Chapter VI: Part II: The Eve of “1641” (2)

Parsons immediately on receiving Owen Connolly’s communication repaired to Borlase, and they at once summoned a meeting of the Council, which sat all that night and all the next day. They caused the Castle to be strengthened with armed men, and the city to be guarded, and proceeded to have such of the insurgents as they could lay hands on apprehended. The first was Hugh MacMahon, whom they examined, and who, to use their own words, when he saw they “laid it home to him, confessed enough to destroy himself and impeach some others.” Calling to mind a letter they had received from Sir William Cole on the 11th of October, they determined to secure Lord Maguire immediately, and succeeded in arresting him in a cockloft in an obscure house far away from his lodging. He was also examined, and admitted knowledge of the conspiracy, and ultimately made and delivered to the Lord of the Tower the written statement to which I shall refer hereafter.

When the hour approached for surprising the Castle a large number of strangers were observed to come to town in great parties several ways, who, not finding admittance at the gates, stayed in the suburbs. The Council issued a proclamation commanding all men, not dwellers in the city or suburbs, to depart within an hour on pain of death, and making it alike penal in those who should harbour them. This had the desired effect. The concourse departed. On the following day the Council sent into all parts of the country another proclamation giving information of the failure of the plot to seize the Castle, so as to dishearten the insurgents, and to encourage the friends of the Government.

Meantime the rebellion had broken out in various places throughout the country. The Council did not know whether to believe MacMahon’s statement that all the counties in the kingdom were in the plot; but if it were so they say, “Then indeed we shall be in high extremity and the kingdom in the greatest danger it ever underwent, considering our want of men, money, and arms to enable us to encounter such great multitudes as they can make if all should come against us.”

It was no wonder that the Lords Justices and Council contemplated a general rising with dismay. “The army we have,” they say in their letter of October 25th, “consisting of but two thousand foot and one thousand horse, are so dispersed in garrisons in several parts of the four provinces, for the security of these parts ... as, if they be sent for to be all drawn together, not only the places whence they are to be drawn ... must be by their absence distressed, but also the companies themselves coming in so small numbers, may be in danger to be cut off in their marches, nor indeed have we money to pay the soldiers to enable them to march.”

The Council soon had reason to know that the insurrection was general. Lord Blaney came to Dublin at twelve o’clock on the night of October 23rd, with news of the seizure of his house at Castleblayney, and of a house of the Earl of Essex at Carrickmacross. At three o’clock on the morning of the 24th they learned that the store of arms and ammunition at Newry had been seized. In a postscript to the letter of October 25th they write: “As we were making up these our letters the Sheriff of the county of Monaghan and Dr. Teate having fled, came to us and informed us of much more spoil committed by the rebels in the counties of Monaghan and Cavan, and that the sheriff of the county of Cavan joins with the rebels, being a Papist and a prime man of the Irish.” On the 5th of November they write that the rebels had seized the houses and estates of almost all the English in Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Tyrone, Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, and a great part of Down, and were beginning to threaten the English plantations in the King’s County and Queen’s County, that Dundalk had surrendered to them without a blow, and that they were marching on Drogheda. On the 13th of November they announce that the Byrnes and others had risen in Wicklow; on the 22nd that some other parts of Leinster had joined; on the 25th that the whole county of Louth, both gentry and others, had joined; that some of the Wicklow rebels had come to within four miles of the city of Dublin, and that the cattle and houses of all the English in both Wicklow and Wexford were in the hands of the insurgents; on the 30th that several other counties had risen, and on the 14th of December that the defection then appeared to be universal throughout the whole four provinces.

The burden of these letters, which are steeped in the gall of bitterness towards the Irish Papist and his religious teachers is principally, in the first place, a wholesale charge of acts of barbarity against the rebels, and in the second place, frantic appeals for help in men and money and material of war.

Now with regard to those charges it is to be observed first, that much weight is not to be attached to accusations made in general terms; and, second, that charges of this kind were very useful as excuses for barbarities committed by the Government troops, and as stimulants to the English Parliament and people to send over the required supplies, and therefore very likely to be greatly exaggerated; and third, that the writers of these letters may have more readily given credence to reports of such excesses having been perpetrated, because, if their first letter is to be believed, Owen Connolly had told them that it was part of the design “that all the Protestants and English throughout the whole kingdom that would not join with them should be cut off, and so those Papists should then become possessed of the Government and kingdom at the same moment.”

It is of importance, therefore, to see what were the actual objects which the organizers of the rebellion had in view. Presumably they would include two, namely, religious liberty, and the restoration of the confiscated lands. Now, we have documents which will throw great light on this question. One is the oath which, as mentioned in the letter of the Council to Leicester, of November 25th, 1641, was administered to all who joined the rebels; another is the written statement made by Lord Maguire and delivered by him, about 1642, to Sir John Conyers, the Lieutenant of the Tower. The oath was to maintain and defend the public and free exercise of the Catholic religion, to bear faith and allegiance to King Charles, his heirs and successors, and to support them against anyone who should attempt anything against their persons or estates, or endeavour to suppress their prerogatives, or do any act contrary to regal government, as also the power and privileges of Parliament, the lawful rights and privileges of the subjects. This oath, it will be observed, asserts:—

1. Religious liberty.

2. Loyalty to the Crown.

3. The power and privileges of Parliament.

4. Rights and privileges of the subject.

Speaking of Lord Maguire’s statement, Carte, Book iii., § II., says, “It carries with it an intrinsic evidence sufficient to merit belief, and hath accordingly been universally allowed to be a just and faithful account of that affair.” We may therefore, I think, rest satisfied that this statement contains an authentic account of the objects that the conspirators had in view, and the method by which they proposed to accomplish them. So far as it relates to the matter in hand it is to this effect:—Roger O’More approached Lord Maguire, and after representing in general the many grievances of the natives, especially the old Irish, who upon several plantations were turned out of their ancestors’ estates, and the favourable opportunity which the insurrection of the Scots and the disturbances in England afforded the gentry of Ireland to free the nation from like grievances in future, to get good conditions for themselves, and to regain the whole, or at least good part of their ancestors’ possessions, obtained from Maguire an oath of secrecy, and then disclosed to him the project for an insurrection, urging it as the only method of recovering his lordship’s vast estates and the power of his ancestors, and as being absolutely necessary for maintaining the Catholic religion which undoubtedly, he said, the Parliament of England resolved to suppress. Here, then, we have plainly stated the objects the conspirators had in view, namely, the restoration of the lands which had been ‘planted,’ and the preservation of the Catholic religion, which was threatened with extinction. It will be observed that in the design thus disclosed there is no mention of erecting Ireland into an independent kingdom, the establishment of Catholic ascendancy, or the extermination of persons of the English race or of the Protestant faith. So far from the last-mentioned being one of the objects in view, “there was,” says Maguire, “a fear of the Scots conceived, that they would presumably oppose themselves, and that would make the matter more difficult; to avoid which danger it was resolved not to meddle with them or anything belonging to them, and to demean ourselves toward them as if they were of us, which we thought would pacify them; and if the Scots would not accept that offer, we were in good hope to cause a stir in Scotland that might divert them from us.”

Lord Maguire and the northern gentry generally consented to join in the plot on the strength of these representations, and at a meeting of the leaders, including Sir Phelim O’Neill, and Lord Maguire, held on the 5th of October, 1641, at Loughrosse, county Armagh, final arrangements were made for a general rising to take place on the 23rd, “all forts and arms should be seized, all the gentry made prisoners for their own better security against any adverse fortune or disappointment, and that none should be killed, especially of the gentry; but when of necessity they should be forced thereto by opposition, a rule to be observed likewise by those appointed for seizing the Castle of Dublin.”

Furthermore, there is the “Remonstrance of the Gentry and Commonalty of Cavan of their Grievances, common with other parts of this Kingdom of Ireland,” addressed to the Lords Justices and Council in the early part of November, 1641, which was drawn up by Bishop Bedell. In this they complain of the oppression of governors who “respected more the advancement of their own private fortunes than the honour of his Majesty or the welfare of his subjects,” of finding themselves “of late threatened with far greater and more grievous vexations, either with captivity or utter expulsion from their native seats.” They further declare “that ... we harbour not the least thought of hostility towards His Majesty, or purpose any hurt to His Majesty’s subjects in their possessions, goods, or liberty; only we desire that your lordships will be pleased to make remonstrances to His Majesty for us of all our grievances and just fears, that they may be removed, and such a course settled, by the advice of the Parliament of Ireland whereby the liberty of our consciences may be secured unto us, and we may be eased of other burdens in civil government.” The Remonstrance then proceeds thus:—“As for the mischief and inconveniences that have already happened through the disorder of the common sort of people against the English inhabitants, or any other, we, with the nobility and gentlemen and such others of the several counties of this kingdom as are most ready and willing to use our and their best endeavours in causing restitution and satisfaction to be made, as in part we have already done.” The Remonstrance winds up by a request for a speedy answer so as to avoid “the inconvenience of the barbarousness and incivility of the commonalty, who have committed many outrages without order, consenting, or privity of ours.”

We have thus in black and white an account of the aims and objects of the leaders of the rebels, and of the means by which they hoped to succeed, and neither Catholic ascendancy, nor disloyalty, nor racial or religious antipathy, to be gratified by massacre, finds a place in their programme or plan of campaign. To do violence to any person on account of his religion is, indeed, a thing wholly averse to the Irish nature. No Protestant ever suffered persecution at the hands of the native Irish in Ireland, for his faith; and when Protestants fled from persecution, in the reign of Queen Mary, to Ireland, they were harboured and protected by the Irish Catholics. Nevertheless, the massacres of Protestants alleged to have taken place in this rebellion have ever since been cast in the teeth of the Irish Catholics, and made the excuse for organized oppression and persecution. The butcheries of Cromwell were justified on the ground that they were a just punishment for such barbarities, though the people that he butchered were never shown to have had, and in many cases could not have had, hand, act, or part in them.

I have gone carefully through all the letters and documents penned by the Lords Justices and Council, and while general charges of murder and cruelty are made and repeated again and again, and though the writers can be specific in their statements as to all other matters, in two cases only do they give any details by which the accuracy of their statements can be tested; one is the case of the killing of Lord Caulfield, who was undoubtedly shot dead while a prisoner on the 1st of March, 1642; the other is the case of Huibarts, who held the island of Lambay, and may have been killed while resisting an attack.

If the Lords Justices and Council confined themselves to general charges of massacre and barbarity, the English pamphleteers were, in all conscience, sufficiently precise. It is needless to say that the news of the rebellion caused a great commotion in England. Leicester received the letter of the 25th of October on the night of Sunday the 1st of November. He at once caused the Council to be summoned, and they resolved to go to the House of Commons the next day as soon as it sat, which they did, notice being first given to the House “that the Lords of the Council had some matters of importance to impart to them”; whereupon chairs were set in the House for them to repose themselves, and the Sergeant sent to conduct them. Clarendon describes the scene. “As soon as they entered the House the Speaker desired them to sit down, and, then being covered, Littleton told the Speaker that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, having received letters from the Lords Justices and Council there, had communicated them to the Council, and since the House of Peers was not sitting, they had thought fit, for the importance of the letters, to impart them to that House,” and so referred the business to the Lord Lieutenant, who, without any enlargement, only read the letters he had received, and so the Lords departed from the House. “There was,” says Clarendon, “a deep silence in the House, and a kind of consternation; most men’s heads having been intoxicated from their first meeting in Parliament with the instigators of plots and treasonable designs through the three kingdoms.”

The King, who was then in Scotland, received letters from Ulster telling him of the outbreak there. These he sent on to the Parliament, with a letter saying that he was satisfied that it was no rash insurrection, but a formed rebellion, which must be prosecuted with a sharp war, the conducting and prosecuting of which he wholly committed to their care and wisdom, and depended upon them for carrying it on. This exactly fitted in with their wishes, as up to the time they got this letter they had no authority to levy troops or make war. They appointed a committee of both Houses for the consideration of the affairs of Ireland, and providing for the supply of men, arms and money for the suppressing of that rebellion. The Lord Lieutenant was a member of the Committee, which sat every morning, and he communicated to them all the letters he received, to be consulted upon and to be then reported to the two Houses, which thus acquired a great accession of power and patronage.

Soon after the news of the rebellion was spread in England, the Press began to pour forth a stream of pamphlets. Some of these were devoted to advocating the plan adopted by the English Parliament for raising the necessary funds for prosecuting the campaign against the rebels, by giving grants of land that should be forfeited to those who advanced money for the purpose. In 1642 they decreed the confiscation of 2½ millions of acres in Ireland, and undertook to allot them to those who made advances, on the following scale: 2,000 acres in Leinster to anyone who advanced £600; and the same quantity in Munster, Connaught, and Ulster respectively, to those who advanced £450, £300, and £200 respectively. Others of those pamphlets were devoted to thrilling descriptions of massacres and atrocities said to have been committed by the Irish rebels. These were, Ormond says, “received as oracles,” and the extirpation of the Irish “preached as gospel.” As I said before, they were not open to the imputation of being wanting in details. They were most circumstantial. They describe the doings of such well-known rebel leaders as the Earl of Clare, whose portrait is given in one of the pamphlets, the great Lord MacDavo, Lord Matquess, Don Luce, Limbrey, Cargena and others, in such well-known counties, Monno otherwise Conno, and Warthedeflowr, and in such well-known towns as Rockcall, six miles from Dublin, Lognall, Toyhull, Kilwood, Kilmouth, Tormoy, and Cormack. The collection of these pamphlets made by Thorpe, and now in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, as well as those in the British Museum, enable one to judge of the way in which the ear of England was poisoned for the purpose of exasperation against the Irish Catholics.

Two months after the outbreak the Government issued a commission to seven Protestant ministers to take evidence upon oath as to the amount of the loss sustained by the British and Protestants that had been “separated from their habitations,” or “deprived of their goods,” the names of the robbers, and what traitorous speeches were uttered by the robbers or others. It is to be observed that in this Commission there is no mention of murder or violence. By a supplemental commission of the 18th of January, 1642, it was extended so as to include an inquiry as to “what violence was done by the robbers, and how often and what number have been murthered or perished afterwards on the way to Dublin or elsewhere.” This addition was an afterthought, and the fact is very significant, as pointed out by Prendergast, _Cromwellian Settlement_, p. 60. A mass of such depositions was taken, and are now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. I have not perused them, but every historian who has done so, and has formed an impartial judgment upon them, has pronounced them to be practically worthless as evidence against the rebels. In the first place they were _exparte_ statements, made in the absence of those whose conduct they impugned. Secondly, they were very largely hearsay, and not the evidence of eye witnesses. Thirdly, many of them are not made on oath. Fourthly, they were to a great extent made by persons intending to make claims for restitution and compensation, and may therefore be expected to be exaggerated, if not unfounded. Fifthly, they bear internal evidence of untruth, many of them deposing to apparitions and other supernatural phenomena. Sixthly, they in many instances gave evidence of the deaths of people who long survived the rebellion. Seventhly, many of the deponents were illiterate. Lastly, they afford no safe basis for a calculation of the numbers stated to have been killed, for the same alleged outrage is obviously referred to in different depositions.

The calculations made by English writers of the numbers slaughtered by the Irish are curiously conflicting. Milton, in his observations on the “Articles of Peace between the Earl of Ormond and the Irish,” set down the number “assassinated and cut to pieces by those Irish barbarians” at 200,000, which was about the total Protestant population of Ireland, inclusive of soldiers in garrison and officials in Dublin. The Lords Justices and Council in their despatch to the King, dated March, 1642-3, in opposition to any accommodation with the rebels, upon an alleged acknowledgment “by their priests appointed to collect the numbers,” set the number down at 154,000 “before the end of March last, ... besides many thousand others since that time.” Temple, whose object also was to obstruct the peace, says that in the first two months of the rebellion 150,000 had been massacred, and that “there were 300,000 Protestants murdered in cold blood or destroyed in some other way, _or_ expelled from their habitations from the 23rd of October, 1641, to the cessation made on the 16th of September, 1643.” Petty fixes the number at 37,000, Walsh at 20,000. The Rev. Dr. Warner, a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, who describes many of the depositions as “incredible,” “ridiculous,” and “contradictory,” carefully examined the thirty-two closely written volumes which are in the library of Trinity College, with the result that he concluded that “the number of people killed upon _positive_ evidence collected in two years after the rebellion broke out, adding them all together, amounts to only 2,109, on _the reports of other Protestants_, 1,619 more, and on _the reports of some of the rebels_ a further number of 300, the whole making 4,028. Besides these numbers there is in the same collection evidence _on the report of others_ of 8,000 killed by ill-usage.” These numbers he considered were the utmost to which “the cruelties of the Irish out of war” could be extended, though, having regard to the nature of several of the depositions, he could not in his conscience charge them with such a number of murders. In corroboration of his figures he quotes a letter which he copied from the Council books in Dublin written on the 5th of May, 1652, from the Parliament Commissioners in Ireland to the English Parliament, in which the Commissioners tell them that it appears “besides 848 families there were killed, hanged, burned, and drowned 6,062.”

That the rebellion at its first outbreak was not accompanied by any massacre, or even by considerable effusion of blood, appears from documents now extant. Lord Chichester wrote to the King from Belfast on October 24th, 1641, “The Irish in the northern parts of your kingdom of Ireland two nights last past did rise with force and have taken Charlemont, Dungannon, Tonragee, and Newry, with your Majesty’s stores there ... and _have slain only one man_.” The letter of the Lords Justices to Leicester of October 25th, does not make mention of a single case of violence to the person. The Remonstrance of the Gentry and Commonalty of Cavan already referred to, issued in the early part of November, 1641, speaks not of massacres or murders, which the Remonstrants would undoubtedly have deemed worthy of condign punishment, but of acts which would be proper subjects of restitution and satisfaction. The first instance of homicide committed by the rebels given by the Lords Justices in their correspondence is in a letter to Leicester of December 3rd, 1641, in which they announce the death of Mr. Huibarts. It is not until the 14th of December that any massacre is mentioned, when they state, in a letter of that date to Leicester, that the garrison of Longford had been massacred.

Your attention has already been called to the pregnant fact that in the first commission of inquiry issued by the Lords Justices and Council, which is dated December 23rd, 1641, no reference is made to murder or personal violence.

It thus becomes abundantly clear that during the first two months of the rebellion, not only was there no general massacre by the rebels, but there was little bloodshed. Indeed the Lords Justices, in their proclamation of February 8th, 1642, assert that the design of a general massacre had failed.

A period of several months elapsed between the end of December, 1641, and the organisation of the rebels under the Confederates. During this period, no doubt, it was that the serious cruelties were committed by the insurgents, for the proceedings of the Confederates were characterised by humanity, and the Supreme Council would not have tolerated murder under any circumstances, or under any provocation. Among the propositions they made to the King in March, 1644, was the following:—“Forasmuch as your Majesty’s Catholic subjects have been taxed with many inhuman cruelties which they never committed, your Majesty’s said supplicants, therefore, for their vindication, and to manifest to all the world to have such heinous offences punished, and the offenders brought to justice, do desire that in the next Parliament all inhuman murthers, breaches of quarter, and inhuman cruelties committed on either side may be questioned in the said Parliament (if your Majesty so think fit), and such as shall appear to be guilty exempted out of the Act of Oblivion and punished according to their deserts.” This principle was embodied in the fifteenth article of the first treaty between the King and the Confederates, signed on the 28th of March, 1646, and in the last treaty signed on the 17th of January, 1648-9.

If we wanted further proof of the scrupulous humanity of the Confederates, the following facts would supply it. The delegates of the Confederates in 1644, in an official communication made to the Marquis of Ormond as representative of the King, declared that one of the results that they most earnestly desired in connection with the removal of their grievances was that when the condition of Catholics and Protestants had been equalised they might all “be united more than ever before,” and neither party “have occasion to envy or oppress the other.” These aspirations were met in the following month by an ordinance made by the Parliament at Westminster, by which the Lords and Commons declared “that no quarter shall be given hereafter to any Irishman or any Papist whatsoever born in Ireland, who shall be taken in hostility against the English Parliament, either upon the sea or within this kingdom or dominion of Wales,” and they followed this barbarous declaration by a decree for carrying it out. In pursuance of this enactment many Irish sailors were brutally murdered, being tied back to back and thrown overboard, and in one instance seventeen Irish soldiers, fighting in the King’s army, when made prisoners, were hanged. Prince Rupert promptly hanged an equal number of his prisoners, at which the English Parliament was greatly shocked, and remonstrated with the Prince, threatening to retaliate, and justifying the butchery of the Irish. Rupert does not appear to have taken any notice of this amazing document, and probably would have hanged or shot a prisoner of English or Scottish blood for every one of Irish blood or the Catholic religion that the Parliamentarians had murdered. But the Confederates were too humane to countenance such atrocities; and they refrained from defiling the records of their assembly by any declaration or ordinance such as that which the pious champions of civil and religious liberty in England, to their eternal infamy, had placed upon their rolls.

What murders were committed at sea under this ordinance never will be known. But Bulstrode Whitelocke, a member of the Long Parliament, under date of May, 1644, records the following significant incident: “At the taking of Carmarthen by Captain Swanley, many Irish rebels were thrown into the sea.” Under date June, 1644, he records that “Captain Swanley was called into the House of Commons and had thanks from them for his good services, and a chain of gold two hundred pounds value.”

It is not to be denied, however, that in the earlier stages of the rebellion murders, and possibly outrages, were committed by the insurgents. It was, of course, necessary that if resistance was offered to the seizure of strongholds or arms, it should be overpowered by force, even to the extent of taking life; and what are described as massacres were probably, in many instances, homicides committed unavoidably in cases of such resistance. But apart from such occurrences, no doubt, lives were taken by the rebels. According to a declaration made under hand and seal by the Rev. John Ker, Dean of Ardagh, given by Nalson, vol. ii., p. 528, Phelim O’Neill, in the course of his trial, at which the Dean was present, said that there were several outrages committed by officers and soldiers, his aiders and abettors in the management of the war, contrary to his intention, which now pressed his conscience very much, and the Dean adds, that he heard several murders and robberies proved at the trial to have been committed by him, and that he had nothing to plead in his defence. This is probably true. It was hardly in human nature, even Irish human nature, to refrain from taking a signal and sanguinary vengeance on those by whom, or for whom, they were oppressed and plundered. Besides, there can, I think, be little doubt but that the massacres began with the butchery, possibly in the beginning of November, 1641, but not later than the beginning of January, 1642, of innocent persons, men, women and children, inhabitants of Island Magee, by the garrison of Carrickfergus; and the murders committed by the rebels in Ulster may not unfairly be attributed in a great measure to reprisals for this horrible carnage. Whatever massacres there were must have been practically confined to Ulster, for there were but few English or Protestants elsewhere, and as the Irish carefully avoided molesting the Scots in Ulster, who were by far the majority of the Ulster population, the numbers slain cannot have been large. There is no doubt, too, but that O’More was strongly opposed to all unnecessary violence, and when we remember that the generals of the Federation, which commenced its session at Kilkenny in October, 1642, were directed by their commission to protect the husbandmen, victuallers, and all other subjects of his Majesty from the extortions, violences, and abuses of the soldiers, we may be pretty sure that little or no blood was unnecessarily shed after the eminent men who led the troops of the Confederation took up their commands.

It is needless to refer to the measures taken by the rebel leaders to check the outburst of pillage which marked the struggle before the Confederation was formed, and to protect the Protestants and the English from molestation. The well-known instance of Bishop Bedell, whose house was the asylum of numerous refugees, and who was himself treated with marked respect while he lived, and buried with all possible honour when he died, is only one example out of many of the conspicuous humanity of the men who were responsible for the insurrection.

But let us look at the reverse of the picture. That the Irish “Papist” was regarded by the English as a creature outside the pale of humanity is evidenced by the ordinance excluding him from quarter already quoted. That the Scotch concurred in this estimate appears from the fact that they adopted this ordinance. That he was to be exterminated was, as Ormond wrote to Clanricarde, “preached as gospel.” That such a gospel was not to be a dead letter appears from documents under the hands of the Lords Justices and Council. “We have hitherto,” they write on the 7th of June, 1642, to the Lords Commissioners for Irish Affairs, “where we came against the rebels, their adherents, aiders, and abettors, proceeded with fire and sword, the soldiers sometimes not sparing the women, and sometimes not children, many women being manifestly very deep in the guilt of this rebellion, and as we are informed, very forward to stir up their husbands, friends and kindred to side therein, and exciting them to cruelty against the English, acting therein and in their spoils even with rage and fury with their own hands.” We have also the directions given by the Lords Justices and Council to Colonel Crawford for his expedition to County Wicklow, and to Colonel Gibson for his expedition to County Kildare. These were to go to these counties and remain there as long as they could find provision for their men, and in their journey to kill, slay, and destroy all rebels; to destroy by fire and sword all their goods, houses, and corn. It is easy to understand how these orders would be interpreted. They meant the extermination of the people by fire and sword, or by famine; for, so long as there was food for the soldiery, the soldiery were to remain; when they left there would be food for no one.

In their despatch to the King in opposition to an accommodation with the rebels, already quoted, the Lords Justices and Council admit the policy of extermination, but only _partial_ extermination, be it observed. “And howsoever it be true,” they write on the 16th of March, 1642-3, “that all the peril and damage we undergo, and all the arms we desired to have used and borne here, is but (by God’s blessing) to bring on a safe and lasting peace, yet we can no way apprehend that it can be done _till the sword have abated these rebels in numbers_ and power, yet not to the utter extirpation of the native which is far from our thoughts (though some to render us the more odious report so of us).”

A characteristic example of the methods of the Lords Justices and their troops is given in their letter of June 7th, 1642, to the Lord Lieutenant, describing the capture of Baldungan Castle, situated twelve miles from Dublin. Colonel Crawford took it by storm, and found therein to the number of 120 rebels, whom immediately his men put to the sword, saving a popish priest, whom Colonel Crawford brought to Dublin, and whom the Provost Marshal hanged. “This sharpness,” they write, “held with them when they maintain castles against us, will doubtless discourage them from presuming to keep castles against us hereafter, when they still find just vengeance thus taken on them for their boldness therein. There was then found in that castle an English gentleman whom the rebels had taken prisoner a few days before, and whom our men now released.”

This despatch would do credit to Cromwell. There is a touch of unconscious irony in the contrast between the treatment of the one English gentleman captured by the rebels, and the 120 rebels captured by the English.

The letters reek with such incidents. Ormond takes a priest at Ballymacur, Westmeath, “who was then immediately hanged.” Monck, on his way to join Ormond, captures a castle at Knock, near Trim, “killed four score men which had maintained it against him, and took some prisoners, who were instantly hanged.” Monck, again, took at the castles of Rathcoffey and Clongowes Wood, in Kildare, “three score and ten prisoners, and amongst the rest some priests, whom with the rest he brought hither to be proceeded with as we should think fit, which was all the quarter he gave them, and we have appointed them to be executed by martial law.” “We lately sent abroad two parties of the army, one towards Catherlagh, thirty-two miles from this city, and the other towards Arklow, thirty-six miles from hence, with direction to burn and spoil all the way, as they went and came, which they did accordingly.” Lord Inchiquin in Cork took fifty prisoners, “divers of them men of quality, and most of them officers in the army of the rebels, which fifty prisoners Lord Inchiquin caused to be hanged the next morning, saving only Colonel Butler, son of the traitor Lord Viscount Ikerrin, and one Purgett, Commissary General of the rebel army, which two still remain prisoners.” Lord Lisle’s performances are thus described: “Lord Lisle hath now caused that house”—Lord Fingall’s house near Virginia—“and all the villages and towns adjoining to be burnt, as also all the corn, hay, and turf in all that country round about them. He still proceeds in burning, wasting, spoiling, and destroying all the country about him, and all the rebels’ corn, hay and turf, and in depriving the rebels of all the cattle he can ... so as by that time he returns thence he will, by God’s assistance, have all that country in such a condition as that the rebels shall have neither house to lodge, nor food, nor fire, which course also we have begun, and God willing, shall hold in other places, as we shall be enabled by supply of provisions, and we have hoped (by the blessing of God upon our endeavours) if we be strengthened from thence, as we expect, suddenly to drive the rebels into such extremities as many thousands of them and their foreign aids (if they should arrive) must perish and starve through hunger and cold.”

This, of course, was a sentence of death on every man, woman, and child in the districts thus condemned to desolation.

In their letter to the Lord Lieutenant, of December 28th, 1641, the Lords Justices make two damning admissions. First they say that Sir Charles Coote, on his return from raising the siege of the Castle of Wicklow, had a skirmish with a numerous body of the rebels, slew some of them, and in that journey slew and caused to be hanged others of them, and amongst others one woman that had been active in robbing and spoiling the English, and had about her at her apprehension some of the clothes of the English she had robbed.

Now, this is merely an ingenious device to endeavour to mix up punishment inflicted on rebels in arms, with what is evidently a massacre of unarmed peasantry perpetrated during “that journey,” in which women, and probably children, were butchered at the instance of the notorious Sir Charles Coote.

The second admission is that four people were murdered at Santry, which they make light of, observing that therein “only four persons were slain, whereas they might have slain many more if they had intended a massacre.” The heads of the victims of this butchery were brought in triumph to Dublin, on poles, and there exhibited. One of them turned out to be a Protestant. This incident had momentous consequences, as we shall see.

O’Connell was quite justified in saying, as he did to O’Neill Daunt, when speaking of the rebellion of 1641: “History has been so completely falsified, that not only is the truth unknown, but the foulest falsehoods have passed current as gospel truths; the characters of the two contending parties have been quite reversed.”

But I must hasten to sketch the leading events of the insurrection.

I have already referred to the murders at Santry. The neighbouring gentry were alarmed at this occurrence. It seemed a precursor of what they might expect themselves, and they held a meeting and assembled their followers. The gentry of the Pale had been placed in a very difficult position. Being Catholics, they were distrusted by the Lords Justices. Being English, they distrusted the rebels. The Lords Justices ordered all persons not ordinarily resident in Dublin to return to their homes. The gentry of the Pale requested to be furnished with arms sufficient to enable them to defend themselves when they were thus surrounded by the rebels. This was at first granted to a limited extent, but when troops were promised from England, the arms supplied were largely withdrawn. The gentry were thus left defenceless. An attack was made by the Government troops on the house at Clontarf of one of them, named King, who owned the village of Clontarf, on the pretext that the fishermen of the village had plundered a bark that lay off the coast there, and that some of the booty was found in his house. The consequence of all this was that the gentry came to the conclusion that their only course was to join the rebels, who thus obtained a considerable accession of strength, both in numbers and weight, though the Lords Justices made light of the matter in their letters. This occurred in December, 1641.

In March, 1642, a Synod of the Ulster clergy met, and it was there suggested that an assembly of clergy and laity should be held to organize the national movement. This proposal was adopted, and the General Assembly of the Confederate Catholics was held at Kilkenny in the following October. They at once proceeded to organize the country, appointing a Supreme Council, and provincial Councils, and commanders of the armies in the four provinces. They made provisions for the administration of justice in the districts under their control, the levy of contributions, and the machinery of government generally. Their seal bore on it the legend: “Pro deo, pro rege et patria, unanimes,” their coins, “floreat rex.” The oath to be taken by the Confederates was similar in terms to that already mentioned.

The Confederates addressed a petition to the King, through Ormond, praying his Majesty, “with heads lower than our knees,” “to assign a place where with safety we may express our grievances.” In this they complain of the condition whereunto the misrepresentation of his ministers in Ireland, united with the malignant party in England, had reduced them, and of the resolution taken by some malevolent persons in England, “to supplant their nation and religion,” and they disclaim any intention of disturbing his Majesty’s Government, or invading any of his prerogatives, or oppressing any of his British subjects, of what religion soever, that did not labour to suppress them. They refer to the petition which they had addressed to the Lords Justices, “but therein,” they say, “we found, instead of a salve to our wounds, oil poured into the fire of our discontent, which occasioned that intemperance in the commonalty that they acted some unwarrantable cruelties upon the puritans, or others suspected of puritanism, which we really detest, have punished in part, and desire to punish with fulness of severity, in all the actors of them, when time shall enable us to it, though the measure offered to the Catholic natives here, in the inhuman murdering of old, decrepit, people in their beds, women in the straw, and children eight days old, burning of houses, and robbing of all kinds of persons without distinction of friend from foe, and digging up of graves, and then burning the dead bodies of our ancestors, in time of cessation, and in breach of public faith, have not deserved that justice from us.”

The King refused to receive delegates from the Confederates, but granted a commission to Ormond, Clanrickard, and others to hear what the delegates had to say. “Albeit His Majesty has not thought fit to admit any of them to his presence who have been ... actors or abettors in so odious a rebellion,” as the Commission expressed it. This passage went near to wrecking the project, for in the safe-conduct sent to the delegates these words were used, and the Confederates were highly incensed at being accused of rebellion. However, they ultimately consented to attend at Drogheda, and the meeting took place on the 17th of March, 1643.

The first result of these negotiations was a truce or “cessation” as it was called, which was originally for a short period, but afterwards renewed from time to time.

Ostensibly Ormond was the King’s mouth-piece in this affair, and he was authorized to make certain concessions, in return for which the Confederates were to furnish the King with 10,000 men for service against the English rebels. But Charles, who never could act straight, granted a secret commission to Lord Glamorgan, not under the Great Seal, empowering him to make further concessions. He accordingly concluded secret articles with the Confederates on August 25th, 1645. But the secret leaked out. Glamorgan was brought before the Castle Chamber on a charge of treason, on the 26th of December, 1645, and committed. He was examined on the following day, and released on the 30th from _close_ custody, but still kept under a certain restraint. The fatal battle of Naseby had been fought on the 18th of June previous. Charles was in dire straits, and, as might be expected, he repudiated Glamorgan’s authority, in a statement given on the 24th of January, 1646, at Oxford, which was to be communicated by the Speaker of the House of Lords to both Houses. In it he says that Glamorgan had only a commission to raise forces, and concluding by asking for a safe-conduct, in blank, to be sent “for a messenger to be immediately dispatched into Ireland to prevent any accident that may happen to hinder his Majesty’s resolution of leaving the managing of the business of Ireland wholly to the two Houses, and to make no peace there but with their consent, which, in case it shall please God to bless his endeavour in the Treaty with success, his Majesty hereby engages himself to do.”

The “treaty” here referred to is a treaty with his rebellious English subjects. If such were made, the King was prepared to hand over his loyal Irish subjects to the tender mercies of the English puritans.

But the negotiations for the treaty with the Confederates went on meantime, and the treaty itself was signed on the 28th of March, 1646. It consisted of thirty articles, and dealt substantially with all the grievances complained of. Collateral with it there was an agreement that the Confederates should furnish the King with 10,000 men, of which 6,000 were to sail on or before April 1st, and 4,000 on or before May 1st. The treaty was to be conditional on the fulfilment of this agreement, and it was deposited in duplicate in the hands of Lord Clanricarde to be held by him as what lawyers call an “escrow,” until the agreement had been fulfilled. It was found, however, that the position of the King’s affairs was such that it was not practicable to carry it out, and that it would be more for his Majesty’s interest that the men should remain in Ireland. The condition was therefore waived.

Everything now appeared to be arranged, when one of these incidents occurred to mar the prospects of Irish nationality, of which the history of Ireland is so full.

The Confederates had been obliged to rely very largely on support from abroad, and among those who contributed most liberally was the Pope. Unfortunately, he not only contributed material support and moral support, but he sent a Nuncio with instructions placing the full establishment of the Catholic religion in Ireland above and before reforms in the political government.

The presence of the Pope’s representative imparted great strength to the Confederates; it was also productive of unexpected consequences. The Nuncio, Rinuccini, was not satisfied with the treaty. He did not think it conceded enough. In February, 1646, in anticipation of the conclusion of peace, he had a protest against the treaty drawn up and signed by several of the prelates, based on the principle that those who entered into it, or supported or favoured it, violated their oath. The peace was proclaimed by Ormond in Dublin on the 30th of July, 1646, and the Confederates ordered its proclamation on the 3rd August. A meeting of the congregation of the clergy was to be held at Waterford on the 12th of August. An attempt made to proclaim the peace there on the 9th failed, as the Mayor and Corporation refused to allow the function to take place. It was then proclaimed at Kilkenny, and the herald and pursuivant proceeded to Limerick, but the attempt at a proclamation provoked a riot, in which they were severely mauled. Finally, the bishops and clergy denounced the peace at Waterford on the 12th, and further efforts to proclaim it were abandoned. On the 1st of September, Rinuccini directed the clergy to publish to their flocks at High Mass, and otherwise, that they were not to adhere to the treaty on pain of excommunication.

Efforts were made to compose the dispute. The Confederation answered the Nuncio and the ecclesiastics; the latter replied, and stated that they would agree to nothing until a new General Assembly was called; and they formed a new government, called “The Council and Congregation,” which was to hold office until the meeting of a General Assembly, to be held on the 11th of January, 1646-7.

The Assembly was held accordingly, and debated the matter at great length, and with great heat. Bellings, who had been the Secretary from the foundation of the Confederation, contrasts the proceedings with the quiet and dignity with which those of the previous assemblies had been conducted. A bishop whom he mentions, could always, he says, get a shout of applause by merely waiving his hat. After a powerful speech by Colonel Walter Bagnall in favour of the treaty, which produced a great impression, the treaty was rejected on the 2nd of February, by a majority of votes. A new oath was then framed containing further clauses for the advantage of the Catholic religion.

The clergy thus won a disastrous triumph. Up to this the arms of the Confederates had been successful. In the previous June, Owen Roe O’Neill had won his famous victory over Monroe at Benburb. But now all went wrong. The Leinster army was defeated at Dungan Hill. The Munster army, under Lord Taaffe, was defeated at Kanturk on the 13th of November, 1647, and these reverses were followed in rapid succession by other defeats. Everywhere there was confusion and disunion. Owen Roe O’Neill sided with the Nuncio. The General and officers of the Leinster army at first took the other side, and only abandoned it when the General found that his men were not “excommunication proof.” The bishops were divided, and so were the convents and monasteries. No doubt, the laity, especially the common people, were bewildered. The Council revoked O’Neill’s patent for the command in Ulster. He threw the letters directed to him and to his officers into the fire, and he and his officers published a sharp declaration against the Council’s proceedings, to which they replied with equal asperity. The Assembly met in September, 1648, and accused the Nuncio. He embarked from Galway on the 23rd of February, 1649, and, needless to say, never returned.

Meantime, efforts had been made to conclude another peace. Ormond, after he had been obliged to surrender Dublin to the English Parliament, had left Ireland; but Clanricarde, who had, in conjunction with Colonel Jones, won the battle of Kanturk, began to distrust the Parliamentarians, and made overtures to the Confederates. Ormond returned to Ireland in October, 1648, and concluded a peace with the Confederates on the 17th of January, 1649.

But it was too late. Events had marched with fatal rapidity in England. On the 5th of May, 1646, the King had surrendered himself to the Scots, to be by them handed over to the English Parliament. His head fell on the scaffold on the 30th of January, 1649. Cromwell landed in Ireland on the 15th of August, to find that Ormond had been defeated by Colonel Jones in the battle of Rathmines. We know what followed. Those who have listened to, or have read, the brilliant lecture on Cromwell, delivered before this Society, by Sir William Butler, need not be reminded of the tragic occurrences of that dark time. But in any case they are beyond the scope of this paper. The “Rebellion” of 1641 ended with the treaty of 1649.

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THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY

BY JAMES DONELAN, M.CH., M.B.,

_Chevalier of the Crown of Italy_

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The Confederation of Kilkenny