The Siege of Derry 1689

by Richard Doherty

  Kirke was unimpressed by Derry and its defences, writing that

  since I was born I never saw a town of so little strength to rout an army with so many generals against it. The walls and outwork are not touched [but] the houses are generally broke down by the bombs; there have been five hundred and ninety one shot into the town.55

  The major-general had already had a report from Richards about the state of the city. This had also included the observation that there was ‘little appearance of a siege by the damage done to the houses or walls’. However, Richards went on to report that

  the people had suffered extremely, having for 5 weeks lived on horses, dogs, cats etc. They lost not during the whole siege 100 men by the sword, but near 6,000 through sickness and want and there still remained about 5,000 able fighting men in the town, who abound with the spoil of those they have killed or taken prisoner.56

  When Kirke arrived at Bishop’s Gate he was received with courtesy and some ceremony. There Mitchelburne, who would have already known him, and Walker, with other officers of the garrison, members of the corporation and ‘a great many persons of all sorts’ met him and offered him the keys to the city as well as the civic sword and mace, all of which Kirke returned to those who had presented the individual items. Soldiers lined the streets to receive their deliverer while the cannon on the walls fired in salute. Even the city’s sick, of whom there were many, made the effort to crawl to their doors and windows to see Kirke and his entourage. Mitchelburne and Walker entertained Kirke to dinner which was described as being ‘very good . . . considering the times; small sour beer, milk and water, with some little quantity of brandy, was and is the best of our liquors’. Following dinner he went to the Windmill to look at the camp for his soldiers. Ash noted that he rode on a white mare that belonged to Mitchelburne which the latter ‘had saved all the siege’.57 Presumably this was ‘Bloody Bones’, the charger gifted to Mitchelburne by Clotworthy Skeffington. One wonders that this fine animal had survived, but perhaps she had been kept outside the city?

  As Kirke was preparing to return to Inch, three horsemen arrived carrying letters from the governors of Enniskillen. These brought official news of the success of the Williamite forces under Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant-Colonel Tiffin at Newtownbutler. Details of the battle were included while, later that night, Kirke also received the news that Berwick was decamping from Strabane and that most of the army that had been before Derry had gone to Charlemont en route to Dublin. Kirke then rode back to Inch while Richards remained in the city to make further preparations for the arrival of the remainder of the relief force. Meanwhile Kirke had invited several of the leading citizens to dine with him on Inch the following day. This might not have been the most convivial of occasions for Walker, since Kirke took the opportunity to suggest that it was time for him ‘to return to his own profession’.58

  Kirke’s three regiments arrived in the city on the 7th with the major-general at their head; their baggage was en route by sea. Once again there was a rapturous reception, with the defenders coming out in force to give the troops three cheers as well as a salute from their cannon. It also seems that all the garrison’s personal weapons were discharged as part of a feu de joie. And there was another dinner after which a council of war was held to which only field officers were invited. This meeting discussed regulating the local regiments, the civil administration of the city and ‘several other necessary things’, which included the market and cleansing the town. The latter task must have been of almost Herculean proportions. It was further decided that the following day would be one of thanksgiving.59

  And so, on 8 August, the city rejoiced for its deliverance. There was considerable merry-making but the day began with a sermon preached by Mr John Know, who told his congregation, which included Kirke, of the nature of the siege and ‘the great deliverance, which from Almighty God we have obtained’. That evening the city’s regiments were drawn up around the walls and fired three volleys while the cannon, too, were fired in salute. A proclamation was also issued stating that anyone who was not in the ranks of one of the regiments and had not resided in the city prior to the siege should return to their own homes before the following Monday. Nor were any goods to be taken out of the city without permission. With the Jacobites now far away, the bureaucrats were back in place. And it seemed that the closest Jacobites were at Coleraine ‘where they were fortifying themselves’.60

  Walker took ship for England the next day, there to produce and have published his ‘true account’ of the siege. Needless to say, this true account would be centred around the activities of Governor Walker, who would thus become the hero of the siege. The London Gazette for 19–22 August carried a report from Edinburgh that Walker had reached that city on the 13th with news that the Enniskilleners, under Colonels Wolseley and Tiffin, but whom he called Owsley and Tiffany, had routed the Jacobites on their retreat from Londonderry and caused heavy losses. This was Walker’s version of the battle of Newtownbutler which, in fact, had been fought between a different Jacobite force from that retreating from Derry and the defenders of Enniskillen. From Edinburgh he made his way to London and was received at Hampton Court by William and Mary; one report suggests that he received £5,000 ‘for his service at Londonderry’.61 For Mitchelburne, Murray and many others their sole reward was to be thanked for their services.

  For those left behind in the city there were some indications of what lay in store for them. All who expected pay for their service in defending the city were told to appear in their arms at 10 o’clock on the following Monday. Whatever they anticipated, they were to be disappointed: no payment was ever made. There was a popular belief among the soldiers that Kirke would distribute £2,000 but ‘they soon found themselves mistaken, not only in that, but in their hopes of continuing in their present posts’.62 One man who had provided £1,000 to support the city in its travails was the Stronge who owned the land across the river. When Sir Patrick Macrory was writing his book on the siege he was told by Sir Norman Stronge, a direct descendant of that landowner, that he still held two notes, signed by Mitchelburne, promising that the money would be repaid. In 1980 Sir Norman calculated that the IOUs represented, with interest, some £60m. These notes were lost when republican terrorists attacked Sir Norman’s home at Tynan Abbey in County Armagh in 1981, murdering both Sir Norman and his son James before setting fire to and destroying their home.63

  On the 12th Kirke reduced the garrison’s regiments to four. Colonel Monroe’s and Colonel Lance’s Regiments were amalgamated, Walker’s Regiment was given to Colonel Robert White, Baker’s to Colonel Thomas St John – the would-be engineer of Inch – and Mitchelburne retained the regiment he had commanded throughout the siege, that which had been Clotworthy Skeffington’s.64 As White died soon after this re-organization his regiment passed to Colonel John Caulfield.65 No records have survived of the regiment formed by the amalgamation of Monroe’s and Lance’s Regiments, and so it would seem that the new unit had a very brief existence. This might have been less than a month, as Kenneth Ferguson notes that a royal warrant of 16 September adopted only three Londonderry battalions; Kirke was ordered to treat unplaced officers as supernumerary until vacancies could be found for them.66 Caulfield’s Regiment had been disbanded by 1694 and the surviving regiments, Mitchelburne’s and St John’s, were disbanded by 1698 by which time the War of the League of Augsburg had ended.67 In contrast, those regiments formed in Enniskillen had a much longer existence with three of them surviving, albeit in much changed form, to this day: Tiffin’s Regiment was the progenitor of the present Royal Irish Regiment while today’s Royal Dragoon Guards may be traced back to dragoon regiments raised in Enniskillen in 1689.68 However, in 1693 some survivors of the siege formed part of a new regiment, Henry Cunningham’s Regiment of Dragoons, raised in Ulster. In time, this regiment was ranked as the 8th Dragoons and later as 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars. In 1958 amalgamation with 4th Queen’s Own Hussars created the Queen’s Royal
Irish Hussars,69 the regiment that led the coalition advance into Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991; the Hussars’ leading tank was called ‘Derry’ and the regiment was commanded by a Derryman.7 Perhaps some of the spirit of Murray’s Horse had passed down the centuries to the men who manned the Hussars’ Challenger tanks.

  To return to 1689, Kirke continued his work on reforming the garrison, but he also organized a force to attack the Jacobites at Coleraine. However, when that force, led it seems by Kirke himself, approached Coleraine, the local garrison decided that it did not want to engage in a battle with the butcher of Sedgemoor and the town was abandoned. A plan had been made to destroy the bridge leading into Coleraine, thus at least delaying any Williamite advance if not assisting a Jacobite defence. This had involved coating the timbers of the bridge with pitch which would then be set alight as the foe approached. In the event the Jacobite garrison was so keen to quit the town that the bridge was left standing, those whose assigned task it had been to start the fire showing no heart for the job. The news that Coleraine had been regained reached London at the same time as the news that the town of Sligo had also been abandoned by the Jacobites.71 The latter information was far from accurate: Sligo did not fall into Williamite hands until 1691, following the battle of Aughrim.

  The Williamite army continued its task of clearing Ulster. On 16 August Schomberg sailed from England ‘with a fair wind’ at the head of the main body of the force that was to be deployed in Ireland.72 At the beginning of September this army was engaged in the siege of Carrickfergus where Jacob Richards was wounded in both thigh and shoulder.73 Before long most of Ulster was in Williamite hands, with only pockets of Jacobite resistance remaining in the southern part of the province.

  The key element in this campaign had been the siege of Derry. Had the city fallen to the Jacobites in April, or failed to hold out as it did, then the Williamite cause in Ulster would have been lost. Enniskillen could not have held out against a Jacobite army no longer distracted by the task of reducing the recalcitrant city and nor would Sligo have been able to sustain a defence for much longer. That the city on the Foyle was the vital element in saving all Ireland for the Williamites was recognized across the three kingdoms. George Walker, the soi-disant governor of Londonderry, was feted in London and took full advantage of the opportunity to further his own reputation with the publication of his book A True Account of the Siege of London-Derry. On 19 November he was thanked by the House of Commons for his services at Londonderry and responded:

  As for the service I have done, it is very little, and does not deserve this favour you have done me: I shall give the thanks of this House to those concerned with me, as you desire, and dare assure you, that both I and they will continue faithful to the service of King William and Queen Mary to the end of their lives.74

  As the tide of war flowed elsewhere the people of north-west Ulster tried to begin their lives anew, safe from the threats that had so recently beset them. But it would be a very difficult task and one in which many of them would not succeed. The scars of those 105 days in 1689 would never fade and the attitude of the government at Westminster towards the survivors would help to ensure that, as we shall see later.

  Notes

  1: Walker, op cit, p. 62; Ash, op cit, pp. 98–9; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 54; Simpson, op cit, p. 148

  2: London Gazette, 1–5 August 1689; Simpson, op cit, p. 148; Ash, op cit, p. 99; Walker, op cit, pp. 62–3

  3: Richards, op cit, p. 38

  4: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 55; Ash, op cit, p. 99

  5: Powley, op cit, p. 274

  6: Ash, op cit, p. 99

  7: Powley, op cit, p. 241

  8: London Gazette, 1–5 August 1689

  9: Ash, op cit, p. 99; Walker, op cit, p. 63; Mackenzie, op cit, pp. 54–5

  10: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 55

  11: Young, op cit, pp. 115–6

  12: Ash, op cit, p. 99

  13: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 55

  14: Ibid; Walker, op cit, p. 63

  15: Ash, op cit, p. 99

  16: Walker, op cit, p. 63; Simpson, op cit, pp. 148–9

  17: NA Kew, ADM3/2; Powley, op cit, p. 250

  18: Franco-Irish Correspondence, letter from Fumeron to Louvois, 13/3 August, p. 165.

  19: Gilbert, pp. 83–4

  20: Richards, op cit, pp. 49–50

  21: London Gazette, 1–5 August 1689

  22: Richards, op cit, pp. 49–50

  23: London Gazette, 1–5 August 1689

  24: NA Kew, ADM3/2

  25: Avaux, op cit, pp. 375–6

  26: Gilbert, op cit, p. 84

  27: Ibid

  28: Ash, op cit, p. 100; London Gazette, 1–5 August 1689

  29: London Gazette, 1–5 August 1689

  30: Simpson, op cit, p. 149; Mitchelburne, op cit

  31: Simpson, op cit, p. 149

  32: Young, op cit, p. 116

  33: Mitchelburne, op cit

  34: Richards, op cit, p. 50

  35: Ash, op cit, p. 100

  36: Ibid; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 55; Simpson, op cit, p. 149; Mitchelburne, op cit

  37: Ash, op cit, p. 100; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 55

  38: Walker, op cit, p. 63

  39: Ash, op cit, p. 101; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 55

  40: Gilbert, op cit, p. 85

  41: Ibid

  42: Walker, op cit, p. 65; Ash, op cit, p. 101

  43: Richards, op cit, pp. 50–1

  44: Ibid; London Gazette, 12–15 August 1689

  45: Walker, op cit, p. 64

  46: London Gazette, 19–22 August & 22–26 August 1689; Gilbert, op cit, p. 85; Ash, op cit, pp. 101–2

  47: Richards, op cit, p. 52

  48: Ash, op cit, p. 101

  49: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 56

  50: Ash, op cit, p. 101

  51: Walker, op cit, p. 65

  52: Ibid; Richards, op cit, p. 52

  53: Richards, op cit, p. 52

  54: Ibid, pp. 52–3; Ash, op cit, p. 102

  55: London Gazette, 22–26 August 1689

  56: Ibid

  57: Ash, op cit, pp. 101–2; Richards, op cit, pp. 52–3; Walker, op cit, pp. 65–6; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 57; Simpson, op cit, pp. 151–2

  58: Richards, op cit, p. 53; Walker, op cit, p. 66

  59: Richards, op cit, p. 55; Ash, op cit, p. 102

  60: Ash, op cit, pp. 102–3; Richards, op cit, p. 55

  61: Walker, op cit, p. 66; Ash, op cit, p. 103; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 57; London Gazette, 19–22 August 1689; Gilbert, op cit, p 87

  62: Ash, op cit, p. 103; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 57

  63: Macrory, op cit, p. 214n

  64: Ash, op cit, p. 103; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 57

  65: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 57; Ash, op cit, p. 105

  66: Ferguson, The Organisation of King William’s Army in Ireland, 1689–92, IS XVIII No. 70, p. 64

  67: Frederick, Lineage Book of British Armed Forces 1660–1978, p. 392, 403 & 410

  68: Harris, The Irish Regiments 1683–1999, pp. 283–5 & p. 69

  69: Ibid, p. 87

  70: Ibid, p. 88

  71: London Gazette, 29 Aug–1 Sep 1689

  72: Ibid, 15–19 August 1689

  73: Ibid, 5–9 September 1689

  74: HLRO, HoCJ, 19 Nov 1689

  __________

  1 Swallow was a fourth-rater, i.e., a ship with forty to sixty guns. Both Deptford and Bonadventure were in the same category: the former had fifty guns with a crew of 280; the latter had forty-eight guns and a crew of 230.

  2 It will be remembered that he acted on a letter from Walker that suggested that the boom had been broken.

  3 On her lower deck were sixteen demi-culverins while the upper deck carried eight sakers and there were four 3-pounders on the quarterdeck.

  4 This name may possibly be Brennan.

  5 The wording of the resolution to make the reward up to £10 each is interesting: ‘resolved that the Navy Board do cause each of the said ten men of the boat crew who sh
all appear to receive it the money already paid them made up to ten pounds each.’ Did this mean that any who did not appear would not be paid?

  6 There were two villages called Muff, one on either side of Lough Foyle, until the villagers of the County Londonderry village petitioned the viceroy to have the name of their village changed. The then viceroy, Lord Eglinton, agreed and the village was renamed in his honour. The name Muff survives in the nearby Muff Glen, a local beauty spot.

  7 A further amalgamation has created the Queen’s Royal Hussars (Queen’s Own and Royal Irish).70

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Fruits of Victory?

  Might the siege have had a different ending? And, if so, what might the results have been? Was there at any time a possibility that the Jacobites might have triumphed? And what was the military and historical significance of the Williamite victory at Derry?

  With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to dismiss the possibility of any other ending to the siege; but if we recall the early and middle days of April 1689 there existed then a real possibility of Jacobite success. And that was a possibility that appeared so tangible that it caused a large proportion of the Protestant population of Ireland to flee to England or Scotland for safety. So perhaps it is safe, if paradoxical, to say that the siege might have had a different ending had it never got underway in the first instance. But this leads on to a more pertinent question: why did the Jacobites lose?

  For an answer to that question, we need first to examine the Jacobite objectives, the reason or reasons they laid siege to the city at all. It is here that we find one of the first clues to their failure. In warfare commanders must have clear objectives. This was not the case with the Jacobite forces that marched into Ulster and set their faces towards Derry. The failure to define a clear overall objective was inherent in the Jacobite command almost from the start. Remember that Richard Hamilton, who led the first Jacobite army into Ulster, did so with the objective of defeating those who held out against Tyrconnel and, therefore, King James. Hamilton’s army, expecting to meet no more than lightly-armed and poorly-trained local forces, marched north for a short, sharp campaign that would bring Ulster into line. Following the battle of the fords in April, the road to Derry was wide open for the Jacobite army. Their cavalry and dragoons had the speed and mobility to race for the city and take it while much of its garrison was still trudging its weary way back to the security of its walls. But Hamilton failed to launch his cavalry and dragoons along that road, thereby denying them the full fruits of the victory they had already gained at Clady, Lifford and Long Causeway.