places of security, in all the ghastliness of cold, fear, and famine. Those prisoners they had now in their

power experienced the full effects of their implacable fury. Humanity shudders at the ruthless scenes which successively presented themselves. Lord Caulfield

was basely and wantonly murdered. Fifty others, at the same time and in the same place, fell by catholic poniards*. Many, confined in different places, were brought out on pretence of being conducted to English settlements: they were goaded forward by their guards like beasts, to whom their torments afforded subject of brutal mirth and savage exultation. Sometimes they enclosed them in some house or castle, which they set on fire, and, spectators of the shocking scene, heard their cries and saw them consumed with a barbarous indifference. Sometimes they plunged them into the first river they met: from the bridge of Portadown in the county of Down no fewer than one hundred and ninety were at once precipitated into the stream §. Sometimes "Irish ecclesiastics were seen "encouraging the carnage. The women forgot the

* Leland, from manuscript depositions of the county of

Antrim.

+ Id. Ibid.

Id. Ibid.

§ Id. Ibid.

"tenderness of their sex, pursued the English with "execrations, and imbrued their hands in blood. "Even children, in their feeble malice, lifted the dag

ger against the helpless prisoners. They who es"caped the utmost fury of the rebels languished in "miseries horrible to be described. Their imagina❝tions were overpowered and disordered by the recol"lection of tortures and butchery. In their distrac❝tion every tale of horror was eagerly received, and every suggestion of frenzy and melancholy believed

66

implicitly. Miraculous escapes from death, mira"culous judgments on murderers, lakes and rivers of "blood, marks of slaughter indelible by every hu"man effort, visions of spirits chaunting hymns, "ghosts rising from rivers and shrieking out revenge; "these and such like fancies were propagated and re"ceived as incontestable."* The protestants, on the other hand, began to show a spirit no less diabolical. The British settlers in places of security forgot that their suffering brethren had been frequently rescued from the hands of the rebels by the interposition of the

old natives.

Their hatred and abhorrence to the Irish

race was so violent and indiscriminate, as to render them guilty of acts equally atrocious with those which' had excited their abhorrence. The garrison of Carrickfergus, in particular, inflamed by an habitual antipathy to popery, beheld the Irish with implacable detestation. In one fatal night they issued forth from the castle into a neighbouring district, called IslandMacgee, where a number of the poorer romanists, peaceable and inoffensive subjects, untainted with rebellion, resided, as in a place of safety under the protection of the garrison; and, assailing them in their beds, with deliberate cruelty massacred the whole without distinction; old men sinking under the burden of age and accumulated infirmities, women in labour, children at the breast, all fell victims alike to the cold-blooded barbarity of their merciless assailants!

Meantime the lords justices, on the full discovery of a plot of general insurrection, had sent O'Connolly, the informer, with intelligence to the earl of Leicester, who resided in England under the title of lord-lieutenant. Sir Henry Spotswood was dispatched at the same time to Edinburgh with the same intelli

gence to the king. The unfortunate Charles, incapable of rendering any assistance towards suppressing the rebellion, devolved the management of the affairs of Ireland on the English parliament, whose determined plan was totally to subvert the royal authority. The parliament assumed this concession in its most extensive signification, and resolved to use the power with which they were entrusted as a fit instrument to forward their designs. Confident in their own power, on which they relied for being at any time able to crush the insurgents, they were careful not to hasten the termination of the war, which would deprive them of the means of extending their influence by patronage, the levying of money, and the providing of arms, which they intended ultimately to employ against the king, though for the present apparently against the rebels.

Closely connected with the popular party, and influenced by the hope of private emolument, the lords justices, especially Parsons, threw every obstacle in the way of putting an end to the rebellion, and the dreadful train of miseries and bloodshed by which it was attended. When proclamations were issued offering pardons to the rebels, they were clogged with

so many stipulations, limitations, and exceptions, as to render them of no effect; and when the English parliament at length ordered them to publish a general full pardon to all who should lay down their arms, within a certain time, they eluded the execution of the order. When the catholic lords and gentlemen of the Pale, whose houses had been plundered and burned, whose lands had been destroyed, whose tenants had been murdered by the earl of Ormond under these parliamentary justices, when these very catholics, notwithstanding all these grievances and oppressions, again tendered their best services to government, in order to put a stop to the insurrection, now becoming general throughout the whole kingdom, their overtures were rejected with insult and contempt. The earl of Castlehaven was unjustly imprisoned, and sir John Read most iniquitously put to torture, for what was termed officious interference. The catholics of the Pale, thus left unarmed and exposed to the rebels, were consequently obliged to pay them heavy contributions for their good treatment. Incensed by these unjust, irritating, and impolitic measures, they were, in self-defence, together with the rest of the well affected catholic body throughout the kingdom, compelled to coalesce with the rebels; a coalition in this