The gloom of popery had overshadowed Ireland
from its first establishment there until the reign of Henry VIII
when the rays of the Gospel began to dispel the darkness, and
afford that light which until then had been unknown in that island.
The abject ignorance in which the people were held, with the absurd
and superstitious notions they entertained, were sufficiently
evident to many; and the artifices of their priests were so conspicuous,
that several persons of distinction, who had hitherto been strenuous
papists, would willingly have endeavored to shake off the yoke,
and embrace the Protestant religion; but the natural ferocity
of the people, and their strong attachment to the ridiculous doctrines
which they had been taught, made the attempt dangerous. It was,
however, at length undertaken, though attended with the most horrid
and disastrous consequences.
The introduction of the Protestant religion
into Ireland may be principally attributed to George Browne, an
Englishman, who was consecrated archbishop of Dublin on the nineteenth
of March, 1535. He had formerly been an Augustine friar, and was
promoted to the mitre on account of his merit.
After having enjoyed his dignity about five
years, he, at the time that Henry VIII was suppressing the religious
houses in England, caused all the relics and images to be removed
out of the two cathedrals in Dublin, and the other churches in
his diocese; in the place of which he caused to be put up the
Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments.
A short time after this he received a letter
from Thomas Cromwell, lord-privy seal, informing him that Henry
VIII having thrown off the papal supremacy in England, was determined
to do the like in Ireland; and that he thereupon had appointed
him (Archbishop Browne) one of the commissioners for seeing this
order put in execution. The archbishop answered that he had employed
his utmost endeavors at the hazard of his life, to cause the Irish
nobility and gentry to acknowledge Henry as their supreme bead,
in matters both spiritual and temporal; but had met with a most
violent opposition, especially from George, archbishop of Armagh;
that this prelate had, in a speech to his clergy, laid a curse
on all those who should own his highness’ supremacy: adding,
that their isle, called in the Chronicles Insula Sacra, or the
Holy Island, belonged to none but the bishop of Rome, and that
the king’s progenitors had received it from the pope. He
observed likewise, that the archbishop and clergy of Armagh had
each despatched a courier to Rome; and that it would be necessary
for a parliament to be called in Ireland, to pass an act of supremacy,
the people not regarding the king’s commission without the
sanction of the legislative assembly. He concluded with observing,
that the popes had kept the people in the most profound ignorance;
that the clergy were exceedingly illiterate; that the common people
were more zealous in their blindness than the saints and martyrs
had been in the defence of truth at the beginning of the Gospel;
and that it was to be feared that Shan O’Neal, a chieftain
of great power in the northern part of the island, was decidedly
opposed to the king’s commission.
In pursuance of this advice, the following
year a parliament was summoned to meet at Dublin, by order of
Leonard Grey, at that time lord-lieutenant. At this assembly Archbishop
Browne made a speech, in which he set forth that the bishops of
Rome used, anciently, to acknowledge emperors, kings, and princes,
to be supreme in their own dominions; and, therefore, that he
himself would vote King Henry VIII as supreme in all matters,
both ecclesiastical and temporal. He concluded with saying that
whosoever should refuse to vote for this act, was not a true subject
of the king. ‘This speech greatly startled the other bishops
and lords; but at length, after violent debates, the king’s
supremacy was allowed.
Two years after this, the archbishop wrote
a second letter to Lord Cromwell, complaining of the clergy, and
hinting at the machinations which the pope was then carrying on
against the advocates of the Gospel. This letter is dated from
Dublin, in April, 1538; and among other matters, the archbishop
says, “A bird may be taught to speak with as much sense as
many of the clergy do in this country. These, though not scholars,
yet are crafty to cozen the poor common people and to dissuade
them from following his highness orders. The country folk here
much hate your lordship, and despitefully call you, in their Irish
tongue, the Blacksmith’s Son. As a friend, I desire your
lordship to look well to your noble person. Rome hath a great
kindness for the duke of Norfolk, and great favors for this nation,
purposely to oppose his highness.”
A short time after this, the pope sent over
to Ireland (directed to the archbishop of Armagh and his clergy)
a bull of excommunication against all who had, or should own the
king’s supremacy within the Irish nation; denouncing a curse
on all of them, and theirs, who should not, within forty days,
acknowledge to their confessors, that they had done amiss in so
doing.
Archbishop Browne gave notice of this in
a letter dated, Dublin, May, 1538. Part of the form of confession,
or vow, sent over to these Irish papists, ran as follows: “I
do further declare him or her, father or mother, brother or sister,
son or daughter, husband or wife, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece,
kinsman or kinswoman, master or mistress, and all others, nearest
or dearest relations, friend or acquaintance whatsoever, accursed,
that either do or shall hold, for the time to come, any ecclesiastical
or civil power above the authority of the Mother Church; or that
do or shall obey, for the time to come, any of her, the Mother
of Churches’ opposers or enemies, or contrary to the same,
of which I have here sworn unto: so God, the Blessed Virgin, St.
Peter, St. Paul, and the Holy Evangelists, help me,” etc.
is an exact agreement with the doctrines promulgated by the Councils
of Lateran and Constance, which expressly declare that no favor
should be shown to heretics, nor faith kept with them; that they
ought to be excommunicated and condemned, and their estates confiscated,
and that princes are obliged, by a solemn oath, to root them out
of their respective dominions.
How abominable a church must that be, which
thus dares to trample upon all authority! How besotted the people
who regard the injunctions of such a church!
In the archbishop’s last-mentioned
letter, dated May, 1538, he says: “His highness’ viceroy
of this nation is of little or no power with the old natives.
Now both English and Irish begin to oppose your lordship’s
orders, and to lay aside their national quarrels, which I fear
will (if anything will) cause a foreigner to invade this nation.”
Not long after this, Archbishop Browne seized
one Thady O’Brian, a Franciscan friar, who had in his possession
a paper sent from Rome, dated May, 1538, and directed to O’Neal.
In this letter were the following words: “His Holiness, Paul,
now pope, and the council of the fathers, have lately found, in
Rome, a prophecy of one St. Lacerianus, an Irish bishop of CasheL
in which he saith that the Mother Church of Rome falleth, when,
in Ireland, the Catholic faith is overcome. Therefore, for the
glory of the Mother Church, the honor of St. Peter, and your own
secureness, suppress heresy, and his holiness’ enemies.”
This Thady O’Brian, after further examination
and search made, was pilloried, and kept close prisoner until
the king’s orders arrived in what manner he should be further
disposed of. But order coming over from England that he was to
be hanged, he laid violent hands on himself in the castle of Dublin.
His body was afterwards carried to Gallows-green, where, after
being hanged up for some time, it was interred.
After the accession of Edward VI to the
throne of England, an order was directed to Sir Anthony Leger,
the lord-deputy of Ireland, commanding that the liturgy in English
be forthwith set up in Ireland, there to be observed within the
several bishoprics, cathedrals, and parish churches; and it was
first read in Christ-church, Dublin, on Easter day, 1551, before
the said Sir Anthony, Archbishop Browne, and others. Part of the
royal order for this purpose was as follows: “Whereas, our
gracious father, King Henry VIII taking into consideration the
bondage and heavy yoke that his true and faithful subjects sustained,
under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome; how several fabulous
stories and lying wonders misled our subjects; dispensing with
the sins of our nations, by their indulgences and pardons, for
gain; purposely to cherish all evil vices, as robberies, rebellions,
thefts, whoredoms, blasphemy, idolatry, etc... our gracious father
hereupon dissolved all priories, monasteries, abbeys, and other
pretended religious houses; as being but nurseries for vice or
luxury, more than for sacred learning,” etc.
On the day after the Common Prayer was first
used in Christchurch, Dublin, the following wicked scheme was
projected by the papists :
In the church was left a marble image of
Christ, holding a reed in his hand, with a crown of thorns on
his head. Whilst the English service (the Common Prayer) was being
read before the lordlieutenant, the archbishop of Dublin, the
privy-council, the lordmayor, and a great congregation, blood
was seen to run through the crevices of the crown of thorns, and
trickle down the face of the image. On this, some of the contrivers
of the imposture cried aloud, “See how our Savior’s
image sweats blood! But it must necessarily do this, since heresy
is come into the church.” Immediately many of the lower order
of people, indeed the vulgar of all ranks, were terrified at the
sight of so miraculous and undeniable an evidence of the divine
displeasure; they hastened from the church, convinced that the
doctrines of Protestantism emanated from an infernal source, and
that salvation was only to be found in the bosom of their own
infallible Church.
This incident, however ludicrous it may
appear to the enlightened reader, had great influence over the
minds of the ignorant Irish, and answered the ends of the impudent
impostors who contrived it, so far as to check the progress of
the reformed religion in Ireland very materially; many persons
could not resist the conviction that there were many errors and
corruptions in the Romish Church, but they were awed into silence
by this pretended manifestation of Divine wrath, which was magnified
beyond measure by the bigoted and interested priesthood.
We have very few particulars as to the state
of religion in Ireland during the remaining portion of the reign
of Edward VI and the greater part of that of Mary. Towards the
conclusion of the barbarous sway of that relentless bigot, she
attempted to extend her inhuman persecutions to this island; but
her diabolical intentions were happily frustrated in the following
providential manner, the particulars of which are related by historians
of good authority.
Mary had appointed Dr. Pole (an agent of
the bloodthirsty Bonner) one of the commissioners for carrying
her barbarous intentions into effect. He having arrived at Chester
with his commission, the mayor of that city, being a papist, waited
upon him; when the doctor taking out of his cloak bag a leathern
case, said to him, “Here is a commission that shall lash
the heretics of Ireland.” The good woman of the house being
a Protestant, and having a brother in Dublin, named John Edmunds,
was greatly troubled at what she heard. But watching her opportunity,
whilst the mavor ‘was taking his leave, and the doctor politely
accompanying him downstairs, she opened the box, took out the
commission, and in its stead laid a sheet of paper, with a pack
of cards, and the knave of clubs at top. The doctor, not suspecting
the trick that had been played him, put up the box, and arrived
with it in Dublin, in September, 1558.
Anxious to accomplish the intentions of
his “pious” mistress, he immediately waited upon Lord
Fitz-Walter, at that time viceroy, and presented the box to him;
which being opened, nothing was found in it but a pack of cards.
This startling all the persons present, his lordship said, “We
must procure another commission; and in the meantime let us shuffle
the cards.”
Dr. Pole, however, would have directly returned
to England to get another commission; but waiting for a favorable
wind, news arrived that Queen Mary was dead, and by this means
the Protestants escaped a most cruel persecution. The above relation
as we before observed, is confirmed by historians of the greatest
credit, who add, that Queen Elizabeth settled a pension of forty
pounds per annum upon the above mentioned Elizabeth Edmunds, for
having thus saved the lives of her Protestant subjects.
During the reigns of Elizabeth and James
1, Ireland was almost constantly agitated by rebellions and insurrections,
which, although not always taking their rise from the difference
of religious opinions, between the English and Irish, were aggravated
and rendered more bitter and irreconcilable from that cause. The
popish priests artfully exaggerated the faults of the English
government, and continually urged to their ignorant and prejudiced
hearers the lawfulness of killing the Protestants, assuring them
that all Catholics who were slain in the prosecution of so pious
an enterprise, would be immediately received into everlasting
felicity. The naturally ungovernable dispositions of the Irish,
acted upon by these designing men, drove them into continual acts
of barbarous and unjustifiable violence; and it must be confessed
that the unsettled and arbitrary nature of the authority exercised
by the English governors, was but little calculated to gain their
affections. The Spaniards, too, by landing forces in the south,
and giving every encouragement to the discontented natives to
join their standard, kept the island in a continual state of turbulence
and warfare. In 1601, they disembarked a body of four thousand
men at Kinsale, and commenced what they called “the Holy
War for the preservation of the faith in Ireland;” they were
assisted by great numbers of the Irish, but were at length totally
defeated by the deputy, Lord Mountjoy, and his officers.
This closed the transactions of Elizabeth’s
reign with respect to Ireland; an interval of apparent tranquillity
followed, but the popish priesthood, ever restless and designing,
sought to undermine by secret machinations that government and
that faith which they durst no longer openly attack. The pacific
reign of James afforded them the opportunity of increasing their
strength and maturing their schemes, and under his successor,
Charles I, their numbers were greatly increased by titular Romish
archbishops, bishops, deans, vicars-general, abbots, priests,
and friars; for which reason, in 1629, the public exercise of
the popish rites and ceremonies was forbidden.
But notwithstanding this, soon afterwards,
the Romish clergy erected a new popish university in the city
of Dublin. They also proceeded to build monasteries and nunneries
in various parts of the kingdom; in which places these very Romish
clergy, and the chiefs of the Irish, held frequent meetings; and
from thence, used to pass to and fro, to France, Spain, Flanders,
Lorraine, and Rome; where the detestable plot of 1641 was hatching
by the family of the O’Neals and their followers.
A short time before the horrid conspiracy
broke out, which we are now going to relate, the papists in Ireland
had presented a remonstrance to the lords-justice of that kingdom,
demanding the free exercise of their religion, and a repeal of
all laws to the contrary; to which both houses of parliament in
England solemnly answered that they would never grant any toleration
to the popish religion in that kingdom.
This further irritated the papists to put
in execution the diabolical plot concerted for the destruction
of the Protestants; and it failed not of the success wished for
by its malicious and rancorous projectors.
The design of this horrid conspiracy was
that a general insurrection should take place at the same time
throughout the kingdom, and that all the Protestants, without
exception, should be murdered. The day fixed for this horrid massacre,
was the twenty-third of October, 1641, the feast of Ignatius Loyola,
founder of the Jesuits; and the chief conspirators in the principal
parts of the kingdom made the necessary preparations for the intended
conflict.
In order that this detested scheme might
the more infallibly succeed, the most distinguished artifices
were practiced by the papists; and their behavior in their visits
to the Protestants, at this time, was with more seeming kindness
than they had hitherto shown, which was done the more completely
to effect the inhuman and treacherous designs then meditating
against them.
The execution of this savage conspiracy
was delayed until the approach of winter, that sending troops
from England might be attended with greater difficulty. Cardinal
Richelieu, the French minister, had promised the conspirators
a considerable supply of men and money; and many Irish officers
had given the strongest assurances that they would heartily concur
with their Catholic brethren, as soon as the insurrection took
place.
The day preceding that appointed for carrying
this horrid design into execution was now arrived, when, happily
for the metropolis of the kingdom, the conspiracy was discovered
by one Owen O’Connelly, an Irishman, for which most signal
service the English Parliament voted him 500 pounds and a pension
of 200 pounds during his life.
So very seasonably was this plot discovered,
even but a few hours before the city and castle of Dublin were
to have been surprised, that the lords-justice h ad but just time
to put themselves, and the city, in a proper posture of defence.
Lord M’Guire, who was the principal leader here, with his
accomplices, was seized the same evening in the city; and in their
lodgings were found swords, hatchets, pole-axes, hammers, and
such other instruments of death as had been prepared for the destruction
and extirpation of the Protestants in that part of the kingdom.
Thus was the metropolis happily preserved;
but the bloody part of the intended tragedy was past prevention.
The conspirators were in arms all over the kingdom early in the
morning of the day appointed, and every Protestant who fell in
their way was immediately murdered. No age, no sex, no condition,
was spared. The wife weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing
her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by
the same stroke. The old, the young, the vigorous, and the infirm,
underwent the same fate, and were blended in one common ruin.
In vain did flight save from the first assault, destruction was
everywhere let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn.
In vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends;
all connections were dissolved; and death was dealt by that hand
from which protection was implored and expected. Without provocation,
without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound
peace, and, as they thought, full security, were massacred by
their nearest neighbors, with whom they had long maintained a
continued intercourse of kindness and good offices. Nay, - even
death was the slightest punishment inflicted by these monsters
in human form; all the tortures which wanton cruelty could invent,
all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies
of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury,
and cruelly derived from no just cause whatever. Depraved nature,
even perverted religion, though encouraged by the utmost license
cannot reach to a greater pitch of ferocity than appeared in these
merciless barbarians. Even the weaker sex themselves, naturally
tender to their own sufferings, and compassionate to those of
others, have emulated their robust companions in the practice
of every cruelty. The very children, taught by example and encouraged
by the exhortation of their parents, dealt their feeble blows
on the dead carcasses of the defenceless children of the English.
Nor was the avarice of the Irish sufficient
to produce the least restraint on their cruelty. Such was their
frenzy, that the cattle they had seized, and by rapine had made
their own, were, because they bore the name of English, wantonly
slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned loose into the
woods, there to perish by slow and lingering torments.
The commodious habitations of the planters
were laid in ashes, or levelled with the ground. And where the
wretched owners had shut themselves up in the houses, and were
preparing for defence, they perished in the flames together with
their wives and children.
Such is the general description of this
unparalleled massacre; but it now remains, from the nature of
our work, that we proceed to particulars.
The bigoted and merciless papists had no
sooner begun to imbrue their hands in blood than they repeated
the horrid tragedy day after day, and the Protestants in all parts
of the kingdom fell victims to their fury by deaths of the most
unheard-of cruelty.
The ignorant Irish were more strongly instigated
to execute the infernal business by the Jesuits, priests, and
friars, who, when the day for the execution of the plot was agreed
on, recommended in their prayers, diligence in the great design,
which they said would greatly tend to the prosperity of the kingdom,
and to the advancement of the Catholic cause. They everywhere
declared to the common people, that the Protestants were heretics,
and ought not to be suffered to live any longer among them; adding
that it was no more sin to kill an Englishman than to kill a dog;
and that the relieving or protecting them was a crime of the most
unpardonable nature.
The papists having besieged the town and
castle of Longford, and the inhabitants of the latter, who were
Protestants, surrendering on condition of being allowed quarter,
the besiegers, the instant the townspeople appeared, attacked
them in a most unmerciful manner, their priest, as a signal for
the rest to fall on, first ripping open the belly of the English
Protestant minister; after which his followers murdered all the
rest, some of whom they hanged, others were stabbed or shot, and
great numbers knocked on the head with axes provided for the purpose.
The garrison at Sligo was treated in like
manner by O’Connor Slygah; who, upon the Protestants quitting
their holds, promised them quarter, and to convey them safe over
the Curlew mountains, to Roscommon. But he first imprisoned them
in a most loathsome jail, allowing them only grains for their
food. Afterward, when some papists were merry over their cups,
who were come to congratulate their wicked brethren for their
victory over these unhappy creatures, those Protestants who survived
were brought forth by the White-friars, and were either killed,
or precipitated over the bridge into a swift river, where they
were soon destroyed. It is added, that this wicked company of
White-friars went, some time after, in solemn procession, with
holy water in their hands, to sprinkle the river; on pretence
of cleansing and purifying it from the stains and pollution of
the blood and dead bodies of the heretics, as they called the
unfortunate Protestants who were inhumanly slaughtered at this
very time.
At Kilmore, Dr. Bedell, bishop of that see,
had ‘charitably settled and supported a great number of distressed
Protestants, who had fled from their habitations to escape the
diabolical cruelties committed by the papists. But they did not
long enjov the consolation of living together; the good prelate
was forcibly dragged from his episcopal residence, which was immediately
occupied by Dr. Swiney, the popish titular bishop of Kilmore,
who said Mass in the church the Sunday following, and then seized
on all the goods and effects belonging to the persecuted bishop.
Soon after this, the papists forced Dr.
Bedell, his two sons, and the rest of his family, with some of
the chief of the Protastants whom he had protected, into a ruinous
castle, called Lochwater, situated in a lake near the sea. Here
he remained with his companions some weeks, all of them daily
expecting to be put to death. The greatest part of them were stripped
naked, by which means, as the season was cold, (it being in the
month of December) and the building in which they were confined
open at the top, they suffered the most severe hardships. They
continued in this situation until the seventh of january when
they were all released. The bishop was courteously received into
the house of Dennis O’Sheridan, one of his clergy, whom he
had made a convert to the Church of England; but he did not long
survive this kindness. During his residence here, he spent the
whole of his time in religious exercises, the better to fit and
prepare himself and his sorrowful companions for their great change,
as nothing but certain death was perpetually before their eyes.
He was at this time in the seventy-first year of his age, and
being afflicted with a violent ague caught in his late cold and
desolate habitation on the lake, it soon threw him into a fever
of the most dangerous nature. Finding his dissolution at hand,
he received it with joy, like one of the primitive martyrs just
hastening to his crown of glory. After having addressed his little
flock, and exhorted them to patience, in the most pathetic manner,
as they saw their own last day approaching, after having solemnly
blessed his people, his family, and his children, he finished
the course of his ministry and life together, on the seventh day
of February 1642.
His friends and relations applied to the
intruding bishop for leave to bury him, which was with difficulty
obtained; he, at first telling them that the churchyard was holy
ground, and should be no longer defiled with heretics: however,
leave was at last granted, and though the church funeral service
was not used at the solemnity, (for fear of the Irish papists)
yet some of the better sort, who had the highest veneration for
him while living, attended his remains to, the grave. At his interment
they discharged a volley of shot, crying out, Requiescat in pace
ultimus Anglorum, that is, “May the last of the English rest
in peace.” Adding, that as he was one of the best so he should
be the last English bishop found among them. His learning was
very extensive; and he would have given the world a greater proof
of it, had he printed all he wrote. Scarce any of his writings
were saved; the papists having destroyed most of his papers and
his library. He had gathered a vast heap of critical expositions
of Scripture, all which with a great trunk full of his manuscripts,
fell into the hands of the Irish. Happily his great Hebrew manuscript
was preserved, and is now in the library of Emanuel College, Oxford.
In the barony of Terawley, the papists,
at the instigation of the friars, compelled above forty English
Protestants, some of whom were women and children, to the hard
fate of either falling by the sword, or of drowning in the sea.
These choosing the latter, were accordingly forced, by the naked
weapons of their inexorable persecutors, into the deep, where,
with their children in their arms, they first waded up to their
chins, and afterwards sunk down and perished together.
In the castle of Lisgool upwards of one
hundred and fifty men, women. and children, were all burnt together;
and at the castle of Moneah not less than one hundred were all
put to the sword. Great numbers were also murdered at the castle
of Tullah, which was delivered up to M’Guire on condition
of having fair quarter; but no sooner had that base villain got
possession of the place than he ordered his followers to murder
the people, which was immediately done with the greatest cruelty.
Many others were put to deaths of the most
horrid nature, and such as could have been invented only by demons
instead of men. Some of them were laid with the center of their
backs on the axletree of a carriage, with their legs resting on
the ground on one side, and their arms and head on the other.
In this position, one of the savages scourged the wretched object
on the thighs, legs, etc., while another set on furious dogs,
who tore to pieces the arms and upper parts of the body; and in
this dreadful manner were they deprived of their existence. Great
numbers were fastened to horses tails, and the beasts being set
on full gallop by their riders, the wretched victims were dragged
along until they expired. Others were hung on lofty gibbets, and
a fire being kindled under them, they finished their lives, partly
by hanging, and partly by suffocation.
Nor did the more tender sex escape the least
particle of cruelty that could be projected by their merciless
and furious persecutors. Many women, of all ages, were put to
deaths of the most cruel nature. Some, in particular, were fastened
with their backs to strong posts, and being stripped to their
waists, the inhuman monsters cut off their right breasts with
shears, which, of course, put them, to the most excruciating torments;
and in this position they were left, until, from the loss of blood,
they expired.
Such was the savage ferocity of these barbarians,
that even unborn infants were dragged from the womb to become
victims to their rage. Many unhappy mothers were hung naked in
the branches of trees, and their bodies being cut open, the innocent
offsprings were taken from them, and thrown to dogs and swine.
And to increase the horrid scene, they would oblige the husband
to be a spectator before suffering himself.
At the town of Issenskeath they hanged above
a hundred Scottish Protestants, showing them no more mercv than
they did to the English. M’Guire, going to the castle of
that town, desired to speak with the governor, when being admitted,
he immediately burnt the records of the county, which were kept
there. He then demanded 1000 pounds of the governor, which, having
received, he immediately compelled him to hear Mass, and to swear
that he would continue to do so. And to complete his horrid barbarities,
he ordered the wife and children of the governor to be hanged
before his face; besides massacring at least one hundred of the
inhabitants. Upwards of one thousand men, women, and children,
were driven, in different companies, to Portadown bridge, which
was broken in the middle, and there compelled to throw themselves
into the water, and such as attempted to reach the shore were
knocked on the head.
In the same part of the country, at least
four thousand persons were drowned in different places. The inhuman
papists, after first stripping them, drove them like beasts to
the spot fixed on for their destruction; and if any, through fatigue,
or natural infirmities, were slack in their pace, they pricked
them with their swords and pikes; and to strike terror on the
multitude, they murdered some by the way. Many of these poor wretches,
when thrown into the water, endeavored to save themselves by swimming
to the shore but their merciless persecutors prevented their endeavors
taking effect, by shooting them in the water.
In one place one hundred and forty English,
after being driven for many miles stark naked, and in the most
severe weather, were all murdered on the same spot, some being
hanged, others burnt, some shot, and many of them buried alive;
and so cruel were their tormentors that they would not suffer
them to pray before they robbed them of their miserable existence.
Other companies they took under pretence
of safe conduct, who, from that consideration, proceeded cheerfully
on their journey; but when the treacherous papists had got them
to a convenient spot. they butchered them all in the most cruel
manner.
One hundred and fifteen men, women, and
children, were conducted, by order of Sir Phelim O’Neal,
to Portadown bridge, where they were all forced into the river,
and drowned. One woman, named Campbell, finding no probability
of escaping, suddenly clasped one of the chief of the papists
in her arms, and held him so fast that they were both drowned
together.
In Killyman they massacred forty-eight families,
among whom twenty-two were burnt together in one house. The rest
were either hanged, shot, or drowned.
In Kilmore, the inhabitants, which consisted
of about two hundred families, all fell victims to their rage.
Some of them sat in the stocks until they confessed where their
money was; after which they put them to death. The whole county
was one common scene of butchery, and many thousands perished,
in a short time, by sword, famine, fire, water, and others the
most cruel deaths, that rage and malice could invent.
These bloody villains showed so much favor
to some as to despatch them immediately; but they would by no
means suffer them to pray. Others they imprisoned in filthy dungeons,
putting heavy bolts on their legs, and keeping them there until
they were starved to death.
At Casel they put all the Protestants into
a loathsome dungeon, where they kept them together, for several
weeks, in the greatest misery. At length they were released, when
some of them were barbarously mangled, and left on the highways
to perish at leisure; others were hanged, and some were buried
in the ground upright, with their heads above the earth, and the
papists, to increase their misery, treating them with derision
during their sufferings. In the county of Antrim they murdered
nine hundred and fifty-four Protestants in one morning; and afterwards
about twelve hundred more in that county.
At a town called Lisnegary, they forced
twenty-four Protestants into a house, and then setting fire to
it, burned them together, counterfeiting their outcries in derision
to the others.
Among other acts of cruelty they took two
children belonging to an Englishwoman, and dashed out their brains
before her face; after which they threw the mother into a river,
and she was drowned. They served many other children in the like
manner, to the great affliction of their parents, and the disgrace
of human nature.
In Kilkenny all the Protestants, without
exception, were put to death; and some of them in so cruel a manner,
as, perhaps, was never before thought of.
They beat an Englishwoman with such savage
barbarity, that she had scarce a whole bone left; after which
they threw her into a ditch; but not satisfied with this, they
took her child, a girl about six years of age, and after ripping
up its belly, threw it to its mother, there to languish until
it perished. They forced one man to go to Mass, after which they
ripped open his body, and in that manner left him. They sawed
another asunder, cut the throat of his wife, and after having
dashed out the brains of their child, an infant, threw it to the
swine, who greedily devoured it.
After committing these, and several other
horrid cruelties, they took the heads of seven Protestants, and
among them that of a pious minister, all of which they fixed up
at the market cross. They put a gag into the minister’s mouth,
then slit his cheeks to his ears, and laying a leaf of a Bibl
e before it, bid him preach, for his mouth was wide enough. They
did several other things by way of derision, and expressed the
greatest satisfaction at having thus murdered and exposed the
unhappy Protestants.
It is impossible to conceive the pleasure
these monsters took in exercising their cruelty, and to increase
the misery of those who fell into their hands, when they butchered
them they would say, “Your soul to the devil.” One of
these miscreants would come into a house with his hands imbued
in blood, and boast that it was English blood, and that his sword
had pricked the white skins of the Protestants, even to the hilt.
When any one of them had killed a Protestant, others would come
and receive a gratification in cutting and mangling the body;
after which they left it exposed to be devoured by dogs; and when
they had slain a number of them they would boast, that the devil
was beholden to them for sending so many souls to hell. But it
is no wonder they should thus treat the innocent Christians, when
they hesitated not to commit blasphemy against God and His most
holy Word.
In one place they burnt two Protestant Bibles,
and then said they had burnt hell-fire. In the church at Powerscourt
they burnt the pulpit, pews, chests, and Bibles belonging to it.
They took other Bibles, and after wetting them with dirty water,
dashed them in the faces of the Protestants, saying, “We
know you love a good lesson; here is an excellent one for you;
come to-morrow, and you shall have as good a sermon as this.”
Some of the Protestants they dragged by
the hair of their heads into the church, where they stripped and
whipped them in the most cruel manner, telling them, at the same
time, that if they came tomorrow, they should hear the like sermon.
In Munster they put to death several ministers
in the most shocking manner. One, in particular, they stripped
stark naked, and driving him before them, pricked him with swords
and darts until he fell down, and expired.
In some places they plucked out the eyes,
and cut off the bands of the Protestants, and in that manner turned
them into the fields, there to wander out their miserable existence.
They obliged many young men to force their aged parents to a river,
where they were drowned; wives to assist in hanging their husbands;
and mothers to cut the throats of their children.
In one place they compelled a young man
to kill his father, and then immediately hanged him. In another
they forced a woman to kill her husband, then obliged the son
to kill her, and afterward shot him through the head.
At a place called Glaslow, a popish priest,
with some others, prevailed on forty Protestants to be reconciled
to the Church of Rome. Thev had no sooner done this than they
told them they were in good faith, and that they would prevent
their falling from it, and turning heretics, by sending them out
of the world, which they did by immediately cutting their throats.
In the county of Tipperary upwards of thirty
Protestants, men, women, and children, fell into the hands of
the papists, who, after stripping them naked, murdered them with
stones, pole-axes, swords, and other weapons.
In the county of Mayo about sixty Protestants,
fifteen of whom were ministers, were, upon covenant, to be safely
conducted to Galway, by one Edmund Burke and his soldiers; but
that inhuman monster by the way drew his sword, as an intimation
of his design to the rest, who immediately followed his example,
and murdered the whole, some of whom they stabbed, others were
run through the body with pikes, and several were drowned.
In Queen’s County great numbers of
Protestants were put to the most shocking deaths. Fifty or sixty
were placed together in one house, which being set on fire, they
all perished in the flames. Many were stripped naked, and being
fastened to horses by ropes placed round their middles, were dragged
through bogs until they expired. Some were hung by the feet to
tenterhooks driven into poles; and in that wretched posture left
until they perished. Others were fastened to the trunk of a tree,
with a branch at top. Over this branch hung one arm, which principally
supported the weight of the body; and one of the legs was turned
up, and fastened to the trunk, while the other hung straight.
In this dreadful and uneasy posture did they remain as long as
life would permit, pleasing spectacles to their bloodthirsty persecutors.
At Clownes seventeen men were buried alive;
and an Englishman, his wife, five children, and a servant maid,
were all hanged together, and afterward thrown into a ditch. They
hung many by the arms to branches of trees, with a weight to their
feet; and others by the middle, in which posture they left them
until they expired. Several were hanged on windmills, and before
they were half dead, the barbarians cut them in pieces with their
swords. Others, both men, women, and children, they cut and hacked
in various parts of their bodies, and left them wallowing in their
blood to perish where they fell. One poor woman they hanged on
a gibbet, with her child, an infant about a twelve-month old,
the latter of whom was hanged by the neck with the hair of its
mother’s headland in that manner finished its short but miserable
existence.
In the county of Tyrone no less than three
hundred Protestants were drowned in one day; and many others were
hanged, burned, and otherwise put to death. Dr. Maxwell, rector
of Tyrone, lived at this time near Armagh, and suffered greatly
from these merciless savages. This person, in his examination,
taken upon oath before the king’s commissioners, declared
that the Irish papists owned to him, that they, at several times,
had destroyed, in one place, 12,000 Protestants, whom they inhumanly
slaughtered at Glynwood, in their flight from the county of Armagh.
As the river Bann was not fordable, and
the bridge broken down, the Irish forced thither at different
times, a great number of unarmed, defenceless Protestants, and
with pikes and swords violently thrust about one thousand into
the river, where they miserably perished.
Nor did the cathedral of Armagh escape the
fury of those barbarians, it being maliciously set on fire by
their leaders, and burnt to the ground. And to extirpate, if possible,
the very race of those unhappy Protestants, who lived in or near
Armagh, the Irish first burnt all their houses, and then gathered
together many hundreds of those innocent people, young and old,
on pretence of allowing them a guard and safe conduct to Colerain,
when they treacherously fell on them by the way, and inhumanly
murdered them.
The like horrid barbarities with those we
have particularized, were practiced on the wretched Protestants
in almost all parts of the kingdom; and, when an estimate was
afterward made of the number who were sacrificed to gratify diabolical
souls of the papists, it amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand.
But it now remains that we proceed to the particulars that followed.
These desperate wretches, flushed and grown
insolent with success, (though by methods attended with such excessive
barbarities as perhaps not to be equalled) soon got possession
of the castle of Newry, where the king’s stores and ammunition
were lodged; and, with as little difficulty, made themselves masters
of Dundalk. They afterward took the town of Ardee, where they
murdered all the Protestants, and then proceeded to Drogheda.
The garrison of Drogheda was in no condition to sustain a siege,
notwithstanding which, as often as the Irish renewed their attacks
they were vigorously repulsed by a very unequal number of the
king’s forces, and a few faithful Protestant citizens under
Sir Henry Tichborne, the governor, assisted by the Lord Viscount
Moore. The siege of Drogheda began on the thirtieth of November,
1641, and held until the fourth of March, 1642, when Sir Phelim
O’Neal, and the Irish miscreants under him were forced to
retire.
In the meantime ten thousand troops were
sent from Scotland to the remaining Protestants in Ireland, which
being properly divided in the most capital parts of the kingdom,
happily eclipsed the power of the Irish savages; and the Protestants
for a time lived in tranquillity.
In the reign of King James II they were
again interrupted, for in a parliament held at Dublin in the year
1689, great numbers of the Protestant nobility, clergy, and gentry
of Ireland, were attainted of high treason. The government of
the kingdom was, at that time, invested in the earl of Tyrconnel,
a bigoted papist, and an inveterate enemy to the Protestants.
By his orders they were again persecuted in various parts of the
kingdom. The revenues of the city of Dublin were seized, and most
of the churches converted into prisons. And had it not been for
the resolution and uncommon bravery of the garrisons in the city
of Londonderry, and the town of Inniskillin, there had not one
place remained for refuge to the distressed Protestants in the
whole kingdom; but all must have been given up to King James,
and to the furious popish party that governed him.
The remarkable siege of Londonderry was
opened on the eighteenth of April, 1689, by twenty thousand papists,
the flower of the Irish army. The city was not properly circumstanced
to sustain a siege, the defenders consisting of a body of raw
undisciplined Protestants, who had fled thither for shelter, and
half a regiment of Lord Mountjoy’s disciplined soldiers,
with the principal part of the inhabitants, making in all only
seven thousand three hundred and sixty-one fighting men.
The besieged hoped, at first, that their
stores of corn and other necessaries, would be sufficient; but
by the continuance of the siege their wants increased; and these
became at last so heavy that for a considerable time before the
siege was raised a pint of coarse barley, a small quantity of
greens, a few spoonfuls of starch, with a very moderate proportion
of horse flesh, were reckoned a week’s provision for a soldier.
And they were, at length, reduced to such extremities that they
ate dogs, cats, and mice.
Their miseries increasing with the siege,
many, through mere hunger and want, pined and languished away,
or fell dead in the streets. And it is remarkable, that when their
long-expected succors arrived from England, they were upon the
point of being reduced to this alternative, either to preserve
their existence by eating each other, or attempting to fight their
way through the Irish, which must have infallibly produced their
destruction.
These succors were most happily brought
by the ship Mountiov of Derry, and the Phoenix. of Colerain, at
which time the had Only nine lean horses left with a pint of meal
to each man. By hunger, and the fatigues of war, their seven thousand
three hundred and sixty-one fighting men were reduced to four
thousand three hundred, one fourth part of whom were rendered
unserviceable.
As the calamities of the besieged were great,
so likewise were the terrors and sufferings of their Protestant
friends and relations; all of whom (even women and children) were
forcibly driven from the country thirty miles round, and inhumanly
reduced to the sad necessity of continuing some days and nights
without food or covering, before the walls of the town; and were
thus exposed to the continual fire both of the Irish army from
without and the shot of their friends from within.
But the succors from England happily arriving
put an end to their affliction; and the siege was raised on the
thirty-first of July, having been continued upwards of three months.
The day before the siege of Londonderry
was raised, the Inniskillers engaged a body of six thousand Irish
Roman Catholics, at Newton, Butler, or Crown-Castle, of whom near
five thousand were slain. This, with the defeat at Londonderry,
dispirited the papists, and they gave up all farther attempts
to persecute the Protestants.
The year following, viz. 1690, the Irish
took up arms in favor of the abdicated prince, King James II but
they were totally defeated by his successor King William the Third.
That monarch, before he left the country, reduced them to a state
of subjection, in which they have ever since continued.
But notwithstanding all this, the Protestant interest at present stands upon a much stronger basis than it did a century ago. The Irish, who formerly led an unsettled and roving life, in the woods, bogs, and mountains and lived on the depredation of their neighbors, they who, in the morning seized the prey, and at night divided the spoil, have, for many years past, become quiet and civilized. They taste the sweets of English society, and the advantages of civil government. They trade in our cities, and are employed in our manufactories. They are received also into English families; and treated with great humanity by the Protestants.
