Montgomery manuscripts

The Montgomery Manuscripts. 407
and bad, because I cannot otherwise choose, for Ipse Bcrnardus non vidit omnia, And I think, nee
memenisse potuit, nee mundo obligatus fuit, cunctorum de sua vita recordari ; nor no more are we
bound to expose ourselves totally than he was :
But Truth is Great and shall prevaile,
Tho Dev'lish calumnys assaile.
I begin then with my undertaking ; wherein I will trace the steps of Time (as near as I can) from October,
my birth hitherto, and Leave what follows to be done by my son. 8 l6 33-
Imprimis as to the time and place of my birth & descent from both my Parents, I referr you
to Page third in S r James Montg: Life,? for I designe to avoyd Repetitions.
Item I was cheated of my milk (the nurses husband having spoiled it) which put me in a
Decay, that with great care of my grandmother Stewart 10 (who kept mee till I was in y e i i tt yeare
of mine Age), I escaped a consumption of y e Lungs, & I doe keep to this day, that Cough w oh I
contracted in y" Cradle.
but I arrived not to the stature of my father, uncles, or cosens germans : and yet am in equal Mount alex-
height, to y 8 present Earle and his brother ;" and thousands of men are lower many inches than mee. and e r -
Item I was kept at School in Newtoun Stewart house, and thrived at my book ; for God
bestowed on mee an aptitude and a desire for it w ch minds me of one Line I then learned, viz :
Ingcnio pollet, cui vim natura negavit.
I aspired to be a man as soon as I could ; and therefore had a picke, and a muskett made to
my size : and on y° 23 d of October, i64i 12 , was in y 6 Garden performing y 8 postures of my Arms
with my grand father S r W ra Stewarts foot company ; himself viewing his soldiers & their Arms, &
exercising them ; when about fower houres afternoon (to our amazement) a man half stript, came
with a Letter, signifying y° Insurrections, Murthers, and burnings, on all sides, committed by y 8 Irish Rebe'-
Irish. The messengers one after another came (sweating and out of breath) from divers
quarters; with Like consternation and haste, (as Jobs escaped servants did, to tell him of his
Losses), and they related the crewell Massacres of divers persons, 1 } also ere night many men and
women fled into towns, and S r W m ordered his company & y° refugees in best manner for defence. 14
3 By my son. — It is not probable that James Mont- " And his brother. — Hugh, who succeeded as second
gomery of Rosemount, the author's son, left any family earl of Mount-Alexander, in 1663, and his brother Henry,
memoirs. who became third earl in 1716, are the persons here re-
' Sr James Montg: Life.— This passage in the author's ferred to.
memoir of sir James has not been printed, and is probably " 23rd of October, 1641. — The date of the breaking out
lost. From the marginal note here occurring we find that of the great Irish rebellion. See pp. 251, 252, supra.
William Montgomery was born in October, 1633, but '3 Of divers persons. — It has been sometimes contended
there is no mention, throughout the Manuscripts, of the that the massacres in Tyrone were not perpetrated until
place of his birth. In the preface to the volume printed 1642, and then only in retaliation, or from a terror of
in 1830, it is stated that he was born at Aughaintain in the Protestant forces. No doubt, massacres of prisoners
Tyrone, on the 27th of October, from which it may be were committed in 1642 by sir Phelim O'Neill's adherents
supposed that the passage referred to in the text must have throughout several towns in Tyrone, after they had heard
been in the MS. from which the memoir of sir James was of the slaughters done by English troops in the Pale, and
printed, in 1830. by Scottish troops at Newry, — but this curious and im-
10 My grandmother Stewart. — This lady, the wife of portant passage of the Montgomery Manuscripts proves
sir William Stewart, was Frances, second daughter of sir that Protestants had been massacred in Tyrone on the very
Robert Newcomen, of Mosstown, in the county of Long- first day of the lamentable outbreak.
ford. Her mother was Catherine, daughter of sir Thomas " For defence. — Sir William Stewart, very soon after
Molyneux, chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland. — Lodge, the commencement of the rebellion, received a commission
Peerage of Ireland, edited by Archdall, vol. vi., p. 274. dated i6thNovember,undertheking'ssignetatEdinburgh.
lion breaks
out.