I. The Irish Rebellion

Appointment of a Committee of Both Houses for Irish Affairs (1 Nov 1641)

      This day the lord keeper, lord privy seal [and other members of the Privy Council] came into this house, and informed it of certain intelligences, that were lately come, of a great treason, and a general rebellion, of the Irish papists in Ireland, and a design of cutting off all the protestants in Ireland; and seizing all the king's forts there....

      Resolved...that a conference be desired with the lords...that a select committee of the members of both houses may be appointed to go into the city of London, and make a declaration unto them of the state of the business in Ireland..., and that they propose unto them the loan of fifty thousand pounds....

      Resolved...that a select committee may be named...to consider of the affairs of Ireland, and of the raising and sending of men and ammunition from hence into Ireland, and of the repairing of the lord lieutenant of Ireland thither....

**Confederation of Kilkenny (1642)

  I. That the Roman catholic church in Ireland shall...have and enjoy the privileges and immunities according to the great charter, made and declared within the realm of England in the ninth year of King Henry III.... And that the common law of England, and all the statutes of force in this kingdom, which are not against the Roman catholic religion, or the liberties of the natives, and other liberties of this kingdom, shall be observed throughout the whole kingdom, and that all proceedings in civil and criminal cases shall be according to the same laws.
 II.  That all and every person and persons within this kingdom shall bear faith and true allegiance unto our sovereign lord King Charles...his heirs and lawful successors, and shall uphold and maintain his and their rights and lawful prerogatives....
 III.  That the common laws of England and Ireland, and the said statutes...shall be punctually observed within this kingdom, so far forth as the condition of the present times [permit]....
 IV.  Inasmuch as the city of Dublin is the usual and principal seat of justice of this kingdom, where the parliament and ordinary courts were held, and some other places where principal councils were kept sometimes, are as yet possessed and commanded by the malignant party who are enemies to God and their king and his majesty's well-affected subjects, this assembly is necessitated during this war in some formalities and circumstances to deviate from the proceedings prescribed by the said laws and statutes.... For the exaltation therefore of the holy Roman catholic church, for the advancement of his majesty's service, and the preservation of the lives, estates, and liberties of his majesty's true subjects of this kingdom against the injustice, murders, massacres, rapes, depredations, robberies, burnings...and destruction daily perpetrated...[by] the malignant party in England and elsewhere, who (as is manifest to all the world) do complot, and practise to dishonour and destroy his majesty, his royal consort the queen, their issue, and the monarchical government, which is of most dangerous consequence to all the monarchs and princes of Christendom, the said assembly doth order and establish a council by name of a supreme council of the confederate catholics of Ireland.... That the said council shall have power and authority to do and execute all manner of acts and things conducing to the advancement of the catholic cause, and good of this kingdom, and concerning the war, as if done by the assembly, and shall have power to hear and determine all matters capital, criminal or civil, excepting the right or title of land....
 XIV.  For the avoiding of national distinction between the subjects of his Majesty's dominions, which this assembly doth utterly detest and abhor, and which ought not to be endured in a well-governed commonwealth, it is ordered...that every Roman catholic, as well English, Welsh, as Scotch, who was of that profession before the troubles, and who will come and please to reside in this kingdom and join the present union, shall be preserved and cherished in his life, goods, and estates....
 XV.  There shall be no distinction or comparison made betwixt Old Irish, and Old and New English or betwixt septs or families, or betwixt citizens and townsmen and countrymen....
 

**Act for the Reduction of the Rebels (1642)

An act for the speedy and effectual reducing of the rebels in his majesty's kingdom of Ireland to their due obedience to his majesty and the crown of England
 Whereas the lords and commons taking into their serious considerations as well the necessity of a speedy reducing of the rebels of Ireland to their due obedience as also the great sums of money that the commons of this realm have of late paid for the public and necessary affairs of this kingdom, whereof the lords and commons are very sensible, and desirous to embrace all good and honourable ways tending to his majesty's greatness and profit, the settling of that realm and the ease of his majesty's subjects of England, and whereas diverse worthy and well affected persons perceiving that many millions of acres of the rebels' land...will be confiscate and to be disposed of...have made these propositions ensuing:
 I.  That two millions and a half of those acres may be assigned allotted and divided amongst them after this proportion, viz. for each adventure of two hundred pounds one thousand acres in Ulster, for three hundred pounds one thousand acres in Connaught, for four hundred and fifty pounds one thousand acres in Munster, for six hundred pounds one thousand acres in Leinster.  All according to the English measure and consisting of meadow, arable and profitable pasture the bogs woods and barren mountains being cast in over and above these two millions and a half of acres, to be holden in free and common socage of the king as of his castle of Dublin....
 II.  And be it further enacted that all and every person and persons which upon the three and twentieth day of October in the year 1641 or at any time after shall be in rebellion or levy war against the king's majesty within his realm of Ireland...shall lose and forfeit unto the king's majesty...all such right, title...unto any honours, castles, manors..., lands [etc.] shall by the authority aforesaid, be deemed vested, adjudged, and taken to be in the actual and real possession of our sovereign lord the king, his heirs and successors, without any office or inquisition thereof....

**Temple, Sir John H.  The Irish Rebellion:  or, An History of the Beginnings and first Progresse of the Generall Rebellion raised within the Kingdom of Ireland, upon the three and twentieth day of October, in the Year 1641 (1642--ed. London:  Samuel Gellibrand, 1646).  [Temple went into many editions, and quickly became the standard Protestant version of one of the central events in Irish history.]

      [Passing over the question of origins, Temple moved to Henry II's expedition to Ireland in 1172, w/permission in the form of a Papal Bull.]  And the King at his arrivall found them no other than a beastly people indeed.  For the Inhabitants were generally devoid of all manner of civility, governed by no setled lawes, living like beasts, biting and devouring one another, without all rules, customes, or reasonable constitutions either for regulation of Property, or against open force and violence, most notorious murthers, rapes, robberies, and all other acts of inhumanity and barbarisme, raging without controll or due course of punishment, Whereupon, He, without any manner of scruple, or farther inquisition into particular titles, resolving as it seems to make good by the sword the Popes donation, made a generall seizure of all the lands of the whole kingdom, and so without other ceremony took them all into his own hands."  [In the decades that followed, English Adventurers came over,] "took possession...of the whole kingdome, drove the Irish in a manner out of all the habitable parts of it, and setled themselves in all the plaines and fertile places of the country, especially in the chief Towns, Ports, and upon the Sea coasts....

      [Gradually the English grew careless, enrolled Irish in their own quarrels, and permitted them to intermingle--yet the English remained in possession.  Under Elizabeth, the English attempted to bring the Reformation to Ireland; despite rebellions by Shane O'Neill and others, shrinking from the cost which a full conquest would involve, she tried gentle means.] But all was in vain; the matter then wrought upon was not susceptible of any such noble forms, those wayes were heterogeneall, and had no manner of influence upon the perverse dispositions of the Irish:  the malignant impressions of irreligion and barbarisme, transmitted down whether by infusion from their ancestors, or naturall generation, had irrefragably stiffened their necks, and hardened their hearts against all the most powerfull endeavours of Reformation:  They continued one and the same in all their wicket customes and inclinations, without change in their affections or manners, having their eyes inflamed, their hearts enraged with malice and hatred against all of the English nation, breathing forth nothing but their ruine, destruction, and utter extirpation....

      [Temple came to the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone.]  So as the Queen now found by wofull experience, that Ireland was no longer to be dallied with, one Rebellion still begot another, and this last was more dangerous than any of the former, it being more deeply rooted, more generally spread within the Kingdome, more powerfully fomented from without.  [She lived long enough to see the rebellion put down.  After her death James gave the rebels amnesty, which Tyrone repaid by plotting anew; failing, he fled to Spain.  James now seized their lands, and had Ulster planted by British undertakers.  As of 1640, Ireland was in a condition of tranquillity.  Privately Catholics enjoyed free exercise of their religion & were settled in all the principal towns.  English & Irish had lived at peace for 40 years; intermarriage was frequent; indeed, many English had degenerated, taking up Irish customs.  The trouble was that Ireland became involved in English politics.]  In August, 1641, the Lords Justices and Council finding the Popish party in both Houses of Parliament to be grown to so great a height, as was scarcely compatible with the present Government, were very desirous to have an Adjournment made for three moneths, which was readily assented unto.... [A committee went to Ireland--where they found only apparent contentment.]

      The discovery of the Conspiracie of the Irish, to seize upon the Castle and City of Dublin; and their generall Rising at the same time, in all the Northern parts of this Kingdome.

      [Suddenly and unexpectedly] There brake out upon the 23 of October, 1641 a most desperate and formidable Rebellion, an universall defection and generall Revolt, wherein not only all the meer Irish, but almost all the old English that adhered to the church of Rome, were totally involved...a rebellion so execrable in itself, so odious to God and the whole world, as no age, no kingdome, no people can parallel the horrid cruelties, the abominable murders, that have been without number, as well as without mercy committed, upon the British inhabitants throughout the land, of what sexe or age, of what quality or condition soever they were.... I cannot but consider with great admiration how this mischievous plot which was to be so generally at the same time and at so many severall places acted, and therefore necessarily known to so many severall persons, should without any noise be brought to such maturity, as to arrive at the very point of execution without any notice or intimation given to any two of that huge multitude of persons who were generally designed (as most of them did) to perish in it....

      [The conflagration began in the North.  The English were defenseless.]  For most of the English having either Irish Tenants, Servants, or Landlords, and all of them Irish neighbours their familiar friends:  as soon as the fire brake out, and the whole Countrey began to rise about them, some made their recourse presently to their Friends for protection....; and with great confidence put their lives, their Wives, their Children, and all they had, into their power.  But these generally betrayed them.... The Priests had now charmed the Irish, and laid such bloody impressions in them, as it was held, according to the maxims they had received, a mortall sin to give any manner of relief or protection to any of the English.... Their servants were killed as they were ploughing in the fields, Husbands cut to pieces in the presence of their Wifes, their Chidrens brains dashed out before their faces....  [One witness testified] that he saw upon the way a woman left by the Rebels stripped to her smock, set upon by three women and some Irish children, who miserably rent and tore the said poor English woman, and stripped her of her smock in a bitter frost and snow, so that she fell in labour under their hands, and both she and her child dyed there....

II. Later Perspectives

James A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1872) [Froude provided an apologia for the Conservative, English, and Protestant causes.]

      We are now upon the edge of the gravest event in Irish history, the turning-point on which all later controversies between England and Ireland hinge.  The facts, real or alleged, are all before us....[I.e., 40 vols. of depositions preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.] Those who choose to think that the massacre of 1641 was a dream will not change their opinion.  Those who see in that massacre the explanation and the defence of the subsequent treatment of Ireland, however unwilling to revive the memory of scenes which rivalled in carnage the horrors of St. Bartholomew, are compelled to repeat the evidence once held to be unanswerable.

      That a rebellion should have broken out at that particular time was in itself so natural that a looker-on might have predicted it with certainty.

      The Irish, still passionately attached to their own habits and their own creed, had seen the conquerors whom they had so long successfully held at bay, at last definitely established among them.  Plantations of aliens were in their midst, owing the lands which had once been theirs, and growing rich and powerful.  Forays out of the Pale they could defy and smile at.... The colonists, on the other hand, were an ever-present affront.... The English interest was growing; their own was falling.  Soul and body they were alike being made slaves.... In such a humour nothing was needed but opportunity....

      October 23 was market day in Dublin, and strange faces would attract no attention in the streets.  It was determined that, on October 23..., in the whole North on the same day, the Irish people were to rise and dispose of the English settlers and their families.  No distinct directions were probably given about killing them.  An Irish mob let loose upon defenceless enemies might be left to their own discretion.... The order was to drive them from their houses; strip them--man, woman, and child--of their property, strip them even of the clothes upon their backs, to take such chances of life as the elements would allow, in the late autumn, to human existence turned adrift amidst sleet and rain, without food or covering.  The Scots, of whom there were several thousand families in Ulster, were to be left, if possible, unmolested. To divide the interests of Scots from English would make the work more easy.... The secret was admirably kept....

      Murder when the spirit of it has gone abroad becomes a passion; and man grows more ferocious than a beast of prey.  Savage creatures of both sexes, yelping in chorus, and brandishing their skenes; boys practising their young hands in stabbing and torturing the English children--these were the scenes which were witnessed daily through all parts of Ulster.... The distinction between Scots and English soon vanished.  Religion was made the new dividing line, and the one crime was to be a Protestant.... The priests told the people 'that the Protestants were worse than dogs'....

      Of the numbers that perished t is rash to offer so much as a conjecture. [Temple's went as high as 300,000; Clarendon put it at 40,000; Sir William Petty at 37,000.]  Even these figures will seem too large when it is remembered how appalling is the impression created by the slaughter in cold blood of innocent unresisting people.... The evidence proves no more than that atrocities had been committed on a scale too vast to be exactly comprehended, while the judgment was still further confounded by the fiendish malignity of the details.

      The rebellion [of 1641] was not...due to any single cause, but represented the accumulated wrongs and animosities of two generations.  The influence of the ejected proprietors, who were wandering impoverished among the people, or who returned from military service in Spain; the rage of the septs, who had been deprived of their proprietary rights and outraged in their most cherished customs; the animosity which very naturally had grown up between the native population and the alien colonists planted in their old dominions; the new fanaticism which was rising under the preaching of priests and friars; all the long train of agrarian wrongs, from the massacre of Mullaghamast to the latest inquisitions of Wentworth; all the long succession of religious wrongs, from the Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth to the confiscation of the Irish College under Charles--all these things, together with the opportunity caused by the difficulties of England, contributed to the result.  Behind the people lay the maddening recollections of the wars of Elizabeth, when their parents had been starved by thousands to death, when unresisting peasants, when women, when children, had been deliberately massacred, and when no quarter had been given to the prisoners.  Before them lay the gloomy and almost certain prospect of banishment from the land which remained t them, of the extirpation of the religion which was fast becoming the passion as well as the consolation of their lives, of the sentence of death directed against any priest who dared to pray beside their bed of death.  To the most sober and unimpassioned judgment, these fears were reasonable; but the Irish were at this time as far as possible from sober and unimpassioned.  The air was hot, feverish, charged wit rumours.... Week after week, as the attitude of the English Parliament became more hostile, the panic in Ireland spread and deepened; and as the shadow of approaching calamity fell darkly over the imaginations of the people, strange stories of supernatural portents were readily believed.  It was said that a sword bathed in blood had been seen suspended in the air, that a Spirit Form which had appeared before the great troubles of Tyrone was again stalking abroad, brandishing her mighty spear over the devoted land.

      ...The great Irish rebellion broke out in Ulster on the night of October 22, 1641.  It had been noticed before, that a large concourse of strangers from distant parts of the kingdom had been thronging to Dublin, and on the evening before the outbreak in the North, the Lords Justices received intelligence, of undoubted weight, of a conspiracy to surprise Dublin Castle.  Every precaution was taken to protect it, and for six weeks after the insurrection broke out in Ulster almost the whole of the other three provinces remained passive....

      [As to the defection of the Old English in the Pale], the rebellion only assumed its general character in consequence of the resolution of the English House of Commons which determined, in the beginning of December, that no toleration should be henceforth granted to the Catholic religion in Ireland. It was this policy...that drove the Catholic gentry of Ireland very reluctantly into rebellion.  In Wicklow, it is true, and in the adjoining county of Wexford, the rebellion...assumed an agrarian character.... But in general the rebellion out of Ulster was a defensive religious war entered into for the purpose of securing a toleration, and ultimately an establishment, of the religion of the Irish people.... In Ulster, however, the rebellion assumed a wholly distinct character, and was speedily disgraces by crimes which, though they have been grossly, absurdly, and mendaciously exaggerated, were both numerous and horrible.  Hardly any page of history has been more misrepresented....

      It has been asserted by numerous writers, and is still frequently believed, that the Ulster rebellion began with a general and indiscriminate massacre of the Protestants, who were living without suspicion among the Catholics, resembling the massacre of the Danes by the English, the massacre of the French in the Sicilian Vespers, or the massacre of the Huguenots at St. Bartholomew.  [Estimates had ranged from Clarendon's 40,000/50,000 to as high as 300,000.]  It may be boldly asserted that this statement of a sudden surprise, immediately followed by a general and organised massacre, is utterly and absolutely untrue.  As is almost always the case in a great popular rising, there were, in the first outbreak of the rebellion, some murders, but they were very few; and there was at this time nothing whatever of the nature of a massacre. [Lecky's footnote: The reader must form his own judgment of the writer who could give the following as a true account of the rebellion of 1641:  "The Catholics were indulged to the uttermost and therefore rebelled"!  Froude's English in Ireland.]

      The rebellion broke out in the counties which had so recently been confiscated, and before the first week elapsed, the English were everywhere driven from their homes, and their expulsion was soon accompanied by horrible barbarities.  The Scotch, however, who formed the great majority of the Protestants in Ulster, were at first entirely unmolested.  Partly because the rebels feared to attack them, and partly through hopes of a future alliance, it was agreed to pass them by; and during the weeks in which the power of the rebels in Ulster was most uncontrolled, this agreement seems to have been faithfully observed.  But the English in the open country were deprived at once of all they possessed.  The season was unusually inclement.  The wretched fugitives often found every door closed against them, and perished in multitudes along the roads.  Probably by far the greater umber of those who were represented as massacred died in this manner from cold, and want, and hardship....

      It was natural that these crimes should have been inordinately exaggerated in England.  The accounts came almost exclusively from one side, and they were mainly derived from the reports of ruined, panic-stricken, uneducated fugitives.  A single crime was continually repeated.  Reports grew and darkened as they passed from lip to lip, and it is not surprising that when the whole English plantation had vanished from the soil it should have been assumed that all had been murdered.... A ruling caste never admits any parity or comparison between the slaughter of its own members and the slaughter of a subject race.

Lord Ernest Hamilton, The Irish Rebellion of 1641 (London:  John Murray, 1920)  [This was written during the bitter period of revolution, partition, and civil war.  Even then, after the Great War and in the midst of civil war, 1641 remained a date to conjure with.] 

      The following pages, in continuance of the [author's earlier] volume devoted to Elizabethan Ulster, aim at carrying on the history of the province up to the time of the Cromwellian Settlement.  In the middle of the path along which the narrative travels stands the Irish rising of 1641.  Many writers, in a generous reluctance to lay bare the details of that rising, have skirted the subject.  [He would therefore present a complete analysis.]  These incidents furnish a very dreadful picture, but it is a picture which cannot be avoided unless truth is to be designedly pushed out of sight and romance substituted for history....

      Where, in the written history of a country, the balance of rights and wrongs is purposely upset, a false perspective is created which cannot fail to work mischievously.  No matter to what extent British historians--from a mistaken sense of generosity--may suppress certain events in Irish history which reflect discredit on the native race, it is quite certain that the same will never be done on the other side.  There is not, and never will be, any suppression of similar facts which reflect discredit on the British.  These are mercilessly made the most of.  As a result it comes about that the native, or Celtic, Irish, from their earliest childhood, are fed on legends in which their ancestors are depicted as the inoffensive victims of English tyranny....

      Nevertheless, it is certain that a country, no less than a man or woman, must know itself before it can claim the right to judge others.  Nor is there any reason that self-knowledge should bring with it any sense of humiliation. The 1641 massacres are no greater slur on the Irish nation than the Reign of Terror is on the French nation or Bolshevism on Russia as a whole.  All three represent the temporary ascendancy of the brute element.  The chief indictment against the better-class Irish of the seventeenth century is one of moral cowardice in shrinking from the suppression of outrages of which they at heart disapproved.  Many did splendid work in rescuing the hunted British, but none had the courage to stand up to and punish the ruffians who ruled society....

      It is hardly possible to doubt that the story furnished by the existing depositions [at Trinity College, Dublin] is an under-statement rather than not of the extent and ferocity of the massacres of 1641 and 1642.  In some districts there were no survivors left to depose.  Some of the existing witnesses dies of the treatment they received before they could give their evidence.  The story must necessarily be far more complete, but even as far as it goes it is sufficient to establish the fact that there were very dreadful and extensive massacres of unoffending men, women and children.  Then came the reprisals, which must inevitably follow in the wake of such deeds.  These have been graven in stone, as memorials of British cruelty to the Irish, as unquestionably they would have been had the massacres not preceded them.  In the light of the massacres, however, they merely appear as acts of just retribution.  The age was an age of brutality, and  when the sword was once unsheathed, many deeds were done on both sides which hardly bear contemplation. If there is a deliberate suppression of some of the deeds and a corresponding advertisement of others, a false impression of injustice is at once created.

      Three hundred years hence the peace terms of 1919 would read as cruel and tyrannous were the previous deeds of Germany deliberately suppressed.  A German would read them with a growing sense of wrong and of hatred against all the nations responsible for them.  Only by a full revelation of all the facts bearing on the situation can such a sense of wrong be cleared away and a better understanding established...

III.  Cromwell in Ireland
**Oliver Cromwell, Report from Ireland to Parliament (Dublin, 17 Sept 1649) [This is Cromwell's account of the Siege of Drogheda.]

Sir,
        Your Army being safely arrived at Dublin, and the Enemy endeavouring to draw all his Forces together about Trym and Tecroghan (as my Intelligence gave me;) from whence endeavors were used by the Marquis of Ormond, to draw Owen Roe O Neal with his Forces to his Assistance, but with what success I cannot yet learn.  I resolved after some refreshment taken for our weather beaten Men and Horses, and accommodations for a march, to take the Field; and accordingly upon Friday the Thirtieth of August last, Rendezvouzed with Eight Regiments of Foot, and Six of Horse, and some Troops of Dragoons, three miles on the Northside of Dublin; the Design was, To endeavor the Regaining of Drogheda, or tempting the Enemy, upon his hazard of the loss of that place, to fight.  Your Army came before the Town upon Munday following, where having pitched, as speedy course as could be taken to frame our Batteries, which took up the more time, because divers of the Battering Guns were on Ship board:  Upon Munday the Ninth of this instant, the Batteries began to play; whereupon I sent Sir Arthur Ashton the then Governor a Summons.  To deliver the Town to the use of the Parliament of England; to the which I received no satisfactory Answer, but proceeded that day to beat down the Steeple of the Church on the Southside of the Town, and to beat down a Tower not far from the same place.... Our Guns not being able to do much that day, It was resolved to endeavor to do our utmost the next day to make Breaches assaultable, and by the help of God to storm them.... The Guns after some two or three hundred shot, beat down the Corner Tower, and opened two reasonable good Breaches in the East and South wall.  Upon Tuesday the tenth of this instance, about five of the clock in the evening, we begun the Storm, and after some hot Dispute, we entred about Seven or Eight hundred men, the Enemy disputing it very stifly with us; and indeed through the advantages of the place, and the courage God was pleased to give the Defenders, our men were forced to retreat quite out of the Breach, not without some considerable loss.... Yet being encouraged to recover their loss, they made a second attempt, wherein God was pleased to animate them, that they got ground of the Enemy, and by the goodness of God, forced him to quit his Entrenchments; and after a very hot dispute, the Enemy having both Horse and Foot, and we onely Foot within the Wall, the Enemy gave ground, and our men became masters; but of their Retrenchments and the Church, which indeed although they made our entrance the more difficult, yet they proved of excellent use to us, so that the Enemy could not annoy us with their Horse, but thereby we had advantage to make good the ground, that so we might let in our own Horse, which accordingly was done, though with much difficulty; the Enemy retreated divers of them into the Mill-Mount....
        Our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the Sword; and indeed being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in Arms in the Town, and I think that night they put to the Sword about two thousand men, divers of the Officers and Soldiers being fled over the Bridge into the other part of the Town, where about One hundred of them possessed St. Peters Church Steeple.... These being summoned to yield to mercy, refused; whereupon I ordered the Steeple of St. Peters Church to be fired, where one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames, "God damn me, God confound me, I burn, I burn."  The next day the other two Towers were summoned [surrendered], in one of which was about six or seven score, but they refused to yield themselves; and we knowing that hunger must compel them, set onely good Guards to secure them from running away, until their stomacks were come down:  from one of the said Towers, notwithstanding their condition, they killed and wounded some of our men; when they submitted, their Officers were knockt on the head, and every tenth man of the Soldiers killed, and the rest Shipped for the Barbadoes [i.e. into servitude]; the Soldiers in the other Tower were all spared, as to their lives onely, and Shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.
         I am perswaded that this is a righteous Judgement of God upon these Barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such Actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.  The Officers and Soldiers of this Garrison, were the flower of all their Army; and their great expectation was, That our attempting this place, would put fair to ruine us; they being confident of the Resolution of their men, and the advantage of the place....
        And now give me leave to say how it comes to pass that this work is wrought; It was set upon some of our hearts, that a great thing should be done, not by power, or might, but by the Spirit of God; and is it not so clear?  That which caused your men to Storm so couragiously, it was the Spirit of God, who gave your men Courage, and took it away again, and gave your men Courage again, and therewith this happy Success; and therefore it is good that God alone have all the Glory.  It is remarkable, that these people at the first set in some places of the town that had been Monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent, that the last Lords day before the Storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great Church, called St. Peters, and they had publique Mass there; and in this very place near One Thousand of them were put to the Sword, flying thither for safety:  I believe all their Fryers were knockt on the head promiscuously, but two...whom the Soldiers took the next day, and made an end of; the other was taken in the Round Tower, under the repute of Lieutenant, and when he understood that the Officers in that Tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a Fryer, but that did not save him....
        I do not think we lost One hundred men upon the place, though many be wounded.  I most humbly pray, the Parliament will be pleased this Army may be maintained, and that a consideration may be had of them, and of the carrying on of the Affairs here, as may give a speedy issue to this work, to which there seems to be a marvellous fair opportunity offered by God.  And although it may seem very chargeable to the State of England to maintain so great a Force, yet surely to stretch a little for the present, in following Gods Providence, in hope the charge will not be long, I trust it will not be thought by any (that have no irreconcileable or malicious Principles) unfit for me to move for a constant supply, which in humane probability, as to outward means, is most likely to hasten and perfect this work; and indeed, if God please to finish it here, as he hath done in England, the War is like to pay itself.  We keep the Field much, our Tents sheltring us from the wet and cold, but yet the Country sickness [dysentery?] overtakes many, and therefore we desire recruits, and some fresh Regiments of Foot may be sent us; for it is easily conceived by what the Garrisons already drink up, what our field Army will come to, if God shall give more Garrisons into our hands.  Craving pardon for this great trouble, I rest,
        Your most humble Servant, O. Cromwell
 

IV. Restoration
Restoration Land Settlement:  Act of Settlement (1662)
An Act for the better execution of his majesty's gracious declaration for the settlement of his kingdom of Ireland, and satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers, and other his subjects there.
      Whereas an unnatural insurrection did break forth against your majesty's royal father of ever blessed memory, his crown and dignity, in this your majesty's kingdom if Ireland upon the 23 October in the year of our Lord God 1641, and manifest itself by the murder and destructions of many thousands of your said majesty's good and loyal subjects, which afterwards universally spreading and diffusing itself over the whole kingdom, settled into, and became a formed and almost national rebellion of the Irish papists, against your royal father of blessed memory, his crown and dignity, to the destruction of the English and protestants inhabiting in Ireland, the which Irish papists being represented in a general assembly chosen by themselves, and acting by a general council called by them, 'The supreme council of the confederate Roman catholics of Ireland,' did first assume, usurp, and exercise the power of life and death, make peace and war, levy and coin money, and many other acts of sovereign authority, treating with foreign princes and potentates for their government and protection, and afterwards acted under a foreign authority, by all the said ways disowning and rejecting your royal father, and your majesty's undoubted right to this kingdom, even whilst they treacherously used his and your majesty's names in the outward forms of their proceedings....and whereas several of your majesty's subjects, by whom, as instruments, the said rebels were totally subdued, did in the time of your majesty's absence beyond the seas, for supply of the then pressing necessities, and to prevent the further desolation of this your majesty's kingdom, enquire into the authors, contrivers, and abbettors of the said rebellion and war, and after much deliberation among themselves...did dispossess such of the said popish Irish rebels of their lands, tenements, and hereditaments...and did withal distribute and set out the said lands to be possessed by sundry persons, their agents and tenants, who by advancing of their monies and goods, or by hazarding of their lives, had contributed to the said conquest.... It is therefore enacted...that all honours, manors, castles, houses, places, lands, tenements, and hereditaments,...[etc.] which at any time from and after the said 23 October, in the year of our Lord 1641, were seized or sequestered into the hands, or to the use of his late majesty King Charles I, or of your most gracious majesty...or whereof the adventurers, officers or soldiers now or formerly of the English army in this kingdom...; as also...all manors, lands, tenements, rents, tithes...of any persons...who...shall not be adjudged innocent persons...shall be and are hereby declared...as from the said 23 October 1641, forfeited, and to have been forfeited to your majesty, your heirs and successors....
       Provided likewise, that this act...shall not vest...in your majesty, your heirs or successors, or otherwise be prejudicial unto or take away any estate...[etc.] from any protestant...who did not join with the said rebels before 15 September 1643....
 

William Petty, The Political Anatomy of Ireland (1672) [Petty was an economist and philosopher who served Cromwell and then the restored Stuarts in Ireland; he was instrumental in surveying Irish land and reapportioning it to Cromwell's men; also a scientist, Petty was a founding member of the Royal Society]

Ch. 5:  Of the future Settlement of Ireland, Prorogation of Rebellions, and its Union with England

      The English invaded Ireland about 500 years since; at which time, if the Irish were in number about 1,200,000 Anno 1641, they were but 600,000 in number, 200 years ago, and not above 300,000 at the same time of their Invasion; for 300,000 People will, by the ordinary course of Generations, become 1,200,000 in 500 years; allowance being made for the extraordinary Effects of epidemical Diseases, Famines, Wars &c....
      Sir John Davys hath expressed much Wit and Learning, in giving the Causes why Ireland was in no measure reduced to English Government, till in Queen Elizabeth's Reign, and since; and withal offers several means, whereby what yet remains to be done, may be still effected.... Some furious Spirits have wished, that the Irish would rebel again, that they might be put to the Sword.  But I declare, that motion to be not only impious and inhumane, but withal frivolous and pernicious even to them who have rashly wish'd for those occasions. 
      That the Irish will not easily rebel again, I believe from the memory of their former Successes, especially of the last, had not many Providences interpos'd; and withal from the consideration of these following Particulars, viz.
     1.  That the British Protestants and Church have three Fourths of all the Lands; five Sixths of all the Housing; nine Tenths of all the Housing in wall'd Towns and Places of Strength, two Thirds of the Foreign Trade.  That 6 of 8 of all the Irish live in a brutish, nasty Condition, as in Cabins, with neither Chimney, Door, Stairs, nor Window, feed chiefly upon Milk and Potatoes, whereby their Spirits are not dispos'd for War.  And that although there be in Ireland 8 Papists for 3 others; yet there are far more Soldiers, and Soldier-like Men of this latter and lesser Number, than of the former.
     2.  That his Majesty, who formerly could do nothing for, and upon Ireland, but by the help of England, hath now a Revenue upon the Place, to maintain, if he pleases, 7000 Men in Arms, besides a Protestant Militia of 25000 more, the most whereof are expert in War.
     3.  That the Protestants have Housing enough within Places of strength within 5 Miles of the Seaside, to receive and protect, and harbour every Man, Woman, and Child belonging to them, and have also places of strength of their own properly so situate in all parts of Ireland, to which they can easily travel the shortest day of the year.
     4.  That being able to secure their Persons, even upon all sudden Emergencies, they can be easily supplied out of England with Food sufficient to maintain them, till they have burnt 160,000 of their afore-described Cabins, not worth £50,000 destroyed Stacks and Haggards [sheds] of Corn, and disturbed their Tillage, which the embody'd British can soon and easily atchieve.
     5.  That a few Ships of War, whereof the Irish have none, nor no skill or Practice of Navigation, can hinder their relief from all Foreign help....
     Lastly, Let the Irish know, that there are, ever were, and will be men discontented with their present Conditions in England, and ready for any Exploit and Change, more than are sufficient to quell any Insurrection they can make and abide by.
     Whereupon, declining all Military means of settling and securing Ireland in peace and plenty, what we offer shall tend to the transmuting one People into the other, and the thorough union of Interests upon natural and lasting Principles; of which I shall enumerate several, tho' seemingly never so uncouth and extravagant.
     1.  If Henry the IId had or could have brought over all the People of Ireland into England, declining the Benefit of their Land; he had fortified, beautified, and enrich'd England, and done real Kindness to the Irish.  But the same Work is near four times as hard now to be done as then; but it might be done, even now, with advantage to all Parties.
     2.  Whereas there are now 300,000 British, and 800,000 Papists, whereof 600,000 live in the wretched way above mentioned:  If an Exchange was made of but about 200,000 Irish, and the like number of British brought over in their rooms [exchange], then the natural strength of the British would be equal to that of the Irish; but their Political and Artificial strength three times as great; and so visible, that the Irish would never stir upon a National or Religious Account.
     3.  There are among the 600,000 above-mentioned of the poor Irish, not above 20,000 of unmarried marriageable Women; nor would above two thousand per Ann, grow and become such.  Wherefore if one half of the said Women were in one year, and the other half the next transported into England, and disposed one to each Parish, and as many English brought back and married to the Irish, as would improve their Dwelling but to an House and Garden of £3 value, the whole Work of natural Transmutation and Union would in 4 or 5 years be accomplished.
     The Charge of making the Exchange would not be £20,000 per Ann, which is about 6 Weeks Pay of the present or late Armies in Ireland.
     If the Irish must have Priests, let the number of them, which is now between 2 and 3 thousand Secular and Regulars, be reduced to the competent number of 1000, which is 800 Souls to the pastorage of each Priest; which should be known persons, and English-men, if it may be.  So as that when the Priests, who govern the Conscience, and the Women, who influence other powerful Appetites, shall be English, both of whom being in the Bosom of the Men, it must be, that no massacring of English, as heretofore, can happen again.  Moreover, when the Language of the Children shall be English, and the whole Oeconomy of the Family English, viz. Diet, Apparel, &c. the Transmutation will be very easy and quick.
     Add hereunto, That if both Kingdoms were under one Legislative Power and Parliament, the Members whereof should be proportionable in Power and Wealth of each Nation, there would be no danger such a Parliament should do any thing to the prejudice of the English Interest in Ireland; nor could the Irish ever complain of partiality, when they shall be freely and proportionably represented in all Legislatures.