From the journal of Edmund Holyfen, Fort Saybrook, Saybrook Plantation January 28, 1642

Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matt 7, 16). Yeah, the dark spirit who tempted our Lord in the desert with bread, with principalities, with powers: our Lord refused, and so evil took them, and arrayed his creatures beneath the black standard, on which is written In Hoc Signo Vinces: thus the sign, by which Antichrist is known; and their deeds, the fruits.

The Leopard, departed Southhampton three months ago, birthed Boston two days ago. A cargo of paper, cloth, lampblack, nutmeg and cinnamon. And a cargo of murder, of hell, that is news of Ireland.

Dublin, October 23. A day the fiends chose as it is the feast of their spiritual father Loyola. On that day they rose from their dark places, their shadowy conventicles, and across the land like locusts, like fire, so many savage Angels of Death – the mad Papist Irish, whipped to frenzy, to murder, by their priests.

In Lisgool, one hundred fifty burned alive. The same or more in Tulla. One hundred butchered in Issenkeath, mothers hung in the branches of trees, their babes thrown to dogs and swine. One hundred fifteen hurled from the bridge at Portadown, and beaten if they tried to swim from the cold Bann to the shore. Seventeen burned alive in Clownes. Three hundred in Tyrone. In Terawley, forty drowned in the sea. Moneah, one hundred fifty butchered by the sword.

In Kilkenney, Mrs Atkins, heavy with child, raped by the Savages, once and twice, a dozen times and twice that; the Babe ripped from her Womb and flung into the Flames of her fired home. An Englishwoman beaten with such Venom, that every bone was broken; then her Daughter raped before her, and her belly slashed cruelly, tossed into a ditch. In Lisnegary, two children taken, and their brains dashed out before their mother’s eyes.

And all with the prayers, the blessings, the Latin chantings and bead-fingerings and praises of the priests, friars, Jesuits: By this standard ye shall have victory: the words of Constantine by which the Church of Christ was joined to Leviathan and so made the Whore of Antichrist, we know him by this fruit.

And as that dark spirit waited for our Lord in the Desert, and so he waits for wherever he might make war against the people of God, to destroy that wherewith Christ hath made us free (Gal, 5,1). As in Ireland, in England: Bloody Mary’s tortures and persecutions; the Pope declarting our great Queen Bess a heretic, and sanctioning her murder; the Armada of his creatures the Spaniards, Fawkes and his gunpowder.

And now that Scotsman Charles on the throne of the Confessor: his despotic rule without Parliament in the manner of a Frenchman or a Spaniard, his goading the church of England toward the vain empty sacramentaliam of the Rome, his hounding of the Godly from the land. And as in Ireland, England, other lands as well: the streets of Paris red with the blood of Protestant martyrs most cruelly murdered on Bartholemew, the skies of hellish Madrid black with the inquisitors’ fires, Germany laid waste by the imperial armies, a waste of cannibals and ruin.

Ireland, England, France, Germany. And America.

Winthrop on the Arbella twelve years ago: “The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

And yeah, I hard those words, and felt them writ across my heart, on the pitching decks, and the crying of gulls, and the sea-air now heavy with the pines and the oaks of the great American forest. And I remember – allowing myself only a moment here, a moment there, as the pain of it could kill me – Sarah’s pale brave face as she crossed the deck, and took my hand, her head on my shoulder, and by this saying: we have undertaken this, the Lord’s work in this land, together.

Never forget, never forget, never forget, though I rarely allow myself the tasting to the memory.

Never forget and always remember: how the savages whipped to hatred by that priest from the French settlement, took her.

Never forget, never forget: how I found her in the forest, bound to that tree.

How they burned her, flayed her, tormented and butchered her.

And our babe, torn from her bomb, spitted and roasted, marks of the teeth on his arm and leg.

I know the priest’s name. I know he prayed and chanted his beads as they slaughtered my Sarah and my babe. Ye shall know them by their fruits and I know him or his like are in Ireland: Antichrist mocks me.

And as I hunted the savages in the lonely places of America, the great howling wastes, as I slew them root and branch, no more than just and proper vengeance, I will do so there.

I if do not do this work then I shall be a story, a byword, a reproach.

I will find a way to Ireland and they shall know the terrible fury of the English and despair.

I will find a way. I WILL FIND A WAY.