That a similar remonstrance, as it was called, did not proceed from the house of lords, was owing, chiefly, to the ability of the Earl of Ormonde. He felt scandalized at the meanness and the villainy which he now saw active for the ruin of his noble friend; and he struggled against it so successfully, in the house of which he was a member, that the malignants were, for the time, defeated; a service which was gratefully acknowledged by the king, who, in a letter, dated the 22d of November, 1640, told him that he viewed his conduct in that affair, "as an assured pledge of the firm continuance of that loyalty, and of those entire and good affections which he had always shown both for the good of his service, and the welfare of his kingdom of Ireland, in the parliament affairs thereof."

The death of lord deputy Wandesford, whom Strafford had left to supply his place, now afforded the king an opportunity, of which Strafford eagerly pressed him to avail himself, of raising Ormonde to that important place. But his advice was declined. The Irish committee used all their influence against its adoption, knowing that, after Strafford himself, Ormonde was the man whose ability was most to be dreaded; and the Earl of Arundel, who was at that time a favourite at court, was not slow to insinuate his disapproval of a measure, by which the consideration and the dignity of one whom he regarded as unjustly possessed of some Irish property to which he had a claim, would have been so much augmented. This was most unfortunate. The time was very critical; and there seems much reason for the belief of Carte, the affectionate biographer of the Earl, that had he been then appointed lord deputy, great calamities might have been prevented.

Sir John Borlace, and Sir William Parsons, were the individuals upon whom the supreme power was now devolved, who were indebted for it, chiefly, to the partiality entertained for them, by the most active enemies of the Earl of Strafford; and were not, therefore, likely to be over favourable to any measures which concerned that unfortunate nobleman's vindication. The tide now ran strongly against him; and his unhappy master saw himself pressed by a combination of parties, who had resolved to be satisfied with

nothing but his blood, in such a way as left him, in his own judgment, no alternative but that of consenting to his death, or witnessing the distraction of his kingdom. A fatal error-if we must not rather call it a heinous crime!

which the wretched monarch never afterwards ceased to deplore, and for which, in the end, the sacrifice of his own life was considered by himself as au awful expiation.

One of the last requests which this great man made to the king was, that the garter which he possessed might, after his death, be given to the Earl of Ormonde. Charles accordingly made him the offer; but Ormonde generously declined it, observing, that such a gift might possibly oblige and engage soine other person to the crown, who was less attached to it by inclination, and less resolved by principle to serve it than himself. He therefore intreated his majesty to bestow it in the way most likely to promote his service in the then exigent condition of his affairs, and to reserve his bounty for him till all dangers were over.*

Nor was it long before his services were required. The great rebellion was now at hand; a system of treason which had been naturing for twenty years, the deepest in its designs, and the most extensive in its operations of any that had at any previous period convulsed or agitated unfortunate Ireland. We have before observed, that the measures of James for tranquillizing and settling the country, had the effect of transferring much of the power, which had formerly belonged to the Irish chieftains, to the Roman Catholic priests. This body now assumed to themselves double functions, and constituted, at the same time, a kind of charch and state, in the imperium in imperio, which was established under their auspices, and by which they divided, at least, with the British crown, the sovereignty of the kingdom. The lawyers were their retainers, and, as these were the conspicuous actors in Catholic affairs, they served, by their factious measures, to embarrass, and at the same time to blind the government, while the more subtle and secret operations of treason were going on unseen, amongst the multitude, who were every day becom ing more and more compacted into a formidable confederacy, which only

waited a fitting occasion for manifesting itself, in all its terrors, to the dismay and the consternation of its hereditary

and heretical enemies.

When the troubles in England and Scotland broke out, that fitting occasion seemed to have arrived. The death of Strafford had removed the only Chief Governor who had ever appeared in Ireland, of whom the factious, of all descriptions, stood in awe, and who was, indeed, a terror to evil doers. The refusal to appoint Ormonde in his place, a measure which was defeated by the intrigues both of papists and puritans, who dreaded, at the same time, his undaunting courage, his great ability, and his incorruptible honesty, left the administration of the country without the only man who could have adequately supplied his place; and the appointment of Sir John Borlace and Sir William Parsons-the former an honest but indolent old soldier, more versed in heavy German tactics, than conversant with public affairs; the latter an artful, puritanical attorney, who had come into Ireland as a needy adventurer, and continued, by a sordid and dexterous adroitness, to wile himself into office and affluence

"To wriggle into power and climb renown, As crooked Satan the forbidden tree,"

them, of the Irish government, looked on, with a supineness for which it is difficult to account, (seeing that their own personal safety was thereby compromised,) at a state of things the most awful and alarming. The work of treason was suffered to go on. The conspirators were suffered to hold those conferences, and to keep up those communications, by which their de signs were matured and their strength was augmented. Foreign powers were suffered to maintain an intercourse with them, by whom large offers of assistance were made, whenever they thought fit to rise against the government. The disbanded soldiers who had been raised by Strafford, to assist the King against the Scotts, and who, upon their dismissal, had been suffered to enter into foreign services, were known to have returned, in great numbers, in company with a large body of ecclesiastics, and to have lent their aid to discipline and to organize the masses who were to be engaged in the approaching convulsion. Yet the government remained without taking one single step to anticipate the danger, until, almost, the very moment of its occurrence, when a mere accident prevented the city of Dublin from falling into the hands of the insurgents.

gave a feeble, and, at the same time, a sinister aspect to the administration.The stamp of puritanic zeal, the only political currency which they acknowledged, recommended Sir William to the English parliament; while the concern which he had in, and the profit which he made by, some of the most iniquitous and oppressive proceedings connected with the settlement and the plantation of the country, caused him to be abhorred by the Irish; and his appointment, at such a juncture, gave no small currency to the rumour which was now industriously noised abroad, that designs, the most exterminating, were entertained by the puritans against the Roman Catholics, and that that turbulent party would never cease, until they had banished their religion and their race from Ireland.

Of the proceedings of those by whom insurrection was meditated, the goverument had ample notice; and the designs of the conspirators would have been early frustrated, had Ormonde been, where he ought to have been, at the head of affairs. But Sir William Parsons and his imbecile colleague, the Cæsar and the Bibulus, as Carte calls

The conspirators had so arranged matters, that the risings, in different parts of the country, were to be simultaneous. The night of Friday, the 22d of October, 1641, was the time appointed for the execution of their design; and, up to the evening of that day, the Irish government had not taken a single precaution against it.→ Then, for the first time, the eyes of Sir William Parsons were opened to the real state of affairs, and some of the conspirators were seized, the gates of the city closed, and the castle put into a state of defence, when, in a very few hours more, the capital would have been in the hands of the rebels.

Indeed, had not the design upon Dublin thus providentially miscarried, the doom of Ireland would have been sealed; for, in less than seven days, either by force or treachery, the rebels were in possession of the entire counties of Tyrone, Monaghan, Longford, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Cavan, Donegal, and Derry, (with the exception of En-. niskillen, Londonderry, and some small castles,) and some parts of the county Down. Had the seat of government been securely in their possession, with the arms and the ammunition which it

contained, they would have easily subdued the rest of the kingdom.

Sir Phelim O'Neil was now at the head of thirty thousand daring follow ers; and if he possessed only a tithe of his great ancestor's address and skill, the dreams of ambition which had possessed that able chieftain must, in the person of his representative, have now been fully realized. But the chosen general of the rebels was all unequal to the arduous duties which he was called upon to discharge, and exhibited, in no one instance, any of the talents of a great commander. What he wanted, however, in skill and courage, he made up for by a remorseless inhumanity, which had then no parallel in any age or country; and which has since been only equalled (exceeded it could not be) by the spirit which actuated the French regicides, during the most sanguinary period of their revolution.

The reader need not apprehend that we are about to enter upon the details of carnage which now filled Ireland with lamentation and mourning, and which ceased not until the execution ers were wearied out by the work of slaughter, and almost deluged with the blood of their victims. No. We refer to the historian, Hume, for the general features of that atrocious massacre; and to Sir John Temple, Sir James Ware, Cox, and others, for detailed accounts of individual sufferings, which must harrow any heart not altogether steeled against every touch of humanity. Suffice it to say, the stifled vengeance of three hundred years of national hate, enflamed and envenomed by the most baleful bigotry, now found a free veut, and raged with devouring violence against all classes of Protes.ants, from the highest to the lowest, sparing neither age nor sex in its destructive progress. The nearest ties of kindred, the most cherished feelings of neighbourly regard, the longest intimacies of the closest companions, were insufficient to protect the objects of papal denunciation, against the wrath which was enkindled against them, because of their supposed heretical pravity; and only served to exalt, in their own eyes, the merits of the sanguinary zealots who were engaged in the work of butchery, and who were led to believe, that the higher the claims upon them for mercy and protection, the more acceptable to heaven

was the greediness with which they indulged their rage for the shedding of blood. In the course of a few weeks, upon the most moderate computation, nearly forty thousand human beings thus fell victims, in cold blood, to a system of premeditated murder. If it were the object of the leaders in the rebellion to steep their misguided followers in crime, until they could find no place for repentance, and were, in their own eyes, beyond the reach of mercy, the course which was pursued was precisely that which would have been adopted; while those who held the consciences of the multitudes in their hands, and were regarded by them as the vicegerents of God upon earth, gave them a plenary indulgence for all their atrocities, and made the very depths to which they waded in blood, the special ground of their justification! Romish worshippers in that day enumerated the Protestants whom they massacred, as the Indian warrior does his scalps, as so many titles to praise and honor! And a misbelieving priesthood were at hand, to encourage them in their dreadful error, and to hound them on, in the work of torture and of death, by every incentive which may be supposed to have influence over a vindictive and superstitious race, who, in the language of one who knew them well, "suffer long, but remember for

As soon as the news of the Irish insurrection reached the king, he despatched a special messenger to Ormonde, with an appointment of lieutenant-general of his forces in Ireland. The earl at once entered upon his duties, and advised the promptest and the most active measures to be taken against the insurgents. He had observed that their military organization was very incomplete-that the discipline of the men, and the skill of the leaders, were not such as he would have found formidable in the field; and he felt satisfied that, if they were attacked with vigour, they must be speedily put to route. He knew also that there was, in possession of the government, a park of artillery, and musketry and ammunition, for at least a thousand men, which would have amply sufficed for the operations which he meditated, and enable him speedily to restore tranquillity to the kingdom. But Sir Wm. Parsons was not to be moved by any thing which he could say, to permit

him to deal with the rebels as he desired; and a system of procrastination was adopted, which was only calculated to dispirit the one party, and to increase the confidence and improve the discipline of the other. But while Sir William was thus slow to yield his assent to Ormonde's judicious and spirited advice, he was not slow to urge upon him petty acts of severity towards his own soldiers, by which, had he been betrayed into them, his own safety might be compromised. There was one Captain Wingfield, who had committed some offence for which Sir William thought that he ought to be tried and punished by a military court-martial. Ormonde knew that he stood upon very ticklish ground, and that such an act, on his part, might render him obnoxious to his enemies in England, as, in point of fact, it had formed part of the charge against Lord Strafford, for which he had so lately forfeited his life. He accordingly answered, that he could not so far commit himself, as he might be called upon to answer for it before those who had of late shown but little partiality for such courses, and to whom both he and the government were responsible for their conduct. Sir William Parsons was piqued at having his authority for a moment disputed in such a matter ;— and, in the presence of the council, answered the Earl with an insolent haughtiness, telling him, that if he did not act upon his advice, he might be called upon to answer for the destruction of the kingdom. Ormonde's reply was prompt and indignant" I believe, Sir, that you will do as much towards losing the kingdom as I; and I am sure I will do as much towards saving it as you.”

In England, the parliament were now fairly pitted against the king;and they looked at the proceedings in Ireland, only, or chiefly, as they might be the means of giving them an advantage over him. The contest be tween prerogative and privilege had already commenced, and the power of the sword, as well as of the purse, was virtually in the hands of the house of commons. Nothing can be more manifest than that the king was desirous, by all means, to extinguish the horrible rebellion by which Ireland was desolated, and that the parliament contented themselves with canting and hypocritical declarations of abhorrence of popery, and compassion for the suffering Irish Protestants, while they threw almost every imaginable obstruction in

the way of the only measures by which the country could be saved. Their supplies of money were niggard and tardy; and the proposal of the king, to send over a military force to aid the Protestants against the rebels, was coldly discountenanced by those who were, yet, not slow to aggravate, in words, the sufferings of their Irish brethren, and to express their confident persuasion of the designs which were entertained for their extirpation.

Sir William Parsons (for his colleague was really of no account) felt himself more the protegé of the parliament than the representative of the king, and always cautiously regulated himself rather by what he conceived would be most agreeable to the one, than by what he should have deemed his bounden duty towards the other. The old gentry of the pale had not as yet openly joined the insurgents; and there is reason to believe that many of them would have persevered in their loyalty, had

they been properly encouraged and supported. Ormonde's policy would have been, to trust, but to watch them; to give them the power, if they were so minded, of aiding the government, while yet care was taken that they should do it no disservice. He would have thus practically separated the loyal from the gunpowder papists, and done much towards mitigating the ferocity of the rebels, as well as taking their most plausible pretexts from the priests, who enflamed their followers most of all, by representations, that designs, the most deadly, were entertained by the puritans against their persons and their religion; and that, in prosecuting the bloody contest in which they were engaged, they were but anticipating the very course which was about to be pursued against themselves. Had Ormonde been suffered to act upon his own judgment, we have very little doubt that a large number of the gentry of the pale would have rallied around him; and that, with the force which he could suddenly muster, the insurrection would have been speedily suppressed. But Sir William Parsons, taking his cue from the English parliament, neither approved of his vigour on the one hand, nor of his wise moderation on the other. He, on the contrary, exhibited a malignant distrust towards those who might have been made good friends, and a despicable timidity towards those who, had they been vigorously attacked, would have been found feeble and contemptible