Talbot hereupon, was sent to the tower, but after some time was released upon his submission." CHAP. XXV, A dangerous conspiracy of the puritans. THE consciousness of having done a wrong is ever attended with some fear of resentment from the party injured. Such was the duke of Ormond's situation at this juncture, with respect to the despoiled Irish. "He had spies and intelligencers in every part of Ireland, who served him so well, that there was not the least motion among them, but it came to his knowledge." Complaints, indeed, that wretched privilege of sufferers, were heard from all parts; but no traces of a conspiracy, nor even endeavors for redress were any where disco vered. The case was very different with those rebellious sectaries, who had got possession of their estates. For upon the restoring of a few innocents, legally adjudged such, they conceived such resentment against the government, for not having divided the spoil of the whole nation among them, that they entered into two dangerous conspiracies on that account; first, in 1662,† to surprise the castle of Dublin, and • "I confess (says lord Arlington in a letter to Ormond on this occasion) it will he a hard matter to be very secure of those who see their estates enjoyed by other men, till time hath accustomed them to such digestion." -State Let. by Brown, p. 408. "This country (Ireland)," says the earl of Essex, lord lieutenant in 1675, "has been perpetually rent and torn since his majesty's restoration. I can compare it to nothing better, than the flinging the reward, upon the death of a deer, among a pack of hounds, where every one pulls and tears where he can for himself; for, indeed, it has been no other than a perpetual scramble."-State Lett. p. SS4. + The duke of Ormond, in order to quiet the fears of these rebellions sectaries, in a letter to the speaker of the Irish commons, March 9th, 166o, very pertinently reminds them, "that the support and security of a true protestant English interest, was the earnest desire of his majesty, and the assiduous endeavor of him his servant, would clearly appear, when it should be considered, how the council and parliament were composed; and withal if it be remembered of whom the army consisted; who were is afterwards in 1665, for a more desperate purpose. For, at this latter period, there was a general design concerted in England, Ireland and Scotland, to rise at one time, and to set up the long parliament, of which above forty members were engaged. Measures had been taken to gather together the dis banded soldiers of the old Cromwellian army;3* and Ludlow was to be general-in-chief. They were to rise all in one night, and to spare none that would not join in the design; which was to pull down the king, with the house of lords; and, instead of bishops, to set up a sober, and painful ministry." In these conspiracies several presbyterian ministers, and seven mem bers of the Irish parliament were found to be engaged. The prisons of Dublin were crowded with these ministers; and the members of parliament were ignominiously expelled. Lord Orrery, from whom this account is mostly taken, has confessed a truth on this occasion, which he certainly never intended should be made public. In a private letter to the duke of Ormond, he tells him, "that he brought over captain Taylor, one of the leaders in this latter conspiracy, to make confessions to him; and that he had, as well as he could, laid open to him, the inexpressible mercy of his majesty to that vile party he had engaged' himself with; not only in pardoning to them their past crimes, but also giving them the lands of many who had served under his royal ensigns abroad, to pay the arrears which had been contracted against his service at home." Such, in those days, were confessedly the rewards of loyalty, and the punishment of rebellion in Ireland! 3 Orrery's State Lett. vol i. p 225. 4 Cart. Orm. vol ii. 7 State Lett. vol. i. p. 226. appointed by his majesty for judicature in the king's courts; who were executing the act of settlement, and who were in magistracy in the towns and counties; in which trusts, add he, is founded the security, interests, and preference of a people." Com. Jour. vol. ii. f. 299.-These were almost to a man, either notorious promoters or secret abettors of the late usurpa tion and regicide. "Vast sums of money (says lord Orrery) were levied for the carrying on this conspiracy, and they had corrupted the most part of the soldiers that were in freeholds; these freeholds they were to surprise, and to put all that opposed them to the sword,”—State Lett, vol. i. p. 225-6, CHAP. XXVI. The duke of Ormond apologizes for the favor he had shewn to the Cromwellian party in Ireland. THE duke of Ormond's strange partiality* in favor of the partizans of the late usurpers, to the ruin of so many thou. sands of his majesty's loyal, innocent, and meriting subjects, is thus more strangely accounted for by himself. Having, in his speech to parliament on passing the first act of settlement, given a most odious and shocking description of these usurpers, as "murderers' of his majesty's father, and usurpers of his inheritance; whose endeavors were incessant to destroy his person, and to blast his fame; who drove him into exile, and all the afflicting circumstances of that miserable state of a king." He thought fit in a subsequent speech to the same parliament, on passing the explanatory act, to observe, "that it might seem liable to some objection, that whilst he declaimed against the proceedings of these men, he yet undertook them ratified." After which, he ludicrously, and as if he were sporting with the destruction of a whole people, adds, "to this I shall only for the present say, that unjust persons may sometimes do justice; and for instance, I will assure you, 1 Borl. Hist. of the Irish Rebel. * A remarkable instance of this partiality we find in one of his grace's letters to John Walsh, esq. one of his commissioners. "You know," says he," what my instructions have been to my commissioners and servants : to give up, whilst I might legally do otherwise, whatever I was possessed of, which was but set out to adventurers or soldiers, though they had not cleared their title in the other court of claims.”—Gart. Orm, vol. ¡¡. Append. fol. 34. This partiality will appear still more strange, when it is considered, "that his grace was the first of that family of the Butlers, that was edu cated a protestant; that his mother lady Thurles, his brothers, sisters, and all his relations continuing Roman catholics, still remained in the Irish quarters during the late insurrection; and such of them as were able to bear arms, as lord Muskerry, colonel Fitzpatrick, his brother-in-law, his brother colonel Butler of Kilcash, and colonel George Mathews, and others his relations, as the lord Mountgarret, Dunboyne, and divers other lords and gentlemen of his name and family, were generals or commanders of lower quality in the army of the confederates."-See Earl of Anglesea's Let. to the Earl of Castlehaven, p. 62. that Ireton, at Limerick, caused some to be hanged that de served it almost as well as himself." Thus, according to the duke of Ormond's casuistry, Ireton's supposed merit in hanging up some catholics at Limerick (obnoxious perhaps to his grace, though otherwise good subjects+), * This regicide, "with his own hand, wrote that precept which was sent out under the hands and seals of the others, on the 8th of January 1648, for proclaiming their court for trying his majesty, to be held in the painted chamber on the 10th of the same month."-Trial of the Regicides, P. 10. "He was once determined to destroy all the inhabitants, men, women and children of a whole barony in Ireland."-Morrice's Life of Orrery, p. 33. The chief of those executed at Limerick, by Ireton's order, were the titular bishop of Emely, major-general Purcell, sir Geoffry Baron, sir Geoffry Gallway, and the mayor of that city. These Ireton caused to be put to death, in revenge of their noble perseverance in defending that city, though infected with the plague, for his majesty. “Ireton had sent in articles of surrender, in which he insisted that about seventeen of the principal persons of the place, who were still for holding it out, should be excepted (from mercy). But these made so strong a party, that the treaty was broke up, without any agreement. But the town being afterwards surrendered (by the treachery of colonel Fennel), the bishop of Emely, major-general Purcell, &c. were taken in the Pest-house, where they were hid." Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i.p. 370. &c.-Ireton himself, a few days after he had taken Limerick, caught the infection, and died of it there. Ludlow, from whom the above is cited, was one of the judges of that court-martial, which condemned these gentlemen. : The very words of the 2d article of the surrender of Limerick are, "But whereas through the practice of some persons, more eminent and active than the rest, the generality of the people (of that city) were partly deluded and deceived, by keeping them in vain expectations of relief from one time to another; and partly overawed and enforced by their power to concur, and contribute thus long to the obstinate holding out of the place therefore the persons hereafter named, which are major-general Hugo O'Neil, the governor, major-general Purcell, sir Geoffry Gallway, lieutenant-colonel Lacy, captain George Wolfe, captain-lieutenant Sexton, the bishop of Emely, John Quillan, a dominican friar, captain Lawrence Welsh, a priest, Francis Wolfe, a franciscan friar, Philip O'Dwyer, a priest, alderman Dominick Fanning, alderman Thomas Stretch, alderman Jordan Roche, Edward Roche, burgess, sir Richard Everard, Dr. Higgen, Maurice Baggot, of Baggot's-town, and Jeoffry Baron, being as aforesaid the principal appearing in such practices in this siege and the holding out so long, shall be exempted from any benefit of this article or any article ensuing; and such of them as can be found within the garrison shall be ren entitled that regicide's vile adherents to be legally invested with the estates and properties, of so many thousands of the innocent and loyal natives; and that too in breach of articles, by which his grace had solemnly engaged to see these natives restored. But leaving this frivolous apology to the contempt it deserves let us now see, if we cannot assign more probable causes of this partiality, from the constant tenor of his grace's conduct, during the whole time of the preceding war, and for many years after his majesty's restoration. CHAP. XXVII. The probable motives of the duke of Ormond's past and present conduct, with respect to the Irish. "TWO grants' were made to the marquis of Ormond by the king, soon after the breaking out of the war in 1641; one was the vesting in him all the securities and mortgages upon his estate, formerly made, and belonging to such persons as were, or had been, in the insurrection. The other, was that of the lands held under him, and forfeited to him for breach of conditions. This grant was confirmed by a clause in the first act of settlement, and the estates thus granted contained a prodigious quantity of land,* which had been granted to gentlemen upon free-farm, or quit-rents, and military tenures; by 1 Cart. Orni, vol. ii. f. 306. dered up at mercy, upon the surrender of the city; and such person or persons as shall be found to hide or conceal any of the said excepted persons, or be privy to their concealment or attempt of escape, and not discover to the best of their endeavor to prevent the same, shall be understood to have forfeit the benefit of these articles to themselves.-Borl. Irish Rebel.f. 359-60. "Colonel Fennel," says lord Castlehaven, "having cowardly or treach erously left the defence of the pass at Killaloe, fled into Limerick with all his party; where, upon the rendition of the town, which happened not long after, Ireton, with more than his ordinary justice, hanged him.” -Mem. p. 128 * It is affirmed that he got as many gentlemen's estates, upon the pretence of a grant of enjoying all lands that he could prove (by witnesses) to have paid him any chiefry, as were worth at least £150,000.-Unkind Deserter, &c. p. 166. |