Disputed Heroes: Early Accounts of the Siege of Londonderry

The one hundred-and-five day Siege of Londonderry in 1689, at the close of a conflict-ridden seventeenth century, was a crucial episode in the larger War of the Two Kings (1688–91) that brought Catholic forces into conflict with Protestants in Ireland. The deposed James II had arrived in Ireland in March 1689 to capitalize on the support of his fellow Catholics in an attempt to regain his crown. By the time the king began his march north, Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell—whom James II had appointed lord deputy of Ireland—had established Jacobite control of all of Ireland with the exception of Londonderry and Enniskillen in Ulster. The Siege of Londonderry began in April 1689 when the combined Irish and allied French forces led by James II arrived before the city walls and demanded the surrender of the Protestant town. Instead of the expected capitulation, they were met with gunfire that killed several of the king’s bodyguards and the possibility of surrender was lost. By June, the military siege had entered a second phase with a blockade of the neighboring River Foyle in an attempt to starve the resistance into submission. It would take an English relief expedition six weeks to break the boom and, with vital supplies now reaching the city, the Siege was lifted on July 31, 1689.¹

The relationship between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland was marked by a deep and enduring animosity; the relationship among the various Protestant sects on the island was likewise often rancorous. Religious tenets, politics, and ethnicity all divided the two predominant confessions in the North, the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians. Ethnically, most Presbyterians were Scots colonists to Ulster. The Episcopalians were the New English immigrants to Ireland.² The episcopal Church of Ireland was the established church. Presbyterians, who dissented on church organization and theology, were suppressed. In matters of governance, the Episcopalian church was administered by bishops, whereas the Presbyterians favored a more republican organization overseen by ministers and elders. The Puritanism of the Dissenters was also in conflict with the remnants of popery that the Presbyterians believed continued to be practiced by the Churchmen. Furthermore, both sects had fundamentally different political philosophies. Anglicans were, by and large, supporters of “divine right” monarchy that saw the ruler as a chosen representative of God. Presbyterians, on the other hand, tended to be versed in resistance theory and supported the concept of the deposition of a tyrannical monarch. Presbyterians were frequently quicker in their support of William III than the Episcopalians, who struggled intellectually with the overthrow of the hereditary monarch James II.³

Historical and literary accounts of military engagements often unanimously extol one outstanding individual as the hero of the campaign—for instance, the role of Patrick Sarsfield at the Siege of Limerick. The varying accounts of the Siege of Londonderry, however, present no clear-cut hero. ⁴ Four works authored in the first two decades after the Siege, in a range of literary genres, propose a variety of individuals as the hero. Two of the authors promote themselves as the heroes of the Siege: Rev. George Walker in his journal A True Account of the Siege of Londonderry (1689) and John Mitchelburne in his five-act tragicomedy Ireland Preserv’d or The Siege of Londonderry (1705). The other two texts acknowledge Colonel Adam Murray as the champion of 1689: Rev. John Mackenzie in his history A Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry (1690) and Joseph Aickin in his epic poem Londeriados or a Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry (1699), each portray Murray as the hero, though they emphasize different aspects of his personality. The conventions of the literary genre that each author purposefully selected—a journal, a drama, a narrative history, and an epic poem—require certain attributes of the hero and create certain expectations and interpretations on the part of the reader. Readers do not treat genres as interchangeable; rather, as one recent scholar of the history of reading noted, they link the text to others they have already read, signaling “the appropriate ‘pre-knowledge’ in...