reference to this last act of theirs) be denied unto them, so any blame thereof ought to be laid upon those alone who have imposed the sad necessity, the saddest to which any king was ever reduced,"

What share he assumed to himself of the disasters of his royal master, by having so long deprived him of the assistance of his catholic subjects, cannot be known; but certain it is, that this awful moment of embarrassment was the first in which he made any avowal favourable to that body of men. Besides the reluctant, the ungracious and half penitent admission of their persevering attachment to the king in his utmost distress, he said in a letter to lord Digby, written within a week of king Charles's death: "I must say for this people, that I have observed in them great readiness to comply with what I was able to give them, and a very great sense of the king's sad condition." And in another letter of the same date to the prince of Wales, he mentions "the very eminent loyalty of the assembly, which was not shaken by the success which God had permitted to the nonstrous rebellion in England; nor by the mischievous practices of the no less malicious rebels in Ireland." Yet this loyal assembly had Ormond most cruelly persecuted, and to these malicious rebels did he surrender up the authority with which he was invested by his royal master. Ormond was at Youghall when the tidings of the death of the unhappy Charles were conveyed to him. He instantly proclaimed the prince of Wales king, by the title of Charles II.

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CHAP. VII.

The Interregnum, and the Reign of Charles II.

IN the first effervescence of the horror which all

conceived of the murder of king Charles, the English and Irish vied with each other in their exertions against the parliamentarian rebels, whom they now denominated and treated as regicides. To this union were owing the first successful movements of Ormond's campaign in the reduction of most of the strong holds of the northern parts of the kingdom, except Dublin and Londonderry. The pride of Ormond stimulated him above all hings to regain the possession of Dublin, which he had so basely surrendered. But the infamy of his giving it up for lucre was aggravated by his sgraceful defeat at Rathmines, about three miles rom Dublin, by a very inferior force under Mihael Jones, the rebel governor of the city. This shameful disaster, coupled with the ready submision of Inchiquin's men, who instantly inlisted in Jones's army, and several other circumstances attending the conduct of Ormond on this occasion, aturally renewed in the Irish their former suspicions that he had still some secret understanding with the English rebels; and these suspicious were strengthened by the constant failure of all his subsequent undertakings against them.

The new king had expressly written from the Hague, "that he had received, and was extremely well satisfied with, the articles of peace with the Irish confederates, and would confirm wholly and

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entirely

entirely all that was contained in them." Notwithstanding this, after his majesty had been proclaimed in Scotland, and had been advised by Ormond to accept of the commissioners' invitation to go over to that kingdom, well knowing that his taking the covenant was to be the previous condition to his being admitted to the throne of Scotland, he took shipping, and landed there on the 23d of June 1650. After having signed both the national and solemn covenant in the short space of two months, the king published a declaration "that he would have no enemies but the enemies of the covenant; that he did detest and abhor popery, superstition, and idolatry, together with prelacy; resolving not to tolerate, much less allow, those in any part of his dominions, and to endeavour the extirpation thereof to the utmost of his power." And he expressly pronounced the peace lately made with the Irish, and confirmed by himself, to be null and void; adding, “that he was convinced in his conscience of the sinfulnes and unlawfulness of it, and of his allowing them (the confederates) the liberty of the popish religion for which he did from his heart desire to be deeply humbled before the Lord; and for having sought unto such unlawful help for the restoring of him to his throne." This declaration necessa rily produced the effect which Ormond himself foretold in a letter to secretary Long, namely, "to withdraw this people from their allegiance, by infusing into them a belief, that by his majesty's hav ing taken or approved of the covenant they are deprived of the benefit of the peace, and left to the extirpation the covenant proposes, both of their religion and their persons."

In the mean time the successes of the parliamen

tarians

tarians continued. When the former successful progress of Ormond first awakened the parliament to a sense of danger, Waller, their general, was displaced to make room for Lambert, who was in turn supplanted by Oliver Cromwell himself. That usurper, aware that the situation was one which would add to his consequence and power, contrived by his intrigues to be chosen lord lieutenant of Ireland by an unanimous vote of parliament. His intrepidity and vigour quickly dissipated all the difficulties of his undertaking, and he landed in Dublin on the 15th of August with eight thousand foot, four thousand horse, twenty thousand pounds in money, and all other necessaries of war. Having intrusted the city to the care of sir Theophilus Jones, he took the field with ten thousand chosen men. Historians in general have represented the submission of the Irish to Cromwell as too hasty and unnecessary. The truth is, that the Irish suf fered severely for the personal bravery and intrepidity which they displayed in defence of the royal canse. When Cromwell with his well-appointed army appeared before Drogheda, his summons to surrender was rejected. "On the 9th of September he began to batter the place," says Dr. Warner;" and continuing so to do till the next day in the evening, the assault was made, and his men twice repulsed with great bravery; but in the third attack, which Cromwell led himself, colonel Wall being killed at the head of his regiment, his men were so dismayed, that they submitted to the enemy offering them quarter, sooner than they had need to have done, and thereby betrayed, themselves and fellow soldiers to the slaughter. The place was immediately taken by storm: and though his officers

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and soldiers had promised quarter to all that would lay down their arms, yet Cromwell ordered that no quarter should be given, and none was given ac cordingly. The slaughter continued all that day and the next, and the governor and four colonels were killed in cold blood." According to Leland, "this hideous execution was continued for five days, with every circumstance of horror. A number of ecclesiastics was found within the walls; and Cromwell, as if immediately commissioned to execute divine vengeance on these ministers of idolatry, ordered his soldiers to plunge their weapons into the helpless wretches. Some few of the ga rison," continues the same author, “contrived to escape in disguise; thirty persons only remained unslaughtered by an enemy glutted and oppressed by carnage; and these were instantly transported as slaves to Barbadoes."

Cromwell, with his usual vigour, followed up the advantage which his butcheries had obtained for him in the consternation of the Irish, and marched with nine thousand men through the county of Wicklow, while his fleet attended the motions of this army. As he advanced, the forts and towns of inferior note surrendered; but # Wexford he found the garrison sufficiently strengthened to resist his progress. This place, however, fell by treachery into his possession, being betrayer into his hands by colonel Strafford, whom Ormond had made governor of the castle; and on this occasion Cromwell is described by Ormond, in a letter to the king, " to have exceeded himself, and any thing he had ever heard of, in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity; and that the cruelties exercised there for five days would make as many

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