ovter,] the only place of strength in the whole county. They suffered the prisoners to carry nothing with them; for the titular bishop took possession of all that belonged to the bishop, and said mass the next Lord's day in the church. All but the bishop were at first clapt into irons, for the Irish, that were perpetually drunk, were afraid lest they should seize both on them and on the castle. Yet it pleased God so far to abate their fury, that they took off their irons, and gave them no disturbance in the worship of God, which was now all the comfort that was left them." After three weeks' imprisonment in this wretched tower, situated in the middle of a lake, and scarcely sufficient to protect them from the inclemency of the weather, an exchange of prisoners was effected; and on the seventh of January, the bishop and his family were released. They were not permitted, however, to leave the county, but were compelled to reside at the house of a protestant minister, who was originally of Irish extraction. "Here the bishop spent the few remaining days of his pilgrimage, having his latter end so full in view, that he seemed dead to the world and every thing in it, and to be hasting for the coming of the day of God. During the last Sabbaths of his life, though there were three ministers present, he read all the prayers and lessons himself, and preached on all those days." (51)

In the beginning of February he was seized with an ague which soon became so violent as to leave no hopes of recovery to a frame worn out, "by the sad weight of sorrow that lay upon his mind, and his ill usage in his imprisonment." "As his sickness increased, his speech failed, and he slumbered out most of the time; only between hands it appeared, that he was cheerfully waiting for his change, which at last came about midnight, on the seventh of February, that he fell asleep in the Lord, and entered into his rest." He had, before his death, expressed a desire to be buried beside his

51 Burnet's Bedell, pp. 156, 7. 160..

wife in the church-yard of Kilmore; but this privilege could be obtained only by an application to the Romish bishop, who continued to reside at the episcopal house. To him, therefore, the friends of the deceased prelate immediately applied. "They found the bishop lying in his own vomit, and saw a sad change in that house which was before a house of prayer and of good works; but was now a den of thieves and a nest of uncleanness. The bishop, when he was awakened out of his drunkenness, excepted a little to it, and said, the church-yard was holy ground, and was no more to be defiled with hereticks' bodies: yet he consented to it at last. So on the ninth of February, he was buried, according to the direction himself had given, next his wife's coffin. The Irish did him unusual honours at his burial; for the chief of the rebels gathered their forces together, and with them accompanied his body to the church-yard of Kilmore in great solemnity. The Irish discharged a volley of shot at his interment, and cried out in Latin, Requiescat in pace ultimus Anglorum,'-may the last of the English rest in peace; for they had often said, that as they esteemed him the best of the English bishops, so he should be the last that should be left among them." (52)

6

The devastation produced in Ulster by the exterminating warfare, carried on between the opposing parties for several months, was most deplorable. The northern province was the principal scene of rapine and of bloodshed. In the other parts of the kingdom, to which the rebellion soon extended, the confederated Roman catholics acted with more humanity and moderation; while many of them denounced in strong

52 Burnet's Bedell, pp. 168, 9. It is right to add, that owing to the humanity of Philip O'Reilly, representative in parliament for Cavan, fewer cruelties were perpetrated by the Irish in this county, than in any other part of Ulster. Carte, i. 173, 4. I have seen it stated as another occurrence at the interment of Bedell, that · Edmund Farilly, a popish priest, exclaimed at the same time, O, sit anima mea cum Bedello! Would to God that my soul were with Bedell! But this fact is not noticed in my edition of Burnet, Dub. 1736.

terms the barbarous massacre which had almost depopulated Ulster.

The number of protestants who perished during the early part of the rebellion has been variously estimated. While Roman catholic writers have not hesitated to aver, in the face of the most indubitable testimony, that there was no massacre, save of their innocent and unoffending party, by the vindictive and blood-thirsty protestants; (53) on the other hand, several protestant historians have run into the opposite extreme of exaggerating the extent of the slaughter to several hundreds of thousands. (54) From the impossibility of preserv

53 For the Roman catholic version of the massacre, see Curry's Historical Review of the Civil wars of Ireland,' pp. 178-81; and Lingard's History of England,' x. 154, and note, p. 483. The latter historian "omits all mention of the massacre, and endeavours, 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." Hallam's Const. Hist. ii. 752. Of the former work, Hallam justly observes, that "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." According to the testimony of the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, afterwards bishop of Kilmore, the rebels boasted to him, while in their custody, that by the month of March, they had slain 154,000 protestants; and O'Mahony, an Irish Jesuit, in his "Disputatio Apologetica," published in 1645, confesses, that his party had cut off 150,000 heretics in four years. Harris's Fiction Unmasked, p. 196. The most curious work on the Romish side of the controversy which I have met with, is one published in Philadelphia, so recently as the year 1819. I have not seen it referred to by any late writer on this part of Irish history, although it discusses at great length, and with an imposing air of research, accuracy, and impartiality, all the controverted topics connected with both the rebellion and the massacre. I allude to " Vindiciae Hibernicae, or Ireland vindicated, &c. By M. Carey." Phil. 1819. 8vo. pp. 504. I notice it here only on account of its flagrant demerits as a work of historical inquiry. It is, in its results, little more than an echo of Curry; but the American, is much more partial and disingenuous than the Irish, writer, while his abuse of the protestants is more violent and rancorous. 54 The following is a brief summary of the calculations of the more eminent protestant writers. May (p. 81) estimates the number slain at 200,000 in the first month. Temple makes it 150,000 in the first two

ing any exact details of so promiscuous a massacre, as well as from the vagueness of the testimony, and the insufficiency of the statistics, on which any calculations could now be founded, it is altogether impossible to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The partiality and violence, too, with which the conflicting disputants have discussed the subject, and the confidence with which they insist upon the most opposite results, have tended still more to perplex and obscure it: so that it is equally vain and presumptuous, at the present day, to hope, by any renewal of the investigation, to discover the exact number of protestant sufferers during the first or earliest stage of the rebellion. Suffice it to say, that the lowest probable computation (5) presents an awful sacrifice of human life, and

months, or 300,000 in two years. Rapin (ix. 343.) gives 150,000 in about four months. Lord Clarendon (i. 299.) says, that above 40,000 were murdered at the first outbreak before any danger was apprehended; and he is followed by Hume. Sir William Petty, a very expert and accurate calculator, computes that 37,000 perished within the first year; (Pol. Anat. p. 313.) and this estimate is adopted by Carte. I feel quite incompetent to add any thing which could enable the reader to decide between these conflicting accounts, except to say that, in my opinion, the first three estimates are decided exaggerations.

55 The lowest probable computation,' by a protestant writer, is that given by the Rev. Dr. Warner, in his "History of the Rebellion and Civil War in Ireland," published in the year 1768. After a minute scrutiny, as he informs us, of the original depositions preserved in thirty-two folio volumes, in the library of Trinity college, Dublin, an authentic copy of a part of which was in his own possession, and after assuring us that it is easy enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the relation of every protestant historian of this rebellion,' who had written before himself, he comes to the conclusion that the number of protestants who lost their lives in the first two years of the rebellion, out of war,' could not have been more than 12,000, and of these, he calculates that 4000 were murdered. In stating the grounds of his computation, he makes the following observation, which has thrown considerable discredit on the authenticity of the depositions above referred to:- There is one circumstance in these books, not taken notice of as I perceived by any body before me, that though all the examinations signed by the commissioners are said to be upon oath, yet in infinitely the greater number of them, the words "BEING DULY SWORN," have the pen drawn through them, with the same ink with which the ex

a fearful proof of the implacable spirit of the Romish faith in those days of ignorance and bigotry.

After these lengthened details of the progress and extent of this memorable rebellion, during its earlier stage, it is

aminations are written; and in several of those where such words remain, many parts of the examinations are crossed out. This is a circumstance which shows, that the bulk of this immense collection is parole evidence, and upon report of common fame.' Hist. ii. 7. Entertaining some doubts of the accuracy of this sweeping assertion, I consulted the books' of depositions in the college library; and, assisted by a friend, examined a good many of the volumes, time not permitting me to go over the whole, with the view of determining this point, which was readily done by referring to the beginning of each deposition; but we could not find a single one in which the words "being duly sworn," were crossed with the pen, or otherwise obliterated. It is probable some such cases do occur; but to assert, as Warner has done, that they occur in infinitely the greater number of them,' is a very incorrect and exaggerated statement. It is also to be remarked, that Warner's computation is founded, not on the depositions whose authority he thus rashly impugned, but upon a copy of a part of them in his own possession, all of which were duly sworn,' and authenticated by the signatures of the commissioners. A duplicate of this copy, he states, was deposited among the manuscripts in the British Museum. This volume I found out, and carefully examined. It is No. 5999, vol. iii. of the Harleian MSS. It is marked, " Original. Received at the Board, 10th November, 1643;" and corresponds with the description given by Warner of his own copy. But I found it to contain only extracts' from no more than about two hundred depositions. Among these, there are only four from the county of Down, all relating to one occurrence; four from Tyrone; three from Donegall, two of which refer to one occurrence; three from Derry; and not a single deposition relating to Antrim. It is quite impossible, therefore, that a correct enumeration of the number who perished, could be formed from any examination, however minute, of these extracts. They could furnish the inquirer with only a portion of the murders perpetrated, the full catalogue of which was not completed till ten years afterwards, when the republican authorities renewed the inquiry, by appointing commissioners for the purpose. These commissioners took a vast number of additional and most important depositions; and they bound over the several deponents to appear at the subsequent assizes for each county, in order to prosecute such of the more noted of the murderers as could then be found,—a circumstance which renders these depositions, taken with the view of being afterwards repeated on a public trial for a capital offence, and at a time when party-feeling had in a great measure subsided, of more value than the depositions contained in the Harleian and Warner's MS.