Foxe - The Book of Martyrs

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
Lochwater, situated in a lake near the sea. Here he remained with his companions some weeks,
all of them daily expecting to be put to death. The greatest part of them were stripped naked,
by which means, as the season was cold, (it being in the month of December) and the building
in which they were confined open at the top, they suffered the most severe hardships. They
continued in this situation until the seventh of January, when they were all released. The
bishop was courteously received into the house of Dennis O'Sheridan, one of his clergy, whom
he had made a convert to the Church of England; but he did not long survive this kindness.
During his residence here, he spent the whole of his time in religious exercises, the better
to fit and prepare himself and his sorrowful companions for their great change, as nothing but
certain death was perpetually before their eyes. He was at this time in the seventy-first year
of his age, and being afflicted with a violent ague caught in his late cold and desolate
habitation on the lake, it soon threw him into a fever of the most dangerous nature. Finding
his dissolution at hand, he received it with joy, like one of the primitive martyrs just hastening
to his crown of glory. After having addressed his little flock, and exhorted them to patience,
in the most pathetic manner, as they saw their own last day approaching, after having solemnly
blessed his people, his family, and his children, he finished the course of his ministry and life
together, on the seventh day of February 1642.
His friends and relations applied to the intruding bishop for leave to bury him, which was
with difficulty obtained; he, at first telling them that the churchyard was holy ground, and
should be no longer defiled with heretics: however, leave was at last granted, and though the
church funeral service was not used at the solemnity, (for fear of the Irish papists) yet some
of the better sort, who had the highest veneration for him while living, attended his remains
to the grave. At this interment they discharged a volley of shot, crying out, Requiescat in pace
ultimus Anglorum, that is, "May the last of the English rest in peace."
Adding, that as he was one of the best so he should be the last English bishop found
among them. His learning was very extensive; and he would have given the world a greater
proof of it, had he printed all he wrote. Scarce any of his writings were saved; the papists
having destroyed most of his papers and his library. He had gathered a vast heap of critical
expositions of Scripture, all which with a great trunk full of his manuscripts, fell into the
hands of the Irish. Happily his great Hebrew manuscript was preserved, and is now in the
library of Emanuel College, Oxford.
In the barony of Terawley, the papists, at the instigation of the friars, compelled above
forty English Protestants, some of whom were women and children, to the hard fate of either
falling by the sword, or of drowning in the sea. These choosing the latter, were accordingly
forced, by the naked weapons of their inexorable persecutors, into the deep, where, with their
children in their arms, they first waded up to their chins, and afterwards sunk down and
perished together.
In the castle of Lisgool upwards of one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, were
all burnt together; and at the castle of Moneah not less than one hundred were all pput to the
sword. Great numbers were also murdered at the castle of Tullah, which was delivered up to
M'Guire on condition of having fair quarter; but no sooner had that base villain got possession
of the place than he ordered his followers to murder the people, which was immeidately done
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