During the early years of the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, the London artisan Nehemiah Wallington reflected on the political, spiritual, and personal significance of the crisis. Ireland, and specifically the Protestants who suffered under the yoke of the papist rebels, was a central part of this reflection. In late 1641 and 1642, Wallington felt compelled to memorialize stories of atrocities against the godly in Ireland in a commonplace book. He summed up his awareness of the intense suffering of his brethren, lamenting ‘the daily bemoanings of the poor oppressed Protestants [which] would almost pierce a Christian's heart’.

Wallington is, of course, well known to students of the seventeenth century thanks to Paul Seaver's Wallington's World, a masterful recreation of the social, cultural, and mental world of this idiosyncratic and word-obsessed puritan turner. Although many of Wallington's surviving writings attest to his spiritual growth and self-reflection, his works in the 1640s reflect an extensive and intensive engagement with matters of high political significance. Ireland and the war victims of 1641 loom large within these writings. Wallington collected printed accounts of the atrocities in Ireland and copied out excerpts from these tracts, organizing them into a coherent narration of popish inhumanity. Despite the time and expense involved, he felt that this work was an important part of his spiritual duty: