In the immediate aftermath of the 1641 rebellion, refugees posed significant challenges to local economies and public order in Ireland and England. They packed the suburbs of Dublin, choked the ports of England, and eventually swarmed into London or took to the roads seeking assistance from increasingly anxious and impoverished parishes. War victims and survivors for a brief but important time took center stage in print and political culture. In a basic way, graphic horror stories of Catholic atrocities against English settlers fed a sensationalized print industry, but the significance of these discourses ran much deeper. Irish war victims became a pretense for talking about and giving meaning to issues of significance in English culture: the threat of international popery, the aims and intentions of English royal advisors, bishops and recusants, previously unspoken or diffuse local fears and anxieties, and the perceived social obligations between those of the Protestant faith. Survivors of the rising played an important role in this process. News from the Irish provinces, intelligence on the rebel actors and their deeds, and much of the disseminated news about the rising came from the mouths and pens of people who claimed to have experienced the war and survived. Their stories heightened tension in England and created the opportunity for broadbased activism on a national scale.