spising our wholesome counsel) do otherwise, and remain in the obedience of the English, we will prosecute him as an heretic, and a hateful enemy of the Church, even unto death.

"DON JUAN DE AQUILA."

No. LV.

Death in

"apostolic vicar." A.D. 1602.

MILITARY PROCEEDINGS OF OWEN MAC EGGAN.

Of this remarkable ecclesiastic, some notice battle of an has been already taken at p. 835, of the present work; but the subjoined fuller and more original account of his performances, from Carew's work, (Pacata Hibernia, pp. 366, 367,) will no doubt be interesting and acceptable to the reader :

p. 366. [In the beginning of 1602 Captain Taafe being employed against the insurgents in Carbery, came to action with some of them on the 5th of January, when] "OWEN MAC EGGAN, (the Pope's Apostolike Vicar so often before mentioned) to put fresh heart into his company, with his sword drawne in one hand, and his portuis and beades in the other, with one hundred men led by himselfe, he came boldly up to the sword, and mainetayned a hot skirmish, untill he was slaine with a shot, whereupon his men (together with a fresh charge of our horse) were so amazed and terrified, partly by his death, and partly by their owne danger, that they brake instantly, and for better expedition throwing away their armes, leaped into the river Bandon, hoping by that

meanes to escape, but that little availed them, for they all for the most part were either killed or drowned in the river." [120 of them, he adds, were slain on this occasion.]

p. 367. [Having mentioned that after this discomfi- Importance ture all Carbery was wholly reduced to subjection, no of Mac Egone open traitour remayning therein," Carew goes on gan's overthus :-]

:

throw.

in Munster.

"A principall meanes of this suddaine and universall reduction was the death of that traitorly priest OWEN MAC EGGAN, which doubtlesse was more beneficiall to the state, than to have gotten the head of the most capitall Rebell in Mounster, for the respect that was borne unto him (by reason of his authority from the pope) and the credit which hee had obtained in Spaine was so great, as his power was in a manner absolute over them all, and he onely was the meanes of their obdurate obstinacie his dignity in being the Pope's Vicarius Apostoli- His influcus did hold them in vassalage unto him, and the livings ence, revegiven him in Mounster by the Pope's grant, were to be nues, and valued (if hee might quietly have enjoyed them) at three age thousand pounds per annum. And farther to ingage the Popish clergy of Ireland unto him, hee had power to dispose at his pleasure of all the spirituall livings in the Province of Mounster, by which authority, together with the credit he had gotten with the king of Spain (well testified by the trust committed to him in transporting and disposing the Spanish money, last brought into Ireland) he had obtayned in a manner all power, both over the temporality and spirituality of Mounster, and to depaint him in his true colours, a more malitious traytor against the state and crowne of England, never breathed, His treatwhich well appeared by the barbarous tyranny hee exer- ment of the cised upon his owne countriemen ; for assoone as any pri- loyal Irish. soners were taken (though of his owne countrey, birth, and religion) yet if they had served the Queene, he

VOL. III.

2 F

caused them first (in piety as he pretended,) to be confessed and absolved, and instantly (in his owne sight) would hee cause them to be murdered, which religious tyranny in him was held for sanctity. The president upon his returne to Corke, employed certaine messengers whom hee might trust, into the countrey to make search in such places as Mac Eggan usually resided, for such bookes and papers as were belonging unto him: divers books of schoole divinity (for the most part) were gotten, all which by the presidents gift fell to my share, and certaine papers amongst the which I will onely insert 3 in this present relation, the first contayning large indulgences, granted by P. Clemens the 8, to such of the Irish, as should beare armes against God's chosen servant, and their annoynted soveraigne the Queene's majesty, the tenor whereof here ensueth."

[Then follows the Bull of P. Clement, already given in No. XXIX sup.

Secondly, Clement's Letter to H. O'Neill; given in No. XXX. sup.

And Thirdly, A Bull of Pope Clement for granting spiritual livings unto Owen Mac Eggan; dated Oct. 31, 1595, and directed to "Dermitius" Bp. Cork (titular)-p. 371.]

No. LVI.

ANCIENT FAMINES IN IRELAND.

The rebellion of E.

Mention has been made in the course of this history of the famines with which Ireland has on

accompan

awful fa

different occasions been visited, as the result of Bruce, and rebellions raised in the country by its inhabitants the O'Neills, and their leaders. The notices.of these calamities ied with occuring in our historians are truly horrifying; mines. and would no doubt appear more so, were it not for the degree in which the mind has been familiarised to recitals of a kindred character even in these late years. Still after all, the accounts given in the following passages, of the famines of E. Bruce and the O'Neills, cannot fail to excite in the mind of the reader a painful and melancholy interest. They are taken, both extracts and references, from Mr. Stuart's valuable History of Armagh :

p. 179. "During the residence of this valiant adven- E. Bruce's turer [E. Bruce] in Ireland, the people were visited with followers the complicated miseries of faction, war, and famine. to acts of compelled How wretched must that situation have been which the cannibalannalist in Camden thus describes*-:

ism.

Many were so hunger-starved that in church- A.D. 1315. yards they took the bodies out of their graves, and in their sculls boiled their flesh and fed thereon: yea and women did eat their own children for stark hunger.'

"This most calamitous famine which seems to have Pembridge's pervaded the whole province [of Ulster] is gravely at- notion of the tributed by the annalist Pembridge to the wickedness cause of of the people who dared to eat flesh in Lent. It is proba- mine.

Annals apud Camden, p. 177. ↑ Perhaps a kind of vessel.

such a fa

F. Moryson's ac

count of the famine of 1602.

Case of children feeding on their mother's remains.

ble that this account of the effects of the famine is highly exaggerated. If the people were reduced to the necessity of using human flesh for food, it is not likely that they would have increased the disgust which they must naturally have felt for such diet by using the skulls of their deceased countrymen for boilers."

[But Mr. Stuart seems here to forget that people driven into the desolate fens and woods to save their lives from the ravages of war could not well carry about with them pots or saucepans or other kitchen utensils on such pilgrimages.]

p. 301. A.D. 1602. “ Ravaged by his [i.e. Lord Mountjoy's] troops, the country was totally inadequate to support its wretched inhabitants. Multitudes of the Irish, hunted from hill to hill, perished by famine, and lay horrid spectacles, unburied in the fields and in the open highways. The following quotation from Fynes Moryson, who was himself an actor in this tremendous scene of misery and blood, will convey to the imagination of our readers a lively and affecting image of the almost unexampled calamity with which this unhappy country was then afflicted.

'Now,' says that writer, because I have often made mention of our destroying the rebels' corn and using all means to famish them, let me by two or three examples shew the miserable estate to which the rebels were thereby brought.

'Sir Arthur Chichester, Sir Richard Moryson (his brother) and the other commanders of the forces sent against Brian Mac Art aforesaid, in their return homeward, saw a most horrible spectacle of three children (the eldest not above ten years old,) all eating and gnawing with their teeth the entrails of their dead mother; on whose flesh they had fed twenty days past, and having eaten all