The Siege of Derry 1689
Page 5
Good my Lord, I have written to you to let you know that all our Irishmen through Ireland is sworn that on the ninth day of this month they are to fall on to kill and murder man, wife and child; and I desire your Lordship to take care of yourself and all others that are judged by our men to be heads, for whosoever can kill any of you, they are to have a captain’s place; so my desire to your honour is to look to yourself and give other noblemen warning, and go not out either night or day without a good guard with you, and let no Irishman come near you, whatsoever he be; so is from him who was your father’s friend, and is your friend, and will be, though I dare not be known as yet for fear of my life.13
The ‘Comber letter’, as it became known, has long been considered a hoax but it was a very dangerous hoax in the atmosphere of the time in Ulster. Memories of the 1641 rebellion and the atrocities that accompanied it were still very strong and there were many still living who could remember those days. Thus the letter served to increase fears that a similar rebellion was in the planning and Protestants felt especially vulnerable since the changes effected in the army by Tyrconnel left them without any guarantee of protection from that body.
News of the ‘Comber letter’ spread across Ulster very quickly. Panic followed, and many Protestants opted to flee the country, joining relatives in England or Scotland, where their imported panic spread along with frightening stories of the fate of their co-religionists left behind in Ireland. However, the majority of Ireland’s Protestants remained in the country and made ready to defend family, home and land against whatever might befall them. Tyrconnel had tried to call in all the arms in the country but many weapons remained in Protestant hands and the Protestant people of Ireland had the consolation that almost every gunsmith in the country was of their faith.
Copies of the ‘Comber letter’ were circulating throughout Ulster and beyond. Some copies reached Dublin and led to such shock and anger that Tyrconnel called the city’s leading Protestants to Dublin Castle. At this meeting he denied the existence of any plot such as that suggested in the letter and called the wrath of God down on his own head if the letter was anything other than a ‘cursed, a blasted, a confounded lie’. His protestations did him no good. If anything, they added to Protestant fears since Tyrconnel was already regarded as an untrustworthy individual, with the soubriquet ‘Lying Dick’; many were prepared to believe that a denial by such a man was proof positive that the threat contained in the letter was real.
A copy of the letter had been sent to George Canning of Garvagh, in County Londonderry, who sent a copy to Alderman Tomkins in Londonderry and to George Phillips in Newtownlimavady.4 Phillips received his copy of the letter on 6 December and must have felt that it contained the truth when he heard that Antrim’s Regiment, en route to Londonderry to replace Mountjoy’s, was about to arrive in his town. Antrim’s Regiment, known as the Redshanks, was to stay overnight in Newtownlimavady. The unit must have been an impressive sight; it numbered some 1,200 men recruited from the glens of Antrim and the Scottish highlands.
George Phillips, who had been governor of Londonderry, immediately sent two messengers to the city to warn Alderman Norman to gather ‘the sober people of the town and to set out the danger of admitting such guests among them’. It appears that Phillips believed that his first message was not worded strongly enough since the second messenger’s despatch advised that the city’s gates should be closed against Antrim’s men. This would amount to an act of rebellion. Furthermore, Phillips told Norman that he and his friends would come to the city the following day to join the local people and stand by them.14
Phillips’ first messenger reached the city as Alderman Tomkins was reading his copy of the Comber letter to a gathering of concerned citizens. Their concern increased considerably when Phillips’ warning arrived. The people of the city were now faced with a dilemma: the letter warned of a massacre of Protestants that would begin on 9 December, and the impending arrival of Antrim’s Regiment suggested that they might prove to be the first victims of that massacre with the earl’s soldiers the instrument of slaughter.15 Thus admitting the Redshanks to the city might lead to mass murder but refusing them entry would be an act of rebellion that might be put down by military action. After all, the soldiers and their commanding officer were acting on the orders of Tyrconnel who was the king’s lord deputy, and James II was still the only lawful king. Denying James’ soldiers entry to the city might bring upon the townspeople the fate that had befallen the Duke of Monmouth’s followers in 1685 since shutting the gates against Antrirn’s men would make rebels of the Protestant citizens of the city. Had not Lord Mountjoy, in answer to a deputation from Enniskillen seeking his advice, recommended that they submit to the king’s authority since ‘the King will protect you’? For people conditioned to accept lawful authority the suggestion that they refuse to do so represented a major dilemma.
But refuse to accept lawful authority they did. However, the story is not quite as simple as that statement suggests. Those who refused to accept the lawful authority were not the men of means and middle age who held authority in the city and who normally made civic decisions. These worthies debated the problem as is the habit of such men the world over, and members of the city’s corporation and the Anglican bishop, Dr Ezekiel Hopkins, advised that Antrim’s Regiment should be allowed into the city. The bishop argued that these were the king’s soldiers and, since the king was God’s anointed, an affront to the soldiers would be an affront to the king. Presumably the bishop also felt that it would be an affront to God; he was a believer in the divine right of kings. Bishop Hopkins’ views would have been shared by most of the city’s secular leaders and prominent citizens since these men would all have been members of the Anglican communion. Presbyterians, or Dissenters, held a social standing similar to that of Catholics, and it is unlikely that many Presbyterians were involved in the debate. However, the argument was taken, literally, out of the hands of the civic and religious leaders. A group of young men, apprentices in the city, seized the keys to the city’s four gates and, shutting each of the gates, locked them against the soldiers.16
By that time the leading elements of Antrim’s Regiment had crossed the Foyle by the ferry and were approaching the Ferry Gate. These were the officers and men of what today might be known as the commanding officer’s reconnaissance, or R, group. In fact, two of Antrim’s officers were already inside the city walls and were involved in discussions with some of the citizens. As with Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, the apprentices had cast the die for their city; the first irrevocable act of defiance had been taken against the rule of King James II in Ulster.
What of the boys who had closed the gates? They were apprentices, and their names are known to history, but those names are usually subsumed in the corporate identity of ‘the apprentice boys of Derry’. In number they were thirteen and their names were William Cairnes, Henry Campsie, William Crookshanks, Alexander Cunningham, John Cunningham, Samuel Harvey, Samuel Hunt, Alexander Irwin, Robert Morrison, Daniel Sherrard, Robert Sherrard, James Spike (or Spaight) and James Steward.17 Little is known about them but they were probably Presbyterians who were not convinced as deeply of the concept of divine right as their Anglican brothers and it is also possible that their act of defiance may have been sparked by the Reverend James Gordon, a Presbyterian minister, who had called for the gates to be closed as had a small number of other citizens.18 Their action may also have been initiated by the arrival of George Phillips’ second messenger with the order to close the gates.
A further possible spur to their actions, or perhaps a result of their actions – we do not know the exact time frame – came from another citizen, James Morrison, who was standing on the walls at the Ferry Gate at about the time that gate was shut. Morrison called on the Redshanks below to be off and is said to have barked an order to bring ‘a great gun’ to the gate.19 Whatever the truth of the Morrison story, those soldiers outside the gate did return to the quay, boarded the ferry and
crossed to the east bank of the Foyle to rejoin the remainder of Antrim’s Regiment. Had there been any intention of massacring the citizens one would have expected Antrim to order his men to assault the city, which could not have provided much resistance, and wipe out its people. That this did not happen would suggest that the fears of local people were unfounded and that the Comber letter was a cruel hoax.
What did happen at this stage was that Tyrconnel had a rethink of his plan to Catholicize Mountjoy’s Regiment, most of which was ordered to return to Derry. Mountjoy came back to the city with his regiment but did not remain there. While Mountjoy returned to Dublin, on Tyrconnel’s orders, the regiment came under the command of his lieutenant-colonel, the Scot Robert Lundy, who was well known to the local citizenry; his daughter, Aromintho, had been baptized in St Columb’s Cathedral on 17 May1686.20
Having seen off Antrim’s Regiment, the people of Derry were in no mood to accept Mountjoy’s Regiment at face value and when it arrived at the city its soldiers, too, found the gates closed against them.
Notes
The principal source in this chapter for information on constitutional developments is The Great Tyrconnel: A Chapter in Anglo-Irish Relations by Sir Charles Petrie and, particularly, Chapters V, VI and VII. All other sources are as noted below.
1: Doherty, The Williamite War in Ireland 1688–1691, p. 23; Murtagh & Murtagh, The Irish Jacobite Army, 1689–91, Irish Sword Vol XVIII, No. 70, p. 32; Bartlett & Jeffery, A Military History of Ireland, p. 189; Childs, The Army of Charles II, p. 196.
2: Murtagh & Murtagh, op cit, p. 32; Doherty, op cit, p. 23;
3: Wilson, The Story of the Gun, p. 14; Murtagh, Jacobite Artillery, 1689–91, Irish Sword Vol XXIII, No. 94, p. 383.
4: Murtagh, Jacobite Artillery, 1689 – 91, op cit, pp. 383–4.
5: Chandler, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough, p. 154.
6: Murtagh & Murtagh, op cit, p. 32; Murtagh, Jacobite Artillery, op cit, p. 383.
7: Bredin, A History of the Irish Soldier, p. 98.
8: Petrie, The Great Tyrconnel, p. 153; Milligan, History of The Siege of Londonderry, pp. 7–9.
9: Bredin, op cit, p. 100; The final establishment in 1689 included a further ten infantry regiments (Murtagh & Murtagh, op cit, p. 33).
10: Avaux makes many references to the lack of uniform, weaponry and equipment among the Irish soldiery.
11: The combat strength of the Irish cavalry was between 2,500 and 4,000 during the war and there was a similar number of dragoons. (Murtagh & Murtagh, op cit, pp. 34–5).
12: See Piers Wauchope’s biography of Sarsfield: Patrick Sarsfield and the Williamite War (Dublin 1992)
13: Mackenzie, Memorials of the Siege of Derry, p. 8
14: Ibid, p. 9
15: Ibid
16: Ibid, pp. 9–10; Milligan, op cit, pp. 26–7; in contrast see Walker’s version in his True Account, pp. 16–17.
17: Their names are recorded by Mackenzie, p. 10. That Walker did not record their names supports the contention that they were Presbyterians.
18: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 9
19: Ibid, p. 11
20: St Columb’s Cathedral baptismal register
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1 Talbot belonged to ‘a Pale family of Anglo-Irish stock’ and was part of what is sometimes called the ‘new Irish’.
2 Three central figures in the siege, Robert Lundy, Henry Baker and Jonathan Mitchelburne, had served in Tangier, while Percy Kirke, who commanded the relief force, was another Tangier veteran.
3 The infantry arm included two elements: the foot guards and the infantry of the line.
4 The village of Limavady (Leim an Mhadaidh, the dog’s leap) was also settled in the plantation and a new town created in 1624. The prefix ‘Newtown’ was applied to the existing name. During the nineteenth century the prefix fell out of use but still appears in the coat of arms of the local council
CHAPTER THREE
Disaster in Ulster
The suspicions that the people of Londonderry felt about Mountjoy’s Regiment were based on the fact that they knew there to be a large number of Catholics in the regiment since it had been stationed in the city for some three years. Furthermore, the regiment had returned from Dublin on the express orders of Tyrconnel ‘to use our [endevours] with the [citizens] of that place to [receive] us as a gareson’. Letters were also received from Dublin to the effect that ‘Lord Tyrconnel had ordered the Lord Mountjoy and Lieut-Colonel Lundy, with six companies of their regiment, to come down and reduce this city to its former obedience. But our friends there [in Dublin] cautioned us against the receiving of them.’ One of the officers of Mountjoy’s Regiment was to play a major role in the siege but when Jonathan Mitchelburne was serving as an acting company commander in Dublin in late-1688 ‘he thought it not his interest to continue among the Irish that were enemies to his religion and country; quitted his command . . . and made his way to Londonderry’. His escape was made by disguising himself as a Scottish highlander and riding away with the only English grenadier still under his command.1 Mitchelburne’s evidence suggests that a considerable proportion of Catholics were in the ranks of Mountjoy’s Regiment, which accounts for the stand-off when that regiment returned to the city.
Mountjoy, however, was able to resolve the situation by reaching an agreement with the city fathers that two companies, about 120 men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Lundy, could enter the city on condition that only Protestant soldiers should be included in their ranks. These were Lundy’s own company and that of Captain Stewart. Furthermore, it was agreed that no other troops should enter the city before 10 March and should Lundy receive orders to march off before then he was ‘to leave the town to themselves as I found it’. Lundy marched into the city with his two companies on 22 December. The remainder of Mountjoy’s Regiment was ordered into quarters at Strabane, Newtownstewart and Raphoe until the other companies could be purged of Catholics.2
By now the Catholic corporation created by Tyrconnel had ceased to function and members of the previous corporation, under Phillips, had retaken control of the city; they constituted what was effectively a military government.3 Before departing for Dublin, whence he had been recalled by Tyrconnel, Mountjoy saw Lundy appointed as military governor of the city, responsible for its defences. His was now the task of making the city defensible since it was virtually certain that action would be taken against the rebels of Londonderry. By his own account, Lundy called a meeting of the corporation on the 24th at which he told the civic leaders that he found the city’s defences in poor condition, a situation that would have to change since he believed that their actions ‘had given [distaste] to the Government’ which was then arming and regimenting the Irish ‘without [employing] a Protestant’. It was his view that Londonderry would become a target for the Irish, thus making it imperative that the city’s defences be repaired.
It might be imagined that the city’s walls already provided sturdy defence against an attacker. However, the walls and the cannon upon them had been neglected by the city authorities for many years and Lundy was faced with a daunting task, made more onerous by the continued restriction on entry to the city of any more than two companies of his soldiers. He now impressed upon the corporation the need to spend money on the city’s defences and outlined those areas on which work had to be done. At that meeting voluntary subscriptions raised £700 which was soon being used to make good deficiencies in the defences. Many of the cannon had defective carriages which needed replacing or repair while level firing platforms, or batteries, had to be constructed. Although the money had been raised and the work begun, not all the city’s cannon were given new carriages, and it would not be until the siege had been underway for over two months that the remaining cannon were made fully fit for their role.
Among the other tasks carried out at this time was one which is almost unbelievable to a twenty-first century mind. This was occasioned by the presence of what Lundy described as ‘two grait dungh
ills without the walls almost as high as themselves’. Local residents had been in the habit of throwing their night soil over the walls and this practice had created the two huge middens that would have made admirable, if unpleasant, ramps for attacking soldiers to reach the tops of the walls. These two mounds of ordure were removed. The city walls themselves had fallen into a state of disrepair and work had to be carried out to bring them up to an acceptable standard. Likewise, repairs were carried out to the city’s gates.
Within the city was a magazine, or storehouse, in which Lundy discovered some 500 old musket barrels. Since these could be made usable he bought stocks for the weapons as well as a supply of powder, without which all weapons were useless, while an additional 500 matchlock muskets were bought from the castle at Stirling. (The muskets found in the magazine were almost certainly matchlocks also.) Some fourteen barrels of gunpowder were recovered from thirty that had been stranded at Strangford, while a supply of cannonballs was also obtained; these, and the muskets from Stirling, were paid for by an additional subscription of £400 raised by the city fathers in mid-January. Recruiting efforts brought in additional soldiers and new companies were formed. Lundy had found six companies already raised within the walls by David Cairnes, obviously from citizens of military age;4 a further five were raised from residents of the liberties, who were issued with the old muskets to which new stocks had now been fitted. The officers of the six companies formed by Cairnes are recorded: the first company was commanded by Captain Samuel Norman with Lieutenant William Crookshanks and Ensign Alexander Irwin; the second by Captain Alexander Lecky with Lieutenant James Lennox and Ensign John Harvey; the third by Captain Matthew Cocken with Lieutenant Henry Long and Ensign Francis Hunt; the fourth by Captain Warham Jemmet with Lieutenant Robert Morrison and Ensign Daniel Sherrard; the fifth by Captain John Tomkins with Lieutenant James Spaight and Ensign Alexander Cunningham; and the sixth by Captain Thomas Moncrieff with Lieutenant James Morrison and Ensign William Mackey.5 (Of these officers, at least six – Crookshanks, Cunningham, Irwin, Morrison, Sherrard and Spaight – were among the thirteen apprentices who had shut the city’s gates while two others, John Harvey and Francis Hunt, may also have been of that group although the apprentices were named Samuel Harvey and Samuel Hunt.) By mid-January the four companies of Mountjoy’s Regiment that had been kept outside the walls had become entirely Protestant and Lundy was asked to bring them inside the walls where he noted that they did equal duty with his soldiers.