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This is a letter from Lieutenant-Colonel F.A. French, a retired British Army officer who received orders from the British War Office to take command of the British forces in Wexford in 1916, to Captain Robert Brennan, acting commandant, Wexford Brigade, Irish Volunteers, 1916. Captain Seamus Doyle was one of the Irish Volunteer leaders in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, one of the few places outside Dublin to see action during the 1916 Rising. Captain John R.(Seán) Etchingham was a recruiting officer for the Irish Volunteers in Wexford, 1916. Due mainly to communication difficulties, the Easter Rising in Enniscorthy, County Wexford didn't take place until Thursday 27 April, 1916, the Dublin Rising having started on Easter Monday 24 April. Patrick Pearse had agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29th but the Volunteer leaders in Wexford refused to believe this. Colonel French arranged for an army car to bring Captain Seamus Doyle and Captain Seán Etchingham to see Pearse at Arbour Hill Barracks. There, Pearse signed a written order to the Wexford Volunteers confirming the surrender. In this letter Colonel French outlines the arrangements for the safe passage of the men to Dublin and back.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).