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Before the month of October, James Touchet, Earl of Castlehaven, an adventurous nobleman, possessed of large estates both in Ireland and England, effected his escape from Dublin Castle, where he had been imprisoned on suspicion by Parsons and Borlase, and joined the Confederation at Kilkenny.
Michael Kilkenny and George Sutherland escaped by swimming the river. In addition to John Pritchard, another prisoner, Anthony Macdonell, had been spared. The total number of the dead was twenty-three. Among the slain were Rogers, the governor's secretary, Doctor Wilkinson, Alexander M'Lean, the most enterprising settler in the colony, and Surgeon James White.
Since my departure, my regiment had been ordered to Kilkenny, that sweet city, so famed in song for its "fire without smoke;" but which, were its character in any way to be derived from its past or present representative, might certainly, with more propriety, reverse the epithet, and read "smoke without fire."
The fugitive garrison finding themselves unpursued, halted to breathe on the Kilkenny bank of the river, were rallied by the veteran Johnson, and led back again across the bridge, taking the surprised revellers completely unprepared.
We took up our abode in the town of Kilkenny, so richly blessed with gospel privileges, and so far removed from the annoyances to which I was exposed while trying to fulfil the landlord's part over a property inextricably involved, and now also placed in the hands of trustees.
Gradually the mere spasmodic atrocity of the first Rebels had been changed into something like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by Generals Preston and Owen Roe O'Neile, while the political conduct of the Rebellion and the government of Confederate Ireland had been provided for by the assembling at Kilkenny of a Parliament of Roman Catholic lords, prelates, and deputies from towns and counties, and by the appointment by that body of county-councils, provincial councils, and a supreme executive council.
It became evident to all who kept posted in politics, that there would be a wide division between the different wings of the Democracy at the coming National Convention, and a most determined effort was to be made by the Peace faction, to control the action of the Convention, and long before the assembling of that body, newspaper strife had commenced between them, and it was hoped, and so it proved, that like the Kilkenny cats, they devoured each other.
The women in those days were always young and ever beautiful, but seldom wise and not often good. The men were saints or else "bad," generally bad. Like the cats of Kilkenny, they fought on slight cause. Our young man at Hawkshead School saw this: it pleased him not, and he made a list of the things on which he would write poems.
We have traced for half a century, and are still farther to follow out, the natural consequences of the odious Statute of Kilkenny. Although every successive Parliament of the Pale recited and re-enacted that statute, every year saw it dispensed in particular cases, both as to trading, intermarriage, and fostering with the natives.
When we reached, Lady Mary was with me, when we reached Kilkenny, the night before the election, I was not ten minutes in town till Butler heard of it, and sent off express to see me; I was at my dinner when the messenger came, and promised to go over when I'd done. But faith, Tom didn't wait, but came rushing up-stairs himself, and dashed into the room in the greatest hurry.