A COMPENDIOUS HISTORY OF THE BRITISH CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND AMERICA.
BY JOHN BROWN, EDINBURGH 1820.
Chapter XI: The Church Of Ireland
(The Massacre ) Page 375 – 379
The powerful Irish Bishops and clergymen favored Popery, permitted Papists to keep schools, some of them so large as to resemble Universities, in which, not only languages, but also liberal sciences, were taught, and permitted multitudes of mass priests publicly to celebrate mass, and permitted friaries and nunneries in their dioceses The bishops published or encouraged wicked libels, and used profane raillery and cursing, &;c. to render the Scots and their late reforming procedure odious ; and they practiced and encouraged the selling of church censures and sacraments,—and by the most base means draw in gain to themselves from old superstitious customs,—not willing marry the poor, who cannot pay the dues, nor suffer their dead to be decently buried,—and excommunicated multitudes, for non payment of the most unjust or trifling demands In their High Commission court, they sat judges 0f their own and in all other causes, they terribly oppressed men by fines and imprisonments, &;c. They not only condemned the Scotch covenant of 1638, but had concurred with Strafford (English Lord Deputy of Ireland) in imposing an oath for renouncing it, in consequence of which many thousands had been hunted out, apprehended, fined, or imprisoned, and even women, just before childbirth, seized, threatened, and terrified.These bishops, and their faction, had unjustly seized upon the best lands, bereaving almost every gentleman of part of his inheritance ; that, by their own swearing, cursing, drunkenness, and Sabbath-breaking, and by their having the most profane servants in the kingdom, they were a reproach to the gospel, and a stumbling block to the Papists.
In 1641, King Charles finding himself obliged to yield to the Scots, and not a little embroiled with his English parliament, by the instigation of his Queen, appears to have encouraged the Papists in Ireland to seize the government of that country, and then to assist him with an army against the Puritans in England, or Presbyterians in Scotland. Glad of this opportunity, the Papists, encouraged by their clergy, resolved on a general massacre of all the Protestants in the kingdom, without regard to station, age, sex, or relation. They laid their scheme and kept their secrets so well, that it was in a great measure out of the Protestants’ power, who were but about a sixth part of the nation, to prevent the execution of it. It was discovered by Owen O’Conolly, an Irishman, who, being servant to Sir John Clotworthy, had become a Presbyterian dissenter; by means of which the seizure of Dublin was prevented, and the Scots in the north of Ireland were empowered to take arms against the Popish murderers ; and the lords justices transmitted accounts of their desperate condition, unless they should be speedily relieved with men and money, to Charles and his English parliament. Notwithstanding his fair pretences, he, in many things, behaved like one that wished these Protestants utter destruction, and the Papists success in their work, and that was exceedingly averse to declare them rebels. Meanwhile, they pushed on their murdering work, in the end of October 1641, and afterwards. In the province of Ulster alone, 154,000 are said to have been destroyed in the cruelest forms. The day before the massacre began, the priests dismissed the people from mass with an encouragement to seize on the property of the Protestants, and to kill them, as a certain preservative against the pains of purgatory.
When it began, the Popish gentry persuaded many of their Protestant neighbors to bring them their goods, and they would preserve them for them, and at least secure them a safe retreat from the country. Having got their goods, they next stripped many of them, particularly women and children, stark naked, and turned them out to perish, amidst the frost and snow, by cold and hunger. So many thousands of them died, that the living being insufficient to bury them, their carcasses were heaped up together in large holes of the earth. Multitudes they sportfully drowned, hanged, or stabbed to death, even after they had given them promises of safe conduct, or had cruelly driven them along, pushing them forward with stabs of their swords or bayonets. Sometimes they dispatched them so quickly, by hewing them in pieces, or otherwise, that they would allow them no time to pray. Sometimes they shut them up in loathsome dungeons, with or without bolts or fetters on their legs, that they might languish to death in great misery. Others they buried alive, or hanged up on tether hooks, or dragged them by ropes through waters, woods, or bogs. Others, particularly women or children, had their bellies ripped up, and guts taken or let fall out. The unborn babes that fell from their mother’s belly, they trod under foot, gave to their dogs and swine to eat, or cast into ditches. Other infants they held upon the point of their swords, that their sprawling might divert them. Some they cruelly slashed in their heads, faces, breasts, &c. and then left them wallowing in their blood, to languish, starve, and pine to death. Others they shut up in houses, and sportfully burnt them in them ; or they plucked out their eyes, and cut off their hands, and then turned them out to wander in the fields, till they perished. Some they decoyed to murder their own parents, or to profess themselves Papists, and then cut their throats, or drowned them. Others they worried with dogs, or by ripping up their belly, tied one end of their tripes [intestines ?] to a tree, and drove them round about it, till all their bowels were gradually pulled out.
In these, and many similar forms, the Protestants were murdered. Many of their dead bodies were left unburied, and especially those of women, exposed and abused, in the most shameful manner, and had candles made of their grease. One Papist boasted that his hands were so wearied with killing Protestants, that he could not lift them to his head ; another, that he had killed sixteen of them in a few hours ; others, that they had killed so many, that the grease which stuck to their swords, might make an Irish candle. Nay, two boys boasted, that at several times they had murdered 36 women and children. The Popish women were no less ready to instruct, excite to, or assist their husbands and children in cruelty. Such Bibles as were found, were profanely trodden under foot, or otherwise destroyed. Such was the piety and humanity of the Papists, whom we have lately adopted as our dear friends and children.
Next: Polish Persecutions
Return Home