Lot 65280 – Wicklow – Bray: 1798 (12.6) Folded entire from Wicklow

Historical reference to the 1798 Insurrection in Wicklow

Wicklow – Bray: 1798 (12.6) Folded entire from Wicklow to Mrs. Tighe, Dublin, carried privately to Bray, with a linear BRAY hs, rated “2” alongside, with second type circular Dublin JU/14/98 bs, very fine

Note: The letter was apparently written to Mary Tighe, whose husband, Henry, was MP for Inistioge, Co.Kilkenny, where the Tighe seat and demesne, Woodstock, covered vast acres of forest and land. Mary Tighe was a famous poet and did much of her writing at Rossanagh Ashford, Co.Wicklow, where she stayed with her uncle and aunt, Henry and Sarah. The letter gives a fascinating insight into the 1798 Insurrection. Mary and Henry Tighe spent most of the 1790s in England, making periodic returns to Ireland to visit family in Wicklow and Dublin, and for him to represent Inistioge in the Irish parliament until the act of union. Both experienced the violence of the 1798 rebellion: he led a corps of yeoman troops through the Wicklow mountains while she was under siege at Rossana. Both argued against the act of union in 1799, he in the Irish parliament and she in her poetry.