in

"The next day, the other two towers were summoned ; one of which was about six or seven score: but they refused to yield themselves: and we knowing that hunger must compel them, set only good guards to secure them from running away until their stomachs 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 knocked on the head; and cvery tenth man of the soldiers killed; and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared, as to their lives only; and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.

"I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment 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 their army. "It is remarkable that these people, at the first, set

up

the mass in some places of the town that had been monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent that, the last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church called St. Peter's, and they had public mass there: and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two; the one of which was Father Peter Taaff, brother to the Lord Taaff, whom the soldiers took the next day and made an end of. The other was taken in the Round Tower, under the repute of a lieutenant, and when he undersood that the officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed that he was a friar; but that did not save him.”*

In another letter written on the same subject to the

* Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i. p. 460.

president of the Council of State, Cromwell remarks:"This hath been a marvellous great mercy. I do not believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant, who, I hear, going to the enemy, said that he was the only man that escaped of all the garrison. The enemy upon this were filled with terror, and truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood, through the goodness of God."

Such is Cromwell's own explanation of the object he aimed at by so terrible a course. That it is an honest and true explanation, cannot admit of a doubt, for his worst reviler never charged him as naturally cruel or fond of blood; that he was justified in his anticipations, was amply confirmed by the results. Even his greatest maligners acknowledge that it ended the war and bloodshed almost at a stroke. "The execrable policy of that regicide," exclaims Carte, "had the effect he proposed. It spread abroad the terror of his name." It showed the insurgents in fact, that hope only lay in submission. Trim and Dundalk were immediately abandoned by the enemy. He passed on from town to castle, each opening their gates and submitting in terror to the conqueror. Wexford refused to yield another storming and bloody vengeance ensued. One other, and very characteristic letter of the victorious General, in answer to proposals of surrender from Major-General Taaff, governor of Ross, will help the reader to a new view of Cromwell. The correspondence had been going on while the latter was breaching the walls; and his letters are as concise and pithy as his other arguments-with the sword. He thus replies to a letter accepting his conditions:

"SIR,

"For the Governor of Ross: These.

19th October, 1649.

"To what I formerly offered, I shall make

good. As for your carrying away any artillery or am

munition, that you brought not with you, or that hath not come to you since you had the command of that place, -I must deny you that; expecting you to leave it as you found it.

"As for that which you mention concerning liberty of conscience, I meddle not with any man's conscience. But if by liberty of conscience, you mean a liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the parliament of England have power that will not be allowed of. As for such of the townsmen who desire to depart, and carry away themselves and goods, (as you express,) I engage myself they shall have three months time so to do; and in the meantime shall be protected from violence in their persons and goods, as others under the obedience of the parliament.

"If you accept of this offer, I engage my honour for a punctual performance hereof. I rest,

"Your servant,

"OLIVER CROMWELL.*

Such will suffice to convey some clear idea of his Irish campaign-swift, bloody, yet merciful in its severity; above all decisive; putting an end by terrible means to a still more terrible state of things; and once more giving Ireland a chance of knowing the good of definite and intelligible government by law. This done, Cromwell appointed Ireton Lord-Deputy, and sailed for England to receive the appointment of General-in-chief of the armies of the Commonwealth, and to enter on another and a very different campaign.

* Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i. p. 477.

CHAPTER XIII.

WAR WITH SCOTLAND.

CROMWELL had made very speedy work of the suppression of the Irish rebellion, to which he was instigated no less by his conviction of its being the wisest, and even under all circumstances, the most merciful mode of procedure; but also by the many events that daily transpired tending to recall him to the great arena of political warfare in England. "We serve you," he wrote in one of his despatches from Ireland, "we are willing to be out of our trade of war, and shall hasten, by God's assistance and grace, to the end of our work, as the labourer doth to be at his rest." The end of Cromwell's work and trade of war, however, was not yet arrived. On reaching England he found that he was only exchanging one scene of foreign warfare for another, of an equally complex, and much more irritating character. The Scots, as we have seen, were the first to originate revolt against despotic sway and enforced conformity throughout the British isles; nor had anything transpired to make them less resolute in resisting such aggressions. They had re-established Presbytery in Scotland well nigh to the satisfaction of the whole nation; they had entered into solemn league with England, on the very ground of their oft approved Covenant, and doubted not but they should soon see that nation as unanimous in the adoption of their favourite ecclesiastical polity as themselves. Presbytery, however, was from the first an exotic in England; and even when its leaders seemed to have the power, their enactments were only carried into partial force in one or two districts under their own immediate influence. Something very different from the establishment of any single dominant and absolute

form of ecclesiastical polity, on the ruins of episcopacy, was aimed at by the English nation; and while it may be true enough that the Independent party was only a small minority, even when it compelled England to submit to its views, it nevertheless represented in the practical working out of freedom of conscience and liberal institutions, much of that at which the great majority of the nation had long been aiming, however imperfectly their views were expressed. Perfect unanimity therefore, between Scotland and England had become impossible; and now while the latter was establishing a Commonwealth, and remodeling her ancient institutions to republican forms, Scotland had patched up an agreement with Charles, the son of the beheaded king, who thenceforth became, in name at least, the King of Scots. The Scots, as Carlyle very happily expresses it, compelled poor Charles to sign their Covenant voluntarily; an arrangement, however, which interfered very little with the King's negotiations with Cavaliers, Prelatists, Papists, and even the Pope himself. "Totally unscrupulous," says Hallam,* * " as to the means by which he might reign, even at the moment that he was treating to become the covenanted King of Scotland with every solemn renunciation of Popery, Charles had recourse to a very delicate negotiation, which deserves remark, as having led, after a long course of time, but by gradual steps, to the final downfall of his family. With the advice of Ormond, and with the concurrence of Hyde, he attempted to interest the Pope (Innocent X.) on his side, as the most powerful intercessor with the Catholic princes of Europe. For this purpose it was necessary to promise toleration at least to the Catholics. The King's ambassadors to Spain in 1650, Cottington and Hyde, and other agents despatched to Rome at the same time, were empowered to offer an entire repeal of the penal laws. The King himself, some time afterwards, wrote a letter to the

⚫ Hallam's Constitutional History vol. ii. p. 336.