of surrendering Dublin and the sword of state to the rebels, but the Marchioness of Ormond received, during the whole time. of her Lord's proscription, 3000l. per annum by favour from Cromwell.

So grossly inconsistent with the late peace was the King's subscription to the covenant, that Ormond, after having advised his Majesty to take it, affected publicly to discredit the report of his having taken it. The confederates, however, not only believed, that the King had (as the fact was) debased himself and betrayed them by thus covenanting with the murderers of his father, but that Ormond had approved of and advised the measure. Several of them, therefore, together with a large part of their clergy, assembled at James Town in their present embarrassment, and mindful of the resolution they had formerly entered into, that in case of a breach or disavowal of the peace on the part of his Majesty or his Lieutenant, they would return to their original confederacy, as the likeliest means to hinder their people from closing with the Parliament; after much deliberation it was determined, that the clergy should endeavour, by ecclesiastical censures, to withdraw all persons of their own communion, from the command of Ormond: they accordingly assuming, that his Lordship would now publicly promote, as he had ever secretly favoured the covenanters, published an excommunication against all such Catholics, as should enlist under, feed, help, or adhere to his Excellency; or assist him with men, money, or any other supplies whatever : but lest their loyalty to their constitutional monarch should be suspected, they involved in the same sentence of excommunication all such Catholics, as should adhere to the common enemies of God, their King and Country: or should any ways help, assist, abet, or favour them, by bearing arms, for or with them. Whether fear, force, or corruption induced Charles II. to this base act, certain it is, that a covenanting independent sovereign is not that constitutional executive magistrate, which the Irish nation was obliged or ought to obey. Under the then existing circumstances, the observance of the late peace, was the only security for their religion, liberty, lives, and fortunes.

When Ormond quitted Ireland, he left the wrecks of his wasted, dissipated, and bartered powers to the Earl of Clanrickard, who had often before remonstrated with him upon those measures of his government, which tended to alienate the affections of the nation from the royal cause; and when he received

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"he had made with him should be punctually observed; and then ordered "him to repair immediately to Bristol, to which place forces should be sent "him, with a sufficient number of ships to transport them into Ireland. He added, that he himself would soon follow him: and was as good as his word in every particular."

the government from Ormond, he was fully sensible of the impossibility of effecting any thing essentially important to the service of his Royal Master.* Although the King, still being in the hands of the Scots, dared not openly avow the treaty then pending with the Duke of Lorrain, to re-establish the Royal Authority in Ireland, yet he did all he privately could to forward it, and afterwards, when he was out of the hands of the Scots, he wrote to his Highness from Paris, to solicit his and the assistance of other Catholic Princes, against their and his own enemies. Nay, even Ormond, as he had now withdrawn himself from the dangerous situation, in which he had placed his successor, finding his once favoured Puritans going greater lengths than he perhaps wished or expected, notwithstanding his horror of Popery, did not scruple to recommend the sending fitting ministers, and proposing apt inducements to the Pope himself, for his interposition with Catholic princes, to enable the King's Catholic subjects of Ireland to make head against the rebels.

It has been the general, though ungrateful and unwarrantable practice of most of our authors, to brand the Irish nation with too hasty and unnecessary submission to the arms of Cromwell. But these very authors relate facts contradictory of their own obloquy. "The Earl of Orrery himself (says P. Walsh) is a "witness beyond exception, that the Irish Catholics were the "last in the three kingdoms, that laid down their arms, and "gave over fighting for the royal cause." Propositions, says Leland, "were received from the parliamentarian General, offering them, (the citizens of Limerick) a free exercise of "their religion, the enjoyment of their estates, churches, and "church livings; a free trade and commerce, without any gar"rison to be imposed upon them, provided they would allow his "forces to march through their city, into the county of Clare. "The citizens rejected these propositions." Which it may be

*The account which Clanrickard gives of the state of Ireland, on the 12th April, 1651, is an honourable and unquestionable proof of the unshaken loyalty of the nation, in the last extreme. Clan. Mem. p. 24. for which, vide Appendix, No. XXXVI.

† For this letter, vid. App. No. XXXVII.

Reply to a person of quality, p. 50.

$3 Lel. 370.

The only disposition that appeared in any part of the nation to favour the rebels, was in the readiness of the peasantry to supply their camp with provisions. For Cromwell issued a proclamation, forbidding any of his army, under pain of death, to hurt any of the inhabitants, or take any thing from them without paying for it in ready money and under this proclamation, he ordered two soldiers to be hanged in the face of the army, for having stolen two hens from an Irish cottager. Under this security and the false assurances of his officers, that they were fighting for the liberties of the Commons, and that every body should thereafter enjoy his own religion and property in freedom, his camp was constantly better supplied than the army of Ormond, whose pas

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observed, were far more favourable than any, that had been granted or even promised to them by the king or his lieutenant. Whilst the general assembly, which had been convened by Ormond himself, was still sitting at Loughrea, after his departure, under full submission to his successor the Earl of Clanrickard, favourable overtures to them for an acvery the regicides made "The consequence of it was, says Carte, an excommodation. "communication denounced by the bishops, and a proclamation "issued out by the deputy, upon the advice of the assembly, "against all persons that either served in the army of the rebels, or entertained any treaty with, or made any submission to "them, declaring them guilty of high treason and punishable "with death, unless within 21 days they quitted the service and The Irish not "left off all communication with the rebels."

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only suffered for their determined and severely tried loyalty to the royal cause, but more particularly for the personal bravery and intrepidity, with which they used their arms in its defence, of which Dr. Warner gives this honourable testimony, in the instance of the brave defenders of Drogheda against Cromwell, at the head of 10,000 men and a well appointed battering artillery. "On the 9th of September, the summons having been "rejected, Cromwell began to batter the place, and continuing "so to do till the next day in the evening, the assault was made, "and his men twice repulsed with great bravery: but in the "3d attack, which he led himself, Colonel Wall being killed "at the head of his regiment, his men were so dismayed, that "they submitted to the enemy offering them quarter sooner "than they need to have done, and thereby betrayed themselves "and their fellow soldiers to the slaughter. The place was im"mediately taken by storm: and though his officers and soldiers "had promised quarter to all that would lay down their arms, "yet Cromwell ordered that no quarter should be given, and "none was given accordingly. The slaughter continued all that "day and the next, and the governor and four colonels were "killed in cool blood: which extraordinary severity, says Lud"low, with a coolness not becoming a man, I presume was used "to discourage others from making opposition." And speaking of the taking of Wexford, which was betrayed by Colonel Strafford, whom Ormond had made governor of the castle, he says, that "the slaughter was almost as great as that of Drogheda.

sage through their country was more dreaded by the peasantry, than that of a most ferocious enemy: such ever had been his rapine, extortion, and oppres

sion.

* Warn. Hist. Reb. 470.

Ib. p. 476. The Marquis of Ormond in his letter to the king and Lord Byron, says, "that on this occasion, Cromwell exceeded himself, and any thing he had ever heard of in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity and that the cruelties exercised there for five days after the town was taken, would

A modern portrait has been given of the state of Ireland during this calamitous period, with a view to promote it's union with Great Britain, in which truth and resemblance have been too grossly sacrificed, to the glow of colouring and warmth of imagination. "After a fierce and bloody contest for eleven years, in which the face of the whole island was desolated, and its "population nearly extinguished by war, pestilence and famine, "the insurgents were subdued, and suffered all the calamities, "which could be inflicted on the vanquished party in a long " contested civil war. This was a civil war of extermination." ....A very seasonable memento is thrown into this composition, addressed to a certain part of the nation, of " the blessings of "republican liberty dealt out to their ancestors, by the Usurper "Cromwell. His first act was to collect all the native Irish, "who had survived the general desolation and remained in the "country, and to transplant them into the province of Connaught, "which had been depopulated and laid waste in the progress of "the rebellion. They were ordered to retire thither by a cer"tain day, and forbidden to repass the Shannon on pain of death: " and this sentence of deportation was rigidly enforced until the "restoration. Their ancient possessions were seized and given up to the conquerors, as were the possessions of every man "who had taken a part in the rebellion, or followed the fortune "of the king after the murder of Charles I. This whole fund

was distributed amongst the officers and soldiers of Crom"well's army, in satisfaction of the arrears of their pay, and i6 amongst the adventurers, who had advanced money to defray "the expences of the war. And thus a new colony of new settlers, composed of all the various sects, which then infested England, Independents, Anabaptists, Seceders, Brownists, "Socinians, Millenarians, and Dissenters of every description, "many of them infected with the leaven of democracy, poured "into Ireland, and were put into possession of the ancient inhe"ritance of its inhabitants."

The real situation of Ireland, at the restoration of Charles II. is more easily described and credited. A people, who had con

"make as many several pictures of inhumanity, as are to be found in the Book of Martyrs, or in the relation of Amboyna." 2. C. Orm. 84. Pity it was that Ormond had not been as prompt to check the progress of Cromwell with his sword, as he was to describe his inhumanity with his pen.

Speech of the Earl of Clare, in the House of Lords in Ireland, on his own motion for the union on the 10th February, 1800. 2d Dub. Ed. p. 15.

It is impossible that an impartial hearer or reader of this discourse, should understand by it, that the insurgents who bad carried on a fierce and bloody contest for eleven years, and had at length been subdued, were the most loyal part of the king's subjects, who had been fighting against the parliamentarian rebels, in defence of the king and his crown, from the year 1641 to 1652, when they were compelled by imperious necessity (three years after England) to submit to the tyrannical usurpation of Cromwell.

tinued determined in fighting for the royal cause, nearly three years longer than any other part of the British empire, reduced to two thirds of their population by the fierceness of their contest with the rebellious regicides, by massacres, famine and pestilence, stripped of any armed force for defence or attack, expatriated at home, and unexceptionably divested of the scanty remnants of their ancient inheritances, which had not been wrested from them by former plantations. Thus were these unfortunate wrecks of the native Irish the devoted victims to their loyalty, penned up liked hunted beasts in the devastated wilds of Connaught, hardly existing in the gregarian and promiscuous possession and cultivation of the soil, without the means of acquiring live or dead stock, and wanting even the necessary utensils for husbandry. The perseverance of these martyrs to royalty, it would be natural to suppose, would have moved the sympathy and challenged the justice of the restored monarch. But Charles was a Stuart, and the Irish nation were his most staunch, unrelenting, and therefore suffering friends. If ever Ireland had a call of gratitude upon the crown of England, it was at the restoration of Charles II.: yet if any period since the invasion of Henry II. be distinguishable for the sufferings of the Irish nation, it was the moment, when that monarch immolated them to the vindictive fury of his own and his father's enemies. Yet such is the force of prejudice against the Irish, who resisted the usurpation of Cromwell, and spent their last blood and treasure in supporting the royal cause, that by the first legislators after the restoration, the rebellious regicides were established and confirmed in the wages of their sanguinary rebellion. This conduct of our ancestors baffles all conjecture: unless the crimes of one kingdom were compromised for the forfeitures of another. Yet in the last session of the last parlia ment of Ireland, the adulatory incense of gratitude thrown up to the shrine of Cromwell, for having reduced the only persevering royalists under his subjection, bids bold defiance to astonishment.† It would have been an act of gross injustice on the part of the king, to have overlooked the interests of Cromwell's soldiers and adventurers, who had been put into possession of the confis cated lands in Ireland.

Cromwell, says Dalrymple (Mem. 1 vol. p. 267) in order to get free of his “enemies, did not scruple to transport 40,000 Irish from their own country, to "fill all the armies in Europe with complaints of his cruelty and admiration of "their own valour." These were either bribed, persuaded or forced to take themselves out of their country embodied with their officers. This was the first foundation of Irish corps in foreign armies. They were all Catholics: for all the Protestant forces in Ireland were either transmitted over by Ormond, or after his departure went voluntarily to the rebellious regicides. Borlase says, that in the summer of 1650, 17,000 died of the plague in Dublin alone. Speech of the Earl of Clare on the 10th of February, 1800, p. 17.