FOOTNOTES:
[174] Whitelock, Mem. 417.
[175] Guizot, Hist. de la Répub. d’Angleterre, i. 28.
[176] P. 233.
[177] Whitelock, 464, 398, 421, 443; Carlyle, i. 345.
[178] Dr. Lingard gives credit to the story of Cromwell’s massacre of townspeople—men, women, and children—but the only direct testimony is a story told by Thomas Wood (the brother of Anthony Wood, the historiographer of Oxford). This Thomas Wood had fought on the king’s side, and after the king’s death, “being deeply engaged in a Cavaliering plot in 1648, he, to avoid being taken and hanged, fled to Ireland,” where, according to his brother’s account, he got a command in the regiment of Ingoldsby, an old schoolfellow, and then a Parliamentary officer; and thus, having changed sides, “was engaged in the storming and assaulting” of Drogheda. He tells a tale, in Spenser’s manner, of a “most handsome virgin, arrayed in costly and gorgeous apparel,” whom a soldier treated as though he were Phineas and she a Midianitish woman; whereupon Wood, “seeing her gasping, took away her money, jewels, &c., and flung her clean over the works.” His brother says “he had an art of merriment called buffooning,” and he seems to have practised this on “his mother and brethren,” to whom he often told this story. Ormond, writing from the neighbourhood, and speaking generally of great cruelty having been exercised for five days after the town was taken, makes no mention of a massacre of townspeople. The Catholic Council of Kilkenny, in the manifesto they published at Clonmacnoise at this time, make no mention of a massacre of townspeople at Drogheda, and even think it necessary to warn the Irish against being deceived by a show of clemency. It is in his answer to this manifesto that Cromwell makes the statement quoted in the text. Ormond Papers, ii. 412; Lingard, viii. Appendix.
[180] Cromwelliana; Carlyle; Boscobel Tracts; Personal Expenses of Charles II. in City of Worcester, communicated to the Transactions of the Historical Society by R. Woof.
[181] Sorbière to M. de Courcelles at Amsterdam, 1st July, 1652, in Harris, Life of Cromwell, 270.
[182] Guizot, i. 448.
[184] De Witt, Interest of Holland, 393.
[186] Colonel Thompson’s Notes upon the Dutch War in Bodleian MSS.
[187] Colonel Thompson’s Notes.