mention is made by Leland or Carte: and, to throw the affair into complete ridicule, and display its wickedness and folly, there was no such person to be found as colonel Peppard; and lord Mountgarret, who was represented as so extremely dangerous, and so active a conspirator, was "of the age of fourscore years, bed-ridden, and in a state of dotage;" "321 most admirable qua

lities for a conspirator!

A considerable portion of the apparatus of this plot business consisted in the framing anonymous letters on the plan that succeeded so well against the earls Tyrone and Tyrconnel.322 They were sometimes sent to gentlemen's houses,* sometimes dropped in the streets, and were always full of throat-cutting, conflagrations, rapes, and

*"To the worshipful and my much honoured friend Orlando Bridgman, Esq. a burgess of Parliament, at his chamber in the Inner Temple, present.

"Sir,

"We are your friends; these are to advise you to look to yourself, and to advise others of my lord Strafford's friends to take heed, lest they be included in the common calamity: our advice is, to be gone, to pretend business, till the great hubbub be past; withdraw, lest you suffer with the Puritans : we intreat you to send away the inclosed letter to Mr. Anderton, inclosed to some trusty friend, that it may be carried safely, without suspicion, for it concerns the common safety. So desire your friends in Covent-Garden.

"January 4th, 1641–2."323

321 Leland, IV. 185.

322 Supra, 168.

323 Nalson, II. 836.

rapine. They never failed of exciting great alarms, and were always brought forward to serve some particular purpose of the moment. Few sessions of the Irish Parliament took place, which were not marked by some of those pretended plots. We presume that we have adduced evidence enough of them, and of the execrable spirit by which they were engendered. We shall, however, as the point to be established is of vital importance, annex a few more instances, the first of which is taken from the "Memoirs of Ireland, from the Restoration,"* and slightly referred

"Their just and terrible apprehensions were increased by a letter, dated the third of December, 1688, sent to the earl of Mount-Alexander, intimating a design of destroying the Protestants on the Sunday following. This letter was spread over the kingdom; and one cannot conceive the horrible fright it put them all into. The contents of it were as follow:324

"A Copy of the Letter dispersed about the Massacre, said to be designed on the 9th of December, 1688.

“Good my lord,

Decemb. 3, 1688.

I have written to let you know, that all our Irishmen through Ireland are sworn, that on the 9th day of this month, being Sunday next, they are to fall on, to kill and murther man, wife, and child, and to spare none; and I desire your lordship to take care of yourself, and all others that are adjudged by our men to be heads; for whoever of them can kill any of you, is to have a captain's place. So my desire to your honour is to look to yourself, and to give other noblemen warning, and go not out at night or day without a good guard with you; and let no Irishman come near you, whatever he be. This is all from him, who is your friend and father's friend,

324 Memoirs, 87.

to above, in page 168. With these we shall conclude this slight sketch of the odious history of letter-dropping,* forgery, and perjury.

One serious reflection here forces itself on the mind. How awful and deplorable must have

and will be, though I dare not be known as yet, for fear of my life.

"Direct this with care and haste

"To my lord Montgomery.3

325

"His lordship sent this letter to Dublin, with several copies of it; and copies of it were also sent to all parts of the kingdom. It arrived at Dublin on Friday, and THE DAY OF SLAUGHTER WAS TO BE TWO DAYS AFTER; the terror of which was so great amongst the English, that about three thousand souls got away on the Saturday. There happened to be a great many ships in the harbour at that time, and they were all so crammed, that the passengers were in danger of being stifled."326

* "There was dropped in the streets a declaration of the Catholics of Ireland, framed upon presumption that the design had been effected, and to the like purpose as is before remembered.327

"The more violent attempted to drive the duke of Ormond from his course of moderate measures, by alarming him with fears of assassination. Letters were dropped in Dublin, intimating a design of this nature, and several pretended to give an account of what they heard or suspected of this design.”328

“It had been a common artifice, just after the king's restoration, TO DROP SUGH LETTERS IN THE STREETS AND HIGHWAYS, IN ORDER TO RENDER THE IRISH ODIOUS."329

325 Memoirs, 87, King, 338.

327 Whitelock, 47. 328 Carte, II. 481.

326 Memoirs, 87.

329 Idem, 239.

been the situation of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, forming the great mass of the nation, when their happiness, their security, nay, their liberties and their lives, lay at the mercy of any miscreant that could fabricate such letters as that sent to lord Mount-Alexander, which, according to the account of the virulent writer of the "History of Ireland, from the Restoration to the present time," set the whole kingdom in a flame! And let it be borne in mind, that every such letter, every rumour of a conspiracy, was intended to introduce, and did produce, some act to violate the rights, or depredate on the property, of those persecuted religionists.

We have asserted, that the witnesses were guilty of the most manifest perjury. Let us add, that the English judiciary, although so extravagantly eulogized, was then in so deplorable a state, so lost were the judges to every sense of honour and rectitude,-and so sealed was the fate of the miserable men brought—not to trial, but condemnation, that the evidence of perjurers was received, in capital cases, and was allowed to hurry the victims to the gallows,

"With all their sins and imperfections on their heads."

The reader is requested to ponder on the following statement; and if he do not feel a holy horror at such monstrous injustice, then ought he to put this book in the fire, as unworthy of a man of his mind, and, for the rest of his life, feast

on the garbage of history to be found in Temple and Borlase,-par nobile fratrum.

Seven priests were indicted together at the Old Bailey, in the year 1679, for treason, in exercising their sacerdotal functions in England, contrary to the statute, which declared this a capital offence. The principal evidence against them was one Bedlow, who was, according to the testimony of Hume,330 a nefarious villain, of the most blasted character, whose evidence should not have been taken against a notorious felon. On the trial of L. Anderson, the first of the number, Bedlow was detected, in open court, in a most manifest and flagrant perjury. He had sworn that Anderson was the son of a gentleman in Oxfordshire, and that HE KNEW HIM AND HIS FATHER WELL. The lord chief baron, who happened to be then in court, was acquainted with the accused, who immediately appealed to him, to prove that he was the son of a gentleman in Lincolnshire; which the baron accordingly testified. The case-hardened Bedlow, no ways abashed, stated that he had his information, as to the place of Anderson's birth, FROM MY LORD PRIVY-SEAL'S NEPHEW; notwithstanding the atrocious villain had, a few minutes before, positively sworn that he knew him well.*

"Bedlow. He is a priest and an Englishman, if his mother was honest, and he honestly born: for he is Mr. Anderson's son, of OXFORDSHIRE, a gentleman of two or three Supra, 292.

330