dition of the Irish Rebellion, nearly trodden to destruction now, it has been judged very fitting, That there be an end of excommunication for the present, and a real attempt at union instead. For which object there has, with much industry, been brought-about a 'Conventicle,' or general Meeting of the Occult Hierarchy, at a place called Clonmacnoise, in the month of December last. Clonmacnoise, 'Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise;' some kind of Abbey then; now a melancholy tract of ruins, 'on some bare gravelly hills,' among the dreary swamps of the Shannon; nothing there but wrecks and death,-for the bones of the Irish Kings lie there, and burial there was considered to have unspeakable advantages once :-a Ruin now, and dreary Golgotha among the bogs of the Shannon; but an Abbey then, and fit for a Conventicle of the Occult Hierarchy, 'which met on the 4th of December 1649,' for the purpose above-said. There, of a certainty, in the cold days of December 1649, did the Occult Hierarchy meet,-warmed, we hope, by good log-fires and abundant turf,-and 'for somewhat less than three weeks' hold consultation. The real issue of which has now, after Two-hundred years, come to be very different from the then apparent one!

The then apparent issue was a 'Union;' worthless 'superficial Union,' as Carte1 calls it; skin-deep, which was broken again within the month, and is of no interest to us here. But it chanced also that, to usher-in this worthless 'Union,' the Occult Hierarchy published in print a Manifesto, or general Injunction and Proclamation to the Irish People; which Manifesto coming under the eye of the Lord Lieutenant, provoked an Answer from him. And this Answer, now resuscitated, and still fit to be read by certain earnest men, Irish and other: this we may define as the real issue for us, such as it is. One of the remarkablest State-Papers ever issued by any Lord Lieutenant; which, if we could all completely read it, as an earnest Editor has had to try if he could do, till it became completely luminous again, and glowed with its old veracity and sacred zeal and fire again, might do us all some good perhaps !—

The Clonmacnoise Manifesto exists also, as a small brown Pamphlet of six leaves, 'printed at Kilkenny and reprinted at London in January 1649;'2 but is by no means worth inserting

1 Life of Ormond, ii. 105-110.

King's Pamphlets, large 4to, no. 43, § 5; [E. 534] the London Reprint, or the day of purchasing it by the old Collector, is dated with the pen 31st January' 1649-50. [It is often difficult to say whether Thomason's dates mean the day of the issue of the pamphlet or of his purchase of it. Probably the two often coincided.

here. It is written in a very smooth, indeed vague and faint style, the deeply discrepant humours at Clonmacnoise not admitting of any other for their 'superficial Union;' and remains, in the perusal, mostly insignificant, and as if obliterated into dim-gray,-till once, in the Lord Lieutenant's fiery illumination, some traits of it do come forth again. Here is our short abstract of it, more than sufficient for present purposes.

'The Kilkenny Pamphlet starts by a preamble, in the form 'of Public Declaration; setting forth, with some brevity, That 'whereas various differences had existed in the Catholic Party, 'said differences do now and shall, blessed be Heaven, all recon'cile themselves into a real "Union;" real Union now, by these 'presents, established, decreed, and bound to exist and continue: signed duly by all the Occult Hierarchy, twenty Bishops more 'or less, Antonius Clonmacnosensis among the rest. This is the 'first part of the Clonmacnoise Manifesto: this is to be read in 'every Church for certain Sundays; and do what good it can.— 'Follows next, similarly signed, a short set of "Acts," special 'Orders to Priests and People at large, as to what they are to do 'by way of furthering said Union, and bringing good success to 'the Cause. Among which Orders we recognise one for masses, 'universal prayers (not wholly by machinery, we hope); and, 'with still more satisfaction, another for decisively putting down, 'or at least in every way discountenancing, those bands called "Idle-Boys" (ancestors of Captain Rock, one perceives), who 'much infest the country at present.

'Our Manifesto then, thirdly, winds up with an earnest admon'ition, or Exhortation General, to the People of Ireland high 'and low, Not to be deceived with any show of clemency, or ""moderate usage," exercised upon them hitherto; inasmuch as 'it is the known intention of the English Parliament to exter'minate the whole of them; partly by slaughter, partly by 'banishment "to the Tobacco Islands and hot West-India 'localities, whither many have already been sent. Known in'tention; as can be deduced by the discerning mind from clear 'symptoms, chiefly from these two: First, that they, the English 'Parliament, have passed an "Act of Subscription," already 'disposing of Irishmen's estates to English Money-lenders: and 'then second, That they have decided to extirpate the Catholic 'Religion, which latter fact, not to speak of their old Scotch 'Covenant and the rest, may be seen with eyes, even from this 'Lord Lieutenant's own expressions in his Letter to the Governor

1

"of Ross; which are quoted. To extirpate the Catholic Religion: 'how can they effect this but by extirpating the professors thereof? 'Let all Irishmen high and low, therefore, beware; and stand 'upon their guard, and adhere to the superficial Union: slaughter, 'or else banishment to the Tobacco Islands, being what they 'have to expect.'It is by this third or concluding portion of the Clonmacnoise Manifesto that the Lord Lieutenant's wrath has been chiefly kindled: but indeed he blazes athwart the whole Document, athwart it and along it, as we shall see, like a destroying sword, and slashes in pieces it and its inferences, and noxious delusions and deludings, in a very characteristic style.

What perhaps will most strike the careless modern reader, in the Clonmacnoise Manifesto with its 'inferences' of general extermination, is that 'show of moderate usage at present; 2 and the total absence of those 'many Inhabitants butchered at Drogheda lately total absence of those; and also of the 'Twohundred Women in the Marketplace of Wexford,' who in modern times have even grown 'Two-hundred beautiful Women' (all young, and in their Sunday clothes for the occasion), and figure still, in the Irish Imagination, in a very horrid manner. They are known to Abbé Macgeohegan, these interesting Martyrs, more or less; to Philopater Irenæus, to my Lord Clarendon, Jacobite Carte, and other parties divided by wide spaces and long centuries from them; but not to this Occult Hierarchy sitting deliberative close at hand, and doing their best in the massacre way, who are rather concerned to guard us against shows of clemency exercised hitherto! This circumstance, and still more what Cromwell himself says on the subject of 'massacring,' will strike the modern reader; and the 'Two-hundred Women,' and some other things, I persuade myself, will profitably vanish from the Marketplace henceforth!

So soon as convenient, that wretched chimera will do well to vanish; and also, I think, a certain terrible fact, which the Irish Imagination pretends to treat sometimes as a chimera, might profitably return, and reassert itself there. The Massacre of 1641 was not, we will believe, premeditated by the Leaders of the Rebellion; but it is an awful truth, written in sun-clear evidence, that it did happen ;-and the noble-minded among the men of

1 Antea, vol. i. p. 493.

2[Dr. Gardiner writes, "Carlyle imagined that these words showed that the prelates did not believe in the massacre of civilians at Drogheda and Wexford. The sentence however clearly refers to property only." Commonwealth and Protectorate, i. 162.]

Ireland are called to admit it, and to mourn for it, and to learn from it! To the ear of History those 'ghosts' still shriek from the Bridge of Portnadown, if not now for just vengeance on their murderers, yet for pity on them, for horror at them: and no just man, whatever his new feelings may be, but will share more or less the Lord Lieutenant Cromwell's old feelings on that matter. It must not be denied, it requires to be admitted! As an act of blind hysterical fury, very blind and very weak and mad, and at once quite miserable and quite detestable, it remains on the face of Irish history; and will have to remain till Ireland cease, much more generally than it has yet done, to mistake loud bluster for inspired wisdom, and spasmodic frenzy for strength; -till, let us say, Ireland do an equal act of magnanimous forbearance, of valour in the silent kind! Of which also we have by no means lost hope. No :-and if among the true hearts of Ireland there chanced to be found one who, across the opaque angry whirlwind in which all Cromwell matters are enveloped for him, could recognise, in this thunderclad figure of a Lord Lieutenant now about to speak to him, the veritable Heaven's Messenger clad in thunder; and accept the stern true message he brings-! Who knows? That too, we believe, is coming; and with it many hopeful things. But to our Declaration, however that may be.2

A Declaration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, For the Undeceiving of Deluded and Seduced People: which may be satisfactory to all that do not wilfully shut their eyes against the light. In answer to certain late Declarations and Acts, framed by the Irish Popish Prelates and Clergy, in a Conventicle at Clonmacnoise.

HAVING lately perused a Book printed at Kilkenny in the year 1649, containing divers Declarations and Acts of the Popish Prelates and Clergy, framed in a late Conventicle at Clonmacnoise,

1 Affidavits, taken in 1641-44; in Sir John Temple's History of the Irish Massacre and Rebellion (Maseres's edition, London, 1812), pp. 85-123; May's History of the Long Parliament, and the contemporary Books passim. [On this subject, see Sir John Gilbert's remarks in Eighth Report of the Hist. MSS. Commissioners, p. 572; Miss M. Hickson's Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, and Mr. Dunlop's criticisms in the English Historical Review, vol. i. p. 740.]

2[On the 16th of January-probably before the issue of his own Declaration, as he does not mention it-Cromwell wrote to the Speaker on the subject of the Clonmacnoise Manifesto. See Supplement, No. 53.]

the 4th day of December in the year aforesaid,-I thought fit to give a brief Answer unto the same.

And first to the first ;-which is a Declaration, wherein (having premised the reconciliation of some differences among themselves, 'and the hearty "Union" they have now attained to') they come to state the reasons of' their War, 'grounding it' upon the interest of their Church, of his Majesty and the Nation, and their resolution to prosecute the same with unity. All which will deserve a particular survey.

The Meeting of the Archbishops, Bishops and other Prelates at Clonmacnoise is by them said to be proprio motu. By which term they would have the world believe that the Secular Power hath nothing to do to appoint, or superintend, their Spiritual Conventions, as they call them ;—although in the said meetings they take upon them to intermeddle in all Secular Affairs; as by the sequel appears.

And first for their Union, they so much boast of. If any wise man shall seriously consider what they pretend the grounds of the differences to have been, and the way and course they have taken to reconcile the same; and their expressions thereabout, and the ends for which, and their resolutions how to carry on their great Design declared for; he must needs think slightly of their said union.1 And also for this, that they resolve all other men's consents and reconciliation' into their own; without consulting them at all.

The subject of this reconciliation was (as they say) the clergy and laity. The discontent and division itself was grounded on the late difference of opinion happening amongst the prelates and laity. I wonder not at differences in opinion, at discontents and divisions, where so Antichristian and dividing a term as clergy and laity is given and received; a term unknown to any save to the Antichristian Church, and such as derive themselves from her ab initio non fuit sic. The most pure and primitive

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1'it' in orig.