PATER’S CHATS WIIH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3112, 5 November 1913, Page 70

PATER’S CHATS WIIH THE BOYS.

THE CROMWELLIAN PERIOD. If you read history you will read of two Irish earls, Tyrone and Tyrconnel, who, after the Elizabethan plantings, fled to the Continent, died there, and were buried in Rome. A short outline of the doings and wanderings of these Ulster earls is given by Justin M‘Carthy in his “An Outline of Irish History.” This allusion to them I am using as an introduction to the opening paragraph in M'Carthy’s chapter “The Cromwellian Settlement.” You will remember that last -week I dealt with the Elizabethan rule in Ireland. This extract refers to the beginning of the Stuart period. I shall cut down mjr references to James I and Charles I in Ireland, because I want to deal with two special dates—l64l and 1649. ‘‘After the flight of the earls Ireland was entirely in James’s hands. . _ . • His writ ran in every part of the island the old Irish law was everywhere superseded: there was nothing to interfere with James’s schemes for confiscating Irish land and planting Irish provinces. The English had already made strong settlements in , Leinster, Connaught, and Munster. Ulster had hitherto been practically untouched; hut now, at last, it, too, was to come under English control. The alleged treason of the two earls served as an excuse for confiscating the counties of Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, hermanagh, Cavan, and Armagh. A sorb oi commission sat ... to parcel out the lands of men who had committed no other offence than that of serving uncUrr the exiled chieftains. Ulster was planted with a thoroughly Protestant and anti-Irish colony of English and Scotch adventurers, and the Irish were driven away from the fertile lands like Red Indians to contracted and miserable reservations, while the fighting men were shipped off to swell the armies of Gustavus Adolphus. Twelve City of London companies bought great tracts of land in Derry at very cheap rates. Six of these companies—the Mercers, Salters, Skinners, Ironmongers, Fishmongers, and Drapers—still retain much of the property thus acquired. The disinheriting process'was carried on not by force alone, but by fraud. Men called ‘discoverers’ made it

their business to epv out flaws in titles of land in order tha.t they might be confiscated by the Crown.” ' ; : % ■ / THE MASSACRE OF 1641. The extract I have given shows in a general way how many Irish were dispossessed .of their property. From their point of view the Irish were patriots fighting, not only for their country, but religion; from the English point of view they were rebels only fit to be outlawed. What happened in the reign of. Charles I I haven’t time nor space to relate, excepting that he temporised with them because he wanted their assistance against the English and Scots, and in this and other ways had an armv of about 8000 ready to act on his behalf. Charles, too, had sent to Ireland Wentworth, who was to carry out the policy of “Thorough” there, a man of great ability ‘‘of which the Lord had given him the use and the devil the application.” The recall and execution of Wentworth, and the subsequent execution of Charles I left these 80C0 men ready for mischief, and remembering with sullen persistency the wrongs of the past. In their desire to be freed from English domination the Irish were divided into two; great parties acting on two distinct principles. These were the "great Roman Catholic nobles, who wished to work by constitutional means, and had no sympathy with bloodshed and murder, and the kinsmen of the dispossessed Ulster chiefs and others, who were eager to use the means readiest at hand, and who looked upon the English as piratical and heretical invaders to be wiped out. Each of these parties was willing to have the assistance of the other at the outset, hoping, wheii the critical time came, to have sufficient power farther, on to control the other; but,- as often happens, the uneducated, fiery, humbler classes got the upper hand, and wholesale massacres and cruelties were the result.

The plot was hatched and the secret well kept. “The Bishop of Clogher was the brain of the enterprise, and in the main directed the course which was to be pursued.” “Rents and taxes were paid in Ireland on November 1. At the end of October the Treasury at Dublin was empty. The tenant’s half-year’s rent was in his own hand. His crops were housed. The high winds at the fail of the year made communication with England at that time always uncertain, and the autumn of 1641 was exceptionally wild. A blow struck simultaneously and fiercely over the whole North, without a note of warning, might crush the English settlement and English religion at once and for ever. The priests were ready-made instruments by which such a plot could be organised without a trace of it going abroad; and Ulster, once delivered, the rest of Ireland might be trusted to follow the pattern. The seizure of Dublin Castle was a part of the programme. Arms for good men were in the cellars there, and the command of Dublin would be the command over Parliament and country.” October 23 was the day decided upon. All details as to seizing Londonderry, Carrickfergus, Newry, and Dublin were arranged. “In the whole North on the same day the Irish people were to rise and dispose of the English settlers and their families. No distinct directions were probably given about killing them. An Irish mob let loose upon defenceless enemies might be left to their own discretion in such a matter. The order was to drive them from their houses; strip them—man, woman, and child—of their property, strip them even of the clothes upon their backs, to take such chances of life as the elements would allow, in the late autumn, to human existence turned adrift amidst sleet and rain, without food or covering.”

Enniskillen or Dublin did not fall as was expected. In the la&£er case a rebel who had been drinking betrayed the plot. The castle gates were closed and the watch manned. But in other towns, and throughout the whole countryside, murder went unchecked, and the 8000 who had been trained for service in Ireland were among the murderers. An English officer wrote: “They were surprised so suddenly that the Irish servant who overnight was undressing his master, the next morning was stripping master , and mistress. In the twinkling of an eye, ■ corporations, towns, villages were blazing.” A letter read in the English Parliament contained the following : “The rebels increase daily in men and munitions in all parts, except the province of Munster, exercising all manner of cruelties, and striving who can be most barbarously exquisite in tormenting the poor Protestants, cutting off their ears, fingers, and hands, plucking 1 out their eyes, and bciling the hands of little children before their mothers’ eyes.” The, unmentionable cruelties to women and girls I cannot : give an account of. Both sexes and all ages were stripped naked, turned adrift, or driven through the street like cattle. If you want fuller particulars read Froude’s account. How many perished? I don’t know. Froude gives figures varying from 200,000 down to 57,000, a number which he is inclined still further to discount. Hus words are: “Even these figures will seem too large when it is remembered how appalling is the impression created by tho slaughter in cold blood of innocent, unresisting people, how little , rage and terror can be depended on for cool observation, and how inevitably the murdered were confounded afterwards with the enormous multitudes which indisputably perished in the civil war which followed. The evidence proves no more than that atrocities had neon committed on a scale too vast to be exactly comprehended, while the judgment was still further, confounded by the fiendish malignity of the details.” Now, I haven’t finished this section after all, so must end it next week. Please do not think I am giving any details to call up the past. In those days there were different standards held from now. I want my younger readers to learn to show the greatest respect for the religion of others, and, of course, expect tho greatest respect in return. Judge

people not by what they profess, but by what they do and by the motive lying behind the doing. I am entering a little into the details of the past for another aose. In Ulster and elsewhere in Irethere are bitter recollections of these Sast acts of reprisals in which both sides id much that was regrettable, but which has not been forgotten. They live in the atmosphere of the past, and feel intensely on both sides.