Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/58

 France, to make concessions to the Pope. A large body of the Irish refugees, who had just entered the Spanish service, were at the moment discontented with the terms of their enlistment, and resolved to pass over the Pyrenees. Attracted by the promise of pay and plunder, they made thence for Italy. On their march they were said to have vaunted 'that they had massacred the English Protestants in Ireland,' and that they would 'now tear in pieces and crucify quick any of the religion' they might find elsewhere. Early in January 1654 they were near Nimes, one of the principal Protestant cities of France, and owing to these boasts they were not allowed to come within the walls. Thence they passed on into Piedmont, and took service with the Duke. Soon the barbarities which, with other soldiers of fortune, they exercised against the unoffending inhabitants of the Alpine valleys, were a household word in every Protestant home in Europe. The adversaries of the Irish confiscations were now swept away in a fierce torrent of national indignation, and the nascent feeling of pity, which was beginning to make itself felt in England, was rudely crushed. 'The distressed and afflicted people of God,' the officers in Ireland wrote in a memorial to the Protector, 'have so bitter a portion, even a cup of astonishment, put into their hands to drink by that scarlet strumpet who makes herself drunk with the blood of the saints, because they refuse to drink of the wine of the fornication. What peace can we rejoice in when the whoredoms, murders, and witchcrafts of Jezebel are so mighty?' An Irish plot, fomented by the Jesuits, to murder the Protector was also suspected. Two of the ambassadors of the Commonwealth, Dr. Dorislaus and Antony Ayscam, had actually fallen under the knives of assassins abroad.

The atmosphere was heavy with anxiety. Dr. Petty relates how, at Dublin, in the midst of the controversies about the settlement of the country, 'his Excellency, the Lord Deputy, meeting in the Castle with several officers of the army, they together did resolve freely to contribute and