modern war, if the rebels had been guilty during the three preceding weeks of a general massacre of unresisting men in the least resembling the Sicilian Vespers or St. Bartholomew. In the Carte Papers and numerous letters extending over the first months of the rebellion, preserved in the memoirs of Lord Clanricarde, though the rebellion in the North is constantly referred to, there is not a trace of such a general massacre. The gentry of Cavan, when taking arms, addressed a remarkable paper, justifying their conduct, to the Lords Justices. It is now known that this paper was drawn up by Bedell, who was at that time their prisoner, and the Lords Justices thought it deserving of an elaborate reply. That reply is dated November 10, nearly three weeks after the rebellion had broken out. It does not contain the faintest allusion to a massacre, though it is perfectly inconceivable that such a topic should have been omitted in such a document if it had really taken place. On November 30, a full month after the rebellion is said to have assumed its most atrocious form, Ormond wrote to Charles I. describing it. He confesses that he had 'little good intelligence,' but still it is extremely remarkable that he makes no mention of murders, and dwells mainly on the wholesale robberies that were committed. The rebels,' he says, are in great numbers, for the most part very meanly armed with such weapons as would rather show them to be a tumultuary rabble than anything like an army. Yet such is our present want of men, arms, and money, that though we look with grief upon the miseries the English suffer, by robbing of them in a most barbarous manner, yet we are in no wise able to help them.'2 Ulster was at this

1 MSS. English Record Office. 2 Carte's Ormond. 'Letters on State Affairs,' xli. (I have

modernised the spelling, which is very bad.)

time very thinly inhabited, and it was estimated that its whole Protestant population consisted only of about 100,000 Scotch and 20,000 English. There is much reason to believe that very few of the former perished except in open war. In the ten days or fortnight which followed the outbreak of the rebellion, during which the massacre was said to be at its height, they were, as we have seen, unmolested.2 They were quite formidable enough in arms and discipline to overawe a mere 'tumultuary rabble.'3 In their first collisions with the Irish it is almost certain that they were the assailants,1 and, as we have seen, they slew great numbers with scarcely any loss. It is true that after these encounters the Irish turned their fury against them as against the English, but they had by this time all over Ulster abandoned the

This is the estimate of Carte, i. 177, 178. It appears from a Government Survey that in the confiscated counties alone there were, in 1633, 13,092 men capable of bearing arms. Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement, p. 55.

2 See p. 49, note.

3 Lord Clanricarde wrote to his brother, the Earl of Essex: 'For my expressions concerning the Scots, I did and do still believe it may be worthy your consideration there, that they, when this rebellion began, were above 40,000 well armed, in the north of this kingdom, and might easily have broken it in the beginning; but they have stayed a time of more advantage, to have pay and arms out of England, strong fortresses delivered them there, and more forfeitures of estates. This I relate as the observations of knowing, discreet persons, and

no conceptions of mine.'-Carte's Ormond, Letters on State Affairs,' lxxxiv.

4 As early as Nov. 5, 1641, the Lords Justices wrote to Clanricarde: We have intelligence that 5,000 Scots are risen in arms against the rebels, and those Scots lie now at Newry, where they have slain many of the rebels and dispersed them from thence, saving a few environed in a castle, which cannot hold out against the Scots.'-Clanricarde's Memoirs, p. 11 (folio ed.). On the 14th, Parsons wrote to Clanricarde: The Northern rebels are still as they were, having no English among them. The Scots do hold them hard to it, and have killed some of them. We hear that some forces are landed there out of Scotland, and more are coming, who, I hope, will help to curb these saucy rebels.'-Ibid. pp. 19, 20.

open country, betaken themselves to strongholds, and organised their forces for regular combat.1

These considerations restrict the pretended massacre to narrow limits, and are sufficient to show that. it has been exaggerated in popular histories almost beyond any other tragedy on record. It has, unfortunately, long since passed into the repertory of religious controversy, and although more than 230 years have elapsed since it occurred, this page of Irish history is still the favourite field of writers who desire to excite sectarian or national animosity. English historians have commonly bestowed only the most casual and superficial attention upon Irish history, and Irish writers have very often injured their cause by overstatement, either absurdly denying the misdeeds of their country

1 On Nov. 13, the Lords Justices write: Such of the Scots and few English as were not surprised on the sudden by these rebels, but had tyme to make any defence, are now upon their guard.'-English Record Office. Clogy, after noticing a skirmish of Col. Kiltach with the English, the date of which is not given, adds: The Scots then, throughout all the province of Ulster, where they were the most numerous, betook themselves to holds, leaving all the open country to the enemy; for the first attempt of Col. Kiltach had so frightened them, that they thought no man was able to stand before that son of Anak' (p. 175). There is a curious letter in the Record Office from Turlough O'Neil, the brother of Sir Phelim, dated Nov. 22, to Sir Robert Stuart, a Scotch gentleman. He laments 'the ill-favoured massacre near

Augher,' declares that his correspondent's brother is as well provided for as the writer's wife, and protests that no Scotchman should be touched by any of the gentry. In a letter to Charles I., dated Dec. 12, 1641, Sir J. Temple says: The whole province of Ulster is entirely in the possession of the rebels, except that part which is possessed by your subjects of the Scottish nation who stand upon their guard only, and for want of arms and commanders dare not adventure to attempt anything of moment against the rebels.' English Record Office. There are a good many cases in the depositions in which Scotchmen were slaughtered, but it is probable that these occurred chiefly in or after a regular combat, though, no doubt, in the anarchy that was prevailing, there were some simple murders.

men, or adopting the dishonest and disingenuous method of recounting only the crimes of their enemies. There can, however, be no real question that the rebellion in Ulster was extremely horrible, and was accompanied by great numbers of atrocious murders. There was an unbounded opportunity for private vengeance in a country where a recent and gigantic confiscation, a recent mixture of bitterly hostile races, and a recent civil war conducted with singular ferocity, had made private animosities peculiarly savage and tenacious. Only a few years had elapsed since the confiscations of James I., and ever since they had taken place the alien race had been steadily encroaching by force or fraud upon the old inhabitants. Under such circumstances a popular and undisciplined rising of men in a very low stage of civilisation could hardly fail to be extremely ferocious. The whole English population in the open country were driven from their holdings and spoiled of all, or almost all,. that they possessed. Great numbers were killed in defending their homes from pillage. Many were turned adrift into the winter air, stripped to the very skin; many were murdered in their flight, and although a great part of the horrible details that were afterwards accumulated were probably false, it is certain that in many cases the murders were accompanied by circumstances of atrocious barbarity, and quite possible that in some parishes or districts they may have assumed the magnitude of a general massacre. Rage and fear, all the motives of religious and agrarian animosity, were combined. In great districts bands of plundering ruffians were complete masters, and the ejected Irish could do their worst on those who had so lately driven them from their homes. By two commissions, one dated December 23, 1641, and the other January 18 following, Henry Jones, the Dean of Kilmore, and several other clergymen in Dublin, were authorised by

the Government to receive evidence on oath and to make full inquiries into the robberies and murders that had taken place, in order to keep up the memory of the outrages committed by the Irish to posterity,' and their report, with the accompanying depositions, furnishes a very painful and a very authentic picture of the crimes that were committed.1

No one, I think, who reads this report with candour can doubt that the popular story of a general, organised, and premeditated massacre is entirely untrue. But it is equally impossible to doubt that murders occurred on a large scale, with appalling frequency, and often with atrocious circumstances of aggravation. At least eighty persons of both sexes were precipitated into the river from the bridge of Portadown,2 and perhaps as many at

1 A Remonstrance of divers Remarkable Passages concerning the Church and Kingdom of Ireland, presented to the House of Commons in England, by Dr. Henry Jones, agent for the Protestant clergy of that kingdom (1642). It is very remarkable that the first of these commissions was only to take an account of losses, and it was only in the second (that of Jan. 18) that it was amended to include murders. It has been argued, I think very justly, that it is perfectly incredible that this should have been the case if murders in the beginning of the rebellion had been as numerous or as conspicuous as has been alleged. See Mr. Prendergast's very able work, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, p. 60.

2 There are three depositions in the report on the subject of this drowning. According to one,

'Near fourscore English were drowned;' according to another, eighty persons; according to a third, 196. In the depositions, which were afterwards published in England by Rushworth, under the authority of the Puritan Government, for the purpose of exciting England against Ireland, the numbers had largely grown, and we read of Protestants in multitudes forced over the bridge of Portnadown, whereby at several times there were drowned above 1,000.' Temple, who based his history on the depositions in Trinity College, asserts that 'hundreds of the ghosts of Protestants that were drowned by the rebels at Portnadown bridge, were seen in the river bolt upright, and were heard to cry out for revenge on these rebels. One of these ghosts was seen with hands lifted up, and standing in that posture from the 29th of