Sir, - It is more than three months since I first stated in The Irish Times (January 6th) that the so-called Wexford Senate "has no credible historical basis". I have been intrigued, although not altogether surprised, at the lack of a response to such a blunt challenge to this core feature of "Comoradh '98" - until Mr Richard Roche's intervention (April 8th).
His letter nicely explains both the silence and my lack of surprise, with its tacit admission that the only contemporary reference to a "Senate" is in George Taylor's account (1800). Mr Roche carefully describes this as "the first history of the 1798 revolution", as if this gives it a particular authority. He equally carefully omits to mention that this is an ultra-loyalist, ultra-Protestant account, deeply hostile to the rebels.
Immediately following Mr Roche's selective quote, Taylor goes on: "Matthew Keogh was appointed Governor and all the Protestants around the county, who had not escaped when the army retreated, were arrested and thrown into gaol. The priests and friars were busily employed in baptising the Protestant women and such men as were admitted into the rebel ranks." The full sentence which includes Mr Roche's other selective quote ("the rebel senate") goes: "No sooner had the rebel senate sat than they were determined on the destruction of such as did not favour their cause." I doubt if Mr Roche accepts this as acceptable evidence of the true nature of what he believes to be a "United Irish revolution"; or, indeed, if he would cite Taylor as an authority on anything else.
The lack of any corroborating evidence from any source, and especially of any document among the many that survive from the rebel leadership that even mentions a "Senate", makes it obvious that Taylor was adding the spectre of revolutionary France to that of a 1641-style sectarian massacre in his demonisation of the rebels. Likewise the only contemporary mention of a "republic" is by Musgrave, who uses it pejoratively, for precisely the same reason. It is ironic that these ultra-loyalist smears should have been seized on in this bicentenary year to promote a new ultra-nationalist interpretation of the rebellion in Wexford. I look forward to Brian Cleary's "definitive article" and hope he has more solid evidence than Mr Roche - and that he makes it available to a wider readership than that of The Wexford Association Yearbook.
Mr Roche wonders about my motives. They are twofold. Like many others, I have a family connection with 1798 in Wexford, and thus have a strong personal interest in the truth of that terrible time being known. Secondly, I have a professional interest in the historical record and in testing all hypotheses and interpretations against original sources. These concerns came together when I read Mr Roche's Here's their memory: a record of the United Irish of Wexford in 1798. He included among "the names of republicans/United Irish men and women" that of any great-great-great-grandfather, John Rice, killed in the aftermath of the battle of New Ross, June 5th, 1798. As Mr Roche knows, I have spent several years researching the background to John Rice's death, and have written about him as a non-participant, one of many hundreds killed by rampaging troops after they recaptured the town. I have so far failed to find any mention of him in the historical record, and this would not be unusual for even a relatively wealthy Catholic of this period. All we have is a family story and a gravestone.
There is no evidence that he was a United Irishman, and the same is almost certainly true of 95 per cent of those whom Mr Roche lists. Instead, it appears that they have been posthumously recruited to the United Irish cause. I resent such exploitation of the dead, as well as finding it unacceptable in terms of the evidence. It is precisely the need to expose such propaganda masquerading as "history" that motivates what Mr Roche is pleased to call my "campaign". - Yours, etc.,
Prof Tom Dunne
Department of History, University College Cork.