CHAPTER X
DEATH OF SIR WILLIAM PETTY
1687
'O God, Cousin,' Sir William writes in March 1687 to Southwell, 'how doth my foot slip, when I consider what Providence hath winked at in its dispensations of Ireland!'[1] The news which had arrived from Kerry was of the most serious import, as it announced that the native Irish had commenced a series of attacks on the Protestants; that Lieutenant-General Justin Macarthy had been made Governor of that County and Sir Valentine Brown Lieutenant-Governor, both of them noted adherents of Tyrconnel. The colony at Kenmare at once became the object of special hostility. The surrounding population drove off the cattle, 'plundered haggard, barn, and granary,' and carried off even the goods and provisions in the houses. These outrages being evidently winked at by the authorities, the colonists decided on retiring to Kilowen House, situated on a kind of peninsula at the head of the Bay of Kenmare, which they fortified. Thither came in forty-two families, consisting of 180 persons, among whom were seventy-five fighting men. 'They had four blunderbusses,' says the author of an account by one of the party, 'forty muskets, carabines and fowling pieces, twenty cases of pistols, thirty-six swords, twelve pikes and six scythes, with 170 lbs. weight of powder, and a proportionable quantity of ball. They encompassed half an acre with a clay wall fourteen feet
- ↑ March, 1687.
