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The horrible scenes we have depicted were not confined to Ireland. The war was carried on, in England and Scotland, with similar rapine, desolation, and carnage on both sides, royalist and republican. It is not necessary, nor would it be proper, to enter here into detail respecting the affairs of the sister island. A few instances will be sufficient for our present purpose, merely to display the spirit of the age, the humanity of its warfare, and the peculiar propriety of the eternal reproaches, with which "the welkin has rung," against the barbarity of the Irish.

Lord Clarendon, in various parts of his history, narrates the ruthless ferocity that reigned in battle and after defeat, when neither age nor sex was spared. In particular, he states, that, in the pursuit of the royalists, after the battle of Edgehill, there were about one hundred women slaughtered, and among them the wives of some of the officers.*

According to Burnet, prisoners were slaughtered in cold blood, and after quarter given; and the preachers, from the pulpit, deprecated the extension of mercy towards them, and denounced all those who were for moderate measures.†

* " The enemy left no manner of cruelty unexercised that day; and in the pursuit killed about one hundred women, whereof some were the wives of officers of quality."556

"Upon this occasion, many prisoners that had quarter given them, were murdered in cold blood. The preachers thunder

556 Clarendon, IV. 639.

We conclude with an account, from Rushworth, of the ruthless and savage progress of Montross, in Scotland, anno 1644, which may stand a parallel with the murderous exploits of Ireton or Cromwell. For six weeks, he acted the part of a demon incarnate, as far as his power extended, laying the whole country in flames, and, in imitation of the sanguinary orders of the lords justices of Ireland, slaughtering all the males able to carry arms, or, in other words, "fit for war."*

The unceasing efforts that have been employed to stifle the truth, and to keep the world in a state of darkness, on the subject of the barbarous carnage perpetrated on the Irish, are incredible. They have unfortunately been but too successful.

ed in their pulpits against all that were for moderate proceedings, as guilty of the blood that had been shed. Thine eye shall not pity, and thou shalt not spare,' were often inculcated after every execution."557

*"Montross dividing his army into three brigades, ranged over the whole country, and laid it waste; as many as they find in arms, going to the rendezvous, they slay, and spared no man fit for war; and so destroyed, or drove out of the country, or into holes unknown, all the service, and fired the villages and cottages, and drove away and destroyed all their cattle. These things lasted from the 13th of December 1644, to the end of January following.'

557 Burnet, I. 40.

99558

558 Rushworth V. 931.

One instance displays such profligacy, that it only requires to be stated, to excite the indignation of every honourable mind.

The government forces in Ulster had committed some frightful massacres on the Irish, of which an account was published in London. The House of Commons, which was actuated by the most rancorous spirit of hostility towards the Irish, took the alarm. They had the printers committed to prison, without trial; ordered the book to be burned by the hands of the common hangman; and directed the Stationers' Company to seize all the copies that could be found, which were to be committed to the flames.* Thus early began the work of deception; thus early was the veil thrown over the enormities of which the Irish were the victims; and thus early were the streams of history poisoned by public authority.

*" June 8, 1642. Ordered, That the book, intituled 'A True Relation of the Proceedings of the Scots and English Forces in the North of Ireland,' shall be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, in the New Palace yard, at Westminster and the master and wardens of the Company of Stationers are required to seize all such of these books as are any where to be had, that they may be burnt accordingly.

"Resolved, That Robert White shall be forthwith committed prisoner to the King's Bench prison, for printing and publishing of a scandalous libel, to the dishonour of the Scots nation; and he be referred to the King's Bench, to be proceeded with there according to law."559

559 Journals, II. 619.

The following extract from a most virulent book, published in London, anno 1647, affords a full display of the infernal spirit of rancour and malice that then prevailed in England against the Irish; and will serve, in some measure, to account + for the butcheries of the St. Legers, the Monroes, the Cootes, the Iretons, and the Cromwells, as exhibited in the present chapter. It is quoted in the North American Review, Vol. I. p. 305.

"The Simple Cobler of Aggavvam in America. Willing to help 'mend his Native Country, lamentably tattered, both in the upper-Leather and sole, with all the honest stitches he can take. And as willing never to bee paid for his work, by Old English wonted pay. It is his Trade to patch all the year long, gratis. Therefore I pray Gentlemen keep your purses. By Theodore de la Guard. In rebus arduis ac tenui spe, fortissima quæque consilia tutissima sunt.-Cic. In English,

When bootes and shoes are torne up to the lefts,
Coblers must thrust their awles up to the hefts.
This no time to feare Apelles gramm:

Ne Sutor quidem ultra crepidam.

London, printed by J. D. & R. I. for Stephen Bowtell, at the sign of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647.

"A Word of Ireland: Not of the Nation universally, nor of any man in it, that hath so much as one haire of Christianity or Humanity growing on his head or beard, but onely of the truculent Cut-throats, and such as shall take up Armes in their Defence.

"These Irish, anciently called Anthropophagi, man-eaters : Have a Tradition among them, That when the Devill shewed our Saviour all the kingdomes of the Earth and their giory, that he would not show him Ireland, but reserved it for himself: it is probably true, for he hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old Fox foresaw that it would eclipse the

glory of all the rest: he thought it wisdome to keep it for a Boggards for himself, and all his unclean spirits imployed in this Hemisphere, and the people, to doe his Son and Heire, I mean the Pope, that service for which Lewis the eleventh kept his Barber Oliver, which makes them so blood-thirsty. They are the very Offall of men, Dregges of Mankind, Reproache of Christendome, the Bots that crawle on the Beasts taile. J wonder Rome it self is not ashamed of them.

"J begge upon my hands and knees, that the Expedition against them may be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our Souldiery are hot, to whom J will be bold to say briefly: Happy is he that shall reward them as they have served us: and Cursed be he that shall doe that work of the Lord negligently! Cursed be he that holdeth back his Sword from blood!!! yea, Cursed be he that maketh not his Sword starke drunk with Irish blood!!! that doth not recompence them double for their hellish treachery to the English! that maketh them not heaps upon heaps!! and their country a dwelling place for Dragons, an Astonishment to Nations! Let not that eye look for pity, nor that hand to be spared, that pities or spares them! and let him be accursed, that curseth them not bitterly!!!!”

This work was received with such approbation, that it passed through several editions. When such Luciferian doctrines were fulminated, coolly and deliberately, from the press, it is not wonderful that they were carried into ferocious and sanguinary practice, in the field of battle; and that "the nits" and "the lice" were slaughtered in one

common mass.

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