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"An Irish guy walks into a bar..."
After an evening spent drinking with Irish conspirators, an inebriated Owen Connelly confessed to colonial administrators in Ireland that a plot was underway to root out and destroy Ireland's English and Protestant population. Within days English colonists in Ireland believed that a widespread massacre of Protestant settlers was taking place. Desperate for help, they began to look to their colleagues in England for help, claiming that they were surrounded by an evil popish menace set on destroying their community. Soon, sworn statements--later called the 1641 Depositions--confirmed their fears. In later years, Protestant commentators could point to the 1641 rebellion as proof of Catholic barbarity. |
What are the 1641 Depositions?
"The 1641 Depositions are witness testimonies mainly by Protestants, but also by some Catholics, from all social backgrounds, concerning their experiences of the 1641 Irish rebellion. The testimonies document the loss of goods, military activity, and the alleged crimes committed by the Irish insurgents, including assault, stripping, imprisonment and murder. This body of material is unparalleled anywhere in early modern Europe, and provides a unique source of information for the causes and events surrounding the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland." ~Trinity College Library, Dublin
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