Lawrence’s answer to Gookin.
Everything English had been destroyed.
Only landowners and soldiers transplanted.
Gookin’s rejoinder.
The two writers agreed in essentials.
A month after its publication, Gookin’s pamphlet was denounced by Fleetwood as a ‘very strange scandalous book,’ and Colonel Lawrence, ‘at the request of several persons in eminent place in Ireland,’ undertook to refute it. He was able to show that former settlements had succeeded only where the colonists were placed near one another, ‘as for instance the barony of Ards, in the county of Down and province of Ulster, which being entirely planted by British people did preserve themselves by keeping guards upon their frontiers when all the country besides was totally ruined.’ He gives many horrible details of the rebellion, ‘wherein neither age nor sex were spared.... English cattle and houses were destroyed for their being of an English kind, and all this without the least provocation, yet this bloody inhuman act with all its aggravations were espoused by this people as a national quarrel and a war waged thereupon’; but admits that some of the Irish gentry ‘(whose kindness I hope either hath been or will be rewarded both by God and man)’ did really help the English, so that a few escaped like Job’s messengers to bring the bad news. Lawrence points out that in all official declarations only landed proprietors and men in arms were marked for transplantation, and that nothing further was intended, but he maintains that it was quite possible to extend it greatly without danger. Gookin’s rejoinder is dedicated to Fleetwood, whom he praises for his kindness to all, whereby the necessary hardships were much diminished. He shows how very few exceptions there would be among the Irish if the declaration of October 14, 1653, were strictly acted upon, acknowledges the authorship of the first pamphlet, and maintains his position. ‘Let no poor sufferer by the Irish betray his reason or religion to his passion here, to think no evils can be too great to be brought on the Irish. It was their being cruel makes us hate them so much: to punish them do not run into their sin, lest God punish thee. Do not think that he that writes this and the Case of Transplantation pleads for them, but thy cause; ‘tis safe and profitable for thee that some be removed, not all. This Colonel Lawrence says shall be done and this I desired might be done: where is my offence against authority more than his, my love to the Irish more than his, or my care of thee less than his?’ After all there is not much difference between the two writers. That the English did not think Gookin’s ideas hostile to the settlement may be inferred from their electing him to Parliament, and proposing to pay his expenses there, an offer which he refused.[269]
Effect of the Waldensian massacre.
Officers in Ireland protest against leniency.
There can be little doubt that the sufferings of the Waldenses reacted upon Ireland, the rather that many Irish refugees were concerned in the massacres. At the end of 1653 it was reported that Irish troops had passed the mountains from Spain and appeared at Nîmes, where there was a strong body of Protestants. The priests secured them a good reception, though they boasted that they would ‘tear in pieces and crucify quick’ any Protestants they found there. Some of them were induced to settle and take wives ‘so that they may in a manner in this town augment and renew the race of that execrable and murdering nation.’ Two months later another detachment were refused admission to Nîmes because some of them boasted that they had massacred the English in Ireland, and they went on to Piedmont. Later on it was said that the Waldensian valleys were to be given up to the Irish. It is not therefore surprising that the officers in Ireland, with Fleetwood at their head, should have expressed their horror at the proceedings in Piedmont, and cautioned the Protector against too great leniency in Ireland. ‘Let the blood of Ireland be fresh in your view, and their treachery cry aloud in your ears, that the frequent solicitations with which you are encompassed may not slack your hand to an unsafe pity of those whose principles in all ages carry them forth to such brutish and inhuman practices, which consist not with human society; and let not such be left untransplanted here, or unminded in England, whose continuance among us do palpably hazard the very being of Protestant interest in these nations.’ And Cromwell himself told the Dutch Ambassador that the example of Ireland was fresh in his memory, where above 200,000 had been massacred. So strong was the feeling in Ireland that the officers contributed a fortnight’s pay and the soldiers a week’s pay for the relief of the persecuted mountaineers. A large sum was also subscribed privately.[270]
Transplantation proceeds slowly.