ing of the bond of mutual agreement, which hitherto hath been held inviolable, between the several subjects of this kingdom, and whereby all his majesty's other dominions have been linked in one. For the preventing therefore of such evils growing upon us in this kingdom, we have, for the preservation of his majesty's honor, and our own liberties, thought fit to take into our hands, for his highness's use and service, such forts and other places of strength, as coming into the possession of others, might prove disadvantageous, and tend to the utter undoing of the kingdom; and we do hereby declare, that herein we harbor not the least thought of disloyalty towards his majesty; or purpose any hurt to his highness's subjects, in their possessions, goods, or liberty; only we desire, that your lordships will be pleased to make remonstrances to his majesty for us, of all our grievances and just fears, that they may be removed, and such a course settled by the advice of the parliament of Ireland, whereby the liberty of our consciences may be secured unto us, and we eased of other burdens in civil government. As for the mischiefs and inconveniencies that have already happened, through the disorder of the common sort of people, against the English inhabitants, or any others, we, with the nobility and gentlemen, and such others of the several counties of this kingdom, are most willing and ready to use our, and their, best endeavours in causing restitution and satisfaction to be made, as in part we have already done.

"An answer hereunto is most humbly desired, with such present expedition as may, by your lordships, be thought most convenient, for avoiding the inconvenience of the barbarousness and incivility of the commonalty, who have committed many outrages, without any order, consenting, or privity of ours. All which we leave to your lordships' wisdom, and shall humbly pray, &c."

On the 10th November 1641, the O'Farrells of the neighbouring county of Longford, sent up also to the lords justices, a remonstrance of their grievances; which was of much the same tenor with that from Cavan, intreating redress in a parliamentary way. "These gentlemen," says Mr. Carte,3« had

3 Life of Orm. vol. i.

deserved well of the crown, and were on that account particularly provided for by king James, in his instructions for planting of that country. But the commissioners appointed for the distribution of the lands, more greedy of their own private profit, than tender of the king's honor, or the rights of the subject, took little care to observe these instructions; and the O'Farrells were generally great sufferers by the plantations. Several persons were turned out of large estates of profitable land, and had only a small pittance, less than a fourth part, assigned them for it in barren ground. Twenty-four proprietors, most of them O'Farrells, were dispossessed of their all; and nothing allotted them for compensation. They had complained, in vain, of this undeserved usage many years; and having now an opportunity afforded them of redress, by the insurrection of their neighbors, had readily embraced it, and followed their example (for it does not appear that any of them were antecedently concerned in the conspiracy), as they likewise did, in laying before the lords justices, a remonstrance of their grievances, and a petition for redress; which, like that from Cavan,+ came to nothing,"

CHAP. III.

The massacre in Island-Magee.

"THE report that his majesty's protestant subjects first fell upon, and murdered the Roman catholics, got credit and reputation, and was openly and frequently asserted," says Jones, bishop of Meath, in a letter to Dr. Borlase, in 1679, And sir Audley Mervin, speaker of the house of commons,2 in a public speech to the duke of Ormond in 1662, confesses, "that several pamphlets then swarmed to fasten the rise of this rebellion upon the protestants; and that they drew the first

• Bishop Burnet's Life of Bishop Bedel.

1 See Preface to Borlase's Hist, of the Irish Rebellion.

2 Com. Jour. vol. i. fol. 258.

« In a manuscript of bishop Stearne, we find that in the small county of Longford, twenty-five of one sept were all deprived of their estates, without the least compensation, or any means of subsistence assigned to them."-Lel. History of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 467.

blood," And, indeed, whatever cruelties may be charged upon the Irish in the prosecution of this war," their first intention, we see," says another protestant voucher,3« went no further than to strip the English and the protestants of their power and possessions, and, unless forced to it by opposition, not shed any blood." Even Temple confesses the same ;+ for mentioning what mischiefs were done in the beginning of this insurrection," certainly," says he, "that which these rebels mainly intended at first, and most busily employed themselves about, was the driving away the Englishmen's cattle, and possessing themselves of their goods."

In a MS. journal of an officer in the king's service, quoted by Mr. Carte, wherein there is a minute and daily account of every thing that happened in the north of Ireland, during the first weeks of this insurrection, there is not even an insinuation of any cruelties committed by the insurgents on the English or protestants; although it is computed by the journalist," that the protestants of that province had killed near a thousand of the rebels in the first week or two of the rebellion." And on the 16th of November, 1641,6 " Mr. Robert Wallbank came from the north, and informed the Irish house of commons, that two hundred of the people of Colerain fought with one thousand of the rebels, slew six of them, and not one of themselves hurt. That in another battle, sixty of the rebels were slain, and only two of the others hurt, none slain." Nor do we find, in this account, the least mention of cruelties then committed by the Irish; but much of the success and victory of his majesty's protestant subjects, as often as they encountered them.*

It is worthy of particular notice, that a commission of the lords justices, Parsons and Borlase, dated so late as December 23d, 1641, was sent down to several gentlemen in Ulster (where it is agreed on all hands that these cruelties and out

3 Dr. Warner's Hist. Irish Reb. p. 47.

4 History of the Irish Rebellion.

5 Carte's Ormond, vol. i.

Temp. Ir. Reb,

Appendix to the Journals of the Irish Commons.

7 Temple's Irish Rebellion, p. 137.

In the beginning of the insurrection," it was determined (by the insurgents) that the enterprise should be conducted, in every quarter, with as little bloodshed as possible.”—Lel. Hist. of Irel, vol. iii. p. 101.

rages were chiefly committed), in virtue of which commission, Temple and Borlase confess," several examinations were afterwards taken of murders committed by the rebels, and the perpetrators of many of these murders were discovered."s Yet the commission itself, though it authorises these gentlemen" to call upon all those who had then suffered in the rebellion, and all the witnesses of these sufferings, to give in examinations of the nature of them, and of every minute circumstance relating to them, expressly and particularly specifying every other crime usual in insurrections, and then committed in this, viz, plunder, robbery and even traitorous words, actions and speeches; yet, I say, there is not a syllable mentioned of any murders then committed in this commission, nor any express power given by it to make enquiry into them. From whence it seems necessarily to follow, either that few or no such cruelties had been committed by the insurgents before the 23d of December, 1641, or that these lords justices deemed murders and massacres less worthy of their notice, of being strictly enquired after, than even traitorous words and speeches. Besides in their proclamation of pardon, published in February following, the justices declare, unto all such of these insurgents, as were not freeholders, that if they would come in, and submit and make restitution of the goods taken by them, they should be received to his majesty's mercy, and no further prosecution held against them." Now certainly, if there was any considerable number of murders known to be at this time committed by these insurgents, the perpetrators of them would have been expressly excepted from pardon in this proclama tion, and not thus promiscuously assured with others less criminal, that" they would be received to his majesty's mercy, and that no further prosecution should be held against them," merely upon their submission and restitution of the goods taken from the British, and they not being freeholders. 10

That a great number of unoffending Irish were massacred in Island-Magee, by Scottish puritans, about the beginning of this insurrection, is not denied by any adverse writer that I have met with. An apology, however, is made for it by them all, which even if it were grounded on fact, as I shall presently shew it is not, would be a very bad one, and seems at least to • Temple's Irish Rebel. p. 137. 9 Ib. p. 40. 10 Ib. p. 137.

imply a confession of the charge. These writers pretend, that this massacre was perpetrated on those harmless people, in revenge of some cruelties before committed by the rebels on the Scots in other parts of Ulster. But as I find this controversy has been already taken up by two able protestant historians, who seem to differ about the time in which that dismal event happened, perhaps, by laying before the reader the accounts. of both, with such animadversions, as naturally arise from them, that time may be more clearly and positively ascertained.

A late learned and ingenious author of an history of Ireland, has shifted off this shocking incident from November 1641, (in which month it has been generally placed) to January following, many weeks after horrible cruelties (as he tells us) had been committed by the insurgents on the Scots in the North." "The Scottish soldiers," says he, "who had reinforced the garrison of Carrickfergus, were possessed of an habitual hatred of popery, and enflamed to an implacable detestation of the Irish, by multiplied accounts of their cruelties. In one fatal night, they issued from Carrickfergus into an ad. jacent district called Island-Magee, where a number of the poorer Irish resided, unoffending and untainted with the re bellion. If we may believe one of the leaders of this party, thirty families were assailed by them in their beds, and massacred with calm and deliberate cruelty. As if," proceeds the historian," the incident were not sufficiently hideous, popish writers have represented it with shocking aggravation. They make the number of the slaughtered, in a small and thinly inhabited neck of land, to amount to three thousand, a wildness and absurdity, into which other writers of such transactions have been betrayed; they assert, that this butchery was committed in the beginning of November, 1641, that it was the first massacre committed in Ulster, and the great provocation to all the outrages of the Irish in this quarter. Mr. Carte seems to favor this assertion: had he carefully perused the collection of original depositions, now in the possession of the university of Dublin, he would have found his doubts of facts, and dates cleared most satisfactorily; and that the massacre of Island-Magee, as appears from several unsuspicious evidences,

Lel. Hist. Irel, vol. iii.