thenceforth enjoy the graces promised to them in the fourth year of his reign. Soon after the receipt of this letter, the parliament adjourned: and the lords justices, as they had been instructed, issued a proclamation of all his majesty's grants and graces, that they might be known to the people. So little however were they even now disposed to discredit the word of their sovereign, that the new proclamation seemed to have produced a total oblivion of the breach of the former: general satisfaction prevailed, in full confidence, that the laws, to which the people now considered themselves entitled by compact and purchase, would be passed at the meeting of the parliament. During this recess the grand rebellion broke out, or rather was proclaimed. In order to form an unbiassed judgment of this period of Irish history, we must attend closely to the power and ascendency, which the Puritan party then had acquired in that kingdom. In many points of view it was more extensive and powerful than in England: for the spirit of it not only pervaded every department of the state, civil, military, and clerical, but their efforts being chiefly directed against the Catholics, were eagerly seconded by all the Protestants of that kingdom; the destruction of Popery being a common object of their mutual zeal. The Puritans dreaded the loyalty more than the religion of the Catholics; but by persecuting them on the score of religion, they attacked their means of supporting the royal cause, and associated all other Protestants with them, whilst they could thus mask their batteries against the throne. As long therefore as the Independents could keep up the division of Ireland into Catholic and Protestant, so long were the loyal Protestants deceived in the assistance they gave to the arms of those rebels. It is impossible to fix the day on which the usurped power of the parliamentarians commenced, and the constitutional power of the crown ceased. From the moment of that usurpation, resistance to the parliamentary power, was loyalty, not treason. The Irish Catholics were the first and last in arms for King Charles*. It was their boast and glory to oppose all the king's I know of no better authority than that of Lord Strafforde, to prove the extraordinary loyalty and affection of his majesty's Irish Catholic subjects, however prone others have been to traduce and vilify them. He tells the King in a letter on the 23d of March, 1639: "This very evening the supply was pro"pounded in the house of commons, and four subsidies assented with all pos"sible cheerfulness, together with a declaration that they will further supply your majesty with their estates and fortunes to the very uttermost, desiring this declaration may be printed together with the bill for subsidies, &c. In "one word, your majesty may have with their free good will as much as this "people can possibly raise. Next, your majesty may as safely account your"self master of their lives and fortunes, as the best of kings can promise to "find amongst the best of subjects; and that if those in England comply with the like alacrity, and minister to your majesty's princely designs and purposes, you will be at an end of the war before it begins. My next endeavour enemies, notwithstanding the duplicity and severity they had experienced from the crown. The Puritans wished to raise the Catholics in arms, especially, whilst they could command the co-operation of the other Protestants to subdue them. And thus it is evident, that in Ireland the Puritan party for a considerable time continued to forward their rebellious designs against the throne, under the appearance of loyalty and submission to the royal authority, and with the concurrence of his majesty's arms. In every quarter of the kingdom, in every department of government, they found means to foment and raise what they called a Popish rebellion. The lords justices, Borlase and Parsons prevented the bills of grace from passing, in direct contravention of the king's commands, they revived the persecution to the highest degree of irritation against the Catholics, and published throughout that kingdom certain petitions presented to the parliament of England, which were applications for the means of destroying the religion, lives, and estates of the Catholics of Ireland. The Scotch covenanting army published the like resolutions, and the Irish believed them earnest in their declarations that they would extirpate all the Catholics from the province of Ulster, and enforce the covenant by the rope and the sword. Under these menaces and alarm, some few of the northern Catholics associated and armed in self-defence against those whom they considered enemies to God and their king..... Some private views will always on such occasions be mingled with the common cause. Lord Clanricarde, who had just ar rived from England at this juncture, said, however that "*none “appeared in this detestable conspiracy, or entered into action, "but the remains of the ancient Irish rebels in the north, and "some of the planted county of Leitrim." But how did the king himself speak of this rebellion?" "is, to settle the levies for the 8000 foot, and for ordering those other great “incidents accompanying so great a design, as will be the transportation and "maintenance of so great an army, wherein I will not lose an hour, or suffer "this nation to cool on my hands, whose zeal is all on fire to serve your "majesty on this occasion." (2 vol. St. Let. 396.) In a letter from thirteen privy counsellors to secretary Windebank on the same day, it is said, “which "we mention for the glory of his majesty, that hath so good and loyal sub"jects." Strafford on the next day, in a letter to Windebank, says, “As in "their purses, so also in their persons I find them most earnest to venture "them in his majesty's service," (399) and in the postscript to that letter, viz. "on the 28th of March, he adds, " In truth, there cannot better be desired of "them than they are willing to effect." In this very letter to Windebank, he gives us full proof of his contempt of the Irish, and a strong implied avowal, that he had not theretofore consulted their wishes and happiness: "Next, I "will pass the royal assent upon the bills of subsidies, and two or three bills of grace, which will be also ready, and so adjourn till after Whitsuntide, dis"missing them with the best words I can possibly give them, to make them "in love and liking with what they have done and afterwards to the utmost "of my power always minister to their fitting contentment and satisfaction, as in truth they passing well deserve." If he had been sincere in this, his future conduct towards them, would have been widely different from the past. Clan. Mem. 63. 112 "The commotions," says his majesty, "in Ireland were so In"sudden and so violent, that it was hard at first either to discern "the rise, or apply a remedy to that precipitant rebellion. "deed that sea of blood which hath there been cruelly and bar"barously shed, is enough to drown any man in eternal infamy "and misery, whom God shall find the malicious author or in"stigator of its effusion." It is not difficult to decipher, that the royal apologist meant to lay this rebellion to the account of the Puritan party of that day, charging them with thinking, they cannot do well but in evil times, nor so cunningly, as in "laying the odium of these events on others, wherewith them"selves are most pleased, and whereof they have been not the "least occasion. And certainly it is thought by many wise "men, that the preposterous rigour and unreasonable severity, "which some men carried before them in England, was not the "least incentive that kindled and blew up those horrid flames, "the sparks of discontent, which wanted not predisposed fuel "for rebellion in Ireland: where despair being added to their "former discontents, and the fear of utter extirpation to their "wonted oppressions, it was easy to provoke to an open rebel"lion a people prone enough to break out to all exorbitant vio"lence, both by some principles of their religion, and the natural "desires of liberty; both to exempt themselves from their pre"sent restraints, and to prevent those after-rigours wherewith "they saw themselves apparently threatened by the covetous "zeal and uncharitable fury of some men, who think it a great argument of the truth of their religion, to endure no other "than their own. 66 "I would to God no man had been less affected with Ire"land's sad estate than myself. I offered to go myself in per66 son upon that expedition: but some men were either afraid I "should have any one kingdom quieted, or loath they were to "shoot at any mark less than myself: or that any should have "the glory of my destruction but themselves. Had my many "offers been accepted, I am confident neither the ruin would have been so great, nor the calamity so long, nor the remedy so desperate. warmness, "But some kind of zeal counts all merciful moderation, lukeand had rather be cruel than counted cold; and is "not seldom more greedy to kill the bear for his skin, than for 66 any harm he hath done: the confiscation of men's estates be"ing more beneficial, than the charity of saving their lives, or And, "I believe it will at last "reforming their errors." * Είκων Βασιλικη. p. 50, 51, &c. be Sir E. Walker says (Hist. Disc. 231) that this proposal was ill taken by "appear, that they, who first began to embroil my other king"doms, are in great part guilty, if not of the first letting out, yet of the not timely stopping those horrid effusions of blood "in Ireland." So spoke the king even from the partial accounts transmitted to him by his own favourites, who were generally enemies to Ireland. : It is not to be dissembled, that in an affair of such diversified moment, a vast variety of causes must have co-operated to produce the effects, which so deeply affected the state. We are assured by different authors, that many were excited to rebellion by the success of the Scotch covenanters, who, by their irruption into England, had obtained the sum of 200,000 to induce them to return quietly into their own country; others, from the dread of the menaces of the covenanting army in Ireland, that they would extirpate every priest and Papist out of the nation : that some of them embarked in it from zeal to their own, and others from abhorrence of the reformed religion under all its different forms and denominations; that all the Puritans, and most other descriptions of Protestants, seized with that turbu lent and restless spirit, which then agitated England, closely followed its examples by opposing all royal authority whatever : that numbers of the old Milesian Irish seized upon this moment of confusion and weakness in the English cabinet, to revive and enforce their ancient claims to the kingdom, which they still .considered as usurped by the English, and withholden from them by no other right or title than of force that no inconsiderable portion of the nation was stimulated into insurrection by their clergy who had been educated abroad in hopes of procuring a civil establishment of the Catholic religion, and other foreign emissaries from courts, whose politics prompted them to weaken the power of the British empire by the internal dissensions of its subjects: in a word, that numberless individuals bereft of their possessions by plantations and forfeitures, persecuted for the exercise of their religious duties, or prevented from any useful or permanent occupation by the effects or abuse of the penal laws, or the indolence of their own dispositions, composed a formidable body of malcontents, who sought redress, preferment or existence in the confusion of commotion and turbulence. These various motives probably operated upon the individuals: but the main source of the evil lay in the existence of real grievances, which formed a plausible rallying point to all. And it is incontestible, that such at this time was the prevalence of the Puritan party in Ireland, such their arrogance, ferocity and power, such their avowed hatred to the Catholics, and such their still dissembled but active enmity to royalty, that the most serious apprehensions of an immediate general massacre or extermination of the whole body of the Ca. tholics were generally entertained throughout the kingdom.* There prevailed at this time a conviction that the armed force in Ireland was, generally, hostile to the king, and that the English parliament had either by concession or usurpation, acquired the government of the kingdom of Ireland. All the remonstrances of the Catholics expressed their loyalty to his majesty, and tenders of service against his enemies; for such from that time they considered the covenanters, and all those who supported or adhered to them: and their complaints generally ran against the harshness, arrogance, and injustice of their immediate governors. *This amongst many other documents appears by a remonstrance presented at that time by the northern nobility and gentry to the king, which is to be seen in Des. Cur. Hyb. 2 vol. 86, and contains the following passage. "There was a petition framed by the Puritans of this kingdom of Ireland, "subscribed by the hands of many hundreds of them, and preferred to the "house of commons of the new parliament of England, for suppressing our reli. "gion and us the professors thereof residing within this kingdom of Ireland: "which as we are credibly informed, was condescended unto by both houses "of Parliament, there, and undertaken to be accomplished to their full desires, and that without the privity or allowance of your majesty." And Dr. Anderson in his Royal Genealogies, p. 786, says, "That the native Irish being well informed as they thought (in 1641) that they now must either turn "Protestant or depart the kingdom, or be hanged at their own door: they be "took to arms in their own defence, especially in Ulster, where the six coun"ties had been forfeited." About this same time a very strong and dispassionate remonstrance from Cavan, said to have been drawn up by Bishop Bedel, was presented to the lords justices: and Burnet in his life of Bishop Bedel owns that this remonstrance gives the best colours to their proceedings of any of their papers he had ever seen: (Vid. App. No. XXII.)" The northern "plantations, says Leland (3 Vol. 89) could not but be offensive to the old "Irish: and those among them that submitted and accepted their portions of "land, complained that in many instances they had been scandalously defrauded. "The revival of obsolete claims to the crown, harassing of proprietors by “fictions of law, dispossessing them by fraud and circumvention, and all the "various artifices of interested agents and ministers, were naturally irritating. "And the public discontents must have been further enflamed, by the in"sincerity of Charles in evading the confirmation of his graces; the insolence "of Strafford in openly refusing it, together with the nature and manner of his "proceedings with the proprietors of Connaught." It I speak not of that armed force of 8000 men, which had been raised by Lord Strafford to be led into Scotland, and which was disbanded in June 1641, without any inconvenience or disorder in the nation at that time. Carte Orm. 1 vol. p. 134. The 1000 Protestants of this body were sent back to their old corps, from whence they had been drafted. Of the loyalty and zeal of this corps, Strafford has left us the following eulogies. State Letters, 2 vol. "is hardly to be believed what forwardness there is in these people to serve "in this expedition (against the Scots). Certainly they will seil themselves "to the last farthing before they deny any thing which can be asked of them "in order to that." And in another letter he tells the king, "they are all on "fire to serve his majesty " With reference to this idea, Dr. Warner said (Hist. of Reb. p. 5.)" So "that he might further testify his resolutions to make his Irish subjects easy "under his government, in the beginning of May he appointed the Earl of Lei"cester, and not the English parliament, as Ludlow says, lord lieutenant of "that kingdom." |