Arminian, a creature of archbishop Laud's, and an ill instrament between the king and parliament in the late times, and therefore voted unfit for any church-preferment; but when the king resolved to govern without parliaments, his majesty preferred him first to the bishoprick of Chichester, and then to Norwich, where he shewed his zeal for the church, by a vigorous and illegal prosecution of the Puritans. He was accused by the present parliament, for superstitious innovations; and would no doubt have felt their resentments, if he had not gone, as Mr. Fuller expresses it,* a more compendious way, to answer for all his proceedings in the high court of heaven. He died April 12, 164.1.

The Rev. Mr. John Eaton, M. A. and vicar of WickhamMarket, was born in Kent 1575, and of a peculiar mould, says Mr. Echard,† very paradoxical in his opinions, and reckoned a great Antinomian, and one of the founders of that sect, for which he more than once suffered imprisonment. His chief performance was a book entitled, "The honeycomb of free justification by Christ alone;" for which he was imprisoned in the Gate-house at Westminster. Mr. Echard admits, that by means of his zeal, his exemplary patience, and piety, he was exceedingly admired in the neighbourhood where he lived, and strangely valued for many years after his death. In truth, though he committed some mistakes in his assertions about the doctrine of grace, he was nevertheless, says Mr. Archdeacon, a pattern of faith, holiness, and cheerfulness, in his sufferings, to succeeding generations. He died in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

CHAP. X.

FROM THE REASSEMBLING OF THE PARLIAMENT, TO THE KING'S LEAVING HIS PALACE OF WHITEHALL, JANUARY 10, 1641-2.

BEFORE his majesty left Scotland, advice came to London [November 1] of a general insurrection of the Papists in Ireland, and of a most cruel and bloody massacre of the *Book 11. p. 194. † Ath. Ox. vol. 2. p. 1—6.

Protestants of that kingdom. The project of an insurrection was formed in the months of March and April 1641, not without the privity of the English court, and executed October 23 following; no information of it having been given to the Protestants till the very night before it was to take place, when it was too late to prevent the effects of it in the country, and almost to save the city of Dublin itself. When the express that brought the news was read in the house, it produced a general silence for a time, all men being struck with horror. When it was told without doors it flew like flashes of lightning, and spread universal terror over the whole kingdom. Every day, and almost every hour, produced new messengers of misery, who brought farther intelligence of the merciless cruelty of the Papists towards the poor Protestants, whose very name they threatened to extirpate out of the kingdom.

On the day appointed, between twenty and thirty thousand of the native Irish appeared in arms in the northern counties, and having secured the principal gentlemen, and seized their effects they murdered the common people in cold blood, forcing many thousands to fly from their houses and settlements, naked into the bogs and woods, where they perished with hunger and cold. No ties of friendship, neighbourhood, or consanguinity, were capable of softening their obdurate hearts, in a cause which they called " the cause of loyalty and religion." Some they whipped to death; others they stripped naked and exposed to shame, and then drove them, like herds of swine, to perish in the mountains; many hundreds were drowned in rivers; some had their throats cut; others were dismembered. With some the execrable villains made themselves sport, trying who could hack

A fair judgment of this horrid affair, it may be observed, cannot be formed without considering it in connexion with the causes that led to it. It should be viewed as the result of various circumstances, which for a course of years had irritated the minds of the Irish, and at last raised them to a pitch of frenzy and cruelty, of which we cannot read without being shocked at the recital. The Irish had been pursued with a constant, rigorous, and unremitting persecution. They had suffered extortions, imprisonments, and excommuuications. Their estates had been seized under the pretext of a judicial inquiry into defective titles, in which inquiry verdicts against them were extorted from jurors. They had been heavily taxed for their superstitions, and totally precluded the exercise of their religion. Their application to Charles I. for a toleration had been scornfully rejected, in consequence of a protestation against it, drawn up by the primate Usher, and twelve bishops. The detail of their sufferings may be seen in " Jones's letter to the united societies of Belfast." By which it will appear, that from the Reformation they had been the victims of religious persecution and civil devastation; as, to the author's words, almost to justify, but certainly to extenuate, the dreadful ensuing period of 1641.-Ed.

deepest into an Englishman's flesh. Husbands were cut to pieces in the presence of their wives; wives and young virgins abused in the sight of their nearest relations; nay, they taught their children to strip and kill the children of the English, and dash out their brains against the stones. Forty or fifty thousand were massacred after this manner in a few days, without distinction of age, sex, or quality, before they suspected their danger, or had time to provide for their defence. In a few weeks the insurrection was so general, that they took possession of whole counties, murdering the inhabitants, plundering their houses, and killing or driving away their cattle. Multitudes of poor distressed creatures and families, fled naked and half starved, first to Dublin, and from thence to England, with death and despair in their countenances. At length the Irish army having ravaged all the northern counties, blocked up the city of Dublin itself, with all the poor distressed Protestants who had taken sanctuary in it; but not being masters of the sea, the city was relieved, and part of the country secured, till the parliament was at leisure to pour out all their vengeance upon the heads of the murderers, by the hands of the victorious and terrible Oliver Cromwell.

The frequent expresses which pressed one after another to England, with the multitudes of distressed creatures that got passage into several parts of the kingdom, filled the hearts of all true Protestants with infinite conjectures, and prodigious imaginations of treasonable designs against this as well as the neighbouring kingdom. They were afraid, and not without reason, that a second part of this tragedy might be acted on themselves; the parliament therefore ordered themselves a guard of train-bands, and entered immediately into measures to secure the nation from the impending storm.

But before we dismiss the Irish insurrection and massacre, it will not be improper to trace it from its original, and inquire into the authors, and the several parties concerned in it. The earl of Antrim and sir Phelim O'Neal, who were at the head of the Irish Catholics, having acquainted the pope's nuncio, and some of the priests about the queen, how easily they could assume the government of Ireland, and assist the king against the English Puritans, letters were

written in the queen's name, and perhaps in the king's,* authorizing them to take up arms and seize the government. The Irish received the orders with pleasure; and concluded farther among themselves, that it was necessary at the same time to extirpate the Protestants out of that kingdom before they could with safety transport their army into England. That this was their design, appears from their remonstrance, published upon the very day of the insurrection, in which they say, "that having some liberty of religion granted them by the king, they perceived the parliament was wresting his majesty's prerogative from him, in order to extinguish their religion; therefore to support his majesty's prerogative, and to confirm his royal and ever happy love to them, they had taken up arms; and accordingly bound themselves to one another by the following oath :

"That they would maintain the Roman-Catholic religion; that they would bear true faith and allegiance to the king and his heirs, and defend him and them with their lives and estates, against all persons that should endeavour to suppress the prerogative, or do any acts contrary to regal government, to the power and privilege of parliaments, and to the rights and privileges of the subject.'

They called themselves the queen's army, and published a proclamation from their camp at Newry, declaring that they acted by the king's commission, under the great seal of Scotland, dated at Edinburgh October 1, 1641, and by letters under his sign manual, of the same date with the commission; which I believe, with lord Clarendon, was a forgery; though it is a little unaccountable, that his majesty should never, by any public act or declaration of his own, clear himself of so vile a calumny. However, though the king gave out no commission, there is too much reason to

Dr. Grey is severe in his animadversions on Mr. Neal's insinuation, that the English court and even the king were privy to the Irish insurrection. Bishop Warburton, on the same ground, has impeached our author's candour and impartiality : our reply to whom, in the two following notes, will serve as an answer to Dr. Grey. I will add here, that Mr. Baxter says, "that the soberer part could not believe that the Irish rebels had the king's commission." His Life, p. 29, folio. A deed was passed on the credulous with that name, by affixing to it the great seal taken off from some grant or patent. The distinction which Mr. Neal afterward makes between the insurrection and the massacre, is justified by what bishop Burnet asserts in a passage quoted in the beginning of the paragraph, where this distinction occurs. Rushworth's Collection, part 3. yol. 1. p. 402.-ED.

+Prynne's Introduction, p. 220—252. Burnet's History, Life, and Times, vol. 1. p. 55. Edinburgh edit. Rushworth, vol. 4. p. 398, &c.

believe,* that the queen and her Popish council, and even the king himself, were not unacquainted with the design of an insurrection before it took place; and that her majesty gave it all the countenance she could with safety but when these bloody butchers overacted their parts to such a degree, as to massacre near two hundred thousand Protestants in cold blood, to make way for their tyranny, it was time for all parties to disown them.

Bishop Burnet observes, "that in the first design of an insurrection there was no thought of a massacre; this came into their heads as they were contriving methods of executing it; and as the people were governed by the priests, these were the men that set on the Irish to all the blood and cruelty that followed." There was a consultation at the abbey of Multifernan in the county of West-Meath, where it was debated, what course should be taken with the Protestants; some were for expelling them, as the king of Spain did the Moors; others pressed to have them universally cut off; but not coming to a conclusion, they left the army to act at discretion. How far the pope's nuncio and the queen's council might be consulted about the massacre, is a secret; if we distinguish between the insurrection, in order to assume the government into the hands of the Irish Papists, and the massacre which attended it, we may conclude without any breach of charity, that the English court admitted of the former, though they might wash their bands of the latter.

The parliament, in their declaration of March 9, 1641, say, that the rebellion in Ireland was framed and contrived in England, and that they had taken several depositions, proving, that the English Papists were to raise about the

Bishop Warburton taxes the following insinuations against the king as being "certainly very unjust and groundless." The reader will observe, that Mr. Neal's insinuations go no farther than that the king was acquainted with, if he did not encourage, the design of the Irish to appear in arms. He by no means charges him with consenting or being privy to the massacre. As to the hand he had in the rebellion, two modern historians have, with great candour, fully stated the evidence pro and con. Dr. Harris in his Life of Charles I. p. 336. 351. And Mrs Macaulay, vol. 3. p. 84-93, the note. From the arguments stated by these writers it will appear, that there were certainly grounds for Mr. Neal's insinuations, and if so, they cannot be very unjust.-ED.

↑ Nalson's Collection, vol. 2. p. 633.

If by the court here be meant the king, bishop Warburton condemns Mr. Neal, as," scandalously uncharitable." It is most reasonable to explain Mr. Neal by himself; and the parties whom he particularized, in this very sentence, are, the queen and the pope's nuncio.-En.