that there could be no
safety but in victory, vengeance, and dominion. They agreed only in
spurning out of the way every mediator who sought to reconcile them.

During some weeks there were outrages, insults, evil reports, violent
panics, the natural preludes of the terrible conflict which was at hand.
A rumour spread over the whole island that, on the ninth of December,
there would be a general massacre of the Englishry. Tyrconnel sent
for the chief Protestants of Dublin to the Castle, and, with his usual
energy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of heaven if the
report was not a cursed, a blasted, a confounded lie. It was said that,
in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat and
wig, and flung them into the fire, [121] But lying Dick Talbot was so
well known that his imprecations and gesticulations only strengthened
the apprehension which they were meant to allay. Ever since the recall
of Clarendon there had been a large emigration of timid and quiet people
from the Irish ports to England. That emigration now went on faster than
ever. It was not easy to obtain a passage on board of a well built or
commodious vessel. But many persons, made bold by the excess of fear,
and choosing rather to trust the winds and waves than the exasperated
Irishry, ventured to encounter all the dangers of Saint George's Channel
and of the Welsh coast in open boats and in the depth of winter. The
English who remained began, in almost every county, to draw close
together. Every large country house became a fortress. Every visitor
who arrived after nightfall was challenged from a loophole or from a
barricaded window; and, if he attempted to enter without pass words and
explanations, a blunderbuss was presented to him. On the dreaded night
of the ninth of December, there was scarcely one Protestant mansion from
the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay in which armed men were not watching
and lights burning from the early sunset to the late sunrise, [122]

A minute account of what passed in one district at this time has come
down to us, and well illustrates the general state of the kingdom. The
south-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautiful
tract in the British isles. The mountains, the glens, the capes
stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build,
the rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves
in which the wild deer find covert, attract every