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4.-Famine which Ensued.

The devastating policy pursued by the English troops was destined to bear its natural fruit, and many of the passages which we have cited, whilst they detail the ruin and desolation. that everywhere marked the progress of the English arms, record at the same time the dire consequences of pestilence and famine which completed the martyrdom of our suffering people.

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We closed the preceding article with the expedition of Mountjoy into Ulster. We may now hear from sir John Davis the result of that expedition: "The queen's army, under lord Mountjoy, succeeded in breaking, and absolutely subduing, all the lords and chieftains of the Irishry. Whereupon the multitude being brayed, as it were, in a mortar, with sword, famine, and pestilence together, submitted themselves to the English government." The lord deputy himself, writing to Cecil and the privy council in England in 1602, attests that in his march through the northern districts, he "found everywhere men dead of famine;" and he adds that some of his party had assured him "that between Tullaghoge and Toome, there lay unburied one thousand dead, and that since our first coming this year to the Blackwater, there were about three thousand starved in Tyrone."t

The secretary of lord Mountjoy gives us some special details: "Because I have often made mention formerly (he says) of our destroying the rebels' corn and using all means to famish them, let me now, by two or three examples, show the miserable estate to which they were thereby reduced." He then cites some dreadful examples: sir Arthur Chichester and other officers, he says, witnessed the horrid spectacle of three children

other fowl, much more plentifully than in England. You may buy a dozen of quails for 3d.; a dozen of woodcocks for 4d. Oysters, etc., about the sea coasts are to be had for the gathering, in great plenty. You may buy the best heifers, with calves at their feet, for 20s. a-piece, which are nothing inferior to the Lincolnshire breed.-Tracts relating to Ireland. I.A.S., 1841.

*Davies' "Historical Tracts" (Discovery of the True Cause, etc., first published in 1612; reprinted, Dublin, 1787) p. 54.

Ap. Fynes Moryson, p. 237.

feeding on the flesh of their dead mother; and again, in the vicinity of Newry, some old women were proved to have subsisted on the flesh of children who were slain; in fact, "the common sort of rebels were driven to unspeakable extremities, beyond the records of any history that I ever read;" and he adds, "no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially in the wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead, with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above the ground."†

The province of Leinster had been mercilessly laid waste, and the famine which ensued involved in one common ruin the persecutors and those whom they persecuted. The Protestant chancellor of Leighlin attests (Dowling's Annals, p. 41), that in 1575" a great pestilence laid waste Wexford, Dublin, Naas, Athy, Carlow and Leighlin-bridge, and the city of Dublin was so depopulated by it, that the very streets and church porticoes seemed changed to meadow-land." At the close of the century, the same scene was renewed, as lord Burgh records, who, writing to Cecil in 1597, declares: "It is lamentable to hear of, but woful to behold, soldiers, citizens, villagers, and all sorts, daily perish through famine; so, as I write to you, the end is, both the spoiler and the spoiled are in like calamities."

As Munster, however, was the district most involved in ruin and desolation, so was it there that famine and pestilence displayed their full violence and exercised a wider sway. We shall allow Hollingshed to present its details; the simplicity and quaintness of his narrative renders it the more impressive and unimpeachable:

"As for the great companies of soldiers, gallowglasses, kerne, and the common people who followed the rebellion, the numbers of them are infinite whose blood the earth drank up, and whose carcasses the beasts

* Cox also mentions this fact. Speaking of the "service of devastation" entrusted to the English soldiers, he writes: "They performed that service effectually, and brought the rebels to so low a condition, that they saw three children eating the entrails of their dead mother, upon whose flesh they had fed many days, and roasted it by a slow fire."-p. 449.

+ Fynes Moryson, "Hist. of Irel," p. 272; see also Curry's "Historical Review," pp. 26-27.

State Pap. Off. London.

of the field and the ravening fowls of the air did consume and devour. After this followed an extreme famine, and such whom the sword did not destroy, the same did consume and eat out-very few or none remaining alive excepting such as were fled over into England; and yet the store in the towns was far spent and they in distress, albeit nothing like in comparison to them who lived at large, for they were not only driven to eat horses, dogs, and dead carrions, but also did devour the carcasses of dead men, whereof there be sundry examples—namely, one in the county of Cork, where, when a malefactor was executed to death and his body left upon the gallows, certain poor people did secretly come, took him down and did eat him; likewise in the bay of Smerwick, the place which was first seasoned with this rebellion, there happened to be a ship there lost through foul weather, and all the men being drowned were there cast on land. The common people who had a long time lived on limpets, orewads, and such shell-fish as they could find, and which were now spent, as soon as they saw these bodies, they took them up and most greedily did eat and devour them, and not long after, death and famine did eat and consume them. The land itself, which before those wars was populous, well inhabited, and rich in all the good blessings of God, being plenteous of corn, full of cattle, well stored with fish and sundry other good commodities, is now become waste and barren; yielding no fruits, the pastures no cattle, the air no birds; the seas, though full of fish, yet to them yielding nothing. Finally, every way the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from the one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to the head of Smerwick, which is about six score miles, he would not meet any man, woman, or child, saving in towns and cities, nor yet see any beast, but the very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening beasts, many of them lay dead, being famished, and the residue gone elsewhere."*

Such was the sad destruction which had fallen on a country blessed by Providence with smiling abundance and all the riches of nature; and well nigh was realized the barbarous project which the persecutors had proposed to themselves," to cut off, forsooth, by pestilence and famine, the Catholics of Ireland whom they could not slay by the sword."†

Mooney, who was an eye-witness of these scenes of misery, attests, that so general was the devastation of the whole island, that "in most parts you would travel forty miles through the country without meeting any human creature, or even any ani*Hollingshed, vi. 459.

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† O'Sullevan Beare, Hist. Cath.," pag. 146. "Nec est pretereundum aliud Protestantium stratagema qui Catholicorum agros, mancipia, segetes, armenta, ferro flammaque corrumpebant, ut quos virtute superare non poterant, fame et inedia vincerent."

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mals except birds and wild beasts. Hence ensued so great a famine, that men were sometimes known to eat human flesh, though this was of rare occurrence; a more common case was their subsisting on horse-flesh. The farms were left untilled; and even in the districts which, being free from the ravages of war, were well cultivated, all the produce was designedly destroyed by fire by the enemy. I myself witnessed the English army cutting down the corn with scythes in the month of July, when as yet the ear was scarce shot out, intending by this means to destroy the remnant of the natives by famine."*

We shall conclude this dismal tale of misery and woe with the words of O'Sullevan Beare, who thus describes the state of Ireland, in the last year of Elizabeth's reign:

"All Ireland was devastated and reduced to ruin: an unparallelled scarcity and famine pervaded everywhere. Nor was it man alone that suffered; the very beasts of the field were in many places swept away, having nothing to subsist upon; the wolves abandoning the hills and woods, assailed and devoured the emaciated inhabitants. The dogs rooted up from the graves the decaying corpses, and devoured even the very bones of the deceased."†

5.-Some Examples to illustrate this Period of Persecution.

WE have already had occasion to commemorate the appointment of Dr. William Walsh to the diocese of Meath: we now recall his name, to record the fortitude and Christian heroism which he displayed, in enduring a cruel imprisonment and exile for the Catholic faith.

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During the short period of his episcopate, he conciliated the universal esteem of the Irish Catholics. Acceptable to God," says his biographer, "and pleasing to men, his whole life. breathed nothing but sanctity, and all his labours were directed to promote the interests of the heavenly King." He opposed,

*

Hist., MS., Franciscan, pag. 93.

"Hist. Cath.," pag. 261. We find recorded the following extraordinary rise in the price of provisions in Dublin in 1602. Wheat rose from 36s. to £9 per quarter; barley malt, from 10s. to 43s. per barrel; oats, from 3s. 4d. to 24s.; beef, from 26s. 8d. to £8 per carcase; mutton, from 3s to 26s., ditto; lamb, from Is. to 6s., ditto, &c.-See M Gregor's "History of Limerick," 1827, vol. ii. pag. 218.

Henriquez, in his "Fasciculus SS. Ord. Cistercien." printed in folio at

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with dauntless courage, the attempted innovations of Elizabeth, and whilst the storm of persecution was gathering around our island, he was at the same time the consolation and refuge of his immediate flock, and by his exhortations and the example of his spotless life, a pillar of strength to the Catholics of the whole kingdom. Hence he was at once marked out as their victim by the agents of persecution. Ware merely commemorates that Dr. Walsh was "very zealous for the Romish Church," and that on the accession of Elizabeth he not only did not assent to her innovations, but publicly impugned them, "for which the lord lieutenant confined him," at the same time soliciting further instructions from her majesty. An order to place him under close arrest was the reply, and a few months later he was deposed by royal authority, and deprived of the temporalities of his see. On the 13th of July, 1565, he was brought into court before Dr. Loftus and the other ecclesiastical commissioners, and sentenced by them to imprisonment in Dublin Castle. The motives which led to this sentence are thus stated by Dr. Loftus himself, in his letter to sir William Cecil, 16th July, 1565: "He refused the oath (of supremacy) and to answer such articles as we required of him: and besides, ever since the parliament he hath manifestly contemned and openly showed himself to be a misliker of all the queen's majesty's proceedings: he openly protested before all the people the same day he was before us, that he would never communicate or be present (by his will) where the Protestant service should be ministered; for it was against his conscience and against God's word."t

*

The

Brussels in 1624, devotes three whole chapters to the life of Dr. Walsh, which he thus entitles: "Gloriosum certamen B. Gulielmi Walshæi, Monachi Cisterciensis in Hibernia, Episcopi Midensis et Martyris," vol. ii. p. 362, seqq. other documents which we have consulted for this sketch of Dr. Walsh's lengthened martyrdom are the "Menologium Ordin. Cistercien.," by Henriquez; also, a fragment of an Italian martyrology of the Cistercians, written in the seventeenth century, and preserved in the Valicellian archives; and three letters of the holy bishop, which we were fortunate enough to discover in the Vatican archives. The reader will find an interesting sketch of Dr. Walsh's life in "The Diocese of Meath," etc., by Rev. A. Cogan, Dublin, 1862.

*Ware's "Annales Regn. Eliz.," 1560, and letter of Dr. Walsh, 5th July, 1573.

† Shirley "Orig. Lett.," p. 220. The Protestant archbishop in the same letter passes this eulogy on Dr. Walsh: "He is one of great credit amongst his countrymen, and upon whom, as touching causes of religion, they wholly depend."

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