From
the very beginning of their tenure in Northern
Ireland it was apparent that the Irish Catholics
viewed their new Scottish neighbors with hostility. What was to
follow was one of the cruelest and gravest
events in Irish history, the turning-point on which
all later controversies hinge. Forty volumes of depositions are
preserved in the library of Trinity College, which tell the tale. The
Irish were in a very bad humor and in such a Humor all that was
needed was opportunity. The opportunity presented itself as the
English were otherwise engaged with a near civil war on their own
soil. Ireland for a time had no Viceroy and no army. The Lord Justices,
Parsons, and Borlase, were unpopular even among the English settlers
and had no influence. Eight thousand Catholic
soldiers, having been collected with the view of
fighting Calvinists in Scotland, had been recently disbanded and
now were far more willing to undertake a fight at home.
At
the beginning of October, 1641, the leading Catholic
clergy and laity met at a Franciscan Abbey in Westmeath,
to discuss what course of action was to be taken against the Protestant
settlers. Some advocated banishment
while others felt extermination
was the answer because a banished man may come back with a sword
in his hand--wiser and safer to destroy them while they could. In
Ulster another meeting was taking place. At this meeting were Sir
Philip, Lord Maguyre of Fermanagh, Philip O’Reilly, a lawyer;
Hugh McMahon and his brother Elmer the Vicar-General, afterwards
Bishop of Clogher; Roger Moore, one of the Moore’s of Leax;
and a friar of Dundalk.The Bishop of Clogher was
the brain of the enterprise, and in large directed the course which
was to be pursued. They had decided to act independently of the
more temperate minded and aimed for full eviction of the settlers,
by any means.
The
end of October was chosen as the time to put their plan into action.
Rents and taxes were paid in Ireland on November 1 which meant that
the rents would still be in the hands of the tenants and his crops
would be housed. The high winds at the fall of the year made communication
with England difficult and in 1641 these winds were exceptionally
wild. They felt that a blow struck simultaneously and fiercely over
the whole North, without a note of warning, might crush
the settlers and their religion at once and forever. Priests
were used to spread the word and organize the assault.
The
order relayed by the priests was that on the same day, the Irish
people were to rise and dispose of the settlers and their families.
Directions were given to drive them from their houses: strip
them--man, woman and child--of their property, strip
them even of their clothes on their backs, to take such chances
of life as the elements would allow, in the late autumn amidst sleet
and rain, without food or covering.
The plan also included an assault and seizure of Dublin Castle as
it held arms for nine thousand men in its cellars. News of this
part of the plan leaked out and was ultimately stopped but the attack
on the settlers went ahead as planned.
On the morning of October 23, 1641 there appeared, before the houses
of the settlers and their tenants, gangs
of armed Irish, who demanded instant possession,
on being admitted, ejected the entire families, and stripped most
of them to the skin. Many resisted and were killed; many, the young
vigorous men especially, who could save their own lives by flight,
sought shelter for their women and little ones in the houses of
their Irish neighbors, with whom they had lived in intimacy
The priests, however told them it
was held a mortal sin to give relief
or protection to the settlers. These helpless ones
were often betrayed or murdered by their hosts, although there were
a few exceptions, as in the case of the Blair and Crawford families
who were saved by the brave warning of a dear Irish servant girl.
(Thousands
of us are alive today because of that one act of kindness!)
Naked
men flying for their lives, carried the alarm to Londonderry, Coleraine
and Carrickfergus, and the inhabitants there had time to close their
gates.
Within
the next two weeks, with the exception of the places mentioned above,
every town, village, fort or private house belonging to a Protestant
in six northern counties and in Down and Monaghan was in the hands
of the Irish insurgents,
while the roads were covered with bands of miserable, fugitives
dragging themselves either toward Dublin, or Londonderry, or Carrickfergus.
In the wildest of remembered winters the shivering
fugitives were goaded along the highways stark naked
and foodless. If some found a few rags to throw about them, they
were instantly torn away. If others, in modesty, twisted straw ropes
round their waists, the straw was set on fire.
Many were buried alive.
Those
who died first were never buried, but were left to be devoured
by dogs, and rats and swine. Some were driven into
rivers and drowned, some hanged, some mutilated, some ripped with
knives.
The
priests told the people "that Protestants
were worse than dogs, they were devils and served the devil, and
the killing of them was a meritorious act."
They
flung babies into boiling pots, or tossed them into the ditches
to the pigs. They
plucked out grown men’s eyes, turned them adrift to wander,
and starved them to death. The towns could not hold the numbers
which flocked into them, and the plague came to add to the general
horrors. In
Coleraine, in four months, six thousand are said to have died of
the pestilence alone. The
following extract comes from Henry Jones’ Remonstrance of Diverse
Remarkable Proceedings Concerning the Church and Kingdom of Ireland
(1641). Published
as a petition to Parliament on the eve of the English Civil War,
it contains a digest of atrocities committed by Irish
Catholic rebels against Protestant settlers
This
rebellion – which sought to revise the structure of
politics in Ireland was marked by incredible levels of violence against
Protestant noncombatants. The author, Henry Jones, was a Protestant
minister and an assistant to a Protestant bishop in Ireland. His early
career is something of a mystery, however, he apparently lost substantial
property when Irish rebels rose in his home county. He therefore spent
much of his later career trying to preserve the memory of Irish Protestant
“martyrs” killed during the 1641 Rebellion. The Remonstrance, from
which this excerpt is taken, was intended to help raise charity from
English Protestants. The poor despoiled and distressed ministers of
the gospel in Ireland, with the widows and orphans of such, humbly
represent their lamentable condition, Showing that by the instigation
of popish priests, friars, and Jesuits,
with other firebrands and incendiaries of the state; partly such of
them as have been resident in this kingdom of Ireland before, party
flocking in from foreign parts, of late in multitudes more than ordinary,
and chiefly by such of them as resorted hither out of the kingdom
of Ireland.
And
out of that ancient and known hatred the Church
of Rome beareth to the reformed religion; as also
by reason of the surfit of that freedom and indulgence, which through
God’s forbearance for our trial, they of the popish faction have
hitherto enjoyed in this kingdom. There hath been beyond all parallel
of former ages, a most bloody and antichristian combination and
plot hatched, by well nigh the whole romish
sect, by way of combination from part foreign, with
those at home, against this our church and state; thereby intending
the utter extirpation of the reformed religion, and the professors
of it.
Upon
view of which, it doth evidently appear that in the present most
dangerous design against this kingdom, the popish faction therein
hath been confederate with foreign states, if we may rely upon the
report made thereof by the conspirators themselves, and their adherents
here, whereof the follow examinations are full. It being confessed
that they had their commission for what they did from beyond the
seas. That from Spain they did expect an army before Easter next….
From France also they look for aid. Being in all this further encouraged
by bulls from Rome, some of these rebels requiring to the Pope’s
use, and in his name…. In all which respects, and in allusion to
that league in France, they terming themselves the Catholic Army,
and the ground of their war the Catholic cause.
And
as we find the hearts of these men in their tongues, so in their
actions, doing what they profess; and being in both beyond all measure
profane and heathenish
in their impious words and behaviors towards God, and the holy scriptures,
religion and the places of God’s public worship. Blaspheming our
God, bidding his servants, whom they had first stripped naked, to
go to their Protestant God and let him give them clothes. Breaking
into churches, burning pulpits, pews,
and all belonging thereunto, with extreme violence, and expression
of hatred to religion and triumphing also in their impiety.
Professing,
that not one Protestant should be left in the kingdom: dragging
some professors through the streets by
the hair of the head, into the church, where stripping,
whipping, and cruelly using them, they added these taunting words:
“If you come tomorrow, you shall hear the like sermon.” How have
our sacred book of holy scriptures been used? God’s book hath been,
O horrible! Cast into and tumbled in the kennel, thence taken up
and dashed in the faces of some Protestants, with these words:
“I
know you a good lesson, this is and excellent one; come tomorrow
and you shall have as good.” They have torn it in pieces, kicked
it up and down, treading it under foot with leaping thereon, they
causing a bagpipe to play the while; laying also the leaves in the
kennel, leaping and trampling thereupon, saying a plague on it…
hoping within three weeks all the Bibles
in Ireland should be so used, or worse, and that
none should be left in the kingdom.
But
what pen can set forth, what tongue express, whose eye can read,
ear hear, or heart, without melting, consider the cruelties, more
than barbarous, daily exercised upon up by those
inhumane, blood sucking tigers! Stripping quite naked men, women
and children, even children sucking upon the breast, whereby multitudes
of all sorts in the extremity of that cold season of frost and snow
have perished. Women being dragged up and down naked, women
in child bed thence drawn out and cast into prison…
a child of 14 years of age taken from his mother, in her sight cast
into a bog pit and held under water while he was drowned.
The forcing of 40 or 50 Protestants to renounced their profession,
and then cutting all their throats.
What should we speak of these murders, their hanging, half-hanging…
and delighting in the tortures of the miserable? Of which their
aforesaid many and barbarous cruelties, each day doth afford us
variety of new instances. This city of Dublin being the common receptacle
for these miserable sufferers. Here are many thousands of poor people,
sometimes of good respects and estates, now in want and sickness,
whereof many daily die, notwithstanding the great care of those
tender hearted Protestants without whom all of them had before now
perished.
In
all which, as our sufferings are general, the hatred of the popish
enemy being expressed to the whole nation, and to all the professors
of the truth. So chief in and above all others do we find it with
the deadliest venom spit against the
persons of us the ministers of the gospel, towards
whom their rage is without bounds.
