TEMPLE, Sir John, Kt. The History of the General Rebellion in Ireland. Raised upon the three and twentieth day of October, 1641. Together with the Barbarous Cruelties and Bloody Massacres which ensued thereupon. To which is added, Sir Henry Tichborne’s History of the Siege of Drogheda, in the year 1641. As also, The whole Tryal of Connor Lord Macguire, with the perfect Copies of the Indictment and all the Evidences against him. Together with the Pope’s Bull to the Confederate Catholicks in Ireland.

Cork: Printed by Phineas & George Bagnell, in Castle-Street, 1766. Crown octavo. pp. xxiv, [12 (List of Subscribers)], 412. Modern quarter calf on marbled boards, title in gilt on red morocco label. A very good copy. Rare Cork printing.ESTC T127399.
John Temple (1600-77), master of the rolls in Ireland, first published this work in 1646. The book caused a great sensation, supposedly written by an eye-witness to the events, and did much to inflame hatred and bigotry in England against the Irish, and thereby justifying Cromwell’s later harsh treatment of them. When the 1679 edition appeared, it infuriated the Irish so much, that it was condemned by their Parliament to be burnt by the Common Hangman in Dublin. This partisan work, written in the Parliamentarian interest, for the purpose of holding up the native Irish to execration for attempting to regain their lands, of which they had been dispossessed by force, forms the standard authority of most of the English writers on those times, and frequently reprinted with the object of exciting, through a sectarian medium, political and religious animosities. “The falsehoods it contains”, says Dr. John Curry, “are so glaring and numerous, that even the Government, in the year 1674, seems to have been offended at, and the author himself ashamed of the republication of it”.

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