d and armed from the magazines
above four thousand men more. They despatched a body of six hundred men
to throw relief into Tredah, besieged by the Irish. But these troops,
attacked by the enemy, were seized with a panic, and were most of them
put to the sword. Their arms, falling into the hands of the Irish,
supplied them with what they most wanted.[*] The justices, willing
to foment the rebel lion in a view of profiting by the multiplied
forfeitures, henceforth thought of nothing more than providing for their
own present security and that of the capital. The earl of Ormond, their
general, remonstrated against such timid, not to say base and interested
counsels; but was obliged to submit to authority.

The English of the pale, who probably were not at first in the secret,
pretended to blame the insurrection, and to detest the barbarity with
which it was accompanied.[**] By their protestations and declarations,
they engaged the justices to supply them with arms, which they promised
to employ in defence of the government.[***] But in a little time, the
interests of religion were found more prevalent over them than regard
and duty to their mother country. They chose Lord Gormanstone their
leader; and, joining the old Irish, rivalled them in every act of
violence towards the English Protestants. Besides many smaller bodies
dispersed over the kingdom, the principal army of the rebels amounted
to twenty thousand men, and threatened Dublin with an immediate
siege.[****]

Both the English and Irish rebels conspired in one imposture, with which
they seduced many of their deluded countrymen: they pretended authority
from the king and queen, but chiefly from the latter, for their
insurrection; and they affirmed, that the cause of their taking arms
was to vindicate royal prerogative, now invaded by the Puritanical
parliament.[v] Sir Phelim O'Neale, having found a royal patent in Lord
Caulfield's house, whom he had murdered, tore off the seal, and affixed
it to a commission which he had forged for himself.[v*]

* Nalson, vol. ii. p. 905.

** Temple, p. 33. Rush. vol. v. p. 402.

*** Temple, p. 60. Borlase, Hist. p. 28.

**** Whitlocke, p. 49.

v Rush. vol. v. p. 400, 401.

v* Rush. vol. v. p. 402.

The king received an account of this insurrection by a messenger
despatched from the north of Ireland. He immediately communicated his
intelligence to the Scottish parliament. He expected tha