Fox's Book of Martyrs, John Foxe [i like reading .txt] 📗

Dr. Cole, however, would have directly returned to England to get another commission; but waiting for a favourable wind, news arrived that queen Mary was dead, and by this means the protestants escaped a most cruel persecution. The above relation as we before observed, is confirmed by historians of the greatest credit, who add, that queen Elizabeth settled a pension of forty pounds per annum upon the above mentioned Elizabeth Edmunds, for having thus saved the lives of her protestant subjects.

During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Ireland was almost constantly agitated by rebellions and insurrections, which, although not always taking their rise from the difference of religious opinions between the English and Irish, were aggravated and rendered more bitter and irreconcilable from that cause. The popish priests artfully exaggerated the faults of the English government, and continually urged to their ignorant and prejudiced hearers the lawfulness of killing the protestants, assuring them that all catholics who were slain in the prosecution of so pious an enterprise, would be immediately received into everlasting felicity. The naturally ungovernable dispositions of the Irish, acted upon by these designing men, drove them into continual acts of barbarous and unjustifiable violence; and it must be confessed that the unsettled and arbitrary nature of the authority exercised by the English governors, was but little calculated to gain their affections. The Spaniards, too, by landing forces in the south, and giving every encouragement to the discontented natives to join their standard, kept the island in a continual state of turbulence and warfare. In 1601, they disembarked a body of 4000 men at Kinsale, and commenced what they called "the holy war for the preservation of the faith in Ireland;" they were assisted by great numbers of the Irish, but were at length totally defeated by the deputy, lord Mountjoy, and his officers.

This closed the transactions of Elizabeth's reign with respect to Ireland; an interval of apparent tranquility followed, but the popish priesthood, ever restless and designing, sought to undermine by secret machinations, that government and that faith which they durst no longer openly attack. The pacific reign of James afforded them the opportunity of increasing their strength and maturing their schemes, and under his successor, Charles I. their numbers were greatly increased by titular Romish archbishops, bishops, deans, vicars-general, abbots, priests, and friars; for which reason, in 1629, the public exercise of the popish rites and ceremonies was forbidden.

But notwithstanding this, soon afterwards, the Romish clergy erected a new popish university in the city of Dublin. They also proceeded to build monasteries and nunneries in various parts of the kingdom; in which places these very Romish clergy, and the chiefs of the Irish, held frequent meetings; and from thence, used to pass to and fro, to France, Spain, Flanders, Lorrain, and Rome; where the detestable plot of 1641 was hatching by the family of the O'Neals and their followers.

A short time before the horrid conspiracy broke out, which we are now going to relate, the papists in Ireland had presented a remonstrance to the lords-justices of that kingdom, demanding the free exercise of their religion, and a repeal of all laws to the contrary, to which both houses of parliament in England, solemnly answered, that they would never grant any toleration to the popish religion in that kingdom.

This farther irritated the papists to put in execution the diabolical plot concerted for the destruction of the protestants; and it failed not of the success wished for by its malicious and rancorous projectors.

The design of this horrid conspiracy was, that a general insurrection should take place at the same time throughout the kingdom, and that all the protestants, without exception, should be murdered. The day fixed for this horrid massacre, was the 23d of October, 1641, the feast of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits; and the chief conspirators, in the principal parts of the kingdom, made the necessary preparations for the intended conflict.

In order that this detested scheme might the more infallibly succeed, the most distinguished artifices were practised by the papists; and their behaviour in their visits to the protestants, at this time, was with more seeming kindness than they had hitherto shown, which was done the more completely to effect the inhuman and treacherous designs then meditating against them.

The execution of this savage conspiracy was delayed till the approach of winter, that sending troops from England might be attended with greater difficulty. Cardinal Richelieu, the French minister, had promised the conspirators a considerable supply of men and money; and many Irish officers had given the strongest assurances that they would heartily concur with their catholic brethren, as soon as the insurrection took place.

The day preceding that appointed for carrying this horrid design into execution, was now arrived, when, happily for the metropolis of the kingdom, the conspiracy was discovered by one Owen O'Connelly, an Irishman, for which most signal service the English parliament voted him 500l. and a pension of 200l. during his life.

So very seasonably was this plot discovered, even but a few hours before the city and castle of Dublin were to have been surprised, that the lords-justices had but just time to put themselves, and the city, in a proper posture of defence. The lord M'Guire, who was the principal leader here, with his accomplices, were seized the same evening in the city; and in their lodgings were found swords, hatchets, pole-axes, hammers, and such other instruments of death as had been prepared for the destruction and extirpation of the protestants in that part of the kingdom.

Thus was the metropolis happily preserved; but the bloody part of the intended tragedy was past prevention. The conspirators were in arms all over the kingdom early in the morning of the day appointed, and every protestant who fell in their way was immediately murdered. 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. The old, the young, the vigorous, and the infirm, underwent the same fate, and were blended in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first assault, destruction was every where let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends; all connexions were dissolved; and death was dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected. Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound peace, and, as they thought, full security, were massacred by their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long maintained a continued intercourse of kindness and good offices. Nay, even death was the slightest punishment inflicted by these monsters in human form; all the tortures which wanton cruelty could invent, all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelly derived from no just cause whatever. Depraved nature, even perverted religion, though encouraged by the utmost license, cannot reach to a greater pitch of ferocity than appeared in these merciless barbarians. Even the weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own sufferings, and compassionate to those of others, have emulated their robust companions in the practice of every cruelty. The very children, taught by example, and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents, dealt their feeble blows on the dead carcasses of the defenceless children of the English.

Nor was the avarice of the Irish sufficient to produce the least restraint on their cruelty. Such was their frenzy, that the cattle they had seized, and by rapine had made their own, were, because they bore the name of English, wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned loose into the woods, there to perish by slow and lingering torments.

The commodious habitations of the planters were laid in ashes, or levelled with the ground. And where the wretched owners had shut themselves up in the houses, and were preparing for defence, they perished in the flames together with their wives and children.

Such is the general description of this unparalleled massacre; but it now remains, from the nature of our work, that we proceed to particulars.

The bigoted and merciless papists had no sooner begun to imbrue their hands in blood, than they repeated the horrid tragedy day after day, and the protestants in all parts of the kingdom fell victims to their fury by deaths of the most unheard of cruelty.

The ignorant Irish were more strongly instigated to execute the infernal business by the jesuits, priests, and friars, who, when the day for the execution of the plot was agreed on, recommended in their prayers, diligence in the great design, which they said would greatly tend to the prosperity of the kingdom, and to the advancement of the Catholic cause. They every where declared to the common people, that the protestants were heretics, and ought not to be suffered to live any longer among them; adding, that it was no more sin to kill an Englishman than to kill a dog; and that the relieving or protecting them was a crime of the most unpardonable nature.

The papists having besieged the town and castle of Longford, and the inhabitants of the latter, who were protestants, surrendering on condition of being allowed quarter, the besiegers, the instant the towns-people appeared, attacked them in a most unmerciful manner, their priest, as a signal for the rest to fall on, first ripping open the belly of the English protestant minister; after which his followers murdered all the rest, some of whom they hung, others were stabbed or shot and great numbers knocked on the head with axes provided for the purpose.

The garrison at Sligo was treated in like manner by O'Connor Slygah; who, upon the protestants quitting their holds, promised them quarter, and to convey them safe over the Curlew mountains, to Roscommon. But he first imprisoned them in a most loathsome jail, allowing them only grains for their food. Afterward, when some papists were merry over their cups, who were come to congratulate their wicked brethren for their victory over these unhappy creatures, those protestants who survived were brought forth by the White-friars, and were either killed, or precipitated over the bridge into a swift river, where they were soon destroyed. It is added, that this wicked company of White-friars went, some time after, in solemn procession, with holy water in their hands, to sprinkle the river; on pretence of cleansing and purifying it from the stains and pollution of the blood and dead bodies of the heretics, as they called the unfortunate protestants who were inhumanly slaughtered at this very time.

At Kilmore, Dr. Bedell, bishop of that see, had charitably settled and supported a great number of distressed protestants, who had fled from their habitations to escape the diabolical cruelties committed by the papists. But they did not long enjoy the consolation of living together; the good prelate was forcibly dragged from his episcopal residence, which was immediately occupied by Dr. Swiney, the popish titular bishop of Kilmore, who said mass in the church the Sunday following, and then seized on all the goods and effects belonging to the persecuted bishop.

Soon after this, the papists forced Dr. Bedell, his two sons, and the rest of his family, with some of the chief of the protestants whom he had protected, into a ruinous castle, called Lochwater, situated in a lake near the sea. Here he remained with his companions some weeks, all of them daily expecting to be put to death. The greatest part of them were stripped naked, by which means, as the season was cold, (it being in the month of December) and the building in which they were confined open at the top, they suffered the most severe hardships. They continued in this situation