But these troops, attacked by the enemy, were seized with a panic, and were most of them put to the sword.

Their arms, falling into the hands of the Irish, supplied them with what they most wanted.[*] The justices, willing to foment the rebel lion in a view of profiting by the multiplied forfeitures, henceforth thought of nothing more than providing for their own present security and that of the capital.

The earl of Ormond, their general, remonstrated against such timid, not to say base and interested counsels; but was obliged to submit to authority.
The English of the pale, who probably were not at first in the secret, pretended to blame the insurrection, and to detest the barbarity with which it was accompanied.[**] By their protestations and declarations, they engaged the justices to supply them with arms, which they promised to employ in defence of the government.[***] But in a little time, the interests of religion were found more prevalent over them than regard and duty to their mother country.

They chose Lord Gormanstone their leader; and, joining the old Irish, rivalled them in every act of violence towards the English Protestants.

Besides many smaller bodies dispersed over the kingdom, the principal army of the rebels amounted to twenty thousand men, and threatened Dublin with an immediate siege.[****] Both the English and Irish rebels conspired in one imposture, with which they seduced many of their deluded countrymen: they pretended authority from the king and queen, but chiefly from the latter, for their insurrection; and they affirmed, that the cause of their taking arms was to vindicate royal prerogative, now invaded by the Puritanical parliament.[v] Sir Phelim O'Neale, having found a royal patent in Lord Caulfield's house, whom he had murdered, tore off the seal, and affixed it to a commission which he had forged for himself.[v*] * Nalson, vol.ii.p.