Chapter VII: Part II: The Eve of “1641” (3)

THE period we are about to deal with is one of the most important, perhaps the most important of modern Irish history, as the events of that time influenced the destinies of Ireland more profoundly than anything that went before, and by their effects, continue to profoundly influence them even in our own times. It is also the most confused, not to say confusing, period of the history of Ireland or any other country that a student can attempt to deal with. Carlyle, rarely just to Ireland, in this instance describes it with both force and faithfulness, when due allowance is made for his prejudices. “The history of it,” he says, “does not form itself into a picture, but remains only as a huge blot, an indiscriminate blackness, which the human memory cannot willingly charge itself with! There are Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other. There are Catholics of the Pale, demanding freedom of religion under my Lord this and my Lord that. There are Old-Irish Catholics under Pope’s Nuncios under Abbas O’Teague of the excommunications and Owen Roe O’Neill demanding, not religious freedom only, but what we now call ‘Repeal of the Union,’ and unable to agree with the Catholics of the English Pale. Then there are Ormond Royalists of the Episcopalian and mixed creeds, strong for King without Covenant; Ulster and other Presbyterians, strong for King and Covenant; lastly, Michael Jones, and the Commonwealth of England, who want neither King nor Covenant. All these plunging and tumbling for the last eight years, have made of Ireland and its affairs, the black unutterable blot we speak of.” The object of this paper is to remove some of the blackness, and attempt to set forth clearly, if possible within the limits allowed, the relations and interactions of these various parties.

A brief reference to the rebellion of 1641 in Ulster gives us the most convenient starting-point. The dispossessed Clansmen, availing of the troubles between Charles I and the English Parliament, suddenly seized on their ancestral lands and drove out the settlers. Much has been written of the cruelties of both sides in a keen struggle for existence in a semi-barbarous age. The insurgents have been charged with a massacre of Protestants, the number of slain, according to some accounts, being greater than that of the whole English population of the island, as if the outbreak were one undertaken from religious motives. Religion had nothing to do with it. It was the eternal Land Question in its original and most crude form—nothing more. It was unfortunate as furnishing a valuable pretext that was readily availed of for a general confiscation by the Puritan Parliament that the settlers were Scotch and English Protestants, but it cannot be doubted that, had they been Spaniards or Italians with an Archbishop at their head, they would have fared in precisely the same manner. From the point of view of the great mass of the Irish proprietors both Old-Irish and Anglo-Irish, it was an enormous tactical blunder.

A detail of the rebellion which had serious consequences, was the use of a forged Commission from Charles I, whereby some chiefs and others of the old proprietors who were hanging back, were induced to come out. Charles was in Edinburgh collecting evidence against the Inviters at the time of the outbreak, but was unwilling to leave until he had finished. Seeing, however, the use that would be made of any hesitation on his part in putting down a rebellion alleged to have been organized under his Commission, he ordered the Parliament to arrange for sending an Army into Ireland. That Assembly strung to the highest pitch of fanatical fury by the grossly exaggerated accounts of the Lords Justices and others interested in future forfeitures in February, 1642, passed an Act whereby 2,500,000 acres of Irish land in parts not concerned in the rebellion, were offered as security to whomsoever should subscribe towards the raising of the army.

On the 8th April, 1642, the King offered to go to Ireland and take command of the English garrison against the rebels, but the Parliament, believing he intended only to bring those troops into England, told him if he went, it would be looked on as an act of abdication. It can easily be seen that the rebellion was a great advantage to the Parliament, since the King could not withdraw his troops from Ireland without giving support to the story circulated by the Parliament, “that he and his Popish Queen had authorized the rising.” But, apart from the loss of popularity suffered by the King, the most important gain to the Parliament was the power to raise money and troops under the Act of Confiscation. The subscriptions obtained from the adventurers, or, as we should now call them, shareholders, were not to be paid into the Royal Exchequer, but to a Committee composed of Members of the House of Commons and Adventurers, and these were to appoint the Commander and Officers, the King being allowed only to sign the Commissions. The lands of the Irish were not to be set out to the adventurers until Parliament should declare the war at an end. The King was also deprived of the power to pardon the insurgents, for the effect of pardons would be to deprive the adventurers of their security. In this way, the mass of the Irish proprietors would be forced into rebellion, while for that reason the King would be prevented from entering into any terms with them, whereby he might call the English garrison in Ireland to his assistance in the coming struggle with the Parliament, or receive help from the insurgents.

In considering the attitude of the Parliament and the English people in all these matters, it must not be forgotten that they were then about to be forced into a life and death struggle against an autocracy. They knew that Strafford had, but a short time before, declared the King’s Government to be as autocratic in Ireland as that of any absolute monarch in Europe, and that both he and the King had lively hopes of bringing about the end of parliamentary government in England. They had an acute dread that the King’s power in Ireland might be greater than it really was, and that it would be used to crush their liberties. For this reason, if for no other, they were more determined than ever to extinguish the Irish as a nation. We know now that Charles was an admirer and correspondent of that Alexis Romanoff, who, after swearing to uphold them, had destroyed such germs of representative Government as then existed in Russia, and which the Russian people are still vainly striving to recover. After bearing with the King’s tyranny, vacillation, and faithlessness through many years, the time was now rapidly approaching when the conflict between the principles of autocracy and those of popular government would have to be decided by the sword.

Of the religious intolerance shown by all parties in these dissensions, it can only be said that men’s minds were yet quite unprepared to accept, or even understand, anything like toleration, and when opposing creeds met in open hostilities, both sides were often disgraced by cruelties that showed they were little influenced by such Christian principles as they were supposed to hold in common.

The Executive Government in Dublin Castle was, during most of the period with which we are concerned, in the hands of the Lords Justices in the absence of Lord Leicester, who had been appointed Lord Lieutenant, but who, already inclining to the popular side in England, never took up his office. The Lords Justices were, nominally, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase. Parsons, from a needy and vulgar adventurer, by the grasping chicanery then, and long after necessary to the establishment of a great position in Ireland, had wormed his way into his present eminence. Sir John Borlase, the Commander of the Ordnance, was an old soldier, well stricken in years, and practically a nonentity by the side of his powerful colleague. The English garrison in Ireland, already largely imbued with Puritan principles, was under the command of the Earl—afterwards Marquis—of Ormond.

The character of Ormond has been viewed from so many standpoints, that it is difficult to decide impartially between the extremely different views given of it. He was originally a Catholic, but taken to England by the Court of Wards in his youth, had been brought up a Protestant. By birth, the head of one of the greatest Catholic Anglo-Irish families of the Pale, amongst whom he had many relatives and connections, he naturally sympathised with them in their troubles, but he also shared with them the firm belief that they were not Irish, but merely English colonists in Ireland. A fervent Royalist, devoted to the King and his interests, as long as there was any chance of helping him, he was distrusted by the Lords Justices, especially Parsons, “the guiding spirit of confiscation and destruction,” to such an extent, that even on such military expeditions as he undertook against the insurgents by their orders, he was constantly thwarted, interfered with, and even recalled when he had gained some success, lest, by his means, the King’s party should grow too strong for that of the Parliament. He was in a most difficult position, and it always seemed to me an error to denounce Ormond as a traitor to the Irish cause. He entered into no engagements to serve it, though he was disposed, as far as possible, to favour his kinsmen and dependents of the Pale, but he was, first of all, an English colonist, a soldier in the King’s service, with no pretensions to any feeling of Irish nationality, which, as a matter of fact, far from having displaced the narrower ties of clanship, was even then, only approaching the throes of birth.

For some years, the Catholic Anglo-Irish proprietors, especially of the Pale, had been endeavouring, but in vain, to come to some accommodation with the King, heedless of what might befall their hereditary enemies, the Old-Irish. They had addressed petitions and remonstrances to Charles, but these, for the most part, had been suppressed by the Lords Justices. It would be impossible, in this rapid sketch to trace the course of these earlier negotiations. The passing of the Acts of Confiscation were a rude awakening for the Anglo-Irish. They were at once made to feel that for all their claims to English descent, they were looked on by those in power in England not as Englishmen, not even as “merely Englishmen with bad accents,” but purely and simply as Irish Papists, fomenters and favourers of rebellion and murder, whom it would be meritorious to exterminate.

They were accordingly forced, though, as they truthfully declared, most reluctantly, to ally themselves with the Old-Irish. This they did in a half-hearted way, being, most of them, rather inclined to temporise with the King through Ormond than to boldly adopt the policy of their allies, and by securing with their help the command of the country, be in a position to dictate terms. At a Synod of the Clergy of the Province of Armagh, in March, 1642, it was decided that an Assembly, representative of the whole of Ireland, should be convened. In May, a meeting of the clergy and principal laity took place at Kilkenny, and a Supreme Council of nine members was chosen as a Provisional Government to arrange the convention of the General Assembly. When the Lords Justices heard of the establishment of the Catholic Confederacy, they and the Irish House of Commons took steps to prohibit all intercourse with Catholics, and the House resolved that no one refusing the Oaths of Supremacy should be allowed to sit. The General Assembly of the Confederation held its first meeting on October 24, and the Rev. Father Meehan, in his _History of the Confederation of Kilkenny_, draws a glowing picture of the scene in St. Canice’s, where, for the first time probably since the battle of Clontarf, the representatives of the Irish nation assembled together for a common national object. Every county and every borough had chosen its representatives, and the body thus deputed was practically an Irish Parliament, though out of respect for the King, not having been summoned by his writs, it disclaimed that title. Its first business was to elect a new Supreme Council of twenty-five members. There were also Provincial and County Councils. The cumbrous procedure adopted, whereby every member of the Supreme Council had to be consulted in all important matters, did much to hamper its action, and was productive of delays in a time when rapid decision was most needful, and this contributed in some measure to its ultimate failure to effect the objects for which it was called into being.

Amongst the most important of the first declarations of the Assembly, was their resolution to maintain the rights and immunities of the Catholic Church agreeably to the Great Charter. They commanded all persons to bear faith and allegiance to the King, and to maintain his just prerogatives, while they denied and renounced the Irish Government administered in Dublin Castle by “a malignant party to his Highness’s great disservice and in compliance with their confederates, the malignant party of England.” The Church was to re-enter on its ancient rights, all ecclesiastical property was to be vested in the Bishops, but Abbey lands were not to be restored by the lay possessors, many of whom were sitting in the Assembly itself. This question of the Abbey lands at once became a bone of contention between the Religious Orders and some of the most powerful of the laity, and was a potent factor of the disunion which followed. The Assembly did not enter into the question of the ownership of land, beyond refusing to recognise the results of the insurrection. Land was to be considered the property of those who were in possession on October 1, 1641. On this point Gardiner says: “The land policy proclaimed was a policy of land owners, and was unlikely to conciliate those who had formed the strength of that agrarian revolution which had well nigh swept the English out of Ulster. It is, however, impossible to doubt that if the efforts of the Assembly had been crowned with success, it would have found itself powerless to reinstate the English and Scottish colonists in the lands which they had recently lost, and it is not very probable that Catholic Ireland would have granted to Protestants, a toleration which was denied to Episcopalians in Presbyterian Scotland, and had lately, when Charles’s authority was supreme, been denied to Presbyterians in Episcopalian England.” On this point of Gardiner’s, it may be remarked that where questions of religion alone were concerned, and apart from temporal considerations, Catholic Ireland has always shown an example of tolerance even in ages when tolerance was unknown in countries supposed to be more advanced in modern civilization.

While the land question threatened to divide the Old-Irish of Ulster from their co-religionists of the South, the Assembly deliberately—perhaps because it could not help itself—adopted a scheme of military commands which from the outset made for disunion. Owen Roe O’Neill was chosen General for Ulster; Preston for Leinster; Garret Barry for Munster, and Colonel John Burke for Connaught, the last with the title of Lieutenant-General, as it was hoped the Earl of Clanricarde would take the chief command in that province. No Commander-in-Chief was appointed, and nothing like concerted action between the various armies was ever seriously attempted. O’Neill had, moreover, little friendship for the Supreme Council, and was on bad terms with the Leinster General, Preston, who was father-in-law of Phelim O’Neill, Owen’s rival, who had but lately claimed the chieftainship of the O’Neills on the ground of lawful heirship, while Owen Roe, though possessing incomparably greater personal merit, was sprung from an illegitimate branch. Of the continued state of war which existed, it is impossible to give any detailed account here. It was a series of skirmishes and petty sieges, in which one side harassed the other without either gaining a decisive victory. The Royalists, under Ormond in Leinster, and the other English General, Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin in Munster, were in the greatest distress for want of provisions, pay, and munitions, and concerted action by the Irish forces under a skilled commander like Owen Roe, for instance, would soon have forced them to terms, but no such united effort was made. The Scottish army, which had landed in Ulster under Leven and Monroe, remained under the command of the latter, and possessed itself of the greater part of the province and extended its raids and forages as far as Sligo, but for the most part afterwards remained inactive, and was only distinguished by some massacres of the unarmed peasants. Of the general conduct of the war, Gardiner says: “There was no strategy on either side, it was an affair of skirmishes and sieges, of raids over the wide expanse of pasture-land, for the purpose of sweeping off the herds of cattle which were the main wealth of the people. Wherever an English force could penetrate, its track was marked by fire and the gallows. Exasperated at the Ulster murders, and seeing in every Irishman a murderer or a supporter of murderers, the English soldiery rarely gave quarter, and, unless the accounts of their enemies are entirely devoid of truth, when they did give it, it was often violated. The peasants retaliated by knocking stray soldiers on the head, and by slaughtering parties too weak to resist. Yet, whenever ... the Irish forces were commanded by officers of rank and authority, they were distinguished for humanity under circumstances of no slight provocation. The garrisons of fortified posts captured by the Irish, were uniformly allowed to find their way in safety to a place of refuge. On the whole, the balance of advantage was on the Irish side.”

The history from now until the arrival of Rinuccini is almost entirely that of a long series of tedious negotiations between Ormond, acting for the King, and the Supreme Council, for a cessation of arms. Ormond had recently been made a Marquis, and his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the English troops had been enlarged, so as to leave him independent of the nominal Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Leicester. Parsons still remained Lord Justice, and the King, did not venture to interfere with him. Leicester had got as far as Chester on his way to Ireland, but Charles, foreseeing that he would side with Parsons and make him still more powerful, summoned him to Oxford, this being practically the recall of his commission as Lord Lieutenant. The English interest in Ireland therefore remained in the hands of the Lords Justices, nominally acknowledging the King, but in reality, devoted to the Parliament and the policy of confiscation, and in those of the Marquis of Ormond, entirely devoted to the King, but with some sympathy for the Catholic nobility and gentry, especially those of the Pale, as he saw they had been driven through despair at the threatened confiscation, to join the Old-Irish in their uprising.

Reynolds and Goodwin had been sent over by the Parliament with £20,000, to attempt to win over the English garrison. The King, when he heard of their presence at the sittings of the Privy Council, denounced them as rebels, and severely reprimanded the Lords Justices. Soon after, he sent warrants for the arrest of Reynolds and Goodwin, but they had fled to England.

Charles, by this time at his wits’ end for forces to check the growing strength of the insurrection in England, had turned his thoughts to Ireland, and determined to enter into negotiations with the Confederates for a cessation so as to enable him to withdraw the English garrison from Ireland. He had proposed to make Ormond Lord Lieutenant, but left it to him to accept or decline the office. Ormond, however, advised him “to delay the sending him an authority to take that charge upon him,” and proceeded to the treaty with the Confederates as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. Amongst the reasons other than the King’s wish, which influenced Ormond in seeking a cessation, were the almost complete exhaustion of supplies of money and food for his troops. The £20,000 brought by Reynolds and Goodwin were spent, having for only a short time barely sufficed, as Carte pithily puts it, “to give soldiers twelve pence a week to keep them from drinking water.” Though Ormond had defeated Preston at Ross, he had no provisions to enable him to keep the field, and was at once obliged to return to Dublin with a starving army clamouring for food and pay. The Lords Justices besought the English Parliament to send money, but the Parliament wanted all the money they could lay hands on, including that subscribed by the Adventurers for the Irish War for their own war against the King, so that it may be truly said that the liberties of the English people were literally paid for by the spoliation of the Old-Irish and Anglo-Irish proprietors.

In January, 1643, Charles issued a commission to Ormond, Clanricarde, and others, to treat with the Catholic leaders, and this step was, of course, at once resented by the Lords Justices. The officers of the English garrison made some protest, but weary of waiting for supplies, which the English Parliament was unable to send, Ormond succeeded in getting them to place their hopes in the King’s power to satisfy their complaints. The King’s Commissioners and those of the Confederation met at Trim on St. Patrick’s Day, 1643, and the latter presented their Remonstrance of Grievances. In that document they described the disabilities they were under on account of their faith, the exclusion of their sons from University education and public employment, the tricks and chicaneries of the Puritan officials striving to make fortunes out of their unhappy position, Parsons being the worst of these; the boast of Parsons and others, that Catholics would be forced to change their faith, and the intention of the English Parliament to pass Acts for the extirpation of the Catholic religion in the Three Kingdoms. It denounced the misconduct of the Lords Justices, their dependence on the English Parliament, the Confiscation Acts passed at their instigation, which had forced the Anglo-Irish to take up arms in self-defence. It declared the Irish Parliament completely independent of that of England, and that the latter had no right to legislate for Ireland. That the Irish Parliament had sunk under the Lords Justices to be a mere section of their own partisans, where the majority of the members of the House dare not appear. The document concluded by praying for a Free Parliament, in which all matters affecting Ireland might be discussed irrespective of Poynings’ Act, and that no Catholic should be, on any account, excluded from sitting and voting. If these favours were granted to them, the Confederates were ready to send an army of 10,000 men to England to defend the King’s prerogative.

Against this remonstrance, the Lords Justices sent a strongly-worded protest to the King against his entering into any treaty with the Irish. They recalled the events of the first rebellion; the Irish did not really care for their religion, but were so ungrateful for the care the English had taken of them as to massacre 150,000 men, women and children of that nation.

“Astounding as this statement was,” says Gardiner, “there was one point in the argument of the Lords Justices which had been passed over entirely by the Irish Commissioners. If the Irish, after all that had passed, were suffered to consolidate their power, would they allow the English to live on an equality with themselves?... Cynicism, however, has seldom gone further than the cool anticipation of slaughter which followed. They remember, say the writers, ‘that in the best of former times the Irish did so exceed in number, as that the Governors never cared or durst fully execute the laws for true reformation for fear of disturbance, having some hope always by civil and fair entreaty to win them to a civil and peaceable life; so if peace should now be granted them before the sword or famine have so abated them in number as that in a reasonable time, English colonies might overtop them.’ ‘No peace,’ the Lords Justices repeated, ‘could be safe or lasting till the sword have abated these rebels in number and power.’”

Ormond, while considering the proposals of the Confederates as totally inadmissible, condemned the representations of the Lords Justices as tending to countenance a scheme of extirpation iniquitous in the attempt, and impossible to be executed.

Charles was desirous of coming to terms with the Catholics without giving them any real power, so that he might strengthen his army in England. Though the manner in which even the rumour of an Irish Catholic army was received in England showed how dangerous it was for Charles even to think of it, still, by entering into negotiations he might gain time in Ireland, and be enabled to withdraw the English garrison—at any rate, temporarily. He first dismissed Parsons, and appointed Sir Henry Tichborne Lord Justice in his place, while Borlase, too old and inefficient to be of consequence, was allowed to remain. The King next authorized Ormond to treat for a cessation of arms for a year, and privately wrote to him to bring over the Irish garrison to Chester as soon as the cessation was agreed on.

The cessation was not, however, so speedily arranged as the King desired, and the Confederates were not so anxious to see Charles enter London in triumph as to forego the interests of religion and country. The earlier negotiations were broken off on Ormond’s refusal of the free Parliament asked for in the Remonstrance of Grievances. Nevertheless, delay was favourable to the Confederates, and their power was still extending over the country. In June, 1643, Ormond, conscious of his desperate military position, “and,” as Gardiner thinks, “perhaps willing to establish beyond dispute, the necessity of coming to terms with the insurgents, told the Lords Justices that he was ready to break off the negotiations if they could find any possible way of maintaining the troops.” They were unable to help him in any way, and Ormond set out once more, this time with the reluctant consent of the Castle Government, to attempt to come to terms with the Confederates, but after nearly three weeks of fruitless effort, he resolved to attack Preston once more. Preston wisely avoided a battle, and Ormond’s army in a starving condition, was obliged to retreat to Dublin.

Ormond and the Lords Justices had now no alternative but a cessation, and knowing that the King was willing to treat for a free Parliament, he prepared to resume negotiations. Some of the irreconcilables of the Privy Council bitterly opposed any cessation, but on the King’s order, Parsons, Sir John Temple, and others, were arrested as traitors to the King for having sided with “my rebels of England.”

Amongst the Confederates, the nobility and gentry of Norman or English extraction were willing to accept such terms as would restore to the Catholic Church its former jurisdiction, and would give them, through Parliament, the control of the Government and the assistance of the King’s troops against the Puritan army under Monroe. They foolishly believed that if the King “gained the victory over his enemies in England (he) would have either the will or the power to support in England the system which found favour at Kilkenny.”

The Old-Irish, especially of Ulster, and the clergy took a more accurate view of the situation, and were against any cessation, as it would only give time for the enemy to regain strength, and for disunion to spread in their own ranks. In these opinions they were strongly supported by Father Scarampi, who had recently arrived as Papal Legate. His views are embodied in a document drawn up by those of the Old-Irish most in his confidence, which is worth quoting at some length, as it is the whole case of the national party as distinguished from those who thought more of the King’s and the English interest, than that of their country. “We should undoubtedly,” they say, “carry on our work to establish the Catholic Faith, the authority of Parliament, and the security of our country by arms and intrepidity, not by cessations and indolence. For this there are the following reasons: That peace will ever be made between the King and the Parliament is improbable, nor would it be to our advantage, for if they combined, we should be necessitated to surrender. It is likely, however, that before long one side will become powerful enough to dictate to the other. If the Parliament prevail—which God forbid—all Ireland will fall under their arbitrary power; the swords of the Puritans will be at our throats, and we shall lose everything except our faith. Should the King triumph, we may expect much from his goodness and kindness, and much from the Queen’s intercession. It is uncertain, however, what laws or terms may be imposed on us in such circumstances. The King, should he succeed by the aid of the Protestants, would be in a manner engaged to them. They, as usual, would oppose freedom of religion in Ireland, and insist on the punishment of our ‘rebellion,’ as they style it, to enable them to seize our properties and occupy our estates. It would probably be thought a sufficient concession to the Queen to allow us to return to the miserable position in which we were before the war. On the other hand, if we now adopt proper measures, the party eventually triumphing in England will find us in arms, well provided, with increased territories, and stronger in foreign succours. Thus they would not so readily invade us, or swallow us up, so as to leave us without the free exercise of our faith, or some share in the administration of the kingdom.”

“It was the banner of Irish nationality,” says Gardiner, “which was here unfolded, and those who upheld it were at least not afraid to look in the face the stern fact that no English party would willingly tolerate the organisation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, or the organisation of a purely Irish Government. If the opportunity of England’s divisions was to be seized to any profit, Ireland must become a nation strong enough to hold its own. To gain for itself the sentiment of patriotism, to cherish, in defiance of all assailants, its own traditions and its own beliefs, would be worthy many a struggle and many a defeat, if only, through suffering, it might be attained.”

The national party were not strong enough in the Assembly or the Council to successfully oppose the cessation; Ormond was permitted to resume negotiations, and the Articles for a Cessation for a year were signed on September 15, 1643. A narrow district on the East Coast, another round Cork, and such fortresses as were held by the Royal troops, were to remain in the hands of the English Commanders. All the rest of Ireland, outside Ulster, was in the power of the Confederates. If Monroe’s troops accepted the Cessation, they were to share its advantages; if not, Ormond’s army was to remain neutral, whilst the whole force of the Confederates was to march against them, and the King was even to be asked to allow Ormond to co-operate.

On these conditions, the Supreme Council agreed to pay £800 to relieve the garrison of Naas and £30,000 in money or beeves for the use of the regiments withdrawn to England in support of the King. The Confederates were also to send Commissioners to Oxford to discuss with Charles the terms of a permanent peace.

Such in brief was the Cessation, and from its very articles which prove the Confederation not only masters of almost the whole of Ireland, but so well provided with money and supplies as to be able to come substantially to the assistance of the King, we can estimate their folly in voluntarily throwing away a position they were never able to regain. Ormond’s diplomacy had triumphed. He had prepared the ground for the future sowing of dissensions in their ranks. He could now look forward to helping the King with the Irish garrison whose cause with this addition might triumph, and before the time expired, they could be back in Ireland flushed with victory, replenished in every way, and easily able to overcome the disunited insurgents. The Confederates had gained nothing, but had placed themselves in danger of losing all. An Irish writer declares “that the Puritans in Dublin did swear that if the Irish did hold out for one month more all the Parliamentarians would have deserted Leinster.... The enemy had no commander of any repute but Ormond, Tichborne, Hume and Monk, while the Irish had O’Neill’s victorious army ... ranging at pleasure in the counties of Meath and Dublin and Castlehaven taking the garrisons whereunto he marched, the enemy not daring to relieve any for fear of the Ulster (O’Neill’s) army. All the Irish got by this bargain was the release of a few prisoners.”

It is necessary only to allude to the attempt made by Randal McDonnell, Earl of Antrim, to raise by his own efforts 10,000 Irish soldiers for the service of the King, as it had no effect on the course of events.

In March, 1644, the Confederates’ Commissioners arrived at Oxford to treat with Charles for a permanent peace. Amongst the first conditions submitted, they required that no standing army should be maintained in Ireland, that all offices should be vacated whereby any titles to lands were found for the Crown since the first year of Elizabeth, that all attainders since that period and all grants and leases from the Crown should be revised in a free Parliament in which they would form the large majority. These conditions were found to be inadmissible by the King, as practically meaning the extinction of his authority in Ireland, and it is difficult to see how they could have been put before any English King, and especially one in the difficult position of Charles, with any hope of success. They accordingly modified their demands, and now asked for the freedom of their religion, the repeal of the penal laws which prevented them from holding public appointments, a free Parliament, and the repeal of Poynings’ Law during its session, the annulling of all Acts of the Irish Parliament since the prorogation of 7th August, 1641, to which they imputed the subsequent troubles, the vacating of all outlawries and attainders against Catholics since that date and of all offices found for the King’s title to lands since the year 1634. They also demanded the establishment of an Inn of Court and Catholic Colleges, a free and indifferent appointment of all Irish natives without exception to places in the public service, that an Act should be passed formally declaring the independency of their Parliament on that of England. If these conditions were accepted by the King, they were ready to send 10,000 men to his assistance, as well as money and supplies. Though unwilling to agree to most, if not all, of these conditions, Charles accepted the memorial for consideration as the basis of a future treaty.

Agents were also nominated at the desire of the King to represent the Irish Privy Council and the Protestant Royalists. These, headed by Archbishop Usher, set out for Oxford, but before they could arrive, Sir Charles Coote headed a Commission sent by the extreme Puritan party in Ireland, and hastened to the King with a memorial praying that he “would abate his quit rents and encourage and enable Protestants to re-plant the Kingdom, and cause a good walled town to be built in every county for their security, no Papist being allowed to dwell therein.” That he should “continue the penal laws and dissolve forthwith the assumed power of the Confederates, and banish all Popish priests out of Ireland, and that no Popish recusant should be allowed to sit or vote in Parliament.”

Archbishop Usher protested against the intolerant demands of these fanatics, but he desired that all the penal laws should be enforced and all Papists disarmed. The King vainly represented to them how useless it was to expect the Confederates, superior in power, and possessed of more than three-fourths of the Kingdom, to resign themselves disarmed to the mercy of those whom they have provoked by their resistance. Even in time of peace, he said, the penal laws were too odious to be strictly executed. It was, therefore, plain that no treaty with the Confederates could be made “on the terms proposed by the Protestants, and it was scarcely less evident that the most violent of this party,” in the interests of the English Parliament, “laboured to obstruct a treaty upon any terms whatever.”

However, Charles was keenly aware of his own necessities, and seeing that of the three Irish parties, that of the Confederates alone had the means to help him if they could be won over, treated their agents with particular attention, and as Leland says somewhat disparagingly, “answered their propositions with that courtesy and condescension which he had been taught by his misfortunes.” He was willing to refer the great difficulty of the independence of the Irish Parliament to be temporarily decided by both Parliaments. He agreed to pass an Act for removing the incapacity of Catholics to purchase lands and hold public offices, and to allow them places of education. Instead of reversing Acts of Parliament and attainders, he proposed to grant a general pardon, and to assent to such an Act of Oblivion as should be recommended by the Lord Lieutenant and Council. He was willing to summon a new Parliament in Ireland, but without the suspension of Poynings’ Act. With regard to the penal laws, he contended that as they had never been rigorously enforced, so his recusant subjects, in returning to their duty, should have no cause of complaint that they were treated with less moderation than in the two last reigns.

Though the negotiations were interrupted, the agents of the Confederation were conciliated by these declarations of the King, and said they confessed that, placed as he was, he could not well make further concessions at present, and hoped that when their General Assembly was aware of his situation they would modify their demands, though they themselves had no authority to recede from them. The King dismissed them with an admonition that would have had some weight from a man of firmer and more trustworthy character, but even as he was, his words were in a sense prophetic. He advised them to bear in mind his circumstances and their own, “that the existence of their nation and religion depended on the preservation of his just rights and authority in England, that if his Catholic subjects of Ireland would consent to such conditions as he could safely grant and they accept, with security to their lives, fortunes, and religion, and hasten to enable him to suppress his enemies it would then be in his power to vouchsafe such grace to them as should complete their happiness, and which he gave them his royal word he would “then dispense in such a manner as should not leave them disappointed of their just and full expectations. But if, by insisting on particulars which he could not in conscience grant, nor they in conscience necessarily demand, and such as though he might concede, yet, at present, would bring that damage on him which all their supplies could not countervail ... if they should thus delay their succours until the power of the rebels had prevailed in England and Scotland then they would quickly find their power in Ireland but an imaginary support for his interest or their own; and that they (the English rebels) who with difficulty had destroyed him, would without opposition root out their nation and religion.” The Confederate Commissioners returned to Kilkenny, and Ormond was empowered by the King to treat with the Supreme Council on the basis of the amended memorial. Meanwhile the war dragged on between the Confederates and the Scots and other adherents of the Parliament who refused the truce, while Ormond’s garrisons remained neutral. In the South, Lords Inchiquin and Broghill continued ravaging the country and capturing posts from the Confederates. They expelled the Catholic inhabitants of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, and wrote to the King asking him to proclaim the Confederates as rebels “and that they were resolved to die a thousand deaths rather than consent to any peace with them.” Supported now by the Parliament which sent a fleet into the Shannon, and disappointed at the King’s refusal to make him Lord President of Munster, Inchiquin soon after openly joined the Parliamentarians, and adopting a canting style, declared that “he was acting for the Gospel, and that if he died for it he should be held as a perfect martyr.”

The negotiations for the peace with the Confederates were resumed by Ormond in September, 1644, but it was soon evident that even if the political articles could be rendered acceptable to both parties, the religious ones promised to upset everything. The Irish demanded not only the repeal of all laws that hindered their freedom of worship, but those against appeals to Rome, and the portion of the Act of Praemunire against Papal jurisdiction. Though Charles would agree that the penal laws should not be enforced, he still would not consent to their repeal, and was absolutely resolved not to alter the Acts of Appeals and Praemunire. In this resolution he was strengthened by the action of the Ormondist faction in the General Assembly headed by Lord Muskerry and Geoffrey Browne. These declared privately to Ormond that they would accept the King’s terms on sufficient guarantee being given that the lives and properties of the Irish would be safe. They would not press for the repeal of the penal laws which they thought would fall into abeyance when Charles was restored to power. The King now yielded somewhat and ordered Ormond to promise that the penal laws should be suspended as soon as peace was made, and that if restored to his rights by Irish aid, they should be absolutely repealed, “but all those against appeals to Rome and Praemunire must stand.”

Ormond, feeling the difficulty of his position as a Protestant native of Ireland with many connections amongst the gentry of the Pale, and, perhaps, also, through a belief that the King would conduct the negotiations without him, wrote offering to send his resignation, but Charles would not hear of it, and urged him to complete the treaty. While so many estimates have been formed of Ormond’s conduct and capacity at this juncture by Irish partisans, it may be useful to quote an English opinion. Gardiner, reviewing his conduct in these transactions says: “Of all living men Ormond was perhaps the least fitted to conduct that negotiation even to the temporary sense of which it was alone capable. His virtues and his defects alike stood in his way. He was too loyal to throw off his shoulders the load which Charles had placed upon them, but he was at the same time so completely wanting in initiative power that he never thought—as Strafford under similar circumstances would assuredly have thought—of suggesting a policy of his own, or even of criticising adversely the one imposed on him by his master. Yet it ought to have been evident to Ormond that an Irish army was not to be gained by haggling over the privileges to be accorded to the true Irish Parliament, and the true Irish Church.” Even if the 10,000 men had been really forthcoming, they would have been of little avail unless those Irishmen were heartily engaged in the King’s cause.

Before the Oxford negotiations were broken off Charles had had an opportunity of winning their confidence. The English Parliament urged Monroe to break the Cessation and sent him a commission as Commander-in-Chief of all the English as well as the Scottish forces in Ulster. He complied with their orders, seized Belfast, and defeated Castlehaven’s army sent against him by the Supreme Council, who offered to place all their forces under Ormond’s command if he would unite with them against the Scots. Ormond refused to do so without the King’s positive order, and at that time, Charles withheld. No doubt he was afraid to take a step which would have cost him most of his army in England; “But what,” says Gardiner, “is to be thought of a policy which based itself on the co-operation of an Irish army in England when it was impossible to grant to the Irish the co-operation of an English army in Ireland?”

The King was apparently also sensible that some other intermediary than Ormond would be needed to bring about the only end he had in view—the strengthening of his army by any means against the Parliament. He soon found, or, rather, had ready to his hand, one far more likely than Ormond to come to speedy terms with the Confederate Catholics, and we accordingly approach the consideration of a series of transactions in which the King’s conduct has provided a fertile theme for discussion Whatever may be thought of his mode of conducting these negotiations, there is no doubt that nothing in his whole career injured him so much in English opinion or contributed more certainly to his tragic end.

When the Irish agents were at Oxford Charles had already been discussing his chances of Irish aid with Lord Herbert of Raglan, the Catholic son of the Marquis of Worcester. He and his father had generously placed their great wealth at the disposal of the King who had but lately acknowledged having received no less than £250,000 from them. He now conferred on Lord Herbert the title of Earl of Glamorgan by warrant, but in order to keep the whole transaction private, though the warrant was presented at the Signet Office, no steps were taken to render it valid by patent. Glamorgan offered—and his offer was eagerly accepted by the King—to induce the Confederates to enter into a private treaty for bringing over the 10,000 men on terms more liberal than Ormond was authorized to grant, he was also to bring 6,000 from Wales, and as many as he could get from Lorraine and the Low Countries to Lynn in Norfolk, where the Parliament’s Commander was ready to betray his post. Glamorgan, sanguine of success, was to be the Commander-in-Chief of the whole of this Catholic army. He chiefly relied on the Pope and other Catholic princes whom he expected to eagerly support a scheme from which the Church was to reap many advantages. The Commission to Glamorgan was issued without the Great Seal, but he soon overcame that difficulty. Any seal was good enough to show to Irish Confederates and foreign courts, and it is believed that he and Endymion Porter cut off a genuine seal from some other document. Charles, completely won over by the assurances of Glamorgan that he would soon be furnished with the means of overcoming all his difficulties, was ready to confer the highest honours. He offered the hand of the Princess Elizabeth to Glamorgan’s eldest son, and conferred on Glamorgan the higher title of Duke of Somerset, though in the case of this title also, the legal formalities were for the present avoided. Though Charles so highly appreciated Glamorgan’s enthusiasm, he apparently did not credit him with much discretion. In writing to Ormond that Glamorgan was about to visit Ireland on his own private affairs, he added, “His honesty or affection to my service will not deceive you, but I will not answer for his judgment.”

Ormond was fully aware of the King’s resolve to conclude peace with the Confederates on Muskerry’s conditions, and it was for this reason he had tried to shift the responsibility for complying with them to some one directly from England. Charles, as we have seen, refused to accept his resignation, but he now sent Glamorgan to persuade those of the Confederates who were opposed to peace on Muskerry’s terms, and to assure them that the penal laws, though unrepealed, would never be enforced. Charles desired that Glamorgan should be guided in everything by the advice of Ormond, but so desperately resolved was he on getting help from the Confederates, that he actually gave “the feather-brained Glamorgan a commission to succeed Ormond as Lord Lieutenant in the event of the death or misconduct of the latter; in other words, in the event of his persisting in his refusal to carry out the negotiation on the lines indicated by his last instructions.” At the same time it is evident that Charles did not think there was any likelihood of Ormond being replaced by Glamorgan, and that he counted rather on their working heartily together. “You may engage your estate, interest and credit,” he instructed Glamorgan, “that we will most readily and punctually perform any our promises to the Irish, and as it is necessary to conclude a peace suddenly, whatsoever shall be consented unto by our Lieutenant the Marquis or Ormond, we will die a thousand deaths rather than disannul or break it; and if upon necessity anything to be condescended unto, and yet the Lord Marquis not willing to be seen therein or not fit for us publicly to own, do you endeavour to supply the same.” Taken in conjunction with the instructions to Ormond, it is plain that Glamorgan was to act with him, but with powers to give the Confederates those assurances which Ormond as a Protestant Royalist might not feel himself free to give, that the penal laws would be suspended until peace was declared and repealed as soon as Charles’s restoration to power would make it safe for him to do so.

On January 6, 1645, Charles issued a Commission under the Great Seal to Glamorgan to levy troops not only in Ireland but on the Continent, and this was followed on the 12th by a letter to him in which the King said, “So great is the confidence we repose in you, as that whatsoever you shall perform, as warranted under our signature, pocket signet, or private mark, or even by word of mouth, without further ceremony, we do on the word of a King and a Christian, promise to make good to all intents and purposes as effectually as if your authority from us had been under the Great Seal of England, with this advantage that we shall esteem ourselves the more obliged to you for your gallantry in not standing upon such nice terms to do us service, which we shall, God willing, reward.... Proceed, therefore, cheerfully, speedily, and boldly, and for your doing so this shall be your sufficient warrant.”

These commissions and instructions of Charles can only be viewed as the words of a desperate gambler willing to promise anything that would provide him with another stake to hazard in the game. He was not, however, dependent only on Glamorgan for Irish and Continental assistance. His Queen, Henrietta Maria, had escaped to France, and was actively engaged in procuring troops. She had been kindly welcomed by the Queen-Regent, Anne of Austria, but the Prime Minister, Mazarin, looked on her coldly. France, exhausted by her long but victorious struggle with the Emperor for those Rhine Provinces she was again destined to lose, was not in a position to make any effort from sentimental motives to help Charles. Mazarin had also no interest in seeing those troubles ended which prevented England from interfering with his designs on the Continent. He therefore received favourably Father O’Hartigan, the Confederate agent at Paris. His plans were such as to lead to the practically complete independence of Ireland. Mazarin, however, would not help unless everything was done in the name of Charles, and with the approval of the Queen of England. O’Hartigan was soon able to report that he had her support. A joint committee of English and Irish Catholics had been formed in Paris and had resolved that the Catholic Church should be first established in Ireland as a step to its establishment in England. By this resolution it was hoped to obtain considerable help in money from the Pope and other Catholic princes, but it was not so much of the interests of the Church in England O’Hartigan was thinking, as of Irish independence. Sir Kenelm Digby was to go to Rome to solicit the help of the Pope. O’Hartigan, writing privately to the Supreme Council at Kilkenny, recommended that after the enemy had been expelled from Ireland, the long talked of Irish army might be despatched to England to replace Charles on the throne. There was another scheme in which the Duke of Lorraine was to play the leading part. He had been deprived of his Duchy by Richelieu, and as a Catholic prince of the Empire, had fought against France. Mazarin was anxious to give his energies some other outlet, and told the Queen that if the Duke could be induced to lead his troops into England, money would not be wanting. The Duke engaged to enter England with 10,000 men, and the Prince of Orange was asked to supply the ships to carry them, as well as 5,000 the Queen was assured would be raised in France.