THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNYBy JAMES DONELAN, M.Ch., M.B.,Chevalier of the Crown of Italy
THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNYBy JAMES DONELAN, M.Ch., M.B.,Chevalier of the Crown of Italy
THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY
By JAMES DONELAN, M.Ch., M.B.,
Chevalier of the Crown of Italy
The Confederation of Kilkenny
The Confederation of Kilkenny
The Confederation of Kilkenny
Theperiod 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 massacreof 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 rebellionalleged 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 hadlively 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 thePale, 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 dictateterms. 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 hisHistory 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 newSupreme 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 ReligiousOrders 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 ageswhen 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. Itwas 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 asupporter 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 morepowerful, 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 tomake 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 commissionto 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 Parliamentcompletely 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 toconsolidate 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 eventhe 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 theLords 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 underMonroe. 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 remainneutral, 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 Confederateshad 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 leasesfrom 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 mento 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, andpossessed 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 togrant 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 hisCatholic 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 Confederatesand 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. ThoughCharles 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 tocomplete 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 urgedMonroe 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 discussionWhatever 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-Chiefof 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 onMuskerry’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 consentedunto 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 thisadvantage 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. Hisplans 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 theQueen 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.
These projects—for they were never more than projects—show why Glamorgan had a commission to raise troops abroad as Charles placed no faith in O’Hartigan. O’Hartigan’s letter, in which he expressed his real hopes, had been captured by a Parliamentary cruiser and sent to Ormond. Charles therefore warned the Queen that O’Hartigan was a knave, and in a letter to Ormond mentioned that the Prince of Orange had consented to supply the ships for the continental troops. He urged Ormond to conclude peace, and said that he would consider the Irish army a good bargain even if he had to consent to Poynings’ Law being suspended, and to Ormond’s joining the Confederates against the Scots; he would make no further concession regarding the penal laws than he had already promised. A month later, when his position in England had become still more critical, he wrote “If the suspension of Poynings’ Act for such Bills as shall be agreed on between you there,and the present taking away of the penal laws against Papists by a law will do it I shall not think it a bad bargain, so that freely and vigorously they engage themselves in my assistance against my rebels in England and Scotland.” But even now Ormond was to make a better bargain if possible, and not to mention these greater powers except in the last extremity.
Even if Ormond were as willing as the King to make these concessions, he had to carry on his negotiations with the help of a Privy Council that would not be likely to view them favourably. For this reason the King decided that Glamorgan should now start for Ireland with powers not only as commander, but to enable him to treat with the Confederates “not indeed without Ormond’s knowledge, but in substitution for him if it proved to be necessary.” Charles gave Ormond a further commission with full powers to treat with the Confederates in such matters as had to be agreed to “wherein our Lieutenant cannot so well be seen in, as not fit for us at present public to own.” He urged him to proceed with all secrecy, and promised on the word of a King and a Christian, to ratify whatever Glamorgan should grant to the Confederates, “they having by their supplies testified their zeal to our service.”
In the meantime the King’s cause had grown much weaker, and it was doubtful even if the Irish army could be landed in England, or, if landed, whether it could be of any help. Not only was Charles severely defeated at Naseby, but his private papers were captured at Sherburne, and his instructions to Ormond made known to the Parliament. Glamorgan on his arrival in Ireland found that a new factor had been introduced into the negotiations by the General Assembly’s adoption of the demand of the Catholic clergy that they should be confirmed in the possession of the churches actually in the hands of the Confederates with the property appertaining thereto as well as all derelict churches. The Confederate Commissioners had been instructed to yield nothing on this point, and as Charles refused to concede anything more than he had done already, and as Ormond concealed his powers with regard to the penal laws, the treaty again broke down. Glamorgan seeing that he could do nothing with Ormond, accompanied the disappointed Confederate Commissioners to Kilkenny, where he privately resumed the negotiations, and acting on the very loosely-worded and wide instructions given him by Charles on March 12, he concluded a secret treaty with the Confederates.
By this instrument, which comprised what were called the Religious Articles, and which was signed on August 25, 1645, he agreed on behalf of the King to the free and public exercise of the Catholic religion. This, though set forth more definitely than Ormond would probably have agreed to, may be looked on as not exceeding the terms Ormond was authorized to grant. But in two other clauses Glamorgan’s treaty was far in advance of anything Ormond would grant or to which indeed Charles had consented, unless we regard the secret commission as empowering Glamorgan to promise anything as long as he could get the troops Charles so sorely needed. Glamorgan agreed that all churches fallen into the hands of the Catholics since the rising in Ulster, and the derelict churches “other than such as are now actually enjoyed by his ‘Majesty’s Protestant subjects,’ were to remain in their possession.” Next, he agreed that the Catholics were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Protestant clergy, and their own clergy were not to be “molested for the exercise of their jurisdiction over their respective Catholic flocks in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical.” This naturally left open the question of appeals to Rome, since there must be some authority over the clergyto decide what were civil and what were spiritual cases, and it was scarcely likely that the Confederates could consent to its being vested in the King.
Charles had not heard of the question of the churches before Glamorgan started, but when he did he wrote to him on July 31, and said he would consent only to the Catholics building chapels for themselves, and absolutely refused to allow them to retain any of the churches.
It seems probable that the King was sincere when he declared that he would look on the giving up of the churches as the abandonment of his religion, and that Glamorgan, eager to obtain the 10,000 men from the Confederates, had exceeded his instructions, but hoped to have his fault overlooked by Charles in view of the great assistance the Irish soldiers would be to his cause. At the same time, Gardiner, who has discussed this question very freely in hisHistory of the Great Civil War, and in a special article in theEnglish Historical Review, does not make sufficient allowance for the shifty vacillating character of Charles, and it is quite permissible to assume that when he gave his general instructions in such vague terms to Glamorgan, he contemplated the possibility of having todisavow any action he might take under them, while, if such action were not questioned by his enemies, he was quite ready to profit by it. It would, however, seem that Glamorgan knew he was acting in a way the King would very likely not agree to; for when he signed the treaty he handed the Confederates another document called adefeasance, in which he declared that he did not intend to bind the King to consent to anything “other than he himself shall please, after he hath received these ten thousand men being a pledge and testimony” of the loyalty of his Irish Catholic subjects. This document was not to be disclosed to Charles until Glamorgan had done all in his power to induce him to agree to the religious articles.
On this point Gardiner says, “It was hardly within the bounds of possibility that Glamorgan’s action should prove beneficial either to his master or to the Irish people; but he was surely right in thinking that if a military alliance was to be formed with the Confederates it could only be by the acceptance of their own terms. It was childish to expect the hearty co-operation of the Irish if their Church was to be maintained in the position of a merely tolerated sect, the organisation of which was in constant danger of a sudden application of the Statutes of Appealand Præmunire; and if the ecclesiastical lands and buildings set apart for religious use by their ancestors, and now recovered after a deprivation of less than a century, were to be forcibly torn from them, and restored to the professors of an alien creed, from whom they had nothing but persecution to expect.”
The Supreme Council of the Confederates at once proceeded to test the new alliance they thought they had formed, and on August 29, asked Ormond to join his forces with theirs against the Scots under Monroe in Ulster, but Ormond gave no reply though pressed by Glamorgan, who assured him that the Confederates would now send the 10,000 men to England, and would resume the treaty for the political articles with Ormond. Glamorgan begged Ormond to grant as much as possible and let the Confederates appeal to the King for the rest. Ormond was, of course, kept in the dark as to the secret treaty for the religious articles by which the Confederates had been persuaded that they would get all they wanted from Charles, so that they were willing to accept such instalment as Ormond would offer.
The Confederates accordingly once more sent Commissioners to Dublin, and the discussion with Ormond continued for another two months,but Ormond refused absolutely to exceed his instructions or to yield anything in matters of religion. On November 20, a few days after Rinuccini arrived there, Glamorgan went to Kilkenny. He found the Supreme Council agreed that if Ormond persisted in refusing the terms they demanded as to religion, the political treaty should be published by itself whilst the religious articles should be kept secret until ratified by Charles. They also promised that the 10,000 men should be sent without waiting for the King’s ratification, but Glamorgan was to swear not to employ them in the King’s service until the religious articles were agreed to, and if refused, he was to either compel his consent by force of arms or bring the whole force back to Ireland.
We are now able to take up in its proper order the consideration of Rinuccini’s mission. In the winter of 1644 the Confederates had sent their Secretary Bellings to solicit help in money from the Pope and other Catholic princes. He was favourably received by the new Pontiff Innocent X, and was greatly surprised at hearing that the Pope would send a nuncio who would act directly in his name and report to him concerning the position of Irish parties. In the first instance the Pope selected Luigi Omodei, but as he beinga Milanese was a Spanish subject, and his employment might give offence to France, and as the Pope wished to be perfectly impartial between France and Spain, he selected Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, who, as a subject of the Duke of Tuscany, could be regarded as neutral. Bellings, in after years, when his thoughts were perhaps embittered by disappointment, said it was a job to please the Duke of Tuscany. Rinuccini was born in 1592, a member of a noble Florentine family, and at the time we speak of was in his forty-third year. His father was Camillo Rinuccini, and his mother Virginia, daughter of Pier Antonio Bandini, sister of Cardinal Ottavio Bandini. He was educated first by the Jesuits in Rome and afterwards went to the University of Bologna in his eighteenth year. Then he studied law at Perugia, and took his doctor’s degree at Pisa, and distinguished himself so remarkably that he was elected a member of the Cruscan Academy though only in his twenty-first year. His first appointments by the Roman Court were those of Chamberlain to Gregory XV, and Secretary to the Congregation of Rites. When Urban VIII became Pope he continued his advancement, and made him Civil Lieutenant to the Cardinal Vicar, and soon after Archbishop of Fermo in1625. At Fermo Rinuccini seems to have found his most suitable sphere of work, for he proved in all respects an excellent Archbishop, and was so loved by the people and felt so true an interest in them that he declined the metropolitan See of Florence in his native Duchy in 1631. In a religious sense he appears to have been an eminently holy and good man, though perhaps more than ordinarily imbued with the intolerant opinions of the age he lived in. He had, moreover, but small knowledge of the ways of men who live wholly in the world, and was absolutely ignorant of the feelings of people in political matters who had always possessed representative government of which he, as an Italian brought up amongst the despotic courts of the Peninsula, had no experience. The Pope, it must be remembered, was then a great temporal prince, and his government was as despotic in practice as any in Europe. He, too, appears to have shared the belief of Rinuccini, that it was only necessary to gain over the Sovereign of a country, and that no regard need be paid to its other inhabitants, heedless of the fact that where free institutions exist, a king who is disliked or distrusted by his subjects soon ceases to have any authority whatever. England was then leading the way in that struggle for popularliberty which was to continue in revolutions and bloodshed until our own time; but on the Continent at that epoch the great mass of any population simply did not count in political matters. To this ignorance and inexperience of Rinuccini’s of the feelings of men like the Irish who had lived under representative institutions however limited, and were striving to regain and extend them, must be attributed much of his failure in dealing with Irishmen of various parties. He was too autocratic in his methods, and being a man of resolute and inflexible character, determined to bend others to his will utterly regardless that such a course might cause him to lose many whom it was his interest to conciliate. He had, moreover, an exaggerated sense of his own dignity, and a fondness for details of etiquette, dress, and ceremonial, which, though to some extent natural to one brought up in the most ceremonious court of a ceremonious period, was carried by him to a point bordering on the ridiculous. It must be said of him, however, that though he had the ecclesiastical patronage of Ireland in his hands for some years, his appointments were made in the interest of the Church, and no charge of favouritism can be made against him. His object was the restoration of the Church in Ireland “in its fullsplendour,” and with this before him he did not pause to consider local feelings or local experience of the difficulties in his way in an age and in circumstances when such an enterprise could only be considered Quixotic. From these characteristics it may be inferred how well fitted he was to strike the final blows that broke up the newly-formed union of the Irish nation.
For a hundred years the Catholic Church had been conducting the counter-Reformation, and had already recovered the allegiance of a great part of Europe. To Innocent X it appeared that the time was ripe for restoring his spiritual authority in England. The Catholics there were still a numerous and wealthy body and comprised amongst their leaders many of the most ancient and most highly placed of the nobility, and would afford a solid foundation for such a reconstruction. The difficult position in which the King was placed seemed to render him a peculiarly suitable object for overtures, and if he could be restored chiefly by the aid of the Catholics and the Pope it was hoped that the Church might gain great advantages if not complete re-establishment. We find in the secret instructions given by Innocent to Rinuccini that these expectations are clearly expressed, and show, moreover, how badly informed the Popewas as to the true state of feeling regarding the Catholic Church in England. In the concluding paragraph the Pope says: “In fine, this rebellion in England has already caused so many divisions in religion and so many disputes amongst the Protestants themselves, that all who have some belief in a future life are beginning to waver, and would become Catholics if they were not restrained by the fear of losing their property and temporal comforts. If, then, by means of this Catholic army, you can obtain from His Majesty the revocation of the penal laws against the Catholics, the abolition of the proposed Oath of Fidelity and freedom in religion, that is that the Catholics be able to hold all appointments in the Kingdom and in Parliament like his other subjects, we may hope in a few years for the conversion of the whole Kingdom—a most important step towards the eradication of heresy from the whole North, and without which the Irish can never hope to enjoy in peace the conditions granted in favour of the true faith in Ireland.”
The Catholic army here referred to was to consist chiefly of the troops who had for the past three years formed the subject of negotiation between Charles and the Confederates. It is well to bear in mind the Pope’s instructionswith regard to this army as showing that both in his eyes and in Rinuccini’s, the Irish were to be merely the convenient instruments of the greater design. He says: “To ensure success in these negotiations two points remain to be well considered; first, that the requisite conditions be well weighed so that the services we hope from this Catholic army be efficacious; the second, to facilitate by every means the agreement between the King and the Irish.” The first of these conditions may be reduced to the following articles:—
“1. That the Irish army shall never agree to land in England with less than ten or twelve thousand effective men, that they may be able to defend themselves without danger of being cut to pieces by the English who serve under the King.
“2. That two sea ports be placed in their hands to disembark their troops in England, and that those places be under the command of persons in their confidence.
“3. That the generals of the army and all the officers ... besides the governors of the said places be appointed by the Irish.
“4, 5. The fourth and fifth articles are unimportant and need not be quoted.
“6. That permission and authority from theKing be accorded to the English Catholics to form themselves into a body of cavalry proportionate in strength to join them when and where appointed by the Irish general to serve in his army and under his command....
“7. That the Catholic general of this cavalry be a person whom the Irish can entirely trust, and must, therefore, be first accepted by their own general.”
That the political freedom of the Irish people, the independence of their Parliament, the right of Catholics to sit therein, in fact the political articles which the Confederates had demanded and which Charles was willing to concede were altogether a secondary consideration in the eyes of the Pope is evident from the following:—
“To facilitate the agreement between the King and the Irish, that articles must be so framed that nothing essential to the full establishment of the Catholic religion in Ireland be omitted; matters of less moment may be remitted, in particular those tending to changes in the Political Government, as they would, without any doubt, retard the agreement.” This passage illustrates the inexperience of the Pope of the power of a people with free institutions, and that he had yet to learn that a people politically free may follow any religion they please.It was scarcely likely that the Catholics, possessing, as they inevitably would, a large majority in the Irish Parliament, would long submit to the disabilities under which they laboured in religious matters.
As to any aspirations for the complete independence of Ireland, the Pope promptly threw cold water on them. In his letter of June 3, 1645, before Rinuccini left Paris, the Cardinal Secretary writes: “Nor is he (the Pope) too well pleased with the rumours which are spread by some Irish Catholics, that they desire to throw off their allegiance to the King because he has not chosen to grant the concessions they demand; and his Holiness would also desire that they should speak with greater moderation of the articles of peace. And, further, he wishes them to understand that he desires to see them continue obedient to the royal power, hoping, however, that from the King himself and from the protection of the Queen, they may gain all they desire. To this end your Excellency’s persuasions and warnings must be directed; His Holiness rests securely on your prudence, whenever you can convey news to him of the Irish, whether it be of rebellion or refusal of submission to the King, and that you will warn your followers in this matter.”
It cannot, however, be doubted that the Pope was entirely within his rights as head of the Catholic Church in endeavouring to promote its extension and well-being, and, however ill-chosen the time and circumstances, that this was his only object is plain from the following passage in the same letter, as well as from his more formal instructions: “Your Excellency is aware that the intentions of His Holiness respecting the affairs of Ireland do not go beyond the limits of pure benefit to the Catholic religion, and that your mission never had, and has no other aims than to procure its free exercise, to restore ecclesiastical discipline, and to reform the habits of the Catholics relaxed by a long course of free living. In all that touches on the civil government your instructions have been so framed as by no possibility to excite the jealousy of either the King or Queen of England; nor does the Holy Father work to any other purpose in spirit, since he concerns himself solely in the propagation of the Catholic religion without a single thought of prejudicing the temporal power of anyone whatsoever.”