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Verum id non omittendum omnes fortem et invictum animum mirari quo fratres nostri in episcopatu Germaniae praeliantur praelia Domini, atque jura et libertatem sponsae Christi defendunt.

Laetamur porro et gloriamur in praeclaris eorum virtutibus quibus decus et ornamentum sanctae nostrae religioni impertiuntur et exemplum tam clarum et illustre toti orbi praebent ut caeteris omnibus pastoribus populorum quasi stimulos quosdam ad fortiter agendum addant. Id porro silendum non est catholicos hujus regni scripta quae ab Episcopis Germaniae ad religionem defendendam edita sunt magni habere atque ex eorum lectione haud parvos fructus percipere.

Una cum hac epistola ad Amplitudinem Tuam pervenient litterae pastorales quibus Episcopi Hiberniae certiores faciunt greges sibi commissos de afflicto Ecclesiae statu, eosque hortantur, ut Dei iram tot mundi sceleribus provocatam placare conentur, eodemque tempore fusis precibus Datorem bonorum omnium implorent ut undas et tempestates quibus jactatur Ecclesia coerceat et placet, et pacem et tranquillitatem misericorditer omnibus Christianis populis tandem aliquando impertiatur.

Denique hanc nactus occasionem non possum quin Amplitudini Tuae eos obsequii et venerationis sensus aperiam, quibus erga Te et alios Germaniae Episcopos sum affectus.

Amplitudinis Tuae humillimus et devotissimus servus et frater in Christo.

Dublini 24 Jan., 1873.

PAULUS CARDINALIS CULLEN.

Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Domino

Paulo Archiepiscopo Coloniensi.

V.-EMINENTISSIME AC REVERENDISSIME DOMINE.

Eminentiae Tuae Reverendissimae litteras colendas 24° Januarii cr. ad me datas simul cum egregia epistola collectiva, quam Hiberniae Antistites Illustrissimi ac Reverendissimi in conventu, Te praeside, 22do ejusdem Dublini habito ad imperii Germanici Antistites direxerant, recepi, ac sine mora istam epistolam necnonl itterarum pastoralium adjunctarum epitomen cum singulis confratribus meis communicavi. Permagnam inde et jucundam in praesenti, qua versamur, tribulatione et pressura percepimus consolationem et recreationem, eo majorem quia ad nos venit ex ore et corde confratrum, qui colunt gregem Domini praeclarum per saecula jam durissima persecutione et oppressione exercitum et probatum, ex quo tot viri sanctissimi quondam provenerunt, qui animarum zelo ferventes in patriam nostram migraverunt atque laboribus ac sudoribus

indefessis Ecclesia in Germania fundata sive dilatata, patres nostri spirituales facti sunt. Pro magnifico isto documento charitatis fraternae, quam non solum verbis et literis, sed factis quoque ac publicis suffragiis nobis exhibere voluistis, ex omnium confratrum meorum animo et commisso expresso Eminentiae Tuae Reverendissimae necnon omnibus et singulis Hiberniae Antistitibus veneratissimis qui epistolae ad nos transmissae nomen dederunt, gratias ago humillimas plurimasque, enixe rogans, ut suffragia quae pro Germaniae Ecclesia fundere jam coepistis dein prosequi et in cultu Sanctissimi Cordis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, quod nos quoque in tribulatione nostra tanquam certissimum auxilii divini pignus et refugium opportunissimum una cum gregibus nobis concreditis colimus atque imploramus, nobiscum uniti perseverare dignemini, donec Deus Opt. Max. Ecclesiae suae persecutionibus finem imponat optatum.

Grato animo vobiscum quoque colimus sanctissimos illos viros apostolicos quibus Germania cum Hibernia supernaturalis necessitudinis vinculis conjunctam se esse gloriatur speramusque fore ut per eorum intercessionem preces nostrae apud gratiae divinae thronum valide juventur. Quod spectat in specie ad S. Bonifacium martyrem et pontificem, quem universa Germania catholica tanquam Apostolum suum peculiariter veneratur quemque et Vos Vestratem appellare et colere non dubitatis, liceat mihi hac occasione data significare, quod Germaniae necnon Angliae Episcopi jam pridem Sanctissimum Patrem Pium IX. adierint supplicantes, ut festum hujus martyris et Pontificis gloriosi, qui de sancta Sede Apostolica et Ecclesia catholica optime meruit, tanquam festum duplex in universa Ecclesia celebrandum praescriberetur. Eminentiam Tuam Reverendissimam omnes Germaniae Antistites per me humillime rogant, ut simul cum caeteris ac singulis Hiberniae Episcopis in honorem Sancti Bonifacii eandem supplicationem ad sacram sedem deferre digneris, quatenus dilatata per universum orbem catholicum veneratione sancti Apostoli Germaniae citius ipsius intercessione potenti nostrae cum vestris unitae preces exaudiantur et Germaniae catholicae auxilium divinum impetretur in tribulatione praesenti. Maximae ac sincerissimae venerationis sensibus persisto.

Eminentiae Tuae Reverendissimae

humillimus ac devotissimus famulus. PAULUS ARCHIEPISCOPUS COLONIENSIS.

Coloniae, 21 Febr., 1873.

Eminentissimo ac Reverendissimo Domino
S. R. E. Cardinali Paulo Cullen, Archiepiscopo
Dubliniensi, Hiberniae Primati.

THE IRISH

ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD.

APRIL, 1873.

THE IRISH MASSACRE OF 1641.

HISTORY does not present a parallel to the sufferings of

the Irish nation during the brief period of Puritan rule from 1641 to 1660. The chief source of that ferocity which overspread our island with ruin, and deluged it with blood, was a rabid hatred of our faith, dearer than life itself to our people. Never were brute force and the perverted talents of man more persistently and more unscrupulously employed to attain the double end of rooting out the Irish, and extirpating the religion which they professed. However, the Celtic race, like the Jews of old, was found to be indestructible. The heroism of our nation under these unparalleled sufferings forms one of the brightest pages in our history, and has merited for "the Island of Saints" a new aureola as "the martyr island of the Church."

Not satisfied with the wholesale butcheries of olden times, the Puritans and their modern friends have sought to blacken the fame of the heroic sufferers, and by a strange perversion of historical truth, posterity has been made to believe that the Irish Catholics of 1641 were the guilty agents and perpetrators of a general massacre, whilst in reality they were the victims. So often, and with such minute details, has this tale of a general massacre by the Irish Catholics been repeated in works professedly historical, as well as in essays from the pulpit and the press, that it may now be said to have taken its place as an integral part of the Protestant tradition of the empire. It is not in the vain hope of checking the onward course of such tradition that these pages have been written. The enemies of the Irish Catholics will listen to no reasoning of ours, and they take care to read nothing but what is coloured for their sight. This paper is intended solely for the students.

VOL. IX.

19

of Irish history, who love to trace the origin and the course of the many calumnies which the malice of our enemies has poured out upon our people.

Sir John Temple was the first who sought to give historical consistency to the lying stories of the supposed massacre. In 1646 he published in London a 4to volume with the title "The Irish Rebellion: or, An History of the Beginnings and First Progress of the General Rebellion raised within the Kingdom of Ireland on the 23rd of October, 1641," and he there laid down that, "since the Rebellion first broke out, unto the time of the cessation, made September 15, 1643, which was not full two years after, above 300,000 British and Protestants were cruelly murthered in cold blood, destroyed some other way, or expelled out of their habitations, according to the strictest conjecture and computation of those who seemed best to understand the numbers of English planted in Ireland, besides those few which fell in the heat of fight during the war," (page 6). The position of Sir John Temple as Master of the Rolls in Ireland and Privy Councillor, at the time the Revolution began, lent credit to his statements. There was also another feature of his work which seemed to give it the stamp of genuine history. A Commission had been issued in December, 1641, to seven Protestant ministers, authorizing them to take evidence upon oath "to keep up the memory of the outrages committed by the Irish." Sir John Temple had full access to the Depositions received by these Commissioners, and his work was little more than a series of extracts from them. Who, therefore, could question the accuracy of his narrative? We will, however, have many things to say hereafter regarding these Depositions. Their original text is still preserved, in thirty-two volumes in folio, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Dr. Edmund Borlase, a physician at Chester, and a host of other interested writers, soon joined in the accusations against the Irish Catholics. Even those who were honoured by the British public as impartial historians, lent their names to these calumnies, and appealed to the authentic "Depositions" as indisputable proof of the general massacre. Thus, Lord Clarendon, in his history, vol. 2nd, writes that "A general insurrection of the Irish spread itself over the whole country, in such an inhuman and barbarous manner, that there were forty or fifty thousand of the English Protestants murdered before they suspected themselves to be in danger." Rapin also states: "The day appointed for executing the bloody design was the 23rd of October, on which day they were to rise all over the island. The design

was really executed, as projected, and it is said that on that 'and the following days above 40,000 English Protestants were massacred by the Irish. Above 154,000 Protestants were massacred in that kingdom from the 23rd October to the 1st March following."—(History of England, vol. ix., p. 340). May, in his "History of the Parliament of England," declares that "The innocent Protestants were upon a sudden disseized of their estates; and the persons of above 200,000 men, women, and children were murdered, many of them with exquisite and unheard of tortures, within the space of one month." Sir Philip Warwick, in "Memoirs of King Charles I.," is still more definite: "Though they were prevented," he says, "of surprising Dublin by a mere accident, yet, through the country, it has been thought that in one week they massacred very near 100,000 persons, men, women, and children."

The historians of the massacre sometimes display considerable ingenuity in varying its details. Thus, for instance, Whitelock states that the rebels "drowned many hundreds, men, women, and innocent children, in the rivers. Some they sent to sea in a rotten vessel without any sails or rudder, to be cast away; and great numbers of the English, after they had done all sorts of drudgeries for the rebels in hopes of mercy, had all their throats cut by them, and with some of them the execrable villains and monsters would make themselves pastime and sport before their death, trying who could hack deepest into the Englishmen's flesh."-(Memorials of English Affairs, London, 1682, p. 49.). Hume, though somewhat cautious in assigning the numbers of the massacred, yet writes:-"An universal massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes. No age, no sex, no condition, was spared. The wife, weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke. In vain did flight save from the first assault. Destruction was everywhere let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn." Leland adds, that "Irish ecclesiastics were seen encouraging the carnage. The women forgot the tenderness of their sex, pursued the English with execrations, and imbrued their hands in blood; even children in their feeble malice lifted the dagger against the helpless prisoners." Milton, so famed for his liberality, is still more extravagant in his statement, for he swells up the number of the Protestant victims to more than 600,000. In the second edition of his Iconoclastes (p. 49), he deliberately treats of "The rebellion and horrid massacre of English Protestants in Ireland, to the number of 154,000 in the province of Ulster only, by their own compu

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