But after Charles left the kingdom, the government of Ireland seemed less inclined to persecute Presbyterians, although the Roman Catholic faith was repressed with great severity. Cromwell, when in the country, had been asked by the governor of Ross for a promise of religious liberty as a condition of surrender. In reply, he declared he did not meddle with any man's conscience; but if a liberty to “exercise" the mass was meant, that would not be permitted where the Parliament of England had power.

During the period of Episcopal ascendancy, the practice was to press with full force against Presbyterians the penal laws seldom enforced against Catholics. The Romanist was pardoned, and the Presbyterian punished. for violating the provisions of the same enactment. But now the republicans began to permit Presbyterian pastors to exercise the functions of their office, although Roman priests were punished with great severity. Through the intercession of Lady Clotworthy, mother of Sir John Clotworthy, Mr. Ferguson got leave to return to his work, and others came back about the same time. Even the Episcopal Church was treated tenderly. Some of the bishops received small pensions, and several of the clergy lectured in private.

The Great Protector died on the 3d of September, 1658, and his son Richard was proclaimed his successor. Henry Cromwell was promoted to be lord lieutenant of Ireland, and continued to rule the country with wisdom and vigor. In the five years of his government more progress was made in reducing Ireland to subjection than in fifty years under the Stuarts. Rebellion had been subdued. Life and property had been rendered safe. Liberty of conscience for almost all classes of Protestants had been established. Many settlers from England and Scotland had been "planted" in the Celtic districts of the South and West. In Ulster, marshes had been drained, woods cut down, and farmhouses built. Landlords had now begun to reap the advantages of higher rent. The Presbyterian colonists had not been absorbed or modified by the Irish as their Anglo-Norman predecessors had been in the past. The Celts themselves were beginning to learn the language and to adopt the custom of their conquerors. Presbyterianism made rapid progress. Congregations were established not only in Antrim, Down, and Derry, but in Tyrone, Armagh, and other counties. As the wave of colonization flowed onwards, ministers went along with their countrymen. There were now in Ireland about seventy Presbyterian clergymen, having under their care eighty congregations, and nearly one hundred thousand people. The Presbytery had become so large that it was sometimes. called a Synod.

In 1641, less than one-third of the landed property in Ireland was owned by Protestants. But after Cromwell's conquest, as a result of vast confiscations, they became owners of three-fourths of the whole country. What remained to Roman Catholic landlords in Ulster, Leinster, or Munster had to be exchanged by them for an equivalent in Connaught. Many grants

were made to soldiers of Cromwell, and on these lands Protestant settlements were established. Every popish priest was banished, and the celebration of the rites of Roman worship repressed with ruthless severity. But the rule of the Protector did not last long enough to firmly establish Protestantism in the South and West; unfortunately it lasted long enough to make that religion detested by the Celts; and the curse of Cromwell" has ever since been a proverb.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XXXVII.

' The following were the first Calvinistic ministers established in Ulster: Edward Brice, (from Stirlingshire), Broadisland, Antrim, 1613; Robert Cunningham, Holywood, Down, 1615; John Ridge (from England), Antrim, Antrim, 1619; Hubbard (from England), Carrickfergus, Antrim, 1621; Robert Blair (from Glasgow), Bangor, Down, 1623; James Hamilton (from Ayr), Ballywalter, Down, 1625; Josias Welsh (from Ayr), Templepatrick, Antrim, 1626; Andrew Stewart, Donegore, Antrim, 1627; George Dunbar (from Ayr), Larne, Down, 1628; Henry Colwort (from England), Oldstone, Down, 1629; John Livingston (from Torpichen), Killinchy, Down, 1630; John McClelland, Newton-Ards, Down, 1630; John Semple, Enniskillen in Magheriboy and Tyrkennedy.

See Appendix U (The Adair Manuscripts).

A

CHAPTER XXXVIII

LONDONDERRY AND ENNISKILLEN

T first, Cromwell's government pressed hardly on the Ulster Presbyterians, and many of the settlers were scheduled for transportation into Leinster and Munster on account of their having opposed the army of the Commonwealth.' Cromwell relented, however; the orders for transportation were not carried out, although lands seem to have been found for some of the Commonwealth soldiers in the northern counties. The great majority of these, however, settled in the South. Government allowances were made to the Presbyterian clergy; and under Cromwell's strict rule the North of Ireland seems to have recovered steadily from the terrible blow of the Rebellion of October, 1641.

With the Restoration ceased the intimate connection which had existed between Scotland and her colony in Ulster; they had been kept together in very great measure by their common religion, and now in both the Presbyterian Church fell on evil days, and had to fight a long fight for very existence. In Ireland the Scottish Church had not to wait long before it received its quietus. Charles II. landed at Dover on the 25th of May, 1660; his restoration brought back Episcopacy as a matter of course; but if the Irish bishops had been wise men it need not have brought any persecution of the Northern Presbyterians, for it was insanity for the two parties of Protestants to quarrel in face of the enormous mass of opposing Catholics. There was no Archbishop Usher now to restrain the bishops, so they went to work with a will; and within a year of the Restoration every Presbyterian minister, save six or seven who recanted, were driven from their churches; they were forbidden to preach, baptize, marry, or exercise any function of the ministry. The old Scottish writer, Wodrow, in his History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, gives a list of the ejected clergy. The numbers show approximately how the Scottish colony had recovered from the effects of the Rebellion of 1641, and grown in strength during the nine quiet years of Cromwell's government. There were in 1660 sixty-eight Presbyterian ministers in Ireland, all save one in Ulster, and of these sixtyone left their churches, and seven conformed to the Established Church.' Woodrow gives his reason for quoting the list: "Because I have always found the elder Presbyterian ministers in Ireland reckoning themselves upon the same bottom with and, as it were a branch of, the Church of Scotland." The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, although it soon got back its liberty to some extent, did not entirely recover from the blow of 1661 until the next century was nearly run out. The number of Presbyterian churches in Ulster gives some indication of the population of Scottish origin, although a moiety

of the Presbyterians were English. The extent of the emigration from Scotland is, however, more exactly given by Sir William Petty in his Political Survey of Ireland in 1672. He takes the total population of the country at 1,100,000, and calculates that 800,000 were Irish, 200,000 English, and 100,ooo Scots-of course the English were scattered all over Ireland, the Scots concentrated in Ulster. Petty divides the English into "100,000 legal Protestants or Conformists and the rest are Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, and Quakers." He states distinctly that a very large emigration had taken place from Scotland after Cromwell settled the country in 1652. The power of the Scots must, indeed, have been so considerable, and so much feared as to be greatly exaggerated, for it was asserted in Parliament in 1656 that they "are able to raise 40,000 fighting men at any time.”♦ Charles II.'s reign brought many remarkable changes, which had much effect on Ulster, as well as on the rest of Ireland. It saw the beginning of the "Regium Donum," the State grant to the Presbyterians. The persecution did not continue as hotly as it was begun in 1661; gradually the Presbyterians recovered a portion of their freedom; gradually their ministers returned. In 1672 the Presbyterian clergy approached the king directly. The good-natured monarch received them kindly, and granted them from the Irish revenues a sum of £1200, to be given annually towards their support. It was the beginning of the State aid to the Irish Presbyterian Church, which continued with a slight interval until put an end to by the Disestablishment Act of 1869. The other and deeper mark made on Irish history was the beginning of that repression of Irish industries which was to come into full force in Queen Anne's time. The first blow struck was an act which forbade the exportation of cattle from Ireland to England; the second when, by the fifteenth of Charles II. (1675), Ireland, which up to this time in commercial matters had been held as part of England, was brought under the Navigation Acts, and her ships treated as if belonging to foreigners.

The Revolution of 1688 was accomplished almost without bloodshed in England; in Scotland the struggle really finished at Killiecrankie; in Ireland it was long and bloody. Once more it was the old race difference—a cleavage in race made more bitter by that terrible land question: the creation of the great settlements of Elizabeth and James's time, and of the yet more violent settlement of Cromwell. The Revolution in England of necessity brought civil war to Ireland. The greater portion of Ireland remained loyal to James II.; the North at once declared for William II. The Protestants of Ulster universally took arms, but their raw militia had little chance against the army which Tyrconnel, the lord deputy, had got together in support of James II. Rapidly he overran Ulster, until only at two points. was the cause of Protestantism and of William of Orange upheld,—at Enniskillen and at Londonderry.

The Irish Presbyterians heard with delight of William's success. Dr.

Duncan Cumyng, on the part of their leaders, proceeded to London to congratulate the prince on his arrival, and to point out the danger in which Irish Protestantism was placed.

At that time, Ireland was prosperous, and provisions were cheap. The native Irish lived on potatoes, beans, pounded barley, and oaten bread. Unless on festival days, they seldom tasted beef or eggs. Yet their craving for flesh was strong; for when they chanced to light on a carrion, "dead or drowned," they gladly ate it even when in loathsome decay. As to clothing they wore neither shirts or shifts, and all the members of the family slept together on straw or rushes strewed on the ground, in the same apartment with their cattle and their swine. Of 200,000 houses in Ireland only 16,000 had more than one chimney, 24,000 had just one chimney, and 160,000 had neither fixed hearth nor windows. Almost the entire population lived in the country. Belfast in 1666 contained not much more than a thousand inhabitants, and when William arrived could not have had much above two thousand at the highest calculation. Besides Belfast, there were not half a dozen places in Ulster better than mere country villages. The religious bigotry of the people was in proportion to their ignorance and rudeness of manners. The Roman Catholics regarded their priests with feelings of superstition; and believing they possessed miraculous power, feared to disobey their commands.

The authority of James had been more firmly established in Ireland than in any other part of the kingdom. The lord deputy, Tyrconnel, himself a Roman Catholic, had placed Romanists in all important positions of civil and military power. Protestants were dismissed from the army and their arms given to Roman Catholics before their eyes. This process was continued until very few except Irish Celts were left in the force. Every Catholic who could speak a little English, and had a few cows or horses, set up for a gentleman, wore a sword, and got into some employment to the exclusion of a Protestant. Even the judges were distinguished more for their "brogue and their blunders" than for any knowledge of the law they were supposed to administer. Arms were supplied to the Irish peasants, with which they committed many outrages on their Protestant neighbors. The houses of the aristocracy were ransacked, the furniture smashed, and the plate carried off. About a million of cattle were taken by force from their Protestant owners, or killed in sheer wantonness. The Irish, who formerly lived on potatoes, oaten bread, and buttermilk, now feasted on raw beef or mutton; and it is calculated that, in all, they destroyed property belonging to Protestants which was valued at upwards of £5,000,000 sterling.

On the 3d of December, 1688, a letter addressed to the earl of MountAlexander was found on the street of Comber, county Down. This letter asserted that a massacre of Protestants had been arranged for the 9th of the same month. And although there was no truth in this statement, it was generally believed. Men still in the vigor of manhood remembered the