to an upper estimate of around 12,000 deaths. This represents around 10% of the total settler population in Ireland, though in Ulster the ratio of deaths would have been somewhat higher, namely around 30%. They were used to support the view of the rebellion as a Catholic conspiracy to wipe out all Protestants in Ireland, a narrative constructed in the Depositions, a collection of victim reports gathered between 1642 and 1655 and now housed in Trinity College Dublin. In 1646, these accounts were summarised in The Irish Rebellion, a book by John Temple, in which he urged the military re-conquest of Ireland and segregation of Irish Catholics from British Protestants. In the long term, the 1641 massacres intensified existing sectarian animosity on both sides, although modern historians argue the killings had an especially powerful psychological impact on the Protestant community. Dr. Mary O'Dowd wrote they "were very traumatic for the Protestant settler community in Ulster, and left long-term scars within that community". Contemporary Protestant accounts depict the rebellion as a complete surprise; one stated that it was "conceived among us and yet we never felt it kick in the womb, nor struggle in the birth". Many argued Catholics could not be trusted and in Ulster, Protestants commemorated the anniversary of the rebellion for over two hundred years. According to historian Pádraig Lenihan, this "helped affirm communal solidarity and emphasise the need for unrelenting vigilance [against] the masses of Irish Catholics surrounding them [who] were and always would be, unregenerate and cruel enemies". English and Scottish intervention Although Charles, the English Parliament and Scottish Covenanter government all agreed the rebellion should be crushed, doing so was delayed by political tensions. Charles was in Edinburgh when he received news of the uprising on 28 October and immediately urged the Scots to send troops to Ulster, once approved by their colleagues in England. On 4 November, Parliament voted to send weapons and gunpowder to Ireland and recruit 8,000 men to suppress the rising but the situation was complicated since any such army would be legally controlled by the king. A series of alleged Royalist military conspiracies in 1641 and rebel claims that Charles supported their actions heightened fears he would turn it against his opponents in England and Scotland, rather than the Irish. The Covenanters urged the English Parliament to fund a Scottish army rather than recruiting their own, arguing it could reach