Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Prelude: Survivors and Victims
- 1 Introduction: Irish Relief and British Problems
- 2 Distress and Great Necessity: The Experience of Survival in 1641
- 3 The Hand of God and the Works of Man: Narrations of Survival
- 4 Imagining the Rebellion: Atrocity, Anti-Popery, and the Tracts of 1641
- 5 ‘A World of Misery’: The International Significance of the 1641 Rebellion
- 6 Many Distressed Irish: Refugees and the Problem of Local Order
- 7 Local Charity: Contributions to the Irish Cause
- 8 Hard and Lamentable Decisions: The Distribution and Decline of Irish Relief
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Imagining the Rebellion: Atrocity, Anti-Popery, and the Tracts of 1641
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Prelude: Survivors and Victims
- 1 Introduction: Irish Relief and British Problems
- 2 Distress and Great Necessity: The Experience of Survival in 1641
- 3 The Hand of God and the Works of Man: Narrations of Survival
- 4 Imagining the Rebellion: Atrocity, Anti-Popery, and the Tracts of 1641
- 5 ‘A World of Misery’: The International Significance of the 1641 Rebellion
- 6 Many Distressed Irish: Refugees and the Problem of Local Order
- 7 Local Charity: Contributions to the Irish Cause
- 8 Hard and Lamentable Decisions: The Distribution and Decline of Irish Relief
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
During the early years of the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, the London artisan Nehemiah Wallington reflected on the political, spiritual, and personal significance of the crisis. Ireland, and specifically the Protestants who suffered under the yoke of the papist rebels, was a central part of this reflection. In late 1641 and 1642, Wallington felt compelled to memorialize stories of atrocities against the godly in Ireland in a commonplace book. He summed up his awareness of the intense suffering of his brethren, lamenting ‘the daily bemoanings of the poor oppressed Protestants [which] would almost pierce a Christian's heart’.
Wallington is, of course, well known to students of the seventeenth century thanks to Paul Seaver's Wallington's World, a masterful recreation of the social, cultural, and mental world of this idiosyncratic and word-obsessed puritan turner. Although many of Wallington's surviving writings attest to his spiritual growth and self-reflection, his works in the 1640s reflect an extensive and intensive engagement with matters of high political significance. Ireland and the war victims of 1641 loom large within these writings. Wallington collected printed accounts of the atrocities in Ireland and copied out excerpts from these tracts, organizing them into a coherent narration of popish inhumanity. Despite the time and expense involved, he felt that this work was an important part of his spiritual duty:
… [I] write them down for the generation to come that they may see what god hath done, that they may put their trust in god and the children unborn may stand up and praise the lord and talk of all his wondrous works. And for our troubles here, and the misery of poor bleeding Ireland, oh how could I be any way affected either with sorrow for the church of God to mourn and pray for them, or with joy to rejoice with them or give thanks for them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion , pp. 76 - 88Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009