17 OCTOBER 1914, Page 20

O'NEILL AND ORMOND.* OWEN ROE O'NEILL was a member of

the great Tyrone family who entered the Spanish military service and returned to lead his countrymen after the outbreak of the Irish Rebel- lion of 1641. By the time he reached Ireland the Civil War in

• O'Neill and Ormond: a Chapter in Irish History. By Diarraid Coffey. insauset and Co. [6e. net

England had broken out, and he fought as a Royalist against the Parliamentary force which was suppressing the rebellion. He was, above everything else, a devout Roman Catholic, and he sided with the Papal Nuncio, Rinuccini, in the disputes which prevented the insurgent Irish from taking advantage of the English crisis of 1648, when Cromwell's attention was occupied by the second Civil War. Rinuccini had to leave Ireland a defeated man, and O'Neill entered into negotiations with General Monck. The approach of Cromwell's invasion threw him into the arms of Ormond, but he died almost immediately. His services to Ireland consisted in his winning an Irish victory (the only important Irish success in the war) at Benburb in 1646, and in his raising and keeping together an army which gave Cromwell considerable trouble. Mr. Coffey's book contrasts O'Neill's career with that of Ormond. James Butler, afterwards first Duke of Ormond, had been left by Strafford in command in Ireland daring his absence, and as a Royalist he played a great part in the suppression of the rebellion. Mr. Coffey has nothing to add to what we already know of this struggle. He describes it from his own point of view, and he regards O'Neill as " the pure patriot who cares for his country and his country only." The moral which he draws is that " the fatal flaw in the whole movement of 1641 and after is found where, for personal or other reasons, a body of Irishmen looks away from the main issue of Irish government in Irish interests. Whether the other interest be that of England, or that of the Roman Catholic Church, or of the Puritans, it alike obscures the Irish issue, and prevents the real interests of Ireland being served." From our point of view, the history of " the whole movement of 1641 and after shows how impossible it is to separate Irish interests from the interest of England or from the interest of the Roman Catholic Church, and the relations between Ormond and O'Neill and between O'Neill and Rinuccini seem to us a particularly good illustration of a thesis quite different from Mr. Coffey's. But he has stated his facts not unfairly from his own standpoint, and his book is worth reading. There are here and there, and especially in the preface, statements to which exception can be taken. It is not quite just to say that Mr. Lecky has proved that the whole story of the massacre of 1641 is a wicked and deliberate exaggeration, for this might easily be taken to mean that there was no massacre at all. What Mr. Lecky does say is that the old story of " a sudden surprise, immediately followed by a general and organized massacre, is utterly and absolutely untrue," but he adds that " it is equally impossible to doubt that murders occurred on a large scale, with appalling frequency, and often with atrocious circumstances of aggravation." In the short chapter in which he deals with the subject, Mr. Coffey represents Mr. Lecky's view accurately enough, but the effect of the difference of standpoint is illustrated by his remark that it is " unnecessary to repeat the well-known story of the bridge of Portadown and other such tales." Mr. Lecky takes scarcely more space to tell that "at least eighty persons of both sexes were pre- cipitated into the river from the bridge of Portadown, and perhaps as many at Corbridge in the county of Armagh." The use of the words " story" and " tales" suggests disbelief on Mr. Coffey's part, but in another clause of the same sentence he says that " there is much evidence to prove that such incidents were merely incidents," and we gather that he does not deny Mr. Lecky's statement. The contrast shows how differently the same thing may be said.