THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 
 
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 MASSACRES IE IRELAND 
 
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 T H & Cl V I L YY A R OF 1 6 4 1 1 
 
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 JOHN McDonnell, m.d 
 
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 5UCHARI) JJ. WEBB!& son, PRINTERS, ABBEY-STHPiET 
 
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 Drumcondra, Ireland. 
 Purchased, 1918. 
 
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THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 
 
 KESPECTING THE 
 
 MASS AGEES IN IEEE AND 
 
 FROM 
 
 ABOUT A. D. 15 80 
 
 TO THE END OF 
 
 THE CIVIL WAE OF 1641: 
 
 JOHN McDonnell, m.d. 
 
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 DUBLIN : 
 
 RICHAED D. WEBB & SON, PRINTERS, ABBEY-STREET. 
 
 18 8a 
 

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 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https ;//archive.org/details/lightofhistoryreOOmcdo 
 
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 MASSACRES IN IRELAND 
 
 FROM ABOUT 
 
 A.D. 1580 TO THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR OF 1641. 
 
 In the following pages I propose to lay before my 
 readers, for the second time, an impartial and truthful 
 account of the atrocities mutually inflicted by English 
 and Irish on each other during the Civil War of 1641, 
 and a few years before — perhaps the most miserable 
 period of the sad history of Ireland since the Danish 
 invasion, about A.D. 850, which closed a long space 
 of time, more than two hundred years, during which 
 Ireland took the lead in European civilization. My 
 former essay was published seven years ago. The 
 VTiting of it was in a manner forced upon me by the 
 calumnies of Mr. Fronde’s English in Ireland. At 
 pp. 2 and 3 of my essay I wrote as follows : — 
 
 “ I have entertained the wish for some years past to write 
 an essay on the so-called Massacre of 1641 in Ulster, because 
 I thought I had found some overlooked facts relating to it, 
 calculated to throw some of what M. Lanfrey calls la 
 vengeresse cle Vhistoire on the gross and cruel exaggerations 
 of the received accounts of the Ulster insurrection ; but I 
 should probably not have taken up my pen at my years [set. 
 83] but for the spur applied by Mr. Froude’s English in 
 Ireland — a most mischievous production, which is solely 
 
 B 
 
 404444 
 
2 
 
 calculated to exasperate the Irish by the calumnious virulence 
 of its anti- Irish spirit, and to persuade Englishmen and Scots 
 that the oppression which the Irish savages had suffered was 
 only too mild for their deserts.” 
 
 I take up my pen to write on this hateful subject 
 again with great reluctance ; for the true history of it 
 is in the highest degree disgraceful both to England 
 and Ireland. This, my second essay, owes its birth to 
 compulsion, similar to Mr. Fronde’s, administered by 
 the recent publication of two octavo volumes, the very 
 title-page of which. The Irish Massacres of 1641-2, 
 stamps them as one-sided and unfair, and the whole 
 work bears ample testimony to the same conclusion. 
 The historian who suj)presses the truth is, in my 
 opinion, as guilty and as base as he who suggests the 
 false. 
 
 Mr. Froude, in his preface to Miss Hickson’s 
 volumes, says : — 
 
 We are asked to believe that the entire story” [of the 
 Massacre of 1641] “ was a fabrication, invented by the Puritan 
 English as an excuse for stripping the Irish of their lands ; 
 that there never was any massacre at all.” 
 
 To whom Mr. Froude here refers I do not know ; but 
 at all events I am not one of them. My creed respect- 
 ing the Massacres of 1641 is in print, and is as 
 follows : — 
 
 “ I do not question that very many murders and massacres, 
 on a small scale, were perpetrated by the Irish during the ten 
 or twelve years of this terrible Civil War ; but I maintain that 
 
3 
 
 no civil war ever occurred under similar circumstances without 
 similar deplorable consequences ; and, further, that none ever 
 will occur under similar circumstances without similar out- 
 rages, till mankind have learned, and reduced to practice, the 
 precept that when smitten on one cheek they shall turn the 
 other to the smiter. I assert also that these Irish outrages 
 were perpetrated by enraged mobs, impelled by what Burke 
 calls ^ the merciless policy of fear,’ or by wicked savages, such 
 as exist among all large bodies of men. The atrocities in both 
 kinds were liberally retorted by the government and the dis- 
 ciplined forces under its command. I will not assert, nor do 
 I think, that the atrocities on either side are in any degree ex- 
 cusable ; but I hold that the atrocities of a rude and ignorant 
 mob, furious from wrongs, are less inexcusable than those of 
 an organized, civilized, and ultra-religious government. I 
 make no terms with cruelty, and impartially abhor it, no 
 matter when, where, or by whom, it is perpetrated ; even 
 though the perpetrators believe, or pretend to believe, that 
 they murder for the love of God, or to promote the cause of 
 ' The Immaculate Spouse of Christ,’ the presumptuous and pro- 
 fane name given at this time to the Established Church of 
 Scotland by the Covenanters.” 
 
 It is not possible for any one who is not well in- 
 formed respecting the condition of the governments 
 of Scotland, England, and Ireland in 1641, to arrive 
 at a fair and just conclusion respecting the events 
 occurring in Ireland in the eleven years of the calami- 
 tous war which commenced in that year. 
 
 (1) In Scotland Charles shortly before had de- 
 clared war on the Covenanters, and had met 20,000 of 
 them with an army of 22,000 men near Berwick-on- 
 Tweed. The armies confronted one another for some 
 time, but never came to blows. Charles soon dis- 
 
4 
 
 covered that half-hearted or disaffected troops were 
 no match for the resolute Scots of the Covenant, and 
 that, therefore, in his case discretion was the better 
 part of valour.’^ He accordingly patched up a hollow 
 peace, and both armies retired to their homes. Not 
 long after Charles returned to Scotland, and yielded 
 to every demand of the Covenanters. The success of 
 the Scottish rebellion was now complete. Before 
 Charles returned to England the Irish rebellion broke 
 out, and he immediately raised and despatched to 
 Ireland, to crush the Ulster rebels, 1,500 men from 
 among his late opponents before Berwick. This fact 
 is perfectly inconsistent with Miss Hickson’s belief, 
 that he at the very same time sent orders under the 
 Great Seal of Scotland to Sir Phelim O’Neill to join 
 with and take the lead of the rebels. 
 
 (2) In England also Charles had suffered a signal 
 defeat. The Long Parliament, which met in 1640, 
 had demolished every despotic principle for which 
 Charles had contended, and had established a con- 
 stitution very similar in essentials to that which 
 we possess — ^justly the pride and boast of every 
 Briton. Macaulay gives the following masterly 
 sketch of it : — 
 
 “ Neither party wanted strong arguments for the measures 
 which it was disposed to adopt. The reasoning of the most 
 enlightened Eoyalists may be summed up thus : ‘ It is true 
 that great abuses have existed, but they have been repressed ; 
 it is true that precious rights have been invaded, but they 
 
5 
 
 have been vindicated and surrounded with new securities. 
 The sittings of the estates of the realm have been, in defiance 
 of all precedent, and of the spirit of the constitution, inter- 
 mitted during eleven years ; but it has been provided that 
 henceforth three years shall never elapse without a parliament. 
 The Star Chamber, the High Commission, the Council of York, 
 oppressed and plundered us ; but those hateful courts have 
 now ceased to exist. The Lord Lieutenant (Strafford) aimed 
 at establishing military despotism ; but he has answered for 
 his treason with his head. The Primate (Archbishop Laud) 
 tainted our worship with Popish rites, and punished our 
 scruples with Popish cruelty ; but he is awaiting in the Tower 
 the judgment of his peers. The Lord Keeper sanctioned 
 a plan by which the property of every man in England 
 was placed at the mercy of the crown ; but he has been dis- 
 graced and ruined, and compelled to take refuge in a foreign 
 land. The ministers of tyranny have expiated their crimes ; 
 the victims of tyranny have been compensated for their suf- 
 ferings. Under these circumstances it would be unwise to 
 persevere in that course which was justifiable and necessary 
 when we first met, after a long interval, and found the whole 
 administration one mass of abuses. It is time to take 
 heed that we do not so pursue our victory over despotism as 
 to run into anarchy. It was not in our power to overturn the 
 bad institutions which lately afflicted our country, without 
 shocks that have loosened the foundations of government. 
 Kow that those institutions have fallen, we must hasten 
 to prop the edifice which it was lately our duty to batter. 
 Henceforth it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on 
 schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachment all 
 the prerogatives with which the law has, for the public good, 
 armed the sovereign.’ ” 
 
 By this constitution a new House of Commons was 
 to be elected every third year, whether Charles had 
 dissolved the former one or not. The first serious 
 
6 
 
 wound inflicted on this constitution by the Puritans 
 was struck by the Act which rendered the existing 
 House of Commons virtually permanent. Charles 
 was thus deprived of the time- honored prerogative of 
 dissolving Parliament. This, however, was a matter 
 of small consequence, for Charles had hitherto exer- 
 cised his privilege with signal unwisdom. But by this 
 Act the people of England were deprived of their pre- 
 scriptive right, of inestimable value, to elect to each 
 new House of Commons, members whose political and 
 other opinions were in accord with those of the nation 
 at the time. 
 
 I am of opinion that when Charles affixed his sig- 
 nature to that Act he signed his own death-warrant. 
 With triennial parliaments there would have been at 
 least three elections between 1640 and 1649. The 
 first of these Houses would no doubt have been in full 
 sympathy with the Puritan faction ; but the second 
 would have contained many members whose consti- 
 tuents saw clearly the anarchy or republicanism to 
 which that faction was hurrying the nation ; and before 
 the third election, and after the administration of 
 Pride’s purge (the drayman who was now a colonel, 
 and was to be a peer of the realm, but not, I will 
 venture to say, a gentleman, for that creation by 
 Cromwell was ‘‘ aboon his might,” and would have 
 proved as difficult a feat as the proverbially difficult 
 one of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear), by 
 
7 
 
 which nearly 200 members were excluded at the point 
 of the bayonet from the House of Commons, for the 
 purpose of securing the execution of Charles, and the 
 cashiering of the House of Lords. I cannot doubt 
 that under these circumstances the third House of 
 Commons would have been elected under a violent 
 royalist rebound of public opinion, such as actually 
 occurred eleven years later, when the good-natured, 
 witty, and selfish profligate, Charles 11. , was restored 
 to his father’s throne without compact or condition 
 limiting his power in any way. If Charles had been 
 then restored to his throne it would assuredly have 
 been with the conditions, which he w^ould gladly have 
 accepted, that the constitution as described by 
 Macaulay should be re-established, and that every 
 Act lately passed by the Puritans tending to repub- 
 licanism should be at once repealed. This, indeed, 
 would have left him the dangerous command of the 
 army, but soldiers are not maintained and fed o’ the 
 chameleon’s dish, promise-crammed;” and if any mis- 
 chievous use were proposed to be made of them by 
 Charles he would soon have learnt that the Commons 
 would refuse to supply him with more substantial 
 food for his troops. 
 
 (3) The condition of the government of Ireland in 
 1641 presents a sad contrast to what we have just 
 stated respecting Scotland and England at the same 
 time. Ireland was now prostrate under the iron heel 
 
8 
 
 of the tyrant Strafibrd. Two terrible wars, in Mun- 
 ster and Ulster, had been carried on with relentless 
 cruelty for the destruction of the elder branch of the 
 Geraldines in the former province, and of the chiefs 
 O’Neill and O’Donnell in Ulster, in the end of the last 
 century and beginning of the present, well entitling 
 them to the name of massacres. Both wars were 
 carried on on the principle that the English soldiers 
 should carry off all the corn, cattle, and sheep, or 
 other food they could lay their hands on, and their 
 orders were that they should burn or otherwise 
 destroy whatever human food they could not carry 
 away. The cattle they could not take with them : 
 they had orders to kill and leave their carcases to rot. 
 Any magazine of corn which they were unable to 
 transport they were instructed to commit to the 
 flames. The standing crops were to be trampled 
 down, or the ears cut off with the sword. The neces- 
 sary result of this diabolical warfare was the death by 
 starvation of multitudes of old men, women, and 
 children who had no concern in the war. 
 
 Spencer, the poet of The Fairy Queen, an eye- 
 witness of what he records, -writes : — 
 
 “ The proof whereof I saw sufficiently exampled in these 
 late wars in Mounster; for notwithstanding that the same was 
 a most rich and plentifull countrey, full of come and cattle, 
 that you would have thought they should have been able to 
 stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to 
 such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued 
 
9 
 
 the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glynnes, 
 they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legges 
 could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death, 
 they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat 
 the dead carrions — happy where they could find them, yea, 
 and one another some time after, inasmuch as the very car- 
 cases they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they 
 found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked 
 as to a feast for the time, yet not able to continue long there- 
 withal! ; that in short space there were none almost left, and 
 a most populous and plentifull country suddainly left voyde 
 of man and beast ; yet sure in all that warre, there perished 
 not many by the sword, but all by the extremities of famine 
 which they themselves had wrought!’ 
 
 Sad contrast to the picture painted by the same 
 poet’s pencil as he knew it before the savage war, the 
 responsibility for the consequences of which he so 
 flippantly throws on the victims ! 
 
 “ And sure,” says he, “ it is a most beautifull and sweet 
 countrey as any is under heaven, being stored throughout 
 with many goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish 
 abundantly, sprinkled with many very sweet islands, and 
 goodley lakes, like little inland seas, that will carry even 
 shippes upon their waters, adorned with goodly woods even 
 fit for building of houses and shippes, so commodiously, as 
 that if some princes in the world had them, they would soone 
 hope to be lords of all the seas, and ere long of all the world ; 
 also full of very good ports and havens opening upon Eng- 
 land, as inviting us to come to them, to see what excellent 
 commodities the countrey can afford ; besides the soyle itself 
 most fertile, fit to yield all kind of fruit that shall be com- 
 mitted thereunto. And lastly, the heavens most milde and 
 temperate, though somewhat more moist than the parts to- 
 wards the east.” 
 
10 
 
 Mr. Fronde’s vivid picture of this war and its con- 
 sequences is not less calculated to make the stony 
 heart rue : 
 
 “ Every living thing was destroyed by which the insurrec- 
 tion could maintain itself. The corn was burned in the field; 
 the cattle were driven into the camp and slaughtered. The 
 men who could bear arms were out with their chief; the aged 
 and the sick, the women and the little ones, perished all in the 
 flames of their burning houses. The official records of this 
 deadly war return the killed and hanged in tens of thousands, 
 and famine took up the work where neither sword nor rope 
 could reach. Finally, when of the proud clan of the southern 
 Geraldines there was none left but a few scattered and despe- 
 rate bands, the last weapon was produced which never failed 
 to operate. Pardon and reward were offered to those who 
 would kill their comrades, and the bloody heads of noted 
 leaders were brought in sacksful to be paid for in land or 
 money. PJ The legate, hunted like a wolf, died wretchedly in 
 a forest shanty [hovel]. Desmond himself, after three years 
 of outlaw life, was betrayed by his own people; he was stabbed 
 in his bed, and his head was set on a spike on London-bridge; 
 while so utterly desolate was Munster, that the lowing of a 
 cow, or the sound of a plough-boy’s whistle was not to be 
 heard from Valentia to the Eock of Cashel” — a distance as 
 the crow flies of about 110 miles. 
 
 Lord Mount] oy carried on in Ulster the same 
 system of warfare adopted in Munster, the sword 
 being relentlessly supplemented by fire and famine 
 through three terrible years — the last of Elizabeth’s 
 
 * I take leave to suggest to Mr. Froude the insertion here, in his 
 next edition, of some little reprobation of this mode of concluding war 
 by subornation of assassination, and the reward of the assassin by par* 
 don and land or money. 
 
11 
 
 reign. This war for the overthrow of the Earls of 
 Tyrone and Tirconnell (O’Neill and O’Donnell) had 
 been waged, but inefficiently, for many years before. 
 For Mountjoy’s share in it I refer the reader to him- 
 self, and to his private secretary, Fynes Moryson, 
 who witnessed many of its horrors. 
 
 Towards the end of 1602 Tyrone’s country had 
 been penetrated by Sir Henry Dowcra, a brave and 
 skilful soldier, from Derry in the north ; by Sir 
 Arthur Chichester, from Carrickfergus in the east ; 
 and by Mountjoy, from the south — till they met in 
 the middle of Tyrone. 
 
 “Tyrone” [the Earl], “says Mountjoy in a letter to the 
 Council in England, “ is already beaten out of his country, 
 and lives in a part of O’Kane’s, a place of incredible fastness, 
 where, though it be impossible to do him any great hurt so 
 long as he shall be able to keep any force about him — the 
 ways to him being inaccessible with an army — yet, by lying 
 about him, as we mean to do, we shall in short time put him 
 to his uttermost extremity, and if not light upon his person 
 yet force him to fly the kingdom. In the mean time we can 
 assure your lordships thus much — that from O’Kane’s country, 
 where he now liveth, which is to the northward of his own 
 country of Tyrone, we have left none to give us opposition, 
 nor of late have seen any but dead carcasses, merely starved 
 for want of meat, of which kind we found many in divers 
 places as we passed.” 
 
 On returning to Dublin, he directed Dowcra to 
 station himself at Omagh, and Chichester to garrison 
 the fort of Mountjoy, on Lough Neagh, near Dun- 
 gannon, with orders to drive the inhabitants from 
 
12 
 
 Tyrone, to spoil all the corn he could not preserve for 
 the garrison, and to deface all the islands taken. 
 
 He writes from Newry, on his way to Dublin, on 
 the 1 2th of September, that — 
 
 “ In Tyrone, which had been reduced to a desert, and in 
 the neighbouring counties also, he had found everywhere 
 men dead of famine, insomuch that O’Hagan” [a chieftain of 
 Tyrone] ‘'protested unto us, that between Tullahogue and 
 Toome” [a distance of about twenty miles] “ there lay a thou- 
 sand dead, and that since our first drawing this year to Black- 
 water there were above three thousand starved in Tyrone.” 
 
 Moryson's testimony is to the same effect : — 
 
 “How because I have often made mention formerly of our 
 destroying the rebels’ corn, and using all means to famish 
 them, let me by two or three examples show the miserable 
 estate to which the rebels were thereby brought. Sir Arthur 
 Chichester, Sir Eichard Moryson, and the other commanders 
 of the forces sent against Brian Mac Art” [O’Heill] “aforesaid, 
 in their return homewards saw a most horrid spectacle of three 
 children (whereof the eldest was not above ten years old) all 
 eating their dead mother, upon whose flesh they had fed 
 twenty days past.” [I omit here some most revolting particu- 
 lars.] “Former mention hath been made in the Lord Deputy’s 
 letters, of carcasses scattered in many places — all dead of 
 famine. And no doubt the famine was so great, as the rebel 
 soldiers taking all the common people had to feed upon, and 
 hardly living thereupon (so as they besides fed not only on 
 hawkes, kites, and unsavoury birds of prey, but on horse-flesh 
 and other things unfit for man’s feeding), as that the common 
 sort were brought to unspeakable extremities (beyond the 
 record of most histories that ever I did read in that kind), the 
 ample relating whereof were an infinite task, yet will I not 
 pass it over without adding some few instances. Captain 
 
13 
 
 Trevor and many honest gentlemen lying in the Newry can 
 witness that some old women in those parts were used to 
 make a fire in the fields, and divers little children driving out 
 the cattle in the cold mornings, and coming thither to warm 
 them, were by them surprised, killed, and eaten, which at 
 last was discovered by a great girl breaking from them by the 
 strength of her body; and Captain Trevor sending out soldiers 
 to know the truth, they found the childrens’ skulls and bones, 
 and apprehended the old women, who were executed for the 
 fact. The captains of Carrickfergus and the adjacent garri- 
 sons of the northern parts can witness, that upon the making 
 of peace and receiving the rebels to mercy, it was a corhmon 
 practice among the common sort of them (I mean such as 
 were not sword-men) to thrust long needles into the horses of 
 our English troops, and they dying thereupon, to be ready to 
 tear out one another’s throat for a share of them. And no 
 spectacle was more common in the ditches of towns, and 
 especially in the wasted countries, than to see multitudes of 
 these poor people dead, with their mouths all coloured green 
 by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up 
 above ground. These and very many like lamentable effects 
 followed their rebellion, and no doubt the rebels had been 
 utterly destroyed by famine had not a general peace shortly 
 followed Tyrone’s submission.” 
 
 Soon after Mount] oy’s departure to Dublin, Tyrone 
 fled to the mountain fastnesses south-west of Lough 
 Erne in Fermanagh. The utmost force he could now 
 raise was 600 gallowglasses (heavy armed foot) and 
 kerne (light armed foot), and fifty horse. Nearly all 
 his vassals and allies, O’Donnell and O’Kane amongst 
 them, had made their peace ; and he himself, reduced 
 to despair, repeatedly made the most urgent appeals 
 to Mount] oy for mercy, and made solemn promises of 
 
14 
 
 the most submissive loyalty to Elizabeth for the rest 
 of his life. He wrote upon 12th November, 1602 : — 
 
 " I will from henceforth,” says he, " both renounce all other 
 princes but her, and serve her highness the residue of my life, 
 humbly requesting of your honor, now that you have brought 
 me so low, to remember I am a nobleman, and to take com- 
 passion on me, that the overthrow of my house and posterity 
 may be prevented by your good means and honorable care 
 towards her Majesty for me, which with all humihty I desire 
 and will accept.” 
 
 Early in 1603, when Elizabeth was on her death- 
 bed, Mountjoy permitted O’Neill to appear before him 
 at Mellifont, near Drogheda, and there the proud but 
 humiliated chieftain, on his knees before the Lord 
 Deputy for an hour, made ample confession of the 
 wickedness of his rebellion, and renewed protestations 
 of future loyalty, and received pardon. 
 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his admirable and truthful 
 Irish History and Irish Character, p. 72, speaking 
 of the terrible consequences of these two wars, says: — 
 
 " With these chiefs ” [the Earls of Desmond and Tyrone in 
 the reign of Elizabeth] “ a long, desperate, and wavering 
 struggle accordingly commenced. It ended in the total over- 
 throw of the chiefs, whose power finally sunk in the fall of 
 Tyrone; but it left Ireland a waste of blood and ashes.” 
 
 I have entered thus particularly into the history of 
 this rebellion, because it affords a demonstration that 
 O’Neill and O’Donnell could not have entertained the 
 thought of a new rebellion within four years of 
 O’Neill’s submission, or before the half-starved Ulster 
 
15 
 
 3 ^outli of 1603 had ripened into fighting men. Under 
 the circumstances, no man, not a cross between a 
 lunatic and an idiot, could have entertained the 
 thought for a moment. 
 
 I request the special attention of the reader to 
 this account of the war against O’Neill, and the bar- 
 barous mode in which it was conducted, because it 
 afibrds what really amounts to a demonstration of the 
 falsehood of King James’s manifesto in proof of his 
 assertion, that four years after his ruinous defeat by 
 England, and long before the half-starved youth of 
 Ulster had reached the military age, O’Neill had 
 plotted a fresh rebellion against the now united forces 
 of England and Scotland. James’s manifesto may 
 fairly be supposed to contain all the evidence he was 
 able to produce in justification of his charge against 
 the Ulster chiefs. It presents us with much most 
 undignified vituperation of them ; but outside his 
 own unsupported assertions no shadow of proof of 
 their treason is to be found in this strange docu- 
 ment. I give it in extenso, that the reader may 
 form his own judgment of it : — 
 
 BY THE KING : A PBOCLAMATION TOUCHING THE EAELS OF 
 TIRONE AND TIRCONNELL. 
 
 “ Seeing it is common and natural in all persons of what 
 condition soever, to speak and judge variably of all new and 
 sudden accidents, and that the flight of the Earles of Tirone 
 
16 
 
 and Tirconnell, with some others of their followers out of the 
 north parts of our realm of Ireland, may haply prove a subject 
 of like discourse : We have thought it not amiss to deliver 
 some such matter in publique, as may better cleare men’s 
 judgments concerning the same ; not in respect of any worth 
 or value in these men’s persons, being base and rude in their 
 originall, but to take away all such inconveniences as may 
 blemish the reputation of that friendship, which ought to 
 be mutually 'observed between us and other princes. For 
 although it is not unlikely that the report of their titles and 
 dignities may draw from princes and states some such cour- 
 tesies at their first coming abroad, as are incident to men of 
 extraordinary rank and qualitie, yet, when wee have taken 
 the best means wee can to lay them open in every condition, 
 wee shall then expect from our friends and neighbours all 
 such just and noble proceedings as stand with the rules of 
 honour and friendship, and from our subjects, at home and 
 abroad, that duety and obedience (in their carriage towards 
 them) which they owe to us by inseparable bonds and obliga- 
 tions of nature and loyaltie, whereof wee intend to take 
 streight accompt. For which purpose wee do hereby first 
 declare, that these persons above-mentioned had not their 
 creations or possessions in regard of any lineall or lawfull 
 descent from ancestors of blood or vertue; but were only 
 preferred by the late Queene our sister, of famous memorie, 
 and by ourselves, for some reasons of state, before others who 
 for their qualitie and birth (in those provinces where they 
 dwell) might better have challenged those honours which were 
 conferred upon them. Secondly, wee doe profess that it is 
 knowen to our counsell here, and to our deputie and state 
 there, and so shall it appeare to the world (as cleare as the 
 sanne) by evident proofes, the onely ground and motive of 
 this high contempt in these men’s departure, hath been the 
 private knowledge and inward terror of their owne guiltinesse : 
 whereof, because wee heare that they doe seeke to take away 
 the blot and infamie, by divulging that they have withdrawn 
 
17 
 
 themselves for matters of religion (a cloake that serves too 
 much in these days to cover many evil intentions) adding 
 also thereunto some other vaine pretexts of receiving injustice, 
 when their rights and claims have come in question between 
 them and us, or any of our subjects and them, wee think not 
 impertinent to say somewhat thereof. 
 
 And therefore, although wee judge it needlesse to seeke 
 for many arguments to confirme whatsoever shall be said of 
 these men’s corruption and falshood (whose heinous offences 
 remaine so fresh in memorie, since they declared themselves 
 so very monsters in nature, as they did not onely withdraw 
 from their personal obedience to their soveraigne, but were 
 content to sell over their native countrey to those that stood 
 at that time in the highest terms of hostilitie with the two 
 crowns of England and Ireland) yet, to make the absurditie 
 and ingratitude of the allegations abovementioned, so much 
 the more cleare to all men of equall judgement, wee doe 
 hereby professe on the word of a kinge that there never was 
 as much as any shadowe of molestation, nor purpose of pro- 
 ceeding in any degree against them for matter concerning 
 religion. Such being their condition and profession, to think 
 murder no fault, marriage of no use, nor any man worthy to 
 be esteemed valiant that did not glorie in rapine and opres- 
 sion ; as wee should have thought an unreasonable thing to 
 trouble them for any different point in religion, before any 
 man could perceive by their conversation that they made 
 truely conscience of any religion. So doe wee also for the 
 second part of their excuse affirm, that (notwithstanding all 
 that they can claime must be acknowledged to proceed from 
 mere grace upon their submission, after their great and 
 unnaturale treasons) so there hath never come any question 
 concerning their rights or possessions wherein wee have not 
 bene inclinable to showe them favour than to any of their 
 competitours, except in those cases v/herein wee have plainly 
 discerned that their onely end was to have made themselves 
 more able than now they are to resist all lawfull authoritie 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 (when they should returne to their vomit again) by usurping 
 a power over other good subjects of ours that dwell among 
 them, better borne than they, and utterly disclaiming from 
 any dependancie upon them. 
 
 “ Having now delivered this much concerning these men’s 
 estates and their proceedings, wee will onely end with this 
 conclusion, that they shall not be able to denie, whensoever 
 they should dare to present themselves before the seate of 
 justice, that they have (before the running out of our king- 
 dom) not onely entered into combination for stirring sedition 
 and intestine rebellion, but have directed divers instruments 
 as well priestes as others, to make offers to foreign states and 
 princes (if they had bene as ready to receive them) of their 
 readinesse and resolution to adhere to them whensoever they 
 should seeke to invade that kingdom. Wherein, amongst 
 other things, this is not to be forgotten, that under condition 
 of being made free from English government, they resolved 
 also to comprehend the utter extirpation of all those subjects 
 that are now remayning alive within that kingdom, formerly 
 descended from the English race. In which practices and 
 propositions, followed and fomented by priestes and jesuites 
 (of whose function in these times the practice and persuasion 
 of subjects to rebel against their soveraignes is one special 
 and essential part and portion) as they have found no such 
 encouragement as they expected and have boasted of, so wee 
 doe assure ourselves, that when this declaration shall bee 
 seene and duely weighed with all due circumstances, it will 
 bee of force sufficient to disperse and to discredit all such un- 
 trueths, as these contemptible creatures, so full of infidelity 
 and ingratitude, shall disgorge against us and our just and 
 moderate proceeding, and shall procure unto them no better 
 usage than they would wish should bee afforded to any such 
 packe of rebels, borne their subjects, and bound unto them in 
 so many and so great obligations. 
 
 “ Given at our palace of Westminster, the fifteenth day 
 
of November, in the fifth yeere of our reigne of Great 
 Britain, France, and Ireland. God Save the King.” 
 
 The world was favoured in this proclamation with 
 much vulgar and false abuse of the Earls, and mere 
 assertion, without proof of any kind of their guilt. 
 But though James fails conspicuously in this respect, 
 he furnished shortly after a singular piece of evidence 
 in favour of thqir innocence. Baron Delvin, one of 
 the alleged conspirators already mentioned, surren- 
 dered himself to James, was soon after in high favour 
 with him, and was created by him Earl of Westmeath. 
 The evidence against O’Neill and O’Donnell, however 
 flimsy, was abundantly sufficient to procure their at- 
 tainder and the confiscation of their vast estates by 
 Act of Parliament in 1613, to be at the disposal of 
 the King. By a crowning act of incredible injustice, 
 all who held lands under the chiefs, however innocent 
 of complicity, forfeited them, and James was enabled 
 to undertake the grateful task of executing the Plan- 
 tation of Ulster, and the introduction of civility, by 
 such means, into the North of Ireland. 
 
 Thus, by an act of atrocious and lawless cruelty, 
 under the mask of law, were six counties of Ulster 
 forfeited to the Crown. The passive submission of 
 the despoiled natives affords strong corroboration of 
 what I have stated as to the nearly complete destruc- 
 tion of the fighting men of the population. 
 
 The foundation of the charge of treason against the 
 
20 
 
 Ulster chiefs was an anonymous letter addressed to 
 Sir William Usher, Clerk of the Privy Council, which 
 had been dropped in the Privy Council Chamber, in 
 which O’Neill, O’Donnell, and Eichard Nugent, Baron 
 of Delvin, were alleged to have entered into a con- 
 spiracy to seize the Castle of Dublin, put the Lord 
 Deputy to death, and raise a general rebellion. Two, 
 and two only plausible facts have ever been produced 
 against them in proof of this charge — viz : (l) Their 
 immediate flight from Ireland the moment the accu- 
 sation was preferred against them ; and (2) that they 
 never published any demonstration of their innocence. 
 O’Donnell died soon after his flight, but O’Neill lived 
 many years after in Rome, and it is a fact that no 
 vindication of the alleged guilt was ever published by 
 him. The first charge is easily disposed of. He fled 
 to save his life, which, without doubt, would have 
 been forfeited if he had submitted himself to trial. If 
 asked why he did not do so, he might have answered, 
 fairly and truthfully, as another Irish exile did 
 under similar circumstances : — “ What chance would 
 a fat goose have before a jury of foxes To the 
 second plausible fact against O’Neill, so far as I 
 am aware, no satisfactory answer has yet been given ; 
 but I am very strongly of opinion that an answer, 
 both satisfactory and obvious, is forthcoming. During 
 his long residence in Rome he was entirely dependent 
 for the support of himself and his family on the libe- 
 
21 
 
 rally supplied pensions of Philip of Spain and the 
 Pope. If he had published, as he easily could have 
 done, clear proof of his innocence of the charge of 
 treason, and quoting his solemn promise on his knees 
 before Mountjoy, that he would be, during his future 
 life, a devotedly loyal subject of King James, he 
 would incontinently have lost his pensions and his 
 daily bread. 
 
 The evidence of treason against the Earls of Tyrone 
 and Tirconnell (O’Neill and O’Donnell), however 
 flimsy, was abundantly sufficient to procure the con- 
 fiscation of their vast estates, and to vest in the 
 Crown by Act of Parliament, in 1614, six counties of 
 Ulster. By this act of legalized robbery a multitude 
 of persons holding farms under the chiefs, and per- 
 fectly innocent of complicity in the alleged treason, 
 were dispossessed of their arable lands; but, with a 
 generosity lauded by Mr. Fronde, were recouped in 
 the bogs, forests, and mountains. A more flagrant 
 act of despotic injustice and cruelty on a large scale 
 was never perpetrated under the mask of law. Mr. 
 Fronde, with his habitual inaccuracy, says ‘‘ two 
 million acres were confiscated.” If he had consulted 
 Thom’s Almanack he would have learned that the 
 counties of Donegal and Derry alone contain 1,999,736 
 . acres. (I have long regarded the late Mr. Thom as 
 one of our benefactors, who devoted his genius and 
 remarkable ability and industry to the service of Ire- 
 
22 
 
 land. The Almanack informs me that Tyrone con- 
 tains 778,943 acres; Fermanagh, 457,570; Armagh, 
 328,086 ; and Monaghan, 319,742; giving a total of 
 3,884,077 acres for the six confiscated counties. 
 
 These considerations leave no doubt on my mind 
 that James’s charge of treason and rebellion was abso- 
 lutely false. Even, however, if it had been perfectly 
 true, the dispossession of the multitudes who held 
 under the Earls, and were not even accused of com- 
 plicity in the projected rebellion, would have been 
 sheer public robbery. 
 
 I have my own reasons for believing that that king 
 was an extremely wicked man, capable of any atrocity 
 that would put money in his purse. He drove my 
 family out of Scotland in the early part of the seven- 
 teenth century, and would have extinguished it but 
 for the refuge we had in the county Antrim. He 
 proposed to the Marquis of Huntly, the chief of the 
 powerful clan Gordon, to assist him in ridding himself 
 of the M'Donnell’s of Isla, Cantyre, and the Glens of 
 Antrim, then the most powerful family of the Clan 
 MacDonald. Gregory, in his History of the Western 
 Highlands and Isles of Scotland, writing of this 
 infamous transaction, says : — 
 
 “ There seems no reason to doubt that if not originally 
 suggested by James himself, they” [z.e., the terms of agree- 
 ment with Huntly] “ certainly received his approval. They 
 were as follow : — That the Marquis should undertake the ser- 
 
23 
 
 vice upon liis own private means alone ; that he should 
 conclude it within a year, and have no exemption from paying 
 rent, but for that space ; that he should end the service, not 
 by agreement with the country people, but by extirpating 
 them.” 
 
 And again Gregory writes : — 
 
 “ This accident — for it does not bear the appearance of a 
 scheme concerted to save the islanders — seems alone to have 
 prevented the reign of James VI. from being stained by a 
 massacre which, for atrocity and the deliberation with which 
 it was planned, would have left that of Glenco far in the 
 shade.” — (Gregory’s History, pp. 314, 315, 1st edition.) 
 
 Gregory’s assertion is perfectly true. The Glenco 
 MacDonalds were the smallest sept of the clan, and 
 the Isla, etc., McDonnells were then, and for one 
 hundred and fifty years before, the most numerous 
 family of the clan. If Dalrymple’s and James’s 
 massacres had been successfully carried out, the 
 former would have sacrificed about 700 lives, the 
 latter about 10,000. James’s inhuman scheme was 
 defeated by the accident that Huntly was a Eoman 
 Catholic. The Presbyterian government of Scotland 
 did not therefore choose that he should acquire a 
 great accession of power by becoming the lord of 
 our extensive possessions. He was therefore ad- 
 judged to betake himself to Elgin, and confine 
 himself within a circle of eighteen miles round it, 
 and to listen to a daily discourse from a Puritan 
 minister, to convert him from his damnable and 
 idolatrous errors of faith, and accept those of the 
 
24 
 
 Immaculate Spouse of Christ/’ above-mentioned, p. 
 3. This was the accident alluded to by Gregory, 
 which of course broke the compact between him and 
 James, and obliged the latter to have recourse to the 
 Campbells, to aid him in driving us out of Scotland 
 without massacre. Since then we have been only too 
 happy to be able to hide our diminished heads, safe 
 from king and Campbell, in Ireland, under the cur- 
 tailed title of the McDonnells of Antrim. 
 
 The confiscation of the property of the inhabitants 
 of about two-thirds of Ulster was a principal cause of 
 the Eebellion of 1641. It should always be borne in 
 mind that the outrage in question was then so recent 
 that many of the dispossessed were still living, or 
 were the children ofi^the dispossessed. The confisca- 
 tion took place between twenty and thirty years 
 before 1641. The condition of Ireland in every other 
 respect was very miserable. At the time of his death 
 James was engaged in an internal conflict to decide 
 whether he would confiscate Connaught, or accept 
 from the gentry a bribe of £10,000 to secure them 
 in the possessions which they and their ancestors had 
 held for centuries with unquestioned titles. Charles 
 I., soon after his fathers death, accepted a bribe 
 of £120,000 to secure the Connaught landowners 
 against all claims of the Crown after sixty years of 
 undisputed possession ; but was so base as to allow 
 his Lord Lieutenant (Strafford) to refuse the grace, 
 
25 
 
 as it was called. No black-leg ever performed a 
 more disgraceful swindle. Just before the outbreak 
 of the Rebellion, Straftbrd had nearly completed 
 his preparations for the confiscation of Connaught. 
 By a mixture of legal chicane, bribery of the judges, 
 and intimidation of juries by 500 horse, who ac- 
 companied him to the trials, as he said, as 
 good lookers on,’^ he had succeeded in vesting the 
 province, except the County Galway, in the Crown. 
 Here only the jury ventured to find in favor of the 
 proprietors. Forthwith, with characteristic insolence, 
 lawlessness, and contempt of justice, he fined the 
 sheriff £1,000 for returning an improper jury, and 
 summoned the jury to appear before the Castle 
 Chamber (his Irish Star Chamber), by which they 
 were fined £4,000 each, and imprisoned till the fines 
 were paid, and till they had confessed their offence 
 before the court on their knees. He also called on 
 the Roman Catholic lawyers who had pleaded against 
 the Crown to take the oath of supremacy, their refusal 
 to take which disqualified them for the exercise of 
 their profession. — (Cooke Taylor, vol. i. p. 254, and 
 Wright’s History of Ireland, p. 641.) 
 
 Elizabeth, in the beginning of her reign, by a stroke 
 of her pen, had handed over to English Protestant 
 clergymen, who were incapable of holding any com- 
 munication with their Irish parishioners from igno- 
 rance of their language, the churches and tithes which 
 
26 
 
 had been the property of the Roman Catholic clergy 
 for about three hundred years. This lawless act of 
 despotism was carried out as far as her bayonets 
 extended, and in 1641 was in force over all Ireland. 
 The Roman Catholic gentry were excluded from the 
 army and navy, from every office in the law courts, 
 from the judge to the crier, and from every office 
 under the Crown. Every Roman Catholic was by 
 law liable to a fine of a shilling for every Sunday on 
 which he had not attended divine service in a Pro- 
 testant church. Lastly, shortly before leaving Ireland 
 to meet his fate on the scaffold, Strafford was able to 
 boast in a letter to Archbishop Laud : — 
 
 Now I can say the king is as absolute here as any prince 
 in the whole world can be, and may be still, if it be not 
 spoiled on that side [viz., in England].” 
 
 The tyranny exercised by Strafford powerfully con- 
 tributed to excite the impending Ulster explosion. 
 
 Such was the deplorable condition of this most un- 
 fortunate country, deprived of the last remnant of her 
 liberties, at the commencement of the Civil War. 
 
 Nevertheless, Miss Hickson, in her scandalously 
 partial History of the Irish Massacres of 1641, has 
 the hardihood to write what follows : — 
 
 “ Sir John Bingley’s account of the two Episcopalian 
 churches in Ireland in 1628, which I have already quoted, 
 shows that the Roman Catholic Church, popularly supposed 
 nowadays to have been at that time depressed and proscribed, 
 was on the contrary virtually supreme in Ireland. Its arch- 
 
27 
 
 bishops, bishops, deans, vicars-general, abbots, priors, and 
 priests habitually resided in the island, taking all the tithes 
 and dues of their office as amply as the Protestant bishops 
 and clergy.” — (Miss Hickson’s Irish Massacres, vol. i. p. 89.) 
 
 There is not in all the mendacious pages of Sir 
 John Temple’s History of the Rehellion of 1641 a 
 more audacious and outrageous falsification of Irisli 
 history than this. Yet must I condone the outrage 
 in consideration of her complete demolition of her 
 falsification by one “ swashing blow ” dealt by her 
 right hand in her very next page. She says : — 
 
 “ Pending the arrival of Wentworth” [in 1633] ''a fraternity 
 of Carmelites began to exercise their religious rites in one of 
 the most public parts of Dublin, close to the Castle. The 
 Protestant Archbishop and the Mayor, with a troop of sol- 
 diers, entered the monastery chapel, while mass was being 
 celebrated, and attempted to disperse the congregation, who 
 turned upon them with such violence, that the soldiers and 
 their leaders, armed as they were, had to fly for their lives. 
 The English Council, hearing of this encounter, once more 
 reversed its policy, and ordered the monastery and chapel to 
 be razed, and fifteen other religious houses in the city to be 
 confiscated to the King’s use. A Eoman Catholic College, 
 which had lately been erected in or near Dame-street, was 
 also seized and handed to the University authorities, who 
 converted it into a Protestant school.” 
 
 Miss Hickson repeats her monstrous assertion re- 
 specting the virtual supremacy of Catholicism at this 
 period, at p. 107, vol. i. 
 
 I beg of the reader to contrast the historical narra- 
 tive I have laid before him, of the wrongs and oppres- 
 
28 
 
 sions by which the Irish Eoman Catholics were 
 afflicted at this time, with Mr. Hume’s preposterous 
 assertion that the outbreak was without injury and 
 without cause. 
 
 Without provocation/’ says Hume, describing the com- 
 mencement of the rebellion, on the authority of Sir John 
 Temple, “ without opposition, the astonished English, living 
 in profound peace and full security, were massacred by their 
 nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a 
 continued intercourse of kindness and good offices.” Again : 
 “ All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise — all the 
 lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of 
 despair — could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and 
 cruelty derived from no cause.” 
 
 It should be borne in mind that in this century the 
 Roman Catholic population of Ireland bore to that of 
 the Established Church the ratio of about eight to one 
 and a half. Sir William Petty, by far the best autho- 
 rity on the statistics of Ireland at this time, states that 
 in 1672 the Roman Catholics were 800,000 and the 
 non-Papists 300,000 [see Petty’s Political Anatomy of 
 Ireland, Mr. Thom’s reprint, p. 19], and of this 
 Protestant population about a half were of the 
 Established Church. 
 
 There were very probably fewer Protestants in 
 Ulster in 1672 than in 1641 ; but the deficiency was 
 well compensated by the influx of Cromwellians about 
 the middle of the century. The original Puritan 
 settlers were certainly very bad Episcopalians, but 
 their children quickly discovered that it was their 
 
29 
 
 interest to belong to the Established Church. They 
 therefore swallowed their Puritanic principles, and 
 became first-class Orange Tories before the day of 
 William of Orange. 
 
 The Irish Eoman Catholics of this time are often 
 accused by Protestant writers of making unreasonable 
 and inadmissible demands. The accusation admits of 
 a short but crushing answer. Every item in these 
 demands of the least importance has now been con- 
 ceded by the free action of enlightened imj)erial par- 
 liaments of modern times. 
 
 Two deputations waited upon Charles in Oxford in 
 1643, whose demands well illustrate the comparative 
 reasonableness or unreasonableness of the petitioners. 
 The Eoman Catholics demanded the free exercise of 
 their religion and the repeal of the Penal Laws — that 
 a free parliament should be summoned, and that 
 Poynings’ law should be suspended ; that seminaries 
 for the education of priests and lawyers should be 
 created ; that an act of amnesty in favour of the 
 insurgents should be passed and their attainders re- 
 versed ; that all who did not reside in Ireland, and 
 did not possess Irish estates, should be excluded from 
 parliament ; and that an act should be passed declar- 
 ing the independence of the Irish parliament ; that the 
 office of Chief Governor should be triennial, and that 
 he should be incapable of acquiring any new lands in 
 the country during his term of office ; that parliament 
 
30 
 
 should inquire respecting all inhuman acts committed 
 by any party, exclude from the amnesty all persons 
 guilty of such acts, and prosecute them to conviction 
 in due course of law. 
 
 The Protestant deputation, on the other hand, de- 
 manded the rigorous execution of all penal statutes 
 against recusants ; the immediate and total disarming 
 of Catholics, the compelling them to repair all damages 
 sustained by Protestants ; the punishment of all of- 
 fences committed by recusants, without pardon or 
 mitigation ; the vesting of all estates forfeited under 
 the administration of Parsons in the Crown ; and, 
 after satisfaction had been made to such as claimed 
 under the A.cts of Parliament, the distribution 
 of the residue entirely to British planters. [See 
 Cooke Taylor s Civil Wars of Ireland, vol. i. p. 294.] 
 
 In short, the Koman Catholics demanded the re- 
 dress of intolerable grievances, and the Protestants 
 that all those grievances should be confirmed and 
 rigorously enforced, and that some severe new ones 
 should be enacted. 
 
 I have now placed before the reader clear evidence 
 of the state of affairs in each of the three kingdoms in 
 1641, which, in few words, was this : — (1) In England 
 Charles the First has been deprived of all despotic 
 power. He is now a constitutional king, without 
 right divine to govern wrong,” and a constitution 
 has been established very similar in essentials to 
 
31 
 
 that which exists at this day, which is truly and 
 justly the pride and boast of every Briton, as the 
 best, the wisest, the freest, and the most favourable 
 to progressive and cautious reform the world has ever 
 seen. (2) In Scotland a short rebellion against the 
 infliction of Bishops and certain horrible vestments by 
 Charles and Archbishop Laud had taken place, ter- 
 minating in the complete triumph of the Covenanters. 
 (3) In Ireland a rebellion, or more correctly a civil 
 war, had commenced in 1641, provoked by intolerable 
 oppression of the great majority of the people. 
 Twenty-five or thirty years before, a most iniquitous 
 and altogether unjustifiable confiscation of about two- 
 thirds of Ulster had been completed, the land of six 
 counties being vested in the Crown. The foundation 
 of a similar atrocity, the confiscation of Connaught, 
 was securely laid. A code of penal laws of great 
 severity and cruelty against Roman Catholics was in 
 force ; and lastly Strafford, during his seven or eight 
 years of rule in Ireland, had established, by the most 
 insolent and lawless measures, a grinding tyranny 
 over all Ireland, which enabled him to make the boast 
 in his letter to Laud, which I have quoted above. 
 The war lasted eleven years, and ended in the com- 
 plete victory of the Puritans and subjugation of 
 Ireland under the Cromwellian settlement — the most 
 cruel wrong ever inflicted on this most miserable 
 country. 
 
32 
 
 I believe that the massacres perpetrated by the 
 English about this time were as numerous, at least, 
 as those of the Irish — more destructive of human 
 'life — more inexcusable, because usually ordered by 
 the government or the leaders of armies ; — the 
 Irish massacres being usually the work of plundered 
 and terrified mobs of ignorant peasants. Sir Phelim 
 O’Neill is the only exception I know to this assertion, 
 and he was deprived of his leadership immediately on 
 the arrival of Owen Eoe O’Neill, eight or nine months 
 after the beginning of the war, one of whose first acts 
 was to notify that any repetition of massacres on his 
 side would forthwith occasion his throwing up his 
 command, and his departure from Ireland. By 
 massacre, I mean any indiscriminate slaughter of 
 men, women, and children, or of unarmed prisoners. 
 
 I wish here to state plainly that I hold the people 
 of England and Scotland as ^articipes criminis in 
 every cruelty and wrong inflicted on Ireland at this 
 time. I do not believe that any public protest 
 against any of them was ever pronounced in either 
 country ; on the contrary, they were cordially ap- 
 proved of. The Irish massacres were often perpetrated 
 with atrocious cruelty ; but I do not know one nearly 
 so atrocious, taking all the circumstances into consi- 
 deration, as the English massacre in the island of 
 Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim. 
 
 The Earl of Essex was carrying on, with money 
 
33 
 
 advanced by Elizabeth, a desultory war with Sorley 
 Buie (fair-haired Somerled,Froude’s ‘‘Yellow Charley”), 
 the leader of the McDonnells of Antrim, and father of 
 the first Earl of Antrim. Essex, without a shadow of 
 right, was carving out for himself an Irish estate with 
 his sword. He had learned that Sorley had sent 
 many of the women and children, and of the sick and 
 aged, of his people to Eathlin, to be out of the reach 
 of Essex’s sword. He ordered John Norris to take 
 two frigates which were lying opposite Carrickfergus, 
 troops, and cannon, to Eathlin. His laconic orders 
 were — “ Kill all you can find.” Norris found a small 
 garrison of Sorley’s Highlanders in possession of 
 Bruce’s castle, the ruins of which are still standing, 
 with two hundred women and children under their 
 protection. He soon knocked the outworks of the 
 castle to pieces, and the garrison proposed to surren- 
 der on condition to be allowed to return to the High- 
 lands. Norris, mindful, no doubt, of his orders, 
 replied that they must surrender at discretion. 
 They did so, and he cut their throats, and then 
 did likewise with the women and children. He then 
 ferreted out from caves round the island and other 
 hiding-places four hundred more women and children, 
 sick and aged, and slaughtered them. Essex writes a 
 description of this diabolical atrocity to Elizabeth, 
 and she replies : — 
 
 I am well pleased with your good service, and will take 
 care to reward John Norris.” 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 It is not easy, I think, to believe that this shocking 
 narrative is not a fable ; but the letters of Elizabeth 
 and Essex are extant. 
 
 The English massacres were often ordered by leaders 
 of armies, or even by the government — as when 
 
 i 
 
 Parsons and Borlase, the Irish Lords- Justices, order 
 Ormonde to kill not only the rebels they meet, but 
 also all men capable of bearing arms, or when the 
 Long Parliament ordains that no quarter shall be 
 given to Irish Papists taken in arms. This ordinance 
 was pleaded in justification of the cold-blooded mas- 
 sacre of four hundred prisoners of Montrose’s Irish 
 Brigade, who, on the morning after the ruin of Mont- 
 rose at Philiphaugh, were marched two miles up the 
 Yarrow, enclosed in the courtyard of Lord Cassiliss’ 
 castle of Newark, and shot down to a man, 
 
 I have already declared my belief with regard to 
 the Irish massacres of this evil time. I acknowledge 
 and deplore them ; but I also deplore the English 
 massacres of the same time. I think all massacres 
 absolutely inexcusable ; but in inexcusability, as in 
 some other things, there are degrees, and I am of 
 opinion that a massacre perpetrated by a mob of de- 
 spoiled and ignorant peasantry, athirst for revenge, 
 who for twenty-five or thirty years past had been 
 looking down from the woods, and bogs, and mountains, 
 to which they had been driven, upon the growing and 
 ripening crops in the fertile lowlands, which they 
 
35 
 
 considered to be, and were by right, their own, in a 
 war for the recovery of their property and the defence 
 of their religion, less inexcusable than a similar mas- 
 sacre ordered by generals or governors, and carried 
 out by disciplined troops, for the maintenance of the 
 most grievous tyranny and wrong. 
 
 In Mr. Fronde’s preface to Miss Hickson’s Irish 
 Massacres of 1641 he specifies five massacres — at 
 Portadown, at Shrule, at Silvermines, Portnaw, and 
 Macroom. I have no special knowledge respecting 
 any of these except that at Portna, and am obliged to 
 believe that the accounts given of the others are only 
 too true. I am the descendant, in the fifth genera- 
 tion, of the leader in the case of Portna, whose fair 
 fame, therefore, is dear to me. He became a highly 
 distinguished soldier as commander of about 2,000 
 men, by the appointment of his relative, the Earl of 
 Antrim, who raised the force for the purpose of send- 
 ing it in support of Montrose. I will call it the 
 Montrose Irish Brigade. Of the six marvellous vic- 
 tories won by this great leader in one year, in 1644-5, 
 in the two first (Tippermoor and Aberdeen, with the 
 capture of Perth and Aberdeen) the Irish Brigade 
 formed at least two-thirds of Montrose’s force ; in the 
 next three (Inverlochy, Auldern, and Alford) about a 
 half. In the battle of Kilsyth alone the Irish were 
 greatly outnumbered by the Highlanders. 
 
 The village of Portna was on the Lower Bann, 
 
36 
 
 about five miles from Ballymena and the same dis- 
 tance -from Ballymoney. I do not hesitate to assert 
 that Mr. Fronde’s account of this affair, and Miss 
 Hickson’s endorsement of it, are faheZ The reader 
 will please to recollect that the^ S|5eaker of the 
 late House of Commons (Mr. Peel) pronounced this 
 word to be parliamentary, Mr. Frou^:\‘qjiotes, as 
 • his single authority for his'^cAmny, Dr. Eeid’s His- 
 tory of P reshy ter ianism-. in h^eland ; but with great 
 prudence does not quote Dr. Eeid’s^ words, which are 
 as follows, and, with the excejDtion of “ in their beds,” 
 are'^true : — ^ ‘ ^ > 
 
 “ On the morniftg of the 3rd ’^ffiuary” [1642] “a party 
 of Irish rebe ls^ fro m hot]; ! IfaJ gs of the river Bann, headed by 
 Alaster McDonnell (Colkittagh)” [this was not Alaster’s name, 
 but his father’s], surprised a detachment of British stationed 
 at Portna, near Kilrea, under the command of Captains 
 Fergus MacDougall, Peebles, and Glover, and massacred them 
 in their beds.” 
 
 Mr. Fronde misquotes Dr. Eeid, and scandalously 
 calumniates Alaster McDonnell : — 
 
 “ Alaster MacDonnell had destroyed some English families 
 in their beds at Kilrea.” He adds — “ Seventy or eighty old 
 men, women, and children had been killed by the same party 
 near Ballintoy and Oldstown.” 
 
 This latter item is a birth from the teeming womb 
 of Mr. Fronde’s imagination. He garbles and falsifies 
 Dr. Eeid’s statements, by converting a military night 
 surprise of soldiers on soldiers into a massacre of men. 
 
37 
 
 women, and children. Alaster s surprise is a strata-- 
 gem accepted in the war ’code of every nation in 
 Europe, and practised with signal success and univer- 
 sal applause lately by Lord Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir. 
 
 Miss Hickson endorses Mr. Fronde’s calumny. She 
 devotes to this charge twenty- two pages, headed “ The 
 Portnaw Massacre,” of her first volume (p. 234 et 
 seq.), with her notes; and in support of it gives the 
 evidence of sixteen witnesses, taken, and now for the 
 first time published, from the thirty-two manuscript 
 volumes in folio, of evidence respecting the Irish mas- 
 sacres of 1641, preserved in the Library of Trinity 
 College, Dublin. I have read the evidence published 
 by Miss Hickson very carefully more than once, and I 
 assert that from end to end of it there is not the 
 shadow of proof that Alaster McDonnell was con- 
 cerned in the death of any human being, except those 
 of soldiers killed by soldiers in the night attack. 
 
 In 1879 I published the following opinion, which I 
 believed was never expressed by any other writer on 
 . this hateful subject : — 
 
 “ The treatment of the expelled English and Scotch was 
 extremely inhuman, In the November of an unusually severe 
 winter the Protestants were often stripped naked, and driven 
 out without food, to make the best of their way to the nearest 
 place of refuge. No doubt, many children, women, and old 
 men must have perished of cold and hunger ; and assuredly 
 aU of these deaths are fairly to be added to the number of 
 those persons who were directly murdered or massacred.” But 
 I add : — ‘‘ Great numbers of the fugitives died also, after reach- 
 
38 
 
 ing places of refuge, by famine and its consequent pestilence. 
 But for these deaths I hold England and Scotland responsible, 
 whose barbarous apathy in not sending immediate military aid, 
 arms, food, and means of transport, across the channel to their 
 wretched countrymen, was unintelligibly and revoltingly 
 heartless.” 
 
 The despoiled Irish mobs ought to have considered 
 that the great majority of their victims sincerely be- 
 lieved that they were rightfully possessed of their 
 Irish lands, bestowed upon them by royal and legal 
 authority. But what mobs of plundered and enraged 
 peasants can be expected to entertain and give due 
 weight to such palliations '? The real criminals were 
 James and the people of England and Scotland, who 
 cordially approved of the Plantation of Ulster. 
 
 Another English massacre, which I think was by far 
 more atrocious than any of the Irish massacres, was 
 the slaughter of 2,000 English soldiers, by Cromwell’s 
 order, in Drogheda, in revenge for the Irish massacres 
 in Ulster. These soldiers, nearly all of whom were 
 Englishmen, had as much concern in, and responsi- 
 bility for, those Irish massacres as you, gentle reader, 
 or I have. They were nearly all Englishmen ; and in 
 my opinion the atrocity is much aggravated by his 
 blasphemous bestowal of the glory of it upon Him 
 whom, before he had attained his present exalted 
 piety, he had often addressed as his “ Almighty and 
 most merciful Father.” Could this strange mixture 
 of fanaticism, hypocrisy — “ferocious piety,” (as some 
 
39 
 
 one has happily called it), and political perspicacity 
 have really believed that he advanced the glory of the 
 Deity by attributing this massacre to Him ? I do 
 not know ; but I do know what marvels fanaticism 
 can work in perverting all Christian and moral princi- 
 ple ; and I both abhor and dread it. 
 
 One of the murderers of Archbishop Sharp, after 
 prolonged public prayer with his brother murderers, 
 retired to his bedroom for private prayer, in the 
 course of which he heard himself addressed from 
 Heaven — Well done, good and faithful servant.” 
 He was soon after mortally wounded at the battle of 
 Drumclog — the battle described in the beginning of 
 Old Mortality, between the Covenanters and Claver- 
 house. One of his brother murderers, who, no doubt, 
 superstitiously believed that the dying man could utter 
 the truth only, spiered at him (inquired of him) : — 
 Dear Will, I aften hard [heard] you say you were 
 sure enough of heaven. Hae ye [have you] ony doots 
 “ noo [any doubts now] ?” and the dying ruffian re- 
 plied : — Nae doots, nae doots ; but fully assured — 
 fully assured.” 
 
 Cromwell was by far the most unscrupulously cruel 
 enemy of Ireland that the civil war produced. The 
 net manufactured to catch every Roman Catholic who 
 possessed an acre of land was, for its purpose, quite 
 perfect. If the landowner of the acre could not prove 
 (the onus of proof being thrown on him) that he had 
 
40 
 
 exhibited constant good will towards the Puritan 
 government, which no Koman Catholic could possibly 
 have done, he should lose a third of his acre, be 
 banished to Connaught, and be reprised (compensated) 
 for the remaining two-thirds of his fertile acre by an 
 equivalent of barren land in Connaught. Others of 
 greater delinquency, who could not disprove greater 
 complicity in the rebellion, were stripped proportion- 
 ately of their lands, banished to Connaught, and re- 
 prised for the land still left in his possession by an 
 equivalent in Connaught land. All who had taken 
 any active part, or borne arms in the rebel forces, 
 vrere deprived of their land, and, along with all the 
 landless, banished to Connaught. Lastly, any one of 
 the famished crowd who was afterwards met with on 
 the east side of the Shannon might be shot with 
 impunity on the spot. Let any one who doubts the 
 strict accuracy of what I have just written consult the 
 thrilling pages of Mr. Prendergast’s admirable and 
 truthful History of the Cromwellian Settlement. 
 
 It is to me perfectly unintelligible how any lover of 
 liberty — of the constitution we enjoy, or of the con- 
 stitution of 1640, as described from Macaulay at p. 4 
 — can pardon the man who in eight years sapped and 
 overthrew that constitution by a series of treasonable 
 acts, ending with the exclusion of nearly two hundred 
 members of the House of Commons at the point of the 
 bayonet, and the extinction of the House of Lords, to 
 
41 
 
 secure the comdemnation of Charles, on signing whose 
 death-warrant the heartless fanatic, in jocular horse- 
 play, wiped his pen across the face of his neighbour. 
 He merited for these crimes, and should have met on 
 the scaffold, the fate of Strafford. 1 refuse peremp- 
 torily to condone these crimes, and his substitution 
 of the reign of the sword in his hand, because he 
 retrieved the honour and influence of England in the 
 councils of Europe from the state of contempt into 
 which they had been brought by the misgovernment 
 of James and Charles, and restored England to the 
 high and honourable position she held in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, by the bold and vigorous use of his usurped 
 sword. 
 
 It is not the least of the charges I have to prefer 
 against Miss Hickson that Cromwell’s barbarities in 
 Ireland are palliated by her. Millions of her country- 
 men and countrywomen will hear of this palliation 
 with indignation and disgust, and the men will re- 
 member that their bitterest curse on^heir worst 
 enemy is — “ The Curse of C r e mw^S T an [on] you,” 
 more than two hundred years after the death of their 
 father ^ b Vorst and most cruel oppressor. In her first 
 volume, p. 395, she writes : — 
 
 “ Their pseudo rule” [viz., Lord Mayo’s and his son’s] 
 “ over their clan, and even that of Clanricarde himself, it 
 was evident, was over before Cromwell came to replace it by 
 a rule of justice and vigour.” And again, at p. 177 of her 
 second volume, she writes : — The order at p. 236, confis- 
 
42 
 
 eating the Cromwellian soldiers’ debenture for the benefit of 
 the widow and orphans of Turlough O’Byrne, the poor Irish 
 carpenter he had murdered, and the letter of Cromwell, at p. 
 238, on behalf of Mrs. Barry, are good proofs of the generous 
 and merciful nature of the Protector, so ill understood to this 
 day by many of his countrymen, who profess to admire his 
 historical greatness.” 
 
 From such generosity and mercy. Oh Heaven ! 
 defend me and mine, my country and mankind, for 
 all future time ! 
 
 In speaking of Cromwell’s Drogheda massacre. Miss 
 Hickson singles out the most revoltingly cruel indi- 
 vidual case of murder for palliation. A beautiful 
 lady, richly dressed, threw herself on her knees before 
 Wood, one of Cromwell’s officers, beseeching him to 
 save her life. He consented ; but on the instant one 
 of the common soldiers rushed upon her, dragged her 
 out of Wood’s hands, passed his sword through her, 
 stripped her, and threw the naked body over the city 
 wall. 
 
 Miss Hicksons hardihood, strange 'to say, is equal 
 to the task of palliating both the general massacre 
 and even this case. At p. 178, vol. ii., she writes : — 
 
 “ The carnage at Drogheda, when the town, garrisoned by 
 English Cavaliers, who expelled impartially many Irish Pro- 
 testants and Irish friars (lest they should betray it to Crom- 
 well or 0 ’Neill), was taken by storm, was as a retribution for 
 Portadown, Belturbet, and Shrule, and a preventive of the re- 
 petition of such horrors in future. Cromwell’s judgment was 
 that of the prophets of old — ‘ The leaders of this people cause 
 
43 
 
 thewo to evrl and who can doubt it was a right one, that knows 
 the real facts of Irish history ?” 
 
 Again, she has the astonishing courage to write of 
 the murder of the lady thus : — 
 
 “Wood, according to this story, just after the town was 
 taken, in the hottest moment of the storm” [this item, I believe, 
 is known to Miss H. alone], “ met a beautiful young lady,' 
 richly dressed and covered with jewellery, who entreated him 
 to save her life, which he was about to do, when a Cromwel- 
 lian soldier dragged her away, killed her, and flung her corpse 
 over the city wall. The incident was a sad and horrible one, 
 only too likely to have taken place then, or even at a later 
 date, wherever an infuriated soldiery took by storm a besieged 
 town. But when English modern sentiment and romance 
 undertake to deliver judgment on Irish history they ought to 
 remember that long before this richly dressed lady was killed 
 at the siege of Drogheda by an infuriated soldier, hundreds of 
 helpless old men, women, and little children (poorly-dressed, 
 it may be) were flung into the rivers at Portadown and Bel- 
 turbet — not in the fury of battle or siege, but as they submis- 
 sively fled before their Irish captors, who had promised to 
 guard and protect them to the place where they were to 
 embark for England.” 
 
 No kind-hearted Irishwoman, gentle or simple, 
 will ever read Miss Hickson’s palliation of this 
 fiendish deed without a shudder. I hope no Irish- 
 man will pronounce the curse of Cromwell on her. 
 This innocent and beautiful creature had no more 
 concern in, or responsibility for, the Ulster massacre 
 than the apologist herself had, and the apology is 
 equally senseless and revolting. The authority for 
 this almost incredible fact is unimpeachable. Wood, 
 
44 
 
 the Cromwellian officer, was eye-witness of the horrid 
 murder. He related the particulars of it to his 
 brother, Anthony A. Wood, a highly distinguished 
 member of the University of Oxford, and author of 
 many and very valuable works, who has recorded his 
 brother s narrative. 
 
 I impeach Miss Hickson of gross partiality in favour 
 of the oppressors of her country throughout the whole 
 of her two volumes. Flashes, indeed, of sympathy 
 with the sufferings of her countrymen we do meet 
 with, but, like Macaulay’s ‘‘ flashes of silence,” des- 
 cribed by Sydney Smith, few and far between. Her 
 account of the case of Henry O’Neil, of Glasdromin 
 (vol. ii. p. 145 seq,) is a good sample, both of this 
 sympathy and of the perfect structure of the Crom- 
 wellian net, devised for the capture and plunder of 
 every Roman Catholic landholder, mentioned above. 
 
 “ For proof of his good affection, O’Neill produced the depo- 
 sitions of several witnesses on his behalf, that at the beginning 
 of the rebellion he saved the lives of Mr. Thomas Taylor, of 
 the city of Armagh, his wife, and family, and six more families 
 of that town, who fled to him for protection, and sent them away 
 to the English quarters. He saved the lives of Mr. Fitzgerald, 
 a minister, and Mr. Edward ^Trevor, of Monaghan, and the 
 wives and families of both of them. He had kept altogether 
 two hundred persons in his house from the violence of the 
 rebels, until he could send them to Dundalk and other 
 English quarters, and as often as he heard of the approach of 
 the rebels into his country, he sent intelligence to the governors 
 of Dundalk or Ne wry, or the adjacent garrisons. For giving 
 such intelligence. General Owen O’Neil sent a party of horse, 
 
45 
 
 and took the claimant prisoner, and sent him to Kilkenny, where 
 he was kept prisoner for three months, till the army was gone 
 ont of the country, and then he escaped. He had himself 
 been robbed by the rebels of his horses and cows, and those at 
 Glasdromin had been burned by order of Sir Phelim O’Keil. 
 It was also deposed that he could not endure any of his sons 
 to come near his castle. Once he shot at one of them, who 
 was with a party coming to his house, because he was in re- 
 bellion. And he had been seen with weeping tears to 
 bemoan himself, saying what would be thought of him, his 
 sons being gone into rebelliou, he ' having ever been faithful 
 to the crown of England.’ Upon this state of facts the court 
 found that he did not aid or promote the rebellion in the first 
 year. It might, perhaps, be supposed that Mr. O’Keil would 
 be entitled to a restoration of his estate, and to escape trans- 
 plantation ; but this would prove a very imperfect conception 
 of the strictness of the rules of transplantation. Of course, 
 the commissioners could not find that he had aided or pro- 
 moted the rebellion in the first years, or was ever in arms 
 since, and they accordingly acquitted him of this. He had 
 also exhibited much good affection to the English, but he 
 must prove a constant good affection to be spared from trans- 
 plantation ; and by contributing money or victuals, not taken 
 by actual force, and the payment of taxes and levies in the 
 rebels’ quarters (where no person dared refuse them) he had 
 lost his claim to be exempted from transplantation. Mr. 
 Henry O’hTeil was probably in this latter predicament. He 
 was adjudged to transplant, but being within the eighth 
 qualification, to have two-thirds of his estate in Connaught.” 
 
 What would have been said, and what done, in 
 England and Scotland if Cromwell had ventured to 
 transplant to the mountains of Wales, or of the high- 
 lands of Scotland, every royalist who could not prove 
 his constant good affection to the Puritan cause 
 
46 
 
 during the war, with, however, the right to be re- 
 prised for so much of his land as he was adjudged 
 worthy to retain, measured by the degree of his 
 malignity, of fertile acres in England or Scotland, by 
 the same number on the sides of Snowdon, Cader Idris, 
 or Plinlymmon — or Ben Nevis, Shehallion, or Ben 
 Lomond ; and lastly, if any one of the transplanted 
 ventured to cross the boundary line between England 
 and Wales, or in Scotland to pass south of the Gram- 
 pian line, that he might be shot with impunity by 
 any one who met him ? 
 
 In the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, there are 
 thirty-two folio volumes of evidence in manuscript 
 respecting the Irish massacres and murders in 1641. 
 Miss Hickson selects and publishes the evidence of 
 two hundred and five witnesses taken from these 
 voluminous records. She contends that certain lines, 
 in very many cases drawn through passages of the 
 evidence, were not intended for erasures. I think 
 she has established this contention satisfactorily. In 
 none of her cases was the witness submitted to cross- 
 examination, nor even, except in a very few, had he 
 before him the prospect of having to repeat his testi- 
 mony in open court under the eyes of judge and jury. 
 Nearly all the witnesses were persons who them- 
 selves, or in the persons of near and dear relatives or 
 friends, had suffered barbarous cruelties from the 
 insurgents, and were therefore naturally disposed to 
 
47 
 
 exaggerate their sufferings. An impartial historian 
 would have notified these circumstances to the reader. 
 Miss Hickson does not do so. . At least I do not 
 remember a single case in which she does. At p. 96 
 of vol. i. there is a modest abetment of the use of 
 torture to elicit truth from unwilling witnesses. 
 Perhaps the most atrocious Irish massacre was that 
 perpetrated at Portadown. About one hundred and 
 fifty men, women, and children were precipitated 
 from the bridge over the Bann and drowned. Miss 
 Hickson reproduces this case seventeen times, with- 
 out informing the reader that it is a reproduction. 
 This is a plagiarism of the stage-trick, in which, by 
 the device of marching a^ few dozen men across the 
 stage, then back behind the scenes, and across the 
 stage again, repeated ten or seventeen times, there is 
 created a great army before the astonished eyes of the 
 uninitiated. 
 
 We hear much nowadays of the Irish hatred of 
 England, diligently and perseveringly earned by six 
 hundred years of cruel misgovernment, which was as 
 detrimental to England as it was ruinous to Ireland ; 
 but much less of English hatred and contempt for 
 Ireland. Mr. Froude informs us that we are not only 
 savages, but irreclaimable savages. I beg of him to 
 recollect that for many years after the battle of 
 Hastings his Saxon forefathers were known to their 
 Norman conquerors as “ Saxon hogs yet, in spite 
 
48 
 
 of Norman billingsgate and insolence, those hogs are 
 now leaders in European civilization, and in the pro- 
 motion of every art and science that tends to advance 
 the best interests of mankind. Perhaps the same 
 happy lot may be in store for us, in spite of the 
 intolerable insolence of Mr. Fronde's pen. Consider- 
 ing that for centuries before 1829 the great majority 
 of Irishmen were excluded from competition for 
 honors and social position, by penal laws designed 
 and effectual to produce the poverty and ignorance of 
 at least four-fifths of the population of Ireland, it is 
 not a little remarkable how many able men she can 
 boast to have produced. If the great statesmen of 
 the Three Kingdoms, for the last half of last 'century 
 and the first half of this, could be collected, and the 
 question submitted to them: — Who was the most 
 profound political philosopher these countries have 
 produced during the century in question ? one vote 
 would probably have been given for Pitt, the son of 
 Chatham, viz. Burke's. The rest would vote almost un- 
 animously — Edmund Burke." Perhaps Mr. Froude 
 might mutter here — “Oh! Burke was a Norman — a 
 De Burgo. But I say no ; the very first De Burgo 
 robber, after having slain the male heirs to the estate 
 he coveted probably married (a received piece of 
 policy) the heiress, and thus, in the very first genera- 
 tion the blood is half Norman and half Irish, and 
 long before the day of Burke the most refined 
 
49 
 
 cliemico-political analysis could not detect the drop 
 of Norman blood remaining in the great orators 
 veins. If the De Burgos had been white, and the 
 Celts black, Edmund would have rivalled in tint the 
 blackest man in Nigritia. The truth of the maxim — 
 Odisse quern Imeris (we hate those whom we have 
 wronged) — is disgraceful to human nature, but alas ! 
 it is true ; and a glaring exemplification of its truth is 
 afibrded by the hatred and contempt of the Irish 
 entertained by Saxon England and Scotland, and 
 even by their Welsh cousins. The steady growth of 
 humanity which so honorably characterizes this age, 
 and a very modest but increasing knowledge of true 
 Irish history, has mitigated this hatred and con- 
 tempt ; but there is much still existing in England 
 and Scotland. I beg leave to recommend the lately 
 published and generally very fair History of Ireland 
 by Mr. Walpole, to all who desire to know the truth 
 respecting the history of, I verily believe, the most 
 unfortunate nation in the world during the long 
 period (just a thousand years) from the Danish 
 invasion to 1829. 
 
 No Englishman desires more sincerely and earnestly 
 than I do a firm, affectionate, and equal union 
 between Great Britain and Ireland. This I never 
 doubted is, without question, the plain and certain 
 interest of Ireland. A very able essay by Mr. 
 O’Brien, just published, clearly proves this. But the 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 Union of 1801, brought about as it was, is my abhor- 
 rence. It is regarded by all Catholics and many 
 Protestants — and justly, as one of the worst wrongs 
 and insults ever inflicted on us. Lord Castlereagh, 
 and even Mr. Pitt, could not have been ignorant that 
 a plebiscite of unbribed Irishmen would have rejected 
 that Union by 90 per cent. The true parties to it 
 were the Government of Great Britain and its people 
 who approved of it, and (excepting a small number 
 ,of honest and honorable men, who really believed 
 that it was in the interest of Ireland) a gang of 
 peerage-bribed, place-bribed, pension-bribed, and 
 hard-cash-bribed scoundrels, known as the Irish 
 Houses of Peers and Commons. The noble minority 
 of Peers and Commons who voted against this TJnion^ 
 will ever be gratefully remembered with high honour 
 by the people of Ireland. 
 
 I hope and expect that any man who reads my nar- 
 rative with the singleminded desire to learn the truth 
 .with respect to the terrible events of the Irish War of 
 1641 will come to the conclusion that both English 
 and Irish, but more especially the Euglish, were 
 guilty of extreme inhumanity towards their adver- 
 saries, and that therefore neither is entitled to twit 
 the other with the perpetration of cruelties that 
 throw those of the Sicilian Vespers, and the Massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew’s, into the shade, while suppress- 
 ing all mention of their own. 
 
51 
 
 But truth is powerful, and it will prevail. The 
 tone of English historians writing of our period has 
 greatly changed. In the Annals of England (1877), 
 p. 91-2, we read : — 
 
 “ Some troops, however, arrived from England, the natives 
 were worsted in many encounters, and horrible cruelties were 
 committed on both sides.” And in a note on this passage : — 
 ‘‘ In Bushworth (vol. iii.) may be seen a long list of butcheries 
 said to have been committed by the Eomanists on the Pro- 
 testants, grounded on inquisitions taken some years after; 
 but it is remarkable that the Lords- Justices, writing at the 
 very time, make no mention of any such general massacre of 
 the Protestants (amounting to 200,000 according to some 
 writers, 40,000 or 50,000 according to others) as is usually 
 said to have occurred. The contest was doubtless embittered 
 by difference of creeds, but it unquestionably arose rather 
 from political than purely religious causes : the Eomanists 
 armed to preserve their estates.” 
 
 I acknowledge, with profound gratitude, that since 
 1829 the spirit of the English government of Ireland 
 has been completely reversed. The Liberal party 
 has, since then, done everything in its power to 
 elevate and benefit the people of Ireland. ' It would 
 be difficult, I think, to find in England at present an 
 historian, male or female, an apologist and eulogist 
 of Cromwell in his dealings with Ireland. That 
 office, I grieve to think, is at present monopolized 
 by an Irish lady. 
 
 JOHN McDonnell, m.d. 
 
 11th February, 1886. 
 
I subjoin, as a sort of appendix, my letter to Miss Hickson, 
 demonstrating the falsehood of Mr. Froude’s calumny against 
 my ancestor ; and proving that she had not, in her publica- 
 tion, adduced a single item in support of her endorsement of 
 the calumny, which I therefore requested her publicly to 
 disavow. In her reply, she put my request altogether aside, 
 and simply informed me that she had learned from the Eev. 
 Mr. Hill’s McDonnells of Antrim, that my forefather had done 
 as much harm as good to Montrose, and that my clan are a 
 parcel of proud, impracticable fools. 
 
 I did not think this reply marked by the usual courtesy of 
 an Irish lady, and immediately printed the subjoined letter. 
 
DEFENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR ALASTER MACCOLLA MCDONNELL, 
 
 Knight of the Field, 
 
 AGAINST MR. FROUDE’S CALUMNIOUS ACCOUNT OF WHA.T 
 HE CALLS THE “MASSACRE OF PORTNAW,” IN 1641; 
 
 ADDRESSED TO MISS MARY HICKSON. 
 
 \ 
 
 •32 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, 
 
 Dublin, 1st January, 1885. 
 
 Dear Miss Hickson, 
 
 When you shall have read what I am about to 
 write, I hope and expect that you will not only 
 excuse the liberty that I, a person altogether unknown 
 to you, take in addressing you, but also that you will 
 frankly grant the request with which I propose that 
 my letter shall conclude. 
 
 Mr. Fronde calumniates .Master MacColla McDon- 
 nell in his English in Ireland. Misled by an authority 
 which you hold in high respect, you endorse his 
 calumny. 
 
 I am the descendant, in the fifth generation, of that 
 highly distinguished soldier, ‘and his fair fame is 
 therefore dear to me ; and I am bound, both by clan- 
 ship and kinship, to vindicate his character from 
 aspersion, so far as I can with truth. His fame took 
 its rise from his appointment, by his near relative the 
 
4 
 
 second Earl and first Marquis of Antrim, to the com- 
 mand of 2,000 men (the Montrose Irish Brigade), 
 raised and equipped by the Earl, and sent to the High- 
 lands of Scotland in support of Montrose. The 
 heroism of this brigade contributed mainly to that 
 great man’s six marvellous victories, between August 
 1644, and August 1645, in the first two of which 
 (Tippermuir and Aberdeen), followed immediately by 
 the surrender of Perth and Aberdeen, the Irish 
 formed fully two-thirds of Montrose’s force. Sir 
 Thomas Ho^dc, the Scottish Lord Advocate, writes as 
 follows in his diary : — 
 
 Conflict at Perth — On September 1st 1644, being Sunday, 
 was the conflict at Perth, where our people were mechantlie 
 defeated by the Irish. Item ; on 13th September, Aberdeen 
 was taken by the Irish, and our force defeated.” 
 
 In the next three victories (Inverlochy, Auldern, 
 and Alford) the Irish formed about half of the royal- 
 ist force. In the last alone (Kilsyth) they vrere far 
 outnumbered by the Highlanders ; — and of these the 
 greater number had been enlisted by Alaster, who was 
 commissioned by Montrose four times — once to neigh- 
 bouring clans, and three times to the Western 
 Highlands and Isles, for that purpose ; because of the 
 great influence he had now acquired throughout the 
 Highlands, by the high character he had attained 
 as a soldier. After the battle of Kilsyth he was 
 created a Knight of the Field by Montrose, in recog- 
 nition of his services in the royal cause. After the 
 
0 
 
 annihilation of Montrose’s army at Philiphaugh, and 
 after a disastrous defeat by Leslie and Argyle, Alaster 
 was driven out of Scotland early in 1646, and ended 
 his short but brilliant career in 1647, after the battle 
 of Nock-na-Noss (the Hill of Fawns), in the County of 
 Cork. Einuccini, the Papal Nuncio in Ireland, gives, 
 in his confidential correspondence with the Court of 
 of Eome, translated by the lamented and accom- 
 plished Miss Annie Hutton, the following account of 
 Sir Alexander’s share in the battle, and of his death. 
 
 “ In front of the right wing was MacDonnell with 3,000 
 infantry, composed of Ulster and Connaught men and Irish 
 Islanders” — [viz. Highlanders], “supported by Colonel Purcell 
 with two regiments of cavalry. Inchiquin [the Parlia- 
 mentary leader] had placed the best part of his troops 
 opposite to MacDonnell, whom he greatly feared, and not 
 without reason, as his soldiers, after firing one or two vollies 
 threw away the musquet and seizing the sword rushed upon 
 the enemy with such fury that they pursued for three miles 
 killing them as they fled to the number of 2,000.” [The Con- 
 federate left wing was disgracefully defeated by Lord Inchiquin, 
 who found, on his return to the field of battle, the right wing 
 of the Confederates, also returned, loosely scattered among the 
 cannon they had taken, and under the belief that their left 
 wing had been victorious. They were immediately attacked 
 and driven off the field with the loss of 700 men. Einuccini 
 continues] “ General Alexander MacDonnell, who had sepa- 
 rated himself a little from his troops to see after a messenger 
 whom he had sent with an account of his proceedings to the 
 other wing, met, on his return, fourteen of the enemy’s horse. 
 Defusing quarter, he killed four of them, and when parleying 
 with their captain was treacherously stabbed from behind by 
 a soldier, and at once fell dead.” 
 
6 
 
 Such was the man — “the lion-hearted MacColl” — 
 the defence of whom against Mr. Fronde’s calumny I 
 now undertake. 
 
 Mr. Fronde, in his English in Ireland (vol. i. p. 
 106), says : — 
 
 “ Alaster MacDonnell destroyed some English families in 
 their beds at Kilrea. Seventy or eighty old men, women, 
 and children had been killed by the same party on the road 
 near Ballintoy and Oldstown.” 
 
 Mr. Fronde quotes Dr. Eeid’s History of the Pres- 
 hy terian Church in Ireland, v. i. pp. 326-327, as his 
 authority. I do not find it at this reference, but I do 
 at p. 324. Perhaps he and I quote from different 
 editions. I admit that Dr. Reid is a very pains- 
 taking and generally accurate historian. Nevertheless 
 he is singularly ill-informed respecting Alaster’s 
 family. It was introduced into the County Antrim 
 by the marriage of Ian Vohr McDonnell, the founder 
 of his family, second son of the Lord of the Isles, 
 with Marjory Byssett, heiress of a Norman Baron, 
 who had, by hook or crook, got hold of a large estate 
 in Antrim. This marriage took place about 1390; 
 and in 1641 the family possessed the County from 
 Larne to Dunluce, on the Atlantic coast of Antrim, 
 and from the North Channel to the River Bann. Dr. 
 Reid wrote his history at Carrickfergus, within seven 
 or eight miles of Larne, and there was hardly an old 
 woman from Larne to Ballycastle who could not have 
 told him much of what 1 have just written; yet he 
 
7 
 
 represents Alaster s family as being employed about 
 1641 in making frequent piratical incursions into 
 Antrim. If it were so, they must have been employed 
 in lifting their own cattle, and plundering and mur- 
 dering their own tenantry. 
 
 Dr. Eeid’s account of the affair at Portna, the 
 terms of which Mr. Fronde prudently does not quote, 
 is true, and is as follows: — 
 
 “On the morning of the 3rd of January, 1642, a party of 
 Irish Eebels from both sides of the Eiver Bann, headed by 
 Alaster MacColl McDonnell (Colkittagh) ” [this was Alaster’s 
 father’s name — Milton, in his sonnet, makes the same mistake], 
 “ surprised a detachment of the British stationed at Portna, 
 near Kilrea, under the command of Captains Fergus Mac- 
 Dougall, Peebles, and Glover, and massacred between 60 and 
 80 of them in their beds.”* [This last item, “in their beds,” 
 is not true.] 
 
 Mr. Fronde’s “Massacre at Portna” was therefore 
 a military stratagem, accepted as legitimate in the war- 
 code of every nation in Europe, and not a massacre. 
 
 You have devoted twenty-one pages of your Mas- 
 sacres q/ 1641 to this subject, under the heading 
 “ The Portna Massacre,” and have given the testi- 
 mony of fifteen witnesses in proof of it. I have read 
 this evidence carefully more than once, and I assert 
 that from end to end of it there is not the shadow of 
 proof or imputation that Alaster McDonnell was 
 implicated in the death of man, woman, or child, ex- 
 
 * See Dr. Eeid’s History of Presbyterianism in Ireland^ vol. i. p. 324, 
 Edition of 1834, Edinburgh. 
 
cept that of soldiers, in his night attack at Portna. 
 But I do find in it some testimony that he was not 
 altogether devoid of humanity. At p. 235 of your 
 first volume, Donnell MacCart deposes that he was a 
 soldier of Fergus McDougall’s company of the troops 
 attacked hy Alaster, and says: — 
 
 “ Two hours before day, when this examt, and five 
 or six more of the said Fergus McDougaU’s company were 
 taken prisoners, and their lives saved by Alaster McColl 
 because they were highlanders. And this deponent saith that 
 he believes there were about forty of the British murdered 
 that night.” [Fergus Fullerton, another soldier of the same 
 regiment deposes,*] ^'That this examt. was at the same time 
 wounded in the head by one of Alexander McDonnell’s 
 soldiers, and that Alexander McDonnell gave him quarter 
 for his life.” [The same witness deposes] — “ The next 
 morning James MacDonnell, Gilduffe, O’Cahan, and Alexander 
 McDonnell, and John Mortimer, wrote a letter to Captain 
 Digby, who with the British kept Dunluce Castle, thereby 
 summoning and requiring him to surrender it or else they 
 would burn the town of Dunluce, and that upon refusal to 
 surrender it Gilduffe, O’Cahan and John Mortimer caused the 
 town of Dunluce to be burned, which the said Alexander 
 McDonnell would not consent unto, but went away with his 
 company. Next day they marched back to Oldstown where 
 they made a proclamation that any that spoke English 
 should be hanged, upon which Alexander bade his soldiers 
 and those he had protected not to speak English for twenty- 
 four hours, being ready to fall out with the Irish that made 
 such a proclamation. . . . And this examt. was after 
 
 this set at liberty.” 
 
 Two other instances of humanity on the part of 
 Alaster, rare indeed at this deplorable period of Ire- 
 
 * Witness No. xxxvi. p. 239 of your first volume. 
 
9 
 
 lancVs sad history, have come to my knowledge. He 
 had just given a complete defeat to the remnant of the 
 troops he had attacked at Portna, reinforced by men 
 capable of bearing arms from among the Protestant 
 refugees in Coleraine, to the number of about 800. 
 Their leader, Archibald Stewart, marched out to 
 attack Alaster at the Laney near Ballymoney, with 
 a nearly equal force, about a month after the Portna 
 affair. The Kev. Mr. Clogy, step son-in-law to that 
 most excellent man Bishop Bedell, rector of and resi- 
 dent in Cavan for the first eight months of the war, 
 gives the following terrific account of the battle : — 
 
 “The Scots then throughout all the province of Ulster, 
 where they were most numerous, betook themselves to holds, 
 leaving all the open country to the enemy; for the first 
 attempt of Coll Kiltagh had so frighted them that they 
 thought no man was able to stand before that son of Anak. 
 In his first encounter with a few Irish highlanders and some 
 of Antrim’s rebels (that were brethern in evil) against 800 
 English and Scots, having commanded these murderers to lay 
 down all their fire-arms, he fell in amongst them with swords 
 and dirks or sceanes, in so furious irresistible a manner, that 
 it was reported that not a man of them escaped of all the 
 800, the first and greatest loss in battle that we sustained in 
 all that war save one in Munster (under the unhappy 
 conduct of Sir Charles Vavasour.)” 
 
 Immediately after this battle, Alaster besieged 
 Coleraine. It is probable that his object was merely 
 to coop up Stewart with the remnant of his regiment 
 and the Presbyterian refugees, so as to prevent any 
 hostile proceedings against the Irish peasantry. The 
 Eev. Mr. Hill, in his McDonnelh of Antrim^ gives 
 
10 
 
 the following account of the manner in which the 
 siege was conducted : — 
 
 '‘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 to 
 him had the circumstances been reversed.”* 
 
 The beef and oatmeal came from Lord Antrim. 
 He had taken his wife, the Duchess of Buckingham, 
 in the beginning of the outbreak to Slane, near 
 Drogheda, for safety. 
 
 “ He had now returned,” says Carte, “ to his seat f 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 
 100 beeves and 60 loads of corn, and other provisions at 
 his own expense.” 
 
 Again, when crossing the Irish Sea and North 
 Channel, on his way to join Montrose, Alaster met 
 and captured two ships of the Covenant under 
 Colonel Munro, carrying supplies to the Scottish 
 troops in Ulster. There were three Presbyterian 
 ministers on board, of whom Alaster made prisoners. 
 
 * See the Eev. Mr. Hill’s The McDonnells of Antrim, p. 72, 
 note 88. 
 
 t See " Cartels Life of Ormond f vol. i. p. 188. 
 
11 
 
 in the hope that he might exchange them for his 
 father and two brothers, at this time prisoners to 
 Argyle. The rest of the men he released. If the 
 circumstances had been reversed in this case — if the 
 two vessels had been taking supplies to the Irish 
 enemy with three priests on board, and had the other 
 ships carried Parliamentary troops, the three priests 
 would, instanter, have been hanged from the yard- 
 arms of their own ships, and not improbably the rest 
 of the men would have been tied, two and two, back 
 to back, and thrown overboard. 
 
 As a lady cannot be expected to be critically well 
 informed respecting the difference between military 
 surprises and massacres, I will set forth for you true 
 samples of both which occurred in England and Scot- 
 land within four years of the Portna surprise. 
 
 In 1643, Prince Kupert made an attack on the 
 Parliamentarians, in which many men were slain or 
 taken prisoners; and Hampden (one of the best, the 
 purest, and the noblest — if I ought not to have said 
 the best, the purest, and the noblest, of the Par- 
 liamentary patriots) received his death-wound. This 
 was a legitimate military surprise. 
 
 In September 1845, David Leslie marched with 
 6,000 Scottish horse from the siege of Hereford, to 
 attack Montrose at Philiphaugh, on the bank of the 
 Ettrick, close to Selkirk. Montrose’s force amounted 
 to about 1,500 men, seven or eight hundred of whom 
 were Irish. In the grey dawn of the morning of 
 
12 
 
 September the 13th, and in a thick mist, Leslie fell on 
 the Eoyalists. Of course Montrose’s army was 
 overwhelmed and ruined. This, however^ was a 
 legitimate surprise. The main body of the Irish 
 retired to an enclosure — 
 
 “Which/" says Guthry, “they maintained, till Stuart, the 
 adjutant, being among them, procured quarter for them from 
 David Leslie, whereupon they delivered their arms and came 
 forth to a plain field as they were directed.” 
 
 The Clergy, however, argued that it would be im- 
 pious to spare the lives of such wretches — that Stuart 
 alone had been admitted to quarter — and that the rest 
 should be put to death; — quoting in support of their 
 outrage on “the beggarly elements of justice and 
 humanity” — [a phrase then familiar in the mouths of 
 the elite of the Covenanters] — “Now go smite Amalek, 
 and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them 
 not, but slay both man and woman, infant and 
 suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” 
 
 What followed next morning, whether these noble 
 men surrendered at discretion or not, was a cowardly 
 and atrocious massacre. Four hundred of these brave 
 men were marched two miles up the Yarrow, enclosed 
 in the courtyard of Lord Cassilis’s Castle of Newark, 
 and shot down to a man. Three hundred women 
 were massacred in the camp, and Grant, in his 
 Memoirs of Montrose, relates that — 
 
 “Eighty other women and children, fugitives from that 
 dreadful scene, were overtaken at Linlithgow, by the Coven- 
 anters, who flung them over a high bridge into the foaming 
 
Avon fifty feet below. . . . Thus man and woman, infant 
 
 and suckling perished; for again and again were the conquerors 
 told the curses which befel those who spared the enemies of 
 God, would fall upon him who suffered one Amalekite to 
 escape.” (Grant, p. 301.) 
 
 The last hundred of the Montrose Irish Brigade 
 were, in May, 1646, massacred in like manner on their 
 surrender, to Leslie and Argyle, of the Castle of 
 Dunaverty, in Cantyre, where Eobert Bruce was 
 entertained and sheltered by the hero of Scott’s Lord 
 of the Isles y at the time when his fortunes were at 
 the lowest. They, with one hundred and sixty 
 MacDougalls, garrisoned the Castle, and were forced 
 to surrender by want of water. 
 
 Sixty years ago I saw the bones of some of those 
 noble fellows bleached quiet white on the beach below 
 the headland on which the castle stood. 
 
 I have now only to submit to you the request of 
 which I spoke in the beginning of this letter. It 
 is this — that you will, frankly and at your earliest 
 convenience, retract your endorsement of Mr. Fronde’s 
 calumny, and that you will give to your retraction the 
 same publicity you have given to the defamation; 
 either by publishing this letter, or in any other man- 
 ner you prefer. 
 
 I am, dear Miss Hickson, 
 
 Eespectfully yours, 
 
 John McDonnell, M.D. 
 
 To Miss Mary Hickson. 
 

 
 
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