Renewal Of The Persecution (Of The Catholics) Towards The Close Of 1678 part 1.

Titus Oates The Perjurer

In the year 1678 the enemies of Catholicity in England, anxious to make a last assault on the Church of their fathers, entered into a conspiracy as dark and as hideous as any known in history. The chief agent in this plot was Titus Oates, whose name has been attached to it by posterity. He had been a clergyman of the Established Church, but preferred to his benefice an infamous and vagrant life. Under ever-varying disguises he insinuated himself into some religious houses on the continent, and made himself sufficiently acquainted with Catholic usages and distinguished Catholic names to be able to give a semblance of circumstantial accuracy to any anti-Catholic tale which he might devise. Returning to England, he found the Protestant populace in a ferment lest a Papist should succeed to the royal throne, and he soon learned that the leaders of the opposition _ were eager to second and repay each effort to fan the flame. Such was, then, the disposition of mens' minds, that the monstrous romance which he constructed was hailed with applause, and found credence, not only with the vulgar, but even with the most sober members of the king's council. The Pope, he said, had handed over the government of England to the Jesuits, and these had already, by commissions under the great seal of the society, appointed to all the chief offices in church and state. Once before the Papists had burned London: that scene was to be now renewed, whilst in the confusion they would assassinate the king, and, at a given signal, each Catholic should massacre his Protestant neighbours.

This tale was not merely greeted with applause. Oates became the idol of the people, and through the influence of his patrons, was raised on a sudden from obscurity and poverty to a position of dignity and wealth Hence he soon found associates and rivals. To give perjured evidence, and lead Catholics to the scaffold, had proved a good speculation, and many wished to share in its profits and honours. We shall allow a Protestant historian to trace the character of the principal of these informers. "A wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a living in Scotland, by going disguised to conventicles, and then informing against the preachers, led the way: Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon, from all the brothels, gambling-houses, and spunging houses of London, false witnesses poured forth, to swear away the lives of Roman Catholics. One came with the story, of an army of thirty thousand men, who were to muster in the disguise of pilgrims, at Corunna, and to sail thence to Wales. Another had been promised canonization and five hundred pounds to murder the king.

Oates, that he might not be eclipsed by his imitators, soon added a large supplement to his original narrative. The vulgar believed, and the highest magistrates pretended to believe even such fictions as these. The chief judges of the kingdom were corrupt, cruel, and timid... . The juries partook of the feelings then common throughout the nation, and were encouraged by the bench to indulge those feelings without restraint. The multitude applauded Oates and his confederates, hooted and pelted the witnesses who appeared on behalf of the accused, and shouted with joy when the verdict of guilty was pronounced." And hence, as the same writer had already remarked, the courts of justice, "which ought to be sure places of refuge for the innocent of every party, were disgraced by wilder passions and fouler corruptions'' than could be found in the annals of England.

Such an excitement against the Catholics naturally found a response in the Protestant ascendancy of Ireland. Ormond was, at this time, Viceroy; his private letters, indeed, prove that he gave no credence to the accusations against the Catholics, but, nevertheless, with his usual duplicity, he enacted such measures and laws as supposed and confirmed the belief of the reality- of their treasonable designs. The council of Ireland met in the presence of the Viceroy, on the 14th of October, 1678. Their first enactment was, that all officers and soldiers should repair without delay to their respective garrisons. A proclamation ensued, commanding "all titular Popish bishops and dignitaries, and all others exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction by authority from the See of Rome, all Jesuits and other regular priests," to depart from the kingdom before the 20th of November following; whilst a reward was offered of £10 for the capture of a bishop, and £5 for that of a regular, after that period. Orders were, at the same time, given, that all "Popish societies, convents, seminaries, and schools," should be forthwith dissolved and utterly suppressed.

To prevent all excuses for not obeying the foregoing proclamation, another was issued on the 16th of November, requiring all owners and masters of ships bound for foreign parts to receive "the Popish clergy" on board, and to transport them accordingly.

It was deemed necessary, too, to disarm the Catholics; and a special-proclamation enacted, that "no persons of the Popish religion should carry, buy, use, or keep in their houses any arms without license; and that all justices of the peace should search for such arms as were not brought in within twenty days, and bind over the offenders to be prosecuted at the next assizes.''

It was feared, however, that some officers were remiss in executing these laws, and hence positive orders were further issued on the 2nd of December, by the Lord Lieutenant and council, addressed to the sheriffs of the several counties, and to be by them communicated to the justices of the peace, " taking notice of their neglect in not apprehending such of the Popish regular clergy as did not transport themselves, and requiring them to return, not only their names, but the names also of such as received, relieved, and harboured them." They were, moreover, required to return " the names of all persons licensed to carry arms, and to prosecute those who had not delivered in their arms" according to preceding proclamations.

These orders were principally directed against the prelates and regulars, but in reality the officers commissioned with their execution prosecuted alike the secular clergy; it was enough for them to raise the cry that any one was a Jesuit in disguise to obtain their reward. A proclamation, however, published on the 26th of March, 1679, had the secular clergy for its special object. It commanded "that when there was any Popish pretended parish priest of any place where any robbery or murder was committed by the tories he should be seized upon, committed to the common gaol, and thence transported beyond the seas, unless within fourteen days after such robbery or murder the persons guilty thereof were either killed or taken, or such discovery made thereof in that time, as the offenders might therefore be apprehended and brought to justice."

A further proclamation ordered the suppression of "Mass-houses and meetings for Popish services in the cities and suburbs of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Kinsale,Wexford, Athlone, Ross, Galway, Drogheda, Youghall, Clonmel, and Kilkenny," these being the most considerable towns in the kingdom, "in which too many precautions could not be taken"

No soldier had for many years been admitted to the army till he had taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. It was now rumoured that some, after entering the service, had embraced the Catholic religion, and hence a special proclamation offered rewards " for the discovery of any officer or soldier who had heard Mass or been so perverted to the Popish religion." On the same day with this proclamation (20th November, 1678), another was issued, prohibiting all Catholics, "from entering the Castle of Dublin, or any other fort or citadel," and ordering that "no persons of the Romish religion" should be suffered to reside in the towns of Drogheda, Wexford, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Youghall, and Galway, or in any other corporation, excepting such as " for the greatest part of the twelve months past had inhabited them."

The result of such stringent measures, though, perhaps, it did satisfy the cravings of those who had anxiously looked forward to the rooting out of Catholicity from the "Island of Saints," yet was such as even to surpass the expectations of moderate Protestants, and Carte remarks, that though all the clergy were not expelled from the kingdom, " which never was, and never will be, the consequence of a proclamation; yet more had been shipped off than could have been imagined, and the rest lurked in corners, and durst not come near the great towns." (Ibid. 483.)

The illustrious Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Talbot, returned to England from his exile on the continent in 1676, and a few months before the present outburst of feeling against the Catholics, through the intercession of the Duke of York, obtained permission to revisit and console his spiritual flock. Though subject to violent disease, and apparently at the close of his eventful career, yet was he chosen by the malignant policy of Ormond to be the first Irish victim of the persecution. Dr. Plunket announces his arrest, writing on the 27th of October, 1678:—

"The matter being proposed and discussed in the Provincial Council that I should make a visitation of the province, I commenced with Meath, which is the first suffragan diocese, and then proceeded to the diocese of Clonmacnoise, where I had scarcely finished when the news arrived by post, that Dr. Talbot of Dublin was arrested and imprisoned in the Castle or Tower of this city. I received this news on the 21st of the past month; immediately afterwards came a proclamation or edict, banishing all the archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, and all the regulars, commanding them to leave the kingdom before the 20th of November, and threatening penalties and fines against any secular who would give them to eat or drink, or otherwise assist them. I was quite astonished at the arrest of the Archbishop of Dublin, the more so, as since his return to Ireland he did not perform any ecclesiastical function.

"The convents of the poor regular clergy have been all scattered and destroyed; so that all the disputes and the reforms which were in contemplation for them are all terminated by this edict. The parish priests and secular priests are not included in it. It is not known what particular accusation has been made against the Archbishop of Dublin; he is in the secret prison, and no one is allowed to hold communication with him. Some have been imprisoned in London on suspicion of conspiracy against the king, and for maintaining private correspondence with foreign princes, and for the murder of a nobleman who was found dead in London. As to the conspiracy against the king, it is a merely imaginary one. I have not been included by name in the present edict, nor in that passed four years ago, and, therefore, I will remain in the kingdom, though retired in some country place, and it is probable that Dr. Brennan and I shall be together.

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681. 

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 10.

§ 10.—Decay Of The Puritan Colonists.

That Protestant colonists have never been able to secure a permanent hereditary succession in Ireland, is a matter of notoriety. As regards the Puritan hordes that rushed over to seize on the devastated country, we shall merely cite an extract from the manuscript narrative now referred to:—

[Cambrensis Eversns writes in 1662 almost in the same strain. "They have drawn their precedent from the policy of the Philistines who, after banishing all smiths from the land, fell upon the Israelites unarmed," &c. Edit. Dublin, page 23.]


"The English Parliamentarians in the beginning of the war, inflated with their own power and strength, did not hesitate to parcel out Ireland for sale to the London merchants, and other heretics throughout England. The whole kingdom was thus divided, as if by agrarian law, into geometrical portions, a certain price being fixed for each farm. Each one purchased for himself some vast territory, subdividing it at a higher price to others. New colonists thus flocked to Ireland in countless numbers ; artisans, merchants, soldiers, and others, numbering more than 200,000. To consummate the insolence of their pride, they already prepared ships with chains and cords, and more than 30,000 iron manacles are said to have been made, to transfer the Irish slaves (it was thus they designated our free and innocent people) to the Indian islands to cultivate the tobacco-plant, and they were all persuaded that the old inhabitants being expelled they had nothing to do but settle down at their ease and enjoy their estates. But, behold the hand of the Lord struck these persecutors, I might say, with Egyptian plagues. They were not, as yet, three months in Ireland, when most fetid vermin crawled forth from their bodies in such swarms, that their hair, and beard, and garments, were covered with them, so that they could not appear in public through shame, nor could they anywhere fmd rest, and what increased the wonder, though their beds and rooms were filled with this pest, yet the contagion did not spread to the neighbouring Irish, nor did it even touch the Irish servants of those who were infected with it, not one of whom is known to have suffered from this disease; it was confined to the strangers alone, and by that disease, and in other ways, God so humbled their pride, that from 1641 to 1650 more than 180,000 English in various parts of Ireland were carried away, not so much slain in war, as destroyed by this herodian disease and other plagues. And though the Puritans have now nearly all Ireland in their own hands, still we are confident that they will not last, nor strike deep roots ; but when our offended God will have through them scourged us for our iniquities, the earth shall, in the words of scripture, vomit them forth, and like their predecessors they, too, will fall away. For it is observed and confirmed by experience, since the beginning of the anglican schism, all the heretics that went from England to inhabit Ireland, though they were by rapine and exactions raised on a sudden to immense wealth and the highest titles, yet, like snow at sunrise, they melted gradually away, and as smoke and vapour they quickly disappeared. Not that this is to be imputed to the English nation, whose natural disposition and innate uprightness, were they not infected with heresy, would be admired and loved by all; but in these facts we recognize the special punishment of God for heresy, and the special protection of St. Patrick for our island, who, as he expelled all serpents from our shores, so that nothing venomous can, to the present day, subsist there, so did he obtain for us this blessing from God, that the Catholic religion being once planted in Ireland, it should never be infected by the poisonous breath of heresy. The Catholic religion has certainly continued untainted for twelve hundred years and more, in our island; so that from the blessing already received through the intercession of our holy Patron, we have reason to hope for the future blessing, and the present firmness of the nation in the faith of Christ, is a pledge of its future constancy."

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681. 

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 9.

§ 9.—Constancy Of The Irish In The Faith.

The author of Cambrensis Eversus well contrasts the condition of the Irish nation, with that of other countries, at the close of this sad period :—

"The happiness of the other nations of Europe has often excited our envy. They have peace on every side, and dwell everyone under his own vine and fig-tree, but we are expelled from our home and country; others overflow with abundance of all things, we are emaciated by want; the foreigner is naturalized amongst us, the natives are made aliens. In foreign cities majestic piles of new buildings are every day towering to the skies, with us the foundations of not a single house are laid, while the old are heaps of crumbling ruins, their roofs open to the rains, and their walls rent, or mere shells and shapeless masses. In other countries temples are zealously decorated, with us they are either levelled to the ground or roofless, or desecrated by tribunals which condemn men to death, or by similar sacrilegious uses. The children of foreigners receive a learned education, which is contraband and penal in our country. With them the clergy are honoured, with us they are either in dungeons or forests, bogs or caverns. The universal law of the Christian world has exempted from slavery all who profess the Christian religion; but your Irish subjects are torn from the" arms of their wives and children by civic vultures, and transported and sold as slaves in India. Thus are the children of the Irish made a prey, and their wives carried off, and their cities destroyed, and their holy things profaned, and themselves made a reproach to the nations. . . . There is no species of injury which the enemies have not inflicted on the Irish, no virulence which they have not disgorged, no torture which they have not employed."

It would, indeed, be difficult to find in history a parallel for that ever-redoubled cruelty which the Puritans displayed. Yet it was impossible to weaken the innate attachment of the Roman Catholics to their holy religion. Countless was the number of those who perished by the sword of the persecutor, or on the scaffold, yet the survivors declared themselves ready to risk the same torments rather than renounce the Catholic faith. When they were offered the enjoyment of their possessions, should they embrace the new creed, all, as in Cork, went forth from their homes, embracing poverty, and cold, and nakedness, in preference to prosperity with the wicked ; when their lives were offered to them if they only delivered up their priests to the mercy of the enemy, they choose to be butchered with the martyrs of God rather than live with the impious ; when, as we have just seen, the oath of abjuration was commanded, under penalty of the loss of the little goods that yet remained to them, they, with one accord, resolved to cling to the cross of Christ, and reject the proffered boon. As a true Christian people, they looked upon all their sufferings as chastisements from the hands of God, and their chief care was, by penitential deeds, to avert his indignation. One instance is especially recorded in the "Description of Ireland in 1654" :—

"Throughout the entire kingdom prayers and fasting were ordered; the priest in each district exhorting- the people to appease the anger of God. With such exactness was this order obeyed, that there was not one Catholic throughout the entire kingdom who did not fast for three days on bread and water, and even the little children of four, or perhaps only three years, most rigorously observed that fast; moreover, all that had attained the proper age were consoled with the holy sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist. No sooner did this piety of the people become known, than, like oil cast upon the fire, the fury of the heretics was rekindled three-fold, and, like hungry wolves, they now breathe nothing but slaughter, and threaten to pursue, with still more atrocious violence, the children of Christ."

Thus, as often in the ways of God, the immediate result of the piety of our people seemed to be only a redoubling of the persecutor's rage, and yet these prayers were not breathed in vain; "a remnant remained in Israel;" all the power and ingenuity of the enemy could not root out the tree of faith, and the 500,000 Catholics that then survived in Ireland were in less than two hundred years swelled to more than eight millions.

Sir William Petty, writing in 1672, states that the population of Ireland, in 1641, was 1,466,000, the Catholics being to Protestants as eleven to two. After the devastation of the country by the Puritans, the population could not be accurately determined, yet the same writer (page 29), estimates the proportion of Catholics to Protestants as eight to one- Lord Orrery, writing to the Duke of Ormond, Feb. 26, 1662, says—" It is high time to purge the towns of the papists, as in most of them there are three papists to one Protestant." At the same time, in the rural districts, the Catholics were as fifteen to one. Dr. Plunket, in some of his letters, states the proportion of Catholics to Protestants throughout Ireland as eleven to one; but he subsequently adds that the proportion was small in the northern counties. It cannot, of course, be pretended that these calculations were accurate, for, owing to the state of the country, it must have been impossible to learn the precise number of the Catholic inhabitants in the rural districts. One thing, however, they sufficiently prove, that the persecutors had not attained the desired end, and that with the Irish race the Catholic religion was still firmly rooted in Ireland. Sir William Petty describes as follows the religion of our country at this period :—"All the Irish are Catholics; the Scotch colonists are Presbyterians; the English are one-half Protestant, the other half Independents, Anabaptists, Quakers, and other dissenters."

We have already often had occasion to refer to a manuscript narrative of the Jesuit Mission in Ireland, written about the year 1655; from it we extract the following record of the devotedness of the surviving natives in enduring every suffering rather than abandon the Catholic faith :—

"Although heresy and tyranny, in the fullness of its pride, strove by every artifice and cruelty, to extirpate this people, and wished that there" should be no smith in Israel, that thus the nations might be either overwhelmed in ignorance, or compelled to whet their arms in the forges of the Philistines; nevertheless, the Irish, despising every danger, choose rather to send their children to distant lands in search of learning, than that they should enjoy at home domestic ease under heretical masters, imperiling their faith. So tenaciously and indomitably has the whole nation clung to the Catholic faith in its full integrity and purity, that in a thousand Irishmen, scarcely one can be found who is not thoroughly devoted to the Holy See; and even the heretics who came to Ireland from other countries, when they have lived there for a little while, and become accustomed to the genius of the people, gradually detest their heresies, and embrace the Catholic religion."

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681. 

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 8.

§ 8.—The Oath Of Abjuration.


Father Richard Shelton, Superior of the Jesuits in Ireland, writing to the Sacred Congregation, on 28th of April, 1658, conveyed the sad intelligence, that the persecution of Cromwell against the Irish Catholics was carried on with ever increasing fury; two of the Jesuit fathers had lately been arrested, and were treated with great cruelty, especially, he adds, "every effort is now made to compel the Catholics, by exile, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, and other penalties, to take the sacrilegious oath of abjuration, but all in vain, for as yet there has not been even one to take it, with the exception of a stranger residing in our island, who had acquired large possessions, and being afraid of losing them, and at the same time being ashamed of the other Catholics, undertook a journey of more than 200 miles, to present himself to one of Cromwell's commissaries "


The oath devised by Cromwell, condensed into a few formulas all the virulence of Puritanism against the Catholic tenets. It was as follows:—


"I A. B. abhor, detest, and abjure the authority of the Pope, as well in regard of the Church in general, as in regard of myself in particular. I condemn and anathematize the tenet that any reward is due to good works. I firmly believe and avow that no reverence is due to the Virgin Mary, or to any other saint in heaven; and that no petition or adoration can be addressed to them without idolatry. I assert, that no worship or reverence is due to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or to the elements of bread and wine after consecration, by whomsoever that consecration may be made. I believe there is no Purgatory, but that it is a popish invention; so is also the tenet that the Pope can grant Indulgences. I also firmly believe that neither the Pope, nor any other priest, can remit sins, as the papists rave. And all this I swear," &c.

( In a note of the Sacred Congregation at this period, reference is made to a Brief sent by the Holy Father to console the Catholics of Ireland, and animate them to endure with constancy the persecution to which they were exposed.)

The penalty enacted against all who should refuse to take this oath was the confiscation of two-thirds of all their goods, which was to be repeated each time that they should prove refractory. It was expected that the Catholic gentry, already reduced to poverty by continued exactions, would be terrified into compliance by the dread of absolute penury and utter ruin which now impended over them. As to the poorer class, another penalty was enacted, forsooth, slavery in the Barbadoes. In every town commissaries and officers were specially deputed to receive this oath, and these received instructions from Government to commence with such persons as would probably assent to the oath, and to proceed in the matter with the greatest energy. At this moment of peril for the faith of our people, the Catholic clergy were everywhere to be seen abandoning their hiding-places to encourage their flocks; they fearlessly went around from house to house admonishing the rich to despise their transitory possessions, when an eternal inheritance was at stake, and reminding the poor that God's providence would not abandon them, and that in his own good time God would repay an hundred-fold all their sufferings.

"These exhortations were not made in vain (we quote the words of a contemporary narrative), and the innate constancy of the whole nation in the Catholic faith, shone forth with such splendour, that a like instance of national constancy can nowhere be found in history; all, animated with the spirit of faith, declared that they were ready to endure extreme torture, rather than obey the impious edict. Even the most wealthy betrayed no apprehensions, and they avowed that of all the penal enactments, this was the most grateful to them; for in the others some secondary motive was often assigned, but here the only and express motive was hatred to the Catholic faith, for which it would be to them a matter of joy to sacrifice whatsoever they possessed ?"

For once the heretics were found to second the efforts of the Catholic clergy. They yearned for new confiscations, and already had marked out for themselves the lands now possessed in Connaught by the transplanted Irish gentry. The better to secure their prey, they assumed the sheep's clothing, and going round amongst the Catholics, they declared that the act of parliament was most unjust, that no one should interfere with their conscientious convictions, that they admired the steadfastness of the Catholics in adhering to principle despite every enactment, and that this heroic constancy of the nation had won for it an immortal fame throughout the kingdoms of Europe. The Catholics were not deceived by these vain appearances, but, nevertheless, they clung unflinching to their holy resolve.

The citizens of Cork had already distinguished themselves by their constancy in the Catholic faith; when summoned to take the impious oath their laurels were multiplied ten-fold.

To the city of Cork all the Catholics of the surrounding territory were ordered to repair on a stated day to have the new oath proposed to them; the penalty of imprisonment and confiscation of all their goods was enacted for all above fifteen years of age who should neglect to attend. On the appointed day, between five and six thousand Catholics entered the city walls; a few only absented themselves, anxious to await the result. According to the heretical custom of holding the assizes in the cherished sanctuaries of the Catholics, the magistrates took their seats in Christ's Church, a happy omen that even the material edifice should be dedicated to Him whose faith was now so nobly to be confessed. All were arranged in processional order, that the oath might be more easily administered individually to each of them. In the foremost ranks was a young man who entered the church with a light step, and whose looks beamed with joy. The clerk received immediate orders to administer to him for the first the oath; for the magistrate saw in his joyous countenance a readiness, as they imagined, to assent to their desires. The young man requested that the oath should be translated into Irish, for he feared lest some of those around him not understanding the English language, might inadvertently take the oath; a crier at once read it aloud in Irish, so that all within the church might hear. "And whatis the penalty," he then asked, "for those who refuse the oath." "The loss of two-thirds of their goods," was the magistrate's reply. "Well, then," added he smiling, all that I possess is six pounds; take four of them; with the two that remain and the blessing of God, myself and my family will subsist; I reject your oath." An aged husbandman that Stood by his side, filled with admiration, cried out aloud, "Brave fellow, reject the oath." The.words were caught up from rank to rank till the church and the street without rang with the echo, "reject the oath, the impious oath." For half an hour these words and the exclamation, " Oh God look down on us;" " Oh Mary, mother of God, assist us," could alone be heard. The magistrates, as though a thunderclap had rent the heavens, were struck mute with terror; then rising from their seats, they commanded the assembled multitude to disperse, and every one of them under pain of death, to depart from the city within an hour. Thus, concludes the contemporary narrative, the glorious confessors of Christ went forth with joy, praising God for the mercy he had shown to them.

In other districts similar scenes of Catholic constancy were witnessed, and none could be found to assent to the impious oath, and barter for the momentary enjoyment of their perishable goods the priceless treasure of their faith.

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681.

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 7.

§ 7.—Irish Exported As Slaves.

It was not enough to import foreigners of every hue and every denomination into Ireland; the Puritan rulers deemed it further necessary to export as slaves to the American islands as many of the natives as yet survived the miseries and vexations of Connaught. Jamaica and the adjoining islands had lately passed into the hands of England, and slaves were wanting to cultivate the sugar and tobacco-plant on their deadly soil. Sir William Petty, writing in 1672, states that six thousand boys and women were thus sold as slaves to the undertakers of the American islands. Bruodin estimates the total number of the exiles from Ireland at 100,000; and adds, that of these several thousands were transported to the tobacco islands. A letter, written in 1656, cited by Dr. Lingard, reckons the number of Catholics thus sent to slavery at 60,000. "The Catholics are sent off in ships-full to the Barbadoes and other American islands. I believe 60,000 have already gone; for the husbands being first sent to Spain and Belgium already, their wives and children are now destined for the Americans."

This transportation to slavery was even viewed by the Puritan persecutors as a boon they were conferring on the Irish Catholics. When Secretary Thurloe wrote to the Lord Deputy of Ireland to inform him that a stock of Irish was required for the peopling of Jamaica, the Lord Deputy replied: —

"Concerning the supply of young men, although we must use force in taking them up, yet it being so much for their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, it is not the least doubted but that you may have such a number of them as you may think fit to make use of on this account. I shall not need repeat anything regarding the girls, not doubting to answer your expectations to the full in that; and I think it might be of like advantage to your affairs there and ours here, if you should think fit to send fifteen hundred or two thousand boys to the place above mentioned. We can well spare them, and who knows but that it may be the means of making them Englishmen—I mean rather Christians. As for the girls, I suppose you will make provisions of clothes and other accommodations for them."

The author of the "Description of Ireland in 1654,'" without stating the number of those thus transported to the tobacco islands, observes:—

"The heretics at length, despairing of being ever able to alienate the Irish from the ancient faith, transport their children in ships-full for sale to the Indian islands, that thus, forsooth, no remnant of the Irish race may survive, and none escape from the utter extermination of the nation."

[When the Rev. John Grace visited these islands in 1666, he found that there were as yet no fewer than 12,000 Irish scattered amongst them, and that they were treated as slaves.]—(From his letter of 5th of July, 1669).

The same writer adds an instance of the sufferings to which the Irish slaves "were subjected in these distant islands:—

"God alone knows the severe lot that awaits the Irish children in that slavery. We may form some idea of it from what happened to some others of our nation there last year, that is to say, in 1653. The heretics, seeing that matters were prospering with the Irish in the island of St. Christopher, and being excited partly by envy and partly by hatred of the Catholic religion, seized in one night and bound with chains three hundred of the principal Irish that were there, and carried them off to a desert island, which was wholly destitute of all necessaries of life, that there they might inevitably perish from cold and starvation. This was, alas! too sadly realized in all, excepting two, who, through despair, cast themselves into the sea, resolving to risk their lives rather on the waves than on the barren rocks. One of these soon perished, the other reached the mainland, bearing the sad intelligence of the dreadful fate of his companions."

The letter of father Grace, already mentioned, states that those who yet survived in 1666 were cruelly treated both temporally and spiritually: "The administration of the sacraments and the giving of instruction is wholly interdicted, nor can any priest visit them without risking his life."

Another "Relatio" of the same islands, made about the same time, reckons the population of Barbadoes at 40,000, of whom 8,000 were Irish; and it adds, regarding these Irish, that "they are sadly deprived of spiritual assistance; nevertheless their constancy in the faith is wondrous and miraculous (mira et miraculosa), for they cling to it despite the oppressive exactions, and threats, and promises, and innumerable arts employed by the heretics to withdraw them from it." In another small island adjoining St. Christopher, the same narrative says, there were 600 Irish; these stealthily sought to frequent the sacraments, and assist at the holy sacrifice in some of the French chapels, but "as often as they are discovered they receive the lash and are fined by their English masters" (mulctas et verbera patiuntur ab Anglis.)

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681.

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 5.

Map of Clare as laid out in 1654 to receive the Irish
of the three other provinces. Link

§ 5.—Transplanting To Connaught.

The sword, and subsequent persecuting edicts, did not succeed in exterminating the Catholic Irish. Hence, the ingenuity of the Puritan masters was set to work to discover some new means for attaining that end. A spot was chosen, the most desolate and devastated in the whole kingdom, and thither, by public proclamation, (in 1654,) all Catholics were commanded to repair. This was, in fact, nothing less than a frightful imprisonment of all the survivors of the nation. To Connaught or the scaffold, was the fiendish cry of the persecutors throughout the country; and yet it was not even the province of Connaught, but only the barren portions of it that the bounty of the Puritans set aside for the Irish Catholics. The heretics retained for themselves a breadth of four miles along the shores of the Atlantic, and of two miles along the rich banks of the Shannon. The Irish, moreover, were not allowed to reside in the capital of the province, or in any of the market-towns. Pent up within these precincts, it was expected that the Catholic race would soon become extinct by famine and disease; for throughout this barren district the new-comers were friendless and unpitied, without food to eat or house to afford them a protection; there was no seed to sow, nor cattle to stock the land. It was death for an Irishman to step beyond the limits thus cruelly traced, and any mere Irishman found in any other part of the kingdom could be butchered without further inquiry. We shall allow Lord Clarendon to sketch this refinement of Puritan policy:—

"They found the utter extermination of the nation which they had intended, to be in itself very difficult, and to carry in it somewhat of horror, that made some impression upon the stone-hardness of their own hearts. After so many thousands destroyed by the plague which raged over the kingdom, by fire, sword, and famine, and after so many thousands transported to foreign parts, there remained still such a numerous"people, that they knew not how to dispose of; and though they were declared to be all forfeited, and so to have no title to anything, yet they must remain somewhere; they therefore found this expedient, which they called an Act of grace. There was a large tract of land, even to the half of the province of Connaught, that was separated from the rest by a long and large river, and which by the plague, and many massacres, remained almost desolate. Into this space they required all the Irish to retire by such a day, under the penalty of death; and who should after that time be found in any other part of the kingdom, man, woman, or child, should be killed by anybody who saw or met them. The land within the circuit, the most barren in the kingdom, was, out of this grace and mercy of the conquerors, assigned to those of the nation as were enclosed, in such proportions as might -with great industry preserve their lives."— (Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 116.)*

The persecutors, however, were not satiated by thus transplanting the Irish inhabitants; they, moreover, obliged all to whom some portions of land were marked out in this barren district, to sign conveyances or releases of their titles to their former properties, that thus they and their heirs might be for ever debarred from their old inheritance.  This law was not a mere idle threat; it was carried into execution with the greatest rigour. Amongst other instances we find recorded, that when some of the transplanted Irish erected cabins or creaghts, as the hurdle houses were then called, in the vicinity of Athlone, orders were sent from Dublin Castle to banish all the Irish and other popish persons from that neighbourhood, so that no such gathering should be allowed within five miles of the English garrison.

No pen can describe the frightful scenes of misery that ensued. With famine and pestilence, despair seized upon the afflicted natives; thousands died of starvation and disease; others cast themselves from precipices, whilst the walking spectres that remained seemed to indicate that  the whole plantation was nothing more than a mighty sepulchre.

The Puritans, however, were still attentive to extort from the poverty of the transplanted Catholics whatsoever might perchance, have yet remained to them. A contemporary writer thus describes these new arts of the Puritan persecutors:—

"There is one thing that now perplexes us very much, the transplanting of our nation to the province of Connaught. This is a tract of Ireland for the most part rocky and mountainous, and wholly reduced to a wilderness by the constant whirlwind of wars, uninterrupted for so many years. Nowhere, throughout all that region, can a house be met with; scarcely is there a particle of a wall left standing, the edifices being destroyed by fire, and levelled to the ground, lest any habitation or defence should remain for the Catholics. Two cities alone remain, and from these the inhabitants are expelled, and they are now filled with English Anabaptists; some of the maritime ports, too, are inhabited by the same pest; the remainder of the province is wholly devastated, and everything levelled to the ground.

"To this desert all the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, and all that had any land or possessions are now transported; amidst these mountains they receive some small particles of land, for the most part sterile and rocky. There they must fix their dwellings, and build for themselves, as best they may, or otherwise be exposed to the hoar frost. Nor is the evil confined to this. The Catholics thus transplanted, although deprived of nearly all their fortunes and goods, are, nevertheless, obliged to support in this Connaught wilderness seventy stations of Puritan soldiers, which are arranged at stated distances throughout the country, under the pretence, indeed, of their own security, and lest Catholics might plot against the State, and excite fresh disturbances, but in reality that they may keep away all priests, and prevent the exercise of the Catholic religion; and, moreover, that thus any property that still remained amongst the persecuted natives might be wasted away and consumed in supporting such a number of guards, and so the whole nation might become gradually extinct; for they see that no violence or artifice can force them to abandon the Catholic faith. Indeed, the magistrates more than once notified to some of the Catholic gentry whom they were anxious to protect, that all this vexation would cease, should they only consent to renounce the Roman Pontiff, and especially the Mass. They sought also to persuade not a few of the Catholics, that it was folly for them to precipitate themselves into voluntary banishment, which could be prevented by so easy a remedy. But the Catholics closed their ears with the holy fear of God against these Siren enchantments, and they choose to suffer even death rather than to tarnish their glory, holding in mind that they are children of saints, and that an inheritance of glory awaits them."

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681.

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 4.

§ 4.—Perils Of The Clergy.

The reader can now easily picture to himself the perils that on every side beset the Irish priesthood. Yet, heedless of danger, many clung to their flocks to break to them the bread of life. History does not afford examples of more heroic fortitude, more fearless courage, more enduring constancy, than that displayed at this period by the Catholic clergy of Ireland. Mr. Dalton, in his history of the Archbishops of Dublin, quotes from a Latin manuscript, written in 1653, the following extract :—

"The keen eyed vigilance of persecution has driven the Catholic laity into the country; and the priests and monks scarcely presume to sleep even in the houses of their own people; their life is warfare and earthly martyrdom ; they breathe as if by stealth among the hills or in the woods, and not un frequently in the abyss of bogs or marshes, which their oppressors cannot penetrate; yet, hither flock congregations of poor Catholics, whom they refresh with the consolation of the sacraments, direct with the best advice, instruct in constancy of faith and confirm in the endurance of the cross of the Lord. These things, however, could not be effected without the knowledge of the heretics, who in a simultaneous impulse are hurried through the mountains and the woods exploring the retreat of the clergy; and never was the chase of the wild beasts more hot and more bitter than the rush of the priest-destroyers through the woods of Ireland, many of whom deem it the most agreeable recreation to run down to the death those beasts of the woods, as they term the Catholic clergy."

The narrative of the state of Ireland in 1654, presents many additional particulars:—

"We live, for the most part, in the mountains and forests; and often, too, in the midst of bogs to escape the horse of the heretics. One priest, advanced in years, father John Carolan, was so diligently sought for, and so closely watched, being surrounded on all sides, and yet not discovered, that at length he died of starvation. Another, father Christopher Netterville, like St. Athanasius, for an entire year and more, lay hid in his father's sepulchre; and even there with difficulty escaping the pursuit of the enemy, he had to fly to a still more incommodious retreat. One was concealed in a deep pit, from which he at intervals went forth on some mission of charity. The heretics having received information as to his hiding-place, rushed to it, and throwing down immense blocks of rock, exulted in his destruction; but Providence watched over the good father, and he was absent, engaged in some pious work of his sacred ministry, when his retreat was thus assailed. As the holy Sacrifice cannot be offered up in these receptacles of beasts rather than of men, all the clergy carry with them a sufficient number of consecrated hosts, that thus they themselves may be comforted by this holy Sacrament, and may be able to administer it to the sick and to others."

Every art of the most refined cruelty was deemed lawful when pursuing to death these doomed victims of the Catholic clergy; and many are the instances which have been handed down to us of priests who were dragged from their hidden recesses, and subjected to the most brutal excesses. One scene, recorded by Ludlow in his memoirs (vol. 1; page, 422; edition Vevay, 1698), sufficiently illustrates the rage of the persecutors.

When marching from Dundalk to Castleblaney, and passing by a deep cave, he discovered that some Irish were concealed therein. Two days were spent by his party in endeavouring to smother the fugitives by smoke. At the close of the first day, thinking that all should be dead, some of them entered the mouth of the cave, but as they advanced, the foremost was wounded by a pistol-shot fired from within. It appears that the inmates preserved themselves from suffocation by holding their faces close to the surface of some running water in the cavern; and one, who was placed at the entrance as guard, took his post near a crevice through which the air was admitted. On the next day all the crevices were stopped, the fires were kindled anew, and, as Ludlow expresses it, "another smother was made." The soldiers then entered with helmets and breastplates: they found the only armed man dead inside the entrance, but they did not enjoy the brutal gratification of finding the others suffocated, for they still preserved life at the little brook. A crucifix, chalice, and sacred vestments were found in the cave, and fifteen of the surviving fugitives were at once massacred by the soldiery; one of the victims is supposed to have been a Catholic priest; it is evident they had assembled to assist at the holy Sacrifice, and it became their happy privilege by martyrdom to pass from the temporary altar to the presence of the Lamb, in his unveiled splendours in Heaven.

Wholly peculiar to this Puritan persecution was the edict published at the same time, commanding the Catholics under the severest penalties to give information against their loved pastors, should they merely chance to meet with them even in the public streets :—

"If any one shall know where a priest remains concealed in caves, woods, or caverns, or if, by any chance he should meet a priest on the highway, and not immediately take him into custody, and present him before the next magistrate, such person is to be considered a traitor and an enemy to the republic. He is accordingly to be cast into prison, flogged through the public streets, and afterwards have his ears cut off. But should it appear that he kept up any correspondence or friendship with a priest, he is to suffer death.

No edicts, however, could sever the bonds that united together the pastors and their flocks. A letter of the Archbishop of Tuam, written from Nantes in September, 1658, informs us that, even then, whilst the persecution raged with its greatest violence, there were 150 priests in his province, and a like number in the other provinces, " attending to the care of souls, seeking refuge in the forests and in the caverns of the earth." The same illustrious confessor of the faith informs us that the priests lately arrested were not put to death as formerly, in consequence of the remonstrance of the Catholic princes on the continent, but "they were transported to the island of Inisbofin, in the diocese of Tuam, where they were compelled to subsist on herbs and water."

One of the priests arrested at this period was father James Finaghty, vicar-general of the diocese of Elphin, a man much maligned, even in some of our Catholic histories. The short record of his sufferings handed down to us in a narrative of the visitation of that diocese made in 1668, sufficiently proves that if the penalty of death was suspended for awhile, yet no toleration was allowed to the Catholic clergy:—

"Father James Finaghty frequently suffered many tortures and cruel afflictions from the common enemy, for the faith of Christ; five times was he arrested, and once he was tied to a horse's tail and dragged naked through the streets, then cast into a horrid dungeon; nevertheless, being again ransomed by a sum of money, he continues to labour untiringly and fearlessly in the vineyard of the Lord."

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681.

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 3.

§ 3.—Other Penal Laws.

Further penal enactments against the Catholics were passed in quick succession. One of the first measures was to confiscate the estates of the Catholic gentry. No fewer than five millions of acres were parcelled out amongst the Puritan soldiers and favourites of the Protector, and so complete was the extermination of the natives that when the government commissioners were distributing some estates in Tipperary, none of the inhabitants could be found to point out the bounds of these estates.

And Dominick De Rosario cries out—

"It was not enough for them to torment and slay all of the Irish who fell into their hands; on the contrary, they resolved to proscribe all those who had not been taken in their impious toils; they contemplated the extirpation of the Irish people, in order to secure their triumph and new fangled religion."

That the persecution might be carried on with some semblance of justice, a new tribunal was instituted, called a high court of justice; in it all the ordinary forms of law were set aside, and so iniquitous and bloody were the sentences pronounced in these courts, that they were commonly called "Cromwell's slaughter-houses."

The parliament commissioners in Dublin, for their part, were not idle. It was enacted, that any one absent from the Protestant parish church on Sunday should incur a fine of thirty pence; and it was made obligatory on the magistrates of Ulster, Meath, Leinster, and Munster, to take away the children of the Catholics and send them to England to be educated Protestants.  All Irish noblemen, whose fathers were not English, were obliged, under pain of death, to wear a distinctive mark on their dress; the Irish of inferior rank were likewise compelled to wear a black round spot on the right cheek, under pain of being branded with a similar mark for the first offence, and of being hanged for the second. No office was to be conferred on an Irishman, if a fit Englishman could be found; if an Englishman were killed, the Irish of his district forfeited their lives; if an Englishman lost any of his property, the Irish had to compensate his loss threefold. Moreover, all Irish beyond fourteen years of age were declared the property of the republic, to be employed on sea or land; and any Irishman going one mile beyond the district in which his name was registered without a passport, or any one taking part in an assembly of four persons, forfeited his life.

The history of the Jesuit mission in Ireland, written in 1662, thus describes the condition to which the country was now reduced:—

"The Catholic nobility and gentry, and the inhabitants of the cities and towns, are deprived of their lands and goods, and partly banished to foreign countries—partly driven to the remote and uncultivated parts of the kingdom; some, too, were sold as slaves for the American islands, and some were privately butchered. . . . Thus all the Catholics are in exile, and in their stead, in the cities, and castles, and towns, and garrisons, none are to be found but parliamentarian heretics, for the most part of the lowest class of artizans, and the scum and outcast of society.  Hence, the ecclesiastics have nowhere a resting-place, and they are forced to fly to the herds of cattle, or to seek a refuge in the barns, or stables, or desert places; sometimes they seek to conceal themselves by paying for their lodging in the houses of the heretics. As regards the fathers of the society, some dwell in ruined edifices, others sleep by night in the porticos of the temples, lest they should occasion any danger to the Catholics."

Again we read:—

"The heretics being now masters of the kingdom, the clergy is scattered and destroyed, and the Catholic religion is almost extinct.  The nobility and gentry, and native citizens, are despoiled of their goods and properties, and in their place foreign heretics have been imported, the vilest of men, persecutors and capital enemies of the Catholic religion; so that Ireland no longer seems to be Ireland, and there are no longer any persons there to harbour the clergy and religious, but only to pursue them and lead them to imprisonment, torture, and the scaffold. Such is the sad condition of Ireland under the most cruel tyrant, Oliver Cromwell, the Nero, Domitian, and Julian, of our age. . . . Hence Ireland is in a far worse condition now than it was one hundred years ago, for it is inundated with foreign enemies and heretical persecutors; it is as an uncultivated field, overrun with briars—an immense and frightful wilderness—a new and unexplored land, to be once more cultivated and reclaimed."

The following still more minute and invaluable narrative of the many penal enactments of this time enforced against the Catholics, is extracted from another contemporary writer:%—

"The Irish nation, besides many other gifts of nature, has two especially remarkable and most innate in her, which seem as two talents most liberally bestowed on her by God—namely, constancy in the Catholic religion, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, in both which qualities I know not if she yields to any other nation. All who are acquainted with the nation, know well these her characteristics. The heretics, too, know them by experience; ever since the commencement of the Anglican schism they oppress the Irish with an iron yoke, and renewing the cruelty of the enemies of the Jews towards the shorn Samson, they unceasingly strive, by every art, to destroy in them the eyes of religion and learning; having proscribed the true pastors of souls, they imported mercenary pastors, whose only aim is to plunder and slaughter and destroy. The Catholic schoolmasters being expelled, now no one can open a school but a heretic, that, forsooth, the poison of Satan may be instilled into the children's minds. All Catholic books are prohibited, and wheresoever they are found, they are destroyed by fire, and in their stead we are inundated with pestiferous books that scatter everywhere the cockle of heresy. The use of printing is interdicted to the Irish, lest, forsooth, any book might be circulated that did not come forth from an heretical source. Nay more, whilst the Catholic religion yet flourished in the kingdom, the English Parliament decreed that no university should be erected in Ireland, lest, perhaps, the eyes of the people might be opened to see the tyranny of the yoke imposed on them. It is strictly forbidden for an Irishman to send his children for education to foreign parts, excepting to England, where he will be sure to imbibe the asp's milk. The jurisconsults are expelled from the tribunals, nay, the Irish are expelled from every office, unless they attest, by oath, the supremacy of the crown in matters of the church and religion. The eldest sons of the nobility, when young, are handed over to the guardianship of heretics, and these guardians, or rather wolves, devour the innocent lambs, and seize on all their goods and revenues: they consign, moreover, the youths to heretical schools as to so many prisons, where, by daily threats and punishments, they compel them to attend at the Protestant conventicles. They cannot contract marriage except with one destined by these guardians, wherefore it often happens that the most noble youths are bound to receive wives from the very lowest class, and from families that have only just emerged from the scum of society by rapine and fraud, the daughters, to wit, or relatives of the tutors, who moreover are always heretics, and deeply imbued with the poison of Calvinism. All the Irish are excluded from the viceroyalty of the kingdom; they are even declared incapable of this office by the very fact of being born in Ireland. Merchandise and commerce are subjected to so many taxes and restraints, that they are almost wholly taken from the hands of the Irish, and given to strangers.  The lands and territories of the gentry, by new interpretations of the laws, are extorted from those who possessed them for centuries, and are given to upstart heretics. We ourselves have seen many most respectable men, who, were it not for the oppression that prevails, would abound in wealth, but who now are seated in ruined edifices by an un-cheering fireside; and when interrogated as to the reason of their carelessness, they replied that they did not dare to live otherwise, and were they to repair or ornament their houses, the harpies would at once seize on them, and they themselves be deprived of the little that remained. Hence is the whole nation now reduced to such poverty, that it is no longer reckoned by the foreign countries, and none but poor and outcasts now go forth from that island, whence formerly, as St. Bernard writes, went forth so many swarms of holy men, and countless bands of philosophers, who illumined France, Germany, and Italy, by their learning and the splendour of their virtues."

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681.

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 2.

§ 2.—Edict Against The Clergy.

Whilst some Catholic soldiers remained in the island, the Puritan persecutors did not display the full excess of their fury. Their first care, therefore, was to rid themselves of that check to their ferocity. Every facility was given to the foreign courts to transport the Irish soldiers to their service. "The agent of the Spanish government (writes a contemporary author in 1654), transferred thousands and thousands of them every month partly to Spain and partly to Belgium."  Borlase estimates the number of those transported in the year 1654 alone at 27,000; and another historian adds, that altogether no fewer than 40,000 Catholics were thus banished from Ireland to the Continent, to be a standing monument of the persecuting spirit of Puritanism, whilst they, at the same time, filled all Europe with admiration of their valour.

The troops being thus removed, on the 6th of January, 1653, the first edict of persecution was published against the Catholic clergy. By it all ecclesiastics, secular and regular, were commanded, under penalty of treason, to depart from the kingdom within, twenty days; and should they return, they incurred the penalties and confiscations specified in the 27th of Queen Elizabeth, that is, they were "to be hanged, cut down while yet alive, beheaded, quartered, embowelled, and burned; the head to be set on a spike, and exposed in the most public place." In addition to this, the new act commanded that every person who, after the twenty days thus specified, should harbour or receive into his house any ecclesiastic, " would incur the confiscation of his property, and be put to death without hope of mercy.''

Thus did the persecutors seek to deprive the fold of its pastors; and we cannot but here adopt the words of Dominick de Rosario, "Right well did England know that her triumph would never be secure as long as the ministers of the Catholic religion, who kept watch over the flock, were suffered to live in the land." ( Loc. cit. 229.)

An example of the severity with which this edict was carried into execution, is recorded in the narrative of the condition of Ireland in 1654.

"When this edict was published the superior of the Jesuits was lying sick of fever in the house of a respectable citizen, unable to move in bed, not to say to journey on foot or on horseback; a petition was, therefore, presented to the governor of the city that he might be allowed to remain some few days till his strength should return. But the governor replied, though the whole body of the Jesuit was dead, and life remained only in one hand or one foot, he must at once quit every inch of Ireland. The sick man was forthwith seized in bed, hurried along for about seventy Irish miles in the midst of a severe winter to a seaport, and there, with two other Jesuits and forty secular priests, was cast into a vessel bound for Spain."

The annual letters of the society of Jesus (anno 1662), having referred to the just-mentioned decree, adds:—

"It is easy to imagine what whirlwinds of dangers then assailed the Catholic community in this island; and yet the assault evidenced how little the persecutors gained by that edict, for the more their fury raged against the priests, the more courageous did these become to encounter every danger; and although very many of them in each city of the kingdom were cast into prison, of whom some were hanged on gibbets, some expired, overcome by the sufferings of their filthy dungeons, some were sent into exile to Spain, and others transported as slaves to the Barbadoes, yet those who escaped from the enemy's pursuit were not deterred by such impending dangers from the discharge of their ministry; and others who, scattered through the various academies of Europe, were engaged preparing themselves for the Irish mission, on seeing the harvest now ripe for the sickle, and hoping for more abundant spiritual fruit amidst these temporal disasters, in greater numbers than was known for many years, abandoned their studies and entered on their field of labour. In the mean time the magistrates, lest the edict might fall into oblivion, and in order to strike greater terror into those who might give shelter to the clergy, caused it to be proclaimed anew each year throughout the entire kingdom; whence it happened that the greatest part of the priests, unwilling to create danger for their flocks, lived in caverns, or on the mountains, or through the woods, or in remote hiding places, and often, too, were obliged to pass the winter without any shelter, concealed amidst the branches of the trees. This deplorable condition of the kingdom fills all the Catholics with terror."

This decree was carried into execution with the greatest rigour, and no mercy was shown to whosoever was found to violate it. Dr. Burgatt presents us with the following details as to the number of the clergy who were sent into exile, or suffered extreme penalty at this direful period:—

"In the year 1649," he writes, "there were in Ireland twenty seven bishops, four of whom were metropolitans. In each cathedral there were dignitaries and canons; each parish had its pastors; there was, moreover, a large number of other priests, and innumerable convents of the regular clergy. But when Cromwell, with exceeding great cruelty, persecuted the clergy, all were scattered. More than three hundred were put to death by the sword or on the scaffold amongst whom were three bishops; more than a thousand were sent into exile, and amongst these all the surviving bishops, with one only exception, the Bishop of Kilmore who, weighed down by age and infirmities, as he was unfit to discharge the episcopal functions, so too was he unable to seek safety by flight. And thus for some years our island remained deprived of its bishops, a thing never before known during the many centuries since we first received the light of Catholic faith."

To discover the clergy that remained in the kingdom, spies and informers scoured the country on every side, impelled partly by hatred to religion, partly by the proffered reward. Five pounds was the sum held out by government for the apprehension of a priest, together with a third part of the property of the person on whose lands he should be discovered; moreover, the profession of informer was declared an honourable one, and such persons were, by virtue of the edict, to receive the special favour of the Crown, and to be promoted to offices and dignities, as men well deserving of the State.

Owing to this diligence of the persecutors, the number of the Catholic priests that escaped their search was comparatively few:—" The prisons were everywhere filled with prelates, priests, and religious, some of whom were executed on the scaffold, others were privately butchered, whilst the greater number were sent into exile." Thus writes the Superior of the Jesuits in 1652.

Another writer, to whom we have more than once referred, describes the state of Ireland in 1654, and contrasts the comparative ease with which the Catholic clergy had in former years evaded the penal statutes, with the difficulty of remaining concealed amidst the present perils, and adds:—

"Now the whole aspect of the kingdom is changed; difficulties and dangers are met with at every step; no human industry can enable us to avoid them, but all must be left to a watchful Providence. The cities and towns are now wholly occupied by the heretics, and the Catholics are banished from them; the castles and country residences of the gentry are converted into barracks, or if not, are held by heretical new-comers. No one is allowed to travel through the country without being examined at every mile by the soldiery; you have to show the letters patent of the magistrate of the district from which you come, and in them your age, stature, beard, colour of hair, condition of life, and many other special characteristics are mentioned, and if you are found wanting in any one of them, you are immediately arrested as a spy or a priest, nor is there any hope of the soldiers' sentence being reversed, for each soldier has the juridical right by martial law to arrest any person he may suspect, and inflict capital punishment. The same martial law authorizes them to enter the house of any Catholic, at any hour of the day or night, and explore every corner of it, under the pretence, forsooth, of detecting and arresting priests. And lest any of the soldiers should he enticed by bribes to allow any priest to escape, the English Government offers a larger reward of each discovery than could be hoped for from the oppressed and impoverished Catholics. The soldiers, therefore, partly impelled by hatred for the Catholic religion, and partly urged on by avarice and the hope of lucre, never cease by day or by night to beset the houses of the Catholics, and explore their most secret recesses; moreover, they hire spies, and keep them in various quarters, that they may thus receive information of any rumour that may be heard of the arrival of a priest in the neighbourhood."

Taken from - MEMOIRS OF THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, WHO SUFFERED DEATH FOR THE CATHOLIC FAITH IN THE YEAR 1681.