that it was a righteous judgment of God on
barbarous wretches who had imbued their hands in so much innocent blood;
and 2. that it would tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.
2. Now the insinuation conveyed in the first of these reasons, that
the major part of the garrison had been engaged in the outbreak of the
rebellion and its accompanying horrors, was in all probability a falsehood;
for the major part of the garrison was not composed of native soldiers,
but of Englishmen serving under the marquess of Ormond, the king's lord
lieutenant. This is plain from the evidence of persons who cannot be
supposed ignorant of the fact; the evidence of the royalist Clarendon
(History, vol. iii. part i. p. 323), and of the republican Ludlow, who soon
afterwards was made general of the horse, and became Cromwell's deputy
in the government of the island (Ludlow, Memoirs, i. 301). But, however
groundless the insinuation might be, it served Cromwell's purpose; it would
array in his favour the fanaticism of the more godly of his party.
For the massacre of the townspeople in the church he offers a similar
apology, equally calculated to interest the feelings of the saints. "They
had had the insolence on the last Lord's day to thrust out the Protestants,
and to have the mass said there.
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