Religious
fanaticism, the scourge of the twenty-first century political world merely reflects that of the seventeenth century in
Europe.
I
am about to relate the story of the worst ever atrocity in Newry but the amateur local historians among you will appreciate
that I must first put it in context.
Nicholas
Bagenal, that figure beloved of today’s Council employees, lost no time, after
he had ruthlessly displaced the historic Cistercians from their abode and
possessions, in importing “all criminals except those guilty of serious
offences as treason, murder (he should
talk!) and also bankrupts etc” to populate his newly acquired
territories.The provision was that they be Protestant and not ‘mere Irish’, the latter of course
being displaced by them.
As
a result, the town and immediate district of Newry did not have to be included
in the brutal Plantation of Ulster that followed the Flight of the Earls in
1607.But just as the native population
of displaced Irish throughout Ulster
seethed through the following generation, so too did the Catholics of Newry and
when the inevitable uprising came in September 1641, Newry was one of the first
towns to be taken by the rebels.
There
were massacres of Protestants in some places in the early part of rebellion but
not apparently in Newry, according to the (English written and inspired)
documentation.
Would
that the same might be said when the town was retaken later by a joint force of
English and Scots troops.
History 
