WIELIAM AND MANY.

155

The pay of the soldiers was very small. The private had cnAp.only threepence a day. One half only of this pittance was ever ■ —

given him in money; and that half was often in arrear. But a Devasu-far more seductive bait than his miserable stipend was the countrj^prospect of boundless license. If the government allowed himless than sufficed for his wants, it was not extreme to mark themeans by which he supplied the deficiency'. Though four fifthsof the population of Ireland were Celtic and Roman Catholic,more than four fifths of the property of Ireland belonged to theProtestant Englishry. The garners, the cellars, above all theflocks and herds of the minority, were abandoned to themajority. Whatever the regular troops spared was devouredby bands of marauders who overran almost every barony in theisland. For the arming was now universal. No man dared topresent himself at mass without some weapon, a pike, alongknife called a skean, or, at the very least, a strong ashen stake,pointed and hardened in the fire. The very women wereexhorted by their spiritual directors to carry skeans. Everysmith, every carpenter, every cutler, was at constant work onguns and blades. It was scarcely possible to get a horse shod.

If any Protestant artisan refused to assist in the manufacture ofimplements which were to be used against his nation and hisreligion, he was flung into prison. It seems probable that, atthe end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmenwere in arms. Near fifty thousand of them were soldiers. Therest were banditti, whose violence and licentiousness theGovernment affected to disapprove, but did not really exertitself to suppress. The Protestants not only w r ere not protected,but were not suffered to protect themselves. It was determined

man lately escaped, 1689; Ireland’s Lamentation, by an English Protestantthat lately narrowly escaped with life from thence, 1689: A True Accountof the State of Ireland, by a person who with great difficulty left Dublin,

1689; King, ii. 7. Avaus confirms all that these writers say about the Irishofficers*