WILLIAM AND MAEY.

159

filthiness of the banquets of the Rapparees was such as the chapdramatists of Grub Street could scarcely caricature. WhenLent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, butcontinued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merelyin order to get a pair of brogues. Often a whole flock of sheep,often a herd of fifty or sixty kine, was slaughtered: the beastswere flayed; the fleeces and hides were carried away; and thebodies were left to poison the air. The French ambassadorreported to his master that, in six weeks, fifty thousand homedcattle had been slain in this manner, and were rotting on theground all over the country. The number of sheep that werebutchered during the same time was popularly said to havebeen three or four hundred thousand.*

Any estimate which can now be framed of the value of theproperty destroyed during this fearful conflict of races mustnecessarily be very inexact. We are not however absolutelywithout materials for such an estimate. The Quakers were

s

* King, iii. 10.; The Sad Estate and Condition of Ireland, as repre-sented in a Letter from a Worthy Person who was in Dublin on Friday last,

March 4. 1689; Short View by a Clergyman, 1689; Lamentation of Ireland,

1689; Compleat History of the Life and Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyr-conncl, 1689; The Royal Voyage, acted in 1689 and 1690. This drama,which, I believe, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, is one of the mostcurious of a curious class of compositions, utterly destitute of literarymerit, but valuable as showing what were then the most successful clap-traps for an audience composed of the common people. “The end of thisplay,” says the author in his preface, “is chiefly to expose the perfidious,base, cowardly, and bloody nature of the Irish." The nccount which thefugitive Protestants givo of the wanton destruction of cattle is confirmedby Avaux in a letter to Lewis, dated April . 1689, and by Desgrigny in aletter to Louvois, dated May 1690. Most of the despatches written byAvaux during his mission to Ireland are contained in a volume of which avery few copies were printed some years ago at the English ForeignOffice. Of many I have also copies made at the French Foreign Office.

The letters of Desgrigny, who was employed in the Commissariat, I foundin the Library of the French War Office. I cannot too strongly express mysense of the liberality and courtesy with which the immense and admirablyarranged storehouses of curious information at Paris were thrown opento me.

*

■ J*t r - . V.