THE PREFACE. THE Affairs of Ireland, ever since licentiousness, appeared there under the cloak of Gospelliberty, have been so strangely misrepresented abroad, especially in England, where every passage was stuffed with such groundless fictions and malicious calumnies, industriously contrived and spread about by a sort of people, who seemed to believe they could do no greater service to the God of Truth, than to act the part of the father of lies; that it is no easy matter for ordinary enquirers to trace out the naked truth of any thing transacted in that country these hundred years past, at least, to the satisfaction of those, who are too much prepossessed and wedded to their first notions, and perhaps have in this case no great mind to be unceived. 'Tis a true saying, opinion governs the world, and of all opinions that of interest is the most powerful It was Saint Paul's sentiment, that godliness is great gain; but the reformed Saints of this age invert the maxim, and do rather conclude, that gain is great godliness. A 2 1 Tim. 6. 6. Upon Steveys Upon this godly motive it was, that our zealous reformers went into Ireland to propagate their gospel, where they took more pains to make the Jand turn Protestant than the people; the confis cation of men's estates (as King Charles the first well observed of that tribes apostolical spirit) being more beneficial, than the charity of saving their lives, or reforming their errors.# And because they could not compass this so effectually, without rendering the Catholic proprietors very black and odious to the world, their great zeal for converting those Popish acres make them stick at nothing that might forward so holy a design; and therefore in all cases their chief text was, throw dirt enough, something will stick; Calumniare fortiter, aliquid adhærebit. Hence it is that those Protestants who went to settle in Ireland, and writ of what passed there either in their own time or before, especially since the reformation, took all possible care to stifle or disguise the truth, and were so far from mentioning any thing, at least as far as ever I could find, that might be of any credit or advantage to the Catholic natives, except some few pasages in Sir John Davis, that they loaded them on every occasion, with all the calumnies wit or malice could invent. And those their malicious and groundless fictions they imposed for truth, not only upon the inferior sort of English historians, who being all Protestants, and generally fanatics were apt to • Icon Basil, chap. 12. catch catch at any bulrush for promoting their good old cause, but even upon those of the first magnitude, particularly the learned antiquary Mr. Cambden, whose errors of that kind gave just occasion to the known and true epigram, "Angligenas occulis lustras, Cambdene duobus ; Uno occulo Scotos; Caecus, Hibernigenas. Of this sort of writers we have a cloud of instances, but a very remarkable one in Sir John Temple, who writ as many lies in a manner as lines, in his romantic legend of the Irish rebellion, on purpose to blacken the people, and exasperate the republicans of England against them, and against the King too, upon the account of the murders he pretends to have been there committed, whereof the hundred part was not true. And in our days the Rev. Dr. King, the pillar of the party, shews plainly in his late elaborate piece, what spirit our Irish reformers are of, when their interest prompts them to play the Devil in God's name. It were too tedious, and indeed not worth the while to mention the rest; they are all of a piece, and as the Scotchman says, the De'el a barrel bet. ter herrings; Insomuch that if they did not abominate confession, as much as they hate restitution (which though undeniably one of the most essential parts of a repenting Christian's duty, is yet never preached nor practised by Protestants, let them wrong their neighbours never so much) they might all unanimously cry with the scornful rulers of Jerusalem, mentioned by the prophet. We have made A 3 made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. For it seems very plain that the same active envoy, who offered to be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets of king † Ahab performed his part with a witness among these evangelical seers. For my part, I can affirm, I have here endeavoured to trace out and deliver the truth, as near as possible I could in so short a discourse; and the chief points of what is related in the following treatise, I have taken from authentic records and the most impartial memoirs of these times, or from living witnesses of quality and undoubted probity only in some few cases I followed the common and constart tradition of the most knowing people of that country which in my opinion, is much more warrantable than the malicious incoherent, and in some cases, morally impossible, relation of others. I am still ready to stand corrected, when better proofs are produced; for there is nothing I love so entirely as truth and justice; and therefore I hold myself obliged to any one that will give a more exact account of those affairs, with such proofs as may seem reasonable to any indifferent person, without shuffling or going about the bush. In the mean time, I will upon these terms conclude with the poet. Si quid novisti rectius istis candidus imperti Si non, his utere mecum. Isa. 28. 15. † 1. Kings, 22, 22. THE THE GENUINE History of Ireland. AS THE FIRST PART. S soon as Queen Mary died, Elizabeth, Henry the VIH's Daughter by Anna Bullen, was assumed to the Crown through the fatal stupidity of the Catholic clergy and laity, who were then by much the major part of the kingdom, and the men chiefly in power; yet foolishly preferring a bastard, of their own country, before the lawful issue of Henry the Seventh's eldest daughter, married into Scotland, they unanimously proclaimed Elizabeth Queen of England; though, besides many other proofs of her being illegitimate, they knew very well that she had been so declared by two Acts of Parliament then in force, and never yet repealed. This Queen being sensible, that by the ancient and known laws of the Catholic church, and the decrees of several Popes, which she could not expect to get repealed, she was a notorious bastard, and consequently had no right to the crown, (as in truth she had no more by the fundamental laws of the land than the late D. of Monmouth) openly declared herself a Protestant, and resolved to esta blish that sort of profession in all her dominions; in which undertaking her preachers had much the same |