repeated the prohibition, and we may be sure that commercial jealousy saw that these laws were observed. One of the Blakes of Galway shortly before 1641 declared and actually proved in a petition that, though his ancestors had been for over 400 years in Ireland, not one of them had ever defiled the purity of their English blood by marriage with an Irishwoman.[1]
When the insurrection broke out in 1641 the townsmen of Cork, Youghal and Kinsale, who were all Catholics, remained true to their old traditions of loyalty, and declared for the English.
They gave shelter to all the fugitive Protestants from the country districts, admitted English garrisons inside their walls, and the Corkmen advanced £30,000 towards paying the expenses of the English army besides providing them with food and lodgings. As a reward for this loyalty they and the Catholics of Youghal were all turned out of their homes and driven outside the walls by Inchiquin and the Puritans in 1644. On this occasion they were plundered of all their property, their losses amounting to £60,000, and they were left with their wives and children without one bit to put into their mouths. And some of them had their throats cut by the Irish as being partisans of the English.
When Inchiquin revolted from the parliament to the King in 1648 these people were allowed back to their homes. But when in less than a year's time the English garrisons revolted from the King
- ↑ This was apparently on the occasion of Strafford's projected plantation.
