Spaniards, put fresh life into the Irish of West Munster, and, indeed,
Red Hugh stood on scant ceremony with such degenerate Irish as refused
to fight for their country, so that wherever he marched, fresh patriots,
eager to “save their bacon,” in many cases, sprang up like crops of
mushrooms. At Castlehaven he formed a junction with 700 newly arrived
Spanish troops, and, together, they marched toward Kinsale, which
Mountjoy and Carew were preparing to invest. O’Neill and his brave
lieutenant, Richard Tyrrell, did not pursue the route taken by
O’Donnell, but had to fight their way through Leinster and North Munster
with considerable loss. At Bandon, in South Munster, they fell in with
O’Donnell and the Spaniards, and all marched to form an immediate
junction with De Aguila. Mitchel, quoting from O’Sullivan’s narrative,
gives the total strength of the force under O’Neill and O’Donnell at
6,000 foot and 500 horse. The Irish leader was opposed to risking a
general engagement with so small a command, although O’Donnell, when he
beheld Mountjoy’s troops beleaguering the town, wanted to attack, which,
judging by after events, might have been the better plan. O’Neill
argued, however, that the inclement season would soon destroy a good
part of the English soldiers and counseled delay. O’Donnell yielded
reluctantly, and then the Irish, very badly provided, intrenched
themselves and began “besieging the besiegers.” Prudence, on this
occasion, ruined the cause of Ireland—so often ruined by rashness,
before and since; for, three days after O’Neill’s policy had been
acceded to, that is on Christmas eve, 1601, accident brought on an
engagement, in the dark, which neither party seems to have anticipated.
The tragedy is best related by Mitchel in his life of O’Neill, thus:
“Before dawn, on the morning of the 24th (December), Sir Richard Graham,
who commanded the night guard of horse, sent word to the deputy that the
scouts had discovered the matches (matchlock muskets were used at this
period) flashing in great numbers in the darkness, and that O’Neill must
be approaching the camp in force. Instantly the troops were called to
arms; messengers were despatched to the Earl of Thomond’s quarter, with
orders to draw out his men. The deputy (Mountjoy) now advanced to meet
the Irish, whom he supposed to be stealing on his camp, and seems to
have effectually surprised them, while endeavoring to prevent a surprise
upon himself. The infantry of O’Neill’s army retired slowly about a mile
further from the town, and made a stand on the bank of a ford, where
their position was strengthened by a bog in flank. Wingfield, the
marshal, thought he saw some confusion in their ranks, and entreated the
deputy that he might be allowed to charge. The Earl of Clanricarde
joined the marshal and the battle became general. O’Neill’s cavalry
repeatedly drove back both Wingfield and Clanricarde, until Sir Henry
Danvers, with Captains Taaffe and Fleming, came up to their assistance,
when, at length, the Irish infantry fell into confusion and fled.
Another body of them, under Tyrrell, was still unbroken, and long
maintained their ground on a hill, but at length, seeing their comrades
routed, they also gave way and retreated in good order after their main
body. The northern cavalry covered the retreat, and O’Neill and
O’Donnell, by amazing personal exertions, succeeded in preserving order
and preventing it from becoming a total rout.”
Such was the unfortunate battle of Kinsale—the most disastrous, perhaps,
in Irish annals. It was not even well fought, because the Irish troops,
surprised in their sleep, owing to lack of vigilance on the part of the
sentinels, had lost most of their effective arms, their baggage, and
colors at the outset. Their camp, also, came into immediate possession
of the enemy. Thus, they were discouraged—the Irish character being
mercurial, like the French—if not badly demoralized, and they did not,
in this ill-fated action, fight with a resolution worthy of the fame
they had rightfully earned as soldiers of the first class, nor did they
faithfully respond, as heretofore, to the military genius of their
justly renowned leaders. They were mostly the troops of Ulster, far from
home, and lacking the inspiration that comes to all men when conscious
that they are fighting to defend their own hearths against the spoiler.
Ulster, in that day, was almost alien to the southern province, although
the soldiers of both were fighting in a common cause. Kinsale was,
certainly, not a battle to which Ireland can look back with feelings of
pride, but she may be thankful that there are few such gloomy failures
recorded in her military annals. Yet the bitter fact remains that
Kinsale clouded forever the glory achieved by the troops of O’Neill and
O’Donnell on so many fields of victory. The Spaniards, who had joined
O’Donnell on the march, refused to fly and were almost all destroyed.
Their commander, Del Campo, two officers, and forty soldiers were all
that survived out of seven hundred men, and they were made prisoners of
war. (Mitchel.) In a note, this author, quoting Pacata Hibernia, says:
“The most merciless of all Mountjoy’s army that day was the Anglo-Irish
and Catholic Earl of Clanricarde. He slew twenty of the Irish with his
own hand, and cried aloud to ‘spare no rebels.’ Carew (the English
general and writer) says that ‘no man did bloody his sword more than his
lordship that day.’” This episode shows how well Mountjoy’s policy of
“Divide and Conquer” and temporary toleration of the Catholics worked
for the English cause. Had the penal laws not been mitigated this
Anglo-Irish and Catholic Earl of Clanricarde would have fought on the
side of Ireland.
De Aguila, seeing that the Irish army was defeated, and that another
effort on the part of O’Neill was rendered impossible by the loss of his
munitions and the lateness of the season, proposed to capitulate. The
Earl of Mountjoy offered him honorable terms, and De Aguila agreed to
surrender to the English all the Irish castles on the coast to which
Spanish garrisons had been admitted, “and shortly after,” says Mitchel,
“set sail for Spain, carrying with him all his artillery, treasure, and
military stores.” Some of the Irish chiefs, notably the O’Sullivan
Beare, refused to ratify that part of De Aguila’s capitulation which
agreed to surrender their castles, occupied by Spanish troops, to the
English. The fortresses had been thrown open to the Spaniards in good
faith, and General de Aguila had no moral right to give them up. The
most he could agree to do was to withdraw his men from the Irish castles
and take them back with him to Spain. And this was the view taken by the
Irish chiefs, with bloody, but glorious, result, as we shall see.
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CHAPTER XII
Sad Death of O’Donnell in Spain—Heroic Defence of Dunboy
O’NEILL, when he perceived the hopelessness of the Irish situation in
Munster, conducted what remained of his defeated army back to the north
and cantoned it along the Blackwater for the winter months, where he
felt quite sure the English, worn out by their exertions at the siege
and battle of Kinsale, would not attack him. Red Hugh O’Donnell,
exasperated beyond endurance at the disregard of his bold advice to
attack the beleaguering English, in conjunction with the Spaniards, on
the first arrival of the Irish army before Kinsale, gave up the command
of his clan to his brother, Roderick, and, with a few followers, sailed
for Spain, in search of further aid. He resolved to ask King Philip for
an army, not a detachment. The chief landed at Coruna, and was received
with high honors by the Spanish authorities. He finally reached the
Spanish Court and placed the whole Irish situation clearly before
Philip, who promised a powerful force and actually gave orders to
prepare at once for a new expedition to Ireland. The sad sequel is well
told in the eloquent words of Mitchel:
“But that armament never sailed, and poor O’Donnell never saw Ireland
more; for news reached Spain, a few months after, that Dunboy Castle,
the last stronghold in Munster that held out for King Philip, was taken,
and Beare-haven, the last harbor in the South that was open to his
ships, effectually guarded by the English; and the Spanish preparations
were countermanded; and Red Hugh was once more on his journey to court
to renew his almost hopeless suit, and had arrived at Samancas, two
leagues from Valladolid, when he suddenly fell sick. His gallant heart
was broken and he died there on the 10th of September, 1602. He was
buried by order of the king with royal honors, as befitted a prince of
the Kinel-Conal; and the stately city of Valladolid holds the bones of
as noble a chief and as stout a warrior as ever bore the wand of
chieftaincy or led a clan to battle.”
While we do not believe in “painting the devil blacker than he is,” we
think it proper to state here that more recent researches would seem to
have fixed the crime of assassination on the Earl of Mountjoy. In an
account, quoted in several lectures by Frank Hugh O’Donnell, ex-member
of the British Parliament, it is definitely stated that Red Hugh
O’Donnell was poisoned at the inn in Samancas, where he died, by a hired
murderer, named Blake, who acted for the English Lord Deputy. Such, if
the statement is true, were the political ethics of the Elizabethan era.
Donal O’Sullivan Beare, the bravest of all the Munster leaders, wrested
his castle of Dun-buidhe (Dunboy), in English, “Yellow Fort,” from the
Spaniards after De Aguila had agreed to surrender it to the English. He
justified his conduct to the King of Spain in a pathetic letter in which
he said: “Among other places that were neither yielded nor taken to the
end that they might be delivered to the English, Don Juan tied himself
up to deliver my castle and haven, the only key to mine inheritance,
whereupon the living of many thousand persons doth rest, that live some
twenty leagues upon the seacoast, into the hands of my cruel, cursed,
misbelieving enemies.”
The defence of this castle by the Irish garrison of one hundred and
forty-three men, commanded by O’Sullivan’s intrepid lieutenant,
McGeoghegan, was one of the finest feats of arms recorded in history.
Although only a square tower, with outworks, it held out against General
Carew, the Lord President, for fifteen days. It was bombarded by the
fleet from the haven, and battered by artillery from the land side.
Indeed, Carew had an army of 4,000 veteran soldiers opposed to
McGeoghegan’s 143 heroes. A breach was finally effected in the castle,
but the storming parties were repeatedly repulsed. The great hall was
finally carried, and the little garrison, under the undaunted
McGeoghegan, retreated to the vaults beneath it, where they sustained
the unequal conflict for four-and-twenty hours, and, by the exertion of
unexampled prowess, at last cleared the hall of the English. The latter
replied with an overwhelming cannonade, and the walls of the castle
crumbled about the ears of its heroic defenders. The latter made a
desperate sortie with only forty men and all perished. The survivors in
the castle continued the defence, but, in the end, their noble
commander, McGeoghegan, was mortally wounded and they laid down their
arms. While their wounded chief lay gasping in the agonies of
approaching death, on the floor of the vault, he saw the English enter
the place. The sight seemed to renew his life and energy. He sprang to
his feet, seized a torch, and made a rush for an open barrel of powder,
intending to blow assailants and assailed into the sky. But an English
soldier was too quick for the dying hero. He seized him in his arms, and
a comrade wrested the torch from the failing hand and extinguished it.
Then they ran their swords through McGeoghegan’s body, and his glorious
deeds and great sufferings were at an end. It should have been stated
that ten of the garrison, who were of the party that made the sortie, on
the failure of their bold effort, attempted to reach the mainland by
swimming across the haven. This movement was anticipated by the English
commander. Soldiers were stationed in boats to intercept the swimmers,
and all were stabbed or shot, as if they had been beasts of prey. The
survivors of the band of Irish Spartans, who made Dunboy forever
memorable in the annals of martial glory, were instantly hanged by order
of Carew, so that not one of the heroic 143 was left. Ruthless as he
was, the Lord President himself, in an official letter, bore this
testimony to their valor: “Not one man escaped; all were slain,
executed, or buried in the ruins, and so obstinate a defence hath not
been seen within this kingdom.” The defence of Dunboy Castle deserves to
rank in history with Thermopylæ and the Alamo of Texas, and the butchery
of its surviving defenders, in cold blood, was a disgrace to English
manhood. How differently the gallant O’Neill treated the English
prisoners taken at Armagh, Portmore, and other places in Ulster during
the period of his amazing victories. It is cruelties of this character
that made the English name abhorred in Ireland, not the prowess, or even
the bloodthirstiness, of the English soldiery in the heat of battle. The
massacre at Dunboy is an indelible stain on the memory of Lord President
Carew.
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CHAPTER XIII
Wane of Irish Resistance—O’Neill Surrenders to Mountjoy at Mellifont
WITH the fall of Dunboy, Ireland’s heroic day was almost at an end for
that generation. O’Sullivan and some other Munster chiefs still held
out, but their efforts were only desultory. O’Neill, accompanied by
Richard Tyrrell, the faithful Anglo-Irish leader, rallied the remnants
of his clan and attempted to hold again the line of the Blackwater. But
the English were now too many to be resisted by a handful of brave men.
They closed upon him from every side, and advanced their posts through
the country, so as to effectually cut him off from communication with
Tyrconnel, whose chief on hearing of the death of his noble brother, Red
Hugh, in Spain, made terms with the Lord Deputy. So, also, did many
other Ulster chiefs, who conceived their cause to be hopeless. O’Neill,
still hoping against hope, and thinking that a Spanish army might yet
come to his aid, burned his castle of Dungannon to the ground, and
retired to the wooded and mountainous portions of his ancient
principality, where he held out doggedly. But the Lord Deputy resorted
to his old policy of destroying the growing crops, and, very soon,
Tyrone, throughout its fairest and most fertile regions, was a blackened
waste. Still the Red Hand continued to float defiantly throughout the
black winter of 1602-3; but, at length, despair began to shadow the once
bright hopes of the brave O’Neill. His daring ally, Donal O’Sullivan
Beare, having lost all he possessed in Munster, set out at this
inclement season on a forced march from Glengariff, in Cork, to Breffni,
in Leitrim, fighting his enemies all the way, crossing the Shannon in
boats extemporized from willows and horsehides; routing an English
force, under Colonel Malby, at the “pass of Aughrim,” in Galway,
destined to be more terribly memorable in another war for liberty; and,
finally, reached O’Ruarc’s castle, where he was hospitably welcomed,
with only a small moiety of those who followed him from their homes,
“—Marching
Over Murkerry’s moors and Ormond’s plain,
His currochs the waves of the Shannon o’erarching
And pathway mile-marked with the slain.”
Even the iron heart of Hugh O’Neill could not maintain its strength
against conditions such as those thus described by Moryson, the
Englishman, who can not be suspected of intensifying the horrid picture
at the expense of his own country’s reputation: “No spectacle,” he says,
“was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially of wasted
countries, than to see multitudes of poor people dead, with their mouths
all colored green, by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could
rend up above ground.” There were other spectacles still more terrible,
as related by the English generals and chroniclers themselves, but we
will spare the details. They are too horrible for the average civilized
being of this day to contemplate, although the age is by no means
lacking in examples of human savagery which go to prove that the wild
beast in the nature of man has not yet been entirely bred out.
Baffled by gold, not by steel, by the torch rather than the sword,
deprived of all his resources, deserted by his allies, and growing old
and worn in ceaseless warfare, it can hardly be wondered at that O’Neill
sent to the Lord Deputy, at the end of February, 1603, propositions of
surrender. Mountjoy was glad to receive them—for the vision of a
possible Spanish expedition, in great force, still disquieted him—and
arranged to meet the discomfited Irish hero at Mellifont Abbey, in
Louth, where died, centuries before, old, repentant, and despised, that
faithless wife of O’Ruarc, Prince of Breffni, whose sin first caused the
Normans to set foot in Ireland. So anxious was Mountjoy to conclude a
peace, that nearly all of O’Neill’s stipulations were concurred in, even
to the free exercise of the Catholic religion in the subjugated country.
He and his allies were allowed to retain, under English “letters
patent,” their original tribe-lands, with a few exceptions in favor of
the traitors who had fought with the English against their own kindred.
It was insisted, however, by the Deputy, that all Irish titles,
including that of “The O’Neill,” should be dropped, thenceforth and
forever, and the English titles of “nobility” substituted. All the Irish
territory was converted into “shire-ground.” The ancient Brehon Law was
abolished, and, for evermore, the Irish clans were to be governed by
English methods. Queen Elizabeth had died during the progress of the
negotiations, and a secret knowledge of this fact no doubt influenced
Mountjoy in hurrying the treaty to its conclusion, and granting such,
comparatively, favorable conditions to Hugh O’Neill and the other
“rebellious” Irish chiefs. Therefore, it was to the representative of
King James I that Tyrone, at last, yielded his sword—not to the general
of Elizabeth. It is said that in the bitter last moments of that
sovereign, her almost constant inquiry was: “What news from Ireland and
that rascally O’Neill?” The latter’s most elaborate historian estimates
that the long war “cost England many millions in treasure, and the blood
of tens of thousands of her veteran soldiers, and, from the face of
Ireland, it swept nearly one-half of the entire population.” (Mitchel.)
And, he continues: “From that day (March 30, 1603, when O’Neill
surrendered at Mellifont), the distinction of ‘Pale’ and ‘Irish country’
was at an end; and the authority of the kings of England and their
(Anglo) Irish parliaments became, for the first time, paramount over the
whole island. The pride of ancient Erin—the haughty struggle of Irish
nationhood against foreign institutions and the detested spirit of
English imperialism, for that time, sunk in blood and horror, but the
Irish nation is an undying essence, and that noble struggle paused for a
season, only to recommence in other forms and on wider ground—to be
renewed, and again renewed, until—Ah! quousque, Domine, quousque?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV
Treachery of James I to the Irish Chiefs—“The Flight of the Earls”
AT the outset of his reign, James I, of England, and VI of Scotland,
collateral descendant of that Edward Bruce who had been crowned King of
the Irish in the beginning of the fourteenth century, promised to rule
Ireland in a loving and paternal spirit. He had received at his London
court, with great urbanity, Hugh O’Neill and Roderick O’Donnell, and had
confirmed them in their English titles of Earl of Tyrone and Earl of
Tyrconnel, respectively. They had accompanied Mountjoy to England, to
make their “submissions” in due form before the king, and, while en
route through that country, were grossly insulted at many points by the
common people, who could not forget their relatives lying dead in heaps
in Irish soil, because of the prowess of the chieftains who were now the
guests of England. It is most remarkable that the English people have
always honored and hospitably entertained the distinguished “rebels” of
all countries but Ireland. Refugees from Poland, from Austria, from
Hungary, from France, from Italy—many of them charged with using
assassin methods—have been warmly welcomed in London, and even protected
by the courts of law, as in the case of the Orsini-infernal-machine
conspirators against Napoleon III, in 1859; but no Irish “rebel” has
ever been honored, or sheltered, or defended by the English people, or
the English courts of law; although individual Englishmen, like Lord
Byron, Percy Shelley, and a few others of their calibre, have written
and spoken in assertion of Ireland’s right to a separate existence. Of
course, the reason is that all the other “rebels” fought in “good
causes,” and, according to English political ethics, no cause can
possibly be just in which the right of England to govern any people
whatever against their will is contested. America learned that bitter
lesson nearly two centuries after O’Neill and O’Donnell were hooted and
stoned by the English populace for having dared to defend the rights and
the patrimony of their people.
The Catholic religion continued to be tolerated by James until 1605,
when, suddenly, a penal statute of the time of Elizabeth was unearthed
and put into operation with full force. Treaty obligations of England
with the Irish chiefs were also systematically violated. The lands of
Ulster were broad and fair, and the great body of military adventurers
who had come into Ireland from England during the long wars of the
preceding reign, were greedy for spoil. These and the Irish traitors—Art
O’Neill, Niall Garbh O’Donnell, the false McGuire, and the rest—pestered
the government and made never-ending charges of plots and “treasons”
against “the earls,” as the Irish leaders of the late war now came to be
called. The plotters were ably assisted by Robert Cecil, Earl of
Salisbury, ancestor of the late Marquis of Salisbury, who was also his
namesake. Another able English conspirator against the Irish chiefs was
Sir Arthur Chichester, who became one of the chief beneficiaries of the
subsequent “confiscations,” and whose descendants still hold, as “titled
nobility,” a very comfortable slice of ancient Ulster. Some “Reformed”
bishops also took great interest in getting the earls into hot water
with the government. Finally an alleged plot on the part of O’Neill and
O’Donnell to overthrow the King of England’s government in Ulster—an
absurdity on its face, considering their fallen and helpless
condition—was made the pretext for summoning them to appear before the
English courts established in Ireland, in whose justice they had no
confidence, remembering the ghastly fate of MacMahon Roe. A hired
perjurer, named O’Cahan—the unworthy scion of a noble house—was to be
chief “witness” against O’Neill, and no secret was made of the fact that
others would be forthcoming, hired by Chichester, to finish the work
begun by the principal informer. Meanwhile the free exercise of the
Catholic religion—so solemnly guaranteed by Mountjoy—was strictly
prohibited, under the penal enactment of Elizabeth, known as the “Act of
Uniformity,” already referred to; and again began those horrid religious
persecutions, for politics’ and plunder’s sake, which had no termination
in Ireland, except for one brief period, during nearly two centuries.
Such Catholics as desired to practice their faith had to betake
themselves to the mountain recesses, or the caves of the seacoast,
where, before rude altars, Mass was celebrated by priests on whose heads
a penal price was set. Sheriffs and judges, attended by large bands of
soldiers, made circuit of the new Ulster “counties” and succeeded in
completely terrifying the unfortunate Catholic inhabitants. Education,
as far as Catholics were concerned, was prohibited, and then began that
exodus of Irish ecclesiastical students to the Continent of Europe,
which continued down to the reign of William IV, notwithstanding the
partial mitigation of the penal laws, in the reign of his father, and
the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill during his brother’s
reign, A.D. 1829.
The persecuted earls clearly saw there was no hope of peace for them in
Ireland, and that their presence only wrought further ill to their
faithful clansmen, now reduced, for the first time, to the condition of
“subjects” of the King of England. Lord Howth, a powerful Catholic noble
of the Pale, was suspected of having given information to the Lord
Deputy of a meeting held at Maynooth the previous Christmas at which the
earls and several Anglo-Catholic noblemen were present. It was claimed
that the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity was there discussed, and
that another effort to overthrow the English power would be made by the
parties to the meeting. This “plot,” if there were any at all, was
communicated to the Clerk of the Privy Council by an anonymous letter
dropped at the Castle of Dublin in March, 1607. “O’Neill,” says McGee,
“was with Chichester, at Slane, in September when he received a letter
from the McGuire—not the traitor of that title—who had been abroad,
conveying some startling information upon which Tyrone seems to have
acted at once. He took leave of the Lord Deputy, as if to prepare for a
journey to London, whither he had been summoned on some false pretext;
and, after spending a few days with his old friend, Sir Garrett Moore,
at Mellifont, repaired to his seat of Dungannon, where he, at once,
assembled all of his immediate family and all proceeded to the shores of
Lough Swilly, at Rathmullen, where they were joined by Roderick
O’Donnell and all of his household. They embarked immediately on the
French ship which had conveyed McGuire to Ireland, and set sail for
France, where, on landing, they were warmly welcomed and royally
entertained by the chivalric King Henry IV, who, as became a stout
soldier and able captain, greatly admired the prowess displayed in the
Ulster wars by Hugh O’Neill. There sailed to France with the latter his
last countess, daughter of McGenniss of Iveagh; his three sons, Hugh,
John, and Brian; his nephew, Art O’Neill, son of Cormac, and many of
lesser note. With O’Donnell sailed his brother Cathbar; his fair sister,
Nuala, wife of Niall Garbh, who had, in righteous indignation, forsaken
the traitor when he drew the sword against Ireland and her noble
brother, Red Hugh; the lady Rose O’Doherty, wife of Cathbar, and, after
his death, of Owen O’Neill; McGuire, Owen MacWard, the chief bard of
Tyrconnel, and several others. It proved to be a fatal voyage, for it
exiled forever the best and bravest of the Irish chiefs. Well might the
Four Masters in their Annals of the succeeding generation say: “Woe to
the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that conceived, woe to the
council that decided on the project of voyage, without knowing whether
they should to the end of their lives be able to return to their ancient
principalities and patrimonies.” And, adds the graphic Mitchel, “with
gloomy looks and sad forebodings, the clansmen of Tyrconnel gazed upon
that fatal ship, ‘built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark,’ as
she dropped down Lough Swilly, and was hidden behind the cliffs of Fanad
Head. They never saw their chieftains more.”
Everything was now settled in Ulster, for the English interest, except
for the brief “rebellion” of Sir Cahir O’Doherty, the young chief of
Inishowen, who fell out with Sir George Powlett of Derry, and flew at
once to arms. He made a brave struggle of some months’ duration, but, as
no aid reached him from any outside quarter, he was speedily penned up
in his own small territory, and, fighting to the last, died the death of
a soldier—the noblest death he could have died, surrounded by the armies
of Marshal Wingfield and Sir Oliver Lambert, on the rock of Doon, near
Kilmacrenan, in August, 1608. Thus went out the last spark of Ulster
valor for a generation.
King James, having used Niall Garbh O’Donnell for all he was worth to
the English cause, grew tired of his importunities and had him conveyed
to England, under guard, together with his two sons. All three were
imprisoned in the Tower of London from which the traitor, at least,
never emerged again. He met a fate he richly merited. Cormac O’Neill,
the brave captor of Armagh, and the legitimate O’Cahan, both of whom had
incurred the hatred of Chichester, also perished in the same gloomy
prison.
And now all that remained to be done was to parcel out the lands of the
conquered Ultonians and others of “the Meer Irish” between the captains
of the new conquest. Chichester was given the whole of O’Doherty’s
country, the peninsula of Inishowen, and to this was added O’Neill’s
former borough of Dungannon, with 1,300 acres of valuable land in the
neighborhood of the town. Wingfield was created Lord Powerscourt and
obtained the beautiful district of Fercullen, near Dublin—one of the
most charming domains in all Europe. Lambert became Earl of Cavan and
had several rich estates, including that of Carrig, bestowed upon him in
addition. All the counties of Ulster were declared forfeited to the
Crown of England. The primate and other Protestant prelates of Ulster
claimed, and received, 43,000 acres. Trinity College, Dublin, received
30,000 acres, in Tyrone, Derry, and Armagh, together with six advowsons,
or Church beneficies, in each county. The various guilds, or trades, of
the city of London, England, obtained the gross amount of 209,800 acres,
including the city of Derry, to which the name of “London” was then
prefixed. Grants to individuals were divided into three classes of
2,000, 1,500, and 1,000 acres each. Catholic laborers were required to
take the oath of supremacy—acknowledging King James as spiritual head of
the Church—which they, notwithstanding all their misfortunes, nobly
refused to do. In the end, seeing that the fields would remain
uncultivated for the most part, the English and Scotch “undertakers,” or
settlers, for prudence’ sake, rather than from liberal motives,
practically made this tyrannical requirement a dead letter. But the
Catholic tillers of the soil were driven from the fertile plains and
forced to cultivate miserable patches of land in the bogs or on the
mountains. When these became in any degree valuable, an exorbitant
“rent” was charged, and the poor Catholics, utterly unable to pay it,
were again compelled to move to some even more unpromising location,
where the same procedure again and again produced the same wretched
result.
It was thus that the ancient Irish clans, and families, were actually
robbed, in spite of solemn treaties and royal pledges, of their rightful
inheritance, and that strangers and “soulless corporations” became lords
of their soil. It was the beginning, in Ulster at least, of that system
of “felonious landlordism” which is the curse of all Ireland, in spite
of recent remedial measures, even in this day. So, too, began that
English garrison in Ireland—pitting race against race and creed against
creed—which has divided, distracted, and demoralized the Irish nation
ever since. The “Plantation of Ulster” was the most fatal measure ever
carried into effect by English policy in Ireland. Some of the Irish
princes did not long survive their exile. From France they had proceeded
to Rome and were very kindly received by the Pontiff, who placed
residences commensurate with their rank and fame at their disposal.
Roderick O’Donnell died in the Eternal City in July, 1608. McGuire died
at Genoa, while en route to Spain in August, and, in September, Cathbar
O’Donnell also passed away, and was laid in the same grave with his
gallant brother, on St. Peter’s Hill. (McGee.) O’Neill’s fate was sadder
still. The historian just quoted says of him: “He survived his comrades
as he did his fortunes, and, like another Belisarius, blind and old, and
a pensioner on the bounty of strangers, he lived on eight weary years in
Rome.” Death came to his relief, according to a historian of his own
period, in 1616, when he must have been over seventy years of age. He
sleeps his last sleep amid the consecrated dust of ages, beneath the
flagstones of the convent of St. Isidore; and there, in the words of the
Irish orator and American general, Meagher, “the fiery hand that rent
the ensign of St. George on the plains of Ulster has mouldered into
dust.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK III
RECORDING THE DOINGS OF THE ENGLISH AND IRISH, IN IRELAND, FROM THE TIME
OF JAMES I TO THE JACOBITE WARS IN THE DAYS OF JAMES II AND WILLIAM III
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
Confiscations and Penal Laws—The Iron Rule of Lord Strafford
THE first Anglo-Irish Parliament held within a period of twenty-seven
years was summoned to meet in Dublin on May 18, 1613, and,
notwithstanding the Act of Uniformity, it would appear that quite a
large number of Catholics, styled in the language of the times
“recusants,” because of their opposition to the spiritual supremacy of
the king, were elected to serve in that body. They would have had a
majority but for the creation of some forty “boroughs,” each entitled to
a member, under the patronage of some Protestant peer. This was the
beginning of that “rotten borough” system which finally led to the
abolition of the sectarian Irish Parliament of after times. Scenes of
great disorder occurred in this Parliament of 1613, chiefly occasioned
by the intolerant, and even violent, proceedings of the anti-Catholic
party, unreasonable bigots, having an eye to the main chance in the
matter of confiscated property, to whom the presence of any “Papist” in
that body was as gall and wormwood. This bitter prejudice led finally to
the utter exclusion of all Catholics from the Anglo-Irish Parliament,
and even the few Catholic commoners previously entitled to a vote were
deprived of that privilege, or rather right, until the last decade of
the eighteenth century. Still, the Catholic minority in the Parliament
of 1613 succeeded in preventing ultra-tyrannical legislation, and,
really, made the first stand for the constitutional rights of Ireland,
from the colonial standpoint. It was finally adjourned in October, 1615,
and no other Parliament was called to meet in Ireland until 1635, when
Charles I had already been ten years on the throne. “Government,”
meanwhile, had been carried on arbitrarily, without constitutional
restraint of any kind, as under the Tudor sovereigns—only with far less
ability. The Tudors, at least—particularly Henry and Elizabeth—were
intellectual tyrants, which their immediate successors were not. Never
was so shameful a system of public spoliation carried out as in the
reigns of James I, and his equally despotic, and still more
unscrupulous, son Charles I. The viceroy was not responsible to any
power whatever, except that of the English monarch. Chichester was
succeeded by Lord Grandison, and under his régime the infamous
“Commission for the Discovery of Defective Titles” was organized, of
which the surveyor-general, Sir William Parsons, ancestor of the Earls
of Rosse, was the head. This Commission, “aided by a horde of clerkly
spies, employed under the name of Discoverers (McGee), ransacked Old
Irish tenures in the archives of Dublin and London with such good
effect, that in a very short time 66,000 acres in Wicklow and 385,000
acres in Leitrim, Longford, the Meaths, and Kings and Queens Counties
were ‘found by inquisition to be vested in the crown.’ The means
employed by the Commissioners in some cases to elicit such evidence as
they required were of the most revolting description. In the Wicklow
case, courts-martial were held, before which unwilling witnesses were
tried on charge of treason, and some actually put to death. Archer, one
of the number, had his flesh burned with red-hot iron, and was placed on
a gridiron over a charcoal fire till he offered to testify anything that
was necessary. Yet on evidence so obtained, whole counties and towns
were declared forfeited to the crown.” (_Ibid._) Is it any wonder,
therefore, that a people so scourged, plundered, and degraded should
cherish in their hearts fierce thoughts of reprisal when opportunity
offered? These wholesale land robberies were not confined to the Celtic
Irish alone, but were practiced on all Irishmen, of whatever descent,
who professed the Catholic faith. Add to these the bitter memories of
the murder and persecution of many bishops and innumerable priests and
communicants of that faith, and the only wonder is that the Irish
Catholic people of the seventeenth, and most of the succeeding, century,
retained any of the milder and nobler characteristics of the human
family. They were stripped of their property, education, civil rights,
and, in short, of all that makes life worth living, including freedom of
conscience—that dearest privilege of a people naturally idealistic and
devotional. The idea of religious toleration never seems to have entered
into the minds of what may be called the “professional Protestant”
ascendency, except, as we have seen, for purposes of diplomacy which
tended to weaken and divide Irish national opposition to foreign rule.
In addition to the grievances we have enumerated, the office of Master
of Wards was bestowed upon Sir William Parsons, and thus “the minor
heirs of all the Catholic proprietors were placed, both as to, person
and property, at the absolute disposal of one of the most intense
anti-Catholic bigots that ever appeared on the scene of Irish affairs.”
(McGee.) This was one of the pernicious influences that, not for
conscience’ sake, but for sordid gain, changed the religion of so many
of the ancient families of Ireland from the old to the new form of
belief; and no English policy was more bitterly resented and vengefully
remembered by the Irish Catholic masses. And because of this dishonest
system of proselytizing, carried on by one process or another from the
period of the Reformation to the reign of Victoria, the Irish Catholic
peasant has associated “conversion” of any of his neighbors to the
Protestant belief with personal degradation. The Irish Catholic peasant
has no feeling but that of utter contempt and aversion for a “turn-coat”
Catholic; but he is most liberal in his feelings toward all Protestants
“to the manor born,” as has been frequently and emphatically manifested
by his choice of Protestant leaders, from Grattan to Parnell. Whatever
of religious bigotry may linger in the warm heart of the Catholic
peasant may be justly charged to outrageous misgovernment, not to his
natural disposition, which, in the main, is both loving and charitable.
The faults we can trace in the Irish character to-day are partially
those of human nature, which averages much the same in all civilized
peoples, but many of them, and the gravest, can be attributed, without
undue prejudice, to the odious penal laws which were sufficient to
distort the characteristics of angels, not to speak of mortal men.
Charles I, of England, was a thorough Stuart in despotic character,
wavering policy, base ingratitude, and fatuous obstinacy. His reign was
to furnish to Ireland one of the most consummate tyrants and highway
robbers that ever cursed a country with his cruelty and greed. This
moral monster was the infamous Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford,
whose “tiger jaws” closed on the unfortunate country with the grip of a
dragon. This dishonorable “noble” counseled King Charles to commit an
act of moral delinquency which, in our day, would be rightly, if
coarsely, called “a confidence game.” The Irish Catholics, in convention
assembled, had drawn up a sort of Bill of Rights, which they urged the
king to confirm, and agreed to pay into the royal treasury the sum of
£100,000, which they could ill spare, to show their “loyalty,” and also,
no doubt, to influence Charles, who, like all of his family, dearly
loved money, to grant “the graces” prayed for. Strafford advised the
base king to take the money, but to manage matters so that the
concessions he had solemnly promised should never go into effect! And
the ignominious Stuart actually acted on the advice of this ignoble
mentor. And so the poor Irish Catholic “gentry” lost both their money
and their “concessions.” When we read this chapter of Irish history, we
are tempted to feel less sympathy for the fate of Charles I, who was
afterward sold to Cromwell and the English Parliament by the Scottish
mercenary army of General Leslie, with which the king had taken shelter,
for back pay, amounting to £200,000 (see Sir Walter Scott’s “Tales of a
Grandfather”). This miserable monarch so far degraded himself, further,
as to cause writs for the election of a Parliament to grant the Catholic
claims issued in Ireland, but privately instructed Lord Falkland to have
the documents informally prepared, so that the election might prove
invalid; and, meanwhile, his Lords Justices went on confiscating
Catholic property in Ireland and persecuting prelates, priests, and
people almost as savagely as in the worst days of Mountjoy and
Chichester. Strafford came to Ireland as Lord Deputy in July, 1633, and
entered at once on his “thorough” policy, as he called it; and, to
prepare himself for the task he had set himself to perform, he through
the “Lords Justices” extracted a “voluntary contribution” of £20,000
additional out of the terrorized Catholic “nobility and gentry” of the
“sister” island, who, no doubt, wrung it, in turn, out of the sweat of
the faces of their peasant retainers. But this was a mere bagatelle to
what followed. He compelled Ireland to pay subsidies to the amount of
£200,000 in 1634, and imposed £100,000 more in the succeeding year. He
carried the war of wholesale confiscation into Connaught, and compelled
grand juries, specially “packed” for the work, to give the King of
England title to the three great counties of Mayo, Sligo, and Roscommon.
The grand jury of Galway County refused to return such a verdict. They
were summoned to the court of the Castle Chamber in Dublin, and
sentenced to pay a fine of £4,000 each to the crown. The sheriff who
empaneled them was fined £1,000. (McGee.) The very lawyers who pleaded
for the actual proprietors were stripped of their gowns; “the sheriff
died in prison and the work of spoliation proceeded.” (_Ibid._) Similar,
if not quite so general, robberies went on in Kildare, Kilkenny, Cork,
and other counties. It must be said, however, that Strafford was, in a
manner, impartial, and robbed, his master granting full approval,
without distinction of creed. We can not help feeling thankful that the
London companies which swallowed, in the reign of King James, the lands
of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, were compelled by “Black Tom,” as the earl was
nicknamed, to pay £70,000 “for the use of the king.” Out of all this
plunder, and much more beside, Strafford was enabled to maintain in
Ireland 10,000 infantry and 1,000 excellently equipped horse, “for the
service of his royal master.” When this great robber visited London in
1639, fresh from his crimes in Ireland, the king, on whom so much
ill-deserved sympathy has been wasted, assured him, in person, that his
actions in Ireland had his (Charles’) “most cordial approval” (McGee),
and even urged the earl to “proceed fearlessly in the same course.” To
still further mark his approbation of Strafford’s policy, the king
promoted him to the rank of Viceroy of Ireland. Strafford took the king
at his word and did proceed so fearlessly in Ireland that his name of
terror has been overshadowed in that country by only one other—that of
Oliver Cromwell. Every Parliament called to meet by the tyrant in the
conquered country—for so the earl regarded Ireland—was used simply as an
instrument wherewith to extort still more tribute from the impoverished
Irish people. This terrible despot, having accomplished his deadly
mission in Ireland, returned to England and there, as before, became
chief adviser to the weak and wicked monarch. He counseled the latter to
ignore, as far as he dared, the action of Parliament, and was imprudent
enough to remark that he (Strafford) had an army in Ireland to support
the royal will. He was, soon afterward, impeached by the House of
Commons, led by stern John Pym, for treasonable acts in seeking to
change the constitutional form of the English Government. This method of
procedure was abandoned, however, and Parliament passed a bill of
attainder, to which the “false, fleeting, perjured” Charles, frightened
by popular clamor, which accused himself of being implicated in a plot
to admit soldiers to the Tower for the rescue of Strafford, gave the
“royal assent.” The earl, on learning this, placed a hand upon his heart
and exclaimed, “Put not your trust in Princes!” And thus the master he
had but too faithfully served consigned Strafford to the block. He was
beheaded on Tower Hill, May 12, 1641. When the hour of his similar doom
approached, nearly eight years thereafter, Charles said that the only
act of his reign he repented of was giving his assent to the bill which
deprived his favorite minister of life.
Some Irish historians, McGee of the number, claim that, outside of his
land robberies and tributary exactions, the Earl of Strafford made an
able ruler of Ireland, and that trade and commerce flourished under his
sway. While this may be, to a certain extent, true, nothing can palliate
the crimes against justice and liberty of which he was guilty. He was
only a degree less contemptible than the treacherous master who finally
betrayed and abandoned him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
Irish Military Exiles—Rory O’More Organizes a Great Insurrection
SINCE Sir Cahir O’Doherty fell on the rock of Doon, in 1608, no Irish
chief or clan had risen against the English interest throughout the
length and breadth of the island. The masses of the Irish people had,
apparently, sunk into a condition of political torpor, but the fires of
former generations still smouldered amid the ashes of vanquished hopes,
and needed but a breath of inspiration to fan them into fierce,
rebellious flame. Most of the ancient Celtic and many of the
Anglo-Norman families of Catholic persuasion had military
representatives in nearly all the camps of Europe. One Irish legion
served in the army of Philip III of Spain, and was commanded
successively by two of the sons of Hugh O’Neill, victor of the Yellow
Ford—Henry and John. In it also served the hero’s gallant nephew, Owen
Roe O’Neill, who rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and made a
brilliant defence of Arras in France, besieged by Marshal de Meilleraye,
in 1640. Of this able soldier we shall hear more in the future. The
English Government never lost sight of those Irish exiles, and, about
this time, one of its emissaries on the Continent reported that there
were in the Spanish Netherlands alone “twenty Irish officers fit to be
colonels and a hundred fit to be captains.” The same agent reported,
further, that the Irish military throughout Europe had long been
procuring arms for an attempt upon Ireland, and had 6,000 stand laid up
in Antwerp for that design, and that these had been bought out of the
deduction of their “monthly pay.” At the defence of Louvain against the
French, the Irish legion, 1,000 strong, commanded by Colonel Preston, of
a distinguished Anglo-Irish family, received honorable mention, and
again at the capture of Breda. These are only a few of the stirring
events abroad which raised the martial reputation of the Irish people in
the eyes of all Europe, and the fame of those exploits, reaching Ireland
by means of adventurous recruiting officers or courageous priests, who
defied the penal laws and all their terrors, found a responsive echo in
many a humble home, where the hope of one day throwing off the foreign
yoke was fondly cherished. The exiled priesthood, many of whose members
became prelates of high rank abroad, aided the sentiment of the military
at the Catholic courts, and thus was prepared the way for the breaking
out of the great insurrection of 1641, which, but for the foolish
over-confidence of an Irish chief and the dastardly treason of an
obscure drunkard, might have been gloriously successful.
The moving spirit in the new project was Roger, or Rory O’More, of the
ancient family of Leix, who had been educated in Spain and was,
virtually, brought up at the Spanish court, in company with the sons of
Hugh O’Neill, of Tyrone. O’More would seem to have been a born
organizer, and a man of consummate tact and discretion. It is a pity
that but little is known of his early career, and, indeed, the precise
time of his return to Ireland remains an unsettled question, but it is
certain that he returned quietly there, and took up his residence,
without parade, on his estate of Ballynagh in Leinster. He never
appeared in Dublin, or any other populous centre, unless on some public
occasion, that would be sure to attract the attendance of the principal
men of the country. Thus, during the Parliamentary session of 1640, we
are told by McGee and other Irish annalists, he took lodgings in Dublin,
and succeeded in drawing into his plan for a general insurrection,
Connor McGuire, MacMahon, Philip O’Reilly, Turlough O’Neill, and other
prominent gentlemen of Ulster. He made a habit, also, of visiting the
different towns in which courts of assize were being held, and there
becoming acquainted with influential men, to whom, after due sounding,
he outlined his plans for the final overthrow of the English government
in Ireland, and the restoration to the Irish people of the lands and
rights of which they had been robbed. On one of these tours, we are
told, he made the acquaintance of Sir Phelim O’Neill, of Kinnaird, in
Tyrone—head of the branch of that great family still tolerated by the
ascendency Sir Connor MCGennis of Down, Colonel Hugh MacMahon of
Monaghan, and the Right Rev. Heber MacMahon, Administrator of Clogher,
by connivance or toleration, for, during the penal laws, there was no
“legal” recognition of a Catholic prelacy, although, under Charles I,
especially about this period, there was no very rigid enforcement of the
Act of Uniformity, probably because the king and government had enough
trouble on their hands in vainly trying to force Protestant episcopacy
on the Scotch covenanters.
O’More did not confine his operations exclusively to Ulster. He also
made a tour of Connaught, with his usual success; for he was a man of
fine person, handsome countenance, and courtly manners. Tradition still
preserves his memory green among the Irish people of all classes. He was
equally courteous to the lord and to the peasant. In the castles and
mansions of the aristocracy he was ever the favored guest, and he
charmed all his entertainers with the brilliancy of his conversational
powers and the versatility of his knowledge. Among the poor, he was
looked upon as “some glorious guardian angel,” who had come as a
messenger from the God of Freedom to rid them of their galling chains.
It is a singular fact that, although he must have taken thousands, high
and low, into his confidence, not a man seems to have betrayed him to
the Castle Government, which remained in profound ignorance of his plot
until the very eve of insurrection. Robert Emmet, in after times,
practiced the methods of O’More, but with far less wisdom, although
influenced by the same lofty principles of patriotism.
The records of the times in which he lived do not show that O’More went
extensively into Munster, but he did excellent missionary work among the
Anglo-Catholic nobles of his own native province of Leinster. He found
them, as a majority, very lukewarm toward his project, influenced, no
doubt, by fears of the consequences to themselves should the
contemplated revolution prove abortive. Although not a trained soldier,
O’More had keen military foresight. The army raised by Strafford in
Ireland was mainly made up of Catholics—for he does not seem to have
discriminated very much in the matter of creed—and these troops were, in
consequence, regarded with distrust, and even intense hatred, by the
people of England, to whom the very name of Catholic was, in those days,
odious. The vacillating king, influenced by the prejudices of his
English subjects, resolved to get rid of his Irish army, and gave such
of the regiments as might so elect permission to enter the service of
Spain. Some did volunteer, but O’More prevailed on many of the officers
to keep their battalions together, and thus secured the nucleus of a
well-trained military force at the very outset of hostilities. Among the
influential Irish officers who acted on O’More’s suggestion were Colonel
Plunket, Colonel Sir James Dillon, Colonel Byrne, and Captain Fox.
These, with O’More, constituted the first Directory of the Irish
Confederates of Leinster. Meanwhile active communication was kept up
with their friends on the Continent, and emissaries were coming and
going all the time between the two organizations. The head of the
movement abroad appears to have been John O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who,
however, died suddenly—some writers aver by the hand of a poisoner—early
in 1641; and the military exiles immediately transferred their
allegiance to his cousin, Colonel Owen Roe O’Neill, with whom we have
already made acquaintance. It was agreed among the allies that the
uprising for Irish liberty should occur about the 1st of November, and
October 23, 1641, was finally decided upon as the fateful day. The date
was made known to only the most trusted chiefs of the projected
insurrection.
Everything appeared to prosper with the plans of the patriots until the
actual eve of the rising. On that night (October 22), as fate would have
it, there dined with Colonel Hugh MacMahon—to whom was intrusted the
command of 200 picked men who were to surprise the Castle—several Irish
officers concerned in the conspiracy. Among the guests was one Owen
O’Connolly, an unworthy creature for whom MacMahon would appear to have
entertained an unaccountable friendship. According to tradition,
O’Connolly remained with Colonel MacMahon after the other guests had
gone to their several abodes, and, in a moment of inexcusable weakness,
the unhappy host, who must have been rendered reckless by wine, confided
to his traitor-guest the secret so momentous to Ireland. O’Connolly was
more than half intoxicated, but, unknown to MacMahon, he was in the
service of a strong government supporter, named Sir John Clotworthy, and
the danger which menaced his patron made the fellow sober enough to
outwit his foolish informant. In order to divert suspicion, he
pretended, after a time, that he wished to retire, and left his sword in
MacMahon’s room. He managed to reach the rear door of the lodgings, and
made his way over all kinds of obstacles, in the dark, to the castle,
where, after much trouble, he succeeded in getting audience of Sir
William Parsons, to whom he related what Colonel MacMahon had revealed
to him. Parsons, observing that O’Connolly was still under the influence
of strong drink, at first refused to believe him; and was on the point
of turning him out of doors, when something in the rascal’s earnestness
made him pause and consider. As a result of his musing, he sent for his
colleague, Sir John Borlaise, Master of the Ordnance; the latter
immediately advised the summoning of the council. Several members of
that body soon appeared, and the deposition of the informer was formally
taken. A squad of soldiers surrounded MacMahon’s lodgings and captured
him. Lord McGuire was also taken, but Colonels Plunket and O’Byrne, Rory
O’Moore, and Captain Fox, who were also in the city, succeeded in making
good their escape. MacMahon, on being arraigned before the Privy Council
in the Castle, at daylight on the memorable 23d, defiantly acknowledged
his share in the plot, and declared that it was then too late for the
power of man to prevent the revolution. He showed great courage, as did
also his colleague, Lord McGuire, but MacMahon’s bravery could have been
much better spared than his discretion, the want of which sent himself
and his companion in misfortune to the scaffold, and, undoubtedly, lost
to Ireland the best chance she had ever had of severing the connection
with Great Britain. This unhappy result teaches a harsh, but useful,
political lesson: Never to confide a secret that concerns a great cause
to a dubious “hanger-on,” and to avoid the cup that inebriates when one
is the possessor of such a secret, or whether one is or not.
O’Connolly’s treachery was rewarded by a grant of lands from “the
crown,” and he was afterward a colonel in Cromwell’s army. His ultimate
fate is involved in obscurity. But his name is embalmed in the annals of
enduring infamy.
The Lords Justices of England, in Dublin, once made aware of the
situation, lost no time in putting the Castle and city at large in a
posture of defence. The guards were doubled and reinforcements were
summoned, by special messengers, from neighboring garrisons. Two tried
soldiers were invested with the military power—Sir John Willoughby, who
had been Governor of Galway, assumed command of the Castle; and Sir
Charles Coote—one of the blackest names in Irish annals—was made
military governor of the city. The Earl of Ormond—afterward Duke—was
summoned from Carrick-on-Suir to assume chief command of the royal army.
Thus, the Irish capital was again preserved, through folly and treason,
to the English interest.
MacMahon made no vain boast before the Privy Council, when he declared
that the rising was beyond the power of man to prevent. Ulster did its
full duty, and, on the morning of October 23, the forts of Mountjoy and
Charlemont and the town and castle of Dungannon were in the hands of Sir
Phelim O’Neill or his chief officers. Sir Connor MacGennis captured
Newry; the MacMahons took Carrickmacross and Castleblaney, the
O’Hanlon’s, Tandragee, while O’Reilly and McGuire—a relative of the lord
of that name—“raised” Cavan and Femanagh. (McGee.) Rory O’More
supplemented a brief address of the northern chiefs, wherein they
declared they bore no hostility to the king, or to his English or Scotch
subjects, “but only for the defence and liberty of themselves and the
native Irish of the kingdom,” with one more elaborate, in which he ably
showed that a common danger threatened the Protestants of the Episcopal
Church with Roman Catholics. In all the manifestos of the time, there
was entirely too much profession of “loyalty” to a king who was
constitutionally incapacitated for keeping faith with any body of men
whatsoever. Never was the adage that “Politics makes strange bedfellows”
more forcibly illustrated than during this period of Irish history. The
manliest of all the declarations issued was that of Sir Connor
MacGennis, from “Newry’s captured towers.” “We are in arms,” wrote he,
“for our lives and liberties. We desire no blood to be shed, but if you
(the English and their allies) mean to shed our blood, be sure we shall
be as ready as you for that purpose.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
Horrors of Civil War in Ulster—Battle of Kilrush—Rory O’More Disappears
from History
AT first the civil war in Ulster—for in the main it was the Old Irish
against the Anglo-Irish settlers of the Elizabethan régime, or their
immediate descendants—was carried on without ferocity, but the Scottish
garrison of Carrickfergus, in the winter of 1641, raided Island Magee,
in the neighborhood, and put to the sword or drove over the cliffs, to
perish in the breakers beneath them, or be dashed to pieces on the
rocks, 3,000 of the Celtic-Catholic inhabitants, without regard to age
or sex. Protestant historians claim that acts of cruelty had been
committed on the Anglo-Irish settlers by the Celtic Irish before this
terrible massacre was accomplished. There may have been some isolated
cases of murder and rapine—for bad and cruel men are to be found in all
armies—but nothing that called for the wholesale slaughter at Island
Magee by fanatical Scottish Covenanters, who made up a majority of the
Carrickfergus garrison. Christians, not to mention Mohammedans and
savage heathens, have shed oceans of blood in fierce persecution of each
other, as if they were serving a furious devil, rather than a merciful
God. They forget, in their unreasoning hatred, that the gentle Messiah,
whose teachings they profess to follow, never made the sword the ally of
the Cross. The man made mad by religious bigotry is a wild beast, no
matter what creed he may profess. Let us, as Americans, be thankful that
we live under a government which recognizes the equal rights of all the
creeds, and permits every citizen to worship God in peace, after his own
fashion. May the day never come when it shall be different in this
Republic!
The frightful event we have chronicled naturally aroused the worst
passions of the angered Catholic population of Ulster, and some cruel
reprisals resulted. We are sorry to be obliged to state that credible
history ascribes most of the violence committed on the Irish side to Sir
Phelim O’Neill; but no charge of the kind is made against O’More,
MacGennis, McGuire, Plunket, O’Byrne, or any of the other noted chiefs
of the period. It is impossible to arrive at any accurate statement of
the number of those who perished on both sides, outside of the numerous
battlefields of the long struggle; but it is certain they have been
grossly exaggerated, particularly by English writers, who took for
granted every wild statement made at the period. But, even granting that
all the charges made were true, which, of course, we do not admit, the
fact would not stamp the charge of cruelty on the Irish nation. It was
an age of cruelty—the age of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, which
gave to the world the horrors of the sack of Magdeburgh; the age of the
wars of the Fronde in France, and almost that of the Spanish atrocities
in the Netherlands. And Cromwell was soon to appear upon the scene in
Ireland, to leave behind him a name more terrible than that of Tilly in
Germany or of Alva in the Low Countries. In fact, in the seventeenth
century, Europe, from east to west, was just emerging from Middle-Age
barbarism, and Ireland, most likely, was neither better nor worse than
most of her sister states. We love and respect the Irish race, but we do
not believe in painting it whiter than it is. The nation, plundered and
outraged, was goaded to madness, and whatever crimes were committed
under such circumstances may well be attributed to the workings of
temporary insanity. It is, however, regrettable that around the history
of the Irish insurrection of 1641 there should linger blood-red clouds,
which even the lapse of two and a half centuries has not been able to
dissipate.
On the Anglo-Irish side of the conflict, the name of Sir Charles Coote
stands out in bloody pre-eminence. Like Sir Phelim, he had the grand
virtue of physical courage—he feared nothing in mortal shape—but in all
else he was a demon-brute, and his memory is still execrated throughout
the length and breadth of the land he scourged with scorpions. His
soldiers are accused of having impaled Irish infants on their
pikes—their mothers having been dishonored and butchered—without rebuke
from their inhuman commander. On the contrary, McGee, a very painstaking
and impartial historian, quotes Sir Charles Coote as saying that “he
liked such frolics.” (McGee’s “History of Ireland,” Volume I, p. 502.)
It is not unpleasant to note that, after a career of the most aggressive
cruelty, he was finally killed by a musket-shot during a petty skirmish
in the County Meath, and it is popular belief that the shot was fired by
one of his own band of uniformed assassins.
The war proceeded in a rather desultory manner, chiefly because of lack
of skill in the Irish generals—only a few of whom had seen service—and
the promised Irish military leaders had not yet sailed from the
Continent. Sir Phelim O’Neill made an unsuccessful attack on Drogheda,
and was also repulsed at other fortified places, owing to the lack of a
suitable battering train. English reinforcements kept pouring into
Dublin by the shipload, until a fine army of not less than 25,000 men,
with a numerous and well-served artillery, was in the field. The Irish
army amounted, nominally, to 30,000 men, but only a third of it was
armed and properly trained.
The excesses of the English army in the peaceful Anglo-Catholic
districts of Leinster aroused the resentment of the hitherto apathetic
nobility and “gentry” of that fine province. They appointed Sir John
Read to bear a protest to the king, but, while en route, he was
arrested, confined in Dublin Castle and put to the rack by the
Parliamentary Government. Even this outrage did not drive the
aristocrats of Leinster into immediate warfare. Other outrages followed
in quick succession. Finally, Lord Gormanstown called a meeting of the
Catholic peers and gentlemen to assemble at the hill of Crofty, in the
County Meath. They met there accordingly, headed by the caller of the
gathering. Other distinguished Palesmen present were the Earl of Fingal,
Lords Dunsany, Louth, Slane, Trimleston, and Netterville; Sir
Christopher Bellew, Sir Patrick Barnewall, Nicholas Darcy, Gerald
Aylmer, and many others. While these personages were still deliberating,
they observed a group of horsemen, bearing arms, approaching at a rapid
pace. They were attended by a guard of musketeers, and proved to be the
insurgent chiefs of Roger O’More, Philip O’Reilly, Costello MacMahon,
Captains Byrne and Fox, and other leaders of the people. The party on
the hill immediately galloped on horseback to meet them, and Lord
Gormanstown, in loud and stern tones, asked: “Who are you, and why come
you armed into the Pale?” To this question O’More replied: “We represent
the persecuted people of the Catholic faith, and we come here for the
assertion of the liberty of conscience, the maintenance of the royal
prerogative, which we understand to be abridged, and the making of the
subjects in this Kingdom of Ireland as free as those of England.”
“Then,” replied Gormanstown, “seeing that these be your true end and
object, we will likewise join with you!” The leaders on both sides then
joined hands, amid the applause of their followers. A more formal
meeting was arranged for at the hill of Tara, and at that gathering,
held the next month, the alliance was formally concluded.
The faulty training of the Irish army was painfully illustrated soon
afterward, when the forces of the newly made allies encountered those of
Lord Ormond at a place called Kilrush, near the town of Athy, in
Kildare, April 13, 1642. The numbers were about equal—perhaps 7,000 men
each. The Irish were commanded by a brave but inexperienced officer,
Lord Mountgarret, and with him were Lords Dunboyne and Ikerrin, Rory
O’More, Colonel Hugh O’Byrne, and Sir Morgan Kavanagh. Mountgarret
failed to occupy in time a difficult pass through which Ormond must
march on his way to Dublin, and this failure compelled him to rearrange
his plan of battle. Confusion—as is always the case when this experiment
is tried with raw soldiers—resulted. The Irish fought bravely for a
time, but were soon outmanœuvred and outflanked. The Anglo-Irish cavalry
took them in reverse. Colonel Kavanagh, fighting desperately at the head
of his regiment, met a hero’s death. His fall discouraged his troops,
who broke and fled to a neighboring bog, whither the hostile cavalry
could not safely pursue them. The other Irish troops, surrounded on all
sides, made a rush for the morass also, broke through the enemy’s ranks
and joined their vanquished comrades. On the Irish side, 700 officers
and men fell in this untoward affair. The loss of the Anglo-Irish was
much smaller, and Ormond was enabled to proceed in a species of triumph
to Dublin, where the news of his victory preceded his arrival.
It is passing strange that, after the battle of Kilrush, the great
organizer of the insurrection, Roger O’More, is heard of never more in
his country’s troubled annals. All accounts agree that, during the
combat, he acted his part like a true soldier, but he failed to reappear
in the Irish ranks during subsequent conflicts. His was certainly a
mysterious and unaccountable disappearance.
The late Rev. C. P. Meehan, author of “The Confederation of Kilkenny,”
who gave more attention to that period of his country’s story than any
other writer, says, on page 26 of his interesting work: “After the
battle of Kilrush, one bright name disappears [he mentions O’More in a
foot-note]; the last time the inspiriting war-shout of his followers
fell on his ear was on that hillside. What reasons there may have been
for the retirement of the gallant chief, whose name was linked with that
of God and Our Lady, are not apparent; but it is said, upon authority,
that he proceeded to Ferns, and devoted the rest of his days to peaceful
pursuits in the bosom of his family.” The historian Coote says that he
died at Kilkenny. This was, surely, a “lame and impotent conclusion” to
such a career. The defeat of his countrymen may have destroyed his
hopes, or he may have had reason to doubt the loyalty of his allies of
the Pale. We are inclined to believe an old Leinster tradition, which
says that he died of a broken heart immediately after the lost battle,
on which he had built such high hopes. Such a spirit as his could not
have remained inactive during the nine long years of the struggle,
inaugurated by himself, which followed the disaster at Kilrush.
We can not dismiss this extraordinary man from our pages without quoting
the following introduction to a ballad dealing with his career in Edward
Hayes’s remarkable collection of poetry, called “The Ballads of
Ireland,” vol. I, page 173:
“Roger, or Rory, O’More, is one of the most honored and stainless names
in Irish annals. Writers who concur in nothing else agree in
representing him as a man of the loftiest motives and the most
passionate patriotism. In 1640, when Ireland was weakened by defeat and
confiscation, and guarded with a jealous care, constantly increasing in
strictness and severity, O’More, then a private gentleman with no
resources beyond his intellect and courage, conceived the vast design of
rescuing her from England, and accomplished it. In three years England
did not retain a city in the island but Dublin and Drogheda. For eight
years her power was merely nominal, the land was possessed and the
supreme authority exercised by the Confederation created by O’More.
History contains no stricter instance of the influence of an individual
mind. Before the insurrection broke out the people had learned to know
and expect their Deliverer, and it became a popular proverb, and the
burden of national songs, that the hope of Ireland was in ‘God, the
Virgin, and Rory O’More.’ It is remarkable that O’More, in whose courage
and resources the great insurrection had its birth, was a descendant of
the chieftains of Leix, massacred by English troops at Mullaghmast a
century before. But if he took a great revenge, it was a magnanimous
one. None of the excesses which stained the first rising in Ulster is
charged upon him. On the contrary, when he joined the northern army, the
excesses ceased, and strict discipline was established, as far as it was
possible, among men unaccustomed to control, and wild with wrongs and
sufferings.” Says De Vere, in his sadly beautiful dirge, which assumes
that the great leader died in 1642, as the people of Leinster have been
taught to believe—
“’Twas no dream, Mother Land! ’Twas no dream, Innisfail!
Hope dreams but grief dreams not—the grief of the Gael!
From Leix and Ikerrin to Donegal’s shore,
Rolls the dirge of thy last and thy bravest O’More!”
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CHAPTER IV
Proceedings of the Confederation of Kilkenny—Arrival of Owen Roe O’Neill
and Rinuccini
OUT of the chaos of a popular uprising, and a number of minor councils,
which could decide only for localities, there sprang into existence the
National Synod, composed of clerics and laymen of the Catholic
persuasion, because, at this period, few, if any of the Irish
Protestants were in sympathy with the insurrection, or revolution, which
is a more fitting term. The “oath of association” was formulated by the
venerable Bishop Rothe, and, somewhat unnecessarily, seeing that the
King of England was using all the forces at his disposal to crush “the
rebellion,” pledged true faith and allegiance to Charles I and his
lawful successors. The fundamental laws of Ireland and the “free
exercise of the Roman Catholic faith and religion” were to be
maintained. Then came the second, and most important, part of the solemn
and, as some thought, stringent obligation, which bound all Confederate
Catholics never to accept or submit to any peace without the consent and
approbation of their own general assembly.
A constitution was framed which declared the war just and
constitutional, condemned racial distinctions such as “New” and “Old”
Irish, ordained an elective council for each of the four provinces, and
a national council for the whole kingdom, condemned, as excommunicate,
all who might violate the oath of association, or who should be guilty
of murder, assault, cruelty, or plunder under cover of the war.
The bishops and priests, very wisely, decided that a layman should be
elected president of the National Council, and Lord Mountgarret was so
chosen, with Richard Belling, lawyer and litterateur, as secretary. Both
were men of moderate opinion and free from any taint of prejudice.
It was decided that the Supreme, or National, Council should hold its
first session in the city of Kilkenny on October 23, 1642, the
anniversary of the rising; and “the choice of such a date,” says McGee,
“by men of Mountgarret’s and Belling’s moderation and judgment, six
months after the date of the alleged ‘massacre,’ would form another
proof, if any were now needed, that none of the alleged atrocities (of
1641) were yet associated with that particular day.”
Between the adjournment of the National Synod, in May, and the meeting
of the Council in October, many stirring events occurred. The
confederate general in Munster, the aged Barry, made an unsuccessful
attempt to capture Cork, but had better success at Limerick, which
surrendered to the Irish army on June 21. Soon afterward the Anglo-Irish
leader, General St. Ledger, died at Cork, and the command devolved upon
Murrough O’Brien, Baron of Inchiquin, who had been brought up from an
early age as one of Parsons’ chancery wards, and had, therefore, become
a Protestant. Furthermore, he had grown to be an anti-Irish Irishman of
the blackest and bloodiest type. In Irish history, he is known as “Black
Murrough the Burner,” because the torch, under his brutal sway, kept
steady company with the sword, and both were rarely idle. He served the
king as long as the royal policy suited his views, but, when it did not,
his services were at the disposal of the opposition. Murrough had served
his military apprenticeship under Sir Charles Coote and was a past
master in all the cruelties practiced by his infamous instructor. The
curse of the renegade was strong upon him, for he hated his own kin more
bitterly than if he were an alien and a Briton. Of the ancient royal
houses of Ireland, those of MacMurrough and O’Brien present the
strongest contrasts of good and evil.
The Irish forces succeeded in taking the castles of Loughgar and
Askeaton, but Inchiquin inflicted a severe defeat upon them at
Liscarroll, where the loss was nearly a thousand men on the side of
Ireland, whereas the victor boasted that there fell only a score on his
side. There were also some skirmishes in Connaught, where the peculiar
inactivity of Lord Clanricarde produced discontent, and led to a popular
outbreak in the town of Galway which General Willoughby speedily
suppressed, with every circumstance of savage brutality. Affairs in
Leinster continued rather tranquil. Ormond was raised by the king to the
dignity of marquis, but does not seem to have been trusted by the
Puritan Lords Justices, Parsons and Borlaise. The fall of the year was
signalized, however, by the landing in Ireland of three able generals,
all of whom fought on the national side—Right Hon. James Touchet, Earl
of Castlehaven, who had been imprisoned as a suspect in Dublin Castle,
but managed to effect his escape; Colonel Thomas Preston, the heroic
defender of Louvain, who debarked at Wexford, bringing with him 500
officers of experience, several siege guns, a few light field-pieces,
and a limited quantity of small arms; and last, but most welcome to
Ireland, arrived from Spain Colonel Owen Roe O’Neill, who made a landing
on the Donegal coast with 100 officers, a company of Irish veterans, and
a quantity of muskets and ammunition. He immediately proceeded to the
fort of Charlemont, held by his fierce kinsman, Sir Phelim O’Neill, who,
with commendable patriotic self-sacrifice, resigned to him, unsolicited,
the command of the Irish army of the North, and became, instead of
generalissimo, “President of Ulster.”
Simultaneously with the arrival of Owen Roe, General Lord Leven came
into Ireland from Scotland with 10,000 Puritan soldiers. He had met
O’Neill in the foreign wars and expressed publicly his surprise that he
should be “engaged in so bad a cause”—to which Owen replied that he had
a much better right to come to the rescue of Ireland, his native
country, than Lord Leven had to march into England against his
acknowledged monarch. Leven did not remain long in Ireland, and the
command of his troops fell to General Monroe—a brave but slow man, on
whom the advice of his predecessor to act with vigor was thrown away.
Monroe’s dilatory tactics enabled O’Neill, who had wonderful talent for
military organization, to recruit, drill, and equip a formidable force,
mainly made up of the men of Tyrone and Donegal—as fine a body of troops
as Ireland had ever summoned to her defence. The valorous clansmen were
speedily molded into a military machine by their redoubted chief, who
set the example of activity to all of his command.
When the Supreme Council of the Irish Confederation met in Kilkenny,
according to agreement, one of its most important acts was the
appointing of generals to command in the several provinces. It named
Owen O’Neill commander-in-chief in Ulster, General Sir Thomas Preston in
Leinster, General Barry in Munster, and General Sir John Burke in
Connaught. Fighting was resumed with vigor. Preston met with alternate
successes and reverses in his province, but, on the whole, came out
victorious. Barry and his lieutenants did brilliant work in Munster, and
routed both Vavassour and Inchiquin. O’Neill played a Fabian game in
Ulster, training his army in partial engagements with the enemy and
husbanding his resources for some great occasion, which, he saw, would
surely come. But the brightest laurels of the campaign were gathered by
General Sir John Burke, who, after other brilliant exploits, compelled
General Willoughby to surrender the city of Galway to the Irish forces
on June 20, 1643; and the national flag waved from the tower of its
citadel until the last shot of the war was fired nine years thereafter.
Clanricarde, who could have had the command in chief, paltered with
time, and thus lost the opportunity of linking his name with a glorious
exploit.
All the Irish armies, and particularly that under O’Neill, occupied
excellent strategic positions, and the hopes of the military chiefs and
the nation rose high when, suddenly, there came a blight upon those
hopes in the shape of a cessation of hostilities—in other words, a
prolonged armistice—agreed to between the Anglo-Catholic majority in the
National Council on the one side, and the Marquis of Ormond,
representing the King of England, on the other. The Anglo-Catholics were
again duped by pretences of liberality toward their religion, as their
fathers had been in the days of Elizabeth; and this ill-considered truce
wrested from Ireland all the advantages won in the war—which had already
lasted two years—by the ability of her generals and the courage of her
troops. Vain was the protest of O’Neill, of Preston, of Burke, of Barry,
of the Papal Nuncio, of the majority of the Irish nation. Charles was in
straits in England, fighting the Parliamentary forces arrayed against
his acts of despotism, and Ormond promised everything in order to end
the war in Ireland, temporarily at least, and so be enabled to send
needed succor to a sovereign whom he loved and served much better than
he did God and country. With incredible fatuity, the Anglo-Catholic
majority in the National Council listened to the voice of Ormond, and
voted men and money to support the cause of the bad king who had let
Strafford loose upon Ireland! We are glad to be able to say that the
“Old Irish” element, represented by the brave and able O’Neill, was in
nowise responsible for this act of weakness and folly. O’Neill saw into
futurity, and frightful must have been that vision to the patriot-hero,
for it included the horrors of Drogheda and Wexford, where the thirsty
sword of Cromwell bitterly avenged on Ireland the foolish and fatal
“truce of Castlemartin”; another lesson to nations, if indeed another
were needed, to avoid mixing up in the quarrels of their neighbors.
Ireland invited ruin on that dark day when she voted to draw the sword
for the ungrateful Charles Stuart against the Parliament of England. The
temporary concession of Catholic privileges—designed to be withdrawn
when victory perched on the royal banner—was poor compensation for the
loss of advantages gained at the price of the blood of brave men, and
the sowing of a wind of vengeance which produced the Cromwellian
whirlwind. If King Charles had ever done a fair or manly act by
Ireland—even by the Anglo-Catholics of Ireland—the folly of that country
might be, in a measure, excusable, but his whole policy had been, on the
contrary, cold-blooded, double-faced, and thoroughly ungrateful. In this
instance, the Anglo-Irish Catholics brought all their subsequent
misfortunes on themselves. As if to emphasize its imbecility, the
National Council placed Lord Castlehaven, an English Catholic, in
supreme command over O’Neill in Ulster. Owen Roe was, of course,
disgusted, but was also too good a soldier and too zealous a patriot to
resign his command and go back to Spain, as a man of less noble nature
might have done. Meanwhile, Monroe and his army of 10,000 Lowland Scotch
and Ulster “Undertakers” kept gathering like a thundercloud in the
north. In Scotland a body of 3,000 Antrim Irish, under Alister
MacDonald, called Cal-Kitto, or “the Left-handed,” were covering
themselves with glory, fighting under the great Marquis of Montrose in
the unworthy royal cause. And we read that the Irish Confederate
treasury, about this time, is somewhat replenished by funds sent from
Spain and Rome. Even the great Cardinal Richelieu, of France, to show
his sympathy with Ireland, invited Con, the last surviving son of the
great O’Neill, to the French court, and permitted the shipment of much
needed cannon to Ireland. But all of those good foreign friends of the
Irish cause were sickened and discouraged by the miserable policy of
armistice, so blindly consented to by the lukewarm “Marchmen of the
Pale” who had assembled in Kilkenny.
Many Irish Protestants, particularly the High Church element, were
ardent royalists and refused to take the oath of the Covenanters
prescribed in Ulster by General Monroe. They were driven with violence
from their homes, and many fled for succor to their Catholic brethren,
who treated them with hospitable consideration. In Munster, the
ferocious Inchiquin, and still more savage Lord Broghill, son of Boyle,
first Earl of Cork, foiled in their ambitious schemes by some royal
refusal, broke out most violently, pretending the armistice was
violated, and seized upon three leading Southern towns—Cork, Kinsale,
and Youghal, where their excesses were too horrible for narration—murder
and arson being among the lightest of their crimes. Ormond, in his
peculiarly adroit way, succeeded in still further prolonging the truce,
and stated that he had power from the king to come to a permanent
agreement with the Confederates. The cause of Ireland about this time
lost a true and ardent friend and champion in the death of the good Pope
Urban VIII, who was succeeded by Innocent X—a Pontiff whose noble
generosity is still gratefully remembered by the Irish nation. It was to
one of their worthy predecessors, in the time of the Elizabethan wars,
O’Donnell’s bard referred, when addressing Ireland, in allegorical
fashion, he sang:
“O! my dark Rosaleen!
Do not sigh, do not weep—
The priests are on the ocean green—
They march along the deep!
There’s wine from the Royal Pope,
Upon the ocean green,
And Spanish ale to give you hope,
My dark Rosaleen!”
Nathless the truce, those two bad Irishmen, Inchiquin and Broghill,
continued to do base work in the South, where their cold-blooded
atrocities struck terror into the wretched people of Munster. They even
corrupted old Lord Esmond, commandant of Duncannon fort, which partly
commanded the important harbor of Waterford from the Wexford side.
Esmond was blind and almost senile, and, perhaps, too, was terrorized by
the brutal threats of Inchiquin. But Lord Castlehaven and the
Confederate Irish immediately laid siege to the place, and, after ten
weeks of beleaguerment, succeeded in retaking it. The traitorous
commandant perished in the assault, and thus escaped an ignominious
death, which his crime had richly merited. Several other Munster towns,
held by Inchiquin and his officers, were successively attacked and taken
by the Confederates. In Connaught, however, the latter met with serious
reverses. The town of Sligo was captured by Sir Charles Coote, Jr.—a
worse scourge than even his infamous father—and, in an attempt to
recover it, several gallant Irishmen perished. Archbishop O’Healy, of
Tuam, fell into the hands of Coote and was barbarously tortured to
death, Sunday, October 26, 1645. It must be remembered that these
hostilities were the work of the Parliamentary forces, which were
opposed by the “Old Irish” party. The royal troops had been sent to
England to assist Charles, or else lay supine in their garrisons, as did
also the Anglo-Irish, waiting for further developments.
The king sent the Earl of Glamorgan, an English Catholic, who had
intermarried with the O’Brien family, to Ireland to negotiate a new
treaty with the Confederates. He succeeded in having a preliminary
document drawn up, signed by himself for Charles, and by Lord
Mountgarret and Muskerry on behalf of the Confederates. Ormond, with his
customary dilatoriness, haggled over the provisions regarding toleration
of the Catholic Church in the kingdom, and thus frittered away much
valuable time, which the Parliamentary forces made good use of. Ormond
caused the treaty to be greatly modified, and while the negotiators were
working on it at Kilkenny, there arrived in Ireland a new Papal Nuncio,
in the person of the famous John Baptist Rinuccini, Archbishop of Ferns,
and, afterward, Cardinal. He came to represent Pope Innocent X, who sent
also substantial aid. The Irish in exile and their friends sent, through
Father Luke Wadding, a further contribution of $36,000. The Nuncio
complained that he had been unreasonably detained in France—it was
greatly suspected by the intrigues of Cardinal Mazarin, who had
succeeded Richelieu, Ireland’s true friend. In spite of this trickery,
however, he managed to purchase, with Pope Innocent’s funds, a 26-gun
frigate, which he called the _San Pietro_, 2,000 muskets, 2,000
cartridge boxes, 4,000 swords, 2,000 pike-heads, 800 horse pistols,
20,000 pounds of powder, and other much needed supplies. (McGee.) A
ludicrous cause of one of his delays in France was the obstinacy of the
wife of Charles I, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry of Navarre, who
insisted that she would not receive the Papal Nuncio unless he uncovered
in her presence. Rinuccini was proud and fiery, and, as representing the
Pope, declined to remove his biretta, which so angered the queen that,
after six weeks’ parleying on this point of etiquette, the pair
separated without coming to an interview. Such is the farcical folly of
“royal minds.”
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CHAPTER V
Treason of Ormond to the Catholic Cause—Owen Roe O’Neill, Aided by the
Nuncio, Prepares to Fight
The Papal Nuncio, although only in the prime of life, was in feeble
health, and had to be borne on a litter by relays of able-bodied men,
from his landing-place, at Kenmare in Kerry, to the city of Limerick,
where he was received with all the ceremony due to his high rank, noble
character, and chivalrous mission. From Limerick he proceeded by the
same mode of conveyance to Kilkenny, the Confederate capital, where
honors almost regal in their splendor awaited him. Lord Mountgarret,
President of the National Council—a veteran soldier who had participated
in the wars of Hugh O’Neill against Elizabeth—met the Papal dignitary,
surrounded by a guard of honor, composed of the youthful chivalry of the
Confederation, in the picture gallery of the Castle of Kilkenny—the
palatial residence of the Duke of Ormond, the most politic nobleman of
the age. The so-called Glamorgan treaty proceeded smoothly enough until
certain demands of the exiled English Catholics, made through the
Nuncio, were included in its provisions. Armed with the amended
parchment, Glamorgan and the representatives of the Confederates
returned to Dublin and laid the matter before Ormond. The latter acted
in so strange a manner as to take the Confederate delegates completely
by surprise. He had Glamorgan arrested while at dinner, on charge of
having exceeded his instructions, and threw him into prison. The
Confederate envoys were sent back to Kilkenny, charged to inform the
President and Council that the clauses concerning the English Catholics
were inadmissible and never could be entertained by the English people
who supported the cause of Charles. Lord Mountgarret and his associates
broke off all negotiations with Ormond pending the release of Glamorgan,
which they firmly demanded. Ormond required bail to the amount of
£40,000, and the bond was furnished by the Earls of Kildare and
Clanricarde. When Glamorgan was enlarged, he proceeded to Kilkenny,
where, to the amazement of the Confederates and the Nuncio he defended,
rather than censured, Ormond’s course toward himself. On which McGee
grimly remarks: “To most observers it appeared that these noblemen
understood each other only too well.”
Frequent bickerings occurred at Kilkenny between Mountgarret’s
followers, or the Anglo-Irish, and the Nuncio’s followers, the “Old
Irish,” who were in the minority. Rinuccini’s heart was with the latter,
for, by instinct as well as observation, he recognized that they were
the only real national party among the Irish factions. The rest he put
down, with good reason, as time-servers and provincialists—ever ready to
go back to their gilded cages the moment the English power filled their
cups with Catholic concessions. With a little more knowledge of Ireland
and her people, the Nuncio would have been a marvelous leader. As it
was, he did the very best he could for Ireland—according to his
lights—and he was one of the very few foreigners who, on coming in close
contact with the situation—remained true to the Irish cause through good
and evil report. He was, of course, a devoted Catholic, but in no sense
a bigot. Irishmen should always hold his name in high honor. Any
mistakes the Nuncio committed were due to lack of familiarity with
surrounding conditions, very excusable in an alien.
But the Glamorgan treaty would appear to have been taken up at Rome,
where Sir Kenelm Digby and the pontifical ministers concluded a truce
favorable to the interests of both Irish and English Catholics. The king
needed the 10,000 Irish troops which he knew the Confederates could
place at his disposal. In March, 1646, a modified Glamorgan treaty was
finally signed by Ormond for King Charles, and by Lord Muskerry and
other Confederate leaders for their party. “These thirty articles,”
comments McGee, “conceded, in fact, all the most essential claims of the
Irish; they secured them equal rights as to property, the army, the
universities, and the bar. They gave them seats in both Houses and on
the bench. They authorized a special commission of Oyer and Terminer,
composed wholly of Confederates. They declared that ‘the independency of
the Parliament of Ireland on that of England’ should be decided by
declaration of both Houses, agreeably to the laws of the Kingdom of
Ireland. In short, the final form of Glamorgan’s treaty gave the Irish
Catholics, in 1646, all that was subsequently obtained, either for the
Church or the country, in 1782, 1793, and 1829. Though some conditions
were omitted, to which the Nuncio and a majority of the prelates
attached importance, Glamorgan’s treaty was, upon the whole, a charter
upon which a free church and a free people might well have stood, as the
fundamental law of their religious and civil liberties.”
These concessions proved to be a new “delusion, mockery, and snare.”
Ormond tricked the Confederates, and the poltroon king, just before his
fatal flight to the camp of the mercenary Scots’ army of General Lord
Leven, which promptly sold him to the English Parliament, for the amount
of its back pay, disclaimed the Glamorgan treaty in toto—a policy
entirely in keeping with his unmanly, vacillating nature.
Owen Roe O’Neill, notwithstanding many and grievous vexations, chiefly
arising from the absurd jealousy of General Preston, had his army well
in hand on the borders of Leinster and Ulster, prepared to strike a blow
at the enemy wherever it might be most needed. He was in free
communication with the Nuncio, who, according to all the historians of
the period, supplied him with the necessary means for making an
aggressive movement. The Anglo-Scotch army of General Monroe presented
the fairest mark for O’Neill’s prowess, and against that force his
movements were, accordingly, directed.
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CHAPTER VI
The Famous Irish Victory of Benburb—Cruel Murder of the Catholic Bishop
of Ross
THE forces of the belligerents were not large, according to our more
modern standards. In his comprehensive “History of Ireland,” the Rev.
Abbe McGeoghegan credits Owen Roe with only 5,000 infantry and 500
horse, while he calls Monroe’s force 6,000 foot and 800 cavalry. The
objective of both generals was the ancient city of Armagh, and the
grand-nephew of the great Hugh O’Neill was destined to win one of
Ireland’s proudest victories in the immediate neighborhood of his
grand-uncle’s most famous battlefield—the Yellow Ford. Marching
northward from the borders of Leinster, Owen Roe crossed the historic
Blackwater and took position at a place called Benburb, in the present
county of Tyrone. Monroe advanced to attack him, and ordered his younger
brother, George Monroe, who commanded a strong detachment, to join
forces with the main body without delay. O’Neill, apprised by his scouts
of this movement, sent two regiments, under Colonels MacMahon and
MacNenay, to intercept young Monroe at a pass through which he would be
compelled to defile his troops in order to form a junction with his
brother. The two colonels obeyed their orders so strictly that George
Monroe’s force was so utterly broken and routed that it was unable to
render any service to the Puritan general during the remainder of the
campaign. The victors immediately rejoined O’Neill, who, in the interim,
had detached Colonel Ricard O’Ferrall to obstruct the elder Monroe’s
march from Kinnaird to Caledon, where he had crossed the Blackwater. The
Scotchman’s cannon proved too much for O’Ferrall, who could only reply
with musketry, but he retired in admirable order, although closely
pressed by Monroe’s stronger vanguard. The battle of Benburb began on
the morning of June 16th, new style, 1646. O’Neill’s post was near the
river, his flanks protected by two small hills, and his rear by a
wood—all held by chosen troops. Throughout most of the day, the Scots,
who had both sun and wind at their backs, seemed to have the advantage,
in so far as partial demonstrations could determine the question.
O’Neill, in expectation of a reinforcement from the direction of
Coleraine, “amused” the Scotch general until the sun had shifted
position and no longer shone full and dazzlingly in the faces of the
Irish soldiers. Almost at this propitious moment, the expected auxiliary
force reached the field, and took up position in O’Neill’s line of
battle. Rev. C. P. Meehan, historian of the “Confederation of Kilkenny,”
who quotes Monroe’s despatch, Rinuccini’s letters, and other
contemporaneous authorities, says: “It was the decisive moment. The
Irish general, throwing himself into the midst of his men, and, pointing
out to them that retreat must be fatal to the enemy, ordered them to
charge and pursue vigorously. A far resounding cheer rose from the Irish
ranks. ‘Myself,’ said he, ‘with the aid of Heaven, will lead the way.
Let those who fail to follow me remember that they abandon their
general.’ This address was received with one unanimous shout by the
army. The Irish colonels threw themselves from their horses, to cut
themselves off from every chance of retreat, and charged with incredible
impetuosity.” Some musketry was used, but the victory was decided in
Ireland’s favor by her ancient and favorite weapon, the deadly pike,
which may be called the parent of the bayonet. Monroe’s cavalry charged
boldly that bristling front of spears, but was overthrown in an instant
and all but annihilated. Vain, then, became the fire of the vaunted
cannon of the Scotch commander and the crashing volleys of his small
arms. Vainly he himself and his chosen officers, sword in hand, set an
example of courage to their men. With the shout of “Lamh Dearg Aboo!”
which, fifty years before, had sounded the death-knell of Bagnal,
Kildare, and De Burgh, on the banks of the same historic river, the
Irish clansmen rushed upon their foes. The struggle was brief and
bitter. Lord Blaney’s English regiment perished almost to the last man,
fighting heroically to the end. The Scottish cavalry was utterly broken
and fled pell-mell, leaving the infantry to their fate. Lord
Montgomery’s regiment alone retired in good order, although with
considerable loss, but Montgomery himself, fifty other officers, and
some two hundred soldiers, were made prisoners. Monroe fled, without hat
or wig, and tradition says he lost his sword in swimming his horse
across the Blackwater. Of the Anglo-Scotch army, there died upon the
field 3,243 officers and men, and many more perished during the vengeful
pursuit of the victors, who do not appear to have been in a forgiving
mood. O’Neill acknowledged a loss of seventy men killed and several
hundred wounded. The Scottish army lost all of its baggage, tents,
cannon, small arms, military chest, and, besides, thirty-two stand of
battle-flags. Fifteen hundred draught horses and enough food supplies to
last the Irish army for many months also fell into the hands of the
vanquishers. Monroe’s army was, virtually, destroyed, and he sullied a
previously honorable record by plundering and burning many villages and
isolated houses to gratify his spite against the people whose soldiers
had so grievously humiliated him.
O’Neill’s fine military instinct impelled him to follow up his success
by giving Monroe no rest until he had driven him from Ulster, but,
unfortunately, there came at this crisis a request, which really meant
an order, from the Nuncio, to march the Ulster army into Leinster in
order that it might support those who were opposed in the Council at
Kilkenny to entering into further peace negotiations with the bigoted
Ormond and the now impotent king. O’Neill could hardly decline this
misdirected mission, but it proved to be, in the end, a fatal act of
obedience. From that hour the Irish cause began to decline. General
Preston, O’Neill’s fierce Anglo-Irish rival, and fanatically devoted to
the cause of Charles, engaged in battle with the Parliamentary general,
Michael Jones, at Dungan Hill in Meath, and was totally routed, with
immense loss. It is only proper to remark here, that the “Old” Irish did
the best fighting during this war, because their hearts were in the
struggle, while the Anglo-Irish, who mainly composed the armies under
Preston and Lord Taaffe—the latter of whom was ignominiously defeated at
Knockinoss, near Mallow in Cork—were only half-hearted in their efforts.
Taaffe’s defeat was aggravated by the cruel murder of the brave
“Left-handed” MacDonnell of Antrim, who, after having been made
prisoner, was barbarously put to death by order of the murderous
renegade, “Murrough the Burner,” who commanded the victors. This
bloody-minded wretch further signalized his cruelty by storming the city
of Cashel and sacking the grand cathedral, founded by one of his own
princely ancestors, in the twelfth century. Hundreds of non-combatants
of all ages and both sexes, who had taken refuge in the holy place, were
ruthlessly massacred, and twenty priests were dragged from under the
high altar and wantonly butchered. Lord Broghill emphasized his
brutality in Cork County by hanging before the walls of Macroom Castle
the saintly Bishop MacEagan of Ross, who refused to counsel the Irish
garrison to surrender. Dr. Madden, a gifted poet, summed up the noble
refusal and its tragical consequences in the following lines:
“The orders are given, the prisoner is led
To the castle, and round him are menacing hordes:
Undaunted, approaching the walls, at the head
Of the troopers of Cromwell, he utters these words:
“‘Beware of the cockatrice—trust not the wiles
Of the serpent, for perfidy skulks in its folds!
Beware of Lord Broghill the day that he smiles!
His mercy is murder!—his word never holds!
“Remember, ’tis writ in our annals of blood,
Our countrymen never relied on the faith
Of truce, or of treaty, but treason ensued—
And the issue of every delusion was death!’