all the kingdomes of the Earth and their glory, 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 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.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Final subjugation of Ireland by Cromwell. The Irish extirpated out of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, and driven into Connaught. The maximum price of the plundered lands to Cromwell's soldiers four shillings per acre.

"What one plunderer left, the next will seize.”—Dryden.

"The logic of a conquering sword may silence, but cannot convince.”—Anon.

THE civil war, or rebellion, had raged for twelve years with a degree of violence never probably exceeded in the annals of human wickedness. The most infuriate rage, resulting from religious bigotry, fanaticism, the spirit of persecution, and national hatred, had laid the nation waste. A senseless spirit of faction, among the Roman Catholics, carried to the utmost excess engendered principally by the intermeddling and turbulent spirit of the nuncio, Rinuccini, a serious curse to the nation-but fostered and fomented, with the most Machiavelian views, by the duke of Ormonde*-destroyed the ener

*Few men have been more extravagantly eulogized than the duke of Ormonde. His merits fall far short of the panegyrics of his admirers. There is every reason to believe that he was zealously attached to Charles I. and yet it might be proved, and I shall perhaps, at a future day attempt to prove, that in all probability Charles owed to his refined policy the loss of his crown and life. This would be travelling out of the record here-and therefore I waive it. I now confine myself to prove, from his own words, the deleterious policy he pursued towards the Irish, by sowing discord among them, even while he was negociating a cessation of arms and a treaty of peace with them, according to the decided orders of Charles I. which he for a long time declined obeying-and finally obeyed only when it was too late to answer any purpose for his master. After the restoration, an accusation was brought against him, of having been on too friendly terms with the Irish clergy at the commencement of the insurrection. He exculpated himself by the declaration, that the measures he had then adopted, were merely for the purpose of sowing discord among them. "My aim was to work a division among the Romish clergy; and I believe I had compassed it, to the great security of the government and Protestants, and against the opposition of the pope, and his creatures and nuncios, if I had not been removed from the government, and if direct contrary counsels and courses had not been taken and held by my successors."'955

Whatever might be his failure in the instance here stated, he had succeeded throughout his administration in this plan of-Divide et impera.

955 Carte, II. App. 101.`

gies of that body-prevented them from establishing the liberties of their country on a secure basis-and laid them and their posterity prostrate at the feet of the most remorseless and unprincipled aristocracy, that ever cursed a nation.

In 1653, the struggle was over. The butchery by Cromwell, at Drogheda and Wexford, and some minor ones in other quarters, had completely intimidated the Irish, so that they dared not make any further resistance. Cromwell then proclaimed that the country was conquered, and proceeded to parcel it out among his friends and supporters.

He had, like the lords justices, been in favour of a general extirpation of the Irish," but when it was finally in his power to accomplish it, he shrunk from the murderous scheme, whether from "compunctious visitings of conscience," or from an apprehension of the consequences of driving the Irish to desperation, cannot now be ascertained. It is buried in eternal darkness.

"They found the utter extirpation of the nation (which they had intended) to be in itself very difficult, and to carry in it somewhat of horror, that made some impression upon the stone-hardness of their own hearts. After so many thousands destroyed by the plague which raged over the kingdom, by fire, sword, and famine; and after so many thousands transported into foreign parts; there remained still such a numerous people, that they knew not how to dispose of: and though they were declared to be all forfeited, and so to have no title to any thing, yet they must remain somewhere. They therefore found this expedient, which they called an act of grace. There was a large tract of land, even to the half of the province of Connaught, that was separated from the rest by a long and a large river, and which by the plague and many massacres remained almost desolate. Into this space and circuit of land they required all the Irish to retire by such a day, under the penalty of death; and all who should after that time be found in any other part of the kingdom, man, woman, or child, should be killed by any body who saw or met them. The land within this circuit, the most barren in the kingdom, was out of the grace and mercy of the conquerors assigned to those of the nation who were enclosed, in such proportions as might with great industry preserve their lives. And to those persons, from whom they had taken great quantities of land in other provinces, they assigned the greater proportions within this precinct; so that it fell to some men's lot, especially when they were accommodated with houses, to have a competent livelihood, though never to the fifth part of what had been taken from them in a much better province. And that they might not be exalted with this merciful donative, it was a condition that accompanied this their accommodation, that they should all give releases of their former rights and titles to the land that was taken from them, in consideration of what was now assigned to them; and so they should for ever bar themselves and their heirs from ever laying claim to their old inheritance. What should they do? They could not be permitted to go out of this precinct to shift for themselves elsewhere; and without this assignation, they must starve here, as many did die

But he determined to extirpate them from the three provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster; for the spirit of injustice and rapine which had predominated in Ireland, with unceasing violence from the era of the invasion, was in active and uncontrolled operation in the present case. The Irish Roman Catholics, as well those pronounced innocent by his tribunals, as those who had not been accused, and who of course had undergone no trial, were, by a decree of complicated wickedness, expelled their ancient possessions, and driven into Connaught, merely because they were "Irish Papists."*

every day of famine. In this deplorable condition, and under this consternation, they found themselves obliged to accept or submit to the hardest conditions of their conquerors, and so signed such conveyances and releases as were prepared for them, that they might enjoy those lands which belonged to other men.

"And by this means the plantation (as they called it) of Connaught was finished, and all the Irish nation enclosed within that circuit; the rest of Ireland being left to the English; some to the old lords and just proprietors, who being all Protestants (for no Roman Catholic was admitted) had either never offended them, or had served them, or had made composition for their delinquencies by the benefit of some articles; and some to the adventurers and soldiers. And a good and great part (as I remember, the whole province of Tipperary) Cromwell had reserved to himself as a demesne (as he called it) for the state, and in which no adventurer or soldier should demand his lot to be assigned, and no doubt intended both the state and it for the making great his own family. It cannot be imagined in how easy a method and with what peaceable formality, this whole great kingdom was taken from the just lords and proprietors, and divided and given amongst those, who had no other right to it but that they had power to keep it; no men having so great shares as they who had been instruments to murder the king, and were not like willingly to part with it to his successor. Where any great sums of money for arms, ammunition, or any merchandise, had been so long due that they were looked upon as desperate, the creditors subscribed all those sums as lent upon adventure, and had their satisfaction assigned to them as adventurers. Ireland was the great capital, out of which all debts were paid, all services rewarded, and all acts of bounty performed."956

*The marquess of Ormonde, in a speech to parliament, anno 1665, draws a strong portrait of the wickedness of the Cromwellian courts of justice, and evinces the deplorable condition of the Irish under their administration, and the barefaced robbery, of which they were. victims :

"All the designations of the usurpers towards a settlement were fitted to the establishment and support of their own tyranny, and contrived with such a malicious negligence, that if it would not do that work, it was indifferent to them, whether it could be useful to any other; witness their giving no other reason for their taking away

956 Clarendon's Life, II. 116.

To the gentlemen of estates in those three provinces, he assigned portions of land in Connaught. But even these, small as they were, of ten only a fifth, or a tenth part of their ancient inheritances, they could not obtain, without signing releases for the lands of which they were robbed.

The whole kingdom was then surveyed, or its extent estimated, and all those who had claims on the government, were paid out of the lands, the highest of which were estimated at four shillings per acre -and the lowest at a penny."

*

Against this wholesale spoliation, the Irish had no remedy. They were forced to submit. And many men who had left splendid dwellings, rich demesnes, a numerous tenantry, and retinues of pampered servants in their old provinces, were in Connaught obliged to derive a miserable subsistence from the cultivation of a few acres.

A tribunal was erected by Cromwell and his followers for the trial of murderers and rebels; and, notwithstanding the tremendous and sickening acts of unheard-of cruelties and massacres, said to have been perpetrated by the Irish, and notwithstanding likewise the perjury of the witnesses, the injustice of the courts, and the various disadvantages under which the accused must have laboured, from the demoniac rage of courts and jurors, there were but two hundred persons found guilty and executed-and however strange it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that in the province of Ulster, which, by all the writers on the subject has been styled the great scene of murder and massacre, there was not one person condemned, but Phelim O'Neil.

men's estates, but that they were Irish Papists. Such was their bold contempt, not only of the essentials, but of the very formalities of justice.957

*"After the subduing of Ireland, there was no small consultation, how to divide every one's portion. At last, at a council of war of all the chief commanders, lord Broghill proposed, that the whole kingdom might be surveyed, and the number of acres taken, with the quality of them; and then all the soldiers to bring in their demands of arrears and so to give to every man, by lot, as many acres of ground, as might answer the value of their arrears.

"This was agreed on; and all Ireland being surveyed, and the value of acres given in, the highest was valued only at four shillings the acre, and some only at a penny. Accordingly they took the names of all that were in arrear, who drew lots in what part of the kingdom their portion should be; and in this manner the whole kingdom was divided among the conquerors and adventurers of money."

957 Carte, II. App. 35.

99958

958 Orrery's Memoirs, I. 39.

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