the ill affected. Irish papists throughout the kingdom; and exhorting all friends to government to provide for their own defence and that of the state. The catholic lords and gentlemen of the Pale, excepting to the general terms of this proclamation, immediately waited on the lords justices and council; and, expressing their abhorrence of, and innocence in, taking any part in the revolt, demanded arms for their own defence and the annoyance of the insurgents. These were refused coldly, on pretence of a scarcity. On the twenty-ninth, however, the lords justices and council issued an explanatory proclamation, intimating that by Irish papists they meant the old Irish of Ulster, and not the English catholics of the Pale, or throughout the rest of the realm. The jealousy of the justices, who were strongly attached to the puritanic party, prevented the catholics of the north from suppressing the insurgents; aud they are with great appearance of justice suspected to have even checked every exertion for that purpose, in the base and dishọnourable hope of profiting by the forfeitures of those who, emboldened by their apparent want of support, might join in the rebellion.

Meantime the rebels in Ulster had risen with alacri

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ty at the appointed time; and with such spirit and activity did they push forward their operations, that in the course of eight days they had acquired full posession of the counties of Tyrone, Monaghan, Longford, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Caven, Donegal, and Derry, and part of the counties of Armagh and Down. They confined their attacks every where to the English settlements, and, as had been previously agreed on, left the Scottish planters for the present unmolested. English were the objects of their resentment: the measures of a puritanic government the subject of their complaint. England and English tyranny were every where thundered against with tremendous imprecations, and held up by every party as worthy of the utmost detestation. The spirit of the rebels was kept alive by assurances of support and assistance. Their leaders sometimes affirmed that the Scotch were about to join them in the glorious effort to extirpate the English; sometimes that they themselves had risen by order of the queen, who was a catholic; sometimes that they acted under authority of the English parliament: These pretences being laid aside as dangerous to their cause, sir Phelim O'Neal produced a parchment with the great seal appending to it, which he declared to be a commission from the king for taking arms. This

he refused to submit to inspection; but seven days afterwards a forged commission was publicly produced, with the great seal fixed to it, which had been torn from the parchment above mentioned. It was notified with great solemnity to the rebel confederates, and contributed much to exhilerate their spirits, while the puritan protestants, who regarded Charles with an eye of deep distrust, dismayed at the sight of the great seal, declared that they were a "sold people." The commission declared in the name of the king, that "For the preservation of his royal person he had "long been obliged to take up his residence in Scot"land, occasioned by the disobedience of the Eng“lish parliament, which had deprived him of his roy"al power and prerogative, and assumed the govern"ment and administration of the realm; that as these "storms blow aloft, and are likely to be carried into "Ireland by the vehemency of the protestant party, " he hath given full power to his catholic subjects to "assemble and consult, to seize all places of strength,

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except those of the Scots, and to arrest the goods "and persons of all English protestants within the

kingdom of Ireland." The lords justices, immediately on the first report of this commission, endeavoured to counteract its tendency by publishing a procla

mation in which they warned the subjects to be on their guard against the effects of false and seditious rumours, derogatory to the honour of the crown. Roger Moore, also, who considered sir Phelim's device as impolitic, published a manifesto, in which he tacitly acknowledged the non-existence of a royal commission, and merely called upon the catholics to arm in order to prevent their own destruction, to support the king against the adherents of the English parliament, and to defend the protestant establishment from the attempts of the seditious puritans..

As soon as the protestants, who had retreated to a place of security, recovered from the consternation into which they were at first thrown, the progress of the rebels was checked. In many skirmishes and assaults they were completely foiled, particularly in several actions in the counties of Donegal and Fermanagh, were the castle of lord Macguire was taken by storm. The confidence of the protestants, raised by these par tial successes, was considerably augmented by the ar rival of fifteen hundred men, provided with arms, ammunition, and a sum of money, whom the king had dispatched from Scotland to their assistance. rebels, however, by no means discomfited by these de

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feats, boldly resolved on the attack of Carrickfergus, the chief post of the loyal party in Ulster. As a preliminary step towards the accomplishment of this splendid design, they determined to obtain possession of Lisburn, a Scottish settlement about sixteen miles to the south from the castle, for the plan of leaving the Scots unmolested had long been departed from. For the reduction of this post, sir Phelim detached four thousand well appointed insurgents, who on the twenty-eighth of November made a furious and obstinate assault. The Scots received them with cool intrepidity; and though the assailants penetrated several times into the town and reduced it to ashes, succeeded in completely routing them with the loss of fifteen hundred men, three times the number of the whole garrison. The rebels, provoked by this defeat, wreaked their impotent rage on their miserable prisoners. The insurrection had been so totally unexpected by the English protestants, that great numbers had fallen into the power of their enemies without resistance, and had been either thrown into confinement under the cruel apprehension of a horrible death; or, driven naked from their habitations, exposed to all the inclemencies of a winter particularly severe, were suffered to faint and expire on the roads, or to crawl to