Purgatory, By The Rev. M. Canty, P.P., Part 13.

DOGMATIC AND SCHOLASTIC - THE VARIOUS QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH IT CONSIDERED AND PROVED.

CHAPTER XI. IT IS FURTHER PROVED FROM THE PRACTICE OF THE EARLY IRISH CHURCH.

IT is abundantly proved that the ancient Church of Ireland believed in the existence of Purgatory. Even Protestant writers, such as Archbishop Usher, have admitted this. Forced by the irresistible testimony of our canons, liturgies, and writers, Usher was obliged to admit that the ancient Irish were accustomed to offer up the Eucharistic sacrifice for the dead, and that Requiem Masses, or those offered for the faithful departed, were celebrated daily.

I. The surest and most indisputable means, to find the faith and practise of any national Church, are the public acts of that Church ; that is, the canons which were passed in its synods, and are still extant. If we refer to the ancient Canons of the Church of Ireland, it will appear to us, as clear as the sun over our head, that she was accustomed to offer the sacrifice of propitiation, and to pray for the dead. In D'Achery's collection (Lib. 2, chap. xx.) an ancient canon is given, in which the synod expresses its mind thus : " The Church offers for the souls of the deceased in four ways : for the very good the oblations are simply thanksgivings; for the very bad they become consolations to the living ; for such as were not very good, the oblations are made in order to obtain full remission ; and for those who were not very bad, that their punishment may be rendered more tolerable" Here we have in unequivocal terms the doctrine of Purgatory. The holy sacrifice was offered up for the full remission of those deceased souls who were not very good; and that their punishment may be rendered more tolerable for those who were not very bad. This establishes in the clearest manner, that the Catholic tenet of praying for the dead was universally believed and practised in the ancient Church of Ireland. Usher was well acquainted with the above important canon; and yet he did not produce it, because he knew right well that such a public document, such a solemn attestation of the whole Irish Church, would destroy his cause, and that he could no longer impose on the credulity of his dupes.

II. To the aforesaid canon, we may subjoin a more ancient one, which is entitled "Of the oblation for the dead." It is the twelfth among the canons of the synod of St. Patrick. It is couched in these words : " Hear the Apostle saying, there is a sin unto death, I do not say that for it any one do pray. And the Lord : Do not give the holy to dogs. For he who will not deserve to receive the Sacrifice during his life, how can it help him after his death ? " It follows from the canon, that the Holy Sacrifice was accustomed to be offered for the purpose of helping persons after their death. What else is this but a profession of faith in Purgatory ? The sin unto death, referred to in the canon, is final impenitence. They, who die with final impenitence in their heart, are cast into hell; and therefore the Sacrifice is of no help to them. " For," the canon says, " he who will not deserve to receive the Sacrifice during his life, how can it help him after his death?" From this it is clear that, according to the canon of the synod, he who deserved to receive the Sacrifice during life could obtain help from it after his death. Hence there is a state in which souls need, and can receive this help ; or in other words there is a Purgatory. Usher also omitted to give this canon, for he l saw it would not suit his purpose.
III. The Liturgies of the ancient Irish Church in like manner breathe the doctrine of Purgatory. We shall draw the attention of the reader only to one of them. This is the ancient Irish Missal, the Cursus Scotorum. It was the only Missal in use in this country until about the close of the sixth century, when, probably, the Gallican Liturgy, the Cursus Gallorum, was introduced. The Cursus Scotorum was brought to Ireland by St. Patrick. Thus it was in universal use in the time of the first class of Irish saints. It is supposed to have been the Liturgy which was originally drawn up by the Evangelist St. Mark, and used by him. St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Basil, and other Greek Fathers adopted it; as did also Cassian, Honoratus of Lerins, St. Caesar of Aries, St. Lupus of Troies, and St, German of Auxerre. It was from the last named that St. Patrick received it, as he was about to start on his mission to Ireland. Mabillon found a copy of it, which he believed to have been then at least a thousand years old, on his visit to the famous monastery of Bobbio, in Italy, which was founded by one of the greatest of our Irish saints, Colombanus.
This Liturgy has two Masses for the Dead ; one is a general Mass, and the other is a Mass of a deceased Priest (Missa Sacerdotis Defuncti). Now, what was the object of these Masses, unless it was the belief of the Irish Church, that the dead could be relieved by such Masses, and consequently that there was such a place as Purgatory ?
In order to enter more in detail into these Masses for the dead, we must turn our attention to some of the prayers, or, as the Missal itself styles them, coniestationes, that are contained in them. In the Mass for the dead, which is entitled " Pro defunctis," is found the following prayer:—"Grant, O Lord, to him, thy servant deceased, the pardon of all his sins, in that secret abode, where there is no longer room for penance; do Thou, O Christ, receive the soul of thy servant, which Thou hast given, and forgive him his trespasses more abundantly than he has forgiven those who have trespassed against him." There is the belief of the ancient Irish Church in Purgatory, and in the utility of prayer for the dead, in order to obtain pardon of all their sins.
This ancient Missal has also a Mass for the living and the dead. In this Mass, which is entitled " Pro vivis et defunctis," is found the following prayer;—
" Propitiously grant that this sacred oblation may be profitable to the dead in obtaining pardon, and to the living in obtaining salvation; grant to them (the dead as well as the living) the full remission of all their sins, and that indulgence which they have always deserved." This prayer supposes, or perhaps I should rather say, states that the holy sacrifice is profitable to the dead, in the sense of obtaining pardon. Hence there are some just souls who, after departing this life, are liable for some sins or debts, from which they must be freed or discharged before they can enter heaven.

IV. To revert again to the testimony drawn from Synods, we may call the reader's attention once more to D'Achery's collection of the Canons of the ancient Irish, in which is found the foil-owing one : (Lib. 2, chap. xx.) " The Synod says : The Church now offers the sacrifice to God in many ways (for many reasons); first, for itself; secondly, for the commemoration of Jesus Christ; and, thirdly, for the souls of the departed" In the clearest manner possible it is said, that the Irish Church of old offered up the holy sacrifice for the faithful departed. Here in an express Canon, we have the faith of the whole Church of Ireland. We could have no clearer, and certainly no more authoritative exposition of her faith. According to that faith, she held that there was a Purgatory ; and she offered up her Masses and her prayers for the souls that were suffering in it. It would be sheer folly then to deny, that the early Irish Church believed in Purgatory.

V. In the ancient life of St. Ita, who lived in the sixth century, and whose name is so closely associated with the diocese of Limerick, where she is venerated as a patroness, and honoured with a special Office since the early years of the rule of the present revered Bishop, it is recorded that " she had constantly prayed for the soul of her uncle, and that alms had been given by his sons" for the same purpose. It is stated in the life of St. Brendan "That the prayers of the living profit much the dead." In the life of St. Pulcherius (Lib. 2, chap. xx.) it is related that "he was accustomed to pray for the repose of the soul of Ronan, a chieftain of Ele, and that he had frequently recommended the soul of the same chieftain to the prayers of the faithful." Were it necessary, similar authorities, without number, could be produced to show the faith of the early Irish Church in the existence of Purgatory, as well as in the utility of our suffrages for those who are detained there.

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.

Penal Laws enacted against the Irish Catholics— General State of the Kingdom in 1652. part 1

Our country, once the island of saints, was now wholly become a prey to the persecutors. As Judea of old its cities were desolate, its altars were overthrown, everything sacred was trampled on, its priests were led to the scaffold, and the inhabitants that yet survived were subjected to a worse than Assyrian captivity:—

"Neither the Israelites were more cruelly persecuted by Pharoah, nor the innocent infants by Herod, nor the Christians by Nero, or any other of the pagan tyrants, than were the Roman Catholics of Ireland at this fatal juncture."

In the history of the Jesuit missions in Ireland, this sad period of our country's suffering is thus depicted:—

"The heretical enemy having overcome every obstacle, and possession of the whole kingdom, raged with such fury against all ecclesiastics and everything dedicated to religion, that the Turks or the very demons from hell could not display greater impiety or ferocity. Everywhere the public crosses and other emblems of the Catholic religion were overturned, the altars were destroyed, the chapels profaned, and used as storehouses or stables; the stained glass windows, on which the sacred history of our Saviour's life, and the images of saints were represented, were everywhere demolished; the sepulchres and monuments of the dead were broken open and scattered, that no memory should remain of the Catholic religion ; the bells were thrown down and broken; the sacred images and vestments were torn to atoms; the statues of the Blessed Virgin and the saints were dragged through the public streets, with ropes around the neck, besmeared with filth, and hanged from gibbets; the priests and religious were treated with a thousand indignities, cast into prison and butchered; the Catholics were despoiled of their goods, laden with oppressive burdens and treated as slaves. I could mention a thousand horrible instances of such cruelty; and many, too, were the miraculous interpositions of Providence to avenge their impiety. Frequently were seen in the public squares heaps of Catholic books and sacred ornaments and images to be destroyed by fire; the Catholic citizens were expelled from their houses and possessions; and the most noble families were subjected to the lowest and most degrading offices; children and youths were torn from their parents; aged matrons and noble ladies were seized on as servants and employed in the most menial occupations. Truly this persecution of the Catholics was direful, envenomed; cunning, astute; the heretics feigned that they did not persecute individuals, but only the superstitions and abominations of popery (this was their language). However, these things they persecuted in individuals, and individuals suffered death for them. There was no restraint on the soldiery when pursuing the Catholics; the persecutors were at the same time accusers, witnesses, and judges; by day and by night they burst into the houses of the Catholics; they broke open rooms and desks and private drawers under the pretence of searching for ecclesiastics, and even when no resistance was offered them, they invented whatever suited their designs, and took away with them whatsoever they pleased. It was a capital crime for any ecclesiastic to enter a city, or town, or garrison, to offer the holy Sacrifice, or to administer the sacraments; and for doing so many suffered death ; the same penalty was incurred by whosoever received a priest into his dwelling. No individual could sleep in any of these places without signing his name and receiving an express permission from the governor; those who came were minutely examined, as to who they were, whence they came, what there business, &c."

All the religious houses were levelled to the ground, and the religious themselves either led to the scaffold or sent into banishment. In the acts of the general Chapter of the Dominican order, held in Rome in 1656, we read of the Irish Province:—

"Abundant was the harvest that in our own times ripened there for the heavenly Master, of those forsooth who suffered extreme torture for the Catholic faith; of forty-three convents that our order possessed in that island, there is not one now remaining, all, through the heretical fury, being consumed by fire, razed to the ground, or devoted to profane use. In the year 1646, we numbered 600 friars there, now not a fourth part remain, and even they are exiles from their native shores, the others being all either crowned with martyrdom or condemned to a lengthened death in the islands of Barbadoes."

The sufferings of the Jesuits were not less severe. Before the Puritan invasion they were eighty in number, they possessed six colleges, eight residences, besides many oratories and schools; but in the universal desolation only seventeen fathers remained, and they too lost everything, not even retaining an image or a book, or the breviary itself: and when the holy Sacrifice was to be offered up, it was only in some cave or granary, or obscure corner, and anticipating the morning aurora, the house and windows being closed, and few being admitted. The fathers being dispersed and scattered, sought a refuge in various places; some in the towns and huts of the poor, others in the mountains and woods, with difficulty dragging along a miserable existence, that they might assist and console the Catholic outcasts; some there were who, in the disguise of rustics or mendicants, visited the cities and towns, and now in one house, now in another, offered the Holy Sacrifice, and administered the Sacrament. From a petition presented to the Sacred Congregation in 1654, we learn that all the Franciscans and Capuchins were likewise banished, some few alone remaining in the island, who lived " as shepherds or herdsmen, or tillers of the soil."

At the same time the convents of the nuns were destroyed, and their inmates, wheresoever they had not consulted for their safety by flight, were treated with inhuman barbarity De Burgo has preserved the memory of two (page 572,) who were crowned with a glorious martyrdom. One, almost in her hundredth year, was discovered in her place of concealment, and despoiled of everything, even of her very garments; the barbarians, moreover, inflicted on her many severe wounds, and she lived only long enough to be borne by her maid to a neighbouring oratory, that she might expire before the altar of our Lady; the other, who was younger in years, fled from the hands of her pursuers, and some days afterwards, was found frozen to death in the hollow of a tree, in an adjoining wood, in which she had taken refuge.

Dr. John Lynch, in his Cambrensis Eversus, published in 1662, likens the sufferings inflicted on the Irish Catholics by the Puritans, to those meditated by Antiochus against the Jews: he applies to them the words of  Tobias, (iii. 4,)  " We are delivered to spoil and to captivity and death, and are made a fable and a reproach to all nations." And again, those of St. Jerome: "The bishops are taken prisoners, the priests slain, the churches thrown down, horses stabled at the altar of Christ, everywhere grief, everywhere lamentation, and death in a thousand shapes." But, he adds, "we have long been familiar with such scenes, and as nail drives nail, our fresh wounds efface the memory of our former ones."—(Vol. i. p. 9.)

It would be difficult to find any parallel for all the sufferings which our country thus endured. The writers of this period continually re-echo the passage of the Lamentations:—" The child and the old man lie without on the ground : my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: thou hast slain them in the day of thy wrath: thou hast killed and shewn them no pity." The author of Cambrensis Eversus just referred to, (pp. 21-5,) well remarks, that the cruelty of the Puritans combined the malice of all preceding persecutions, and no better parallel can be found for the dread desolation of the whole kingdom, than what we read in Sacred Writ, when the chosen people saw their temple razed, their sanctuary polluted, their cities laid waste, and the people become a bye-word among the nations. To cite any further extracts from the contemporary writers when commemorating this sad scene of universal destruction, would be merely to repeat, the same phrases; for, so general was the ruin, that it admitted of but little variety in depicting it. We shall therefore conclude this article with the words of Bruodin:—"Ireland being entirely subjugated, and scourged by God with pestilence, famine, and the sword, the churches were everywhere profaned, the altars overthrown, the sacred images broken to atoms, the crosses trampled under foot, the priests banished or led to the scaffold .... and no words can express how many and how great were the evils which the Catholics that survived were compelled to endure."—(p. 639.)

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

AN ESSAY ON THE PERSECUTION OF THE IRISH CATHOLICS BY THE PURITAN PARLIAMENT AND CROMWELL, FROM 1641 TO 1658. part 4.

§ 7-—Sufferings Of The Catholics In Waterford.

The narrative above referred to, written in 1655, thus describes the destruction brought on Waterford at this period: "As the year 1650 spread mourning and sorrow through all parts of the kingdom, so, in a special manner, did it put an end to the happiness of Waterford." Three enemies, pestilence, famine, and the sword, at the same time assailed the city. The enemy offered, indeed, liberal conditions, together with the privileges of the citizenship of London, and the free exercise of their religion. But the inhabitants held in mind the interpretation that had been put upon this latter article on the surrender of Ross, when Cromwell declared that it extended only to the internal belief, and not to the open practice of that religion, and hence they resolved on resisting to the last the heretical foe. Dreading the treachery of the royal officers, they refused to admit within the walls the reinforcements which Ormond offered them: and though the siege was carried on with unremitting vigour from September to December, so heroic was the defence, that on the feast of St. Francis Xavier the enemy abandoned the siege in despair.

However, "those whom the parliamentary forces could not subdue, were gradually wasted away by pestilence, till at length the city became a prey to the enemy." Of the many thousands who then defended it, four hundred survived, when Ireton, after the siege of Clonmel, advanced a second time against its walls. Nevertheless it again resisted for nine weeks, "and it came into the enemy's hands, not so much overcome by force, as because it had become a solitude through the violence of the pestilence." For a little while no persecution was proclaimed, but ere long the virulence of Puritanism" was seen; an edict commanded all Catholics to depart from the city within three months, and thus citizens and clergy were involved in a common ruin;" and now, glorious confessors of Christ, they seek a secure asylum scattered through the various regions of the earth "

From a letter of a Capuchin father (30th June, 1651,) written from Waterford to his superior in Rome, we learn that no ecclesiastic dared to appear publicly in the city, and that neither friendship nor rewards could induce the heretics to allow the slightest toleration. "As for me," he adds, " I pass freely through the city, for I serve as gardener the chief heretic of this city: sometimes, too, I work in carrying loads, passing as one of the coalporters." We learn further details from the bishop of the diocese, who, writing from his place of exile to Rome (3rd March, 1651), thus depicts the ruin that had fallen on his once chosen flock: "War and the pestilence have laid waste the whole country; our churches and altars are profaned and transformed into stables or barracks, or hospitals; no longer is the sacrifice offered up, nor the divine word preached, nor the holy sacraments administered; the ecclesiastics who were spared by the plague, have been sent into banishment; the pestilence swept away five thousand of the citizens and the soldiery, and yet continues its havoc there. Truly this dire scourge is a chastisement for our sins."

§ 8.—Sufferings Of The Catholics In Galway.

To review in detail the sufferings of the other cities of Leinster and Munster, would be to repeat the scenes which we have already described. There is, however, something peculiar in the rigour displayed by the Puritans in the capital of the western province that claims a special attention. Our chief guide in this article will be " the Life of Dr. Francis Kirwan, bishop of Killala, written by his friend, Dr. John Lynch, and published at St. Malo's in 1669.

The city of Galway was remarkable amongst the other cities of Ireland, for the wealth of its inhabitants and the beauty of its edifices. The walls were of green marble, flanked by numerous towers; the waters of Lough Corrib flowed through its centre, whilst the regularity of its streets, the fair proportions of its buildings, its noble squares, and its palaces, built of native marble, gladdened the eye. All this was soon to become a prey to the ruthless enemy. It was in the month of June, 1651, that the Puritan army marched into Connaught, laying waste the whole province with fire and sword, and on the 8th of July they encamped before the walls of Galway. The city had already been decimated by the pestilence, yet it was only after nine months' combat that the enemy entered within the walls.

Dr. Francis Kirwan was at this time lying hid in a country house, at a short distance from the city. For eight months he continued there in a small narrow room, which, besides two beds for himself and his chaplain, was barely able to contain a chest. This served for an altar; and whilst the holy sacrifice was offered up each day, one bed had to be removed to afford standing room for the celebrant. The intense cold of winter was endured without a fire, and during the whole eight months only thrice did the bishop go for an instant from this hiding-place: on one occasion he was carried out wrapped in a sheet, whilst the enemy were engaged in searching every corner of the house for arms, and when met by the soldiers he was recognized only as a feeble and worn-down old man; and well does his biographer compare his many sufferings at this period to those of the early pastors of the Catholic church.

Within the city the soldiery displayed a rabid detestation of the Catholic priests, and with an insatiate avarice plundered the Catholic citizens of all they possessed. When the bishop deemed it more secure to enter the town, "he was obliged to take refuge in the topmost stories of the houses aneath the tiles, and this, too, at mid-winter, without one spark of fire. Sometimes, too, he was forced to go out on the roof, and when the pursuers approached, to descend into a neighbouring house by the dormant-window." , We must allow this contemporary writer to depict some of the frightful scenes of persecution to which the citizens were at the same time subjected:—

"Along with the three scourges of God, famine, plague, and war, there was another which some called the fourth scourge, to wit, the weekly exaction of the soldier's pay, which was extorted with incredible atrocity each Saturday, bugles sounding and drums beating. On these occasions the soldiers entered the various houses, and, pointing their muskets to the breasts of men and women, threatened them with instant death if the sum demanded was not instantly given. Should it have so happened that the continual payment of these pensions had exhausted the means of the people, bed, bedding, sheets, tablecloths, dishes, and every description of furniture, nay, the very garments of the women, torn off their persons, were carried to the market-place and sold for a small sum, so much so that each recurring Saturday bore a resemblance to the day of judgment, and the clangour of the trumpet smote the people with terror almost equal to that of doom's day."

The scene of plunder in the house of Mr. Martin Kirwan, which he next describes, is only an instance of the fearful course which was pursued by these harpies when the country was parcelled out to their devastating fury:—

"In the house they found only young children and servants, together with the mother who superintended their education, for the father and his son were in prison. Having ransacked the whole house, the soldiers entered an inner room, where they saw some glittering rays of light, and in this recess they discovered a wooden tabernacle, ornamented with gilded mouldings, and wooden candlesticks likewise gilt, which the bishop was about to place in some church; all these sacred objects did the soldiers drag out of the house, nor could they be induced by supplication or money to restore them; they subsequently tore them all to pieces, and scattered many relics that had been deposited in the tabernacle."

When at length the good bishop, finding it impossible to remain any longer concealed, surrendered to the government, he and several other ecclesiastics were treated as galley-slaves; they were marched along in bodies surrounded by soldiers, drums beating and bugles sounding, and when, by the diligence of the priest-catchers, many other ecclesiastics were cast into prison, they were locked up in houses hired for the occasion, and for which the prisoners themselves had to pay. During his imprisonment the holy man found occasion frequently to celebrate the sacred mysteries, and at a window in the rear of the prison administered to the children the sacrament of confirmation. (Ibid page 127.) No sooner was it discovered by the government that the bishop and his companions were thus engaged in conferring spiritual blessings on the Catholics, than their banishment was resolved on ; the confessors of Christ " were suddenly carried off to a ship, and on their way were surrounded by a terrible escort, nor had they any previous notice of the decree of banishment, lest their friends might succour them with some viaticum."

Throughout the whole province of Connaught the persecution raged with the same fury. Thus, when Dr. James Fallon, who governed the diocese of Achonry as vicar-apostolic, "was arrested in Iar-Connaught, the heretics so plundered him of his copious collection of books, that not even a breviary was left with him. Before he was made prisoner, he for a long time was exposed, day and night, to the inclemency of the winter, till he at length erected a small hut at the base of a rock, which he covered with leafy branches; here he remained till the goats, brousing on the foliage, stripped the branches, and then he was obliged to seek elsewhere a place of refuge." (Ibid, page 15.)

§ 9.—Sufferings Of Catholics During The Plague.

Thus was the whole country subjected to a dire persecution, which surpassed in ferocity the sufferings of any nation recorded in history :—

"Everywhere agriculture and commerce ceased. Each one's thoughts were solely devoted to preserve his life, and to avoid the impending destruction. Hence resulted a dearth of all articles of food, and with famine, a pestilence, too, assailed us. Thus the three scourges of God, of which David had to chose hut one, were all at the same time inflicted on us: famine, pestilence, and war. Urged by the famine, numbers fled from all parts of the kingdom to seek shelter in the cities, whilst others, too, fled thither, driven from their estates, or escaping from the sword of the heretical enemy, so that no longer could a place be found for them within the walls, and the outcasts filled the highways and the country around."*

So dreadful, indeed, was this scourge, that the learned Dominican father, Dominick de Rosario, cried out—" Oh, look upon us to-day, ye nations. Are we not a spectacle to men and angels? Learn of us what a terrible calamity it is to fall into the hands of the living God; and let him who stands take heed lest he fall.''

It was from the commencement a main object of the Puritans to bring on this famine. Ormond's letters inform us that "Sir William Parsons advised the governor to the burning of corn, and to put man, woman, and child to the sword ; and Sir Adam Loftus wrote to the same effect." It was, indeed a renewal of the policy pursued at the time of Elizabeth, and which was so strongly recommended by Spencer, "in order that thus," he said, (the Irish) "might be driven to devour each other." That the parliament hoped for this result is clear from the History of Lord Clarendon, who records (ii. 323), that when an armistice was agreed to between Ormond and the Catholic forces, the parliament passed a vote of censure on the commander for betraying, as they said, the interests of the Protestant religion, "since the rebels were now brought to their last gasp, and reduced to so terrible a famine that, like cannibals, they eat one another, and must have been destroyed immediately, and utterly rooted out."

The pestilence which resulted from the famine first appeared in the west, and thence soon spread itself through the whole country. The Provost of Galway, writing on the 1st of May, 1650, says—" The pestilence has changed this city into a desert by the flight of nearly all the inhabitants, and the death of three thousand persons." Another letter in the following month of June estimates the total number of deaths in that city, from famine and pestilence, at 3,900.

We have already seen how in Dublin no fewer than 30,000 citizens were mowed down by the same disease. In Limerick, too, it made many victims. "Truly these were disastrous times," cries out father Dominick de Rosario, " for the sword was ever unsheathed without the walls, whilst death was mowing down his victims within." The heroism of father James Woolf, in assisting the sick in this city, is especially recorded. He was absent when the city was taken by the enemy; but "on learning that all the ecclesiastics there had been either expelled or butchered, he contrived to get into the city for the purpose of administering the sacraments to the sick and dying." He was only allowed to continue eight days in this ministry of charity. Being arrested by the heretics, he was led forthwith to execution, and from the scaffold exhorted the assembled multitudes to remain steadfast in the faith, addressing to them these memorable words—" We are made a spectacle to God, men, and angels; but the angels rejoice, whilst men scorn us."

In Waterford it also raged with especial violence, and the number of its victims soon swelled to five thousand. We are informed by father Dominick de Rosario, that as soon as it made its appearance there, "the bishop called his priests together, and exhorted them to strain every nerve in order to console the afflicted. This they did with great assiduity, administering unceasingly the holy sacraments of penance and the Eucharist." He mentions two as particularly distinguished in this city—father Michael O' Cleary, prior of the Dominican convent, and father White, a secular priest. "Three days did they pass in solitude and prayer before entering on that harvest of death; and when they had received the sacramental confessions of thousands, they themselves died of the infection."

The disease, however, was not confined to any particular district; it spread throughout the whole island, and prepared the way for the triumph of the Puritans. "The success of Cromwell and Ireton, and his followers," writes a contemporary author,* " must be ascribed, not so much to their own strength as to the dreadful pestilence that desolated the country. For, the anger of God being kindled against us on account of our sins, his chastening Angel so afflicted with a direful pestilence almost all the towns and cities of the entire kingdom, that the soldiers and citizens being swept away by it, the enemy often got possession of little more than empty cities or fortifications, so few were those that remained to oppose them."

But we shall allow an English Protestant historian, who was himself at this very time in hunting to death the Irish, to describe the frightful miseries which then fell upon our devoted country:—

"About the year 1652 and 1653, the plague and famine had so swept away whole counties, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man, beast, or bird; they being either all dead or had quit those desolate places; our soldiers would tell stories of the place where they saw a smoke; it was so rare to see either smoke by day, or fire or candle by night. And when we did meet with two or three poor cabins, none but very aged men with women and children, and those like the prophet might have complained, 'We are become as a bottle in the smoke, our skin is black like an oven, because of the terrible famine.' I have seen those miserable creatures plucking stinking carrion out of a ditch, black and rotten, and been credibly informed that they digged corpses out of the grave to eat. And some instances are added too horrible to be here related."

Amongst the victims of the plague was the Commander in Chief of the Puritan forces. On the surrender of Limerick, the heroic bishop of Emly, Albert O'Brien, was, with all other ecclesiastics, excepted from hope of pardon. When brought before Ireton, he fearlessly announced to the tyrant that before many days he himself should answer for his crimes before the tribunal of God. The holy martyr was at once led to the scaffold, but before eight days his prophecy was verified, Ireton being stricken with the plague, and with his last breath exclaiming that that bishop's blood was the cause of his death. Lest this event should be regarded by the Catholics as a triumph the English of Limerick, for some years, observed Thursday, the day on which Ireton expired, as a day of solemn festival.

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

AN ESSAY ON THE PERSECUTION OF THE IRISH CATHOLICS BY THE PURITAN PARLIAMENT AND CROMWELL, FROM 1641 TO 1658. part 3.

§ 4.—Sufferings Of The Catholics Wexford.

In Wexford the scenes of Puritan barbarism were again renewed. Cromwell having obtained possession of the town through the treachery of one of Ormond's officers, "thought it not good or just to restrain the soldiers from their right of pillage nor from doing of execution on the enemy." [Lett, of Crom. to the Parl].

In his opinion the massacre of the inhabitants could only be likened to that of Drogheda, and he adds: "It pleased God to give into your hands this other mercy, for which, as for all, we pray God may have all the glory." In the same letter he estimates the number of the garrison thus butchered at 2,000, and recommends the Parliament to send over English Protestants to inhabit the city, as " of the former inhabitants not one in twenty can be found to challenge any property in their own houses. Most of them are run away, and many of them were killed in this service. God, by an unexpected providence in His righteous justice, brought a just judgment on them, causing them to become a prey to the soldiers.''

It was on the 11th of October that the enemy entered the town of Wexford. The History of the Jesuits in Ireland, by father St. Leger (1655), thus briefly sketches the scene of slaughter that ensued: "On the city being taken, Cromwell exterminated the citizens by the sword." Another contemporary record details the special sufferings of the friars of the order of St. Francis: "On the 11th of October, 1649, seven friars of our order, all men of extraordinary merit, and natives of the town, perished by the sword of the heretics. Some of them were killed kneeling before the altar, and others whilst hearing confessions. Father Raymund Stafford, holding a crucifix in his hand, came out of the church to encourage the citizens, and even preached with great zeal to the infuriated enemies themselves, till he was killed by them in the marketplace."[Letter of F. Francis Stafford. See it in full in Duffy's Magax., May, 1847.]

The archbishop of Dublin, in the letter already referred to, repeats the same in a few words: "At Wexford," he says, "many priests, some religious, innumerable citizens, and two thousand soldiers were massacred."[" Multi Sacerdotes, nonnulli religiosi, plurimi cives, et duo millia militum trucidati."—Lett. 5 June, 1650].

The fullest narrative, however, of the persecution in this town, is presented by the venerable bishop of the diocese, Dr. Nicholas French, who from the place of his exile, thus wrote to the Internuncio in the month of January, 1673:—

"On one day I lost, for the cause of God and the faith, all that I possessed; it was the 11th of October, 1649; on that most lamentable day my native city of Wexford, abounding in wealth, ships, and merchandize, was destroyed by the sword, and given a prey to the infuriated soldiery by Cromwell, that English pest of hell.[Peste inferni anglicana.]

There, before God's altar, fell many sacred victims, holy priests of the Lord; others, who were seized outside the precincts of the church, were scourged with whips; others were hanged; some were arrested and bound with chains; and others were put to death by various most cruel tortures. The best blood of the citizens was shed; the very squares were inundated with it, and there was scarcely a house that was not defiled with carnage, and full of wailing. In my own palace a youth, hardly sixteen years of age—an amiable boy—as also my gardener and sacristan, were cruelly butchered; and the chaplain, whom I caused to remain behind me at home, was transpierced with six mortal wounds. These things were perpetrated in open day by the impious assassins. From that moment (and this it is that renders me a most unhappy man) I have never seen my city or my flock, or my native land, or my kindred. After the destruction of the city I lived for five months in the woods with death ever impending over me. There my drink was milk and water, a small quantity of bread was my food, and on one occasion I did not taste of it during five days; there was no need of cookery for my scanty meals, and I slept in the open air, without either bed or bed-clothes. At length the wood in which I lay concealed was surrounded by numerous bodies of the enemy, who anxiously sought to capture me and send me loaded with chains to England. My angel guardian being my guide, I burst through their lines, and escaped owing to the swiftness of my able steed."

In the library of Trinity College, Dublin, another letter of this prelate is preserved, written at the same period, and entitled " Apologia," being a defence of the course he had pursued in seeking his safety in exile. In it he thus addresses his accuser:—

"You say nothing about my native city, Wexford, cruelly destroyed by the sword on the 11th of October, 1649; nothing of my palace being plundered, and of my domestics impiously slain; nothing of my fellow-labourers, precious victims, immolated by the impious sword of the heretics before the altar of God; nothing of the inhabitants weltering in their own blood and gore. The rumour of the direful massacre reached me whilst I was in a neighbouring town suffering from a burning fever. I cried and mourned, and shed bitter tears, and lamented; and turning to Heaven, with a deep sigh, cried out, in the words of the prophet Jeremias, and all who were present shared in my tears. In that excessive bitterness of my soul, a thousand times I wished to be dissolved, and to be with Christ, that thus I might not witness the sufferings of my country. From that period I have never seen my city nor my people, but, as an outcast, I sought a refuge in the wilderness. I wandered through woods and mountains, generally taking my rest and repose exposed to the hoar frost, sometimes lying hid in the caves and caverns of the earth. In the woods and groves I passed more than five months, that thus I might administer some consolation to the few survivors of my flock who had escaped from the universal massacre, and dwelt there with the herds of cattle. But neither trees nor caverns could afford me a lasting refuge; for the heretical governor of Wexford, George Cooke, well known for his barbarity, with several troops of cavalry and foot soldiers, searching everywhere, anxious for my death, explored even the highest mountains and most difficult recesses; the huts and habitations adjoining the wood, and in which I sometimes had offered the holy Sacrifice, he destroyed by fire, and my hiding places, which were formed of branches and leafy boughs of trees, were all overturned. Amongst those who were subjected to much annoyance, on my account, was a nobleman in whose house he supposed me to lie concealed. He searched the whole house with lighted tapers, accompanied by soldiers, holding their naked swords in their hands to slay me the moment I should appear; but amidst all these perils God protected me, and mercifully delivered me from the hands of this blood-thirsty man."

In the extracts just cited, the public square or market-place is referred to as the chief scene of this wholesale massacre. Many of the principal inhabitants had assembled there, and no fewer than 300 females are said to have chosen the same place of refuge. They knelt around the great cross which was erected in its centre, and they hoped that their defenceless condition, their prayers and cries, would move the enemy to compassion. The ruthless barbarian, the pagan Goth or Hun, would have been moved to pity, but Puritan ferocity had steeled the hearts of Cromwell's followers against every sentiment of mercy, and the market-place of Wexford was soon inundated with the blood of these martyrs.

§ 5.—Sufferings Of The Catholics In Cork.

Whilst these deeds of cruel barbarity were perpetrated by Cromwell's troops, many of the southern towns, through the treachery of the officers of Inchiquin, were surrendered into the hands of the Puritans, and thus they, too, soon became the theatres of a most violent persecution. The narrative from which many extracts have already been made,t gives the following details as to the city of Cork :—

[Some have questioned the accuracy of the statement made by M'Geoghegan and Lingard as to the massacre of these females around the cross of Wexford; they say Dr. French and other contemporary writers would not be silent in regard of this particular. But these contemporary writers sufficiently describe the wholesale massacre of the inhabitants, without mercy being shown to age or sex; and any particulars that are added have a special reference to themselves. The same writers, when describing the destruction of Drogheda, are silent as to the massacre of the females in the crypts of St. Peter's Church; and were it not for the narrative of an officer who himself was engaged in that barbarous deed, some critics would probably now be found to reject it as fabulous. The constant tradition, not only of Wexford, but of the whole nation, attests the truth of the statement of the above-mentioned historians]

"The tempest of the most cruel persecution, carried on by the parliamentarians against the Catholics, reached Cork without having to encounter any obstacle. For, the president of the province pretending to be a liege minister of the king, was, together with his troops, admitted without difficulty within the walls. Having thus, under pretence of defending it for the king, got possession of the city, he perfidiously handed it over to the parliamentarians."

Their first edict was that all the clergy should at once depart from the city, permitting, however, four parish priests to remain, lest the Catholic citizens, who were as yet too powerful, might be impelled to revolt. As the Puritan forces increased, fresh pretexts were found for new persecutions :—

"The hatred of the heretics for our religion (the narrative thus continues) becoming greater and greater every day, an order was published prohibiting the citizens to carry swords, or to have in their houses any arms whatsoever. This being effected, another proclamation was issued by the president of the council of war, commanding all Catholics either to abjure their religion or to immediately depart from the city. Should they consent to embrace the parliamentary teaching (parliamentariam religionem), they were permitted to remain and enjoy their goods and property. Should they, however, pertinaciously adhere to popery, all, without exception, were to immediately depart from the city. Three cannon shots were to be fired as signals at stated intervals before nightfall, and any Catholic that should be found in the city after the third signal, was to be massacred without mercy. It was then that the constancy of the citizens in the faith was seen. There was not even one to be found in the whole city to accept the proffered impious condition, or to seek to enjoy his property and goods with the detriment of his faith. Before the third signal all went forth from the city walls—the men and the women, yea, even the children and the infirm; and it was a sight truly worthy of heaven to see so many thousands thus abandoning their homes—so many venerable matrons, with their tender children, wandering through the fields, or overcome by fatigue, seated on the ground in ditches, or on the highways; so many aged men, some of whom had held high offices in the state, and were members of the nobility, with their wives and families, wandering to and fro, knowing not where to seek a place of refuge; So many merchants who, on that morning, abounded in wealth, but now had not a home in which to rest their weary limbs, yet all with joy went forth to their destruction, abandoning their houses and goods, their revenues and property and wealth, chosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God, on the mountain tops, and in the caverns, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, than to enjoy momentary pleasures and temporal prosperity with sin."

§ 6. Sufferings Of The Catholics In Kilkenny.

After the massacre of Wexford, Cromwell invited the other cities and towns to surrender. Should they consent to receive parliamentary garrisons, their property and goods were to be secured to them, and no inquiries were to be made as to religion. One thing only would be required, that the Mass should be abolished, " for," he added, "wheresoever the sway and authority of Parliament extends, the Mass shall not be tolerated." However unable the Catholics might be to resist the torrent of destruction that was now bursting upon them, yet they were too devoted to the faith to embrace this impious condition, and, as we learn from Dr. Burgatt, (subsequently Archbishop of Cashel), not one was found in the whole island who would consent to barter his religion for the proffered boon. Thus the sword of extermination was again unsheathed.

"Catholicity was flourishing in the city of Kilkenny, when the Puritan army, like a devastating torrent, overturning everything in its course, appeared before its walls."Whilst the inhuman foe threatened it from without, another scourge laid it waste within. The plague raged with such fury, that its brave garrison was reduced from 1,200 to 400 men. So dreadful was the contagion, that when the earl of Castlehaven destined some troops to succour it, they refused to march, declaring that they were ready to fight against man, but not against God. The enemy granted favourable conditions to the citizens, but no sooner had they got possession of the city, than these were violated; "they impiously profaned the churches, overturned the altars, destroyed the paintings and crosses, and profaned all things sacred. The vestments, which had been for the most part concealed, were discovered and plundered by the soldiery; the books and paintings were cast into the streets, and either destroyed by fire or brought away as booty." The holy bishop, Dr. David Rooth, venerable for his years, his piety, his learning, and his zeal, had just entered a carriage to seek for safety by flight, when the enemy arrived. They inhumanly dragged him from his seat, despoiled him of liis garments, and then clothing him with a tattered cloak which was covered with vermin, they cast him into a loathsome dungeon, where, after a prolonged martyrdom, he expired in the month of April, 1650.

Dr. Patrick Lynch of Galway, writing on the 1st of May, 1650, to the secretary of the Sacred Congregation, mentions that the rumour had reached him of the death of this holy bishop, of the cruelties exercised in the city of Kilkenny, and of numbers of priests and religious, and citizens, having been put to death.

Whilst the pestilence raged within the city, one good priest, father Patrick Lea, was especially distinguished by his charity and zeal. Not only was he untiring in administering to the spiritual wants of the sick and dying, but he also assisted them in their corporal wants ; he ministered to the poor even in the most loathsome duties, and sometimes, too, he was seen digging graves, and bearing on his shoulders to interment the bodies of those who were abandoned. It was whilst exercising this last-mentioned excess of Christian heroism that he himself was infected with the disease, and expired a martyr of charity a few days before the arrival of Cromwell at the gates of Kilkenny.

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

AN ESSAY ON THE PERSECUTION OF THE IRISH CATHOLICS BY THE PURITAN PARLIAMENT AND CROMWELL, FROM 1641 TO 1658. part 2.

§ 2.—Sufferings Of Catholics In Cashel.

In 1647 the Earl of Inchiquin, having administered the covenant to his apostate followers, led them on to the assault of Cashel. Along his march he everywhere burned the crops, and massacred the peasantry; and to the present day his name is familiar in the household traditions of our country, as " Murrough of the burning." All the cruel deeds, however, of that sanguinary monster sink into insignificance, when compared with the sack of the ancient city of Cashel. "There is not on record," says Rev. Mr. Meehan, " a more appalling tragedy;" and the following details, taken from the manuscript narrative of the Irish superior of the Jesuits, written early in 1651, more than justifies this assertion : [Relatio rerum quarumdam, &c. ut sup.]

"Cashel became not only a prey to the enemy, but rather a slaughter house.[“Hosti cessit non modo in praedam sed et in lanieuam."]

The city being but badly fortified, it accepted the offer of conditions from Inchiquin, and opened its gates. The garrison, about 300 in number, together with the priests and religious, as also very many of the citizens, retired to the cathedral church, which holds a strong position, and is styled the Rock of St. Patrick. The enemy, having taken possession of the city, and in part destroyed it by fire, assailed the cathedral with all their forces, but were heroically repulsed by our troops. After a long combat, the general of the enemy suspended the fight, and, demanding a surrender, offered permission to the garrison to depart with their arms and ammunition, and all the honours of war, requiring, however, that the citizens and clergy should be abandoned to his mercy. It was then that the true heroism of the Catholic soldiers was seen. They refused to listen to any conditions unless the citizens and clergy, whom they had undertaken to defend, should be sharers in them; and they added, that they chose rather to consecrate their lives to God on that Rock of St. Patrick, than to allow their sanctuary to be profaned by dogs. The assault was then renewed with extreme ferocity; the enemy, being seven thousand in number, assailed the church on every side, entering by the windows and the shattered doors. Nevertheless, for some time the struggle was bravely maintained within the church, till our few troops were rather overwhelmed by the multitude of the enemy, than vanquished by them.[Obruti potius quam superati sunt]

"When all resistance ceased, then was the cruelty of the heretics displayed against the priests and religious, one of whom was of our society, by name F. William Boyton. Many old men, of eighty years of age, aged females, some of them in their hundreth year, besides innumerable other citizens, who had grown old, not only in years but in piety, and whose only arms were their prayers, prostrate around the steps of the altar, now empurpled them with their blood, whilst the infirm, who had been borne to the church as to a place of sacred refuge, and the innocent children, were slain on the very altars.

"Within the cathedral nine hundred and twelve was the number of the slain, of whom more than five hundred were of the heretical troops, and about four hundred of the Catholics.[Ex quibus Catholici fere quadringenti; ex hjereticis supra quingentos.]

Everywhere dead bodies were to be seen, which for some days remained uninterred. The altars and chapels, the sacristy and seats, were covered with them, and in no place could the foot rest on anything save on the corpses of the slain.

One of the priests who had taken refuge in the cathedral, Father Theobald Stapleton, was remarkable for his piety; clothed with surplice and stole, and holding a crucifix in his left hand, he sprinkled with holy water the enemy's troops as they rushed into the sacred edifice. The heretics, mad with rage, strove with each other who should pierce him with their swords, and thus he was hewn to pieces. At each wound the holy man exclaimed, "strike this miserable sinner!" till he yielded his soul into the hands of his Creator.

In the town itself no fewer than 3,000 were massacred by the heretical enemy, and twenty priests were martyred within the sanctuary. The heroic death of Father Richard Barry, of the order of St. Dominick, is especially recorded:

"When the priests had been cut to pieces, Richard Barry alone survived. Him did God reserve for greater trials. The captain seeing the venerable friar in his habit, and struck by his noble and sanctified appearance, said to him: 'Your life is your own, provided you fling off that habit; but if you cling to such a banner, verily you peril life itself.' When the father replied, that his habit was an emblem of the passion of the Redeemer, and more dear to him than life; 'think more wisely,' rejoined the captain; 'indulge not this blind passion for martyrdom, for if you comply not with my orders, death awaits you.' 'But if so,' said the father, 'your cruelties will be to me a blessing, and death itself great gain.' Infuriated at this answer, they bound the venerable man to a stone chair, kindled a slow fire under his feet and legs, and after two hours of torture his eyes flashed their last upon that heaven which he was about to enter. Then did his persecutors transfix the lifeless body with their spears, while yet the bubbling blood trickled from the parched arteries."

The demoniac scenes that followed most clearly prove how great a share religious hatred had in stimulating the fervent Covenanters to this fearful massacre:—

"The heretics set to work at once to destroy all the sacred things which had been stored in the cathedral of St. Patrick. The altars were overturned; the images that were painted on wood were consigned to the flames; those on canvas were used as bedding for the horses, or were cut into sacks for carrying burdens. The great Crucifix which stood at the entrance of the choir, as if it had been guilty of treason, was beheaded, and soon after its hands and feet were amputated. With a like fury did they rage against all the other chapels of the city; gathering together the sacred vases and all the most precious vestments, they, through ridicule of our ceremonies, formed a procession. They advanced through the public squares wearing the sacred vestments and having the priestly caps on their heads, and inviting to Mass those whom they met with on the way. A beautiful statue of the immaculate Virgin taken from our church was borne along (the head being broken off), in mock state with laughter and ridicule. The leader of the Puritan army had, moreover, the temerity to assume the archiepiscopal mitre, and boast that he was now not only governor and lieutenant of Munster, but also archbishop of Cashel." [•Relatio, &c., ut sup.]

§ 3.—Sufferings Of The Catholics In Drogheda.

Cromwell landed on our shores firmly resolved to acquire popularity amongst his fellow-Puritans by the extermination of the Irish papists. On his arrival in Dublin he addressed his soldiers, and declared that no mercy should be shown to the Irish, and that they should " be dealt with as the Canaanites in Joshua's time." ["Dr. Anderson's Royal Gen.," 786.] 

The city of Drogheda was the first theatre of his exterminating fury. No sooner had the garrison of the town submitted on the promise of quarter, than orders were given for an indiscriminate massacre. There were in the city 3,000 choice troops, commanded by the brave Sir Arthur Ashton, a Catholic. Three times did they repel the charge of the 10,000 assailants, till, seeing further resistance fruitless, they accepted the conditions proposed to them. Cromwell, writing to the Parliament, makes it a boast that, despite the promise of quarter, he himself gave orders that all should be put to the sword [Letter Sept. 17, 1649, to Hon. William Lenthall, Speaker of the Parliament in England] and, subsequently, in the usual Puritanical phrases of that period, he styles that worse than brutal massacre, a righteous judgment of God upon the barbarous wretches; a great mercy vouchsafed to us; a great thing done, not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God" As to the slaughter of the inhabitants, it continued for five days, and the Puritan troops spared neither age nor sex, so much so, that the Earl of Ormond, writing to the secretary of Charles II., to convey the intelligence of the loss of Drogheda, declares that " Cromwell had exceeded himself, and anything he had ever heard of, in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity." General Ludlow, in his despatches, speaks of it as an extraordinary severity, and, indeed, Cromwell's own letters present sufficient data to justify these statements.

The church of St. Peter, within the city, had been for centuries a place of popular devotion: a little while before the siege the Catholics had re-obtained possession of it, and dedicated it to the service of God, and the holy Sacrifice was once more celebrated there with special pomp and solemnity. Thither many of the citizens now fled, as to a secure asylum, and, with the clergy, prayed around the altar; but the Puritans respected no sanctuary of religion: " In this very place” writes Cromwell, "near one thousand of them were put to the sword  believe all the friars [They were Carmelites.] were killed but two, the one of which was Father Peter Taafe, brother to the Lord Taafe, whom the soldiers took the next day, and made an end of; the other was taken in the round tower—he confessed he was a friar, but that did not save him."We learn some further particulars about this massacre in St. Peter's church from Johnston's History of Drogheda:—

"Quarter had been promised to all those who should lay down their arms; but it was only observed until all resistance was at an end. Many, confiding in this promise, at once yielded themselves prisoners, and the rest, unwilling to trust to the mercy of Cromwell, took shelter in the steeple of St. Peter's; at the same time the most respectable of the inhabitants sheltered themselves within the body of the church. Here Cromwell advanced, and, after some deliberation, concluded on blowing up the building. For this purpose he laid a quantity of powder in an old subterraneous passage which was open, and went under the church, but, changing his resolution, he set fire to the steeple, and, as the garrison rushed out to avoid the flames, they were slaughtered. After this he ordered the inhabitants in the church to be put to the sword, among whom many of the Carmelites fell a sacrifice. He then plundered the building, and defaced its principal ornaments."

Thomas Wood, one of the Puritan officers engaged in this massacre, and brother of the justly celebrated Anthony Wood, relates that a multitude of the most defenceless inhabitants, comprising all the principal ladies of the city, were concealed in the crypts or vaults of the church; thither the bloodhounds tracked them, and not even to one was mercy shown. Lord Clarendon also records, that during the five days, that the streets of Drogheda ran with blood, " the whole army executed all manner of cruelty, and put every man that related to the garrison, and all the citizens who were Irish, man, woman, and child, to the sword." [ Hist., vol. vi. page 395.]

Dr. Fleming, archbishop of Dublin, in a letter to the Sacred Congregation (5th June, 1650), says, that four thousand brave men, amongst whom his own nephew, Colonel Fleming, were slain in this frightful massacre; and Cromwell himself reckoned that less than thirty of the defendants were not massacred, and these, he adds, are in safe custody for the Barbadoes:

The manuscript narrative often referred to presents many details regarding this horrid tragedy. "The city being captured by the heretics, the blood of the Catholics was mercilessly shed in the streets, and in the dwelling-houses, and in the open fields; to none was mercy shown, not to the women, nor to the aged, nor to the young. The property of the citizens became the prey of the parliamentary troops; everything in our residence was plundered; the library, the sacred chalices, of which there were many of great value, as well as all the furniture sacred and profane, were destroyed. On the following day, when the soldiers were searching through the ruins of the city, they discovered one of our fathers, named John Bathe, with his brother, a secular priest: suspecting that they were religious, they examined them, and finding that they were priests, and one of them, moreover, a Jesuit, they led them off in triumph, and, accompanied by a tumultuous crowd, conducted them to the market-place, and there, as if they were at length extinguishing the Catholic religion and our society, they tied them both to stakes fixed in the ground, and pierced their bodies with shot till they expired."

Father Robert Netterville was another victim of their fury. He was aged and confined to bed by his infirmities; nevertheless, "he was dragged thence by the soldiers and trailed along the ground, being violently knocked against each obstacle that presented itself on the way; then they beat him with clubs, and when many of his bones were broken, they cast him on the highway; on the fourth day, having fought a good fight, he departed this life to receive, as we hope, the martyr's crown."

For the unparalleled brutality displayed on this occasion a vote of thanks was passed by parliament to Cromwell, a day of general thanksgiving throughout the kingdom was ordered, and it was decreed " that the house does approve of the execution done at Drogheda, as an act of justice to themselves and of mercy to others who might be warned thereby.'"

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