ders at, was simply the usual tactic of the Highlanders in battle at this time. Before the charge each clan was formed into a wedge-shaped regiment, the front edge of which was formed of the chief and gentry of the clan, who were always the best armed, and usually the largest and strongest men. Just before the charge they fired into the enemy, threw down their guns, and drawing the broadsword with the right hand and the dirk with the left, rushed upon the foe. Each Highlander carried a small round target on the left foreIt was his object on reaching his antagonist to throw his bayonet up with this, and dashing in between two men to give the broadsword to one and the dirk to the other. This certainly very formidable mode of attack had the effect, at the Laney, at Killikrankie, at Preston-Pans, and on many another occasion, of scattering the enemy like chaff before the wind. Sir Walter Scott gives a graphic account of it in his description of the battle of Preston-Pans in Waverley.

arm.

Coleraine and Ballintoy were immediately besieged, and in a few weeks reduced to the last extremity of distress. Great numbers of fugitives had flocked into Coleraine, and over-crowding and starvation produced pestilential fever, by which great numbers of the inhabitants perished. Temple has the hardihood to print the following evidence of James Redferne :

"The mortality there (in Coleraine) was such and so great, that many thousands died there in two days; and that the

living, though scarce able to do it, laid the carcasses of those in great ranks into vast and wide holes, laying them so close and thick as if they had packed herrings together."

The truth was bad and sad enough without such preposterous exaggeration as this. Sir James McDonnell mentions that Lord Antrim had retired with his wife from Dunluce to Slane, near Drogheda, in the beginning of the insurrection. He now returned, says Carte, in his Life of Ormond, vol. i., p. 188,

"To his seat at Dunluce, a strong castle by the seaside; and after his arrival there, found means to supply Coleraine, which had been blocked up by the Irish, and was reduced to extremity, with one hundred beeves, sixty loads of corn, and other provisions at his own expense."

The Rev. Mr. Hill states:

"On this occasion Alaster MacColl, who was chief in command, consented so to relax the severity of the siege, that the inhabitants not only got ample space for themselves and their cattle, but were supplied with the best descriptions of food, beef and oatmeal. Alaster MacColl, who had here the fate of so many Presbyterians literally in his hands, thus dealt with them very much more humanely than even the rules of modern warfare would permit, and certainly very much more so than the Presbyterians would have dealt with him, had the circumstances been reversed."

The same author relates, in his Stewarts of Ballintoy, p. 22, another touching instance of humanity on the part of a truly Christian priest at the siege of Bal

*The MacDonnells of Antrim, p. 72, note 88.

lintoy, which was being prosecuted at the same time as that of Coleraine.

"During these operations," says Mr. Hill," the adjoining church was crowded with a trembling multitude of women and children, who were every hour threatened with destruction, either by fire or famine. In their dire extremity a good Roman Catholic priest, at great personal risk, interfered for their preservation. With difficulty he obtained permission to bring them water, and, in doing so, filled the water vessels with oatmeal, covering it with a few inches depth of water at the top. In this way he daily carried to the captives as much food as kept them alive till relief came. Tradition states that this truly good Samaritan was called MacGlaime, but nothing is known of him save this one noble Christian act."

From such Christian acts as these arise

"That incense

Whose fragrance smells to Heaven."

Gladly would I quote any similar deeds of mercy on the part of Parsons or other of the Puritan leaders in Ireland of this time; but as far as I know there are none such to record.

A few weeks later, Monroe, who had arrived in Carrickfergus in April with 2,500 Scotch troops, and had expelled the insurgents from Newry, marched to Coleraine, burning Glenarm on his way, and making Lord Antrim a prisoner at Dunluce. Carte says this was effected in a treacherous manner after an entertainment given him by Lord Antrim; but other authorities deny the treachery. Till lately I had lost

sight of Alaster MacColl completely for near two years after this―neither any historical account nor family tradition giving me any information about him between the time when he retreated into the County of Derry, before Monroe's overwhelming force, and the time of his appointment as Major-General of about 2,000 men, despatched by Lord Antrim in the middle of 1644, in aid of Montrose in the Highlands of Scotland. From Sir John Clotworthy's officer, already quoted, I have learned that Alaster quickly united his force with Sir Phelim O'Neill's, who, thus reinforced, marched to the Lagan, a district in the north of the County of Donegall, between the rivers Foyle and Swilly, to attack a body of Protestants under Sir Robert and Sir William Stewart. O'Neill received a severe defeat.

"The next Boute the Irish and British," says this author, "had in Ulster was at a place called Glommaquin,* in the County of Dungall, whither Sir Phelim O'Neil and O'Cahan, their chief commanders, marched with about 4,000 men. Which the British hearing, under the command of Sir Robert Stewart, an old soldier, entrenched themselves in the night, but had not time to make it full breast high before morning, when the Irish appeared close to them, and sent a brigade under the command of Alexander MacColla MacDonnell, a stout brave fellow (under the command of Mount Rose afterwards in Scotland), who charged up alone to the work but was shot, and after a very sharp skirmish the Irish fell back,

* Glenmaquin, in the parish of Raphoe, near Lifford, capital of the County of Donegall. The battle was fought 16th June, 1642. Hill— MacDonnells of Antrim, p. 75.

and took the retreat, where many were slain, and with much ado O'Cahan brought off MacDonnell in a horse-litter."

His wound was very severe and he had a tedious recovery, during which he was nursed by a priest named O'Crilly.

III.

In every history of this war which I have met with, scant justice is done to Lord Antrim, in respect to the services he rendered in support of the Royalist cause. He is held up to contempt as a braggart who made magnificent promises in 1644 to raise 10,000 men in aid of Montrose in Scotland, and ended by sending twelve or fifteen hundred men to join his standard in the Highlands. I assert with confidence that Antrim's services to Charles were far more important than those of any other Irish nobleman, with, perhaps, the exception of Ormond. I say perhaps, for I think Ormond's surrender of Dublin to the Long Parliament has left an indelible stain upon his character as a staunch and faithful cavalier. Already, in 1641, Lord Antrim had raised a regiment of 800 men, certainly intended by him for the support of Charles; but, by some unexplained cause, 600 of these men were Presbyterians, and therefore Parliamentarians, at the head of whom, reinforced by 200 volunteers of Coleraine, Archibald Stewart, Lord Antrim's agent, whom he had employed