The Rev. Mr. Carte, an English Protestant clergyman, who wrote the celebrated Life of the Duke of Ormonde, tears all Temple's assertions in pieces, and demonstrates from indubitable authority the falsehoods of his statements. Writing of these "Depositions" he says, at Vol. II., p. 263: "Anyone who has ever read the examinations and depositions which were generally given on hearsay, and contradicting one another, must think it very hard upon the Irish, to have all those without distinction to be admitted as evidence." And in the Preface to the collection of Letters affixed to the Life he alludes to the "uncertain, false, mistaken, and contradictory accounts, which have been given of the Irish Rebellion, by parties influenced by selfish views and party animosities, or unfurnished with proper and authentic materials and memoirs." It is obvious from the first pages of Temple's History what the scope of the work is. It is a gross libel on the whole Irish nation from the earliest times. In one page, he twice applies to them the epithet of a beastly race, and, no doubt, worthy to be rooted out, to make room for Royalists of his type, who worshipped the rising sun. Carte, in his Life of Ormond, Vol. II., p. 135, gives an account of the attack on Mellifont as follows:--"This detached body of the northern rebels appeared on November 21st in sight of the town of Drogheda, within four miles of it, presuming (as was imagined) upon some party within the place. Sir H. Tichburne, Governor of Drogheda, had the week before sent a party of fifteen horse and twenty-two foot to Mellifont (formerly an Abbey of Bernardine monks, founded by Donagh O'Carroll, prince of Ergall, about A.D. 1142, but then an house of the Lord Viscount Moore's, three miles from town), as well as to secure that place from the incursions of roving parties, as to keep abroad continual sentinels and scouts, that might inform him of the rebels' motions. His orders were not well observed, nor his party so vigilant as they ought to have been; for on the 21st, the rebels on a sudden encompassed the house, and (after the soldiers' powder was spent) took it with a loss of some one hundred and twenty of their own number (among which were Owen M'Mahon and another captain), and eleven of the soldiers, with most of the arms. As the Irish were breaking into the house on all sides, the troopers causing the great gate to be opened, sallied out, and opening themselves a way through the body of the rebels, got safe with the rest of the foot soldiers sore wounded to Drogheda." This may be accepted as a true, unvarnished account of this much magnified attack; especially as Tichburne himself, who cannot be accused of partiality towards the Irish, and who was Governor of Drogheda at the time of its occurrence, seems to have been Carte's authority for it, as appears from a reference to a letter written by Tichburne to Ormond, but not given in the collection of Letters mentioned above.