When Number One daughter made a surprise visit this weekend, she brought me a nice (if temporary) present. She checked out of the Christendom College library a copy of "Lives of the Irish Martyrs and Confessors" by Myles O'Reilly (pub. 1878). I would love to have my hands on a copy of this treasure - permanently. (In fact Requiem Press would love to reprint this classic either in parts or in its entirety. If it be God's will - we will get around to it.) Here is a sample:
CROMWELL landed on our shores in July, 1649, firmly resolved to acquire popularity among his fellow-Puritans by the extermination of the Irish papists. On his arrival in Dublin he addressed his soldiers, and declared that no mercy should be shown to the Irish, and that they should "be dealt with as the Canaanites in Joshua's time."
Drogheda was first attacked. It was defended by 3000 good troops, commanded by Sir Arthur Ashton, a Catholic. Three times did they repel the assaults of their 10,000 besiegers. At length, seeing further resistance useless, they surrendered on terms. Cromwell, writing to the Parliament, makes it a boast that, despite the promised quarter, he himself gave orders that all should be put to the sword; ("Our men were ordered by me to put them all to the sword." — Cromwell's Letter) and, in his Puritanical cant, he styles that brutal massacre a righteous judgment of God upon the barbarous wretches; a great mercy vouchsafed to us; a great thing, done, not by power or might, but by the spirit of God. The slaughter of the inhabitants continued for five days, and the Puritan troops spared neither age nor sex, so much so that the Earl of Ormond, writing to the secretary of Charles II, to convey the intelligence of the loss of Drogheda, declares that "Cromwell had exceeded himself, and anything he had ever heard of, in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity;" and the Parliamentarian General Ludlow speaks of it as an extraordinary severity. The church of St. Peter, within the city, had been for centuries a place of popular devotion; a little while before the siege the Catholics had reobtained possession of it, and dedicated it anew to the service of God, and the Holy Sacrifice was once more celebrated there with special pomp and solemnity. Thither many of the citizens now fled as to a secure asylum, and, with the clergy, prayed around the altar; but the Puritans respected no sanctuary of religion. "In this very place," writes Cromwell, "near one thousand of them were put to the sword. I believe all the friars* were killed but two, the one of which was Father Peter Taaffe, brother to Lord Taaffe, whom the soldiers took the next day, and made an end of; the other was taken in the round tower; he confessed he was a friar, but that did not save him."
We read in Johnston's History of Drogheda :
“Quarter had been promised to all those who should lay down their arms, but it was observed only until all resistance was at an end. Many, confiding in this promise, at once yielded themselves prisoners; and the rest, unwilling to trust to the mercy of Cromwell, took shelter in the steeple of St. Peter's; at the same time the most respectable of the inhabitants sheltered themselves within the church. Here Cromwell advanced, and, after some deliberation, concluded on blowing up the building. For this purpose he laid a quantity of powder in an old subterraneous passage, which was open, and went under the church; but, changing his resolution, he set fire to the steeple, and as the garrison rushed out to avoid the flames they were slaughtered. After this he ordered the inhabitants in the church to be put to the sword, among whom many of the Carmelites fell a sacrifice. He then plundered the building and defaced its principal ornaments."
Thomas Wood, one of the Puritan officers engaged in the massacre, relates that a multitude of the most defenceless inhabitants, comprising all the principal ladies of the city, were concealed in the crypts or vaults of the church ; thither the bloodhounds tracked them, and not even to one was mercy shown. Lord Clarendon also records that during the five days, while the streets of Drogheda ran with blood,* "the whole army executed all manner of cruelty, and put every man that related to the garrison, and all the citizens who were Irish — man, woman, and child — to the sword;" and Cromwell himself reckoned that "less than thirty of the defenders were not massacred."
Note: Down to the present century the street leading to St. Peter's Street retained the name of Bloody Street. It is the tradition of the place that the blood of those slain in the church formed a regular torrent town the street
I will post a little more from this classic on or before St. Patrick's feast.
From the small holding in Bethune ...
Oremus pro invicem!
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