their mouths all coloured green with eating nettles, docks, and all things they could find above the ground." On one occasion, Sir Arthur Chichester, with some English officers, saw three small children-the eldest not above ten years old-feeding off the flesh of their starved mother. In the neighbourhood of Newry famine gave rise to a novel and appalling crime. It was discovered that some old women were accustomed by lighting fires to attract children, whom they then murdered and proceeded to devour.12 Ireland, brazed, as in a mortar, to use Sir John Davies' phrase, at last submitted. In the last years of the century half the population had perished. Elizabeth reigned over corpses and ashes. Hibernia Pacata. Ireland was "pacified.”13

66

IV. THE CONQUEST (1603-1691).1

'Peace reigned in Ireland," but the conquest had not yet been achieved, and the work of subjugation was destined to be carried out by massacres, confiscations and "plantations," in the seventeenth century precisely as in the sixteenth. Things followed much the same course in the reigns of the Stuarts and under Cromwell as in the days of the Tudors, and the conquest of Ireland was not finally achieved until the time of William III. But in the seventeenth century the work of subjugation assumed at once more of a religious and more of a political complexion. Ireland had remained Catholic when England had embraced Protestantism; and as an inevitable result religious persecution was added to race

12 Lecky, op. cit. II., 98.

13 Lord Grey, one of Elizabeth's Lieutenants (Leland, op. cit. IV., Chap. II.).

I See especially on this epoch, Ball, The Reformed Church in Ireland, London, 1886. State Papers (reign of James I.). Carte, History of the Life of the Duke of Ormond, 1735-1736. Sir William Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland, 1691. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland, 2nd edition, Dublin, 1875. J. F. Taylor, Owen Roe O'Neill, 3rd edition, London and Dublin, 1904. Thomas Davis, The Patriot Parliament (3rd edition in the New Irish Library, London)

domination. Again, Ireland being so closely connected with England, could not but be affected by the two revolutions for which the Stuarts were responsible, and to which they fell victims. The Irish took the losing side. England wreaked vengeance on them for their loyalty, real or apparent, to a reigning house that cared no more for the Irish than the Irish cared for them, that in truth regarded Ireland as but a pawn in their political game. Again, when the English turned Protestant, they naturally desired that the Irish should do the same. But the Tudors, who persecuted Catholicism so sharply in England, had been tolerant, by comparison, in Ireland. The Church of England was not long in establishing a foothold in the east of Ireland, as a result of the confiscation of churches, monasteries and religious houses.3 But at first no attempt was made to extend its influence beyond the "Pale," and hence, outside the Pale, Irish and AngloIrish alike remained Catholic.

Elizabeth was the first to persecute "Papist recusants," that is, those who refused to take the oath of supremacy. She imprisoned or put to death bishops, monks, and Jesuits.4 Moreover, as the "plantations " progressed, the Anglican church grew in power. Having been triumphantly endowed with the spoils of Catholicism by Henry VIII., it embarked upon a course of persecution. From this forward the animosity between the Catholics and the new Protestant "planters" grew every day more bitter. The Puritans assumed a threatening attitude. Papists were

2 G. de Beaumont op. cit. 1, 32.

3 Anglicanism was first introduced into Ireland by the Act of Supremacy of 1537, which imposed an oath which anyone refusing to take was guilty of High Treason. This was followed by an Act for the Supression of Abbeys, which was extended to all religious houses in 1542. Convents and abbeys were declared to be the property of the Crown. These Acts were subsequently repealed by Queen Mary Tudor, in 1553, but the confiscated property which had changed hands was not restored to its owners. Finally, Anglicanism was definitely established in Ireland by Elizabeth, by the Act of Supremacy and Uniformity of 1562.

4 Lecky, the great historian (op. cit. II., 99-103), lays stress on the point that the wars of Elizabeth in Ireland were entirely political and agrarian, and not religious wars. This is most questionable. Nay,

excluded from all places of emolument, and were thrown into gaol, or had their goods confiscated, because they refused to take the oath. When we add to the rancour produced by this persecution that which resulted from wholesale confiscations, from the "planting." of Ulster in James I.'s reign, from Strafford's projected confiscation of Connacht, from deeds of spoliation carried on under legal forms, from the menace that hung over every head throughout the length and breadth of the country, there is small difficulty in understanding how it came about that all the Catholics of Ireland-save a few Government hacks, like the Ormonds-profited by the weakness of the Crown in these troubled times, and rose en masse, not for the king, but against the king, against the English Government, against the planter and the persecutor, in the Great Rebellion of 1641.

The facts can be found in all contemporary accounts of the insurrection. The men of Ulster were the first to rise and drive out the new "planters "not a few of whom perished in the conflict.5 The insurrection then spread through the country, having now assumed a purely religious aspect. The reprisals of the Protestants and the proscriptions decreed by the English Parliament added to its vigour. Victory crowned the campaign under the leadership of Owen Roe O'Neill. The insurgents gained supreme power throughout Catholic Ireland and proceeded to establish their Parliament-the Confederation of Kilkenny. They entered into negotiations with Charles I. and were duped by him. Their excesses, terrible as they

rather it is certain that from the middle of the sixteenth century on, the religious question had become acute in Ireland, and anti-Catholic persecutions had a great deal to do with the risings of that epoch

5 See Lecky's refutation of the exaggerations, by which certain antiIrish historians have endeavoured to paint the Ulster Rebellion of 1641 as a general massacre of Protestants, a parallel to the Sicilian Vespers, some of them, putting the number of slain at 50,000, and others at 100,000, or even 200,000 or 310,000. The number of Protestants slain was from four to eight thousand. Lecky points out the interest which the English in Ireland had in exaggerating the accounts of the massacre. They hoped in this way to strengthen their shaky titles to their property and to pave the way for the Penal Laws. (Cf. cit. II. 128, 153).

were, were far less terrible than those perpetrated by Sir Charles Coote, St. Leger, and Sir Frederick Hamilton, who, on the opposite side, proved themselves worthy successors of Mountjoy and Carew.

From the first the Lords Justices ordered the troops to refuse all quarter. In Leinster, they were instructed to slay and destroy the rebels, their adherents and their accomplices, to burn and raze to the ground all towns, places and houses, where they received shelter, to put to the sword all the inhabitants capable of bearing arms. They had orders to put to death any priest that fell into the hands of the troops. It is not difficult to imagine

the fashion in which such orders were carried out. The details of the massacres that ensued are best omitted.6 It is pleasanter to recall, as Lecky does,7 how Owen Roe O'Neill made it his practice to repress excesses on the part of his troops and invariably gave quarter to prisoners; how the Synod of Kilkenny in 1642 decreed excommunication against Catholics guilty of pillage, arson or murder; how the rebels did honour to the Protestant Bishop Bedell, protected his ministrations, and gave him, on his death, a magnificent funeral with military honours. It was at his funeral that the crowd made use of the famous cry, "Requiescat in pace, Ultimus Anglorum!”

But, in England, the revolution had been successful. It was no longer with the King, but with the "Roundheads," with Cromwell and his Iron-sides, that the Irish

6 See Lecky, op. cit. 156 et seq. Carte's soldiers perpetrated wholesale massacres and spared neither women nor children. Saint-Leger ravaged Munster with fire and sword. One day he had a woman, big with child, cut open, and her three children, taken from her arms, impaled upon spear points. Near Newry, Monroe and his troops killed in one day seven hundred peasants, men, women and children, who were driving their flocks. In Westmeath and Longford his soldiers set the country ablaze and slew everybody. In Island Magee thirty families were massacred in their beds by the Carrickfergus garrison. Sir William Coote tells us himself of the exploits of his regiment in Ulster-" Starved and famished of the vulgar sort whose goods were seized on by this regiment, 7,000.” It was at this time that the phrase "Nits will be lice,' was coined to justify the slaughter of children. Cf. O'Connell, A Memoir of Ireland (Observations, Proofs, etc. Chap. III.).

7 Op. cit. II., 161-167.

had now to deal. Ormond and the Royalist forces now sided with the insurgents against whom they had but lately been engaged, but both parties were destined to succumb before the arms of the Puritans. Cromwell landed in Ireland in 1649 and proceeded "in the name of Jesus" to massacre the garrison of Drogheda, thirty thousand in number, Englishmen for the most part, though Catholics. A similar fate overtook the garrison of Wexford. Before long, Ireland lay prostrate at the Protector's feet. He decided to deal with the country on a very simple plan, namely, to exterminate the Irish inhabitants and make it a land inhabited only by Englishmen. In the eleven years of the war 616,000 persons had already perished out of a total population of 1,466,000.8 The policy of extermination had done its work. Priests were hanged, banished, or imprisoned in Arran. A campaign of persecution was maintained against the Catholics. Between thirty and forty thousand Irishmen fled to France and Spain to join those who had formerly become exiles during the wars and confiscations of Elizabeth's reign. Thousands of young girls, women and children, were sold as slaves and sent to Jamaica and the Barbadoes, as were also all rebels taken with arms in their hands.9 In this way Ireland was turned into a desert and cleared of its inhabitants. The wolves came to ravage at the very gates of Dublin. Cromwell now desired to colonise the country with English. The lands of three provinces, Ulster, Leinster and Munster, were confiscated and divided between the Puritan soldiers and the "undertakers" who had advanced to the Parliament the funds required for the expedition. The remaining province, Connacht, was given over to the remnants of the old population, who were, so to speak, penned into it. Death was to be the portion of every

8 These are Sir William Petty's figures (Lecky op. cit. II., 172).

Others have put it

9 Sir William Petty puts the figures at 6,000. as high as 100,000, but this latter figure is an obvious exaggeration. Cf. O'Connell, A Memoir of Ireland. Chap. III.