bury him. Beside it Siberia was Eden. And many of those consigned to it returned to face death at the hands of the soldiers. And it is to be noted that even Connacht was not entirely left to them. For, not satisfied with obtaining the three more fertile quarters of Ireland, the covetous eyes of the British followed these creatures even across the Shannon-and the one fertile county of Connacht, Sligo, was filched from them, as well as many fruitful patches that God had granted to the remainder of Connacht. Sir William Petty, in his Political Anatomy of Ireland, estimated that the wars had reduced the population of Ireland from 1,466,000 in '41 to 616,000 in '52-so that much more than onehalf of the population of the whole country had been at that time exterminated. And they were probably dying more thickly during the terrible transplanting-and in the years immediately after, when they were cooped up in Connacht, without houses, cattle, or implements of tillage, striving as it were to live on manna from heaven. Petty also tells us that, whereas before 1641 the British in Ireland were to the Irish as two to eleven, when the Cromwellian Settlement was effected, three-fourths of the lands, and five-sixths of the houses belonged to the British Settlers. And when Petty wrote, in '72—after a period of twenty years' rest during which the exiled Irish had got some time to rehabilitate themselves—he records that three-fourths of the population existed upon milk and potatoes, and lived in cabins that had neither chimney, door, stairs, nor window-"So," exclaims Sir William, and we can see the pious and gallant Briton rub his hands for glee, "they will never rebel again." Now, as ever in Ireland, the gloom is illumined by a radiance behind. While things are at their blackest, the people, like driven animals, agonising most sorely, both learning and religion are still cherished-cherished not only by those cooped up in Connacht, but by the dispossessed who had remained hewers of wood and drawers of water for their dispossessors; and among the thousand who, escaping back from Connacht, were in every corner of the country insinuating themselves into its life once more. Keeping in mind that these creatures, under the terrible conditions pictured, were just clinging to a life of unparalleled hardship, it is something noteworthy and characteristic of the indomitable soul of the race, to find Petty testifying: "The superior learning among them is the philosophies of the schools and the genealogies of their ancestors-both which look like what St. Paul hath con demned!" The superior Briton in Petty makes him set down the priests as having small learning. But he admits in the next breath: "They can often outtalk in Latin those who talk with them." It was shortly before this time that King James' Commissioners the learned Protestant Primate, Archbishop Usher, sad to say, being one of them-suppressed the classical school conducted in Galway by John Lynch, the noted author of Cambrensis Eversus-praised it and suppressed it, and bound over Lynch in four hundred pounds "to forbear teaching." And cooped together in Connacht, or scattered fugitives, haunting the fields that had once been theirs, they clung to their religion too, with a perseverance that was sublime. Just before the Wars the people had been venturing, here and there, to bring their religion into the open. That good Puritan, Sir William Brereton, in the record of his journey in Ireland in 1635, expressed himself shocked at the painful sight that met his eye at Dundalk-"wherein the Papists boldly dare to go to Mass openly." And wherever they were, there also, lurking too, was the hunted priest with price upon his head." O'Hagan (afterwards Chief Justice) in his Essay on Irish History cites one of the edicts of that time: "If any one shall know where a priest remains concealed, in caves, woods, or caverns, or if by any chance he should meet a priest on the highway, and not immediately take him into custody and present him before the next magistrate, such person is to be considered a traitor and an enemy of the Republic. He is accordingly to be cast into prison, flogged through the public streets and afterwards have his ears cut off. But should it appear that he kept up any correspondence or friendship with a priest, he is to suffer death." Both the perseverance of the people in their thirst for learning and religion, and also the hard lot of the hunted priest, then, Here are a few sample disbursements taken from the Government records for 1657: "Five pounds to Thomas Gregson, Evan Powell, and Samuel Ally, to be equally divided upon them, for arresting a Popish priest, Donogh Hagerty, taken and now secured in the County jail at Clonmel." "To Lieutenant Edwin Wood, twenty-five pounds for five priests and three friars apprehended by him-namely, Thomas McGeoghan, Turlough MacGowan, Hugh Goan, Terence Fitzsimmons, and another-who on examination confessed themselves to be priests and friars." "To Humphrey Gibbs and to Corporal Thomas Hill ten pounds for apprehending two Popish priests, namely, Maurice Prendergast and Edward Fahy." "To Arthur Spollen, Robert Pierce, and John Bruen, five pounds for their good service performed in apprehending and bringing before the Right Honourable Chief Justice Pepys on the twenty-first January last, one Popish priest, Edwin Duhy." is well pictured for us by a Jesuit, Father Quinn, who, in the early 'fifties, in a Latin report, from Galway, made to his superiors in Rome (and preserved in St. Isidore's) writes: "On a spot of ground in the middle of an immense bog, Father James Forde constructed for himself a little hut, whither boys and youths came and still come to be instructed in the rudiments of learning, virtue, and faith. Then they go from house to house and teach parents and neighbours what they learnt in the bogs. "Our life is therefore daily warfare and living martyrdom. We never venture to approach any houses of Catholics, but live generally in the mountains, forests, and inaccessible bogs-where Cromwellian troopers can not reach us. Thither crowds of poor Catholics flock to us, whom we refresh by the Word of God and consolations of the Sacraments. Here in wild mountain tracts, we preach to them constancy in faith and the mystery of the Cross of Our Lord." In spite of all precaution taken for the secret exercises, Cromwellians often discovered it: then the wild beast was never hunted with more fury, nor tracked with more pertinacity, through mountains, woods, and bogs, than the priest. "I cannot omit a lamentable incident which occurred here lately," says Father Quinn, "three hundred Catholics bound in chains, were carried to a desolate island-where they were abandoned. All of them starved to death except two who swam away. One sank. One reached land." After the Puritan fury had expended itself, and the native Irish were everywhere mysteriously springing up again-out of the bowels of the earth as it seemed-we have interesting testimony of the rapid recovery of the race, and revival of its religion, from the French traveller Janvin de Rochefort, who went through Ireland in 1668. He found: "Even in Dublin more than twenty houses where Mass is secretly said, and in about a thousand places, subterranean vaults and retired spots in the woods." Spending a Sunday in Drogheda he was told he could hear Mass two miles outside the city-where he found it being celebrated in a poor chamber in a mean hamlet. He was astonished at the numbers he saw flocking through the woods and across the mountains to attend. And he adds: "Here I saw, before Mass, fifty who confessed and afterwards communicated with devotion truly Catholic." Like all the many other English attempts of the like kind, the Cromwellian Settlement did not settle-and the Cromwellian extirpation did not extirpate-the perverse race. For the wars of the 'Forties and Cromwellian Settlement see the following: Belling's History of the Irish Confederation. Meehan's Confederation of Kilkenny. Warner's History of the Rebellion. Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormond. Green's Short History of the English People. Lord Maguire's Narrative. Murphy's Cromwell in Ireland. Taylor's Life of Owen Roe. CHAPTER LII THE WILLIAMITE WARS WHEN to England's throne and Ireland's governorship came James II (1685), his first act was to suspend the Penal Laws against Catholics and Dissenters-whereby he filled the majority of his English subjects and the Puritan settlers in Ireland with horror. Furthermore, he decided to effect a reform in the government of Ireland. So, he sent over Richard Talbot, later known in Irish history as the Duke of Tyrconnell. Talbot had been attached to King Charles's suite since the Restoration. He was an Irishman and a Catholic; "a large powerful-looking man, brilliant and handsome in his youth" says Gramont in his "Memoirs," "of nobility, not to say haughtiness in his manners." It was recorded of him that he always paid his debts. He was fifty years of age when the king chose him for the service. A tall cavalry officer of Irish birth, then in England, captain in Hamilton's dragoons by name Patrick Sarsfield, held an opinion later that Tyrconnell lacked decision and boldness. However, on being appointed to the command of the army in Ireland, and in the following year to the Lord Lieutenancy, he showed no lack of decision. He had been at the sack of Drogheda, a boy of sixteen. That memory, and the king's cause to serve, caused him speedily to make a radical change in the army. The Puritan element was removed from the ranks; regiments were recruited from Irish Catholics; the Cromwellian officers were replaced by Irishmen. "I have put the sword in your hands," he is reported to have said to the Irish Privy Council; and the statement was true. He went further. The charters of the Corporations, all framed in favour of the foreigner, the English settler, were called in. He appointed Catholics as judges and magistrates, and placed Catholics on his Council. These mere acts of justice appeared crimes to the settlers. To complete his sins Tyrconnell sent three thousand Irish soldiers to England as a reinforcement for James's army. Their arrival was regarded with horror. The English believed them to be bloodthirsty banditti. |