The subsequent cruelties were not on one side only, and were magnified to render the Irish detestable, so as to make it impossible for the king to seek their aid without ruining his cause utterly in England.

The story of the massacre, invented to serve the politics of the hour, has been since kept up for the purposes of interest.

No inventions could be too monstrous that served to strengthen the possession of Irish confiscated lands.
'A True Relation of the Proceedings of the Scots and English Forces in the North of Ireland,' published in 1642, states that on Monday, May 5, the common soldiers, without direction from the general-major, took some eighteen of the Irish women of the town [Newry], stripped them naked, threw them into the river, and drowned them, shooting some in the water.

More had suffered so, but that some of the common soldiers were made examples of.
'A Levite's Lamentation,' published at the same time, thus refers to those atrocities: 'Mr.Griffin, Mr.Bartly, Mr.Starkey, all of Ardmagh, and murdered by these bloudsuckers on the sixth of May.

For, about the fourth of May, as I take it, we put neare fourty of them to death upon the bridge of the Newry, amongst which were two of the Pope's pedlers, two seminary priests, in return of which they slaughtered many prisoners in their custody.' A curious illustration of the spirit of that age is given in the fact that an English officer threw up his commission in disgust, because the Bishop of Meath, in a sermon delivered in Christ Church, Dublin, in 1642, pleaded for mercy to Irish women and children.
The unfortunate settlers fled panic-stricken from their homes, leaving behind their goods, and, in many cases, their clothes; delicate women with little children, weary and footsore, hurried on to some place of refuge.