II. 1. It did not require many days to transmit intelligence from Dublin to the government; for the admiralty had contracted with a Captain Rich, that for the monthly sum of twenty-two pounds he should constantly have two swift-sailing vessels, stationed, one at Holyhead, the other at Dublin, ready to put to sea on the arrival of despatches for the service of the state.—Lords' Journ. ix. 617. From an accidental entry in Whitelock, it would appear that the letters from Cromwell reached London on the 27th of September; on the 28th, parliament, without any cause assigned in the Journals, was adjourned to October 2nd, and on that day the official account of the massacre at Drogheda was made public. At the same time an order was obtained from the parliament, that "a letter should be written to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, to be communicated to the officers there, that the house doth approve of the execution done at Drogheda both as an act of justice to them and mercy to others, who may be warned by it" (Journals, vi. 301), which are the very reasons alleged by Cromwell in his despatch. His conduct was now sanctioned by the highest authority; and from that moment the saints in the army rejoiced to indulge the yearnings of their zeal for the cause of God, by shedding the blood of the Irish enemy. Nor had they long to wait for the opportunity. On the 1st of October he arrived in the neighbourhood of Wexford; on the 9th he opened a cannonade on the castle, which completely commanded the town. On the 11th, Synnot, the military governor, offered to capitulate; four commissioners, one of whom was Stafford, the captain of the castle, waited on Cromwell to arrange the terms. He was dissatisfied with their demands, pronounced them "abominable," and detained them till he had prepared his answer. By that answer he granted life and liberty to the soldiers; life, but not liberty, to the commissioned officers, and freedom from pillage to the inhabitants, subject, however, to the decision of parliament with respect to their real property. He required an immediate acceptance of these terms, and the delivery to him of six hostages within an hour.—(Compare the letter of October 16 in the King's Pamphlets, No. 442, with the document published by Mr. Carlyle, ii. 79, which appears to me nothing more than a rough and incorrect draft of an intended answer.) But Stafford was a traitor. In the interval, being "fairly treated," he accepted, without communication with the governor, the terms granted by Cromwell, and opened the gates of the fortress to the enemy. From the castle they scaled an undefended wall in the vicinity, and poured into the town. A paper containing the terms was now delivered to the other three commissioners; but "their commissioners this while not having hearts to put themselves into the town again with out offer."—Ibid. Letter of October 16. Thus Synnot and the other authorities remained in ignorance of Cromwell's decision.
2. At the first alarm the garrison and burghers assembled in the market-place, to which they were accompanied or followed by crowds of old men, women, and children. For a while the progress of the enemy was retarded by barricades of cables. At the entrance of the market-place they met with a "stiff resistance," as it is called by Cromwell. The action lasted about an hour; but the assailants receiving continual reinforcements, obtained at last fell possession of the place, and put to the sword every human being found upon it. The governor and the mayor perished with the rest.
3. But how could these bloody proceedings be reconciled with the terms of capitulation which had been already granted? If we may believe Cromwell's official account, a matchless specimen of craft and mystification, he was not to blame that they had been broken. He was perfectly innocent of all that had happened. Could he not then have ordered his men to keep within the castle, or have recalled them when they forced an entrance into the town? Undoubtedly he might; but the pious man was unwilling to put himself in opposition to God. "His study had been to preserve the place from plunder, that it might be of more use to the commonwealth and the army." But he saw "that God would not have have it so." The events which so quickly followed each other, were to him a proof that God in his righteous judgment had doomed the town and its defendants to destruction; on which account he "thought it not good, nor just, to restrain off the soldiers from their right of pillage, nor from doing of execution on the enemy."—Letter of 16th of October. He concludes his despatch to the government with these words:—"Thus it has pleased God to give into your hands this other mercy, for which, as for all, we pray God may have all the glory. Indeed, your instruments are poor and weak. and can do nothing but through believing, and that is the gift of God also."—Cary's Memorials, ii. 180. Did then the fanatic believe that perfidy and cruelty were gifts of God? for at Wexford he could not plead, as at Drogheda, that his summons had been contemptuously rejected. It had been accepted, and he had himself dictated the terms of capitulation. Was he not obliged to carry them into execution, even if, as was pretended in defiance of all probability, his men had taken possession of the castle, and forced an entrance into the town without his knowledge or connivance? Would any honest man have released himself from such obligation under the flimsy pretext that it would be acting against the will of God to recall the soldiers and prevent them from doing execution on the enemy?
4. Cromwell's ministers of the divine will performed their part at Wexford, as they had done at Drogheda, doing execution, not on the armed combatants only, but on the women and children also. Of these helpless victims many had congregated round the great cross. It was a natural consequence in such an emergency. Hitherto they had been accustomed to kneel at the foot of that cross in prayer, now, with life itself at stake, they would instinctively press towards it to escape from the swords of the enemy. But, as far an regards the atrocity of the thing, it makes little difference on what particular spot they were murdered. You cannot relieve the memory of Cromwell from the odium of such murder, but by proving, what it is impossible to prove, that at Wexford the women and children were specially excepted out of the general massacre.
5. I have already copied Bruodin's description of the sack of Drogheda; here I may transcribe his account of the sack of Wexford. "Ipse strategus regicidarum terrestri itinere Dublinium praetergressus, Wexfordiam (modicam quidem, et maritimam, munitam et opulentam civitatem) versus castra movet, occupatoque insperate, proditione cujusdam perfidi ducis castro, quod moenibus imminebat, in civitatem irruit: opposuere se viriliter aggressori praesidiarii simul cum civibus, pugnatumque est ardentissime per unius horae spatium inter partes in foro, sed impari congressu, nam cives fere omnes una cum militibus, sine status, sexus, aut aetatis discrimine, Cromweli gladius absumpsit."—Bruodin, Propag. 1. iv. c. 14, p. 679. The following is a more valuable document, from the "humble petition of the ancient natives of the town of Wexford," to Charles II., July 4, 1660. "Yet soe it is, may it please your Majestie, that after all the resistance they could make, the said usurper, having a great armie by sea and land before the said toune, did on the 9th of October, 1649, soe powerfully assault them, that he entered the toune, and put man, woman, and child, to a very few, to the sword, where among the rest the governor lost his life, and others of the soldiers and inhabitants to the number of 1,500 persons."—Gale's Corporation System in Ireland, App. p. cxxvi.
6. My object in these remarks has been to enable the reader to form a correct notion of the manner in which Cromwell conducted the war in Ireland. They will give little satisfaction to the worshippers of the hero. But his character is not a mere matter of taste or sympathy. It is a question of historic inquiry. Much indeed has been written to vindicate him from the imputation of cruelty at Drogheda and Wexford; but of the arguments hitherto adduced in his defence, it will be no presumption to affirm that there is not one among them which can bear the test of dispassionate investigation.
NOTE E, p. 338.
The following pensions were afterwards granted to different persons instrumental in facilitating the king's escape. Unless it be mentioned otherwise, the pension is for life:—
£.
To Jane Lane (Lady Fisher) . . . . . . . . . 1000
Thomas Lane, the father . . . . . . . . . 500
Charles Gifford, Esq. . . . . . . . . . . 300
Francis Mansell, Esq. . . . . . . . . . . 200
Thomas Whitgrave, Esq. . . . . . . . . . 200
Catharine Gunter, for 21 years . . . . . 200
Joan Harford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Eleanor Sampson . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Francis Reynolds . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
John and Anne Rogers, and heirs male . . 100
Anne Bird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Sir Thomas Wyndham, and heirs, for ever . 600
William Ellesdun, during pleasure . . . . 100
Robert Swan, during the king's life . . . 80
Lady Anne Wyadham . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Juliana Hest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Clarendon Corres. i. 656.