Persecution of Irish Catholics

Margaret Anne Cusack

An Illustrated History of Ireland

1868

start of chapter | Chapter XXV

Father Dominic à Rosario, the author of The Geraldines, scarcely exceeded truth when he wrote these memorable words: "This far-famed English Queen has grown drunk on the blood of Christ's martyrs; and, like a tigress, she has hunted down our Irish Catholics, exceeding in ferocity and wanton cruelty the emperors of pagan Rome." We shall conclude this painful subject for the present with an extract from O'Sullivan Beare: "All alarm from the Irish chieftains being ceased, the persecution was renewed with all its horrors. A royal order was promulgated, that all should renounce the Catholic faith, yield up the priests, receive from the heretical minister the morality and tenets of the Gospel. Threats, penalties, and force were to be employed to enforce compliance. Every effort of the Queen and her emissaries was directed to despoil the Irish Catholics of their property, and exterminate them. More than once did they attempt this, for they knew that not otherwise could the Catholic religion be suppressed in our island, unless by the extermination of those in whose hearts it was implanted ;nor could their heretical teachings be propagated, while the natives were alive to detest and execrate them."[5]

Notes

[5] Them.—Hist. Cath. p. 133.

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