The catholics themselves might better leave their cause to Carte and Leland than excite prejudices instead of allaying them by such a tissue of misrepresentation and disingenuousness as Curry's Historical Account of the Civil Wars in Ireland.

[545] Sir John Temple reckons the number of protestants murdered, or destroyed in some manner, from the breaking out of the rebellion in October 1641, to the cessation in September 1643, at three hundred thousand, an evident and enormous exaggeration; so that the first edition being incorrectly printed, and with numerals, we might almost suspect a cipher to have been added by mistake (p. 15, edit. Maseres). Clarendon says forty or fifty thousand were murdered in the first insurrection. Sir William Petty, in his Political Anatomy of Ireland, from calculations too vague to deserve confidence, puts the number massacred at thirty-seven thousand. Warner has scrutinised the examinations of witnesses, taken before a commission appointed in 1643, and now deposited in the library of Trinity College, Dublin; and, finding many of the depositions unsworn, and others founded on hearsay, has thrown more doubt than any earlier writer on the extent of the massacre. Upon the whole, he thinks twelve thousand lives of protestants the utmost that can be allowed for the direct or indirect effects of the rebellion, during the two first years, except losses in war (History of Irish Rebellion, p. 397), and of these only one-third by murder. It is to be remarked, however, that no distinct accounts could be preserved in formal depositions of so promiscuous a slaughter, and that the very exaggerations show its tremendous nature. The Ulster colony, a numerous and brave people, were evidently unable to make head for a considerable time against the rebels; which could hardly have been, if they had only lost a few thousands. It is idle to throw an air of ridicule (as is sometimes attempted) on the depositions, because they are mingled with some fabulous circumstances, such as the appearance of the ghosts of the murdered on the bridge at Cavan; which by the way, is only told, in the depositions subjoined to Temple, as the report of the place, and was no cold-blooded fabrication, but the work of a fancy bewildered by real horrors.

Carte, who dwells at length on every circumstance unfavourable to the opposite party, despatches the Ulster massacre in a single short paragraph, and coolly remarks, that there were not many murders, "considering the nature of such an affair," in the first week of the insurrection. Life of Ormond, i. 175-177. This is hardly reconcilable to fair dealing. Curry endeavours to discredit even Warner's very moderate estimate; and affects to call him in one place (p. 184) "a writer highly prejudiced against the insurgents," which is grossly false. He praises Carte and Nalson, the only protestants he does praise, and bestows on the latter the name of impartial. I wonder he does not say that no one protestant was murdered. Dr. Lingard has lately given a short account of the Ulster rebellion (Hist. of England, x. 154), omitting all mention of the massacre, and endeavouring in a note at the end of the volume, to disprove, by mere scraps of quotation, an event of such notoriety, that we must abandon all faith in public fame if it were really unfounded.

[546] Carte, i. 253, 266; iii. 51; Leland, 154. Sir Charles Coote and Sir William St. Leger are charged with great cruelties in Munster. The catholic confederates spoke with abhorrence of the Ulster massacre. Leland, 161; Warner, 203. They behaved, in many parts, with humanity; nor indeed do we find frequent instances of violence, except in those counties where the proprietors had been dispossessed.

[547] Carte and Leland endeavour to show that the Irish of the pale were driven into rebellion by the distrust of the lords justices, who refused to furnish them with arms, after the revolt in Ulster, and permitted the parliament to sit for one day only, in order to publish a declaration against the rebels. But the prejudice of these writers is very glaring. The insurrection broke out in Ulster, October 23, 1641; and in the beginning of December the lords of the pale were in arms. Surely this affords some presumptions that Warner has reason to think them privy to the rebellion, or, at least, not very averse to it. P. 146. And, with the suspicion that might naturally attach to all Irish catholics, could Borlase and Parsons be censurable for declining to intrust them with arms, or rather for doing so with some caution? Temple, 56. If they had acted otherwise, we should certainly have heard of their incredible imprudence. Again, the catholic party, in the House of Commons, were so cold in their loyalty, to say the least, that they objected to giving any appellation to the rebels worse than that of discontented gentlemen. Leland, 140. See too Clanricarde's Letters, p. 33, etc. In fact, several counties of Leinster and Connaught were in arms before the pale.

It has been thought by some that the lords justices had time enough to have quelled the rebellion in Ulster before it spread farther. Warner, 130. Of this, as I conceive, we should not pretend to judge confidently. Certain it is that the whole army in Ireland was very small, consisting of only nine hundred and forty-three horse, and two thousand two hundred and ninety-seven foot. Temple, 32; Carte, 194. I think Sir John Temple has been unjustly depreciated; he was master of the rolls in Ireland at the time, and a member of the council—no bad witness for what passed in Dublin; and he makes out a complete justification, as far as appears, for the conduct of the lords justices and council towards the lords of the pale and the catholic gentry. Nobody alleges that Parsons and Borlase were men of as much energy as Lord Strafford; but those who sit down in their closets, like Leland and Warner, more than a century afterwards, to lavish the most indignant contempt on their memory, should have reflected a little on the circumstances.

[548] "I perceived (says Preston, general of the Irish, writing to Lord Clanricarde) that the catholic religion, the rights and prerogatives of his majesty, my dread sovereign, the liberties of my country, and whether there should be an Irishman or no, were the prizes at stake." Carte iii. 120. Clanricarde himself expresses to the king, and to his brother, Lord Essex, in January 1642, his apprehension that the English parliament meant to make it a religious war. Clanricarde's Letters, 61 et post. The letters of this great man, perhaps the most unsullied character in the annals of Ireland, and certainly more so than even his illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Ormond, exhibit the struggles of a noble mind between love of his country and his religion on the one hand, loyalty and honour on the other. At a later period of that unhappy war, he thought himself able to conciliate both principles.

[549] Carte, ii. 221; Leland, 420.

[550] Carte, ii. 216; Leland, 414.

[551] Carte, 222 et post; Leland, 420 et post.

[552] Carte, 258-316; Leland, 431 et post.

[553] The statements of lands forfeited and restored, under the execution of the act of settlement, are not the same in all writers. Sir William Petty estimates the superficies of Ireland at 10,500,000 Irish acres (being to the English measure nearly as eight to thirteen), whereof 7,500,000 are of good land, the rest being moor, bog, and lake. In 1641, the estates of the protestant owners and of the church were about one-third of these cultivable lands, those of catholics two-thirds. The whole of the latter were seized or sequestered by Cromwell and the parliament. After summing up the allotments made by the commissioners under the act of settlement, he concludes that, in 1672, the English, protestants, and church have 5,140,000 acres, and the papists nearly half as much. Political Anatomy of Ireland, C. 1. In Lord Orrery's Letters, i. 187 et post, is a statement, which seems not altogether to tally with Sir William Petty's; nor is that of the latter clear and consistent in all its computations. Lawrence, author of "The Interest of Ireland Stated," a treatise published in 1682, says, "Of 10,868,949 acres, returned by the last survey of Ireland, the Irish papists are possessed but of 2,041,108 acres, which is but a small matter above the fifth part of the whole."—Part ii. p. 48. But, as it is evidently below one-fifth, there must be some mistake. I suspect that in one of these sums he reckoned the whole extent, and in the other only cultivable lands. Lord Clare, in his celebrated speech on the Union, greatly over-rates the confiscations.

Petty calculates that above 500,000 of the Irish "perished and were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship, and banishment, between the 23rd day of October 1641, and the same day 1652;" and conceives the population of the island in 1641 to have been nearly 1,500,000, including protestants. But his conjectures are prodigiously vague.

[554] Petty is as ill satisfied with the restoration of lands to the Irish, as they could be with the confiscations. "Of all that claimed innocency, seven in eight obtained it. The restored persons have more than what was their own in 1641, by at least one-fifth. Of those adjudged innocents, not one in twenty were really so."

[555] Carte, ii. 414 et post; Leland, 458 et post.

[556] Leland, 493 et post; Mazure, Hist. de la Révolut. ii. 113.

[557] M. Mazure has brought this remarkable fact to light. Bonrepos, a French emissary in England, was authorised by his court to proceed in a negotiation with Tyrconnel for the separation of the two islands, in case that a protestant should succeed to the crown of England. He had accordingly a private interview with a confidential agent of the lord lieutenant at Chester, in the month of October 1687. Tyrconnel undertook that in less than a year everything should be prepared. Id. ii. 281, 288; iii. 430.

[558] Leland, 537. This seems to rest on the authority of Leslie, which is by no means good. Some letters of Barillon in 1687 show that James had intended the repeal of the act of settlement. Dalrymple, 257, 263.

[559] See the articles at length in Leland, 619. Those who argue from the treaty of Limerick against any political disabilities subsisting at present do injury to a good cause [1827].

[560] Irish Stat. 9 W. III. c. 2.

[561] Parl. Hist. v. 1202.

[562] 7 W. III. c. 4.

[563] 7 W. III. c. 4.

[564] 9 W. III. c. 3; 2 Anne, c. 6.

[565] Id.

[566] Id.

[567] 7 W. III. c. 5.

[568] 9 W. III. c. 1; 2 Anne, c. 3, s. 7; 8 Anne, c. 3.

[569] Carte's Ormond, i. 328; Warner, 212. These writers censure the measure as illegal and impolitic.

[570] Leland says none; but by Lord Orrery's letters, i. 35, it appears that one papist and one anabaptist were chosen for that parliament, both from Tuam.

[571] Mountmorres, i. 158.

[572] Mountmorres, 3 W. & M. c. 2.

[573] Ibid. i. 163; Plowden's Hist. Review of Ireland, i. 263. The terrible act of the second of Anne prescribes only the oaths of allegiance and abjuration for voters at elections. § 24.

[574] Such conversions were naturally distrusted. Boulter expresses alarm at the number of pseudo-protestants who practised the law; and a bill was actually passed to disable any one, who had not professed that religion for five years, from acting as a barrister or solicitor. Letters, i. 226. "The practice of the law, from the top to the bottom, is almost wholly in the hands of these converts."

[575] "Evidence of State of Ireland in Sessions of 1824 and 1825," p. 325 (as printed for Murray). In a letter of the year 1755, from a clergyman in Ireland to Archbishop Herring, in the British Museum (Sloane MSS. 4164, 11), this is also stated. The writer seems to object to a repeal of the penal laws, which the catholics were supposed to be attempting; and says they had the exercise of their religion as openly as the protestants, and monasteries in many places.

[576] Plowden's Historical Review of State of Ireland, vol. i. passim.

[577] Sir William Petty, in 1672, reckons the inhabitants of Ireland at 1,100,000; of whom 200,000 English, and 100,000 Scots; above half the former being of the established church. Political Anatomy of Ireland, chap. ii. It is sometimes said in modern times, though very erroneously, that the presbyterians form a majority of protestants in Ireland; but their proportion has probably diminished since the beginning of the eighteenth century.

[578] Plowden, 243.

[579] Irish Stat. 6 G. I. c. 5.

[580]Mountmorres, ii. 142. As one house could not regularly transmit heads of bills to the other, the advantage of a joint recommendation was obtained by means of conferences, which were consequently much more usual than in England. Id. 179.

[581] Id. 184.

[582] Carte's Ormond, iii. 55.

[583] Vol. ii.; Mountmorres, i. 360.

[584] Journals, 27th June 1698; Parl. Hist. v. 1181. They resolved at the same time that the conduct of the Irish parliament, in pretending to re-enact a law made in England expressly to bind Ireland, had given occasion to these dangerous positions. On the 30th of June they addressed the king in consequence, requesting him to prevent anything of the like kind in future. In this address, as first drawn, the legislative authority of the kingdom of England is asserted. But this phrase was omitted afterwards, I presume, as rather novel; though by doing so they destroyed the basis of their proposition, which could stand much better on the new theory of the constitution than the ancient.

[585] 5 G. I. c. 5; Plowden, 244. The Irish House of Lords had, however, entertained writs of error as early as 1644, and appeals in equity from 1661. Mountmorres, i. 339. The English peers might have remembered that their own precedents were not much older.

[586] See Boulter's Letters, passim. His plan for governing Ireland was to send over as many English-born bishops as possible. "The bishops," he says, "are the persons on whom the government must depend for doing the public business here." I. 238. This of course disgusted the Irish church.

[587] Mountmorres, i. 424.

[588] Plowden, 306 et post; Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont.