houses of the gentry in the Pale, and committed slaughters of unarmed
men, and the Scotch forces, in the same month, after beating off
Sir Phelim O'Neill's army at Newry, drowned and shot men, women, and
priests, in that town, who had surrendered on condition of mercy, then
it was that some of Sir Phelim O'Neill's wild followers in revenge,
and in fear of the advancing army, massacred their prisoners in some
of the towns in Tyrone. The subsequent cruelties were not on one side
only, and were magnified to render the Irish detestable, so as to make
it impossible for the king to seek their aid without ruining his cause
utterly in England. The story of the massacre, invented to serve
the politics of the hour, has been since kept up for the purposes
of interest. No inventions could be too monstrous that served to
strengthen the possession of Irish confiscated lands.

'A True Relation of the Proceedings of the Scots and English Forces in
the North of Ireland,' published in 1642, states that on Monday, May
5, the common soldiers, without direction from the general-major, took
some eighteen of the Irish women of the town [Newry], stripped them
naked, threw them into the river, and drowned them, shooting some in
the water. More had suffered so, but that some of the common soldiers
were made examples of.

'A Levite's Lamentation,' published at the same time, thus refers
to those atrocities: 'Mr. Griffin, Mr. Bartly, Mr. Starkey, all of
Ardmagh, and murdered by these bloudsuckers on the sixth of May. For,
about the fourth of May, as I take it, we put neare fourty of them
to death upon the bridge of the Newry, amongst which were two of
the Pope's pedlers, two seminary priests, in return of which they
slaughtered many prisoners in their custody.'

A curious illustration of the spirit of that age is given in the fact
that an English officer threw up his commission in disgust, because
the Bishop of Meath, in a sermon delivered in Christ Church, Dublin,
in 1642, pleaded for mercy to Irish women and children.

The unfortunate settlers fled panic-stricken from their homes, leaving
behind their goods, and, in many cases, their clothes; delicate women
with little children, weary and footsore, hurried on to some place
of refuge. In Cavan they crowded the house of the illustrious
Bishop Bedell, at Kilmore. Enniskillen, Derry, Lisburn, Belfast,
Carrickfergus, with some isolated castles, were still held by the
English garrisons, and in t