Part 578

'When Cromwell arrived in Ireland at the head of 12,000 men, he found almost the whole country under the power of the Royalists (August 15th). A Parliamentary garrison in Dublin itself had only escaped a siege by surprising the enemy on the banks of the Liffey (August 2nd). The general first marched against Drogheda, then called Droghdagh or Tredah, and summoned the garrison to surrender; Sir Arthur Ashton, the governor, refused; he had 3,000 of the choicest troops of the confederates and enough provisions to enable him to hold out till winter should compel the enemy to raise the siege. But within twenty-four hours the English batteries had made a breach in the wall, Oliver, after twice seeing his soldiers beaten off, led them on in person and carried the breach. A terrible massacre followed. 'Being in the heat of action I forbade them,' Cromwell wrote in his despatch to the Parliament, 'to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men.' Of these, one-half probably fell in the streets; the other half Cromwell describes as having been slain at early dawn in St. Peter's Church. This he looks upon as a judgment for their previous proceedings there. 'It is remarkable,' he writes, 'that these people at first set up the mass in some places of the town that had been monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent that, the last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church called St. Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all the friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two.' … Royalist accounts assert that many hundreds of women and children were slain in St. Peter's Church: It is, of course, possible that some of the townspeople, fleeing thither for safety, lost their lives in the general massacre of the garrison. There is, however, no trustworthy witness for any lives being taken except those of soldiers and friars. Cromwell did not sanction the killing of any but those with arms in their hands, though he seems to have approved of the fate of the friars. The fanatical zeal of his letter, and the fact that he takes the full credit, or discredit, for the slaughter of the garrison; makes it improbable that he concealed anything; and this substantiated by his subsequent declaration, in which he gives this challenge:—'Give us an instance of one man, since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning the massacre or the destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavoured to be done.' With the enemy's troops Cromwell carried out the determined mode of warfare which he began at Drogheda. They were mostly scattered over the country, occupied in garrison duty. Before whatever town he came he demanded immediate surrender, or threatened to refuse quarter. Town after town opened its gates to this grim summons. Wexford, which refused to surrender, was stormed, and the whole garrison, 2,000 in number, put to the sword (October 11th). … In other respects, while Cromwell's rigour and determination saved bloodshed in the end by the rapidity and completeness of his conquests, his conduct in Ireland contrasted favourably on many points with that of the Royalists there. His own soldiers, for ill-using the people contrary to regulations, were sometimes cashiered the army, sometimes hanged. When a treaty was made, he kept faithfully to its terms. Garrisons that yielded on summons were allowed either to march away with arms and baggage, or else to go abroad and enter the service of any government at peace with England. Before the war was over he had rid the country, on these terms, of some 45,000 soldiers. Taking advantage of the divisions of his enemies, he persuaded several garrisons of English soldiers to desert the cause of Charles Stuart for the Commonwealth. His conduct of the war was so successful that, during the nine months of his stay in Ireland, the forces of the Royalists were shattered, and the provinces of Leinster and Munster recovered for the Parliament. Cromwell returned to England in May, 1650, leaving his son-in-law Ireton to complete the conquest of the country. The last garrisons in Ulster and Munster surrendered during the course of the ensuing summer and autumn. Ireton crossed the Shannon and drove the Irish back into the bogs and mountain fastnesses of Connaught, their last refuge, where fighting still continued for two years after all the rest of the country had been reduced (1651-2)."

_B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 12._

"No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and earnestness—no sympathy with the cause that he upheld in England—can blind us to the truth, that the lurid light of this great crime [the massacre at Drogheda] burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland; that it is one of those damning charges which the Puritan theology has yet to answer at the bar of humanity."

_F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 8._

{1769}

"Oliver's proceedings here [at Drogheda] have been the theme of much loud criticism, and sibylline execration; into which it is not our plan to enter at present. … To those who think that a land overrun with Sanguinary Quacks can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these letters must be very horrible. Terrible Surgery this: but is it Surgery and Judgment, or atrocious Murder merely? That is a question which should be asked; and answered. Oliver Cromwell did believe in God's Judgments; and did not believe in the rose-water plan of Surgery;—which, in fact, is this Editor's case too. … Here is a man whose word represents a thing! Not bluster this, and false jargon scattering itself to the winds: what this man speaks out of him comes to pass as a fact; speech with this man is accurately prophetic of deed. This is the first King's face poor Ireland ever saw; the first Friend's face, little as it recognises him,—poor Ireland! … To our Irish friends we ought to say likewise that this Garrison of Tredah consisted, in good part, of Englishmen. Perfectly certain this:—and therefore let 'the bloody hoof of the Saxon,' &c., forbear to continue itself on that matter."

_T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 5._

"Cromwell met with little resistance: wherever he came, he held out the promise of life and liberty of conscience; … liberty of conscience he explained to mean liberty of internal belief, not of external worship; … but the rejection of the offer, though it were afterwards accepted, was punished with the blood of the officers; and, if the place were taken by force, with indiscriminate slaughter."

_J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 5, with foot-note._

ALSO IN: _D. Murphy, Cromwell in Ireland._

IRELAND: A. D. 1651. The Massachusetts colonists invited to Ireland by Cromwell.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1649-1651.

IRELAND: A. D. 1652. The Kilkenny Articles.

"On 12th May, 1652, the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered on terms signed at Kilkenny, which were adopted successively by the other principal armies between that time and the September following, when the Ulster forces surrendered. By these Kilkenny articles, all except those who were guilty of the first blood were received into protection, on laying down their arms; those who should not be satisfied with the conclusions the Parliament might come to concerning the Irish nation, and should desire to transport themselves with their men to serve any foreign state in amity with the Parliament, should have liberty to treat with their agents for that purpose."

_J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, part 1, section 2._

IRELAND: A. D. 1653. The Cromwellian Settlement.

"By the term Cromwellian Settlement is to be understood the history of the dealings of the Commonwealth of England with the lands and habitations of the people of Ireland after their conquest of the country in the year 1652. … The officers of the army were eager to take Irish lands in lieu of their arrears, though it does not appear that the common soldiers were, who had small debentures and no capital, and no chance of founding families and leaving estates to their posterity. But the adventurers [national creditors, who had loaned money to the government for the Irish War] must be first settled with, as they had a claim to about one million of acres, to satisfy the sums advanced for putting down the rebellion on the faith of the Act of 17 Charles I. (A. D. 1642), and subsequent Acts and Ordinances, commonly called 'The Acts of Subscription.' By these, lands for the adventurers must be first ascertained, before the rest of the country could be free for disposal by the Parliament to the army. … Towards the close of the year 1653, the island seemed sufficiently desolated to allow the English to occupy it. On the 26th of September in that year, the Parliament passed an Act for the new planting of Ireland with English. The government reserved for themselves all the towns, all the church lands and tithes; for they abolished all archbishops, bishops, deans, and other officers, belonging to that hierarchy, and in those days the Church of Christ sat in Chichester House on College-green. They reserved also for themselves the four counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork. Out of the lands and tithes thus reserved, the government were to satisfy public debts, private favourites, eminent friends of the republican cause in Parliament, regicides, and the most active of the English rebels, not being of the army. They next made ample provision for the adventurers. The amount due to the adventurers was £360,000. This they divided into three lots, of which £110,000 was to be satisfied in Munster, £205,000 in Leinster, and £45,000 in Ulster, and the moiety of ten counties was charged with their payment:—Waterford, Limerick, and Tipperary, in Munster; Meath, Westmeath, King's and Queen's Counties, in Leinster; and Antrim, Down, and Armagh, in Ulster. But, as all was required by the Adventurers Act to be done by lot, a lottery was appointed to be held in Grocers' Hall, London, for the 20th July, 1653. … A lot was then to be drawn by the adventurers, and by some officer appointed by the Lord General Cromwell on behalf of the soldiery, to ascertain which baronies in the ten counties should be for the adventurers, and which for the soldiers. The rest of Ireland, except Connaught, was to be set out amongst the officers and soldiers, for their arrears, amounting to £1,550,000, and to satisfy debts of money or provisions due for supplies advanced to the army of the Commonwealth, amounting to £1,750,000. Connaught was by the Parliament reserved and appointed for the habitation of the Irish nation; and all English and Protestants having lands there, who should desire to remove out of Connaught into the provinces inhabited by the English, were to receive estates in the English parts, of equal value, in exchange. … The Earl of Ormond, Primate Bramhall, and all the Catholic nobility, and many of the gentry, were declared incapable of pardon of life or estate, and were banished. … Connaught was selected for the habitation of all the Irish nation by reason of its being surrounded by the sea and the Shannon, all but ten miles, and the whole easily made into one line by a few forts. To further secure the imprisonment of the nation, and cut them off from relief by sea, a belt four miles wide, commencing one mile to the west of Sligo, and so winging along the coast and Shannon, was reserved by the Act of 27th September, 1653, from being set out to the Irish, and was given to the soldiery to plant. Thither all the Irish were to remove at latest by the first day of May, 1654, except Irish women married to English Protestants before the 2d December, 1650, provided they became Protestants; except, also, boys under fourteen and girls under twelve, in Protestant service and to be brought up Protestants; and, lastly, those who had shown during the ten years' war in Ireland their constant good affection to the Parliament of England in preference to the king. {1770} There they were to dwell without entering a walled town, or coming within five miles of some, on pain of death. All were to remove thither by the 1st of May, 1654, at latest, under pain of being put to death by sentence of a court of military officers, if found after that date on the English side of the Shannon." In the actual enforcement of the law—found impracticable in all its rigor—there were many special dispensations granted, and extensions of time.

_J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, preface, and parts 1-2._

ALSO IN: _J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the 18th Century, book 1, chapter 2 (volume 1)._

_J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 6._

IRELAND: A. D. 1655. Cromwell's deportation of Girls to Jamaica.

See JAMAICA: A. D. 1655.

IRELAND: A. D. 1660-1665. The restored Stuarts and their Act of Settlement.

"On the fall of Richard Cromwell, a council of officers was established in Dublin; these summoned a convention of deputies from the protestant proprietors; and the convention tendered to Charles the obedience of his ancient kingdom of Ireland. … To secure the royal protection, they made the king an offer of a considerable sum of money, assured him, though falsely, that the Irish Catholics meditated a general insurrection, and prayed him to summon a protestant parliament in Ireland, which might confirm the existing proprietors in the undisturbed possession of their estates. The present was graciously accepted, and the penal laws against the Irish Catholics were ordered to be strictly enforced; but Charles was unwilling to call a parliament, because it would necessarily consist of men whose principles, both civil and religious, he had been taught to distrust. The first measure recommended to him by his English advisers, with respect to Ireland, was the re-establishment of episcopacy. For this no legislative enactment was requisite. His return had given to the ancient laws their pristine authority. … In a short time the episcopal hierarchy was quietly restored to the enjoyment of its former rights, and the exercise of its former jurisdiction. To this, a work of easy accomplishment, succeeded a much more difficult attempt,—the settlement of landed property in Ireland. The military, whom it was dangerous to disoblige, and the adventurers, whose pretensions had been sanctioned by Charles I., demanded the royal confirmation of the titles by which they held their estates; and the demand was opposed by a multitude of petitioners claiming restitution or compensation [protestant royalists, loyal Catholics, &c.]. … Humanity, gratitude, and justice, called on the king to listen to many of these claims. … From an estimate delivered to the king, it appeared that there still remained at his disposal forfeited lands of the yearly rental of from eighty to one hundred thousand pounds; a fund sufficiently ample, it was contended, to 'reprize' or compensate all the Irish really deserving of the royal favour. Under this impression, Charles published his celebrated declaration for the settlement of Ireland. It provided that no person deriving his title from the adventurers under the parliament, or the soldiers under the commonwealth, should be disturbed in the possession of his lands, without receiving an equivalent from the fund for reprisals; that all innocents, whether protestants or Catholics, that is, persons who had never adhered either to the parliament or the confederates, should be restored to their rightful estates." After much contention between deputations from both sides sent to the king, an act was passed through the Irish parliament substantially according to the royal declaration. "But to execute this act was found to be a task of considerable difficulty. By improvident grants of lands to the church, the dukes of York, Ormond, and Albemarle, the earls of Orrery, Montrath, Kingston, Massarene, and several others, the fund for reprisals had been almost exhausted." New controversies and agitations arose, which finally induced the soldiers, adventurers, and grantees of the crown to surrender one third of their acquisitions, for the augmenting of the fund for reprisals. "The king, by this measure, was placed in a situation [August, 1665], not indeed to do justice, but to silence the most importunate or most deserving among the petitioners. … But when compensation had thus been made to a few of the sufferers, what, it may be asked, became of the officers who had followed the royal fortune abroad, or of the 3,000 Catholics who had entered their claims of innocence? To all these, the promises which had been made by the act of settlement were broken; the unfortunate claimants were deprived of their rights, and debarred from all hope of future relief. A measure of such sweeping and appalling oppression is perhaps without a parallel in the history of civilized nations. Its injustice could not be denied; and the only apology offered in its behalf was the stern necessity of quieting the fears and jealousies of the Cromwellian settlers, and of establishing on a permanent basis the protestant ascendancy in Ireland. … The following is the general result. The protestants were previously [i. e., before the Cromwellian Settlement] in possession of about one moiety of all the profitable lands in the island; of the second moiety, which had been forfeited under the commonwealth, something less than two-thirds was by the act confirmed to the protestants; and of the remainder a portion almost equal in quantity, but not in quality, to one-third, was appropriated to the Catholics."

_J. Lingard, History of England, volume 11, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1)._

_T. Carte, Life of James Duke of Ormond, book 6 (volume 4)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1685-1688. The reign of James II. Domination of Tyrconnel and the Catholics.

"At the accession of James II., in 1685, he found the native Irish, all of whom were Roman Catholics, opposed to the English rule, as to that of a conquering minority. … Of the settlers, the Scotch Presbyterians shared the feelings of their brethren in their native country, and hated Episcopalians with the true religious fury. In the Irish Parliament the Presbyterians and Episcopalians were nearly balanced, whilst the Protestant Nonconformists, in numbers almost equalling the other two parties, had but few seats in the Parliament. The Episcopalians alone were hearty supporters of the house of Stuart; the Presbyterians and Nonconformists were Whigs. James was in a most favourable position for tranquilising Ireland, for, as a Roman Catholic, he was much more acceptable to the native Irish than his predecessors had been. {1771} Had he followed his true interests, he would have endeavoured, firstly, to unite together, as firmly as possible, the English settlers in Ireland, and secondly, by wise acts of mediation, to bridge over the differences between the English and Irish. Thus he might have welded them into one people. James, however, followed a directly opposite policy, and the results of this misgovernment of Ireland are visible at the present day. The Duke of Ormond was at the time of the death of Charles II. both lord lieutenant and commander of the forces. … Soon after his accession James recalled him, and the office of lord lieutenant was bestowed on his own brother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, whilst the post of general of the troops was given to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel. Talbot … was a coarse, vulgar, truculent ruffian, greedy and unprincipled; but in the eyes of James he had great virtues, for he was devoted to the Romish Church and to his sovereign. 'Lying Dick Talbot,' as he was called, was raised by James to the peerage as Earl of Tyrconnel. Lord Clarendon was, from the time of his appointment, hampered by his associate," who, finally, in 1687, supplanted him, gathering the reins of government into his own hands, "not indeed as lord lieutenant, but with the power which Ormond had formerly held, although under a new title, that of lord deputy. The rule of Tyrconnel entirely subverted the old order of things. Protestants were disarmed and Protestant soldiers were disbanded. The militia was composed wholly of Roman Catholics. The dispensing power in the royal prerogative set aside the statutes of the kingdom, and the bench and privy council were occupied by Roman Catholics. Vacant bishoprics of the Established Church remained unfilled, and their revenues were devoted to Romish priests. Tithes were with impunity withheld from the clergy of the Establishment. … The hatred of the Irish Roman Catholics towards the Protestant settlers was excited to the utmost under Tyrconnel's rule. The former now hoped to mete out to the latter a full measure of retaliation. The breach was widened owing to the fear and distrust openly showed by the Protestants, and has never since been effectually repaired." Before the occurrence of the Revolution which drove James from his throne, in 1688, "Tyrconnel had disarmed all the Protestants, except those in the North. He had a large force of 20,000 men under arms, and of this force all the officers were trustworthy and Papists. He had filled the corporations of the towns with adherents of James. He had shown himself to be, as ever, tyrannical and unscrupulous. It was universally believed by the Protestants that a general massacre, a second St. Bartholomew, was intended. Even a day, December 9, was, they thought, fixed for the expected outbreak. The garrison of Londonderry had been temporarily withdrawn. On December 8, Lord Antrim arrived in command of 12,000 [1,200?] soldiers to form the new garrison. Without any warning, the Protestant apprentices ('the prentice boys of Derry') shut the gates of the city in his face. The inhabitants, in spite of the entreaties of the bishop and of the town council, refused to allow them to be opened. Antrim was compelled to withdraw. Thus one rallying-point was gained for the opponents of James. Another was found in Enniskillen, sixty miles south of Londonderry. Into these two towns poured all the Protestants from the surrounding districts. With these two exceptions, the boast of Tyrconnel that Ireland was true, was well founded."

_E. Hale, The Fall of the Stuarts, chapters 10 and 13._