Irish History
And
The Fighting Irish

 Elizabeth it was enacted that every Romish priest found in Ireland after a certain

date should be deemed guilty of rebellion, that he should be hanged till dead, then his head taken off, his bowels taken out and burned and his head fixed to a pole in some public place. Keating tells us how Bisshop Patrick O' Healy and Cornelius O' Rourke were put to the rack, had their hands and feet broken by hammers, needles thrust under their nails, and were finally hanged and quartered. But this sort of treatment happened to tens of thousands in an effort at reforming the Irish - Two Franciscans were taken and thrown into the sea, and another was trampled to death by horses. Three laymen, at Smerwick, had their arms and legs broken with hammers, and then were hanged, and a similar torture was inflicted upon the abbot of Boyle. Three Franciscans at Abbeyleix, were first beaten with sticks, then scourgedwith whips until the blood came and were finally hanged. One Roche was taken to London and flogged publicly through the streets and then tortured in prison until he died; another being flogged, had salt and vinegar rubbed into his wounds and then was placed on the rack and tortured to death. And Collins a priest at Cork was first tortured, then hanged, and whilst he yet breathed, his heart was cut out and held up, soldiers around crying in exultation, Long live the Queen ( From ' Our Martyrs " quoted by E. A D' Alton in his History of Ireland )

It was under Elizabeth that the price fixed on the head of a priest was made uniform with that on the head of a wolf. Five pounds was the usual price for both - but Burton's Parliamentary Diary of June 10th, 1567 records the words of Mayor Morgan MP for Wicklow - who was protesting in Parliament against striking more taxes on Ireland " We have three beasts to destroy that lay burdens upon us; the first is a wolf upon whom we lay five pounds; the second beast is a priest, on whom we lay ten pounds - if he be eminent, more;
the third is a Tory. " etc.
Under her majesty was passed the law of Recusancy fixing heavy penalties upon all delinquents who refused to attend Sabbath services in the church of the new religion. It was not alone the religion of the Irish people that was then sought to be wiped out, but their very life. Her armies with torch and sword, converted a smiling fruitful country into a fearful desert. Edmund Spenser in his " View of the State of Ireland " thus graphically pictures a little of what Elizabeth accomplished:

" Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corne and cattel, yet, ere one year and a half, they were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would rue the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glenns, they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eate the dead carrisons, happy where they could finde them: yea, and one another soone after; insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves, and if they found a plot of water -
cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time; yet not able to continue there withal; that in shorte space, there was none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful countrey suddainlie left voyde of man and beast. "

Leckey in the preface to his History of Ireland in the 18th century says :

" The slaughter of Irishmen was looked upon as literally the slaughter of wild beasts. Not only men, but even women and children who fell into the hands of the English, were deliberately and systematically butchered. Bands of soldiers traversed great tracts of country slaying every living thing they met. " - " The suppression of the native race was cariied on with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in the Netherlands, and which has seldom been exceeded in the pages of history. "

The honest Scottish Protestant Dr Smiles sums up the Elizabethan work in Ireland:

" Men, women and children wherever found were put indiscriminately to death. The soldiery was mad for blood. Priests were murdered at the altar, children at their mother's breast. The beauty of women, the venerableness of age, the innocence of youth was no protection against these sanguinary demons in human form. "

The Protestant Rev. Dr Taylor, in his History of the Civil War in Ireland, bears testimony to the fact that these Irish barbarians, when opportuniy offered for avenging themselves on their persecutors, took their revenge in a manner that would have done credit to a civilised people - say to the gende English. He tells how, when in the reign of Queen Mary the persecutors of the Catholics found their occupation gone. " The restoration of the old religion was effected without violence: no persecution of the protestants was attempted; and several of the English who fled from the furious zeal of Mary's inquisitors, found a safe retreat among Catholics in Ireland. It is but justice to this maligned body to add that they never injured a single person in life or limb for professing a religion different from their own. They had suffered persecution and learned mercy, as they showed in the reign of Mary, and in the wars from 1641 to 1648. "