A History of Ireland.

Volume 2

by Eleanor Hull

1931

V.—THE CONFEDERATE WARS IN IRELAND

Hitherto the rebellion had found no sympathizers among the Leinster gentry. From its outbreak the Lords of the Pale, Catholics and Protestants alike, had avowed their devotion to the King and offered their services to help in suppressing the rebels. Lord Dillon of Costelogh, a Protestant, united with the Catholics Lord Gormanston and Sir Robert Talbot in the petition presented to the King at Westminster in the spring of 1641. The traditions of the gentry of the Pale had allied them with England and the English Crown, and they had no sympathy with rebellion; on the contrary, they offered their lives and fortunes for the suppression of the revolt. In a series of remarkable petitions during the progress of the rebellion they declared their unalterable attachment to the sovereign, their expressions increasing in warmth as the misfortunes of the King became more serious and perplexing. They give a call to "all the inhabitants of Ireland and to each of them" to be "most faithful to our Sovereign Lord and King, and to his heirs and lawful successors," and to "maintain to the uttermost of their power his royal prerogatives" against his enemies, and also to support the laws of England, so far as they do not extinguish the Catholic religion or the liberty of the subject.

At the meeting of the Confederate gentry at Trim on March 17, 1642, after taking their decision to resist, they protest that they had been necessitated to take up arms only to "prevent the extirpation of their nation and religion...and to maintain the rights and prerogatives of his Majesty's crown and dignity and the interests of his royal issue, and for no other reason whalever." They style themselves "Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects." Similar expressions of devotion came from the gentry of all parts of the kingdom. Their own demands were for the freedom of Parliament, liberty of religion, and the right to educate their sons at home instead of sending them abroad for education, with the opening of paths of employment and trust in Church and State to their families. They complained of the "immortal hatred of some of the ministers of state, and especially of Sir William Parsons, to any welfare or happiness of this nation, and of the ambition of these men to make themselves still richer and greater by the total ruin and extirpation of this people"; and of Parsons' "underhand working" in procuring false inquisitions upon feigned titles of their estates after many hundred years possession, "one hundred and fifty letters patent being avoided by him in one morning, under the King's great seal, being the public faith of the kingdom." The whole land, they complained, was filled with swarms of escheators and pursuivants, carrying on illegal practices under the protection of the Lords Justices and the oppressive Court of Wards.[1] We feel that it required all the sinister practices of such men as Parsons to drive these gentlemen, most of them English by descent and all of them enthusiastically loyal to the sovereign, into the arms of the rebels of the North; yet even this feat the double-dealing of the Irish Government accomplished. But the union was an uneasy one. Southern Ireland was, in fact, throughout the years of the rising, a Catholic Royalist stronghold, upheld by the belief that they were warring for the King against the Puritan Parliament and that his cause was identical with their own.

[1] Curry, Civil Wars, Appendix V, p. 614; Gilbert, History of the Irish Confederation, vol. ii, No. LX, pp. 226-242; see also "Apologie of the Irish for Rising in Arms," in J. Lodge, Des. Cur. Hib. (1772), ii, 78; 82, 102, 113.
For the King's support they poured out subsidy after subsidy, and to his help they sent the Irish troops that turned the defeats of Montrose in Scotland into victories; they proffered the army for England which roused such violent anger against Charles I that it was made a main accusation against him at his trial. In their loyalty they had the sympathy of the more considerable Catholic corporations throughout the country. None of the towns stirred until the residents found themselves in the midst of an armed population, while they, through the mistrust or malice of Parsons, were forced to go about unarmed. Worse things were happening. Sir Charles Coote, commonly known as "the Raven," had been let loose upon Leinster, where no rising was contemplated or massacre had been committed. His orders were "to kill and destroy all rebels, and waste, consume, and demolish all places where they had been harboured, with all who were capable of bearing arms." Soon afterward they heard that Colonel Reade and other gentlemen of position and honour who had been chosen as their envoys to the King had been seized by the Lords Justices and put upon the rack, in the hope of forcing them to inculpate the King in the rising. It was such acts as these which caused the gentry of the south to unite with the malcontents in the north. Another urgent cause thrust this union upon them.

In London, Parliament was busily engaged in forcing through all its stages the nefarious Adventurers Bill as a means of raising a loan to pay the English garrison in Ireland. By this Bill, passed through in a week, lands in Ireland to the extent of 10,000,000 acres, "to be confiscated" in consequence of the rebellion, were offered for sale, of which 2,500,000 acres were to be allotted to subscribers to the loan. On March 19, 1642, only five months after the outbreak of the rebellion, the Act was signed by the King, who, though he had recently declared himself ready to "pawn his head" for Ireland, passed every proposition without taking time to examine its results. Money for the lands "to be forfeited" poured in, though little of it was used for the purpose for which it was subscribed. The confiscations under Cromwell were largely founded on the Adventurers Act. Henceforth rebellion was encouraged on the one hand with a view to forfeitures and cruelly put down on the other; it took on a specially savage aspect. To the gentry the Adventurers Bill resolved the war into a struggle for existence, and to secure their estates they threw in their lot with the rebels, having with them but one aim in common--religious liberty. On December 15, the Lords Gormanston, Fingall, Slane, and Dunsany met Rory O'More, Philip O'Reilly, and Colonel MacMahon at the Hill of Crofty, and, O'More having sworn that he had no personal motive in the rebellion but had taken up arms for the King and for religion, they consented to join hands, and their union was confirmed at Tara some weeks later. This act made the Anglo-Irish lords rebels in the eyes of the Dublin Government, and they refused any further dealings with them. Lord Dunsany and others were flung into prison, and measures taken to indict them of high treason.

The outbreak of the rebellion brought Ormonde into power. On November 10, 1641, the King appointed him Commander-in-Chief, and from that time forward till his death in the year of the Revolution (1688) he took an active part in the changing fortunes of his country, endeavouring to pursue amid the violences of faction an even path of moderation. Ormonde's loyalty was the basis of his character. "Yonder comes Ormonde," once said Charles II. "I have done all in my power to disoblige that man, and to make him as discontented as others; but he will be loyal in spite of my teeth, and I must even take him in again." James, twelfth Earl and first Duke of Ormonde, was not a strong man, and some of his acts, especially his delivery of Dublin to the Parliament and his retirement from the country at a critical moment, are open to question; but of his conscientious efforts to do the best he could for the country there seems no doubt. The difficulties of his position were immense. As a royal ward he had been brought up a Protestant, though heir to a great Catholic house, and he had to supply, by his natural abilities, a complete lack of education. His father, Lord Thurles, had been drowned at sea, and his grandfather, "Walter of the beads and rosary," had spent much of his life in the Fleet Prison, with a debt of £100,000 round his neck, only saved from starvation by the affection of a retainer. Though there were English policies to which, as Catholics, the house of Butler could give no adherence, the allegiance of the Earls had remained untainted through all the troubled days of Elizabeth and James I. When, as Lord Thurles, James returned to Ireland determined "to lie well in the chronicle of his house," it was with 'some such ideals in his mind'; and in the difficult days before him he seldom belied either the humanity or the loyalty of his ancestors. From the outset his way was beset with perils. Though holding a high commission from the King, he was hampered at every step by the jealousy of Parsons, whose barbarous orders he refused to obey; and he was embarrassed by the defection of his brother, Richard Butler of Kilcash, who joined Muskerry, their brother-in-law, and became, with Lord Mountgarret, one of the three chief leaders of the Munster rebels.

Ormonde's capacity as a commander was shown as soon as he took the field. Tredath (Drogheda) having been relieved, largely through the efforts of the garrison and of Lord Moore of Mellifont, he cleared the country south of Dublin and defeated the rebel forces at the battle of Kilrush, about twenty miles from Dublin. But matters were approaching a crisis. In July 1642 the news arrived that the brave Owen Roe O'Neill had landed in Donegal, and he was soon afterward followed by Colonel Preston, uncle to Lord Gormanston, who brought with him five hundred officers and men to the coast of Wexford. On October 24 of the same year the Confederate Catholics met at Kilkenny, formed themselves into a General Assembly by an Oath of Association, in which each of them swore "that all and every person or persons within this kingdom shall bear faith and true allegiance unto our Sovereign Lord, King Charles,...and to his heirs and lawful successors; and that I shall during my life defend, uphold, maintain, all his and their just prerogatives, estates, and rights, etc." They swore to uphold the Parliament and the fundamental laws of Ireland, and the free exercise of the Roman Catholic faith and religion, and to obey the Supreme Council which they proceeded to elect, consisting of twenty-four members, six from each province. This important meeting included eleven bishops, fourteen lay lords, and two hundred and twenty-six commoners. They proceeded to settle the government of the country, appoint sheriffs, coin money, and regulate trade. The Supreme Council had absolute control over military and civil officials, and the direction of negotiations with foreign states, and heard and decided all capital and civil causes except titles to land. They showed their loyalty in the design of the seal of the Confederation. It bore the cross in the centre and the crown and harp beneath its arms, a dove above and a flaming heart below, with the legend Pro Deo pro Rege et Patria Hibernia unanimis.[2]

[2] Gilbert, History of the Irish Confederation, 1641-1643 (1882), ii, 84. He gives an illustration of the Seal.
The Oath of Association was signed by the Catholic gentry of the country, Irish and old English alike. It contains, along with the signature of the Earl of Castlehaven and Lord Gormanston, those of "Phelemy" O'Neill, O'Rorke, O'Sullivan More, Mac Carthy, O'Shaughnessy, O'Callaghan, etc., none of whom seem to have had any hesitation in swearing allegiance to the King. Indeed, though accused by the Dublin officials of being 'rebels,' they felt they were supporting Charles and his royal house against his puritan enemies as much as did any English royalist cavalier. Their next step was to appoint Owen Roe O'Neill general in Ulster, and Preston general of the forces at their disposal in Leinster. But here trouble began. Sir Phelim was furiously jealous of the interference of his cousin, who took him to task for his incompetence and cruelty, and whose fame he could not but recognize to be far above his own. Nor were the relations more friendly between Owen Roe and Preston, who were quite unable to work in concert and had many old causes of friction in their remembrance. To understand the position we must look back to their past history.

Both Preston and O'Neill had served with distinction in the Spanish wars of the Low Countries. They had entered the Irish regiment of Colonel Henry O'Neill, Tyrone's second son, and had risen to be captains shortly before the visit of Tyrone and Tyrconnel to Brussels in 1608. They probably were among those who welcomed the Earls on their entry to the capital in the suite of the Archduke Albert. But they belonged to different parties at home, and even abroad Preston found it impossible to forget that he was a Palesman on both sides, of old English descent and nobility, who except in the matter of religion had no common ground with the native Irish of the north. He did not join the regiment of Owen Roe even when that born leader of men rose to fame in the Spanish service. He married a Flemish lady of rank and had gained both wealth and influence, but his jealousy was aroused when he found the Irish recruits which, with Strafford's approval, he had spent money and trouble in raising in Ireland deserting wholesale to the regiment of his rival. He kept himself apart, as "captain of a separate company," while O'Neill had serving under him, besides several of his own family, officers both of English and Irish extraction of the O'Mores, Kavanaghs, Lalors, Dillons, de la Hoydes, Daltons, Owens, Browns, FitzGeralds, and O'Donnells. There were said to be ten or twelve thousand Irish infantry and five hundred horse in the Spanish army, with more constantly coming over. Many of the uprooted young men of Ulster must have been among them, glad to exchange into regular service from the wild life on the mountains at home. Preston was not a successful commander, and in Ireland he is best known by two dismal defeats; the battle of New Ross, in March 1643, soon after his arrival in Ireland, and the battle of Dangan Hill in August 1647, In the former he was defeated by Ormonde solely on account of the bad disposition of his forces, having, as Castle-haven says, "put himself under as great disadvantage as his enemy could wish"; in the latter, fought near the close of the Confederate Wars, his huge army of eight thousand men was annihilated by Michael Jones, the leader of the Parliamentary forces. He earned for himself from his countrymen the title of "the Drum," because "he was only heard of when he was beaten." Yet he came over with a good record, the courage of his Irish company and his own pluck having largely contributed to the saving of Louvain when it was besieged by the combined armies of France and Holland in 1635.[3]Immediately on his arrival in Wexford he was appointed general of the southern army by the Confederate Council.

[3] See Preston's report to Strafford, Letters, i, 440; Piot, History of Louvain, pp. 308-309; and Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, History of the Wars in Flanders. Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, was an eye-witness of the siege, which is described in the Introduction to his Works.
The record of Owen Roe, known in the Spanish army as Colonel Don Eugenio O'Neill, had been more brilliant. He was the commander of Arras during that memorable siege "on which the eyes of all Europe were fixed" between June and August of the year 1640, when the town had to resist an army of Richelieu's best troops, thirty-two thousand strong, under the command of Chatillon, one of the foremost French generals, whose siege constructions were universally recognized as "extraordinarily fine." When at last Arras surrendered, on the threat of being blown into the air by well-laid mines, an escort of two hundred horse was appointed by the conquerors to watch over the personal safety of the commander, and the French army presented arms. Marshal de la Meilleraie, accosting O'Neill as he marched out with drums playing and standard waving, made a notable speech. "Your bravery, Colonel O'Neill, has added to the lustre of our achievement. You surpassed us in all things, except in fortune." Two years later Owen was in Ireland, pitted with his two hundred veterans "old war-beaten soldiers" against Monroe and his Scottish troops. His correspondence with Luke Wadding shows that even during the anxieties of the siege of Arras he was watching affairs at home, but Monroe and Leslie refused to believe that the illustrious general would come over to lead a paltry rebellion in Ireland. Owen Roe declared, however, that it was the duty of every man to come to the help of his suffering country, taking thought of nothing else. He appealed to Chichester and Leslie not to join the enemies of Charles, in whose defence he was fighting, and "therein we shall continue and die to the last man," and he assures Sir Robert Stewart that he is holding out in the same cause. Hearing that he was actually arriving, Leslie, now Earl of Leven, thought it prudent to slip away into Scotland, having first warned Monroe to be on his guard; "for if O'Neill can once succeed in getting an army together, he will most surely worst you." In time to come, at the battle of Benburb, Monroe was to realize the truth of the assertion.

Even at the outset of the campaign O'Neill drove back Monroe's troops near Charlemont, which he made his headquarters, the Scottish general running about wildly exclaiming, "Fy, fy, fy, run awa frae awheen rebels!" [4] as his defeated men retired. But Owen's troops, taken over from Sir Phelim, were a mere rabble, and were sharply punished for their want of discipline when Sir Robert Stewart and his brother crossed their path at Clones and fell on them with the cry, "Whar's MacArt?" [5] Owen was obliged to retire into the mountains and by the exercise of an iron discipline to shape his followers into an army. He was hampered on all sides. Sir Phelim could not forgive his superior fame or powers and did all he could to distress a relative who had, he believed, come over only to dispute with him the right to the chief command of the army, if not to the crown of Ireland. The Supreme Council, occupied in state progresses through the south, "with representations of comedies and state-plays, feasts and banquets," were pleased when they knew that O'Neill was hemmed up in Ulster, and "wished him no nearer than Grand Cairo." Ormonde, whom he was anxious to follow, distrusted him; and from Oxford, where the King was surrounded by Irish agents from all parties undermining his authority, Sir Brian O'Neill wrote, "There is none but rogues here, as false as the devil, and they intend nothing but the destruction of you all." The salvation of Ireland was a difficult task.

[4] Journal of Colonel Henry O'Neill, in J. Lodge, op. cit., ii, 490-491.
[5] Owen was son of Art MacBaron and nephew to Tyrone. He was probably born about 1582. His father led the Irish troops at the Blackwater in 1595. He kept his lands because "he has two sons captains in the Archduke's army, and a lusty blade at home."
Early in 1643 the King, pressed by necessity, empowered Ormonde to negotiate a truce or 'Cessation' with the Confederates for a year, and as soon as this was done he was to bring over the Irish army to Chester. The Cessation, which was not signed till September 15, brought about a change in the position of affairs. Technically, it ended the rebellion, and future Acts of Settlement differentiated between acts of war before and after its signature, all land possessed at this date being left undisturbed in the hands of their then owners. It was the first of a series of truces ending in the Ormonde Peace of 1649. Its immediate result was to send over troops and money to the aid of the King, in return for rather illusory promises of concessions. The Cessation was greeted in England by a howl of execration from the Puritans and a very modified welcome from the Cavaliers, who did not feel their cause strengthened by the assistance of men whom they looked upon as the authors of the "massacre" of 1641. The Irish army failed to take Nantwich, and the fury of the Roundheads refused them quarter. But the army sent over under Lord Antrim to Scotland by the Confederates reinstated, by a series of victories, the broken fortunes of the royalist Montrose, though few of them survived to return home.

The Parliament and the King intrigued with every party in turn, and the pulpits were ' tuned ' with political harangues to corrupt the allegiance of the army. In Ireland the treaty put Ormonde, now a marquis, later to be created duke, into authority as Lord-Lieutenant. He was appointed in January 1644, and henceforth assumed an unapproachable aspect, receiving no one personally, but transacting all business in short written notes.[6] He was in a difficult position, for he knew that those around him were plotting for their own ends and that no one was to be trusted. The Confederates offered him the chief command if he would make war on Monroe, whose already large army had been augmented by 10,000 new Scots; but Ormonde, a Protestant, became increasingly suspicious of the designs of the Confederates, who were falling more and more into the hands of the clerical party. The King, outwardly his friend, was secretly undermining his authority, and in 1645 the talented but unscrupulous Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, Lieutenant-General for Charles in South Wales, was offered the title of Earl of Glamorgan if he would go over and on the King's behalf secure 10,000 Irish infantry in return for certain terms which could not be proposed through Ormonde, "as not fit for Us at present publicldy to own."

[6] "The Aphorismical Discoverie of Treasonable Faction," in Gilbert, A Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland from 1641 to 1652, i, 92. This tract deals chiefly with affairs in Ulster, while that of Bellings is concerned with the dealings of the Confederates in the south of Ireland.
Glamorgan was, in fact, given two commissions; one was to Ormonde, who received him warmly and quite in ignorance that his own post as Viceroy was to be transferred to the envoy if he should succeed in his embassy; the second was to the Confederates, full of vague promises in return for the troops. This extraordinary warrant, which was signed with the King's privy seal, was to be used "as effectually as if your authority from Us had been under the Great Seal of England." It gave free permission to Glamorgan to make what terms he pleased, and the promise was added that "whatever you shall perform as warranted under our sign manual...or even by word of mouth, without further ceremony We do in the word of a King and Christian promise to make good to all intents and purposes."[7] This document and its contents were to be kept secret from Ormonde, his part in the transaction being confined to taking upon himself the odium if the negotiations failed, in which case it was to be given out that they had originated with himself, and so the King would be exculpated. "I fear," writes Clarendon, "there is very much in that transaction of Ireland, both before and since, that you and I were never thought wise enough to be advised withal."[8] The affairs of Charles were in a desperate condition after the battle of Naseby in June 1645, and in the hope of getting fresh troops he was willing to barter his honour and sacrifice his most loyal adherents.

[7] Birch, An Enquiry into the Share which Charles I had in the Transaction of the Earl of Glamorgan (1756), p. 19.
[8] Clarendon to Nicholas, February 12, 1646-47, in Clarendon State Papers, ii, 337.
The treaty entered into with Glamorgan at the General Assembly of Kilkenny was signed on August 25 with Ormonde's consent, though he disliked some of its terms. At the same time Glamorgan signed a second secret treaty, giving the widest powers to the Catholics if in return they sent off 10,000 troops to the King's assistance. But he was so uncertain of his powers to sign such promises that the following day he added a "defeasance," to protect himself if the King disapproved.

By the time that Glamorgan arrived in Ireland the affairs of the Confederates at Kilkenny, which had long been their headquarters, had fallen almost entirely into clerical hands. This was due partly to the lethargy of the lay members, and partly to the increasing energy and interest of Popes Urban VIII and Innocent X, whose attention was kept constantly turned to affairs in Ireland by the watchfulness of the indefatigable Luke Wadding, President of the Irish College of St Isidore at Rome, one of the most learned and able men of his day, attractive alike by the vigour of his intellect and the simplicity and warmth of his heart. His correspondence on political and religious matters shows how widely his influence reached, and he was everywhere received with enthusiasm when he made a tour in Italy to collect money for the Irish wars and to induce officers to return home to take part in them. The Confederation drew up a petition to the Pontiff praying him to bestow a Cardinal's hat upon Wadding, but with characteristic modesty he managed to intercept the letter, which never reached Rome.[9]

[9] Luke Wadding was born in Waterford in 1588. He founded St. Isidore's College in Rome in 1625, and governed it till his death on October 18, 1657.
Into the midst of the contending parties with which Ireland was distracted the Pope now launched two emissaries, Scarampi, a Neapolitan, who arrived in 1643, and later the Bishop of Fermo, John Baptist Rinuccini, who came over as Papal Nuncio in October, 1645. Rinuccini had aspired to a higher post. He had hoped to be nominated Nuncio to France, in consequence of his friendship for Cardinal Mazarin, and it came as a blow to find himself dismissed from France and given the meagre sum of 1500 pistoles to buy a frigate to carry him "to a poor island far remote from Italy." He brought with him only a small supply of money and arms, for the Continental nations, though profuse in promises, were too much absorbed in wars of their own to contribute largely to wars in Ireland. Richard Bellings, secretary to the Confederate Council, who had been sent abroad on an official embassy to collect money, returned, as he himself says, "with no other fruit of his voyage but experience"; and "the Council's magazine of hopes was found empty."

Rinuccini's reception in Ireland was all that he could wish. He landed in the west of Co. Kerry, having, however, narrowly escaped being taken at sea by the puritan Plunket; and the inhabitants received him with extraordinary demonstrations of joy. He entered Kilkenny under a canopy of state, attended by a troop of horses, and received an address of welcome from the Council.[10] He declared that he had come to propagate the Catholic religion, to keep the Catholics in union among themselves, and to cherish in them the allegiance due to their lawful sovereign. The speech was warmly applauded, especially the last item, which they took to signify his approval of the Peace offered through Ormonde by the King, and for which the country longed. But Rinuccini had quite other ideas. He steadily opposed every effort for peace or truce, though it was solemnly approved by the Assembly of Kilkenny as the voice of the nation; he found himself out of sympathy with the strong loyalist sentiments of the Confederation, and he set himself to build up a clerical rule, above the law and outside the national Confederacy, looking to Rome as its head, and gradually ousting all lay influence from its councils. He and his party insisted on the restitution of confiscated church and abbey lands, as part of a general abrogation of all changes by which the freedom and position of the Roman Church had suffered in recent years; but on this point the gentry were firm in their resistance. Good Catholics as they were, they had no intention of resigning the lands upon which they lived and on which their fortunes and rank depended. Nor did the Nuncio's demand that the promotion of Catholics should be numerical and not in order of merit win approval; it was peremptorily refused by Ormonde and the King, who substituted for this proposal the juster offer of toleration, with educational and professional equality of opportunity.

[10] Bellings, who accompanied the Nuncio, gives a full account of the proceedings. See Gilbert, Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, 1641-52, i, p. 9; J. Lodge, op. cit., ii, 269, 273-5. The address is given in Borlase, History of the Rebellion (1680), p. 154.
The Ulster insurgents, who were becoming discontented that the lands to recover which they had gone into rebellion had not yet fallen to their lot, welcomed him as the minister of God, and thronged his house, but there were other Catholic gentry besides Castlehaven who looked on his landing as being "to the great misfortune of the Confederate Catholics and other good wits." The coming of the Nuncio had fortified Glamorgan in his plans. He became immediately the confidant and obsequious servant of Rinuccini and signed with him a new secret treaty, besides revealing to him a letter written by the King to the Pope, so carefully worded that it could be disowned if occasion required. But the Confederates as a whole, as Rinuccini complains, regarded him rather as "a treasurer of pontifical funds" than as a spiritual guide, and firmly refused the "absolute authority" claimed by the Nuncio. Becoming more and more aware of their inability either to quiet the kingdom or to conduct the war, they thought of nothing but how to conclude the Peace proposed by Ormonde. They felt that this peace was more possible to negotiate than a counter peace proposed by the Nuncio, for his proposals required the delivery of all the royal towns, Dublin included, into the hands of the Catholics, the placing of every position, including the Viceroyalty, in Catholic hands, and the restoration of all ecclesiastical property and of the archbishops and hierarchy as in pre-Reformation days.[11] The time was not ripe for such terms, and the confederates were well content with such religious freedom as they now enjoyed, and the relaxation of all penal legislation. The Nuncio's treaty was directed against the power and influence of the Protestant Ormonde, and it was this treaty that he endeavoured to carry through privately in conjunction with Glamorgan, whose large and vague commission from the King to the Nuncio, of which Ormonde was unaware, was exactly what the Nuncio desired.[12]

[11] Second speech delivered by the Nuncio, in Rinuccini, Embassy in Ireland (ed. A. Hutton, 1873), pp. 122-123; and see Articles sent from Rome to be treated for in Ireland, ibid., Appendix, pp. 573-574, and Memoranda, p. lxiii.
[12] Ibid., pp. 103-105; 117-118; 570-571.
But Rinuccini had failed to calculate on the devotion with which Ormonde was regarded even by those who differed from him in religious belief, or on the immense influence exercised by him over the members of the Confederation. Nor had he realized the supineness of the majority about matters which to him seemed vital. Still less did he or anyone toresee that the royal instructions on which Glamorgan's first secret treaty had been formed would after a long delay become public, a copy having been found in the pocket of Malachias Quaelly, Archbishop of Tuam, who had fallen in battle. The news of this disclosure spread consternation. In England it raised a storm of anger against the King, who did not hesitate to take advantage of what he called "the starting-hole" which he had purposely left in the treaty in order to be able to deny it if circumstances made its disavowal expedient.[13] Ormonde, who refused to believe in the authenticity of the document, clapped Glamorgan into prison, accusing him of high treason for involving the sovereign in a scheme so detrimental to his interests, but it is remarkable that the envoy was shortly afterward liberated and continued to plot with the clerical party to overcome the resistance of Ormonde and the Confederates. In the tangled web of duplicity that surrounds all the actions of Charles I the story of his relations with Glamorgan has never been fully unravelled. The monarch seems to have been quite ready to sell his faithful servant Ormonde for the chances of a new cast on the moving table of his fortunes.

[13] Clarendon State Papers, ii, 202. This letter is decisive as to the Commission of Glamorgan (then Marquis of Worcester) to deal with the Irish Catholics and through them with the Pope and foreign princes, from whom the King hoped to raise £30,000 a month. It describes also how the King's privy seal was obtained.
END OF CHAPTER V