The Story of Ireland

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 14, 15 April 1925, Page 7

The Story of Ireland

(By A. M. Sullivan.) CHAPTER LX. (Continued.)

But there was another army — of the Ricardo White, in May, 1652, shipped seven

expatriated—of whom we are not to lose sight, the "Irish swordmen," so-called in the European writings of the time; the Irish regiments who elected to go into exile, preferring to "roam Where freedom and their God might lead," rather than be bondsmen under a bigot-yoke at home. "Foreign nations were apprised by the Kilkenny Articles that the Irish were to be allowed to engage in the service of any State in amity with the Commonwealth. The valor of the Irish soldier was well known abroad. From the time of the Munster plantation by Queen Elizabeth, numerous exiles had taken service in the Spanish army. There were Irish regiments serving in the Low Countries. The Prince of Orange declared they were ' born soldiers '; and Henry theft Fourth of France publicly called Hugh O'Neill 'the third soldier of the age,' and he \said there was no nation made better troops than the Irish when drilled. Agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, and the Prince de Conde, were now contending for the services of Irish troops. ; Don

thousand in batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Galway, Limerick, and Bantry, for the King of Spain. Colonel Christopher Mayo got liberty in September, 1652, to beat bis drums to raise three thousand for the same king. Lord Muskerry took five thousand to the King of Poland. In July, 1654, three thousand five hundred, commanded by Colonel Edmund Droyer, went to serve the Prince de Conde. Sir Walter Dungan and others got liberty to beat their drums in different garrisons, to a rallying of their men that laid down arms with them in order to a rendezvous, and to depart for Spain. They got permission to march their men together to the different ports, their pipers perhaps playing ' Ha til, Ha til, Ha til, mi tulidh ' — ' We .return, we return no more!'* Between 1651 and 1664, thirty-four thousand (of whom few ever saw their loved native land again) were transported into foreign parts."t-

* "The tune with which the departing Highlanders usually bid farewell to their native shores."—Preface to Sir Walter Scott's Legend of Montrose. • t Prendergast's Crom. Settlement.

While the roads to Connaught were as I have described witnessing a stream of hapless fugitivesprisoners rather, plodding wearily to their dungeon and gravea singular scene was going on in London. At an office or bureau appointed for the purpose by Government, a lottery was held, whereat the farms, houses, and estates from which the owners had thus been driven, were being "drawn" by or on behalf of the soldiers and officers of the army, and the "adventurers" —i.e. petty shopkeepers in London, and others who had lent money for the war on the Irish. The mode of conducting the lottery or drawing was regulated by public ordinance. Not unfrequenfly a vulgar and illiterate trooper "drew" the mansion and estate of an Irish nobleman, who was glad to accept permission to inhabit, for a few weeks merely, the stable or the cowshed* with his lady and children, pending their setting-out for Connaught! This same lottery was the "settlement" (varied a little by further confiscations to the same end forty years subsequently), by which the now existing landed proprietary was "planted" upon Ireland. Between a proprietary thus planted and the bulk of the population, as well as the tenantry under them, it is not to be marvelled that feelings the reverse of cordial prevailed. From the first they scowled at each other. The plundered and trampled people despised and hated the "Cromwellian brood," as they were called, never regarding them as more than vulgar and violent usurpers of other men's estates. The Cromwellians, on the other hand, feared and hated the serf-peasantry, whose secret sentiments and desires of hostility they well knew. Nothing but the fusing spirit of nationality obliterates such feelings as these; but no such spirit was allowed to fuse the Cromwellian "landlords" and the Irish tenantry. The former were taught to consider themselves as a foreign garrison, endowed to watch and keep down, and levy a land-tribute off the native tillers of the soil; moreover "the salt of the land," the "elect of the Lord," the ruling class, alone entited to be ranked as saints or citizens. So they looked to and leaned all on England, without whom they thought they must be massacred. "Aliens in race, in language, and in religion," they had not one tie in common with the subject population; and so both classes unhappily grew up to be what they remain very much in our own daymore of taskmasters and bondsmen than landlords and tenants. LXL—How King Charles the Second Came Back on a Compromise. How a New Massacre Story was Set to Work. The Martyrdom of Primate Plunkett. Possessed of supreme power, Cromwell, by a bold stroke of usurpation, now changed the republic to what he called a "protectorate," with himself as "Protector" ; in other words, a kingdom, with Oliver as king, vice Charles, decapitated. This coup d'etat completely disgusted the sincere republicans of the Pym and Ludlow school; and on the death of the iron-willed Protector, 3rd September, 1658,

* See the case of the then proprietor of the magnificent place now called Woodlands, Co. Dublin.— Set. Ire. n;H

the whole structure set up by the revolution on the ruins of the monarchy in England tottered and fell. ; Communication had been opened with the j second Charles, a worthless, empty-headed V creature, and it was made clear to him., that if he would only undertake not to disturb too much the "vested interests" created during the revolution—that is, if he would undertake to let the' "settlement of property" (as they were pleased to call their stealing of other men's estates) alonehis return to the throne might be made easy. . Charles was delighted. This proposal only asked of him to sacrifice his friends, now no longer powerful, since they had lost all in his behalf. ' He acquiesced, and the monarchy was restored. The Irish nobility and gentry, native and Anglo-Irish, who had been so fearfully scourged for the sin of loyalty to his father, now joyfully expected that right would be done, and that they would enjoy their own once more. They were soon undeceived. Such of the "lottery" speculators, , or army officers and soldiers as were actually in possession of the estates of royalist owners, were not. to be disturbed. Such estates only as had not actually been "taken up" were to be restored to the owners. There was one class, however, whom all the others readily agreed might be robbed without any danger—nay, whom it was loudly declared to be a crime to desist from robbing to the last —namely, the Catholics—especially the "Irish Papists." The reason why, was not clear. Everybody, on the contrary, saw that they had suffered most of all for their devoted loyalty to the murdered king. After a while a low murmur of compassion—muttering even of justice for thembegan to be heard about the court. This danger created great alarm. The monstrous idea of justice to the Catholics was surely not to be endured; but what was to be done? "Happy thought!"—imitate the skilful ruse of the Irish Puritans in starting the massacre story of 1641. But where was the scene of massacre to be laid this time, and when must they say it had taken place? This was found to be an irresistible stopper on a new massacre story in the past, but then the great boundless future was open to them: could they not say it was yet to-take 'place? A blessed inspiration the saintly people called this. Yes; they could get up an anti-Cath-olic frenzy with a massacre-story about the future, as well as with one relating to the past Accordingly, in 1678 the diabolical fabrication known as the "Great Popish Plot" made its appearance. The great Protestant historian, Charles James Fox, declared that the Popish plot story "must always be considered an indelible disgrace upon the English nation." Macaulay more recently has still more vehemently denounced the infamy of that concoction; and indeed, even a year or two after it had done its work, all England rang with execrations of its concoctorssev- . eral of whom, Titus Oates, the chief swearer, especially, suffered the penalty of their discovered perjuries. (To be continued.)