Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 2.djvu/511

 Candles were blazing at all the windows. The public places were as bright as at noonday. All the great avenues were barricaded. More than twenty thousand pikes and muskets lined the streets. The late daybreak of the winter solstice found the whole City still in arms. During many years the Londoners retained a vivid recollection of what they called the Irish Night. When it was known that there had been no cause of alarm, attempts were made to discover the origin of the rumour which had produced so much agitation. It appeared that some persons who had the look and dress of clowns just arrived from the country had first spread the report in the suburbs a little before midnight: but whence these men came, and by whom they were employed, remained a mystery. And soon news arrived from many quarters which bewildered the public mind still more. The panic had not been confined to London. The cry that disbanded Irish soldiers were coming to murder the Protestants had, with malignant ingenuity, been raised at once in many places widely distant from each other. Great numbers of letters, skilfully framed for the purpose of frightening ignorant people, had been sent by stage coaches, by waggons, and by the post, to various parts of England. All these letters came to hand almost at the same time. In a hundred towns at once the populace was possessed with the belief that armed barbarians were at hand, bent on perpetrating crimes as foul as those which had disgraced the rebellion of Ulster. No Protestant would find mercy. Children would be compelled by torture to murder their parents. Babes would be stuck on pikes, or flung into the blazing ruins of what had lately been happy dwellings. Great multitudes assembled with weapons: the people in some places began to pull down bridges, and to throw up barricades: but soon the excitement went down. In many districts those who had been so foully imposed upon learned with delight, alloyed by shame, that there was not a single Popish soldier within a week's march. There were places, indeed, where some straggling bands of Irish made their appearance and demanded food: but it can scarcely be imputed to them as a crime that they did not choose to die of