Portadown massacre: Difference between revisions
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{{Short description|Massacre of Protestants during the 1641 Irish Rebellion}} |
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{{POV|date=February 2009}} |
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{{EngvarB|date=October 2013}} |
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{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2024}} |
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{{Infobox civilian attack |
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| title = Portadown massacre |
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| partof = the [[Irish Rebellion of 1641]] |
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| image = File:Portadown Massacre.png |
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| caption = Engraving of the massacre by [[Wenceslaus Hollar]], published in [[James Cranford]]'s ''Teares of Ireland'' (1642) |
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| location = Portadown, [[County Armagh]], Ireland |
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| coordinates = {{coord|54.421027|-6.458244|display=it|region:GB_scale:20000|format=dms}} |
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| map = {{Location map | Northern Ireland |
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| width = 250 |
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| lat = 54.421027 |
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| long = -6.458244 |
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| marksize = 6 |
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| caption =<!--Please leave this blank--> |
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| label1 = Portadown |
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}} |
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| date = November 1641 |
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| type = [[Drowning]], [[Execution by shooting|shooting]] |
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| fatalities = c.100 |
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| perps = Irish rebels |
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}} |
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{{Campaignbox Irish Confederate Wars|state=collapsed}} |
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The '''Portadown |
The '''Portadown massacre''' took place in November 1641 at [[Portadown]], [[County Armagh]], during the [[Irish Rebellion of 1641]]. Irish Catholic rebels, likely under the command of Toole McCann, killed about 100 [[Ulster Protestants|Protestant settlers]] by forcing them off the bridge into the [[River Bann]] and shooting those who tried to swim to safety. The settlers were being marched east from a prison camp at [[Loughgall]]. This was the biggest massacre of Protestants during the rebellion, and one of the bloodiest during the [[Irish Confederate Wars]]. The Portadown massacre, and others like it, terrified Protestants in Ireland and Great Britain, and were used to justify the [[Cromwellian conquest of Ireland]] and later to lobby against Catholic [[rights]]. |
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==Background== |
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The Irish rebellion had broken out in Ulster on 23 October 1641. It began as an attempted ''[[coup d'état]]'' by Catholic gentry and military officers, who tried to seize control of the [[Dublin Castle administration|English administration in Ireland]]. They wanted to force King [[Charles I of England|Charles I]] to negotiate an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, and greater Irish self-governance, and to partially or fully reverse the [[plantations of Ireland]]. Many of those involved in the rebellion had lost their ancestral lands over the past thirty years in the [[plantation of Ulster]]. |
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Most of the land at Portadown had belonged to the McCanns (''[[Mac Cana]]''), a [[Gaels|Gaelic]] clan. As part of the plantation, this land was confiscated by the English Crown and [[Colonization|colonized]] by English and Scottish Protestant settlers.<ref name="RiseOfPortadown">{{cite web|title=The Rise and Development of Portadown|url=http://www.craigavonhistoricalsociety.org.uk/rev/luttonriseofportadown.html|last=Lutton|first=S. C.|publisher=Review – Journal of the Craigavon Historical Society Vol. 5 No. 2|accessdate=9 April 2010}}</ref> Rebels, including the McCanns,<ref name="RiseOfPortadown"/> captured Portadown on the first day of the rebellion along with nearby settlements such as [[Tandragee]] and [[Charlemont Fort|Charlemont]].<ref name="perceval-maxwell214-219">Perceval-Maxwell, Michael. ''The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641''. McGill-Queen's Press, 1994. pp.214–219</ref> |
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⚫ | |||
⚫ | Some of the rebels began attacking and robbing Protestant settlers, although rebel leaders tried to stop this.<ref name="perceval-maxwell214-219"/> Irish historian Nicholas Canny suggests that the violence escalated after a failed rebel assault on [[Lisnagarvey]] in November 1641, after which the settlers killed several hundred captured rebels. Canny writes, "the bloody mindedness of the settlers in taking revenge when they gained the upper hand in battle seems to have made such a deep impression on the insurgents that, as one deponent put it, 'the slaughter of the English' could be dated from this encounter".<ref>Canny, Nicholas. ''Making Ireland British, 1580–1650''. Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 485.</ref> |
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One such a group of Protestants were imprisoned in a church in [[Loughall]]. They had been informed that they were going to be marched eastwards where they were to be expelled to England. The Irish soldiers were said by to be led by either Captain Manus O'Cane or Toole McCann- later accounts of the event differed on this point. After some time,the English civilians were taken out of the Church and marched to a bridge over the [[river Bann]]. Once on the bridge, the group was stopped. At this point the civilians, threatened by pikes and swords, were forcibly stripped of their clothes. They were then herded off the bridge into the icy cold river waters at swordpoint. Most drowned or died of exposure, although some were said to have been shot by musket-fire as they struggled to stay afloat. |
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==Massacre== |
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Estimates of the number of those killed varied from less than 100 to over 300. William Clark, a survivor of the massacre, said during the 1642 depositions that as many as 100 were killed at the bridge. As Clark was a witness of the massacre his figure is taken as being the most credible. |
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Twenty-eight people made statements about the incident, but only one of them witnessed it. The others related what they had heard about it, including possibly from some of the rebels themselves.<ref name="Darcy68-69">Darcy, Eamon. ''The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms''. Boydell & Brewer, 2015. pp.68–69</ref> |
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William Clarke, the only survivor, stated that he had been held in a prison camp at [[Loughgall]], where many of the prisoners were mistreated and some subjected to [[half-hanging]]s.<ref name="Darcy68-69"/> The rebels in the Loughgall area were commanded by Manus O'Cane.<ref name="Simms">{{cite book |last1=Simms |first1=Hilary |editor1-last=MacCuarta |editor1-first=Brian |title=Ulster 1641: Aspects of the Rising |date=1997 |publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation |pages=124–126 |chapter=Violence in County Armagh, 1641}}</ref> Clarke states that he and about 100 other prisoners were marched six miles to the bridge over the [[River Bann]] at Portadown.<ref name="Darcy68-69"/> The wooden bridge had been broken in the middle. Threatened with swords and pikes, Clarke states the prisoners were stripped, and then forced off the bridge and into the cold river below. Those who tried to swim to safety were shot with [[musket]]s. Clarke claimed he was able to escape by bribing the rebels.<ref name="Darcy68-69"/><ref name="Simms"/> |
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==The Portadown Ghosts== |
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The massacre seems to have happened in mid-November.<ref name="Simms"/> It is likely that the prisoners were being brought to the coast to be deported to Britain, and rebel leader [[Felim O'Neill]] had already sent other such convoys safely to [[Carrickfergus]] and [[Newry]].<ref name="Simms"/> Toole McCann was the rebel captain in charge of the Portadown area at the time, and several people made statements that he was responsible for the massacre. Hilary Simms writes: "The convoy entered his area of control and it would seem likely that even if he did not order it, he and his men could not have avoided being involved in it".<ref name="Simms"/> Native Irish tenants had already been massacred at [[Castlereagh (County Down townland)|Castlereagh]], but Pádraig Lenihan writes there is no direct evidence the Portadown massacre was retaliation for this.<ref name="Lenihan">Lenihan, Pádraig. ''Consolidating Conquest: Ireland 1603–1727''. Routledge, 2014. p.99</ref> |
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The depositions record numerous reports of ghost sightings after the massacre: For example, a woman called Elizabeth Price claimed to have seen at the spot of the massacre a spirit in the shape of a woman: 'her eyes seemed to twinkle in her head and her skin as white as snow...divulged and then repeated the word ''Revenge, Revenge, Revenge'''. It continued to appear for some time and only disappeared when the settler force reached the town. |
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The message within such stories is apparent. Over two hundred years later, in 1886, the historian Robert Dunlop argued that the presence of these ghost stories in the depositions meant that they were 'worthless' as evidence. <ref>Ulster 1641 pg 185</ref> Modern historians generally accept that there were a number of major atrocities in Ulster in 1641, but disregard the idea of a wholesale massacre of Protestants in the province. |
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==Aftermath== |
==Aftermath== |
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As word of the massacre spread, "elements of what happened were exaggerated, tweaked and fabricated". People who heard about the massacre gave a range of death tolls, from 68 to 196. As Clarke was a witness of the massacre his figure of 100 is taken as being the most credible.<ref>Ellis, Beresford. ''Eyewitness to Irish History''. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. p.108</ref> Nevertheless, the Portadown massacre was one of the bloodiest in Ireland during the [[Irish Confederate Wars]].<ref name="Darcy68-69"/> About 4,000 Protestant settlers were killed in Ulster in the early months of the rebellion. In [[County Armagh]], recent research has shown that about 1,250 Protestants were killed, about a quarter of the settler population there.<ref>John Kenyon & Jane Ohlmeyer. ''The Civil Wars''. Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 74.</ref> In [[County Tyrone]], modern research has identified three blackspots for the killing of settlers, with the worst being near [[Caledon, County Tyrone|Kinard]], "where most of the British families planted ... were ultimately murdered".<ref>Lenihan, Pádraig. ''Confederate Catholics at War''. Cork University Press, 2001. p. 31.</ref> There were also massacres of local Catholics, such as at [[Islandmagee]] in County Antrim,<ref>{{cite web |title=The Island Magee Massacre |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/plantation/tully/tc02.shtml |publisher=BBC |accessdate=10 May 2020}}</ref> and on [[Rathlin Island]] by [[Scottish Covenant]]er soldiers.<ref>Royle, Trevor. ''Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638–1660''. Abacus, 2004. p.143</ref> Though a supporter of British rule in Ireland, 19th-century historian [[William Lecky]] wrote "it is far from clear on which side the balance of cruelty rests".<ref>Corish, Patrick. "The Rising of 1641 and the Confederacy", in ''A New History of Ireland: Volume III'', Oxford University Press, 1991. p.292</ref> |
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The massacre terrified Protestant settlers and was used to support the view that the rebellion was a Catholic conspiracy to massacre all Protestants in Ireland,<ref name="Simms"/> though in truth such massacres were mostly confined to Ulster. In 1642, a commission of inquiry was held into the killings of settlers. Protestant bishop [[Henry Jones (bishop)|Henry Jones]] led the inquiry and read out some of the evidence to the English parliament in March 1642, although most of his speech was based on hearsay.<ref name="Simms"/> The massacre featured prominently in [[Roundhead|English Parliamentarian]] [[atrocity propaganda]] in the 1640s, most famously in John Temple's ''The Irish Rebellion'' (1646). Temple used the massacres at Portadown and elsewhere to lobby for the military re-conquest of Ireland and the segregation of Irish Catholics from Protestant settlers in Ireland.<ref>Darcy, pp.99–100</ref> Accounts of the massacre strengthened the resolve of many Parliamentarians to re-conquer Ireland, which they did [[Cromwellian conquest of Ireland|in 1649–52]]. Massacres were committed by [[Oliver Cromwell]]'s army during this conquest, and it resulted in the [[Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652|confiscation of most Catholic-owned land]] and mass deportations.<ref>Albert Breton (Editor, 1995). Nationalism and Rationality. Cambridge University Press. Page 248. "Oliver Cromwell offered Irish Catholics a choice between genocide and forced mass population transfer.”</ref><ref>John Morrill. "Rewriting Cromwell: A Case of Deafening Silences." Canadian Journal of History. December 2003: 19.</ref><ref>Faolain, Turlough (1983). Blood On The Harp. p. 191. ISBN 9780878752751</ref> Temple's work was published at least ten times between 1646 and 1812.<ref>Connolly, S. J.. ''Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630-1800''. Oxford University Press, 2008. p. 449.</ref> The graphic massacres depicted therein were used to lobby against granting more rights to Catholics.<ref>[https://1641.tcd.ie/index.php/historical-memory/ Memory of 1641]. The 1641 Depositions Project, Trinity College Dublin.</ref> |
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The total of Protestant civilians killed in Ulster in the early months of the rebellion was about 4,000. In [[County Armagh]], recent research has shown that about 1,250 Protestants were killed or about a quarter of the planter population there.<ref>Ohlmeyer and Kenyon, ''The Civil Wars'', p. 74</ref> In [[County Tyrone]], modern research has identified three blackspots for the killing of settlers, with the worst being near [[Kinard]], 'where most of the British families planted... were ultimately murdered'<ref>Lenihan, ''Confederate Catholics at War'', p.31</ref>. |
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The Portadown massacre was used to support the view that the Irish Uprising was a vast conspiracy to massacre all of the Protestant inhabitants of Ireland, though in truth large scale massacres such as this were confined to Ulster. The atrocity featured prominently in Parliamentarian propaganda works in the 1640s, most famously by John Temple's ''The Irish Rebellion'' of 1646. The immediate goal of these propagandists was to isolate [[King Charles I of England|King Charles]], who many prominent English Protestants such as [[John Pym]] viewed as being sympathetic to Irish Catholics. In the longer term, accounts of the massacre strengthened the resolve of many Parliamentarians to launch a reconquest of Ireland, which they did in 1649. Over the next 150 years, infamous massacres such as that at Portadown were often cited as a justification for the discriminatory [[Penal Laws]] in Ireland. |
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After the massacre, stories spread of ghosts appearing in the river at Portadown, screeching and crying out for revenge. These stories were said to have struck fear into the locals. One woman stated that [[Confederate Ireland|Irish Confederate]] commander [[Owen Roe O'Neill]] went to the site of the massacre when he returned to Ireland in 1642. She stated that a female ghost appeared, crying for revenge. O'Neill sent for a priest to speak to the ghost, but it would only speak to a Protestant cleric from an English regiment.<ref>Darcy, pp.70–71</ref> |
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==Footnotes== |
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Toole McCann was later captured by English forces. He was questioned and made a statement in May 1653, saying he had not authorised nor seen the massacre, but had only heard of it. He was executed shortly after.<ref>Ellis, p. 109.</ref> |
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*{{fnb|1}} Canny, ''Making Ireland British'', p.485 |
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*{{fnb|2}} MacCuarta, '' Ulster 1642'',p.185 |
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==References== |
==References== |
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{{Reflist}}<!--added under references heading by script-assisted edit--> |
{{Reflist|30em}}<!--added under references heading by script-assisted edit--> |
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* MacCuarta, Brian, ''Ulster 1641'', Institute of Irish Studies, [[Queen's University of Belfast]], 1993, ISBN 0853894914 |
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* Canny, Nicholas P,''Making Ireland British, 1580-1650'' |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:Massacres in Ireland]] |
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[[Category:Massacres |
[[Category:Massacres during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms]] |
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[[Category:17th century in County Armagh]] |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:Irish Rebellion of 1641]] |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:Massacres in 1641]] |
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[[Category:Massacres of Protestants]] |
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[[Category:Portadown]] |
Latest revision as of 14:17, 27 May 2024
Portadown massacre | |
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Part of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 | |
![]() Engraving of the massacre by Wenceslaus Hollar, published in James Cranford's Teares of Ireland (1642) | |
Standort | Portadown, County Armagh, Ireland |
Coordinates | 54°25′16″N 6°27′30″W / 54.421027°N 6.458244°W |
Date | November 1641 |
Attack type | Drowning, shooting |
Deaths | c.100 |
Perpetrators | Irish rebels |
The Portadown massacre took place in November 1641 at Portadown, County Armagh, during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Irish Catholic rebels, likely under the command of Toole McCann, killed about 100 Protestant settlers by forcing them off the bridge into the River Bann and shooting those who tried to swim to safety. The settlers were being marched east from a prison camp at Loughgall. This was the biggest massacre of Protestants during the rebellion, and one of the bloodiest during the Irish Confederate Wars. The Portadown massacre, and others like it, terrified Protestants in Ireland and Great Britain, and were used to justify the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and later to lobby against Catholic rights.
Background
[edit]The Irish rebellion had broken out in Ulster on 23 October 1641. It began as an attempted coup d'état by Catholic gentry and military officers, who tried to seize control of the English administration in Ireland. They wanted to force King Charles I to negotiate an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, and greater Irish self-governance, and to partially or fully reverse the plantations of Ireland. Many of those involved in the rebellion had lost their ancestral lands over the past thirty years in the plantation of Ulster.
Most of the land at Portadown had belonged to the McCanns (Mac Cana), a Gaelic clan. As part of the plantation, this land was confiscated by the English Crown and colonized by English and Scottish Protestant settlers.[1] Rebels, including the McCanns,[1] captured Portadown on the first day of the rebellion along with nearby settlements such as Tandragee and Charlemont.[2]
Some of the rebels began attacking and robbing Protestant settlers, although rebel leaders tried to stop this.[2] Irish historian Nicholas Canny suggests that the violence escalated after a failed rebel assault on Lisnagarvey in November 1641, after which the settlers killed several hundred captured rebels. Canny writes, "the bloody mindedness of the settlers in taking revenge when they gained the upper hand in battle seems to have made such a deep impression on the insurgents that, as one deponent put it, 'the slaughter of the English' could be dated from this encounter".[3]
Massacre
[edit]Twenty-eight people made statements about the incident, but only one of them witnessed it. The others related what they had heard about it, including possibly from some of the rebels themselves.[4]
William Clarke, the only survivor, stated that he had been held in a prison camp at Loughgall, where many of the prisoners were mistreated and some subjected to half-hangings.[4] The rebels in the Loughgall area were commanded by Manus O'Cane.[5] Clarke states that he and about 100 other prisoners were marched six miles to the bridge over the River Bann at Portadown.[4] The wooden bridge had been broken in the middle. Threatened with swords and pikes, Clarke states the prisoners were stripped, and then forced off the bridge and into the cold river below. Those who tried to swim to safety were shot with muskets. Clarke claimed he was able to escape by bribing the rebels.[4][5]
The massacre seems to have happened in mid-November.[5] It is likely that the prisoners were being brought to the coast to be deported to Britain, and rebel leader Felim O'Neill had already sent other such convoys safely to Carrickfergus and Newry.[5] Toole McCann was the rebel captain in charge of the Portadown area at the time, and several people made statements that he was responsible for the massacre. Hilary Simms writes: "The convoy entered his area of control and it would seem likely that even if he did not order it, he and his men could not have avoided being involved in it".[5] Native Irish tenants had already been massacred at Castlereagh, but Pádraig Lenihan writes there is no direct evidence the Portadown massacre was retaliation for this.[6]
Aftermath
[edit]As word of the massacre spread, "elements of what happened were exaggerated, tweaked and fabricated". People who heard about the massacre gave a range of death tolls, from 68 to 196. As Clarke was a witness of the massacre his figure of 100 is taken as being the most credible.[7] Nevertheless, the Portadown massacre was one of the bloodiest in Ireland during the Irish Confederate Wars.[4] About 4,000 Protestant settlers were killed in Ulster in the early months of the rebellion. In County Armagh, recent research has shown that about 1,250 Protestants were killed, about a quarter of the settler population there.[8] In County Tyrone, modern research has identified three blackspots for the killing of settlers, with the worst being near Kinard, "where most of the British families planted ... were ultimately murdered".[9] There were also massacres of local Catholics, such as at Islandmagee in County Antrim,[10] and on Rathlin Island by Scottish Covenanter soldiers.[11] Though a supporter of British rule in Ireland, 19th-century historian William Lecky wrote "it is far from clear on which side the balance of cruelty rests".[12]
The massacre terrified Protestant settlers and was used to support the view that the rebellion was a Catholic conspiracy to massacre all Protestants in Ireland,[5] though in truth such massacres were mostly confined to Ulster. In 1642, a commission of inquiry was held into the killings of settlers. Protestant bishop Henry Jones led the inquiry and read out some of the evidence to the English parliament in March 1642, although most of his speech was based on hearsay.[5] The massacre featured prominently in English Parliamentarian atrocity propaganda in the 1640s, most famously in John Temple's The Irish Rebellion (1646). Temple used the massacres at Portadown and elsewhere to lobby for the military re-conquest of Ireland and the segregation of Irish Catholics from Protestant settlers in Ireland.[13] Accounts of the massacre strengthened the resolve of many Parliamentarians to re-conquer Ireland, which they did in 1649–52. Massacres were committed by Oliver Cromwell's army during this conquest, and it resulted in the confiscation of most Catholic-owned land and mass deportations.[14][15][16] Temple's work was published at least ten times between 1646 and 1812.[17] The graphic massacres depicted therein were used to lobby against granting more rights to Catholics.[18]
After the massacre, stories spread of ghosts appearing in the river at Portadown, screeching and crying out for revenge. These stories were said to have struck fear into the locals. One woman stated that Irish Confederate commander Owen Roe O'Neill went to the site of the massacre when he returned to Ireland in 1642. She stated that a female ghost appeared, crying for revenge. O'Neill sent for a priest to speak to the ghost, but it would only speak to a Protestant cleric from an English regiment.[19]
Toole McCann was later captured by English forces. He was questioned and made a statement in May 1653, saying he had not authorised nor seen the massacre, but had only heard of it. He was executed shortly after.[20]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Lutton, S. C. "The Rise and Development of Portadown". Review – Journal of the Craigavon Historical Society Vol. 5 No. 2. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
- ^ a b Perceval-Maxwell, Michael. The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641. McGill-Queen's Press, 1994. pp.214–219
- ^ Canny, Nicholas. Making Ireland British, 1580–1650. Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 485.
- ^ a b c d e Darcy, Eamon. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Boydell & Brewer, 2015. pp.68–69
- ^ a b c d e f g Simms, Hilary (1997). "Violence in County Armagh, 1641". In MacCuarta, Brian (ed.). Ulster 1641: Aspects of the Rising. Ulster Historical Foundation. pp. 124–126.
- ^ Lenihan, Pádraig. Consolidating Conquest: Ireland 1603–1727. Routledge, 2014. p.99
- ^ Ellis, Beresford. Eyewitness to Irish History. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. p.108
- ^ John Kenyon & Jane Ohlmeyer. The Civil Wars. Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 74.
- ^ Lenihan, Pádraig. Confederate Catholics at War. Cork University Press, 2001. p. 31.
- ^ "The Island Magee Massacre". BBC. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
- ^ Royle, Trevor. Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638–1660. Abacus, 2004. p.143
- ^ Corish, Patrick. "The Rising of 1641 and the Confederacy", in A New History of Ireland: Volume III, Oxford University Press, 1991. p.292
- ^ Darcy, pp.99–100
- ^ Albert Breton (Editor, 1995). Nationalism and Rationality. Cambridge University Press. Page 248. "Oliver Cromwell offered Irish Catholics a choice between genocide and forced mass population transfer.”
- ^ John Morrill. "Rewriting Cromwell: A Case of Deafening Silences." Canadian Journal of History. December 2003: 19.
- ^ Faolain, Turlough (1983). Blood On The Harp. p. 191. ISBN 9780878752751
- ^ Connolly, S. J.. Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630-1800. Oxford University Press, 2008. p. 449.
- ^ Memory of 1641. The 1641 Depositions Project, Trinity College Dublin.
- ^ Darcy, pp.70–71
- ^ Ellis, p. 109.