When Elizabeth quitted Woodstock, she left the following lines written with
her diamond on the window.
Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be, quote, Elizabeth Prisoner.
With the life of Winchester ceased the extreme danger of the Princess,
as many of her other secret enemies soon after followed him, and last of all her
cruel sister, who outlived God in but three years.
The death of Mary was ascribed to several causes.
The Council endeavoured to console her in her last moments, imagining it was the
absence of her husband that lay heavy at her heart.
But though his treatment had some weight, the loss of Calais, the last fortress
possessed by the English in France, was the true source of her sorrow.
Open my heart, said Mary, when I am dead, and you shall find Calais written there.
Religion caused her no alarm, the priests had lulled to rest every misgiving of
conscience which might have obtruded, on account of the accusing spirits of the
murdered martyrs.
Not the blood she had spilled, but the loss of a town excited her
emotions in dying, and this last stroke seemed to be awarded that her fanatical
persecution might be paralleled by her political imbecility.
We earnestly pray that the annals of no country, Catholic or pagan, may ever be
stained with such a repetition of human sacrifices to papal power, and that the
detestation in which the character of Mary is holden may be a beacon to succeeding
monarchs to avoid the rocks of fanaticism.
God's Punishment Upon Some of the Persecutors of His People in Mary's Reign
After that arch-persecuted gardener was dead, others followed, of whom Dr. Morgan,
a bishop of St. David's who succeeded Bishop Farrer, is to be noticed.
Not long after he was installed in his bishopric, he was stricken by the
visitation of God.
His food passed through the throat, but rose again with great violence.
In this manner, almost literally starved to death, he terminated his existence.
Bishop Thornton, suffragan of Dover, was an indefatigable persecutor of the
true Church.
One day after he had exercised his cruel tyranny upon a number of pious persons at
Canterbury, he came from the chapter-house to Bourne, where, as he stood on a Sunday
looking at his men playing at bowls, he fell down in a fit of the palsy,
and did not long survive.
After the latter succeeded another bishop or suffragan ordained by Gardiner,
who not long after he had been raised to the Sea of Dover, fell down a pair of
stairs in the cardinal's chamber at Greenwich, and broke his neck.
He had just received the cardinal's blessing.
He could receive nothing worse.
John Cooper, of Watson, Suffolk, suffered by perjury.
He was from Private Peak, persecuted by one fenning, who suborned to others to
swear that they had heard Cooper say, if God did not take away Queen Mary,
the devil would.
Cooper denied all such words, but Cooper was a Protestant and a heretic,
and therefore he was hung, drawn, and quartered, his property confiscated,
and his wife and nine children reduced to beggary.
The following harvest, however, Grimwood, of Hitcham, one of the witnesses
before mentioned, was visited for his villainy.
While at work stacking up corn, his bowel suddenly burst out, and before
relief could be obtained, he died.
Thus was deliberate perjury rewarded by sudden death.
In the case of the martyr Mr. Bradford, the severity of Mr. Sheriff Woodruff has
been noticed.
He rejoiced at the death of the saints, and at Mr. Rogers' execution he broke the
carman's head because he stopped the cart to let the martyr's children take a last
farewell of him.
Scarcely had Mr. Woodruff's sheriffalty expired a week when he was struck with a
paralytic affection, and languished a few days in the most pitiable and helpless
condition, presenting a striking contrast to his former activity in the cause of
blood.
Ralph Lardin, who betrayed the martyr George Eagles, is believed to have been
afterwards arraigned and hanged in consequence of accusing himself.
At the bar he denounced himself in these words, "'This has most justly fallen upon
me for betraying the innocent blood of that just and good man George Eagles,
who was here condemned in the time of Queen Mary by my procurement when I sold
his blood for a little money.'" As James Abbas was going to execution, and
exhorting the pitying bystanders to adhere steadfastly to the truth, and like him to
seal the cause of Christ with their blood, a servant of the sheriff's interrupted
him, and blasphemy called his religion heresy, and the good man a lunatic.
Scarcely, however, had the flames reached the martyr before the fearful stroke of
God fell upon the hardened wretch in the presence of him he had so cruelly
ridiculed.
The man was suddenly seized with lunacy, cast off his clothes and shoes before the
people, as Abbas had done just before to distribute among some poor persons,
at the same time exclaiming, "'Thus did James Abbas, the true servant of God,
who is saved, by which I am damned!' Repeating this often, the sheriff had him
secured, and made him put his clothes on, but no sooner was he alone than he tore
them off and exclaimed as before.
Being tied in a cart, he was conveyed to his master's house, and in about half a
year he died.
Just before which a priest came to attend him with the crucifix, etc., but the
wretched man bade him take away such trumpery and said that he and other
priests had been the cause of his damnation, but that Abbas was saved.
One clerk, an avowed enemy of the Protestants in King Edward's reign,
hung himself in the Tower of London.
Froling, a priest of much celebrity, fell down in the street and died on the
spot.
Dale, an indefatigable informer, was consumed by vermin, and died a
miserable spectacle.
Alexander, the severe keeper of Newgate, died miserably, swelling to a prodigious
size, and became so inwardly putrid that none could come near him.
This cruel minister of the law would go to Bonner, Storey, and others, requesting
them to rid his prison he was so much pestered with heretics.
The son of this keeper, in three years after his father's death, dissipated his
great property and died suddenly in Newgate Market.
The sins of the father, says the Decalogue, shall be visited on the
children.
John Peter, son-in-law of Alexander, a horrid blasphemer and persecutor,
died wretchedly.
When he affirmed anything he would say, If it be not true, I pray I may rot ere I
die.
This awful state visited him in all its loathsomeness.
Sir Ralph Elliker was eagerly desirous to see the heart taken out of Adam Damlip,
who was wrongfully put to death.
Shortly after, Sir Ralph was slain by the French, who mangled him dreadfully,
cut off his limbs, and tore his heart out.
When Gardner heard of the miserable end of Judge Hales, he called the profession of
the gospel a doctrine of desperation.
But he forgot that the judge's despondency arose after he had consented to the
papistry.
But with more reason may this be said of the Catholic tenets if we consider the
miserable end of Dr Pendleton, Gardner, and most of the leading
persecutors.
Gardner, upon his death-bed, was reminded by a bishop of Peter denying his master.
Ah, said Gardner, I have denied with Peter, but never repented with Peter.
After the accession of Elizabeth, most of the Catholic prelates were
imprisoned in the Tower or the Fleet.
Bonner was put into the Marshalsea.
Of the revilers of God's word, we detail, among many others, the
following occurrence.
One William Moulden, living at Greenwich in servitude, was instructing himself
profitably in reading an English Primer one winter's evening.
A serving man named John Powell sat by and ridiculed all that Moulden said,
who cautioned him not to make a jest of the word of God.
Powell nevertheless continued until Moulden came to certain English prayers
and read aloud, Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, etc.
Suddenly the reviler started and exclaimed, Lord have mercy upon us.
He was struck with the utmost terror of mind, said the evil spirit could not abide
that Christ should have any mercy upon him, and sunk into madness.
He was remitted to Bedlam and became an awful warning that God will not always be
insulted with impunity.
Henry Smith, a student in the law, had a pious Protestant father of Camburn
in Gloucestershire, by whom he was virtuously educated.
While studying law in the Middle Temple, he was induced to profess Catholicism,
and going to Louvain in France, he returned with pardons, crucifixes,
and a great freight of Popish toys.
Not content with these things, he openly reviled the Gospel religion he
had been brought up in.
But conscience one night reproached him so dreadfully, that in a fit of despair he
hung himself in his garters.
He was buried in a lane without the Christian service being read over him.
Dr. Story, whose name has been so often mentioned in the preceding pages,
was reserved to be cut off by public execution, a practice in which he had
taken great delight when in power.
He is supposed to have had a hand in most of the conflagrations in Mary's time,
and was even ingenious in his invention of new modes of inflicting torture.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, he was committed to prison, but
unaccountably effected his escape to the continent, to carry fire and sword there
among the Protestant brethren.
From the Duke of Ulver at Antwerp, he received a special commission to search
all ships for contraband goods, and particularly for English heretical
books.
Dr. Story gloried in a commission that was ordered by Providence to be his ruin,
and to preserve the faithful from his sanguinary cruelty.
It was contrived that one Parker, a merchant, should sail to Antwerp,
and information should be given to Dr. Story that he had a quantity of heretical
books on board.
The latter no sooner heard this than he hastened to the vessel, sought everywhere
above, and then went under the hatches which were fastened down upon him.
A prosperous gale brought the ship to England, and this traitorous, persecuting
rebel was committed to prison, where he remained a considerable time,
obstinately objecting to recant his anti-Christian spirit, or admit of Queen
Elizabeth's supremacy.
He alleged, though by birth and education an Englishman, that he was a sworn subject
of the King of Spain, in whose service the famous Duke of Alva was.
The doctor, being condemned, was laid upon a hurdle and drawn from the tower to
Tyburn, where, after being suspended about half an hour, he was cut down,
stripped, and the executioner displayed the heart of a traitor.
Thus ended the existence of this Nimrod of England.
Chapter 17 Rise and Progress of the Protestant Religion in Ireland,
with an account of the Barbarous Massacre of 1641.
The gloom of Potpourri had overshadowed Ireland from its first establishment there
until the reign of Henry VIII, when the rays of the Gospel began to
dispel the darkness, and afford that light which, until then, had been unknown in
that island.
The abject ignorance in which the people were held, with the absurd and
superstitious notions they entertained, were sufficiently evident to many,
and the artifices of their priests were so conspicuous that several persons of
distinction, who had hitherto been strenuous papists, would willingly have
endeavoured to shake off the yoke and embrace the Protestant religion,
but the natural ferocity of the people, and their strong attachment to the
ridiculous doctrines which they had been taught, made the attempt dangerous.
It was, however, at length undertaken, though attended with the most horrid and
disastrous consequences.
The introduction of the Protestant religion into Ireland may be principally
attributed to George Brown, an Englishman who was consecrated Archbishop of Dublin
on the 19th of March, 1535.
He had formerly been an Augustine friar, and was promoted to the mitre on account
of his merit.
After having enjoyed his dignity about five years, he, at the time that Henry
VIII was suppressing the religious houses in England, caused all the relics and
images to be removed out of the two cathedrals in Dublin, and the other
churches in his diocese, in the place of which he caused to be put up the Lord's
Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments.
A short time after this, he received a letter from Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy
Seal, informing him that Henry VIII, having thrown off the papal supremacy in
England, was determined to do the like in Ireland, and that he thereupon had
appointed him, Archbishop Brown, one of the commissioners for seeing this
order put in execution.
The Archbishop answered that he had employed his utmost endeavours at the
hazard of his life to cause the Irish nobility and gentry to acknowledge Henry
as their supreme head in matters both spiritual and temporal, but had met with
the most violent opposition, especially from George, Archbishop of Armagh.
That this prelate had, in a speech to the clergy, laid a curse on all those who
should own His Highness's supremacy, adding that their isle, called in the
chronicles Insula Sacra, or the Holy Island, belonged to none but the Bishop of
Rome, and that the King's progenitors had received it from the Pope.
He observed likewise that the Archbishop and clergy of Armagh had each dispatched a
courier to Rome, and that it would be necessary for a Parliament to be called in
Ireland to pass an act of supremacy, the people not regarding the King's
commission without the sanction of the Legislative Assembly.
He concluded with observing that the Popes had kept the people in the most profound
ignorance, that the clergy were exceedingly illiterate, that the common
people were more zealous in their blindness than the saints and martyrs had
been in the defence of truth at the beginning of the Gospel, and that it was
to be feared that Sean O'Neill, a chieftain of great power in the northern
part of the island, was decidedly opposed to the King's commission.
In pursuance of this advice, the following year, a Parliament was summoned to meet at
Dublin by order of Leonard Grey, at that time Lord Lieutenant.
At this Assembly, Archbishop Brown made a speech in which he set forth that the
bishops of Rome used anciently to acknowledge emperors, kings, and princes
to be supreme in their own dominions, and therefore that he himself would vote
King Henry VIII as supreme in all matters both ecclesiastical and temporal.
He concluded with saying that whosoever should refuse to vote for this act was not
a true subject of the King.
This speech greatly startled the other bishops and lords, but at length,
after violent debates, the King's supremacy was allowed.
Two years after this, the Archbishop wrote a second letter to Lord Cromwell,
complaining of the clergy and hinting at the machinations which the Pope was then
carrying on against the advocates of the gospel.
This letter is dated from Dublin in April 1538, and among other matters,
the Archbishop says, a bird may be taught to speak with as much sense as many of the
clergy do in this country.
These, they're not scholars, yet are crafty to cousin the poor common people
and to dissuade them from following His Highness's orders.
The country folk here much hate your lordship, and despitefully call you in
their Irish tongue the blacksmith's son.
As a friend, I desire your lordship to look well to your noble person.
Rome hath a great kindness for the Duke of Norfolk, and great favours for this
nation, purposely to oppose His Highness.
A short time after this, the Pope sent over to Ireland, directed to the
Archbishop of Armagh and his clergy, a bull of excommunication against all who
had or should own the King's supremacy within the Irish nation, denouncing a
curse on all of them and theirs, who should not within forty days
acknowledge to their confessors that they had done amiss in so doing.
Archbishop Brown gave notice of this in a letter dated Dublin, May 1538.
Part of the form of confession, or vow, sent over to these Irish Papists
ran as follows.
I do further declare him or her, father or mother, brother or sister,
son or daughter, husband or wife, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece,
kinsman or kinswoman, master or mistress, and all others nearest or dearest
relations, friend or acquaintance whatsoever, accursed, that either do or
shall hold for the time to come any ecclesiastical or civil power above the
authority of the Mother Church, or that do or shall obey for the time to
come any of her, the Mother Church's, opposers or enemies, or contrary to the
same, of which I have here sworn unto.
So God the Blessed Virgin, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the Holy Evangelists help
me, etc.
This is an exact agreement with the doctrines promulgated by the councils of
Lateran and Constance, which expressly declare that no favour should be shown to
heretics, nor faith kept with them, that they ought to be excommunicated and
condemned, and their estates confiscated, and that princes are obliged by a solemn
oath to root them out of their respective dominions.
How abominable a church must that be which thus dares to trample upon all authority!
How besotted the people who regard the injunctions of such a church!
In the Archbishop's last-mentioned letter, dated May 1538, he says, His Highness's
viceroy of this nation is of little or no power with the old natives.
Now both English and Irish begin to lordship's orders, and to lay aside their
national quarrels, which I fear will, if anything will, cause a foreigner to
invade this nation.
Not long after this, Archbishop Brown seized one Thaddeus O'Brien of Franciscan
Friar, who had in his possession a paper sent from Rome, dated May 1538,
and directed to O'Neill.
In this letter were the following words, His Holiness Paul, now Pope, and the
Council of the Fathers, have lately found in Rome a prophecy of one St. Lacerianus,
an Irish Bishop of Cashel, in which he saith that the Mother Church of Rome
falleth when in Ireland the Catholic faith is overcome.
Therefore, for the glory of the Mother Church, the honour of St. Peter,
and your own secureness, suppress heresy and His Holiness's enemies.
This Thaddeus O'Brien, after further examination and search made, was pilloried
and kept close prisoner until the King's orders arrived in what manner he should be
further disposed of.
But, order coming over from England that he was to be hanged, he laid violent hands
on himself in the Castle of Dublin.
His body was afterwards carried to Gallows Green, where after being hanged up for
some time, it was interred.
After the accession of Edward VI to the Throne of England, an order was directed
to Sir Anthony Ledger, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, commanding that the liturgy in
English be forthwith set up in Ireland, there to be observed within the several
bishoprics, cathedrals and parish churches.
And it was first read in Christchurch, Dublin, on Easter Day, 1551, before the
said St. Anthony, Archbishop Brown and others.
Part of the Royal order for this purpose was as follows.
Whereas our gracious father, King Henry VIII, taking into consideration the
bondage and heavy yoke that his true and faithful subjects sustained under the
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, how several fabulous stories and lying
wonders misled our subjects, dispensing with the sins of our nations by their
indulgences and pardons for gain, purposely to cherish all evil vices,
as robberies, rebellions, thefts, whoredoms, blasphemy, idolatry,
etc., our gracious father hereupon dissolved all priories, monasteries,
abbeys, and other pretended religious houses, as being but nurseries for vice or
luxury, more than for sacred learning, etc.
On the day after the Common Prayer was first used in Christchurch, Dublin,
the following wicked scheme was projected by the Papists.
In the church was left a marble image of Christ holding a reed in his hand with a
crown of thorns on his head.
Whilst the English service, the Common Prayer, was being read before the Lord
Lieutenant, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Privy Council, the Lord Mayor and a
great congregation, blood was seen to run through the crevices of the crown of
thorns and trickle down the face of the image.
On this, some of the contrivers of the imposture cried aloud, See how our
Saviour's image sweats blood!
But it must necessarily do this, since heresy is coming to the church.
Immediately many of the lower order of people, indeed the vulgar of all ranks,
were terrified at the sight of so miraculous and undeniable irrevidence of
the divine displeasure.
They hastened from the church, convinced that the doctrines of
Protestantism emanated from an infernal source, and that salvation was only to be
found in the bosom of their own infallible church.
This incident, however ludicrous it may appear to the enlightened reader,
had great influence over the minds of the ignorant Irish, and answered the ends of
the impudent impostors who contrived it, so far as to check the progress of the
reformed religion in Ireland very materially.
Many persons could not resist the conviction that there were many errors and
corruptions in the Romish church, but they were awed into silence by this
pretended manifestation of divine wrath, which was magnified beyond measure by the
bigoted and interested priesthood.
We have very few particulars as to the state of religion in Ireland during the
remaining portion of the reign of Edward VI and the greater part of that of Mary.
Towards the conclusion of the barbarous sway of that relentless bigot,
she attempted to extend her inhuman persecutions to this Ireland, but her
diabolical intentions were happily frustrated in the following providential
manner, the particulars of which are related by historians of good authority.
Mary had appointed Dr. Pole, an agent of the bloodthirsty Bonner, one of the
commissioners for carrying her barbarous intentions into effect.
He, having arrived at Chester with his commission, the mayor of that city,
being a papist, waited upon him, when the doctor, taking out of his
cloak-bag a leathern case, said to him, Here is a commission that shall lash the
heretics of Ireland.
The good woman of the house, being a Protestant and having a brother in Dublin
named John Edmonds, was greatly troubled at what she heard, but watching her
opportunity, whilst the mayor was taking his leave and the doctor politely
accompanying him downstairs, she opened the box, took out the commission,
and in its stead laid a sheet of paper with a pack of cards and the knave of
clubs atop.
The doctor, not suspecting the trick that had been played him, put up the box and
arrived with it in Dublin in September 1558.
Anxious to accomplish the intention of his pious mistress, he immediately waited upon
Lord Fitzwalter, at that time viceroy, and presented the box to him, which being
open, nothing was found in it but a pack of cards.
This startling all the persons present, his lordship said, We must procure another
commission, and in the meantime let us shuffle the cards.
Doctor Pole, however, would have directly returned to England to get another
commission, but waiting for a favourable wind, news arrived that Queen Mary was
dead, and by this means the Protestants escaped a most cruel persecution.
The above relation, as we before observed, is confirmed by historians of the greatest
credit, who add that Queen Elizabeth settled a pension of £40 per annum upon
the above-mentioned Elizabeth Edmonds, for having thus saved the lives of her
Protestant subjects.
During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, Ireland was almost constantly agitated
by rebellions and insurrections, which although not always taking their
rise from the difference of religious opinions between the English and Irish,
were aggravated and rendered more bitter and irreconcilable from that cause.
The Popish priests artfully exaggerated the faults of the English government,
and continually urged to their ignorant and prejudiced heroes the lawfulness of
killing the Protestants, assuring them that all Catholics who were slain in the
prosecution of so pious an enterprise would be immediately received into
everlasting felicity.
The naturally ungovernable dispositions of the Irish, acted upon by these designing
men, drove them into continual acts of barbarous and unjustifiable violence,
and it must be confessed that the unsettled and arbitrary nature of the
authority exercised by the English governors was but little calculated to
gain their affections.
The Spaniards, too, by landing forces in the South, and giving every encouragement
to the discontented natives to join their standard, kept the island in a continual
state of turbulence and warfare.
In 1601 they disembarked a body of 4,000 men at Kinsale, and commenced what they
called the Holy War for the Preservation of the Faith in Ireland.
They were assisted by great numbers of the Irish, but were at length totally defeated
by the deputy Lord Mountjoy and his officers.
This closed the transactions of Elizabeth's reign with respect to Ireland.
An interval of apparent tranquillity followed, but the Popish priesthood,
ever restless and designing, sought to undermine by secret machinations that
government and that faith which they durst no longer openly attack.
The Pacific reign of James afforded them the opportunity of increasing their
strength and maturing their schemes, and under his successor, Charles I,
their numbers were greatly increased by titular Romish archbishops, bishops,
deans, vicars general, abbots, priests and friars, for which reason in
1629 the public exercise of the Popish rites and ceremonies was forbidden.
But notwithstanding this, soon afterwards the Romish clergy erected a new Popish
university in the city of Dublin.
They also proceeded to build monasteries and nunneries in various parts of the
kingdom, in which places these very Romish clergy and the chiefs of the Irish held
frequent meetings, and from thence used to pass to and fro to France, Spain,
Flanders, Lorraine and Rome, where the detestable plot of 1641 was hatching by
the family of the O'Neills and their followers.
A short time before the horrid conspiracy broke out, which we are now going to
relate, the papists in Ireland had presented a remonstrance to the Lord's
justice of that kingdom, demanding the free exercise of their religion and a
repeal of all laws to the contrary, to which both Houses of Parliament in
England solemnly answered that they would never grant any toleration to the Popish
religion in that kingdom.
This further irritated the papists to put in execution the diabolical plot concerted
for the destruction of the Protestants, and it failed not of the success wished
for by its malicious and rancorous projectors.
The design of this horrid conspiracy was that a general insurrection should take
place at the same time throughout the kingdom, and that all the Protestants,
without exception, should be murdered.
The day fixed for this horrid massacre was the 23rd of October 1641, the feast of
Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and the chief conspirators in the
principal parts of the kingdom made the necessary preparations for the intended
conflict.
In order that this detested scheme might the more infallibly succeed, the most
distinguished artifices were practiced by the papists, and their behaviour in their
visits to the Protestants at this time was with more seeming kindness than they had
hitherto shown, which was done the more completely to affect the inhuman and
treacherous designs then meditating against them.
The execution of this savage conspiracy was delayed until the approach of winter,
that sending troops from England might be attended with greater difficulty.
Cardinal Richelieu, the French minister, had promised the conspirators a
considerable supply of men and money, and many Irish officers had given the
strongest assurances that they would heartily concur with their Catholic
brethren as soon as the insurrection took place.
The day preceding that appointed for carrying this horrid design into execution
was now arrived, when happily for the metropolis of the kingdom, the conspiracy
was discovered by one Owen O'Connolly, an Irishman, for which most signal service
the English Parliament voted him £500 and a pension of £200 during his life.
So very seasonably was this plot discovered, even but a few hours before
the city and castle of Dublin were to have been surprised, that the Lord's Justice
had but just time to put themselves and the city in a proper posture of defence.
Lord Maguire, who was the principal leader here with his accomplices, was seized the
same evening in the city, and in their lodgings were found swords, hatchets,
pole axes, hammers and such other instruments of death as had been prepared
for the destruction and extirpation of the Protestants in that part of the kingdom.
Thus was the metropolis happily preserved, but the bloody part of the intended
tragedy was past prevention.
The conspirators were in arms all over the kingdom, early in the morning of the day
appointed, and every Protestant who fell in their way was immediately murdered.
No age, no sex, no condition were spared.
The wife, weeping for her butchered husband and embracing her helpless
children, was pierced with them and perished by the same stroke.
The old, the young, the vigorous and the infirm underwent the same fate and were
blended in one common ruin.
In vain did flight, save from the first assault, destruction was everywhere let
loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn.
In vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends.
All connections were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand from
which protection was implored and expected.
Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound
peace and, as they thought, full security, were massacred by their nearest
neighbours, with whom they had long maintained a continued intercourse of
kindness and good offices.
Nay, even death was the slightest punishment inflicted by these monsters in
human form.
All the tortures which wanton cruelty could invent, all the lingering pains of
body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited
without injury and cruelly derived from no just cause whatever.
Depraved nature, even perverted religion, though encouraged by the utmost license,
cannot reach to a greater pitch of ferocity than appeared in these merciless
barbarians.
Even the weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own sufferings
and compassionate to those of others, have emulated their robust companions in
the practice of every cruelty.
The very children, taught by example and encouraged by the exhortation of their
parents, dealt their feeble blows on the dead carcasses of the defenceless children
of the English.
Nor was the avarice of the Irish sufficient to produce the least restraint
on their cruelty.
Such was their frenzy, that the cattle they had seized, and by rapine had made
their own, were, because they bore the name of English, wantonly slaughtered,
or when covered with wounds, turned loose into the woods, there to perish by slow
and lingering torments.
The commodious habitations of the planters were laid in ashes, all levelled with the
ground, and where the wretched owners had shut themselves up in the houses and were
preparing for defence, they perished in the flames, together with their wives and
children.
Such is the general description of this unparalleled massacre, but it now remains,
from the nature of our work, that we proceed to particulars.
The bigoted and merciless papists had no sooner begun to imbrew their hands in
blood than they repeated the horrid tragedy day after day, and the Protestants
in all parts of the kingdom fell victims to their fury by deaths of the most
unheard-of cruelty.
The ignorant Irish were more strongly instigated to execute the infernal
business by the Jesuits, priests and friars, who, when the day for the
execution of the plot was agreed on, recommended in their prayers diligence in
the great design, which they said would greatly tend to the prosperity of the
kingdom and to the advancement of the Catholic cause.
They everywhere declared to the common people that the Protestants were heretics
and ought not to be suffered to live any longer among them, adding that it was no
more sin to kill an Englishman than to kill a dog, and that the relieving or
protecting them was a crime of the most unpardonable nature.
The papists, having besieged the town and castle of Longford, and the inhabitants of
the latter, who were Protestants, surrendering on condition of being allowed
quarter, the besiegers, the instant the townspeople appeared, attacked them in a
most unmerciful manner, their priest, as a signal for the rest to fall on,
first ripping open the belly of the English Protestant minister, after which
his followers murdered all the rest, some of whom they hanged, others were
stabbed or shot, and great numbers knocked on the head with axes provided for the
purpose.
The garrison at Sligo was treated in like manner by O'Connor Sligar, who,
upon the Protestants quitting their holds, promised them quarter and to convey them
safe over the Curlew Mountains to Roscommon, but he first imprisoned them in
a most loathsome jail, allowing them only grains for their food.
Afterward, when some papists were merry over their cups, who were come to
congratulate their wicked brethren for their victory over these unhappy
creatures, those Protestants who survived were brought forth by the white friars,
and were either killed or precipitated over a bridge into a swift river where
they were soon destroyed.
It is added that this wicked company of white friars went some time after in
solemn procession with holy water in their hands to sprinkle the river on pretence of
cleansing and purifying it from the stains and pollutions of the blood and dead
bodies of the heretics, as they called the unfortunate Protestants, who were
inhumanely slaughtered at this very time.
At Kilmore, Dr. Burdell, bishop of that sea, had charitably settled and supported
a great number of distressed Protestants, who had fled from their habitations to
escape the diabolical cruelties committed by the papists.
But they did not long enjoy the consolation of living together.
The good prelate was forcibly dragged from his episcopal residence, which was
immediately occupied by Dr. Swiney, the popish titular bishop of Kilmore,
who said mass in the church the Sunday following, and then seized on all the
goods and effects belonging to the persecuted bishop.
Soon after this the papists forced Dr. Burdell, his two sons and the rest of his
family, with some of the chief of the Protestants whom he had protected,
into a ruinous castle called Loch Water, situated in a lake near the sea.
Here he remained with his companions some weeks, all of them daily expecting to be
put to death.
The greatest part of them was stripped naked, by which means as the season was
cold, it being in the month of December, and the building in which they were
confined open at the top, they suffered the most severe hardships.
They continued in this situation until the 7th of January, when they were all
released.
The bishop was courteously received into the house of Denis O'Sheridan,
one of his clergy, whom he had made a convert to the Church of England.
But he did not long survive this kindness.
During his residence here he spent the whole of his time in religious exercises,
the better to fit and prepare himself and his sorrowful companions for their great
change, as nothing but certain death was perpetually before their eyes.
He was at this time in the seventy-first year of his age, and being afflicted with
a violent ague caught in his late cold and desolate habitation on the lake,
it soon threw him into a fever of the most dangerous nature.
Finding his dissolution at hand, he received it with joy like one of the
primitive martyrs, just hastening to his crown of glory.
After having addressed his little flock and exhorted them to patience in the most
pathetic manner, as they saw their own last day approaching, after having
solemnly blessed his people, his family, and his children, he finished the course
of his ministry and life together on the seventh day of February, 1642.
His friends and relations applied to the intruding bishop for leave to bury him,
which was with difficulty obtained.
He at first telling them that the churchyard was holy ground and should be
no longer defiled with heretics.
However, leave was at last granted, and though the church funeral service was
not used at the solemnity, for fear of the Irish papists, yet some of the better
sort, who had the highest veneration for him while living, attended his remains to
the grave.
At this interment they discharged a volley of shot, crying out, Requiescat in pace,
ultimus anglorum, that is, may the last of the English rest in peace.
Adding that, as he was one of the best, so he should be the last English bishop
found among them.
His learning was very extensive, and he would have given the world a
greater proof of it, had he printed all he wrote.
Scarce any of his writings were saved, the papists having destroyed most of his
papers and his library.
He'd gathered a vast heap of critical expositions of scripture, all which,
with a great trunk full of his manuscripts, fell into the hands of the
Irish.
Happily, his great Hebrew manuscript was preserved, and is now in the library of
Emmanuel College, Oxford.
In the barony of Tiroli, the papists, at the instigation of the friars,
compelled above forty English Protestants, some of whom were women and children,
to the hard fate of either falling by the sword or of drowning in the sea.
These choosing the latter were accordingly forced by the naked weapons of their
inexorable persecutors into the deep, where, with their children in their arms,
they first waded up to their chins, and afterwards sunk down and perished
together.
In the castle of Lisgoul, upwards of one hundred and fifty men, women, and children
were all burnt together, and at the castle of Monia not less than one hundred were
all put to the sword.
Great numbers were also murdered at the castle of Tula, which was delivered up to
Maguire on condition of having fair quarter, but no sooner had that base
villain got possession of the place than he ordered his followers to murder the
people, which was immediately done with the greatest cruelty.
Many others were put to deaths of the most horrid nature, and such as could have been
invented only by demons instead of men.
Some of them were laid with the centre of their backs on the axel tree of a
carriage, with their legs resting on the ground on one side and their arms and head
on the other.
In this position, one of the savages scourged the wretched object on the
thighs, legs, etc., while another set on furious dogs, who tore to pieces the arms
and upper parts of the body, and in this dreadful manner were they deprived of
their existence.
Great numbers were foused to horses' tails, and the beasts being set on full
gallop by their riders, the wretched victims were dragged along until they
expired.
Others were hung on lofty gibbets, and a fire being kindled under them,
they finished their lives partly by hanging and partly by suffocation.
Nor did the more tender sex escape the least particle of cruelty that could be
projected by their merciless and furious persecutors.
Many women of all ages were put to deaths of the most cruel nature.
Some, in particular, were fastened with their backs to strong posts, and being
stripped to their waists, the inhuman monsters cut off their right breasts with
shears, which of course put them to the most excruciating torments, and in this
position they were left until from the loss of blood they expired.
Such was the savage ferocity of these barbarians that even unborn infants were
dragged from the womb to become victims to their rage.
Many unhappy mothers were hung naked in the branches of trees, and their bodies
being cut open, the innocent offsprings were taken from them and thrown to dogs
and swine, and to increase the horrid scene, they would oblige the husband to be
a spectator before suffering himself.
At the town of Isonceath, they hanged above a hundred Scottish Protestants,
showing them no more mercy than they did to the English.
Maguire, going to the castle of that town, desired to speak with the governor.
When being admitted, he immediately burnt the records of the county which were kept
there.
He then demanded one thousand pounds of the governor, which having received,
he immediately compelled him to hear mass, and to swear that he would continue to do
so.
And to complete his horrid barbarities, he ordered the wife and children of the
governor to be hanged before his face, besides massacring at least one hundred of
the inhabitants.
Upwards of one thousand men, women, and children were driven in different
companies to Portadown Bridge, which was broken in the middle,
and there compelled to throw themselves into the water, and such as attempted to
reach the shore were knocked on the head.
In the same part of the country, at least four thousand persons were
drowned in different places.
The inhuman Papists, after first stripping them, drove them like beasts to the spot
fixed on for their destruction, and if any, through fatigue or natural
infirmities, were slack in their pace, they pricked them with their swords and
pikes, and to strike terror on the multitude they murdered some by the way.
Many of these poor wretches, when thrown into the water, endeavoured to save
themselves by swimming to the shore, but their merciless persecutors prevented
their endeavours taking effect by shooting them in the water.
In one place, one hundred and forty English, after being driven for many miles
stark naked and in the most severe weather, were all murdered on the same
spot, some being hanged, others burnt, some shot, and many of them buried alive.
And so cruel were their tormentors that they would not suffer them to pray before
they robbed them of their miserable existence.
Other companies they took under pretence of safe conduct, who from that
consideration proceeded cheerfully on their journey, but when the treacherous
Papists had got them to a convenient spot, they butchered them all in the most cruel
manner.
One hundred and fifteen men, women, and children were conducted by order of
Sir Philem O'Neill to Porterdown Bridge, where they were all forced into the river
and drowned.
One woman named Campbell, finding no probability of escaping, suddenly clasped
one of the chief of the Papists in her arms and held him so fast they were both
drowned together.
In Killiman they massacred forty-eight families, among whom twenty-two were burnt
together in one house.
The rest were either hanged, shot, or drowned.
In Kilmore the inhabitants, which consisted of about two hundred families,
all fell victims to their rage.
Some of them sat in the stocks until they confessed where their money was,
after which they put them to death.
The whole county was one common scene of butchery, and many thousands perished in a
short time by sword, famine, fire, water, and others the most cruel deaths
that rage and malice could invent.
These bloody villains showed so much favour to some as to dispatch them
immediately, but they would by no means suffer them to pray.
Others they imprisoned in filthy dungeons, putting heavy bolts on their legs and
keeping them there until they were starved to death.
At Cassell they put all the Protestants into a loathsome dungeon, where they kept
them together for several weeks in the greatest misery.
At length they were released, when some of them were barbarously mangled and left on
the highways to perish at leisure, others were hanged, and some were buried
in the ground upright with their heads above the earth, and the Papist,
to increase their misery, treating them with derision during their sufferings.
In the county of Antrim they murdered nine hundred and fifty-four Protestants in one
morning, and afterwards about twelve hundred more in that county.
At a town called Lysnagary they forced twenty-four Protestants into a house,
and then setting fire to it burned them together, counterfeiting their outcries in
derision to the others.
Among other acts of cruelty they took two children belonging to an English woman,
and dashed out their brains before her face, after which they threw the mother
into a river and she was drowned.
They served many other children in the like manner, to the great affliction of
their parents and the disgrace of human nature.
In Kilkenny all the Protestants without exception were put to death, and some of
them in so cruel a manner as perhaps was never before thought of.
They beat an English woman with such savage barbarity that she had scarce a
whole bone left, after which they threw her into a ditch, but not satisfied with
this they took her child, a girl about six years of age, and after ripping up its
belly threw it to its mother, there to languish until it perished.
They forced one man to go to mass, after which they ripped open his body,
and in that manner left him.
They sawed another asunder, cut the throat of his wife, and after having dashed out
the brains of their child and infant, threw it to the swine who greedily
devoured it.
After committing these and several other horrid cruelties, they took the heads of
seven Protestants, and among them that of a pious minister, all of which they fixed
up at the market cross.
They put a gag into the minister's mouth, then slit his cheeks to his ears,
and laying a leaf of a Bible before it, bid him preach, for his mouth was wide
enough.
They did several other things by way of derision, and expressed the greatest
satisfaction at having thus murdered and exposed the unhappy Protestants.
It is impossible to conceive the pleasure these monsters took in exercising their
cruelty, and to increase the misery of those who fell into their hands,
when they butchered them, they would say, your soul to the devil.
One of these miscreants would come into a house with his hands imbued in blood,
and boast that it was English blood, and that his sword had pricked the white
skins of the Protestants, even to the hilt.
When any one of them had killed a Protestant, others would come and receive
a gratification in cutting and mangling the body, after which they left it exposed
to be devoured by dogs.
And when they'd slain a number of them, they would boast that the devil was
beholden to them for sending so many souls to hell.
But it is no wonder they should thus treat the innocent Christians, when they
hesitated not to commit blasphemy against God and his most holy word.
In one place, they burnt two Protestant Bibles, and then said they had burnt
hellfire.
In the church at Power's Court, they burnt the pulpit, pews, chests,
and Bibles belonging to it.
They took other Bibles, and after wetting them with dirty water, dashed them in the
faces of the Protestants, saying, We know you love a good lesson.
Here's an excellent one for you.
Come to-morrow, and you shall have as good a sermon as this.
Some of the Protestants they dragged by the hair of their heads into the church,
where they stripped and whipped them in the most cruel manner, telling them at the
same time that if they came to-morrow, they should hear the like sermon.
In Munster, they put to death several ministers in the most shocking manner.
One in particular they stripped stark naked, and driving him before them,
pricked him with swords and darts until he fell down and expired.
In some places, they plucked out the eyes and cut off the hands of the Protestants,
and in that manner turned them into the fields, there to wander out their
miserable existence.
They obliged many young men to force their aged parents to a river where they were
drowned, wives to assist in hanging their husbands, and mothers to cut the throats
of their children.
In one place, they compelled a young man to kill his father, and then immediately
hanged him.
In another, they forced a woman to kill her husband, then obliged the son to kill
her, and afterward shot him through the head.
At a place called Glasgow, a Popish priest, with some others, prevailed on
forty Protestants to be reconciled to the Church of Rome.
They had no sooner done this, than they told them they were in good faith,
and that they would prevent their falling from it and turning heretics by sending
them out of the world, which they did by immediately cutting their throats.
In the county of Tipperary, upwards of thirty Protestants, men, women,
and children, fell into the hands of the Papists, who after stripping them naked,
murdered them with stones, whole axes, swords, and other weapons.
In the county of Mayo, about sixty Protestants, fifteen of whom were
ministers, were upon covenant to be safely conducted to Galway by one Edmund Burke
and his soldiers.
But that inhuman monster, by the way, drew his sword at an intimation of his
design to the rest, who immediately followed his example, and murdered the
whole, some of whom they stabbed, others were run through the body with
pikes, and several were drowned.
In Queen's County, great numbers of Protestants were put to the deaths.
Fifty or sixty were placed together in one house, which being set on fire,
they all perished in the flames.
Many were stripped naked, being fastened to horses by ropes placed round their
middles, were dragged through bogs until they expired.
Some were hung by the feet to tenterhooks, driven into poles, and in that wretched
posture left until they perished.
Others were fastened to the trunk of a tree, with a branch at top.
Over this branch hung one arm, which principally supported the weight of
the body, and one of the legs was turned up and fastened to the trunk, while the
other hung straight.
In this dreadful and uneasy posture did they remain as long as life would permit,
pleasing spectacles to their bloodthirsty persecutors.
At Clown's, seventeen men were buried alive, and an Englishman, his wife,
five children, and a servant-maid were all hanged together, and afterward thrown into
a ditch.
They hung many by the arms to branches of trees with a weight to their feet,
and others by the middle, in which posture they left them until they expired.
Several were hanged on windmills, and before they were half dead,
the barbarians cut them in pieces with their swords.
Others, both men, women, and children, they cut and hacked in various parts of
their bodies, and left them wallowing in their blood to perish where they fell.
One poor woman they hanged on a gibbet, with her child, an infant, about a
twelve-month old, the latter of whom was hanged by the neck with the hair of its
mother's head, and in that manner finished its short but miserable existence.
In the county of Tyrone no less than three hundred Protestants were drowned in one
day, and many others were hanged, burned, and otherwise put to death.
Dr. Maxwell, Rector of Tyrone, lived at this time near Armagh,
and suffered greatly from these merciless savages.
This person, in his examination taken upon oath before the King's commissioners,
declared that the Irish Papists owned to him that they at several times had
destroyed in one place twelve thousand Protestants, whom they inhumanly
slaughtered at Glynwood in their flight from the county of Armagh.
As the river Ban was not fordable, and the bridge broken down, the Irish
fought thither at different times a great number of unarmed, defenceless
Protestants, and with pikes and swords violently thrust about one thousand into
the river where they miserably perished.
Nor did the cathedral of Armagh escape the fury of those barbarians, it being
maliciously set on fire by their leaders and burnt to the ground.
And to extirpate, if possible, the very race of those unhappy Protestants
who lived in or near Armagh, the Irish first burnt all their houses, and then
gathered together many hundreds of those innocent people, young and old,
on pretence of allowing them a god and safe conduct to cholerane, when they
treacherously fell on them by the way and inhumanly murdered them.
The like horrid barbarities, with those we have particularised, were practised on the
wretched Protestants in almost all parts of the kingdom.
And when an estimate was afterwards made of the number who were sacrificed to
gratify diabolical souls of the Papists, it amounted to one hundred and fifty
thousand.
But it now remains that we proceed to the particulars that followed.
These desperate wretches, flushed and grown insolent with success, thereby
methods attended with such excessive barbarities as perhaps not to be equalled,
soon got possession of the castle of Newry, where the king's stores and
ammunition were lodged, and with as little difficulty made themselves masters of
Dundalk.
They afterward took the town of Ardee, where they murdered all the Protestants,
and then proceeded to Drogeda.
The garrison of Drogeda was in no condition to sustain a siege,
notwithstanding which, as often as the Irish renewed their attacks, they were
vigorously repulsed by a very unequal number of the king's forces, and a few
faithful Protestant citizens, under Sir Henry Titchborne the governor,
assisted by the Lord Viscount Moore.
The siege of Drogeda began on the 30th of November 1641, and held until the 4th of
March 1642, when Cephilim O'Neill and the Irish miscreants under him were forced to
retire.
In the meantime, 10,000 troops were sent from Scotland to the remaining Protestants
in Ireland, which, being properly divided in the most capital parts of the kingdom,
happily eclipsed the power of the Irish savages, and the Protestants for a time
lived in tranquillity.
In the reign of King James II, they were again interrupted, for in a
parliament held at Dublin in the year 1689, great numbers of the Protestant
nobility, clergy and gentry of Ireland were attainted of high treason.
The government of the kingdom was at that time invested in the Earl of Turconnell,
a bigoted papist and an inveterate enemy to the Protestants.
By his orders, they were again persecuted in various parts of the kingdom.
The revenues of the city of Dublin were seized, and most of the churches converted
into prisons.
And had it not been for the resolution and uncommon bravery of the garrisons in the
city of Londonderry and the town of Inneskillen, there had not one place
remained for refuge to the distressed Protestants in the whole kingdom,
but all must have been given up to King James and to the furious popish party that
governed him.
The remarkable siege of Londonderry was opened on the 18th of April 1689 by 20,000
papists, the flower of the Irish army.
The city was not properly circumstanced to sustain a siege, the defenders consisting
of a body of raw, undisciplined Protestants, who had fled thither for
shelter, and half a regiment of Lord Mountjoy's disciplined soldiers,
with the principal part of the inhabitants, making it all only 7,361
fighting men.
The besieged hoped at first that their stores of corn and other necessaries would
be sufficient, but by the continuance of the siege their wants increased,
and these became at last so heavy that for a considerable time before the siege was
raised, a pint of coarse barley, a small quantity of greens, a few
spoonfuls of starch, with a very moderate proportion of horse-flesh, were reckoned a
week's provision for a soldier, and they were at length reduced to such
extremities that they ate dogs, cats, and mice.
Their miseries increasing with the siege, many through mere hunger and want,
pined and languished away, or fell dead in the streets.
And it is remarkable that when their long-expected suckers arrived from
England, they were upon the point of being reduced to this alternative, either to
preserve their existence by eating each other, or attempting to fight their way
through the Irish which must have infallibly produced their destruction.
These suckers were most happily brought by the ship Mountjoy of Derry in the Phoenix
of Coleraine, at which time they had only nine lean horses left with a pint of meal
to each man.
By hunger and the fatigues of war, their 7,361 fighting men were reduced to
4,300, one-fourth part of whom were rendered unserviceable.
As the calamities of the besieged were great, so likewise were the terrors and
sufferings of their Protestant friends and relations, all of whom, even women and
children, were forcibly driven from the country thirty miles round, and inhumanly
reduced to the sad necessity of continuing some days and nights without food or
covering before the walls of the town, and were thus exposed to the continual
fire both of the Irish army from without, and the shot of their friends from within.
But the suckers from England, happily arriving, put an end to their affliction,
and the siege was raised on the 31st of July, having been continued upwards of
three months.
The day before the siege of Londonderry was raised, the inner-skillers engaged a
body of 6,000 Irish Roman Catholics at Newton, Butler or Crown Castle,
of whom near 5,000 were slain.
This, with the defeat at Londonderry, dispirited the Papists, and they gave up
all farther attempts to persecute the Protestants.
The year following, namely 1690, the Irish took up arms in favour of the
abdicated Prince King James II, but they were totally defeated by his
successor King William III.
That monarch, before he left the country, reduced them to a state of subjection,
in which they have ever since continued.
But notwithstanding all this, the Protestant interest at present stands upon
a much stronger basis than it did a century ago.
The Irish, who formerly led an unsettled and roving life in the woods, bogs,
and mountains, and lived on the depredation of their neighbours,
they who in the morning seized the prey and at night divided the spoil,
have for many years past become quiet and civilised.
They taste the sweets of English society and the advantages of civil government.
They trade in our cities and are employed in our manufactories.
They are received also into English families and treated with great humanity
by the Protestants.
Chapter 18 The Rise, Progress, Persecutions, and Sufferings of the
Quakers In treating of these people in a historical manner, we are obliged to have
recourse to much tenderness.
That they differ from the generality of Protestants in some of the capital points
of religion cannot be denied, and yet, as Protestant dissenters, they are
included under the description of the Toleration Act.
It is not our business to inquire whether people of similar sentiment had any
existence in the primitive ages of Christianity.
Perhaps in some respects they had not, but we are to write of them not as what
they were, but what they now are.
That they have been treated by several writers in a very contemptuous manner is
certain.
That they did not deserve such treatment is equally certain.
The appellation Quakers was bestowed upon them as a term of reproach, in consequence
of their apparent convulsions which they laboured under when they delivered their
discourses, because they imagined they were the effect of divine inspiration.
It is not our business at present to inquire whether the sentiments of these
people are agreeable to the Gospel, but this much is certain that the first
leader of them, as a separate body, was a man of obscure birth who had his
first existence in Leicestershire about the year 1624.
In speaking of this man we shall deliver our own sentiments in a historical manner,
and joining these to what have been said by the Friends themselves, we shall
endeavour to furnish out a complete narrative.
George Fox was descended of honest and respected parents who brought him up in
the national religion.
But from a child he appeared religious, still solid and observing beyond his
years, and uncommonly knowing in divine things.
He was brought up to husbandry and other country business, and was particularly
inclined to the solitary occupation of a shepherd, an employment that very well
suited his mind in several respects, both for its innocency and solitude,
and was a just emblem of his after ministry and service.
In the year 1646 he entirely forsook the national church, in whose tenants he had
been brought up, as before observed, and in 1647 he travelled into Derbyshire
and Nottinghamshire without any set purpose of visiting particular places,
but in a solitary manner he walked through several towns and villages which way so
ever his mind turned.
He fasted much, said Swell, and walked often in retired places with no other
companion than his Bible.
He visited the most retired and people in those parts, says Penn, and some there
were, short of few, if any in this nation, who waited for the consolation of Israel
night and day, as Zacharias, Anna, and Simeon did of old time.
To these he was sent, and these he sought out in the neighbouring counties,
and among them he sojourned until his more ample ministry came upon him.
At this time he taught, and was an example of silence, endeavouring to bring them
from self-performances, testifying of and turning them to the light of Christ within
them, and encouraging them to wait in patience, and to feel the power of it to
stir in their hearts, that their knowledge and worship of God might stand in the
power of an endless life, which was to be found in the light, as it was obeyed in
the manifestation of it in man.
For in the word was life, and that life is the light of men.
Life in the word, light in men, and life in men too, as the light is
obeyed.
The children of the light living by the life of the word, by which the word begets
them again to God, which is the generation and new birth, without which there is no
coming into the kingdom of God, and to which whoever comes is greater than
John.
That is then John's dispensation, which was not that of the kingdom,
but the consummation of the legal and forerunning of the gospel times,
the time of the kingdom.
Accordingly, several meetings were gathering in those parts, and thus his
time was employed for some years.
In the year 1652 he had a visitation of the great work of God in the earth,
and of the way that he was to go forth in a public ministry to begin it.
He directed his course northward, and in every place where he came,
if not before he came to it, he had his particular exercise and service shown to
him, so that the Lord was his leader indeed.
He made great numbers of converts to his opinions, and many pious and good men
joined him in his ministry.
These were drawn forth especially to visit the public assemblies to reprove,
reform, and exhort them, sometimes in markets, fairs, streets, and by the
highway side, calling people to repentance and to return to the Lord with their
hearts as well as their mouths, directing them to the light of Christ
within them, to see, examine, and to consider their ways by, and to eschew the
evil and to do the good and acceptable will of God.
They were not without opposition in the work they imagined themselves called to,
being often set in stocks, stoned, beaten, whipped, and imprisoned,
though honest men of good rapport that had left wives, children, houses, and lands to
visit them with a living call to repentance.
But these coercive methods rather forwarded than abated their zeal,
and in those parts they brought over many proselytes, and among them several
magistrates and others of the better sort.
They apprehended the Lord had forbidden them to pull off their hats to anyone,
high or low, and required them to speak to the people without distinction,
the language of thou and thee.
They scrupled bidding people good morrow or good night, nor might they bend the
knee to anyone, even in supreme authority.
Both men and women went in a plain and simple dress, different from the fashion
of the times.
They neither gave nor accepted any titles of respect or honor, nor would they call
any man master on earth.
Several texts of scripture they quoted in defense of these singularities,
such as, Swear not at all, how can ye believe, which receive honor one of
another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only, etc., etc.
They placed the basis of religion in an inward light and an extraordinary impulse
of the Holy Spirit.
In 1654 their first separate meeting in London was held in the house of Robert
Dring in Watling Street, for by that time they spread themselves into all parts of
the kingdom, and had in many places set up meetings or assemblies, particularly in
Lancashire and the adjacent parts.
But they were still exposed to great persecutions and trials of every kind.
One of them, in a letter to the Protector Oliver Cromwell, represents, Though there
are no penal laws in force obliging men to comply with the established religion,
yet the Quakers are exposed upon other accounts.
They are fined and imprisoned for refusing to take an oath, for not paying their
tithes, for disturbing the public assemblies, and meeting in the streets and
places of public resort.
Some of them have been whipped for vagabonds and for their plain speeches to
the magistrate.
Under favor of the then toleration, they opened their meetings at the Bull and
Mouth in Aldersgate Street, where women as well as men were moved to speak.
Their zeal transported them to some extravagancies, which laid them still more
open to the lush of their enemies, who exercised various severities upon them
throughout the next reign.
Upon the suppression of Venner's mad insurrection, the government, having
published a proclamation forbidding the Anabaptists, Quakers and Fifth Monarchy
men to assemble or meet together under pretence of worshipping God, except it be
in some parochial church, chapel or in private houses, by consent of the persons
there inhabiting, all meetings in other places being declared to be unlawful and
riotous, etc., etc., the Quakers thought it expedient to address the King thereon,
which they did in the following words.
O King Charles, our desire is that thou mayest live forever in the fear of God and
thy counsel.
We beseech thee and thy counsel to read these following lines in tender bowels and
compassion for our souls and for your good.
And this consider, we are about four hundred imprisoned in and about this city,
of men and women from their families, besides in the county jails about ten
hundred.
We desire that our meetings may not be broken up, but that all may come to a fair
trial, that our innocency may be cleared up.
London, 16th day, 11th month, 1660.
On the 28th of the same month, they published the declaration referred to
in their address, entitled, A Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of
God Called Quakers, Against All Sedition, Plotters and Fighters in the World,
for Removing the Ground of Jealousy and Suspicion from Both Magistrates and People
in the Kingdom, Concerning Wars and Fightings.
It was presented to the King, the 21st day of the 11th month, 1660, and he promised
them upon his royal word that they should not suffer for their opinions,
as long as they lived peaceably.
But his promises were very little regarded afterward.
In 1661, they assumed courage to petition the House of Lords for a toleration of
their religion and for a dispensation from taking the oaths, which they held
unlawful, not from any disaffection to the government or a belief that they were less
obliged by an affirmation, but from a persuasion that all oaths were unlawful,
and that swearing upon the most solemn occasions was forbidden in the New
Testament.
Their petition was rejected, and instead of granting them relief, an act was passed
against them, the preamble to which set forth that whereas several persons have
taken up an opinion that an oath even before a magistrate is unlawful and
contrary to the word of God, and whereas, under pretence of religious worship,
the said persons do assemble in great numbers in several parts of the kingdom,
separating themselves from the rest of his Majesty's subjects, and the public
congregations and usual places of divine worship, be it therefore enacted that if
any such persons, after the 24th of March 1661, shall refuse to take an oath when
lawfully tended, or persuade others to do it, or maintain in writing or otherwise
the unlawfulness of taking an oath, or if they shall assemble for religious
worship to the number of five or more of the age of fifteen, they shall for the
first offence forfeit five pounds, for the second ten pounds, and for the
third shall abjure the realm or be transported to the plantations,
and the justices of the peace at their open sessions may hear and finally
determine in the affair.
This act had a most dreadful effect upon the Quakers, though it was well known and
notorious that these conscientious persons were far from sedition or disaffection to
the government.
George Fox, in his address to the king, acquaints him that 3068 of their friends
had been imprisoned since his Majesty's restoration, that their meetings were
daily broken up by men with clubs and arms, and their friends thrown into the
water and trampled underfoot until the blood gushed out, which gave rise to their
meeting in the open streets.
A relation was printed, signed by twelve witnesses, which says that more than 4200
Quakers were imprisoned, and of them 500 were in and about London and the suburbs,
several of whom were dead in the jails.
Six hundred of them, says an account published at that time, were in prison
merely for religion's sake, of whom several were banished to the plantations.
In short, the Quakers gave such full employment to the informers that they had
less leisure to attend the meetings of other dissenters.
Yet under all these calamities they behaved with patience and modesty towards
the government, and upon occasion of the Rye House plot in 1682, thought proper to
declare their innocence of that sham plot in an address to the king, wherein
appealing to the searches of all hearts, they say, their principles do not allow
them to take up defensive arms, much less to avenge themselves for the
injuries they received from others, that they continually pray for the king's
safety and preservation, and therefore take this occasion humbly to beseech his
majesty to compassionate their suffering friends, with whom the jails are so filled
that they want air to the apparent hazard of their lives, and to the endangering and
infection in divers' places.
Besides many houses, shops, barns, and fields are ransacked, and the goods,
corn, and cattle swept away, to the discouraging trade and husbandry and
impoverishing great numbers of quiet and industrious people, and this for no other
cause but for the exercise of a tender conscience in the worship of almighty God,
who is sovereign lord and king of men's consciences.
On the accession of James II, they address that monarch honestly and plainly,
telling him, we are come to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend
Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor.
We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the church of England no more than we.
Therefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty which thou allowest thyself,
which doing we wish thee all manner of happiness.
When James, by his dispensing power, granted liberty to the dissenters,
they began to enjoy some rest from their troubles.
And indeed it was high time, for they were swell to an enormous amount.
They the year before this, to them one of glad release, in a petition to James for a
cessation of their sufferings, set forth that of late above 1,500 of
their friends both men and women were imprisoned, and that now there remain
1,383, of which 200 are women, many under sentence of primuniary,
and more than 300 near it for refusing the oath of allegiance because they could not
swear.
350 have died in prison since the year 1680.
In London the jail of Newgate has been crowded, within these two years sometimes
with near twenty in a room, whereby several have been suffocated, and others
who have been taken out sick have died of malignant fevers within a few days.
Great violences, outrageous distresses, and woeful havoc and spoil have been made
upon people's goods and estates, by a company of idle, extravagant,
and merciless informers, by persecutions on the Conventicle Act and others,
also on quai tam writs, and on other processes, for twenty pounds a month,
and two-thirds of their estates seized for the king.
Some had not a bed to rest on, others had no cattle to till the ground,
nor corn for feed or bread, nor tools to work with.
The said informers and bailiffs, in some places, breaking into houses and
making great waste and spoil, under pretence of serving the king and the
Church.
Our religious assemblies have been charged at common law with being rioters and
disturbers of the public peace, whereby great numbers have been confined
in prison, without regard to age, and many confined to holes and dungeons.
The seizing for twenty pounds a month has amounted to many thousands, and several
who have employed some hundreds of poor people in manufactures are disabled to do
so any more, by reason of long imprisonment.
They spare neither widow nor fatherless, nor have they so much as a bed to lie on.
The informers are both witnesses and prosecutors, to the ruin of great numbers
of sober families, and justices of the peace have been threatened with a
forfeiture of one hundred pounds, if they do not issue out warrants upon
their informations.
With this petition they presented a list of their friends in prison in the several
counties, amounting to four hundred and sixty.
During the reign of King James II, these people were, through the
intercession of their friend Mr. Penn, treated with greater indulgence than ever
they had been before.
They were now become extremely numerous in many parts of the country, and the
settlement of Pennsylvania taking place soon after, many of them went over to
America.
There they enjoyed the blessings of a peaceful government, and cultivated the
arts of honest industry.
As the whole colony was the property of Mr. Penn, so he invited people of all
denominations to come and settle with him.
A universal liberty of conscience took place, and in this new colony the natural
rights of mankind were for the first time established.
These friends are in the present age a very harmless, inoffensive body of people,
but of that we shall take more notice hereafter.
By their wise regulations they not only do honour to themselves, but they are of vast
service to the community.
It may be necessary here to observe that as the friends, commonly called Quakers,
will not take an oath in a court of justice, so their affirmation is permitted
in all civil affairs, but they cannot prosecute a criminal, because in the
English courts of justice all evidence must be upon oath.