à Wood, with tears and prayers, to save her life; and being struck with a profound pity, he took her under his arm, and went with her out of the church, intending to put her over the works to shift for herself. But a soldier, perceiving his intentions, ran his sword through her body. Whereupon À Wood, seeing her gasping, took away her money and jewels, and flung her down over the works." Mr. Froude has been unlucky that he did not fall in with this detailed account given by one "who himself engaged in the storm." It proves his assertion to be wholly false, that there is no evidence from an eye-witness that women and children were killed otherwise than accidentally.

"It is remarkable," says Cromwell, "that these people, at the first, set up the Mass in some places of the town that had been monasteries, and afterward grew so insolent, that the last Lord's day before the storm the Protestants were thrust out of the great church called St. Peter's, and they had public Mass there, and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety."

The sight of the ruin which surrounded him does not seem to have wrought any compunction in his soul:

"I am persuaded," he says, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds of such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret. The officers and soldiers of this garrison were the flower of their army. And their great expectation was, that our attempting this place would put fair to ruin us, they being confident of the resolution of their men and the advantage of the place; if we had divided our force into two quarters, to have besieged the north town and the south town, we could not have had such a correspondency between the two parts of our army, but that they might have chosen to have brought their army and have fought with what part they pleased, and at this same time have made a sally with 2,000 men upon us, and have left their walls manned, they having in the town the number hereinafter specified, some say near 4,000.

"And now give me leave to say how it comes to pass that this work was wrought. It was set up in some of our hearts that a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the spirit of God. And is it not so, clearly? That which caused your men to storm so courageously, it was the spirit of God, who gave your men courage and took it away again; and gave the enemy courage and took it away again; and gave your men courage again, and therewith this happy success. And therefore it is good that God alone have all the glory."

And writing to the President of the Council of State, he says:

"This hath been a marvelous great mercy. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory to God alone, to whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs.'

What the fate of the ecclesiastics was who were found within the walls, it is not hard to conjecture.

"I believe all their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two; the one was Father Peter Taaffe, brother to Lord Taaffe, whom the soldiers took the next day and made an end of. The other was taken in the round tower, under the repute of a lieutenant; and when he understood that the officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a friar, but that did not save him."

A manuscript history of these events, written at the time by one of the Jesuit Fathers employed on the Irish mission, and preserved in the archives of the Irish College at Rome, gives some further details of the cruelty exercised towards the priests that were seized.

"When the city was captured by the heretics, the blood of the Catholics was mercilessly shed in the streets, in the dwelling-houses, and in the open fields; to none was mercy shown; not to the women, nor to the aged, nor to the young. The property of the citizens became the prey of the Parliamentary troops. Everything in our residence was plundered the library, the sacred chalices, of which there were manyf great value, as well as all the furniture, sacred and profane, were destroyed.

"On the following day, when the soldiers were searching through the ruins of the city, they discovered one of our Fathers, named John Bathe, with his brother, a secular priest. Suspecting that they were religious, they examined them, and finding that they were priests and one of them, moreover, a Jesuit, they led them off in triumph, and, accompanied by a tumultuous crowd, conducted them to the market-place, and there, as if they were at length extinguishing the Catholic religion and our Society, they tied them both to stakes fixed in the ground, and pierced their bodies with shots till they expired. Father Robert Netterville, far advanced in years, was confined to bed by his infirmities; he was dragged thence by the soldiers, and trailed along the ground, being violently knocked against

each obstacle that presented itself on the way; then he was beaten with clubs; and when many of his bones were broken, he was cast out on the highway. Some good Catholics came during the night, and bore him away, and hid him somewhere. Four days after, having fought the good fight, he departed this life, to receive, as we hope, the martyr's crown."

Two Fathers of the Dominican Order, Dominick Dillon, prior of the convent of Urlar, who had been apointed chaplain to the Confederate army by the Nuncio Rinuccini, and Richard Oveton, prior of the convent of Athy, were seized and taken outside the walls to the Puritan camp. There, in the presence of the whole army, they were put to death through hatred of their religious calling and of the Catholic faith.

The massacre continued for five whole days in succession. "During all that time," says Clarendon, "the whole army executed all manner of cruelty, and put every man that belonged to the garrison, and all the citizens who were Irish, man, woman, and child, to the sword." Well might Ormonde say that on "this occasion Cromwell exceeded himself and any thing he had ever heard of in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity; and that the cruelties exercised there for five days after the town was taken, would make as many several pictures of humanity as are to be found in The Book of Martyrs' or in 'The Relation of Amboyna.'"

Ludlow calls it an "extraordinary severity." Of the inhabitants only thirty survived, and these by a dubious mercy were shipped to the West Indies, and sold as slaves to the planters. Richard Talbot, who was later the famous Duke of Tyrconnell, was at Drogheda when the town was taken. The sights he witnessed, though he was but a child at the time, made a lasting impression on his mind, and inspired him with a horror of the Puritans all his life long. According to a tradition still current in Drogheda, the slaughter was stayed by a touching incident which aroused the lingering spark of humanity in Cromwell's breast. Walking through the streets, he noticed, stretched in the pathway, the dead body of a newly made mother, from whose breast her miserable infant was striving to draw sustenance.

JAMES MURPHY.

(1839)

JAMES MURPHY, the well-known Irish novelist, was born in Glynn, County Carlow, in 1839. He entered the Dublin Training College for Teachers in 1858, and in 1860 was principal of Public Schools at Bray, County Wicklow. He has filled some important municipal positions; was professor of mathematics at St. Gall's University, Dublin, and is a prominent Government educational official in Ireland.

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He has contributed many historical ballads to The Irishman, The Nation, and other periodicals, and his novels, The Forge of Clohogue, The House on the Rath,' 'Hugh Roach the Ribbonman,' 'The Shan Van Vocht, a Story of '98,' etc., have had and still enjoy considerable vogue.

A NOBLE LORD.

From The Shan Van Vocht, a Story of '98.'

It was with a heart beating with conflicting emotions that Eugene found himself in the officers' quarters of the Thunderer, wherein at a large table sat the captain and a number of gentlemen resplendent with all the gorgeousness of naval uniform. If he had had the time to analyze these emotions he would have found the principal one to be a vague sense of disappointment and loss and disaster. Not loss or disaster to himself-for he knew well enough that every man in warfare on sea or land must run the risk of these they are the incidents of his profession; but for others. Simple as was the little barque in appearance that was even then making her rapid way through the deep waters to the bottom, she bore important fortunes. The future of a gallant and brave nation struggling into the light of freedom was in her keeping, and mayhap the safety of a powerful and friendly fleet. He was convinced, from all that he had heard the night before, that the only chance for success attending the great venture which France was about to make in Ireland's cause, was in making the Eastern coast their point of debarkation; and that unless the present intention of the Republican leaders were altered, sorrow would come to the cause now engaging the attention

of the high-hearted men whom he had left last night—and misfortune to a French army and fleet.

Relying upon the great success with which hitherto their messages had been conveyed, he knew the Irish leaders would rely on this message reaching safely also, and would not send a duplicate. Indeed, except himself and François, they had no one sufficiently acquainted with French customs and ways to do the work. He shuddered as he thought of the tremendously important efforts now making in France in the wrong direction, and the impossibility at present of a warning or advising voice reaching them.

He banished, with a strong effort, these uncomfortable feelings and thoughts, as he perceived the necessity for keeping a bold and unconcerned front to the group of officers before whom he was brought. And his first thought in this new train of ideas which his position suggested was, what information as to his position and recent doings should he give his captors, or should he decline to give any at all? The query had no sooner occurred to him than he immediately answered it by mentally adopting the latter course. But the first question addressed to him showed how futile it was.

"Your name is Eugene Lefèbre?" half queried, half affirmed the captain, after glancing at a paper lying on the table before him.

"Yes, that is my name," said the prisoner with great surprise; for he was quite unable to comprehend how they had acquired knowledge of his name.

"First Lieutenant on board the French Republican frigate, La Vengeur?"

"I hold that position," said Eugene, bowing.

"You have been in Ireland?"

"I have."

"State to the court here assembled the mission or business that brought you there."

"That I must decline doing."

"It is unnecessary for you to do so. It is all set out here. You were, in the first place, sent on business, on a treasonable errand, from the usurped Republican Government to stir up disaffection in Ireland, and to give countenance and aid and advice to certain traitors there. Is not that so?"