to have entertained Mr.
Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to
Loughrea and Woodford,[15] "Dr." Tully being one of the guests invited
to meet them.[16] Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the
scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this
region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George
Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it
necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford,
previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light
of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in
the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the
firebrand priest."

In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other
tenants of Mrs. Lewis of Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent.
reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made
with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis's
son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to
give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so.
One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier,
discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country
as "Balaklava," because he was one of the "noble six hundred," who there
rode "into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell." His name was
Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen
(the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay,
and said, "no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir
Henry Burke of Marble Hill." The words and the look were thrown away on
the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns,
and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the
processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were
"boycotted." His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was
attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2
o'clock P.M., he left his house--which Mr. Tener pointed out to me--to
cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance.
Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time
he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged
absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with
bullets lying lifeless in t