CHAPTER VI. SUFFERINGS OF CATHOLICS IN KILKENNY
1. After the massacre of Wexford, Cromwell invited the other cities and towns to surrender. Should they consent to receive parliamentary garrisons, their property and goods were to be secured to them, and no inquiries were to be made as to religion. One thing only would be required, that the Mass should be abolished, ”for,“ he added, ”wheresoever the sway and authority of Parliament extends, the Mass shall not be tolerated“. However unable the Catholics might be to resist the torrent of destruction that was now bursting upon them, yet they were too devoted to the faith to embrace this impious condition, and, as we learn from Dr. Burgatt (subsequently Archbishop of Cashel), not one was found in the whole island who would consent to barter his religion fro the proffered boon ( "Brevis Relatio de praesenti in Hibernia fidei et Ecclesiae statu“, 1667). Thus the sword of extermination was again unsheathed.
”Catholicity was flourishing in the city of Kilkenny when the Puritan army, like a devastating torrent, overturning everything in its course, appeared before its walls“ (Relation rerum, etc). Whilst the inhuman foe threatened it from without, another scourge laid it waste within. The plague raged with such fury, that its brave garrison was reduced from 1200 to 400. So dreadful was the contagion, that when the Earl of Castlehaven selected some troops to succour it, they refused to march, declaring they were ready to fight against man, but not against God. The enemy granted favourable conditions to the citizens, but no sooner had they got possession of the city, than these were violated; they impiously profaned the churches, overturned the altars, destroyed the paintings and crosses, and profaned all things sacred. The vestments, which had been for the most part concealed, were discovered and plundered by the soldiery; the books and paintings were cast into the streets, and either destroyed by fire or carried away as booty“. The holy bishop, Dr. David Rooth, venerable for his yyears, his piety, his learning, and his zeal, and just entered a carriage to seek for safety by flight, when the enemy arrived. They inhumanly dragged him from his seat, despoiled him of his garments, and then clothing him with a tattered cloakwhich was covered with vermin, they cast him into a loathsome dungeon, where after a prolonged martyrdon, he expired in the month of April 1650. (Letter of Dr. Fleming, Archbishop of Dublin, 5th June, 1650).
2. Dr. Patrick Lynch of Galway, writing on the 1st of May 1650, to the secretary of the Sacred Congregation, mentions that the rumour had reached him of the death of this holy bishop, of the cruelties exercised in the city of Kilkenny, and of numbers of priests and religious, and citizens, having been put to death.
At the same time the fine old cathedral of St. Canice, and most of the other churches in the surrounding country, were pillaged and plundered by the soldiery.
Dr. Williams, Protestant Bishop of Ossory, in a treatise published in 1651, describes the churches of the diocese as unroofed, and their walls thrown down, by the iconoclastic rage of the Parliamentarians, and adds:-
"The great and famous most beautiful Cathedral Church of St. Keney, they have utterly defaced and ruined, thrown down all the roof of it, taken away five great and goodly bells, broken down all the windows, and carried away every bit of the glass (that they say was worth a great deal), and all the doors of it, so that hogs might come and root, and the dogs gnaw the bones of the dead: and they brake a most exquisite marble font, wherein the Xtian‘s children were regenerated, all to pieces, and threw down the many goodly marble monuments that wee therein“. (”Seven Treatises“ etc. London 1661)
The most recent historian of the Cathedral of St. Canice gives some further particulars to illustrate the profanation of our Catholic sanctuaries by the Protestant soldiers:-
"In 1650, Cromwell having occupied the Irish town (of Kilkenny), and, we may suppose, the Cathedral, on the 25th of March, lodged there the night before his attempt to breach the town wall near the Franciscan abbey. On this occasion, tradition has it that the aisles of the cathedral church were converted into stabling for the horses of the Protector’s troops.“ (”The History, etc. , of the Cathedral Church of St. Canice“ By Rev. James Graves. Dublin, 1857, p.42).
3. Whilst the pestilence raged within the city, one good priest, Father Patrick Lea, was especially distinguished by his charity and zeal. Not only was he untiring in administering to the spiritual wants of the sick and dying, but he also assisted them in their corporal wants; he ministered to the poor even in the most loathsome duties, ans sometimes, too, he was seen digging graves, and bearing on his shoulders to interment the bodies of those who were abandoned. It was whilst exercising this last-mentioned excess of Christian heroism that he himself was infected with the disease, and expired a martyr of charity a few days before the arrival of Cromwell at the gates of Kilkenny.( Relatio rerum, etc.)
4. The Committee of Transplantation published an order in 1654, commanding all Irish and Papists to depart from the city of Kilkenny before the 1st of May. Permission was granted for only forty labourers to remain after that period, and even these were to be persons not otherwise included within the rule of transplantation. Again, on the 15th of May the following year, it was ordered, on the petition of the Protestants of Kilkenny, that ”for the better encouragement of an English plantation in the city and liberties, all the houses and lands lately belonging to the Irish, and now in the possession of the State, should be thenceforth demised to English and Protestants, and none others; and that all Irish should quit Kilkenny within twenty days, except such artificers as any four justices of the peace should, for the convenience of that corporation, license to stay for any period not exceeding one year“ (Prendergast, p. 142). Neither did the commissioners allow these orders to slumber, and, as an instance, it is mentioned in a letter of March 25th, 1665/6, that Daniel Fitzpatrick was sentenced to death by the commissioners in Kilkenny for refusing to transport himself into Connaught.