The contending principles contributed also to bring about this result. For it had been part of Strafford’s system to allow some toleration to the Catholics: they had been by him introduced into the army; he had winked at a crowd of priests from the Spanish and Netherland seminaries entering the country and acquiring an ecclesiastical authority to which the natives willingly submitted. On the other side the national religious constitution which the Scots had attained by their example induced the Irish to attempt the same thing, but in the Catholic sense appropriate to their case. No doubt the old Irish antipathy of the natives against the Saxons was stimulated thereby; how could it be otherwise? Still it was the common object of all Catholics, alike of Anglo-Saxon and of Celtic origin, to restore to the Catholic Church the possession of the goods and houses that had been taken from her, and above all to put an end to the colonies established since James I, in which Puritan tendencies prevailed. The Catholics of the old settlements were as eager for this as the natives.
The idea originated in a couple of chiefs of old Irish extraction, Roger O’More and Lord Macguire, who had been involved in Tyrone’s ruin, but were connected by marriage with several English families. The first man whom O’More won over was Lord Mayo, the most powerful magnate of old A.D. 1641. English descent in Connaught, of the house of De Burgh, of whose ancestors one, a half-brother of William the Conqueror, came over with him to England; another came to Ireland with Henry II[271]. The best military leader in the confederacy, Colonel Plunkett, was a Catholic of old English origin: he had numerous connexions among the Catholics of Leinster, and had preserved through the wars in Flanders the religious enthusiasm which led him thither. Among the natives the most notable personage was Phelim O’Neil, who after having been long in England, and learning Protestantism there, on his return to Ireland went back to the old faith and the old customs: he was reckoned the rightful heir of Tyrone, and possessed unbounded popular influence.
The plan for which the Catholics of both Irish and English extraction now united was a very far-reaching one. It involved making the Catholic religion altogether dominant in Ireland: even of the old nobility none but the Catholics were to be tolerated: all the lands that had been seized for the new settlements were to be given back to the previous possessors or their heirs. In each district a distinguished family was to be answerable for order, and to maintain an armed force for the purpose. They would not revolt from the King, but still would leave him no real share in the government. Two lords justices, both Catholic, one of Irish, the other of old English family, were to be at the head of the government. In the Parliament, which should no longer be in any way subordinate to the English, the clergy also were to have seats and voices. In the negotiations which preceded the rising, the question had already been discussed, what should be done with the Irish Protestants in case of victory. At a meeting of the political and spiritual leaders held on St. Francis’ day in the Franciscan convent at Mullifarvan in Westmeath, this question, as well as the form of the future state, was taken into consideration. The advice of the monks was to drive them out, as Philip III had driven the Moors out of Spain, without staining the land with their blood. Others A.D. 1641. remarked that that prince would have done better to destroy the Moors, since a lasting evil, the strength of the pirate states, had been increased by his clemency: in the same way it would be better to exterminate the Protestants in Ireland than to incur their future hostility—a consideration of disastrous omen. We do not hear how they decided at the moment, but the sequel showed what feelings were supreme in their hearts.
The preparations were made in profound silence: a man could travel across the country without perceiving any stir or uneasiness. But on the appointed day, October 23, the day of St. Ignatius, the insurrection everywhere broke out. In Ulster the O’Neils, under the leadership of Phelim, succeeded in obtaining possession of Charlemount, which commanded one of the most important points on the northern roads. The O’Guires surprised Mountjoy; the O’Hanlons Tanderagh in the county of Armagh, and Newry, where they found arms and powder: in the county of Monaghan all, in Cavan, where the sheriff himself headed the rising, nearly all the fortified posts were seized; here and there the government troops, where they met the insurgents, carried away by their impulses, made common cause with them. The insurrection, however, did not fully attain its object. The chief attack was directed against the castle of Dublin, where they hoped to gain great supplies of arms and military stores; and then, with the co-operation of the inhabitants who sympathised with them, they would have been in a position to defy the attacks of England. This did not seem a hard thing to achieve, for the government, which always liked to do the exact opposite of what Strafford had done, had neglected military matters; it had no troops in the city, and the castle was very insufficiently garrisoned, so that it might apparently have been captured by two hundred men. Perhaps it may be affirmed that the English dominion in Ireland was saved through some natives of Irish origin having been won to Protestantism. The conspirators applied to one of these, Owen Conolly, to gain his accession to their cause. He was an opponent of Strafford, as such had come into contact with the zealous Puritans during a short stay in England, and by A.D. 1641. them had been strengthened in the Protestantism which he had always professed[272]: he abhorred the religious tendency of the Irish rising, and on the evening of the 22nd gave information. The government awoke from perfect security to a sight of their terrible danger: they had still just time to arrest the leaders who were already in the city, and to secure the gates of the castle and city, so that those who came up, seeing that they were discovered, obeyed the order to disperse. Several other places also held out, as Londonderry and Carrickfergus, and afforded places to which the Protestants might fly. But no one can paint the rage and cruelty which was vented, far and wide over the land, upon the unarmed and defenceless. Many thousands perished: their corpses filled the land and served as food for the kites. The elemental forces, which hitherto had been repressed by the strong hand of the government, arose in the wildest licence: religious abhorrence entered into a dreadful league with the fury of national hatred. The motives of the Sicilian Vespers and of the night of St. Bartholomew were united. Sir Phelim, who at once was proclaimed Lord and Master in Ulster, with the title of the native princes, as Tyrone had been, and who in his proclamations assumed the tone of a sovereign, was not at all the man to check these cruelties. Rather cast upwards by a sudden eruption, than raised by his own services and exertions, he added fuel to the flame already kindled: either when drunk, or when for a moment he believed himself in danger, he ordered the massacre of all the prisoners. Or did this happen in consequence of their deliberations? Did they wish to put an end for ever to the claims of the rich settlers by taking their lives? With all this letting loose of ancient barbarism there was still some holding back. The Scottish settlements were spared, although they were the most hated of all, for fear of incurring the hostility of the Scottish as well as of the English nation.
Immediately there was a rising in the five counties of the old English Pale: the gentry of Louth, under the leadership A.D. 1641. of the sheriff, took the side of the rebels. The younger men of Meath assembled on the Boyne, and commenced hostilities against the Protestants: so completely had their religious sympathies prevailed over their patriotism. They told the King that being in the midst between the government which mistrusted them and forbade them arms, and the advancing rebels, threatened on both sides, they had no escape left except by joining the latter[273]. This agrees with their original suggestion that if they sought him he might treat them no worse than the Scots: if he would be gracious to them, they would shed the last drop of their blood for him.
As the Scots had won from the King the recognition of their national and religious independence, so also the Irish aimed at a national and Catholic independence. There is certainly a resemblance, but a far greater difference. In the one it was a controversy which found vent, as it were, prematurely in violent demonstrations and domestic feuds; the other was one of the most cruel insurrections recorded in history.
The King received the first tidings of the Irish rebellion while in Scotland; he immediately informed the Scottish Parliament and begged their aid. The Scots declared themselves ready, but delayed to see what would happen in England. The King, who regarded the cause as his own, in spite of his distressed circumstances contrived out of his own means to send over a small force of 1500 men under experienced commanders: this was the first succour which the Protestants received, and it gave them courage, and contributed greatly to make the strong places that had not surrendered in the mean time hold out to the end. False as it is to accuse Charles I of having himself secretly taken part in this Irish movement, it is undeniable that it was not altogether hostile to him. It was above all a reaction against the form of government derived from the Puritan parliamentary principles in England. The Irish Catholics told the King, that it was because he, in the fulness of his A.D. 1641. princely love, granted them some religious liberty, that the English Parliament, envious of their good fortune, diminished his prerogative: it desired to call the Scots to its assistance, and with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other to extirpate Catholicism in Ireland. It is obvious that Ireland in its native condition could exist very well under a monarchy clothed with extensive prerogatives, but never under a parliamentary government with predominant Puritan sentiments, such as existed and daily grew stronger in the present Parliament.
We turn our attention to England, to those parliamentary discussions long before proposed, and now again resumed, to which the course of things in Scotland, and still more the events in Ireland, furnished a new and powerful impulse.
FOOTNOTES:
[268] The diurnall of the second parliament of our sovereign lord, King Charles. In Balfour, Annals iii. 65.