A LETTER From a Person of HONOUR in the COUNTREY Written to the EARL of CASTLEHAVEN BEING Observations and Reflections Upon his Lordships MEMOIRES Concerning the WARS of IRELAND LONDON Printed for Nath. Ponder at the Peacock in the Poultrey 1681. A LETTER Written to the EARL of CASTLEHAVEN My Lord Castlehaven HAving Received your Lordships of the 24th Current with your printed Memoires which you are pleased in some sort to Intitle me to and I will not conceal from your Lordship that I am not yet ashamed now I have read them though I cannot approve all in them that I was the first incentive to your Writing them which was upon this occasion having sat along with your Lordship in Parliament and observing for the most part such a consent between your Lordship and me in proceedings there upon the most abstracted Principles of Honour and Allegiance I could not but account of your Lordship as a true Englishman and a Loyal Subject whatsoever blemish your engagement under the confederate Rebels of Ireland had before fixed on you and having heard you so often pathetically declare your self fully to mine and most honest Mens Minds against the dangers of the growing greatness of the French and the too fast Declension of the Spaniard between which great Powers of the World the Crown of England was so happy and wise in former times as to hold and guide the Ballance and finding by your frequent and as I could not but conceive Cordial Expressions against the Pope of Rome's Usurping Authority in these Dominions over and against his Majesty and Kingdoms to such a degree that you spared not like a right Ancient Peer of this Realm often to say That if the Pope himself should Attack any of his Majesties Dominions you would be one of the first to labour his Destruction I was deservedly much delighted in your Lordships Converse which having been often honoured with both by your Letters when in Foreign parts and your favourable Society here at home I was instrumental as your Lordship well knows to prevail with the Parliament to set a mark of great Honour on your Lordship by a special recommendation and intercession to his Majesty for a regard to and reparation of the Breaches time and misfortune had made upon so Ancient and Honourable a Family And looking upon your Lordship as a Peer of most noble Principles and free of the worst part of Bigotry I could not but lament your leaving the Parliament and still wish your return During our said Converse being ingaged in the History of Ireland to which I was the more inclined by an interest therein for several Generations my Great Grandfather Sir John Perrot having been Deputy thereof governing the same with great Wisdom and Success my Grandfather Annesley having been Commander at Sea in Queen Elizabeths time and one of the Undertakers for Land in Munster after the Earl of Desmond's Rebellion my Father the Lord Baron of Mountnorris and Viscount of Valentia of whom I have very often heard your Lordship speak with great Honour and as your worthy Friend having faithfully served King James and King Charles the First near Forty years in that Kingdom in Offices and Imployments of high Trust and I my self being a Native of the City of Dublin a diligent Observer of the Troubles there wherein I had some share and having both Honours and Lands descended to me in that Realm and knowing that your Lordship had heretofore a great part in the Action there and taking notice that no Memorials I had yet seen did give a full account of your Lordship whom as my own Friend and my Fathers Friend I was willing to do right to in History as far as I could ever highly esteeming the Bravery of your Actions and Wisdom of your Conduct as far as I had Cognizance thereof though I bemoaned the unhappy circumstances of your engaging under a Power usurping over your own Prince and incroaching Royal Power which I find you cannot digest either the Pope or Duke of Lorraine should have done I discoursed with your Lordship many of the most important Designs Actions and Traverses of Fortune in Ireland since the fatal 23 of October 1641 and finding by your full Relations with a perfect memory thereof that you were able to give help to History therein I moved your Lordship to which you friendly consented that at leasure hours you would reduce to writing what you could remember with as exact reference to Time and Order as you could recollect of Passages and Exploits there and that I might by your favour be possessed thereof And I wish things had rested there little expecting a formal Relation in print and much less so introduced before I had the perusal of it for I must now acquaint your Lordship that I did not after what I have above related save now and then to your self inquire after your Memoires promised me till by a Letter of the 16th of this moneth from a hand I respect I had notice he had seen them and my Censure thereon was desired they seeming to him after 28 years silence to cast a Calumny on the Government then and as he suspects with no good intention though he refers that to my Opinion knowing as he is pleased to say none to appeal to but me Your Lordship sees now how you are ingaged for want of commanding my Service before the Printers and I am confident the heat of a Battle would be less formidable to you then the Paper warre you must expect to be assaulted with wherein if I be necessitated to have the least hand your Lordship may be assured it shall be en Gentilhome en amy and chiefly with an aim to convince your Lordship of that which hath obscured the Glory of your Adventures and Exploits or Undertakings in that unfortunate Kingdom and therefore I forbear giving any Opinion to my Friend till I have vented my thoughts to your Lordship which I shall now take the liberty to do Upon serious perusal of your Book I find your Lordships Story of two parts The First till the Cessation of Arms concluded by the Rebels Commissioners at Seginstowne with the Marquess of Ormond Sept. 15 1643 all which time your Lordship was wholly of the Rebels Party and under their Pay and Command which I wish your Lordship had not thought fit for the Press though there were some Acts of Souldierly bravery in it The Second Part From that time till your Lordship finding the ill state of Affairs in Ireland was dispatched by the then Lord Deputy Clanrickord to set out the same to the King in France from whence though your Lordship procured a Letter from his Majesty to the Lord Deputy and sent the same by a safe Messenger yet you returned not again but ingaged in the Service of the Prince of Conde My Lord I am loath now to make my Remarques upon this Second Part because your Lordships acting therein at times under the Confederate
being most of them Papists conceived they had fallen into a fit juncture to set up their darling Idolatry and restore the pretended Jurisdiction of their Idolized Forraign Power of the Pope of Rome or being in at the Intrigues of the Popish Faction all Court and receiving incouragement by what they observed and was infused into them they had here laid the Foundation of the Massacre and Rebellion whereof Ireland was to be the Scene or upon what other grounds I shall not here take upon me determine but I well remember that he 23d of October after their Return broke out upon a formed Combination and Conspiracy wherein almost all the said Popish Committees were leading Men and principal Actors such a horrid and bloody Massacre and Rebellion as is not to be parallell'd in History neither Man Woman nor Infants in the Womb or at the Breast being spared but the generality of that Nation turning barbarous and wild Irish again after so many hundred years Subjection to the Crown of England and Endeavours of their Reformation and Civilizing to so vast an expence of Blood and Treasure as is hardly to be believed But my Lord I may now but touch at things Comme en passant that I may keep within the bounds of a Letter but when what I have meditated and am preparing from Records and authentick unquestionble Relations and Transactions of that bloody Tragedy and matchless Defection from the Crown and very Nation of English Men shall see the light your Lordship will be informed of what it seems hath not yet come to your knowledge and what must make your Lordship blush at your so fatal mistake to have ever been so far as you confess your self in so ill Company and to have partaken in the least in so foul a Guilt Having made this necessary Excursion and Caution I proceed in your Lordships own Method Going first with your Lordship to the Lords Justices acquainting them of your willingness to serve the King against the Rebels to which no doubt by advice of his Majesties Privy Council in that Kingdom they gave a very prudent Answer That your Religion was an obstacle and how could they well say less when it was apparent that it was a Popish Conspiracy and those of that profession universally ingaged in the Defection in so much that though the State there would have distinguished them into Allegiance and for that end more out of desire to win them than any confidence they had in them but to leave them without excuse put Arms and Ammuuition into the hands of the Lord Viscount Gormanston and other Popish Lords and Gentlemen of best Quality and Estates in the English Pale and who by their tenures had formerly and were obliged to assist the Crown in times of danger and they almost all of them went with his Majesties Arms in Aid of the Rebells and they who did best did but restore the Kings Arms and joyned themselves and all the power they could make to the Insurrection forgetting the Grants and bountiful Gifts of Lands their Ancestors had received from the Crown for former and on condition of future Service in which Rank your Lordship placeth your noble Ancestors and I heartily wish you had continued that station Your Lordships next motion was to the Lords Justices for a Pass to go for England which though they could not consent to they gave your Lordship good Advice and which for a time you followed viz. to go home to your House being but 20 miles from Dublin and under the protection or reach of the State as there should be occasion and as your Lordship found afterwards Concerning your Lordships entertaining my Lord of Antrim and the Dutchess of Buckingham at Madinstowne whither they soon followed whither by consent with your Lordship is not said and your delight in their company I have nothing to say but that it was an ill time for Feasting and Jollity when stript and almost starved English came flying by your Gate every day from the Rebels Cruelty And I find that both the Marquess of Antrim and the Dutchess were after that deeply ingaged in the Rebellion and her Grace living and dying in the Irish Quarters chose to be buried at Waterford And though your Lordship had power enough when the Irish came and drove away a great part of your Stock to recover it by a party sent out with your Brother who brought with him two or three of the chiefest Conductors of that Rabble yet you do not so much as pretend that you delivered up any of them to Justice as you ought But you say that this inraged the Irish so much as you conceived your Brother was not safe there where yet you thought fit to continue but sending him to Dublin to attend the Justices Orders and assure them of your readiness to return on a Call they sending a Convoy which they promised to do as occasion required yet your Lordship hearing that you were indicted of high Treason the most publick way of accusing though your Brothers Letter calls it Clandestine you went to Dublin it seems you could go when you pleased without a Convoy but did not it seems think fit to appear and oppose the Indictment but being committed by the Lords Justices and Council the Justification whereof is not the work of this Letter but will have its proper time and place your Lordship after addressing your Case by your Brother to the King and Parliament in England without success whither your Brother being refused a Pass by the Justices was gotten It seems your Lordship meditated your escape into the Irish Quarters and relate the manner how you compassed the same which few will believe your Lordship would have done or held it the way to save your self but that you knew you had deserved it of them and that they had no cause to hurt you as appeared after by their making you General of their Horse and your Lordship chusing the Oath of Association before that of Allegiance Your Lordships having now shifted sides betake your self roundly to a justification of the Rebels cause I must follow you your own way though it be not so methodical as I could wish and is with great confusion of times and affairs which the thred of History will reduce to order when time serves It is true that Parties were sent out by the Justices according to his Majesties Direction to kill and destroy the Rebels throughout all the parts of the Kingdom and if the Officers and Souldiers did not take care enough in your Lordships Opinion to distinguish between the Rebels and the Subjects but killed in many places promiscuously whereof your Lordship gives no instances or of particular complaints to have been made of any such thing I wou'd fain know what distinction could be made of those that were found in Arms or Action against the Kings Authority for there will appear to have been no prosecution of others nor any others killed unless by such
taking the contrary part and his Lordship escaping soon after the Rebellion to Dublin only with the Kings Troop which he Commanded and some Servants that attended him The Earl of Leicester Lord Lieutenant as he was upon his Journey for Ireland was discharged that Imployment to make way for the Marquess of Ormond to succeed him who had an unlimitted Commission sent him sole to examine the pretended Grievances of the Irish and for making a Cessation with the Rebels which he did and was after made Lord Lieutenant and concluded the two first Peaces before-mentioned I have heard Sir Philip Percival a very worthy Person and of a fair Estate being asked why he would by his Certificates of Defect of Stores give countenance and furtherance to a Cessation which he knew could only advantage the Rebels and be ruinous to the English Answer The Stores were really wasted upon unprofitable fruitless Marches and then his Certificates being required he durst not as an Officer refuse them though he was aware of the use would be made of them To shew your Lordship how the Cessation operated laying aside at present the question of the warrantableness on necessity thereof and that the two first Peaces were against Law and several Acts of Parliament in both Kingdoms and upon that and other accounts the validity thereof I must take another opportunity when I may discourse things more fully with your Lordship I can now only briefly tell your Lordship that all the Proceedings of the Rebels in Arms and all their Demands were Treason That the English and Protestants had the Laws on their side which the Irish by combination and force did break and designed wholly to subvert That the Irish tollerated no Protestants in their Quarters though that Religion were the only legal Establishment but seized and forfeited all their Estates whilst the Protestants afforded the measure and benefit of the Laws to the Irish and Papists even to those who had been in Rebellion whensoever they came in or submitted It is not then to be wondred at that the chief and most of the English Nobility in Ireland and the generality of English Scotch and Irish Protestants of all qualities and degrees sooner or later opposed both the Cessation and Peaces as destructive to them and derogatory to the Crown in which number we find the Earls of Kildare Thomond Cork Barrimore Drogheda Donnagall Claubrasill Mount Alexander c. The Viscounts of Valentia Conoway Ranelagh Kinnelmeky Shannon c. Barons or Lords Elsmond Juchequin Blaney Broghill c. But it were endless to name all and of no use to your Lordship who know this as well as I. By this it appears how ungratefully the Irish did requite the Marquess of Ormond for his unwillingness that the whole Irish Nation should ruin themselves by their persisting in Rebellion And now whether it was their vain confidence to carry the day or what else occasioned it they lost the opportunity of deliverance which the Marquess of Ormond being related to so many of them by Blood and Alliance had compassionately designed for them though with great hardship and damage to the English And whatever grounds the Marquess of Ormond had for the Cessation and Peaces by which he could have got nothing but would have incurred manifest loss which it chiefly concerns himself to vouch that in the eye of the World he may stand clear as a true English Man and faithful Subject It is apparent that now by the Forfeiture and Punishment of the Irish his Lordship and Family are the greatest gainers of the Kingdom and have added to their Inheritances vast scopes of Land and a Revenue three times greater than what his Paternal Estate was before the Rebellion and most of his increase is out of their Estates who adheared to the Peaces or served under his Majesties Ensigns abroad which shews that whatsoever of Compassion or Natural Affection or otherwise might incline him to make those Peaces he is in Judgment and Conscience against them and so hath since appeared and hath advantage by their laying aside The like may be said of the Duke of York the Earl of Arlington Lord Lanesborough and others who have great Estates of the Irish freely given them upon the same foundation So that 't is to be hoped whether the Bills already come over to confirm the forfeited Rebels Estates to English and Protestants will do the work or no That his Grace or whosoever shall succeed him in the Lieutenancy will in time transmit such Bills as shall do that work effectually and unite and strengthen his Majesties Protestant Subjects to oppose and break the further Designs of that Rebellious Generation which they will never keep free from so long as they acknowledge and obey a Forreign Head I shall make no reflection at this time upon the Peace called Glamorgan's Peace but what your Lordship gives occasion for by mentioning it viz. That it was the most destructive of all to the English and Protestants but suited best with the Confederate Design of establishing the Romish Idolatry which your Lordship in your Oath of Association engaged as deep in as any excepting the first foundation laid in Blood a fit basis for a Faction only supported by Fraud and Cruelty One passage in your Lordships Memoires I cannot but take notice of for your Honour as an English Man That when the Marques of Ormond in his extremity between the Nuncio party and the Parliament of England asked your Lordship with which of his Enemies he should treat You answered That you were confident he had resolved that before there being no question in the case when it was no question with your Lordship I wonder how it came to be one with his Lordship but the success of your Council was happy and founded upon solid grounds of Reason Your Lordship sees I can but glance at particulars in this Letter and being by so noble a Pens ingaging in justification of a Quarrel which casts reflection upon all that took contrary part to the Irish of which number I was one contrary to my first intention upon the matter necessitated in vindication of as just a cause as ever was managed under the Sun to hasten out the last part of the general History of Ireland first Wherein I shall so impartially make relation beyond all possibility of contradiction that I doubt not your Lordship will reflect with remorse upon what you have done and written wherein I differ from you and the World will know exactly the truth of that sad story I shall in the mean time only as in an abstract ser these things before you and upon the whole matter in answer to your Lordships specious justification and for your present mortification let you know that by Judgment of the King and his Privy Councils and Parliaments in both Kingdoms You are involved in the guilt of Treason and under forfeiture of all you have and as a friend yet advise you to get his