This is a guest blog by the writer Tom Reilly. It
is copyrighted further publication is at the discretion of the author.
On the morning before Oliver Cromwell swung his
legs out of bed to travel to Ireland, the notion of besieging the town of
Drogheda – the event that would later become the biggest blot on his career –
would never have even occurred to him. That’s because Drogheda was under
roundhead control that day as it had been for the lengthy duration of two whole
years previously. He could simply have strolled through any of the gates of the
walled town any time that day and he would have been greeted with a barrage of deferential
good morning sirs.
On 11 July 1649, the town of Drogheda was captured
by the royalists under Lord Inchiquin and wrested from the hands of Parliament,
who had been in military occupation since the summer of 1647. It was
parliamentarian soldiers who would later be accused of committing civilian
atrocities at Drogheda, yet it was parliamentarian soldiers who had lived
peaceably, side by side with these very same inhabitants for two long years
beforehand, with no recorded evidence of discord between the military and
civilian occupants whatsoever. Indeed, there is even some evidence to suggest
that Cromwell’s attacking forces at Drogheda included members of roundhead
regiments who had fraternised with the local populace for those two years
previously. Cromwell, who would not have been aware of the royalist victory at
Drogheda the previous day, left London for Ireland on 12 July 1649 to crush
royalist resistance there.
But that’s not what the history books will tell you
– especially Irish history books. In Irish history it is much more difficult
than in the story of most other countries to reverse traditional views, and
although there have been many investigators of this period at first hand, few
have concluded that Cromwell was not a war criminal.
The idea that the massacre of the unarmed civilian
populations of both Drogheda and Wexford by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army
did indeed take place has survived through the centuries almost perfectly
intact. Indeed, it is so well constructed that it is virtually indestructible.
The years bristle with the names of erudite academics who have studied
Cromwell’s Irish campaign and who have produced hundreds of articles and books
on the subject.
Even the most ardent Cromwell enthusiasts who have
studied the period forensically have conceded that large-scale massacres of
defenceless civilians occurred in September (Drogheda) and October (Wexford)
1649. Done deal. Case closed. The result of their labour is captured in short
sound bytes in both past and present Irish school textbooks. In 2004, Folens
published Earthlink 5th Class. On page 87 the following words are printed:
‘Cromwell captured Drogheda. About 3,000 men, women and children were killed.’
The Educational Company of Ireland released Timeline in 2008. A paragraph on
page 223 reads, ‘He [Cromwell] first laid siege to Drogheda. He was determined
to make an example of the town. When he captured it he slaughtered the entire
population.’ There is no ambiguity there.
Such is his murderous Irish legacy, Cromwell
features in a modern-day cult card game called Terror Top Chumps, a
‘politically charged version’ of the children’s card game Top Trumps (created
by Fear Trade Ltd.) alongside Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Mussolini,
Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Sadam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden; a
total of thirty-two terrorists and dictators in all – and has a body count of
600,000 attributed to him. Not by coincidence, this figure has often been used
as the entire number of people who died due to famine, pestilence and war
during the Cromwellian period in Ireland.
When discussing the horrific events at Drogheda in
1649, one of the ‘go to’ sources for many is the (second hand) account of the
parliamentarian soldier Thomas á Wood, who fought at Drogheda and therefore
could be (and often has been) described as an eyewitness. Wood reputedly tells
us that children were used ‘as a buckler of defence’ by the attackers and he
describes the gruesome killing of a young local girl, whom he tried to save but
one of his crazed colleagues stabbed her through ‘her belly or fundament
whereupon Mr Wood seeing her gasping, took away her money, jewels &c.,
and flung her down over the works.’
Although some have determined that Wood’s tract is
melodramatic hyperbole it has generally been used in a primary source context
coming directly from an eyewitness. This is a mistake. Now for the first time
the stories of Thomas á Wood, which were transcribed decades later by his
brother Anthony, (rendering it non-eyewitness testimony) in the context of
fireside stories with which he regaled his ‘brethren’ can be revealed as
unequivocally untrustworthy. The source is normally cited loosely as The Life
of Anthony á Wood from the year 1632 to 1672 written by himself.
New evidence now clearly shows that this book was
first compiled (not published) in 1711 by Doctor Thomas Tanner, 16 years
after Anthony á Wood died and 62 years after Drogheda. Most significantly, however, is the fact that it might easily have been influenced by the hands of
others and it did not see the light of day until 1772 when a Thomas Hearne
edited and published it - that’s 123 years after the events!
Anthony á Wood, a staunch royalist, who was always
suspected of being a Catholic had his life’s historical works published after
his death in various publications, and all with different editors (including
the Rev Sir J Peshall 1773, John Gutch 1786, Phillip Bliss 1813, Andrew Clark
1889), some of which included the story of his life, which in turn contains the
account of his brother Thomas at Drogheda. Wood’s biography was not in fact
published by himself in the literal sense but was transcribed by editor Hearne
in 1772 from pocket diaries, documents and manuscripts that Wood left to Dr
Tanner, among others, on his deathbed. This is not exactly what you would call
an authentic primary source directly from an eyewitness. Diminishing the
credibility of the source even further is the fact that Colonel Henry
Ingoldsby, Thomas á Wood’s commanding officer described Thomas as having ‘an
art of merriment called buffooning.’ Just the type of soldier, as Samuel Rawson
Gardiner has suggested, who might make up sensational stories to impress a
fireside audience.
It is important to analyse Anthony á Wood’s
commentary because his is the only account that gives details of civilian
deaths at Drogheda, using his brother’s lurid stories, if they even were his
brother’s own lurid stories. In stark contrast to what the Wood brothers
purportedly say are the actual words of Oliver Cromwell. As soon as he landed
in Ireland he issued orders to his troops not to do ‘any wrong or violence to
any person, not in arms or office with the enemy.’ In the main, commentators on
this topic throughout antiquity tend to assume that Cromwell just ignored the
fact that many of his troops simply disregarded this order and lost their
self-control at Drogheda, as indeed did their commanding officer himself. But
the evidence does not support this point of view.
In his declaration to the Catholic clergy in the
winter of 1649, after Drogheda and Wexford Cromwell categorically denies that
he has stepped outside the military domain, and on no less than ten occasions
he emphasises that the ordinary unarmed people of Ireland are to be left
unmolested. On one occasion he even denies that he has actually killed unarmed
civilians and he is consistent in this respectful attitude to the civilian
population in all of his documented utterances throughout his entire campaign
in Ireland. On his approach to Drogheda he even had two of his men hanged for
stealing hens from an old woman, a clear breach of his orders.
On several occasions throughout his life, Cromwell
shows his abhorrence of indiscriminate civilian massacres when he hears of
them. In Ireland, he unequivocally blames the Catholic clergy for the 1641
massacres of innocent Protestant settlers and outlines his revulsion of such
behaviour in no uncertain terms in the above-mentioned declaration.
Also in May 1655 as Lord Protector, he is clearly
horrified when he learns of the massacre by the troops of the Catholic duke of
Savoy, of some 200-300 Protestants known as Waldensians who lived in the
adjoining isolated Alpine valleys in Piedmont to the west of Turin. There is
ample evidence from throughout his life that Cromwell’s moral threshold was
high and even in this narrow context of an appreciation of his character, a
massacre of unarmed blacksmiths, cobblers, innkeepers, their wives, daughters,
babies and toddlers at either Drogheda or Wexford at his hands does not accord
with his personality and now given these fresh insights seems ludicrous in the
extreme. Those who promote Cromwell as a war criminal perpetuate the idea that
he simply lost his moral compass in Ireland and returned to his old self on his
return to England. This is not an inaccurate portrayal.
So where then did the allegations of civilian
atrocities come from? Much store has been put into the letters (or
military despatches) that Cromwell sent back to his superiors in London from
both Drogheda and Wexford that outline the events at both towns in detail. In
the opinion of many, the letter concerning Drogheda in particular has
incriminated Cromwell, where he is alleged to have admitted that he killed
‘many inhabitants in that town in a list of the slain that appears in the
official pamphlet that was printed by parliament on 2 October 1649 to
officially announce the news of the fall of Drogheda.
In the pamphlet Letters from Ireland relating the
Several great successes, it hath pleased God to give unto the Parliament’s
forces there, in the taking of Drogheda, Trym, Dundalk, Carlingford and the
Nury. Together with a list of the chief commanders, and the number of the
officers and soldiers slain in Drogheda this list appears at the end of
Cromwell’s letter, the last line of which reads, ‘Two thousand Five hundred
Foot Soldiers, besides Staff Officers, Chyrurgeons, &c and many
inhabitants.’
For the first time in 365 years, this official government
document has now been analysed forensically (by me) in conjunction with the
newsbooks (newspapers) of the day that also carried the exact same list of
those killed. And for the first time ever it can be almost categorically said
(inasmuch as anything from that period can) that the three words ‘and many
inhabitants’ were NOT the words of Cromwell himself. Up to now, most early
modern historians have deemed these lists (There is also a list of the
composition of the garrison.) in Letters from Ireland... to have been from the
quill of Old Ironsides himself. (The original letter does not survive.) But
this writer’s analysis proves that the published list of those slain at
Drogheda was in separate circulation to Cromwell’s letter and that it was
published in no less than seven newsbooks in early October 1649 in isolation,
without Cromwell’s letters directly preceding it. Furthermore, none of the
newsbook writers attributes the list to Cromwell himself. It can also be shown
that of the seven publications that printed the list of the slain, only two
include the phrase ‘and many inhabitants’. Most significantly, this list of the
slain can now be shown to have been in circulation on 22 September, TEN days
before Cromwell’s letter was even opened in parliament. It can further be shown
that the pamphlet was printed in haste and that these two lists were simply
slotted into the available spaces on the 16-page leaflet with clear demarcation
lines to separate the lists from Cromwell’s letters.
Of course, the caveat here is that these ‘many
inhabitants’ may well have been armed and involved in the conflict, a scenario
that is perfectly plausible since The Moderate Intelligencer of 6 September
says of Drogheda that ‘every man in that kingdom fit to bear arms is in a posture
of war.’ This is another inconvenient fact that is now being brought to general
public attention for the first time ever and that gets in the way of the tales
of indiscriminate massacres of unarmed civilians. After all, an armed civilian
is no longer a civilian.
Seventeenth-century historians rightly generally
disregard (or at least view with acute suspicion) the later accounts of
post-Restoration writers who, when writing their memoirs, documented their
accounts about this issue years afterwards (like Bulstrode Whitelocke, the Earl
of Clarendon, Dr George Bate, and the officer in the regiment of Sir John
Clotworthy). None of these individuals were at either Drogheda or Wexford, they
were not qualified to comment, had axes to grind and all allege that Cromwell
engaged in deliberate civilian massacres.
The most pragmatic way to approach the question of
the origin of the deliberate civilian atrocity allegations is to separate the
wheat from the chaff and identify the primary sources themselves, those that
date from the year 1649 and were written in the weeks and months following the
sackings of Drogheda and Wexford. These 1649 sources are well-known and mostly
comprise the newsbooks of the day, the letters of those in command of the
royalist army (Lord Ormond and Lord Inchiquin) and one or two private letters.
It may therefore occasion surprise for one to learn
that in the eleven intervening years between the stormings of both Drogheda and
Wexford and the Restoration there are just TWO contemporary accounts that
allege Cromwell slaughtered the lawyers, merchants, servants, farmers, doctors,
carpenters, washerwomen, widows, teenagers and children of Drogheda and Wexford.
That being the case, it is not such a wild leap of
faith to identify these two individuals as the ones who instigated the civilian
massacre stories – or alternatively to identify them as the ones who framed
Oliver Cromwell. Sir George Wharton and John Crouch were royalist propagandists
who spewed out their radical anti-government newsbooks Mercurius Elencticus and
The Man in the Moon respectively on a weekly basis. Both Wharton and Crouch
have been described by many early modern print experts as the purveyors of
little news but lots of outlandish absurdity. Any analysis of any of their publications
will reveal their penchant for lies, slander, slurs, calumny and character
assassination, including crass sexual innuendo directed at Cromwell himself and
his high profile parliamentary bosses. Indeed, in his edition of 7 November
1649 John Crouch decides to spread a rumour that Cromwell’s penis was shot off
at Drogheda and goes into some explicit and gaudy details as to how this might
affect Mrs Cromwell.
For eleven long years no other document, that we
know, accuses Cromwell of civilian atrocities. There the matter should
really have ended. Indeed, it is worth speculating that if the House of
Cromwell, in the guise of his son Richard in the first instance, the second
Lord Protector, had survived into the 1660s and beyond it is likely that both
Crouch’s and Wharton’s outrageous publications would have been long cast to the
mists of time.
Instead, of course, the Restoration happened when
Charles II restored his royal seat on the throne and it wasn’t long before his
father’s killers became the victims of vengeful royalist wrath. Not long after
the bodies of Cromwell, his parliamentarian compatriot John Bradshaw and
son-in-law Henry Ireton were exhumed and defiled as the chief protagonists of
the failed republic, people couldn’t get to the printing presses quickly enough
to destroy their reputations. The royalist James Heath was one of the first out
of the traps when he published his scurrilous Flagellum, The Life and Death,
Birth, Burial of O Cromwell, the Late Usurper in1660 where the author alleges
that Cromwell himself ordered the massacre of 300 women around the market cross
in Wexford. Indeed, Heath further alleges that those troops he ordered to carry
out the dastardly deed refused and Cromwell, sneering them for their refusal,
called another group of soldiers up to complete the task. Few historians take
anything Heath says seriously.
Interestingly, Heath doesn’t even mention the
deaths of any inhabitants of Drogheda in his heavily biased narrative. That
particular privilege is left to the Catholic clergy in Ireland, who join in the
post-Restoration Cromwell bashing free-for-all and now ludicrously declare that
4,000 civilians had died in Drogheda without a scrap of primary source
evidence. Naturally, 4,000 dead civilians at Drogheda makes no sense whatsoever,
since the population of the town was approximately 3,000 and we already know
that upwards of 3,000 soldiers were slaughtered. No other source, credible or
otherwise suggests for a moment that 7,000 souls lost their lives at Drogheda. Furthermore,
this same body politic of the Catholic clergy had already had their say about
Drogheda and Wexford in their decrees from Clonmacnoise in the winter of 1649,
when there is no mention of this assertion whatsoever. And the difference in
the timing? Cromwell was still alive and well, still in Ireland, and he would
have dismissed such claims out of hand in the strongest possible terms, one
imagines, with any talk of restoration at that point aeons away.
Among the many other fresh revelations that this
writer has discovered is evidence from several different sources that suggest
the civilian population of Drogheda were not even in the town by the time the
12,000 Roundheads sat down in front of the walls. For instance, there was a
siege of Drogheda just eight years earlier when the Irish rebels, under the
command of Sir Phelim O’Neill surrounded the entire town and reduced the
population to eating rats and horses. It is difficult to believe that they
would stay put to have a similar culinary experience so soon afterwards.
Furthermore, Ormond was expecting a long siege and ordered all ‘superfluous’
people to depart from the town in order that the provisions (a reported
nine-month supply) stored there would stretch among the soldiers over the
several months they expected the siege to last. Dean Nicholas Bernard, the
Protestant minister at St Peter’s Church in Drogheda in 1649, and an
eyewitness, confirms that his family were sent out of the town. Bernard, who
saw what happened that day and wrote a detailed account of it later, says
nothing of civilian deaths.
There is no doubt that some women died in Wexford
as a result of them cramming into boats and the boats sinking in the harbour in
an attempt to flee the place. But they clearly died as the result of an
accident and not because of a deliberate policy to kill the innocent by the New
Model.
Also into this anti-Interregnum maelstrom of
vengeance came the petition of the people of Wexford, who were pleading to
Charles II for the restoration of their properties following the Cromwellian
Plantation. Remarkably the petition writers seem to have chosen to grossly
exaggerate Cromwell’s actions in Ireland in order to receive clemency from
their new king. In their petition, they claim that after entering Wexford,
Cromwell ‘put man, woman and child, to a very few’ to the sword, again a
scenario that has no supporting contemporary evidence or eyewitness
attestation. In the same petition, the writers allege that Cromwell ‘put all of
the inhabitants and soldiers’ of Drogheda to the sword, an allegation that
simply does not stand up since nobody who was there on that fateful day
corroborates this contention. This significantly reduces the credibility of the
petitioners’ sycophantic petition, which Charles II ultimately ignored anyway.
The evidence now being revealed by this writer
simply hones in on whether or not Cromwell was responsible for deliberately
killing large numbers of innocent, unarmed civilians in Ireland in the year
1649. Some may have died in the cross-fire, as the result of collateral damage,
others definitely drowned by accident. The subsequent dreadful Cromwellian
Plantation that devastated Catholic Ireland is another matter altogether and
should not cloud one’s judgement when discussing these alleged war crimes. Were large numbers of innocent civilians deliberately massacred? Did Cromwell do it,
or did he not? Should we still be teaching children that Cromwell
indiscriminately slaughtered entire town populations? As President of the
Cromwell Association, Prof John Morrill has recently announced, ‘Paradoxically,
by blaming Cromwell for the much more lasting horrors of the Commonwealth
period in Ireland, we let those really responsible off the hook.’
I, for one, as an Irish citizen and native of
Drogheda would like to start the ball rolling and posthumously apologise to
Oliver Cromwell and his family for staining his reputation. He was an
honourable enemy and the victim of a huge miscarriage of historical justice.
Cromwell was framed. Wharton and Crouch fitted him
up.
