Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/42

Cromwell in Ireland in Ulster of an illness which was to prove fatal to him, and to Ireland. It was said that he died from the effects of poison conveyed into his system by means of a pair of the large military russet boots which were then worn by mounted officers, and Carte gives the name of the agent who afterwards boasted of the service he had done the Parliament by this dastard deed. But history is doubtful as to the precise manner of this great soldier’s death. As to its effect upon the Royal cause in Ireland, history has never had any doubt. It was its death blow.

The exact date upon which Cromwell landed in Dublin is disputed, but it is certain that he and his army were all there by the last week in August, and in the early days of September he moved north for Drogheda.

Of his work in Dublin, during the ten or twelve days Cromwell spent there, we know little, but enough has come down to show that never had his matchless powers of dissimulation been exercised to greater effect, and never did he succeed better in deceiving with words of hypocritic kindness the victims upon whose destruction he was then wholly bent. Just as he had lured the Presbyterian party in the Civil War to destruction by an ostentatious acceptation of the Covenant to which he swore adher- 30