Seventeenth Century
Propaganda
Protestant Propaganda
The Bloody Persecution of the Protestants in Ireland (1641)
‘Captain Vaul, the Irish rebel, was like a violent Sea, devouring all before him,
committing the horrible outrages, sparing neither man, woman, nor child: after
the cruell murdering of many hundred Protestants, forcing of Matrons, and
ravishing of tender virgins, about the north part of Ireland, intending to
prosecute his ungrateful outrages on the City of Dublin.’
A Discourse between two Councillors of State
English Councillor:
It was a very desparate boldness, and ill becoming the modesty and
probity requisite in men of that profession. But I pray, Sir, that great
slaughter of the English and those barbarous and inhuman cruelties,
mentioned in that remonstrance to have been acted by the Irish, were
they true or not?
Irish Councillor:
Doubtless they did in many places kill men resisting, and pillaging all
protestants within their power, but the report of their killing women and
children or men desiring quarter such like inhumanities, they were
inventions to draw the larger contributions from the people of this
kingdom to maintain the war. But that is indeed an ordinary thing in all
wars to raise such reports, to make the enemy odious, although no truer
than that Colonel Lunsford did eat children about Kingston. Sure I am
there was no such thing done whilst I was in Ireland, above six months
after those stirs began.