Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/16

Cromwell in Ireland some great historic cataclysm, some vast fact of human destruction which has wanted no historian to describe it, so largely is it written in characters, which even Time is powerless to efface, over the broad page of the entire island.

People have grown so accustomed to those relics that few stop to think or to ask what they were, or why they are ruined? It seems so natural they should be there. Are they not Irish? Do not the jackdaws nest in them? does not the ivy rest on them? do not the cattle shelter and shade in them from winter cold and summer heats?—that is all.

To-night I hope to lift a corner of the curtain which has enveloped these "fragments of stone raised (and ruined) by creatures of clay," and to show something of the actual impact of the storm which passed over Ireland two hundred and fifty years ago, to leave its wrecks still visible across the length and breadth of the land.

The time at which I ask you to begin is the early part of 1649. The Parliament has been purged by ex-drayman, now Colonel, Pride. The King has been beheaded at the banqueting hall in sight of Charing Cross; the nation has supped full of horrors; the death of the King has produced in the great majority of the people a profound sense of gloom, and a dread of 4