“This Is That I May Remember What Passings That Happened In

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2010, vol. 5 “This is that I may remember what passings that happened in Waterford”: Inscribing the 1641 Rising in the Letters of the Wife of the Mayor of Waterford Naomi McAreavey This is that I may remember what passings that happened in Waterford since Christmas Eve till the day after Saint Patrick’s Day. Captain Evelings I protest to God all these I write with my own hands because I was grieved at the passings and ill carriages of those that went in rebellion against the Mayor. That if it be God Almighty’s will I live, I will make good before their faces every point that I write to be true, and I hope in God I shall have right against those that are my enemies.1 omposed in the immediate aftermath of the Irish rising, this is an Cexcerpt from the remarkable letters of the wife of the Mayor of Waterford, which are preserved among the Carte Papers in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Through a detailed examination of the letters in manuscript, my essay will disentangle their representation of conflict in Waterford, and in doing so indicate the complexly gendered and nationalized nature of one Irishwoman’s writing of war in the mid- seventeenth century.2 The author’s forename is not recorded and her identity remains obscure, but it is known that she was wife of Francis Briver, who was Mayor of Waterford when the rising began in Ulster in the penultimate weekend of October 1641.3 A pivotal event in the devel- opment of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (better, but less accurately, known as the “English” civil wars), the rising originated as a conspiracy of 77 EMW_2010.indb 77 7/15/10 7:57 AM 78 EMWJ 2010, vol. 5 Naomi McAreavey discontented native Irish Catholic landowners who planned to take the principal fortified positions in the country in order to negotiate a resolu- tion to grievances from a position of strength; they were joined in revolt by the Old English the following month.4 The Old English were descended from the Anglo-Norman invaders of the twelfth century, and shared with their co-religionists a common resentment of the special rights and privileges enjoyed by the most recent arrivals in Ireland, the Protestant New English, who, by the mid-seventeenth century, dominated the Irish Parliament at Dublin Castle.5 What had begun as an attempted coup d’état by the Catholic elite quickly descended into widespread violence against Protestant settlers, which, along with the more formal military campaign, had reached Waterford by December 1641.6 Toward the end of the month, Richard Butler, third Viscount Mountgarret, a prominent Old English Catholic, assumed command of Confederate forces in Kilkenny, and within a week had taken most of the strategic points in the counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Waterford.7 Covering the period from “Christmas Eve till the day after Saint Patrick’s Day,” Mistress Briver’s letters chart what had happened in Waterford from the first stirrings of revolt in the city until shortly after its capture by the Confederate Catholics.8 The letters are addressed to one Captain Evelings who was stationed at the crown garrison at Duncannon Fort at the mouth of Waterford Harbour, which was under the command of Laurence Esmonde, Baron Esmonde of Limerick. Written in March 1642 not long after Waterford’s capture, the letters attempt to explain to the men leading the war against the Confederate Catholics why the Mayor was unable to retain possession of the city.9 Briver asserts an ostensibly loyalist political position through her deliberate adoption of the language of “rebellion” and, defining what happened locally as a “rebellion against the Mayor,” she insistently emphasizes the Mayor’s loyalty and the rebelliousness of Waterford’s citizens. It is perhaps no surprise that Waterford was to declare for the Confederate Catholics: an Old English stronghold, the city was nicknamed “Parva Roma” (“Little Rome”) because of its stringent Catholicism.10 But an Old English Catholic background was no guarantee of affiliation with the Confederate cause, as Briver’s letters vividly testify. She and her husband were Old English, and perhaps also Catholic, yet throughout her letters she EMW_2010.indb 78 7/15/10 7:57 AM “This is that I may remember. .” 79 unrelentingly protests the couple’s vigorous opposition to the Confederates and their loyalty to the New English.11 The letters are framed as testimony. Composing her story that “I may remember,” Briver suggests that she does so for herself but also for posterity. And protesting that she “write[s] with my own hands,” whether or not this is literally true, she invokes the authority of the eyewitness. Throughout, she stresses the reliability of her “true” account. Yet apparent throughout the letters is a defensive tone that suggests she is addressing a skeptical, even hostile, audience. Asserting that “I will make good before their faces every point that I write to be true,” Briver acknowledges that her version of what happened in Waterford has been contested by her “enemies.” These “enemies” (some of whom she specifically addresses in her letters to Evelings) are elsewhere identified as settlers who were driven by the Confederates from Waterford city to safety in Duncannon Fort. Having evidently taken to the garrison a rather different story of her husband’s conduct as Mayor, Briver confronts these New English and challenges their suggestion that her husband was complicit with the Confederates in the persecution of the settlers. Briver’s account of the rising is thus ani- mated and disturbed by her readers’ doubts about her husband’s loyalty, which points to the complexity of Irish representations of war at this time. Locating Briver’s writing amongst the ethnic, religious, political, and ideological fault-lines inherent to Waterford during the rising, my essay unpacks the underlying tensions in her description of revolt. In doing so, I contend that Briver’s account of the events that precipitated Waterford’s fall to the Confederates is shaped by her desire to defend her husband’s actions as Mayor and justify his failure to protect the city. The first part of the essay introduces the manuscripts and situates them in the context of Waterford and the 1641 rising, thereby proposing that Briver writes her apology for the Mayor in response to some contemporary pamphlets that question his loyalty. In the second part of the essay, I argue that her status as Mayor’s wife gives Briver the authority, as well as a legitimate reason, to write about the proceedings of the highly masculine sphere of municipal government, but that she also specifically commemorates her own interventions on her husband’s behalf. While her ostensible purpose is to defend and support her husband, she also emphasizes her own loyal EMW_2010.indb 79 7/15/10 7:57 AM 80 EMWJ 2010, vol. 5 Naomi McAreavey agency independent of her husband. Underlying doubts about the couple’s loyalty are the focus of the third part of the essay, which explores the ways in which Briver’s description of the uprising is compromised by alternative versions embedded within her account, whereby she and her husband are cast as complicit with the Confederate Catholics. Suggesting that the tensions that underpin her story are largely attributable to the couple’s Old Englishness and possible Catholicism, I demonstrate how Briver attempts to resolve the contradictions inherent in their Old English identity through her representation of a leading Confederate sympathizer. Casting him as the wild “Irishman” of the English colonial imagination, Briver defines her family as “English” by contrast. The instability of this construction is explored in the final part of my essay, which shows how Briver attempts to intervene in her family’s uncertain future through her letters, revising her account in light of her family’s present circumstances. After several attempts on her husband’s life, the need for Briver to emphasize the loyalty of the couple as individuals is obvious, for if her husband were to be killed, she would be responsible for her own survival, and that of her children. By repeatedly asserting the efforts she and her husband made on behalf of the New English refugees in Waterford, she may be soliciting the same protection from her New English “friends” as the couple gave them. Perhaps, then, Briver’s letters were written to Captain Evelings at the royalist garrison in the hope that he would now offer safety to her family, just as they apparently did to the New English. This is my essay’s contention. And arguing that the letters represent Briver’s attempts to preserve her family from their “enemies” in Confederate-controlled Waterford, I hope to show the richness of her writing on war in early modern Ireland. By focusing on the wartime writings of a regional Irishwoman, my essay follows recent moves to relocate the “English” wars of the mid- seventeenth century in a “Three Kingdoms” context.12 I also respond to critics such as Kate Chedgzoy who urge scholars of early modern women’s Anglophone writing to consider writers from all parts of the Atlantic archipelago.13 In illuminating Briver’s writing, my aim is to put women writers throughout “Britain” and Ireland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in conversation with each other. Furthermore, by showcasing EMW_2010.indb 80 7/15/10 7:57 AM “This is that I may remember. .” 81 this hitherto unknown Irishwoman’s lively narrative, I hope to stimulate further search in the archives for other examples of women’s writing in early modern Ireland, which will undoubtedly enrich the landscape of early modern women’s writing as a whole.

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