An attempt of the English Puritan party (S378) to root out Catholicism in Ireland (1641) had caused a horrible insurrection.  The Royalist party in Ireland now proclaimed Prince Charles, son of the late Charles I, King.  Parliament deputed Cromwell to reduce that country to order, and to destroy the Royalists.  Nothing could have been more congenial to his “Ironsides” (S445) than such a crusade.  They descended upon the unhappy island (1649), and wiped out the rebellion in such a whirlwind of fire and slaughter that the horror of the visitation has never been forgotten.  To this day the direst imprecation a southern Irishman can utter is, “The curse of Cromwell on ye!"[3]

[3] At Drogheda and Wexford, Cromwell, acting in accordance with the laws of war of that day, massacred the garrisons that refused to surrender.

Several years later (1653-1654), Cromwell determined to put in practice a still more drastic policy.  He resolved to repeople a very large section of southern Ireland by driving out the Roman Catholic inhabitants and giving their lands to English and Scotch Protestants.  It seemed to him the only effectual way of overcoming the resistance which that island made to English rule.  By the use of military power, backed up by an Act of Parliament, his generals forced the people to leave their houses and emigrate to the province of Connaught on the west coast.  Part of that district was so barren and desolate that it was said, “it had not water enough to drown a man, trees enough to hang him, or earth enough to bury him.”  Thousands were compelled to go into this dreary exile, and hundreds of families who refused were shipped to the West Indies and sold to the planters as slaves for a term of years,—­a thing often done in that day with prisoners of war.

In Scotland also Prince Charles was looked upon as the legitimate sovereign by a strong and influential party.  He found in the brave Montrose,[1] who was hanged for treason at Edinburgh, and in other loyal supporters far better friends than he deserved.  The Prince came to Scotland (1650); while there, he was crowned and took the oath of the Covenant (S438).  It must have been a bitter pill for a man of his free and easy temperament.  But worse was to come, for the Scottish Puritans made him sign a paper declaring that his father had been a tyrant and that his mother was an idolater.  No wonder the caricatures of the day represented the Scots as holding the Prince’s nose to a grindstone.  Later, Prince Charles rallied a small force to fight for him, but it was utterly defeated at Dunbar (1650).

[1] See “The Execution of Montrose,” in Aytoun’s “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.”  Prince Charles basely abandoned Montrose to his fate.

Twelve months afterward, on the anniversary of his defeat at Dunbar, the Prince made a second attempt to obtain the crown.  At the battle of Worcester Cromwell again routed his forces and brought the war to an end.  Charles escaped in Shropshire, where he hid for a day in an oak at Boscobel.  After many narrow escapes he at length succeeded in getting out of the country.