Irish Rebellion.
The Protestant Church never flourished in Ireland. Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, and Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, laboured to produce reform. Bedell, seeing that the native Irish were little regarded by the Protestant clergy and were left almost entirely in the hands of the Popish priests, aimed at instructing them in the truths of Christianity; a wise method, which however did not meet the views of Strafford, whose policy was "to enforce religious unity by Church discipline, and to invigorate Church discipline with the secular arm."[268] Bramhall, in 1633, gave a deplorable account of the Irish Church to Archbishop Laud. It was hard to say whether the fabrics were more ruinous, or the people more irreverent. One parochial church, in Dublin, had been turned into a stable, a second into a dwelling, and a third into a tennis court, the vicar acting as keeper. The vaults of Christchurch, from one end to another, were used as tippling rooms, and were frequented for that purpose at the time of Divine service. The very altar had become a seat for maids and apprentices. The bishop also doubted the orthodoxy of his clergy. The inferior sort of ministers (he said) were below contempt in respect of poverty and ignorance, and the boundless heaping together of benefices by commendams and dispensations was but too apparent. Rarely ten pounds a year fell to the incumbent, and yet one prelate held three-and-twenty benefices.[269] Such a state of things, not described by an enemy but by a friend, speaks volumes. Bramhall, in meditating reform, followed too much Laud's method, first looking at the external condition of the Church, striving to improve edifices, to preserve and rightly administer emoluments, to regulate worship and secure uniformity—doubtless with far higher ultimate aims—instead of going at once to the root of the evil, and promoting the spread of the Gospel of Christ, and the revival of spiritual religion. Some outward improvement followed the Churchman's endeavours, but very little of that pure vital piety, and that Christian love, without which a Church, no less than an individual, is but as "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." Protestantism, even with the best endeavours of its advocates, had not laid hold on the Irish heart; and Papists, who were immensely in the majority, looked with bitter feeling on the chronic disease of Ireland—the absorption of ecclesiastical emoluments by a sect in the minority. Puritanism too was active. People complained of "the unblest way of the prelacy," of fines, fees, and imprisonments, of silencing and banishing "learned and conscionable ministers," and of the prelates favouring popery.[270] Moreover, political heart-burnings mingled with all this ecclesiastical strife.
1641, October.
The Popish rebellion broke out in October. On the 1st of November, Mr. Pym rose in the House of Commons, and stated that a noble lord, a Privy Councillor, with other noble lords, stood at the door, waiting to deliver important intelligence. Chairs were ordered to be placed for these distinguished visitors, who entered uncovered—the serjeant carrying the mace before them. The Commons doffed their hats till the strangers were seated; when, having covered their heads again, each, in breathless silence, with eager inquisitive eye, perhaps with pressed ear, listened to the Lord Keeper, as he proceeded to tell them the purpose for which he had come. The alarm increased as the Earl of Leicester, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, one of the deputation from the Lords, took off his hat, and said: That letters and papers had been sent from Ireland by the Lord Justices, communicating information of the shedding of much blood; that all Protestants were to be cut off; that no British man, woman, or child was to be left alive; that the horrid deed had been fixed for Saturday, the 23rd of October, being the feast of St. Ignatius; that the King's forts were to be seized, and the Justices and Privy Council slain. A timely supply of men and money therefore was needed to save the country.
Irish Rebellion.
These vague tidings ran through England like wildfire, and then there followed details of unparalleled barbarities. It was reported, that in the county of Armagh alone, a thousand Protestants were forced over the Bridge of Portadown, and drowned in the River Bann. A wife was compelled to hang her own husband. Two-and-twenty people were put into a thatched house, and burned alive. Women, great with child, had their bellies ripped up, and were then drowned. Three hundred Protestants were stripped naked, and crowded into the Church of Loghill, a hundred of whom were murdered, one being quartered alive, whose quarters were flung in the face of the unhappy father. A hundred men, women, and children were driven like hogs for six miles to a river, into which they were pitched headlong with pikes and swords.[271] These instances are only a few taken from the reports: page after page in Rushworth, and other collections, is filled with the like enormities. The computation was that between one and two hundred thousand persons perished in these massacres. Common sense, knowledge of human nature, and the recollection of rumours in our own time respecting Indian massacres and Jamaica atrocities, must lead us to suspect the accuracy of these reports.
Allowance should be made for exaggeration at a time of maddening terror, and in the case of an excitable and imaginative people like the Irish. It should also be remembered that our poor sister island had endured wrongs from a Protestant Government; that the Puritans had alarmed the Papists; that the Papists had exasperated the Puritans; and that mutual intolerance increased mutual hatred. But, after all fair abatements, that Irish Rebellion must be regarded as one of the blackest crimes recorded in history, as an outburst of demoniacal fury, which nothing could excuse, and which the utmost provocation could but slenderly palliate.[272] If, as supposed by some, it was a desperate stroke for Popish ascendancy in Ireland, encouraged by the example of the Scots, who by rising in arms had asserted their right to a Presbyterian Government, it must be admitted by all to have been, as Carlyle says, "a most wretched imitation."
1641, October.
It is not our business to investigate the sources of the Irish rebellion, or to weigh evidence as to its horrors. Enough is admitted by historians of every school to shew that it was a very great calamity, and all to be done here is to indicate the impression it made in England, and how it further complicated the already intricate causes which conspired to complete the great ecclesiastical revolution of the age.