The letters reek with such incidents. Ormond takes a priest at Ballymacur, Westmeath, “who was then immediately hanged.” Monck, on his way to join Ormond, captures a castle at Knock, near Trim, “killed four score men which had maintained it against him, and took some prisoners, who were instantly hanged.” Monck, again, took at the castles of Rathcoffey and Clongowes Wood, in Kildare, “three score and ten prisoners, and amongst the rest some priests, whom with the rest he brought hither to be proceeded with as we should think fit, which was all the quarter he gave them, and we have appointed them to be executed by martial law.” “We lately sent abroad two parties of the army, one towards Catherlagh, thirty-two miles from this city, and the other towards Arklow, thirty-six miles from hence, with direction to burn and spoil all the way, as they went and came, which they did accordingly.” Lord Inchiquin in Cork took fifty prisoners, “divers of them men of quality, and most of them officers in the army of the rebels, which fifty prisoners Lord Inchiquin caused to be hanged the next morning, saving only Colonel Butler, son of the traitor Lord Viscount Ikerrin, and one Purgett, Commissary General of the rebel army, which two still remain prisoners.” Lord Lisle’s performances are thus described: “Lord Lisle hath now caused that house”—Lord Fingall’s house near Virginia—“and all the villages and towns adjoining to be burnt, as also all the corn, hay, and turf in all that country round about them. He still proceeds in burning, wasting, spoiling, and destroying all the country about him, and all the rebels’ corn, hay and turf, and in depriving the rebels of all the cattle he can ... so as by that time he returns thence he will, by God’s assistance, have all that country in such a condition as that the rebels shall have neither house to lodge, nor food, nor fire, which course also we have begun, and God willing, shall hold in other places, as we shall be enabled by supply of provisions, and we have hoped (by the blessing of God upon our endeavours) if we be strengthened from thence, as we expect, suddenly to drive the rebels into such extremities as many thousands of them and their foreign aids (if they should arrive) must perish and starve through hunger and cold.”
This, of course, was a sentence of death on every man, woman, and child in the districts thus condemned to desolation.
In their letter to the Lord Lieutenant, of December 28th, 1641, the Lords Justices make two damning admissions. First they say that Sir Charles Coote, on his return from raising the siege of the Castle of Wicklow, had a skirmish with a numerous body of the rebels, slew some of them, and in that journey slew and caused to be hanged others of them, and amongst others one woman that had been active in robbing and spoiling the English, and had about her at her apprehension some of the clothes of the English she had robbed.
Now, this is merely an ingenious device to endeavour to mix up punishment inflicted on rebels in arms, with what is evidently a massacre of unarmed peasantry perpetrated during “that journey,” in which women, and probably children, were butchered at the instance of the notorious Sir Charles Coote.
The second admission is that four people were murdered at Santry, which they make light of, observing that therein “only four persons were slain, whereas they might have slain many more if they had intended a massacre.” The heads of the victims of this butchery were brought in triumph to Dublin, on poles, and there exhibited. One of them turned out to be a Protestant. This incident had momentous consequences, as we shall see.
O’Connell was quite justified in saying, as he did to O’Neill Daunt, when speaking of the rebellion of 1641: “History has been so completely falsified, that not only is the truth unknown, but the foulest falsehoods have passed current as gospel truths; the characters of the two contending parties have been quite reversed.”
But I must hasten to sketch the leading events of the insurrection.
I have already referred to the murders at Santry. The neighbouring gentry were alarmed at this occurrence. It seemed a precursor of what they might expect themselves, and they held a meeting and assembled their followers. The gentry of the Pale had been placed in a very difficult position. Being Catholics, they were distrusted by the Lords Justices. Being English, they distrusted the rebels. The Lords Justices ordered all persons not ordinarily resident in Dublin to return to their homes. The gentry of the Pale requested to be furnished with arms sufficient to enable them to defend themselves when they were thus surrounded by the rebels. This was at first granted to a limited extent, but when troops were promised from England, the arms supplied were largely withdrawn. The gentry were thus left defenceless. An attack was made by the Government troops on the house at Clontarf of one of them, named King, who owned the village of Clontarf, on the pretext that the fishermen of the village had plundered a bark that lay off the coast there, and that some of the booty was found in his house. The consequence of all this was that the gentry came to the conclusion that their only course was to join the rebels, who thus obtained a considerable accession of strength, both in numbers and weight, though the Lords Justices made light of the matter in their letters. This occurred in December, 1641.
In March, 1642, a Synod of the Ulster clergy met, and it was there suggested that an assembly of clergy and laity should be held to organize the national movement. This proposal was adopted, and the General Assembly of the Confederate Catholics was held at Kilkenny in the following October. They at once proceeded to organize the country, appointing a Supreme Council, and provincial Councils, and commanders of the armies in the four provinces. They made provisions for the administration of justice in the districts under their control, the levy of contributions, and the machinery of government generally. Their seal bore on it the legend: “Pro deo, pro rege et patria, unanimes,” their coins, “floreat rex.” The oath to be taken by the Confederates was similar in terms to that already mentioned.
The Confederates addressed a petition to the King, through Ormond, praying his Majesty, “with heads lower than our knees,” “to assign a place where with safety we may express our grievances.” In this they complain of the condition whereunto the misrepresentation of his ministers in Ireland, united with the malignant party in England, had reduced them, and of the resolution taken by some malevolent persons in England, “to supplant their nation and religion,” and they disclaim any intention of disturbing his Majesty’s Government, or invading any of his prerogatives, or oppressing any of his British subjects, of what religion soever, that did not labour to suppress them. They refer to the petition which they had addressed to the Lords Justices, “but therein,” they say, “we found, instead of a salve to our wounds, oil poured into the fire of our discontent, which occasioned that intemperance in the commonalty that they acted some unwarrantable cruelties upon the puritans, or others suspected of puritanism, which we really detest, have punished in part, and desire to punish with fulness of severity, in all the actors of them, when time shall enable us to it, though the measure offered to the Catholic natives here, in the inhuman murdering of old, decrepit, people in their beds, women in the straw, and children eight days old, burning of houses, and robbing of all kinds of persons without distinction of friend from foe, and digging up of graves, and then burning the dead bodies of our ancestors, in time of cessation, and in breach of public faith, have not deserved that justice from us.”