Ireland, 321 



themselves of Kinsale ; and the rebellions of Tyrone, who baffled and 

 outwitted her favourite general, the earl of Essex, are well known in 

 English history. 



The lord deputy Mountjoy, who succeeded Essex, was the first 

 Englishman who gave a mortal blow to the practices of the Spaniards 

 in Ireland, by defeating them and the Irish before Kinsale, and bring- 

 ing Tyrone prisoner to England, where he was pardoned by queen 

 Elizabeth, in 1602. This lenity, shown to such an offender, is a 

 proof of the great apprehensions Elizabeth had from the popish in- 

 terest in Ireland. James I confirmed the possessions of the Irish j 

 bat suqh was the influence of the pope and the Spaniards, that the 

 earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, and their party, planned a new rebel- 

 lion, and attempted to seize the castle of Dublin ; but their plot being; 

 discovered, their chiefs fled beyond seas. They were not idle abroad * 

 for in 1608 they instigated sir Calim O'Dogherty to a fresh rebellion, 

 by promising him speedy supplies of men and money from Spain. 

 Sir Calim was killed in the dispute, and his adherents were taken 

 and executed. The attainders of the Irish rebels, which passed in 

 the reigns of James and Elizabeth, vested in the crown 51 1,465 acres, 

 in the several counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Colerain, Fermanagh, 

 Cavan, and Armagh ; and enabled the king to make that protestant 

 plantation in the north of Ireland, which, from the most rebellious 

 province in the kingdom, became, for many years, the most quiet and 

 industrious. 



Those prodigious attainders, however just and necessary they 

 might be, operated fatally for the English in the reign of Charles I. 

 The Irish Roman-catholics in general were influenced by their priests 

 to hope not only to repossess the lands of their forefathers, but to 

 restore the popish religion in Ireland. They therefore entered into 

 a deep and detestable conspiracy for massacreing all the English 

 protestants in that kingdom. In this they were encouraged by the 

 unhappy dissensions that broke out between the king and his par- 

 liaments in England and Scotland. Their bloody plan being dis- 

 covered by the English government at Dublin, prevented that city 

 from failing into their hands. They however, partly executed, in 

 1641, their horrid scheme of massacre ; but authors have not agreed 

 as to the numbers who were murdered ; perhaps they have been 

 exaggerated by warm protestant writers : some of the more mode- 

 rate have estimated the numbers of the sufferers at 40,000 ; other 

 accounts speak of 10,000 or 12'i000 ; and some have diminished that 

 number* What followed in consequence of this rebellion, and the 

 reduction of Ireland by Cromwell, who retaliated the cruelties of the 

 Irish papists upon themselves, belongs to the history of England. It 

 is certain that they suffered so severely, that they were quiet during 

 the reign of Charles II. His popish successor, and brother, James 

 II, even after the revolution took place, found an asylum in Ireland ; 

 and was encouraged to hope, that, by the assistance of the natives 

 there, he might remount his throne : but he was deceived, and his 

 own pusillanimity co-operated with his disappointment. He was 



* Mr. Hume, after enumerating the various barbarities practised by the papists 

 " upon the protestants, says, "By some computations, those who perished by all 

 " those cruelties are made to amount to an hundred and fifty* or two hundred 

 " thousand ; by the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, 

 " they must have been near 40,000." History of England, vol. vi. p. 317, edit. 

 8vo. 1763. 



Vol. I. T t 



