’Longford was crowded with yeomanry of various corps, and with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who had flocked thither for protection.  With great difficulty the poor Edgeworth Town infantry found lodgings.  We were cordially received by the landlady of a good inn.  Though her house was, as she said, fuller than it could hold, as she was an old friend of my father’s, she did contrive to give us two rooms, in which we eleven were thankful to find ourselves.  All our concern now was for those we had left behind.  We heard nothing of our housekeeper all night, and were exceedingly alarmed; but early the next morning, to our great joy, she arrived.  She told us that, after we had left her, she waited hour after hour for the carriage; she could hear nothing of it, as it had gone to Longford with the wounded officer.  Towards evening, a large body of rebels entered the village; she heard them at the gate, and expected that they would have broken in the next instant; but one, who seemed to be a leader, with a pike in his hand, set his back against the gate, and swore that, if he was to die for it the next minute, he would have the life of the first man who should open that gate or set enemy’s foot withinside of that place.  He said the housekeeper, who was left in it, was a good gentlewoman, and had done him a service, though she did not know him, nor he her.  He had never seen her face, but she had, the year before, lent his wife, when in distress, sixteen shillings, the rent of flax-ground, and he would stand her friend now.

’He kept back the mob:  they agreed to send him to the house with a deputation of six, to know the truth, and to ask for arms.  The six men went to the back door and summoned the housekeeper; one of them pointed his blunderbuss at her, and told her that she must fetch all the arms in the house; she said she had none.  Her champion asked her to say if she remembered him.  “No,” to her knowledge she had never seen his face.  He asked if she remembered having lent a woman money to pay her rent of flaxground the year before.  “Yes,” she remembered that, and named the woman, the time, and the sum.  His companions were thus satisfied of the truth of what he had asserted.  He bid her not to be frighted, for that no harm should happen to her, nor any belonging to her; not a soul should get leave to go into her master’s house; not a twig should be touched, nor a leaf harmed.  His companions huzzaed and went off.  Afterwards, as she was told, he mounted guard at the gate during the whole time the rebels were in the town.

’When the carriage at last returned, it was stopped by the rebels, who filled the street; they held their pikes to the horses and to the coachman’s breast, accusing him of being an Orangeman, because, as they said, he wore the orange colours (our livery being yellow and brown).  A painter, a friend of ours, who had been that day at our house, copying some old family portraits, happened to be in the street