| ; |
"A powerfull majestie to comaunde
and an awfull countenaunce to execute."
--Aphorismical Discoverie, Bk. IV, ch. xii.
On July 12, 1649, the day of the surrender of Drogheda to Inchiquin,
Cromwell had taken over the Irish command, and on July 26 the first of
his twenty-eight regiments had disembarked in Dublin. Inchiquin was detached
to meet him in Munster, where it was believed he might land, but Cromwell,
who paid little attention to the expectations of his enemies, arrived
in Dublin Bay on August 15, a fortnight after the rout of Ormonde's forces
at Rathmines, "being received with all possible demonstrations of
joy, the great guns echoing forth their welcome."
The passage of Cromwell through Ireland was like the swift stroke of
a sword that spared not. His main object was to reduce the Royalist towns
which still held for the King, and to confirm the now rapidly increasing
authority of the English Parliament party in Ireland. Having taken over
the command of the city of Dublin from Jones and organized his forces,
Cromwell appeared on September 3 before Drogheda, summoned it to yield
on terms, and, on the refusal of the Governor, stormed the town. The garrison
of Drogheda was composed of Ormonde's picked troops, whom he had thrown
into this town and Trim, where he himself lay watching the event. It was
well provisioned, and its walls had been repaired as far as time permitted,
so that it was confidently believed that it could stand a long siege.
A regiment of horse and two thousand foot occupied the town under the
experienced command of Sir Arthur Aston, a Catholic officer of good Cheshire
family and strong Royalist principles. He had with him a number of English
as well as Irish officers, as Sir Edmund Varney, Colonel Warren, Colonel
Wall; their troops were Munstermen and Englishmen. Drogheda held for the
King against the Parliament. The resistance was stout, and the Cromwellians
twice entered the town and were twice driven out again. The third time,
led by Cromwell himself, the attacking party crossed the Boyne Bridge,
capturing first the entrenchments, next the 'tenalia' or defensive outworks,
and finally the Churches of St Mary and St Peter, and the Towers, in all
of which the soldiers made successive stands.
Cromwell's report gives a vivid picture of what occurred after the outworks
were taken and the town entered by his troops: "The enemy, divers
of them, retreated into the Mill Mount; a place very strong and of difficult
access; being exceedingly high, having a good graft and strongly palisaded.
The Governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being
there, our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all
to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them
to spare any that were in arms in the town; and, as I think, that night
they put to the sword about 2000 men; divers of the officers and soldiers
being fled over the Bridge into the other part of the town, where about
100 of them possessed St Peter's Church steeple, some the west gate, and
others a strong Round Tower next the gate called St. Sunday's." [1]
Being summoned to yield to mercy, the gallant defenders of these last
refuges still refused. The steeple of St Peter's was fired by Cromwell's
orders, and many perished in the flames, and the Towers were reduced by
hunger, the attackers, grown savage by massacre, mounting the steps holding
up each a child before him as a protection from the defenders, who brained
them as they appeared at the top of the winding stairs.
[1] Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. C. H. Firth (1904),
vol. i, No. CV, pp. 468-469.
Thomas à Wood, who served in Cromwell's army, says that three thousand
at least, besides women and children, were put to the sword. Sir Arthur
Aston had his brains beaten out and his body hacked to pieces, and the
women of high and low rank who took refuge in the vaults were slain without
pity.[2] Hear Cromwell again: "From one of the Towers, notwithstanding
their condition, they killed and wounded some of our men. When they submitted,
their officers were knocked on the head; and every tenth man of the soldiers
killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other
Tower were all spared, as to their lives only, and shipped likewise for
the Barbadoes...The officers and soldiers of this garrison were the flower
of all their army." [3] The sack of Drogheda, even in a day when
the sack of towns was the universal accompaniment of war,[4] sent a thrill
of terror through the country. Ormonde, watching the fate of his fine
troops from the distance of only a few miles, writes to Lord Byron: "On
this occasion Cromwell exceeded himself more than anything I ever heard
of in breaking faith and bloody inhumanity; the cruelties exercised there
for five days after the town was taken would make as many several pictures
of inhumanity as are to be found in the Book of Martyrs or in the relation
of Amboyna."[5] Even Ludlow comments on the "extraordinary severity"
of the action at Drogheda, and the soldiers themselves protested against
the order to kill their prisoners, who had surrendered on quarter promised.[6]
But to Cromwell the horror of Drogheda appeared in another aspect. In
his report he writes: "It was set upon some of our hearts, that a
great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the spirit of
God...and therefore it is good that God alone have all the glory."
[7] In this manner did Oliver the Puritan reflect upon the deed.
[2] "Life and Times of Anthony à Wood," in Athenae Oxoniensis
(1815), pp. xix-xx.
[3] Letters of Cromwell, vol. i, No. CV, p. 469.
[4] Owen Roe had witnessed the awful sack of Tirlemont before he closed
the gates of Arras ; he had himself threatened to sack Kilkenny.
[5] Carte, Ormond, iii, 477.
[6] Ludlow, Memoirs, ed. C. H. Firth (1894), i, 234.
[7] Letters of Cromwell, vol. i, No. CV, p. 470.
On the taking of Drogheda we may make the following remarks: First, Cromwell
felt that in the destruction of these picked forces he had at one blow
broken the back of the defence of the Irish Royalists, and that all that
remained thereafter was to follow up his success. Secondly, he came over,
filled with that detestation of the "unheard of, unprovoked, and
most barbarous massacre (without respect of age or sex) that ever the
sun beheld," which, rightly or wrongly, every Englishman of his day
believed had been recently practised "at a time when Ireland was
in perfect peace" upon their countrymen newly settled in Ireland.
The "horrible massacre" was always on Cromwell's lips, and there
is no doubt that all his actions in Ireland were considered by him as
an act of just and deserved retribution.[8] But his orders withdrawing
the quarter given to the garrison, "most English" as Clarendon
and Ludlow believed, "both as to men and officers," can find
no excuse; nor yet the massacre of the civilians, which his men, drunk
with blood, carried out. The sentencing of the soldiers taken prisoners
to Barbadoes, after the execution of one in ten of them, was more in the
manner of the times and was not confined to Ireland. Scotland was being
cleared forcibly of paupers and prisoners, who were being shipped off
in gangs to the newly-discovered West Indian plantations.[9] In October,
1648, the Secretary of State writes to Ormonde: "It is a wonderful
thing and God's just judgment, that those that sold their king not two
years ago for £200,000 should now be sold for two shillings apiece,
to be carried to the new plantations." John Morley says that Cromwell's
theory of the divine operations at Drogheda "must be counted one
of the most wonderful of all the recorded utterances of Puritan theology,"[10]
but it is perhaps surpassed by his declaration when the Governor of Ross
demanded liberty of conscience as a condition in surrendering that town.
"Concerning liberty of conscience," was the reply, "I meddle
not with any man's conscience. But if by liberty of conscience you mean
a liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing,
and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power that will
not be allowed of."[11]
[8] Letters of Cromwell, ii, p. 8.
[9] Thurloe Papers, iii, p. 497.
[10] John Morley, Oliver Cromwell (1904), pp. 311-312.
[11] Letters of Cromwell, vol. i, No. CX, p. 493.
Cromwell's own explanation of his conduct at Drogheda was that it would
prevent the effusion of blood in the future. At Drogheda, as at every
town besieged by him, terms were offered on condition that the garrison
laid down its arms and surrendered the town to the Parliament. The terms
included safety for the inhabitants free from injury, and the right to
the common soldiers to march out, with or without arms, and in some cases
permission to their officers to accompany them. Where they were refused
he pointed to Drogheda as an example of what fate might overtake them.
The terrible example was, in fact, not without effect. In a few days Newry,
Carlingford, Wicklow, Arklow, Enniscorthy, and several castles had surrendered
and were garrisoned with Parliamentary troops, no harm having been done
to their occupants, civil or military, and certainly much "effusion
of blood" having been saved. At Wexford Sinnott, the youthful Governor,
stood out for high terms; his thriving town "pleasantly situated
and strong" within a fifteen-foot wall and ramparts of earth, with
its good houses and excellent trade and fisheries, might, he thought,
be saved. But treachery threw the castle into Cromwell's hands, and from
its walls he turned his guns upon the town. The governor had gained from
Cromwell the safety of the citizens and leave for the soldiers to depart
to their homes, with the lives of his officers, who were to be made prisoners.
At this very moment, however, the inhabitants, suddenly stricken with
terror, fled out of the town and attempted to escape in boats so heavily
laden that most of them capsized, and the soldiery, entering without resistance,
put all they found in arms to the sword. The priests were a special object
of their hatred, but neither sex nor age was spared. Cromwell thinks that
two thousand "became a prey to the soldier" at Wexford. New
Ross, commanded by Lucas Taaffe, surrendered on good terms, his men marching
away with their arms, bag and baggage, drums and colours; five hundred
of them, Englishmen, went over to Cromwell's army.[12]
[12] Letter written from Ross, October 25, 1649, Letters of Cromwell,
vol. i, No. CXII, pp. 495-496.
The effect of Cromwell's conquering march was being felt all over the
country. Ormonde in vain tried to add to the remnants of his army; everywhere
men were passing over to the enemy in large numbers, partly through fear,
partly for the sake of peace, which they could find nowhere else. Ormonde's
own army was forsaking him, and the towns refused obedience to any commands.
Each set up independently for itself, with the results that we have seen
at Wexford and shall see later at Limerick and Galway. Ormonde writes
of "the speedy decline of the King's business, beyond any reason
that can be given for it. Towns have declared against us fifty miles from
any enemy, but those within them; most remarkable is it that the Roman
Catholics that stood so rigidly with the king upon religion...are with
much ado withheld from sending commissioners to entreat Cromwell to make
stables and hospitals of their churches." With all his industry the
Lord-Lieutenant could not keep together his army, though superior in numbers
to the enemy. Owen Roe, still alive, though slowly sinking to his grave,
alone sent help. Long ago, in May, he had written to Rinuccini: "We
are almost reduced to despair. On the one hand, Ormonde entreats us to
join him; on the other, the Parliamentary party seeks our friendship.
God knows, we hate and detest both alike";[13] but his last act was
to make peace with Ormonde and send him a body of men. Even Cromwell dreaded
this new alliance. But almost at the same moment there came the news that
all Munster had revolted to Cromwell. Kilkenny, Youghal, Cork and Kinsale
declared for him, partly by treachery, but chiefly by the services of
Roger Boyle of Broghill, later Lord Orrery, son of the Earl of Cork. Broghill
now professed for Cromwell the affection which, at the Restoration, he
instantly transferred to the King, and he exerted his great influence
to bring over the south to the Parliamentary side. This was the most severe
blow that had as yet fallen, and though Cromwell did not trust Broghill
he found him very useful in the south, where Inchiquin's army came over
to him.
[13] Letter to Lord Jermyn from Clonmel, November 30, 1649.
The country people, too, Irish and Catholic though they were, everywhere
helped the Puritan army. Cromwell allowed no pillage; he hanged any soldier
that plundered. Till money grew scarce, all was paid for and no free quarters
were taken. An army that paid for everything and did them no wrong was
a new experience to the poor inhabitants, who were accustomed to be pillaged
indiscriminately by all parties, and they came in freely with market produce
and kept the army well victualled. Everything seemed to be working for
Cromwell. Ormonde was playing an uncertain and losing game, unable to
move without the sanction of the vacillating Confederates at Kilkenny,
and deeply suspected of treachery; he seems to have been waiting in the
vain hope that Charles II would come over and take command; it was assuredly
the only possible chance of rallying parties in Ireland. At Clonmacnois
a large body of prelates were engaged in trying to make "a kind of
union" among themselves and patch up the old quarrel between the
Nuncio's party and that of the independent bishops; "sitting there,"
as the author of the Aphorismical Discoverie says, "canvassing many
needless questions on either side."[14] Their chief act, besides
issuing proclamations, was to appoint the vigorous and warlike Ever MacMahon,
Bishop of Clogher, general of the Northern army in the place of Owen Roe
O'Neill, with fatal results; for in July of the following year (1650)
Coote's army encountered him near Letterkenny and completely crushed the
Irish forces, reducing them to a rabble. The Bishop, who escaped from
the Woody field where three thousand of his men lay dead, was taken and
hanged; he was a man regretted even by Ormonde, who deplored "the
fatal itch the clergy have to govern people and command armies";
the ruthless Coote added to his severities the death of Colonel Henry
O'Neill after quarter given.[15]
[14] Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, 64.
[15] Colonel Henry O'Neill was a son of Owen Roe. For his treatment by
Coote. See Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, pp. 88-89 ; iii. p. 214.
In the south Cromwell's luck seemed to have turned. His army was held
up at Waterford, and the gallantry of Colonel Hugh O'Neill thwarted all
his efforts to take Clonmel. But an enemy stronger and more pitiless than
the Irish army was fighting against Cromwell. The plague had broken out
and was spreading rapidly through the south of Ireland; it had been introduced,
rumour said, by some Spaniards into the house in Galway from which Rinuccini
had fled abroad, as though to show the Divine disapproval of the Nuncio's
treatment in Ireland. Cromwell's soldiers had, like all English regiments,
been perpetually sick of the "country's disease," and hundreds
of them were in hospital in Dublin. He himself had been "crazy in
his health," and he writes in his quaint fashion from before Ross:
"To the praise of God I speak it, I scarce know an officer of forty
amongst us that hath not been sick, and how many considerable ones we
have lost, is no little thought of heart to us."[16] Among this weakened
army the plague took its heavy toll. Jones, the late Governor of Dublin,
died of it, and Ireton, who was appointed to the command of the Parliamentary
armies on Cromwell's abrupt recall on May 29, 1650, while still besieging
Clonmel, ended his period of office by catching the plague after the siege
of Limerick and dying of it on November 26th, 1651. The siege of Clonmel
had been the great triumph of the campaign for the Irish troops. Writing
to Broghill, Cromwell had to confess himself twice beaten.[17] Two thousand
of his army died at Clonmel in a siege lasting from Christmas to May,
and more than once Cromwell threatened to raise the siege and withdraw
his army.
[16] Letters of Cromwell, vol. i, No. CXIII, p. 498. and No. LXV, p.
506.
[17] State Letters of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1742), p. 12.
An English writer says that at Clonmel "he found the stoutest enemy
his army had ever met with in Ireland, and never was seen so hot a storm
of so long continuance or so gallantly defended, neither in England nor
in Ireland."[18] The garrison fought on till their ammunition failed,
and then they slipped silently away in the night to Waterford, so that
the enemy on its surrender on May 10, 1650, entered a city from which
their prey had departed. Cromwell had to report before his return to England
that though a tract of land along the shore was in his hands, yet it had
little depth into the country, while the escape of O'Neill's army had
added 7,000 effective horse and foot to Ormonde and his allies.[19] Hugh
O'Neill had fallen back on Limerick, which held out for three months and
then was lost by treachery. When Ireton's troops entered the pestilence-stricken
city, which surrendered on October 27, they found it in a state of horror;
"the living seemed like walking skeletons," too few and weak
to bury the dead.
[18] Whitelock, Memorials of English Affairs (1732), p. 457, col. I.
[19] Cromwell's Report to Lenthal, 19th December, 1649, in Gilbert, Contemporary
History, ii, 341-342 ; 467-468.
Conditions in Galway were equally terrible. Lady Fanshawe, whose husband
was working for the return of Charles II to Ireland, reaching Galway from
Youghal, found it almost depopulated by plague. In the "very clean
dwelling" where she found lodging, nine persons had died during the
previous six months, but the host prudently kept back this discouraging
piece of information until they bade him farewell.[20] John Lynch, who
was living in Galway, his native town, during the Confederate Wars, says
that at Drogheda, Dublin, and Cork the burial-grounds could not contain
the victims of the pestilence, and they had to be interred in pits. Of
the sixty thousand English and Scottish soldiers sent to Ireland the great
majority died of plague and distemper; in a few months Cromwell's army
of twelve thousand was reduced to less than half.
[20] Lady Fanshawe, Memoir, pp, 92 seq. In London the plague reached
its climax in 1665, about fifteen years later.
Events moved fast after Cromwell's departure. A month later the astonishing
news arrived in Ireland that Charles II had gone to Scotland, accepted
the Scottish Covenant, declared the Peace of Ormonde with the Irish null
and void, and rejected all compromise with the Irish Catholics. This astounding
act of treachery on the part of the King, who had up to this moment been
contemplating throwing himself on the support of the Irish, and was daily
expected over to raise his standard and attempt the recovery of England
from Ireland, threw the whole kingdom into a ferment. Ormonde at first
thought it was a forgery. The clergy, on the other hand, accused him of
being a party to the transaction, and insisted on a conference at Galway
with the Commissioners of Trust, who supported Ormonde, but it led to
no result, and Ormonde determined to leave the country and find out for
himself what the King's intentions were. At the request of the Assembly
he appointed the Earl of Clanricarde Viceroy in his absence, hoping that
a Catholic Deputy might smooth the present difficulties, and on December
11 he sailed for France, to which safe shelter Charles had now returned.
He was followed by Colonels Vaughan, Wogan, Warren, and many other Royalists,
and by "that treacherous panther" Inchiquin, who, like so many
in his day, changed his religion and his loyalties to suit the whim of
the moment or the chances of being on the winning side. Though reiterating
their professions of fidelity to the Crown, the unrest of the country
found expression in the expeditions of Viscount Taaffe, Sir Nicholas Plunket,
and Jeffrey Brown to the Duke of Lorraine, who had long been considering
a descent on Ireland in aid of Charles II, urged on by the intriguing
Queen Mother from Paris. The arrangements for his coming were nearly completed,
and at first the Viceroy seems to have thought well of the proposal; but
a letter falling into his hands in which the Duke was styled "Protector
of Ireland," and an agreement proposed by which all the chief towns
and forts of the south and west of Ireland were to be held by him in trust
for the repayment of moneys disbursed, decided Clanricarde to put a peremptory
end to the whole proceeding. The Duke's demands had risen as the correspondence
proceeded, and it was evident that he intended to impose his authority
upon the kingdom. But the towns were falling one after another into the
hands of the Parliament. Ludlow had been made Commander-in-Chief on Ireton's
death, and even Clanricarde's efforts were unavailing to stay the break-up
of the Royalist party. The Viceroy was universally trusted and respected;
it is said of him that no man ever loved his country more or his friend
better, but the surrender of Galway, his native town, which he had believed
to be impregnable, to Sir Charles Coote and the Parliament on May 12,
was followed by that of the other garrisons in Connacht. Finding his efforts
to rally his party unavailing, he retired to England in March 1652 and
there died soon afterward.
Galway was the last town to enter the conflict of 1641 and the last to
surrender. The country had been undermined by treachery constantly fomented
by the Puritan party, and no one could trust his neighbour. In July 1652
Fleetwood, Cromwell's son-in-law, was sent over as Commander-in-Chief,
and in the following year Cromwell was proclaimed Lord Protector, and
the new military despotism of the Protectorate replaced the old military
despotism of the Crown. The Protector turned his attention to the business
of "settling" the countries of Scotland and Ireland, now definitely
in his power. Charles II had suffered the humiliations imposed on him
by the Scottish Covenanters for nothing. The Covenanters, under Leslie,
had been routed at Dunbar on September 3, 1650, and Charles had again
taken flight to the Continent after his defeat at Worcester on the anniversary
of Dunbar in the following year. The risings in the King's favour were
crushed with merciless rigour; the leaders suffered for their indiscretion
on the scaffold; and the Royalists were forced to pay a tenth of their
income to support the tyranny that was crushing them. In 1652 the "Settlement"
of Ireland was taken vigorously in hand.
The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland was a vast measure of confiscation,
under the excuse of punishment for the "massacre" of 1641, by
which to satisfy the legal claims of two classes; on the one hand, the
English who had in March 1642 subscribed to the costs of the Irish war,
on the promise of receiving compensation in Irish land; and on the other
hand, the soldiers and officers who had fought in Ireland and whose pay
was long in arrears, who also were to be paid off in Irish settlement
lands. The former were called 'Adventurers' and were in the main citizens
of London, Puritan shopkeepers and tradesmen, who looked to advance the
cause of Protestantism and to secure a good return for their money at
the end of the war by this investment in rebel lands, thus forfeited beforehand.
Some of the claimants had become entitled to extra lands by the 'doubling
ordinance' by which they had been induced to pay up part of their loans
at an earlier date in consideration of receiving larger properties in
return. In practice it was found impossible to fulfil these special claims;
there was not enough land to go round.[21] Besides the Londoners there
were a considerable number of applicants from the western counties of
England, which had always been closely associated with Ireland by trade,
and whose sympathies had been aroused by the arrival of numbers of refugees
who had fled from Ireland in the early days of the 1641 rebellion to take
shelter among them. It was only by adopting some sweeping plan such as
that suggested by the Earl of Cork during his Munster sessions in 1642,
some months after the outbreak of the rebellion, that these extensive
claims could be satisfied. He had indicted, in one comprehensive charge,
all the leading Catholic gentry of the South of Ireland. "Lords Viscount
Roche, Mountgarret, Ikerrin and Muskerry, Barons Dunboyne and Castleconnell,
Richard Butler, brother of the Earl of Ormonde...with all other baronets,
knights, esquires, gentlemen, freeholders, and Popish priests, in number
above 1100, that either dwell or have entered or done any rebellious act
in those two counties." He adds that "this course of proceedings
was not by them suspected and doth much startle and terrify them; for
now they begin to take notice, though too late, that they are in a good
forwardness to be attainted and all their estates confiscated to the corruption
of their blood and extirpation of them and their families."[22]
[21] "Doubling ordinances" were the fashion of the day, and
were ready means of raising money by speculation. In the Restoration Settlement
these "Doubling ordinances" were struck out. Cal. S. P. I.,
1660-62, Intro., p. xv.
[22] The Earl of Cork to the Speaker of the House of Commons in England,
August 25, 1642. State Letters of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1742),
p. 5. Lismore Papers, 2 series, vol. v, pp. 98-107.
These sessions were held in Waterford and Cork, when the South had only
recently shown signs of disturbance or sympathy with the insurgents in
the North. The Act of August 1652 carried into execution the designs outlined
by Lord Cork ten years before. It was a deliberate proposal by the Puritan
Parliament to destroy the monarchical principle in Ireland by uprooting
the whole of the Catholic and some of the Protestant gentry of Ireland,
most of whom had fought for the King long after the loyalists of England
had given up his cause. By the intolerable conditions imposed by the Bill
they were to be forced to fly the country or submit to impoverishment,
while the bulk of their properties were to be transferred to a new body
of Puritan owners [23] drawn from a different class, for the most part
strangers to the country and strongly prejudiced against its inhabitants.
Wholesale confiscations of loyalist and Church properties were also going
on in England, enlarging as the bills for the wars of the Parliament against
the Sovereign came in, but nothing so sweeping as the practical resale
of the whole country was contemplated elsewhere. The much-advertised massacre
made it possible in Ireland.
[23] Lynch, who lived through this period and who dedicates his book
in fulsome language to Charles II, distinguishes between the Puritans
and Protestants or Anglicans. He says: "The Puritans had no regard
to laws of humanity or respect of treaties; the Protestants had some regard
for mercy and plighted faith." (Cambrensis Eversus (ed. M. Kelly,
1848), iii, 201).
Some years later, in September, 1658, a Commission was appointed to try
those directly involved in the rebellion and accused of acts of murder.
It seems to have been fairly conducted, numberless witnesses being called
on both sides; and though much of the evidence given was coloured by the
exaggerations which stories of terror necessarily acquire when repeated
after years of embellishment, there was an evident desire to get at the
truth and to act with justice. Sir Phelim O'Neill had been executed, chiefly
on the ground of complicity in the murder of Lord Caulfeild. He atoned
for a reckless life by the courage of his death. On the scaffold he refused
to buy his life by accusing Charles I of having instigated the rebellion.
There had been other executions, chief among them that of Lord Maguire.
Now the Commissioners made a number of acquittals, far too many being
declared innocent to please planters who were hungry for the lands of
the accused. Lord Muskerry, who was acquitted, gave a remarkable testimony
to the justice of the Commission. He had suffered so many miseries and
humiliations during his sojourn in Spain and Portugal, in raising troops
for the Peninsula, that he had returned and thrown himself on the mercy
of the Parliament. On his acquittal he exclaimed: "I met many crosses
in Spain and Portugal. I could get no rest till I came hither...When I
consider that in this court I came clear out of that blackness of blood
by being so sifted, it is more to me than my estate. I can live without
my estate but not without my credit." He regained most of his property
after the Restoration.
The debt claimed by the Adventurers amounted to £336,000, to be
paid in lands the position of which was to be determined by lot. Ten counties
of the richest part of Ireland--Limerick, Tipperary, King's and Queen's
Counties, Meath and Westmeath, Down, Antrim, Armagh, and Waterford--some
of them planted with English and Scottish during the last century, were
now to be handed over to the newcomers, halved between the army and the
Adventurers. Louth was reserved as additional security to the purchasers,
and several counties, mostly in the North and in Leinster, with Kerry,
were put aside as additional security to the soldiers for arrears of pay
due to them. The counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork, with all
Church lands, were held back for bestowal on notable regicides and other
favoured persons. It was eventually found that even these vast forfeitures,
which included the whole of Ireland except Connacht and Clare, the two
districts reserved for the uprooted inhabitants, were not sufficient to
pay off the long-standing arrears of pay, and portions of Sligo and Mayo,
intended for the dispossessed landowners, were eventually added to them.
This great confiscation of a whole country is usually spoken of as a transplanting
of the Irish to make way for English. It affected all the Catholic Irish
gentry, especially those who had been in arms between October, 1641, and
September, 1643. But it was land that was wanted, and in their effort
to find lands to go round the hundreds of creditors who were pressing
their claims, it suited those in authority to sweep together Irish, old
English and Scottish, those who had resisted the rebellion as well as
those who had taken part in it. The Settlement was largely an act of vengeance
on those who had been loyal to the King.
Protestants and Presbyterians as well as Catholics were evicted, but
it was the Catholic gentry of English descent who suffered most. Among
the list of persons excluded by name from pardon both as to life and estate
were the noblest families in the country, beginning with the Earl of Ormonde,
the only Protestant of his family, Lords Clanricarde, Mayo, Castlehaven,
Fingall, Roscommon, and Westmeath--Royalists who had throughout declared
their abhorrence of the rebellion; Viscounts Iveagh and Montgomery of
the Ardes, of Scottish blood; the Barons of Slane, of Louth, of Athenry,
belonging to the old English families of the Flemings, Plunketts, and
Berminghams; Richard Bellings, who had resisted the old Irish party, and
drawn up many declarations of loyalty to the King; and Bramhall, Protestant
Bishop of Derry. Of old Irish descent were Sir Phelim O'Neill, Muskerry,
Inchiquin, the O'Conor Don, Moores, Byrnes, O'Tooles, and O'Flahertys,
some only of whom were actively engaged in the rebellion, even if they
were sympathetic to the insurgents.[24] Lord Antrim, who had raised the
Irish army which fought for the King under Montrose and retrieved his
waning fortunes, had his whole estate taken from him, but he was later
allowed a small subsidy for services at Ross, where he appears to have
advised surrender to the Parliamentary forces. It was only after years
of struggle that he was restored in 1663 as an "innocent papist,"
one of four so favoured in the North of Ireland; two of the others being
Sir Henry Magennis and Sir Henry O'Neill.[25]
[24] The Acts relating to the Settlement will be found in Scobell, Acts
and Ordinances, ii, 197 (cap. 13), 210 (cap. 23 seq.), 235, 240, 252.
[25] Prendergast, Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution (1887),
p 98, n.
Next to those who were held to have forfeited the right to life and property
came various grades of supposed guilt, ranging from those who had been
in command or actively engaged against the Puritan forces to those whose
homes happened to have been anywhere within the quarters occupied by the
rebels, even if they had taken no part whatever in the fighting but had
merely lived quietly at home. None could entirely escape who had not shown
"constant good affection" to the Parliamentary cause throughout
the entire period, and few indeed there were who could pretend to have
been thoroughly consistent in their attachment to Puritanism. All others
forfeited from one-third to two-thirds of their properties, receiving
an equivalent to the remainder, on paper, in Connacht or Clare. But it
was soon found that these districts did not provide enough land for all
claimants, especially as the claims of the soldiers cut off large slices
even of these lands, pushing the new settlers out of the few habitable
districts into the waste and mountainous lands beyond them. There were
noblemen like Lord Trimleston, who had the rich fattening grounds of Co.
Meath; Lord Ikerrin, with farms and ripening cornfields in Tipperary;
the Talbots of Malahide; the Cheevers, with a fine estate at Monkstown,
near Dublin. These found themselves, at the beginning of harvest, ordered
to transplant to the west, and though an attempt was made to give them
better lands than their less fortunate neighbours, as coming from the
richest pasture and agricultural portions of Ireland, this arrangement
could only be very imperfectly carried out.
The time given to transplant was too short for niceties, and the claims
and complaints far too many to receive adequate attention. The Act was
passed in August 1652, after which a hasty survey was made and the lands
balloted for in London in September 1653. By May 1, 1654, all removals
had to be accomplished by the inhabitants in possession, to make way for
the incoming owners. By carriage, by cart, or on foot they must, under
pain of death if found after that date on the east of the Shannon, transport
to Connacht and make their settlements there. A few terrible examples
warned others that the threats of punishment for lingering beyond the
allotted date were no empty ones. Nevertheless, like all schemes contrary
to humanity and reason, the plan broke down. Already when Fleetwood came
over in September 1652 he saw that the task of removing the proprietors
and their families and tenants from the three most fertile provinces of
Ireland to one province of which a large part was uninhabitable was beyond
the power of any Government to accomplish. The removals had to be made
during the winter, and there were hundreds of delicate women, young children,
and invalids to whom this would mean death; many of the cattle were not
in condition to travel; the harvest was in the fields, waiting to be cut;
and there would be no one to sow for the next year, for the evicted gentry
were not likely to plant for the men who were evicting them. Delays had
to be granted for all these reasons, and in order to permit the heads
of families to go first and build some sort of shelters for their households.
They were not permitted to take refuge in the towns, which were expressly
reserved, with three miles round each. No transplanted person, were he
the highest in the land, might enter these areas.
Aged great ladies, like Lady Thurles, Ormonde's mother, and Lady Dunsany,
were particularly hard to move. Though agents and Adventurers were clamouring
at their doors they declined to stir. Lady Dunsany boldly said that if
her lands were wanted they would have to carry her out of them. Lady Thurles
had rescued and supported the English during the rebellion, numbers of
whom found refuge in her house. She had subscribed two heavy loans to
the English army and when pillaged by the insurgents she had welcomed
an English army to Thurles. Even the Commissioners found her "a very
deserving person." But her home was "in enemy quarters,"
and she had four thousand fertile acres; she was a Catholic in religion,
and with so many damning qualities against her it was only her personal
friendship with Cromwell that secured for her, as a special act of grace,
one reprieve after another from transplanting. Lady Ormonde was in much
the same position. It could not be forgotten that she "had commanded
her own servants out of their beds" during the rebellion to accommodate
the distressed English with whom she filled the rooms of Kilkenny Castle;
she was given Dunmore House and a pension, of which she only received
a fraction, on condition of giving nothing to her husband. But these were
exceptional cases. More fortunate were the poorer Irish. If they had no
real or personal estate to the value of £10 they might, by submitting
to the Commonwealth and living peacefully and obediently, obtain pardon.
Husbandmen, ploughmen, artificers and labourers had more chance than those
in a higher position. As had happened in Ulster,[26] they were needed
by the new proprietors, who were many of them ignorant of a farmer's life
and knew little of conditions in Ireland. It happened fortunately for
them that the order for removal covered the harvest and sowing seasons.
Their old masters left them behind to reap the harvest for them, and the
newcomers, finding them on the properties, and seeking in vain for servants,
were only too glad to keep them on to sow in the spring. But large numbers
clung to their old masters, and we have lists of retainers transplanting
with the families with whom they had lived. They preferred the hard work
of turning Connacht into ploughland to coming under the rule of strangers.
[26] Sir Vincent Gookin, The Case of Transplanting the Irish Vindicated
(1655).
The actual facts of the re-settlement were different from what had been
contemplated. When the time came for the soldiers to settle it was found
that large numbers of them had, for a little badly-needed ready money,
sold their holdings to their officers, often for far less than the actual
value of the land, and had gone out of the country. Some of the officers
had in this way built up large properties at the expense of their disbanded
men. Of the original Adventurers, too, few cared to leave their businesses
in London to risk a totally different kind of life in Ireland. They also
were ready to sell. The Commissioners found the claims most complicated,
some properties having changed hands already several times since their
original sale in 1653. In spite of Fleetwood, who was a doctrinaire Puritan
of the dour kind, there were still unremoved proprietors "playing
loath to depart" in the spring of 1654, and frequent letters complain
to the Government that the work was moving slowly, and that many were
breaking out as 'Tories' or brigands rather than settle on their plots.
In many cases these plots existed only in the imagination of the Commissioners,
the allotted lands not being sufficient for the purchasers. It was only
by the most threatening orders and wholesale arrests that numbers of owners
could be got to move. The prisons were choked, "such batches being
brought in that there was not gaol room to contain them." The young
men passed in hundreds out of the country to take service in Spain and
France, many who should have been exempted being forced to go by the inflexible
Fleetwood. Lord Muskerry had leave to transport five thousand of his old
followers out of Ireland to any country in amity with the Commonwealth,
and he chose to take them to the King of Poland; others went under their
old officers to serve the Prince of Conde or the King of Spain.
Petty [27] calculates that thirty-four thousand men went abroad between
1651 and 1654; elsewhere he gives forty thousand, including boys, women,
and priests, the last being all expatriated by law. An evil fate overtook
the women and boys who, to the number of six thousand, were sent into
slavery to the plantations of America and the West Indies. Thither were
sent the wives of the men who had gone abroad, or the widows left after
the recent wars, besides the destitute people wandering with their families
about the country or turned out of the gaols. While the agents of the
King of Spain were treating with the Government for the swordsmen and
taking away the best blood of the kingdom to fight in foreign wars, Bristol
agents were contracting with kidnappers and governors of prisons for boys,
women, and girls to be sent to the sugar-plantations. It was only when
the ruffians engaged in this work began to lay their hands on English
children that this shocking traffic was stopped.[28]
[27] "Political Anatomy of Ireland," a work written in 1672,
in Collection of Tracts (1861), ii. 18.
[28] Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement (1865), Appendix VI, pp. 237
seq.
The results of all this horror were not quite what was intended. The country
swarmed with 'Tories,' who hovered in the woods and mountains near their
old homes and made the lives of the planters a misery by their depredations
and raids. They seemed to increase with the same rapidity as the wolves,
which now once more infested the country. Many of the men who had followed
their officers abroad returned home to swell the parties of brigands that
roamed about under chosen leaders, and the exploits of captains of outlaws
like Redmond O'Hanlon, "the Tory of the Fews," became famous
far beyond their native land. The hunting of Tories became part of a settler's
normal life, and the rewards for captures were as great as for the killing
of wolves.[29] An unforeseen result of the new conditions of life was
the speedy fraternization between the Cromwellian soldier-planters and
the Irish among whom they settled. Unlike the Adventurers, many of the
soldiers had been for some years in Ireland, with the inevitable result
that they felt on friendly terms with the young people of the country,
and marriages became frequent. However distasteful it might be theoretically
for a Cromwellian Puritan to marry a Catholic Irish girl, human nature
proved stronger than theological prejudice, and in spite of proclamations
and punishments these marriages still went on. When rebuked, the soldiers
averred that their wives had turned Protestant; thereupon courts presided
over by army veterans were set up to examine the proficiency of the converts
in the tenets of their new faith. How many of the young Irish wives outwitted
Cromwell's godly veterans history does not say. Their children were soon
all talking Irish and living as the Irish lived. Forty years after the
settlement and seven after the battle of the Boyne a writer remarks that
many of Oliver's soldiers could not speak a word of English. "And,"
he adds, "what is more strange, the same may be said of some of the
children of King William's soldiers, who came but t'other day into the
country."[30] The descendants of this mixed soldier race were in
after days to become the turbulent populations of Tipperary and Westmeath.
[29] Prendergast, Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution (1887);
Thurloe Papers, iv, pp. 23-24; 41 ; 46.
[30] True Way to render Ireland Happy and Secure, addressed to the Hon.
Robert Molesworth (Dublin, 1697).
Thus was Ireland 'settled' by the Die-hards of Cromwell's day by the oft-desired
expedient of extirpating the inhabitants and replanting with English.
Orrery declared that the tremendous scheme "had so broken and shattered
that nation that they could never make head afterwards."[31] Yet
so far was the nation from being settled by Cromwell's policy that Ormonde,
on his return as Viceroy in 1662, said that he found Ireland "as
divided and unsettled a country as is or ever was in Christendom."
The memory of "the curse of Cromwell" has outlived any later
troubles, and is not yet extinct after the lapse of over two and a half
centuries.
[31] Memoirs of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1742), p. 20.
END OF CHAPTER VII
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