side, and flourished like a green bay tree. This line of business had attractions for Morty Oge from every point of view. It was adventurous, it was exciting, it was anti-English. After his return trips he loved to slip back quietly to old Berehaven, to see again the places of his boyhood, to tread the soil that had been the property of his fathers, and talk with some of the old people over their altered fortunes. And much of the news he heard from them was of a nature to set his blood aflame. Puxley " of Dunboy " was now the great man of the place, a magistrate, a revenue officer, a lay preacher, and general adviser to a little colony of Welsh Protestants whom he had brought over to be helpful to him and be an English outpost in those parts. I make no doubt that he was in his own estimation a very upright, impor- tant, and excellent person ; but it was inevitable that by the natives in that region he should be regarded simply as an excrescence ; inevitable also that his zeal and diligence in the enforcement of the revenue laws should make for him a crowd of enemies, and ultimately bring him into collision with Morty Oge. Puxley and Morty caught sight of each other once or twice — ^and probably each of them felt that they should meet again. And meet they did. One Sunday morning, as Puxley and a few of his co-religionists, were proceeding to hold a service in a little conventicle E Digitized by Google 50 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND he had built for them, they fell in with Morty and some of his friends on the way. Angry words were exchanged ; a quarrel ensued, and, whether by accident or design, Puxley was shot dead by Morty Oge.' This deplorable incident created a great sensation throughout the country. The Government party took prompt action. A military force was despatched from Cork to seize the offender and return with his body alive or dead. They made their way to Berehaven ; but when they got there Morty was not to be found. He had gone off to France. There he might have lived safely to the end of his days had he been so minded ; but his native place had a fascination for him, and he made several trips to and fro- Even as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue. Pants to the place from whence at first he flew. — so would Morty pay furtive visits to his old home, to see again his wife and child in his mountain cottage at Eyries, and be welcomed and watchfully guarded by kinsmen who loved him. But he was caught at last. Information of his being in the place was conveyed to the authorities ; another expedition — this time by sea — was sent from Cork to Berehaven, with all the secrecy possible under the circumstances ; the vessel reached the shore on a dark, wet, and stormy night, without attracting attention ; the soldiers at once disembarked, and — guided presmnably by someone who knew the ground — crept stealthily up to the cottage of the outlaw. 1 Mr. J. A. Froude, in his " Two Chiefs of Dunboy," gives a purely fanciful and very absurd account of this occurrence. He frankly calls his work a " romance/' but as it is written on a historical basis and purports to present a picture of the time, be should have given a less offensive tone and turn to bis inventions. His description of the scene in the forge where " Colonel Goring," {i,e, Puxley) lost his life, and of the con- trivance by which he and Morty Oge were brought to meet there, is worthy only of a " penny dreadful." Digitized by Google THE (ySULLIVAN SEPT 61 The noise of the rainstorm prevented the occupants from hearing the approaching footsteps ; but the keener ears of O'Sullivan's watch-dog caught the sounds, and the animal gave the alarm by loud barking. Morty grasped the situation at once ; he had been in bed, and his friends in the house were sleeping or drowsing after the day's toil, but all were immediately on their feet and preparing to offer what resistance they could to the foe. The struggle that ensued is thus recorded in a publication called The Cork Remembrancer, printed in that city in 1783 : — Sullivan and his party took the alarm directly. Sullivan came to the door and opened it in his shirt, with a blunderbuss in his hand ; at the same time they might have taken away his life, but the commanding ofiScer, choosing rather to take him alive, did not fire at him. Sullivan and his men fired several blunderbusses out of the house at the party, but finding them too strong, he thought on a stratagem, by sending them out one man at a time, thinking by that means the party would leave the house to follow them, by which he may get ofi ; but he was prevented by the ofiScer, who only fired at the men as they went off. At length Sullivan's wife, with her child and nurs«, came out and asked for quarter, which was granted. The officer asked her who was in the house ; she answered no one but her husband and some of his men ; upon which he ordered the house to be set on fire, which they were a long time doing, the men's arms being rendered quite useless from the heavy rains; but the house being at last set on fire, they were obliged to come out Sullivan behaved with great bravery, as did his men; he stood and snapped his blunderbuss twice at the party, and missed fire ; likewise the party snapped at him twice and missed fire, and cocking the third time, shot him through the heart dead. The soldiers brought away with them the dead body of Morty Oge, and two prisoners named Sullivan and Connell. Morty's body they lashed to the stem of their vessel, and so towed it from Berehaven to Cork, where its head was cut off and spiked over the South Gaol. A like fate befel the gallant fellows SuUivan and Connell : their heads were similarly displayed for the edification of his majesty's subjects, loyal and dislo}^]. Digitized by Google 62 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND Tradition has it that the giver of the information which brought the soldiery upon O'Sullivan's house was a servant of his named Scully, but there is no reliable record to that effect ; doubts have been thrown upon the story, and as the statement can neither be proved nor disproved, I think it would be only fair to pass in this case the Scotch verdict of '' Not Proven." It was, however, made the subject of a vigorous ballad by the Cork poet, J. J. Callanan, a rendering of a GaeUc lamen- tation for her beloved master supposed to have been uttered by the old nurse of the family. I here quote it in part : — The sun on Ivera No longer shines brightly; The voice of her music No longer is sprightly; No more to her maidens The light dance is dear. Since the death of our darling O'Sullivan Beare. Had he died cahnly I would not deplore him; Or if the wild strife Of the sea-war closed o'er him; But with ropes round his white limbs Through ocean to trail him. Like a fish after slaughter, 'Tis therefore I wail him. In the hole which the vile hands Of soldiers had made thee, Unhonour'd, unshrouded, And headless they laid thee; No sigh to regret thee, No eye to rain o'er thee. No dirge to lament thee. No friend to deplore thee; Digitized by Google THE a SULLIVAN SEPT 53 Dear head of my darling. How gory and pale These aged eyes see thee High spiked on their jail; That cheek in the summer sun Ne*er shall grow warm. Nor that eye e'er catch light But the light of the storm. A curse, blessed ocean, Is on thy green water. From the harbour of Cork To Ivera of slaughter. Since thy billows were dyed With the red wounds of fear. Of Muiertach Oge, Our O'Sullivan Beare. It is obvious to anyone having even a slight acquain- tance with our olden tongue that the poem from which I have quoted is founded on a GaeUc original. The verses of imprecation, which I omit, are further evidence in that direction, for, as regards both curses and prayers, the swing, fervour, and force of the Irish language are unequalled. But a more beautiful and touching lamen- tation is that of O'Sulhvan's faithful follower and brave conwade &)nnell, written in Cork Gaol on the night before his execution. It is thus given in the Rev. Mr. Gibson's History of the City and County of Cork, published in 1861 : — Morty, my dear and loved master, you carried the sway for strength and generosity. It is my endless grief and sorrow — sorrow that admits of no comfort — that your fair head should be gazed at as a show upon a spike, and that your noble frame is without life. I have travelled with you, my dear and much loved master, in foreign lands. You moved with kings in the royal prince's army ; but it is through the means of Puxley I am left in grief and confinement in Cork, locked in heavy irons without hopes of relief. The great God is good and merciful ; I ask his pardon and support, for I am to be hanged at the gallows to-morrow, without doubt. The rope will squeeze my neck, and Digitized by Google 64 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND thousands will lament my fate. May the Lord have mercy on my master ; Kerryonians, pray for us. Sweet and melodious is your voice. My blessing I give you, but you will never see me again among you alive. Our heads will be put upon a spike for a show ; and under the cold snow of night, and the burning sun of summer. Oh, that I was ever born ; Oh, that I ever returned to Bere- haven ; Mine was the best of masters that Ireland could produce, May our souls be floating to-morrow in the rays of endless glory ; The lady his wife : Heavy is her grief, and who may wonder at that, were her eyes made of green stone, when he, her dear husband was shot by that ball. Had he retreated, our grief would be lighter ; but the brave man, for the pride of his country, could not retreat. He has been in King's palaces. In Spain he got a pension. Lady Clare gave him robes bound with gold lace, as a token of remembrance. He was a captain on the coast of France, bat he should return to Ireland for us to lose him* Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 65 CHAPTER IX. AFTER Donal of Beara and his cousin, Don Philip of Spain, I think the most illustrious man of the name was General John Sullivan, one of the heroes of the American War of Independence. Not only did he serve with distinction during the war, but, in point of fact, he may be said to have " opened the ball." Trouble had for some time been impending between the colonies and the " nwther country," a conflict became inevitable ; but, without waiting for a formal rupture, SuUivan, with a small band of patriot followers, took action and forced the fighting. He captured the first fort and the first cannon taken during the war. One of his biographers, his kinsman, Mr. Thomas C. Amory, relates the incident as follows : — In the spring of 1774 he was a member of the Provincial Assembly of New Hampshire, and in September of the same year was sent to Philadelphia as one of the New Hampshire delegfation to the Provincial Congress. . . . Soon after his return home he planned with Thomas Pickering and John Langdon an attack upon Fort William and Mary at Newcastle, in Portsmouth Harbour — one of the earliest acts of hostility against the Mother Country ; and, by the aid of a portion of a force he had been for some months engaged in drilling in their military exercises, in preparation for the anticipated conflict, carr-ied ninety-seven kegs of powder and a quantity of small arms in gondolas to Durham, where they were concealed, in part under the pulpit of its meeting-house. Soon after the battles of Lexington and Concord, in April, had aroused the people to a realising sense that they were actually engaged in hostilities, these much-needed supplies, or a portion of them, were brought by him to the lines at Cambridge, where he marched with his company, and were used at the Battle of Bunker Hill." Digitized by Google 66 BANTRY. BEREHAVEN AND General Sullivan was a trusted officer and peftonal friend of George Washington, Conunander-in-chief of the American army and liberator of his country. In the siege of Boston by the American patriots — June 1775 to March '76 — the town being then held by an English army under General Gage, supported by an English fleet in the harbour, Sullivan rendered invaluable service to the investing force, and was accorded a signal mark of honour — a compUment at once to himself and to his nation — by Washington, who issued the following *' Order of the Day," dated for the 17th of March :— Special Order of the Day. Headquarters, March 17, 1776, Parole— Boston. Countersign — St. Patrick. The regiments under marching orders to march to-morrow morning. Brigadier of the Day — General Sullivan. That was, indeed, a memorable St. Patrick's Day ! For on that date, after having withstood a siege of nine months* duration (so protracted because the investing force was comparatively small), the English evacuated the city of Boston, and got away in their ships. One can easily imagine the feelings with which General Sullivan led his regiments into the city and hurried forward the retreating foe 1 More than a hundred years before that time the chiefs of his sept had been hunted out of their patrimony by an English army ; here was he now engaged in the congenial operation of hunting an English army from one of their strongholds on American soil, and so con- tributing to the wresting of a whole continent from the crown and government of England Digitized by Google THE O' SULLIVAN SEPT 67 Boston was not a bad balance for Berehaven. The writer of one of the valuable historical articles that appear occasionally in the New York Irish World, at the close of a memoir of General Sullivan, gives the following brief outline of his military services : — It was well for Sullivan the Revolution broke out so soon, or he and his brave comrades would be hanged like dogs by the followers of King George. But soon afterward the patriot drum- taps resounded, calling upon every American to arm in defence of the principles espoused by Sullivan, and the first to respond to the call and rally round the patriot flag was he who committed the first hostile act and captured the first gun. He was present at Bunker Hill, and took command of the patriot army after the patriots were driven from their intrenchments. At Long Island, in the desperate and terrible retreat through the Jerseys, at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Valley Forge, wherever the enemy were to be met, wherever a breach was to be stormed or a battery to be carried, SuUiVUn never shrank from the duty, never faltered, but followed the flag until at last he saw it planted over the ramparts of Yorktown. The surrender of Lord Cornwallis and the British army at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, gloriously ended the American War of Independence. But General Sullivan's services to the newly-made nation in a political capacity extended over many subsequent years. His brother James, also — a man of considerable abiUty — gave good service to his country, and was twice elected Governor of Massachusetts. Both the brothers were lawyers by profession, and, as suclx were regarded in their early years with rather unfriendly feelings by the unsophisticated people of Durham (New Hampshire), where they resided. How they made good their footing amongst them is thus told in a Life of James Sullivan, quoted by Mr. Amory : — At the time of John's first settlement at Durham, a town rich in fertile farms, its inhabitants were devoted to the peaceable pursuits of rural life. There prevailed among them a strong Digitized by Google 68 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND prejudice against lawyers. It was believed that they were a class not required in the community ; that they fomented litiga- tion for their own purposes, and craftily devoured the substance of their neighbours. Resolved, if possible, to secure their village from the presence of all such promoters of discord, some energetic young men gave the newly-settled counsellor notice to quit Durham, threatening personal coercion if this peremptory order were not speedily obeyed. Nothing daunted by this open and decided show of hostility, John Sullivan informed them that he should not think of it ; and, if they cared to resort to force, they would alwa3rs find him ready. The people of the town became greatly excited, and took different sides in the quarrel ; collisions occurred between the parties, and in the progress of the dispute one of the assailants was severely, though not dangerously, wounded by an over-zealous adherent of Mr. Sullivan. The afiair already wore a serious aspect, when a truce was called, and it was finally determined to settle the question by a personal conflict with any combatant the assailants should select Their chosen champion not being considered a fair match for the elder brother, who possessed great physical strength, James, at his own request, was substituted to do battle for the law. The encounter took place at the time appointed, and James came off the victor. The people acquiescing in the result of this ordeal, ever after placed the greatest confidence in John Sullivan ; and he soon became, and continued through life, their most beloved and popular citizen. In old times many controversies were decided by the ordeal of single combat ; but this was probably the first occasion on which the right of a young lawyer to practice his profession in a country village was thus tried out and established. Those Durhamites must have been a fair-minded lot of young fellows ; they did not mob the referee (for I suppose they had one) ; and in all likelihood they appreciated alike the chivahy of the elder brother and the prowess of the younger. There were four of those Sullivan boys, and they all took the American side in the war. Their father was an emigrant from Limerick, where he had filled the position of school teacher. His son John, when he had risen to fame and high honour, got the old patriarch to Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 59 .write for him a short account of his ancestry — from which I copy the following record : — I am the son of Major Phflip O'SulliVan, of Ardea, in the County of Kerry. His father was Owen O'Sullivan, original descendant from the second son of Daniel O'Sullivan, called Lord of Bear- haven. He married Mary, daughter of Colonel Owen M'Sweeney, of Musgery, and sister to Captain Edmond M'Sweeney, a man noted for anecdotes and witty sayings. . . . My father died of an ulcer raised in his breast, occasioned by a wound he received in France, in a duel with a French oflScer. . . . My mother's name was Joan M'Carthy, daughter of Dermod McCarthy, of Killowen. Her mother's name I forget, but she was a daughter to M'Carthy Reagh, of Carbery. Her eldest brother. Colonel Florence, alias M'Finnen, and his two brothers, Captain Charles and Captain Owen, went in defence of the nation against Orange. Owen was killed in the Battle of Aughrim. . . . Charles I just remember. He left two sons. Darby and Owen. Darby married with Elena Sullivan, of the Sullivans of Banaune. Her brother Owen married Honora Mahony, daughter of Denis Mahony, of Dromore, in the barony of Dunkerron. . . . My mother's sister was married to Dermod, eldest son of Daniel O'Sullivan, Lord of Dunkerron. Her son Cornehus, as I understand, was with the Pretender in Scotland in the year 1745. The family name figures largely not only in the history, but also in the topography of the United States. There are counties called SulUvan in each of the following States :— Indiana, New Hampshire, New York, Mobile, Pensylvania Tennessee, Missouri. The capital town of Sullivan County in Indiana is also called Sullivan. Then there are townships and villages bearing the name in : — Aurora County, Dacota ; Livingston Co., Illinois ; Jackson Co., Kansas ; Hancock Co., Maine ; Polk Co., Minnesota ; Laurens Co., South Carolina ; Jackson Co., Wisconsin. And there are some others. Whether all these places were so called in honour of General Sullivan, or whether some of them got their designations from other settlers Digitized by Google 60 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND of the name, is more than I can tell ; but there they are at all events. Several members of the Sullivan sept, as well as the above-mentioned Cornelius, were " with the Pretender in Scotland in the year 1745." John Sullivan, a native of Kerry, was one of the most distinguished, important and influential men of the whole enterprise. He was a trusted friend and counsellor of the Prince — called by his English enemies *' the young Pretender,*' and by his Scottish and Irish adherents " Bonnie Prince Charlie," *' The Young Chevalier," and other endearing names — when he made his bold dash to recover the throne of his ancestors. The campaign, in the course of which some brilliant successes were achieved by the Scots, was closed by their disastrous defeat at Culloden. Colonel SulUvan was Adjutant-General on that fateful day, and placed the Prince's troops in position before the battle. When all was lost, it was he who ensured the personal safety of his beloved chief by seizing his horse's bridle-rein and leading him off the field — as Napoleon's marshals did with the Emperor after Water- loo, exclaiming " Sire, we have lost enough already." Digitized by Google THE (y SULLIVAN SEPT 61 CHAPTER X. THE Bantry and Bearhaven people, largely owing to their location and environment, were a sea- going race. They had to do with boats and oars and sails almost from their childhood. Most of the time of the younger men was spent in fishing in the bay, which for a long period was the resort of great shoals of herrings, mackerel, and pilchards, while the elder folk were engaged in such farming operations as were possible on a rugged soil, wind-swept and drenched with the salt mists and sprays of the Atlantic. Trading vessels calling in to the harbour to land goods or procure provisions often took away with them some fine strapping youths, who, in a short time, became as expert and daring seamen as could be found in the world. English warships, on their occasional visits, enticed many of them to enter the naval service, in which a notable number of them or their descendants rose to high rank. In the Dictionary of National Bio- graphy, vol. 55, we read of the following : — Rear-Adnodral Thomas Ball Sulivan, who had a dis- tinguished career. Admiral Sir Bartholomew James Sulivan, eldest son of the foregoing. Admiral George Lydiard Sulivan, another son of Admiral Thomas Ball Sulivan. Sir Charles Sulivan, Admiral of the Blue.* ♦ Those naval officers spelled their surname with one " 1," which is not at all a new departure, as it is so spelled in ancient Gaelic writings ; the more usual form, however, in Gaelic as well as in English, gives the "11." In the Pacata Hibernia the name Digitized by Google 62 BANTRY. BEREHAVEN AND A remarkable run of Admirals in one family ! The second on the foregoing list rendered important service to the Admiralty in the matter of mappings, soundings and surveyings of coasts, creeks, and harbours in various parts of the world, but was especially useful to them by his work of that kind in the Baltic at the opening of the Crimean War in 1854. He was then Captain Sullivan, in conunand of the Lightning. He participated in the attack made by the combined French and English fleets on the Russian fortress of Sweaborg in 1855, stnd after their fire had silenced the forts and set fire to some naval yards, stores, and private dwellings, the joyful news was telegraphed to Paris and London that Swea- borg was " destroyed." Scarcely had the guns of the Lightning cooled when Sullivan wrote a gushing letter to his family in England relating the good news, and in a fit of confessedly unaccustomed piety giving thanks to a higher power for the same. He said : — Sweaborg is in ruins after two days* bombardment, and not a scratch on our side. ... It is almost enough to excite my pride to hear what they all say about my work. . . . When all was finished at last, and I went below — ^having just been told what the admiral said — ^the conflicting feelings of gratitude and pleasure were such that when I went on my knees to offer thanks to that God who still so wonderfully aids me above my deserts, and in spite of my neglect of Him, I could only burst into tears. Another man of the name distinguished himself in the same war, and is worthy of mention in a record such as this. He was a native of Bantry, and as brave a man is always spelled "Osulevan ;•• but that work is no authority as regards che orthography of the names of Irish persons or places. O'Rourke, for instance, is written " Orwrke,** O'Daly, " Odalie," and so on. Its copies of letters, apparently authentic, from the chieftain of Dunboy to the King of Spain, would indi- cate that his own spelling of his name was O'Sulevan. A fac- simile of his signature wMch I have seen gives the spelling as O'Sulyvan ; but the pronunciation in all cases is the same. Digitized by Google THE (TSULLIVAN SEPT 63 — ^to say the least of it — as any of the admirals. An interesting sketch of his career, from the pen of a fellow- countrjmian and friend, Mr. Michael P. Barry, appeared in The Catholic Fireside (Liverpool), in October, 1880, from which I take the following passages : — Most visitors to the great naval dockyard at Portsmouth, while being shown the many objects of interest, have their attention drawn by the attendant policeman to a taU well-built man, with a typical Irish face, who in all weathers is to be seen modestly and unostentatiously performing his arduous duties. This is Mr. John Sullivan, V.C., chief boatswain of the yard, a hero whose gallant breast has been decorated with the most coveted decorations of England and France. Those acquainted with the district (Bantry) may remember the old house at the foot of Ardnabrahair, on the left of the ** boreen " leading to the graveyard. Here, in April, 183 1, John Sullivan was bom in the home of his fathers. As he grew in years he attended a school in the neighbourhood presided over by an estimable lady, whose son, " Sandy " Sullivan (afterwards A. M. Sullivan, M.P.), was his school-fellow and friend. Little thought those two boys as they conned their lessons, wrote their copies, or alternately fought and revelled in their hot youth that one would hve to be the leaurned and eloquent Member for Meath, and the other to wear the most coveted military decora- tions on his breast. . • • On the declaration of war against Russia in 1854 John SuUivan was a chief petty officer — ^boatswain's mate— on board H.M.S. Rodney, which was at once ordered to the Black Sea, with other " wooden walls," to commence operations. A naval brigade for duty on shore was orgfmised, composed of picked men, and in this brigade our boatswain's mate was present at the Battle of Inkermann. After this battle the brigade settled down before Sebastopol, and the siege began in right good earnest. Yoang Sullivan was " captain " of one of the guns in No. 5 Battery, and on him devolved the honour of making the first breach in the Malakofi Tower, and blowing up its magazine at the commence- ment of the siege. From this achievement he won distinction as a crack shot, and his fame reached even to the ears of the Admiral and the Commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan. Admirals Lyons, Stewart, and Boxer, attracted by his reputation, went to No. 5 Battery to see the young Irishman's practice against the Digitized by Google 64 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND enemy, and had the satisfaction of seeing him dismount one of the heavy guns in the Russian redoubt, that being the third gun his battery had that day disabled. . . . On the morning of the loth of April, 1855, a concealed Russian battery suddenly opened fire on the advanced works of the allied forces, and in a short time did terrible execution. The allies were dismayed. Their gunners could take no aim at this hidden foe. whose missiles were decimating their men and destro3dng theii batteries. What was to be done ? Some guide must be given to direct the answering fire. Suddenly a volunteer is called for to plant a flagstaff on a small mound midway between the opposing batteries. But who will risk it ? A deathly silence ensues, broken only by the terrible boom of those unerring guns, and the moans, the shrieks, and groans of wounded and dying. A few seconds, which seem an age, pass, and then out steps the young Corkman and volunteers for the awful mission. He takes the flag, and, leaping the breastwork, runs steadily towards the mound, exposed the while to a galling fire from the Russian sharpshooters. *' When he gained the mound," says an eye witness, '' he was cool and collected enough to take observations right and left to satisfy himself that he was in an exact line between the Russian battery and the British guns. Then, kneeling down, he scraped with his hands a hole for the flagstaff, and made it secure with stones and clods of earth he collected there. He then returned to the battery, miraculously unhurt| to receive the applause and congratulations his heroism deserved. The writer proceeds to relate some other brilliant actions of Sullivan during the siege, including one whereby the soldiers of one of the French posts were saved from almost certain annihilation, and he thus continues : — The French were so grateful for this timely assistance that hundreds of them came to see their rescuer and to shake his hand. ... At the conclusion of the war Commander Kennedy, of the Naval Brigade, recommended SuUivan for the Victoria Cross. This decoration " for valor " was conferred on him on the 25th of July, 1857. On the i6th of June in the previous year the Emperor of the French had created him a Knight of the Legion of Honour for his services to the French. In addition to these honours, so gallantly won, our hero received a medal for con- spicuous gallantry, the Sardinian medal, the Turkish medal, and the Crimean medal, with clasps for Inkcrmann and Sebastopol Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 65 He was also the recipient of the silver medal of the Royal Humane Society for saving, by swimming, the life of a drowning man, in the night time, in a sea infested with sharks. The memoir from which I have quoted thus concludes : — With all his honours he remains a simple, straightforward civil man ; one to whom all are instinctively drawn by a naive artlesness and geniality, and an uncommon amount of common sense. Long may he Uve to wear his laurels and to gladden his admiring friends^ I am not aware whether this brave soil of old Bantry is still living, or whether he has passed to that better land where Victoria Crosses are of no account. Many members of the O'SuUivan stock have been notable otherwise than as soldiers and sailors. In the domains of law, Uterature, and art they have given distinguished men to their country. Don PhiHp, the historian and controversial writer, has been previously mentioned ; it would be unpardonable to omit the names of the Gaelic poets, Owen Roe O'SulUvan, born in Kerry, in or about the year 1748, and Tadhg Gaolach (Irish Thade) O'Sullivan, a native of Cork County, bom somewhat about the same time. No sweeter lyrics than those of the first-mentioned bard were ever penned in the melodious Irish tongue. For a due appreciation of the poetry of Owen Roe I would refer the reader to the critical study by the Rev. Patrick O'Dinneen, pre- fixed to his admirable edition of the poet's works. I quote from it but a few sentences : — Our poet has solved the problem of the connection between words and melody more successfully than it has ever been solved before ; and in this respect he has no rival in literature, ancient or modern. ... As a lyric poet he stands in the first rank. His pathos is unsurpassed. He seizes on the most tangled and difficult metrical system and builds his poem on it as if he F Digitized by Google 66 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND were writing prose. His ear is perfect. There is never a flaw in his metre. . . . Eoghan Ruad is entitled to a supremacy in Irish literature from which he cannot be dislodged. Lyric poetry never flowed with such life and motion as from his pen. The characteristic vehemence of the Irish Celt — his enthusiasm, his warmth of nature, his tenderness of heart — have in his songs found their highest expression. Owen was for some time a soldier-sailor on board an English warship, and fought in the engagement between the fleet under Lord Rodney and that commanded by the French admiral, De Grasse, off the coast of Dominica, in the West Indies. He even wrote a poem in honour of Rodney's victory, but it was a poor thing, being in the English tongue, of which he was not a master. When asked what token of approbation he would like to receive from the commander, he repUed that what he wished was to be allowed to return home — a wish that was not granted to him. He was an Irishman all through, a lover of his country, a S5anpathiser with his suffering race. His entry into his majesty's service was not a deliberate act — it was really more a matter of accident than of design. When he got clear of the army and navy, he devoted his bardic powers to singing the sorrows, the hopes, and the future glories of his country. Owing to the decline of the Irish as a spoken language, the poems of Owen Roe O'SulUvan are no longer common know- ledge in their native place; but in their time they helped to nourish that spirit of Irish nationaUty which has come down tmbroken to our days ; and in view of the Gaelic revival, now happily spreading over the land, may we not believe that before many years shall have passed away the old speech will again be heard and the old songs sung on the rugged soil of Bere and Bantry , on the slopes of the Kerry Mountains, and midst the " lakes and fells " of ever fair Killarney. Tadhg Gaolach O'Sullivan was not so consummate a master of the bardic art as was his contemporary Owen Roe. But he was verily a '* poet born, not made." He, too. Digitized by Google THE O' SULLIVAN SEPT 67 gave to his people a body of compositions which should not be allowed to die. Some of his youthful effusions were not of an edifying character ; he was fond of an idle and roystering life, and he put the spirit of it into some of his verses:; but that phase passed ; he became a man of profound and sincere piety. It is related that his " conversion " came about in this way : — He and a party of young companions were playing cards one Sunday in the neighbourhood of their parish church when they should have been at Mass. As soon as the service was over, the good P.P. hastened to the place, routed the boys, and gave Tadhg a lecture that made a deep impression on his mind. From that day forward, with^an awakened conscience, he " turned over a new leaf.'* He made his poetry a vehicle for prayer and adoration, for the inculcation of virtue and the advocacy of pious practices. His devotional poems became immensely popular throughout Munster. Often were they repeated by workmen in the fields, by fishers in their boats at sea, around their hearths at night by peasant families, who loved them next to the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin. Of this honoured bard, who died while at his devotions in Waterford Cathedral, in April, 1795, Father O'Dinneen has written: — "Tadhg Gaolach is undoubtedly the first of Irish religious poets, and whatever place may be assigned him among the poets of the world who chose devotional subjects for poetic treatment, it is certain that no history of religious poetry would be complete without an account of his works.'^ M Digitized by Google BANTRY. BEREHAVEN AND CHAPTER XI. IN proceeding to give a brief sketch of the condition of the inhabitants of the O'Sullivan territory in Cork and Kerry in our own time, it becomes necessary that I refer once again to the periods of the three great confiscations — ^the Elizabethan, the Cromwellian, and the Williamite. For some years after the death of Elizabeth there wa5 little doing in those regions. The country had been devastated ; the old chiefs were gone ; the Gaelic tribal and social order was in niins, and the foreign grabbers had not yet settled down securely on the lands. But ere her majesty passed away she had made large grants of the despoiled and almost depopulated country to certain of her servants, flatterers, and favourites, civil and miUtary ; and thus it was that rapacious Englishmen came into possession of great tracts oi the lands of the O'SulUvans, O'Driscolls, MacSwineys, O'Donoghues, and other native families in Cork and Kerry. It was not till some years later, after the Cromwellian tornado had swept over the country, that the most voracious land-shark of his time — ^an English apothecary named Petty — ^managed to make himself the legal owner of an immense expanse of country on the Kerry side of the Berehaven mountains. Petty was a man of remarkable ability, the possessor of varied talents ; in character cunning, covetous, ambitious and un- scrupulous. He saw in the welter of Irish affairs a grand opportunity for advancing his fortunes, and he made skilful use of it. In 1652 he was physician Digitized by Google THE O* SULLIVAN SEPT 69 to the army in Ireland; (he had obtained the degree of M.D. in 1649, and was then, according to his own account, the proud possessor of £60 in the world) ; his medical practice added to his income; then he got other employments, one of his posts being that of secretary to Henry Cromwell, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. But his great work — ^great for its magnitude, its importance, and its effects on his own fortune- was that known as the *' Down Survey " — a survey, admeasurement, and mapping down of the lands confiscated in consequence of the " RebelUon *' of 1641. For the execution of this work Petty was rewarded with large grants of land ; but it was alleged against him — probably by grabbers less lucky or clever than himself — that he had so juggled with his maps, plans and figures as to secure to himself greater ad- vantages both in the way of acreage and of cash than he was entitled to. One Colonel Sir Jerome Sankey formulated against him an indictment of no fewer than nine articles, in which he was accused of " High Misdemeanours, Breaches of Trust, and severall other Crimes." Sankey appears to have done his best to bring this impeachment to trial before the Council ; but, even in our own day, '* the law's delay " — especially in a case of any magnitude — is proverbial ; and some- how the Sankey case would seem to have fizzled out — probably from want of means to prosecute the suit. The upshot of the whole matter was that Petty became the legal owner of a princely domain in one of the most picturesque and historically interesting parts of Ireland. Standing on the top of the majestic Mangerton mountain, if he could not say " I am monarch of all I survey " he could at all events proudly feel that by the exercise of his wits he had made himself lord of an extensive territory, beautiful beyond all description and bound to*be very profitable in the coming years. i* I am not certain," wrote Mr. Francis Prendergast Digitized by Google 70 BAN TRY, BEREHAVEN AND (brother of the historian John P.), in the Nation news- paper, " that even in our own days of rapid acquisition of wealth, anyone has exceeded the Hampshire apothe- cary of the i6th century, who, from being the owner of no more than sixty pounds sterling, found himself in less than seven years the proprietor in fee of all he could view from the summit of Mangerton.'* This notable man carried on his career of success to the end of his life. In the reign of Charles II. he was made Surveyor General of Ireland, and received from that monarch " the honour of knighthood." Additional honours and titles were acquired by his posterity. John, ist Earl of Shelbourne, succeeded to the Petty estates on the death of his maternal uncle in 1751, and William, the second of that title, became the first Marquess of Lansdowne. A curious fortune befel the maps of Petty's Down Survey. Some of them were consumed in a fire which took place in a Government office in Dublin ; others were shipped in a Government vessel for London, there to be engraved. But in those days there were special risks upon the sea, for, France and England being at war, French privateers were doing a lively business around the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. One of those craft fell in with the ship that carried Petty's maps, attacked and captured her, and took her off to the French port of St. Malo. Probably the French Government were glad to get hold of Petty's maps ; they gave them a place in the Royal Library, but there they were so badly shelved and so little regarded that in a few years the librarians had lost all knowledge of them. Meantime, English officials who knew their importance as documentary evidence in relation to Irish landed property, were questing for them in every direction. How they were discovered is thus told in an official letter, bearing date Jan. 27th, 1786, from Colonel Charles Vallancey Digitized by Google THE O* SULLIVAN SEPT 71 to the Duke of Rutland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Many fruitless searches have been made to recover these Surveys. Lord Harcourt made every enquiry possible for them in France/^ Lord Shelbom did the same ; the Catalogues of the French Libraries were turned to in vain ; no such maps appearing in the Catalogues under the words Cartes or MSS., the librarians never gave themselves further trouble. I have experienced the same both at Oxford and Cambridge. My pursuits this day in the French King's Catalogue were for old copies of the Bible, and consequently turned to the volume entitled '* Theology," curious to know in what manner the collection was made. I perused the Preface, and to my great astonishment at page 50 found the enclosed account of the original Survey of Ireland, by Sir William Petty, on the large scale, and I suppose complete. Colonel Vallancey goes on to say that if the French Government would not consent to restore those maps to the English he believed that permission to make copies of them would be granted on the appUcation of a British minister to the French Ambassador. The permission was asked for and accorded. Val- lancey made the copies; in recent years the British Government got them engraved, printed and published, and they are now on sale to the public at a moderate price. The map of the Baronies of Beare and Bantry included in the appendix to this work is copied from one of them, but on a reduced scale. The size of the original is 2 ft. 8 by I ft. 4| ins. The present representative of the Petty family is Henry Charles Keith Fitzmaurice, fifth Marquess of Lansdowne, and bearer of many other titles, who has held various high oflBces under the Crown. All his predecessors in title were — as far as Ireland is concerned — absentee landlords, and his lordship carries on the tradition. In the period of the Great Famine — 1847-49 — and many of the subsequent years, the management of the Lansdowne property in Kerry was such as to Digitized by Google 72 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND make its name notorious to the ends of the earth. For this it is not easy to say whether the chief responsibility rested on the " noble marquess " of that time — ^the fourth in succession — or on his agent, Mr. William Stewart Trench. The latter, I should think, was the inventor of the depopulating poUcy then carried out on the estate, but if so, the former was the assentor to it without whose sanction the scheme could not have been worked. Their plan was to deport to America hundreds of their starving tenantry, and then to enforce on the estate such rules and regulations as would prevent the re-growth of what they regarded as a " surplus population " on the property. This proceeding they represented as a benevolent and generous mode of dealing with these poor creatures. In reality the scheme had its economic and sordid side* At home those destitute and enfeebled persons would become entitled to relief under the poor law; food, clothing and medical treatment would have to be provided for them ; when they would die, the cost of their burial would have to be defrayed by the imion. In other words, the charges for all these things would fall on the noble landlord and such of his tenants as were not yet pauperised — thereby weakening their rent-paying capacity. Obviously it would be cheaper for his lord- ship to pay the passage money for some hundreds of those undesirables, dump them on the shores of America, and so clear his estate of them for ever. A painfully significant circumstance was that so numerous became the admissions of exiles from his lordship's property to one of the New York hospitals that a ward in the build- ing came to be popularly known as '* The Lansdowne Ward." For such of the tenantry as were able still to keep a hold upon their lands. Trench formulated a set of " Rules of the Eistate," subjecting them to a despotism unparalleled in the dominions of Czar or Sultan. His Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 73 great object — next to the getting in of a stiff rent- was to prevent the dwelling of what he regarded as too great a number of persons on the estate. With this view he forbade the heads of families to make arrange- ments whereby any of their younger members might — even without any sub-letting — ^get a share of their farms or dwelling-houses ; he exercised a strict surveillance over marriages: to marry without his permission in- volved being speedily tiu-ned off the property ; and it was perilous for a tenant to harbour, even for a day or two, any friend, but especially any relative of his family ; a smart fine was the lightest penalty for such offending. An appeal to Dublin Castle against these exactions was at one time made on behalf of the tenantry ; the reply of the Lords Justices, sent by Sir Thomas Larcom, on the 29th of December, 1857, was to the effect that they saw no grounds for interference, inasmuch as Mr. Trench in these cases did not act in a magisterial capacity, '* the arrangements in question being part of the private regulation of the estate." So there was no redress to be had from that quarter. Several illustrative instances are recorded in the newspapers of the time. Thus the special reporter of the Cork Examiner, writing from Kenmare on De- cember 30th, 1857, *^lls of the daughter and the son of two tenants who, wishing to become united in matrimony, eloped from their parents' homes — ^probably with the intention of saving the old people from any responsibility for their union — and got married in another part of the country. The correspondent says : — The " happy pair " returned to the house of the bridegroom's father, and remained there until the circumstances came to the ears of his lordship's driver. A warning was at once given to the tenant that the young people should remain with him no longer, and he was accordingly compelled to drive his son and Digitized by Google 74 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND his son's wife out the doors, to get a shelter wherever they conld. This they sought in the house of the girl's father, and for a few days obtained it, until the terrible " warning " again came, and again the unfortunate pair had to tramp. I believe they eventually made their way to America, where the young man since died. But the two fathers-in-law were not merely warned ; they were punished for harbouring their son and daughter, by a fine of a gale of rent. This was but a specimen case ; there were many others reported at the time; they were not contra- dicted ; they could not be denied. The special corres- pondent already quoted says in another letter that in a conversation he had with a number of the tenants, one poor fellow dolefully said : " I gave a month's lodgings to my brother-in-law, and I was fined two gales for it." Another was punished for having given housing to a labourer on his farm. Such was the landlordism of the Petty-Shelburne-Lansdowne-Fitzmaurice family on the splendid domains they had acquired so easily ; such was their treatment of the plundered remnant of the native race whose fathers had owned, lived and prospered on those lands for centuries before the foreign spoilers came upon them. A series of letters pubHshed in the DubUn Nation, from the pen of Mr. Edmund Fitzmamice Donnelly, of Kenmare, in the winter of 1857 ^^^ ^^^ ^^urly months of the following year, first drew the attention of the whole country to this scandalous state of things. Amaze- ment and indignation filled the popular mind. The Nation set to work courageously to expose and denounce the audacious pretensions and proceedings of this Bashaw Trench, and the Cork Examiner rendered splendid service by sending a special correspondent to report on the situation. The facts thus placed before the pubUc would now seem almost incredible. I doubt not that the following excerpts from the evidence will be found interesting. Digitized by Google THE O' SULLIVAN SEPT 7ff From a letter of Mr. Donnelly's to the Nation of December I2th, 1857, ^ take the following passages : — Why should the poor tenant do more than barely sow and reap ? Why should he fence, drain, irrigate, and cultivate his master's farm ? Why should he work the very flesh off his bones and the very blood out of his veins in improving a farm of which he would be deprived if he dared to give his son or daughter in holy wedlock without leave from the lay ** Vicar- General," alias Mr. Trench ? Perhaps you will laugh at this ludicrous title — ^you would perhaps also laugh if you were to see a poor ** glinster '* all the way (fifteen miles from Colerus or Glenmore) running np to the lodge to catch his " reverence *' before he would leave home, to get his permission to marry. And its the " V.-G.'s" (Trench's) trick to leave here just at the critical time, or not to come here until the last fortnight or so of Shrovetide. What was the poor glinster to do then ? Why I should say he was at liberty to adopt either of three courses — marry without Mr. Trench's leave and get " mopped out "; wait until he could catch Mr. Trench in the course of a hali year or so ; or — no, sir, I need not say it. Please God, Irishmen or Irishwomen will never adopt the fashion of certain neighbouring countries, that of " living together " as the police reports in the English papers phrase it. For any violation of the "Rules of the Estate" heavy penalties were inflicted. As regards Trench's marriage laws, we read in one of the letters of the Cork Examiner's special reporter (John Francis Maguire, M.P.) : A poor widow, whose cabin I entered, had the temerity to get her daughter married without the necesssury permission from the " office," and an ejectment was the immediate con- sequence, withdrawn only on the payment of three gales of rent, raised by the sacrifice of the little produce at her disposal. . . . One man of whom I made an enquiry as to how he had escaped, told me, with the utmost simplicity, that he had got his wife " just before Mr. Trench's laws came into force." It is only a wonder that this great law maker did not go on a Uttle further and prescribe a limit to the number of children that he would allow to be born into each family. Digitized by Google 76 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND At and about this period Irish landlordism had reached what was perhaps its highest pitch of rapacity and cruelty. It was legahsed tyranny, robbery and murder. In some parts of the country — ^in Mayo and Donegal, for instance — ^its work was carried on more brutally than in Cork and Kerry — that is to say, with less affectation of rectitude and of regard for high social and moral considerations. In later years, when some awakening of the public conscience to the iniquity of this system and the impolicy of allowing it to go on unchecked took place in England, the doings of the Lansdowne estate supplied to tenant-righters, popular orators, and liberal-minded statesmen some of their most piquant illustrations of the urgent need for a large measure of land~law reform. A young Irish lawyer, Mr. Charles RusseU, Q.C., M.P. (afterwards Lord Killowen and Lord Chief Justice of England), visited the place when engaged in the writing of a series of articles entitled *' New Views on Ireland ; or, Irish Land Grievances and Remedies " (published in book form by Macmillan in 1880), and gave an account of what he had seen and heard, in language unimpassioned» but all the more weighty because of its obviously scrupu- lous regard for the verities of the case. The publication drew from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, brother of the noble Marquess, a letter in which an endeavour was made to contradict and discredit the statements of Mr. Russell. Lord Edmond disliked especially the recru- descence of the story of the *' Lansdowne Ward," and appeared to think he had disposed of it when he wrote that it was " an old calumny," and that a friend of his whom he had asked to look into this matter during a visit to New York, had told him on his return that "he believed the whole story was an impudent in- vention got up by Irish politicians for their own pur- poses.** But the incredulity of Lord Edmond's friend «?as no disproof of the statement, and evidence of its Digitized by Google THE O'SULUVAN SEPT 77 truth was soon forthcoming in the following letter from a gentleman who had seen the controversy in the Press, and who had personal knowledge of the matter in dispute : — 33 Curzon Street, South Circular Road, Dublin. Nov. 20, i88o. Dear Sir. — The information that Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice received from his charitable " friend *' as to the non-existence (at present) of the Landsowne Ward in New York Hospital is quite correct. The New York Hospital stood in Duane Street, and was pulled down to make room for an extensive dry goods house twelve years ago. But this much I can assert from personal knowledge, that there was a ward known by the name of the Lansdowne in the hospital, which was as weU known to New Yorkers as Lansdowne Road is to Dubliners to-day, If you think this communication of any value you may publish it. Eugene O'Connell. P.S. — I may add that I am a New Yorker by birth, and any old resident of there can bear out my statement. Before I part with the *' noble Marquess " and his agent it is only fair to say that in the opinion of the local people and of persons who went to the district to investigate and report on the facts, the blame for this unhappy state of things lay not so much with the Marquess as with his trusted manager and adviser, Mr. Trench. It was pointed out that the Marquess was an old man, an absentee who never saw his tenants, and took no personal part in the management of his property, and who therefore had to depend upon others for his ideas of the situation and the part he should play therein. But such a plea could not exonerate him from a fearful responsibility in this matter. It was his business in such a crisis to visit his property, see and speak to his tenants, consult with their friends lay, and clerical, and consider with them what had best be done under the terrible circumstances. Instead of so doing, he re- Digitized by Google 78 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND mained away in his English home, took no heed of the clamour that arose in Cork and Kerry, and contented himself with sending to his agent a considerable sum of money for the expatriation of the half famished and broken down people to America. The Petty family are still in possession of the spoils they got hold of in the Cromwellian period. Sir William, the father of the tribe, died in 1687 ; his widow, in consideration of his services to the State, was created Baroness Shelbourne for life. Their eldest son, Charles, died in 1696, and was succeeded by his brother Henry, who obtained the title of Earl of Shelbourne. On his death in 1752 the title lapsed, but only to be revived after a short interval. Henry had willed his estate to his nephew, the Hon. John Fitzmaurice, on condition that he should adopt the name and bear the arms of Petty. On his compliance therewith " his Majesty hath been pleased to advance him to the dignities of Baron of Dunkerron and Viscount Fitzmaurice by privy seal . . . And his lordship hath been created Earl of Shel- bourne by privy seal, dated at Kensington 30th May, and by letters patent 26th June, 1753." The present Marquess of Lansdowne (a.d. 1908) is the fifth bearer of the title. Like his distinguished pro- genitor, Petty, he is a very accompUshed gentleman, and moreover a trained diplomat, qualified and em- ployed by England to take care of her interests in dealings with the sharpest intellects of foreign nations. He can buy his gloves in seven languages. The list of his titles, appointments and decorations is an affair of " linked sweetness long drawn out." He has many tail- feathers to his name. But to Ireland he is " no good " ; he is an opponent to her right to self government ; he is no friend to popular interests at home or abroad, and he is no favourite with his Irish tenantry. Digitized by Google THE O'SULLIVAN SEPT 79 CHAPTER XII. THE landlordism of the White family, on the southern side of the Bera promontory, was of a milder type than that of Lord Lans- downe and his man Trench on the Kerry side. The Whites resided on their property. The first Lord Bantry — ^he of the French fleet business — ^was a genial person, understood and could speak some Irish, and was not infrequently asked for advice by some of his tenantry on personal and even family matters. He kept a pack of hounds at Glengarriffe, and gave the local gentry and farmers many a day's sport. The tastes of his son, the second lord, who resided at Bantry house, were quite different ; he would not mount a hunter for any consideration, or even keep a little yacht on the bright waters of the beautiful harbour that lapped the edges of his domain. But he had a taste for art, and loved to decorate his house and grounds with Italian paintings and statuary. Their lands were highly rented, but the management of the property was not very rigorous, and there were but few evictions. In the time of the third Lord Bantry a portion of the Bere- haven property was put up for sale in the Incumbered Estates Court, and purchased by an Englishman, Lord Charles Pelham CUnton. Trouble arose out of the transaction. Lord Charles bought the lands without being made aware that there existed arrears of rent on* the property, which Lord Bantry would, at his own convenience, proceed to recover from Lord Clinton's tenants. How Lord Bantry managed to '* keep it dark," and how Lord Clinton omitted to look to this Digitized by Google 80 BANTRY, BEREHAVEN AND question of arrears before bidding for the property is indeed surprising, but so it happened. The situation and some of the ensuing scenes are graphically described by Mr. John P. Prendergast (Lord Clinton's newly- appointed agent) in a letter of protest addressed to Lord Bantry and published in pamphlet form in October, 1854. I quote a few passages : — My Lord. — You are already aware that the business that brought me to Berehaven was the seizing of Bere Island by your bailiffs on the morning of the 8th S^tember in execution of near 200 civil biU decrees, obtained by your lordship against your late tenants, the islanders, at th^ Bantry Quarter Sessions in January last, for sums amounting in the whole to ;£i,8oo, found to be due to your l(^dship for rent and arrears of rent to Michaelmas. Day, 1853. It does not concern yOur lordship to hear by what accidents Lord Charles Clinton was prevented from seeing, personally or by deputy, to the condition of his new purchases, until the month of August last, when his lordship, in company with his newly appointed agent, visited them, and was received by their inhabitants with a warmth that indicated fully as much joy at getting rid of the old landlord as at becoming the tenants of a new one. It was during the hurry of this three days visit that your Lordship caused Lord Charles Clinton to be informed, verbally, that you had claims against the lately purchased properties amounting, roughly, in the case of Bere Island, to over £1,000, and in the case of the mainland estate to near ^600 — rather a shock to one who thought he had bought free of incumbrance — but which your lordship was good enough to inform him you would give him time to collect for you by instalments, adding, however, significantly, th?it if you were not settled with you "could break every tenant on the island . . . On the very day that Lord Clinton was leaving this country for England — a short week afterwards — he received the news that your lordship's bailiffs were ravaging the island, driving all the cows to the pound, and threatening to carry off every- thing that was not too hot or too heavy. . . . On the night of the 9th of September last, the second day after their descent, a large armed force of police, summoned in from the neighbouring outposts, rendervoused at midnight Digitized by Google THE O* SULLIVAN SEPT 81 at a wooded point that juts into the sound, and embarked hastily for the island. They were, howevfer, unable to overtake a boat that started immediately to apprise the unfortunate islanders of the approach of these ill-timed visitors. This invading military force reached the island almost at the same moment as the friendly warners, but these last, being better acquainted with the short cuts to the hamlet, had time (and only time) to summon the terrified inhabitants from their beds, when they, for the most part aged and respectable women, fled, half naked, up the telegraph hill, where, like a frightened herd, they stood at gaze in the shadow of the building, watching the scene below. For seven days and nights they lay out on the hills, often on the point of giving in, through acting bones, swollen faces, and shivering limbs. One of the skirmishes which took place in the course of the distraint of the cattle of the poor tenants Mr. Prendergast thus describes : — One, Thady Harrington's wife (Thady was at sea) stopped a cow of her husband's that had been seized by one of your bailiffs in mistake for one belonging to her mother-in-law, decreed to be in debt to your lordship. Her women friends collected around, calling the bailiffs and your lordship ugly names — as women will. No stones were thrown, no blow was struck, but the cow got off. The fact is that the women gathered in a crowd at the cross and barred the way to the pound, leaving open the road leading up to the mountain where the cow used to graze — a hint she was not slow to take ; for, shaking off her mistress who had hold of one horn, and your bailiff, who grasped the other, she released herself from the hold of '* Sooty Denis ** (a wretched creature who acts as spy for your lordship) who was hanging by her tail^ and, raising it high in the air, out of his ugly clutch, she bolted to the mountain. The process of " driving " the seized cattle to the pound and " canting " them to the highest bidder is thus pictured : — Now let me recall the familiar features of your lawless Irish " driving.'* Let us suppose some sudden call of your lordship for money: instantly your drivers scour the country, aided by a flying troop of boys, hired at fourpence to sixpence a day. G Digitized by Google 82 BANTRY. BEREHAVEN AND The boys, wild with delight, beat the co^vb out of the fields with sticks and stones, over hedges and ditches, down to the pound. The owners follow, i.e.y such as can find a friend to bail their beasts out until the cant day ; but the poor man's cow often remains in the pound till nearly dead of hardship. On the cant day, towards the hour of canting, the pound be- comes choked, and then comes the scene of the strong cows beating down and goring the weak. Often one strong cow will drive the others flying in a whirl round the pound. Meantime the top of the great pound wall is thronged with the owners of the impounded beasts, each watching his own with anxious fear, lest they should suffer damage, and men will often descend among the maddened herd and endeavour to save their cows from the injuries inflicted by the stronger upon the weaker ones on those occasions. Of one of those scenes, in November, 1834, Mr. Prender- gast says :— This last driving of your lordships* so overcrowded the great circular pound of Rossmacowen that the place was a pool of gore ; and the bellowings of the tortured cows could be heard at the top of Hungry Hill. In later times, long after the property had passed from the hands of the Lords Bantry, there were some troubles between the Berehaven tenantry and. their landlord — at this time a Mr. Clinton, son of the Lord Clinton in whose interest Mr. Prendergast wrote so vigorously. In May, 1905, and the July of th« following year, decrees were obtained and notices of eviction served for arrears of rent — ^but this was in the era of Land Acts and Land Courts, and rent reductions, and settlements were arrived at without any smous difficulty. A good many of the tenants have bought their holdings under the Purchase Act, and are now their own land- lords, having such a grip on the soil of Beara as their fathers had not since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Digitized by Google THE 0*SULLIVAN SEPT 83 CHAPTER XIII. IT may be that no violent reversal of the great events of Irish history can now be effected ; but there is plenty of scope in various ways for bettering the condition of the Irish people. AU men, no matter of what racial origin, who desire to take part in that good work should get a friendly welcome to the national ranks. As for those who may prefer to stand sullenly aloof, unwilUng to share in the upraising of a long-oppressed nation, looking with frowning eyes on the increase of popular power and public right, let them have it so; foreigners let them remain. Ireland will regard them simply with pitying contempt ; and they will have no business looking for sympathy to England, for they will get none. No people in the world will have a good word to say for a class so worthless, so heartless, so unpatriotic. It will quietly disappear from the face of the earth, "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung." The fortunes of the historic regions of which I have written have somewhat brightened of late years. Recent legislation — ^the Local Government Act and the Land Acts — ^are being happily availed of by the people of Bantry and Berehaven, and by their kinsmen on the Kerry side of the mountains. Whatever may happen in the future, those districts have proud possessions that can never be taken from them — " the charms that Nature gave them," and heroic memories the glory of which will last till time shall be no more. Digitized by Google Digitized by Google APPENDIX. Sir George Carew and the Pacata Hibernia : — To these the references throughout the earlier chapters of this volume are, of necessity, numerous. Sir George, Queen Elizabeth's "Lord President of Munster," was the chief organiser of the con- quest and spoliation of that province. The Pacata is his account of the operations. One Thomas Stafford edited the papers, prepared them for the Press, wrote a dedication of the work to Elizabeth's successor, King James, and got it published in 1636, some years after the death of Carew. Of Carew and Stafford the Rev. C. B. Gibson, M.R.I.A., in his History of the County and City of Cork, gives the following appreciation : — •* So cool and cruel, so cunning and unknightly a ruler (as Carew) never came to Ireland. We have his effigy in the Pacata Hibernia — a book written by a man who worshipped him as his Magnus Apollo — and a more sinister countenance we never beheld. We have no objection to adopt the former part oi the circumscription — for the words go round the picture — Talis erat vultu, sed lingua, mente, manu," The Reign of Queen Elizabeth, p. 9: — The following account of the characteristics of the O' Sullivan people is given in the Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland, published in 1846 by A. FuUerton and Co., Dublin, London, and Edinburgh : " The Sept of the O'Sullivans anciently inhabited most of what now constitutes the baronies of Beare and Bantry. They were inveterate opponents of the EngUsh interest and the Protestant Reformation, and acted a zealous and self-ruining part in the great rebellion of Munster, towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth." Digitized by Google 86 APPENDIX. Tyrell, one of O'Sullivan's most trusted Captains (p. 17) : " While some of his (Tyreirs) men were prisoners in the hands of the besiegers, the President propounded a " stratagem " to the captain — some accompUshed piece of devilment, no doubt — by the doing of which he and his men were to get their lives and liberties. He replied : "I will ransom my men with money, if that be accepted, but to be false to the King of Spain, my master, or to betray the Catholic cause, I will never." — Gibson's History of Cork, Don Philip O'Sullivan Be are, p. 32 : — This eminent patriot and litterateur, author of the Historia Catolica Ibernia, is referred to by some writers as a nephew of Donal of Dunboy. Judge Madden, in his recently published work, entitled Some Passages in the Early History of Classical Learning in Ireland, so speaks of him ; others call him a cousin, which I take to be the correct designation, as his father was not a brother, but a first cousin of Prince Donal. Philip's age was about ten years when Donal, after having evicted the Spanish soldiers from Dunboy, sent him, with his own son, as a pledge of fealty to the King of Spain. Young Philip as he advanced in years developed a high degree of literary talent, and wrote several works in the Latin tongue, all in defence of his religion and his country. Mr. Matthew J. Byrne, of Listowel, Co. Kerry, has rendered valuable service to Ireland by translating into English and getting published (Sealy, Bryers & Walker), a most interesting portion of O'SuUivan's ** Compendium of the CathoUc History of Ireland " — the section relating to the Eliza- bethan war. I may add that a good deal of Don Philip's lite- rary work was done on board -sliip while he held a command in the Spanish Navy. Robbed, despoiled, and disinherited, p. 34 : — In the valuable work entitled Illustrations, Historical and Genealogical, of King James's Irish Army List (1689), by John D' Alton, Esq., B.L., published in Dublin in 1855, is given, at considerable length, a record of notable members of " this noble Sept." I can here give but a couple of short extracts from the work, indicating how they were harried, despoiled and hunted down : — " In the Attainders of 1642 were Donell O'SuUivan Beare, of Berehaven ; Philip O'SuUivan, of Ix)ughandy ; Owen of Inchi- clough and Drumdivane, Donell Mac Owen, of Drumgarvan; Digitized by Google APPENDIX. 87 John Mac Dermody, of Derryne ; GiUicuddy O' Sullivan, of Traghprashy; Connor O'SuUivan, of Loughane, and Owen Neagh O' Sullivan, of Drumgowlane, all in the County of Cork. — ^This Sept was represented at the Supreme Council of Kilkenny by O'Sullivan More of Dunkeiran and Daniel O'Sullivan of Culmagort ; while the Declaration of Royal Gratitude, in the Act of Settlement, preserves the names of Captain Dermot O'Sullivan of Kilmeloe, Lieutenant O'Sullivan of Fermoyle, and Ensign Owen O'Sullivan, aH in the County of Cork. Of those outlawed in 1691 were Daniel O'Sullivan of Rosma- cone, McDermot Cnogher Sullivan and Cwnelius Sullivan of Shiskeen ; Owen Mac Murtough Sullivan of Berehaven, John MacMurtough Sullivan of Lanlaurence, Thady Sullivan of Killiebane, Clerk, all of the County of Cork, with Dermot Mac Donell Soolevane of Litton, and Florence Soolevane of Nodden in the County of Kerry." The place-names in the foregoing extracts were printed by Mr. D' Alton as they stood in old documents. In more recent orthography " Nodden " is Nedeen, a former name of the town of Kenmare ; " Lanlaurence " is Clanlaurence ; " Rosmacone " is Rosmacowen ; ** Derryne " is Dcrreen, and *' Traghprashy " is Trafrask. Smugglers and privateers, p. 46 : — Privateers were a class of vessels owned by private persons or companies, and employed both for trading and warlike purposes. Their chief business was preying on the commerce of ttie enemy in war time. They were the highwaymen of the sea, but carried " letters of marque " — ^a sort of licence from their own government to cover their capturing and plundering operations, without which they would be pirates, entitled to no mercy should they fall into the hands of their enemies. The disorganization of trade and commerce caused by vessels of this class became so great that modifications of the system were agreed to by the European governments from time to time, until in March, 1856, the Plenipotentionaries of the Great Powers, in Conference at Paris, arrived at a resolution that : — " Privateering is and remains abolished." This Declaration was not pleasing to everybody; there are even now people who hold that after the outbreak of war the speediest way of arriving at a peace is to make the continuance of hostilities as inconvenient and hurtful as possible to one or other or all the belligerent nations. This view is cleverly advocated in a work by Thomas Gibson Bowles, M.P., published in London in 1900. Digitized by Google 88 APPENDIX, At Fontenoy, p. 47 : — Morty O'SulUvan was not the only warrior of his name at the battle of Fontenoy. In the French official return of the killed and wounded of the Irish regiments in that engagement, we read the names of " Lieutenant Timothy Sullivan, — contused leg," and " Lieutenant Florence Sullivan, — gunshot in leg." A copy of the list will be found in the admirable paper on " The Irish Brigade at Fontenoy," by tiie Very Rev. P. Boyle, CM., of the Irish College, Paris, published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, for May, 1905. It would be well if this most interesting and valuable paper, with its excellent map of the positions of the opposing forces, were reprinted and issued as a separate tract. A more recent association of the family name with that historic field is supplied by the patriotic action of the Hon. Frank J. Sullivan, of San Francisco, who recently got fixed on the outer wall of the neighbouring cemetery a white marble tablet bearing the following inscription : — In Memory of the Heroic Irish Soldiers Who changed Defeat into Victory At Fontenoy, May iith, 1745. Erected by Frank J. Suluvan, OF San Francisco, U.S.A. A handsome memorial cross was set up on the site of the battle by the Irish Literary Society of London in August, 1907. Prince Charles Edward •* The Pretender," p. 47 : — Several executions for the crime of enlisting recruits for the service of the Scottish Prince, and of France, are recorded in the publications of the time. Thus we read in " The Cork Remem- brancer, by John Fitzgerald, printed by J. Sullivan, near the Exchange. 1783."— On April i8th, 1772, Captains Henry Ward and Francis Fitzgerald were hanged and quartered at Gallows- Green for enlisting men for the Pretender. Digitized by Google APPENDIX. 89 W. Stewart Trench, pp. 72 ei seq. : — When or how Mr. Trench's agency over the Lansdowne estates came to an end I do not exactly know ; but subsequently he boomed himself largely in the newspapers in connection with the pill and ointment business. " Trench's Remedies " he proclaimed to be cures for many of the ills that flesh is heir to. I can say nothing for or against them, not having tried them ; but, if indeed they were health restorers, I think it a pity they were not invented early enough to be serviceable to the ex- patriated Kenmare tenantry in the Lansdowne ward of a New York hospital. The Bantry and Berehaven men stood in with every national movement of their time. Within my own recollection they were Repealers with Daniel O'Connell, " Young Irelanders " with Smith O'Brien, Phoenix men and Fenians with O' Donovan Rossa and James Stephens, and Land Leaguers with Parnell. Of the Bantry men prosecuted in connection with the Phoenix conspiracy in 1858, no fewer than eight were Sullivans. In the ccnstitutional movement Bere and Bantry gave a remarkably large contingent to the Irish ParUamentary Party. They were: — A. M. Sullivan. T. D. SuUivan. Donal Sullivan. T. M. Healy, Thomas J. Healy. Maurice Healy. WilUam M. Murphy. James Gilhooly. Timothy Harrington. Edward Harrington. The Messrs. Harrington (who were Berehaveners) " went ParnelUte " at the time of the historic " Split," and so differed from the rest of the above-named group, to whom was then humourously or sarcastically applied the name of " the Bantry Band." In reference to this designation a gifted young member of the ParUamentary Party, Mr. John McCarthy, of Roscrea, Member for Mid-Tipperary, published the following verses : — " The Bantry band ! " " The Bantry band I " Who blushes for the " Bantry band ? " Are truer men in all the land, Revilers I than " the Bantry band ? *• Digitized by Google 00 APPENDIX, Not theirs in these or darker djays To tune their harps to tyrants' praise Not theirs to gather venal bays Where Honour warps and Truth decays ! Not theirs the part of sneering slave, When good men leagued the land to save ; But theirs the grit that foiled the knave, And theirs the cry that cheered the brave I Though cradled not in halls built high With rackrents wrung from misery — Mere Irish, just as you and I — We obe^ them yet with fearless cry. For love of Erin fires their hearts. And spite of foes and traitor arts. Fell Faction reels beneath their darts. And still the whipped oppressor smarts. Could every town in Ireland show Such Spartan bands to face the foe, Not long we'd wait his overthrow. Not long we'd wail our country's woe I Then, blessings on you, " Bantfy band 1 " Speed on, speed on, brave " B^ntry band," Till Freedom crowns your native land. And ends your labours, " Ba»try band ! " Mention should here be made of the distinguished musician Sir Arthur Sullivan, who has : bat recently passed away. .His compositions in various styles and forms of his art acquired great popularity, especially his work in what are. known as the " Gilbert and Sullivan " operas. He was born in London in May, 1842, but his family, as we learn from the lately published work of his relative, Mr. B. W. Findon, was Irish from both sides. *' His grandfather was a native of Kerry, and his grandmother (who^ maiden name was also Sullivan) was born in Bandon, in the adjoining county of Cork." His father was Thomas Sullivan, a military bandmaster, and his mother's name was Mary Clementina Coghlan. See Sir Arthur Sullivan and His Op$ras, by B. W. Findon. Sisleys, publishers, London. Digitized by Google APPENDIX, 91 Portrait of Donal O'Sullivan Bears : — To the patriotism of the late Right Rev. Monsignor James O'Laverty, of Belfast, we owe it that an authentic portrait of Donal O'Sullivan Beare is now to be found in many Irish publica- tions. The reverend gentleman had learned that there was such a portrait in the Irish College at Salamanca, and he at once commissioned a reverend friend to have a copy of it painted for him by a competent artist. On receipt of tl]ds work, which was well executed. Father O'Laverty was good enough to allow copies of it to be made for use in various historical books and papers. One of those reproductions — a coloured lithograph — is hung in Room III. of our National Gallery of Science and Art, Leinster Lawn, Dublin. It is a small picture, no larger than the engraving prefixed to this volume (the size of the original painting I do not know), and is thus described in the official catalogue : — " A small full-length figure, in trunk hose, armour, and large ruflf. He wears the badge of the order of St. James of Compostela, of which he was made a Knight by Philip III. In upper portion of picture is the inscription : — OsuUevanus Bearrus Bearra et Bgantria Comes atatis sua LIII. Christi vero Domini MDCXJII. Anno, and a shield of arms." This shows that the picture was painted in 1613, when O'Sullivan's age was fifty -three, five years before his assassination by Bath at Madrid. Thb ''Obstinate and Prolonged Defence" of Dunboy, p. 21. There was, however, one of the heads of the sept who stood out against his patriotic kinsmen and gave what aid and encouragement he could to their enemies. This was Sir Owen O'Sallivan, known in those days as " the Queen's O'Sullivan." He was a claimant to the chieftaincy, and to Donal O'SuUivan's Berehaven territory. Their dispute was taken for trial before the high courts in England, where Sir Owen lost his case, after which he became a bitter enemy of his successful relative, and took part with the English in their operations against Dunboy Castle and on Dursey Island. After the overthrow of Donal and his followers Sir Owen got possession of Carriganass Castle, and members of his family continued there and thereabout for some time. The castle is now a picturesque ruin on the banks of the Ovane river, within a few miles of Bantry. Digitized by Google 92 APPENDIX. In her admirable work entitled " The Making of Ireland and its Undoing," basing her statements on historic records, Mrs. Alice Stopford Green says : — " The coasts of Ireland were famous for their fisheries — a trade carried on both by the Irish and by foreigners. O' Sullivan, prince of Bear and Bantry, ruled over a people who Uved by fishing, and had his native fleet : when an EngUsh ship seized a Spanish fishing vessel ofi the coast he manned a small squadron, brought both ships to Berehaven, hanged the English captain and set the other free." Hungry Hill, p. 82. — Some residents in the locality believe that its earlier name was " Angry Hill," and say that its present title was given to it, jocosely, by a party of military engineers who, in the years 1840 to '45, were hutted on its sides, engaged on the new ordnance survey, and who often experienced some difficulty in procuring food supplies. But the idea is utterly erroneous. The mountain has borne its present name for at least two centuries. Unquestionable evidence of that fact is supplied by the Down Survey map of the Barony of Bere and Bantry, a copy of which is included in this volume. The survey was commenced in 1655 and completed in about three years ; the place-names were recorded on the resultant maps just as they were known at that period, and doubtless had been for many years before ; and the antiquity of the name " Hungry Hill ' is therefore undeniable. It is indeed a magnificent moan« tain, rising to a height of 2,249 ^^et above the level of the sea. From a lake on its summit, down its precipitous side, a splendid cascade, often referred to as the finest in the three kingdoms, tumbles into Bantry Bay. A legal friend has suppUed me with the following note : — " In the matter of John Mahony's estate in the Land Judges* Court (Mr. Justice Ross) in 1903, on which estate the Gap of Dunloeand other lands by the Lakes of KiUamey are situate, the root of title proved by the present owner was a grant in GaeUc from The O'SulUvan Beare, written on parchment — ^in size not much larger than an ordinary envelope." I wrote some songs in praise of the grand old bay. I here append two of them, and so close this little work. Digitized by Google APPENDIX. 93 BACK O' WHIDDY. Off from Bantry pier we start Sailing—or it may be rowing — Lads and lasses, light of heart, On to fair Glengarriffe going. Oh, the harbour's smooth enough, But some heads get queerly giddy. Once we dip in waters rough Round the point and back o' Whiddy. Then there's chaffing, back o* Whiddy; Joking, laughing, back o' Whiddy; Fearful tales Of sharks and whales And huge sea-serpents, back o* Whiddy? Soon we've cause for tender cares (Thanks, oh, thanks, sweet rolling ocean) I And we hear delightful pray'rs Uttered with intense emotion ; Sometimes, too, when waves and wind Would try the temper of a " middy," Language of another kind Is freely spoken back o' Whiddy. But that's no harm — when back c Whiddy; It has a charm — ^when back o' Wihddy — At least I know I judged it so, Long, long ago — when back o' Whiddy. Sing the beauties of Glandore — They deserve such celebration; Say good things of Baltimore — A safe retreat, a pleasant station; Praise what bays and creeks there be From Mizen Head to Ringaskiddy, But after all, the trip for me Is that which takes me back o' Whiddy I Oh, the long waves back o' Whiddy I Oh, the strong waves back o' Whiddy I Oh, the joys That— girls and boya— We knew when boating back o' Whiddy t Digitized by Google APPENDIX BANTRY BAY : (A " Shanty ** or Boat Song.) Come help me, boys, to sing a song, And lilt a lively roundelay ; As fast and free we boom along, And top the waves of Bantry Bay. A fair wind fills our flowing sail — But let it blow from where it may. We'll woo the breeze or brave the gale With joyful hearts on Bantry Bay. Oh, there are harbours made with hands. With sticks and stones, with mud and clay. With piles and beams and iron bands — We've no such things in Bantry Bay ! We've fair GlengariflE's silvery tide, We've grand Berehaven, where to-day The fleets of half the world might ride. With room to swing, in Bantry Bay. Historic scenes come into view As on we plough our watery way; For chieftains bold and clansmen true Were long the lords of Bstntry Bay. And well we hope the world may see, Ere many jrears have passed away. The sons of patriot ancestry Again hold sway by Bantry Bay. So trim your sails, and ease your sheets, And hoist your bunting bright and gay; Our trip has been a bunch of sweets — Hip I hip I hurrah I for Bantry Bay ! Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google Digitized by Google ' This book should be returned to the Library on or before the last date stamped below. A fine of five cents a day is incurred by retaining it beyond the speeiiied time> Please return promptly. APR 17 1931 APR 21 1931 flU(v .1 ''^ >o3 i&mi^ Digitized byGoOgl^