14 February 1798: Supporters of government are appalled as news filters through of the deaths at Castle Uniacke, near Kilworth, Cork, of Col Richard St George Mansergh and magistrate Jasper Uniacke.
Mansergh, wearing a black silk scarf to conceal a severe American War head wound, calls to his Araglen estate on the 9th to upbraid his assembled tenantry for their "insurrectionary spirit" and for felling his trees. Accompanied only by his agent, Uniacke and an escort of two soldiers, he declares his intention to burn more houses and "transport every United Irishman he could discover amongst them".
This credible scenario evidently spurs Capt Doe's men to kill both gentlemen after dark and to mortally wound Mrs Uniacke. Some comfort is taken by the seizure near Cape Clear of the 26-gun Du Gay Trouin, an enemy privateer of 170 crew reconnoitring the southern coast. Admiral Kingsmill's prompt dispatch of the Kanga- roo sloop and HMS Shannon ensures that she is intercepted and brought into Cork just hours after making a prize of the Jamaica-bound Welding.
The Belfast Newsletter reports on the 9th that "a few days ago a party of dragoons entered the house of a poor cottager in one of those parts which had been declared out of the peace. After shooting the poor old woman to whom it belonged, with more than savage barbarity the officer commanding violated the person of her daughter.
"He was taken into custody by a guard of the regiment to which he belonged (Ninth Dragoons) who shewed as much indignation at the unnatural and unmanly crime with which he stands charged, as any private citizen could do, and with an alacrity that does honour to this old and respectable regiment, lodged him in the jail of Carlow." The Ninth Dragoons, commanded by Kildare landowner Col Brydges Trecothic Henniker, are hardened veterans of the dragooning of Ulster and many readers undoubtedly disbelieve claims that the actual culprit is Trooper Mitchell of a Myshall `sergeant's guard' (squad).
The effect of such incidents is recorded by a Press correspondent, who claims on the 13th that house-burning and tortures such as "pricking" (shallow bayonet cuts) and "half-hanging" (repeated partial strangulation) are being widely practised in the baronies of Forth and Idrone.
An open letter to the Carlow magistracy by "Humanitas" asserts "great numbers" have fled for fear of being "thrown into a crowded and loathsome dungeon, to perish with cold, hunger and pestilence, or hurried as transports to the mortal regions of the West Indies, to perish by the unwholesomeness of the climate or in fighting for a cause which brought upon them and families so many accumulated miseries and all this without the semblance of justice, or trial, even by a packed jury."
Public order is preserved in the capital by less draconian means. The Freeman's Journal singles out the "laudable activities" of the Superintendent Magistrate who "enforces a reverent observance of the Sabbath by preventing the sale of newspapers, etc, etc, by compelling all public houses to be closed, during Divine Service".
Pubs are prudently subjected to a midnight curfew, "not only preventing nocturnal riot and debauchery in the metropolis, but also in breaking up knots of seditious conference".
About the author:
The 1798 Diary is written by Ruan O'Donnell, a 29-year-old history lecturer at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin. He also teaches in UCD where he received an MA in 1991. A dissertation on the transportation of the United Irishmen to New South Wales secured him a PhD in 1996 from the Australian National University.
His publications include a revised and expanded edition of Luke Cullen's Insurgent Wicklow (Kestrel Books, 1998) and The Rebellion in Wicklow, 1798, to be published next month by Irish Academic Press. Ruan O'Donnell is PRO of the Wicklow '98 Committee. He is married and has four children.