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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45369	A true relation of the actions of the Inniskilling-men from their first taking up of arms in December, 1688, for the defence of the Protestant religion, and their lives and liberties / written by Andrew Hamilton ...	Hamilton, Andrew, d. 1691.	1690 (1690)	Wing H476; ESTC R3872	45,416	80

LICENS'D January the 15th 1689 90. Ja. Vernon A TRUE RELATION OF THE ACTIONS OF THE Inniskilling-Men FROM Their First Taking up of Arms in December 1688. for the Defence of the Protestant Religion and their Lives and Liberties Written by ANDREW HAMILTON Rector of Kilskerrie and one of the Prebends of the Diocess of Clogher in the Kingdom of Ireland an Eye-witness thereof and Actor therein LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard and are to be Sold by Richard Baldwin in the Old-Baily MDCXC TO Their Most Excellent MAJESTIES WILLIAM and MARY KING and QUEEN Of England Scotland France and Ireland c. May it please Your Majesties THAT which imbolden'd me to lay these Papers at Your Royal Feet was in discharge of the Instructions I received from the Governour and Garison of Inniskilling humbly to Present before Your Majesties together with their Address a true Account of their Faithful Endeavours for the Support of the Protestant Interest and of Your Majesties together with the Reasons and Grounds upon which they proceeded in this so extraordinary a Revolution and the rather because Inniskilling made no Declaration upon their first taking up Arms as most other parts of Ulster have done And witb Submission I think it most pertinent to plead before Your Majesties the Difficulties we found in what had but the appearance of Disloyalty to our Prince for Your Majesties will be ill serv'd by men who have not Loyalty in their Principles They who pretend they forsook their King for you out of a Desire only of change their pretence is immoral and humours are inconstant their Flattery is but the Tribute of Base Souls and of Traiterous Consequence to Princes against whom the Justice or Wisdom of a Prince cannot secure him for both these could not preserve Moses and David from the madness of the people May it please Your Majesties We in Ireland were ill used exceeding ill we were disarm'd and displac'd after the most signal Services of our Fathers and many of our selves to the Crown and the Arms put into the hands of the Murtherers the bloody Murtherers of Forty one and their Off-spring of whom our County afforded the most remarkable the Mac Guires who were the first in that hellish Conspiracy and inhuman in the execution of it The chief of whom was thought worthy to be brought hither and suffer the pains of his Rebellion in London Your Majesties will believe us that not only the Off-spring but some of the very Hands which committed those Massacres were arm'd by Authority at the same time that Protestants were thrust out of the Army on pretence that some one or other of their Relations had ingag'd with the Usurpers though themselves had served the King to the utmost Extremities and many were Cashiered against whom even that pretence could not be found and who had bought their Places with the King's License and laid out all they had upon it till at last being a Protestant was given for the Reason and we were discourag'd by all the Artifice of Jesuit or Irish and even threatn'd another Massacre by many of their lesser Politicians yet could not all this remove us the least step from our Duty to the King But with Your Majesty's Patience there was more than all this We had Acts of our Parliament which did incapacitate these men from bearing either Arms or Offices yet did we even faultily acknowledge and submit to their Authority out of profound deference to the King who had placed them over us though apparently to our Ruine and overthrow of our Religion All our Bishopricks and Livings that fell in the King's Gift were kept vacant and the Revenues given to the Popish Clergy Their Bishops kept publick Visitations in the Vacant Diocesses and assumed even the Title one of whom was made Secretary of State and signed himself by the name of his Bishoprick in all his Warrants and Dispatches that none might plead ignorance of the King's Intentions towards us And we were told by some in the highest place That the King would fill no Protestant Vacancies in the Church so that we saw great part of our Churches in their possession and nothing interpose but the lives of a very few and most of them Old Men to leave us not one Protestant Bishop in the Kingdom And for our Civil Rights our Judges Justices of the Peace Sheriffs and even Constables were for the most part made of Papists and the Act of Settlement was then doom'd in every Coffee-house to the same Condemnation under which it has fallen since And the Army being intirely in those worst of Popish Hands the most barbarous Irish who had thrown off humanity it self our prospect was all black and dismal Then it was that You Sir appear'd like the Sun to dispel those mists which had darken'd all our Sky Your Declaration revived us from the very Grave while it shew'd us a way only to stand by and see the Salvation of the Lord only not to hinder you to relieve us without hazard or even Dishonour to our King No more being askt than to let our Parliaments be free and the Laws run in their Ancient Channel To this generous Declaration we gave full and absolute Credence and drank it in as thirsty Sands does the showers of Heaven And look'd upon You as no other than a Miracle a Moses sent immediately from God to deliver us from Egyptian Servitude and Idolatry And as a no less wonderful effect of this that our King had been so perniciously Advised as to Abdicate his Throne Voluntarily to throw up his Government Disband his Army and Retire some said to a Monastry some to Rome and some Dead as every man's Fancy led him and which to believe we knew not for at that Distance we were absolute Strangers to Court and to any true Intelligence At this very time Lord Tyrconnel Armed the Rabble of the Irish Papists to the Number of Forty or Fifty Thousand and to live upon the Countrey without Pay whence ensued miserable Depredations open Noon-day Robberies and an inevitable and sudden Ruine of the Brittish and Protestant Interest in Ireland Having granted Commissions dated about the beginning of January last for these New Levies he after upon Notice of the King's Desertion the 10th of December alter'd the dates of these Commissions to the first of December to bear a show as done while the King was in the Government and consequently that we should believe it was by his Majesties Orders And many of these New-rais'd men were so Transported with the Glorious prospect they had before them that they had not the Continence no not their Priests to refrain telling us That they were now our Masters and we must submit to new Laws such as should be their Pleasure and what we had deserved in their Opinion Then it was we thought our selves no longer under obligation to be active in our own Destruction to acknowledg Officers whom

our Laws did incapacitate and acting more violently than ever in the open Contempt of our Laws and visibly to our Extirpation and that in all reasonable Presumption even without Orders from the King who being gone from us for what Reasons we neither knew at that distance nor could examine we did not think we ought to continue in assisting to the breach of our Laws in any lesser hands whether of the Lord Tyrconnel or of any other And in this Cause only it was that we first took Arms in defence of our Laws against those who when the King was gone would govern by Force tho the Law said they should not be capable of any Employment and when they declared they would act in contradiction to all the Laws in being and went so far in it as to lay us absolutely in the mercy of another Massacre with which some of them threatned us and the most moderate of them did not tell us we were secure from it But on the contrary very many Intimations were sent from Fosterers and others among the Irish to their Friends of the Protestants to be gone to send away their Effects to save their Lives for that a storm was coming They had Publick Masses through all the North for the furthering of that which they called Inteneragh that is a Secret Intention Our Hills were daily covered with Multitudes of them Arming and Inlisting themselves and they were quarter'd in our Towns and in Private Houses All of them were Armed of all Sorts Sexes and Ages the old Women and young Children provided them Skeans and Half-Pikes for which they cut down our Woods before our Faces and it was difficult to get a Horse shod in our Countrey all Smiths being taken up in fitting this sort of Armory Nor were their Circumstances alter'd more than their Looks and Behaviour and if we might believe themselves nothing wanted but the Signal to perfect what had been begun in Forty one we were absolutely in their Power and we had but that moment to rescue our selves Such Extremities might have excused great Excesses which I might very fully show were it not for swelling this Discourse beyond its intended bounds and therefore I forbear it And now it remains to show how we became Subjects to Your Majesties without breach of our former Loyalty or rather how the same Loyalty becomes now due to Your Majesties and we do even with boldness hope That the shewing how firm this our Loyalty held out through all the Temptations of the last Reign will render it the more acceptabte to Your Majesties This then was the scheme of Affairs which our little Intelligence brought to us That the Late King had by Advice of the Jesuits quitted the Government on purpose to put us into Confusion and had then put himself into the hands of a bigotted Prince Enemy to our Nation and Persecutor of our Religion That upon his obstinate Desertion and Abdication of the Government the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons of England Assembled did unanimously place Your Majesties upon the Vacant Throne Thus we heard and this we believ'd And what were we that we should take upon us at our distance from Affairs to understand them better than those at the Helm or to dispute what no one in England made the least hesitation to admit And what could we embrace with more delight than to see the Crown Madam upon Your Royal Head the next undoubted Heir to him who had Abdicated it Whose Virtues gave You as good a Title to the Election as Your Blood to the Succession in that Illustrious Line which we Pray God may Reign over us till Time shall be no more And were not even our Wishes left behind to behold all Your Glories doubled in Your Conjunction with His Present Majesty born to Empire and a Pattern to Future Fate It was this Fate Great Sir Great Madam These were the Steps by which we were raised beyond our own Contrivance but with our ready Consent to become Your Subjects And how we have acquitted our selves in that Glorious Relation we stand in to Your Majesties is the business of that Account which I now begin without studying the Stile or any other Ornament but Truth which must be obscur'd in any dress I could bestow upon it THE ACTIONS OF THE INNISKILLING-MEN ABout the first Day of December 1688. there came a Letter from Mr. Secretary Ellis by the Lord Tyrconnel's Order to the Provost of Inniskilling to provide Quarters for two Foot Companies viz. Capt. Nugent's and Capt. Shurloe's Companies that were sent to Quarter in that Town and about the same time a report was spread through the Countrey That the Irish intended to Massacre all the Brittish and to confirm the same upon Friday the 7th of the same Month there came to Inniskilling and to most Gentlemen in the Country about a Copy of a Letter from the County of Down written to the Earl of Mount-Alexander telling That the Massacre was to be on the Sunday following being the Ninth of December 1688. This Letter had an incredible Operation on the Minds of all near Inniskilling for many of them were yet alive who had been Eye-witnesses of the Barbarous Cruelties Committed on the Protestants by the Irish Papists in the Rebellion of 41 without any Compassion or distinction to Age or Sex This Letter with the other to the Provost to receive a Garison into the Town which had not had a Garison for a long time before in it and having good Information from Dublin that the Lord Tyrconnel had granted Commissions all over the Kingdom to put all Papists in Arms and that any Papist that was able or could propose any way to maintain men for three Months had got what Commissions they desired and to confirm the same they saw the Natives that lived in the Countrey near them gather in great numbers and forming themselves into Companies and had some experienced Soldiers sent to several Parts of the County to exercise them This made those of Inniskilling apprehensive that those Preparations were all making for the intended Massacre and knowing that Inniskilling was the only place of Consequence upon Logh Earne all Protestants and who held out the whole Rebellion of 41 with remarkable Courage and if the Irish were possessed of it they had an open Passage from Connaught to Vlster they therefore did unanimously resolve not to admit the Two Foot Companies to Quarter in the Town but did immediately dispatch Letters to all the Gentlemen in the Countrey near the Place acquainting them with their Resolution and craving their Advice and Assistance in that Juncture for of themselves they were not able to keep out the Two Foot Companies there being but about Eighty Dwellers in the Town and few or no Arms among them but when their Messengers returned tho some few gave Encouragement yet the greater part did disswade them from the Enterprize ●s dangerous the Irish being well provided of Arms