Page:Abstract of the bloody massacre in Ireland.pdf/21

 them with skeins, and pulled out the guts of one of the children, whereby they died; and not far off they took divers men, women and children, and hanged them up; one of the women being great with child, they ripped up her belly as she hanged, so that the child fell out in the cawl alive. Some after they were hanged, they drew up and down till their bowels were torn out.

How many thousands of Protestants were thus inhumanly butchered by sundry kinds of deaths, we cannot ascertain.

In the province of Ulster, we find about one hundred and fifty thousand murdered, as before: What the number of the slain was in the three other provinces, we find not upon record, but certainly it was very great, for you have these passages in a general remonstrance, of the distressed Protestants in the province of Munster, “We may, say they, compare our woe to the saddest parallel of any story, our churches are profaned by sacrifices to idols; our habitations are become ruinous heaps; no quality, age, or sex; privileged from massacre, and lingering deaths, by being robbed, stripped naked, and so exposed to cold and famine. The famished infants of murdered parents swarm in our streets; and for want of food, perish before our faces, &c. And all this cruelty that is exercised upon us, we know not for what cause, offence, or seeming provocation that is inflicted on us, (sin excepted) saving that we are, &c. Who