“Be not dismayed,” said Elizabeth, on hearing that O’Neal meditated some designs against her government; “tell my friends, if he arise, it will turn to their advantage—there will be estates for those who want.” Soon after this prophetic speech, Munster was destroyed by famine and the sword, and near 600,000 acres forfeited to the crown, and distributed among Englishmen. Sir Walter Raleigh (the virtuous and good) butchered the garrison of Limerick in cold blood, after Lord Deputy Gray had selected 700 to be hanged. There were, during the reign of Elizabeth, three invasions of Ireland by the Spaniards, produced principally by the absurd measures of this princess for the reformation of its religion. The Catholic clergy, in consequence of these measures, abandoned their cures, the churches fell to ruin, and the people were left without any means of instruction. Add to these circumstances the murder of M’Mahon, the imprisonment of O’Toole and O’Dogherty, and the kidnapping of O’Donnel—all truly Anglo-Hibernian proceedings. The execution of the laws was rendered detestable and intolerable by the queen’s officers of justice. The spirit raised by these transactions, besides innumerable smaller insurrections gave rise to the great wars of Desmond and Hugh O’Neal; which, after they had worn out the ablest generals, discomfited the choicest troops, exhausted the treasure, and embarrassed the operations of Elizabeth, were terminated by the destruction of these two ancient families, and by the confiscation of more than half the territorial surface of the island. The last two years of O’Neal’s wars cost Elizabeth £140,000 per annum, though the whole revenue of England at that period fell considerably short of £500,000. Essex, after the destruction of Norris, led into Ireland an army of above 20,000 men, which was totally baffled and destroyed by Tyrone, within two years of their landing. Such was the importance of Irish rebellions two centuries before the time in which we live. Sir G. Carew attempted to assassinate the Lugan Earl—Mountjoy compelled the Irish rebels to massacre each other. In the course of a few months 3,000 men were starved to death in Tyrone. Sir Arthur Chichester, Sir Richard Manson, and other commanders, saw three children feeding on the flesh of their dead mother. Such were the golden days of good Queen Bess!
By the rebellions of Dogherty, in the reign of James I., six northern counties were confiscated, amounting to 500,000 acres. In the same manner, 64,000 acres were confiscated in Athlone. The whole of his confiscations amount to nearly a million acres; and if Leland means plantation acres, they constitute a twelfth of the whole kingdom according to Newenham, and a tenth according to Sir W. Petty. The most shocking and scandalous action in the reign of James, was his attack upon the whole property of the province of Connaught, which he would have effected, if he had not been bought off by a sum greater than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during the reign of James I., suffered under the double evils of a licentious soldiery and a religious persecution.
Charles I. took a bribe of £120,000 from his Irish subjects, to grant them what in those days were called Graces, but in these days would be denominated the Elements of Justice. The money was paid, but the graces were never granted. One of these graces was curious enough: “That the clergy were not to be permitted to keep henceforward any private prisons of their own, but delinquents were to be committed to the public jails.” The idea of a rector, with his own private jail full of Dissenters, is the most ludicrous piece of tyranny we ever heard of. The troops in the beginning of Charles’s reign were supported by the weekly fines levied upon the Catholics for non-attendance upon established worship. The Archbishop of Dublin went himself at the head of a file of musketeers, to disperse a Catholic congregation in Dublin—which object he effected after a considerable skirmish with the priests. “The favourite object” (says Dr. Leland, a Protestant clergyman, and dignitary of the Irish Church) “of the Irish Government and the English Parliament, was the utter extermination of all the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland.” The great rebellion took place in this reign, and Ireland was one scene of blood and cruelty and confiscation.
Cromwell began his career in Ireland by massacring for five days the garrison of Drogheda, to whom quarter had been promised. Two millions and a half of acres were confiscated. Whole towns were put up in lots, and sold. The Catholics were banished from three-fourths of the kingdom, and confined to Connaught. After a certain day, every Catholic found out of Connaught was to be punished with death. Fleetwood complains peevishly “that the people do not transport readily,” but adds, “it is doubtless a work in which the Lord will appear.” Ten thousand Irish were sent as recruits to the Spanish army.
“Such was Cromwell’s way of settling the affairs of Ireland; and if a nation is to be ruined, this method is, perhaps, as good as any. It is, at least, more humane than the slow, lingering process of exclusion, disappointment, and degradation, by which their hearts are worn out under more specious forms of tyranny; and that talent of despatch which Molière attributes to one of his physicians is no ordinary merit in a practitioner like Cromwell:—“C’est un homme expéditif, qui aime à depêcher ses malades; et quand on à mourir, cela se fait avec lui le plus vite du monde.” A certain military Duke, who complains that Ireland is but half conquered, would, no doubt, upon an emergency, try his hand in the same line of practice, and, like that ‘stern hero’ Mirmillo, in the Dispensary,
“While others meanly take whole months to slay,
Despatch the grateful patient in a day!”“Among other amiable enactments against the Catholics at this period, the price of five pounds was set on the head of a Romish priest, being exactly the same sum offered by the same legislators for the head of a wolf. The Athenians, we are told, encouraged the destruction of wolves by a similar reward (five drachms); but it does not appear that these heathens bought up the heads of priests at the same rate, such zeal in the cause of religion being reserved for times of Christianity and Protestantism.”—(pp. 97–99.)
Nothing can show more strongly the light in which the Irish were held by Cromwell than the correspondence with Henry Cromwell respecting the peopling of Jamaica from Ireland. Secretary Thurloe sends to Henry, the Lord Deputy in Ireland, to inform him that “a stock of Irish girls and Irish young men are wanting for the peopling of Jamaica.” The answer of Henry Cromwell is as follows:—“Concerning the supply of young men, although we must use force in taking them up, yet it being so much for their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, it is not the least doubted but that you may have such a number of them as you may think fit to make use of on this account.
“I shall not need repeat anything respecting the girls, not doubting to answer your expectations to the full in that; and I think it might be of like advantage to your affairs there and ours here if you should think fit to send 1,500 or 2,000 boys to the place above mentioned. We can well spare them; and who knows but that it may be the means of making them Englishmen—I mean, rather, Christians? As for the girls, I suppose you will make provisions of clothes, and other accommodations for them.” Upon this, Thurloe informs Henry Cromwell that the council have voted 4,000 girls, and as many boys, to go to Jamaica.
Every Catholic priest found in Ireland was hanged, and five pounds paid to the informer.
“About the years 1652 and 1653,” says Colonel Lawrence, in his Interests of Ireland, “the plague and famine had so swept away whole counties, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man, or beast, or bird, they being all dead, or had quitted those desolate places. Our soldiers would tell stories of the places where they saw smoke—it was so rare to see either smoke by day or fire or candle by night.” In this manner did the Irish live and die under Cromwell, suffering by the sword, famine, pestilence, and persecution, beholding the confiscation of a kingdom and the banishment of a race. “So that there perished,” says Sir W. Petty, “in the year 1641, 650,000 human beings, whose bloods somebody must atone for to God and the King!”
In the reign of Charles II., by the Act of Settlement, four millions and a half of acres were for ever taken from the Irish. “This country,” says the Earl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant in 1675, “has been perpetually rent and torn since his Majesty’s restoration. I can compare it to nothing better than the flinging the reward on the death of a deer among the pack of hounds, where every one pulls and tears where he can for himself.” All wool grown in Ireland was, by Act of Parliament, compelled to be sold to England; and Irish cattle were excluded from England. The English, however, were pleased to accept 30,000 head of cattle, sent as a gift from Ireland to the sufferers in the great fire! and the first day of the Sessions, after this act of munificence, the Parliament passed fresh acts of exclusion against the productions of that country.