Contrary Voices

Abstract

In his sustained campaign against Francis Plowden’s Historical survey of the state of Ireland (1803), Sir Richard Musgrave fired salvoes at two pamphlets published in the same year as Plowden. They are Edward Hay’s History of the insurrection of the county of Wexford and James Gordon’s History of the rebellion in Ireland.¹ Musgrave thought Hay’s account ‘as strongly under the influence of Popish bigotry as that of Mr Plowden’, and equally ‘libellous of the government, the magistrates and the king’s troops’. Gordon, although a clergyman of the Established Church, is thought by Musgrave ‘to be imbued with republican principles, and the tenor of his book strengthens the suspicion’. Gordon kept a school in County Wexford ‘in such a state of obscurity and retirement, that it is universally well known he was ignorant of the events which passed within a short distance of his residence’. This isolation, adds Musgrave, led Gordon to collect his information about the Rebellion ‘from the hearsay evidence of low obscure people, who it is presumed were disaffected, as his book contains many gross perversions of the truth’.²