supply themselves from it with arms and ammunition; but this part of the plot was completely defeated by information conveyed to the Lords Justices (Parsons and Borlase) by Owen O'Connolly, on the night of October the 22nd.

The character of the chief governors powerfully influenced the course of affairs. There is good reason to believe that they adopted measures deliberately with the intention of promoting and extending the rebellion, with a view to consequent confiscations. They were both staunch Puritans; but Borlase was a mere soldier, and was led by Parsons. Parsons was an extremely wicked man.

"This was another most selfish and successful adventurer; and, therefore, very much interested in the extirpation of the native race. He got immense grants of lands in Meath, Cavan, Cork, Tipperary, Limerick, and Fermanagh. He was eventually appointed Surveyor-General, and in this capacity became enormously wealthy."*

The following revolting narrative is abstracted by Cooke Taylor, in his Civil Wars of Ireland, from the statement in Carte's Life of Ormond:

Bryan and Turlough Byrne were the rightful owners of a tract in Leinster, called the Ranelaghs. Its vicinity to the capital made it a desirable plunder; and accordingly Parsons, Lord Esmond, and some others, determined that it should be forfeited. The Byrnes, however, had powerful interest in England, and obtained a patent grant of their lands from the

* The Rev. G. Hill, The MacDonnells of Antrim, p. 59, note 38.

King. Parsons and Esmond were not to be disappointed so easily. They flatly refused to pass the royal grant; and, deeming the destruction of the Byrnes necessary to their safety, they had them arrested on a charge of treason. The witnesses provided to support the charge were Duffe, whom Turlough Byrne, as a justice of the peace, had sent to prison for cow-stealing, MacArt and MacGriffin, two notorious thieves, and a farmer named Archer. This last long resisted the attempts to force him to become a perjured witness; and his obstinacy was punished by the most horrible tortures. He was burned in the fleshy parts of the body with hot irons ; placed on a gridiron over a charcoal fire; and finally flogged until nature could support him no longer, and he promised to swear anything that the Commissioners pleased. Bills of indictment were presented to two successive grand juries in the County of Carlow, and at once ignored, as the suborned witnesses were unworthy of credit, and contradicted themselves and each other. For this opposition to the will of Government the jurors were summoned to the Star Chamber in Dublin and heavily fined. The witnesses MacArt and MacGriffin, being no longer useful, were given up to the vengeance of the law. They were hanged for robbery at Kilkenny, and with their dying breath declared the innocence of the Byrnes. ingenuity of Parsons and his accomplices was not yet exhausted. The Byrnes presented themselves before the court of King's Bench in Dublin to answer any charge that might be brought against them. No prosecutor appeared, and yet the Chief Justice refused to grant their discharge. During two years repeated orders were transmitted from England, directing that the Byrnes should be freed from further process, and restored to their estates; but the faction in the Castle evaded and disobeyed every mandate. At length, on learning that the Duke of Richmond, the generous patron of the persecuted Irishmen, was dead, it was determined by Parsons to complete the destruction of the victims. He had before been baffled by the integrity of a grand jury; on this

The

occasion he took proper precautions to prevent a similar disappointment. The bills were sent before the grand jurors of Wicklow, the majority of whom had obtained grants of the Byrne property, and all were intimately connected with the prosecutors. The evidence placed before this impartial body was the depositions of four criminals, who were pardoned on condition of giving evidence; but even these wretches were not brought in person before the jury. Their depositions were taken in Irish by one of the prosecutors, and translated by one of his creatures. These suspicious documents, however, proved sufficient, and the bills were found.

"To procure additional evidence, it was necessary to use expedients still more atrocious. A number of persons were seized and subjected to the mockery of trial by martial law, though the regular courts were sitting. The most horrid tortures were inflicted on those who refused to accuse the Byrnes; and some of the most obstinate were punished with death. But the firmness of the victims presented obstacles which were not overcome before some virtuous Englishmen represented the affair so strongly to the King that he was shamed into interference. He sent over Commissioners from England to investigate the entire affair. The Byrnes were

Their lives

brought before them and honourably acquitted. were thus saved; but Parsons had previously contrived to obtain a great portion of their estates by patent, and was permitted to keep them undisturbed.

"This narrative, which has been rather softened in its horrible details, may appear to many too shocking to be believed; but all the documents are still preserved in the library of the Dublin University, and it is circumstantially related by Carte, a historian remarkable for his hostility to the Irish."

Owen O'Connolly was immediately despatched with information respecting the insurrection to the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Leinster, which was forthwith communicated to the English Houses of Parliament.

Sir John Temple and Lord Clarendon are the historians from whom, in an especial manner, most Protestants have taken the accounts they give of the atrociously inhuman proceedings of the rebels. Hume continually quotes Temple; and I cannot deny that he had apparently good reason to trust his narrative. Certainly nothing short of the strongest facts could discredit his and Clarendon's testimony. Temple, who was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and a Privy Councillor, published his history within a few years of the outbreak. He had the best opportunities for procuring reliable information respecting the conduct of the insurgents, and saw with his own eyes in Dublin some of the deplorable consequences of it. Clarendon also enjoyed most unusual opportunities for procuring correct information. Temple's testimony is that 150,000 Protestants were slaughtered in the first two months of the rebellion; Clarendon's, that 40,000 or 50,000 were slain before they had any suspicion of their danger.

Mr. Froude gives the following statement in the beginning of his account of the rebellion :

"On December the 1st-I am particular about these dates, because it is insisted that the story of the massacre was an afterthought, made up in the following year to justify the confiscation of the estates of the insurgents-on December the 1st a petition [probably written a fortnight before] was presented to the English Parliament, signed by the Irish Council, stating that there were then 40,000 rebels in the field. Their tyranny,' says this document, 'is so great, that

they put both man, woman, and child that are Protestants to the sword, not sparing either age, sex, degree, or reputation. They have stripped naked many Protestants, and so sent them to the city, men and women. They have ravished many virgins and women before their husbands' faces, and taken their children and dashed their brains against the walls in the sight of their parents, and at length destroyed them likewise without pity or humanity.'

"On December the 14th the following letter from Ireland was read in the English Parliament: All I can tell you is the miserable state we continue under, for the rebels daily increase in men and munition in all parts, except the province of Munster, exercising all manner of cruelties, and striving who can be most barbarously exquisite in tormenting the poor Protestants, cutting off their ears, fingers, and hands, plucking out their eyes, boiling the hands of the little children before their mothers' faces, stripping women naked, and ripping them up.'

"On the 12th of December, 1641, Sir John Temple writes to Charles, at this time in Edinburgh, as follows, respecting the atrocious proceedings he attributes to the rebels: Thus enraged, and armed by these pretences, they march on, furiously destroying all the English, sparing neither sex nor age throughout the kingdom, most barbarously murdering them, and that with greater cruelty than ever was yet used among Turks and infidels. I will not trouble your Majesty with the sad story of our miseries here. Many thousands of our nation are already perished under their cruel hands, and the poor remainder of them go up and down, desolate, naked, and most miserably afflicted with cold and hunger, all inns and other places in the country being prohibited, under penalties, to entertain or give any kind of relief to them, so as here we sit, wearied out with the most lamentable and fearful outcries of our poor distressed countrymen, and have no means to afford them any redress, nor indeed any great hopes long to preserve ourselves and this city from the fury of the rebels,