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.