When they met stiff resistance from Protestant militias in Ulster, the rebels turned their focus southward with the goal of taking Dublin.

Through appeal to the Lord Justices in Dublin, he was then able to secure a commission to enroll and equip 120 citizens of Drogheda as a military troop at the expense of the State.

As the garrison continued to hold out throughout the four month siege, the rebels attempted to attack the walls and break into the city in a conventional manner.

However, the initial incursion was repulsed in confused fighting and, in the morning, the garrison opened the gates to rebels outside, only to take them prisoner once they entered the town.

[7] A second, more famous siege of Drogheda took place later during the war in 1649, when Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army took the town and massacred its Royalist and Irish Confederate garrison.