the signal was given, every man flew to the place where he had
hid his arms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards
some Protestant mansion. One band penetrated to Clonmel, another
to the vicinity of Maryborough; a third made its den in a woody
islet of firm ground, surrounded by the vast bog of Allen,
harried the county of Wicklow, and alarmed even the suburbs of
Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were not always successful.
Sometimes the plunderers fell in with parties of militia or with
detachments from the English garrisons, in situations in which
disguise, flight and resistance were alike impossible. When this
happened every kerne who was taken was hanged, without any
ceremony, on the nearest tree.76

At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the
winter, no authority capable of exacting obedience even within a
circle of a mile. Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He
had left the supreme government in the hands of a Council of
Regency composed of twelve persons. The nominal command of the
army he had confided to Berwick; but Berwick, though, as was
afterwards proved, a man of no common courage and capacity, was
young and inexperienced. His powers were unsuspected by the world
and by himself;77 and he submitted without reluctance to the
tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the Lord Lieutenant.
Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was popular
at Limerick. The Irish complained that men who were not Irish had
been entrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry
was loudest against an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was
certain that he was a Scotchman; it was doubtful whether he was a
Roman Catholic; and he had not concealed the dislike which he
felt for that Celtic Parliament which had repealed the Act of