1641 Depositions Project
The Project
The 1641 Depositions Project is a collaborative initiative by scholars from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge, and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board in the UK, the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Trinity College Library. Starting in October 2007, this 3-year project aims to digitise and transcribe the c. 3,400 depositions contained in 31 manuscripts located in the Trinity College Library. The principal investigators on the project are: Professor Jane H. Ohlmeyer, Trinity College Dublin, Professor Thomas Bartlett, University of Aberdeen and Dr Micheál Ó Siochrú, TCD. The transcriptions are edited by Professor Aidan Clarke.
The Depositions
The depositions are witness testimonies of Scottish and English Protestants concerning their experiences in the 1641 Irish rebellion. Government commissioned officials recorded these statements in the years directly following the outbreak on the 22nd of October 1641, and they run to approximately 19,000 pages. The testimonies document losses of goods and chattels, military activity, and the alleged crimes of the Irish rebels, including assault, imprisonment, the stripping of clothes, and murder. This body of material, unparalleled elsewhere in early modern Europe, provides a unique source of information for the causes and events surrounding the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland. The depositions also constitute the chief evidence for the sharply contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of Protestant settlers.
The Scots in the Rebellion
The rebels initially targeted English settlers in the hope that the Scots would remain neutral, but the Protestant community united in the face of attacks from the Catholic native Irish. Many Scots fled from Ulster and a large number of these refugees returned to Scotland through the ports of Ayr, Irvine, Portpatrick and Stranraer, which are easily accessible from the north of Ireland. The Kirk raised funds in presbyteries throughout Scotland, and the names of refugees claiming aid can be found in church records all over the country, as far afield as Elgin in the Northeast. Within a few short months, an army of over 10,000 Scottish covenanters had landed in Ulster and remained there throughout the 1640s.
http://www.tcd.ie/history/1641
Two extracts from the depostions concerning the Scots
Deposition of Richard Parsons, MS 833: Cavan, fols 275r-281v, 24 February 1645
Richard Parsons reports that he has overheard some of the rebels say that, instead of attacking both the English and Scots at the same time and having two powerful opponents, they would try to apply the Machiavellian proverb ‘divide and rule’ and persuade the Scots to join them, before turning to attack and kill them too.
(fol. 276r)
Hee further heard them confesse that, because it would be very difficult and dangerous to deale with the vanguishing & destroying of the English & Scottish both together, and that they might with more facility effect their purpose against all such of both nations as (at least) were in Ireland, they agreed & resolved that in the beginning of their actions and designes, they would first falle upon thEnglish only, & would give out in speeches that their intencion was not at all to touch or meddle with the Scotts inhabiting amongst them, but only with thEnglish, and would (untill the subversion of the English) declare the Scotts to be their brothers & frendes & the better to obteine beleefe thereof, would make them the fairest and best promisses they could according to that Machiavillian proverbe Divide et regna. Howbeit, whenas they had overcome thEnglish, then they would with all cruelty fall upon the Scotts and distroy them alsoe, which would be farr more easy unto them then if they should at the first fall upon twoe such powerfull nations at once.
Deposition of Suzanna Wyne, MS 835: Fermanagh, fols 189r-189v, 4 February 1642
Suzanna Wyne was an eyewitness to the imprisonment and hanging of 18 Scots in the churchyard of the town of Clones, County Monaghan, on the 4th of December 1641 by the rebel captains Rory and Redmond McMahon.
(fol. 189r)
And further saith that about the fowrth of December last the Rebells Capt Rory and Capt Redmond mc Mahowne late of the Dartry gentleman, after they had robbed all thenglish, they cold fell on the scotts, being all howsholders, into the towne of Clowness and there imprisoned them in the church. And some tenn dayes after hanged them all on the posts of the Churchyard gate in one night, by torch light made of rishes, which this deponent sawe.
Project Researchers
- Dr Annaleigh Margey
- Dr Edda Frankot
- Elaine Murphy