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ple of the house pass; it was agreed they should be permitted to do so; no sooner were the latter out, than firing commenced on both sides. M'Alister's arm was broken by a musket ball, he turned to Dwyer, and said, 'I am now useless, I cannot get off; when I present myself at the door, do you and the others rush out, and they'll fire at me.' This was done, and M'Alister, and all, except Dwyer, were killed. He jumped out of the house; but fell at the door of the barn. A ball went through the collar of his shirt; he got 'clean off,' but was almost naked. He was pursued by the Highlanders, and also by another party of soldiers, who had joined the former; he fled through the glen of Emall, forded the river, and at Slaney, the soldiers gave up the pursuit, on account of the rapidity of the flood. Six of his comrades were taken in the other house; one of the name of Byrne turned informer; the five others were hanged. Byrne was accused of having killed an officer; to save himself he offered to give evidence against a man of the name of Valentine Case, 'his gossip.' This offer was accepted, and Case was 'half hanged' at Baltinglass; he was then taken down, dragged to the chapel, and, in front of it, his head was cut off. Byrne was employed to behead him; he did so, carried the head, and spiked it on the market-house.

"The night before the battle of Hacketstown, a vast number of people were assembled, they were not all under Michael Dwyer; his brother saw them, and thought there could not be less than fifteen thousand men.

"In 1803, he came down to Robert Emmet, when he was living in Butterfield Lane, a few days before the 23rd of July, accompanied by Martin Bourke and Hugh Byrne-Robert Emmet having written to him, expressing a desire to see him.

"In December, 1803, he surrendered to Captain Hume,* who behaved well to him; he was conveyed to Dublin, lodged in the Tower, and afterwards was confined in Kilmainham. After some months imprisonment, he was transported for life, along with his companions, Hugh Byrne, Martin Bourke,

* Dwyer surrendered on the express condition of being allowed to emigrate to America. When he was in Kilmainham, and was informed he was to be transported to New South Wales, he complained bitterly of the faith of the government having been broken with him.-R. R. M.

Arthur Devlin, and John Mearn. A. Devlin died soon after he was transported; Bourke and Mearn were still alive in 1843. Shortly after their arrival in Botany Bay, a plot was formed, which was directed against the life of Dwyer. He was tried and acquitted; Governor Bligh, however, sent him to Norfolk Island, and kept him there for six months. From that place he was sent to Van Diemen's Land; he was two years there. When General Bligh died, Governor M'Quarry succeeded him; he allowed Dwyer to return to Sydney, and appointed him to the situation of high constable, which he held for eleven years During this time he was in the condition of a free man; he held some land, which he farmed, and made a comfortable livelihood out of it. He died in 1826. His wife, who went with him to Botany Bay, still is living at Gouldburn. His children did not go out for many years after his transportation; he sent for them shortly before his death, but when they arrived, he was not living.

"His father and his family, who had suffered severely on his account, in consequence of an application to government, through Mr. Hume, got a sum of £100 as an indemnity for the ruin which had been brought on them. Governor M'Quarry either obtained permission for him to return to Ireland, or offered to do so; but it was not his wish to return.

"Michael Dwyer was born in 1770; he died in 1826, at a place called Liverpool, in New South Wales. He was about five feet eleven inches and a half high; stout made, and of great activity. Those who say that Michael Dwyer was in the habit of robbing, or plundering houses, say what is not the truth. He was no plunderer; he never committed an act of cruelty; he saved the lives of many; he never suffered a prisoner to be put to death. The people under him were faithful and obedient to him; they had entire confidence in him. The thumb of his left hand had been shot off; he had no other wound."

Such is the account of Michael Dwyer, given by his brother, which I believe is entitled to entire credit. His superiority, in every respect, to Holt, is too evident to need observation. The latter has been made a hero, with very doubtful claims to that character; the former, far more deserving of that title, has been represented, very unjustly, as a mere brigand.

Thomas Brangan, of Irishtown, I am informed by his

daughter, was in the habit of visiting the Depots in Dublin, under the name Williamson. His carts were used in conveying the stores from place to place; two or three waggon loads had been brought to Brangans, from Thomas-street; and a great quantity of pikes in hollow beams of timber. On the 23rd of July, many men armed with pikes came to Brangans, expecting to be called on; the signal was not given. The sending up of a rocket at Irishtown was to be the signal for attacking the Pigeon House; but no attack was made.

When Emmet's attempt failed, a reward was offered for Brangan's apprehension, under the name of Williamson-the name by which he was known in the Depots. He then absconded, and went to Dublin, with the intention of going to America. Brangan was concealed a long time at Mrs. Cuffs, a widow lady in Pill-lane; he afterwards removed to Mr. Butler's, in Fishamble-street, the corner of Saul's Court. He became very ill, while he was in concealment there, and sent for Dr. Brennan, of wrestling notoriety, who visited him frequently; and when his recovery was despaired of, a Roman Catholic clergyman, Dr. B- -e, was sent for. Difficulties occurred between him and Dr. B- -e, one of the most distinguished divines of that day, or of the present, respecting a quantity of military stores in Mary's Abbey, concealed in the ruined vaults of that ancient edifice, which had been converted into a Depot by Emmet. The vaults in question are those which there is some traditional record of their leading by a tunnel passage under the Liffey, to the vaults of Christ Church, a tradition which I believe was the subject of some inquiry about two years ago on the part of Earl de Grey. Brangan was unwilling that information should be given which he was called upon to sanction, and the result was the necessity for an application for the special assistance of another clergyman, the venerable Dr. Betagh, which application was not unsuccessful.

The house of Mrs. Cuff, in Pill-lane, was the temporary asylum obtained by Brangan for Russell on his return to Dublin, after his unfortunate expedition from the north. The person who took the lodging for Russell, at Muley's, was a Mr. Lacey, a native of Wicklow, a '98 man. Lacey had been with Russell the morning he was taken, he had also visited Emmet frequently at Harold's-cross. At this time Lacey kept an inn in Kevin-street frequented chiefly by Wicklow people. This

man was the constant medium of communication between Emmet and Brangan. Shortly after the arrest of Emmet, he gave up the inn, and seemed greatly improved in his circumstances. Brangan suspected him, and when Emmet was taken, being in concealment himself at the time, he took especial care to keep the secret of his place of retreat, and of his existence in the country from Lacey. When the latter came to his house to inquire for him, Lacey was informed by the family of the fugitive that he had gone to America. When Brangan heard of Emmet's arrest, he said, Lacey is the traitor;" (Brangan was not the only person who entertained a similar opinion.)

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Brangan succeeded in making his escape from Ireland; he got out of the bay in a fishing boat, and was put on board of a vessel bound for America. Whether he proceeded to America, or had been put on board some vessel bound for Portugal from the American vessel, I have not ascertained, but in March, 1804, he wrote to his family from Oporto. After some time he proceeded to France, and got a commission in the French service. He rose to the rank of Captain in the 3rd Regiment, in that service formerly the Irish Brigade. He went through the Peninsular war, and his family are in possession of certificates honourable to his courage from his commanding officers. He lost his life in a duel in France, in 1811, and died possessed of some little property. When he quitted Ireland he was thirty years of age; he left a wife and four children behind him.

"Mr. John Hevey," says Duggan, was a respectable brewer, (and subsequently a tobacconist), in the city of Dublin, he had been well known to all the leading people of 1798. This gentleman was persecuted by the agents of the government, namely, Major Sirr, Major Swann, and Major Sands, commonly I called the three S.'s. He was tried in Kilkenny and Dublin, and the account of his sufferings has excited great interest.

"But he was only beginning his sufferings in 1798. He brought down the vengeance of the Majors on him in 1802, when he brought an action against Major Sirr for the robbery of his mare. After Mr. R. Emmet's object failed, Mr. Hevey was arrested and detained a prisoner in Kilmainham, until the general liberation of all the state prisoners, after the death of Mr. Pitt. The sufferings poor Mr. Hevey had sustained by the

losses in business, and by the distress of mind and misery he had endured, brought him to ruin, to madness, and to beggary. I knew him in his prosperity, and was often in his brewery in Thomas-court, on business, and I knew him in Kilmainham a state prisoner, and also after my return from the Continent. I knew him also when he was reduced from affluence and comfort to extreme poverty. He had many companions and gay associates among his countrymen, when he was well off, but few friends when he wanted assistance, and was in great distress. I often heard of sentiments and toasts having been given in honour of his triumph over the Major at public entertainments, at the same time poor Mr. Hevey could not break his fast before he went out in the mornings, with bad shoes and stockings, with a bad hat and coat, and when he often returned in the evening with an empty stomach. He had a bed for some time in my little apartments until my business failed, and I was obliged to remove from town to Chapelizod. Shortly after, he became deranged, and was sent to the Lunatic Hospital, in Brunswick-street, where he expired, and no man knows where he was buried. This is but a slight sketch of Mr. Hevey, the brewer of Thomas-court. Shortly before his death, he ran into the Lower Castle Yard, and fell a breaking Major Sirr's windows, and immediately he was seized by the Major's people, and sent to the Lunatic Asylum, where he died a beggar."*

СНАРТЕER X.

On the 29th of July, 1803, two bills were brought into Parliament and read in both houses, the first, second, and third time,

*The account of poor Hevey, and the feeling manner in which it is given, does great credit to Duggan. Indeed I am disposed to think that a man who could express the sentiments he does in the preceding statement, and evince the propriety of feeling which is shewn in it can hardly be the person of the same name, assumed or real, I have spoken of in a former memoir, as the correspondent of the Major, whom he truthfully speaks of here as the persecutor of poor Hevey Hevey's fellow citizens ought not to have allowed him to perish in a pauper mad-house.

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