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- Herausgeber: Brandon
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
A vivid account of the Irish slave trade: the previously untold story of over 50,000 Irish men, women and children who were transported to Barbados and Virginia.
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SEAN O’CALLAGHAN
TO HELL OR BARBADOS
The ethnic cleansing of Ireland
To the Irish men, women and children who lie in unhallowed ground in the sugar cane fields of Barbados
CONTENTS
“Few, but readers of Old Colonial Papers and records are aware that a lively trade was carried on between England and the Plantations, as the Colonies were then called, from 1647 to 1690, in political prisoners, where they were sold by auction to the Colonists for various terms of years, sometimes for life.” Colonel A.B. Ellis,
“White Slaves and Bond Servants in the Plantations” (1883)
“Those sold to the heretics in America are treated by them more cruelly than the slaves under the Turks; nor is any attention paid to youth or the decrepitude of old age, to sex or rank, to sacerdotal orders, to religious life.”
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, papal nuncio to the Confederation of Kilkenny (1645–48)
“When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.”
Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and orator (1729–97)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have encouraged and helped me in the writing of this book. Chief among them I would single out Michael Carroll, M.A. of Bantry; Professor Kenneth L. Carroll of Maryland; C.F.J. MacCarthy (historian) of Cork; Ulick O’Connor; Gregory O’Connor, Archivist of National Archives, Dublin; Peter Simmonds, Ronald Taylor, Mrs Betty Carillo Shannon and, above all, Patrick Kelman Roach, all of Barbados. Patrick Roach was my guide and mentor there. Finally, thanks to Desiree Brincat and Yvonne Magri for typing the manuscript, as well as my wife, Halina, and son, Mark, for their advice, support and help.
To one and all, I owe a deep debt of gratitude.
Sean O’Callaghan
Malta, July 2000
INTRODUCTION
Writing a book on the ethnic cleansing of Ireland in the seventeenth century is a daunting task. Although the expression itself is modern, it applies well to the wholesale transportation of Irish men, women and children who were sold into slavery in Barbados and North America.
I had written books on slavery previously. The Slave Trade dealt with slavery in the Sudan, which is still taking place. The books I wrote on the white and yellow slave trades dealt with girls’ being sold into prostitution in Europe and the Far East. The collapse of the Iron Curtain has greatly increased the trade in Europe. In the Far East, female children and young girls are still a disposable commodity. Writing about Irish slavery is a different matter. So little material is available on the subject that we do not even know the numbers of people transported. One historian, the Reverend Aubrey Gwynn, SJ, who did considerable research on the subject in the 1930s, estimated that over 50,000 men, women and children were transported to Barbados and Virginia between 1652–59.
What became of them? Although I am not a historian, I determined to find out. There are no Irish records. They were destroyed when the Public Records Office in Dublin was burned in 1922.
The State Papers in the English Public Records Office in Kew yielded some information, as did the Shipping Register of the period, giving details of some of the ships engaged in the transportation as well as the names of their masters, but this was not enough. Did any records exist of the people transported or of their lives in the sugar fields of Barbados or in the tobacco fields of Virginia? One thing is certain, there is no record of any having ever returned, nor of any account of their sufferings.
I felt the answer must be in Barbados. I wrote to the librarian of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Three weeks later I received a reply from Mrs Betty Shannon, the librarian. In a letter she informed me that the library contained a quantity of files on Irish, Scottish and African slaves. It was more than I could have hoped for. I left for Barbados in August 1993. This book is the result.
CHAPTER ONE
The Effusion of Blood
“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.”
Letter written by Oliver Cromwell after Drogheda (1649)
THE CIVIL WAR in England was over. Many of the vanquished Cavaliers lay in jails and lock-ups, there to await transportation to Barbados. After the execution of Charles I and the ending of the monarchy, a new republic was established with Oliver Cromwell as first president of its Council of State. Its forty members were mainly merchants, with a sprinkling of lawyers and army officers.
Many problems faced the new Commonwealth. There was discontent in the country and problems with the army, including a mutiny in Banbury and at Salisbury among the troops destined for Ireland. This mutiny was quelled by Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had three of the ringleaders shot.
Cromwell’s greatest preoccupation, however, was with Ireland. Since the beheading of the king and resignation of the royalist lord lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, Earl of Ormonde, his greatest fear was that all classes of Irishman, Protestant and Catholic alike, would unite to invade England.
If we do not endeavour to make good our interest there, and that timely, we shall not only have … our interest rooted out there, but they will in a very short time be able to land forces in England and to put us to trouble here… I had rather be overrun with a Cavalierish interest than a Scotch interest; I had rather be overrun with a Scotch interest than an Irish; and I think of all this is most dangerous. If they shall be able to carry on their work, they will make this the most miserable people in the earth, for all the world knows their barbarism.
This amply shows Cromwell’s frame of mind before leaving for Ireland. His fear was that the young Charles, who had been declared king in Scotland immediately after his father’s death, would land in Ireland, rally the people to the royalist cause and lead an invasion to England. In the summer of 1649 it seemed to Cromwell that Ireland had become a royalist state and the prospects of a successful English invasion of that country were receding with every passing day.
On 15 March 1649 the Council of State nominated him to command the troops for the invasion of Ireland. Cromwell hesitated for several reasons. In the first place his health had not been good since the previous Christmas, when he had a breakdown. He was also determined that he should have a free hand in Ireland and that the forces under his command would be properly equipped and provided for as he did not want soldiers to follow him out of personal loyalty. Finally, on 30 March, he accepted the nomination, saying that: “It matters not who is our commander-in-chief if God be so.”
All was now set for the invasion of Ireland and the reconquest of a country from the “barbarous wretches” who had spilled “so much innocent blood” in the rebellion of 1641. In 1641, eight years before his invasion of Ireland, the Irish rose in rebellion against the English and Scottish planters who had seized their lands during the Elizabethan plantations. The rebellion began in Ulster, which was the most heavily planted, and soon spread throughout the country until only Dublin and Derry remained in English hands. At the beginning of this rebellion only peasants took part, armed with pikes and pitchforks. They fell upon the settlers, killing men, women and children indiscriminately.
Sir John Temple, who was in Dublin Castle at the time the rebellion broke out, wrote in his History of the Horrid Rebellion in Ireland (1646): “The crisis burst upon us with the suddenness of a violent torrent…” He claimed that the rebels, inflamed by Jesuits, did “march on furiously destroying all the English, sparing neither sex nor age, most barbarously murdering them, and that with greater cruelty than was ever used among Turks or Infidels”.
Sir John Temple gave the figure of those killed as 100,000; Dr Bate, a royalist who later changed sides to become Cromwell’s personal physician, described the Irish as “a mixed rabble, part papist and part savages, guilty in the highest degree of all those crimes”, and gave the number of settlers slain as 200,000. W.E. Lecky’s History of Ireland, published in the middle of the eighteenth century, gave the number of those killed as 4000, which is today accepted as being closer to the true figure.
King Charles I believed the exaggerated accounts of the massacre and accompanying atrocities committed by the Irish and instructed his forces in Ireland “to prosecute the Rebels and Traitors with fire and sword”. He also sent a message to Parliament that he intended to put himself at the head of an army and go to Ireland “to chastise those wicked and detestable rebels, odius to God and all good men”. Parliament replied that it would consider his departure from England equal to a formal abdication of the throne. Charles stayed. Bulstrode Whitelocke, a member of the House, said that the Irish would be rooted out by a new and overwhelming plantation of English and that another England would be speedily found in Ireland. The Lords of the Council ordered Lord Ormonde, then lieutenant general of the army in Ireland, “to burn, spoil, waste, consume, destroy and demolish all the places, towns and houses where the said rebels are … and to kill and destroy all the men there inhabiting able to bear arms”.
That there were massacres of Protestants by Catholics in the early days of the rebellion cannot be denied; they were perpetrated by the peasantry whose hatred for the settlers was endemic. The leaders of the rebellion, Rory O’Moore, Lord Maguire, Sir Phelim O’Neill and others, soon brought them under control. It was not what actually happened that mattered, however, but what the English believed had taken place.
The Irish seemed, to Englishmen of that time, of a lower race. To Cromwell it was to be a contest between the honest English and the murderous and treacherous Irish. Pamphlets published before and during the English Civil War fuelled the hatred of the English for the Irish. They were depicted as a subhuman species, undeserving of pity or mercy. An extract from one of these pamphlets is sufficient to show the virulence of the hatred that the Puritans had for the Irish people:
These Irish, anciently called Anthropophagi (maneaters), have a tradition among them, that when the devil showed our Saviour all the kingdoms of the earth and their glory he would not show him Ireland, but reserved it for himself … They are the very offal of men, dregs of mankind, reproach of Christendom, the bots that crawl on the beast’s tail…
I beg upon my hands and knees that the expedition against them may be undertaken whilst the hearts and hands of our soldiery are hot. To whom I will be bold to say briefly: Happy is he who shall reward them as they have served us; and cursed is he that shall do the work of the Lord negligently. Cursed be he that holdeth back his sword from blood; yea, cursed be he that maketh not his sword drunk with Irish blood.
Many Irish soldiers crossed over to England and took part on the king’s side during the Civil War. On 24 October 1644, Parliament passed an ordinance that “no quarter shall henceforth be given to any Irishman or papist born in Ireland captured on land or at sea”. In the same year a Captain Swanley, a naval officer fighting for Parliament, captured a ship out of Dublin bound for Bristol with seventy Irish soldiers and two women aboard. He threw them all overboard, tied back to back. One of the London papers, the Perfect Diurnall, wrote approvingly of Captain Swanley’s action and stated that he “made water rats of the papish vermin”. Parliament acclaimed his action and presented Captain Swanley with a gold chain worth £200.
When the parliamentarians under Colonel Thomas Mytton captured Shrewsbury in February 1645, they took fifty Irish prisoners. Mytton selected twelve by lot and hanged them in the town square. In retaliation Prince Rupert ordered the hanging of thirteen Roundheads taken at Oswestry. Parliament protested vigorously against this “outrage” and ordered the Earl of Essex to explain to Rupert that “there was a very great difference between Englishmen and Irishmen”. Sir William Brereton hanged every Irish prisoner he took, saying that the Irish soldiers “deserved the noose because they were guilty of great spoils and cruelties… horrid rapes and insolencies”. Oliver Cromwell concluded that hanging the Irish was “a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches”.
It is not necessary to go too much into the convoluted state of Irish politics before the arrival of Cromwell in Ireland. The Irish were, as usual, divided. Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century historian, wrote of them, “Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other.” In overall command of the royalists was James Butler, twelth Earl of Ormonde. The Butlers were an old Anglo-Irish Catholic family, but Ormonde was a Protestant, having been made a ward of court and raised in England. In his army, three of his Catholic brothers and several cousins held high commands. Canon O’Rourke in his The Battle of the Faith in Ireland (1887) wrote:
Undoubtedly Ormonde was a man of great parts. His weakest point was, perhaps, the want of high military talents; but as for diplomacy—that is plotting—he was a veritable Palmerston born before his time … Ormonde hated the Catholic religion with an intensity which can only belong to a pervert … the old Irish whom Ormonde and all Palesmen looked upon as an alien and inferior race, unfit for the same rights and priviledges as Englishmen…
Under him served Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin. He had a varied career: in early life he was a soldier of fortune, serving in the Spanish army in Italy. He was appointed vice-president of Munster by Charles I. When the rebellion of 1641 broke out, he became the scourge of rebels in Munster, sacking and burning, killing and hanging. On the refusal of the king to grant him the presidency of Munster, he joined the parliamentary army and for some years devoted all his energies and military skill to securing that province for the parliamentarians. Inchiquin was responsible for the sacking of Cashel in which he and his men slaughtered the defenders, although he had previously promised them quarter. A short time later he again changed sides, but was not as active on behalf of the king as he had been for the parliamentarians. Because he was a turncoat so many times, he was never really trusted by the Irish; in fact, he was still remembered for his fierce and unrelenting hatred of the Catholic Church. He was known to the Irish as “Murrough the burner”. His army was mainly made up of Protestants of English origin.
The Catholic Confederation of Kilkenny, which was set up in 1643, also had a standing army. The pope sent Cardinal Giovanni Battista Rinuccini as papal nuncio to the Confederation in 1645. He was warmly welcomed by some of the officers of the Confederation, including Richard Butler, the brother of the Earl of Ormonde. Rinuccini reported: “At the time of my arrival the greater part of the Catholic troops were under the command of two generals, Owen O’Neill and Thomas Preston, … who were not only rivals by nature, and from party spirit, but embittered by jealousy from having both served in the Flemish wars, and from having even then shown signs of mutual aversion.”
Owen Roe O’Neill was a scion of the great Clan O’Neill, one of his forebears being Niall of the Nine Hostages who had raided Gaul for slaves. O’Neill, although born in Ireland, was taken to Spain as a child and entered the Spanish army in his youth. He was transferred to the Netherlands in the Spanish service in 1625 and was regarded as one of their ablest commanders there. He returned to Ireland in 1642, assumed command of his northern clansmen and fought the English troops who were devastating the country after the rebellion of 1641.
Ormonde strove to bring O’Neill over to the royalist side, pointing out that now peace had been made between himself and the Catholic Confederation, they should all unite against the common enemy—the parliamentarians. O’Neill hesitated and was proclaimed by the Confederation “a traitor and a rebel”. He wrote to Cardinal Rinuccini: “We are almost reduced to despair. On the one hand Ormonde entreats us to join him; on the other, the Parliamentary party seeks our friendship. God knows we hate and detest both alike!”
O’Neill’s hatred of Ormonde was such that he eventually joined the parliamentary forcers, under General Monck (or Monk, as it was sometimes spelled). The general gave certain assurances to him, granting him and his men indemnity for the past and assurances that their religion and estates would be respected. O’Neill also received thirty barrels of powder with matches and bullets, 300 cows and £400 in cash, all on condition that he should march to the relief of Derry, then besieged by royalists. O’Neill joined “Butcher” Coote’s parliamentary army to lift the siege, but the royalists withdrew on his approach. Sir Charles Coote was the other commander of the parliamentary forces in Ireland, and his father was notorious for his atrocities towards the Irish rebels of 1641. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that Owen Roe O’Neill was prepared to enter an alliance with such a man. The alliance between O’Neill and the parliamentarians did not last long. Monck was recalled from Ireland and imprisoned in the Tower for entering into this alliance with O’Neill; Coote escaped with a reprimand. The arrival of Cromwell forced O’Neill and Ormonde to join forces, but it was too late to have any effect on the campaign there.
On 17 January 1649 a peace was concluded between Ormonde, acting on behalf of Charles I, and the General Assembly of the Confederation. A few days after the signing of this treaty, the news of the king’s execution reached Ireland. Ormonde had the Prince of Wales proclaimed king under the title of Charles II. Almost the whole of Ireland supported this move, and for a time the leaders of the various parties forgot their differences.
There were two parliamentary armies in Ireland at the time under the overall command of General Charles Coote, whose father, also a general, was killed by Irish rebels in Trim in 1642. General Monck commanded the other parliamentary army. He was an old campaigner who had fought in most of the battles of the Civil War in England.
There is no doubt, with hindsight, that Ormonde was unfitted for the overall command of the royalist armies. On seeing a portrait of him, Cromwell is reported to have remarked that he looked more like a country gentleman than a soldier. Ormonde had a tendency to blame all his defeats in the field on others, especially the Irish.
The first battle of the parliamentary war in Ireland was fought and won before Cromwell ever reached the country. It took place near Rathmines, County Dublin, on 22 July 1649, between a royalist force of 7000 men under the command of Lieutenant General Ormonde and a much smaller force of 2000 parliamentarians commanded by Colonel Michael Jones. Jones surprised the royalists, who were preparing to besiege Dublin, and in the space of a couple of hours routed them. Ormonde claimed that he lost 600 men, although according to Dr Bate 3000 were slain and 2100 soldiers and 150 officers were taken prisoner, including one of Ormonde’s Catholic brothers, Colonel Richard Butler. In addition, the parliamentarians took all their baggage, arms and ammunition, and a money chest containing £4000. Ormonde himself narrowly escaped capture.
As happened in many battles later, he sought to lay the onus on the Irish. In a letter to Charles II he wrote: “It was the right wing of our army; and it was not long before I saw it wholly defeated, and many of them running away towards the hills of Wicklow, where some of them were bred and whither they knew the way but too well.”
Cromwell was already on board a ship called the John when he received news of Jones’ victory. He wrote: “This is an astonishing mercy; so great and seasonable as indeed we are like them that dreamed. What can we say? The Lord fill our souls with thankfulness, that our mouths may be full of his praise.”
He sailed from Milford Haven for Ireland on 13 August 1649 with the dual objects of revenging the massacres of 1641 and of bringing Ireland under the Commonwealth. He had with him a fleet of thirty-two ships, while his son-in-law, Commissary General Henry Ireton, followed two days later with the main body of the army in forty-two vessels; and Cromwell’s chaplain, Hugh Peters, with another twenty ships, brought up the rear. In all the parliamentary army numbered 20,000 men. They were all trained soldiers, well equipped with an abundant supply of military stores, and more important still, with four big siege guns which could batter the walls of the most heavily fortified towns. He also brought with him an immense store of Bibles and, lastly, a quantity of scythes to cut down the crops which would provide sustenance to the Irish.
After Ormonde’s defeat at Rathmines, he arranged a meeting with Owen Roe O’Neill to combine forces to defeat Cromwell. O’Neill sent 3000 men to Ormonde’s aid and promised to meet him in the middle of December. The meeting never took place. O’Neill died on 6 November 1649, after a lingering illness. It was rumoured at the time that he had been poisoned by a thorn placed in a pair of russet boots sent to him by an acquaintance named Plunkett.
Cromwell did not waste much time after landing in Dublin; after two days he set out for Drogheda and Dundalk, vital keys to the north. As an old campaigner he knew the value of time and was determined not to allow Ormonde to regroup his scattered army. On 31 August he marched out of the city at the head of 10,000 horse and foot soldiers, with a plentiful supply of provisions and an artillery train such as had not been seen previously in Ireland. Before leaving he issued a proclamation that farmers and other folk who brought provisions to the army were to receive ready money for their goods and not to be troubled or molested in any way. It was a shrewd psychological move on his part; previously the country people had been at the mercy of rapacious, plundering armies who took their provisions without any payment. As an example that the proclamation meant what it said, Cromwell hanged two of his private soldiers for stealing a hen from a countrywoman.
The royalists were resolved to hold Drogheda, and Ormonde ordered the fortifications to be repaired. However, despite the feverish preparations, Drogheda was still short of provisions for a prolonged siege. There was not enough time to prepare the fortifications, which in some cases were still very weak. A week before Cromwell appeared before the city, the governor, Sir Arthur Aston, wrote to Ormonde: “Yesternight there came from Dundalk ten barrels of powder, but very little match; and that is a thing most wanting here; and for round shot, not any at all. I beseech your Excellency to be pleased to give speedy orders for same, as also for the sudden coming of men and moneys. Bellyfood, I perceive will prove scarce amongst us.” Ormonde was in no position to send these supplies as his own resources were running low.
The town was held by 2220 foot and 320 horse, nearly all of whom were Irish. They were commanded by Sir Arthur Aston, a Catholic from Cheshire, an old soldier who had served in the army of Poland against the Turks. He had returned to England at the outbreak of the Civil War and was appointed colonel general of dragoons. He saw service at Edgehill, and it was said of him that there was none in the king’s army with a greater reputation for bravery. Both he and Ormonde hoped to hold Drogheda until winter set in and hunger and sickness would weaken the besieging forces sufficiently for Ormonde to attack them.
Before the debacle at Rathmines, Ormonde had sent Inchiquin with a force of 2000 men south to Munster after the receipt of a rumour that Cromwell intended to land there. It was only one of the many mistakes of Ormonde’s campaign in Ireland. Most of Inchiquin’s men were Protestants of English descent and had no wish to fight their fellow countrymen in Cromwell’s army. They deserted in squadrons to join the parliamentary army whenever the opportunity offered.
Having encamped his army around the city and placed his batteries of big guns in position, Cromwell on 10 September 1649 sent a demand for surrender to Aston:
Sir—Having brought the army belonging to the Parliament of England before this place, to reduce it to obedience, to the end effusion of blood may be prevented, I thought fit to summons you to deliver the same into my hands to their use. If this be refused, you will have no cause to blame me. I expect your answer, and rest your servant,
O. Cromwell
Cromwell’s offer was refused. Cromwell lowered the white flag and ran up the red ensign. Later, in a letter to the speaker of Parliament, William Lenthell, he gave a vivid account of the storming of Drogheda:
Upon Tuesday, the 10th of this instant, about five o’clock in the evening, we began the storm; and after some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight hundred men, the enemy disputing it very stiffly with us. And indeed, through the advantages of the place and the courage God was pleased to give the defenders, our men were forced to retreat, quite out of breath, not without some considerable loss. [Cromwell does not mention that he, sword in hand, led the second assault.] Although our men that stormed the breaches were forced to recoil … yet, being encouraged to recover their loss, they made a second attempt, wherein God was pleased so to animate them that they got ground of the enemy, and, by the goodness of God, forced him to quit his entrenchments.
God must have been busy that day in Drogheda. Later that night the Roundheads were the victors and ran amok. No mercy was shown as Cromwell had declared on the previous day that if the defenders of Drogheda held out, no quarter would be given. Ormonde later hotly disputed this: “All the officers and soldiers promised quarter to such as would lay down their arms, and performed it as long as any place held out; which encouraged others to yield. But when they had once all in their power and feared no hurt that could be done them, then the word no quarter went round, and the soldiers were forced, many of them against their wills, to kill the prisoners.”
In all, forty-four captains, all lieutenants and ensigns, 220 reformadoes (an officer who for some reason was deprived of his command, but retained his rank) and troopers and 2500 foot soldiers were killed, according to a list published in the Perfect Diurnall in London on 2 October 1649. All these had been promised quarter. Others, seeing the fate of their commanders, determined to fight to the bitter end.
According to a report at the time by Cromwell:
Divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, whereabout a hundred of them possessed St. Peter’s church-steeple, some the West gate, others a strong round tower next the gate called St. Sunday’s. These being summoned to yield to mercy, refused, wherupon I ordered the steeple of the St. Peter’s church to be fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames, “God damn me, God confound me, I burn, I burn.”
Colonel Michael Jones, the victor of Rathmines, who was second-in-command to Cromwell, told him that now he had the flower of the Irish army in his hands and could deal with them as he pleased. Cromwell then issued an order that the life of neither man, woman nor child should be spared; and when one of his officers pleaded for mercy for the unresisting victims, he said he “would sacrifice their souls to the ghosts of the English whom they had massacred”.
Cromwell gave an account of the death of Sir Arthur Aston:
The enemy retreated divers of them to the Mill Mount: a place very strong and of difficult access, being exceeding high, having a good graft, and strongly palisaded. The Governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about 2000 men.
Sir Arthur Aston had a wooden leg and the soldiers believed that he had hidden gold in it; not finding it they proceeded to bludgeon him with his own wooden stump, and then hacked his body to pieces. The slaughter went on all that night and for the next four days. Not only were the defenders killed in cold blood, but priests and nuns were especially singled out and slaughtered in a particularly gruesome manner. A manuscript history of these events, written at the time by one of the Jesuit Fathers employed on the Irish mission and preserved in the archives of the Irish College in Rome, gives some further details of the cruelty exercised towards the priests that were seized:
When the city was captured by the heretics, the blood of the Catholics was mercilessly shed in the streets, in the dwelling-houses, and in the open fields; to none was mercy shown; not to the women, not to the aged, nor to the young … On the following day, when the soldiers were searching through the ruins on the city, they discovered one of our Fathers, named John Bathe [Taaffe], with his brother, a secular priest. Suspecting that they were religious, they examined them, and finding that they were priests and one of them, moreover, a Jesuit, they led them off in triumph, and accompanied by a tumultuous crowd, conducted them to the market-place, and there, as if they were at length extinguishing the Catholic religion and our Society, they tied them both to stakes fixed in the ground and pierced their bodies with shots till they expired.
Cromwell, referring to the storming of Drogheda, wrote in a letter to John Bradshaw, president of the Council of State, dated 17 September 1649: “It hath pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda. The enemy were about 3000 strong in the town … Before we entered we refused them quarter; having the day before summoned the town. I do not think Thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for Barbadoes.”
Yet in another letter to the speaker of the Parliament in England, also dated on the same day as before, he wrote:
The next day the two other towers were summoned, in one of which was about six or seven score, but they refused to yield themselves; and we, knowing that hunger must compel them, set only good guards to secure them from running away until their stomachs were come down. From one of the said towers, notwithstanding their condition they killed and wounded some of our men. When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped to the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared (as to their lives only), and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.
This would show that a greater number were shipped there than Cromwell indicated in his first letter. In the years that followed, many thousands more men, women and children were shipped into slavery to Barbados and the other colonies.
CHAPTER TWO
The Rape of Wexford
“Before God’s altar fell sacred victims, holy priests of the Lord. Of those who were seized outside the church some were scourged, some thrown into chains and imprisoned, while others were hanged or put to death by cruel tortures. The blood of our noblest citizens was shed so that it inundated the streets. There was hardly a house that was not defiled with carnage and filled with wailing.”
Dr Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, writing to the papal nuncio (January 1673)
IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE capture and sack of Drogheda, Cromwell sent a body of his men under Colonel Chidley Coote to Dundalk, which fell without a shot being fired. Another part of his army went to Trim, which had been abandoned by Ormonde in such haste that the stores, ammunition and guns, which Colonel Aston had begged for, were left abandoned.
Cromwell returned to Dublin an acclaimed hero. He left the city within a fortnight, heading south, with the four great guns that had battered Drogheda, 4000 foot soldiers, 1200 horse and 400 dragoons in his train. Castle after castle, strong point after strong point either surrendered to him or the defenders fled at his approach.
On 29 September the parliamentary fleet, under Sir George Ayscue (or Ascough), reached the harbour of Wexford. They had sailed along the coast to give close support to the parliamentary army on the way south. On 1 October Cromwell’s army camped before the walls of the city. Ormonde was determined to hold Wexford, of vital importance to him because it was through it that he obtained supplies of arms and ammunition from the Continent. The townspeople were, as usual, divided in their loyalties. Some of the old Irish, represented by a man named Rochford, a recorder of the town, had already been in correspondence with Cromwell and were anxious to come to terms with him, relying on him more than on Ormonde. To them Lord Inchiquin, who had sent two regiments of horse into the town, was as great an enemy as Cromwell. They remembered his devastation of Munster and his massacre of the defenders of Cashel. It was only when Sir Edmund Butler, another Catholic brother of Ormonde, arrived with his forces that they accepted Lieutenant Colonel David Sinnott as their governor.
On 3 October Cromwell summoned the town to surrender in a letter to Sinnott. The latter replied that he desired to consult the mayor and other officials before giving an answer. While letters were being exchanged between Sinnott and the Lord Protector, the mayor and aldermen sent Cromwell a present of “sack, strong waters and strong beer”.
Negotiations for the surrender went on for several days. In the mean time Cromwell sited his big guns so that if negotiations broke down they were in position to batter the castle, the key to the town. Cromwell began to lose patience with what he regarded as the deliberate delaying tactics of Sinnott, and on 11 October his big guns began a cannonade of the castle walls. Within a few hours some breaks were made, and Sinnott sent four of his officers to parley for terms. One of the four chosen was a Captain Stafford, governor of the castle, described by a contemporary as “a vain, idle young man, nothing practiced in the art military”. Somehow Cromwell was able to speak with Stafford alone and, playing on the young man’s vanity, induced him to surrender the castle. When the parliamentary troops took possession of it, they were able to open the gates, enabling the remainder of their forces to enter. The defenders and the townspeople withdrew to the market place.
Cromwell’s soldiers again ran amok in Wexford and their officers seemed incapable of restraining them. Cromwell needed the town for winter quarters, but the soldiers did so much damage to property that the town became uninhabitable. They killed indiscriminately, defenders and civilians alike; priests, monks and nuns were again especially singled out and tortured before being killed. This is borne out in a letter to the papal nuncio written by Dr Nicholas French, the Bishop of Ferns, who was lying ill in a neighbouring town and thus escaped the slaughter: “On that fatal day, October 11th, 1649, I lost everything I had. Wexford, my native town, then abounding in merchandise, ships, and wealth, was taken at the sword’s point by that plague of England, Cromwell, and sacked by an infuriated soldiery.”
Reverend Denis Murphy, SJ, in CromwellianIreland (1885), quotes from a contemporary report: “On the 11th October, his Excellency took Wexford by storm, and in it 51 peeces of ordnance, besides those in ships, 40 vessels in the harbour, great store of plunder, 2000 were slaine of Ormonde’s soldiers in the town.” Cromwell himself wrote to John Bradshaw, president of the Council of State: “I believe in all there was lost of the enemy not many less than two thousand, and I believe not twenty of yours killed, from first to last of the siege.”
The defenders obviously just threw down their arms and surrendered. Sir Edmund Butler was shot as he was endeavouring to escape by swimming across the ferry. According to some writers of the period, a massacre of some 300 women took place at a cross in Wexford; every one of them was killed, and rings which they wore were hacked off their fingers. Cromwell and his officers did nothing to stop the slaughter. Because the town was uninhabitable and the place stank of rotting corpses, he decided to pull his army out of Wexford and march on his next objective, and two days later he approached Ross.
His troops were now weary of the campaign and regretted the destruction of Wexford. Cromwell was forced to leave one of his big guns behind; his men, almost in a state of mutiny, had refused to haul it. Ross was defended by a body of the Catholic Confederation army under Sir Lucas Taaffe, a young and inexperienced man. Cromwell sent his usual demand for surrender to avoid “an effusion of blood”. Taaffe replied that he was ready to surrender provided that his men were allowed to march out with arms, bag and baggage, if the lives of the citizens were spared and if they were granted “liberty of conscience”.
Cromwell immediately replied: “Sir, To what I formerly offered, I shall make good… For that which you mention concerning liberty of conscience, I meddle not with any man’s conscience. But if by liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed of.” At the same time he placed his three big guns and gave orders to open fire on the walls. After only three shots Taaffe surrendered. Cromwell, in an unexpected show of magnanimity, allowed the defenders to march out of the town, with “arms, bag and baggage, and with drums and colours”. Five hundred English soldiers of Inchiquin’s regiment, who were among the defenders, went over to the parliamentary side; the remaining 1500 went with Taaffe to Kilkenny. This was yet another blow to Ormonde’s plan of campaign, as he had expected Ross to hold out for some considerable time.
Cromwell intended to use Ross as winter quarters but his plans were changed by a singular stroke of good fortune: the garrison of Cork revolted. Under the command of Lord Broghill, a son of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, it declared for Parliament and drove the Irish inhabitants out of the city. Other towns in Munster also followed suit: Youghal, Bandon, Baltimore, Mallow, Cappoquin and Dungarvan. The royalists lost some of the best-fortified centres in this revolt, which caused a further split between the Protestants under Ormonde and Inchiquin and the soldiers of the Catholic Confederacy.
Illness prevented Cromwell from marching to Cork immediately. He remained in Ross “very sick and crazy” in his health. Writing to William Lenthall he confided that “a considerable part of your army is fitter for the hospital
