ut between papist and Protestant; that papacy or popery
was not to be endured in that kingdom; and they cited the maxim of James
I: "Plant Ireland with Puritans, root out papists, and then secure it."

To Cromwell, as to all English Puritans, it seemed a self-evident truth
that one of the three realms could not be suffered to become Catholic;
as little could it be suffered to become independent, or the open
practice of the Catholic religion allowed there, any more than in
England; finally, that peace and prosperity could never be secured in
Ireland without a dominant and preponderating order of English birth and
Protestant belief. By Cromwell, as by the whole Puritan body--we may
fairly say by the whole body of Protestants--the Irish rebellion of 1641
was believed to have opened with a barbarous, treacherous, and wholesale
massacre, followed during nine years by one prolonged scene of confusion
and bloodshed, ending in an almost complete extinction of the Protestant
faith and English interests.

The victorious party, and Cromwell more deeply than others, entered on
the recovery of Ireland in the spirit of a religious war, to restore to
the Protestant cause one of the three realms which had revolted to the
powers of darkness. Such was for centuries the spirit of Protestant
England.

Five months were occupied in the preparations for this distant and
difficult campaign. Cromwell's nomination was on March 15, 1649. On the
same day Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the council. During
April Cromwell arranged the marriage of his eldest son with the
daughter of a very quiet, unambitious squire. On July 10th he set forth
from London with much military state. His lifeguard was a body of
gentlemen "as is hardly to be paralleled in the world." He still waited
a month in the West, his wife and family around him; and thence wrote
his beautiful letter to Mayor about his son, and the letter to "my
beloved daughter Dorothy Cromwell, at Hursley."

At length all was ready, and he set sail on August 13th with nine
thousand men in about one hundred ships. He was invested with supreme
civil, as well as military, command in Ireland; amply supplied with
material and a fleet. Ireton, his son-in-law, was his second in command.

On landing in Dublin, the general made a speech to the people, in which
he spoke of his purpose as "the great work against the barbarous and
bloodthirsty Irish, and all their adherents and confederates, for the