rated this defeat (and the simultaneous defeat of Harrington in Wicklow) as the two heaviest blows suffered by the English in Ireland.

Boyle suffered hardship during the famine years (1847-49). The following quote from the novel Woodbrook is one example: A retired herd, Mick Maxwell, speaking to Thompson about his grandfather during the famine, related the following: 'when his grandfather, the only man strong enough, brought fifty and sixty corpses on