t'-rfr.'-r ^lOSANCElfj)> '^/^a3AlNn-3WV 'UVJ3IIVJ-3VJ ^OFCALIF0%, ^OFCAlIFOi C. ^^lllBRARYOr ^OFCAIIFOff^ ,^WE•UNIVER% ,^\^E•UNIVERS•/A. ^lOSANCELfXv^ o '^/ia3AiNa]y\v ,^^^l■LIBRARYQ^ >s.^MIBRARY ^ >^lOSANCElfx^ ^OFCALIFO/?^ ■"JJUDNVSOl^^ ^^\^EL'NIVER% ,, ^111BRARY(9/^ '^(f/OdllVDJO'^ .^WEUNIVERV/. .vWSANCElfjv, ^OFCALIFO/?^ 4n: A Jltemoir on Irefaiii) NATIVE AND SAXON. BY DANIEL ^OTON NELL, M.P. Fifth Edition. H)ubUn:< JAMES DrFFV AND CO., Ltd.. 1.*) Wkllington Qtay. Edmund Burke & Co., 6l & 62 GREAT STRAND STREET, DUBLIM.. >- <: p.-A ^ u THIS BOOK HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO HEli MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY ^ CD THE QUEEN S @ OF GREAT BRITAIN AND OF IRELAND. C9 a8;3ao PKEFACE 1 HUMBLY inscribe the following Memoir to her most gracious Majesty the Queen ; not in the shape of a dedioation, or with the presumptuous hope ol my being able to produce any work of sufficient interest to occupy the Eoyal mind. Yet, there is nothing more desirable than that the Sovereign of these realms should understand the real nature of Irish history ; should be aware of how much the Irish have suffered from English misrule ; should comprehend the secret springs of Irish discontent ; should be acquainted with the eminent virtues which the Irish nation have exhibited in every phase of their singular fate ; and, above all, should be intimately acquainted with the confiscations, the plunder, the robbery, the domestic treachery, the violation of all public faith and of the sanctity of treaties, the ordinary wholesale slaughters, the planned murders, the concerted massacres, which have been inflicted upon the Irish people by the English Governments. It has pleased the English people in general to forget all the facts in Irish history. They have been also graciously pleased to forgive themselves all those crimes ! And the Irish people would for- give them likewise, if it were not that much of the worst spuit of the worst days still survives. The 6 PKEPAOE. system of clearance of tenants at the present day^ belongs to, and is a demonstration of, that hatred of the Irish people which animated the advice of Spenser and the conduct of Cromwell. It is quite true that at the present day judges are not bribed with " four shillings in the pound,'* to be paid out of the property in dispute ; but, may not prejudice and bigotry produce unjust judgments, as well as pecuniary corruption ? And are those persons free from reproach or from guilt, who are ready to select, for the bench of justice, men whose sole distinguishing characteristic has been the ex- hibition of their animosity to the religion and to the people of Ireland % Did Stanley show none of the temper of Ireton in his Coercion Bill % Is none of the spirit of Coote or of Parsons to be found (in a mitigated form) in those who refuse to the Catholic people of Ireland their just share of elective or municipal franchises 3 and who insist that the Irish shall remain an infe- rior and a degraded caste, deprived of that perfect equality of civil and religious liberty, of franchises and privileges— which equality could alone consti- tute a union, or render a union tolerable *? I wish to arouse the attention of the Sovereign and of the honest portion of the English people to the wrongs which Ireland has suffered and which Ireland is suffering fi^nm British misrule. The Irish people are determined to preserve their alle- giance to the Throne unbroken and intact ; but they are equally determined to obtain justice for themselves ; to insist on the restoration of their native Parliament, and to persevere in that demand without violating the law ; but also without remit- PREFACE. 7 ting or relaxing their exertions, until the object is achieved and success attained. What the Sovereign and the Statesmen of Eng- land should understand is, that the Irish people feel and know that there cannot happen a more heavy misfortune to Ireland than the prosperity and power of G-reat Britain. When Britain is powerful, the anti-Irish faction in this country are encouraged, fostered, promoted ; Irish rights are derided ; the grievances of Ireland are scoffed at ; we are compelled to receive stinted franchises, or none ; limited privileges, or none !— -to submit to a political inferiority, rendered doubly afflictive by the contrast with the advantages enjoyed by the people of England and the people of Scotland. The Tory landlord class — exterminators and all — prime favourites at the Castle, are countenanced and sustained as the nucleus of that anti-Irish faction which would once again transplant the Catholics of Ireland to the remotest regions, if that faction had the power to do so ; and which actually drives those Catholics to transport themselves in multitudes to every country out of Ireland. The worst residt of British prosperity is, the protection it gives to the hard-hearted and bigoted class among the Irish landlords. It is also of the utmost importance that the Sovereign and Statesmen of England should be apprised that the people of Ireland know and feel that they have a deep and vital interest in the weakness and adversity of England. It was not for themselves alone that the Americans gained the victory over Burgoyne a: Saratoga. They conquered ioT Irish as well as for American freedom. Nor a PREFACE. was it for France alone that Dumourier defeated the Austrian army at Gemappe. The Catholics of Ireland participated in the fruits of that victory. At the present day, it would be vain to attempt to conceal the satisfaction the people of Ireland feel at the fiscal embarrassments of England. They bitterly and cordially regret the sufferings and privations of the English and Scotch artisans and operatives; but they do not regret the weakness of the English Government, which results from fading commerce and failing manufacture. For the woes of each suffering individual they have warm compassion and lively sympathy. From the con- sequent weakness of the Government party, they derive no other feelings than those of satisfaction and of hope. Was ever folly — was ever fatuity so great, as is evinced in the system of governing such a country as Ireland in such a manner as to create and continue the sentiments and opinions which I have expressed, and feebly endeavoured to describe 1 Her Majesty's most faithful, most dutiful, and most devoted Subject, DANIEL O'CONJSELL. AN H]STORICAL ME^IOIK IRELAND AND THE IRISH, CHAPTER L Yeaes 1172—1612. 1. The English dominion in Ireland commenced in the year 1172. It was for some centuries ex- tended over only an inconsiderable portion of the island. From various causes the English district or Pale sometimes augmented in size, sometimes dimi- nished. It did not become generally diffused over Ireland until the last years of Queen Elizabeth, nor universally so, until shortly after the accession of King James the First. The success of the forces of Queen EKzabeth was achieved by means the most horrible: treachery, murder, wholesale massacre, and deliberately-created famine. Take the last instance. The growing crops were year after year destroyed, until the fairest part of Ireland, and in particular che province of Munster, waa literally depopulated. I give here one quotation. It is from the English Protestant historian, Morrison : — "No spectacle was mort fre(^uent in the ditches of the towns^ and especially m wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people, the Irish, dead, with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend above ground." Mark ! Illustrious Lady — oh ! mark ! The most 10 1172—1612. [chap. I. frequent spectacle was, multitudes of dead — of Irish dead — dead of hunger! — Lady, after having endea- voured to sustain life by devouring, after the fashion of the beasts of the field, the wild-growing herbs. They were dead in multitudes, and none to bury them ! This was the consummation of the subjuga- tion of the Irish, after a contest of four hundred years. Never was a people on the face of the globe so cruelly treated as the IrisL 2. The Irish people were not received into alle- giance or to the benefit of being recognized as subjects untn the year 1612, only 228 years ago, when the Statute 11 James I. cap. 5, was enacted. That statute abolished all distinctions of race between English and Irish, "with the intent that," as the statute expresses it, " they may grow into one nation, whereby there may be an utter oblivion and extin- guishment of aU former differences and discorde betwixt them." 3. During the four hundred and forty years that intervened between the commencement of the English dominion in 1172, and its completion in 1612, the Irish people were known only as the " Irish Enemies.'' They were denominated " Irish Enemies " in all the Royal Proclamations, Royal Charters, and Acts of Parliament, during that period. It was their legal and technical description. 4. During that period the English were pro- hibited from intermarrying with the Irish, from having their children nursed by the wives of Irish Captains, Chiefs, or Lords; and what is stiU more strange, the English were also prohibited from sending goods, wares, or merchandizes for sale, or polling them upon credit or for ready money to the Irish. 5. During that time any person of English de- scent might murder a mere Insh man or woman witli perfect impunity. Such murder was no more a crime CHAP. II.] 1612—1625. 11 in the eye of the law, than the killing of a rabid or ferocious animal 6. There was indeed this distinction, that if a native Irishman had made legal submission, and had been received into English alle^ance, he ^ could no longer be murdered with impunity, for his murder was punishable by a small pecuniary fine : a punish- ment, not for the moral crime of murdering a man, but for the social injury of depriving the State of a cervant. Just as, at no remote period, the white man in several of our West Indian Colonies was liable to pay a fine for killing a negro, only because an owner was thereby deprived of a slave. CHAPTER XL Yeabs 1612—1625. " Residue of the reign of King Jajnes the First." 1. I HAVE traced the first period of Anglo-Irish History by a few of its distmctive characteristics. It comprised a period of 440 years of internal war, rapine, and massacre. The second period consists only of thirteen years, but possesses an interest of a different and a deeper character. 2. Unhappily there had grown up during the first period another, and, alas ! a more inveterate source of "differences and discorde'' between the people. I mean the Protestant Reformation. I am not now to give any opinion on the religious grounds of that all-important measure. I do not treat of it as a theologian. I speak of it merely historically, as a fact having results of a most influential nature. 3. The native Irish universally, and the natives of English descent generally, rejected the Reforma- tion. It was embraced but by comparatively few : and thus the sources of "differences and discorde'^ were perpetuated- The distinction of race was lost Iriflh and English were amalgamated for the pui'pose 13 1626—1660. [chap, m of enduring spoil and oppression under the name of Catholics. The party which the English Govern- ment supported was composed of persons lately arrived in Ireland, men who, of course, took the name of " Protestants." 4. The intent of the statute of 1612 was thus frustrated. The "discorde" between the Protestant and Catholic parties, prevented the Irish from " grow- ing into one nation, and still prevents them from being " one nation. ' The fault, however, has been and still is with the Government. Is it not time it were totally corrected 1 5. The reign of James the First was distinguished by crimes committed on the Irish people under the pretext of Protestantism. The entire of the province of Ulster was unjustly confiscated — the natives were executed on the scaffold or slaughtered with the sword — a miserable remnant were driven to the fastnesses of remote mountains, or the wilds of almost inaccessible bogs. Their places were filled with Scotch adventurers, " aliens in blood and in religion." Devastation equal to that committed by King James in Ulster, was never before seen in Christendom, save in Ireland In the Christian world there never was a people so cruelly treated as the Irish. 6. The jurisdiction of Parliament being now extended all over Ireland, King James created in one day forty close boroughs, giving the right to elect two members of Parliament in each of these boroughs to thirteen Protestants, and this in order to deprive his Catholic subjects of their natural and just share of representation. CHAPTER IIL Years 1625—1660. 1. The reign of Charles the First began under different auspices. The form of oppression and robbery varied— the substance was still thft samo* CHAP, m.] 1625—1660. 13 Iniquitous law took place of the bloody Bword ; tha soJdfier "was superseded by the judge ; and for the names of booty and plunder, the words forfeiture and confiscation were substitutea The instrument used by the Government was the " Commission to inquire into Defective Titles." The King claimed the estates of the Irish people in three provinces. This com- mission was instituted to enforce that claim. It was a monstrous tribunal An attempt was made to bribe juries to find for the Crown — that attempt failed. Then the jurors who hesitated to give verdicts against the people, were fined, imprisoned, ruined. The judges were not so _ chary— they were oribed — aye, bribed, with four shillings in the pound of the value of aU lauds recovered from the subjects by the Crown before such judges. And so totally lost to all sense of justice or of shame was the perpetrator of this brioery, Strafibrd, that he actually boasted, that he had thus made the Chief Baron and othei judges " attend to the afiair as if it were their own private business." 2. By these unjust and wicked means, the mi- nisters of Charles the First despoiled, for the use of the Crown, the Irish Catholic people of upwards of one million of arable acres, besides a considerably greater extent of land taken from the right owners, and granted to the rapacious individuals by whom the spoliation was effected. 3. The civil war ensued. Forgetting all the crimes committed against them, the Irish Catholics adhered with desperate tenacity to the party of the King. The Irish Protestants, some sooner and others later, joined the usurping powers. 4 During that civil war, the massacres committed on the Irish by St. Leger, Monroe, Tichboume, Hamil- ton Grenville, Ireton, and Cromwell, were as savage and as brutal as the horrible feats of Attdla orGhengia Khaa 5. In particular, the histoiy of the world presents 14 1660—1692. CHAP. IV. notMng more shockiTig and detestable than the massacres perpetrated by O'Brien, Lord IncMquin, in the Cathedral of Cashel ; by Ireton at Limerick ; and by Cromwell in Drogheda and Wexford. 6. When the war had ceased, Cromwell collected, as the first-fruits of peace, eighty thousand Irish in the southern parts of Ireland, to transplant them to the West India Islands. As many as survived the process of collection, were embarked in transports for these islands. Of the eighty thousand, in six years, the survivors did not amount to twenty individuals ! ! ! Eighty thousand Irish at one blow deliberately sacri- ficed, by a slow but steady cruelty, to the Moloch of English domination ! 1 1 Eighty thousand— O God of mercy ! 7. Yet aU these barbarities ought to be deemed light and trivial, compared with the crowning cruelty of the enemies of Ireland. The Irish were refused civil justice. They were still more atrociously refused historical justice, and accused of being the authors and perpetrators of assassinations and massacres, of which they were only the victims. 8. No people on the face of the earth were ever treated with such cruelty as the Irish. CHAPTER IV. Yeaes 1660—1692. 1. We are arrived at the Restoration — an event of the utmost utility to the English and Scotch royal- ists, who were justly restored to their properties— an event which consigned, irrevocably and for ever, to British plunderers, and especially to the soldiers of Ireton and CromweU, the properties of the Irish Catholic people, whose fathers had contended against the usurped powers to the last of their blood and their breath. 2. The Duke of York, afterwards James the CHAP. IV.] 1660— lt^92. 15 Second, took to his own share of the plunder about eighty thousand acres of lands belonging to Irish Catholics, whose cause of forfeiture was nothing more than that they had been the friends and sup- porters of his murdered father, and the enemies of his enemies. 3. Yet such was in the Irish nation the inherent love of principle — a principle of honourable, but, in this instance, most mistaken loyalty — that when this royal plunderer was afterwards driven from the throne by his British subjects, he took refuge in Ireland, and the Irish Catholic nobility, gentnr, and universal people rallied round him, and shed their blood for him, with a courage and a constancy worthy of a better cause. 4. This section should be devoted to the Treaty of Limerick. The Irish were not conquered, Lady, in the war. They had, in the year preceding the treaty, driven William the Third with defeat and disgrace from Limerick. In this Irish victory the women par- ticipated. It is no romance. In the great defeat of William, the women of Limerick fought and bled and conquered. On the 3rd of October, 1691, the Treaty of Limerick was signed. The Irish army, 30,000 strong — the Irish nobiHty, and gentry, and people, capitulated with the army and Crown of Great Britain. They restored the allegiance of the Irish nation to that Crown. Never was there a more useful treaty to England than this was under the circum- stances. It was a most deliberate and solemn treaty — deliberately confirmed by letters-patent from the Crown. It extinguished a sanguinary civil war. It restored the Irish nation to the dominion of England, and secured that dominion in perpetuity over one o( the fairest portions of the globe. Such was the value given by the Irish people. 5. By that treaty, on the other hand, the Irish Catholic people stipulated for and obtained the pledge of " the faith and honour" of the English Crown, lor the 16 1693—1778. [CHAP. V. equal protection by law of their properties and tliei> Kberties with aU other subjects — and in particular for the free and unfettered exercise of their religion. CHAPTER V. Years 1692— 177& L The Irish in every respect performed with scru- pulous accuracjr the stipulations on their part of the Treaty of Limerick. 2. That treaty was totaUjr violated by the British Government, the moment it was perfectly safe to violate it. 3. That violation was perpetrated by the enact- ment of a code, of the most dexterous but atrocious iniquity that ever stained the annals of legislation. 4. Let me select a few instances of the barbarity with which the Treaty of Limerick was violated, under these heads : First—" Property." "Every Catholic was. by Act of Parliament, de- prived of the power oi settling a jointure on any Catholic wife — or charging his lands with any provi- sion for his daughters — or disposing by will of his landed property. On his death the law divided his lands equally amongst all his sons. "All the relations of private life were thus violated. " If the wife of a Catnolic declared herself a Pro- testant, the law enabled her not only to compel her husband to give her a separate maintenance, but ta transfer to her the custody and guardianship of all their children, "Thus the wife was encouraged and empowered successfully to rebel against her husband. " If the eldest son of a CathoKc father at any age^ however youn^, declared himself a Protestant^ he thereby made Ms father strict tenant for life, deprived CHAP. V.J 1692—1778. 17 the father of all power to sell or dispose of his estate, and such Protestant son became untitled to the abso- lute dominion and ownership of the estate. " Thus the eldest son was encouraged, and, indeed, bribed by the law to rebel against his father. " If any other child beside the eldest son declared itself, at any age, a Protestant, such child at once escaped the control of its father, and was entitled to a maintenance out of the father's property. "Thus the law encouraged every child to rebel against its father. " If any Catholic purchased for money any estate in land, any Protestant was empowered by law to take away that estate from the Catholic, and to enjoy it without paying one shilling of the purchase-money. "TMs was Law. The Catholic paid the money, whereupon the Protestant took the estate. The Ca- tholic lost both money and estate. "If any Catholic got an estate in land by marriage, by the gift or by the will of a relation or friend, any Protestant could by law take the estate from the Ca- tholic, and enjoy it himseK. " If any Catholic took a lease of a farm of land as tenant at a rent for a life or lives, or for any longer term than thirty-one years, any Protestant could by law take the farm from the Catholic, and enjoy the benefit of the lease. " If any CathoKc took a farm by lease for a term not exceeding thirty-one years, as he might still by law have done, and by his labour and industry raised the value of the land so as to yield a profit equal to one-third of the rent, any Protestant might then by law evict the Catholic, and enjoy for the residue of the term the fruit of the labour and industry of the CathoKc. " If any Catholic had a horse worth more than five pounds, any Protestant tendering £5 to the Catholic owner, was by law entitled to take the horse, though worth £50, or ^100, or more, and to keep it as his own. B 18 1692—1778. [CHAP. T. " If any Catholic, being the owner of a horse worth more than five pounds, concealed his horse from any Protestant, the Catholic, for the crime of concealing his own horse, was liable to be punished by an iir prisoument oi three months, and a fine of three tire the value of the horse, whatever that might be. " So much for the laws regulating by Act of Pari ment the property — or rather plundering by d, course of law the property — of the Catholic "I notice- - Secondly.— Education. "If a Catholic kept school, or taught any pers ^ Protestant or Catholic, any species of literature n science, such teacher was, for the crime of teachi punishable by law by banishment — and, if he turned from banishment, he was subject to be han " as a felon. J "K a Catholic, whether a child or adult^ atten< •' in Ireland, a school kept by a Cathohc, or ti privately instructed by a Catholic, such Cai.%:j(^^ although a child in its early infancy, incurred i feiture of all its property, present or luture. "If a Catholic child, no wever young, was sf any foreign country for education, such infant incurred a similar penalty— that is, a forfeiturs right to property, present or prospective. ** If any person in Ireland made any remittc money or goods, for the maintenance of an a' child educated in a foreign country, such per ^• curred a similar forfeiture. ^r Thirdly.— Personal Disabilities. ^ "The law rendered every Catholic incapab. n holding a commission in the army or navy, or "j to be a private soldier, unless he solemnly abjured religion. "The law rendered every Catholic incapable oi holding any office whatsoever of honour or emolu- ment in the State. The exchision was univAreaL CHAP, v.] 1692 -1/7S. 19 "A Catholic had no legal protecnon for life or liberty. He coiild not be a Judge, Grand Juror Sheriff, Sub-sheriff, Master in Chancery, Six Clerk, barrister, Attorney, Agent or Solicitor^ or Seneschal of ly manor, or even gamekeeper to a private gentleman. *' A Catholic could not be a member of any corpo- tion, and Catholics were precluded by law from ^idence in some corporate towns. " Catholics were deprived of all right of voting for lembers of the Commons House of Parliament. " Catholic Peers were deprived of their right to sit vote in the House of Lords. •' Almost all these personal disabilities were equally '^ .forced by law against any Protestant who married Catholic wife, or whose child, under the age of arteen, was educated as a Catholic, although against h consent Fourthly.— Religion. To teach the Catholic religion was a transportable .y j to convert a Protestant to the Catholic faith a capital offence, punishable as an act of treason. To be a Catholic regular, that is, a monk or friar, punishable by banishment, and to return from hment an act of high-treason. 3 be a Catholic Archbishop or Bishop, or to se any ecclesiastical jurisdiction whatsoever in atholic Church in Ireland, was punishable by [^ )ortation — to return from such transportation la^> in act of high-treason, punishable by being th<^ ed, embowelled alive, and afterwards quartered." on ^J After this enumeration, will you. Illustrious V ly, be pleased to recoUect that every one of these actments, that each and every of these laws, was palpable and direct violation of a solemn treaty, to which the faith and honour of the British Crown was pledged, and the justice of the English nation unequivocally engaged. 6. There never yet was such a horrible code of 20 1692—1778. [CHAP. v. persecution invented, so cruel, so cold-blooded — cal- culating — emaciating — universal — as this legislation, which the Irish Orange faction — the Shaws — the Lefroys— the Verners of the day did invent and enact— a code exalted to the utmost height of infamy by the fact, that it was enacted in the basest violation of a solemn engagement and deliberate treaty. 7. It is not i)ossible for me to describe that code in adequate language — it almost surpassed the elo- quence of Burke to do so. "It had," as Burke describes it — " it had a vicious perfection — it was a complete system — full of coherence and consistency ; well-digested and well-disposed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." 8. Tliis code prevented the accumulation of pro- perty, and punished industry as a crime. Was there ever such legislation in any other country, Christian or Pagan 1 _^ut that is not all ; because the party who inflicted this horrible code, actually reproached the Irish people with wilful and squalid poverty. 9. This code enforced ignorance oy statute law, and punished the acquisition of knowledge as a felony. Is this credible 1 — yet it is true. But that is not all ; for the party that thus persecuted learning, reproached and still reproach the Irish people with ignorance, 10. There ; — there never was a people on the face of the earth so cruelly, so basely treated as the Irish, There never was a faction so stained Tsdth blood, so blackened with crime, as that Orange faction, which, under the name of Protestant, seeks to retain the remnants of their abused power, by keeping in acti- vity the spirit which created and continued the infa- mous penal persecution of which I have thus faintly traced an outline. CHAP. n,j 1778—1800. ai It would be worse than seditious, uay, actuaUy treasonable, to suppose tliat such a faction can ever obtain countenance from you, Illustrious Lady, des- tined, as I trust you are, at length to grant justice, by an equalization of rights Avith your other subjects, to your faithful, brave, long-oppressed, but magnani- mous, people of Ireland. CHAPTER YL Yeaes 1778—1800. 1. The persecution I have described — the perse- cution founded on a breach of national faith and public honour — lasted for eighty-six long years of darkness, of shame, and of sorrow. It was intended to reduce the Catholic people of Ireland to the state of the most abject poverty, and by the same means to extirpate the Cathohc religion. Here a question of some interest arises : — "WTiat was the success of the experiment 1 Before the ques- tion is answered, let it be recollected that the experi- ment had in favour of its success the Crown — the Parliament — the Bishops and Clergy of the Established Church — the Judges — the Army, the Navy — the Cor- porations — Mayors — Aldermen— Sheriffs and Free- men — the Magistracy, the Grand Jurors — the almost universal mass of the property and wealth of the Irish nation. It had besides the entire countenance, con- currence, and support of England and Scotland — not a tongue could utter in public one word against it, or if it so uttered even one word, it was stopped foi ever — not a pen could write one word in opposition. Yet with all these tremendous advantages, what was the success of the experiment 1 Illustrious Lady, it failed — it totally failed. A just estimate would state that the Catholics went into the persecution about two millions in number ; the Protestant persecutors — for, at that day, they were all persecutors — were about one million. The CathoHca 22 1778—1800. [chap. VI. have increased to nearly seven millions— ;-tlie Protes- tants still scarcely exceed the original million. The comparative increase of the one under persecution is enormous — the comparative decrease of the other whilst persecuting is astounding. In the first instance the Catholics were at the utmost only two to one — in the second, they are near seven to one : "Thus captive Israel multiplied in chains/* Blessed be God! So may persecution fail in every country, until it shall universally be admitted to be as useless for conversion, as its exercise is debas- ing and degrading in those who employ it. 2. The time for a relaxation of the " Penal Code ^ — that was the technical name given to the persecuting code — had at length arrived. In 1775 the obstinate refusal of the British Government to do "justice to America" was checked by blood. In 1777 a British army, in its " pride of place," surrendered at Saratoga to the once despised,_ insulted, and calumniated " Provincials." It was in 1778 too late to conciliate America. She proclaimed her independence, and America was for ever lost to the British Crown. 3. The ancient enemies of England in Europe armed, and assailed her. The English Government in their adversity learned one lesson from fatal expe- rience ; they for the first time tried conciliation to Ireland The Penal Code was relaxed in 1778. Con- ciliation succeeded, as it always will with the Irish people. America, it is true, was lost by refusing to conciliate — but Ireland was preserved to the British Crown by conciliation. 4. The relaxation of the "Peiuu Code," in 1778, was, in its own nature, a large, instalment of the debt of " Justice to the Catholic people of Ireland." It restored to the Catholics the same power and domi- \iion over the property they then held as the Protes- tants always enjoyed ; and it enabled the Catholics to acquire as tenants, or as purchasers, any interest is CHAP, vl] 1778— 18C0. 23 lands for any terms or years, though they may be as long as one thousand years. But still they could not acquire by purchase, or as tenants, any freehold inte- rests. The Catholics wisely accepted the instalment, and went on, with increased security and power, to look for the rest of the debt of justice. 5. In 1782, England stood alone in a contest with the greatest power in the world — the combined fleets of her enemies, as one of the rare instances in hei naval annals, rode triumphant and unopposed in the British Channel Accordingly the " Penal Code " was once again relaxed — conciliated Ireland poured twenty thousand seamen and active landsmen into the Bri- tish navy — enabled Rodney to pursue the French fleet to the West Indies ; where, m his action with De Grasse, Irish valour, emulating, and, if that were possible, exceeding British bravery, rendered the "meteor flag of England" once more victorious — crushed the naval power of the enemy — saved not only the West Indian Colonies, but also the honour of the British Crown, and strewed laurels over a peacf which would otherwise have been ignominious as welj as disastrous. 6. The relaxation of the year 1782 was a second instalment of the debt of " Justice to Ireland." It was a noble instalment. It enabled the Catholics to acquire freehold property for lives or of inheritance. But it did more ;— for the first time after ninety years of persecuted learning, it enabled the Cathohcs to open schools and to educate their youth in literature and religion The Catholics wisely accepted that in- stalment, which restored in full their rights of pro- perty, and gave them the inestimable right of educa- tion. They gratefully accepted the instalment, and wisely, and, with increased power, conomenced a new struggle for the rest. 7. The admission of the Catholics to the tenancy of lands in 1778, increased considerably the rents of the Prot^tant landlords in Ireland. The permission H 1778—1800. [chap vr. to the Catholics, in 1782, to purchase estates, enhanced enormously the value of the property of all the Pro- testants of Ireland. Conciliation and prosperity went hand in hand ; and that which benevolence alone would have suggested, was proved by experience to be the best means to increase the value of their property, which the most rigid and the most selfish prudence would have dictated to the Protestant proprietors of Ireland. 8. There were other events, in 1782, which merit more than the passing glance I can now bestow upon them-^events of the deepest, the most soul-stirring interest. For the present, suffice it to say, that the Irish Parliament which asserted the legislative inde- pendence of Ireland, was not only the most advanta geous to its constituents, but was at the same time the most loyal to the British Crown, and the most useful to the British power. It was that Parliament which voted and paid the twenty thousand Irish Ca- tholics who rushed to man the British fleets, and contributed to Eodney's victory. Ireland never had a Parliament more attached to British connexion than the Irish Parliament which asserted Irish legislative independence. 9. Ten years followed of great and increasing prosperity in Ireland — but they were years of peace and power in England, and there was no occasion to conciliate or court tlie Catholics of Ireland. ^ Accord ingly no further advance was made in their eman- cipation. The Catholics, however, shared in the universal prosperity of Ireland. 10. The year 1792 found matters in this condition The prosperity which the Catholics enjoyed in common v/ith their other countrymen— the property which they were daily acquiring, made them impatient for political rights. They therefore petitioned the Irish House of Commons that the profession of the law might be opened to them, and for the elective fran- chise. It was with difficulty one member could be CHAP. VI.] 1778—1800. 86 procured to move that the petition should be laid upon the table, and another to second it. The motion was opposed by the member forKildare, Mr. Latouche; he moved that the petition should be rejected — ther& was no danger apprehended from its rejection. It was accordingly rejected, all the members of the Government voting for that rejection. 11. But, before the close of 1792, a new scene was opened. The French armies defeated their enemies at every point. The Netherlands were conquered and a torrent of republicanism, driven on by nulitary power, threatened every State in Europe. The cannon of the battle of Gemappe were heard at St. James's, — the wisdom of conciliating the Catholics was felt and uiilcrstood ; and in the latter end of that same year, 1792 — in the early part of which the Government had ignominiously rejected the Catholic petitioi/ with contempt — that same Government brought in a bill still further to relax the " Penal Code ;" and early in the next year brought in another bill, granting, or I should rather say restoring, greater privileges to the Catholics. 12. By the effect of both these bills, the bar was opened to the Catholics — they might become barris- ters, but not King's counsel — they could be attorneys and solicitors — they could be freemen of the lay cor- porations — the Grand Jury box and the magistracy were opened to them — they were allowed to obtain the rank of colonel in the army — and, still greater than all, they were allowed to acquire the elective franchise, and to vote for members of Parhament. This was the third great instalment of public justice obtained by the Catholics of Ireland. 13. But it should be recollected that these conces- sions were made more in fear than in friendship. The revolutionary war was about to commence — the flames of republicanism had spread far and near. It was eagerly caught up amongst the Protestant and especially an).ong the Presbjrterian population of the 26 1778—1800. [chap. Yl, north of Ireland. Belfast was its wannest focus. It was the deep interest of the British Government to detach the wealth and intelligence of the Catholics of Ireland from the republican party. This policy was adopted. The Catholics were conciliated. The Catholic nobility, gentry, mercantile, and other edu- cated classes, almost to a man, separated from the republican party. That which would otherwise have been a revolution, became only an unsuccessful rebel- lion. The intelligent and leading Catholics were conciliated ; and Ireland was once again, by the wise policy of concession and conciliation, saved to the British Crown. 14 Illustrious Lady, the Rebellion of 1798 itself was, almost avowedly, and beyond a doubt provably, fomented to enable the British Government to extin- guish the Irish legislative independence, and to bring about the Union. But the instrument was nearly too powerful for the unskilful hands that used it; and if the Catholic wealth, education, and intelligence had joined the rebellion, it would probably have been successful 15. One word upon the legislative independence of Ireland— that which is now called a " Repeal of the Union." It is said to be a severance of the empire — a separation of the two countries. Illustrious Lady, these statements are made by men who know them to be unfounded. An Irish legislative independence would, on the contrary, be the strongest and most durable connexion between your Majesty's Irish and /our British dominions. It would, by conciliating your Irish subjects, and attending to their wants and \vishes, render the separation of Ireland from the law ful dominion of your Crown utterly impossible. 16. No country ever rose so rapidly in trade, manufactures, commerce, agricultural wealth, and general prosperity, as Ireland did from the year 1782 until the year 1798, when the "fomented rebellion" broke out, and for a space, a passing and transitory space, marred the fair prospects of Ireland. CHAP, vn.] 180a CHAPTER YII. The Year 1800. 1. This year would justify a volume to itself. It ^Ya3 the year that consummated the crimes which, during nearly seven centuries, the English Govern- ment perpetrated against Ireland. It was the year of the destruction of the Irish legislature. It was the fatal, ever-to-be-accursed year of the enactment of the Union. 2. The Union was inflicted on Ireland by the combined operation of terror, torture, force, fraud, and corruption. 3. The contrivers of the Union kept on foot and fomented the embers of a lingering rebellion. They haUooed the Protestant against the Catholic, and the Catholic against the Protestant. The}- carefuUy kept aHve domestic dissensions, for the purposes of sub- jugation. 4. Whilst the Union was in progress, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended — all constitutional freedom was annihilated in Ireland — martial law was pro- claimed — the use of torture was frequent — liberty, life, or property had no protection — public opinion was stifled — trials by court-martial were familiar— meetings legally convened by sheriffs and magistrates were dispersed by military violence — the voice of Ireland was suppressed — the Irish people had no protection. Once again, I repeat, martial law was proclaimed. Thus tne^ Union was achieved in total despite of the Irish nation. 5. But this was not aU. The most enormous and the basest corruption was resorted to. Lord John Russell is reported to have stated some time ago, at a public dinner, that the Union was carried at an ex- pense of £800,000. He was much mistaken, speaking aa hft did merely from a vague recollection. The par- '28 1800. [chap, til liamentary documents will show him that the one item of the purchase-money of rotten and nomination boroughs, cost no less a sum than one million, two hundred and forty-five thousand pounds. The pecu- niary corruption amounted altogether to about three millions of pounds sterling. 6. But this was not all The expenditure of pa- tronage was still more open, avowed, and profligate. Peerages were a familiar staple of traffic — the com- mand of ships of the line and of regiments— the offices of chief and puisne judges, the stations of arch- bishops and bishops, commissionerships of the revenue, and all species of collect orships — in short, all grades of offices. The sanctuary of the law and the temples of religion were trafficked upon as bribes, and given in exchange for votes in Parliament in fa- vour of the Union. 7. But this was not all. Notwithstanding all the resources of intimidation and terror — of martial law and military torture — of the most gigantic bribery ever exhibited — the Union, could not be carried untU several of the nomination boroughs were purchased, to return a number of Scotchmen and Englishmen, all of whom held rank in the army or navy, or other offices under Government, removable at pleasure. The number of such " aliens" was almost as great as the majority by which the Union was carried. 8. The Union was not a treaty or compact. Illus- trious Lady. It was not a bargain or agreement. It had its origin in, and was carried by force, fraud, terror, torture, and corruption. It has to this hour no binding power but what it derives from force. It is still a mere name. The countries are not united. The Irish are still treated as " ahens in blood and in re- ligion." 9. Thus was the legislative independence of Ire- land extinguished. Thus was the greatest crime ever perjietrated by the English Government upon Ireland consummated. CFAP. m.] 1800. 29 10. The atrocity of the manner of carryiiig the Union was equalled only by the injustice of the terma to which Ireland was subjected. 11. 1 hate to dwell on this detestable subject. ] will put forward only two of the features of the in- justice done to Ireland. The one relates to finance — the other to representation. 12. The epitoniGof the financial fraud perpetrated against the Irish is just this : At the time of the Union, Ireland owed twenty millions of funded debt •, England owed four hundred and forty-six millions. If the Union were a fair and reasonable treaty, the debts of the two countries should continue to bear the same proportions. Perhaps even that arrange- ment would, under aU the circumstances, be harsh towards Ireland. But what is the consequence to Ireland of the Union 1 It is this, that all the land, bouses, and other property, real and personal, of Ire- land, are now pledged to the repayment equally with England of eight hundred and forty millions of pounds sterling ! ! ! At the utmost the Irish ought to owe a sum not exceeding forty millions. By the Union we are made to owe eight hundred and forty millions. But for the Union, the entire Irish debt would have been long since paid off, and Ireland, Hke Noi-w^ay, would have no national debt. Xever was there a people so unjustly treated as the Irish ! 13. The gross injustice done to Ireland in the matter of representation in the United Parliament was this : The ingredients to entitle either country to re- presentation were said by the fabricators of the Union to be — population and property. The only evidences of property that Lord Castlereagh would allow were exports, imports, and revenue — he totally omitted rental ; yet, upon his own data, Ireland was entitled to 108, out of a total of 658 representatives. He took off eight, of his own va\l and pleasure, and left Ireland but one hundred members. But, in truth, lie ought to have taken into calcula- 30 1800—1829. [chap. vni. tion the relative rental of each country, and then the right of Ireland to 169 members would appear. Still more, had the ingredients of a relative representation consisted, as they ought to have consisted, solely of population and revenue, the right of Ireland to 176 members would be demonstrated. 14. If the Union had been a fair treaty, no chicanery could have deprived Ireland of, at the least, 150 mem- bers ; yet one-third were struck off at the despotic will and pleasure of the English Government. This was indeed a grievous injustice, and much of the in- security of the Union rests upon it. Substantial jus- tice, in tliis respect, has ever been withheld. Thus we are degraded and insulted by the Union. CHAPTER VIII. YiiAits 1800—1829. 1. The alleged object of the Union was to con- solidate the inhabitants of both islands into one nation — one people. The most flattering hopes were held out, the most solemn pledges were vowed. Ire- land was no longer to be an alien and a stranger to British liberty. The religion of the inhabitants was no longer to be a badge for persecution — the nations were to be identified — ^the same privileges — the same laws — ^the same liberties. They trumpeted, until the ear was tired and all good taste nauseated, the hackneyed quotation, the '■''Paribus se legibus^' — the ^^ Invictce gentes" — ^the ^^ Eterna infedera.^^ 2. These were words — Latin or English, they were mere words — Ireland lost everything and got nothing by the Union. Pitt behaved with some dignity when he resigned the office of Prime Minister, on finding that George the Third refused to allow him to redeem the Union pledge of granting Catholic Emancipatiom But that dignity was dragged in the kennel, when he CHAP. VIIL] 1800—1829. 31 afterwards consented to be minister \sith his pledge broken and his faith violated. Yet there are still " Pitt Clubs "—are there not 1— in England ! ! ! _ 3. Ireland lost everj'thiug and gained nothing by the Union. There is one great evil in the political economy of Ireland — there is one incurable plague- spot in the state of Ireland. It is, that nine-tenths of the soil belong to absentees. This evil was felt as a curse, pregnant with every possible woe, even before the Union. It has enormously increased since — the Union must inevitably have increased, and must continue to increase absenteeism. Even all the establishments necessary to carry on the Government, save one — ^that of the Lord Lieutenant — have become absentees. 4. Ireland lost all and gained nothing by the Union. Every promise was broken, every pledge was violated. Ireland stnigded and prayed, and cried out to friends for aid, and to Parliament for relief. 6. At length a change came over the spirit of our proceedings. The people of Ireland ceased to court patronage, or to hope for relief from their friends. They became " friends to themselves :" and after twenty -six years of agitation, they forced the conces- sion of Emancipation. They compelled the most powerful as well as the most tricky, the most daring as well as the most dexteroua, of their enemies to concede Emancipation. 6. Wellington and Peel— blessed be heaven!— we defeated you. Our peaceable combination — blood- less, unstained^ crimeless — was too strong for the mili- tary glory — bah !— of the one, and for aU the little arts, the debasing chicanery, the plausible delusions, of the other. Both at length conceded, but without dignity, without generosity, without candour, with- out sincerity. Nay, there was a littleness in the con- cession almost incredible, were it not part of public history. They emancipated a people, and by the 32 1800—1829. [CHAP. VHJL same act they proscribed au iudividual. Peel and Wellington, we defeated and drove you before us into coerced liberality, and you left every remnant of character behind you as the spoil of the victors. 7. There was an intermediate period in which Emancipation could have been conceded with a good grace, and would have been accepted as a boon. It was the year 1825. In that year, when everything favoured the grant of Emancipation — when it could have been granted with grace and dignity — when it could have been bestowed as the emanation of the mighty minds of statesmen and conquerors, — in 1825, Wellington and Peel successfully opposed Emancipa- tion, and thus preserved that which might have been their glorious triumph, to become the instrument of their own degradation. 8. Let it not be forgotten that the House of Commons three times during these twenty-nine years passed an Emancipation bill ; but that biU was, each of those times, rejected by the House of Lords. The Lords, however, yielded to the fourth assault, backed as it was by the power of the Irish nation. We at length defeated the perpetual enemy of Ireland— the British House of Lords. 9. Let it be recollected that our struggle was for " freedom of conscience." Oh ! how ignorant are the men who boast of Protestatt tolerance, and declaim on Catholic bigotry ! This calumny was one of the worst evils we formerly endured. At present^ we laugh it to scorn. The history of the persecutions perpetrated by the Protestant Established Church of England, upon Catholics on the one hand, and upon Presbyterians and other Protestant dissenters on the other, is one of the blackest in the page of time. 10. The Irish Catholics, three times since the Reformation restored to power, never persecuted a single person — blessed be the great God ! caAP. IX. 1829—1840. 33 CHAPTER IX. Years 1829—1840. 1. Theee never was a people on the face of the earth so cruelly, so basely, so unjustly treated as the people of Ireland have been by the English Government. 2. The Catholics being emancipated, the people of England had leisure to awaken to a sense of the delusions practised upon them, by false alarms, on the score of religion and loyalty. The delusion was most . valuable to the deluders. At length the monstrous Qature of vvhat was called Parliamentary representa- tion stared the British people in the face. It was, perhaps, the greatest and most ludicrous farce that had ever been played on the great stage of the world. Luckily a blunder, such as no man out of a madhouse had ever before committed — a blunder of the Duke of Wellington — brought the absurdity and oppression of this farce into so glaring a point of view, as to render it impossible to be continued. He, as a Prime Minis- ter of England, declared his conviction that the nomi- nation and rotten-borough system of England was the actual perfection of political sagacity — nay, he almost exalted it into an emanation of a diviner mind This was irresistible — common sense revolted — Keform was inevitable. 3. Again the most gross and glaring injustice was done to Ireland. It is admitted that, without the aid of the Irish members, Reform could not have been carried. Even the most malignant of our enemies, Stanley, has admitted that fact. To the Irish, there- fore, a deep debt of gratitude was due from the Britisii Reformers. But how have we been requited 1 We have been treated with the basest and most atrocious ingratitude. 4. We are stiU suffering under the ingratitude of the British Reformers — under the consistent injustice of the British I'ories. ^^ 34 \8£y— ■184y. fCHAP. T?; Under fonr heads I will, as briefly as possible sketch our complaints— not the abject com]>laint o? those Avho have no hope in,, and no reliance upon, their own virtue. I make the complaint in the lan- guage of a freeman. I make it on behalf of a people who have made others free, and who deserve to be free themselves. As my only preface, I desire these four facts to be remembered. 1st. That the Irish representatives turned the scale of victory, and carried the English Parliamentary Keform Bill. 2nd. They equally, and by the same Act, carried the Scotch Reform Bill. 3rd. They equally, and by inevitable consequence, carried the English Municipal Reform Bill. 4th. They equally carried the Scotch Municipal Reform Bill. 5. Even if they had not these merits, they were entitled, unless the Union be an insulting mockery—- they were — the Irish were — on the plainest principles of common sense, entitled to equal measures of Reform with England and Scotland. This the Union enti- tled them to. But their case has this glorious adjunct to its right — namely, that they had principally con- tributed to obtain Reform for the two other countries, 6. The complaints of the Irish people are these : My first complaint is, that the Irish did not get an equal Parliamentary Reform BiU with Scotland or with England. " 1st. Ireland did not get the proper portion of representatives. Wales got an increase of six members upon a population of 800,000. Scotland, upon a popu- lation of 2,300,000, got an increase of eight. Ireland, upon a population of 8,000,000, got an increase o; fire. " Scotland increased her representatives by one in five — Wales by one in six — Ireland by one in ten ! ! ! and even one of these was given against not for Ire- land— the second member forthe University of Dublia, Rut let it be one in ten. CHAP. IX.7 IB29 — 154n. 35 " Thus the original iniquity of the Union in respect to representation, wa,s enhanced by the Pteform Bill. Ireland, upon the score of population and property, was entitled to 176 members out of 658 — we offered to take 125. " 2nd. The next and still greater injustice done to Ireland was in the nature of the franchise. " In the towns, though the franchise is nominally the same, yet it is substantially and really infinitely greater in Ireland than in England. A house worth ten pounds a-year gives the franchise in London and in Liverpool. How few, how very few houses are there in either not worth ten pounds a-year ! " A house worth ten pounds a-year gives the fran- chise in Ennis or in Youghal. How few houses are there in these towns, or similar towns in Ireland, worth ten pounds a-year ! To be just, this franchise should, for a ten-pound house in England, allow a five-pound house in Ireland. I complain of the in- justice thus done us, by making that nominally the same which is substantially different. "In the county constituencies, the injustice was still more glaring. We have, in fact, but two fran- chises for the people — they are both of ten pounds clear annual value, ruled to be above rent — an enor- mously high rate of franchise — the one of a freehold tenure, the other for a term of twenty years. " Contrast this with England, which, by her Reform BiU, multiplied her franchises to nine different and distinct species. " England, a rich country, has nine different species of franchise, to meet every gradation of property, including in them the more ancient 40s. freehold franchise. "Ireland, infinitely the poorer country, has, in fact, for her people only two franchises, and these so enor- mously high as ten pounds clear annual value. " Perhaps the annals of history never displayed a more disgusting injustice than was thus committed by the Irish Reform Bi^l upon the Irish people- 36 1529—1840. [CHAP. TX, "The third base act of ingratitude committed by the English Reformers upon the people of Ireland, was the ' base and bloody ' Coercion Act, in the very spirit in which Cromwell and Ireton acted. In that very spirit the first reformed Parliament passed the atrocious Coercion Act, as the reward of the Irish people for their successful efforts in the cause of Reform. Yes ; Anglesey, Stanley, Lord Grey, Brougham — all, all joined in recompensing us for our patriotic exertions in their behaK, by abohshing all constitutional liberty, by annihilating the trial by jury, and leaving the lives, Kberties, and properties of the people of Ireland, at the mercy of mihtary caprice, violence, or passion. " Sacred Heaven ! — were there ever a people so cruelly, so vilely treated as the people of Ireland 1 Here, indeed, was a specimen of the gratitude of British Reformers ! ! ! " The fourth complaint I have to make affects only the British Tories. This injustice is done to the people of Ireland by the House of Lords. England has reformed Municipal Corporations — Scotland has reformed Municipal Corporations. "Ireland was for several years pertinaciously refused reformed Municipal Corporations. " Ireland has been still more outrageously insulted by the Corporate Reform Bill, which has been at length — I will not say conceded, but flung to her — as one would fling offal to a dog. " Ireland has been insulted by the Irish Corporate Reform Bill, flung to her after so many years of refusal : " Firstly — Because, by the Irish Corporate Reform Bill, the new corporations are eviscerated of all tht leal power and authority necessary to enable them to give protection to the people in the corporate towns and cities ; to enable them to watch over the adminis- tration of justice ; to introduce economy in the expen- diture, and moderation in the levying, of local taxes. CHAP. IX,] 1829—1840. 37 In short, the Irish Corporate Reform Act has produced a mongrel species of corporation, more dead than alive —powerless and paralyzed. " Secondly— The Irish Corporate Reform Bill is ar insult to the people of our towns and cities, by the contrast of the municipal franchise in England com- pared with that in Ireland. In the English towns and cities, every man rated to the poor, no matter at how low an amount, is entitled to the municipal franchise, and to be placed accordingly on the burgess roll. In Ireland, on the contrary, no man is entitled to the municipal franchise, or to be placed on the burgess roll, unless he is rated to the full amount of ten pounds. The law thus includes all the English who are rated at all ; and excludes at the same time all the Irish who are rated at any sum under ten pounds, and who form a most numerous class. And this insult is aggravated by those who say that there is a union between England and Ireland ! — Bah ! " Thirdly — Another contrast renders the Irish Cor- porate Reform Bill a yet more aggravated insult to the Irish people. It is this : — In the English towns and cities each person on the burgess roll has his right to vote qualified by the condition f>f pajnng only one tax, namely, the poor-rate, including (if any) the burgess- rate ; whereas in Ireland (for example, in the city of Dublin), every person on the burgess roll lias bis right to vote qualified by the necessity of pacing at least nine, and, almost 'n all instances, no less than eleven, different taxes ~-a necessity which reduces the number of persons actually entitled to make use of the inunicipal franchise by at least one-third." There are other points of inferiority in the Irisli Cor porate Reform Bill which I scorn to take the trouble of noticing. The complaint I make is sufficiently intel- ligible to justify our indignation and utter disgust. With this complaint I close the catalogue of actual wrongs perpetrated upon Ireland since the passing of the Emancipation BijL 08 7^30 38 CONCLDSIOK 7. There remains the question of tithes^ now called Tithe Eentcharge. Ireland feels the ancient and long-continued injustice to the heart's core. The Catholic people of Ireland support and maintain a perfect hierarchy in their own Church. They support four archbishops — twenty-five bishops — many deans — vicars-general — vdth more than three thousan (ine-tbird of Ireland, they at ouce "leave nothing for the natives " ! ! ! It is true, indeed, that Henry afterwards granted a special charter, conceding the benefit of the English laws — and, of course, the right of property — to five Irish families. They were caUed, in pleading, persons "of the five bloods " — de quinque sanguinihus. " TJiese were the O'Nials of Ulster, O'Melachlin. of Meath, the O'Connors of Connaught, the O'Briena of Thomond, and the MacMurroughs of Leinster." — Davies' Hist. ReL p. 45. Henry II. also granted a charter to the " Ostmeii or Esterlings," — that is, the Danes of Waterford, who were inhabitants of that city long before his coming to Ireland — "that they should have and enjoy in Ireland the laws of England, and according to that law be judged and inherit." This appears from the fono^\ing passage in Davies, page 80 : — " Among the pleas of the Crown, 4 Edward 11., we find a confirmation made by Edward I. of a charter of denization, granted by Henry II. to certain Ostmen or Esterlings, who were inhabitants of Waterford long before Henry IE attempted the conquest of Ireland : " ' Edwardus Dei gratia, etc. Justitiario suo Hi- berniie salutem : quia per inspectionem Chartee Dom. Hen. Reg. filii Imperatricis quondam Dom. Hibernice proavi nostri nobis constat, quod Ostmanni de Water- ford legem Anglicorum in EQbernia habere et secun- dem ipsam legem judicari et deduci debent.' " Nor was this a barren privilege. These Danes, tv that charter, obtained protection for their Lives and properties, which none of the Irish save the above named five families obtained. The Irish could not sue as plaintifi's in any court of Jaw. They were not treated as conquered enemies, bound to accept the laws of the conqueror, but entitled to the protection of those laws. They were treated as perpetual ene- mies, whom it was lawful to rob or kill, at the pleasure 46 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. I. or caprice of an English subject. Let the Attorney- General, Sir John Davies, speak. — Hist.Tracts, p. 78. " Tliat the mere Irish were reputed aliens, appearetlj by sundry records, v/herein judgments are demanded , if they shall be answered in actions brought by them " In the Common Plea Rolls of ^ 28 Edward III (which are yet preserved in Bermingham's Tower), this case is adjudged. Simon Neale brought an action against William Newlagh, for breaking his close in Clondalkin, in the county of Dublin : the defendant doth plead that the plaintiff is Hibernicus et non de quinque sanguinibus [' an Irishman, and not of the five bloods'], and demandeth judgment, if he shall be answered. The plaintiff replieth : that he is of the five bloods — to wit, of the O'Neils of Ulster, who, by the grant of the progenitors of our Lord the King, ought to enjoy and use the English liberties, and for freemen ito be reputed in law. " The defendant rejoineth : that the plaintiff is not of the O'Neils of Ulster — nee de quinque sangui- nibus [nor of the five bloods]. And thereupon they are at issue. Which being found for the plaintiff, he had judgment to recover his damages against the defendant. " Again, in the 29 Edward L, before the Justices in Oyer, at Drogheda, Thomas Le Botteler brought an action of detinue against Robert de Almain, for cer- tain goods. The defendant pleadeth : that he is not bound to answer the plaintiff for this — that the plain, tiff is an Irishman, and not of free blood. "And the aforesaid Thomas says that he is an Englishman, and this he prays may be inquired of by the country. Therefore, let a jury come, and so forth : "And the jurors, on their oath, say that the aforesaid Thomas is an Englishman. Therefore it is adjudged that he do receive his damages." Thus these records demonstrate that the Irishman had no protection for his property ; because, if the plaintiff, in either case, had been declared by the jury CHAP, l] proofs, etc. 47 to be an Irishman, the action would be barred, though the injury was not denied upon the record t-v have been committed. The validity of the plea in point of law was also admitted ; so that, no matter what injurj^ might be committed upon the real or personal property of an Irishman, the courts of law afforded him no species of remedy. But this absence of protection was not confined to property ; the Irishman was equally unprotected in his person and in his life. The following quotation from Sir John Davies puts this beyond a doubt.— hist. Tracts, p. 82. " The mere Irish were not only accounted aliens, but enemies, and altogether out of the protection of the law ; so as it was no capital offence to kilJ them : and this is manifest by many records. At a jail de- livery at Waterf ord, before John AVogan, Lord Justice of Ireland, the 4th of Edward the Second, we find it recorded among the pleas of the Crown of that year, that Robert Wallace being arraigned of the death of John, the son of Juor MacGillemory, by him felo- niously slain, and so forth, came and well acknow- ledged that he slew the aforesaid John, yet he said, that by his slaying he could not commit felony, be- cause he said that the aforesaid John was a mere Irishman, and not of the five bloods, and so forth ; and he further said, that inasmuch as the lord of the aforesaid John, whose Irishman the said John was, ou the day on which he was slain, had sought pajmient for the aforesaid slaj-ing of the aforesaid John as his Irishman, he, the said Eobert, was ready to answer for such payment as was just in that behalf. And thereupon a certain John Le Poer came, and for our Lord the King said, that the aforesaid John, the son of Juor MacGillemory, and his ancestors of that sur- name, from the time in which our Lord Henry Fitz- Empress, heretofore Lord of Ireland, the ancestor of our Lord the now King, was in Ireland, the law of England in Ireland thence to the present day, of right A8 OBSERVATiO^'S, [CHAP. I. had and ought to have, and according to that hiw ought to be judged and to inherit. And so pleaded the character of denization granted to the Ostnien recited before ; all which appeareth at large in the said record : wherein we may note, that the killing of An Irishman was not punished by our law as man- slaughter, which is felony and capital (for our law did neither protect his life nor avenge his death), but by a fine or pecuniary punishment, which is called anericke, according to the Brehon or Irish law." The following record speaks still more distinctly the perfect right claimed and enjoyed by the English in Ireland, of slaughtering with impunity the "mere Irish." It records a case tried at Limerick, before the same Lord Chief Justice Wogan, in the fourth year of Edward the Second, and is as follows : " William Fitz-Koger, being arraigned for the death of Roger de Cantelon, by him feloniously slain, comes and says that he could not commit felony by means of such killing ; because the aforesaid Roger was an Irishman, and not of free blood. And he further says that the said Roger was of the surname of O'Hederisca], and not of the surname of Cantelon ; and of this he puts himself on the country, and so forth. And the jury upon their oath say, tnat the aforesaid Roger was an Irishman of the surname of O'Hederiscal, and for an Irishman was reputed all his life • and there- fore the said WiHiam.as far as regards the aforesaid felony, is acquitted. But inasmuch as the aforesaid Roger O'Hederiscal was an Irishman of our Lord the King, the aforesaid William was re-committed to jail, antil he shall find pledges to pay five marks to our Lord the King, for the value of the aforesaid Irish- man." One more quotation from Sir John Davies will place in the clearest light the spirit in which the Eng- lish party governed Ireland, and the results of such misgovernment. It will also serve to show that there is nothing new under the sun ; as the pretence of the o'IfAP. L] PROOFS, tTC. 49 modern faction that tliey are able to root out the Irish, is but the repetition of the factious cry oi former days. The only difference is this : that in the olden day it might have been realized ; at the pre- sent, it is utterly impossible it should be successful. The following quotation is from p. 85 of B a vies* Tracts : " In all the Parliament RoUs which are extant, from the fortieth year of Edward the Third, when the Sta- tutes of Kilkenny were enacted, till the reign of King Henry the Eighth, we find the degenerate and disobe- dient English called rebe],« ; but the Irish which were not in the King's peace, are called enemies. Stat'ote Kilkenny, c. 1, 10, and 11 ; 2 Henry the Fourth, c. 24 ; 10 Henry the Sixth, c. 1, 18 ; 18 Henry the Sixth, c. 4, 5 ; Edward the Fourth, c. 6 ; 10 Henry the Seventh, o. 17. All these statutes speak of English rebels and Irish enemies ; as if the Irish had never been in the condition of subjects, but always out of the protection of the law, and were indeed in worse case than aliens of any foreign realm that was in amity with the Crown of England. For, by divers heavy penal laws, the English were forbidden to marry, to foster, to make gossips with the Irish, or to have any trade or commerce in their markets or fairs ; nay, there was a law made no longer since than the twenty-eighth year of Henry the Eighth, that the English should not marry with any person of Irish blood, though he had gotten a charter of denization, unless he had done both homage and fealty to the King in the Chancery, and were also bound by recog- nizance with sureties, to continue a loyal subject. Whereby it is manifest, that such as had the govern- ment of Ireland under the Crown of England, did intend to make a perpetual separation and enmity between the English and the Irish, pretending, m doubt, that the English should in the end root out the Irish ; wliich the English not being able to do, aaiued a i^erpetual war between the nations, which ^ OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. h continued four hundred and odd years, and -would have lasted to the world's end, if, in the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Irish had not been broken and conquered by the sword, and since the beginning of his Majesty's reign been protected and governed by the law." The compliment included in the last phrase to the then reigning monarch, James I.^as naturally enough to be expected from Sir John Davies, who was his Attorney-General ; but it will soon appear that the law was scarcely less destructive than the sword, and that the Irish had very little cause to rejoice at the transition. It is not, however, to be taken for granted that it was the sword alone which had been used against the Irish during the preceding reigns. The vexations of law were superadded to the cruelty of open violence; and the statutes passed by the Parliament of the English Pale, afforded specimens of the senseless, and indeed ludicrous, malignity of the English party against the Irish. I think it right to add the follow- ing specimens : — " 10th Henry the Sixth. This was an Act entitled, An Act, that no person, liege or alien, shall take mer- chandize or things to be sold, to faire, market, oi other place, amongst the Irish enemies, &lc. ; whereby it was enacted, ' That no merchant, nor other person, liege or alien, should use, in time of peace nor warre, to any manner of faire, market, or other place amongst the Irish enemies, with merchandize or things to bo sold, nor send them to them, if it were not to acquite any prisoner of them that were the King's liege men ; and if any liege man did the contrary, he should be holden and adjudged a felon, and that it should be lawful for every liege man to arrest and take such merchants and persons, with their merchandize and things, and to send them to the next gaole, there to remain until they should be delivered as law requlreth, Rud the King to have one halfe of the said goods. CHAP. L] PROOFS, ETC. 61 and lie or they that should take them the other halfe' — as by the said Act more at large appeareth." It is quite impossilie in the annals of English his- tory to meet such another specimen of legislation as that which made an English merchant a felon, for no other crime than that of selling his goods at the bes1 profit he could get. There was, however, another statute passed in the same 10th year of Henry VI., which shows that there was to be no peace nor truce with the Irish ; but that they were, in time of truce, or even of peace, to be slaughtered as enemies. It was an Act intituled — " An Act, that every liege man shall take the Irish conversant as espialls amongst the English, and make of them as of the King's enemies ; whereby it was enacted, ' That it should be lawfull for every liege man, to take all manner of Irish enemies, which in time of peace and truce should come and converse amongst the English lieges, to spie their secresies, force, waves, and subtilties, and to make of them as of the King's enemies.' " It will be observed that these Acts of Parliament were passed in the year 1432, that is, 260 years after the English invasion of Ireland by Henry II. It appears that the latter of these Acts was not considered sufficiently sanguinary, for the same English partj^ passed another law in the year 1465, the fifth year of Edward IV., intituled — " An Act, that it shall be lawfull to kill any that is found robbing by day or night, or going or coming to rob or steal, having no f aithfull man of good name or fame in their company in EngHsh apparrel :" Whereby it was enacted — " That it shall be lawfull to all manner of men that find any theeves robbing by day or by night, or going- or coming to rob or steal, in or oat, going or coming, having no faithfull man of good name in their com- pany in English apparrel, upon any of the liege people of the King, that it shall be lawfull to take and kiJl 52 OBSERVATIONS, [OHAP. I those, and to cut off their heads, without any impeach- ment of our Sovereign Lord the King, his heirs officers, or ministers, or of any otliers." Thus, in truth, the only fact necessary to be ascer- tained, to entitle an Englishman to cut off the head of another man, was, that such other should be an ' Irishman. For if the Irishman was not robbing, or coming from robbing, who could say but that he might be going to rob — "in or out," as the statute has it ? And the Englishman— the cutter-off of the head — was made sole judge of where the Irishman was going, and of what he intended to do. The followers of Mahomet, with regard to their treatment of their Grecian subjects, were angels of mercy when compared with the English in Ireland. Care was also taken, that no part of the effect of the law should be lost, by the mistaken humanity of any individual Englishman; for an additional stimulant was given by the following section of the Act : " And that it shall be lawful by authority of the said Parliament, to the said bringer of the said head, and his ayders to the same, for to destrain and levy by their own hands, of every man having one plowland in the barony where the said thief was so taken, two- pence ; and every man having half a plowland in the said barony, one penny ; and every other man having one house and goods to the value of fourty shillings, one penny; and of every other cottier having house and smoak, one half -penny." After such statutes as these, it is matter of little sur- })rise that so late as the 28th year of the reign of Henry VIII.— that is, in the year 1537 — an Act was passed, intituled, " An Act against marrying, or fos- tering with, or to. Irishmen." By this Act it was prohibited, under the severest penalties, to marry an Irishman • but the legislature was not so ungallant as to prohibit marriage with Irish women. That would have been inflicting the severest possible pu- uishnieut upon themselves i and considering the .'HAP. r.] PROOFS. ETC. 53 uatural antipathy tliat the English in those days en- tertained against everything Irish, it furnishes the strongest proof that the Irish women at that time afforded the same models of beauty and goodness foi which they are celebrated at the present day. Even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the spirit oi hatred and contempt of the Irish animated the legis- lature. So late as the year 1569, an Act was passed (in tho 11th year of her reign), intituled, "An Act prohibiting any Irish lord or captaine of this realm e, to foster to any of the lords of the same reahne ;" whereby it was enacted — " That no lord nor captaine of the Irish of Ireland, should from henceforth foster to any earl, viscount, baron, or lord of the same realme ; and that what Irish lord or captaine soever, that from henceforth should receive or take to foster the child mulier, or bastard of any of the said earls, viscounts, barons, or lords, the same should be deemed and adjudged high-treason in the taker, and also felony in the giver, according to the taxation and discretion of the lord-deputie, governour, or governours, and counceU of this realme for the time being." Such were the laws made by the Parliament of the English settlers in Ireland, in the spirit of contempt and hatred of the Irish people. Yet the extent of territory which belonged to the English was, during all this time, extremely limited. How ignorant iy the present generation of the fact, that for centuries England claimed the actual dominion of only twelve of our counties ; and, even in these, the English laws were only in force in the parts actually occupied by men of English descent ! Upon this point the authority of Davies is distinct and decisive. — Hist. Tracts^ p. 93. " True it is, that King John made twelve shires ill Leinster and Munster, namely, Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Uriel, Catherlogh, Kilkenny, Wexford, Water- ford, Cork,_ Limerick, Kerry, and Tipperary. Yet these counties stretched no farther than the lands oj 54 OBSSRVATIU.NS, ICHAP. I. vihe English colonies extended. In them only were the English laws published and put in execution ; and in them only did the itinerant judges make their cir- cuits and visitations of justice, and not in the countries possessed by the Irish, which contained two-thirds of thQ kingdom at least ; and therefore King Edward the First, before the court of Parliament was established in Ire- land, did transmit the statutes of England in this form." Davies then sets forth the writ for the promulgatiou of the statutes in Ireland : it is in Latin of course, and is stated to be for the common utility of our people ; but that promulgation is confin>ed to "the several places belonging to us in our land of Ireland." Davies then proceeds thus : — " By which writ, and by aU the pipe-rolls of that time, it is manifest that the laws of England were published and put in execution only in the counties which were then made and limited, and not in the Irish countries, which were neglected and left wild." It appears, however, that although there were twelve counties thus nominally under English domi- nion, yet, before the reign of Henry the Eighth, they had shrunk into four ; at least, that in not more than four were the English laws obeyed and executed. For Davies, in speaking of the Acts called Poyning's Laws, after alleging that they were intended for all Ireland, is forced to confess that they were executed only within a very limited portion of that country. His words, at p. 177, are : " And that the execution of all these laws had no greater latitude than the Pale, is manifest by the sta- tute of 13th Henry the Eighth, c. 3, which recites, ' that at that time the King's la.ws were obeyed and executed in the four shires only ;' and yet the Earl of Surrey was then Lieutenant of Ireland, a governor much feared of the King's enemies, and exceedingly honoured and beloved of the King's subjects. And the instructions given by the Stati) of Ireland to John Allen, Master of the j.iolJs employed in England near CUAP. r.] PROOFS, ETC. 65 about the same time, do declare as ranch ; "wherein, among other thinp, he is required to advertise the King that his land of Ireland was so much decayed, that the King-'s laws were not obeyed twenty miles in compass. "Whereupon grew that byword used by the Irish, viz., ' That they dwelt by west the law, which dwelt beyond the river of the Barrow ;' which is within thirty miles of Dublin. The same is testified by Baron Finglas, in his discourse of the decay of Ire- land, which he wrote about the twentieth year of King Henry the Eighth." It will be a matter of astonishment that the Eng- lish dominion had shrunk into the narrow limits of four counties, to any person acquainted with the hideous system of daily recurring misrule and tyranny which was constantly practised towards the Irish, as weU as towards the weaker portion of the English settlers, by the more powerful of the English lords and proprietors. These proprietors adopted and ex- aggerated the most oppressive portions of the English feudal system, and they added to that every injustice committed by the more powerful upon the weak amongst the natives. The foUowing passage from Davies (p. 131) wiU show what must have been the effects of such accumulated oppressions ; especially as they were practised with little intermission for more than four centuries : " The most wicked and mischievous custom of all, was that of 'coin and livery,' which consisted in taking of man's meat, horse meat, and money, of all the inhabitants of the country, at the -^vill and plea- sure of the soldier ; who, as the phrase of the Scrip- ture is, did eat up tlie people as it were bread ; for that he had no other entertainment. This extortior was originally Irish ; for they used to lay honagJit^ upon their people, and never gave their soldier any other pay. But when the English had learnt it, they * •' Bonaght " was the Irish term for billeting of soldiers, with a right to be maintained in food. 56 OBSHRVATI0K6, [CHAl'. I. used it with more insolence, and made it more in- tolerable J for this oppression was not temporary, nor limited either to place or time ; but because there was everywhere a continual war, either offensive or defensive, and every lord of a country, and every marcher, made war and peace at his pleasure, it be- came universal and perpetual ; and indeed was the most heavy oppression that ever was used in any Christian or heathen kingdom. And, therefore, vox oppressorum, this crying sin did draw down as great or greater plagues upon Ireland, than the oppression of the Israelites did draw upon the land of Egypt. For the plagues of Egypt, though they were grievous, were but of a short continuance ; but the plagues of Ireland lasted four hundred years together." The natural consequences followed ; they may aa well, and cannot be better described, than in tli& words of Davies : " This extortion of coin and livery produced two notorious effects : first, it made the land waste ; next, it made the people idle ; for when the husbandman had laboured all the year, the soldier in one night consumed the fruits of all his labour — longique perit labor irritus anni. Had he reason then to manure the land for the next year 1 Or rather, might he not complain as the shepherd in Yirgil : ** * Tmpius hffic tam ciilta novalia miles liabebit ? Barbaras has segetes ? En quo discordia cives Perduxit miseros ? En quels consevimus agros ?' And hereupon of necessity came depopulation, banishment, and extirpation of the better sort of sub- jects ; and such as remained became idle and lookers* on, expecting the event of those miseries and g\4. times : so as their extreme extortion and oppression hath been the true cause of the idleness of this Irish nation ; and that ratJier the vulgar sort have chosen to be beggars in foreign countries, than to manure their fruitful land at home." (pp. 132, 133.) CHAP. I.J PROOFS, ETC. 67 The same result is produced by the oppvession of the present dcay. The Irish for four centuries suffered the miseries of " coin and livery," as they now suffer from tithes and absentee rents. They are still driven, not as beggars,, but as labourers, to foreign lands, and to cultivate every soil but their own. Thus, during four centuries, the property of the Irish had no protection. An Irishman could not maintain an action in the English courts of law, no matter what injury might be done to his property. An Irishman had no protection for his person or lus life. It was not, in point of law, a trespass, or punishable as such in any action or civil suit, to beat, or wound, or imprison. To murder him by the basest mode of assassination was no felony nor crime in the eye of the law. We have seen with what perfect im punity he could be and was plundered, under the names of " coin and livery." It might be supposed by some, that the Irish were unwilling to receive the English laws, or to be received into the condition of subjects. The Attorney-General, Davies, however, tells us the contrary. At p. 87, he puts the question thus : — ^ " But perhaps the Irish in former times did wilfully refuse to be subject to the laws of England, and would not be partakers of the benefit thereof, though the Cro-wTi of England did desire it ; and therefore they were reputed aliens, outlaws, and enemies 1 Assuredly the contrary' doth appear." And in page 101, he expressly declares — " That for the space of two hundred years at least, after the first arrival of Henry the Second in Ireland, the Irish would have gladly embraced the laws of England, and did earnestly desire the benefit and pro- jection thereof; which, being denied them, did of necessity cause a continual bordering war between the English and Irish." It does, indeed, appear that the reason why that wise monarch. King Edward III., did not extend the bene- 68 OBSEEVATIOXS, l<^'HAP. I. fit of English protection and English law to the Irish people, was, that the great lords of Ireland— the A^icklows, the Stanlej^s, and the Rodens of the day — certified to the King — " That the Irish might not be naturalized without being of damage or prejudice to them, the said lords, or to the Crown." This appears by a writ, directed by that monarch to the Lord Justice of Ireland, commanding him to consult and take the opinion of the great lords of Ireland, with the return thereon, amongst the rolls in the Tower of London, quoted at length by Davies, at p. 88. I will refer, for the present, only to one passage more in the Tracts of that Attorney-General, in fur- ther illustration of the text of my first chapter. It is to be found at page 90 : — "This, then, I note as a great defect in the civil policy of this kingdom ; in that, for the space of three hundred and fifty years at least after the conquest first attempted, the English laws were not communi- cated to the Irish, nor the benefit and protection thereof allowed unto them, though they earnestly desired and sought the same : for as long as they were out of the protection of the law, so as every Englishman might oppress, spoil, and kill them with- out control, how was it possible they should be other than outlaws and enemies to the Crown of England % If the King would not admit them to the condition of subjects, how could they learn to acknowledge and obey him as their sovereign 1 AVhen they might not converse or commerce with any civil man, nor enter into any town or city without peril of their lives ; whither should they fly but into the woods and mnnntains, and there live in a wild and barbarous manner]" The passages which I have already quoted, shov; that the Irish sought for, but could not obtain, any species of legal protection. It would bfi too tedious 'HAP. r.J PROOFS. i^TC. 59 ' > enter into a detail of all tlie horrors inflicted upon tiiem by the lawless power and treachery of the Eng- K-rl] settlers. XotLing could be more common than .scenes of premeditated slaughter — massacres perpe- trated under the guise of friendly intercourse, into wliicli the natives permitted themselves to be betrayed Xo faith was kept with the Irish : no treaty nor agreement was observed any longer than it was the interest of the English settlers to observe it, — or whilst t]iey were not strong enough to violate it with safety. It would be equally shocking and tedious to recite all the well-attested acts of cruelty and perfidy which were perpetrated on the Irish people by the order or cijnnivance of the English Government. There is in the College of Dublin a State Paper of considerable importance. It is a memorial presented by a Captain riiomas Lee, drawn up with great care and with very singular abilitj^, written about the year 1594, and ad- flressed to Queen Elizabeth, giving her a detailed account of the real state of Ireland. It was a confi- dential document, for the personal information of the Queen. I shall have occasion to extract many pas- sages of it. In the meantime, I mil give, from other authors, two or three instances only, of the horrible cruelty exercised towards the liish by the English governors. My first quotation is from Leland's History of Ire- land, Book iv. He tells us, chap. 2, that when, in ;he year 1579, the garrison of Smerwick, in Kerry, surrendered upon mercy to Lord Deputy Gray, he ordered upwards of seven hundred of them to be put to the sword or hanged. " That mercy for which they sued was rigidly denied them ; Wingfield was commissioned to disarm them ; and when this service was performed, an English com- pany was sent into the fort and the garrison was 1' tchered in cold blood : nor is it without pain that we find a service so horrid, so detestable, committed u. Sir Walter Raleigh." tJO ORSEKVATTONS, fClIAP. I. It also appears that for this and .^uch other exploits, Sir Walter Raleigh had 40,000 acres of land bestowed upon him in the county of Cork, which he afterwards sold to Kichard, first Earl of Cork. The next instance is almost contemporaneous. It introduces another historic name. Shortly before the same year, 1579 — " Walter, Earl of Essex, on the conclusion of a peace, invited Brian O'Nial of Claneboy, with a great number of his relations, to an entertainment, where they lived together in great harmony, making good cheer for three days and nights ; when, on a sudden, O'Nial was surprised with an arrest, together with his brother and his wife, by the Earl's orders. His friends were put to the sword before his face, nor were the women and children spared. He was him- self, with his brother and wife, sent to Dublin, where fchey were cut in quarters. This increased the dis^ nfl'ection, and produced the detestation of all the trish : for this chieftain of Claneboy was the senior of his family, and as he had been universally esteemed, so he was now as universally regretted." — MS. Trinity College, Duhlin. The next instance I shall mention, occurred in the year 1577. It is thus introduced by Morrison the historian (foho edition, p. 3) : — " After the 19th year of Queen Elizabeth, videlicit, anno 1577, the Lords of Connaught and O'Rorke,'' says Morrison, " made a composition for their lands with Sir Nicholas Malby, governor of that province ; wherein they were content to yield the Queen so large a rent and such services, both of labourers to work upon occasion of fortifying, and of horse and foot to serve upon occasion of war, that their minds seemed not yet to be alienated from their wonted awe and reverence to the Crown of England. Yet, in the same year, a horrible massacre was committed by the English at Mulloghmaston on some hundreds of the most peaceable of the Irish gentry, invited thither :nAP. I.] TKOOFS, ETC. 61 nil tlie public faith and under the protection of Govern- liient.'' The manner of this massacre appears to have been ."Jiis (the s]iot is now part of the King's County) : — "The English published a proclamation, in\^ting all the well-aftected Irish to an interview on the Eath- luore, at Mulloghmaston, engaging at the same time fur their security, and that no evil Avas intended. In cunsequence of this engagement, the well-affected Ccime to Rathmore aforesaid ; and soon after they were assembled, they found themselves surrounded by three or four lines of English horse and foot com- pletely accoutred, by whom they were ungenerously attacked and cut to pieces ; and not a single man e.-caped."* This seems to be one of the massacres particularly alluded to by Captain Lee in his memorial. Speak- ing of the treachery and cruelty of the English go- vernors of Ireland, he says : — " They have drawn unto them by protection, three * There is the following more detailed account of this massacre in the quarto edition of Leland's History, printed in Dublin by Marchbank and -Moiicrieffe, in 1773. Here are Leland's words: — "The Irish MS. annals of this reign mention a very dishonourable trans- uction of this lord on his return to Ulster. It is here given in a literal translation from the Irish, with which the author was favoured by Mr. O'Connor, anno 1745. " ' A solemn peace and concord was made between the Earl of Essex and Phelim O'Mall, however, at a feast wherein the Earl entertained that chieftain ; and at the end of their good cheer O'Niall and his wife were seized; their friends who attended were put to the sword before their faces ; Phelim, together with his wife and brother, was conveyed to Dublin, where they were cut up in quarters. This execution gave universal discontent and horror.' '•In like manner, these annals assure us, that a few years after, the Irish chieftains of the King's and Queen's counties were invited by the English to a treaty of accommodation; but when they arrived at the place of conference, they were instantly surrounded by troops, and all butchered on the spot. Such relations would be the more sui-prising if these annals, in general, expressed great virulence against the English and their government ; but they do not appear to differ essentially from the printed histories, except in the minuteness with wli'ch they record the local transactions and adventures of the Irish, and f"oa"^times ther expressly condemn their coiintiymcn for their ' rebellions against theii prince.' "—Book Iv., chap. 3, voL IL, v- 537. (Note.) 62 01iSJSllVATI0]SS, [CHAP. 1. or four hundred of these country people, under colouc to do your Majesty's service, and brought them to a place of meeting, where your garrison soldiers were appointed to be, who have there most dishonourably put them all to the sword ; and this hath been by the consent and practice of the lord deputy for the time being." Perhaps the instances of cruelty to individuals and to private families are more heart-rending than the wholesale massacres to which I have referred. The following quotation is from Morrison's History of Ireland, (folio, p. 10) : — " About the year 1590 died M'Mahon, chieftain of Monaghan, who, in his lifetime, had surrendered his country into her Majesty's hands, and received a re- grant thereof under the broad seal of England, to him and to his heirs male ; and in default of such, to his brother Hugh Roe M'Mahon, with other remainders. And this man dying without issue male, his said brother came up to the state, that he might be settled in his inheritance, hoping that he might be counte- nanced and cherished as her Majesty's patentee. ^ But he found, as the Irish say, he could not be admitted until he promised six hundred cows ; for such, and no other, were the Irish bribes. He was afterwards 'imprisoned for failing in part of his payment • and in a few days enlarged, with promise that tne lord deputy himself would go and settle him in his county of Monaghan ; whither his lordship took his journey shortly after, with M'Mahon in his company. At their first arrival the gentleman was clapt into bolts ; and in two days after he was indicted, arraigned, and executed at his own door ; all done, as the Irish said, by such ofhcers as the lord deputy carried with him for that purpose from Dublin. The treason for which he was condemned was, because, two years before, he, pretending a rent due under him out of Fearney, levied forces and made a distress for the same, which, by the English law, adds my author, may perhaps CHAP. l.J I'llOOFS, ETC. 63 be treason ; but in that country, never before subject to law, it was thought no rare thing nor great offence. The marshal. Sir Henry Bagnal, had part of the country ; Captain Hensflower was made seneschal of it, and had M'Mahon's chief house and part of the land ; and to divers others, smaller portions of land were assigned ; and the Irish spared not to say that these men were all the contrivers of his death, and that every one was paid something for his share." _ Another instance I select from a multitude of simi- lar cases mentioned by Lee in his memorial. " The Irish who have once offended," says Lee, in his memorial to Elizabeth "live they never so honestly afterwards, if they grov/ into wealth, are sure to be cut off by one indirect way or other." Of this he gives the following melancholy instance : "In one of her Majesty's civil shires, there livo( an Irishman peaceably and quietly as a good subject many years together, whereby he grew into greal wealth ; which his landlord thirsting after, and desi- rous to remove him from his land, entered into prac- tice with the sheriff of the shire to despatch thia simple man, and divide his goods between them. Whereupon they sent one of his own servants for him, and he coming mth him, they presently took the man and hanged him ; and, keeping the master prisoner, they went immediately to his dwelling and shared his substance, which was of great value, between theuL turning his wife and many children to begging. After they had kept h^jn (the master) fast for a season with the sheriff, they carried him to the castle of Dublin, where he lay bye the space of two or three terms ; and he, having no matter objected against him where- upon to be tried by law, they, by their credit and countenance, being both English gentlemen, and he who was the landlord the chiefest man in the shire, informed the lord deputy so hardly of him, as that, without indictment or trial, they executed him, to the great scandal of her Maie.sty's state, and the impeach- 04 OBSEKNTATIONSj [CHAP. J ment of her laws. Yet this, and the like exemplarj/ justice," adds he, "is ministered to your Majesty '<| poor subjects there." Individual instances of this kind make oppression more familiar to the human mind, and leave a stronger impression on the recollection, from their individu- ality. ^ They also illustrate the working of the system. They, in fact, bring it home more pointedly and dis- tinctly to the eye of reason and common sense. But we must not lose sight of the more general de- scription of crimes perpetrated by the Government, and with the sanction of the persons who from time to time acted as the Sovereign's deputies at the head of that Government. Here is a passage of this description from the same memorial : — " There have also been divers others pardoned by your Majesty, who have been held very dangerous men, and after their pardon have lived very dutifully, and done your Majesty great service ; yet upon small suggestions to the lord deputy that they should be spoilers of your Majesty's subjects, notwithstanding their pardon, there have been bonds demanded of them for their appearance at the next sessions. They, knowing themselves guiltless, have most will- ingly entered into bonds, and appeared ; and there (no matter being found to charge them) they have been arraigned only for being in company with some of your Majesty's servitors, at the killing of notorious known traitors, and for that only have been con- demned of treason, and lost their lives ! And this dishonest practice hath been by the consent of your deputies." But it was not treachery alone, however hideous and sanguinary, which formed, as it were, the princi- pal ingredient in the Enghsh Government of Ireland. Direct assassination — wholesale assassination — was another instrument of that Government ! In short, there were no crimes that man ever pcrfjetrated JHAP, I.j PHOOFS, ETO. 65 against man, or that fiends of hell, in their satanic malignity, ever invented, which were not actually made portion of the familiar mode lay which the English managed the government of Ireland during the period alluded to in the first chapter, and t& which these illustrations refer. Let me give one specimen more, from the same memorial of wholesale villany : — "When there have been notable traitors in arms Against your Majesty, and sums of money offered for their heads, yet could by no means be compassed, they have in the end (of their own accord) made means for their pardon, offering to do great service, which they have accordingly performed, to the con- tentment of the State, and thereby received pardon, and have put in sureties for their good behaviour, and to be answerable at all times at assizes and sessions, when they should be called ; yet, notwith- standing, there have been secret commissions given for the murdering of these men " ! ! ! It is scarcely credible these things should be done by a Government calling itself Christian, and by a people calling themselves Christians. Yet, they are facts — recorded of an English Protestant Government and people ; not by Catholic or inimical writers, but by Protestant historians and Protestant officers, high in command and authority under the Protestant Crown of England : such docu- ments being addressed in general to the Sovereign ; and being, as to the statement of facts, of the most unimpeachable authenticity. Here is another specimen : " When, upon the death of a great lord of a conntry, there hath been another nominated, chosen, and created, he hath been entertained with fair speeches, taken down into Ms country, and for the offences of other men indictments have been framed against him, whereupon he hath been found guilty, and so lost his life _; which hath bred auch terro* in other great lo^o^ 66 OBF^ETlVATTOl^fc, [^CliAP. i of tlie lilce measure, as raaketh them stand upon thost tenns whidi they now do." Another specimen : " A great part of that unquietness of O'Donneir country, came by Sir William Fitzwilliams his placing of one Willis there to be sheriif ; who had with hini three hundred of the very rascals and scum of that king dom, which did rob and spoil that people, ravish their udves and daughters, and make havoc of all, wliich bred such a discontentment, as that the whole country was up in arms against them, so as if the Earl o\ Tyrone had not rescued and delivered him and them out of the country, they had all been put to th«j sword." The savages of New Zealand never were, nor coulij have been, guilty of such barbarities, as were tho monsters who administered the English Government in Ireland. Here is another description of the stat« of Ireland in the reign of Edward the Second. I insert it to show that at the distance of centuries the British policy in Ireland was the same. It is taken from the History of Ireland written by a distin- guished Protestant clergyman named Leland These are his words : — " The oppression exercised with impunity in every particular district ; the depredations everywhere com- mitted among the inferior orders of the people, not by open enemies alone, but by those who call them- selves friends and protectors, and who justified their outrages on the plea of lawful authority ; their avarice and cruelty, their plundering and massacres, were still more ruinous than the defeat of an army, or the loss of a city ! The wTetched sufferers had neither power to repel, nor law to restrain or vindicate their injuries. In times of general commotion, laws the most wisely framed, and most equitably administered, are but of little moment. But now the very source of pu blic justice was corrupted and poisoned." — Leland^ Book ii. chap. a. CHAP. LJ l»KOOFS, ETC. 67 In a previous passage, Leland had given ns the rea^ cause why this horrible state of misgovernment was continued ; and we find the very same principle in existence which actuates the conduct of the great Orange leaders of the present day : — ''The true cause which for a long time fatally opposed the gradual coalition of the Irish and Eng- lish race under one form of government, was, that tlie great English settlers found it more for their immediate interest, that a free course should be left to theii oppressions ; that many of those whose lands they roveted should be considered as aliens • that they ihould be furnished for their petty wars by arbitrary exactions : and, in their rapines and massacres, be freed from the terrors of a rigidly impartial and revere tribunal." — Lela.nd, Book ii. chap. 1. I give another passage from the same Protestant rlergyman, Leland ; because it describes the modus snendi in the oppression of the Irish, by giving power {i;id authority to persons resident in Irelaiid, who {tttected to be the only friends of the English interest. It is just the story of the Orangeists of the present day. Powerwas given, and the administration ot atfairs committed, to the persons whose only attach- ment to English connexion was, that it gave then] the means of committing crime with impunity. These persons fabricated, outrages, or exaggerated any crimes that might have been reaUy committed They were accordingly entrusted with authority to put down disturbances and preserve the peace. That power they naturally, and, indeed, necessarily abused But I had better use the words of Leland himself :- '^'Riot, rapine, and massacre, and all the tremen- dous effects of anarchy, were the natural conse- quences. Every inconsiderable party, who, undei pretence of loyalty, received the King's commissioij to repel the adversary in some particular district^ became pestilent enemies to the inhabitants, Tht;it properties, their lives, the chastity of their familici 66 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. I. were all exposed to barbarians, who sought only to gUit their bnital passions : and by their horrible excesses, saith the annalist, purchased the curse of God and man." — Leland, Book ii. chap. 3. That these disorders and crimes were encouraged, or at least not discountenanced, either in the words or by the example of the English viceroys, is a melancholy fact, that appears in every page of Irish history. They could not, without arrant hypocrisy, discourage in others that which they practised on a larger scale themselves. The following is the general account given of the Irish viceroys, by the same Pro- testant historian whom I have so often quoted : — " At a distance from the supreme seat of power, and with the advantage of being able to make such re- presentations of the state of Ireland as they pleased, the English vicegerents acted with the less reserve. They were generally tempted to undertake the conduct of a disordered State, for the sake of private emolu- ment, and their object was pursued without delicacy or integrity ; sometimes with inhuman violence." — Leland^ Book iii chap. 1. Speaking of the departure of one of them, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, Leland has a short passage, which, with a small variation in phrase, might serve as the general character of the English governors of Ire- land : — "Fumival (chief governor) departed with the execration of aU those, clergy and laity alike, whose lands he had ravaged!, whose castles he had seized, whose fortunes had been impaired by his extortion and exactions, or who had shared in the distress arising from the debts he left undischarged." — Leland^ Book iii. chap. 1. It will be perceived that the English governors be- haved with the same impartial and indiscriminate treacherj^ and cruelty to the descendants of the Eng- lish and to the native Irish themselves. Nothing can exceed the baseness of the means which were CflAP. L] PROOFS, BTC. 69 anblushingly resorted to by the monster Cxovemment f)f Ireland. I select as an instance, f rom Hollinslied's Chronicles, the mode in which, in the reign of Henry tlie Eighth, the insurrection of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald was terminated. Perjury, murder, and blasphemy so richly concur in capping the climax of atrocity and Ijaseness, that it may alone serve to demonstrate the tpirit in which Ireland was governed. The passage from HoILinshed is this : — " With Fitzgerald, Sir WHliam Brereton skirmished so tiercelie, as both the sides were rather for the great slaughter disadvantaged, than either part by anie great victory furthered- Master Brereton, therefore, perceiving that rough nets were not the fittest tu take such peart birds, gave his advice to the lord deputie to grow with Fitzgerald by faire means to some rea- 2onable composition. The deputie liking of the motion, craved a parlie, sending certayne of the Eng- lish as nostages to Thomas his campe with a protec- tion directed unto him, to come and go at will and pleasure. Being upon this securitie in conference v^dth Lord Greie, he was persuaded to submit himself e bnto the King his mercie, with the govemour's faith- ful! and undoubted promise that he should be par- doned upon his repaire into England. And to the end that no treachery might be misdeemed of either tide, they both received the sacrament openlie m the campCj as an infallible seale of the covenants and Eonditions of either part agreed ! Heerupon Thomas Fitzgerald, sore against the wiUes of his counceUors, dismist his armie, and rode with the deputie to Dub- lin, where he made short abode, when he sailed to England with the favourable letters of the govemour and the councefl. And as he would have taken his journeie to Windsore where the Court laie, he was intercepted contrarie to his expectation in London waie, and conveied without halt into the towre ! and before his imprisonment was bruited, letters were posted into Ireland, streictlie commanding the deputie 70 OBSERVAinoNs. [chap, l apon sight of them, to apprehend Thomas Fitzgerald his uncles, and to see them with all convenient speed Bhipt into England, which the lord deputie did not slacke. For, having feasted three of the gentlemen at Kilmainan, immediately after their banket (as it is nowe and then scene that sweet meate will have sowre sauce), he caused them to be manacled, and led as prisoners to the castell of Dublin ! and the othei two were so roundlie snatcht up in villages hard by, as they sooner felt their own captivitie, than they had notice of their brethren's calamitie ! The next wind that served into England, these five bre- thren were embarked, to Avit, James Fitzgerald, Walter Fitzgerald, Oliver Fitzgerald, John Fitz- gerald, and Richard Fitzgerald. Three of these gentlemen, James, Walter, and Richard, were knowne to have crossed their nephue Thomas to their power, in liis rebellion ; and therefore were not occasioned to misdoubt anie danger ! But such as in those dales were enemies to the house, incensed the Kiug so sore against it, persuading him that he should never con- quer Ireland as long as anie Geraldine breathed in the countrie : as for making the pathwaie smooth, he was resolved to lop off as well the good and sound grapes as the wild and fruitlesse berries ; whereby ap- peareth how dangerous it is to be a rub, when a king is disposed to sweepe an alley." — IloUinshed, vi. 302. " Thomas Fitzgerald, the 3rd of February, and these five brethren his uncles, were hanged, drawne, and quartered at Tyburne, which was incontinently bruited as well in England and Ireland as in foreign soiles." Idein. 303. One incident during the war with Lord Thomae Pitzgerald, is worth recording : — " One hundred and forty of his (viz., Lord Thomas Fitzgerald's) gallowglasses had the misfortune to be intercepted and made prisoners ; and as intelligence was received that the rebels advanced and prepared to Hive battle, Skeffington (the poveruor). with a bar- CHAP. I.J PROOFS, ETC. 71 barous precaution, ordered these wretcncs to be .^lauglitered ; an order so efiectually executed, that but one of all the number escaped the carnage." — Leland, Book iii. chap. 6. It should be kept in mind that, during the period of four hundred years and upwards, the usual mode of governing both English and Irish within the juris- diction of the Anglican Government, was by martial law ; which was treated as if it really formed part of the common law of Ireland. The abstract of a com- mission to execute martial law, as given by HoUin- Bhed, is worth recording : — " The lord justice from Waterford, upon notice of the trouble dailie increasing, sent a commission of the eleventh of Februarie, to Sir Warham Sentleger to be provost marshaU, authorising him to proceed according to the course of marshaU law against aU offenders, as the nature of his or their oiBfences did merit and deserve ; so that the partie offender bee not able to dispend fortie shillings by the yeare in land or annuitie, or be not woorth ten pounds in goods; also that upon good cawses he male parHe and taike with anie rebeU, and grant him a pro- tection for ten dales : that he shall banish all idlers and sturdy beggars : that he shall apprehend aiders of outlaws and theeves, and execute all idle persons taken by night ! that he shall give in the name and names of such as shall refuse to aid and assist him : that in doing of his service he shall take horse meat and man's meat where he Ust, in anie man's house for one night ; that everie gentleman and nobleman doo deliver him a book of all the names of their servants ind followers ; thiit he shaU put in execution aU fetatutes against merchants and other penal laws, and 6ae same to see to be read and published in every :?hurch by the parson and curate of the same : and that he doo everie month certifie the lord justice how many persons, and of their offences and qualities, that he shall execute and put to death i with sundrie other 72 OBSITRVATIONS. [CBAP. L articles, which generaiiie are comprised iu every com- Jiiission for the marshall law." — Hollinshed, vi. 429. This is given only as a specimen. It is mentioned as a common practice, and is spoken of thus by one of the chief governors. He talks, it will be seen, of " giving this power to sundrie ;" so that he was not at all scrupulous as to the persons to whom he com- mitted it: — " I also granted unto sundrie^ power to execute the martiall lawe, and left authoritie with Sir Edmond Butler and Patrick Sherlock to levie and entertayne men to prosecute the outlawes, and such as no man would answere for. I have herde that since that tyme some have been executed." — Sydney, i. 21. That persons were executed by martial law in time of profound peace is indisputable. "The Lord Dillon affirmed that martial law had been practised, and men hanged by it in times of peace. — Nalson, it. 60. I shall make one quotation more to establish the fact that it was considered in Ireland that the officers of the Crown could supersede the common law, whenever they pleased, by substituting trial by court martial. " Martial law is so frequent and ordinary in Ireland, that it is not to be denied ; and so little offensive there, that the common law takes no exception at it" ! ! \—Bushworth, viii. 198. The manner in which the execution of the martial law worked, we can discover from the following instance, which I find in Cox's History of Ireland : — " The Earl of Ormond's officers made a complaint against Lovell, Sheriff of the county of Kilkenny, that he had executed martial law on several felons that had lands and goods, which would l^e forfeited to the Earl by their attainders, and that the Sheriff* took those lands and goods to his own use." — Cox, 395. The result of all these grievances and oppressions was the almost total secession from Enghsh power, CHAP, l] proofs^ eto. 73 even of the parts of Ireland that had been overrun by the English and submitted to English authority. There has been lately published a document, from jl fidelity to the English commanders secured them the confidence or the kindness of their unprincipled seducers. There is a remarkable instance of this, recorded as having occurred after a battle fought at Knocktow in Conn aught, in the reign of Henry the Seventh ; in which the Irish were totally defeated by the com- bined army of English and of royalist Irish, who aided them, under the command of Lord Gormanstowii, I take the following quotation from Leland (voL 2, p. 120) :— " Immediately after the victory of Knocktow, Lord Gormanstown turned to the Earl of Kildare, in the utmost insolence of success ; ' We have slaughtered our enemies,' said he ; ' but to complete the good deed we must proceed yet further — cut the throats of those Irish of our own party.' " I shall now proceed with extracts of equal authority and authenticity, showing the mode in which English authority in the reign of Queen Elizabeth became predominant. What arms were unable to achieve, was brought about by the most horrible and perse- vering cruelties. The Irish, who could not be subdued by force, were compelled to yield to famine. The harvests were destroyed year after year ; the cattle were taken away and slaughtered ; provisions of every kind were destroyed ; the country was devastated— tlie population perished for want of food ; fanime and pestilence were the irresistible arm^used by England \o obtain the dominioii. CHAP. I.] PTionrs, ETC. 79 It is horrible to think that this mode of subjuga- tion was suggested in detail by the poet Spenser — a man who, though affected by the quaintness of his time, was endowed with the most poetic genius ; but liis imagination, which might have been inflamed b^ fictitious woe, exhausted itseK in devising real horroii for Ireland. He had his plan for the pacification oi Ireland. It was no other than that of creating famine and ensuring pestilence ; and he encouraged tha repetition of these diabolical means by his own evi- dence of their eflficacy. He recommended, indeed^ that twenty days should be given to the Irish to come in and submit ; after the expiration of which time they were to be shown no mercy. But let me quote his own words : — " The end will (I assure mee) bee very short, and much sooner than it can be in so greate a trouble, as it seemeth, hoped for : altho' there should none of them fall by the sword, nor be slaine by the soldiour ; yet thus being kept from manurance, and their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint they would quietly consimie themselves, and devour X)ne another \" — Spenser's Ireland, p. 165. These counsels of Spenser were carried into effect. The war with Desmond, who was in fact forced into rebellion — that is, into a contest with the Queen— af- forded the pretext and opportunity for exercising these cruelties. Take these specimens from HoUinshed, who thus describes the progress of the English army through the country : — " As they went, they drove the whole country before them into the Ventrie, and by that means they preyed and took all the cattle in the country, to the number of eight thousand kine, besides horses, garrons, sheep, and goats ; and all such people as they met, they did without mercy put to the sword ; by these means, the whole country having no cattle nor kine left, they were driven to such extremities, that for want of rictuals they were either to die and perish for famine or to die under the swer, ETC. 81 ciiere wiuj none j bat in killing unarmed men and ilestroying provisions. Tlie Queen's annv was in Munster ; and here are some specimens of the way in ^hich they were working out Spenser's plan : — " By reason of the continuall persecuting of the rebells, who could have no breath nor rest to releeve themselves, but were alwaies by one garrison or other hurt and pursued ; and by reason the harvest \yas taken from them, their cattells in great numbers preied from them, and the whole countrie spoiled and preied : the poore people, who lived onlie upon their labors, and fed by their milch cowes, were so distressed that they would follow after the goods which were taken from them, and (jffer themselves, their wives and chiidrerj. rather to be slaine by the armie, than to suffer the famine wherewith they were now pinched." — HoUmshed, vi. 33. Also Leland, Book iv. chap. 2. Again, take the following from Sir George Carew : " The President having received certaine information, that the Mounst^r fugitives were harboured in those parts, having before burned all the houses and corne, and taken great preyes in Owny Onubrian and Kilquig, a strong and fast countrey, not farre from Limerick, diverted his forces into East Clanwilliamand ^Muskery- quirke, where Pierce Lacy had lately beene succoured ; and harassing the country, killed all mankind that were found therein, for a terrour to those as should give releef e to runagate traitors. Thence wee came into Arleaghe woods, where wee did the like, not lea^dng behind us man or beast, come or cattle, except such a? had been conveyed into castles." — Pdcata Hibemia 189. " They wasted and forraged the country, so as in a Bmall time it was not able to .give the rebells any Velief e ; having spoiled and brought into their garrisons &e most part of their corne, being newly reaped." — Pacata Hihernia, 584. " Hereupon Sir Charles, with the English regiments, tverrau all Beare and V^^i^tvy, destroying all that they 82 OBSERVATIONS, Y^HAP. i, could fiud meet for the reiiefe of men, so as that country was wholly wasted." — Pacata Hihemid. 659. But it was not in Munster only that the horrors of this system were practised. I may observe that it was in the reign of Elizabeth that the general practice commenced of calling the Irish rebels instead of enemies, the reason of which is sufficiently obvious. For it was under the name of rebels that the people, who for the greater part were living in peaceable sub- mission to English authority, were deprived of the produce of their harvests and consumed by famine. The following extracts will show how this system was acted upon in Leinster and in part of Ulster. I quote from Leland : — " The Leinster rebels, by driving the royalists into their fortified towns, and living long without mo- lestation, had cultvated their lands, and established an unusual regularity and plenty in their districts. But now they were exposed to the most rueful havoc from the Queen's forces. The soldiers, encouraged by the example of their officers, everywhere cut down the standing corn with their swords, and devised every means to deprive the wretched inhabitants of all the necessaries of life ! ! Famine was judged the speedi- est and most effectual means of reducing them : and therefore the deputy was secretly not displeased with the devastations made even in the well-affected quarters by the improvident fury of the rebels. " The like melancholy expedient was practised in the northern provinces. The governor of Carrick- fer^us, Sir Arthur Chichester, issued from his quarters, and, for twenty miles round, reduced the country to a desert. Sir Samuel Bagnal, the governor of Newiy. proceeded with the same severity, and laid waste all t]ie adjacent lands. All the English garrisons were daily employed in pillaging and wasting ; while Tyrone, with his dispiritedparty, shrunk gradually within narrower bounds. They were effectually pre IfTlOOTB, 1TTT7. 88 vented from sowing and cultivating their lands." — Leland^ Book iv. ch. 5. To give some variety to these horrors, I will quote an incident that occurred in the year IblAr-pour varier les agremens, as the French would say. " — * Anno 1574. A solemn peace and concord was made between the Earl of Essex and Felim O'Nial. However, at a feast wherein the Earl entertained that chieftain, and at the end of their good cheer, O'Nial and his wife were seized, and their friends who attended were put to the sword before their faces. Felim, together with his wife and brother, were con- veyed to Dublin, where they were cut up in quarters.' This execution gave universal discontent and horror. In like manner, a few years after, the Irish chieftains of the King's and Queen's counties were invited by the English to a treaty of accommodation. But when they arrived at the place of conference, they were in- stantly surrounded by troops, and aU butchered on the spot." — Leland, Book iv. ch. 2 {note). As these individual instances of cruelty and treachery give a more vivid interest to the general tale of at. species of atrocious crimes, I will just give one ex- ample more of individual depravity, in no less a person than the Lord President of Munster. It is, in truth, a fact of a family — being part of the general system. " Carew still descended to more dishonourable prac* tices. One Nugent, a servant of Sir Thoxuas Norris, had deserted to the rebels, and, by the alacrity of his services, he acquired their confidence. In a repenting mood he submitted to the President (Carew) ; and to purchase his pardon, promised to destroy either the titular earl* or his brother John. As a plot was already laid against the former, and as his death could only serve to raise up new competitors for his title, the bravo was directed to proceed against John, • Viz., the Earl of Desniond. 84 OBSERVATIONS. [CHAP, L He seized Ms opportunity, and attempted to despatch liim : but as his pistol was just levelled, he was seized, condemned to die, and at his execution confessed liia design : declaring that many others had sworn to thn "Lord President to effect what he intended." — Leland^ Book iv. ch. 5. CareVs description of the policy adopted in his own day, might serve for a much later period : — '' It was thought no ill policy to make the Irish draw blood upon one another, whereby their private quarrels might advance the public service/' — Pacata Ilibernia, 650. I now come back to the systematic plan of destroy- ing property, especially the harvests. We find the following incidental notices among the repetitions of more detailed destruction : — A.D. 1600. "On the 12th of August, Mountjoy, with 560 foot and 60 horse, and some volunteers, niarcht to Naas, and thence to Philipstown, and in his way tooke 200 cows, 700 garrons, and 500 sheep, and so burning the country." — Cox, 428. 1600. " Sir Arthur Savage, governor of Connagh, designed to meet the Lord Lieutenant, but could not accomplish it, though he preyed and spoil'd the coun- try as far as he came.'* — Cox, 428. 1600. '* Mountjoy staid in this country till the 23rd of August, and destroyed £10,000 worth of corn, and slew more or less of the rebels every day. One Lenagh, a notorious rebel, was taken and hanged, and a prey of 1000 cows, 500 garrons, and niany sheep, was taken by Sir Oliver Lambert in Daniel Spany's countrey, with the slaughter of a great many rebels." —G^x, 428. 1600. "About the 18th December, Sir Francis Barkley having notice that many rebels were relieved in Clanawley, marclit thither, and got a prey of 1000 cows, 200 garrons, many sheep, and other booty, and had the killing of many tray tors." — Cox, 434. " The next }nomiTig being the fourth of January, CHAP. L,} PKOOFS, ETC. 06 1 602, Sir Charles Wilmot coming to seeke the enemy in their campe, hee entered into their quarter without resistance, where hee found nothing but hurt and sicke men, whose pains and Kves by the soldiers were both detetinined.' — Pacata Hihemia., 659. " Greate were the services these garrisons perform- ed ; for Sir Richard Pearce and Captain George Flower, with their troopes, left neither corne nor home, nor house unburnt between Kinsale and Koss. Captain Roger Harvie, who had with him his brother, Captain Gawen Harvie, Captain Francis Slingsby, Captain William Stafford, and also the com]mnies of the Lord Barry and the treasurer, with the President's horse, did the like between Ross and Bantry."— Pacata Rihemia^ 645. The result of all these proceedings is described by so many of the English historians, in terms of such complicated horror, that volumes might be filled with the i)articular instances of cruelty and barbarity. I give these quotations : — "Repeated complaints were made of the inhuman rigour practised by Grey (the Deputy) and his officers. The Queen was assured that he tyrannized with such barbarity, that little was left in Ireland for her Majesty to reign over, but ashes and carcasses !" Leland, Book iv. chap. 2. "The southern province seemed to be totally de- populated, and, except within the cities, exhibited an hideous scene of famine and desolation. — Leland, Book iv. chap. 3. It might be supposed that the progress of destruc- tion would now have been arrested ; that enough in the demoniacal labour of massacre and spoliation had been done ; and that the kingdom might have at last been permitted to enjoy some respite from the atrocities of fiends in human form. But this was forbidden by the active anti-Irish spirit — the national antipathy to, and jealousy of, this country ; which spirit then, as well as now. exercised its evil aiuj 8ef OBSERVATIOlfS, malignant influences on our destiny. We have seen already, that where the Irish had driven the royalists into their fortified towns, and freed themselves from EngKsh molestation, " they had cultivated their lands, and established an unusual regularity and plenty in their districts." — Leland, Book iv. chap. 5. But Irish peace, plenty, and prosperity formed no part of English policy. It appears from Leland that the oppression and plunder of Ireland, the butchery of her inhabitants, and the perpetuation of social discord, were regularly systematized, reasoned on, and, despite some opposition, adopted and established as a mea- sure of State policy. Here are Leland's words : — "Some of her (Elizabeth's) counsellors, appear to have conceived an odious jealousy which reconciled them to the distractions and miseries of Ireland. " * Should we exert ourselves,' said they, * in re- ducing this country to order and civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and riches. The inhabitants wiU thus be alienated from England ; they wiU cast themselves into the arms of some foreign nower, or perhaps erect themselves into an independent and separate State. Let us rather con- nive at their disorders ; for a weak and disordered people never can attempt to detach themselves from the Crown of England.' We find Sir Henry Sydney and Sir John Perrot, who perfectly understood the affairs of Ireland, and the dispositions of its inhabi- tants, both expressing the utmost indignation at this horrid policy, which yet had found its way into the English Parliament." — Lelanrl, Book iy. chap. 3. This policy was incessantly and vigorously acted upon. The "disorders" were perpetuated. There was no pause. The efficient manner in which the army performed the service of destruction, was boasted of by many of the English historians. Let an*/ man who chooses read in cold blood the following exCHtct : — **They performed that service effectually, and CHAP. LJ PROOF.i, ETC. S7 brought the rebels to so low a condition, that they saw three children eating the entrails of their dead mother, upon whose flesh they had fed many days, and roasted it by a slow fire." — Cox, 449. Nor did the entire conquest and death of Desmond, and the total suppression of any resistance^ satiate the English commanders or their soldiers. Let the fol- lowing description of their conduct, by a contempcv- rary historian, suffice for our present purposes : — " After Desmond's death, and the entire suppression of his rebellion, unheard-of cruelties were committed on the provincials of Munster (his supposed former adherents) by the English commanders. Great com- panies of these provincials, men, women, and children, were often forced into castles and other houses, whick were then set on fire ; and if any of them attempted to escape from the flames, they were shot or stabbed by the soldiers who guarded them. It was a diversion to these monsters of men to take up infants on the point of their spears, and whirl them about in their agony ; apologizing lor their cruelty by sajdng, that ' if they suffered them to Live to grow up, they would become popish rebels.' Many of their women were found hanging on trees, with their children at their breasts, strangled with the mother's hair." — Lombard. Comment, de Hihcrru p. 635 ; apud Curry ^ Hist. Reviev), p. 27 (note). All the Irish, and persons of the English race who had resisted the Queen's authority, having been de- stroyed by the sword or famine, the subjugation of the country became complete. There is in HoUinshed's Chronicle a quaintness of expression that gives an additional interest to the details he has preserved ; but they have, from their own nature, a deeper interest stilL If these details had been given of cruelties towards wretched and infidel barbarians in the re- motest extremity of the globe, they would excite great compassion and heartfelt commiseration in any icLiiman being. But let it be recollected that these are 88 OBsJiiKVATlONS, [CHAJ?. i, aiitlientic and unimpeachable narratives of crimeii which Christian Englishmen committed npon Chris- tian Irish. The historians who have recorded these facts, had every motive to palliate, and none to ex- aggerate, the English barbarity and cruelty. Yet the wildest flights of imagination could scarcely suppose anything in fiction equal to the horrors of the reality. The following passage describes the closing scene of the conquest of the southern provinces of Ireland :— " And as for the great companies of souldiers, gal- lowglasses, kerne, and the common people whofoUowed this rebellion, the numbers of them are infinite whose bloods the earth drank up, and whose carcasses the oeasts of the field and the ravening fowls of the air did consume and devoure. After this followed an extream famine ; and such whom the sword did not destroy, the same did consume and eat out ; very few or none remaining alive excepting such as were fled over into England ; and yet the store in the towns was far spent i^nd they in distress, albeit nothing like in comparison to them who lived at large ; for they were not ordie driven to eat horses, dogs, and dead camons. but also did devour the carcases of dead men, whereoi there be sundrie examples ; namely, one in the county of Cork, where, when a malefactor was executed to death, and his body left upon the gaUows, certain poor people did secretly come, took him down, and did eat him ; likewise in the bay of Smeerweeke, oi St. Marieweeke, the place which was first seasoned with this rebellion, there happened to be a ship to be there lost through foul weather, and all the men being drowned, were there cast on land. The common people, who had a long time lived on limpets, orewads, and such shell- Ash as they could find, and which were now spent, as soon as they saw these bodies, they took them up, and most greedily did eat and devoure them ; and not long after, death and famine did eat and consume them. The land itself, which befcij bliObe wars was populous; 'vell-inhabited, and rich in all the good blessings o! CHAP. Lj imOOFS, ETC. 89 fjrod, being plenteous of come, full of cattel, well stored vrith fish and sundrie other good commodities, Ls now become waste and barren, yielding no fmit.^, the pastures no cattel, the aire no birds ; tLe S(3a8 (though full of fish), yet to them yielding nothing. Finally, every waie the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and beast, that who- soever did travell from the one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to the head of Smeer- weeke, which is about six score miles, he would not meet anie man, woman, or child, saving in towns and cities ; nor yet see any beast, but the very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening beasts, many of them laie dead, being famisht, and the residue gone else- where."— ^o^/^7^^A€Strau^iule in Wales, and to him granted the reversion of Leinster, \nXh. the said Eve Ms daughter. And after that the said Earle granted to the said King Henry the citie of Dublin, with certain cantreds of lands next to Dublin, and all the haven towns of Leinster, to have the rest to him in quiet with his Grace's favour. " Another title is, that in the year of our Lord God one thousand one hundred sixtie two, the aforesa/d King Heury landed at the citie of Waterford within the realm of Ireland ; and there came to him Der- mot, King of Corke, which is of the nation of the M'Carties, and of his own proper will became liege tri- butarie for him and his kingdom, and upon that made his oathe and gave his hostages to the King. Then the King roade to Cashell, and there came to hinj Donald, King of Limerick, which is of the nation of the O'Brienes, and became his liege as the other did. Then came to him Donald, King of Ossorie, Mac Shaglin, King of Ophaly, and all the princes of the south of Ireland, and became his liegemen as afore- said. Then went the said King Henry to Dublin, and there came to him O'Kirnill, King of Uriel, OTiOurke, King of Meth, and Rotherick, King of all Irishmen of the land, and of Connaught ; with all the princes and men of value of the land, and became liege subjects, and tributaries, by great oaths for them, their kingdoms and lordships to the said King Henry ; and that of their o"v\ti good wills, as it should fceem ; for that the chronicles make no mention of i-.iiy warre or chivalry done by the said King, all the tone that he was in Ireland. This, to be sure, is a most ludicrou.«i piece of legia- 94 OBSERVATIONS; [OHAP. U lation — absurd lo a degree that wiii make any mac stare with astonishment who reads it at the present day. The only rational title which it makes out being one of compact, giving the people of Ireland a right to the benefit of British laws— a right which is a dead letter even unto the present day ! CHAPTER IL— PART L Years 1612—1625. The extracts which I have given from Irish history, in corroboration of the text of my first chapter, wlQ have given the reader some idea of the multiplied and variegated cruelties, horrors, treacheries, and mas- sacres by which the English dominion was extended and maintained in various parts of Ireland ; and at length spread all over the entire land by means of provoked famine and pestilence. Queen Elizabeth did not live long enough to enjoy the consummation of this fiendish policy, nor to reign amidst the tran- quillity of the grave. It remained for her unworthy successor to reap the fruits of her cruelties. The people being "brayed as in a mortar" — I like to re- peat the phrase of Sir John Davies — the survivors readily acquiesced in any alteration of law, and very gratefully received that alteration which, in the year 1612, acknowledged, for the first time, the Irish as jubjects, and admitted them under the protection of the Crown, It affords an inquiry of some interest to ascertain what was the genius and the disposition — what the social and moral character of the people who had en- dured such hideous cruelties, and who were now- made citizens of the State. I will not draw that character in the glowing colours in which it has been painted by Irish writers, or by any favourers or par- tisans of the Irish. I will take that character from CBAP. II.] PROOFS, ETC. 95 Englishmen and Protestants, and Irom persons who themselves were participators in the crimes which I have mentioned, and in those which remain to be described. The following is from an English Protestant writer by no means favorable to the Irish ; on the contrary,' a man disposed to speak ill pf, and to calumniate them and their clergy. Here is the worst he could say of them : — " The people are thus inclined, religious, frank, amorous, irefuU, sufferable of infinite paines, verie glorious, menie sorcerers, excellent horsemen delighted with warres, great alms-givers, passing in hospitality. The lewder sorts, both clerks and iaiemen, are sensuall and ouer loose in living. The same being vertuouslie bred up or reformed, are such mirrors of _ holinesse and austeritie, that other nations retain but a shadow of devotion in comparison of them. As for abstinence and fasting, it is to them a familiar kind of chastisement." — Stanihurst, &-pud Rollinshed, vi. 67. But as character is best shown by individual traits, especially when the writer is one adversely inclined, I select a passage descriptive of the fidelity that existed between foster brothers amongst the Irish • and it is not going too far to say that a people capable of such high and generous attachment to each other, and to their duty, ought to rank high in the estimation of good men. Mark the following extract : — " You cannot find one instance of perfidy, deceit, oi treachery among them ; nay, they are ready to expose themselves to all manner of dangers for the safety of those who sucked their mother's milk. You may beat them to a mummy ; you may put them on the rack ; you may burn them on a gridiron ; you may expose them to the most exquisite torture that the cruellest tyrant can invent ; yet you will never remove them from that innate fidelity which is grafted^ in them , you will never induce tlv^m to betray their duty." — Ware. ii. 73. 06 OBSERVATIONS, I will now add more favourable testimony of other English Protestant writers. Take this passage from a decided enemy of the Irish name and nation : — "The Irish themselves were a people peaceable, harmless, and affable to strangers and to all, pious and good, whilst they retained the religion of their forefathers. '^ — Borlase, 14. Baron Finglas, who was Chief Baron of tlie Ex- chequer under Henry VIII., places the Irish character on a far higher ground than the English, so far as concerns submission to law and justice. He says : — " It is a great abusion and reproach that the laws and statutes made in this land are not observed ne kept, after the making of them, eight days, which matter is one of the destructions of Englishmen of this land : and divers Irishmen doth observe and keepe such laws and statutes which they make upon hills in their country, firm and stable, without break' ing them for any favour or reward." — Baron Finglas Hibernica^ 51. The next is from Lord Coke, who cannot be sus- pected of any undue leaning in favour of the Irish : — I have been informed by many of those that had judicial places in Ireland, and [know] partly of my own knowledge, that there is no nation of the Chris- tian world that are greater lovers of justice than the Irish are : which virtue must of course be accom- panied by many others." — Coke, iv. Inst 349. The next is a passage which has often been quoted from the celebrated Sir John Davies : — "They will gladly continue in tliis condition of" subjects without defection, or adhering to any other lord or king, as long as they may be protected and J astly governed, without oppression on the one side, or impunity upon the other. For there is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish ; or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof^ although It be against themselves.'* — Davies' Hist. Tracts, 213. '^AP. iL] PKOOFS, ETC. 97 lliere has been lately published, bythe Irish Archseo- logical Society, in the first volume of their Tracts relating to Ireland, a srnall work entitled " A Brief e Description of Ireland, made in the year 1589, by Robert Payne :" from which I select two extracts that i3onfirm strongly the praises bestowed upon the Irish love of justice : — "Nothing is more pleasing unto them, than to heare of good justices placed amongst them. They have a common saying, wliich I am persuaded they speakc nnfeignedly, which is, defend me and spend me ; meaning from the oppression of the worser sorte of v»ur countrymen. They are obedient to the laws ; so that you travel through all the land without any danger or injurie oflered of the verye worst Irish, and be greatly relieved of the best." (page 4.) My next quotation is peculiarly interesting at the present moment, It shows what the corporations of Ireland were in Catholic times, before Protestantism and exclusion were the ruling impulses: — " But, as touching their government in their corpo- rations where, they beare rule, is done ^vith such ft'isdome, equity, and justice, as demerits worthy commendations. For I myself divers times have seene in severall places within their jurisdictions wel near twenty causes decided at one sitting, with such indif- lerencie that for the most parte both plaintife and defendant hath departed contented : yet manie that •iiake show of peace, and desireth to live by blood, doe utterly mislike this or any good thing that the poore Irish man dothe." — Ibid. There is nothing new under the sun. The tran- quillity which existed in Ireland, whilst the disposi- tion of the Melbourne Government was evinced, to administer the laws impartially, had been found at former periods to arise from precisely a similar cause. Sir John Perrot had endeavoured to show the Irish impartial justice, and Ho'^ker. who, in some of hia U'ritings, bestows on the Irish unmea-sured vitupera- 98 OBSERVATIONS, [OHAP. II. tion and abuse, yet says that at the close of Sir John Perrot's administration — ^ " Everie man with a white sticke only in hib hands, and with great treasures, might and did travell with- out feare or danger where lie woulde (as the writer heerof by triall knew it to be true), and the white sheepe did keepe the blacke, and all the beasts lay continually in the fields, without stealing or preie- ing." — Hooker ; apud Hollin.-Jied, vi. 370. Let us listen to Sir John Davies upon this subject, and one will imagine it is the Attorney-General of the Melbourne Government who speaks :— " I dare affirm that in the space of five years last past, there have not been found so many malefactors worthy of death, in aE the six circuits of this realm, which is now divided into thirty -two shires at large, as in one circuit of six shires, namely, the western cir- cuit in England ! For the truth is, that, in time of peace, the Irish are more fearful to offend the law than the English, or any other nation whatsoever."— Davies, p. 200. As to the bravery of the Irish, it may be superfluous to give any proof of it from Protestant and inimical testimony; since friends and foes alike admit the chivalrous gallantry of the Irish people ; and the Scotch pliilosophers have lately demonstrated the superiority of their physical powers. I cannot, how- ever, refrain from inserting the following quotation from Edmund Spenser : — " I have heard some great warriors say, that in all the services which they had seen abroad in foreign countries, they never saw a more comely man thai? the Irishman, nor that cometh on more bravely to his charge." — Spenser's Ireland. These now are all noble traits in the character of the Irish people. Fidelity — joroof against every temp- tation of bribery or torture ; fidelity which notliing could buy, and which nothing could intimidate ! *' Piety and goodness whilst her people adhered" (and they do yet adhere^ " ^o ti.K religion of their fore- CHAP. ilJ proofs, etc. 99 fnthers," But, above all, transcendently stands the giOrious title, "lovers of justice" — "lovers oi' equal and impartial justice." Lovers of justice, not only when they obtain it for themselves, but loving it so dearly that they are satisfied with its execution even when against themselves. Military valour not excelled by any nation in existence ! And upon whose testi- mony is it that the Irish claim the glory of these quali- ties 1 From the testimony of strangers, aliens, enemies ! I challenge the world to produce an instance of such praise bestowed on any nation by persons not them- selves interested in or connected with such praise. It may be objected that near 300 years have elapsed since these praises were bestowed, and that the Irish :iiiay have mucli changed since that period. But vrhat 5ays the truth of history 1 The Irish have been since severely tried in the furnace of affliction ; they have been assailed with treachery and persecution ; and yet they have exhibited the most unalterable fidelity to the faith which they in their consciences preferred. No money could bribe — no torture could compel them to forsake the alle^ance which they owed to their God. Compare their conduct in this respect with that of any other nation under the sun ; and admit (for truth compels the admission) that the glory of religious fidelity supereminently belongs to the people of Ireland. You may say, perhaps, that their faith was erroneous, their creed mistaken, and their practice superstitious. Suppose it were so. Yet their fidelity was religious ; it was attachment to the religion they deemed the true one ; and this national trait of their character ought not to be tarnished even in the opinion of those who do not agree with them as to its object. It will not be thus tarnished in the mind of any just or generous man. Again, we perceived, during the late administration, the same respect paid to the attempt on the part of the Irish Government to purify the administration of justice : the same tranquillity follows, from the hope of having justice administered. 100 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. II. Again, beliold tlie national movement in favour of temperance. There are more than five millions pledged to total abstinence from all intoxicating liqnors. What nation upon the face of the earth can afford suph an exan.iple as this 1 But it may be said that this temperance movement is transitory. To those who may say so I reply, that the first trait in the Irish character is fidelity of jDurpose — fidelity superior to corruption, to force, and to temptation ! I do there- fore feel it my duty solemnly to declare, that the people of Ireland, the ] overs of impartial justice, stand superior in their national characteristics to the inhabitants of any other country on the face of the globe. I am, therefore, proud of my fatherland. Nor is it the less dear to me because of the evils that have been inflicted upon it, the oppression it has endured, and the tyranny that it has nearly survived : " More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy showers, Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours." Nor is it the less loved by me, because of the slavery that has been treacherously imposed upon it : '* No ! thy chains as they rankle, thy blood as it runs, But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons ! Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird's nest, Drink love in each life-drop that flows from thy breast." It 'will have been observed, that the alteration in religion, commonly, but most improperly, called " The Reformation" — for it cannot seriously be called a Reformation at all — occurred in the period included in the first chapter. But I have designedly omitted ill mention of it, having reserved it for a separate and distinct consideration. ^ When Luther commenced the great schism of the sixteenth century, aU Christendom was Catholic. Ireland, of course, was so. It has indeed been said — for what will not religious bigotry say 1 — that the Catholic Church in Ireland did not recognize the authority of the Pope, and was severed from the CHAP. IL] proofs, etc. 101 Ohurcli of Kome. This assertion was gravely brought forward by Archbishop Usher, who was indeed its principal fabricator. But the Right Rev. Dr. Milner has distinctly shown that there is the most conclusive historical evidence, in the works of Usher himself, to demonstrate the utter falsehood of his own assertion. And there is a curious incident belonging to this con- troversy which occurred before ]\Iilner wrote — namely, that the credit of Usher's assertion having been much impugned, a grandson of his, a Protestant clergj^man, determined to confute the impugn ers of his grand- father's statement ; and, with that view, carefully examined the authorities upon the subject ; when, to his utmost surprise, he discovered the total falsehood of that statement ! Being led by tliis circumstance to examine the other points of difference between the Catholics and Protestants, he ended by giving up his h\dng, resigning his gown as a Protestant clergyman, and embracing the profession of a Catholic priest. It has been often remarked that in all the countries into which I'rotestantism entered, it owed its intro- duction to men remarkable for the badness of their character, and the greatness of their vices. Protestantism was not more fortunate in Ire- land than it was elsewhere. It owed its intro- duction into Ireland, as it did into England, to the foul passions of Henry the Eighth ; but in Ireland its principal patron was Archbishop Browne (as he is caUed ; but his title to the archbishopric Avould not have stood canonical investigation). The Act of Supremacy — that Act which so absurdly vested in the King — and such a King ! — spiritual power — was passed by a gross and glaring fraad. The proctors of the clergy had, from the commencement of the parlia- ments held in Ireland, been received as members of that body. It would have been impossible to pass the Act of Supremacy if they had remained in the house. Henry the Eighth made short work of the matter — he expelled- them He procured then an 102 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAf. H A.ct of Parliament making it high treason to dispute the validity of the marriage of the wretched Ann Boleyn, or the legitimacy of her child. He soon afterwards procured another Act of Parliament, by which it was made treason to assert that validity or legitimacy ! That was the mode in which Protes- tantism was made the law of the land ! It is curious enough that the Act of Uniformity was passed in Ireland by another gross and ludicrous trick. The historian* informs us, that — " It was passed by the artifice of one Mr. Stany- hurst, of Corduff, then Speaker of the Irish Commons, who, being in the Reforming interest, privately got together, on a day when the house was not to sit, a few such members as he knew to be favourers of that interest, and consequently in the absence of all those who he believed would have opposed it. But that these absent members having understood what passed at that secret convention, did soon after, in a full and regular meeting of the parliament, enter their protests against it : upon which the Lord Lieutenant assured many of them in particular, with protestations and oaths, that the penalties of that statute should never be inflicted ; which they, too easily believing, suffered it to remain as it was. This, adds my author, I have often heard for certain truth from many ancient people, who hved at that time : and I am the more inclined to believe it, because the Lord Lieutenant's promise was so far kept that this law was never generally exe- cuted during the remainder of Queen Elizabeth's reign ; — ' that is,' observes Curry on the foregoing passage, 'until all or most of those members wero probably dead, to whom such promise had been given.' " Sir Christopher Nugent asserted publicly before the King, the traditional report of the Irish, that this statute was passed in the fraudulent manner above mentioned." — Analecta Sacra, p. 431. • Mr. Lynch, In his Cambreruis Soet'iux. CHAP el] proofs, etc. 103 It is right to observe, that these Acts « >f Parliament were operative only upon a small portion of the inhabitants of Ireland ; only ten counties being repre- sented, and the entire number of members of the House of Commons did not exceed from sixty to eighty. It is unnecessary to say, tliat, so far as the English dominion extended, persecution was vigorous. The utmost cruelty was exercised to the extent of the power of the English Government. Doctor Johnson says that there is no instance, even in the ten per- secutions, equal to the severity which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics. This is literally true wherever the English power extended. The reign of Edward the Sixth was marked by the intensity with which the system of attempting to Pro- testantize Ireland was carried on. Take this specimen : — "The means of conversion which the Protector (Somerset) designed to use in Ireland, were soon exemplified. A party, issuing from the garrison_ of Athlone, attacked the ancient church of Clonmacnoise, destroyed its ornaments, and defiled its altars. Simi- lar excesses were committed in other parts of the country ; and the first impression produced by the advocates of the reformed religion was, that the new system sanctioned sacrilege and robbery." — Tayloi-'s Hist, of the Civil Wars of IrtUuid, vol. i., p. 167. But it was in the reign of Elizabeth that the per- secution of the Catholics raged with the greatest fury ; as the policy of her officers in creating their familiar instruments of famine and pestilence extended her dominion, religious persecution extended ^ith it. Amongst the multitude of Catholic priests who were murdered in the most barbarous manner, I give two specimens in the following extracts. The first is from Curr/s Review of the Civil Wars of Ireland ; p. 9 (note) : — " In this reign, among many other Eoman Catholic oriests and biSiops, there were put to death for the 104 OBSERVATIONSj [CHAP. U. exercise of their function in Ireland, Glaby O'Boyla^ abbot of Boyle of the diocese of Elphin, and Owen O'Muikeren, abbot of the monastery of the Holy Trinity in that diocese, hanged and quartered by Lord Gray in 1580 ; John Stephens^ priest, for tliat he said mass to Teague M'Hugh, was hanged and qv jtered by the Lord Burroughs, in 1597 ; Thady O'Boylej guardian of the monastery of Donegal, was slain by the English in his own monastery ; six friars wei'6 slain in the monastery of Moynihigan ; John O'CalyhoA and Bryan O'Trevor, of the order of St. Bernard, wero shiin in their own monastery, De Santa Maria, in Ulster • as also Felimy O'Hara, a lay brother ; so wa.f3 Eneas renny, parish church of KiUagh, slain at the altar of his parish church there ; Cahall M'Goraiiy Rory O'Donnellan, Peter O'Qiiillan, Patrick O'Kenna, George Power, vicar-general of the diocese of Ossoiy; Andrew Stretch, of Limerick, Bryan O'Muirihirtagh, vicar-general of the diocese of Olonfert; Dorohow O'Molony of Thomond, John Kelly of Louth, Stepheu Patrick of Annaly, John Pi Hi a, friar, Rory M'Heniea, Tirrilagh M'Inisky, a lay brother. All those that come after Eneas Penny, together with Walter Farnan, priest, died in the Castle of Dublin, either through hard usage or restraint, or the violence of torture." My next extract is from Milner's Letters to a Fit^ hendary : — " The penal laws were in general no less severely exercised against the Catholics of Ireland, though they constituted the body of the people, than they were against those of England. Spondanus and Pagi relate the horrid cruelties exercised by Sir William Drury on F. O'Hurle, O.S.F., the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, who, falling into the hands of this sanguinary governor, in the year 1579, was first tortured, by^ hia legs being immersed in jack-boots filled with quicklime, water, &c., until they were burnt to the bone, in order to force him to take the Oath of Supremacy ; and then, with other circumstances of barbaritj^ executed on Mi^ cuAi'. il] pucoirs, ktc. 105 gallows : having pi-eviously cited Drury to meet him at the tribunal of Christ -within ten days, who accord- ingly died within that period, amidst the most ex- cruciating pains. See in Bourke's Hihernia Do- minicana, a much longer list and a more detailed account of Irish sufferers, especially in Elizabeth's reign, on the score of religion. It was a usual thing to beat with stones the shorn heads of their clergy, till their brains gushed out. Others had needles thrust under their nails, or the nails themselves were torn off. Many were stretched upon the rack, oi pressed under weights. Others had their bowels torn open, which they were obliged to support with their hands, or their flesh torn with curry-combs." — Milner's LefJr-rs to a Prebendary, Letter iv. (note). The following anecdote I have taken from the often- quoted work of Carew : — " Towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, her Majesty's forces besieging the castle of Cloghan, and understanding that in the same there was a ilomish priest, (to which order of men they never gave quarter,) having also in their hands the brother of the constable who had the charge of the castle, the commanding officer sent him word that if he did not presently surrender the castle to him, he would hang his brother in their sight. But to save the priest, whose life they tendered, they persevered obstinately not to yield : whereupon the officer, in their sight, hanged the constable's brother. Nevertheless, within four days afterwards, the priest being shifted away in safety, the constable sued for a protection, and sur- rendered the castle." — Pacata Hihernia, p. 358. The remarks of this author are quite characteristic ; he thus contiimes : — "I do relate this accident, to the end that the reader may the more clearly see in what reverence and estimation these ignorant and superstitious Irish do hold a popish priest ; in regard to whose safety the constable was content to suffer his brother to perish." How totally does Carew forget that the murder of 106 OBSERVATIONS. CHAP. II. the constable's brother was the crime of the enlight- ened English ofiBicer! Whereas the "ignorant and superstitious" Irish commander had too much con- science to be accessory to the murder of an innocent man— a man who had committed no crime except that of being a prie .t ! Ignorant and superstitious indeed ! I readily retort the charge with a small variation ! The English commander and the English writer are utterly ignorant of every rule of morality, and are alike brutal and unprincipled in the act and in the comment. But there is a contrast of still a higher and more glorious nature. It is the contrast between the vir- ulent and murderous persecution of the English Protestant Government, and the humane and truly Christian demeanour of the Irish Catholics when re- stored to power. The reigns of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth passed away. Queen Mary ascended the throne. Catholicity was restored to power in Ireland without difficulty — ^without any kind of struggle. How did the Catholics— the Irish Catholics — conduct themselves towards the Protestants, who had been persecuting them up to the last moment ] How did they — the Catholics — conduct themselves 1 I wiU take the answer from a book, published several years ago by Mr. WiUiam ParneU— a Protestant gentleman of high station— the brother of a Cabinet Minister : — A still more striking proof that the Irish Roman Catholics, in Queen Mary^s reign, were very little in- fected with reKgious bigotry, may be drawn from their conduct towards the Protestants when the Pro- testants were at their mercy. " Were we to argue from the representations of the indelible character of the Catholic religion, as pour trayed by its adversaries, we should have expected that the Irish Catholics would exercise every kind of persecution which the double motives of zeal and re- taliation could suggest : — the Catholic laity, in ali the impunity of triujiiphant bigotry, hunting the wrelched CHA^. n.] PEOor^, KTc. 107 heretics from their hiding places— the Catholic clergy pouring out the libation of human blood at the shrine of the God of mercy, and acting before high heaven those scenes which make the angels weep. " But on the contrary — though the religious feehngs of the Irish Catholics, and their feelings as men, had been treated with very little ceremony during the two preceding reigns, they made a wise and moderate use of their ascendancy. They entertained no resent- ment for the past : they laid no plans for future domi- nation. "Even Leland allows that the only instance of popish zeal was annulling grants that Archbishop Browne had made, to the injury of the bee of Dublin ; and, certainly, this step was full as agreeable to the rules of law and equity as to popish zeaL " The assertors of the Eeformation during the pre- ceding reigns were every way unmolested ; or, as the Protestant historian chooses to term it, were allowed to siuk into obscurity and neglect " Such was the general spirit of toleration, that many English families, friends to the Eeformation, took refuge in Ireland, and there enjoyed their opinions and worship without molestation. " The Irish Protestants, vexed that they could not prove a single instance of bigotry against the Catholics, in this their hour of trial, invented a tale, as palpably false as it is childish, of an intended persecution (but a persecution by the English Government, not by the Irish Cathohcs), and so much does bigotry pervert all candour and taste, that even the Earl of Cork, Archbishop Usher, and, in later times. Dr. Leland, were not ashamed to support the silly story of Dean Cole and the Knave of Clubs ! " How ought these pei-verse and superficial men to blush, who have said that the Irish Eoman Catholics must be bigots and rebels from the very nature of their religion, and who have advanced this falsehood in the very teeth of fact, and contrary to the most dijstiiict evidence of Listory 1 108 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. IL " The Irish Roman Catholics bigots ! The Irish Eoman Catholics are the only sect that ever resumed power without exercising vengeance ! " Show a brighter instance, if you can, in the whole page of history. Was this the conduct of Knox or Calvin ? or of the brutal council of Edward VI., who signed its bloody warrants with tears ? Has this been the conduct of the L'ish Protestants ]" — PameWs His- torical Apology, pp. 35-37. In the wretched history of dissension and cruelty from the period of the Reformation to the present mo- ment, there is no instance in which any people, Catho- lic or Protestant, have been entitled to such a meed of approbation as the Irish Catholics. There is no other such instance. Protestantism can boast of nothing of the kind — nor can the Catholics of any other state in the known world, give such a practical proof of Chris- tian liberality. What a contrast between the English and the Irish Catholics. You find the English Pro- testants flying from English Catholic persecution, and receiving refuge, shelter, and security in Ireland. Queen Mary's persecution of Protestants leaned very heavily on Bristol. And, accordingly, the merchant s of Dublin, being Cathohcs and then forming the cor- poration, are known to have hired no less than seventy- four furnished houses, which they filled with English Protestant refugees from Bristol and its vicinage. They lodged them — they fed them — they maintained them, and sent them back safe and sound to England, when the death of Mary restored Protestantism to power there : and enabled the English Protestants to retaliate with sevenfold severity on tlieir Catholic countrjnnen ; and — shame upon English Protestants to make use of that power — again unrelentingly to per- secute the generous and liberal Catholics of Ireland : — Let me give another quotation from a modern Protestant writer of very considerable literary merit and discrimination. When this writer comes to treat of the reign of Queen Mary, he has the following passage : — CHAP. II.] PROOFS, KTC. lOfi 1553. "The restoration of the old religion was effected without violence : no persecution of the Protestants was attempted ; and several of the English, who fled from the furious zeal of Mary's inquisitors, found a safe retreat among the Catholics of Ireland. It is but justice to this maligned body to add, that on the three occasions of their obtaining the upper hand, they never injured a single person in life or limb for professing a religion diff'erent from their own. They had suffered persecution and learned mercy, as they showed in the reign of Mary, in the wars from 1641 to 1648, and during the brief trium^ph of James II." — Taylor's History of the Civil Wars of Ireland vol. i. p. 169. I cannot better conclude my observations upon Catholic liberality, than by giving an extract from the historian Leland ; whose prejudices and whose inte- rests made him necessarily most inimical to the Catholic people and their religion. He, in fact, con- firms everything I have said respecting the liberality exhibited by the Irish Catholics during the melancholy reign of Queen Mary. If anything could silence the rancorous malignity with which the Irish people are persecuted in their character as well as in their pro- perty, it would be tMs distinct admission of their per- fect tolerance to Protestants during the reign of Queen Mary — an admission proceeding from so powerful an adversaiy as Dr. Leland. I give his words : — " The spirit of popish zeal, which glutted all its ven- geance in England, was, in Ireland, thus happily con- fined to reversing the acts of an obnoxious prelate, (namely, Browne, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin) and stigmatizing his ofispring with an opprobrious name. Those assertors of the Eeformation M'ho had not fled from this kingdom, were, by the lenity of the Irish Government, suffered to sink into obscurity and neglect. No warm adversaries of popery stood forth to provoke the severity of persecution : the ^-^hole nation seemed to have relapsed into the stupid com- posure of ignorance and superstition from which it had scarcely awakened. /\jid as it thus escaped the effects 110 OBSERVATIONS, [CfHAP. n. of Mary's diabolical rancour, several English families friends to the reformation, fled into Ireland, and there enjoyed their opinions and worship in privacy, without notice or molestation." — LelandJs History of Ireland, book iii. c. 8. The following quotations may appear to derogate from the merit of the Irish in resisting the spread of that religious devastation called the Reformation. But the facts which they record are so characteristic of the English Protestantism of that period, that I cannot refrain from placing them before the public. The first of my quotations refers to the Protestant bishops; and the reader will, I think, smile at the readiness with which the author, no less a man than the great poet Spenser, div^ilges the excuse of the Protestant prelates for appropriating the tithes to themselves. One would imagine, that if there were no clergymen fit to be recipients of the tithes, there ought not to be any tithes paid at all. If the people were not even offered anything in the semblance of value for the tithes, one would think the tithes should not be demanded from them. But the poetic Spenser, agreeing with the prosaic Stanley of the present day, is of a clean contrary opinion j and thinks that whe- ther there be pray«^,rs or no prayers — religion or no religion — parsons or no parsons — still the tithes ! the tithes ! the tithes ! ought at all events, and in every contingency, to fatten the bishops, even if there were no parsons to browse upon them : — ^'Some of them (the Protestant bishops) whose diocese are in remote parts, somewhat out of the world's eye, doe not at all bestowe the benefices which are in their own donation, upon any, but keepe them in their owne hands, and set their own servants and horse-boys to take up the tithes and fruites of them ; with the which, some of them purchased great lands, and built faire castells upon the same. Of which abuse if any question be moved, thej hajre a very seemly colour and excuse, that they have no worthy ministers to bestow them upon ! ! 1" — Spenser, 140, CHAP. il; proofs, etc. hi It thus appearing that the talismanic word "tithes" was mixed up with every evolution of Protestantism, whether there were clergymen or none — good, bad, or indifferent — let us now look to the case in which there were actually parsons to receive the tithes ; and let us estimate their merits from Spenser's testimony. Speaking of the Protestant clergy of Ireland, he says, " "Whatever disorders you see in the Church of England, you finde there, and many more. Namely, gross simony, greedy covetousness, fleshly inconti- nence, carelesse sloath, and generally all disordered life in the common clergjTuen." — Spenser, 139. Such is Spenser's character of the Protestant clergy of his day. Let us now see what character this zealous Protes- tant witness gives to the Catholic clergy. We shall find — I say it triumphantly ! — that they bore the same character for zeal and piety in that day as they do at present, and occasionally extorted the praises of even their bitterest enemies. Here is what Spenser says of them, when contrasting their conduct with that of the Protestant ministers ; one would really imagine it was some candid enemy at the present day who speaks ! "It is greate wonder to see the oddes which is betweene the zeale of popish priests, and the ministers of the gospel • for they spare not to come out of Spayne, from Kome, and from Eemes, by long toile and dangerous travayling hither, where they know perill of deathe awaiteth them, and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the people unto the Church of Rome : whereas some of our idle ministers, having a way for credit and estimation thereby opened unto them, and having the livings of the country ofif^red to ttem, without paines and ^^thout perill, will neither for the same, nor any love of God, nor zeale for religion, or for all the good they may doe by winning soules to God, be dra^vne forth from their warm nests to looke out into Gt">d's harvest." — Spenser^ 254 112 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. 11 The character given of the Protestant clergy of that period by Carte, is as follows ; it fully accords with the statement of Spenser :— " The clergy of the Established Church were gene- rally ignorant and unlearned, loose and irregular in their lives and conversations, negligent of their euros, and very careless of observing uniformity and decency in divine worship." — Carte^ i. 68. Notwithstanding the ignorance and immorality of the law-established clergy, they could occasionally exliibit a sufficiency of anti- Catholic zeal to blast- pheme and insult oar Divine Redeemer, by outraging the memorials of him which are held sacred and venerable among the Catholics. I give a specimen : — " One Hewson, an English minister of Swords, fell violently on one Horish of that place, and took from him a crucifix, and hung the same upon a gallows with these words under it, ' help, all strangers, for the God of the papists is in danger.' Upon Horish's complaining to the State, and producing the mangled and defaced crucifix, Sir Geoftry Fenton, secretary, insulted the poor man, snached the cinicitix from him, and cast it on the ground under his feet ; and Horish for offering to complain of that abuse, was thrown into prison." — Theatre of Catholic and Protestant Religions, p. 117. The memotials of our Saviour appear to have been particularly offensive to the refined piety of this Sir Geoffry Fenton : — " The same Sir Geoffry Fenton did set a poor fellow on the pillory in Dublin with the picture of Christ about his neck, for having carried the same before a dead friend at his funeral." — Ibid, p. 118. A better idea may be conceived of the virulence oi' the persecution of the Irish Catholics during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if we refer for one moment to her san£fuinary proceedings against the CathoUcs of the more favoured portion of the empire — England. Upon this subject I may refer to the authority of a Catholic writer; especially as the accuracy of his statements stood the test of the adverse criticism of CHAF. II. J PUOOFS, ETC. ii3 an able and virulent adversary — Doctor Sturges. In the seventh edition of Dr. Milner's celebrated work entitled Letters to a Prthendary, pp. 95, 96, there occurs the following passage : — " I have," says Dr. Milner, " collected the names of 204 persons executed on that sole account, (viz. for being Catholics,) chiefly within the last 20 years of Elizabeth's reign. Of this number 142 were priests, three were gentlewomen, and the remainder esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen. Amongst them 15 were con- demned for denying the Queen's spiritual supremacy^ 126 for the exercise of the priestly functions, and the rest for being reconciled to the Catholic faith, or for being aiding and abetting to priests. Besides these^ 1 find a particular account, together with most of the tiames of 90 priests or Catholic lay persons who died in prison, in the same reign, and of 105 others, who were sent into perpetual banishment. I say nothing of many more who were whipped, fined, or stripped of their property, to the utter rain of their families. In one night, 50 Catholic gentlemen in the county of Lancaster, wer3 suddenly seized and committed to prison on account of their non-attendance at churcL About the same time, I find an equal number of Yorkshire gentlemen lying prisoners in York Castle on the same account, most of whom perished there. These were every week, for a twelve- month together, dragged by main force to hear the established service performed in the castle chapel. An account was published by a contemporary writer, (Dr. Bridgewater,) ol 1200 Catholics, who had been in some sort or other victims of this persecution previously to the year 1588 ; that is to say, during the period of its greatest lenity." — Milner's Letters to a Prehendary, Letter iv. To show the intensity of the persecution and the horrible nature of the cruelties inflicted by Protestant Elizabeth and her Protestant advisers, I add the fol- lowing extract. Dr. Milner thus addresses his anta- gonist, the Rev. Dr. Sturges : — B 4 OBSERVATIONS, I CHAP. 3J. " Since, sir. you oblige me to enter upon this dis- gusting subject, I must tell you, -svith respect to the greater part of Catholic victims, that the sentence ol the law was strictly and literally executed upon them. After being hanged up, they were cut down alive, dis- membered, ripped up, and their bowels literally burned before their faces, after which they were beheaded and quartered ! The time employed in this butchery was very considerable, and in one instance, lasted above half an hour. I must add, that a great number of these sufferers, as well as ether Catholics, who did not endure capital punishment, were racked in the most severe and wanton manner, in order to extort proofs against themselves or their brethren."— Ihid, Letter iv. It is an object of painful curiosity to contemplate the modes in which men tortured each other in the sacred aud holy name of religion. The following succinct summary, given in a note to Letter iv. of the " Letters to a PrelDendary," will afford a further idea of the familiar instruments of Protestant persecution in the reign of Queen Elizabeth : — " Camdc-n, in his Annals, speaking of the famouis F. Campian, says, ' tuat he was not so racked but that he was still capable of signing his name.' It appeanj from the account of one of these sufferers,* that the following tortures were in use against Catholics in the Tower : 1. The common rack, in which the limbs were stretched by levers. 2. The Scavenger's Daughter, so called, being like a hoop, in which the body was bent until the head and feet met together. 3. The chamber caUed Little Ease, being a hole so small that a person could neither stand, sit, nor lie straight in it. 4. The Iron Gauntlets." — Diar. Rer. Gest. in Turri Lond. " In some instances needles were thrust under the prisoners' nails. With what cinielty the Catholics vrere racked, we may gather from the following pag- * Campian. Brian, Cot^aiu, Shernood, &e. CHAP, n.] PllOOFS, ETa 115 sage in a letter from John Nicholls to Cardinal Allen, by way of extenuating the guilt of his apostacy and his perfidy in accusing his Catholic brethren : ' Non bona res est cotxjus isto cruciato longins fieri i^er duos fere pedes riuain natura concessit^ Sir Owen Hoptou, lieutenant of the Tower, was commonly the imme- diate' instrument in these cruelties ; but sometimes Elmer, Bishop of London, directed them. On one occasion he caused a young lady of good birth to be cruelly scourged, when he could not prevail on her to attend the public service." I canno^ help remarking that nothing was ever more unfounded than the notion that Protestantism was favourable to freedom of conscience ; or that Protes- tants were not persecutors. The contrary is directly the fact. Protestants not only persecuted Catholics, but they persecuted each other to the death, it is vrorth while to read the notes on this subject iu Doctor Milner's book, appended to " Letter iv." pp. 65, 66, of the seventh edition. I quote the follow- ing :— Scotland. — " The Reformation may be said to have begun there by the assassination of Cardinal Beatoun, in which Kiic.^i was a party, and to w}iich Fox in his Acts and Monuments, says the murderers were insti- gated ' by the Spirit of God.' In 1560, the parliament at one and the same time decreed the establishment of Calvinism, and the punishment of death against the ancient religion. 'With such indecent haste,' says Robertson, ' did the very persons who had just escaped ecclesiastical tyranny proceed to imitate the example.' {Rist. of Scotland.) See also the answer of the Pres- byteiy to the King and Council in 1596, concerning the Catholic Earls of Huntly, Errol, &c., viz. that 'as they (the earls) had been guilty of idolatry, a crime descE^ng of death, the civil power could not s])are theuL'" France. — " In France, it is well known that wher- ever the Huguenots carried their victorious arms against their sovereign, they prohibited the exercise 116 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. IL of the Catholic religion, slaughtered the priests and religious ; burnt the churches and convents ; dug up the dead to make bullets of their leaden coffins, &c. See lilaimhourg, Hist. Calvinism; Tkuaniis Hist. L. xxxi. One of their own writers, Nicholas Frou- menteau, confesses, that in the single province of Dauphiny they killed 256 priests, and 112 monks or friars. {Liv. de France.) In these scenes the famous Baron Des Adrets signalized his barbarity ; forcing his Cathohc prisoners to jump from the tov»'ers upon the pikes of his soldiers ; and obliging his own chil- dren to wash their hands in the blood of the Catholics." The Low GountHes. — "Dr. Sturges speaks with horror of the persecution of the Protestants in the Low Countries by the Duke of Alva, who, he says, 'boasted that he had delivered 18,000 heretics (he should have said heretics or rebels — see Brandt) to the executioner.' I heartily join with him in condemning and execrating the sanguinary vengeance of the Spanish Governor and Government against their seditious subjects of the Calvinistic persuasion ; but to form an adequate judgment of this case^ it is proper to attend to the provocations which the former had received from the latter. Not to mention the conspi- racy of Carli and Risot to assassinate the Duke of Alva himself at the monastery of Groonfeldt, near Brassels, it is certain that one class of the Reformers had endeavoured to erect the same fanatical and bloody kingdom in Holland, which John of Leyden actually estabhshed at Munster, crying out that God had given up the country to them, and that vengeance awaited all who would not join them, It was an or- dinary thing with them to assault the clergy in the discharge of their functions ; and the air resounded with their cries of kill the priests, kill the monks, kill the magistrates. These violences became more common as the Reformation extended itself A^ider. "Wherever Vandermerck and Sonoi, both of them lieutenants to the Prince of Orange, carried their arms, tliey uni- formly put to death in cold blood all the priests and CHAP, il] proofs, etc. 117 religions they could lay their hands upon, as at Oude- narde, Riiremond, Dort, Middlebourg, Delft, and Shonoven. See Hist. Ref. des Pays Bas, by the Pro- testant minister De Brandt ; also Dr. Patinson in his Jerusalem and Babel, p. 385. A late celebrated bio- grapher, Feller, Diet. Hist. Art. Toledo, says that Yandermerck slaughtered more unoffending Catholic priests and peasants in the year 1572, than Alva exe- cuted Protestants during his whole government. He gives us, in the same passage, a copious extract from H Ahrege de V Histoire de la HoUande, par Monsieur Kerroux, in which this Protestant writer, who pro- fesses to write from judicial records still extant, draws a most frightful picture of the infernal barbari- ties of Sonoi on the Catholic peasants of North Hol- land. He says that some of these, after undergoing the torments of scourges and the rack, were enveloped in sheets of linen that had been steeped in spirits of wine, which being inflamed, they were miserably scorched to death ; that others, after being tortured with burning sulphur and torches in the tenderest parts of their bodies, were made to die for want of sleep, executioners being placed on guard over them to beat and torment them with clubs and other weapons whenever exhausted nature seemed ready to sink into forgetfulness ; that several of them were fed with nothing but salt herrings, without a drop of water or any other liquid, until they expired with thirst ; finally, that others were stung to death by wasps, or devoured by rats, which were confined in coffins with them. Amongst the cruelties ' there re- counted are some of so indecent a nature that they will not bear repeating ; and those which occur above are only mentioned, to induce Dr. Sturges and other wTiters of his class to join me in burying the odious names of Alva and Sonoi in equal oblivion. Amongst the more illustrious foreign Protestants who suffered death by the violence of other Protestants, it may be proper to mention the names of Servetus, Gentilis, Felix Alam>, Kotman, Bamevelt, »fec, not to mention Bolsec, 118 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. IL Grotius, and others, who were banished, or otherwise persecuted for their religious opinions." England. — " The following is a more circumstantia] account of the persecution which some Protestants have exercised upon others in this country, than is contained in the passage above quoted. In the reign of Edward VI., in the year 1550, six Anabaptists were condemned by Archbishop Cranmer, some of whom recanted and carried faggots in sign of their having merited burning ; and one of them, a woman, Joan Knell, was actually burned alive. The following year George Paris was condemned, and suffered in the same manner. See Stow's Annals. During the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1573, Peter Burchet, a gentle- man of the Middle Temple, was examined on the score of heresy by Edward Sands, Bishop of London, but recanted his opinions. In 1575, twenty-seven heretics VN'-ere at one time, eleven at another, and five at a third, condemned for their errors, most of them by the same Protestant bishop. Of these, twenty were whipped and banished ; others bore their faggots ; and two of them, John Peterson and Henry Turwort, were burned to death in Smithfield. In 1583, John Lewes, 'for denying the Godhead of Christ,' says Stow, was burned at Norwich ; at which place also, Francis Kett, Al.A., suffered the same kind of death for similar opinions in 1589. Two years afterwards, William Hackett w^s hanged for heresy in Cheapside. Five others suffered death in this reign for being Brownists — viz., Thacker, Copping, Greenwood, Bar- row, and Penry. The above particulars may be seen ni Stow, Brandt, Limborch, CoUier, Neal, &c. " Under James I., Legat and Whitman were exe- cuted for Arianism. In the time of Charles T., the Dissenters complained loudly of their sufferings, and particularly that four of their number, Leighton, Burton, Prynne, and Bastwick, were cr6pj)ed t)f their ears, and set in the piliory. Limborcli, Hist of Inqui- sition ; Neal, &c. When the Presbyterians afterwards got the upper Imnd, they continued to put Catholics vJUAP. il] pkoofs, etc. 119 t>3 death, and treated those of the former establish- ment with almost equal severity ; at the same time appointing day^ of humiliation and fasting, to beg God's pardon for not being more intolerant. See Neal^ Hist, of Puritans ; also Hisf. of Churches of England and Scotland, vol. iii. The editor of De Laune's rieafor X on- Conformists, says, that this writer was one of 8,000 Protestant Dissenters who * perished in prison in that single reign, — (viz., of Charles 11.) merely for dissenting from the Church.' Preface, 1>. 2. He addS; ' that one of their people, Mr. White, lad carefully collected a list of the sufferings of the Dissenters ; that the Catholics, in the reign of James II., offered him bribes to obtain this list ; that he re- jected the offer, to prevent the black record from rising up in judgment against the Church ; and that the dignified prelates sent thanks and money to Mr. White in reward for his services.' For the capital punishments and other sufferings of the Quakers, see ^Penn's Life of George Fox, io]io"—Milner s Letters to il Prebendary, letter iv. (note). The subject of the change of religion and the Der- secutions attending on it, have necessarily compelled jne to condense here the cruelties of several reigns, and to range beyond the period embraced in my first chapter, to which the present notes and illustrations l^hould more properly belong. The treachery, the cruelty, the infernal injustice of every shape and kind, whereby Elizabeth and her fol- lowers obtained the dominion of Ulster, viiR be eluci- dated by further extracts from Protestant historians. Ere I close these evidences on the subject of reli- gious persecution, I shall give, from the statute book, the following abridged record of the penal Acts passed against the Catholics of England ; from which the reader can form his own judgment of Protestant tole- ration in that country from 1548 to 1791. 120 OBSKRVATIONS, [CHAP. H Abstract of Acts of Parliainent made in England on the subject of Religion^ from the year 1548 to tlu year 1791. 1548. — Any parson, vicar, or other minister, refus- ing to use the Book of Common Prayer, and other rites and ceremonies according to the use of the Church of England, or using any other manner of prayer, or speaking against the said Book of Common Prayer, and being afterwards thereof three times convicted, shall suffer imprisonment during his life. 1551.— Every person shall resort to Church where Common Prayer shall be used, upon pain of punish- ment by the censures of the ChurcL And any person hearing or being present at any manner or form of Common Prayer, of administration of the Sacraments, making of ministers, or of any rites, other than those set forth in the said Book of Common Praj^er, shall suffer imprisonment during his or their lives. 1558 — The Queen declared to be supreme head of the Church ; and all persons bearing promotions and offices, ecclesiastical or temporal, refusing to take the oath of Supremacy, disabled from retaining or exercis- ing any such offices during life. Any person assert- ing the jurisdiction, spiritual or ecclesiastical, of any foreign prince, prelate, &c. as heretofore Ubed within this kingdom, shall, with his abettors, be attainted, forfeit his estates, and suffer pains of death, and other penalties and forfeitures, as in cases of high treason. 1563. — Any person refusing to take the oath of the Queen's Supremacy, to incur for the first such refusal, tne danger, penalties, pains, and forfeitures ordained and provided by the statute of provisions and prae- munire, made in the 16th year of King Richard II. Refusing the oath a second time declared to be treason. 1581. — Statute enacting it to be treason to with- draw any person from the religion established, to the Romish religion. Treason to be reconciled or wdth- drawn to the Romish religion. All aiders to suffer as for misprision of treason. CHAP. IT.] PROOFS, ETC. 121 Any person saying or wilfully hearing mass, shall forfeit 200 marks, and suffer twelve months' imprison- ment. Any person over the age of sixteen, not going to church or usual place of common prayer, shall forfeit £20 English per month ; and should he absent himseK still, he shall give sufficient sureties for £200 at least, "to their good behaviour," and shall so continue bound until he conform himself and come to church. Any person keeping a schoolmaster who shall not repair to the Established Church, shall f orfeit £10 per month. Imprisonment in default of all the above pajnnents. 1585. — All Jesuits, seminaiy, and other priests re- maining in England, or entering the kingdom after forty days, shall for such offence be adjudged a traitor, and shall suffer, lose, and forfeit, as in case of high treason. Receiving or relieving any such persons shall be a felony ; and sending money or relief to such persons out of England shall be punished with the penalties of prosmunire, or, in other words, with transportation and forfeiture of property. Note. — Numerous executions of priests, (tc, took place under this Act ; and so late as the 30th of June 1640, when England and Scotland were in arms for liberty of conscience, Rushworth mentions as an ordi- nary occurrence, that one Morgan was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn for having received holy orders in the Catholic Church beyond seas, and hav- ing, in defiance of this Act, come into England.— Rushworth^ iv. 305. 1537. — Two- thirds of the lands and other estates of every person refusing to go to church, shall be taken into the Queen's possession. 1593. — All recusants {i.e., persons refusing to con- form to the new State creed) shall give in their names to the curate of the parish, who ^vUl certify the same to the justices, in order to take proceedings against 122 OBSEItVATlONS, [CHAP. IT. tliem. Any priest refusing to acknowledge himself as siicli, shall be committed to prison. [Query — Wherein differed this from the Spanish Inquisition '?] Any person over the age of sixteen years, refusing to go to church, or impugning, by speeches, the Queen's authority ecclesiastical, or persuading others not to go to church, or going to any other place of religious meeting, shall be committed to prison, there to remain without bail or mainpjize, until they conform to the Church, and hear divine service as established by law. Any person offending against this Act, and not coming in within three months, and conforming to the Church, must abjure and depart out of the realm. Kefusal to do so is declared felony, without benefit of clergy. Any person keeping in his house any one who refuses to go to church, shall forfeit <£10 per month for every person so refusing. The lands and goods of persons forced to depart out of the realm by this Act, shall be forfeited to the head of the State Church — the sovereign. 1605. — Churchwardens to return monthly lists of persons refusing to attend divine service, and of their children above nine years of age. Justices to make proclamation that all such offenders surrender their bodies to the sheriff; monthly penalty, <£20 each, and two-tliirds of their estates to be taken for the King. Every bishop shaU examine the persons in his diocese on oath ; and he who shall refuse to answer upon oath, shall be committed to prison without bail or mainprize. [N.B. — The Inquisition again !] Any person aged above eighteen years refusing the oath of supremacy, shall incur the danger and penal- ties of prasmunire. No indictments of such persons shall be reversed for want of form. Any person reconciling another to the Church oi CHAP. II.] PROOFS, ETC. 123 Rome, shall have judgment, suffer, and forfeit, as m cases of high treason ! The sheriii or other officer may break open any house wherein popish recusants shall be. 1609. — Every person above the age of eightoeii shaU take the oath of supremacy. Any person refusing to do so, shall be committed to prison -without bail or mainprize, until the assizes ; and if he then refuse, he shall incur the danger and penalty of praemunire, except women covert, who shall be committed to prison only, there to remain -^-ithout bail or main- prize till they will take the said oath and conform, or until her husband pay to the King JlO per month, or the third part of all his estate. [Here we have perjury — foul perjury — enfor^^ed by statute, under the penalty of praemunire. We may note, that such was the rigid execution of these infernal laws, that in 1626 we find Lord Scroop ac- cused to the King of conniving at recusancy, inas- much as he had convicted only 1670 Catholics in the East Riding of i^orkshire.] 1670. — Justices of the peace, constables, hiyed for in this parliament. Leland, with all his prejudices, admits that Everard was chosen Speaker r-y a majority of undoubted representatives. It was, however, too great an object to have a Speaker devoted to the plunderers, for the government party to hesitate ■it the commission of any fraud or violence. The fol- lowing extract will amuse as well as instruct : — Election of Speaker. 1613. — " There were two elec- tions, viz., those of the recusant sect had chosen Sii John Everard, Knight, for their Speaker, and there- fore would in no wise accept of Sir John Davies ; and in this division gTew an uncertainty who had most voices ; whereupon Sir John Davies, with all those of the protestancy, went out to be numbered, and before they came in again, those of the recusiincy had shul [38 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. II. the door, and had set Sir John Everard in the chair of the Speaker ; but when the Protestants saw that, they pulled Sir John Everard out of the chair, and held Sir John Davies therein ; and thus, with great contention, the second and tliird days (of the session) were spent ; but the recusants prevailed not therein *, for Sir John Davies was maintained in the place. Then did they recusants of both houses of parliauicnt withdraw themselves, and resorted not thither any more, notwithstanding that they were often sent for by the Lord Deputy." — Desider. Ctirios. Hiheni. vol. i. p. 168 ; see also Leland, Book iv. chap. 7. " A band of armed soldiers, with lighted matches in their hands, stood at the entrance of the house, to embolden the Protestant party." — Gurry, 79. Complaint was vain ^ and although the flagrant illegality of the returns of a number of the Englisli party was confessed, yet it appears from I6'^ra^u7'(i. L 353. 160 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. ID, Notwithstanding the total deficiency of the King's title as against the possessors — a title against which it was admitted that there was an adverse possession of nearly three centuries — j'et Strafford determin.ed to work out the iniquity to its full consummation. Elated with the success that had attended him in Roscommon, Mayo, and Sligo, he proceeded to con- summate similar robbery on the inhabitants of the wealthier and more populous county of Gal way. But here he was foiled for a time. In spite of all his arti- fices, the jury found a verdict in favour of the de- fendants ; as they were bound to do, if they had any regard to the evidence or to their oaths. Let every reasonable and just man listen to the consequences These are Strafford's own words : — " We then bethought us of a course to vindicate his majesty's honour and justice, not only against the persons of the jurors, but also against the sheriff, for returning so insufficient, indeed, as we conceived, a packed jury, to pass upon a business of so great weight and consequence ; and therefore we fined the sheriff in a thousand pounds to his majesty, and bound over the jury to appear in the castle chamber, where, we conceive, it is fit that their pertinacious carriage be followed with all just severity." — Strafford^ i. 451. We shall see what the " just severity " towards the juiy was : — "They were fined four thousand pounds each, their estates were seized, and themselves imprisoned till the fines were paid." — Carte's Ormond. Leland adds : — "The jurors of Galway were to remain in prison till each of them paid his fine of £4,000, and acknow- ledged his offence in court upon his knees."— ZeZcmc?, book V. chap. i. In the same despatch in which Strafford announced his having committed the outrage of fining the sherifl and imprisoning the jurors, he proposed to cut the work short in the following summary manner : — VJHAP in.j PROOFS, ETC. ICl " We therefore liave resolved, that I, the deputy, shall forthwith give order to the King's learned coun- sel to put the King's title into a legal proceeding (if bis m£ijesty in his wisdom shall not find reason to direct the contrary), which we conceive may be in a fair and orderly way by an exchequer proceeding to seize for his majesty the lands of the jurors, and of all that shall not lay hold on his majesty's grace offered them by the proclamation." — Strafford^ i. 453. He, however, advised other precautions. He ad- vised : — " That his majesty would be pleased to give war- rant to me, his deputy, to add two hundred to the number of the horse troops already listed here, yet without any new addition of charge to his majesty in respect of captains or other officers ; but that by them the old troops may be reinforced by a distribution among them of these new supplies, as I, his majesty's deputy, shall think fit, or as I shall be better directed oy his majesty. This increase of horse we should mdeed advise at any time ; much rather now, till the intended plantation be settled ; for it will be neces- sary that some strength of horse may stand and look on, as an excellent assistant to countenance the plan- tation."— AS'^rcz/orcZ, i. 453, 454. It -udll be recollected that Strafford, at the com- mencement of these inquisitions, when he had secured the jury for the county of Roscommon, made a parade of the great liberality with which the Crown had per- mitted counsel to defend the rights of the people against itseK. That this declaration was intended merely as a trap, will appear from the following extract from the same despatch, dated 25th August. 1635 :— " For those counsellors of the law, who so laboured against the King's title, we conceive it is fit that sucli of them as we shrill find reason so to proceed Tvithai, be put to take the oath of supremacy, which, if they refuse, that then they be silenced and not admitted L 162 OBSEllVATIONS, JCHAP. HI. to practise as now they do ; it being unfit that thej should take benefit by his majestjr's graces, that take the boldness after such a manner to oppose his ser- vice." — Strafford., i. 454. It is manifest, therefore, that the permission to use counsel must have been given in the expectation that such counsel would neglect their duty to their clients, and betray their own consciences, to please the lord deputy. The counsel disappointed this unholy expectation. They were accordingly driven from the practice of their profession ; for they would not and could not take the oath of supremacy. I cannot refrain from here stating a fact which has occurred in my own time. There was an individual at the Irish bar who practised exclusively in the crimi- nal courts ; and who for nearly twenty years contrived to be appointed counsel for all the persons prosecuted by the Crown. Yet that man had, »r the last eighteen years of his life, a private pension of £300 per annum from the Crown. This was not discovered by the public until after his death. What was this pension given for 1 To return to Wentworth, and the methods whereby he procured verdicts. Here is a specimen :— " Your majesty was graciously pleased, upon my humble ad-^dce, to bestow four shillings in the pound upon your lord chief justice and lord chief baron in this kingdom, forth of the first yearly rent raised up- on the Commission of Defective Titles. Which, upon observation, I find to be the best given that ever was ; for now they do intend it with a care and diligence inch as it were their own private ; and most certain, the gaining to themselves every four shillings once paid, shall better your revenue for ever after at least five pounds." — Strafford^ ii. 41. The unhappy Galway jurors remained for years in prison. They sent agents to London to obtain mercj." from the King — but in vain ! On the contrary, Straff'ord had the audacity to demand that these agents should be punished ! — punished merely for CHAP, ni.] PROOFS, ETC. 163 going to sue for mercy. There is this passage in his despatch of the 14th December, 1635 : — " I find that nothing would give these commission- ers so much satisfaction, and even in my own judg- ment so much enable us, and dispose all to a speedy and happy conclusion, as to remit these agents of Galway in the condition of prisoners, and their pro- positions entirely to our consideration and legal pro- ceeding on this side." — Strafford, L 493. And, accordingly, the agents were transmitted as prisoners, to abide the tender mercies of Strafi'ord. It has been said that the unhappy Charles was ignorant of these enormities, and would have con- demned them. Alas ! the fact is otherwise. Strafford, in the year 1636, went over to England j reported to the King in council his proceedings in the Galway case. The Eling replied — " That it was no severity ; and wished him to go on in that way ; for that if he served him otherwise, he would not serve him as he expected. So," adds Went- worth, " I kneeled down, kissed his majesty^s hand^ and the council arose." — Cartas Orrrwnd, voL iii p. 11. If any one wiU reflect upon the nmltitnde of crimes of which the King thus expressed his approval, he win not be surprised at the ultimate fate of the un- fortunate monarch. Assuredly the forms of law were never before used to inflict such a complication of iniquities as were perpetrated by Strafford, and ap- proved of by the ELing. The palliation, or rather justification, which ob • trudes itself in all Strafford's despatches, is, that all these things were done, not only to augment the King's revenue, but first and especially for the ad- vancement of Protestantism, and the good of Pro- testants. O Protestantism ! what horrors have been committed in your name in Ireland ! I pass hastily over another grievance of the utmost magnitude sustained by the Irish ; it was the infititn- tion of the Court of Wards. 164 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. in. " This was a new court, never known in Ireland till the 14th of James I. It had no warrant from any law or statute, whereas that of England was erected by an Act of Parliament." — Gartens Ormond, vol. i. p. 517. The object of this court was to vest in persons appointed by the Crown the custody of the estates of minors. It is easy to see how it worked in Ireland, especially during the rule of Strafford. " Sir William Parsons, by whom it was first pro- jected, was appointed master of it — a man justly and universally hated by the Irish ; and such were the illegal and arbitrary proceedings of that court, that ' the heirs of Catholic noblemen and other Catholics were destroyed in their estates, bred in dissolution and ignorance ; their parents' debts unsatisfied, their sisters and younger brothers left wholly unprovided for ; the ancient appearing tenures of mesne lords dis- regarded ; estates valid in law, and made for valuable considerations, avoided against law ; ana the whole land filled with frequent swarms of escheators, feuda tories, pursuivants, and others, by authority of that court.' ' — Remonstrance from Trim (apud Gurry^ p. 125). Another court was instituted stiU more recently, and if possible with less authority. It was Lord Strafibrd who proposed to erect this other court, in the year 1633. It inflicted on the Catholics — " An incapacity for aU offices and employments ; a disabihty to sue out livery of their estates without taking the oath of supremacy ; severe penalties of various kinds inflicted by that court on all those of the Catholic religion, although the Catholics were an hundred to one more than those of any other religion." — Remonstrance from Trim (ut supra). The proceedings in this court were of a nature so cruelly oppressive, and so utterly indefensible, that even Leland speaks of them in the following terms:— " These regulations in the ecclesiastical system were followed by an establishment too odious, and there- CHAP, ni.] PRUOFS, ETC. l65 fore too dangerous, to be attempted during the sessions of parliament, that of a High Commission Court, which Avas erected in Dublin after the English model, with the same formality and the same tremendous powers/' — LciandJs Ireland^ book v. chap. 1. I cannot proceed without giving the following exquisite morgeau. It is part of Lord Strafford's defence of himself, in which he, with great naivete, i-elies upon cases in point, of cruelty. Let it speak for itself : — "I dare appeal to those that know the country, whether in former times many men have not been committed and executed by the deputies' warrant that wepe not thieves and rebels, but such as went up and down the country. If they could not give a good account of themselves, the provost-marshal, by direction of the deputies, using in such cases to hang them up. I dare say there are hundreds of examples in thia kind." — RushwortNs Collectanea, viii. 649. I may here, also, by way of parenthesis, bring before the reader other significant passages from Protestant histo-rians, which show that the virulence wherewith Catholicity was persecuted was not confined to the ecclesiastical courts. " In this year (1629) the Koman clergy began to rant it, and to exercise their fancies called religion so pub- licly, as if they had gained a toleration. For whilst the lords justices were at Christ Church in Dublin on 8t. Stephen's day, they were celebrating mass in Cook- street ; which their lordships taking notice of, they sent the Archbishop of Dublin, the mayor, sheriffs, and recorder of the city, with a file of musketeers, to ap- prehend them; which they did, taking away the cracifixes and paraments of the altar ; the soldiers hewing down the image of St. Francis ; the priests and friars were delivered into the hands of the pursuivants, at whom the people threw stones, and rescued them. The lords justices being informed of this, sent a guard and delivered them, and clapped eight popish aldermen by Um h.^^ for not assisting theii- iUAyor. 166 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. On this account, fifteen houses [viz., chapels], by direc- tion of the lords of the council in England, were seized to the King's use ; and the priests and friars were so persecuted, that two of them hanged themselves in their own defence." — Hammon L'Estrange^ quoted in Harris's Fiction Unmasked. It will be easily believed that the priests and friars were saved the trouble of hanging themselves. All these proceedings were approved of by the un- happy Charles. " His majesty^ in person, was pleased openly, and in the most gracious manner, to approve and commend their ability and good service ; whereby they might be sufficiently encouraged to go on, with the like resolu- tion and moderation^ till the work was fully done, as well in the city as in other places of the kingdom, leaving to their discretion when and where to carry a soft or harder hand." — Scrinia Sacra. It is just worth while to pause for one moment, and to see what was doing in England about the Bame time ; or, as the modem phrase is, " was being done." " Besides Richard Herst, Edmund Arrowsmith, and others, put to death in 1628, merely for exercising the functions of Roman Catholic priests ; Thomas Bulla- ker, Thomas HoUand, Paul Heath, Francis Bell, Rho- dolphus Colman (condemned, but reprieved), Henry Morse, Morgan, Philip Powel, and Martin Wood- cock, together with Reading and ^Vhitaker, were executed in England for the same causes, between the years 1641 and 1646 . . . The condition of a mission- ary at the beginning of this reign was different from what it was at the latter end of it, when religious zeaj against popery was heightened and inflamed with all the rage of faction. If a Turkish dervise had then preached Mahomet in England, he would have met much better treatment than a popish priest." — Gh^ain- gei'^s Biographical Hist, of England^ li. pp. 206, 7, 8. It wiU be remembered that nothing more tended to foment the great rebellion in England against Charles 7KAP. in.] PROOPfS, ETXX 167 the First, than the oppressions practised by the Court of Wards and the High Commission Court. Ireland felt more than double the severity inflicted upon England by these institutions. The reason why I have dwelt in these notes upon rhe enormities committed in the administration oi what was called "justice" in Ireland, is that, by the most singular perversion of the facts of history, not only Temple, but Clarendon, and, after him, Hume, and a multitude of other calumniators of Ireland, have gravely stated the astounding falsehood, that Ireland was well governed in the reigns of James the First and of Charles the First ! Well governed ! when the ecclesiastical courts hunted the Catholics like wild beasts, and crowded them, when caught, into loathsome prisons ! when the Court of Wards spoliated the properties of all Catholic minors, and perverted their religion ! when the High Commission Court punished with moi-e than tttar-Chamber severity every supposed slight or insult to any person in power — punished every resistance however necessary and justifiable) to the will or caprice of men in authority ! when the sheriffs were intimidated, and punished if the verdicts of the juries did not satisfy the ruling tyrc^nts ! when the chief justice and other judges were bribed by the highest authority in the land — bribed with a stipulated proportion of the property in dispute, for procuring judgment against the unhappy possessors of that pro- perty ! when the jurors who obeyed the impulses of conscience were thrown to rot in prison — were ruined by fines so enormous as to amount to a confiscation of their property — were pilloried, had their ears cut off, their tongues bored through — were but I will not pursue this subject. "What need It Well governed 1 This is what English writers of the highest class caU good government- 168 OBSERVATIONS, , [CHAP. HI. CHAPTER IIL-PART II. I AM not writing the history in detail of the civil war; I am merely justifying my statement in the text. No person can deny that the cause of the King had now become identified with that of the Irish Catholics. Now for the cruelties perpetrated by the English Protestant parliamentarians and CromweUians. My first extract is from a Protestant clergjnnan — the historian Inland. He shows the design with which these c^iielties were committed. " The favourite object of the Irish governors and the English parliament, was the utter extermination of aU the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland. Their estates were already marked out and allotted to their conquerors; so that they and their posterity were consigned to inevitable ruin." — Letancl^ book v. chap. 4. My second quotation, establishing the same fact, is from another Protestant clergyman, named Rev. Dr. Warner : — " It is evident from their (the lords justices) last letter to the lieutenant, that they hoped for an extir- pation, not of mere Irish only, but of aU the old English families that were Roman Catholics.'^ — Warner^s History of the Rebellion and Civil War in Ireland, p. 176. Upon this subject — namely, the design of utter extirpation — my next quotation is from the equally undeniable authority of Lord Clarendon : — "The parliament party . . . had grounded their own authority and strength upon such foundations as were inconsistent with any toleration of the Roman Catholic religion, and even with any humanity to the Irish nation, and more especially to those of the old native extraction, the whole i-ace whereof they had upon the matter sworn to extirpate," — Lord Clareii- don, i 215. CHAP. IIL] proofs, ETC. 169 This hideous determination of massacre was occa- sionally somewhat relaxed when the fortunes of the parliamentarians waned ; it was relaxed, however, only to be renewed with redoubled alacrity when theii fortunes prospered again. The follo^ving is from Cartas Ormond : — "Mr. Brent lately landed here, and hath brought with him such letters as have somewhat changed the face of this government from what it was, when the parliament pamphlets were received as oracles, their commands obeyed as laws, and extirpation preached for gospel" — Carte's Ormond, iii. 170. _ There were two objects to h& gratified by the Eng- lish Protestant rulers of the day. The first was the increase of plunder to themseJ ves in the confiscation of the estates of the Catholics. The second was the indiscriminate slaughter of those Catholics, Avithout any distinction of age, sex, rank, or condition. The following accusation — fully borne out by the iacts — is quoted from the same English Protestant historian^ Carte : — "There is too much reason to think, that as the lords justices really wished the rebellion to spread, and more gentlemen of estates to be involved in it, that the forfeitures might be the greater, and a general plantation be carried on by a new set of English Protestants all over the kingdom, to the ruin and expulsion of all the old English and natives that were Poman Catholics ; so, to promote what they wished, they gave out such a design, and that in a short time there would not be a Roman Catholic left in the kingdom. It is no small confirmation of this notion, that the Earl of Ormond, in liis letters of January 27th and February 25th, 1641-2, to Sir W. St. Leger, imputes the general revolt of the nation, then far advanced, to the publishing of such a design ; and when a person of his great modesty and temper, the most averse in his nature to speak his sentiments of what he could not but condemn in others, and who, when obhged to do so does it always in the gentlest 170 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAjf. 111. expressions, is drawn to express such an opinion, the case must be very notorious. I do not find that the copies of those letters are preserved ; but the original of Sir William St. Leger's, in answer to them, suffi- ciently shows it to be his lordship's opinion ; for, after acknowledging the receipt of these two letters, he useth these words : — ' The undue promulgation of that severe determination to extirpate the Irish and papacy out of this kingdom, your lordship rightly apprehends to be too unseasonably published/"— Garths Ormonde i. 263. This St. Leger was himself one of the chief extir- pators ; and I pray the reader to observe that he does not at all condemn the system of massacring the Irish to the last man. The only thing that he finds fault with is the unseasonable publication of the purpose to do so. It will, however, be more clearly under- stood what his real dispositions were, from a letter written by Lord Upper Ossory, quoted by Carte, in which the writer says : — "That Sir William St. Leger" (who was Lord President of Munster) "was so cruel and merciless, that he caused men and women to be most execrably executed, and that he ordered, among others, a woman great with child to be ripped up, from whose womb three babes were taken out ; through every of whose little bodies his soldiers thrust their weapons ; which act," adds Lord Upper Ossory, " put many into a sort of desperation." — Carte's Ormond, voL ii p. 51. I only implore Englishmen and Protestants to read these extracts from Protestant historians, and to re- flect how much of disrepute they fling upon Pro- testantism in general, and the EngKsh nation in particular. If they had such a case to make, in point of fact, against the Catholics, we should never hear the end of it. But as the cruelties of individuals wiU bring the fact more pointedly before the mind, and cause its more easy retention in the recollection, I will select «ome specimens of the sgavoir faire of that Sir Charles CRAP. nLj PROOFS, ETC. 171 Coote, whom I have mentioned in the text To work out the purposes of the English Government, power of life and death was given to him. Mark the follow- ing description of him and his cruelties : — It was certainly a miserable spectacle to see every iay nimibers of people executed by martial law, at the discretion, or rather caprice, of Sir Charles Coote— a hot-headed and bloody man, and as such accounted even by the English Protestants. Yet, this was the man whom the lords justices picked out to entrust with a commission of martial law to put to death rebels or traitors — that is, all such as he should deem to be so • which he performed T\ith delight and a wanton kind of cruelty. And yet all this while the justices sat in council, and the judges, at the usual seasons, sat in their respective courts, spectators of and countenancing so extravagant a tribunal as Sir Charles Coote's, and so illegal an execution of justice." —Lord Casilehaven^ quoted in Carte's Ormond, vol L pp. 279, 280. Another specimen of the services npon which Sir Charles Coote was employed, we have on the authority of Borlase, as well as of Carte. The public faith had been pledged to protect a Mr. King, one of the gentlemen assembled at Swords. The lords justices observed their plighted faith by sending a party of horse and foot, on the 15th December, 1641, to Clon- tarf, the property of Mr. King, with orders to fall upon, and cut off the inhabitants, and bum the village. "These orders," says Borlase, "were excellently well executed."— ^wi. Reh. p. 62. Carte adds : — "Sir Charles Coote, who, by the lords justices' special designation, was appointed to go _ on this expedition, as the fittest person to execute their orders, and one who best knew their minds, at this time pillaged and burned houses, com, and other goods belonging to Mr. King, to the value of four thousand pounct." — Cartas Ormcmd, i. 249. The next extract I shall give is of some length; 172 OBSERVATIONS, CHAP. IH. but it is exceedingly significant. It relates to the murder of father Higgins, the parish priest of Naas ; a man of innocent life, of humanity, and of piety ; a man whose character was never tarnished. Yet his innocence, his active humanity, and his piety, could not — in the midst of Dublin, and in the presence of the Government — avail him aught ! Every part of this extract is pregnant with meaning : the object to discourage submissions, lest they should diminish confiscations, was well worthy of our pious Protestant English governors. Here is the story of his assassi- nation : — "The cruelties of the martial law under Sir C. Coote have been already mentioned ; but about this time, when it was thought politic to discourage the submissions which were growing frequent, Father Higgins, a very quiet, pious, inoffensive man, who had put himself under the protection of Lord Ormond, and whom his lordship had brought with him to Dublin, was one morning seized ; and without any trial or delay, or giving his lordship any notice of the intention, by Sir C. Coote's order, hanged. Father Higgins officiated as priest at Naas and in that neighbourhood ; had distinguished himself greatly by saving the English in those parts from spoil and slaughter ; and had relieved several whom he found to have been stripped and plundered, so far was he from engaging in the rebellion, or giving any encou- ragement to it. Lord Ormond had therefore taken him under his protection ; and when he heard of the execution of this innocent man, for no other reason than his being a priest, his lordship was very warm in hisexpostulations with the justices upon it at the council board. They pretended to be surprised : and excused themselves from having had any other hand in the affair than giving Sir C. Coote a general au- thority to order such executions without consulting them. Lord Ormond insisted that Coote should be tried for what he had done, as having hanged an innocent, nay, a deserving subject, without examina- CHAP. III.J PROOFS, BTa 17S don Tvitbont trial, and without a particniar warrant to authorize him in it. The justices, who had either directed him to do it, or were determined to support their favourite in a proceeding which was agreeable to them, would not give him up. Their hanging a man of character at all, deserving in many respects, and exceptionable in none but ms religion, inclines one to think that they intended this war should be understood to be a war of religion. But their hang- ing him in such a manner, by martial law, by Sir C. Coote's authority only, against justice and humanity, when brought thither and protected by Lord Ormond, could only be meant to prevent all submissions, or to offer such an indignity to his lordship as should pro- voke him to resign his com mi ssion, and to oppose them no longer in council" — WaTmer, p. 182. I now give Clarendon's version of the same transac- tion ; because it shows the brutality of even the soldiers who were under the command of Ormond, while he was serving the English party. It, however, does not appear that these soldiers knew he was a priest. They were ready to murder him merely for being a papist. " The Marquis of Ormond, having intelligence that a party of the rebels intended to be at such a time at the Naas, he drew some troops with the hope of sur- prising them ; and, marching all night, came early in the morning into the town, from which the rebels, upon notice, were newly fled. In the town some of the soldiers found the Kev. Mr. Higgins, who might, it is true, have as easily fled, if he had apprehended any danger in the stay, "\^'nen he was brought be- fore the marquis, he voluntarily acknowledged that he was a papist, and that his residence was in the to^\Tl, from whence he refused to fly away with those who were guilty ; because he not only knew himself very innocent, but believed that he could not be ^vithout ample evidence of it, having by his sole charity and power preserved very many of the Eng- ish Protestants from the rage and fury of the I^sh : 174 OBSERVATIONS. ^^CRJ^T. ITL and, therefore, he only besought the marquis to pre- serve him from the violence of the soldiers, and to put him securely into Dublin, to be tried for any crime : which the marquis promised to do, and per- formed it, though with so much hazard, that when it was spread abroad among the soldiers that he was a papist, the officer into whose custody he was entrusted was assaulted by them ; and it was as much as the marcjuis could do to relieve him, and compose the mutmy. When he came to Dublin he informed the lords justices of the prisoner he had brought with him ; of the good testimony he had received of his peaceable carriage ; and of the pains he had taken to restrain those with whom he had credit, from entering into rebellion ; and of many charitable offices he had performed, of which there wanted not evidence enough, there being many then in Dublin who owed their lives, and whatever of their fortunes was left, purely to him; so that he doubted not that he would be worthy of protection. Within a few days after, when the marquis did not suspect the poor man's being in danger, he heard that Sir Charles Coote, who was Provost-marshal General, had him taken out of prison, and caused him to be put to death in the morning, before or as soon as it was light ; of which barbarity the marquis complained to the lords justices ; but was so far from bringing the other to be questioned, that he found himself to be upon some disadvantage, for thinking the proceeding to be other than it ought tO have been." — Clarendon's Hist Irish Reh. I wish to specify in particular the cruelties of Sir Charles Coote in the county of Wicklow. Let it be recollected that Coote's crimes are not the crimes of an individual only ; the Government who selected and employed him is, of course, responsible for those crimes. Here is the short and pithy account given by Leland of an expedition of his into the county of Wicklow : — " Sir Charles Coote," says Leland^ " in revenge of the depredations of the Irish, committed such uupro- OHAP. in.] PEoops, Bra 17§ voked, such ruthless, and indiscriminate carnage in the town of Wicklow, as rivalled the utmost extra- vagances of the northerns." — Lelands Hist. Ireland, book V. c. 4. Fortified by this corroboration, I do not hesitate to give the following account of the English cruelties in the county of Wicklow, from a pamphlet published in liondon in the year 1662, although it was written by an Irish Catholic. But as the writer appeals con- fidently to then living Protestant witnesses, and in- deed is corroborated in the most important of his statements by Leland and Warner, both Protestant clergymen, it is manifest that his details can with perfect safety be relied on. " County of WicJdoio — October, 1641. Three wo- men, whereof one gentlewoman was big with child, and a boy, were hanged on the bridge of Neuraghby command of Sir Charles Coote, in his first march to that county ; and he caused his guide to blow into his pistol, and so shot him dead. He also hanged a poor butcher on the same march, called Thomas Mac William. Mr. Dan Conyam, of Glanely, aged, and unable to bear arms, was roasted to death by Cap- tain Gee, of Colonel Crafford's regiment ; and in the marches of 1641, 1642, and 1643, the English army killed all they met in this country, though no mur- ders are charged in the said county to be committed on Protestants by the Abstract. In the usurper's time, Captain Barrington, garrisoned at Arklow, murdered Donagh O'Doyle of Killecarrow, and above five hun- dred more protected by himself ; and it is weU known that most of the commonalty were murdered." Here is another passage from the same writer, con- firmed by Carte and Warner in like manner. It is giT'-en in abstract by those Protestant historians, but in fuller detail in the following quotation : — ^County of Dublin. — 1641. About the beginning of November, five poor men (whereof two were Pro- testants) coming from the market of Dublin, and lying that night at Santry, three miles from thence, 176 OBSEKVATIO-N-g. [CHAP. IIL were murdered in their beds by one Captain Smith and a party of the garrison of Dublin, and their heads brought next day in triumph into the city ; which occasioned Luke Netterville and George King, and others of the neighbours, to write to the lords jus- tices to know the cause of the said murder : where- upon their lordships issued forth a proclamation that within five days the gentry should come to Dublin to receive satisfaction ; and in the meanwhile (before the five days were expired) old Sir Charles Coote came out with a party, plundered and burned the town of Clontarf, distant two miles from Dublin, belonging to the said George King, nominated in the proclama- tion, and killed 16 of the townsmen and women, and three sucking infants. Which unexpected breach of the proclamation (having deterred the gentlemen from waiting on the lords justices) forced many of them to betake themselves to their defence, and abandon their houses." The character of Sir Charles Coote requires no fur- ther elucidation. He was the man to whom the Eng- lish Government gave unlimited power of life and death over the Irish. " He was," as Carte says, " the fittest person to execute their orders, and one who best Icnew their minds." It is not surprising, there- fore, that a Protestant clergyman should give of him the following mitigated character : — "He" (Sir Charles Coote) "was a stranger to mercy, and committed many acts of cruelty without distinction." — Warner's Hist. Irish Reh. p. 135. This Sir Charles Coote was of inestimable value to his employers. The object of the English party, headed by the lords justices, was, as we have seen, to drive the Catholics into rebellion ; and they began by falsely accusing them of treasonable practices. For that purpose they spared no methods, however in- fanjLOus, to fabricate evidence against the Catholic nobility and gentry. The rack and torture were fami- liar instruments of this villany. This fact is ad- mitted by all contemporary historians. Speaking OHAP \ri.] PROOFS, ETC. 177 of some of the principal Catholic gentry, Leland says : — "They (the chief governors) resolved to supply the want of legal evidence by putting come prisoners to the rack. They began with Hugh M'Mahon, who had been seized on the information of O'Counoiy, and from whom they expected some important discoveries. But torture could force nothing from him essential to their great purpose." — Leland, book v. c. 4. Even in this cruelty there is a very characteristic trait. The Irish gentry, unwilling to be driven into armed resistance, entrusted Sir John Read with a pe- tition to the Kjng. Parsons (whom we have already named — the ancestor of the present Earl of Rosse) obtained the confidence of Sir John Read, and of course betrayed him. Let Warner tell the story : — " Sir John Read, by the same stretch of arbitrary power, was brought to the rack. This gentleman was of the privy chamber to the King, a lieutenant- colonel in the late disbanded army, and engaged by the lords of the Pale to carry over their petitions to the King and Queen. He intended to make no secret of his journey, and therefore sent a letter by a servant of his own to Parsons, to desire a pass ; who, in an- swer, ^ required him to repair to Dublin, that the council might confer with him." — Warner.^. 177. He was tortured. But no evidence could be extor- ted from him, because he had no evidence to give against the Catholic gentry whom it was sought to convict, save that which he had avowed and consi- dered no crime, namely, their having petitioned the Sovereign for protection. He was, however, made to feel that if the fact of petitioning were not a crime, it was at least punishable as such. Let the English reader pause upon the consequences : — *' Sir J. Read was sent a prisoner to England ; and whilst absent, and in those circumstances, was in- dicted and outlawed for high treason ; his lady and goods were seized upon, and she and his childreii turned out of doors ; and wheii she petitioned to theee M 178 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. worthy justices to assign her some part of her effect.-^ to maintain her family, they absolutely refused to allow her any."— Warner, 178. Ay — his wife and children turned out to starve ! There is a specimen of English humanity and justice for you ! While the wife and children were famishing, the Government proceeded in their reck] ess ca- reer : — " The racking M'Mahon and Sir John Read did not content this merciless administration; and so Mr. Barne- wal, of Killebrew, was put to the same torture. He was one of the most considerable gentlemen of the Pale ; a venerable old man of sixty-six years of age, delighting in husbandry, a lover of quiet, and highly respected in his country. He had sent intelligence to the govern- ment of the motion of the Ulster rebels in the month of November ; and the only thing that could be said against him was, that he had obeyed the sheriff's sum- mons for the meeting at the hill of Crofty, when Lord Gormanstown declared an union with them. It does not appear that he approved the union, or that he ac- tually had joined them upon any occasion ; and so little did the ministers get by putting liim to the tor- ture, that it only served to make his innocence and their own inhumanity the more conspicuous." — Warner, p. 179. The object was avowed — to force the Catholics of property into rebelhon. They were allowed no means '^f defending their houses against the insurgents (\^ho had already been driven to take up arms. They thronged into Dublin, where they would have been under the immediate inspection of the Government, and would have joined in resisting the insurgents. But the object of the English Protestant party was io force these Catholics of wealth to join those whom ihey called rebels. It required no less than tlirce proclamations to force them out of Dublin. But I will give the original authority : — " The gentlemen of the Pale, banished Dublin by three successive proclamations, and on pain of death en A p. in.] i»B00Fs, etc 179 ordered to repair to their own houses, unable to make resistance, and seeing not any, even the least, prospect of relief or succour, opened their defenceless habitations to the enemy ; which gave the lords justices occa- sion to complain ' that the rebels were harboured and lodged in gentlemen^s houses of that county, as fully as if they were good subjects.' This correspondence, tiowever necessitated it was at first, involving them in the guilt of rebellion, according to the rigour of the law, which they had no reason to think would be i-elaxed on account of their unhappy situation, by any favour or tenderness they might hope from the then Government, made the gentlemen in general, and the high sheriff in particular, to join the rebels, and put the fate of their persons and fortunes upon the issue of the rebellion." — Cartas Ormond, i. 238. Thus, they were to be punished \\ith death if they remained in Dublin. Driven to their own houses they must submit to the insurgents, and thus incur the penalties of treason. What were they then to do '? Several of these unhappy gentlemen fled back from the insurgents, and surrendered themselves to the mercy of the justices. This was the proceeding taken against them : — "All the gentlemen who surrendered themselves were, without being admitted to the presence of the justices, committed prisoners to the castle. Prepara- tions were made for their trial, and it was publicly said they should be prosecuted mth the utmost se- verity. But as they had never appeared in the field, nor been engaged in any warlike action, proper facts were wanting to support a charge against them. To supply this defect, the lords justices had recourse ti» the rack, though against the law, in order to extort such confessions as these miscreants had a mind to put into the mouths of the unhappy men who were to undergo it." — IFcrrTier, p. 176. The premeditation with which the lords justices arranged their plans for driving the Irish into rebel- lion, is well iliuiitrated by the following extract i which 180 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. shows that no devices were omitted to drive the Ca- thelic Irish to despair, and to force them to defend themselves with the sword : — " Some time before the rebellion broke out/' says Carte, "it was confidently reported that Sir John Clotworthy, who well knew the designs of the faction that governed the House of Commons in England had declared there in a speech that the conversion of the papists in Ireland was only to be effected by the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other ; and Mr. Pym gave out that they would not leave a priest in Ireland. To the like effect Sir William Parsons, out of a strange weakness, or detestable policy, posi- tively asserted before so many witnesses, at a public entertainment, that within a twelvemonth no Catholic should be seen in Ireland. He had sense enough to know the consequences that would naturally arise from such a declaration ; which, however it might con- tribute to his own selfish views, he would hardly have ventured to make so openly and without disguise, if it had not been agreeable to the politics and measures of the English faction, whose party he espoused, and whose directions were the general rule of his conduct.'" — Cartas Ormond, voL L p. 235. "It is evident," says Dr. Warner, a Protestant clergyman, "from the lords justices' letter to the Earl of Leicester, then lord lieutenant, that they hoped for an extirpation, not of the mere Irish only, but of all the old English families also who were Roman Catholics." — Warner's Hist, of the Irish Rebel. Coming back for one moment to Sir Charles Coote, the catalogue of whose horrors we have already de- scribed, I will revive the recollection of them by the following passage from Clarendon ; — " Sir Charles, besides plundering and burning this town [Clontarf] at that time did massacre sixteen of the townspeople, men, and women, besides three sucking infants ; and in the very same week, fifty-six men, women, and children of the village of Bulloge, being fright- ened at what was done at Clontarf, took boats, and CHAP, IILj PROOFS, ETC. Ibl went to sea, to shun the fury of a party of soldiers that were come out of Dublin, under the command of Colonel Crafford ; but being pursued by the sol- diers in other boats, they were overtaken and thrown overboard." — Appendix to Clarendon's Hist. Irish Reb. Wilford, Londm, 1720. Was Coote punished for his sanguinary conduct, not exceeded in atrocity by that of the modern Ro- bespierre ] You shall learn ; — " Sir Charles Coote, immediately after his inhuman executions and promiscuous murders of the people in Wicklow,^ was made governor of Dublin." — Cartas Ormond,!. 259. The hideous monster, Coote, indeed was, as I have already said, of inestimable value to his employers. To him was given the part of the arch-fiend. It was death and destruction to place the least confidence in him. The lords justices proposed a treaty with the lords of the Pale, who were most anxious to accept any terms ; but they would not put themselves into the power of Sir Charles Coote, who they knew would have murdered every one of thenu " The lords justices, as soon as they were satisfied that the lords of the Pale would not trust themselves in the city in the hands of Sir Charles Coote, though they were ready to treat with commissioners sent from thence to any place out of his power, took mea- sures in order to convict them of treason, and forfeit their estates." — Cartas Ormond^ i. 276. For the present — so much for Sir Charles Coote ! I go on with my extracts. The next is, the orders given in February, 1641-2, by the lords justices to the Earl of Ormond;^ com- municated to him in the shape of a resolution, as follows : — " It is resolved — That it is fit that his lordship do endeavour with his majesty's forces to wound, kill, slay, and destroy, by all the ways and means he may, aU the said rebels, their adherents and relievers; ijid bum, spoil, waste, consume, destroy, and demo- 182 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. Ill lish, all the places, towns, and houses, where the rebels are, or have been, relieved and harboured ; and all the hay and com there ; and kill and destroy all the men there inhabiting capable to bear arms. Given at his majesty's Castle of Dublin, 23rd Feb- ruary, 1641-2. "R. Dillon, F. Willotjghby, Tho. Rotherham, J. Temple, Ab. Loftus, Robert Meredith." —Carte^ m. 61. With what fiendish pleasure this tribunal of blood gloated over every word that could signify destruc- tion or massacre ! The French Revolutionists were but poor copyists of English cruelty in Ireland ! The orders were of course carried into effect beyond the letter, but according to the spirit. Here is what Le- land says : — "In the execution of these orders, the justices declare that the soldiers slew all persons promis- cuously, not sparing the women, and sometimes not the children." — Leland. book v. It wiU be remarked that the original orders were of the most cruel injustice ; because they not only sanctioned the slaughter of those who were called " rebels, and their aiders and abettors," but also of all male adults who happened to reside in any of the quarters where the so-called rebels had been received , although such persons might be perfectly innocent of the "crime" of having given them any assistance. But villanous and blood-thirsty as were the instruc- tions, yet the cruelty of the execution went beyond chem. That, indeed, was almost a matter of course, when one considers the sanguinary spirit that pre- vailed against the IrisL That these massacres were committed, not by the over zeal of the meaner sort, but were deliberately planned and ordained by the persons in the highest authority, can be established by the most abundant proofs We have seen the diabolical orders issued PROOFS, ETC. 183 by the lords justices. Read now the following ex tract from Lord Ormond : — " Sir William Parsons hath by late letters advisee the governor to the burning of corn, and to put man. woman and child to the sword ; and Sir Adam Lof tus hath written in the same strain." — Ormondes Let ters, ii. 350. Here is a specimen of a massacre of prisoners in the streets of Dublin, who were taken at the battle of Kathmines. It is Lord Ormond who speaks : — " The army, I am sure," says his lordship. " was not eight thousand effective men ; and of them it is certain that there were not above six hundred killed ; the and most of them that were killed, were butchered after they had laid down their arms, and had been almost an hour prisoners, and divers of them mur- dered after they were brought within the works of Dublin."— OrmoTio^, ii. 396. Those who (according to the practice of the day) were massacred as prisoners, were not all Irish : — " Some Walloons, whom the soldiers took for Irishmen, were put to the sword." — Whitelocla^s Me morials of English Affairs. Unlucky Walloons ! As I have referred to Whitelock, I may as well give two other short extracts from that writer, signi- ficant of the practice of the time : — " Their friars and priests were knocked on the head promisucuosly with the others who were in arms." — Whitelock, p. 412. Again : — Sir Theophilus Jones had taken a castle, put some men to the sword, and thirteen priests. — TF^2V€- lock, p. 527. I wiU give the following instances of the conduct of General Monroe, who was employed by the Go- vernment in the northern expedition : — " Monroe put sixty men, eighteen women, and two priests to death at Newry." — Leland, iii. 203. The second is this :— 184 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAV. llL "He [Monroe] at Lord Conway's instance who attended him in the expedition, advanced with 3,600 foot, three troops of horse, and four field-pieces. He did no other service than taking a view of the place on the 16th July, 1642, and saw some parties of the enemy who had no powder to fire. He did not attack them ; but making a prey of cattle, and killing seven hundred country people, men, women, and children, who were driving away the cattle, he returned to 'Newry." —Carte y vol. i. p. 311. One trait more of Monroe : — [Other] "forces joining Monroe, he made up the strongest army that had been seen in Ireland during the war; it amounting to at least 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse. It was unfit, however, for any great undertaking, not being furnished with above three Aveeks' victual. Monroe advanced with it into the county of Cavan, from whence he sent parties into Westmeath and Longford, which burnt the country, and put to the sword all the country people that they met. — Cartels Ormond, i. 495. The following massacre took place upon the hill above Rathcoole. It was one of the few instances which savoured of retaliation ; but it was so horrible, that I cannot refrain from giving the particulars, as stated by Colonel Mervyn Touchet to his brother Lord Castlehaven. Sir Arthur Loftus, governor of Naas, marched out with a party of horse, which was joined by another party sent from Dublin by the Marquis of Ormond, and killed such of the Irish as they met. "But the most considerable slaughter was in a great strait of furze, seated on a hill, where the people of several villages taking the alarm had shel- tered themselves. Now, Sir Arthur, having invested the hill, set the furze on fire on all sides, where tha people, being in considerable number, were all burn- ed or killed, men, women, and children. I saw the bodies and furze still hmwmg"— Castlehaven' s Me- moirs. CHAP. III.] PROOFS, ETC. 185 It is manifest that this was not a solitary Instance of such craelty. Clarendon treats it as the usual practice : — " In the year 1641-2, many thousands of the poor innocent people of the county of Dublin, shunning Ihe fury of the English soldiers, fled into thickets and furze, which the soldiers did usually fire, killing as many as endeavoured to escape, or forced them back again to be burned, and the rest of the inhabi- tants for the most part died of f a-mine."— Appendix of Clarendon's Hist, of the Irish Reb.^ Wilford, Lcm- dm, 1720. This horrible roasting alive of the inhabitants of several villages serves only to relieve by its variety the sanguinary slaughter of the sword. Let us now turn to another scene. Two quotations more from Carte wiU show, how the insurrection in Munster was, according to the technical phrase, " made to explode." That is, how the people were compelled to take arms in their own defence. They will also show the active humanity of the Catholic clergy, and of many of the Catholic laity, at that disastrous pe- riod, when — I say it with bitter regret— no such instances were shown upon the part of the Protestant clergy or laity. " It was in the middle of December before any one gentleman in the province of Munster appeared to favour the rebellion. Many had shown themselves zealous to oppose it, and had tendered their services for that end. Lord Muskerry, who had married a sister of the Earl of Ormond's, ofi'ered to raise a thou- sand men at his own charge : and if the state could not supply them with arms, ne was ready to raise money by a mortgage of his estate to buy them Nor did any signs of uneasiness or disaffection appear among the gentry, till Sir W. St. Leger came to Clon- meU, which was on the first of that month, three days before the action I have just now related." [viz., at a place called MohilL] " There had been a few dava before, some robberies (of cattle) commiti/Hi in tJie 186 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. ID, county Tipperary Sir W. St. Leger, upon notice thereof, came iu two or three days after with two troops of horse in great fury to Ballyowen ; and being informed the cattle were driven into Eliogarty, he marched that way. As he set forth, he killed three persons at Ballyowen, who were said to have taken up some mares of Mr. Kingsmill's ; and not far off, at Grange, he killed or hanged four innocent labour- ers ; at Bally-O'Murrin, six ; and at Ballygarburt, eight, and burnt several houses. Nor was it without great importunity and intercession that he spared the life of Mr. Morris Magrath, (grandson to Milerus, Archbishop of Cashel in Queen Elizabeth's time,) a civil, well-bred gentlemen, it being plainly proved that he had no hand in the prey, notwitstanding which proof he still kept that gentleman in prison. From thence Captain Peisley marching to Armaile, killed there seven or eight poor men and women whom he found standing abroad in the streets near their own doors inoffensively. And passing over the river Ewyer, early in the morning, marched to Clon- oulta, where meeting Philip Ryan, the chief farmer of the place, a very honest and able man, not at all con- cerned in any of the robberies, going with his plough- iron in a peaceable manner to the forge, he, without any inquiry, either gave orders for, or connived at his being killed, as appeared by his cherishing the mur- derer. From thence he went to Goellyn bridge, where he killed and hanged seven or eight of Dr. Gerald Fennell's tenants, honest inhabitants of the place, and burned several houses in the town." — Garths Ormonde i. 265. The Catholic nobility and gentry of Munster re- monstrated with St. Leger. This was his answer : — " He, in a hasty, furious manner, answered them, that, they were all rebels, and he would not trust one soul of them ; but thought it more prudent to hang the best of i\\em:\— Carte, i. 266. The m.urders of the Irish went on ; some of the meaner sort occasionally, as was inevitable. One is not surprised C«AP. ni.] PROOFS, ETC. 187 to hear that some of the kinsmen of the mnrdersd Philip Ryan, in reprisal for this and other murders, slew thirteen of the English. But this crime served to bring out the virtues of the Catholic Irish ; thus they conducted themselves on that occasion : — "'All the rest of the English were saved by the inha- bitants of that place in their houses, and had the goods which they confided to them safely restored. Dr. Samuel Piillen, [Protestant] Chancellor of Cashel and Dean of Clonfert, with his wife and children, was pre- served by Father James Saul, a Jesuit. Several other Romish priests distinguished themselves on this occa- sion by their endeavours to save the English ; parti- cularlarly F. Joseph Everard and Redmond English, both Franciscan friars, who hid some of them in their chapel, and even under their altar The Eng- Hsh who were thus preserved, were according to their desire, safely conveyed into the county of Cork, by a guard of the Irish inhabitants of CasheL" — Cartels Orviond, vol. i. p. 267. I will now revert to the proofs given by the Eng- lish parliament of their malignant enmity towards the unhappy natives of Ireland. The following extract is taken by Rushworth from the Journals of 3ie English House of Commons : — " October 24, 1644. — An ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in parliament, commanding that no officer or soldier, either by sea or land^ shall give any quarter to an Irishman, or to any Papist born in Ireland, which shall be taken in arms against the par- liament of England : " The Lords and Commons assembled in the parlia- ment of England do declare, that no quarter shall be given to any Irishman, or any Papist born in Ireland, wliich shaU be taken in hostility against the parlia- ment, either upon sea, or within this kingdom, or dominion of Wales : and therefore do order and ordain that the Lord General, Lord Admiral, and all other officers and commanders both by sea and land, shall except all Irishmen, end all Papists bom in Ire- 188 OBSERVATIONS, [c HAP. la land, out of all capitulations, agreements, and compo- sitions hereafter to be made with the enemy ; and shall, upon the taking of every such Irishman and Papist bom in Ireland as aforesaid, forthwith put every such person to deatL •' And it is further ordered and ordained, that the Lord General, Lord Admiral, and the Committes of the several counties, do give speedy notice hereof to subordinate officers and commanders by sea and land respectively ; who are hereby required to use their utmost care and circumspection that this ordinance be duly executed ; and lastly, the Lords and Commons do declare, that every officer and commander by sea or land, that shall be remiss or negligent in observing the tenor of this ordinance, shall be reputed a favourer of the bloody rebellion in Ireland, and shall be liable to such condign punishment as the justice of both houses of parliament shall inflict upon him/' — Rush- ivcn^th, vol. V. p. 783. The following specimen of the readiness with which this cruelty was anticipated by national antipathy, and carried into effect against Ireland, is full of horror : — " The Earl of Warwick, and the officers under him at sea, had, as often as he met with any Irish frigates, or such freebooters as sailed under their commission, taken all the seamen who became prisoners to them of that nation (Ireland,) and bound them back to back, and thrown them overboard into the sea, without distinction of their condition, if they were Irish. In this cruel manner very many poor men perished daily ; of which the King said nothing, because . . . his Majesty could not complain of it without being concerned in the behalf and in favour of the rebels of Ivdsind"— Clarendon J ii. 478. Clarendon is, of course, anxious to excuse or pal- liate the conduct of Charles— but how does his excuse aggravate the demoniacal disposition of the English aristocracy and gentry, as well as of the people in gfiueral, towards the IrisM Let any reasonable man CHA.P. ni.] PKOOFS, -BTO. 189 but reflect for one moment on these deliberate cruel- ties — cruelties not committed in the rage of fight or in the heat of blood. Here were Protestant Christians — English Protes- tant Christians — coolly and calmly going through the slow process of tying back to back, and then delibe- rately drowning a number of their fellow creatures— merely because they had them in their power, and because they were Irish ! There is nothing new under the sun ! The drown- ing of the loyalists in France, the " noyades,'' as they were called, by the revolutionary monster Carrier, and his colleagues, had their precedent in the conduct of Englishmen to Irishmen. But what a difference between the cases ! Carrier was a low-born, vulgar monster— an avowed Atheist. He affected no con- scientious scruples — he was a godless wretch. But the English who perpetrated these cruelties were *' noblemen" and "gentlemen" — men (in their way) of fervent piety ! with the Bible— the Word of God— in their hands ; with prayer upon their lips ; proclaimed themselves the disciples of the God of mercy and of charity. Yes, they were "English Protestant Chris- tians"— they, who, even in the name ol that God, com- mitted these barbarous cruelties ! Indignation and execration are vain. What coun- try ever inflicted on another such ineffable cruelties as England has inflicted on Ireland "? Let me give another instance in which the bloody orders of the English Commons were anticipated. In the month of May, A.D. 1644— . ^ ', The Marquis of Ormond had sent Captam An- thony Willoughby with 150 men, which had formerly served in the fort of Galway, from thence to Bristol. The ship which carried them was taken by Swanley, who was so inhuman as throw seventy of the soldiers overboard, under the pretence that they were Irish ; though they had faithfully served his Majesty against the rebels during all the time of the wai\"— CarU, L 48L 190 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. UL Some may possibly be so absurd as to suppose that Captain Swanley was punished for these bru- talities. He had barbarously assassinated faithful sol- diers, serving their King and their country. He had basely assassinated them, for no other reason thai' that they were Irish. How did the representatives of the English people treat them? Recollect that these representatives were the chosen spirits of thf- age — the master minds of England — the advocates of liberty — and the zealous promoters of (what they called) religion. Listen, Englishmen ; attend Pro- testants ; my authority is no less than the Jour- nals of your House of Commons. Here is the fact : — "June, 1644," (the next month after his murder- ous outrage,) " Captain Swanley was called into the [English] House of Commons, and had thanks given nim for his good service ; and a chain of gold of two hundred pounds value ; and ^ Captain Smith, his vice-admiral, had another chain of jEIOO value."— Journals, III. 517. It will be borne in mind that I am making selec- tions — not giving all the instances of cruelty ; no, nor probably the one-thousandth part of them. It is on that account alone that I quit the navy, ^ and give another specimen of the English land-service. Just mark, I pray you, the mode of procuring the esteem of parliament : — " Sir Eichard Grenville was very much es- teemed by the Earl of Leicester, and more by tha par- liament for the signal acts of cruelty he did every day commit upon the Irish hanging old men who Were bedrid, because they would not discover where their money was that he believed they had ; and old women, some of quality, after he had plundered them, and found less than he expected." — GlarendoUy IL p. 414. We must ever bear carefully in mind, that a large portion of the astounding horrors and diabolical crimes committed against Ireland by England, were confess- CHAP. III.] PROOFS, ETC. 191 edly perpetrated for the support, and on the behalf of the " Protestant Heligion." In 1643, a cessation of hostilities had been pro- claimed in Ireland, which was equally desirable to the wretched King, and to the Irish people. The reader will remember, that, in the reign of Eliza- beth, Spenser had recommended the destruction of provisions, in order that the Irish might be driven by famine " to devour each other." Spenser's diobolical policy (which had been acted upon at the time) Avas now revived, and patronized by the Protestant par- liament of England. That parliament deemed it con- ducive to the interest of the Protestant reHgion, that the Irish Catholics should be compelled by famine " to eat one another." Accordingly the cessation of hostilities — " Was no sooner known in England, but the tvvQ houses declared again.^ it, with all the sharp glosses upon it to his Majesty's dishonour that can be ima- gined ; persuading the people that the rebels were now brought to their last gasp, and reduced to so ter- rible a famine, that, like cannibals, they eat one another ; and must have been destroyed immediately, and utterly rooted out, if, by the popish counsels at court, the King had not been persuaded to consent to this cessation." — Clarendon, ll 323. That the persecuting bigotry of Protestantism de- liberately purposed to prolong the horrible famine thus described, as a means of strengthening and pro- pagating the Protestant religion, is a fact of which the record stands upon the journals of the English parliament : — " Sept. 20, 1643. It was resolved, upon the question, that this house doth hold that a present cessation of arms with the rebels in Ireland is destructive to the Protestant religion." — Journals, III. 248. Kushworth's testimony adds the fuUest confirma- tion (if any were wanted) to the fact, that these horrors were quite congenial with the Protestant bi- gotry- of the English Legislature. Hece ai-e his words : — ?92 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. " The Lords and Commons have reason to declare against this plot and design of a cessation of arms, as being treated and carried on without their advice ; so also because of the great prejudice which will thereby redound to the Protestant religion, and the encourage- ment and advancement which it will give to the prac- tice of popery, when these rebellious Papists shall, by this agreement, continue and set up with more free- dom their Idolatrous worship, their popish supersti- tions, and Komish abominations, in all the places of their command, to the dishonouring of God, the grie- ving of all true Protestant, hearts the dissolving of the laws of the Crown of England, and to the provoking the wrath of a jealous God ! as if both kingdoms had not smarted enough already for this sin of too much conniving at, and tolerating of antichristian idolatry, under pretext of civil contracts and politic agreements." — Rushworth^ V. 557. Oh, Protestantism ! what unspeakable horrors and miseries — what demoniac persecutions — have been inflicted in your name upon the Catholic people of Ireland ! Let us now come back to Sir Charles Coote the elder. Here is an additional accusation brought against him. There is no doubt stated as to the fact of the monstrous cruelty ; the only question is, as to his mode of expression. There is no doubt that he did not prevent the cruelty ; and independently of the authority, it is difficult to doubt the expression. At aU events the poor babe in question was brutally massacred. This act of English friendship was per- petrated : — " Tuesday, December 7th, a party of foot being sent out into the neighbourhood of Dublin in quest of some robbers that had plundered an house at Buskin, came to the village of Santry, and murdered some innocent husbandmen, (whose heads they brought into the city in triumph, and among which were one or two Protestants,) under pretence that they had har- bouied and lelieved tlie rebels who had made inroad& CHAP. III.] PROOFS, ETO. 193 and committed depredations in those parts. Hard was the case of the country people at this time, when not being able to hinder parties of robbers and rebels breaking into their houses and taking refreshments there, this should be deemed a treasonable act, and sufficient to authorize a massacre. This following so Eoon after the executions, which Sir Charles Coote .... had ordered in the county of Wicklow ; among which, when a soldier was carrying about a poor babe on the end of his pike, he," [namely, Coote] " was charged with saying that he liked such frolics, made it presently be imagined that it was determined to proceed against all suspected persons in the same undistinguished way of cruelty ; and it served either for an occasion or pretence to some Roman Catholic gentlemen of the county of DubUn (among which were Luke Nettervile, George Blackney, and George King) to assemble together at Swords, six miles from Dublin, and put themselves with their followers in a posture of defence." — Gartens Ormond, i. 244-5. Let me give another specimen of the merits of one of Coote's coadjutors ; his efforts were directed to produce that hideous famine which the English par- liament deemed of such utility to the Protestant reli- gion :— "Among the several acts of public service per- formed by a regiment of Sir William Cole, consisting of 500 foot and a troop of horse, we find the following liideous article recorded by the idstorian Borlase, with particular satisfaction and triumph : — " ' Starved and famished of the vulgar sort, whose goods were seized on by this regiment, seven thou- sand.' " — Leland, Book v. chap. 5 {note). To come back for the last time to Coote himself- T take the following extract from a pamphlet entitled '' A Collection of some of the Massacres and Murders committed on the Ldsh in Ireland, since the 23rd of October, 1641 :"— ''County of Meath—\C>^2.-'Av. Barnewall, of To- bertinian, and Mr. John Hussey, iuuocent persons, w 194 OBBKHVATTONS, [CHAP. IIL were hanged at Trim by old Sir Charles Coote's party. Gerald Lynch of Danower^ aged 80 years, was killed by troopers of Trim, being m protection. Mr. Thomas Talbot, of Crawly^s Town, about 80 years old, being protected, and a known servitor to the crown, was killed at his own door by some of Captain Morroe's troop. About the month of April the soldiers under the said Grenville's command, killed in and about the Navan 80 men, women, and children, who lived under protection. Captain Wentworth and his company, garrisoned at Duno, killed no less than 200 protected persons in the parish of Donamora Slane, and barony of Margellion and Ovemorein, the town of Ardmul- chan, Kingstown, and Harristown, all protected per- sons." My next quotation will be rather long. It gives so many particulars of murders committed by the sol- diers of the garrisons in Meath, thst I am tempted to give it at length. It is in the same book. I confess I cannot resist inserting it ; even if it were from the circumstance alone that it was in that county — Meath — that the hellish miscreant Sir Charles Coote met his death ; it is supposed from one of his own party. •' In April, (1642), Mrs. Elinor Taafe, of Tullagha- noge, sixty years old, and six women more, were murdered by the soldiers of the garrison of Trim ; and a blind woman, aged eighty years, was encom- Eassed ^\ith straw by them, to Avhich they set fire and urned her. The same day they hanged two women in Kilbride, and two old decrepit men that begged ahns of them. In the same year, ^Ir. Walter Dulin, an old man, unable to stir abroad many years before the war, was killed in his own house by Lieut. Col. Brough- ton's troopers, notwithstanding the said Broughton's protection, which the old man produced. Mr. Walter Evers, a justice of the peace and quorum, an aged man, and bedrid of the palsy long before the rebel- lion, was earned in a rai-t to Trim, and there hanged by the governor'a orders. Many ploughmen ^^■e^e CHAP. III.] PROOFS. ETa 195 killed at Philbers'towne. Forty men, wornea, and children in protection, reaping their hai'vest in Bones- town, were killed by a troop of the said garrison ; who, on the same day, killed Mrs. Alison Bead at Dunsaughlin, being 80 years old ; and forty persons more, most of them women and children, shunning rtie fury of the said troop, were overtaken and slaugh- tered. About 70 men, women, and children, tenants to Mr. Francis M'Ovoy, and under protection, were killed by Grenville's soldiers, and 160 more in the parish of Eathcoare, whereof there was one aged cou- ple blind about 15 years before. Captain Sandford and his troop murdered in and about Mulhussey upwards of 100 men, women, and children, under protection, and caused one Connar Breslan to be struck with a knife into the throat, and so bled to death. And one Eleanor Cusack, 100 years old, was tied about with Lighted matches, and so tortured to death, in Clonmoghon. James Dowlan, about 100 years old, Donagh Comyn, Darby Denis, Roger Bolan, and several other labourers and women to the number of one hundred and sixty, making their harvest, were slaughtered by the garrison of Trim." One instance more in Meath ; it is an atrocity com- mitted by the men under command of Sir Eichard Grenville, whom I have already mentioned : — Sir Eichard Grenville's troop killed 42 men, wo- men, and children, and eighteen infants, at Dorams- town. A woman under protection was, by Captain .NIorroe's soldiers, put into the stock of a tuckmill, and so tucked to death." — (From a pamphlet pub- lished in LROOFS, ETC. 197 From Gaiway let us uovv go to Donegal. Tlie following are specimens of English humanity in that county : — " County of Donegal. — ^About the same time," (viz. November, 1641,) Captain Fleming, and other officers of the said regiment commanding a party, smothered to death 220 women and children in two caves. And about the same time also. Captain Cunningham mur- dered about 63 women and children in the isles of Ross. " The Governor of Letterkenny gathered together on a Sunday morning 53 poor people, most of them women and children, and caused them to be thrown off the bridge into the river and drowned them all " In November, one Reading murdered the wife and three children of Shane O'Morghy, in a place called Letterkeny of Ramaltan ; and after her death cut off her breasts with his sword. " 1641-2. — About two thousand poor labourers, w^o- meu, and children, of the barony of Tirbue, were massacred by the garrisons of Ballyshany and Done- gal ; and Lieutenant Thomas Poe, an officer among them, coming under colour of friendship, to visit a neighbour that lay sick in his bed, and to whom he owed money, carried a dagger under his cloak, which, whilst he seemed to bow towards the sick man in a friendly manner, asking how he did, he thrust it into his body, and told Ms wife her husband should be no longer sick. " I will next introduce the head of the O'Brien fa- mily, Lord Inchiquin ; I believe the dii-ect ancestor of the present Marquis of Thomond. He was re- nowned for his acts of cruelty. He had sought to be made president of Munster under the King ; but having been refused that office, to w^hich another was appointed, he, from the paltry motive of selfish re- sentment, joined the English rebels, and committed the most horrible cruelties upon the Irish. He is cele- brdited in the recollection of the people, even till the 198 OBSEKVATIONS, [OHAP. Ill present day, for his massacres in the Cathedral of CasheL There is something very characteristic in the following traits of his cruelty : — " Inchiqnin commits great destruction as far as he dares venture, about Dublin and Tredah [Drogheda], by burning and driving away their cattle, hangs al] he can meet with, going to the Lord Lieutenant." — Whitelock. " The Lord Inchiqnin took Pilborne castle by storm, and put all in it but eight to the sword.*' — Whitelock. The next fact has "damned him to everlasting fame": " Inchiquin marched into the county of Tipperary, and hearing that many priests and gentry about Cashel had retired with their goods into the Church, he stormed it, and being entered, put three thousand of them to the sword, taking the priests even from underthe altar " — Ludlon/s Memoirs, vol. Lp. 106. The massacre of not only men and women, but even of little children, by the Cromwellian army, ib familiar in the traditions of our peasantry at the pre- sent day. The common phrase in which these ruffians justified the slaughter of unoffending infants, is original in its disgusting phraseology. We have the odious fact authenticated by the Eiev. Dr. Nalson ; and he too, was a Protestant clergyman. Here are his words : — " I have heard a relation of my own, who was captain iu that service, relate, that no manner of compassion or discrimination was showed either to age or sex ; but that the little children were promis- cuously sufferers with the guilty ; and that if any who had some grains of compassion reprehended the so-- diers for this unchristian inhumanity, they wolud scoffingly reply ' Why, nits will be lice !' and <5o would despatch them." — liaison, vol. II. (Introduc- tion) p. vii. To come back to DubHn county. The author oi the " Collection,'* speaking of the first week in No- vember, 1641, says, — "In the same week. 56 men, women, and children, CHAP. ra.J PROOFS, ETC. 199 of the village of BuUoge, (being frightened at what was done at Clontarf,) took boats and went to sea, to shun the fury of a party of soldiers come out of Dublin under the command of Colonel Crafford : but being pursued by soldiers in other boats, were over taken, and thrown overboard. One Kussell, a baker in Dublin, coming out of the country, in company with Mr. Archbold of Clogram, (who went to take hold of the proclamation of the lords justices,) were both hanged and quartered. In March, a party of horse, of the ganison of Donshaghlin, murdered seven or eight poor people in protection, tenants of Mr. Dillon, of Huntstowne, having quartered in their houses the night before, and receiving such entertain- ment as the poor people could afford. About the same time a party of the EngUsh quartered at Mala- hyde, hanged a servant of Mr. Eobert Boyne's at the plough, and forced a poor labourer to hang his ovvn brother ; and soon after they hanged 15 of the inhabi- tants of Swords who never bore arms, in the orchard of Malahyde ; they likewise hanged a woman be- moaning her husband hanged among them." There is an incident of some interest given by tho same author, immediately following my last extract. It relates to the cause why a Colonel Washington re- signed his command and quitted the service. Its date is the same year — 1641 : — " In the same year, after quarter given by Lieu- tenant Colonel Gibson to those of the castle of Carrig- main, they were all put to the sword, being about 350, most of them women and children ; and Colonel Washington, endeavouring to save a pretty child of seven years old, carried him under his cloak, but the child, against his wiU, was kiUed in his arms, which was a principle motive of his quitting that ser- vice." Several of the extracts already quoted, relate to periods subsequent to Cromwell's arrival in Ireland. The following extract refers to a period long beforf? that arrival : — 200 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. " Hir Henry Tichbourne, who had the chief com- mand in that driving of O'Nial from Dundalk, per- formed that service, and afterwards pursued it with such an amazing slaughter of the Irish in those parts, that he boasts himself that for some weeks after there was neither man nor beast to be found in sixteen miles, between the two towns of Drogheda and Dun- dalk ; nor on the other side of Dundalk in the county of Monaghan, nearer than Carrickmacross, a strong pile twelve miles distant." — Carte's Ormond. I shall add to my catalogue the following, which I take from Borlase, than whom a more hostile witness could not be cited. I shall only mention one in Con- naught, and two or three in Munster i — " Sir Frederick Hamilton," says Borlase, " enter- ing SHgo about the first of July, 1642, burnt the town, and slew in the streets three hundred of the Irish." — Borlase^ p. 112. Here are the instances referring to Munster : — " Lord Dungarvan and Lord Broghill summoning the castle of Ardmore in the county of Waterford, 21st of August, 1642, it was yielded upon mercy. Never- theless, one hundred and forty men were put to the Bword. — Borlase, p. 111. We cannot, therefore, wonder that this Lord Brog- hiU on another occasion declared : — "That he knew not what quarter meant." — Bor- lase, p. 110. Before I proceed further, I wish to give one ex- tract from the relation of the many massacres com- mitted in Munster. The county of Cork has claims upon me, and perhaps it is therefore that I cannot avoid multiplymg my instances with the following quotation : — " County Cork— 16^± At Cloghnekilty about 238 men, women, and children were murdered, of which number 17 children were taken by the legs by soldiers who knocked out their brains against the _ walls. This was done by Phorbis's men, and the garrison of Bandon Bridge." CHAP. III.] PROOFS, ETC. 201 " The English party of this county burned 0*Su]- ]ivan Beare's houses in Bantry, and in all the rest of that country, killing man, woman, and child, turnind many in to their houses then on fire to be burned therein ; and among others Thomas De Bucke, a cooper, about 80 years old, and his wife being little less ; and all this was done without provocation, the said 'Sullivan being a known reliever of the English in that country. Observe that this county is not charged in the late Abstract with any murders." In honour of Bandon, I insert the following short extract : — " 1641. At Bandon Bridge, the garrison there tied 88 Irishmen of the said town, back to back, and threw them off the bridge into the river, where they were all drowned." — OolL, p. 5. We will now go back a little. The first great slaughter that occurred in the civil war after the Irish were driven into insurrection— (and never were such pains taken to compel an unwilling people to rise against a Government as were taken by the Adminis- tration in Ireland to force the Irish to resist their tyranny !) — is the incident I am now going to describe. It is taken from the " Collection," and requires no pre- face to excite attention. It was the fruitful source of many a crime. The following is the Irish account : — "1641. About the beginning of November, the English and Scotch forces at Knockfergus murdered in one night aU the inhabitants of the territory of the Island !Magee, to the number of about 3,000 men, women, and children, all innocent persons, at a time when none of the Catholics of that country were in arms or rebellion. — Note, that this was the first massacre committed in Ireland of either side." Now, I will place in juxtaposition Avith the above the English Protestant account of the same transaction : " In one fatal night, they [the garrison of Carrick- fergus] issued from Carrickiergus into an adjacent district called Island Magee, where a number of the 802 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. poorer Irish resided, unoffending, and untainted by tlie rebellion. If we may believe one of the leaders of this party, thirty families were assailed by them in their beds, and massacred with calm and deliberate cruelty." — Leland, Book V. chap. 3. There is no substantial difference between these two accounts. The difference in the number of the slaii i is easily accounted for by recollecting that upon that point the Irish would naturally be the better informed. Both agree in the circumstances of this most unpro- voked and diabolical massacre. The inhabitants of the district of Island Magee, innocent, unoffending- unarmed ; without a shadow of crime, or the least suspicion of guilt, were attacked at night in their beds, by English and Scotch soldiers, commanded and led on by their officers ; and put to death with calm and deliberate cruelty. Talk of the barbarity of un- educated ravages in any part of the globe ! you can- not find it exceeding this deliberate slaughter, com- mitted by English and Scotch Protestant soldiers on unarmed beings, who admittedly were giiilty of no other crime than that of being Irish Catholics ! One or two facts more, touching the manner in which those English and Scotch soldiers conducted themselves in that country. I take it from the same " Collection " I have quoted already : — " Mr. M'Naghten having built a smaU. fortress in the said county (Antrim) to ]3reserve himself and his followers from outrages, until he understood what the cause of the then rebellion was ; as soon as Colonel CampbeU came near with part of the army, he sent to let him know that he would come to him Mdth his party, which he did ; and they were next day mur- dered to the number of eighty, by Sir John Clotworthy, now Lord Massareen's soldiers." " About the same time, one hundred poor women and children were murdered in one night, at a place called Balhaghuin, by direction of the English and Scotch officers commanding in that country." r now come to the master demon : he who steeped CH^r. m.] PROOFS, ETC. 203 his hands in the blood of his Sovereign, and came to Ireland reeking from that crime ; in order, by horrible cruelties committed on the Irish, to acquire popu- larity in England. And he did so acquire it, until it was sufficient to confer upon him regal power, and to enable him to place his hand upon that throne which he had not moral courage to occupy. I begin with an extract of the taking of Wexford ; although, in point of time, this was the second toAvn in wliich he displayed his barbarity. The following is the short and pithy account of this transaction by the Protestant clergyman, Doctor Warner :• — " As soon as CromweU had ordered his batteries to play on a distant quarter of the town, on his summons being rejected, Stafford (the commander of the garrison) admitted his men into the castle, froiy whence issuing suddenly, and attacking the waU and gate adjoining, they were admitted, either thi'ough the treachery of the townsmen or the cowardice of the jioldiers, or perhaps both; and the slaughter was ahnost as great as at Drogheda." — Warner, 476. The more recent historian. Dr. Lingard, has added from the original authorities, the following most striking and melancholy circumstance : — " No distinction was made between the defenceless inhabitant and the armed soldier ; nor could the shrieks and prayers of three hundred females, who had gathered round the great cross, preserve them from the swords of those ruthless barbarians. By Cromwell himself the number of the slain is reduced to two, by some writers it has been swelled to five thousand." — Lingard, a.d. 1649. Three hundred women screaming for pity, round the emblem of salvation — the cross. Three hundred Irish women slaughtered in one mass — by English Pro- testant "Christians" — men of great zeal and profound piety ! I now come back to Drogheda. And as the slaughter there is a subject to be dwelt upon, I will give three different ver^ons of it ; I do so, because each contains 204 OBSERVATIONS, ^OHAP. IIL some circumstances not specified in the others. Here .: are the accounts of Carte and Leland : — " The assault was given, and his (Cromwell's) men twice repulsed ; but in this third attack. Colonel WaU being unhappily killed at the head of his regiment, his men were so dismayed thereby, as to listen, before they^ had any need, to the enemy offering them quarter, admitting them (viz. Cromwell's army) upon those terms, and thereby betraying themselves and their feUow-soldiers to the slaughter. All the officers and soldiers of Cromwell's army promised quarter to such as would lay down their arms, and performed it as long as the place held out j which encouraged others to jdeld. But when they had once aU in their power and feared no hurt that could be done them, Cromwell, being told by Jones, that he had now aU the flower of the Irish army in his hands, gave orders that no quarter should be given !^ So that his soldiers were forced, many of them against their wilL to kill their prisoners ! The brave governor. Sir A. Aston, Sir Edward Vemey, the Colonels Warren, Fleming, and Byrne, were killed in cold blood ; and indeed all the officers, except some few of least consideration, that escaped by miracle. The Marquis of Ormond, in his letters to the king and Lord Byron, says, ' that on this occasion Cromwell exceeded himself, and anything he had ever heard of, in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity ; and that the cruelties exercised there for five days after the town was taken, would make as many several pictures of inhumanity as the Book of Martyrs or the Kelation of Amboyna."' — Carte, 11. 84. Leland adds — " A number of ecclesiastics were found within the waUs ; and Cromwell, as if immediately commissioned to execute divine vengeance on the ministers of idolatry, ordered his soldiers to plunge their weapons into the helpless wretches." — Leland^ Book vi. chap. 4 I next shall give the account of Lord Clarendon. Here it is : ^ " Before the Marquis of Ormond could draw his CHAP, m.] PROOFS, ETC. 2t;5 army together, Cromwell had besieged Tredah '' [Drogheda] : " and though the garrison was so strong in point of number, and that number of so choice men that they could wish for nothing more than that the enemy would attempt to take them by storm ; the 7ery next day after he came before the tovna, he gave a general assault, and was beaten off with considerable loss. But after a day more, he assaulted it again in two places, with so much courage that he entered in both ; and though the governor and some of the chief officers retired in disorder into a fort where they hoped to have made conditions, a panic fear so pos sessed the soldiers, that they threw down their arms upon a general offer of quarter : so that the enemy entered the works without resistance, and put every man, governor, officer, and soldier to the sword : and the whole army being entered the town, they executed all manner of cruelty, and put every man that related to the garrison, and all the citizens who were Irish, man, woman, and child, to the sword ; and there being three or four officers of name, and of good fami- lies, who had found some way, by the humanity of some soldiers of the enemy, to conceal themselves for four or five days,_ being afterwards discovered, they were butchered in cold blood." — Lord Clarendon's History, vol vL 395. Let Jie reader again peruse the above account — It is worth any Englishman's while to read it thrice over. For an Irishman, once would be enougL I shall now give the statement from Lingard : — Aware that the royalists could assemble no army in the field, he marched to the siege of Drogheda. The defences of the place were contemptible ; but the garrison consisted of two thousand five hundred chosen men, and the governor, Sir Arthur Aston, had earned in the civil war the reputation of a brave and experienced officer. In two days a breach was made ; but Aston ordered trenches to be dug within the waU, and the assailants on their first attempt were quicklv repulsed. In the second, more than a 206 OBSERVATIONS, ["(THAP. HI, tnousand men penetrated through, the breach; but they suffered severely for their temerity, and were driven back ^\ith considerable loss. Cromwell now placed himself at the head of the reserve, and led them to the assault, animating them with ms voice and example. In the heat of the conflict, it chanced that the officer who defended one of the trenches fell ; his men wavered : quarter was offered and accepted ; and the enemy, surmounting the breastwork, obtained possession of the bridge, entered the town, and suc- cessively overcame all opposition. The pledge which had been given was now violated ; and, as soon as resistance ceased, a general massacre was ordered or tolerated by Cromwell. During five days the streets of Drogheda ran with blood ; revenge and fanaticism stimulated the passions of the soldiers : from the gar- rison they turned their swords against the inhabitants, and one thousand unresisting victims were immolated together within the walls of the great church, whither they had fled for protection.*' — LbvgardJs England, A.D. 1649. I believe there is not in the history of Christendom a more horrible instance of quiet, deliberate cmelty, systematic and cold-blooded. First, the garrisons who were promised quarter, and who, on the faith of that promise, had ceased to resist, were slaughtered deliberately and in detail. And next the unoffending inhabitants were for five days deliberately picked out and put to death — the men the women and even the little children. And this was done, not by New Zea- land savages, but by Christian Englishmen — the choice spirits of the age — men of the most intense piety and Protestant sanctity — every man of them with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the other ! Men over- flowing with Scripture quotations — men fond of preaching or listening to long sermons — praying long prayers — full of all that there is of ascetism in their English Christianity ! Would not these English " Christians " spare the unarmed citizens] Surely; they could fear no danger CMAP. ni.J PEOOFS, ETC. «07 from the hapless females 1 Would they not at least spare the children— the infants ] Oh, England! England! in what letters of blood have you not written your cruel domination in Ire- land ! It is true that the garrison deserved their fate. They put faith in an English promise made to Irish- men—Sir Arthur Aston, Sir Edward Verney, Colonel Byrne, and the rest of them. Fie upon them — oh, fie I They did indeed deserve their fate ! What a trumpet-tongued lesson to Irishmen ! But such times never can come again. There is in this fiendish transaction one colouring yet wanted, to make the monsters who committed it more hideous than the devils in heU. It is the colour- ing of hypocrisy. Let the reader, if he can, calmly peruse Cromwell's own despatch ; and then admit with me, that human language is utterly inadequate to describe the inefiable horror of the English crime. Here are extracts from Cromwell's despatch to the Speaker of the House of Commons : — "Sir, " It has pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda One shudders at such an introduction of the name of the adorable Creator — ^the God of mercy and of charity 1 I begin again : — "Sir, "It has pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda. After battering we stormed it. The ene- my was about 3,000 strong in the town." CromweU then goes on to describe shortly the cir- cumstances of the attack and of the slaughter ; and cooUy says : — " I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their Kves ; and those that did^ 'are in safe custody for the Barbadoes." He thea goes on as follows : — " This hath been a marvellous great mercy. The enemy being not ^villing to put an issue upon a field 208 OBSERVATIONS, ['CHAP. Ill of battle, had put into this garrison almost all their prime soldiers, being about 3,000 horse and foot, under the command of their best officers, Sir Arthur Aston being made governor. There were some seven or ei,f';ht regiments, Ormond's being one, under the com- mand of Sir Edward Verney. I do not believe, nei- ther do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant." Could any one imagine that human nature could be so destitute of all that belongs to humanity, or to reli- gion, as to be capable of calling such cruelty " a mar- vellous great mercy 1" Oh, it was truly an English mercy ! But there is more ; for this is the conclusion of Cromwell's despatch : — " I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs. For instruments they were very in- considerable to the work throughout. "O. Cromwell'' The flesh creeps — ^the heart sinks, at the unparalleled atrocity, profanity, and blasphemy of such a despatch. But exclamations weaken the horrors by which we R,re thus surrounded. Perhaps some persons may be found so absurdly credulous as to believe that the English parliament revolted at the cruelty perpetrated by Cromwell ; and that they inflicted upon his sanguinary barbarity, if not punishment, at least censure. No such thing. The victims were Irish Catholics ; and it is manifest that the English parliament had not only no sympa- thy but no humanity for the unhappy natives of Ireland. To cap the climax of English atrocity, let the following extract from the Journals of the House of Commons be read : — " 1649 — October 2nd. This day the House received despatches from the Lord Lieutenant Cromwell, dated DulDlin, September 17th, giving an account of the tak- ing of Drogheda. For this important success of the parliament's forces in Ireland, the House appointed a thanksgiving day to be held on the 1st November OHAP. m.] PROOfS, ETC. 2()» riisuing throughout the nation. Tney like wise ordered that a declaration should be prepared and sent into much from another as Ireland has suffered from England : nor is any country on the face of the eartli so stained with diabolic cruelty as England in her conduct towards Ireland ! Religious bigotry inflamed and augmented the na- tional hostility of England to Irishmen. To show how distinctly the purpose of exterminating the Catholic people of Ireland for the good of the Pro- testant religion was avowed by the first authorities in the State, let me here quote the following testimony from page 55 of a book of CromweU's acts, entitled " Cromwelliana :" — "April 12, 1649. Those who were appointed to go to the Common Council about the furnishing£l20,000 came unto GuildhaU. The first that spoke was Mr. Lisle, after him Mr. Whitlock, who very notably urged the accommodation of the paruament with the sum ap- pointed for the service of Ireland : after whom the Lord Chief Baron Wild did press the same with many argu- ments, and among others he rightly distinguished the state of the war in that kingdom as not being between Protestant and Protestant, or Independent and Pres- byterian, but Papist and Protestant ', and that was the interest there; Pat)acv or Poj^eiy being not to be ejt- 210 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. dured in that kingdom ; which notably agreed with that maxim of King James, when first King of the three kingdoms ' Phxnt Ireland with Puritans, and root out Papists — and then secure it.' " Cromwell gorged himself with human blood. He committed the most hideous slaughters ; deliberate, cold-blooded, persevering. He stained the annals of the English people with guilt of a blacker dye than has stained any other nation on earth. And — after all — for what 1 What did he gain by it 1 Some four or five years of unsettled and preca- rious power ! And if his hideous corpse was interred in a royal grave, it was so, only to have his bones thence transferred to a gibbet ! Was it for this that he deliberately slaughtered thousand? of men, women, and children? Femala loveliness, and the innocent and beautiful boy — aged but seven years — of Colonel Washington 1 It has often been said that it was not the people, but the Government of England, who were giiilty of the attempts to exterminate the Irish nation. The observation is absurd. The government had at all times, in their slaughter of the Irish, the approbation of the English people. Even the present adminis- tration is popular in England in the precise proportion of the hate they exhibit to the Irish people ; and this is a proposition of historic and perpetual truth. But to the Cromwellian wars, the distinction between the people and the Government could never apply. These were the wars, emphatically, of the English people They were emphatically the most cruel and murderous wars the Irish ever sustained. The natural result of the promiscuous slaughter of the unarmed peasantry wherever the English soldiers could lay hold on them, was, as a matter of course, an appalling famine. The ploughman was killed in the half -ploughed field. The labourer met his death at the spade. The haymaker was himself mowed down. A universal famine, and its necessary concomitant^ pestilence, covered the land. An eye-witne?6, him CHAP. lU.] PROOFS, KTO. 211 self employed in hunting to death the Irish — has left the description which follows : and although the victims were Irish, yet possibly, in the present day, their miseries may draw a tear from English eyes. Thus was consummated English Protestant power : — "About the year 1652 and 1653, the plague and famine had so swept away whole countries, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man, beast, or bird ; they being either aU dead, or had quit those desolate places ; our soldiers would tell stories of the place where they saw a smoke, it was so rare to see either smoke by day or fire or candle by night. And when we did meet with two or three poor cabins, none but very aged men, with women and children, and those, like the prophet, might have complained, ' We are become as a bottle in the smoke, our skin is black like an oven because of the terrible famine.' I have seen those miserable creatures plucking stinking car- rion out of a ditch, black and rotten, cind been credibly informed that they digged corpses '>ut of the grave to eat : but the most tragical story I ever heard was from an officer commanding a party of horse, who, hunting for tories in a dark night, discovered a light, which they supposed to be a fire, which the tories usually made in those waste countries to dress their provisions and warm themselves ; but drawing near, they found it a ruined cabin, and besetting it round, some did alight, and peeping at the window, where they saw a great fire of wood, and a company of miserable old women and children sitting round about it, and be- twixt them and the fire a dead corpse lay broihng, which, as the fire roasted, they cut off coUops, and eat." — Colonel Laurences Interest of Ireland^ part 2, pp. 86, 87. Such, I repeat, were the demoniacal means by which Protestantism and English power achieved and consummated their ascendency in Ireland. 212 OBSERVATIONSj [CHAP. III. CHAPTER in.— PAET IH. I HAVK said in the text, that however aggravated and atrocious the actual cruelties perpetrated by England on the Irish were, there was a greater cruelty still : namely, in the slander and calumnies aflS.xed upon the character and conduct of the Irish people. Alas ! the spirit of calumny lives to the present day. In- deed, I do not know any spirit of hostility to Ireland which was ever displayed, which is not still alive and vigorous. The mode of exhibiting that spirit is dif- ferent. Its virulence is turned into another channel. But its existence and vitality are not the less marked by unequivocal characters. It was not sufficient for the English party to com- mit those most horrible atrocities of which I have collected a small proportion of instances. They car- ried their malignity farther ; and they accused the Irish of those very crimes which they themselves committed upon that unhappy people. It is scarcely credible — it would not be credible of any other people except the Irish — that when they were massacred in tens of thousands, they should be accused of the very crime that was committed against themselves. Yet it is literally true. What Clarendon and Temple originally asserted, has been, of course, taken up by that infidel falsifier of history, Hume : and the Catholics of Ireland for more than a century, were persecuted to the loss of their lives and properties ; and, what was still more grievous and afflicting, by the loss of their reputation for that conduct, which, while it reaUy merited the applause of all good men, was converted into the imputation of foul and horrible slaughter. The charge was brought against the Irish by Cla- rendon, in these words : — " On the 23rd of October, 1641, a rebellion broke out in all parts of Ireland except Dublin, where the design of it was miraculously discovered the night before it was to be executed. . . But that, in the other CHAP. TTL] proofs, etc. 213 parts of the kingdom, they observed the time ap- pointed, not hearing of the misfortiine of their friends m Dublin. . . That a general insurrection of the Irish spread itseK over the whole country in such an in- human and barbarous manner, that there were forty or fifty thousand Protestants murdered before they suspected themselves in any danger, or could provide for their defence, by drawing together into towns or strong houses." — Hist Reh. Temple aggravates the crime. This is his state- ment : " One hundred and fifty thousand Protestants were massacred in cold blood, in the first two months •jf the rebellion." — Sir John Temple, Hist. Irish Reh. Milton, in the second edition of his Iconoclastes, has the following passage : — " The rebellion and horrid massacre of the English Protestants in Ireland, to the amount of 154,000 in the province of Ulster only, by their own computa- tion ; which, added to the other three, makes up the total sum of that slaughter, in aU likelihood, four times as great." It is true this passage has been softened in subse- quent editions ; but the enemies of Ireland had the full benefit of Milton's falsehood at the very time that it was most important for them to have it. One may throw in here, by way of parenthesis, that it has been demonstrated by Sir William Petty and others that there could have scarcely been at that period more than 200,000 Protestants in aU Ireland. It will of course be recollected that the parliamen- tary party had forced the insurrection to explode, and had made it purely a religious war. Now, let the reader look back, at Clarendon, Temple, and Milton : and then let him look at this extract from another Protestant historian ; a clerg;^^man of the established Protestant church, whom I have quoted more than once already : — " The number of people killed, upon positive evi- dence collected in two years after the insurrection broke out, adding tlienr. altogether, amounts only to 214 OBSEEVA»riONS, [CHAP, Til. two thousand one hundred and nine ; on the reports of other Protestants, one thousand six hundred and nineteen more ; and on the report of some of the rebels themselves a further number of three hundred ; the whole making four thousand and twenty-eight." — Warner, p. 297. ^ Thus — upon positive evidence, and upon evidence of mere report, which latter is the thing in the world the most exaggerating ; and after all the provocation which the Irish had sustained — is it not marvellous, that in and out of battle, there should have been re- turned as killed (and that too, by adding to authentic fact the evidence of rumour.) a number of Protestants altogether amounting to only twenty-eight more than four thousand in two full years of civil war ] And this fact vouched, not by a Catholic or an Irishman, but by an English Protestant clergyman ; a Fellow, by-the-bye, of the Protestant University of Dublin ! Notwithstanding all this, for considerably more than a century after the Restoration, the Catholics of Ireland were set down as wholesale murderers, and were charged with murdering 50,000 Protestants on the 23rd of October, 1641. And this atrociously false calumny was reiterated in books and pamphlets, in speeches and sermons and acts of parliament ! The arch-liar, Hume, the man who of all historians it least to be relied on — for throughout his history scarcely one fact is stated accurately — has given greai circulation to this enormous falsehood ; and he is thb more criminal, inasmuch as shortly after the appear- ance of the volume of his history containing the reign of Charles the First, documents were furnished to him demonstrating the utter falsehood of his account of the alleged massacre. But all in vain. The immoral infidel adhered to his falsehood, as it gave a greater interest to his fictitious history. At the present day, however, no writer of character would venture to repeat the calumny. The horrible charge fulfilled the purpose for which it was intended. And the odioujs practice of falsely imputing crime to :rHAP. in.] proofs, eto. 21 «5 Catholics has partially ceased among the better class of English — and altogether in the better class of American writers. Dr. Lingard, whose work is the only one that deserves the name of a history of England, has, in his text, very properly omitted all mention of what is Jailed " the Irish massacre." He has thrown into his notes the reason for this omission. It is impossible for any one to read that reason, without the most thorough conviction of the utter falsehood of the story told by Clarendon and Temple. It will be recollected that Clarendon places the " great massacre" as having occurred suddenly on the 23rd of October. It is only requisite to read the following extracts from Lingard's Xotes, borne out by the authorities which he so dis- tinctly quotes, to be fully convinced that the alleged massacre of the 23rd of October is purely a fiction : — " We have the despatches [of the Lords Justices] of October the 25th ; with the accompanying docu- ments (LorcU Journals^ iv. 412 ; Nalson, ii. 514 — 523) : but in these there is no mention of any one murder. After detailing the rising, and plundering by the insurgents, they add, ' This, though too much is all that we yet hear is done by them." — Journals^ ibid, Nalson, ii. 516." — Lingard, x. 464, note (a.) The next, perhaps, is more convincing still. For it shows that the Lords Justices carefully record the murder of ten of the garrison of the Lord Moore's house at Mellifont : — "In the fourth [despatch] of November 25, they describe the progress of the rebellion. ' In both coun- ties, as well Wickloe as Wexford, all the castles and houses of the English, with aU their substance, are come into the hands of the rebels ; and the English, with their wives and children stript naked, are banished thence by their fury and rage. The rebels _ in the eounty Longford do still increase also, as well in their numbers as in their violence. The Ulster rebels are grown so strong, as they have sufficient men to leave behind them in the places they have gotten north- 216 (WJSfEKTATIONS, [CHAP. IH. ward, and to lay siege to some not yet taken .... They have already taken Mellifont, the Lord Moore's house, though with a loss of about 120 men of theirs, and there, in cold blood, they murdered ten of those that maniully defended that place. In the county of Meath also, the rebels rob and spoil the English Protestants till within six miles of DubUn.' — (Ihid. p. 900.)" — Lingard^ x. 466, note (a.) The next extract, if possible, more fully corrobo- rates the fact that no general massacre could possibly have taken place. It contains, to be sure, an accusa- tion of great inhumanity on the part of the Irish. But let it be remarked that an accusation is not proof of the fact alleged: whereas this species of accusa- tion demonstrates tnat another, and a worse accusa- tion, was not withheld : it proves the readiness to accuse the Irish, whether truly or falsely, of aU that could possibly be brought against them ; but it does not accuse them of the slaughter by the sword of a single Protestant. It is also observable, that during all this time these Lords Justices themselves were, by means of Sir Charles Coote and their other minions, putting to death in cold blood all the Irish CathoHcs — armed and unarmed— men, women, and children, that came wdthin their reach. These villains had therefore the deepest interest in falsely accusing the Irish of cruelty. ];t is manifest that nothing could gratify them more than being able to substantiate against the Irish the charges of massacre or murder. The absence of any such charge is indeed a trumpet-tongued acquittal :— " We have a fifth despatch of November 27th :— " The disturbances are now grown so_ general, that in most places, and even round about this city withii? four miles of us, not only the open rebels of mere jrish, but the natives, men, women, and children, joyn together and fall on the neighbours that ar(! English and Protestants, and rob and spoil them oi all they have, nor am we help it."— Nalson, 902.— " I fQiall add a sixth, of December 14th—' They con- CHAP, ni.] PITOO-PS, ETC. 217 tinue their rage and malignity against the English and Protestants, who if they leave their goods or cattle for more safety Tvith any Papists, those are called out by the rebels, and the Papists' goods or cattle left behind ; and now upon some new councils taken by them, they have added to their former, a farther de- gree of cruelty, even of the highest nature, which is to proclaim, that if any Irish shall harbour or relieve any English, that be sujffered to escape them with his life, that it shall be penal even to death to such Irish ; and so they will be sure though they put not those English actually to the sword, yet they do as certainly and with more cruelty cut them off that way, than if they had done it by the sword ; and they profess they will never give over till they leave not any seed of an Englishman in Ireland. — {Ibid. p. 911.)" — Lingard, X. 467, note (a). There remains another proof afforded by the lords justices, of the utter falsehood of Clarendon's and Temple's narrative. Here it is ; — " On the 23rd of December the same lords justices granted a commission to Henry Jones, Dean of Kil- more, and seven other clergymen in these words : ' Know ye that we do hereby give unto you full power and authority to call before you, and examine upon the holy Evangelists as well aU such persons as have been robbed and spoil- ed, as all the witnesses that can give testimony therein, what robberies and spoils have been com- mitted on them since the 22nd of October last, or shall hereafter be committed on them, or any of them ; what the particulars were, or are, whereof they were or shaU be so robbed or spoiled ; to what value, by whom, what their names were, or where they now or last dwelt that committed these rob- beries. On what day or night the said robberies or ?poils committed or to be committed, were done ; what traitorous or disloyal words, speeches, or actions were then, or at any other time, uttered or committed by •Jiose robbers or any of them, and how often ; and ali 218 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. in. other circumstances concerning the said particulars, and every of them. And you, our said commissioners, are to reduce to writing all the examinations, and the same to return to our justices and council of this our realm of Ireland." — Temple, Irish Reh. 137 It is utterly incredible that if there had been any massacre of Protestants by the Irish, an enquiry into that most important subject should have been totally omitted in such a commission as the above. Indeed it would have necessarily been the leading feature in an inquisition of that description. Yet — such a com- mission did issue to inquire into matters, compara- tively of trivial importance, without so much as one single word respecting the alleged massacre ! This is indeed " the part of Hamlet left out, by special desire." Multiplied proofs would but weaken the demon. stration arising from those we have given. It may be some relief to give specimens of the kind of evidence adduced to prove the reality of the alleged massacre. The first I shall give is the follow- ing extract from Sir John Temple's " History of the Irish Rehellicmr — "Hundreds of the ghosts of Protestants," says Tem- ple, " that were drowned by the rebels at Portadown Bridge, were seen in the river bolt upright, and were heard to cry out for revenge, on these rebels. One of these ghosts was seen with hands lifted up ; and stand- ing in that posture from the 29th of December to the latter end of the following lent." My next specimen is taken from the testimony of no less a person than a Protestant bishop. And when a Protestant bishop outrages all that is pro- bable in order to blacken the Irish Catholics, it would Amuse one to conjecture what the minor inventors o/ fables may not do : — Dr. Maxwell, Protestant bishop of Ealmore, " who," says Borlase, " was a person whose integrity and can- dour none ever dared to question," has described, in I CHAP. III.] PROOF!?, ETC. 219 his own prolix examination, the different pcstnres and gestures of these apparitions — (the ghosts of Protes- tants) — " as having sometimes been seen, by day and night, walking on the river at Portadown ; sometimes branclishing their naked swords • sometimes singing )salm3 ; and at other times shrieking in a most fear- ul and hideous manner." This bishop adds, " that he never heard any man so much as doubt the truth thereof ; but that he obliged no man's faith in regard he saw them not with his own eyes ; otherwise he had as much certainty as could morally be required of such matters. '^ — Borlas^s History of the Irish Rebel- lion, Appendix, p. 392 I close with an emphatic quotation from Warner, giving the true character of the original Protestant historians of this disastrous period : — " It is easy enough," says thivS Protestant clergyman, "to demonstrate the falsehood of the relation of every Protestant historian of this rebellion." — War- ner, p. 296. CHAPTER in.-PART lY. The snbject of this fourth part of my illustrations and proofs, is to bring forth into contrast with the acts of the English and Protestant party, the conduct of the Irish Catholics. And here — after having se- lected so many instances, to which I might have added hundreds more, of most horrible cruelties per- petrated by the English Protestant party — I am bound to say, and I do say it with the deepest regret, that I do not find these horrors mitigated by any acts of general or individual humanity or mercy. It is all murder on murder — slaughter upon slaughter — mas- sacre after massacre — men, women, and children. No Btayingof the hand— no stopping of the sword! Nobody interfering to preserve the victims from assassination : or if there be rare instances, like that of Colonel 220 OBSirVATIONS, fCHAP. IIL Washington, who tried to save the child of seven years, the attempt becomes vain, and the victim is sacrificed. But with what proud and glowing gratulation do I turn to the conduct of the Irish Catholics during the civil war. I collect from Protestant historians— for on this subject I shall scarcely use one other — multi- tudinous facts of lenity, forbearance, and mercy ! of protection and kindness, of benevolence and charity ! The horrors of war mitigated by the multiplied exer- cise of the tenderest humanity. O ! what a contrast ! What a glorious contrast ! This contrast is rendered still more striking, when we bear in mind that during the time that these vir- tues were exhibited by the Irish Catholics, the Pro- testants were committing the horrible cruelties of which I have cited so many. On the one side was the demon spirit, animating the Protestant party to slaughter and death : on the other was the angelic benevolence of the Catholic Irish, protecting and rescuing from the sword as many as possible, of all those whom the actual fight had spared. I begin with general testimony borne by Protestant writers to the humane intentions of the Irish. It was in Ulster that the insurrection was first made to ex- plode. In that province, almost all the Protestants were Scotch. Yet we find preserved by Carte the following fact. At the commencement of the insu? rection, — " The Irish made proclamatien, on pain of death, that no Scotsman should be molested in body, goods, or lands." — Carte's Ormonde i. 178. How well these Scots merited so humane and proper {\, determination on the part of the Irish, will be ap- preciated by those who recoUect that it was the gar- rison of Carrickfergus (chiefly Scotch) that began the work of massacre, bj^ slaughtering unarmed in their beds three thousand inhabitants or refugees in Island Magee ! The next admission is from the ijrofiigate Temple ; CHAP, til] proofs, ETC. 221 an admission so inconsistent with the principal object of his history ! He, too, speaking of the commence- ment of the insurrection, has this passage : — '* It was resolved " [by the Irish party] " not to kill any, but where, of necessity, they should be forced thereunto by opposition." — Temple, _ p. 65. Even Leland himself — the anti-Irish, the anti- Catholic Leland — has, in other words, the same ad- mission ; — " In the beginning of the insurrection it was deter- mined " [by the Irish] " that the enterprise should be conducted in every quarter with as little bloodshed as possible." — Leland, v. 3. The reader wiU remember that I have cited many Protestant authorities to show, what indeed no man acquainted with the history of the times will dream of denjdng, that the object of the Enghsh party— of the Lords Justices themselves — was to exterminate the Cathohcs of Ireland, whether of native Irish, or of English descent. To remind the reader the more forcibly of this, I will here just insert one passage from Carte : — " The Lords Justices had set their heart on the ex- tirpation, not only of the mere Irish, but likewise of all the old English famihes that were Roman Catholics, and the making of a new plantation all over the king- dom, in which they could not fail to have a principal share."— C'ar?^, L 330. Yet, it is admitted that the Irish — driven to defend themselves from extirpation — resolved, _ as the very first rule of their conduct, to shed as little blood as possible ! I have given so many instances of the cruelties per- petrated by Sir Charles Coote and his son (who was afterwards created Lord Mountrath for his own and his father's services,) that I wish to begin my col- lection of facts illustrating the humanity of the Irish, with an incident in which his family were concerned. It is this : "Lady Mountrath, and Sir Robert Hamuli, her 222 OBSERVATIONS, [chap. Ill father, with many others, being retreated to Beleek for security, were all conveyed safe to Mannor Hamil- ton ; and it is observable, that the said lady, and the rest, came to Mr. Owen O'Rorke's, who kept a gar- rison at Drumaheir for the Irish, before they came to Mannor Hamilton, whose brother was prisoner with Sir Frederick Hamilton ; and the said Mr. O'Rorke, having so many persons of quality in his hands, sent to Sir Frederick to enlarge his brother, and that he would convey them all safe to him : but Sir Frederick, instead of enlarging his brother, hanged him the next day, which might have well provoked the gentleman to revenge, if he had not more humanity than could well be expected upon such an occasion, and in times of so great confusion : yet he sent them all safe where they desired.'''— Collection, p. 97, I doubt much whether there be anything finer than this, in ancient or modern story. It would seem as if Sir Frederick Hamilton had been conscious of O'Rorke's humanity, when he committed the outrage of executing O'Rorke's brother, whilst that chief had so many English persons of condition in his hands. But Sir Frederick was quite safe. O'Borke was an Irish Catholic ; and although he endured the murdei of his brother, yet he could not endure to stain his own soul with the blood of a prisoner. The next specimen I shall give, is that of the con- duct of the Cathohc baronet in Munster. I must say, that in order to appreciate f uUy the value of such acts of humanity, it should be constantly recollected that the English Protestant party were massacring the unfortunate Catholics in every direction around them where they had the power to do so : — " Sir Richard Everett, baronet, in the beginning of the rebel Hon, sent the richest of the English planters in his country, with their stock and goods, into the English quarters. The poorer English, consisting of eighty-eight persons, he kept and maintained at his own charge till the middle of June, 1642, then con- veyed them to Mitchektown ; and when that place JHAP. ni.J PROOFS, ETC. 223 was afterwards taken by the Irisli, he sent for some of those families that were very poor, and maintained, them for a long time. As soon as the cessation was made, some of the poor tenants came back to him, and he settled, and protected them on his lands, till Crom- well came into the country."— Cartas Ormond^ vol. i. The next act illustrative of Irish humanity, I shall bring before the reader, is one that occurred in the county of Cavan, where the civil war raged, and of course some Protestants lost their lives, which Carte calls "being murdered." Let it be so. I am not dis- posed to mitigate the shedding of blood, even by the use of a word : — " By the humanity of Mr. Philip CReilly, one of the most considerable chiefs of the rebels, scarce any murders were committed in the county of Cavan. Such of the Protestants as put themselves under his protection, were safely conveyed into the English quarters ; and those that were stript and in necessity, he fed and clothed till they were sent away. Among these was Mr. Henry Jones, a nephew of Primate Ussher, and Dean of Kilmore, who, although he afterwards turned a noted partizan of Cromwell's, was promoted to the see of Clogher, and thence, after the Restoration, to the see of Meath." — Cartas Ormond, voL i. I have already, in page 186, in stating the atrocious cruelties perpetrated in the county Tipperary by the English Protestant party, mentioned the murder in cold blood, and unprovoked, of Mr. Philip Ryan and several others. I have also mentioned that the inhabi- tants re^^ahated by murdering thirteen of the English party. The following paragraph made part of my quotation, but it is so very suitable to my present sub- ject, that I think it a duty to repeat it here : — "AU the rest of the English were saved by the inhabitants of that place in their houses, and had the goods which they confided to them safely restored. Dr. Samuel Pullen, Chancellor of Cashel and Dean o\ Clonfert, with his wife and children, was preserved by 224 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAf. 111. Father James Saul, a Jesuit. Several other Romish priests distinguished themselves on this occasion by their endeavours to save the English ; particularly F. Joseph Everard and Redmond EngKsh, both Fran- ciscan friars, who hid some of them in their chapel, and even under the altar .... The English who were thus preserved, were, according to their desire, safely conveyed into the county of Cork, by a guard of the Irish inhabitants of CasheL" — Carti^ Ormond, voL L p. 267. In making my selection of instances of the humauity shown by the Catholic party, I think the following has an interest about it, which gives it a title to ,)articular notice : — " Doctor Maxwell, afterwards Bishop of Kilmore, deposeth that Mrs. Catharine Hovendon, widow, and mother to Sir Phelim O'Nial, preserved four and twenty English and Scotch in her own house, and fed them there for seven and thirty weeks, out of her own store ; and that, when her children took her away, upon the approach of our army, she left both them, and the deponent at liberty. That Captain Alexandei Hovendon, her son, conducted five and thirty Enghsh out of Armagh to Drogheda, whereof some were of good quality ; when it was thought he had secret directions to murder them. Twenty more he sent safe to ISTewry, and he would tnist no other convoy but himseK." — Carte; and Ap. to Borl. Hist. Irish Reh. Again, it must not be forgotten, that all this charity and humanity was exhibited and practised by the Catholics during the atrocious cruelties of the Pro- testant party, of which I have recorded instances in the foregoing pages. There is a very important passage on this subject in Warner, relative to the conduct of the Catholic gentlemen of Munster. This is Warner's language : — " There are many honourable testimonies of tho care and preservation of the English by Lord Mus- kerry and his lady ; not only in saving their lives from the enemy, but also in relieving them, iu great CEAl'. in.] PROOFS, UTO. 225 number.s, from cold and hunger, after they had been stript and driven from tlieir habitations, [ndeed, all the gentlemen in that part of the kingdom " [viz MiinsterJ '* were exceedingly careful to prevent blood- shed, and to hinder the English from being pillaged and stript, althoug:h it was many times impossible."— Warner's Hist Irish Reh. Yet, this Lord jMuskerry was afterwards barbarously executed by the Cromwellians. It is said that his Lady shared his fate. Another instance, in which the illustrious head of the house of Mountgarret — the ancestor of the present Earl of Kilkenny, figures in the character in which one would naturally expect to find a member of his illustrious family. A gallant soldier in battle— hiunanity personified towards the unarmed foe : — "In the above-mentioned province of Munster,' says Carte, "Lord Mountgarret, by proclamation, strictly enjoined all his followers not to hurt any ol the English inhabitants either in body or goods ; and he succeeded so far in his design for their preservation, that there was not the least act of bloodshed com- mitted. But it was not possible for him to prevent the vulgar sort, who flocked after him for booty, from plundering both English and Irish, Papist and Pro- testant, without distinction. He used his authority, but in vain, to put a stop to this violence : till seeing one of the rank of a gentleman, Mr. Pdchard Cantwell, (descended from Mr. Cantwell of Painstown, a man much esteemed in his country), transgressing his orders, and plundering in his presence, he shot him dead with his pistol.' — Carte's Ormond. Now for a few instances of the manner in which the Irish, when successful, treated their enemies when in their power. Here is a remarkable instance : — " ' I took,' says Lord Castlehaven, ' Athy by storm, with all the garrison (700 men) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by lettei that he would do the like with me, as any of mine ^ould faU into his power. But he little valued my P 2?6 UiJSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. civility. For in a few days after lie besieged Gowran, and the soldiers mutinying, and giving up the place with their' officers, he caused the governor, Hammond, and some other officers, to be put to death.' " — Castle- haven, 107. There is another instance which is still more grati- fying ; as it shows how even the private soldiers of the Catholic party rivalled their officers in their ab- horrence of, and forbearance from, cruelty : — " The next day Eathfarnham was taken by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners ; and though 500 soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed ; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference between our and the [Cromwellian] rebels making use oi a victory." — Lord Ormondes Letters, ii. 408. Thus it appears that even the Irish soldiery ceased to shed blood, from the moment when resistance was at an end. I could easily multiply instances ; but the few I select are so emphatic, that more are unneces- sary. I cannot however avoid giving this. It is another proud honour to the House of Mountgarret : — "At the same time the said Lord Mountgarret's eldest son, Colonel Edmund Butler, taking posses- sion of Waterford, none of the inhabitants, of what- ever country or religion, was either killed or pillaged ; and such of the British Protestants as had a mind to leave the place, were allowed to carry off their goods wherever they pleased." — Cartas Ormond. Contrast, now, the manner in which the Irish Ca- tholics performed the conditions of surrender, with the mode wherein the Protestant party behaved on Bimilar occasions. This is the Catholic instance : — "When Birr surrendered to General Preston, in January, 1642, the articles were faithfully performed; and the Earl of Castlehaven, his Lieutenant General, conveyed the garrison and inhabitants, to the number of 800 persons, in a long march of two or three days together through the woods of Irregan and waste <;ountries, safe to Athy." — Cartels Ormond vol. i. CHAP, in.] PROOFS. ETC. f27 There are many more instances of this kind — highly honourable to the Irish party. I select the following : — " The towns of Clonmel and Carrickmagriffit^ in Tipperary, and Dungarvan, were severally surprised by Mr. Richard Butler, of Kilcash, second brother to the Marquis of Ormond ; and he had such an influ- ence over his followers that he kept them not only from murder but even from plunder ; his great care and noble disposition being acknowledged even by his enemies." — Cartels Ormmd. Here is another : — " Callan and Gowran were seized at the same time by persons thereunto designed by Lord Mountgarret, without any bloodshed : some plunder, however, was there committed, though with less violence for fear of complaints, it being well confined to cattle of English breed which were stolen as well from the Irish who had any of that breed, as from the English." Cartas Ormond. I give another instance more in detail : — " James, Lord Dunboyne hearing of the surprise of Fethard by Theobald Butler, and being chief com- mander of the barony of Myddlethyrde, by special grants made k) some of his ancestors for service per- formed to the Crown of England, repaired thither the next day, and took on him the command of the town, dispersing the rabble, and placing in it a garrison which he formed of the most substantial inhabitants of the place and neighbourhood. He immediately set the English at liberty, restored them their goods, and sent them away in safety to YoughaU, and other places, which they chose for their retreat. Two of these were clergymen, of whom Mr. Hamilton was, at his request, sent with his family to the Countess of Ormond. ' — Cartas Ormond. ^ Let the reader now compare the extracts I have given descriptive of English Protestant cruelty, with the chivalrous generosity of the Irish leaders and troops ; the English cruelties not being palliated or 228 JBSBRV ATIONS. [CHAP. HI. relieved from their horror by any acts of generosity or any traits of humanity. But extermination v/as the object, and unmitigated murder and slaughter the means. I think I cannot more appropriately close this part of my illustrations of Irish history, than by quoting from Bishop Burnet the follomng description of the treatment given by the Irish to the Right Rev. Dr. Bedell, Protestant bishop of Kilmore; a most humane and worthy man. He was in the hands of the Irish during the worst part of the insurrection. The Irish not only did him no harm ; but they took care of aU those persons — (being Protestants of course) — who came to him for protection. In short they treated him with kindness, and protected him whilst he lived ; and honoured him at his death. This affecting ac- count is taken from Burnet's Life of Bedell ; — " Doctor Bedell, bishop of Kilmore, when a pri- soner with the insurgents, v\^ho doubtless had many priests among them, was never interrui)ted in the exercise of his worship, although not only his house and all the out-buildings, but also the church and church- yard, were full of people that flocked to him for protection. So that, from the 23rd of Octo- ber, to the 18th of December following, he, and all those within his walls, enjoyed, to a miracle, '^ says bishop Burnet, " perfect quiet. And when he died at the age of 71, the titular bishop of that diocese, though he had proselyted his brother, a popish priest, to the communion of the established church, suffered him to be buried in consecrated ground, the Irish doing him unusual honours at his funeral. For the chiefs of the insurgents having assembled their forces accom- panied his body to the church-yard vvdth great solem- nity ; and desired Mr. Clogy, one of his chaplains, to bury him according to the church offices. At his in- terment they discharged a voUey of shot, crying out in Latin. ' Hie requiescat ultimus AiKjlorum ! ' May the last of the English rest in peace ! Edmund Farrilly, a popish priest, exclaimed at the same time, ' 0, Sit CilAl^. III.] PROOFS, ETC. 220 anima mea cum Bedello !' Would to God tliat my boul were with Bedell !" — Bisliop Burners Life oj Bedell. I have now concluded the quotations which con- trast the brutal ferocity of the English Protes- tant party, with the humanity and generosity of the Irish Catholics during the civil war. And I shall next proceed to a few further illustrations of the conduct of the adverse party during that disastrous period. CHAPTER III— PART V. It is, I repeat it, singularly curious, that whilst the English party had the strongest inducements to ca- lumniate the Irish CathoHcs, they yet should have preserved so many traits of humanity and mercy on the part of the Irish ; while at the same time they have not attempted to state a single act of kindness, charity, humanity, or mercy amongst the leaders of the English Protestant party. Extermination of the Irish was their object. Accordingly, extermination was their practice. I cannot, after the most minute search, discover one single instance in which life was spared to combatant or non-combatant, being Irish ; to Irish man, Irish woman, or Irish child. I do not believe there are any such instances ; I hope there are such ; because if there be, the publication of this work will assuredly induce somebody to hunt them out and bring them forward. It would be desirable to mitigate the horror arising from the atrocity of the blood-thii-sty Protestant party of that day. It could be wished, for the sake of humanity, th^t the cruelties of the EngHsh should have some mitigation arising from at least one soKtary act of virtue. Let it not be supposed that I am ignorant that even CromweU occasionally observed the faith of treaties ; or that he sometimes carried into eifect that quarter for which men iu arm^ had stipulated l)efore surrcL.dcr. It was his beat policy on some occasions to do so ; and 230 OBSERYATIONS. [CHAP. HI. not to drive to utter despair all the armed Irish. But even these acts of justice were extremely rare. And some of them were liable to be impeached for base un- faithfulness. His first perfidious slaughter at Drogheda, leaves any person attempting to become his advocate, by reason of his occasional performance of stipulation, in a situation not the most enviable. The truth is, that a fiend so black with crime, so stained with blood, never yet exhibited in any country to compare with Cromwell and his gang of sanguinary biblical enthu- siasts in Ireland. The deep interest which the English party had in calumniating the Irish is manifest. The atrocious iniquity of falsely charging the Irish with crime, was calculated to give these advantages to the English : — Firstly — These false charges would serve to miti- gate the horrors, otherwise unpaUiated, of the mas- sacres committed by the English Protestant party. It Avould place these massacres in the light of a re- taliation upon the Irish for their crimes. Although, in sad truth, retaliation by means of the slaughtei of unoffending men, women, and children, would be a poor plea for such barbarous inhumanity. But yet it would be some, and it could be the only mitigation. Secondly — ^It would serve— as it did serve — as an excuse for seizing all the estates of the Irish, and de- claring them forfeited to the Cromwellian party. Thirdly — it would serve — and it did serve — to en- able the ungrateful Stuart family to leave in the hands of the Cromwellian soldiers, or to convert to their own use, the estates of the faithful Irish Catho- lics, who had fought, and bled, and suffered in the cause of Charles the First, and whose properties were left as a plunder to those enemies of that monarch who brought him to the scaffold ; a plunder partici- pated in to the extent of eighty thousand acres by the Duke of York, afterwards the miserable and contemp- tible James the Second. CHAP. in. mooFs, etc. 231 With such powerful motives to cahimniate and to persevere in calumny, it will not be surprising to find, that all enquiry into the real facts was refused ; either contemptuously or upon the most futile pre- tences. The Irish repeatedly pressed for the fullest inquiry. And when the King's necessities compelled him to offer them an amnesty ; the Irish actually re- fused to accept any amnesty for any person of their party who should be proved guilty of murder, breach of quarter, or any inhuman cruelty. The following is the 19th proposition addressed to the King, with a remonstrance on their grievances, by the confederate Catholics who assembled at Trim in 1642 :— " 19thly. Forasmuch as your majesty's said Catho- lic subjects have Keen taxed with many inhuman cruelties which they never committed, your majesty's said suppliants, therefore, for their vindication, and to manifest to aU the world their desire to have all such offenders brought to justice, do desire that in the next parliament, all notorious murthers, breaches of quarter and inhuman cruelties committed of either side, may be questioned in the said parliament, if your majesty think tit ; and such as shall appear to be guilty to be excepted out of the act of oblivion, and punished according to their deserts." — Borlase^ p. 191. The reader will not be surprised to hear that this proposition was rejected at the instance of the English Protestant party. This single fact of rejection will be conclusive in the mind of every reasonable man as to the guilt or innocence of the parties respectively. There was a peace made in 1643 — termed "The Cessation " — between the confederated Catholics and the King's friends in Ireland, with the Marquis of Ormond at their head : and again a regular peace in 1648. Upon both these occasions the Irish Catholics refused to accept an indemnity for person.^ convicted of murder, breach of quarter, or inhumua cruelty. On the contrary, theii' leaders were desirous that every 232 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. 111. l^erson wlio had slied liuinau blood out of battle, should be condigiily punished. " In the two peaces concluded " [by the Irish Ca- tholics] "with the Marquis of Ormond, viz. those of 1643 and 1648, they expressly excepted from pardon aU those of their party that had committed such cruelties. And long before either of these peaces, Lord Clanricard testified, 'it was the desire of the whole nation that the actors of these cruelties should, in the highest degree, be made examples to all pos- terity.' — Cartels Ormond^ vol. iii. " And the Marquis of Oiinond himself confessed, ' that those, assuming power among the Irish, had long disclaimed them, and professed an earnest desire that they might be brought to punishment.' " — Ihid. In short, the Irish Catholics acted precisely as in- nocent men would act : not seeking to screen any of the idle or dissolute of their own party, who in the wild license of civil war might have slain any Protes- tant out of battle, or committed any other murder. On the contrary, tne Irish CathoHcs sought anxiously to have aU such offenders punished without mercy. The following extract from the Rev. Peter AValsh, tends forth to elucidate these transactions ; and he is confessed, by the Protestant writers of his own and all subsequent periods, to be a faith-worthy witness : " Not to dwell longer," says Mr. \yalsh, '' on par- ticulars, the whole body of the Catholic nobility and gentry of Ireland did, by their agents at Oxford in 1643, petition his Majesty : — " ' That all the murders committed on both sides, in this war, might be examined in a future parlia- ment, and the actors of them exempted out of all the acts of indemnity and oblivion. But this proposal the Protestant agents, then also attending the King at Oxford, wisely declined ; upon which it was justly observed that if it should be asked wherefore this offer of the accused Irish has been always rejected or evaded by their accusers (for it was more than once repeated afterwards^) there is no man of reason but CllAP. III.] PROOFS, ETC. 233 understands it was, because the Irish were not guilty of those barbarous and inhuman crimes with which they were charged • and because those who charged them so exorbitantly, found themselves, or those of their party, truly chargeable vnth more numerous crimes aud murders, committed on the stage of Ire- land, whereon they had acted, and yet but partly, their own proper guilt ; for many of them had acted it on that of Great Britain too, even the most horrid guilt imaginable, by the bloody and most execrable murder of the best and most innocent of Kings/ "— Feter Walsh's Reply to a Person of Quality. All the official acts of the confederated Catholics were consistent with this pure and honourable prin- ciple ; the principle of inquiry into ilie crimes actually committed at aU sides • the principle of exonerating the innocent and punishing the guilty. And this principle of justice was repudiated and rejected by the Protestant party ! In ever^^ part of these transactions, there is some- thing singular and striking. The confederated Catho- lics were in possession of power from the year 1643 to the year 1649. They were in possession of, and had the management of, nearly all Ireland, with the exception of Dublin and a few other places. In 1644 they were at the acme of their power. Theii' General Assembly met at Kilkenny, enacted laws, and carried on the government. This assembly was composed almost exclusively of Catholics ; the Executive were exclusively so. Yet they never were once accused of having made a single intolerant law ; or a single into- lerant or bigoted regulation or ordinance ! They did not persecute one single Protestant ; nor are they ac- cused of any such persecution. This indeed is matter of vrhich the Catholics of Ireland may be justly proud. I have already shown from extracts taken from Protestant writers, the admission that the confede- rated Cathohcs never persecuted a single Protestant. Inow if the reader will go back to page 1&7. he will 234 OBSERVATI024S, [ciiAP. lUL find the sanguinary orders issued against the Irish by the English parliament ; the utter refusal to give the Irish quarter. And especially in page 181, he will find the extermination orders given in Dublin by the Lords Justices, bearing date the 23rd of February, 1641 ; in which, by-the-bye, there is a perfect gloating over every word descriptive of sanguinary cruelty ; and above all, the direction to destroy all towns wherein the rebels had been relieved or harboured, and " to kill and destroy all the men there inhabiting capable to bear arms," aye, although thoroughly inno- cent in thought, word, or deed, of any crime ! The contrast afforded to this ineffable barbarity by the conduct of the Catholic power is painfully pleas- ing. In May, 1642, the Catholic body — clerical and lay — met in national Synod at Kilkenny. They wielded not only temporal authority, but also the spiritual thunders of the Catholic church, against all those who, during the war, should commit any cruelty. I take the following description of this Catholic body, from a Protestant historian, Doctoi Warner : — "This was," says Dr. Warner, "a general Synod of aU the popish bishops and clergy of Ireland. Three of the titular archbishops, six other bishops, the proxies of five more, besides vicars-general and other dignitaries, were present at this Synod. And as these are the acts and ordinances purely of the Eoman Catholic clergy of Ireland, represented in a general Synod, I suppose it would be allowed on all sides that whatever proceedings are here condemned, are to be placed to the account of the folhes and vices of particular people ; and cannot fairly be charged on 'jhe Roman faith." — Warner's Hist Irish Rehellioii p. 201. I wiU now give three of the articles unanimously agreed on at this Sjniod : " Articles agreed upon, ordained, and concluded in the General (Catholic) Congregation held at Kilkenny, May, 1642. I CHAP, in.] PfiOOFS, ETC. 235 " We declare the [present] war, openly Catholic, to be lawful and just ; in which war, if some of the Catholics be found to proceed out of some particular and unjust title, covetousness, cruelty, revenge, or hatred, or any such unlawful private intentions, we declare them therein grievously to sin, and therefore worthy to be punished and restrained with ecclesias- tical censures (if advised thereof) they do not amend." — Rushworth, v. 516. " We will and declare all those that murder, dis- member, or grievously strike ; all thieves, unlawful spoilers, robbers of any goodsj extorters ; together ^\dth all such as favour, receive or any ways assist them, to be excommunicated ; and so to remain until they completely amend and satisfy, no ^ less than if they were namely proclaimed excommunicated. " We command all and every the generals, colonels, captains, and other officers of our Catholic army, to whom it appertaineth, that they severely punish all transgressors of our aforesaid command, touch- ing murderers, maimers, strikers, thieves, and rob- bers ; and if they fail therein, we command the parish priests, curates, or chaplains, respectively, to declare them interdicted ; and that they shall be ex- communicated if they cause not due satisfaction to be made unto the commonwealth and the party offended. And this the parish priests or chaplains shall observe, under pain of excommunication on sentence given ipso facto P — Borlase, p. 122 ; and Eiishiuorth, v. 520. Thus, the public acts of the confederated Catholics, contrast as favourably with the public acts of the Protestant party, as the generosity and humanity of the Catholic Irisn, armed and unarmed, contrast with the atrocities of the Protestant English. CHAPTER m— PART VT. Feom the quotations which I have made from various hifltoriaua, he who ha^ taken tha trouble to follow me 230 OBSERVATIONS, CHAP. III. must have perceived how completely the Cromwellian power had been established, through oceans of blood, and through scenes of fiendish and appalling cruelty. I shall now proceed to show how the survivors of the Irish were disposed of. " The affairs of the confederate Catholics being now absolutely irretrievable, the Marquis of Clanricard in 1652 left Ireland, carrjdng with him the royal au- thority — (Borlase, Irish Reh.) ' And within a twelve- month after, Mortogh O'Brien, the last of the Irish commanders, submitted to the XDarliament on the usual terms of transportation ; by the favour of which,' (adds Borlase), ' twenty-seven thousand men had been that year sent away.' 'Cromwell,' says a late his- torian, ' in order to get free of his enemies, did not scruple to transport forty thousand Irish from their own country, to fill aU the armies in Europe witli complaints of his cruelty, and admiration of their own valour.' — Dalrymple, Mem. of Great BHt. voL i. part 2, p. 267.)"— Gurry's Review, p. 386. I have given proofs enough to show that the design of the English Protestant party was totally to exter- minate the Irish people. For the i)urpose of effectually clearing the country of the native Irish, it was, of course, expedient to get rid of as many persons of the military age as possible. It was in this way that the 27,000 persons mentioned in the last extract were disposed of. Several other detachments, comprising from one to four thousand men each, under the com- mand of Irish officers, were disposed of by Cromwell and his government to foreign princes. But the enormities of the ruling tjo-ants did not stop here. Those of military age who were spared from the slaughter, to the amount, by a safe calcu- lation, of more than forty thousand, were sent into foreign service on the continent of Europe, especially to Spain and Belgium. The foUoAving note will be found in Lingard : — " According to Petty (p. 187), six thousand boys Hud women were aent away. Lynch {Cambreusis CF*vP. TTL] proofs, etc. 23; Eversus, in fine) says, that they were sold for slaves. Broudin, in his Fropujnnculum {Pragce. anno 16G9), nnmbers the exiles at 100,000 : Ultra centum millia omnis sexus et setatis, e qiiibus aliquot millia in di- versas Americae tabbacarias insnlas relegata sunt ; p. 692. In a letter in my possession, written in 1656, it is said : Catholicos pauperes plenis navibus mittunt in Barbados et insulas Americae. Credo jam sexa- giiita millia abivisse. Expulsis enim ab initio in Hispaniam et Belgium maritis, jam uxores et proles in Americam destinantur." — Lingard's England^ voL X. p. 306. Thus we see from Broudin, that there were more than 100,000 persons of every age and sex banished ; of whom several thousands were, as he says, sent to the West India Islands. We also learn from the original letter in the possession of Dr. Lingard, that the vessels were crowded with the poorer classes of Catholics, and sent to Barbadoes and the other West India Islands. "I believe," says the writer, "that already sixty thousand are gone ; for the husbands being first sent to Spain and Belgium, already their wives and children are destined for the Americas." It would be, indeed, idle to exclaim at any cruelty committed at that time. Those unhappy exiles per- ished in hundreds and thousands. Of the myriads thus transported, not a single one survived at the end of twenty years. Was there any species of crime which was not per- petrated against the Irish by the barbarians of the English Governments 1 In Thurlow's correspondence, the formation of press-gangs to collect the male and female youth fop transportation, is stated at lengtL Some have thought that the system adopted by the monster who now rules in Paissia, of collecting young women from his Polish subjects to send to his military colonies, was an in- vention of his own. But there is no atrocity so great as not to have its prof- -tyi^Q in the brutalities inflicted 'ipon the people of Ireland by some of their Englisli 238 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. rulers. It is melancholy to read such a statement as the followiiig : " After the conquest of Jamaica, in 1655, the Pro- tector, that he might people it, proposed to transport a thousand Irish boys and a thousand Irish girls to the island. At first, the young women only were demanded, to which it is replied : ' Although we must use force in taking them up, yet, it being so much for their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, it is not in the least doubted that you may have such a number of them as you shaU think fit.' — Thurloe, iv. 23. In the next letter, H. Cromwell says : ' I think it might be of like ad- vantage to your affairs there, and ours here, if you should think fit to send one thousand five hundred or two thousand young boys of twelve or fourteen years of age to the place aforementioned. We could well spare them, and they would be of use to you : and who knows but it might be a means to make them Englishmen, I mean rather Christians?' (p. 40.) Thurloe answers : 'The committee of the council have voted one thousand girls, and as many youths, to be taken up for that purpose.' (p. 75.)" Sacred heaven ! Thus it is that the English " did good " to the people of Ireland ! The young women were to be taken by force from their mothers, their sisters, their homes, and to be transported to a foreign and unhealthy clime. "0 but" said the English rulers, " it is aU for their own good !" Then, again, look at the cold-blooded manner in which Henry Cromwell proposes to make " Englishmen and Chris- tians." ** Englishmen and Christians !" . . . But no. Comment is useless. All these things appear like a hideous dream. They would be utterly incredible, only that they are quite certain. There remained, however, too many to render pos- sible the horrible cruelty of cutting all their throats. The Irish Government, constituted as it was of tho CHAP, til] proofs, BTtt 239 superior officers of the regicide force, resorted to a different plan. Here is the account given by Lord Clarendon of their conduct : — " They found the utter extirpation of the nation (which they had intended, to be in itseKvery difficult, and to carry in it somewhat of horror, that made some impression upon the stone-hardness of their own hearts. After so many thousands destroyed by the plague which raged over the kingdom, by fire, sword, and famine, and after so many thousands transported into foreign parts, there remained still such a nume- rous people that they knew not how to dispose of : and though they were declared to be all forfeited, and so to have no title to anything, yet they must remain somewhere. They therefore found this expedient, which they called an act of grace : there was a large tract of land, even to the half of the province of Connaught, that was separated from the rest by a long and large river, and which, by the plague and many massacres, remained almost desolate, into this space they required all the Irish to retire by such a day, under the penalty of death ; and all who should, after that time, be found in any other part of the kingdom, man, woman, or child, should be killed by anybody who saw or met them. The land within this circuit, the most barren in the kingdom, was, out of the grace and mercy of the conquerors, assigned to those of the nation as were enclosed, in such proportions as might, with ^eat industry, preserve their lives.'' — Clarendon's Life, vol ii p. 116. It would seem as if the English rulers of Ireland had determined that there should be no species of in- justice omitted in the catalogue of their crimes to- wards Ireland. For, certainly, _ a greater cruelty than this "transplanting" (as it was technically called) could not be committed upon human beings who were allowed to live. This cruelty was refined. For the tyrants took care to provide against the con- tingent chance of the restoration of the royal autho- rity. They had the baseness to compel the unhappy 240 OBF^ERVATIONS, [CHAP. III. Irish gentry to execute releases of their former pro- perty ; releases which were used for the worst of purposes by the profligate monarch who regained the tlirone, and by his more profligate advisers. Clarendon continues the account of the trans- plantation thus : — "And to those persons from whom they had taken great quantities of land in other provinces, they assigned the greater proportions within this pre- cinct ; so that it fell to some men's lot, especially when they were accomodated with houses, to have a com- petent livelihood, though never to the fiftli part of what had been taken from them in a much better province. And that they might not be exalted with t his merciful donative, it was a condition that accom- panied this their acommodation, that they shoidd all give releases of their former rights and titles to the land that was taken from them, in consideration of what was now assigned to them ; and so they should for ever bar themselves and their heirs from ever laying claim to their old inheritance. What should they do 1 They could not be permitted to go out of this precinct to shift for themselves elsewhere ; and without this assignation, they must starve there, as many did die every day of famine. In this deplor- able condition, and under this consternation, they found themselves obliged to accept or submit to the hardest conditions of their conquerors ; and so signed such conveyances and releases as were ]irepared for them, that they might enjoy those lands which belonged to other men." — Clarendon's Life, ii. 116, 117. The English usurpers now declared that Ireland was pacified. It was literally in the words of Tacitus, — " Hbi solitudiiiem facltint, pacem appellant" They had made a solitude ; but it was not of a sterile waste ; it was of a fertile and beautiful land CHAP, m.^ PROOFS, ETC. 241 They were glad to inhabit it, these officers and sol- diers ! Tliey brought over as many of their com- panions, relations, and friends, as they could. I will now insert a sketch of the manner in which 1xe CromweUians divided Ireland among themselves : — " On the 26th of September 1653, the English par- I'ament declared, that the rebels in Ireland were sub- dued, and the rebellion ended ; and thereupon pro- ceeded to the distribution of their lands, in pursuance of the Act of Subscriptions, 17 Caroli. 'This being notified to the Government of Ireland, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery, proposed at a council of war of all the chief commanders for the parliament, that the whole kingdom should be surveyed, and the number of acres taken, with the quality of them ; and then that aU the soldiers should bring in their demands of arrears ; and so, give every man by lot, as many acres as should answer the value of his demand.' " — Mortice's Life of Orrery. We shall now see what was done upon this pro- posal : — "This proposal was agreed to, and aU Ireland being surveyed, the best land was rated at only four shillings an acre, and some only at a penny." — ( Morric^s Life of Orrery, vol ii, p. 117.) " The soldiers drew lots in what parts of the kingdom their portions should be assigned to them." — (Cartels Ormond, ii 301.) Great abuse was committed in setting out the adventurer's satisfaction for the money they had advanced at the beginning of the war ; foi they had whole baronies set out to them in gross ; and then they employed surveyors of their own, to m^e their admeasurements." — Lb. I may here remark that the general survey which was made in pursuance of Lord Broghill's proposal, is the same which is known by the name of " the Down Barvey ;" in the making of which, Sir W. Petty, the paternal ancestor of the present Marquis of Laus- down, had a very principle part. '249, OBSERVATIONS, [CEAP. III. Amidst tliiy rapine, it may excite a faint smile to soe the clioice that Cromwell made for himself ; al- though his premature death prevented the realization of his plan : — " A good and great part (as I remember the whole province of Tipperary) Cromwell had reserved to him- seK, as a demesne (as he called it) for the state, and in which no adventurer or soldier should demand his iot to be assigned ; and no doubt intended both the state and it for making great his own family. It can- not be imagined in how easy a method, and with what peaceable formality, this whole great kingdom was taken from the just lords and proprietors, and divided and given amongst those who had no other right to it but that they had power to keep it." — Clarendon's Life, vol. ii., p. 117. It wUl be _well to remember, when we come to treat of the reign of King Charles ii., who they w^ere that got the greatest share of the lands of the Irish royalists : — " No men had so great shares as they who had been instruments to murder the King. What lands they were pleased to call unprofitable (which were thrown in gratis) they returned as such, let them be never so good and profitable." — Cartes Ormond, ii. 301. " The lands held by the soldiers as unprofitable, and as such returned into the surveyor's oifice, amounted to 605,670 acres. In this manner was the whole king- dom divided between the soldiers and the adventurers of money." — Gurrijs Review, p. 388. Thus was the slaughter and the robbery of the Irish people complete. But the iniquity was not complete. It could not be so, without the intervention of what was termed " Courts of Justice." I beheve there is no instance in English history of any villany being perpetrated upon the people of England Scotland, and Ireland, in which my lords the judges had not their full share of the crime. Accordingly, Cromwell instituted his CHAP. III.] PROOFS, ETC 24S ' Courts of Justice " in Ireland They were familiarly called Cromwell's slaughter-houses. ^'' High Courts of Justice, in Ireland. — ^About this time, a new tribunal, underthe title of an high court of justice, was erected by the usurpers in different parts of both kingdoms, for the trial of rebels and malig- nant.s ; that is to say, those who were still found faith- fid to the King. That which sat at Dublin in 1652, was besides authorised ' to hear and determine all massacres and murders done and committed since the first day of October, 1641 ; that is to say, the actors, contrivers, promoters, abettors, aiders, and assisters of any of the said massacres or murders, or killing after quarter given.' For the iniquitous and bloody sen- tences frequently pronounced in these courts, they were commonly called ' Cromwell's slaughter-houses' ; for no articles were pleadable in them ; and against a charge of things said to be done twelve years before, little or no defence could be made ; and that the cry was made of blood, aggravated with expressions of so much horror, and the no less daunting aspect of the court, quite confounded the amazed prisoners, so that they came like sheep to the slaughter." — Curry's Re - vieiv of the Civil Wars in Ireland^ p. 392. The Irish Catholic party, as we have seen, repeat- edly requested a full investigation of all the murders committed diu-ing the war. But they demanded that it should be an inquiry into the crimes of all parties —the Protestant as well as the Catholic This in- quiry the Irish pressed to obtain in 1642, in 1646, and again in 1648. But at each of these times the re- quest was eluded or denied by the English Protestant party. And they acted wisely in so denying it, foi- their own interests. These repeated offers on the part of the IrisL Cathohcs, these repeated refusals on the part of the EngUsh Protestants, can, of course, leave not a doubt on the mind of any rational man at the present day, of the innocence of the one, and of the deep guilt of the other. 244 OBSERVATIONS. [CHAP. Ill Cromwell's courts, however, were quite unequivocaL Their examination was avowedly and exclusively con- fined to the crimes committed by the Irish party, and did not extend to any crimes committed upon them. Yet, such is the nature of a just cause, that even those tribunals confirmed the general innocency of the Irish party. Such was the indiscriminate and glaring injustice of these courts, that in various parts Df Ireland they contrived to condemn about two hundred persons as guilty of murder on forged, cor- rupt, or even upon no evidence. "Yet," says Leland, "in the northern province, which had been the great scene of barbarity, not one was brought to justice but Sir Phelim O'Nial." — Leland, book iii. p. 394. The remark which Leland makes upon there being but one case in the northern province, would have assumed quite a different shape if he had been fair or candid. He should have said that when this active, energetic, and ambulatory tribunal of blood could find but one case in all Ulster, and when that one was the case of Sir Phelim O'Neill : and as Ulster was the province the most deeply and extensively charged with inhumanity and murder, it followed inevitably that the charges were most enormously exaggerated even against the people of Ulster, as we have, in fact, seen that they were. If there had been many murders in the rest of Ireland, surely this sanguinary tribunal would have found more victims than the number mentioned — about two hundred. Let it be recollected that even against the two hundred persons who were convicted judgment was given either on no evidence. or on corrupt or ■'^orged evidence. To a thinking mind, there is no quantity of written or verbal au thority that would so coerce a conviction of the inno cence of the Irish Catholic party, as the result of the investigation of this sanguinary and energetic court. That court was ambulatory, and sat in almost every county in Ireland. They had to investigate the crimes committed by the Irish during an insurrection ren- CHAP, m.] PROOFS, ETC!. 245 derecl hideous by the crimes committed upon the Irislu Tt was a court in which no defence was listened to.— Men who had surrendered on the faith of articles of capitulation, and who had performed their own part of the stipulation, were deprived of the benefit of those articles. No faith was kept with the Irish- no justice was done. And yet — oh ! astonishing !— not more than two hundred victims could be found affording a shadow of pretext for putting them to death upon the allegation that they committed crimes during the rebellion ! Yet the Irish were made to endure the infliction of tlie most horrible calumnies, sustained not only upon false, but on the most incredible of all imaginable tes- timony, for nearly a century, before they were allowed so much as to assert or defend their own innocence. Such was the course and manner of English justice to Ireland. I cannot proceed without giving one trait of the anhappy Sir Phelim O'Neill. There is no man of the Irish party so deeply stained with the crimes accom- panying the insurrection. He was, in short, the worst of the Irish. Yet, at his trial, he was offered his life, if he would but charge the King with having author- ized him to commence that insurrection. He utterly refused to accuse the King falsely. Accordingly, he was sentenced to execution. There is for this fact the authority of Dr. Sheridan, Protestant Bishop of Kilmore, who was present at the execution, and who asserts — " That Colonel Hewson coming towards the ladder. Sir Phelim made his public acknowledgments to hini in a grateful manner, for the civil treatment he had met with during the whole course of his imprison- ment, and only wished that his life had been taken from him in a more honourable manner. To this Colonel Hewson answered, that he might save his life if he pleased, only by declaring at that moment to tlie people, that his first taking arms was by virtue of a commission under the broad seal of King Charles the 246 OI^SERVATTONS, [CHAP. III. First : but Sir Pheliin replied tlicat he would not save his life by so base a lie, by doing so great an injury to that Prince. 'Tis true, he said, that he might the better persuade the people to come unto him, he took off an old seal from an old deed, and clapt it to a commission that he had forged, and so persuaded the people that what he did was by the King's authority, but he never really had any commission from the King. This, adds Mr. Carte, the bishop told me he heard him say." — Macpherson^ s Hist. Great Britain^ iii. 280 ; also, Leland^ book vi. c. 2. Thus, even amongst the worst of the Irish, do we find a redeeming or a mitigating quality, that will enable them to compete with the very foremost of the English party. And this I say without at all pallia- ting Sir Phelim's crimes. All I say is, that if he had a thousand crimes — yet, bad as he was, he had one virtue ; whereas his enemies had none at all ! I have already quoted crimes enough committed by the English Protestant party, to satiate the most Sa- tanic disposition for cruelty ; but not enough to satiate the English party. The Irish parliament being suppressed, the usurped powers in Ireland legislated by proclamations. There was no other form. But these proclamations were perfectly efficacious, sustained as they were by the power of the sword. I wiU give the first specimen : "In the same year (1652) the parliament commis- sioners at Dublin published a proclamation, signed Charles Fleetwood, Edmund Ludlow, and John Jones : wherein the act of the 27th of Elizabeth was made of force in Ireland, and ordered to be most strictly put in execution. By this act, ' every Romish priest, so found, was deemed guilty of Rebellion, and sentenced to be hanged until he was half dead ; then to have his head taken off, and his body cut in quar- ters ; his bowels to be drawn out and burned ] and his head fixed upon a pole in some public place."-- Curry's Review^ p. 392. '7HAP. m.] PPwOOFS. ETC. 247 TiiG only excuse for enacting this horrible and barbarous la-^, was, that it was ah^eady in force in iTngland. But in England the Catholic priests were comparatively few ; in Ireland they were many. Pro- testant intolerance found this method of diminishing their number in Ireland ; hanging them till they were half dead, and then tearing out their bowels. In the next proclamation these lawgivers exceeded even the English brutality. Here is the specimen : — "The punishment of those who entertained a priest, vras, by the same act, confiscation of their goods and chattels, and the ignominious death of the gallows. Tliis edict was renewed the same year, with the ad- ditional cruelty of making even the private exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, a capital crime. And again repeated in 1657, with the same penalty of confiscation and death to aU those who, knowing where a priest was hid, did not make discovery to the Government." — Gurry's Revieio, 392. Xor were these mere idle threats. They were axr- ried into fuU execution. The Protestant party ■^ere triumphant ; and no Catholic who fell within their grasp was spared. Let others speak for me : — " Of the strict execution of these barbarous edicts, many shocking examples were daily seen among these unhappy people, insomuch, that to use the words of a contemporary writer and eye witness, ' Neither the Israelites were more cruelly persecuted by Pharaoh, nor the innocent infants by Herod, nor the Christians by Nero or any other of the Pagan tjTants, than were the Roman Catholics of Ireland at that fatal junc- ture of these savage commissioners.' "- —J/ormow'* Threnodia, p. 14. There, was an awful pleasantry also in the cruelty of these sanguinary wretches : — " The same price (five pounds sterling) was set by these commissioners on the head of a Romish priest as on that of a wolf ; the number of ^vhich latter was then very considerable in Ireland : and although the profession or character of a Romish priest could not. 248 OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. IlL one would think, be so clearly ascertained as the species of a wolf, by the mere inspection of their heads thus severed from their bodies, yet the bare asseveration of the beheaders was, in both ^ cases, equally credited and rewarded by these commission- ers."— Gurry's Review^ pp. 393-4. Here let me pause amidst these scenes of horror and desolation. Here let me pause ; consoled and soothed by the recollection of the glorious contrast of the humanity and mercy exhibited by the Irish Catho- lics, with the fiendish cruelty and barbarity perpe- trated by the English Protestants. The documents put forth by each party fully establish this contrast. On the side of the Irish there cannot be quoted any letter, any writing, any document, any general or par- ticular order, edict, law, or command ; enjoining, suggesting, or palliating murder or pillage — plunder or crime. No — not one ! I repeat it, not one ! On the contrary, every authentic document that has ever been produced as emanating from the Irish Catholics, suggests lenity, forgiveness, and mercy. And, as in the case of the act of the general Confederacy in 1642, there are not only pains, just pains and penal- ties denounced against all evil-doers, plunderers, robbers, and murderers ; but punishment is denounced in the strongest terms against every person, no matter of what rank, who should connive at crime, or en- deavour to extend impunity to criminals ! And even going so far, that to the inflictions by the tribu- nals of this world, there is superadded the more awful judgment of excommunication. (See pp. 309-10.) On the other hand, you can read the gloating satis- faction with which the English Protestant Lords Justices, the English parliament, English officers in comnipnd, and English parliamentary commissioners in po^ session of legislative and executive authority in Ireland, not only commanded but enforced the perpe- tration of the most brutal barbarities and diabolical cruelties upon the Irish people, by their public and JHAP. IIL] PKOOFS, etc. 249 private documents, their proclamations, their orders to the military, their ordinances, edicts, and laws. All, all steeped in blood, and saturated with horrors. Contrast the two. Kecollect that, with a very small exception, the entire of Ireland was in the pos- session of the confederated Catholics for nearly sLx years ; that is, from about 1643 to 1649. Recollect that during that year (and for the two years preceding it) the utmost atrocities were perpetrated upon the Irish. Recollect all this — and join then with me in blessing Providence who gave the Irish nation a soul fuU of humanity, a disposition so replete witli mercy, that, excepting in the actual civil war itself, the Irish shed no blood, committed no crime, perpe- trated no barbarity, exhibited no intolerance, exer- cised no persecution. \Yhen, when ! will justice be rendered to thy sons, loved fatherland 1 When, when ! will mankind recognise the just title of the Irish to pre- eminence in the most glorious virtues ? to morality of the purest order, domestic and pubHc 1 Temperancu of the most extensive and practical utility 1 Tenacious religious fidelity, beyond the example of aU, or any of the countries on the face of Christendom % CHAPTER nX— PART VII. I shall close the disastrous period embraced in this third chapter, by the insertion of some documents illustrative of the practices of the times. The first is taken from a note to Lingard's History of England^ and shows the spirit that animated the popular party in England. I desire to show that it was not only the Protestant Government, but the Protest .int populations of England, that gloated over Catho- lic blood : — " I have not been able," says Lingard, " to ascer- tain the number of Catholic clergymen who were exe- cuted or banished for their religion imder Charles I^ and under the Commonwealth. But I possess au 250 OBSERVATION'S, [CHAP. IH. original document, authenticated by the signatures of the parties concerned, which contains the names and fate of such Catholic priests as were apprehended and prosecuted in London between the end of 1640 and the summer of 1651, by four individuals who had formed themselves into a kind of joint stock com- pany for that laudable purpose, and who solicited from the council some reward for their services. It should, however, be remembered, that there were many others engaged in the same pursuit, and conse- quently many other victims besides those who are here enumerated." Lingard then proceeds to quote from Ms original document as follows : — " The names of such Jesuits and Romish priests as have been apprehended and prosecuted by Captain James Wadsworth, Francis Newton, Thomas Mayo, and Robert De Luke, messengers, at our proper charge, whereof some have been condemned, some executed, and some reprieved since the beginning of the par- liament, (3rd November, 1640,) the like having not been done by any others since the Reformation of re- ligion in this nation : — " William Waller, als. Slaughter, als. Walker, exe- cuted at Tyburne. Cuthbert Clapton, condemned, re- prieved and pardoned. Bartholomew Row, executed at Tyburne. Thomas Reynolds, executed at Tyburne. Edward Morgan, executed at Tyburne. Thomas Sanderson, als. Hammond, executed at Tyburne. Henry Heath, als. Pall Magdalen, executed at Tyburne. Francis Quashet, died in Newgate after judgment. Arthur BeU, executed at Tj^burne. Ralph Corbey, executed at Tyburne. John Duchet, executed at Ty- burne. John Hamond, als. Jackson, condemned, reprieved by the King, and died in Newgate. Wal- ter Coleman, condemned and died in Newgate. Ed- mond Cannon, condemned and died in Newgate. John Wigniore, alias Turner, condemned, and reprieved by the King, and is in custcdie in Newgate, Andrew Ffryer, alias Heme, alij^s Richmond, condemned, and CHAP, m.] PEoors. "etc. 251 died in Ne^vgate. John Goodman, condemned, and died in Newgate. Henry Morse, executed at Tybiirne. Thomas Worsley, alias Harvey, indicted and proved, reprieved by the Spanish ambassador and others. Charles Chanie (Cheny), als. Thompson indicted and proved, and begged by the Spanish ambassador, and since taken by command of the Council of State and is now in Newgate. Andrew White, indicted, proved, reprieved before judgment and banished. Eichard Copley, condemned and banished. Richard Worthing- ton, found guiltie, and banished. Edmond Cole, Peter Wright, and William Morgan, indicted, proved, and sent beyond sea. Phillip Morgan, executed at Tyburne. Edmund Ensher, als. Arrow, indicted, condemned, reprieved by the parliament, and banished. Thomas Budd, als. Peto, als. Gray, condemned, re- prieved by the Lord Mayor of London and others, justices, and since retaken by order of the Council of State, and is now in Newgate. George Baker, als. Macham, indicted, proved guiltie, and now in New- gate. Peter Beale, als. Wright, executed at Tyburne. George Gage, indicted by us and found guiltie, and since is dead." James Wapsworth. Feancis Newton. TnoiiAS Mayo. RobepvT De Luke. " This catalogue," continues Lingard, " tells a fearful but instructive tale ; inasmuch as it shows how wan- tonly men can sport with the lives of their fellow-men, if it suit the purpose of a great political party. The patriots, to enlist in their favour the religious preju- dices of the people, represented the King as the patron of popery, because he sent the priests into banishment, instead of delivering them to the knife of the exe- cutioner. Hence, when they became lords of the ascendant, they were bound to make proof of their orthodoxy ; and almost every execiition mentioned abovetook place by their order in 1642 or 1643. After that time they began to listen to the voice of humanity, and adopted the very expedient which they had so 262 0BSET?VATI0N9, CHAP. TH. clamorously condemned. They banished, instead of hanging and quartering." — Lingard, vol, x. p. 428. As a pendant to the foregoing, and to form a kind of relief to the wholesale slaughters, I insert an extract of the translation of an exceedingly rare and curious tract, and published the year after Cromwell's death. The original is in Latin, and is entitled, " Morisoni Threnodia Hibemo-Catholica, sive Planctus Univer- salis totius Cleri et E,egni Hiberniae de transcendent! Crudelitate Anglomm adversus Catholicos in Hiber- nia," (Enipont, 1659 : — " A catalogue of some of the chiefs and nobles slaugh tered by the Protestants. — Chap. vi. — I do not here enumerate any persons slain in battle, although h might have fallen in the cause of his religion, nor do give the tenth part of the persons of quality who were murdered, but only the more illustrious, being chiefly those who were received into allegiance by the Pro- testants, after the amnesty had been made and actually entered on ; [a treachery] which barbarians and infi- dels themselves would abhor and deem detestable. 1. Lord Hugh MacMahon, the chief of his illustrious race, a brave and noble military leader, was, after two years' imprisonment in London, half hanged, and, ere life was extinct, quartered • his head was then placed on an iron spike on Lond.on bridge to feed the ravenous fowls of the air; his four quarters were placed over four of the gates of London. 2. Cornelius Maguire, Lord Viscount Iniskillen, a most devout and holy man, sole companion in captivity of the aforesaid Hugh MacMahon, underwent the same butchery about two months after the execution of MacMahon, 3. The illustrious Felix O'Neill (captured by Protestant de- vice) was half -hanged in Dublin, a.b, 1652, and, while yet alive, was quartered. His head was stuck upon a great spike at the western gate of Dublin, and his quarters were sent to be stuck on spikes in four dif ferent parts of the kingdom. 4. Henry O'Neill, sod. of Eugene O'Neill, taken prisoner in battlCj and, not- withstanding pUffhted faith, slaughtered, in Ulster, CHAP. III.J PROOFS, ETC. 253 A.D. 1651. 5. Tliaddaeus O'Connor (Sligo), descended from the royal race of the last and most powerful monarchs of Ireland, a man of great goodness and in nocence, hung in the town of Boyle, in Connaught, A.D. 1652, after the general amnesty had been made. 6. Constantius O'Euairk, taken prisoner in battle, murdered in 1652, notwithstanding plighted faith. 7. Theobald De Burgo, Lord Viscount Mayo,_ after truce had been made with all such persons in the Idngdom as were not actually in arms against the Pro- testants, and a general amnesty promised, was shot in Galway in 1651. 8. Charles O'Dowd, of a most high and noble race, hanged A.D. 1651. 9. The illustrious Donat O'Brien, descended of the royal race of the O'Briens, a most generous man, and of surpassing hospitality ; after the Protestants had plighted to him their faith, and given him safe conduct in order that he might become their tributary ; an attack being made one day by the Protestants against the Catholics, he (O'Brien) relying on his having been received into their friendship, approached ; when a certain Protes- tant knight shot him through the body. Unsatisfied with this cruelty, when the venerable old man (then aged about 64 years}, had entered a hut, haH dead, that he might, in penitence, commend himself to God, a soldier followed, set fire to the hut, and burned this noble old man — in Thomond, A.D. 1651. 10. James O'Brien, of illustrious lineage, maternal nephew of the aforesaid Donatus O'Brien, a youth of high hopes and prospects, was murdered at Nenagh in the Or- monds. They cut his head off and sent it to his uterine brother, Moriarty O'Brien, then their prisoner. 11. Bernard O'Brien, of the same noble family, a youth of equally fair prospects, was hanged in 1651. 12. Daniel O'Brien, first cousin of the said Bernard, was hanged, and his head cut off at Xenagh, 1651. 13. The illustrious Colonel John O'Kennedy, a man of the utmost integrity, was slain by the swords of the Protestants, after tlieir faith had been pledged to him in battle. His head was then cut off and fastened on 25i OBSERVATIONS, [CBAP. lil. a spike in the town of Nenagh, a.d, 1651. 14. James O'Kenedy, son of tlie aforesaid illustrious gentleman, a youth of great hopes, being deluded with a similar pledge of good faith, was hanged in Nenagh, a.d. 1(351 15. The illustrious Sir Patrick Purcell, Vice-General of all Munster, noble hearted, and a most accomplished warrior (renowned for his services in Germany against Sweden and France, under Ferdinand III. of Augustan memory), was hanged after the taking of Limerick, his head cut off, and exposed on a stake over the southern gate (called John's gate) of the city of Limerick, a.d. 1651. 16. The illustrious and most generous Sir Godfrey Barron, a sincere Catholic, of the highest fidelity, and of singular eloquence, who had been deputed by the confederated Catholics of Ireland as their envoy to his most Christian Majesty, was also hanged at Limerick. 17. The noble Sir Godfrey Galway, was likewise hanged at Limerick, 1651. 18. The noble Thomas Stritch, Mayor of Lim- erick, and alderman, was, with the like cruelty, hanged at the same time with the rest. His head was then cut off and fastened to the ^ity gate. 19. The noble Dominicus Fanning, ex-Mayor of Limerick, and alderman, a well-known man, and of the highest in- tegrity, who had been of great service to the confe- derated Catholics, and had laudably conferred much benefit on the kingdom as well as on the city, was hanged at Limerick along with the rest, a.d. 1651, His head was cut off and affixed to the gate. 2C Daniel O'Higgins, medical doctor, a wise and pious man, was hanged at the same time at Limerick, a.d. 1651. 2 1 . The ill ustrious and Right Reverend Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Raphoe (of whom I have already spoken), was hanged at the same time, and his head cut off. He went gloriously to heaven, a.d. 1651. 22. The illustrious John O'Connor, Lord of Kerry and Iracht, on account of his adhesion to the Catholic party, and his efforts to draw to it not only his i)cr- sonal followers, but all with whom he had friendship, \^'as, alter having been seized upon by btratagem by CHAP. nLJ PKOOFS, ETC. 255 the Protestants, brought to Tralee in that county, and there half hanged and then beheaded, a.d. 1652. 23. The illustrious Lord Edward Butler, son of Lord Mountgarret, an innocent man, Vv^ho had never taken arms, ^Yas hanged at Dublin alter the truce had been commenced, and amnesty promised throughout ths whole kingdom, a.d. 1652. 24. The illustrious and Eevereud Bernard Fitzpatrick, priest, and descended from the illustrious lineage of the Barons of Ossory, who, flying for refuge from the fury of the Protestants to a cave, was pursued by them ; who there cut off the head of tliis most holy man (who was equally renowned throughout the kingdom for his life, his doctrine, and Ids lineage). They affixed his head to a spike ovei the town gate to be meat for the fowls of the air, and left his flesh to be devoured by the beasts of the held. "Nor was the inhuman fury of the Protestants satiated with this slaughter of men ; but they also drew their swords against women. Thus — " The noble Lady Koche, ^Yiie of Maurice, Viscount of Fermoy and Eoche, a chaste and holy matron, u^hose mind was solely occupied with prayer and piety, being falsely accused of murder by a certain ungrateful English maid-servant (whom she had compassionately taken when a desolate orphan, and supported and c\!ucated), was hanged at Cork in 1654, although itricken in years, and destined in the course of nature soon to die. " The noble Lady Bridget of the house of Darcy, wife of Florence Fitzpatrick, one of the Barons of Ossory, was hanged by the Protestants at Dublin in 1652, without the form of law or of justice. " What shall I yet say "l Time ^^'ould fail me to nar- rate the martyrdom of chiefs, nobles, prelates, priests, friars, citizens, and others of the Irish Catholics (whose purple gore has stained the scafiolds almost with(~»ut end); who ' by faith conquered kingdoms and ^\TOught justice.' Of whom some had trials in mockeries and stripes, moreover also of chains and prisons. Others weie stoned, cut asunder, racked, or put to death with 9,5Q OBSERVATIONS, [CHAP. 111. the sword, {lleh. xi.) Others have wandered over the world in hunger, thirst, cold, and nakedness ; being in want, distressed, afflicted ; wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in dens and in caves of the earth. And all these being approved by the testi- mony of the faith, without doubt received the promise, Amen."— (pp. 65—72.) c.^ <' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REC"^ LD-URl MAR 2 01985 .00. 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