1641 masacre

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picture on left is Protestants being hanged, while a mother and child are put in a sack to be drowned !picture 2 centre is protestants being crucified, picture 3 on right is Protestants being slowly tortured these are just some of the deeds carried out on Protestants in 1641 by the Roman Catholics.

The Massacre of 1641, one of the foulest deeds ever perpetrated in all the dark and bloodthirsty history of Ireland, started on 23rd October 1641.

On that date, which is the Roman Catholic Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, Ireland and the northern province of Ulster in particular experienced a slaughter no less cruel in its nature or tragic in its consequences than that which had taken place on St Bartholomew's Eve 1572, in France.

On that terrible October Saturday the native Irish Papists, led by Sir Phelim O'Neill, and incited, encouraged, financed, aided and abetted by the Roman Catholic Church, its priests and hierarchy, rose up in an insurrection, the sole purpose of which was the total eradication of Protestants and Protestantism throughout the Emerald Isle.

All that had been accomplished in the preceding three decades, since the Plantation of Ulster, spiritually, politically and economically was to be wiped out by fire and the sword.

Three and a half centuries later and in our third decade of the war of genocide currently being waged by the Roman Catholic terrorists of the IRA and their offshoots, little has changed, with the exception of the weaponry. Swords, pikes and daggers have been replaced by bombs and bullets supplied by Libya and the nations of the Communist world.

The sad fact is that today the events of 1641 are very largely forgotten, they have become censored history. Our people are unlikely to hear the facts from the Church pulpits where ecumenical and apostate clergy continually tell their flocks that we must forget our unhappy divisions.

Our children will definitely not hear of this major event which influenced all Ulster history thereafter, for in the schools today every effort is being made to emphasise our supposedly shared culture and heritage, thereby accelerating the process of de-Protestantization in preparation for the final push towards a united Roman Catholic dominated Irish Republic.

It is true to say that a nation or people who do not learn from past events are condemned to relive the same experiences.

There are three major historical acounts of the 1641 massacre, which have been used as source material. They are:

It is from these three reliable accounts that the following record of the Massacre has been compiled.

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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 23rd October 1641, the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. The conspiracy was 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 was 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 let loose everywhere. . without provocation, without opposition the astonished Protestants, 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. ..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 ... Depraved nature, even perverted religion, cannot reach to a greater pitch of ferocity than appeared in these merciless barbarians. . the very children taught by example and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents dealt their blows on the dead carcasses of defenceless children of the Protestants.

The bigoted and merciless Papists had no sooner begun to imbue their hands in blood than they repeated the horrid tragedy day after day; the Protestants in all parts fell victim 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 greater sin to kill one than to kill a dog; and that the relieving or protecting of them was a crime of the most unpardonable nature.

The Papists having besieged the town and castle of Longford, and the inhabitants who were Protestants having surrendered on condition of being allowed quarter (mercy), the besiegers, the instant the townspeople appeared, attacked them in the most unmerciful manner, their priest as a signal for the rest, first ripping open the belly of a Protestant minister; after which his followers murdered all the rest, some of whom they hung, others were stabbed or shot, and great numbers knocked on the head with axes provided for the purpose.

The Bloody Bridge, Newcastle, Co. Down. Scene of one of the many massacres of Protestants.

The garrison of Sligo was treated in like manner by O'Connor Slygah, who upon the Protestants quitting their holds promised them quarter, but imprisoned them in a loathesome jail, allowing them only grains for their food. Those Protestants who survived were brought forth by the White Friars and were either killed or were precipitated over the bridge into a swift water 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, cleansing it from the pollution of the blood and dead bodies of the heretics, as they called the unfortunate Protestants who were inhumanly slaughtered at this time.

At Kilmore the Bishop Dr Bedell, his two sons and the rest of his family with some of the chief of the Protestants whom he had protected, were forced into a ruinous castle called Lochwater, situated in a lake near the sea Here they remained for some weeks, daily expecting to be put to death. The greatest part of them were stripped naked, by which means as the season was cold, it being December, and the building in which they were confined, open at the top they endured the most severe hardships.

In the barony of Terawley, the Papists at the instigation of their Friars compelled more than forty English Protestants, some of whom were women and children to the hard fate either of falling by the sword or of drowning in the sea. Those choosing the latter were forced by the weapons of their persecutors into the deep where with their children in their arms they first waded up to their chins and afterwards sunk down and perished altogether.

In the Castle of Lisgool, upwards of 150 men, women and children were all burnt together; and at the Castle of Moneah not less than 100 were put to the sword Great numbers were also murdered at the Castle of Tullah. 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 their backs on the axletree 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 victim, while another set on furious dogs who tore to pieces, the arms and upper parts of the body and in this way they were deprived of existence. Great numbers were fastened 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, 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 till from the loss of blood they expired.

Such was the savage ferocity of these barbarians that even unborn infants were dragged were dragged from the womb to become victims to their rage. Many unhappy mothers were hung naked on the branches of trees, and their bodies being cut open the innocent offspring were taken from them and thrown to dogs and swine And 10 increase the horrid scene they would often oblige the husband to be a spectator before he suffered himself.

At the town of Lissenskeath they hanged above 100 Scottish Protestants. McGuire commanded the governor of the castle to hear Mass and to complete his horrid barbarities he ordered the wife and children of the governor to be hung before his face beside massacring at least 100 of the inhabitants.

Upwards of 1,000 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 4,000 persons were drowned in different places. The inhuman papists at first stripping them drove them like beasts to the spot fixed for their destruction; any who were slack in their pace, they pricked with their swords and pikes and murdered on the way. Many of the poor Protestants when thrown into the water tried to save themselves by swimming to the shore, but their merciless persecutors prevented their endeavour by shooting them in the water.

In one place 140 Protestants 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, many buried alive, and so cruel were their tormentors that they would not suffer them to pray before they robbed them of their miserable existence. lt is recorded that 115 men, women and children were conducted by order of Sir Phelim O'Neill to Portadown Bridge where they were forced into the river and drowned. One woman named Campbell, finding no probability of escaping, suddenly clasped one of the chief of the rebels in her arms and held him so fast (tight) that they both were drowned together.

In Killaman they massacred 28 families, amongst whom 22 were burnt together in one house. The rest were hanged, shot or drowned.

In Killmore 200 families all fell victims to their rage. Some of the Protestants were set in the stocks till they confessed where their money was, after this they were put to death.

The whole country was one common scene of butchery. Thousands perished in a short time by sword, famine, fire, water and the most cruel deaths that malice could invent.

At Cashel they put all the Protestants into a loathsome dungeon where they kept them for several weeks in the greatest misery. At length they were released to be barbarously mangled and left to die. The Papists, to increase their misery, treating them with derision during their sufferings.

At Antrim they murdered 954 Protestants in one day. And afterwards about 1,200 more in that county.

At a town called Lisnegarry they forced 24 Protestants into a house and then setting fire to it burned them, counterfeiting their cries in derision.

In Kilkenny all the Protestants without exception were put to death ... they beat one 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 till it perished.

They forced one man to go to Mass after which they ripped open his body and left him. They sawed another asunder, cut the throat of his wife and having dashed out the brains of their child, an infant, threw it to the swine who greedily devoured it.

After committing these and many other horrid cruelties they took the heads of seven Protestants, one of them a pious minister, all which they set up at the market cross. They slit the minister's cheeks to his ears and laying a leaf of the Bible before it, bid him preach for his mouth was wide enough.

When any of them had killed a Protestant, others would come and receive a gratification in cutting and mangling the body, after which they left it to be devoured by dogs and when they had slain a number of Protestants they would boast that the devil was beholden to them for sending so many souls to hell.

At Powerscourt Church they burnt the Bibles, whilst some of the Protestants they dragged by the hair of their heads into the Church where they strippedand whipped them in the most cruel manner.

In Munster they put to death several ministers in the most shocking manner. One they stripped stark naked and driving him before them pricked him with swords and pikes till he fell down and expired. In some places they plucked out the eyes and cut off the hands of the Protestants and in that condition turned them into the fields, there to linger out the remainder of their miserable existence

They obliged 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 Protestant man to kill his own father, and then they immediately hanged him In another they forced a woman to kill her husband then obliged her son to kill her, and afterwards shot him through the head.

At a place called Glaslow a Popish priest prevailed upon 40 Protestants to be reconciled to the Church of Rome under the vain hope of saving their lives they had no sooner done this than they (the Papists) cut their throats.

In County Tipperary a great number of Protestants, men, women and children fell into the hands of the Papists who after stripping them naked murdered them with stones, pole-axes, swords and other weapons.

In County Mayo, 60 Protestants including 15 ministers under a safe conduct to Galway, were stabbed, piked and drowned by the soldiers of Edmund Burke.

In County Tyrone 300 Protestants were drowned in one day. Dr. Maxwell, rector of Tyrone, under oath declared that Irish Papists had destroyed in one place, at Glynwood, 12,000 Protestants in flight from County Armagh.

Some Protestants were hung by the feet to tenter-hooks driven into poles and left in that wretched posture to expire Several were hung on windmills and before they were half dead the savages cut them in pieces with their swords One poor woman they hung on a gibbet, with her child, a twelve month old infant hung by the neck with the hair of its mother's head.

When estimates were afterwards made of the number who were sacrificed to gratify the diabolical souls of the Papists, it amounted to 150,000."

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"Just as Ulster was beginning to put on the garb of her ultimate prosperity, came the great massacre of 1641-42. Without any provocation, and equally without any warning, the native Irish, who for thirty two years had given no sign of hostility, rose at a preconceived signal, fell upon the isolated colonists, and stripped them literally to the skin In this condition men, women and children were turned out into the cold. All succour and sustenance to the outcasts was prohibited under very dire penalties, so that the old and the ailing quickly succumbed. The more vigorous, however, hung on to life by one means or another, and at the end of a week, nature's processes were voted too slow, and the hunting down and butchery of these naked wretches became a recognised form of sport. In its turn mere killing began to pall, and tortures of various kinds were resorted to, at first as a means of finding out where the settlers had hidden their money, but later for the mere sake of torturing.

'All I can tell you is the miserable state we continue under, for the rebels daily increase in men and munition in all parts, except the province of Munster, exercising all manner of cruelties, and striving who can be most barbarously exquisite in tormenting the poor Protestants, cutting off their ears, fingers and hands, plucking out their eyes, boiling the hands of little children before their mothers faces, stripping women naked and ripping them up.'

Four Protestant men hanged whilst Papists put a woman and a baby in a sack to be drowned

The main record, however of this terrible occurrence is furnished by Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls at the time, who collected and published in book form the sworn depositions of the many witnesses who gave evidence before the Commission of Enquiry. Many of the witnesses had themselves been mutilated, but survived long enough to give their evidence. Others had a knowledge of the Irish language, by means of which they were able to pass themselves off as Irish, and so remain unwilling witnesses of the scenes which they describe. Forty volumes of depositions are still preserved at Trinity College, Dublin. The indictment they furnish is a truly appalling one.

'If we shall take a survey of primitive times and look into the sufferings of the first Christians, that suffered under the tyranny and cruel persecution of those heathenish Emperors we shall certainly not find any one kingdom where more Christians suffered, or more unparalleled cruelties were acted in many years upon them, than were in Ireland within the space of the first two months after the breaking out of this rebellion .... to let in death among an innocent, unprovoking, unresisting people, who had always lived peaceably with them, administering all manners of helps and comforts to those who were in distress. That made no difference between them and those of their own nation, but even cherished them as friends and neighbours without giving any cause of unkindness or distaste unto them.'

The crime of the Protestants, however, was not any unneighbourly conduct but the fact of their presence in a foreign land. They were aliens, and the elimination of aliens has always been the first item on the official Nationalist programme.

The destruction of an entire colony is no light task. Its thorough accomplishment at a period when powder and shot were too good to waste, necessitated the free use of fire and water. All the principle Ulster rivers - where accessible - were called into service. At Portadown over 1,000 were at one time or another, drowned in the River Bann, where the bridge was broken down in the middle, and the victims thrust in with pikes from both sides. We have a similar scene recorded at the River Toll in Armagh, where a number were drowned near Loughgall. Two hundred were piked and flung into the Tyrone Blackwater, which for a time ran red with blood; 180 were drowned at the Bridge of Callon, and 100 in a Iough at Ballymacilmurrough; 300 were drowned in one day at a millpool at Killamoon. Where no more suitable water was available, parties were driven to bogholes, where they were held under with pikes till dead.

Protestants crucified and dragged to death behind horses

Phelim O'Neill the head of the movement, after being repulsed from the Castle of Augher, ordered all the Protestants in the three adjacent parishes to be at once massacred, irrespective of age or sex. O'Neill who is described as a weak creature, entirely void of personal courage, invariably signalized his defeats in the field by an indiscriminate massacre of all the helpless victims within reach. After his defeat at Lisburn, he, in revenge, butchered Lord Caulfield who had just been hospitably entertaining him.

Fire, though obviously less merciful than water, also proved an agent of quick destruction -152 men, women and children were burnt in the Castle of Lisgool in Fermanagh; 22 in a thatched house at Kilmore, in Armagh; 26 at Langale, in the same county, and a number in the Church at Blackwatertown.

The Irish had recourse to their ancient strategem .... to offer good conditions of quarter, to assure them their lives, their goods and free passage, with a safe conduct into what place soever they pleased and to confirm these covenants sometimes under their Hands and Seals, sometimes with deep oaths; and then as soon as they had them in their power, to hold themselves disobliged from their promises, and to leave their soldiers at liberty to despoil, strip and murder them at their pleasure.

These tactics were adopted with complete success by Rory McGuire at Tullah, and at Liffenskeagh in County Fermanagh; by Phelim O'Neill and his brother Tullah at the Cathedral of Armagh and by Phil O'Reily at Belterbet, Newtownbutler and at Longford Castle In every case all those who surrendered under promise of safe conduct were stripped and butchered.

The apparent disposition on the part of the native Irish to despatch the earlier of their victims quickly and mercifully was not long-lived. After the first big batches of captives had been got rid of by drowning or burning some very horrible forms of death were devised for small detached parties, the details of which are too revolting for reproduction. Women and children would seem to have been the worst sufferers and on the side of the native Irish the gentler sex and even the children joined eagerly in the horrible work. One small boy was heard to boast that his arm was so wearied with hacking and stabbing that he could not raise it.

The actual number of the Protestant colonists who were massacred, or who died of cold and hunger, is not easy to arrive at. A large proportion of the victims were babies or young children who were not included in any recent census Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Petty, one of the ablest men of the day, with a marked genius for statistics reckoned the Protestant settlers in Ireland as numbering 260,000 in 1641 and 150,000 in 1653, a loss in twelve years of 110,000.

The priests in the weekly returns which they furnished from the various parishes concerned, claimed 154,000 victims between October 1641 and April 1642.

A Cork Roman Catholic priest, named Mahoney published in 1645 an exhortation to his fellow countrymen in which he said:

'You have killed 150,000 enemies in these four or five years, as your very adversaries howling, openly confess in their writings and you do not deny I think more heretic enemies have been killed; would that they had all been. It remains for you to slay all the other heretics or expel them from the bounds of Ireland.'

The 1641 Massacre may unhesitatingly be put down as the most disastrous occurrence in the history of the island, for - apart from its own intrinsic horrors - it laid the seeds of an undying distrust among future generations of Protestants.

These twelve years proved to be the most devastating Ireland had known. All the worst passions of men were let loose .... on top of this came famine and plague and by the time peace was finally established, nearly one third of the population of Ireland had perished."

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"Scarcely had Ulster been delivered from the tyranny of Strafford when another fiery trial swept over her - the terrible Rebellion of 1641.

The objects of the outbreak were the extinction of British power in Ireland, the utter extirpation of Protestantism, and the establishment of Romanism in its place.

The rebellion broke out with all the suddenness and fury of a tornado on Saturday 23rd October 1641. Part of the programme was the seizure of Dublin Castle, but fortunately it was saved through the vigilance of a Presbyterian elder Captain Owen O'Connolly.

The force of the insurrection spent itself on tnster, and here the havoc which it wrought was appalling. No one was prepared for it, and the Protestants being almost defenceless were in many cases butchered like sheep. Led on by Sir Phelim O'Neill the insurgents seized castle after castle, town after town, frequently ruthlessly massacring all the inhabitants Dungannon, Newry, Monaghan, Dromore and many other places were thus seized. Fortunately Enniskillen was secured by Sir William Cole, who also supplied information which saved Derry and Newtown-Limavady.

Coleraine too received timely warning and was not only saved, but proved a welcome haven of refuge for many stricken Protestants. Carrickfergus, Lisburn and Belfast also remained untaken. But outside these places Ulster became a veritable field of blood. Far and wide over the country the eye beheld towns and villages, the dwelling of the Protestant clergyman, and the farmhouse of the Protestant husbandman all in flames. Behind hedges and ditches droves of Protestants, stripped absolutely naked, crouched for shelter, the husband trying in vain to shield his trembling wife, and the mother her wretched children, from the fury of the pitiless assassins, and the biting cold of one of the severest winters that could be remembered. The River Blackwater in Tyrone is said to have run red with the blood of murdered Protestants.

Protestant woman tortured by Irish rebel soldier

These atrocities do not depend upon hearsay. Thirty-two volumes of sworn depositions still exist in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, to attest the reality of the horrors of that awful time. It is sickening to read them, and the worst cannot be set down in print. We can tell of the infants whose brains were dashed out against walls before their helpless and horrified mothers faces; of others who were flung into boiling pots or tossed into ditches to the pigs; of poor Protestants whose eyes were gouged out of their heads, their hands cut off or their ears, in fiendish savagery; of many who were actually buried alive; of women first stripped naked, then ripped up with knives; of men from whose bodies the rebels cut slices of flesh and then roasted their victims alive; of 300 Protestants, men, women and children at Loughgall, stripped naked and driven into the Church, the doors locked and fierce men liker wolves or tigers than human beings let loose upon them daily to kill and outrage as they pleased; of women broiled on hot gridirons and men hanged twice or thrice till half dead, then let down and butchered; of 196 Protestants drowned at Portadown Bridge in one day, and 1,000 said to have been killed there altogether in the same manner.

Of the special cruelties reserved for the Protestant ministers, to whom ordinary deaths were in many cases denied as too good; of some hanged, then dismembered and their heads cut off, and pieces of their own bodies thrust into their mouths in mockery; of thirty of them massacred in one district, of one hanged at his own Church door, another thrown into Lough Neagh and drowned, and a third Rev Thomas Murray of Killyleagh, who was actually crucified, in blasphemous mockery of Calvary, between two other Protestant gentlemen, his two sons killed and actually cut to pieces before their mother's eyes, then her own body frightfully mutilated and her tongue cut half out. One can tell of these things but it is sickening. But worse remains over which a veil must be thrown.

In addition to those actually killed, multitudes perished of cold and hunger in the fields, and of sickness brought on by the privations to which they were exposed. The numbers of bodies which lay unburied tainted the air. A pestilential fever broke out of which multitudes died. In Coleraine, 6,000 persons are said to have faIled victim to it, so that the living, unable to give the dead proper burial, laid the carcases in great ranks into vast and wide holes, laying them so close and thick, as if they had packed up herrings altogether.

The abominable and infamous cruelties of this rebellion lie as a terrible blot on the Romish Church. From the beginning it was a Romish rebellion Sir Phelim O'Neill declared that:

'he would never leave off the work he had begun till Mass should be sung or said in every church in Ireland, and that a Protestant should not live in Ireland, be he of what nation he would.'

The priests joined in planning it and were the foremost in urging it to the utmost extreme. At a meeting in the Abbey of Multifarnham in Westmeath, held about a fortnight before the commencement of hostilities, some of the clergy present recommended a general massacre as the safest and most effective method of putting down Protestant ascendancy. Evor McMahon, Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor (presumably the predecessor of Bishop Cathal Daly, if we accept Rome's theory of Apostolic Succession) prompted Sir Phelim O'Neill to the commission of some of his most revolting atrocities. The Roman Catholic clergy of all grades appear ever and anon upon the stage during the worst scenes of this dismal tragedy. A Romish Bishop was brain of the whole enterprise. The priests commonly anointed the rebels before sending them to their murderous work, assuring them that if they chanced to be killed they would escape Purgatory and go immediately to heaven. They told the people that the Protestants were worse than dogs, they were devils and served the devil and the killing of them was a meritorious act.

The Massacre of 1641 was really an Irish St. Bartholomew, only more terrible and inhuman, and it is no wonder that the scenes we have described have left behind in Ulster a dread amounting almost to terror of every again being placed in the power of Rome."

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