Lewis Topographical Dictionary - OSi Online Shop

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tion to Mac Murrough’s views. Aided by them he
took the city of Dublin from the Danes, and was pro-
jecting a scheme for asserting his right to the monarchy
of the whole island, when the arrival of Richard de
Clare, surnamed Strongbow, Earl of Chepstow, gave a
new turn to the aspect of affairs; extending still wider
by his conquests the power of the English arms and the
ambitious views of Dermod, whose daughter Eva he es-
poused. Fitz-Stephen and his party, to secure their new
possessions, had erected the castle of Carrigg near Wex-
ford, where the native inhabitants quickly besieged
them, and they were induced to surrender on articles
by the false intelligence of the death of Strongbow and
the extirpation of his followers. On surrendering, most
of his men were killed, and Fitz-Stephen himself was
committed to the island of Beg-Erin, in Wexford har-
bour, where all the inhabitants of the town sought safety
on the approach of Strongbow with his victorious for-
ces. The latter, however, was deterred from practising
hostilities towards them by a threat that Fitz-Stephen’s
life should be answerable for such a proceeding; so
that he remained in captivity until the arrival of Hen. II.,
to whom he was given up by his captors on a promise
of redress for any ill treatment inflicted by him on the
natives.
After the death of Mac Murrough in 1172, Strong-
bow became lord of Leinster, which was confirmed to
him as a palatinate in the same year by Hen. II., when
he visited Ireland. This monarch at first retained the
town of Wexford in his immediate possession, but in
1174 he granted it to the earl, who made it one of the
principal seats of his power, which extended over the
whole of the present county, as well as the other parts
of Leinster. The county of Wexford is one of those
erected by King John in 1210, and it formed part of
the inheritance of William le Mareschal, who succeeded
to the possessions of Earl Strongbow by marriage with
his daughter. On the extinction of the male line of
William, Earl Marshal, his possessions were divided
among his five daughters; and the corpus comitatus of
Wexford, with the assizes, perquisites, &c., valued at
£50.12.6., and the burgh of Wexford, valued at £42.1.5.,
with the manors of Rossclare, Carrick, Ferns, &c., were
assigned to the second daughter, Joan, married to War-
ren de Mountchensy, the richest baron in England.
Through this marriage the lordship descended by the
female line successively to William de Valence, Earl of
Pembroke and half brother of Hen. III., and to Law-
rence, Lord Hastings of Abergavenny, after the death
of whose grandson, John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke,
the king, in 1395, ordered possession of all his estates
to be given to his next heirs, and the lordship of Wex-
ford came to the family of Talbot, and was inherited by
John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who, in 1446, was
created Earl of Waterford and Baron of Dungarvan.
In the mean time, however, in consequence of these
changes and the non-residence of the great English
lords, the county fell into a state of such confusion,
that, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a great
part of it was seized by one of the Kavanaghs, who as-
sumed the title of Mac Murrough, declared himself king
of Leinster, and maintained possession of a large por-
tion of Carlow and Wexford by means of his alliance
with the O’Tooles and Byrnes, the chieftains of Wick-
low. Nor did the county suffer merely from the efforts
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of the natives to regain their ancient dominion. John
Esmond, Bishop of Ferns, having been deprived of his
episcopal dignity by the pope in 1349, maintained him-
self in his castle of Ferns, in defiance of the power of
his superiors. The sheriff declared himself unable to
execute the king’s writ against him, and he was at
length with difficulty brought to enter into articles to
keep the peace. His immediate successor was equally
warlike, for, when his castle was assaulted by some Irish
septs about the year 1360, he made a sortie in person
at the head of his servants and retainers, and routed
the assailants with considerable slaughter. During the
minority of George, great grandson of John, Earl of
Shrewsbury, it was enacted by parliament, in 1474, that
Gilbert Talbot, Esq., might exercise and enjoy the
liberty of the county of Wexford, with cognizance of
all pleas and jurisdictions royal, under the name of
Seneschal of the Liberty of Wexford, with power to
appoint all officers established of old within that liberty.
Earl George afterwards enjoyed it, until 1537, when an
act was passed vesting in the crown this and the other
possessions of the great absentee lords of Ireland, and
the separate jurisdiction of the liberty was thereby ter-
minated. During its existence, the county returned
two sets of representatives to the Irish parliament, two
members being sent for the liberty, in which the re-
turn was made by the lord’s seneschal, and two for the
Cross, or Church lands within the county, over which
was a sheriff appointed by the king, to whom the writs
were addressed.
In the year 1571 the people of this county had a feud
with the Kavanaghs of Carlow, in which 30 gentlemen
of rank in Wexford were killed: but it led to no im-
portant consequences. In the civil war which broke
out in 1641, it was the scene of important military
operations; the Marquess of Ormonde was repulsed, in
the early part of it, from before New Ross; and Duncan-
non fort was afterwards taken by the Catholic party
who thus became masters of the whole. But in 1649
it was reduced to submission by Cromwell, who put the
garrison of Wexford to the sword in the same sangui-
nary manner in which Drogheda had been treated. In
the war of the Revolution it was much less distinguish-
ed; and from this period the history of the county
presents a perfect blank, until 1798, when it acquired a
melancholy notoriety as the chief seat of the insurrec-
tion of that year. In the month of April the county
was subjected to martial law in consequence of the sus-
picions of the secret organization of the society of
United Irishmen, which had already pervaded most of
the other counties, having been extended to it; but it
was not until after actual hostilities had broken out in
other parts that any military force was sent hither. The
burning of the chapel of Boulavogue, in the parish of
Kilcormuck, by the military, and the cruel treatment of
the peasantry in order to force them to confess their
guilt, hastened the assembly of the people in arms on
the two neighbouring hills of Oulart and Kilmaethomas.
They were immediately driven from the latter position
with some loss, but at the former they routed and cut
to pieces the detachment of the military sent to dis-
perse them. Increasing now in numbers and confidence,
the insurgents attacked Enniscorthy the next day, and
forced the garrison to fall back upon Wexford. Having
at the same time cut off a party of infantry and artillery