consultations unto the Parliament, to be there allowed and confirmed, and receive the stamp of authority, thereby to find passage and obedience throughout the kingdom." The whole contention of the party of the Grand Remonstrance, the whole root of the baleful tree of Civil War, lay in these words. "The malignant party," they went on Position taken up. to say, "tell the people that our meddling with the power of Episcopacy hath caused sectaries and conventicles, when idolatry and Popish ceremonies introduced into the Church by command of the Bishops have not only debarred the people from thence, but expelled them from the kingdom. Thus, with Elijah, we are called by this malignant party the troublers of the State, and still, while we endeavour to reform their abuses, they make us the authors of those mischiefs we study to prevent." "No Popery!" was the cry on one side. "No sectarian meeting!" was the cry on the other. "No toleration!" was the cry on both.1 Demand for In the face of such divisions of heart and mind every claim for increase of political power had the ring of faction in it. Yet it was impossible that the demand made in the a responsible Additional Instruction should be passed over in the ministry. Remonstrance. Charles was asked to employ such councillors, ambassadors, and other ministers in managing his business at home and abroad as the Parliament might have cause to confide in. Otherwise no supplies could be given. It would not be enough to allow the right of impeachment. "It may often fall out that the Commons may have just cause to take exceptions at some men for being Councillors, and yet not "Troubles... I ... A contemporary letter well brings this out. believe will not yet cease until the business of religion be better settled, and the sectaries and separatists (whereof in London and the parts contiguous are more than many) may be suppressed and punished. . . . Oft times we have more printed than is true, especially when anything concerns the Papists, who (though they are bad enough) our preciser sort strive yet to make them worse, and between them both are the causes that in no discoveries we can hardly meet with the face of truth."- Wiseman to Pennington, Nov. 11, S. P. Dom. charge those men with crimes, for there be grounds of diffidence which lie not in proof. There are others which, though they may be proved, yet are not legally criminal." Politically Pym-and Pym may fairly be regarded as the main author of the Remonstrance-was far in advance of his Character of opponents. The position which had been taken by Pym's work. the Houses, with the full consent of both parties, was incomplete without the subordination of the Executive to Parliament. If Pym was in the wrong, it was not here that his mistake was made. tion. On the 9th the Remonstrance underwent a closer examina- Nov. 9. monstrance grievances which had been omitted in the original The Re- draft. No opposition, so far as is now known, was discussed. offered to those clauses in which the King's past misgovernment was set forth in detail. During the discussion of the first two days not a single division is reported to have been taken. Nov. 11. from Ireland. Oct. 24. Once more the attention of the House was called off by bad news from Ireland. Before the first week of the rebellion was over it had developed itself in the direction of Worse news that savagery which inevitably attends the uprising of a population suffering under grievous wrongs, without the habit of self-restraint which is the most precious fruit of the higher civilisation. It is true that on October 24 Sir Phelim O'Neill made known by proclamation that no harm was intended either against the King or against any of his subjects.2 It is just possible that in some dreamy way he may have contemplated a revolution in which all wrongs should be righted without effusion of blood. The fact was far otherwise. There was, indeed, no general massacre in the North.3 The Scots who formed the majority O'Neill's proclaina. tion. No general massacre. ' D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 116 b. 121 b. 2 Proclamation, Oct. 24. S. P. Ireland. If a general massacre had taken place, it must have left traces in the Carte MSS. and the State Tapers. On Sir John Temple as an authority, see Lecky, Hist. of England, ii. 149. I take this opportunity of expressing my extreme admiration for Mr. Lecky's account of the Irish Rebel of the colonists were spared, apparently on some notion that, the cause of nationality being common to Scotland and Ireland, they were not to be regarded as enemies. Nor were the English put to the sword in a body. The condition of the settlers was, however, scarcely less pitiable. In the first week of the rebellion the greater part of the fortified posts in the North of Ireland fell into the hands of the rebels. Freed from apprehension the wild multitude swooped down upon every English homestead, and thrust out the possessors to fare as best they Violence and might. It was not in the nature of things that violence murder. should stop there. Two classes of Englishmen were specially exposed to danger-the officials who had enforced the payment of dues to the Crown, and the clergy who had drawn their maintenance from an impoverished people of another faith. From these classes victims were early chosen. A far larger number feil a sacrifice to the wild brutality of ferocious and excited mobs than to any deliberate purpose of venSlaughter in geance. Worst of all were the deeds of the Maguires Fermanagh. in Fermanagh. Exasperated by the imprisonment, of Lord Maguire, they killed, if report spoke truly, no less than three hundred English on the first day of the outbreak. Even when the leaders of the natives were inclined to spare the prisoners, they were unable to secure them against the brutality of their followers. It sometimes happened that the guard appointed to conduct the former masters of the soil to a place of safety, was driven off by the rude country-people, and the sad procession, clogged with helpless women and children, found its close in murder. No attempt was made to bury the victims. The stripped corpses lay about till the hungry dogs left nothing but scattered bones to bleach on the ground.1 October. lion. Having examined a large mass of original material amongst the State Papers and the Carte MSS., I have been surprised to find how, even when he has not himself gone through the work of reference to MS. authorities, he almost always contrives to hit the truth. 1 Deposition of T. Grant, Feb. 9, 1642 (Carte MSS. ii. fol. 346). The deponent, who was examined on oath, says that, being in Fermanagh on Oct. 23, he heard that Mr. Champion was killed and his company murdered. He himself escaped, and, being retaken, was carried to Cicnes to State of 66 In Cavan, on the other hand, Philip O'Reilly, who headed the rebellion, set his face against cruelty and murder. In Belturbet, he gave leave to about 800 English settlers to Cavan. carry some of their property with them. A mixed multitude of men, women, and children, set out for Dublin. "That night so the Rector told the story in after yearswe all lay in open field. Next day we were met by a party of the rebels, who killed some, robbed and spoiled the rest. Me they stripped to my shirt in miserable weather; my wife was not so barbarously used; both of us, with a multitude of others, hurried to Moien Hall. That night we lay in heaps, expecting every hour to be massacred." At last they reached Kilmore, where they were received by Bedell, in whose conversation they enjoyed for three weeks 'a heaven upon earth.' Three weeks later they were sent on to Dublin, where they arrived personally unhurt. Another body of fugitives from the neighbourhood of Belturbet said to have amounted to 2,000, was sent on under a guard of 200 Irish. For eight or ten miles the guards performed their duty well. Then they found that the whole country-side was roused. The warm clothes of the hated English would be a precious possession in the cold winter nights which were approaching. It was but a moment's work to rush upon the helpless crowd, to strip both men and women to the skin, and to send them on in their misery. Irish women and Irish children rushed to the spoil even more savagely than the men. If compassion left to some of the poor creatures a bare rag wherewith to cover their nakedness, it was snatched away when the next hovels were reached. About a hundred perished on the way from cold and hunger. The remainder were hounded on with fiendish mockery to Dublin, the city of refuge. One who told The fugitives from Belturbet. be hanged, but was reprieved. He then mentions hearing of the hanging of twenty-one English prisoners at Carrigmacross, of two others at Monaghan, of the murdering of nineteen persons elsewhere. The mention of these particulars shows that he did not know of a universal massacre. Thus far the story is taken from the letter of the Bishop of Elphin to Ormond, May 4, 1682, Carte MSS. xxxix. 365. At the time of the Rebellion the Bishop was Rector of Belturbet. the tale gave thanks to God that, as amongst the shipwrecked companions of St. Paul, 'some came to land on planks, some on broken pieces of the ship, so some have passed these pikes, some with torn clothes and rags, some with rolls of hay about their middles, some with sheep-skins and goat-skins, and some of the riflers themselves exchanged their tattered rags for the travellers' better clothes.'1 Further Other more deliberate murders were perpetrated over the face of Northern Ireland. Protestant ministers and Protestant settlers were hung or stabbed. Unless the belief outrages. of those who escaped far outran the reality, simple death would have been to many a dearly prized relief. It was at least believed that noses and cars were cut off in sheer brutality, that women were foully outraged, and that 'some women had their hands and arms cut off, yea, jointed alive to make them confess where their money was.' 72 At Portadown a large number of persons were flung from the bridge into the river to drown. At Corbridge a similar tragedy was enacted. Tales of unimaginable brutality were afterwards collected from the mouths of those who had escaped from those awful scenes -tales swollen, we may hope and believe, by the credulity of fear, and which were often exaggerated by the credulity of superstition. The same testimony that was taken as evidence of the murders was taken as evidence of the visible appearance of the ghosts of the murdered. Statements were collected from excited fugitives, ready to believe the worst, and to tell all that they had heard, as well as all that they knew, perhaps under pressure from Commissioners who were anxious that the story which they elicited should be as horrible as it could be. It does not, however, follow that all was pure invention or the result of credulity. There is nothing to make the commission. A Brief Declaration of the Barbarous and Inhuman Dealing of the Northern Irish Rebels. By G. S., Minister of God's Word in Ireland, E. 181. This was written soon after the Rebellion broke out, and has about it a moderation which inspires confidence. It is probable that the number of the fugitives is over-estimated, and it is possible that some of the 800 mentioned by the Bishop of Elphin made part of the body. 2 This is from the Brief Declaration. |