THE Irish Colours DISPLAYED, In A REPLY of an English Protestant To a late LETTER of an Irish Roman Catholic.  
Both Addressed to his Grace THE DUKE of ORMOND Lord Lieutenant of His Majesty's KINGDOM OF IRELAND.  Similis in prole resurgo. 
London, Printed in the Year, 1662.   

The IRISH COLOURS DISPLAYED, In a REPLY of an English Protestant to a late LETTER of an Irish Roman Catholic.  
Both addressed to his Grace The DUKE of ORMOND Lord Lieutenant of His Majesty's Kingdom of IRELAND.  Similis in prole resurgo. 
MY LORD,  
IT was yesterday my chance to meet a Letter newly printed, though pretended by the Title to have been given your Grace about the end of October 1660. [desiring a just and merciful regard of the Roman Catholics of Ireland] wherein though I confess much is spoken and little said, yet because the Author of it seems to have been both a bold man in setting your Grace's name to it, and a wise man in not setting his own, I thought it fit to be taken notice of, and shall follow his example in both, though (I fear) neither that nor his precepts in any thing else.  
The contention lying (as it ever has done, and I fear ever will,) between His Majesty's British Protestant Subjects, and His Irish Roman Catholic in the Kingdom of Ireland, I imagined it would become us ill, who never refused to fight them in the Field upon the extremest disadvantage, if we should now avoid to do it in the Press upon the greatest advantages, that the justice of our Case, the mercy of our King, your Grace's patronage, and the favour of Heaven expressed in all these circumstances can allow us; and therefore since they have drawn so much of our blood, I shall never grudge them a little of our ink, being I confess well enough pleased to see us both now at length putting on the same colour, whereas for so long together the Black has been ours, and the Crimson theirs.  
The matter of this Pamplet is indeed so difficult to find, and so easy to answer, that I am a little loath to begin the search, being much of the same nature with that of a Brass penny in a heap of Rubbish, that before you find it almost puts out your eyes, and after you have it, 'tis hardly felt in your hand; and therefore before I quest after that little game it affords me, I shall give your Grace some account of a word or a fear, which just now fell from me, that the contention between the two Parties in Ireland will never have an end, which may both startle your Grace with the difficulty of your Charge, whose chief end and task is to disprove this opinion; and shock many others as an uncharitable thought, who are apt to believe the quiet of that Country; may be wrought out by tempering of Interests, extinguishing Feuds, by inducing a general Oblivion of the past and security of future Times; and in a word, that a Golden Age may arise in that Kingdom, out of one of Iron that has lasted some hundreds of years, just as a fair and gentle morning does sometimes at Sea after a long furious storm, without any reason for one or for t'other, but only, that a general composure of minds happens at times like a calm set of weather; and no man the wiser though all men the happier for it.  
My Lord, I wish I could be of this Belief, I confess I am not, though I may justly say my temper and fortune both dispose me to it, the one giving me fear of losing a little, and the other despair of gaining the least by tumults and wars. I have long accounted the Peace of my Country to be like the Health of my Body; without which all that men call pleasures turn sour, or lose all their relish at least. I will not say to make good my opinion, that Saturn, Mars, and Mercury are the only Planets that influence that Climate, though the sullen and angry genius, as well as the cunning, busy, chaffering vein of the inhabitants might help me out, nor that the kindly rays of Venus and jupiter are too gentle to pierce a thick air that is accused so often to obscure the Sun, and fully the Moon among them; but I must needs say, when I consider the rise of these two parties in that Kingdom, which was the descent of our victorious Ancestors among them, who at first held their Lands from their Swords, though our King's title to the whole was afterwards strengthened by Alliances, by submissions as well as (if they please to take notice of it) by an absolute grant of that whole Island from Pope Adrian the fourth to Henry the second.  
When I consider that upon this original quarrel the Natives of the Country have ever since locked upon the English name, as that of Usurpers and Intruders upon their lands and inheritance, and the English planted there, upon the Irish; as enemies, for so they were styled in all public Acts for a long course of time.  
When I consider that these two parties have for above four hundred years, been bred up, as I may say in mutual slaughters, and rapines, and wars, every age, begun by the Irish, upon pretences of recovering their Liberty and Country, and returned by the English, in defence of their King, their Kindred, and the Lands they had purchased by their Ancestors blood, or by their own Treasure.  
When I consider that these bloody animosities were constant and hereditary to them, so long before any division between them in matters of Religion, and withal how much they have been sharpened by that accident, which has been so powerful as most unhappily to engrafft such numbers of old English families into the Irish stock and interest upon this last Rebellion (for to that we must needs attribute it rather than to their long habitudes among them.)  
When I consider how much of the Irish lands have been given in a lump into the hands of British Planters upon forfeitures in King james his time, what quantities must now be disposed of, though the greatest tenderness imaginable should be used in the adjudging their new forfeitures now in question, besides how perpetual a memory the Irish retain of these esteemed injuries, as I could give instances to amazement, and as several of their Articles in forty eight in some measure discover by their returning so far back and resolutions even in cold blood to unravel the settlements of ages past.  
When I consider that similitude of customs and manners is the common sodder of all Friendships and good Intelligences among men, and withal how strange a difference in both these as well as habit and language is between these two Nations, unless it be where by long abode of few among many, either the civility of the English has corrected theirs, or the barbarousness of the Irish has infected ours.  
When I consider among many others of the kind, that one old custom of theirs, in celebrating their funerals after their savage manner, where the praises of the dead use to be raised and rehearsed, from no other virtue or prowess then the number of English slain or murdered by him or his Ancestors, either as Soldiers in War, or as Woodkernes or Tories in Peace, which is elegantly described by Spencer in his short discourse of Ireland, and I have been assured is still used in many of the wilder parts in the North, where upon such occasions they have no witnesses but themselves.  
When I consider the common conversation of the Vulgar of both parties upon all the least occasions breaking out into terms of malice, suspicion, revenge, and contempt, besides the strange ignorance of the common Irish that subjects the whole conduct of their lives to the guidance of their Priests and Friars, which makes them all Spanish Papists, as the common term goes, and as I think indeed all Roman Catholics living in Protestant Dominions throughout Europe are in great degree; and to this only I can attribute that senseless opinion among the Vulgar Irish, that the Kingdom of Ireland lawfully belongs to the Crown of Spain, and that his Majesty's Title to it is like that of the English to their Lands by usurpation and force.  
When I consider that, upon this present conjuncture, though his Majesty has been pleased to exempt many of the Roman Catholic Nobles and Gentlemen from the stain and punishment of their common original guilt in the last bloody Rebellion, by restoring them fully to their honours and estates, upon the amends they seem to have made by their personal services to his Majesty abroad, yet not a man of them is content to save his own stake to break from the herd, or leave stickling in the patronage and defence of the common party, as if they valued not their estates without their dependences, and had something more in aim then what they pretend to in their ordinary clamours and complaints; This I confess is the only thing which lessens many of them in my value, whom otherwise I should esteem very much as persons of good breeding, good meene, good wits, and good humour, and fit for the eye and for the service of their Prince.  
And lastly, when I consider that all this cannot be attributed to the force of any constellation above, or conjunction here below, but rather to the common course of humane nature, and the passions incident thereunto, and that this implacable enmity of the Irish to the English, springs from the same root with that of all other subjected people to their Conquerors, till by time and prevailing number, weariness of mutual fears, policy of Laws and Governors both come at length to be blended into one Mass. That consequently the late unparallelled Massacres, though far greater in number then any upon record of Story, yet had no newer cause or occasion then that of the Roman Citizens in the lesser Asia, that of the French in Sicily, that of the Danes in England, and the frequent ones of European Colonies in the Indies; till time and experience taught them to provide for their safety and so they have done, My Lord, all wiser Nations to secure their conquests, though it has ever yet been the reproach of the English Government, that in so long a tract of time they have never been able to free themselves from a vast expense of Blood and Treasure upon an Island which seems by nature to have been intended so much for the greatness of His Majesty's Imperial Crown, by the mighty access of those two great strengths, Money and able bodies of men, arising from the incredible fertility of the soil in all rich native Comoditieses, aswel as the increase of people; When all these thoughts I say run through my head, I cannot hope to live so long as to hear [jam cuncti gens una sumus] played by the Irish Harp, though I know it was sung by some English in their discourses about the beginning of the late King's Reign, but never I think by any Irish, and with how sad Notes it then ended in the Close some men I hope may still have leave to remember.  
Now My Lord, if all this be but vision and false imagery, raised up only by my own spleen or passions, I may possibly pass for a Fanatique, or some malicious envious person, none of which I thank God I have yet ever done nor I hope ever shall upon any other score. For I have often deplored that my birth or my fotunes should cast me into an Age or a Country, where men cannot live together more like the Sons of one Father, the Subjects of one Prince, the Servants of one God, than I see we are like to do. But if it be a true representation of the Quarrel in that Kingdom, of the disposition of the parties, and complexion of the Climate; then I think it will concern his Majesty to secure his Crown and his Subjects peace in that Kingdom, by the same arts of Government that have been used in the same cases, with respect to such differences as circumstances may make, and whatever become of lands never trust our lives again in the power of a generation whose game and prey they have been, and whose design they must ever be unless my Almanac fails, 'tis but a careless and will be but an unfortunate Shepherd that quits his guard and suspicion, and neglects his flock because the old wolf has broke his teeth, though he can never lose his nature nor yet break the Law of [Similis in prole resurgo.]  
What those arts of Government are, I shall not in the least presume to discourse of, all Stories and all Times are full of them, and the Observations upon them very instructing, and no person able to make better use of them, and to improve them more than your Grace under His Majesty's favourable influence, and in concurrence with so great, so wise, and so renowned a Councillor to his Majesty and friend to your Grace as My Lord High Chancellor of England, whose justice and favour to us we must ever own, and shall endeavour to acknowledge, with that devotion becomes us as true servants both of his virtues and fortunes.  
Besides, my opinions in this point I confess may be a little out of the common way, and I am so too in not being the least fond of giving them light without a direct occasion, and therefore shall make no inquiry here into the usual ways of securing acquisitions either by out numbering the Natives, by introducing conformity of Laws, Language, Habit, Custom, Religion, by interchangeable removal of their seats, as in Charlemain's time, of Saxons into Flanders, and of Flemish into Saxony, by assuming their lands and giving them a new dependency, by entertaining feuds between themselves, by Forts and standing Armies according to the modern policy, or by distinct Colony's according to that of the old Grecian and Roman States, I should only beg if my prayers were of any regard, that his Majesty might but esteem this a matter worthy His care and thought, and then I should no way doubt of the success; and that you may judge it so the more, I shall only be your remembrancer that as the only good effect of such infinite slaughters and Murders as have hitherto infamed that Kingdom, and discouraged the plantation, has been the producing of this conjuncture wherein His Majesty hath gained an occasion of settling it upon lasting foundations which has been so much desired by his Ancestors, but the like never attained either in respect of power, justice, or honour. So whatever mischiefs or miscarriages shall ever happen in that Kingdom in times to come, will by posterity be laid to the charge of this generation, but how to be answered I believe the next must tell.  
Now My Lord, how great a part of this care and conduct must needs fall to your Grace's share, I shall not need put you in mind, finding one among your Titles that sufficiently does it, but in case you fall into the same opinion I profess to be of, that the peace and safety of that Kingdom cannot be provided for by balancing interests between English and Irish, but by boying up one or other of them out of danger of sinking again, I shall then offer to your thoughts, whether as Duke of Ormond as well as His Majesty's Lieutenant of Ireland, both your duty and your interest does not evidently lead you to the support, protection, and encouragement of the English who in that Kingdom will come under your charge.  
And here I must begin to take notice of our Secretary and his Letter, the Scribbling of which gave me the occasion of mine, the greatest design of the whole draught seems by cogging and clawing, by professions of kindness and confidence, by terms of relation and good intelligence, to endear their cause and persons to your Grace, and to work upon your affections where they despair to do it upon your judgement. He says they have been [your constant beleivers, your passionate Sticklers, their hopes of delivery have been by you, begs a demonstration of that justice and favour you intended them in forty eight, threatens your failing will lessen your esteem and dependencies among them, and at last compares you to Joseph, and calls you the Saviour of your brethren] on purpose sure to put you in mind how your brethren sold and betrayed you, for how the Irish came to be your brethren upon any other kindred I cannot imagine.  
On the other side, My Lord, we are bold to claim and challenge you for ours, and upon many good tokens, by the birth of your Ancestors and your own, by their and your unshaken loyalty to the Crown of England, by your constancy to the old Protestant Religion, by your personal commands against the Irish, and glorious victories over them the first two years of the Rebellion, and which no question had continued had not your Royal Master's affairs at that time received a change there, by the fatal necessity of his others in England, and forced you to a conjunction, where you had ever before been at defiance. If I may descend to lighter circumstances, we challenge you for ours by your breeding, by your person by your speech, by your disposition, by your Lady and your Children, in the midst of all which who ever should see you, let him be never so much a stranger to all our disputes, I durst trust him to judge whether you are English or Irish, and durst die for it, if one man in a hundred that was not stark blind would ever give you from us.  
As for our affections to you, our confidence in you, our dependence upon you in this occasion and upon all to come, we cannot give place to our adversaries, as knowing our own hearts, and that 'tis well if any else knows theirs. If our hopes or our trusts have ever been estranged from your Grace, it has been owing to those unhappy revolutions that have forced you to a seeming good aspect upon them, but now that the occasion and necessity of that is all blown over, we return and throw ourselves into your arms, with the same kindness and confidence that Lovers would do into those of a Mistress whose forced or feigned smiles to a rival, had for a while entertained them in sullen aching jealousies, which serve to make way for a kinder reconcilement, And now My Lord, deceive us if you can, no, we know you are too wise, too loyal, and too generous.  
Besides as to your personal interest, (for as for that of your Masters it's too evident which way it must incline you) you are arrived in command, in dependence, in estate to the height of what you can aim at in Ireland without being too much envied and something feared, so that all the game that lies before you ought in prudence to be pursued in England, by preserving His Majesty's favour, gaining his Subjects affections, preferring your Children and increasing your fortunes, in a place where they may lie for a record of your honour and merit, and be both a testimony and a pawn of your Family's Loyalty, if in ages to come your posterity should grow too great, or meet with a more suspicious Master then now you have the happiness to serve. And My Lord, I need not tell you how much your countenance to the English in Ireland would endear you to the Nation here, nor how much that might be estranged from you, by your favour to the Irish. For believe me, My Lord, we have here in England bled and paid too deep, and too often upon their occasion to be presently friends, and the horridness of this last Rebellion, has too far reached Heaven with its cry, and stained the earth with its colour to be suddenly either forgiven in Heaven or forgotten upon Earth.  
The next thing I can observe in the letter I begun with, is a comparison it insists upon, between the Roman Catholic Irish, and His Majesty's Protestant Subjects in the three Kingdoms, [many thousand of whom were he says far more heinously criminal, who have as little contributed or intended towards His Majesty's Restauration as they.]  
If any comparisons are odious they are those of men's vices and guilt, rather than of their virtues and innocency, which makes me unwilling to pursue this any further, yet I cannot but observe the offences of the Irish sprung from a more general quarrel, which was without comparison more generally infused through the hearts of the people, pursued by far more bloody courses, and which is remarkable begins where other quarrels use to end, that is with slaughter and fury, whereas all others swell first in expostulations and manifestoes, ripen in threats, warning, and preparations, break at length in fair and open arms. But this Irish Rebellion clashed out like a sudden storm of lightning and thunder, defacing houses and fields, wasting Countries, destroying man and beast, and giving an essay of what it meant in the end by the cold and treacherous murders of so many thousand innocent souls in the first two months, before men were enough themselves to know almost from whence their danger came; which number increasing to that of above Two hundred Thousand in the first two years, makes the Massacre unparallelled, and excuses all cruelties may have been returned by the English in the heat of the War. Whoever imagines a Troop of Soldiers, among whom is hardly a man, but has lately lost a Wife, a Brother, a Parent or a Child by the butcherly hands of inveterate enemies, will not wonder to see them fierce in their assaults or furious in their executions.  
For the horrid Murder of his late Majesty of blessed memory, which this Writer would throw into the balance as a crime diffused through many Thousands of the Protestant Subjects in the three Kingdoms, I look upon it as a bold slander, and which is no more to be imputed to the Protestants here, than the assassin of Henry the fourth of France, to the Roman Catholics there, this having been contrived by Ravilliack, and perhaps half a dozen Jesuits his complices, and that by Cromwell, Ireton, and perhaps half a dozen more, whose power, and name, and artifices, had at that time stun'd the Nation into a sufferance of that impious fact, and enchanted the Army into an outward compliance with what I am confident not one man in Ten Thousand throughout the three Kingdoms but abhorred in his Soul.  
For what he says of [their having as little contributed or intended towards the King's restoration as the Irish did] because 'tis modestly spoken he shall even go away with it, though no man I am sure, no not the Birds nor the Flies contributed less to it then the Roman Catholic Irish, whereas there seemed an universal conspiration towards it in the Protestants of the three Kingdoms, which passed for some amends of their faults, and earnest of their pardons so graciously allowed them. And for their bare intentions they may best judge themselves, for by their former actions we should be apt to judge ill, and besides I have heard an unlucky Proverb, that hell is full of good intentions.  
But we plead not our innocence neither here nor in Ireland, we stand not upon Articles, we claim His Majesty's Grace held forth in the Act of Indemnity, and question not but the same reasons which then induced His Majesty both to grant it us and deny it them, continue still, and will do so to both our Posterities, unless we lose our memories, and change our Religions, we grow to own dependence upon the Pope, and they upon the King in all Ecclesiastical matters, which, say what men will, draw Civil after them.  
The next thing pleaded in this Letter is that [they fought for His Majesty till overpowered by Multitudes, through God's unsearchable judgements, desertion by friends abroad, and home divisions, they lost both themselves and their Country.] That they fought so long for the King, or were overpowered by Multitudes, I cannot allow, for the Quarrel pursued by the Long-Parliament, and by the following Tyrannous power, against the Irish, was not for their Show of adherence to the King, which was known to be the next Covert they shrunk under for shelter, but it was for being Murderers and Rebels against the English Nation and Government, and what advantages accrued to the Rebellious Arms in England, from the pretence of this National War and revenge upon the Rebels of Ireland, I need not enlarge; I may safely say, that as the miseries of these Nations began to break out with violence and blood, first in that Kingdom, so they were fomented and heightened all along by the ill effects and ill colours of that Irish Rebellion.  
Those who indeed so long and so bravely fought for His Majesty in Ireland, and were so violently pursued by the Usurpers and their powers, we know well were those gallant and Loyal Troops of English, assembled under your Grace's command, and made up either of the first English Army, or such constant Subjects to his Majesty's interest in England, who after the Ruin of their hopes here, went over into Ireland, preferring the hazard of their lives once more before the Servitude of their Country: These are commonly comprehended under the name of such as served His Majesty in the War of Ireland, before 49. and are a noble vital part of that body, I mean by the English interest in Ireland; and how well these were assisted and treated by the Roman Irish Catholics, I may safely leave to your Grace's Remembrance.  
[The overpowering them with Multitudes,] I before never heard, nor can any believe, who knows their numbers in proportion to ours much to the contrary; I have heard and could tell, but that I love not to reproach men who have lost their Arms, though cruelty and valour have been ever esteemed, and are indeed by nature so little a kin, that whoever knows much of the one cannot believe much of the other. For the rest of that Paragraph it is so ingenuous, I must needs join with him in the acknowledgement [that through the unsearchable Wisdom of God, desertion by friends abroad, and home divisions, they have lost both themselves and their Country.]  
For matter of their Articles in forty Eight, which the Writer of this Letter presses to be observed that of Trasplantation, Corporations, and the disposal of the Irish Lands according to His Majesties declared Will, and the present pursuit of His English Protestant Subjects, they are particulars I shall not meddle with, as having heard that they all have, or will fall in debate before His Majesty at Council, where your Lordship must needs be acquainted with all that can be argued upon those Subjects, though in case I find need of more public Satisfaction, I shall not refuse to come once more into the Press upon that occasion, and question not to satisfy all unbias'd persons, concerning His Majesty's Resolutions of settling the Kingdom of Ireland, upon the foundation of a Protestant Strength and Interest, and make it evident he has taken them up upon grounds of Piety, Justice, Prudence, and Honour, not out of any [fear from the power of the English Army there as this Letter would insinuate.] Whereas I am confident never any Prince was better served and obeyed then His Majesty will be by His Protestant Subjects in Ireland, whom I look upon all as one body.  
Another shred of this Work I am taking in pieces, consists of some well couched threatenings, [how much the hearts of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, will be estranged both from His Majesty and your Grace] if they are defeated of their hopes. I must agree with him again and acknowledge he tells you a great truth, and that he might have told you another in saying they are so already, past all means of firm reconciling, since they who aim at the whole, will never be contented with a part. I shall only desire your Grace to take the warning they give you; to trust and favour those who take themselves to be obliged by you, never those who think themselves offended. Nor for aught I know will any man blame them so much for seeking their revenge, as us for not providing our defence, since in all like cases the same nature uses to imprint both the one and the other.  
All the rest of this Pamphlet consists in quotations of Scripture, from which its Author [exhorts to imitation of God in not destroying the righteous with the just, and denounces judgements against Breakers of Articles, from the Example of Saul and the Gib●onites.] I shall not pursue the Parallel in those cases between the Sins of Sodom and those of the Irish, nor between the Scarcity of the Innocent in the one, and the other of these Nations; nor shall I observe that the judgements of God were not sent down upon Israel, for making the Gibeonites Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water, but as the Text runs for Saul and his bloody House, because he slew the Gibeonites; in which case we desire no Parallel, but should as earnestly intercede for the lives of the Irish, though yet in that Case unpardoned, as we must always solicit for the safety of our own, in such a Settlement as we hope to see achieved by His Majesty's Gracious care, and your Lordship's diligence in the execution of it. For the rest I will not go about to answer him at this weapon (though it might easily be done) as having I confess an aversion from the late custom of our Age, for every private hand as it serves its one occasion, to draw all Stories and expressions of Scripture into consequence, for the conduct of our lives and the framing our opinions; I have observed this use to be of mischievous effect, and destructive in a great measure to the respect and obedience we owe Civil Authority. I revere the Scriptures, but esteem them given us for other use then to fortify disputes concerning State Affairs out of every part of them, I know how apt we are to be deceived with the likeness of Examples or Precepts, in the unlikeness of times and persons, and Laws and Manors, and Constitutions and other Circumstances, therefore I shall here leave him to his devotions, and betake myself to mine, a part of which are my hearty wishes and prayers, that all His Majesty's Counsels may be guided with that Wisdom which will end in his own Glory, and the Prosperity as well as Peace of all His Kingdoms, and that your Grace's conduct in this great Employment, may be as eminent as the rest of your fortunes, and enlightened with a clear Sight of what is the true interest both of His Majesty at present, the Crown of England in all Ages, and your own too in the present Settlement and future Government of that unhappy Kingdom; and because I both am, and desire to appear in Charity with all men, I shall end my discourse as the Roman Catholic does his, with hearty wishes that you may be in your Station [the Saviour of your Brethren and your Country.]  
For myself, what I am as to my temper and opinions, must be referred to this Paper, who I am is no matter, if that speaks either sense or truth, or successfully to the ends I intent it, which I am sure are fair and honest, as well as the Professions sincere of my being  
Your Grace's most humble Servant.