Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wogan, Edward
WOGAN, EDWARD (d. 1654), royalist captain, was a grandson of David Wogan of New Hall, co. Kildare, and would appear to have been the third son of Nicholas Wogan (d. July 1636) of Blackhall, by Margaret, daughter of William Holywood of Herbertstown, co. Meath (O'Hart, Irish Pedigrees, 1888, ii. 447). He may almost certainly be identified with the ‘Captain Wogan’ of Okey's dragoons in the ‘new model,’ as when in 1648 he deserted the parliament's service and went over to Langdale we learn that the offence was seriously aggravated by the fact that he took over ‘his troop’ with him (Gardiner, Civil War, iv. 91). He marched safely to Scotland with this troop (Rushworth, vii. 1021–4), his surrender being indignantly but vainly demanded by the parliament. Later, in 1648, he joined Ormonde in Ireland (Carte, ii. 97). Ormonde appointed him governor of Duncannon, nine miles south-east of Waterford, in place of Captain Thomas Roche, who had begged for the transference of his responsibility; at the same time one hundred and twenty of Ormonde's ‘life guard’ were sent to aid in the defence. Wogan made a brilliant sortie in the spring of 1649 (Castlehaven, Memoirs, 1680, p. 116), and held the fortress successfully against Ireton during the summer, though both places were taken under Cromwell's immediate direction in the middle of December. Wogan himself had been captured by Colonel Sankey on 9 Dec. 1649, having previously sallied out of Duncannon to the assault of Passage Fort, a castle some five miles out of Waterford. In February 1650 Wogan, ‘that perfidious fellow,’ corrupted the provost-marshal and escaped from his prison in Cork (Whitelocke, p. 426). Had he not escaped, Cromwell intended to execute him as ‘a renegade and a traitor,’ who not only ‘did betray his trust in England, but counterfeited the general's hand (thereby to carry his men whom he had seduced into a foreign nation to invade England), under whom he had taken pay.’ In December 1650 he sailed with Ormonde for Brittany, and he is next heard of at Worcester fight (3 Sept. 1651), rallying a troop of royalist horse, effectually covering Charles's retreat, and joining him in the evening at Barbon's Bridge, about a mile out of the city (Boscobel Tracts, ed. Hughes, 1857, p. 43); he then escaped into France. In the autumn of 1653, having with difficulty obtained the king's consent to his enterprise, he boldly landed at Dover with seven or eight companies, made his arrangements in London, and enlisted over a score of men (some accounts say as many as two hundred) in the neighbourhood of Barnet for the king's service. With these he marched through England, gaining a few recruits on the way, giving out that his troopers were Commonwealth soldiers, and actually escaping detection until he arrived at Durham, where he had a smart brush with some of Cromwell's horse, but got through; and some months later (January 1654) successfully joined the highland force of Middleton [see Middleton, John, first Earl] at Dornoch in the south of Sutherlandshire. A few weeks later he was run through the shoulder in a skirmish; his wound mortified and, no efficient surgical aid being at hand, proved fatal (4 Feb.) He was buried on 10 Feb. in the kirk of Kenmore, near Aberfeldy. The troop that he commanded was handed over to Robert Dungan (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1655, p. 225; Cal. Clarendon State Papers, ii. 286); several of his comrades made their way back to France.
Clarendon gives an interesting, if not very exact, sketch of Wogan's character and of his adventurous journey to Scotland in his ‘History.’ Scott, in the description which he gives of Captain Wogan in the twenty-ninth chapter of ‘Waverley’ (containing some verses by ‘Flora Mac-Ivor’ upon Captain Wogan's tomb), unaccountably gives 1649 as the date of his death.
A portrait of Edward Wogan, whom Clarendon described in 1653 as ‘a beautiful person of the age of three- or four-and-twenty’ (he was probably somewhat more than this), is in the possession of Lord Talbot de Malahide.
Wogan briefly sketched his experiences as a Commonwealth soldier in ‘The Proceedings of the New-Moulded Army from the time they were brought together in 1645 till the King's going to the Isle of Wight in 1647;’ Carte printed half of this narrative, bringing down the sketch until February 1646; the remainder is printed as Appendix A to the ‘Clarke Papers,’ from the original in the Clarendon state papers (Bodleian, No. 2607).
Captain Edward Wogan's younger brother Thomas, who must be distinguished from Thomas Wogan [q. v.], is stated to have fought at Worcester, and to have died shortly afterwards. His eldest brother, William, was sheriff of Kildare in 1687, and represented the county in James II's parliament of 1689.
[O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees, 1888, ii. 447; Lodge's Irish Peerage, 1789, iii. 256; Clarendon's Hist. of the Great Rebellion, 1888, v. 313–15; Carlyle's Cromwell, ii. 228–9, v. 233, App. xvi; Carte's Ormonde, ii. 97; Clarke Papers (Camd. Soc.), i. 421; Denis Murphy's Cromwell in Ireland, 1883, pp. 174 sq., 197, 230; Mil. Memoirs of John Gwynne, 1822, pp. 220 sq., 166; Carte's Collect. of Original Papers, 1739; Whitelocke's Memorials under dates 24 Jan. and 17 Feb. 1653; Gilbert's War in Ireland, iii. 216, vi. 80–5; Firth's Scotland and the Commonwealth (Scots Hist. Soc.), 1895, pp. 296, 297, 298, 302; Gardiner's Great Civil War, iv. 91, and Commonwealth, ii. 403–4; Masson's Milton, iii. 720; Heath's Chronicle of the late Intestine War, 1676, p. 355; Spottiswoode Society's Miscellany, vol. ii.; Sinclair's Guide up the Valley of the Tay, 1882; notes kindly furnished by John Christie, esq.]