Another remarkable case was that of Edmund O'Reilly, then or later vicar-general of Dublin and afterwards Primate, for the murder of John Joyce and others at Wicklow in December 1642. They appear to have been burned in Wicklow Castle in cold blood. Most of the evidence was hearsay, and does not perhaps amount to much more than that O'Reilly made rather light of what had been done. Luke Byrne, indeed, swore that in a conversation when Joyce was mentioned O'Reilly had advised him to kill all the English about him, and had afterwards excommunicated him for favouring them. The prisoner answered that this Byrne was his enemy, and that he had excommunicated him for living in adultery. Perhaps the strongest point against O'Reilly was made by Peter Wickham, who had been High Sheriff of Wicklow, and who stated that Edward Byrne was put off the jury because he, as foreman, was prepared to say that Joyce and the rest were murdered. Edward Byrne himself corroborated this. On the other hand, a witness bearing the English name of Pemberton swore that O'Reilly had done many acts of kindness and preserved many English lives, including those of five Protestant clergymen. These cases were all a good deal later than Joyce's murder, and it is not improbable that, while favouring the rebellion at first, he became afterwards disgusted at the outrages that attended it. He was found guilty, but received a pardon. Peter Walsh, who was bitterly opposed to O'Reilly, speaks of him as rather a good-natured and merciful man, but adds that he escaped owing to 'his former services to the Parliament, especially that of betraying the royal camp at Rathmines to Jones.' He was certainly engaged in secret negotiations between Jones and Owen Roe O'Neill in 1648, and it may well be that there was no wish to deal hardly with him. Walsh says he was under protection within the Parliament's lines, and in that unsafe position was rash enough to appear in Dublin as a witness for the prosecution in a criminal trial. He was recognised and named by a person in court, who called upon the judge to arrest him as priest and vicar-general and chief author of seizing and burning in cessation time the black castle of Wicklow, and consequently too of murdering all those within it. 'Now whether this accusation was in itself true or false I know not.'[252] [Sidenote: Trial of Lord Mayo, who is shot.]