Loughrea
ByBagwell, the Tax Collector
In the year 1729 Mr Hubert Burke, a professing Protestant, was a magistrate at Loughrea, and in that capacity entertained the collector of the revenue when he came to collect the hearth-money tax. Mr. Bagwell, the collector, was in bed at Burke's house when Burke's eldest son came drunk into the room with a fiddler and a servant, and held a candle to the collector's nose. Springing out of bed, Bagwell snatched a stick out of young Burke's hands ordered him to leave the room, and after a scuffle drove him out and locked the door.
In the morning young Burke sent Bagwell a challenge. Bagwell replied that he was in Loughrea on the service of the Government. He had neither time nor inclination for such fool's play as duelling, and sent the messenger about his business. On receiving the collector's reply the family considered that they had been grossly insulted. Ancient habits and manners lingered in Galway. The old gentleman told his son that "if he did not bring him gentleman's or kerne's or churl's satisfaction " out of a man who had struck a Burke, he would never own him more. In the evening young Burke gathered a number of his friends in the yard of the house, sent a message to the collector that he was wanted, and when he appeared he was attacked with a loaded whip, received a fracture of the skull, and was left for dead.
A commissioner of the revenue in the neighbourhood, being told of the attack on Bagwell, applied for a company of soldiers from Portumna barracks to take young Burke prisoner, and bring him to Dublin for trail. A civil warrant, he said, would be useless,
"for the offender's father, being a magistrate, could procure any number of villains to prevent it from being executed. Were a Burke tried at the Galway Assizes he had so many relations and namesakes that no verdict could be procured against him. Moreover, without soldiers, neither he nor his accomplices could be taken at all, or, if taken, be conveyed to the county goal."
Bagwell recovered from his injuries but retained a bitter memory of the Burkes. In 1743, he writes from Tipperary, "I have a large walk in this country, some parts of it being wild and well stocked with the vermin called Papists, who, I fear, will destroy me when I am amongst them upon my collection."
An Abduction
The Presentments and Informations by Grand Juries in the eighteenth century give quite a lot of information about abductions. These documents do not, it may be presumed, contain all the crimes that were committed, but they may be regarded as containing the most conspicuous. One of interest, which occurred in Galway, is not among the Presentments in the State Paper Office. It was told to W. H. Lecky by Henry Ward, Q.C., Crown Counsel of the County of Galway, and concerns the daughter of Dean Dudley Persse, Dean of Kilmacduagh.
The Dean's father John Persse, had come over from England during the Cromwellian War. Having renounced Catholicism he became a member of the Established Church. By the first of those grants made by Charles II to Dean Persse under date 15th August,1677, he received 64 acres in the County Roscommon and 404 in the County Galway. On the 3rd August, 1678 an additional grant of 66 acres in the barony of Leitrim, County Galway, was made to him by letters patent. A still more extensive and valuable grant of lands was made by James II, containing 2,590 acres profitable and unprofitable in the baronies of Longford, Clonmacknowen, Leitrim, Loughrea, Dunkellin, and Kiltartan. Of these extensive grants 1,100 acres were situated in the baronies of Loughrea, Dunkellin and Kiltartan. They included "the mansion-house at Cregarosta," which Dean Persse used as his res 1703.
A major in King William's army quartered at Loughrea, formed in attachment to a rich heiress, but was refused by the father, on the ground that having nothing but his commission, he could settle no jointure upon her. Soon after, "a previous arrangement having been made," the major surrounded the Dean's house at Cregarosta with a party of horsemen - the tradition of the county says that they were a company of the regiment he commanded - and peremptorily demanded the hand of the lady. It was stated that he threatened, if his demand was not complied with, to decapitate her father, but this assertion was afterwards denied. The lady, who very probably knew something of his intention, on being questioned, declared herself ready to be married. The Dean, yielding to necessity, performed the ceremony and the property so acquired remained in the family of the bridegroom until comparatively recent times.