Kilcomney Hill, on the borders of Carlow and Wexford, they were attacked and routed by General Sir Charles Asgill [q. v.] on 26 June. Some uncertainty attaches to the fate of Murphy. He was missed by his followers during the fight, but it is credibly stated that he was captured by some yeomen, and taken to Tullow, where, after being grossly insulted and whipped, he was on the same day (26 June) hanged and beheaded, and his body burnt (Plowden, Historical Register, ii. 717, 752, note). Nearly a year afterwards subscriptions were solicited in Dublin to enable a person claiming to be Murphy to escape from Ireland, but the man was declared by Byrne (Memoirs, i. 230) to be an impostor. Father Murphy, as he was generally called, was a well-built, agile man, about five feet nine inches high, of a fair complexion, and rather bald. He was regarded even by members of his own creed as somewhat of a religious fanatic. He was personally very brave, and in the management of the rebellion he displayed considerable military skill. He was not naturally of a cruel disposition, but where religion was concerned he appears to have been indifferent to shedding blood, and was directly responsible for some of those outrages on life and property that marked the course of the insurrection.
[Sir R. Musgrave's Memoirs of the different Rebellions in Ireland; Edward Hay's Hist. of the Insurrection in the County of Wexford, A.D. 1798; Thomas Cloney's Personal Narrative of those Transactions in County Wexford in which the Author was engaged during the awful period of 1798; the Rev. J. Gordon's Hist. of the Rebellion in Ireland; Miles Byrne's Memoirs; Plowden's Historical Register; the Rev. George Taylor's Hist. of the Rebellion in the County of Wexford; Castlereagh Correspondence; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Froude's English in Ireland; Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century.]
MURPHY, JOHN (fl. 1780–1820), engraver, was born in Ireland about 1748, and came to London, where he practised as an engraver, chiefly in mezzotint. His plates are not numerous, but some of them are singularly brilliant and masterly in treatment. He engraved historical subjects after contemporary English painters and the old masters, and also portraits. Murphy's plates include: ‘A Tyger,’ after Northcote; ‘A Tigress,’ after G. Stubbs; ‘Jael and Sisera,’ after Northcote; ‘Mark Antony's Oration,’ after West; ‘George III and his Family,’ after T. Stothard; ‘Portrait of the Duke of Portland,’ after Reynolds; two subjects from the history of Joseph, after Guercino; ‘Titian's Son and Nurse,’ after Titian; ‘Christ appearing to the Magdalen,’ after P. da Cortona; ‘Sacrifice of Abraham,’ after Rembrandt; and ‘The Cyclops at their Forge,’ after L. Giordano. The last four were done for Boydell's ‘Houghton Gallery.’ Murphy was also a portrait draughtsman. Several of his plates are from his own designs, and a portrait of Arthur O'Leary [q. v.], drawn by him, has been engraved by G. Keating. The latest date on Murphy's prints is 1809, but, according to a list of living artists published in 1820, he was then residing in Howland Street, Fitzroy Square.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; J. Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Huber and Rost's Manuel des Curieux et des Amateurs de l'Art, 1804; Annals of the Fine Arts, iv. 665.]
MURPHY, MARIE LOUISE (1737–1814), mistress of Louis XV, was born at Rouen 21 Oct. 1737, being the fifth daughter of Daniel Murphy, an Irishman who had served in the French army, but had become a shoemaker. Her mother's name was Margaret Hickey. Her parents removed to Paris, where her mother, after her father's death, became a secondhand clothes dealer near the Palais Royal. The daughters, all handsome, were disposed of by the mother as soon as they became marketable. Two are said to have been actresses. The eldest was a model at the Academy of Painting, and Marie Louise, to whom the reversion of that post had been promised, sat to Boucher, and in this way fell under the notice of Madame de Pompadour, who contrived that she should pose for the Virgin in a Holy Family painted for the queen's oratory. The king, as was expected, was smitten with the portrait, and in March 1753 Marie Louise was lodged, as its first occupant, in the small house at Versailles, styled the Pare aux Cerfs, round which so many legends have gathered. There on 21 May 1754 she gave birth to a child, described by some contemporaries as a girl, but probably a boy. Witty as well as handsome, 'la petite Morfi' is said to have aimed at supplanting Madame de Pompadour, but was dismissed in disgrace, and was married, on 25 Nov. 1755, to Major Beaufranchet d'Ayat, a man of good connections but poor. She retired with him on a pension to Ayat in Auvergne, being forbidden to reappear at Versailles. According to Argenson, her sister, Marie Brigitte, succeeded her in the Pare aux Cerfs. Her husband, promoted general, was killed at Rossbach in 1757, shortly after which she married Frai^ois-Nicolas Le Normant, a revenue official at Riom. Valfons alleges (Souvenirs, Paris, 1860) that Louis XV, after giving his consent to this marriage, revoked it,
