XII.

CHAP. penter, every cutler, was at constant work on guns and blades. It was scarcely possible to get a horse shod. If any Protestant artisan refused to assist in the manufacture of implements which were to be used against his nation and his religion, he was flung into prison. It seems probable that, at the end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmen were in arms. Near fifty thousand of them were soldiers. The rest were banditti, whose violence and licentiousness the Government affected to disapprove, but did not really exert itself to suppress. The Protestants not only were not protected, but were not suffered to protect themselves. It was determined that they should be left unarmed in the midst of an armed and hostile population. A day was fixed on which they were to bring all their swords and firelocks to the parish churches; and it was notified that every Protestant house in which, after that day, a weapon should be found should be given up to be sacked by the soldiers. Bitter complaints were made that any knave might, by hiding a spearhead or an old gunbarrel in a corner of a mansion, bring utter ruin on the owner.*

Chief Justice Keating, himself a Protestant, and almost the only Protestant who still held a great place in Ireland, struggled courageously in the cause of justice and order against the united strength of the government and the populace. At the Wicklow assizes of that spring, he, from the seat of judgment, set forth with great strength of language the miserable state of the country. Whole counties, he said, were devastated by a rabble resembling the vultures and ravens which follow the march of an army. Most of these wretches were not soldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law. Yet it was, he owned, but too evident that they were encouraged and screened by some who were in high command. How else could it be that a market overt for plunder should be held within a short distance of the

* At the French War Office is a report on the State of Ireland in February 1689. In that report it is said that the Irish who had enlisted as soldiers were fortyfive thousand, and that the number would have been a hundred thousand, if all who volunteered had been admitted. See the Sad and Lamentable Condition of the Protestants in Ireland, 1689; Hamilton's True Relation, 1690; The State of Papist and Protestant Properties in the

Kingdom of Ireland, 1689; A True Representation to the King and People of England how Matters were carried on all along in Ireland, licensed Aug. 16. 1689; Letter from Dublin, 1689; Ireland's Lamentation, 1689; Compleat History of the Life and Military Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, General1ssimo of all the Irish forces now in arms, 1689.

capital? The stories which travellers told of the savage Hottentots near the Cape of Good Hope were realised in Leinster. Nothing was more common than for an honest man to lie down rich in flocks and herds acquired by the industry of a long life, and to wake a beggar. It was however to small purpose that Keating attempted, in the midst of that fearful anarchy, to uphold the supremacy of the law. Priests and military chiefs appeared on the bench for the purpose of overawing the judge and countenancing the robbers. One ruffian escaped because no prosecutor dared to appear. Another declared that he had armed himself in conformity to the orders of his spiritual guide, and to the example of many persons of higher station than himself, whom he saw at that moment in court. Two only of the Merry Boys, as they were called, were convicted: the worst criminals escaped; and the Chief Justice indignantly told the jurymen that the guilt of the public ruin lay at their door.*

When such disorder prevailed in Wicklow, it is easy to imagine what must have been the state of districts more barbarous and more remote from the seat of government. Keating appears to have been the only magistrate who strenuously exerted himself to put the law in force. Indeed Nugent, the Chief Justice of the highest criminal court of the realm, declared on the bench at Cork that, without violence and spoliation, the intentions of the government could not be carried into effect, and that robbery must at that conjuncture be tolerated as a necessary evil.†

The destruction of property which took place within a few weeks would be incredible, if it were not attested by witnesses unconnected with each other and attached to very different interests. There is a close, and sometimes almost a verbal, agreement between the descriptions given by Protestants, who, during that reign of terror, escaped, at the hazard of their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys, commissaries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that it would take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry.‡ Some of the Saxon aristocracy had mansions richly furnished, and sideboards gorgeous with silver bowls and chargers. All

See the proceedings in the State Trials.

+ King, iii. 10.

Ten years, says the French Ambassador; twenty years, says a Protestant fugitive.

CHAP.

XII.

CHAP.
XII.

this wealth disappeared. One house, in which there had been
three thousand pounds' worth of plate, was left without
a spoon.* But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in
cattle. Innumerable flocks and herds covered that vast ex-
panse of emerald meadow, saturated with the moisture of the
Atlantic. More than one gentleman possessed twenty thou-
sand sheep and four thousand oxen. The freebooters who
now overspread the country belonged to a class which was
accustomed to live on potatoes and sour whey, and which had
always regarded meat as a luxury reserved for the rich. These
men at first revelled in beef and mutton, as the savage inva-
ders, who of old poured down from the forests of the north on
Italy, revelled in Massic and Falernian wines. The Pro-
testants described with contemptuous disgust the strange
gluttony of their newly liberated slaves. Carcasses, half raw
and half burned to cinders, sometimes still bleeding, some-
times in a state of loathsome decay, were torn to pieces, and
swallowed without salt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders
who preferred boiled meat, being often in want of kettles,
contrived to cook the steer in his own skin. An absurd tragi-
comedy is still extant, which was acted in this and the follow-
ing year at some low theatre for the amusement of the Eng-
lish populace. A crowd of half naked savages appeared on
the stage, howling a Celtic song and dancing round an ox.
They then proceeded to cut steaks out of the animal while
still alive, and to fling the bleeding flesh on the coals. In
truth the barbarity and filthiness of the banquets of the Rap-
parees was such as the dramatists of Grub Street could
scarcely caricature. When Lent began, the plunderers gene-
rally ceased to devour, but continued to destroy. A peasant
would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair of brogues.
Often a whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fifty or sixty
kine, were slaughtered; the beasts were flayed; the fleeces
and hides were carried away; and the bodies were left
to poison the air. The French ambassador reported to his
master that, in six weeks, fifty thousand horned cattle had
been slain in this manner, and were rotting on the ground all
over the country. The number of sheep that were butchered
during the same time was popularly said to have been three
or four hundred thousand.†

* Animadversions on the proposal for sending back the nobility and gentry of Ireland, 1688.

King, iii. 10.; The Sad Estate and Condition of Ireland, as represented in a Letter from a Worthy Person who was

Any estimate which can now be framed of the value of the property destroyed during this fearful conflict of races must necessarily be very inexact. We are not however absolutely without materials for such an estimate. The Quakers were neither a very numerous nor a very opulent class. We can hardly suppose that they were more than a fiftieth part of the Protestant population of Ireland, or that they possessed more than a fiftieth part of the Protestant wealth of Ireland. They were undoubtedly better treated than any other Protestant sect. James had always been partial to them: they own that Tyrconnel did his best to protect them; and they seem to have found favour even in the sight of the Rapparees.* Yet the Quakers computed their pecuniary losses at a hundred thousand pounds.+

CHAP.

XII.

the South

In Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, it was utterly im- The Propossible for the English settlers, few as they were and dis- testants in persed, to offer any effectual resistance to this terrible out- unable to break of the aboriginal population. Charleville, Mallow, resist. Sligo, fell into the hands of the natives. Bandon, where the Protestants had mustered in considerable force, was reduced by Lieutenant General Macarthy, an Irish officer who was descended from one of the most illustrious Celtic houses, and who had long served, under a feigned name, in the French army. The people of Kenmare held out in their little fast

in Dublin on Friday last, March 4. 1689; Short View by a Clergyman, 1689; Lamentation of Ireland, 1689; Compleat History of the Life and Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, 1689; The Royal Voyage, acted in 1689 and 1690. This drama, which, I believe, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, is one of the most curious of a curious class of compositions, utterly destitute of literary merit, but valuable as showing what were then the most successful claptraps for an audience composed of the common people. "The end of this play," says the author in his preface, "is chiefly to expose the perfidious, base, cowardly, and bloody nature of the Irish." The account which the fugitive Protestants give of the wanton destruction of cattle is confirmed by Avaux in a letter to Lewis, dated April 1689, and by Desgrigny in a letter to Louvois, dated May 17. 1690. Most of the despatches written by Avaux during his mission to Ireland are contained in a volume of which a very few copies were printed some years

23

ago at the English Foreign Office. Of
many I have also copies made at the
French Foreign Office. The letters of
Desgrigny, who was employed in the
Commissariat, I found in the Library of
the French War Office. I cannot too
strongly express my sense of the libe-
rality and courtesy with which the im-
mense and admirably arranged store-
houses of curious information at Paris
were thrown open to me.

"A remarkable thing never to be
forgotten was that they that were in
government then "-at the end of 1688
-"seemed to favour us and endeavour to
preserve Friends."--History of the Rise
and Progress of the People called
Quakers in Ireland, by Wight and Rutty,
Dublin, 1751. King indeed (iii. 17.) re-
proaches the Quakers as allies and tools
of the Papists.

† Wight and Rutty.

Life of James, ii. 327. Orig. Mem. Macarthy and his feigned name are repeatedly mentioned by Dangeau.

CHAP.
XII.

Ennis

killen and London

out.

ness till they were attacked by three thousand regular soldiers, and till it was known that several pieces of ordnance were coming to batter down the turf wall which surrounded the agent's house. Then at length a capitulation was concluded. The colonists were suffered to embark in a small vessel scantily supplied with food and water. They had no experienced navigator on board: but after a voyage of a fortnight, during which they were crowded together like slaves in a Guinea ship, and suffered the extremity of thirst and hunger, they reached Bristol in safety.* When such was the fate of the towns, it was evident that the country seats which the Protestant landowners had recently fortified in the three southern provinces could no longer be defended. Many families submitted, delivered up their arms, and thought themselves happy in escaping with life. But many resolute and highspirited gentlemen and yeomen were determined to perish rather than yield. They packed up such valuable property as could easily be carried away, burned whatever they could not remove, and, well armed and mounted, set out for those spots in Ulster which were the strongholds of their race and of their faith. The flower of the Protestant population of Munster and Connaught found shelter at Enniskillen. Whatever was bravest and most truehearted in Leinster took the road to Londonderry.†

The spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry rose higher and higher to meet the danger. At both places the tidings of what derry hold had been done by the Convention at Westminster were received with transports of joy. William and Mary were proclaimed at Enniskillen with unanimous enthusiasm, and with such pomp as the little town could furnish. Lundy, who commanded at Londonderry, could not venture to oppose himself to the general sentiment of the citizens and of his own soldiers. He therefore gave in his adhesion to the new government, and signed a declaration by which he bound himself to stand by that government, on pain of being considered a coward and a traitor. A vessel from England soon brought

* Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies and Losses sustained by the Protestants of Kilmare in Ireland, 1689.

A true Representation to the King and People of England how Matters were carried on all along in Ireland by the late King James, licensed Aug. 16.

1689; A true Account of the Present
State of Ireland by a Person that with
Great Difficulty left Dublin, licensed
June 8. 1689.

Hamilton's Actions of the Inniskilling Men, 1689.