Prince Rupert was made of too "stern stuff," to be terrified out of his manly purpose. He announced his determination to pursue the system of lex talionis, and to murder man for man.* There do not appear any data whereon to ground an opinion of the ultimate issue of this sanguinary rivalry but it is more than probable, that the energy and spirit of the prince stayed the progress of the devouring sword, and rescued many an unfortunate Irishman from the horrible proscription of their enemies. Such a system, pursued steadily, as it ought to have been, by general Washington, would have snatched thousands of

*Extracts from a letter of Prince Rupert to the Earl of Essex.

"Those soldiers of mine, that were barbarously murdered in cold blood, after quarter given them at Shrewsbury, were such as, during the time they were in Ireland, served his majesty stoutly, constantly, and faithfully, against the rebels of that kingdom; and, after the cessation there, were, by his majesty's command, transported to serve him in this, where they honestly performed the duty of soldiers."534

"If the same course shall be held, and any prisoners under my command shall be taken, executed and murdered in cold blood, under what senseless and unjust pretence whatsoever; for every officer and soldier, so causelessly and barbarously murdered, I will cause so many of the prisoners remaining in my power to be put to death in the same manner: and I do not in the least doubt but the blood of those miserable men, who shall so suffer by my order, as well as those who shall be so butchered by that ordinance your lordship mentions, shall be required at their hands, who by their cruel examples impose a necessity upon other men to observe the rules they lay down."535

534 Parliamentary History, XIII. 455.

535 Idem, 457.

brave and noble victims from the horrors of the Jersey prison-ship. Any other system sacrifices our best friends for our worst enemies; than which a more miserable policy cannot be conceived.

A murderous ruffian, commander of one of the vessels belonging to the English Parliament, took a vessel with a number of Irish soldiers on board, who were not only not insurgents,, but had served under the duke of Ormond against them, and, after the cessation of hostilities in Ireland, were going to England, to be incorporated in the royal army. In pursuance of the ordinance for giving no quarter to Irish prisoners, he tied seventy of them back to back, and threw them into the sea. For this cruel act, and other congenial exploits, the Parliament of England ordered him to be presented with a medal and a gold chain, of the value of two hundred pounds.*

Barbarous and murderous as were the commanders of the forces against the Irish, in general, there were some of them who far exceeded their colleagues in the dreadful trade of slaughter. Of these, St. Leger, Monroe, Inchiquin, Sir Richard

"June 4, 1644. Ordered, That captain Swanly have the thanks of this house returned unto him for his faithful service and valiant actions, performed by him for the good of the publick, both at the Isle of Wight, Pembrokeshire and Caermarthenshire, and that a chain of gold of two hundred pounds price, with a medal annexed unto it, be bestowed upon him."536

536 Journals, III. 517.

Grenville, Sir Charles Coote, Tichbourne, Ireton, and Cromwell, stand proudly pre-eminent, as prime ministers of Satan, in the horrid work of extermination.

Grenville was naturally ferocious and bloodthirsty but his native ferocity was whetted by avarice and rapacity, which goaded him to deeds of horror, of the blackest die. He hung old and bed-ridden men, for not discovering wealth which they did not possess; and, with equal barbarity, hung women, frequently of quality, because they had not as much money as he had expected.* This barbarian, having been ordered to England, pursued the same system of rapine and murder there.t

*"Sir Richard Grenville, upon the fame of being a good officer, was sent over with a very good troop of horse; was major of the earl of Leicester's own regiment of horse, and was very much esteemed by him, and the more by the Parliament, for the signal acts of cruelty he did every day commit upon the Irish; which were of so many kinds upon both sexes, young and old, hanging old men who were bed-rid, because they would not discover where their money was, that he believed they had; and old women, some of quality, after he had plundered them, and found less than he expected; that they can hardly be believed, though notoriously known to be true."537

"He made one of them hang all the rest; which, to save his own life, he was contented to do: so strong his appetite to those executions he had been accustomed to in Ireland, without any kind of commission, or pretence of authority."538

537 Clarendon, IV. 537.

538 Idem, 538.

A few of the characteristic feats of St. Leger,* Inchiquin, Monroe, and Coote, grace the foregoing pages. Honourable mention remains to be made of Tichbourne, Ireton, and Cromwell,a bloody triumvirate, whose names ought to be held in eternal reprobation by Irishmen and descendants of Irishmen.

Henry Tichbourne, governor of Drogheda, signalized for his sanguinary career, merited the distinction we have accorded him, to be ranked with the destroyers, Ireton and Cromwell. In a familiar letter to his wife, as a matter of course, he communicates the information, that, finding he could not induce the Irish to hazard the fortune of a battle, he had concluded "they were in another sort to be dealt with ;" and accordingly the wretch sallied out "every other morning, for several weeks," slaughtering all he met, without mercy; so that he left "neither man nor beast alive," for sixteen miles from the garrison.† And

*"If, in the execution of martial law, he [St. Leger] spared neither sex nor age, his countrymen frequently expressed a generous indignation and horror at his barbarity.”539

"Finding that they did only put themselves in arms, and would no more now than formerly forsake their strength, to draw into equality of ground, notwithstanding their advantage of numbers, I concluded they were in another sort to be dealt with; and from thenceforth, for the most part, I fell every other morning into their quarters, and continued those visitations for several weeks together, with the slaughter of very many of them, especially the new plantation in the county of

539 Leland, III. 171.

one of his coadjutors in this business of destruction perpetrated the same havoc, for twelve miles on the other side: thus filling the country with carnage, for twenty-eight miles, and "not leaving man nor beast alive!" In another part of this letter, he informs her of one of his murderous expeditions, in which he says, "he took no account of the slain; but there was little mercy shown in those times."540 What a hideous picture of incarnate demons do these horrible facts present to the mind's eye! And what effrontery must not Temple and his followers have possessed, when they dared to raise such an outcry against the Irish, for the crimes which they themselves perpetrated!

Of all the cases of murderous cruelty that marked the career of the government forces in Ireland, the most atrocious occurred at the surrender of Drogheda. The history of the Huns, Vandals, Goths, and Ostrogoths, or of those scourges of the human race, the successors of Mahomet, may be searched in vain for any thing more shocking. In fact, it is not in the power of man, were he possessed by all the furies of the

Monaghan, and at the taking in of Harry O'Neal's house, in the Fews; insomuch that by this course, and the like acted often by the garrison at Drogheda, there was neither man nor beast to be found in sixteen miles, between the two towns of Drogheda and Dundalk, nor on the other side of Dundalk, in the county of Monaghan, nearer than Carrick Mac-Cross, a strong pile, twelve miles distant."541

540 Tichbourne, 186.

541 Idem, 188.