“Moreover,” says Mr. Howell, “they [the Irish] entered into consideration that they had sundry grievances and grounds of complaint, both touching their estates and consciences, which they pretended to be far greater than those of the Scots. For they fell to think that if the Scot was suffered to introduce a new religion, it was reason they should not be punished in the exercise of their old, which they glory never to have altered; and for temporal matters, wherein the Scot had no grievance at all to speak of, the new plantations which had been lately afoot to be made in Connaught and other places; the concealed lands and defective titles which were daily found out; the new customs which were enforced; and the incapacity they had to any preferment or office in church or state, with other things, they considered to be grievances of a far greater nature, and that deserved redress much more than any the Scot had. To this end they sent over commissioners to attend this Parliament in England with certain propositions; but they were dismissed hence with a short and unsavory answer, which bred worse blood in the nation than was formerly gathered. And this, with that leading case of the Scot, may be said to be the first incitements that made them rise.… Lastly, that army of 8,000 men which the Earl of Strafford had raised to be transported into England for suppressing the Scot, being by the advice of our Parliament here disbanded, the country was annoyed by some of those straggling soldiers. Therefore the ambassadors from Spain having propounded to have some numbers of those disbanded soldiers for the service of their master, his majesty, by the mature advice of his Privy Council, to occur the mischiefs that might arise to his kingdom of Ireland from those loose cashiered soldiers, yielded to the ambassadors’ motion. But as they were in the height of that work (providing transports), there was a sudden stop made of those promised troops; and this was the last, though not the least, fatal cause of that horrid insurrection.
“Out of these premises it is easy for any common understanding, not transported with passion or private interest, to draw this conclusion: That they who complied with the Scot in his insurrection; they who dismissed the Irish commissioners with such a short, impolitic answer; they who took off the Earl of Strafford’s head, and afterwards delayed the despatching of the Earl of Leicester; they who hindered those disbanded troops in Ireland to go for Spain, may be justly said to have been the true causes of the late insurrection of the Irish.
“Thus,” continues Castlehaven, “concludes this learned and ingenious gentleman, who, as being then his majesty’s historiographer, was as likely as any man to know the transactions of those times, and, as an Englishman and a loyal Protestant, was beyond all exception of partiality or favor of the Papists of Ireland, and therefore could have no other reason but the love of truth and justice to give this account of the Irish Rebellion, or make the Scotch and their wicked brethren in the Parliament of England the main occasion of that horrid insurrection.”
As for the “massacre,” so called, that ensued, Lord Castlehaven speaks of it with the abhorrence it deserves. But this very term “massacre” is a misnomer plausibly affixed to the uprising by English ingenuity. In a country such as Ireland then was—in which, though nominally conquered, few English lived outside the walled towns—an intermittent state of war was chronic; and therefore there was none of that unpreparedness for attack or absence of means of defence on the part of the English settlers which, in other well-known historical cases, has rightfully given the name of “massacre” to a premeditated murderous attack upon defenceless and surprised victims. To hold the English as such will be regarded with contemptuous ridicule by every one acquainted with the system of English and Scotch colonization in Ireland in that age. The truth is, the cruelties on both sides were very bloody, “and though some,” says Lord Castlehaven, “will throw all upon the Irish, yet ’tis well known who they were that used to give orders to their parties sent into the enemies’ quarters to spare neither man, woman, nor child.” And as to the preposterous muster-rolls of Sir John Temple—from whom the subsequent scribblers borrowed all their catalogues—giving fifty thousand (!) British natives as the number killed, Lord Castlehaven’s testimony is to the effect that there was not one-tenth—or scarcely five thousand—of that number of British natives then living in Ireland outside of the cities and walled towns where no “massacre” was committed. Lord Castlehaven also shows that there were not 50,000 persons to be found even in Temple’s catalogue, although it was then a matter of common notoriety that he repeats the same people and the same circumstances twice or thrice, and mentions hundreds as then murdered who lived many years afterwards. Some of Temple’s, not the Irish, victims were alive when Castlehaven wrote.
But the true test of the character of this insurrection is to be found, not in the exaggerated calumnies of English libellers writing after the event, but in the testimony of the English settlers themselves when in a position where lies would have been of no avail. We will therefore give here, though somewhat out of the course of our narrative, an incident related by Castlehaven to that effect.
Shortly after he had been appointed General of the Horse under Preston, Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Catholics in Leinster, that general took, among other places, Birr, in King’s County. Here Castlehaven had the good fortune, as he says, to begin his command with an act of charity. For, going to see this garrison before it marched out, he came into a large room where he found many people of quality, both men and women. They no sooner saw him but, with tears in their eyes, they fell on their knees, desiring him to save their lives. “I was astonished,” says Castlehaven, “at their posture and petition, and, having made them rise, asked what the matter was? They answered that from the first day of the war there had been continued action and bloodshed between them and their Irish neighbors, and little quarter on either side; and therefore, understanding that I was an Englishman, begged I would take them into my protection.” It is enough to say that Lord Castlehaven, with some difficulty, and by personally taking command of a strong convoy, obtained for them the protection they prayed for from the exasperated and outraged population around them. But what we wish to point out is this: that here are those victims of Sir John Temple’s “massacre”—not the garrison of the fort, observe, but the English settlers driven in by the approach of Preston’s army, after terrorizing the country for months—now, with the fear of death before them, confessing on their knees that from the first day of the war they had arms in their hands, and that little quarter was given on either side!
How well the English were able to take care of themselves at this time, and what their “massacres” were like, are shown by the following extract from a letter of Colonel the Hon. Mervin Touchett to his brother, Lord Castlehaven. Col. Touchett is describing a raid made by Sir Arthur Loffens, Governor of Naas, with a party of horse and dragoons, killing such of the Irish as they met, to punish an attack upon an English party a few days before: “But the most considerable slaughter was in a great strength of furze, scattered on a hill, where the people of several villages (taking the alarm) had sheltered themselves. Now, Sir Arthur, having invested the hill, set the furze on fire on all sides, where the people, being a considerable number, were all burned or killed, men, women, and children. I saw the bodies and the furze still burning.”
We remember the horror-stricken denunciations of the English press some years ago when it was stated, without much authentication, that some of the French commanders in the Algerine campaigns had smoked some Arabs to death in caves. But it would seem from Col. Touchett’s narrative that the English troopers would have been able to give their French comrades lessons in the culinary art of war some centuries ago. A grilled Irishman is surely as savory an object for the contemplation of humanity as a smoked Arab!
But whatever the atrocities on the English side, we will not say that the cruelties committed by the Irish were not deserving of man’s reprobation and God’s anger. Only this is to be observed: that whereas the “massacres” by the Irish were confined to the rabble and Strafford’s disbanded soldiers, those committed by the English side were shared in, as the narratives of the day show, by the persons highest in position and authority. They made part of the English system of government of that day. On the other hand, the leading men of the Irish Catholic body not only endeavored to stay those murders, but sought to induce the government to bring the authors of them on both sides to punishment. But in vain! On the 17th of March, 1642, Viscount Gormanstown and Sir Robert Talbot, on behalf of the nobility and gentry of the nation, presented a remonstrance, praying “that the murders on both sides committed should be strictly examined, and the authors of them punished according to the utmost severity of the law.” Which proposal, Castlehaven shrewdly remarks, would never have been rejected by their adversaries, “but that they were conscious of being deeper in the mire than they would have the world believe.”
So far the “massacre” and first uprising.