ད No. VII. "Tantum RELIGIO potuit suadere malorum ?" 1642, January 1.-The King issued a proclamation against the Irish rebels, given under his signet at the Palace of Westminster. This proclamation coming out so late, and only forty copies of it being published, was afterwards interpreted by the English parliament as an encouragement to the rebels. (Borlase, p. 54.) On this day the rebels entered the archiepiscopal city of Cashel, took possession of it, killing fifteen men and women, all Protestants. They seized the Rev. Edward Banks, with some other clergymen of this neighbourhood, and put them into close confinement in a dismal dungeon, where they were confined for twelve weeks. (Mr. Bank's Examination, Temple, p. 94.) Jan. 3.-The King orders five members of the House of Commons to be accused of High Treason. One of the articles of impeachment was, that they had traiterously endeavoured, by foul aspersions upon his Majesty and his government, to alienate the affections of the people, and to make his Majesty odious to them. (Rushworth, vol. iv. p. 473, and Nalson, vol. ii. p. 811.) One of these aspersions, which was most industriously propagated, was, that the King had a hand in the Irish rebellion. Rapin, (vol. xi. p. 271,) observes, that there was but too much reason to believe this accusation was not unfounded, considering in what juncture of time it broke out, and the rebels' declaration that they had the King's and Queen's authority for what they did; but the confession of Lord Maguire at his execution, as well as the discovery of the manner in which Plunket, the Popish Lawyer, fabricated the forged commission, may serve to refute this opinion-whilst a full share of the guilt of the rebellion and massacre devolves upon the Queen, Rosetti, the Pope's Nuncio, some of the ministers of the neighbouring powers, and the swarm of Popish Ecclesiastics who had lately hurried into England and Ireland from various parts of the continent. In the declaration of both Houses of Parliament, presented to the King at Newmarket, on the 9th of March in this year, the third article stated, that the Irish rebellion had been framed and contrived in England; that the Queen had formed a design against the Protestant religion, for the success of which Count Rosetti had enjoined fasting and praying to be observed every week by the English Papists-which was proved by one of his letters to a Popish Priest in Lancashire. The Irish, after massacreing without resistance, between sixty and eighty Englishmen in their quarters at Portna, on the Banside, in the County of Antrim, collected this day on each side of that river, and proceeded with fire and sword from Portna to Ballentoy. This is testified by an evidence of their own party, Gilduffe O'Cahan, of Dunoeverick, father of one of their leaders. (See Depositions in Trinity College, Dublin, County of Antrim, p. 4233.) This, with the massacre of Lord Grandison's troop of horse at Tanderagee, a short time before, has been assigned as a cause of the shameful act perpetrated by the Scots in Island Magee, five days afterwards. Jan. 4.-The Rev. Edward Slacke, of Gusteen, in the County of Fermanagh, deposed, that the rebels there took his BIBLE, opened it, and laying the open side in a puddle of water, leaped and trampled upon it, saving, a plague upon it, THIS BIBLE HATH BRED ALL THE QUARREL; and one of them said, he hoped within a few weeks all the Bibles in Ireland should be used as that was, and none of them be left in the kingdom. (Temple, p. 109.) On the same day, Adam Clover, of Slonosie, in the County of Cavan, deposed before Dean Jones, and the other Commissioners, that James O'Reilly, Hugh Brady, and other rebels in that County, did often take into their hands Protestant BIBLES, and wetting them in dirty water, did, five or six times, dash the same on the face of him, the said deponent, and other Protestants, saying, "come, I know you love a good lesson-here is an excellent one for you; come to-morrow and you shall have as good a sermon,"-using other scornful and disgraceful words to them. Mr. Clover further said, that dragging divers Protestants by the hair of the head, and in other cruel ways, into the church, they there robbed, stripped, and whipped them most cruelly, saying, if you come tomorrow you shall hear the like sermon. He also saw upon the highway, a woman, left by the rebels stripped to her smock, attacked by three women and some children, who, after stripping her of that her only covering in bitter frost and snow, miserably rent and tore her, so that she fell in labour in their hands, and both she and her child died there. (Temple, from manuscript depositions in the College of Dublin, p. 99, 101, 108.) Jan. 5.-The King made the following solemn declaration in a speech to the Common Council of London: -: Whereas, there are divers suspicions raised that I am a favourer of the Popish religion, I do profess, in the name of the King, that I did, and ever will, and that to the utmost of my power, be a prosecutor of all such as any ways oppose the laws and statutes of this kingdom, either Papists or Separatists; and not only so, but will maintain and defend that true Protestant religion which my Father did profess, and will continue in it during my life. (Rushworth, vol. iv. p. 479.) Jan. 6.-Teig O'Connor, Sligo General of the Rebels, having sat in Council with his followers, and a Convent of Friars, in the Abbey of Sligo, for three days, seized on all the Protestants of that town, (many of whom they had compelled to become Papists,) and lodged them in the jail. About midnight these unhappy persons were attacked in their prisons by Captain Charles O'Connor, a Friar, aided by two butchers, named John Buts and Robert Buts, with Captain Hugh O'Connor, Teig O'Sheil, Kedagh O'Hart, Richard Walsh, Thomas Walsh, and divers others, who stripped them stark naked, murdered most of them with swords, axes, and skeins, and then used the dead bodies in the most barbarous and shameful manner. The Irish who came into the jail to carry out these bodies for burial, stood up to the mid-leg in blood. They buried the mangled remains of these victims of Popery in the garden of the Rev. Mr. Ricrofts, Minister of Sligo. This information, containing many other particulars of the same kind, was made before the Commissioners on the 3d of December, 1643, hy Mrs. Jane Stewart, wife of an opulent merchant in Sligo, who had been robbed of all his property by the rebels. (MSS. Dep. and Temple, p. 119.) Jan. 7.-Bishop Bedell was relieved by exchange from his dreary prison in the Castle of Cloughoughter. Sir James Craig, Sir Francis Hamilton, and Sir Arthur Forbes, afterwards Lord Granard, having retired to two strong houses in that neighbourhood, and being besieged by the rebels in them, had made a resolute sally in which, among other prisoners, they took four men of considerable interest, whom they exchanged for the Bishop, his two sons, and his son-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Clogy; but, though the Irish promised to suffer the Bishop, with the other three, a safe passage to Dublin, yet (with their usual perfidy) they would not let them out of the country, intending to make some further advantage by having them still among them. They were, therefore, lodged in the Ꭰ house of an Irish Minister, the Rev. Dennis O'Sheridan, to whom some respect was shewn by the rebels, on account of his extraction, though he had forsaken the Popish religion, and had married an English woman. This worthy man, who has been already mentioned as the convert of Bishop Bedell, and the ancestor of a family eminent for literary talent, continued firm in his religion, and relieved many in their extremity. Here the Bishop spent the few remaining days of his pilgrimage, having his latter end so full in view, that he seemed dead to the world, and every thing in it, and to be hastening for the coming of the day of God. During the last Sabbaths of his life, though there were three Ministers present, he read all the prayers and lessons himself, and preached on all those days. (See his Life by Bishop Burnet, p. 160.) Jan. 7.-This day William Clerke, of the County of Armagh, tanner, made oath before Dean Jones and the other Commissioners, that he, with one hundred men, women, and children, or thereabouts, were by the Rebels driven like hogs about six miles, to a river called the Band, (Bann,) in which space the aforesaid christians were most barbarously used, by forcing them to go on fast with swords and pikes, thrusting them into their sides; three were murdered on the way, and the rest they drove to the river aforesaid, and there they forced them to go upon the bridge, which was cut down, and with their pikes, swords, and other weapons, thrust them down headlong into the said river, and those who assayed to swim to the shore the rebels stood and shot at. (MSS. Depositions quoted in Temple, p. 93.) Edward Deane, of Ocram, in the County of Wicklow, made oath before the Commissioners, that the Irish rebels issued a Proclamation, that all English men and women, (meaning, as usual, by the term, Protestants,) that did not depart the country within twenty-four hours, should be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and that the Irish houses that kept any of the English children should be burned. He further deposed, that the said rebels burned two Protestant BIBLES, and then said that it was hell fire that burned them. (Ib. 108.) On this day the city of London presented a petition to the King, representing the fears and distractions then prevailing in the city, by reason of the progress of the rebels in Ireland, fomented by the Papists of England and their adherents.The King replied to this article of the petition, that as for the business of Ireland, there was nothing on his part unoffered or undone, and that he hoped by the speedy advice and assistance of his Parliament, that great and necessary work would be put in a sure forwardness, to which he would contribute all in his power. (Rushworth, vol. iv. p. 481; Nalson, vol. ii. P. 481.) No. VIII. "They make an oathe to the Pope, cleane contrarie to the "oathe that they make us, so that they seeme to be his subjectes, "and not ours.' (Henry VIII. of the Romish Clergy, 1642, Jan. 8.-The Scotch garrison sallied from the garrison of Carrickfergus, and cruelly massacred several Irish! families in Island Magee, in the County of Antrim. The number of those who were cut off on this occasion has been enormously exaggerated by the Popish writers, and the time of the perpetration of this barbarous act wilfully mis-stated to have been at the commencement of the rebellion; but by the testimonies of the surviving Irish, though they might be supposed inclined to exaggerate their own danger and the sufferings of their friends, the number of the persons murdered on this unhappy occasion appears to have been nearer to thirty persons than thirty families, and the date of the transaction is ascertained beyond all doubt, by the deposition of Bryan Magee, a Roman Catholic, and the son of Owen Magee, whose family were among the chief sufferers in the massacre. (See Magee's deposition in Trinity College, Dublin, in page 2716, of the volume lettered, County of Antrim.) The impudent falsehoods propagated respecting the time when this unhappy event occurred, and the number of those who perished by it, originated in a miserable pamphlet published in London, by an anonymous writer in 1662, in which the number massacred is said to have been three thousand, and that "this was the first massacre on either side." Dr. Curry, in his History of the Civil Wars of Ireland, published in 1775, revived these falsehoods, and vainly attempted to support them by the authority of a tract falsely ascribed to Lord Clarendon. Plowden and Milner re-echoed the cry; but they were all refuted in Walter's Hibernian Magazine, for December, 1803, page 738. This day the King issued a Proclamation, straitly charging and commanding, that the last Wednesday of every month should be observed as a solemn fast throughout his dominion of England and Wales, during the troubles in Ireland, shewing, * ́zu alt Amber artes 6. Bo D 2 |