The number of men capable of bearing arms within the walls was seven thousand; and the whole world could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualified to meet a terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valour, and stubborn patience.

They were all zealous Protestants; and the Protestantism of the majority was tinged with Puritanism.

They had much in common with that sober, resolute, and Godfearing class out of which Cromwell had formed his unconquerable army.

But the peculiar situation in which they had been placed had developed in them some qualities which, in the mother country, might possibly have remained latent.

The English inhabitants of Ireland were an aristocratic caste, which had been enabled, by superior civilisation, by close union, by sleepless vigilance, by cool intrepidity, to keep in subjection a numerous and hostile population.