HISTORICAL.

Otago Witness, Volume 06, Issue 1986, 6 March 1890, Page 34

HISTORICAL.

A SHORT SUMMARY OF IRISH HIS-

TORY : WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE

LAST TWO CENTURIES.

Compiled for the Otago Witness, chiefly feom s. gregg's "history for English Readers," Compared with over 40 Recognised Authorities. .

(By an English Protestant Parson.)

THE CIVIL WAR OF 1641.

Few events in mcdern history are enveloped in more mystery than are the rebellion and civil war of 1641. Much has been written on these subjects by Catholics and Protestants— English and Irish— but the writers who lived at or near the time of the rising were so swayed by party feeling, terror, and indignation that their evidence is most contradictory, and of little use in helping us to arrive at a just conclusion. That both parties were guilty of barbarous cruelty there is but little doubt ; historians of every shade of opinion concede as much. To whichever party commenced the indiscriminate murderings, drownings, hangings, strippings, and other horrors, belongs the greater guilt; but indeed the murder of women and children with nameless cruelties, because other men had dorse the same by other innocent and defenceless creatures, is so barbarous a retaliation that it is surprising, that two civilised peoples have been eager to claim this mean excuse. ( , . ( , The caases of the rebellion were many and. complicated; chief among ; them being : the murderings, torturihgs, burnings, and des* troyings of the Irish by Elizabeth's trobps. Not two generations; had, passed since they had created for their Sovereign " i( 90 square miles of carcasses and ashes." They sowed a fierce wind from "which their successors reaped the whirlwind. The confiscation of large tracts of land under Elizabeth and James I ; the fitful and apparently meaningless persecution of the Catholics ; the tyranny of Weritworth, and the weak despotism of Charles, all conspired to make the Irish disaffected and disloyal. Nine thousand of the lowest Irish stood with arms in their hands ; armed by the false and unhappy Charles in the hope that he could use them against his Parliament. Driven to desperation by the tyrannies of " Black Tom " Wentworth these rose in revolt, and >were joined by a rabible of some 20,000 more. It was the hour of revenge, and egged on by Phelim jbhey committed; hideous cruelties. The season was exceptionally severe; the ground was hard arid ' white with frost and snow. The pitiless Phelim turned the settlers from their homes, stripping even the women and children of their. clothes, and. driying them naked into the woods, 'to 'there or find their way as best as they might to Dublin. Many died of cold and hunger on the grim journey. Many,.tt?o, were hanged, ripped up, or driven into the'river by Phelim's barbarous rabble, whom he was please'd'to call •« The Catholic Army of Ireland." Here and there the Romish priests or some kindhearted Catholic sheltered and cared for the wretched fugitives, but in the main the English of Tyrone had a bitter time of it. Men, women, and children were pouring into Dublin naked, starving, wounded, and ruined; all they had possessed had been taken from them, and their relatives had died or been murdered on the road. Many a ghastly tale of horror was told. Some of these tales were true, many were exaggerated fey fear, horror, and the natural instinct that prevents tales from losing in the telling, others were false. So great was the exaggeration of horrors ,that though the total English population of Ulster was- not more than 20,000 it was stated that 145,000 had perished. Yet, with these tales of agony coming daily to their ears, with naked, wounded, starving fugitives trooping into Dublin the infamous lords of justices did absolutely nothing to quell the rebellion, ' Dublin they strongly fortified, and then not only refused to attack the rebels themselves but rejected the numerous offers of help that were made by the loyal Anglo-Irish families. The loyal Catholics were now on the horns of a dilemma, for the Government not only did nothing to quell the rising, but had absolutely refused proteotion to loyalists from the province. The atrocities of Phelim, which had seemed unparalleled in loyal Dublin, sank into insignificance compared •with the accounts giveD by the rebels of the barbarity of Munroe and Coote, who, in quelling the Ulster rising, ordered that no Papist should be spared, "if it were but the child a hand high, for nits will be lice ; " and a bill which was then passed in the English' Parliament for the extirpation of the Romish religion led the Catholics to believe that this policy of extermination would shortly be applied to the whole Romish population. Driven undefended into the rebel quarters, nd with England preparing a death-blow for their creed, it issmall wonder that the loyalty of the Anglo-Irish lords gave way, and that in December both they and . Munstermen threw in their lot with the rebels.

When Cromwell had established his power in England he turned his attention to Ireland, and subjugated Ireland as she never had been during five centuries of cruelty. He turned his soldiery on her to wage a ruthless "holy" war, shipped '6ooo of her children to the West Indies, deported in all 100,000 to perish on the Tobacco Islands,' suppressed the celebration of the mass, and condemned all priests to departure or death.

His first act was to lay siege to Drogheda, and the garrison surrendered on promise of quarter, when no sooner had they laid down their arms than Oromwell took back his word and slaughtered every man, woman, and child in the city, so that five days are said to have been spent in this ghastly massacre. At Wexford, the same miserable scenes of treachery and butchery were enacted, and all over the country Sir Phelim's atrocities (which had already been paid off in the earlier part of the war) were revenged, in too many instances, on innocent people who had nothing to do with them. He mildly decreed for the native Irieh

exile to the rainy, waste lands of Connaught. Connaught was from henceforth the Ireland of -the Irish; fertile Ulster, green Leinster, and lovely Munster were for the Oromwellian settlers, who, by an act of grace, gave Connaught to the native Irish. This province was chosen for the Irish not only because it was the least fertile, but also because, encircled by the ocean and the Shannon, it was most easily converted inlo a natural prison. The flight was to be in the winter, for after the Ist of May 1654 any 'Irishman found within the three provinces, 5 in England, or on the high seas, was liable to be put to death. Not only the old Irish families, but the Anglo-Norman settlers came under this proscription. The men were to go first, to wrest the land allotted to them from its rightful owners, and to build shelters for the women, who weie speedily to follow. Without servants, without money, without cattle, these Irish gentlemen—many of them with no knowledge of farming— went to earn their living in Connaught. , Death was the penalty if they returned; death if they entered the gates of Galway, the one city of this penal settlement ; death if they ventured within four miles of the sea or two miles of the Shannon ; and to enforce this regulation soldiers were planted round the river-side and the seacoasfc. It seems as -though a choice of deaths were offered to these unhappy creatures— the swift sword of the soldier or the slow starvation of hunger and cold in Connaught. Then arose a new difficulty, for the lands were found to be too small for the exiles ; but many of them solved the question by quietly .dying cf cold and exposure. And now the women began to follow. - The winter was wet, and the roads (neglected during the late war) nearly impassable. .The country was' famine-stricken, and the women, weakened by want and burdened with the sick", the aged, and the ohildren, could not get away by the dreaded Ist of May. Very slowly the squalid procession dragged along the heavy, slushy roads, and many were still east of the Shannon when their time was up. So indifferent, so listless were they, that it was 'found .necessary to hang some and im-, prison others to stimulate the flagging energies of the remainder , When Charles II came to the throne the Irish royalists supposed that they also would be restored to those possessions they had lost through their devotion to his cause, and a few of them, acting with more zeal than discretionjproceeded' at once to turn but, the settlers " by ' force. " " .Though, , the number of i these ,fanatics f was Vmalli they; were enough, to revive the old cry ."that the Irish Papists were rebelling again. The Papists, in truth'; h'ad'-no idea of rebelling. •ThSy : kn r e 1 W + that if' Charles Jhad-not been actually received.. -into the Church of Rome, aft jbi^eympatihjies were Oatholic^and they expected- ;t.o.(bav,e; their, lands returned and their religion respected. diaries Waß.now In a. l difficult<p,Qsi.tioiy,ifor many oi 'his 1 f ather>,enemies, "seeingthe turn of the" tide,: hafl 'been Jofembst of those who had'helped him- to T ttiethrone. ; :Frieridssnoh as'thfese needed* buying,' for 'their principles went witb\ '£h£ir !f 'interest.- • Thejf '^estates Were, therefore I 'eyte^ firmed. ,, l ','!.JJa^p,,mu6ti"of your 'eriefnies,' for j your" friends will 1 " 4b-',' you rib , harm/'^w'as' Clarendon's cynical advice, arid in it Charles saw ; the. only solution of the Irish land question.'; ... The accession 1 of a. Catholic king in James II was naturally a great • joj to Catholic Ireland, though James -personally was disliked by, arid disliked, his Irish subjects. On the other hand, Protestant Ireland was rhuch distressed at the ascendancy of a Papist, and the new interest quaked, for their rights. But James had the'aiidaeity to announce that he intended to establish religious equality, a joyful, proclamation to Papist and Presbyterian, but greatly distrusted by the Episcopalians, who saw in it the first step towards Catholic ascendancy. Probably,they were right. James was not wise enough, or'liberal enough, to care about religious equality for its own sake, nor were the Catholics sufficiently ahead of the age to be content .with simple justice. An illustrious Irishman of our own day has summed up the relations • between England and Ireland as "a course of brutal repression on the one side met by savage retaliation on the other," and the Episcopalians •of James' time were well aware that their oppression had been brutal enough to call down a fearful retribution should the Catholics ever be capable of revenge. On William of Orange being invited to take possession of the British throne Ireland took no part in the invitation. War, massacre, and confiscation were associated in the Irish mind with Protestant ascendancy, and the majority knew nothing of the invitation to William till the news reached them that, on the sth of November, "The Deliverer" bad landed in Torbay, and that James had absconded to France. For a moment the Catholics were paralysed by the blow, and the flight of James by no means added to the dignity of the situation. James' misfortunes wiped out from the memory of the Irish people the remembrance of his unpopularity and his cowardly flight from England. Blinded by their sympathies, they saw in James the noble upholder of their faith, persecuted for righteousness^sake, deserted by his ,English subjects, and dethroned by his own daughter because of his steadfastness-.to his religion. <;Th,e .obstinate, weak-minded old coward was fsr them a'saint, They forgot. that vthey; jiijfee every one v else, disliked and despised, him, and they 4efnsed to see how intensely indifferent he was to their national aims and ambition, Irish hospitality and sympathy prepared a warm welcome for their king; who enjoyed an ovation from Kinsale to' Dublin, and a perfect triumph in the capital, where 10 days and nights were spent in festivities, levees, and receptions. But there was more serious business to attend to, and Parliament was called. James and the Irish entirely differed as to the uses of Parliament— to James it was a machine for wringing money out of his subjects ; to them it was a means for wringing a constitution out of James. A long experience of the Stuart character made them well aware that when once James had got their money hia interest in the Irish Parliament would vanish, so they refused to make any arrangement with regard to subsidies till certain acts were passed. Their first care was for the repeal of

Poyning*s Act, by which, since the time of Richard 11, no act passed by the Irish Parliament could become law till it had been approved by the English Privy Council, by whom it might bo altered and amended to any extent, but on its return to Ireland it might receive no further alteration, but must either be rejected altogether or passed just as it was returned. Having disposed of this hated law, acts were passed to secure religious equality. Since the Reformation, Papist and Protestant .alike had had to pay tithe to the clergy of the Established Church. The Irish Catholics now practically disestablished the Irish Church by decreeing that all persons should pay tithe to the clergy of their own denomination. Measures for the security of trade were also passed; but the great business of the session, from the Irish point of view, was the reversal of the Bill of Settlement, and it was decreed that all Catholics who had held land before October 1641 were to be reinstated. By the subsequent defeat of James, thes6 acts were rendered waste paper, but they are important historically as showing the views of Irishmen of that day with regard to the needs of their oountry.

The arrival of William in Ireland reduced James to a helpless condition, but he made a desperate effort not to run away, and insisted on a battle being fought on the banks of the Boyne. Still he felt a depressing presentiment of defeat, sent his heavy luggage on to Dublin, and chartered a ship to wait for him in Waterford Harbour in anticipation of disaster. But notwithstanding these overwise precautions James was bent on proving his valour before William, and on the 20th of June the armies met. The Jacobites had the best position, the Williamites the larger force, and the inestimable advantage of being headed by a prince who knew no fear. Brave to recklessness, William, though wounded and in pain, was always in the front of the battle, leading his men and encouraging them at the post of danger. James watched his army from a safe distance,' anxiously regarding the ever changing tide of fortune, as now the Irish, now the English, got the best' oi the desperate encounter. At last, when -the Jacobites, after seven hours' fighting, began to retreat in good order, James, wild with terror, spurred his horse, and never stopped till, with a scanty retinue of contemptuous gentlemen, he arrived, blown and breathless, in Dublin city— the bearer of the news of his own defeat. The', king thus flying, his horse spent and heated, turned the defeat into a rout in the mind of the country. "Change kings with us," cried the sorrowful troops, "and we will fight you. again; ".but James was determined- there should be no . changing kings— he had had enough of this terrible warfare. .Next morning, he 1 .fled, though no man pursued him, and never rested till the ship his'foresight had provided bore him in safety! to France. .

fib be continued.)