# An abstract of the bloody massacre in Ireland

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AN
ABSTRACT
OF THE
BLOODY MASSACRE
IN
IRELAND,
GLASGOW, PRINTED by J. and M. ROBERTSON, Saltmarket, 1800.
THE
PREFACE
TO THE
READER.
THERE is no part of the character of Antichrist more truly applicable to the Church of Rome than this, that she is drunk with the blood of the saints; the martyrs of Jesus Christ, and of all that were slain on the earth. In the book of the Revelation, the great city where the witnesses of God are slain is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. Sodom on account of its notorious filthiness, and Egypt on account of its being a house of bondage to the people of God, whom they refuse to let go, even when the Lord is visiting them with plagues for detaining them; and to whom these characters are justly applicable, one may see almost with half an eye. The believers of the gospel, so far as the faith of it reigns in their hearts, will ever be disposed to live peaceably, as much as in them lies, with all men. But the enemies of the gospel; when it is plainly out of their power to overthrow the foundation of it, have by infallible proofs endeavoured to terrify and torment the followers of the Lamb of God, by violence and ill treatment, especially when persecution, when murdering the people of God takes nothing out of their pockets, when they can effectuate their diabolical designs, without the formalities of process and conviction, by massacres and assassinations, there they will shew how far they have imbibed ​the spirit of the wicked one, in delighting and glorying to be the tormentors and murderers of men. This temper appears written upon the church of Rome, as with an iron pen, and the point of a diamond; as is plain from the cruelties they exercised upon the Waldenses and Albigenses; from the horrid massacre of Paris, where indeed no faith was kept, but all faith broke with the Protestants: And concerning which infernal cruelty, one of the great men of the church of Rome, who had a very particular hand in it, said on his death-bed, That he was so far from repenting of it as a sin, that he looked upon it as a most meritorious action: Yea, the best deed he ever performed.
The same thing is plain from the following narrative, which it is judged expedient to reprint at this time; when the successors of these bloody men are, like beasts of prey, beginning to look out from their dens, and are not ashamed to ly in wait to deceive in our most populous cities. Still they discover their old temper by studying to recover the free exercise of their formerly abused power, and exclaiming against the rigour of those laws which were only imposed upon them as a necessary check to their cruelty. Their complaints of suffering under the present laws in force, tho’ they were put in execution against them, are but like the out-cries of Potiphar’s wife, against that sin, which had it been in her own power, she would have committed with very good will.
AN
ABSTRACT
OF THE
BLOODY MASSACRE
IN
IRELAND.
WHEN their plots were ripe for execution, we find their first proceedings against the English various: some of the Irish only stripping and expelling them; others murdering men, women, and children without mercy; all resolving universally to root all the Protestants out of Ireland; so deeply malicious were they against the English Protestants, that they would not so much as endure the sound of their language.
The priests gave the sacrament unto divers of the Irish, upon condition they would neither spare man, woman nor child of the Protestants. One Halligan a priest, read an excommunication against all those, that from henceforth should relieve or harbour any English, Scotch, or Welchmen, or give them alms, whereby many were famished to death. The friars exhorted them with tears, not to spare any of the English; they boasted, that when they had destroyed them in Ireland, they would go over into England, and not leave the memorial of an Englishman under heaven.
They openly professed, that they held it as lawful to kill a Protestant as to kill a dog. ​One of their priests said, That it was no more pity to take their lives from them, than to take a bone out of a dog's mouth.
The day before this massacre began, the priests gave the people a dismiss at mass with liberty to go out and take possession of all their lands, as also to strip, rob and despoil them of all their goods and cattle; the Protestants being as they told them, worse than dogs, for they were devils, and therefore the killing of such was a Meritorious act, and a rare preservative against the pains of Purgatory; and this caused some of these murderers to boast, after they had slain many of the English, That they knew, that if they should die presently, they would go straight to heaven.
The Irish, when the massacre began, persuaded many of their Protestant neighbours to bring their goods to them and they would secure them, and hereby they got abundance peaceably into their hands, whereof they cheated the Protestants, refusing to restore them again; yet so confident were the Protestants of them at first, that they gave them inventories of all they had, and digged up their best things that were hidden in the ground. And deposited them into their custody. They also got much into their hands by fair promises, deep oaths and engagements, that if they would deliver them their goods, they would suffer them, with their wives and children, quietly to depart the country; and when they had got what they could, they afterwards murdered them.
​Having thus seized upon their goods and cattle, ransacked their houses, got their persons, stript man, woman, and child naked, and so turned them out of doors, strictly prohibiting the Irish, under great penalties, to give them any relief, by means hereof many perished miserably through cold, nakedness and hunger.
In the town of Colraine, of these poor people that fled thither for succour, many thousands died in two days, so that the living could not bury the dead, but laid their carcases in ranks, in waste and wide holes, piling them up as if they had been herrings.
One Magdalen Kedman deposeth, that she and divers other Protestants, among whom were two and twenty widows, were first robbed, and then stripped naked, and when they had covered themselves with straw, the bloody Papists threw in burning straw among them, on purpose to burn them; then they drove them out into the woods in frost and snow, where many of them died with extreme cold, and those that survived, lived miserably by reason of their many wants.
Yet though these bloody villains exercised such inhuman cruelties among the poor Protestants, they would commonly boast, That these were but the beginning of their sorrows, and indeed they made it good; for having disarmed the English, robbed them of their goods, stript them of their clothes, and having their persons in their power, they furiously broke out into all manner of ​abominable cruelties, horrid massacres, and execrable murders.
There were multitudes murdered in cold blood, some as they were at plough, others in their houses, others in the highways; all without any provocation, were suddenly destroyed.
In the castle of Lisgool, were about one hundred and fifty men, women, and children consumed with fire. At the castle of Tullah, which was delivered to MacGuire, upon composition, and faithful promises of fair quarter, as soon as he and his gang entered, they began to strip the people, and most cruelly put them to the sword, murdering them all without mercy.
At Lissanskeach, they hanged and killed above one hundred of the Scotch Protestants. In the counties of Armagh and Tyrone, where the Protestants were more numerous, their murders were more multiplied, and with greater cruelty.
MacGuire coming to the castle of Lissanskeach, desired to speak with Mr. Middleton, who admitted him in, he first burnt the records of the county, then demanded 1000l. which was in the custody of Sir William Balfores, which as soon as he had got, he caused Mr. Middleton to hear mass, and to swear that he would never alter from it, and then hanged him up, with his wife and children; hanging and murdering above one hundred persons besides, in that place.
At Portadown-bridge, there were one thousand men, women and children, ​carried in several companies, and all unmercifully drowned in the river. Yea, in that country there were one thousand persons drowned in several places.
In one place, an hundred and forty English were taken and driven like cattle, for many miles together, other companies they carried out to a fit place for execution, and then murdered them. One hundred and fifteen men, women and children, they sent with Sir Phelim O’Neal’s pass till they came to Portadown bridge, and there drowned them.
At another time one hundred and forty Protestants being thrown in at the same place, as soon as any of them swam to the shore, the bloody villains, with the butt-end of their muskets, knocked out their brains.
At Armagh O’Cane put together all the Protestants thereabouts, pretending to conduct them to Colraine; but before they were a day’s journey, they were all murdered, and so were many others, though they had protection from Sir Phelim O’Neal. The aged people in Armagh were carried to Charlemont, and there murdered.
Presently after the town of Armagh was burnt, and five hundred persons murdered and drowned. In Killoman, forty-eight families were murdered; in one house twenty two Protestants were burned. In Kilmore, all the inhabitants were stript and massacred, being two hundred families: The whole country was a common butchery; many thousands perished by sword, famine, fire, ​water, and other deaths the most cruel, that rage and malice could invent.
At Cashel they put all the protestants into a loathsome dungeon, kept them twelve weeks in great misery: Some they barbarously mangled, and left languishing; some they hanged up twice or thrice, others they buried alive.
In Queen’s county, an Englishman, his wife, five children and a maid, were all hanged together. At Clownish seventeen men were buried alive; some were wounded, and hanged upon tenter-hooks. In Castle Cumber, two boys were wounded, and hung upon butchers’-tenters. Some hanged up, and taken down to confess money, and then murdered. Some had their bellies ripped up, and were left with their guts about their heels.
In Kilkenny, an English woman was beaten into a ditch were she died; her child about six years old, they ripped up her belly, and let out her guts. One they forced to mass, then they wounded him, ripped up his belly, took out his guts, and so left him to die.
A Scotchman they stripped, and hewed to pieces ripped up his wife’s belly, so that her child dropped out; many other women they hung up with child, ripped up their bellies, and let their infants fall out; some of the children they gave to the dogs.
In the county of Armagh, they robbed, stripped, and murdered abundance of Protestants, whereof some they burned, some they slew with the sword, some they hanged, some ​they starved to death; and meeting mistress Howard, and mistress Frankland with six of their children, and themselves both with child, they murdered them all, ripped open the gentlewomen’s bellies, took out their children, and threw them in the ditch. A young Scotch woman’s child they took by the heels, and dashed out its brains against a tree; the like they did to many other children.
Ann Hill, going with a young child upon her back, and four more by her side, they pulled the child off her back, trode on it till it died stripped her and the other four children naked, whereby they died of cold.
Some others they met with, hanged them up upon a wind mill, and before they were half dead, cut them in pieces with their skeins.
Many other Protestants, especially women and children, they pricked and stabbed with skeins, forks and swords, slashing, cutting and mangling them in their heads, but left them wallowing in their own blood, to languish, starve, and pine to death.
The castle of Lisgoole, being set on fire by these merciless Papists, a woman leaped out at a window to save herself from burning, whom they presently murdered; many fled to vaults and cellars, where they were all murdered. One Joan Addit they stabbed, and then put her child of a quarter old to her breast, and bade it suck, English bastard, and so left it to perish.
One Marry Burlow had her husband hanged, herself with six children stripped naked, ​in frost and snow, after which, sheltering themselves in a cave; they had nothing there to eat for three weeks, but two old calf skins, which they beat with stones, and so ate them hair and all.
In the cold weather, many thousands of Protestants of all ranks, ages, and sexes, being turned out naked, perished of cold and hunger; thousands of others were drowned, cast into ditches, bogs, and turf-pits; multitudes miserably burnt in houses; some that lay sick of fevers they hanged up; some men, women and children they drove into boggy pits, and knocked them on the head.
Some aged men, and women, these barbarous Papists enforced their own children to drown them; yea, some children were compelled unnaturally to execute their own parents, wives forced to hang their own husbands, and mothers to cast their own children into the waters; after which themselves were murdered. In Sligo they forced a young man to kill his father, and then hanged him up, in another place, they forced a woman to kill her husband, then caused her son to kill her, and then hanged the son: yea, such was their malice against the English, that they taught their children to kill English children.
The Irish women that followed the camp, cried out, Kill them all spare neither man, woman nor child. They took the child of Thomas Sorattan, being about twelve years old, and boiled him in a caldron. One good-wife Linn, and her daughter, they carried into a ​wood, first hanged the mother, and then the daughter in the hair of her mother’s head.
In some places they plucked out the eyes, and cut off the hands of the Protestants, and turned them into the fields, where they perished. The women in some places, stoned the English women and children to death. One man they shot through his thighs, digged a hole in the ground, set him in upon his feet, filled up the hole, left out only his head, where he languished to death. Another man they held his feet in the fire till he was burnt to death.
In Munster, they hanged up many ministers in a most barbarous manner. One minister they stripped naked and drove him through the town, pricked him with darts and rapiers, till he fell down dead.
These barbarous villains vowed, That if any parents digged graves to bury their children in; they should be buried therein themselves. They stripped one William Loverdon naked, then killed him before his wife and children. Divers minister’s bones that had been buried some years before, they digged up, because they were, as they say, patrons of heresy.
Poor children that went out into the fields to eat weeds and grass, they killed without all pity.
A poor woman whose husband was taken by them, went to them with two children at her feet, and one at her breast, hoping to beg her husband’s life, but they slew her and her sucking child; brake the neck of another, ​and the third hardly escaped; and all this wickedness they exercised upon the English, without any provocation given them. Alas! who can comprehend the fears, terrors, anguish, bitterness, and perplexity that seized upon the poor Protestants, finding themselves so suddenly surprized without remedy, and wrapped up in all kind of outward miseries which could possibly by man be inflicted on human creatures. What sighs and groans, trembling and astonishment! What shrieks, cries, and bitter lamentations of wives, children, servants, and friends, howling and weeping, finding themselves without all hope of deliverance from their present miseries! How inexorable were their barbarous tormenters, that compassed them in on every side, without all bowels of compassion, or the least commiseration or pity! Yea, they boasted upon their success, That the day was their own, and that ere long they would not leave one Protestant rogue living, but would utterly destroy every one that had a drop of English blood in them. Their women crying out, Slay them all, the English are fit meat for dogs, and their children are bastards.
These merciless Papists, having set a castle on fire, wherein were many Protestants, they rejoicing said, O how sweetly do they fry?
At Kilkenny, when they had committed many cruel murders, they brought seven Protestants’ heads, one the head of a reverend minister, all which they set upon the market-cross, on a market-day, triumphing, slashing ​and mangling them: they put a gag in the minister’s mouth, slit up his cheeks to his ears, and laid a leaf of the Bible upon it, and bade him preach, for his mouth was wide enough.
At Kilmore, they put many Protestants, men, women and children into a thatched house, and there burnt them. They threw Mrs. Maxwell into the river when in labour, the child being half born when the mother was drowned.
In one place they burnt two Protestants' Bibles, and then said, It was hell fire they burnt. Other Bibles they took, cut in pieces, and then burnt them, saying, They would do the like to all puritan Bibles. They took the Bible of a minister, called Mr. Edward Slack, and opening it, they laid it in a puddle of water, and then stamped upon it saying, A plague on it, This Bible has bred all the quarrel.
At Glasgow, a priest, with some others, drew about forty English and Scotch Protestants to be reconciled to the church of Rome, and then told them, They were in a good faith, and for fear they should fall from it, and turn heretics, he with his companions presently cut all their throats.
In the county of Tipperary, near the Silver Works some of these barbarous Papists met with eleven Englishmen, ten women, and some children, whom they first stripped, and then with stones, pole-axes, skeins, swords, &c. they most barbarously destroyed them all
In the county of Mayo about sixty Protestants, whereof fifteen were ministers, were ​upon covenant to be safely conveyed to Galway, by one Edmond Burk, and his soldiers; but by the way, this Burk and his company began to massacre these poor Protestants, some they shot to death, some they stabbed with skeins, some they thrust through with their pikes, some they drowned; the women they stripped naked, who lying upon their husband’s to save them, were run thro' with pikes, so that very few of them escaped with life.
In the town of Sligo, forty Protestants were stripped, and locked up in a cellar, and about mid-night, a butcher provided for the purpose, was sent in among them, who with his ax butchered them all.
In Terawly, thirty or forty English, who had yielded to go to mass, were put to their choice, Whether they would die by the sword, or be drowned, they chose the latter; and so, being driven to the sea-side, these barbarous villains, with their naked swords, forced them into the sea; the mothers with their children in their arms, wading to the chin, were overcome by the waves, whereby they all perished.
The son of Mr. Montgomery a minister, aged about fifteen years, met with his schoolmaster, who drew his skein at him, whereupon the boy said, Good master, whip me as much as you will, but do not kill me. Yet this merciless tyger, barbarously murdered him without all pity.
In the town of Sligo, all the Protestants were first robbed of their estates, then cast ​into goal, and about midnight were all stripped naked, and there most cruelly and barbarously murdered with swords, axes, skeins, &c. some of them being women great with child, their infants thrust out their arms and legs at their wounds, after which execrable murders, these hell hounds laid the dead naked bodies of the men upon the naked bodies of the women, in a most immodest posture, where they left them till the next day to be looked upon by the Irish, who beheld it with great delight. Also Isobel Baird, great with child, hearing the lamentable cries of those they were murdering, ran out into the streets, where she was murdered, and the next day was found with the child’s feet coming out of the wounds in her sides; many others were murdered in the houses and streets.
About Dungannon, were three hundred and sixteen Protestants in the like barbarous manner murdered; about Charlemont, above four hundred; about Tyrone, two hundred and six.
One MacCraw, murdered thirty-one in one morning.
Two young villains murdered a hundred poor women and children that could make no resistance. An Irish woman, with her own hands, murdered forty-five.
At Portadown-Bridge were drowned above three hundred. At Laugh were drowned above two hundred in one day. In the parish of Killamen, there were murdered one thousand and two hundred Protestants.
​Many young children they cut in quarters; eighteen Scotch infants they hanged upon clothiers tenter-hooks; one fat man they murdered and made candles of his grease; another Scotchman they ripped up his belly, took one end of his small guts, tied it to a tree, and forced him round about it, till they had drawn them all out of his body, saying, That they would try whither a dog's or a Scotchman's guts were the longest.
By the command of Sir Phelim O’Neil: Mr. James Maxwell was drawn out of his bed being sick of a fever, and murdered; his wife being in child-birth, the child being half born, they stripped naked, drove her about a slight shot, and drowned her in the black water; the like or worse, they did to another English woman in the same town. One Mr. Watson they roasted alive. A Scotch woman great with child, they ripped up her belly, cut the child out of her womb, and so left it crawling on her body.
Mr. Sturkey, school-master at Armagh, being above one hundred years old, they stripped him naked, then took his two daughters, being virgins, whom they also stripped naked, and then forced them to lead their aged-father to a turf-pit, where they drowned them all three.
To one Henry Crowel, a gallant gentleman, they proffered his life, if he would marry one of their trulls, or go to mass; but he chose death rather than consent to either.
Many of the Protestants they buried alive, ​solacing themselves, while they were digging down old ditches upon them.
They brake the back-bone of a youth, and left him in the fields; some days after, he was found, having eaten the grass round about him: neither then would they kill him outright, but removed him to better pasture, wherein was fulfilled that saying, The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
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 near Lisnegary, they forced twenty-four Protestants into a house, and burnt them all.
Sir Phelim O‘Neal boasted, that he had slain above six hundred at Garvah, and that he had left neither man, woman, nor child alive in the barony of Munterlong. In other places he murdered above two thousand persons in their houses, so that many houses were filled with dead bodies.
Above twelve thousand were slain in the highways, as they fled towards Down. Many died of famine; many died for want of clothes, being stripped naked in a cold season: some thousands were drowned, so that in the province of Ulster, there were about one hundred and fifty thousand murdered by sundry kinds of torments and deaths.
The Popish English were no whit inferior; yea, rather exceeded the natural Irish in their cruelty against the Protestants that lived amongst them, within the pale; not ​being satisfied with their blood till they had seen the last drop thereof.
Ann Kinnaird testified, That fifteen Protestants being imprisoned, and their feet in the stocks, a Popish boy not above fourteen years old, slew them all in one night with his skein.
An English woman, who was newly delivered of two children, some of these villains violently compelled her, in great pain and sickness, to rise out of her bed, and took one of the infants that was living, and dashed his brains against the stones, and then threw him into the river of Barrow. The like they did to many other infants. Many others they hanged up without all pity.
The Lord Montgarret. caused divers English soldiers, that he had taken about Kilkenny, to be hanged, hardly suffering them to pray before their death.
One Fitz Patrick, an Irish Papist, enticed a rich merchant that was a Protestant, to bring all his goods to his house, promising to keep them safely, and to re-deliver them to him; but when he had gotten them into his possession, he took the merchant and his wife and hanged them both: The like they did to divers others. Some Englishmen’s heads they cut off and carried them to Kilkenny, and on the market-day set them on the cross; where many, especially the women stabbed cut and slashed them.
A poor Protestant woman with her two children, going to Kilkenny, these bloody miscreants baited them with the dogs, stabbed ​them with skeins, and pulled out the guts of one of the children, whereby they died; and not far off they took divers men, women and children, and hanged them up; one of the women being great with child, they ripped up her belly as she hanged, so that the child fell out in the cawl alive. Some after they were hanged, they drew up and down till their bowels were torn out.
How many thousands of Protestants were thus inhumanly butchered by sundry kinds of deaths, we cannot ascertain.
In the province of Ulster, we find about one hundred and fifty thousand murdered, as before: What the number of the slain was in the three other provinces, we find not upon record, but certainly it was very great, for you have these passages in a general remonstrance, of the distressed Protestants in the province of Munster, “We may, say they, compare our woe to the saddest parallel of any story, our churches are profaned by sacrifices to idols; our habitations are become ruinous heaps; no quality, age, or sex; privileged from massacre, and lingering deaths, by being robbed, stripped naked, and so exposed to cold and famine. The famished infants of murdered parents swarm in our streets; and for want of food, perish before our faces, &c. And all this cruelty that is exercised upon us, we know not for what cause, offence, or seeming provocation that is inflicted on us, (sin excepted) saving that we are Protestants, &c. Who ​can make it manifest, that the depopulations in this province of Munster do well near equal those of the whole kingdom.”
And thus in part you have heard of the merciless cruelties which the bloody Papists exercised towards the Protestants: Let us now consider at least, some of God’s judgements upon the Irish, whereby he hath not left the innocent blood of his servants to be altogether unrevenged.
These bloody hell-hounds themselves confessed, That the ghosts of divers of the Protestants which they had drowned at Portadown Bridge were daily seen walking upon the river, sometimes singing psalms, sometimes brandishing naked swords, sometimes shrieking in a most hideous and fearful manner. So that many of the Irish Papists which dwelt thereabouts, being affrighted therewith, were forced to remove their habitations farther off into the country.
Katharine Cook testified upon oath, That when the Irish had barbarously drowned one hundred and eighty Protestant men, women, and children, at Portadown Bridge; about nine days after she saw the apparition of a man bolt upright in the river, standing breast-high, with his hands lift up to heaven, and continued in that posture from December to the end of Lent, at which time some of the English army passing that way, saw it also, after which it vanished away.
Elizabeth Price, testified upon oath, That she and other women, whose husbands and ​children were drowned in that place, hearing of these apparitions, went thither one evening, at which time they saw one like a woman rise out of the river, breast-high, her hair hanging down, which with her skin, was as white as snow, often crying out, Revenge, revenge, revenge, which so affrighted them, that they went their way. Divers Protestants were thrown into the river at Belterbert, and when any of them offered to swim to the land, they were knocked on the head with poles, after which their bodies were not seen for six weeks; but after the end thereof, the murderers coming again that way, the bodies came floating up to the very bridge where they were.
Sir Con. MacGennis with his company slew Mr. Turge, minister of Newry, with divers other Protestants, after which, the said MacGennis was so affrighted with the apprehension of the said Mr Turge his being continually in his presence, that he commanded his soldiers not to slay any more of them, but such as should be slain in battle
A young woman being stripped naked, there came a rogue to her, bidding her, Give him her money, or he would run her through with his sword. Her answer was, You cannot kill me except God give you leave; whereupon he ran three times at her naked body with his drawn sword, and yet never pierced her skin, whereat he being confounded, went his way and left her. This was attested by divers women that were present and saw it.
​As for the protestant ministers whom they surprised, their manner was first to strip them and after bind them to a tree or post, where they pleased, and then ravish their wives and daughters before their faces (in sight of all their merciless rabble) with the basest villains they could pick out, after which they hanged up their husbands and parents before their faces, and then cut them down before they were half dead, then quartered them, after dismembered them, and stopped their mouths therewith.
They basely abused one Mr. Trafford a minister in the north of Ireland, who was assaulted by these bloody wolves of Rome’s brood that knew not God, nor any bowels of mercy. This distressed minister desired but so much time as to call upon God, before he went out of the world: But these merciless wretches would admit no time, but instantly fell upon him, hacked and hewed him to pieces.
They ravished Sir Barck Dunfian’s wife before him, slew his servants, spurned his children till they died, bound him with a match to a board that his eyes burst out, cut off his ears and nose, tore off both his cheeks, after cut off his arms and legs, cut out his tongue, And after ran a red hot iron into him.
These particulars with many more were attested before the Commissioners appointed for that purpose.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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