“ Shipped for the Barbadoes.” 335 
All the priests and friars were of course knocked on the head promiscuously 
aad Clarendon states that the massacre continued for five days, and that all the 
etizens who were Irish, men, women and children, were put to the sword. 
Thomas, the brother of Anthony a Wood, the historian of Oxford, was a Round- 
head trooper in the Siege. He related to his brother who records it without 
comment in his Athen Oxon enses, that when his comrades made their way up 
to the lofts and galleries of St. Mary’s Church and tower where the enemy had 
retreated, each would take up a child and use it as a buckler. In the vaults 
many women had taken refuge. Thomas a Wood tried to save one of these, 
a beautifully dressed maiden, and to escort her to safety, but a soldier per- 
ceiving his intentions ran his sword through her body. The narrator, 
“seeing her gasping, took away her money and jewels and flung her down 
over the works.’ Doubts have been thrown upon this frank record by 
writers of all parties owing to the scamp’s reference to the girl’s jewels and 
beautiful dress. The mud-stained staff of Grant and Sheridan who headed 
off Les at Appomatox were surprised to find the hard-bitten Southerners 
in new uniforms and their leader wearing a presentation sword. The explana- 
tion is simple. When the Army of Virginia made its last dash for freedom it 
preferred to leave behind its old clothes rather than its new. Hither feminine 
human nature or the commercial spirit of the Anglo-Irvish town had induced 
this poor girl in abandoning her worldly goods to cling at least to her jewels 
and best clothes. My lady listeners, I am sure, will pardon my hazarding 
an inexperienced bachelor’s explanation of the incident. 
The Governor, Sir Arthur Aston, was among the first who fell at the Mill- 
mount. He had his brains beaten out with his own artificial leg. It was 
reputed to be of gold, says the regicide historian Ludlow. There was a great 
dispute and a scramble for it, but it proved to be of wood. In his girdle, how- 
ever, were two hundred broad pieces and this led to another scramble. These 
godly men did not despise the mammon of unrighteousness. His body was 
hacked to pieces. Thomas 4 Wood tells the same tale, and neither expresses any 
disgust. At this spot Cromwell commanded in person and his own blood- 
shot eyes may have seen through the hot red mist of action the igno- 
minious butchery of the gallant soldier and honoured pensioner of King 
Sigismund. We seem to have made little progress since thy golden times, 
Ambrogio, Ma~quis of Spinola, dead of a father’s and a soldier’s grief and 
in thine honourable grave these eighteen years at Casale in Piedmont! It is 
caleulated in Curry’s Review that of the inhabitants only thirty survived the 
five days’ massacre and these. were shipped to the West Indies as slaves. Of 
the garrison, some three or four thousand of the flower of the Irish royalist 
army, it would appear from Cromwell’s own account as given above, that a 
hundred or so were spared who had held out after the first day in the two towers 
(the Bolton and West Tower). These were all “ shipped for the Barbadoes.” 
The above quoted extract from Cromwell’s military correspondence is the 
first mention we find of the shipment of Irish slaves to the West Indies. We 
know, however, froma letter of Father O’Hartigan, a Jesuit envoy of the Catho- 
lic Confederation to Cardinal Richelieu, that as early as 1643 he had received 
“a petition from twenty thousand Irish whom persecution and evil times have 
