accompanied him. A band of fifty students mounted on horseback met him on the way, and their leader, crowned with laurel, recited to him congratulatory Latin verses, while a vast multitude of people crowded along the road cheering with all their might. At the city gate he was lifted from the litter, and mounted a horse richly caparisoned. Here he was met by a procession of the clergy and the city guilds. At the Market Cross a Latin oration was delivered in his honour, to which he graciously replied in the same language. From the Cross he was escorted to the Cathedral, the bishop receiving him at the door. At the high altar he intoned the Te Deum, and gave the multitude the Apostolic benediction. Thence he was conducted to Kilkenny Castle, the magnificent seat of the Duke of Ormonde, where in the great gallery, which elicited even a Florentine's admiration, he was received in stately formality by the President of the Council, Lord Mountgarret. Another Latin oration on the nature of his mission was given by the Nuncio and responded to by the Bishop of Clogher, and so the reception ended.

The observations which the Pope's ambassador made upon the Irish people as he saw them are not without interest at the present time. He remarked that the native Irish were behind the rest of Europe in the knowledge of those things that tended to their material improvement. They were indifferent agriculturists, living from hand to mouth, caring more for the sword than the plough; good Catholics, though by nature barbarous, and placing their hopes of deliverance from English rule on foreign intervention. For this they were constantly straining their eyes towards France or Spain, and no matter where the ally came from, were ever ready to rise in revolt. One virtue, however, intense love of country, more or less redeemed these vices, for so they deserved to be called; "but to establish anything like strict military discipline or organisation among themselves it must be owned they had no aptitude." "This," says the Rev. Mr. Meehan, "to some extent will account for the apathy of the Northern Catholics, while the undertakers were carrying on the gigantic eviction known as the Plantation of Ulster, for since Sir Cahir O'Dohart's rebellion till 1615 there was only one attempt to resist the intruders, an abortive raid on the city of Derry, for which, the

meagre annals of that year tell us, six of the Earl of Tyrone's nearest kinsmen were put to death.” '

Returning to Ulster, we may well imagine how disagreeable to General O'Neill was the long delay occasioned by those negotiations. He possibly foresaw their issue, for political events in England swayed the destiny of Ireland then as now. The poor vacillating, double-minded King, unstable in all his ways, was delivered to the Puritans by the Scotch army; and Christendom was horrified by the trial and execution of a king, one of the Lord's anointed. But before Cromwell crossed the Channel to smash the Kilkenny Confederation and everything Papal in Ireland, the Ulster chief gladdened the hearts of his countrymen by the glorious victory of Benburb, one of the most memorable in Irish history. In a naturally strong position, the Irish repulsed repeated charges of the Puritan horse. At length, as the sun began to descend, pouring its rays upon the face of the enemy, O'Neill led out his whole force-5,000 men against 8,000—and made a general attack. One terrible onset bore down all resistance. The Scotch were routed, and of them there were counted on the field 3,243, and of Catholics but 70 killed and 100 wounded. Lord Ards and 21 Scottish officers, 32 standards, 1,500 horses, with all the guns and tents, were captured. General Munroe fled to Lisburn, and thence to Carrickfergus, where he shut himself up until he could obtain reinforcements. O'Neill sent the captured colours to the Nuncio at Limerick, by whom they were solemnly placed in the choir of the cathedral, and afterwards, at the request of Pope Innocent, they were sent to Rome. The Te Deum was chanted in the Confederate capital, while penitential psalms were sung in the Protestant fortresses. O'Neill emblazoned the cross and keys of his banner with the Red Hand of Ulster; and Munroe wrote: The Lord of Hosts has rubbed shame on our faces till once we are humbled.' '

The stage of Irish politics now presented the most extraordinary complications, political, military, and religious. In the

1 Mr. Froude, who misses no opportunity of reviling the O'Neills, is profoundly silent about the battle of Benburb! An avowed advocate of one side would hardly think it prudent to suppress facts in this fashion, however disagreeable to his clients the facts might be.

north was the 'Catholic army' exulting in its one brilliant victory; elsewhere commanders changed positions so rapidly, the several causes for which men had been fighting became so confused in the unaccountable scene-shifting, giving glimpses now of the King, now of the Commonwealth, and now of the Pope, that men hardly knew what they were fighting for, or what standard they should follow. In the mean time the Catholic Confederation was distracted by dissension, rent into factions, and exploded into fragments by those centrifugal forces of Irish division which no power has yet been able effectively to control. The Nuncio found, at all events, that the Pope's power was not able to do it, and he went back to Rome chagrined and disgusted that his blessings and his curses, which he dispensed with equal liberality, were utterly fruitless.

CHAPTER XIII.

RELIGION UNDER CROMWELL-THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND
COVENANT.

Ar length appeared upon the stage an actor who gave a terrible unity to the confused drama of Irish warfare and politics. Oliver Cromwell left London in July, 1649, 'in a coach drawn by six gallant Flanders mares;' and made a grand 'progress' to Bristol. There he embarked for Ireland, and landed at Ringsend, near Dublin, on the 14th of August. He entered the city in procession, accompanied by his son Henry, and by Blake, Jones, Ireton, Ludlow, Hardress, Waller, and others. The history of his military exploits, the massacre of the garrison of Drogheda and of all who had taken shelter in the church, a similar massacre in the town of Wexford, and the other cruel measures by which he struck terror into the hearts of the Irish enemy, and made his name synonymous with cruelty in the minds of the peasantry to the present day, are well known. It would, perhaps, have been better if they had been allowed to rest in oblivion. But Mr. Prendergast, a few years ago, called attention to them by his work on the 'Cromwellian Settlement'; and recently Mr. Froude in his English in Ireland,' and in his lectures in America, has caused the fame, or the infamy, of those deeds of horror to ring throughout the civilised world. Not only with the historians who make themselves the apostles of the anti-Christian principle that Might is Right,' and worship all tyrants, usurpers, and despots, no matter by what amount of perfidy, treachery, and murder they have risen to power, provided only they are successful, and rule with a rod of iron; but many Protestants also, who repudiate the atrocious dogma in question, Cromwell is a Christian hero, because he was so terribly in earnest in his love of truth and justice, and for this they are willing to condone his crimes

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against humanity. And it must be allowed that the exterminating persecution of Protestants on the the Continent might well excuse in the Puritans of that age the conviction that no country could have peace or enjoy the blessings of Divine Providence while the upas tree of Popery' remained rooted in the soil. Mr. Froude labours to prove that the Puritan rulers of Ireland, whether Republicans or Royalists, punished Roman Catholics because the Mass' was the symbol of treason and rebellion. But that is a mistake. The Mass was to them not treason, but Idolatry; and, in exterminating idolaters, they were simply discharging a solemn duty, which could not be neglected without bringing Divine judgments on themselves and their country.

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We have seen how extreme the historian is to mark the iniquities of the Irish in the rebellion which Cromwell was now in Ireland to punish. There everything was intensified, exaggerated, and arranged for effect-to inspire horror and hatred. But when he comes to speak of the slaughter at Drogheda, it is only a so-called wholesale massacre.' It was reduced within narrow dimensions; and the wisdom of making a severe example was signally justified in its consequences.' Nay, he is so charmed with the work at Drogheda and its results, that he becomes sentimental and philanthropic over it, exclaiming Happier far would it have been for Ireland if, 40 years later, there had been a second Cromwell before Limerick !'

Cromwell is defended on two grounds. He was punishing the guilty Irish for the massacre of 1641, and he was bringing the war to a speedy issue by striking terror into the hearts of the natives. But as to the garrison, it was English, not Irish, and as innocent of the massacre as Cromwell himself. Mr. Froude had told us (p. 123) that several of the best regiments—almost wholly English--had been thrown into Drogheda, under Sir Arthur Ashton, late Governor of Reading.' These English regiments, with their gallant commander, were fighting for the King, to whom they had sworn allegiance. Was it noble work in Cromwell's Bible-reading Ironsides to spend two days and nights in butchering these English brethren? Yet the English historian maintains that this was the right thing to do. He denies, indeed, that the gallant butchers slaughtered the women and children as well as the men ;