"and marched away undiscovered to us; and the inhabitants "of Clonmel sent out for a parley. Upon which, Articles were agreed on, before we knew the Enemy was gone. After signing of the Conditions, we discovered the Enemy to be gone; and, very early this morning, pursued them; and fell upon their rear of stragglers, and killed above 200,—besides "those we slew in the storm. We entered Clonmel this morning; and have kept our Conditions with them. The place "is considerable; and very advantageous to the reducing of "these parts wholly to the Parliament of England.”19 Whitlocke has heard by other Letters, That they found in Clonmel 'the stoutest Enemy this Army had ever met in Ireland; and 'that there was never seen so hot a storm, of so long continuance, and so gallantly defended, either in England or Ireland, '20 : The Irish Commander here was Hugh O'Neil, a kinsman of Owen Roe's: vain he too, this new brave O'Neil ! It is a lost Cause. It is a Cause he has not yet seen into the secret of, and cannot prosper in. Fiery fighting cannot prosper in it; no, there needs something other first, which has never yet been done! Let the O'Neil go elsewhither, with his fighting talent; here it avails nothing, and less. To the surrendered Irish Officers the Lord Lieutenant granted numerous permissions to embody regiments, and go abroad with them into any country not at war with England. Some Five-and-forty Thousand' Kurisees, or whatever name they had, went in this way to France, to Spain, and fought there far off; and their own land had peace. The Lord Lieutenant would fain have seen Waterford surrender before he went: but new Letters arrive from the Parliament; affairs in Scotland threaten to become pressing. He appoints Ireton his Deputy, to finish the business here; rapidly makes what survey of Munster, what adjustment of Ireland, military and civil, is possible ;-steps on board the President Frigate, in the last days of May, and spreads sail for England. He has been some nine months in Ireland; leaves a very handsome spell of work done there. At Bristol, after a rough passage, the Lord Lieutenant is received with all the honours and acclamations, 'the great guns 20 Whitlock, p. 441. 19 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 81). VOL. II. S firing thrice;' hastens up to London, where, on Friday 31st May, all the world is out to welcome him. Fairfax, and chief Officers, and Members of Parliament, with solemn salutation, on Hounslow Heath: from Hounslow Heath to Hyde Park, where are Trainbands and Lord Mayors; on to Whitehall and the Cockpit, where are better than these,—it is one wide tumult of salutation, congratulation, artillery-volleying, human shouting ;-Hero-worship after a sort, not the best sort. It was on this occasion that Oliver said, or is reported to have said, when some sycophantic person observed, "What a crowd come out to see your Lordship's triumph!" "Yes, but if it were to see me hanged, how many more would there be !"21_ Such is what the Irish common people still call the “Curse of Cromwell;" this is the summary of his work in that country. The remains of the War were finished out by Ireton, by Ludlow: Ireton died of fever, at Limerick, in the end of the second year;22 and solid Ludlow, who had been with him for some ten months, succeeded. The ulterior arrangements for Ireland were those of the Commonwealth Parliament and the proper Official Persons; not specially Oliver's arrangements, though of course he remained a chief authority in that matter, and nothing could well be done which he with any emphasis deliberately condemned. There goes a wild story, which owes it first place in History to Clarendon, I think, who is the author of many such: How the Parliament at one time had decided to 'exterminate' all the Irish population; and then, finding this would not quite answer, had contented itself with packing them all off into the Province of Connaught, there to live upon the moorlands; and so had pacified the Sister Island.23 Strange rumours no doubt were afloat in the Council of Kilkenny, in the Conventicle of Clonmacnoise, and other such quarters, and were kept up for very obvious purposes in those days; and my Lord of Clarendon at an after date, seeing Puritanism hung on the gallows and tumbled in heaps in St. Margaret's, thought it safe to write with considerable latitude respecting its procedure. My Lord had, in fact, the story all his own way for about a hundred-and-fifty years; and, during that time, has set afloat. 21 Newspapers (in Kimber, p. 148); Whitlocke, p. 441. 22 26th November 1651 (Wood in voce): Ludlow had arrived in January of the same year (Memoirs, i. 322, 332, &c.). 23 Continuation of Clarendon's Life (Oxford, 1761), p. 119 &c. through vague heads a great many things. His authority is rapidly sinking; and will now probably sink deeper than even it deserves. The real procedure of the Puritan Commonwealth towards Ireland is not a matter of conjecture, or of report by Lord Clarendon; the documentary basis and scheme of it still stands in black-on-white, and can be read by all persons.24 In this Document the reader will find, set forth in authentic businessform, a Scheme of Settlement somewhat different from that of 'extermination;' which, if he be curious in that matter, he ought to consult. First, it appears by this Document, all husbandmen, ploughmen, labourers, artificers and others of the meaner sort' of the Irish nation are to be,-not exterminated; no, but rendered exempt from punishment and question, as to these Eight Years of blood and misery now ended; which is a very considerable exception from the Clarendon Scheme! Next, as to the Ringleaders, the rebellious Landlords, and Papist Aristocracy; as to these also, there is a carefullygraduated scale of punishments established, that punishment and guilt may in some measure correspond. All that can be proved to have been concerned in the Massacre of Forty-one ; for these, and for certain other persons of the turncoat species, whose names are given, there shall be no pardon :—'extermination,' actual death on the gallows, or perpetual banishment and confiscation for these; but not without legal inquiry and due trial first had, for these, or for any one. Then certain others, who have been in arms at certain dates against the Parliament, but not concerned in the Massacre: these are declared to have forfeited their estates; but lands to the value of one-third of the same, as a modicum to live upon, shall be assigned them, where the Parliament thinks safest,—in the moorlands of Connaught, as it turned out. Then another class, who are open Papists and have not manifested their good affection to the Parliament: these are to forfeit one-third of their estates; and continue quiet at their peril. Such Such is the Document; which was regularly acted on; fulfilled with as much exactness as the case, now in the hands of very exact men, admitted of. The Catholic Aristocracy of Ireland have to undergo this fate, for their share in the late miseries; this and no other and as for all 'ploughmen, husbandmen, artifi24 Scobell, Part ii. p. 197 (12th August 1652); see also p. 317 (27th June 1656). cers and people of the meaner sort,' they are to live quiet where they are, and have no questions asked. In this way, not in the way of 'extermination,' was Ireland settled by the Puritans. Five-and-forty thousand armed 'kurisees' are fighting, not without utility we hope, far off in foreign parts. Incurably turbulent ringleaders of revolt are sent to the moorlands of Connaught. Men of the Massacre, where they can be convicted, of which some instances occur, are hanged. The mass of the Irish Nation lives quiet under a new Land Aristocracy; new, and in several particulars very much improved indeed: under these lives now the mass of the Irish Nation; ploughing, delving, hammering; with their wages punctually paid them; with the truth spoken to them, and the truth done to them, so as they had never before seen it since they were a Nation! Clarendon himself admits that Ireland flourished, to an unexampled extent, under this arrangement. One can very well believe it. What is to hinder poor Ireland from flourishing, if you will do the truth to it and speak the truth, instead of doing the falsity and speaking the falsity? Ireland, under this arrangement, would have grown-up gradually into a sober diligent drabcoloured population; developing itself, most probably, in some form of Calvinistic Protestantism. For there was hereby a Protestant Church of Ireland, of the most irrefragable nature, preaching daily in all its actions and procedure a real Gospel of veracity, of piety, of fair dealing and good order, to all men; and certain other 'Protestant Churches of Ireland,' and unblessed real-imaginary Entities, of which the human soul is getting weary, would of a surety never have found footing there! But the Ever-blessed Restoration came upon us. All that arrangement was torn-up by the roots; and Ireland was appointed to develop itself as we have seen. Not in the drabcoloured Puritan way;-in what other way is still a terrible dubiety, to itself and to us! It will be by some Gospel of Veracity, I think, when the Heavens are pleased to send such. This 'Curse of Cromwell,' so-called, is the only Gospel of that kind I can yet discover to have ever been fairly afoot there. ADJOINED TO VOLUME SECOND. SQUIRE PAPERS (FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE). THE following Article in Fraser's Magazine had not the effect intended for it,—of securing in printer's types a certain poor defaced scantling of Cromwell Letters, which had fallen to my charge under circumstances already sorrowful enough; and then of being, after some slight peaceable satisfaction to such as took interest in it, forgotten by the public; I also being left to forget it, and be free of it. On the contrary, the peaceable satisfaction to persons interested was but temporary; and the public, instead of neglecting and forgetting, took to unquiet guessing, as if there lay some deeper mystery in the thing, perhaps foul-play in it: private guessing, which in a week or two broke out into the Newspapers, in the shape of scepticism, of learned doubt too acute to be imposed upon, grounding itself on antiquarian philologies (internal evidence of anachronisms), 'cravat,' 'stand no nonsense,' and I know not what. The unwonted circumstances of the case, and the unsatisfactory though unavoidable reticences in detailing it, threw a certain enigmatic chiaroscuro over the transaction, which, as it were, challenged the idle mind. Since the public had not neglected and forgotten, the public could do no other than guess. The idle public, obstinately resolute to see into millstones, could of course see nothing but opacity and its wide realms; got into ever deeper doubt, which is bottomless, 'a sphere with infinite radius,' and very easily arrived at; could get into no certainty, which is a sphere's centre, and difficult to arrive at; continued fencing with spectres, arguing from antiquarian philologies, &c. in the Newspapers; whereby, echo answering echo, and no transparency in millstones being attainable, the poor public rose rapidly to a height of anxiety on this unexpected matter, and raised a noise round itself, which, considering the importance of the subject, might be called surprising. In |