ship; and afterwards, they were to be denied access to his person."*

In this manner, such of those unhappy noblemen and gentlemen as had been driven from Dublin by their lordships proclamation, on pain of death, had never offended the govern ment, or were desirous to return to their duty, if in any respect they had offended, were delivered up, without distinction, to the mercy of soldiers, who thirsted after nothing more ardently than the blood of the Irish; and whom their lordships had before incensed, by all manner of ways, against the nation in general.

Doctor Nalson assures us,2 « that the severities of the provost-marshals, and the barbarism of the soldiers to the Irish, were then such, that he heard a relation of his own, who was a captain in that service, relate, that no manner of compassion or discrimination was shewn either to age or sex ; but that the little children were promiscuously sufferers with the guilty; and that if any, who had some grains of compassion, reprehended the soldiers for this unchristian inhumanity, they would scornfully reply, Why, nits will be lice, and so would dispatch them." "Of sir Charles Coote, provost-marshal of Ireland, it is said, that he would bid his Irish prisoners blow in his pistol, and then would discharge it."

"May 28th, 1642, the justices issued a general order to the commanders of all garrisons, not to presume to hold any correspondence or intercourse with any of the Irish or papists dwelling or residing in any place near or about their garrisons; or to give protection, immunity, or dispensation from spoil, burning, or other prosecution of war, to any of them; but to prosecute all such rebels, from place to place, with fire and sword,

2 Histor. Collect.

3 Leyburne's Mem. Pref. p. xxviii.

4 Cart. Orm. vol. i.

"In the execution of these orders, the justices declare, that the soldiers slew all persons promiscuously, not sparing the women, and sometimes not the children."-Lel. Hist. of Irel. vol. iii. p. 172.

"Among the several acts of public service performed by a regiment of sir William Cole, consisting of five hundred foot, and a troop of horse, we find the following hideous article recorded by the historian Borlase, with particular satisfaction and triumph: "Starved and famished of the vulgar sort, whose goods were seized on by the regiment, seven thousand."--Let, ib.

according to former commands and proclamations. Such," says Mr. Carte on this occasion, " was the constant tenor of their orders, though they knew that the soldiers, in executing them, murdered all persons promiscuously, not sparing, as they themselves tell the commissioners for Irish affairs, in their letter of the 7th of June following, the women, and sometimes not children."

CHAP. XXIII f

Orders of the English parliament relative to Ireland. PREPARATORY to these destructive orders of the jus tices and council of Ireland, their partizans in the English parliament had procured a resolution to be passed,' on the 8th of December 1641, never to tolerate the catholic religion in that kingdom;* and in February or March following, the same parliament voted the confiscation of two millions and a half of acres of arable, meadow and pasture land, when very few persons of landed property were concerned in the insurrection. On occasion of this resolution concerning religion, lord Clanrickard expostulated, with just and spirited resentment, in a fetter to the earl of Essex; who, it was then thought, would have come over lord lieutenant, with orders to execute it. “It is reported," says he," that the parliament hath resolved to make this a war of religion, that no toleration thereof is to be granted here; nor any pardons, but by consent of parliament; to send one thousand Scots into this kingdom, and yourself to come over lord lieutenant. If such be the resolutions of England, I should esteem it the greatest misfortune possible, to see you here upon such terms; but if you come over as becomes the person, honor, and gallant disposition of the earl of Essex, and not as the agent of persecution, it may produce much hap. Hughes's Abridgment. Borl. Hist. of the Irish Rebel.

2 Cart. Orm, vol. iii.

• "It was resolved, upon solemn debate, on the 8th of December, 1641, by the lords and commons in the parliament of England, that they would never give consent to any toleration to the popish religion in Ireland, or any other his majesty's dominions. Which vote (adds my author) hath been since adjudged a main motive (by the insurgents) for making the war a cause of religion.”—Borl. Irish Rebel. f. 53.

piness to your own particular, and to this kingdom in general. And, if I may presume to speak my sense, it will not agree either with the honor or safety of England, to make use of such a power of Scots to destroy or over-run us here. My lord, recollect yourself, and draw together your best and bravest thoughts; consider that, by this violent proceeding, contrary to the religion of the whole kingdom, you will put us into desperation, and so hazard the destruction of many noble families."

In consequence of the English vote, for the confiscation of two millions and a half of Irish acres," the lords justices,3 in a private letter to the speaker of the house of commons in England, May 11th, 1642, without the rest of the council, besought the commons to assist them with a grant of some competent proportion of the rebels lands. Here," says Warner,* "the reader will find a key, that unlocks the secret of their iniquitous proceedings; and here we find the motives to the orders they gave for receiving no submissions; for issuing no proclamation of pardon at first, as the parliament had suggested; and, in short, for all their backwardness in putting an end to the rebellion, of which several opportunities offered; and consequently for their sacrificing the peace and happiness of the country, and the lives of thousands of their fellow-subjects." "But some kind of zeal," says the king himself on this occasion, «counts all merciful moderation lukę-warmness, and is not seldom more greedy to kill the bear for his skin, than for any harm he hath done; the confiscation of men's estates being more beneficial, than the charity of sav. ing their lives or reforming their errors."

A Hist. Irish Rebel.

5 Reliq. Sacr. Carolin. p. 85.

BOOK VI.

CHAP. I.

The nobility and gentry of Ireland unite in a regular body.

THE lords and gentlemen of the pale, who had seen their houses burnt, their lands destroyed, and their tenants murdered, without making any opposition, still renewed their applications to government,' to accept of their best assistance and endeavors towards putting a stop to the insurrection, now daily increasing in every part of the kingdom. But these overtures were scornfully rejected, and even the proposers of them held worthy of punishment. The earl of Castlehaven, who had presented one of their petitions, was imprisoned;2 and had he not escaped by a stratagem, might have been racked for his officiousness, as sir John Read was on a similar account. At the same time, Hugh Oge O'Connor, sir Luke Dillon, and others of the principal gentry of the county of Roscommon, intreated the lords Clanrickard and Ranelagh, to prevail with the justices, to receive the like humble offer of their services, or, at least, to consent to a suspension of hostilities for some short time. Lord Clanrickard transmitted their request to the government, with his humble wishes for its success; but sir William Parsons was so much offended at the motion, that Clanrickard was obliged to apologize for having made it, by telling him,3« that his grounds for seconding that application were, that fire and sword having made a sharp discovery of his majesty's high indignation, some part of his mercy might appear, by a distinction of punishment; which then, and since, had fallen equally, not only on capital offenders, but even upon deserving servitors. These," adds his lordship," were the apprehensions which drew me into that error, which I must now conceive to be such, as it stands in opposi tion to so able a judgment. But certainly, some other way of moderation may be agreeable to his majesty's goodness, and

3

the destruction and murders committed by the soldiers, thereby prevented; which are now acted upon those, who are protected by your lordship, which, at present, puts all men into high desperation."

Thus were the catholic nobility and gentry of Ireland, at last, compelled to unite in a regular body; and to put themselves into that condition of natural self-defence, which has been ever since branded by their enemies, with the appellation of a most odious and unnatural rebellion.*

At Kilkenny they formed two different meetings on this occasion, viz. their general assembly and supreme council: of the first were all the lords, prelates and gentry of their party; the latter consisted of a few select members, chosen by the general assembly, out of the different provinces, with the most rigorous exactness: those so chosen, having taken the oath of counsellors, were, after the recess of the assembly, accepted and obeyed as the supreme magistrates of the confederate catholics.

"The supreme council consisted of about four and twenty members, some of every state, nobility, clergy and commons, who, during the intervals of the assemblies, had a kind of li mited government, and power to call an assembly on occasion." "They framed to themselves a seal, bearing the mark of a long cross; on the right side a crown, on the left a harp with a dove above, and a flaming harp below the cross, and round about this inscription, pro Deo, pro rege, et patria Hibernia, unanimes, with which they sealed their credentials."

4 Belling's MSS. Hist. of the Wars of Ireland,

5 Leyburne's Mom. Pref. p. xi.

6 Borl. Irish Rebel. fol. 128.

"To strengthen their party," says Mr. Carte, “as much as was possible, they sent manifests and declarations of the motives and reasons of their conduct, to all the English catholics throughout the kingdom. Nor did they find any great difficulty in engaging them; they being ready enough to consider it as a common cause, and to imagine that the same snares, which they were persuaded had been laid for the lives and estates of the lords of the pale, would be made use of to destroy them, by piecemeal, one after another: and that the only way to prevent the destruc. tion of each particular, was to unite all together as one man, to make a general association for their defence, and to depend upon the fate of war to make the best terms they could for themselves.—Orm. vol. iii. fol. 262,