Interesting read:
Q. Did Protestants persecute Catholics?
A. Yes; in every country where the Reformed doctrines were received, Catholics were persecuted. C. Peterson Hooft, a Protestant, reproaches his Protestant countrymen of Holland thus: “Actuated by: hatred of cruelty, you rush yourselves into acts of cruelty; no sooner have you secured your freedom, than you wish to tyrannize over others.”—Hist. Reform. Ger. Brand., T. i, p. 333. Knox commenced the Reformation in Scotland, by being a party to the murder of Cardinal Beatoun. (Tytler’s Hist.of Scotland.) In l560, the Parliament established the Presbyterian re-
ligion, and ordered all the professors of the ancient faith to be punished with death. “With such indecent haste,” says Robertson, “did the very persons, who had just escaped ecclesiastical tyranny, proceed to imitate the example.” In 1596, the Presbytery, writing to the Ring and Council concerning the Earls of Huntly, Errol, &c., say that, “as they had been guilty of idolatry, a crime deserving of death, the civil power could not spare them.”
Q. Did the French Protestants persecute?
A. They rebelled against their sovereign, prohibited the Catholic religion, murdered the priests and religious, burnt the churches and convents, and dug up the dead to make bullets of their leaden coffins. (Maimbourg, Thuanus, Hist. Calv., Lib. 31.) Nic. Fromenteau, a Protestant, confesses, that in Dauphine alone, they killed two hundred and fifty-six priests and one hundred and twelve monks or friars. In these atrocities, the Protestant Baron des Adrets forced Catholic prisoners to jump from the towers upon the pikes of his soldiers, and obliged his own children to wash their hands in the blood of Catholics. (
Liv.de Finance.)
Q. Did Protestant England persecute Catholic Ireland?
A. Dr. Curry has preserved, amongst many other martyrs, the names of twenty-seven priests, who suffered death on account of their religion. (Hist. of Civil Wars in Ireland, vol. i, p. 8.) See Spondanus and Pagi on the martyrdom of F. O’Hurle, the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, a sanguinary deed, perpetrated by Sir W. Drury. See also Bourke’s Hibernia Dominicana, where the number of Irish martyrs, and the dreadful deaths they died, are given in detail.
Q. Did not the Duke of Alva boast, that, In the Low Countries, he had delivered eighteen thousand heretics to the executioners?
A. These heretics should have been called rebels, since, according to the Protestant writer Brand, they had conspired against the life of the duke, then Spanish governor, and put to death, in cold blood, all the priests and religious they could lay their hands upon. See Brand, Hist. Reform. des Pays Bas. Feller, Hist. Dict. art. Toledo, says, that Vandermerk slaughtered more unoffending Catholic priests and peasants in 1572, than Alva executed Protestants during his whole government. See also on this subject, Mons Kerroux, L’Abrege de l’Hist. de la Hollunde
My last shared ancestor with Hugh O’Neill, last Earl of Ulster, is Conn Bacach O’Neill, Hugh’s grandfather. My direct ancestor, Turlough O’Neill was the last Earl’s cousin (their fathers were brothers).
