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Lord Maguire and Hugh Oge MacMahon
arrested and later hanged at Tyburn - Sir Phelim O'Neill forges a Royal
Commission - He assumes the title of "Lord General of the Catholic Army
in Ireland" - Many Murders and Massacres - Lord Castlehaven's Opinion,
"They were Bloody on both Sides" - The O'Reillys' Remonstrance - Arms
supplied by the Government to the Catholic Nobility of the Pale - The
Irish Parliament meets - Both Houses join in a Remonstrance - The Scots
in Ulster - An "Admirable" Crichton - London sends to the relief of
Londonderry.
On the fateful night of Friday, the
22nd of October, 1641,
the Lords Justices, having taken O'Connolly's sworn information in due
form at Chichester House, immediately issued
warrants for the arrest of Hugh Oge MacMahon, Lord
Maguire, and their fellow-conspirators. The first- named
appears to have had no suspicion of being betrayed, for at
an early hour on the following morning he was captured
in his lodgings in Henrietta Street; and so confident was he
in the ultimate success of the plot, that when he was brought
into the presence of the Lords Justices he merely remarked:
"I am now in your hands, use me as you will; I am sure
I shall be shortly revenged". Maguire, Fox, Plunket,
O'Byrne, and O'Moore seem to have got some inkling of
trouble in store for them, for they sought safety in flight,
but Maguire was captured in a cock-loft in Cook Street, in
which he had hidden himself, while the others escaped.
Maguire and MacMahon were subsequently sent to London,
where they were tried and hanged at Tyburn.
When Sir Phelim O'Neill took
possession of Charlemont,
he declared that he acted on the authority of a commission
given him by the King. He confessed later that having
found among Lord Caulfeild's papers a patent with the Great
Seal attached, he had torn off the seal and attached it to a
fictitious royal commission which he exhibited to his followers
as a genuine document. In this instrument the King was
represented as declaring to his Catholic subjects of Ireland
that for the sake of his safety he had been obliged to take
up his residence in Scotland; that the English Parliament
had deprived him of his royal power and prerogative, and
had assumed the government and administration of the
realm; that as these "storms blew aloft", and were likely
to be carried into Ireland by the vehemency of the Protestant party, he
had given full power to his Catholic subjects to assemble and consult,
to seize all places of strength
except those belonging to the Scots, and to arrest the goods
and persons of all English Protestants within the kingdom
of Ireland.
The effect produced by the report of
this pseudo-com-
mission on the Puritans of Ulster, as well as on the Irish,
was so great that the Lords Justices issued a Proclamation
conveying a warning against false and seditious rumours,
and declaring that they had authority from the King to
pursue all rebels to the uttermost extremity. That the
forged commission was generally accepted as genuine even
by the English is certain, the chicanery of Charles having
earned for him a reputation for dishonesty of purpose so
diffused that no man believed in him. When Sir Phelim
O'Neill produced the pseudo- commission in public and
declared at the same time that he would be a traitor if he
acted of his own accord, an Englishman who was present
exclaimed: "We are a sold peopleI" and such was the
general belief.
The rebellion "was as yet an
insurrection of lords and
gentlemen", says a writer on this period'; "nor is there",
he adds, "any reason to believe that anything more was
designed by these than a partial transfer of property, and
certain stipulations in favour of the Church of Rome ".
But Sir Phelim O'Neill was already at the head of some
30,000 men, the majority of them undisciplined and unaccustomed to bear
arms. Sir Phelim himself was a civilian
when he assumed the somewhat bombastic title of Lord
General of the Catholic Army in Ulster. His followers could
scarcely be said to be, in any sense, an army, for in addition
to an utter lack of discipline they possessed antiquated arms
and little ammunition, and were not even provided with
pikes, for they had not had time to make them. To command such an
irresponsible irregular herd of humanity was
obviously impossible, especially when they were united and
animated by but a single desire a yearning for the blood
of those who had, they held, for years heaped injuries and
insults upon them.
Such a motley multitude, with wild
passions long sup-
pressed let loose, would be, even in the hands of men
"entirely great", a weapon dangerous to the public weal.
But Sir Phelim was not great; and being himself somewhat
volatile and a victim to violent fits of passion, he did not
possess the power to control, nor the ability to lead the
irregular forces of which he undertook the command; and
later he lamented the cruelties which he had either countenanced or
instigated.
But it must not be thought that the
Irish alone were to
blame for the murders and massacres perpetrated at this
period. Lord Castlehaven, who cannot be accused of being
biased in favour of the Irish, has recorded his convictions
in no ambiguous terms. "The truth is," he wrote, "they
were very bloody on both sides, and though some will throw
all on the Irish, yet 'tis well known who they were that used
to give orders to their parties, sent into enemies' quarters,
to spare neither man, woman, nor child. And the leading
men among the Irish have this to say for themselves, that
they were all along so far from favouring any of the
murderers, that not only by their agents, soon after the
King's restoration, but even in their Remonstrance, presented
by the Lord Viscount Gormanston and Sir Robert Talbot,
on the 1 7th of March, 1642, the nobility and gentry of the
nation desired that the murders on both sides committed
should be strictly examined, and the authors of them
punished, according to the utmost severity of the law; which
proposal, certainly, their adversaries could never have rejected but
that they were conscious to themselves of being
deeper in the mire than they would have the world believe."
A Remonstrance in which some of the
rebels sought to
justify themselves, and signally failed to do so, was that
drawn by William Bedell, the learned and lovable Protestant
Bishop of Kilmore, at the request of two O'Reillys of Cavan,
of whom one was a sheriff, the other a Member of Parliament. It purports
to be "the remonstrance of the gentry and
commonalty of the county of Cavan", and the signatories
declare that the rising was caused by the fear of "captivity
or utter expulsion from our native seats, without any just
ground given" for such proceedings; and that "for the preventing,
therefore, of such evils growing upon us in this
kingdom, we have, for the preservation of his majesty's
honour and our own liberties, thought fit to take into our
hands for his highness's use and service, such forts and
other places of strength, as, coming into the possession of
others, might prove disadvantageous and tend to the utter
undoing of the kingdom".
The Dean of Kilmore, the Very Reverend
Henry Jones,
was requested to convey this Remonstrance, which is dated
6th November, 1641, to Dublin, which he did much against
his will, only consenting because the doing so would give
him an opportunity to tell the Lords Justices how matters
stood in Cavan, "which by letters could not so safely be
delivered". In Cavan there was at first less bloodshed than
in the neighbouring counties, but the English, men, women,
and children, were driven naked from their homes to take
refuge in the woods and die of starvation. The bridge of
Belturbet rivalled in notoriety that of Portadown on account
of the number thrown from it to drown in the waters beneath.
The massacre here is said to have been instigated by the
wife of one of the O'Reillys, who, notwithstanding their
Remonstrance, were now actively preparing to attack Dublin.
The rebellion spread to the other
three provinces, and
was not by any means confined to Ulster; and the Lords
Justices, who were lamentably lacking in discrimination, and
were by no means past-masters in the science of psychology,
were called upon to face the ordeal of a demand made by the
Roman Catholic nobility and gentry of the Pale, for arms
wherewith to protect their persons and their property from
the depredations of the insurgents. This caused Parsons
and Borlase not a little mental perturbation, for to grant
the request might be to encourage hitherto loyal subjects
to rebel "how oft the sight of instruments to do ill deeds,
makes ill deeds done!" On the other hand, to refuse arms
to those who professed loyalty to the King and constitution
might have the result of swelling the numbers of those
under the banner of Sir Phelim O'Neill. The Lords Justices
chose the lesser evil, and accordingly commissions carrying
plenary powers were issued to several of the applicants, who
were also appointed governors of counties, and authorized
to have recourse to martial law when necessary.
In this way, arms out of the stores in
Dublin Castle were
dealt out to many noblemen and gentlemen, notably to Sir
Christopher Bellew, Sir Nicholas Barnwell, Viscount Gormanston, George,
Earl of Kildare, and Sir Thomas Nugent.
Of these Bellew and Gormanston joined the rebels, Kildare
and Nugent remained loyal, while Barnwell cleared out of
the country, to return later to assume the governorship of
County Dublin.
Early in June, 1641, Robert Sidney,
Earl of Leicester, had
been appointed Lord-Lieutenant, but he declined to live in
Ireland, and never came over. However, although the
Lords Justices continued to act as Chief Governors, the Lord-Lieutenant
could not be ignored, and accordingly the Irish
Government sent him in the closing days of October a full
account of the rebellion by the hand of Owen O'Connolly,
who was rewarded for his loyalty with a gift of £500 and a
pension of £200, "until an estate of greater value could be
provided".
The Irish Parliament met in mid-
November, and both
Houses agreed in a protestation against all who, "contrary
to their duty and loyalty to His Majesty, and against the
laws of God, and the fundamental laws of the realm, have
traitorously and rebelliously raised arms, have seized on some
of His Majesty's forts and castles, and dispossessed many of
His Majesty's faithful subjects of their houses, lands, and
goods, and have slain many of them, and committed other
cruel and inhumane outrages and acts of hostility within the
realm", and they pledged themselves to "take up arms
and with their lives and fortunes suppress them and their
attempts".
The attempts of the northern rebels
were, however, insignificant in comparison with their achievements. At
first
they affected to spare the Scots, hoping by their forbearance
to induce them to join in the rebellion; but when the Irish
leaders found not only that the Irish Scots remained loyal,
but that the Scots were prepared to oppose them, their
resentment against the Scots exceeded, if possible, their
hatred of the English, and the Ulster Scots were, in consequence,
subjected to most diabolical cruelty, modes of torture
being practised upon them in comparison with which the
inventions of the Inquisition and the methods of the red
Indian or of the mandarin sink into insignificance and may
be contemplated with composure. As the details of these
are far from delectable, the reader may safely be referred
for particulars to contemporary documents which give sufficient evidence
on the subject to satisfy the most incredulous.
As ill invariably keeps echoing ill,
the Scots retaliated by
showing little mercy to the Irish whenever they fell into their
hands. Of this instance of the carrying out of the law of
retaliation, one example may suffice. A small peninsula
called Island Magee, near the town of Carrickfergus, was
inhabited by some Irish families, some members of whom
had in its earlier stages identified themselves with the rebels.
A body of Scottish soldiers being garrisoned in Carrickfergus
awaited a fitting opportunity, and taking advantage of a dark
night in January, 1642, sallied forth and, falling unawares
upon these Irish Roman Catholics who had been quiescent
for some months, put the greater part, if not the whole of
them, to the sword. According to the confession of the perpetrators of
this deed, thirty families were surprised in their
beds and deliberately put to death.
There is, however, a pleasanter side
to the picture. Sir
Phelim O'Neill's mother distinguished herself by sheltering
four-and-twenty English and Scots under her roof, and
preserving them uninjured throughout the troublous times.
Her son, Sir Phelim's step-brother, imitated her noble
example and conveyed many of the English Protestants in
safety from. Armagh to Newry and Drogheda. The Rev.
George Crichton, a Scotsman as his name suggests, vicar
of Lurgan, was told by Captain Tirlogh MacShane MacPhilip O'Reilly that
the Irish would harm no Scot; he
added that directions had been received from His Majesty
"to do all these things to curb the Parliament of England;
for all the Catholics in England should have been compelled to go to
Church; or else they should be all hanged
before their own doors". Crichton, who lived at Virginia,
lodged refugees in his house, and provided many with food
and clothing. He told his wife, when she urged upon him
the wisdom of flight, that "in this trouble God had called
them to do Him that service", and continued to tend the
wounded and give milk to the children until the fugitives
ceased to call upon him.
Philip MacHugh MacShane O'Reilly,
member for the
county Cavan, was the chosen leader of the Irish. Crichton
no doubt owed his life, and the lives of his wife and children,
to the fact that he was a Scot, for he discovered that Philip
MacHugh's mother was an Argyle, "of which house it
seemeth that she was well pleased that she was descended.
This kindred stood me in great stead afterwards, for although
it was far off and old, yet it bound the hands of the ruder sort
from shedding my blood." Thus this Admirable Crichton
escaped scot-free, thanks to his courage, nationality, and
diplomacy.
Londonderry remained the bulwark of
the north, Sir
Phelim's attempts to take it having failed signally. The city
of London now sent four ships to its relief with provisions,
clothing, accoutrements for several companies of foot, and
much ammunition. |
