and famine; and the zeal of these persecuted, for the service of the king, after all the galling oppression inflicted by him and his father. "Borlase has given us a journal of Sir William Cole's services against the insurgents, wherein it is boastingly asserted, "that from the twentythird of October 1641, to some time in 1642, the said Sir William killed with his regiment of five hundred foot and one troop of horse, two thousand four hundred and seventeen swordsmen of the rebels; and starved and famished of the vulgar sort (whose goods were seized on by the regiment), seven thousand. That he rescued and relieved five thousand four hundred and sixtyseven Scotch and English protestants. That after this rate the English in all parts fought. Colonel Gibbon having taken the strong castle of Carricmain, belonging to the Walshes, near Dublin, in which several hundreds of the Irish had taken refuge, "put them all to the sword, sparing neither man, woman, nor child."*

Whence did this malignant spirit of exterminating warfare originate? Not from the religion or character of the original Irish. We have already cited a reproach to them, of having no martyrs to boast, from a popish British historian; an honorable testimony of their toleration, distinguishing them from all other nations; none of whom abstained from putting to death some of their first missionaries, except the highland Scots, of the same antient lineage. We have

* Borlase's Hist. of the Irish Rebelljon.

proved, that, during the persecution of queen Mary, great numbers of protestants took refuge in Ireland; where the fugitives lived unmolested, under protection of a catholic government, a catholic parliament, and a catholic nation. If they, in any degree, afterwards degenerated from the magnanimous and christian principle of toleration, the degeneracy must be attributed to the bitter persecution they endured in every thing dear to humanity; and the terror inspired by the enthusiastic hatred of popery; and the threatened extinction thereof, with fire, sword and famine, openly proclaimed by the regicide faction, who made it a crime in his majesty to relax ever so little from the code of prescription, called penal laws. This savage hatred of catholics was considerably augmented, by the fore-mentioned artifices of the revolutionizing party, and much by the anti-christian rage, raised and boiling furiously from the cauldrons of hell, during the sanguinary, irreligious wars about religion, carried on in Germany, which Charles himself had the folly and wickedness to encourage. Weak politician, he little foresaw the fatal consequences to himself, to church and state, from conjuring up the evil spirit of religious animosity, and exciting the cruellest and most implacable of wars; a war of obstinate, misguided zealots: encouraging the French Hugonots to war against their sovereign, with promises of support from England; and inviting, with similar promises, Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, to put himself at the head of the protestant league in

Germany, and carry on the war of religion against the emperor. The contagious spirit of religious hatred, engendered by these long and inhuman wars, operated with epidemic infection on the fanatical puritans, and excited that phrenetic abhorrence and detestation of every thing and person bearing the name of catholic, which writers, like Leland, vainly strive to ascribe to other causes.

Some of the Irish, chiefly the rabble, were driven by their sufferings, and the denounced terror of worse, from the proud pre-eminence of their ancestors, in the wise and christian policy of toleration; but bright examples of the contrary, attested by adverse or not friendly writers, are yet on record.

"The first thing that the new general of the Irish, Owen O'Nial, did, was to express his abhorrence of cruelties that had been committed on the English. He told Sir Phelim O'Nial, that he himself deserved to be treated in the same manner. In detestation of their actions, he burnt some of the murderers' houses; and said, with a warmth unusual to him, that he would join the English rather than not burn the rest.

By the humanity of Mr. Philip O'Reilly, one of the most considerable chiefs of the rebels, scarce any murders were committed in the county of Cavan; such of the protestants as put themselves under his protection, were safely conveyed into the English quarters; and those that were stript and in necessity, he fed and cloathed, till they were sent away. Among these, was Dr. Henry

Jones, a nephew of primate Usher, and dean of Kilmore, who, though he turned afterwards a noted partizan of Cromwell's, was promoted to the see of Clogher, and thence, after the restoration, to the see of Meath.

"Doctor Maxwell, afterwards bishop of Kilmore, deposeth, that Mrs. Catherine Hovenden, widow, and mother to Sir Phelim O'Nial, preserved four-and-twenty English and Scotch, in her own house; and fed them there for seven-andthirty weeks, out of her own store; and that, when her children took her away, upon the approach of an army, she left both them, and the deponent, at their liberty. That captain Alexander Hovenden, her son, conducted fiveand-thirty English out of Armagh to Drogheda, whereof some were of good quality; when it was thought he had secret directions to murder them. Twenty more he sent safe to Newry, and he would trust no other convoy but himself.

"There are many honorable testimonies of the care and preservation of the English by lord Muskerry and his lady, not only in saving their lives from the enemy, but also in relieving them, in great numbers, from cold and hunger, after they had been stript and driven from their habitations. Indeed, all the gentlemen in that part of the kingdom (Munster) were exceedingly careful to prevent bloodshed, and to hinder the English from being pillaged and stript, though it was many times impossible.

"In the abovementioned province of Munster, lord Mountgarret, by proclamation, strictly en

joined all his followers not to hurt any of the English inhabitants, either in body or goods; and he succeeded so far in his design for their preservation, that there was not the least act of bloodshed committed. But it was not possible for him to prevent the vulgar sort, who flocked after him for booty, from plundering both English and Irish, papist and protestant, without distinction. He used his authority, but in vain, to put a stop to this violence; till sceing one of the rank of a gentleman, Mr. Richard Cantwell descended from Mr. Cantwell of Painstown, a man much esteemed in his country) transgressing his orders, and plundering in his presence, he shot him dead with his pistol.

"At the same time the said lord Mountgarret's eldest son, colonel Edmund Butler, taking possession of Waterford, none of the inhabitants of whatever country or religion, were either killed or pillaged; and such of the British protestants as had a mind to leave the place, were allowed to carry off their goods wherever they pleased.

"Callan and Gowran were seized at the same time, by persons thereunto designed by lord Mountgarret, without any bloodshed; some plunder however, was there committed, though with less violence for fear of complaints, it being confined to cattle of English breed, which were stolen as well from the Irish, who had any of that breed, as from the English.

"The towns of Clonmell and Carrickmagriffit, in Tipperary, and Dungarvan, were severally surprized by Mr. Richard Butler of Kilcash,