Although an amateur historian, Anthony Breen is an assiduous researcher. He has discovered an Irish historical document at the Suffolk Record Office in Ipswich. While his Cappoquin Rebellion 1849 is less impressive than other recent publications - such as Joe Kennedy's Famine in the Kilkenny/Tipperary Region (Callan Heritage Society, £5) and Conor O'Brien's Feagh McHugh O'Byrne (Rathdrum Historical Society, £9.99) - it contains an interesting appendix. This is a letter written to Lord Stradbroke's agent shortly after the attack on Cappoquin police barracks in 1849.
Stradbroke's tenants were the only such group in Waterford to express loyalty to the British government during the 1848-9 disturbances. Sycophantic in tone, William Fitzmaurice's letter contributes to our knowledge of the 1849 "rising".
On the day the Young Ireland insurrection collapsed - July 29th, 1848 - Lord Stuart de Decies had written to the viceroy, Lord Clarendon: "The people themselves, there is no doubt, would with their characteristic recklessness have readily raised the standard of revolt had not the clergy (even those who but lately were preaching war), alarmed at the magnitude of the preparations made by the government to crush the threatened outbreak and by the total want of supplies of all kinds for the support of the insurgent forces, made it a point with their flocks to abstain from committing themselves."
Rebellion "is a game too dangerous for them to play", commented Lord Clarendon, revealing his attitude to the Catholic clergy.
Rare bird
Fitzmaurice provided further evidence of a sectarian age in his letter to the land agent: "There is at Cappoquin a rara avis in the person of a Roman Catholic priest - a man at all times opposed to rebellious proceedings. I do not mean to say but that many more of his profession are also opposed to such, but in 99 cases out of 100 their opposition [a]rises more from the fear of not succeeding in wresting this country from England than from any feeling of pure loyalty. This may be harsh after all their repeated professions of loyalty - but I believe it to be true notwithstanding and, if I know you rightly, your opinion is the same."
Continuing on an implausible note, Fitzmaurice reported that when asked if there was any truth in the rumour that emissaries were going about exciting the people to another rebellion, this priest replied that one parishioner had said to him: "Our arrangements are better made and the time is at hand when we will compel you and all your sort to march at our head." The priest added he was convinced that a rising would take place in Cappoquin and if it should, "a Protestant would not be left alive to tell the tale - that in the town there were 700 sworn men and that the oath taken by them would make the blood of any well-regulated person run cold".
1849 conspiracy
A spirit of resistance persisted in the south-east after the 1848 rising. John O'Mahony maintained an armed force in the Comeragh mountains until September.
The new conspiracy emerged with the release of James Fintan Lalor in November. Another journalist, Joseph Brenan, held equally radical views. He disliked the petty bourgeoise and asserted: "if a man in frieze has more intellect than the man in broadcloth, he should, in politics at least, be leader."
Like Philip Gray and Thomas Clarke Luby, Brenan had been a member of the Swift Confederate club. After an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the Young Ireland prisoners in Clonmel, Gray and John O'Leary - later of literary Fenian fame - began swearing in new members and contacting former confederates along the Suir valley.
The authorities released Charles Gavan Duffy in April 1849, having failed to convict him of high treason. During a tour of the south with Thomas Carlyle, he found the Famine still raging and "that an insurrection which would be more futile than the last was ripening . . . My plainest duty was to tell the people there was no hope or safety in that direction".
Nonetheless, when Duffy resumed publication of the Nation in September, Lord Clarendon said he never expected that astute editor to recommend physical force "while the recollection of last year's failure was fresh in the minds of the people, but he will do much mischief".
Cappoquin barracks came under attack on September 16th. Half an hour before, Clarendon would report, "the town was perfectly quiet and not a person was to be seen, and if an old woman had not muttered to the sergeant that bad work was at hand and he better take care of himself the whole party would have been murdered, as they had only time to barricade the doors before a mob of about 200 ruffians arrived".
According to Fr Robert Arthure's recent study of Dr Patrick Fogarty - a priest instrumental in bring the Cistercian monks to Mount Melleray - a better-informed report put the number of insurgents at between 70 and 80. Brenan had apparently called to Mount Melleray on the morning of the attack seeking the abbot's blessing and gun, both of which were withheld.
The loss of the element of surprise doomed the assault to failure. Seven well-armed policemen, assisted by Sir Richard Keane's ranger, withstood the brief siege. One attacker, James Donohue, was killed and the fleeing rebels piked a constable to death. Sub-constable James Owens thus became the only casualty among Crown forces in 1848-9.
Fitzmaurice wrote to Lord Stradbroke's agent, Alexander Coates, that the leaders of this outbreak were well-known Chartists and, if not actors in, "were to a man ready to join the late abortive rebellion". While links between Young Ireland and the English democrats remain obscure, in the minds of the ruling classes the two movements were allied.
Disjointed attacks
The raid on Cappoquin barracks was the culmination of a few disjointed and desperate attacks by insurgents, who considered they "might as well be hanged or shot as starve".
Joseph Brenan and a number of other leaders escaped to the United States. Eleven local men, arrested on the information of an informer, were each sentenced to 14 years' transportation. Lalor, who was hunchbacked and in bad health, died before the year had ended. In New York, Brenan worked on John Mitchel's Citizen. Philip Gray died in 1857, one year before James Stephens and John O'Mahony launched the Fenian movement. O'Mahony wrote from New York that Gray "could never be made to understand that we were beaten. It was he who worked hardest of all to retrieve the lost cause." Luby made his first public speech, at the insistence of Stephens, at Gray's funeral in Kilglass, Co Meath.