Investigation by Owen Roe O’Neill.
The Portadown massacre has been more discussed perhaps than any episode in the Irish rebellion, and it has left behind it an ineffaceable impression of horror. The victims were only a part of those murdered in the county of Armagh, but more than 100—one account says 160—were killed at one time—and the affair was carefully planned beforehand. The chief actor was Captain Manus O’Cahan, but many of the sufferers had received passes from Sir Phelim himself. O’Cahan and his men, Mrs. Price deposed, forced and drove all those prisoners, and amongst them the deponent’s five children, by name Adam, John, Anne, Mary, and Jane Price, off the bridge into the water. Those that could swim were shot or forced back into the river. When Owen Roe O’Neill came to the country he asked in Mrs. Price’s hearing how many Protestants the rebels had drowned at Portadown, and they said 400. If this is correct the cruel work on the Bann must have continued for some time. They also said that those drowned in the Blackwater were too many to count, and that the number thrust into lakes and bog-holes could not even be guessed at. On November 17 they burned the church at Blackwaterstown with a crowd of Protestants in it, ‘whose cries being exceeding loud and fearful, the rebels used to delight much in a scornful manner to imitate them, and brag of their acts.’ Attempts have been made to discredit the evidence on the ground that Mrs. Price and others refer to apparitions at the scene of the Portadown massacre. Screams and cries are easily explained, for wolves and dogs fed undisturbed upon the unburied dead. But Mrs. Price says she actually saw a ghost when she visited the spot where her five children had been slaughtered, and that Owen Roe O’Neill, who came expressly to inform himself as to the alleged apparitions, was present with his men, who saw it also. It was twilight, and ‘upon a sudden, there appeared unto them a vision, or spirit assuming the shape of a woman, waist high, upright in the water, naked, her hair dishevelled, very white, and her eyes seeming to twinkle in her head, and her skin as white as snow; which spirit or vision, seeming to stand upright in the water, divulged, and often repeated the word “Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!”’ O’Neill sent a priest and a friar to question the figure both in English and Latin, but it answered nothing. He afterwards sent a trumpet to the nearest English force for a Protestant clergyman, by whom the same figure was seen and the cries of ‘Revenge!’ heard, but Mrs. Price does not say she was present on this occasion. The evidence of this lady shows no marks of a wandering mind, and yet it is evident that she believed in an apparition. It is quite possible that some crazed woman who had lost all that was dear to her may have haunted the spot and cried for vengeance, but in any case a belief in ghosts was still general in those days, and especially in Ireland. The evidence as to the massacre is overwhelming.[296]
Bedell at Kilmore.
He is allowed to relieve many Protestants.
He refuses to leave his post.
He is imprisoned at Lough Oughter.
He is released.
Fate of his library.
Bedell was at Kilmore when the rebellion broke out. The Protestants were surprised, but it was remembered afterwards that there had been an invasion or migration of rats, and that caterpillars had appeared in unusual numbers. It was more to the purpose that a crack-brained Irish scholar who wandered from house to house was heard frequently to exclaim, ‘Where is King Charles now?’ and that he wrote in an old almanac ‘We doubt not of France and Spain in this action’—words which he may have heard in some conventicle of the Irish. The fugitive Protestants crowded to Kilmore, where they were all sheltered and fed, the better sort in the palace and the rest in out-buildings. The bishop’s son, who was there, likens the stream of poor stripped people to ‘Job’s messengers bringing one sad report after another without intermission.’ After a few days, Edmund O’Reilly, the sheriff’s father, ordered Bedell to dismiss his guests, who were about 200, chiefly old people, women and children. On his refusal those in the detached buildings were attacked at night and driven out almost naked into the cold and darkness. The bishop’s cattle were seized, but he had stored some grain in the house, and was still able in an irregular way to relieve many stray Protestants. On one occasion he sallied forth to rescue some of them, and two muskets were placed against his breast. He bade them fire, but they went away, and still for some time the palace walls were allowed to shelter those within. One of these was John Parker, afterwards Bishop of Elphin, who had fled from his living at Belturbet. ‘For the space of three weeks,’ says Parker, ‘we enjoyed a heaven upon earth, much of our time spent in prayer, reading God’s word, and in good conference; inasmuch as I have since oft professed my willingness to undergo (if my heart did not deceive me) another Irish stripping to enjoy a conversation with so learned and holy a man.’ Church service was regularly continued, but the investment of the house became closer, Bedell resolutely refusing to quit his post, although the Irish urged him to leave the country and promised all his company safe convoy to Dublin. His own children wished him to accept this offer, and it is probable that the Bishop himself and possible that his guests might have reached the capital in safety, but the experience of others had not been encouraging. Some prisoners having been taken by the Scottish garrisons at Keilagh and Croghan, and Eugene Swiney, the rival Bishop of Kilmore, pressing for restoration to his palace, Bedell and his family were at last expelled. ‘I arrest you,’ said Edmund O’Reilly, laying his hand on the Bishop’s shoulder, ‘in the King’s name.’ Having first arranged that the Church plate provided by himself should be handed over to the other Bishop, Bedell was conveyed to a castle upon an island in Lough Oughter. He was allowed to take his money with him, and his two sons with their wives accompanied him. They were well treated on the whole, but the castle had neither glass nor shutters to the windows, and they spent a cold Christmas. Some of the prisoners were in irons, and Bedell earnestly desired to share their fate, but this was refused. The party were dependent on the Irish for news, and at first they heard much of the disaster at Julianstown and of the certain fall of Drogheda. But an English prisoner who knew Irish listened one night through a chink in the floor, and heard a soldier fresh from Drogheda tell the guard that the siege was raised. ‘The bullets,’ he said, ‘poured down as thick from the walls as if one should take a fire-pan full of coals and pour them down upon the hearth, which he acted before them, sitting altogether at the fire. And for his own part he said he would be hanged before he would go forth again upon such a piece of service.’ At last Bedell and his sons were exchanged for some of those in the hands of the Scots, and released from the castle. The Bishop’s remaining days were spent in the houses of Dennis Sheridan, a clergyman ordained and beneficed by him, whose vicarage was near at hand. Sheridan, though a Protestant, was a Celt, and respect for his clan secured him a certain toleration. He was instrumental in saving some of Bedell’s books, among them a Hebrew Bible, now at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the Irish version of the Old Testament which had cost so much trouble, and which was not destined to be printed for yet another generation. Most of the books and manuscripts were taken away first by friars and afterwards by English soldiers, who sold them. ‘Certain of the Bishop’s sermons,’ says his son, ‘were preached in Dublin, and heard there by some of his near relations, that had formerly heard them from his own mouth: some even of the episcopal order were not innocent in this case.’
Bedell’s death, Feb. 9, 1641-2.