‘Besides the hatred of the generals,’ Digby wrote from the midst of Rinuccini’s partisans, ‘their men have a greater animosity one against another, than those at Dublin have against either.’ But for this the capital might probably have been taken, for the defences were very weak, ammunition was scarce, and famine was always in sight. The fortifications were, however, repaired as well as possible, the ladies, with the Marchioness of Ormonde at their head, setting an example to the citizens by carrying baskets of earth. Ormonde had destroyed the bridges over the Liffey, and the mills, so that the Irish had great difficulties about food. Negotiations were opened by the Lord Lieutenant with the Ulster Scots, but they ended in nothing, for the survivors of Benburb were too few and too much discouraged to play an active part. Colonel George Monro, whose Royalist proclivities were doubtless known to Ormonde, apologised for his enforced inactivity. The Lord Lieutenant suggested that 500 Scots should come to Dublin, but the officers did not see their way to go so far south, though they were willing to act as a garrison for Drogheda. The Lord Lieutenant was not likely to accept such an offer, for Drogheda was in no danger. Negotiations had also been opened with the Parliament, whose fleet lay out in the bay. Sir Francis Willoughby, Sir Gerald Lowther, Chief Baron, and Sir Paul Davis, clerk of the Council, sailed on Michaelmas Day, and reached London a fortnight later. They were heard by a committee of the Commons, and five commissioners, of whom Sir John Clotworthy was one, reached Dublin on November 12 with power to treat for its surrender. The negotiations lasted for ten days, failing at last mainly because Ormonde would not deliver up the sword of state without actual orders from the King, and thus dissolve the remnant of the Irish Parliament on which the Protestants relied. The other points upon which the Lord Lieutenant insisted and the commissioners failed to satisfy him, were that they could give him no assurance for their estates ‘to the Papists who adhered to his Majesty’s Government since October 22, 1641’; that the Covenant should not be pressed, nor the Book of Common Prayer suppressed; and that official vested interests should be preserved. Ormonde was perhaps less anxious to come to terms because the mere appearance of the commissioners had averted the danger of a siege, and because he had been allowed to procure powder from the Parliamentary ships. The supplies intended for Dublin were carried by Clotworthy and his colleagues to Ulster.[101]

The conduct of Preston throughout the whole of these proceedings showed the weakness of the Confederate position as well as of his own character. First he gave Ormonde to understand that he would prevent O’Neill from marching southwards, and then he let the nuncio persuade him to join forces with the northern general in the attempt to intercept Ormonde and in threatening Dublin. On August 26 he wrote to invite the Lord Lieutenant’s commands as to the disposition of troops to prevent O’Neill from entering Leinster. On September 5 he excused himself from personal attendance. On the 17th he lamented that clerical threats of excommunication prevented him from obeying any of the Lord Lieutenant’s orders. On October 10 he found that the peace published in his camp and by his authority was ‘destructive to my religion and liberty of the nation,’ and contrary to his oath as a Confederate. On the 21st he swore solemnly to aid O’Neill in attacking Dublin, to ‘use and exercise all acts of hostility against the Lord Marquis of Ormonde and his party,’ and to damage him in every possible way. Digby, who was a sanguine man, thought it possible to kidnap O’Neill and Rinuccini and carry them to Dublin, and to spike Preston’s guns, and he was also inclined to believe that something might be done with that vacillating general. Ormonde was less hopeful, but his patience was inexhaustible, and he resolved to make another effort, and Preston took care to let him know privately that he was not really irreconcilable, and would not join O’Neill, and that if he captured towns or castles it was only to prevent the Ulster general from getting them. Clanricarde was sent for from Portumna, and came to Luttrellstown, where he was in a position to communicate with all parties.[102]

Preston never really co-operated with O’Neill, but he joined him in making certain proposals to Ormonde in which the nuncio’s hand can be very clearly seen. The first was that the Roman Catholic religion should be exercised in every part of Ireland as in Paris or Brussels. The third was ‘that Dublin, Drogheda, Trim, Newry, Carlow, Carlingford, and all the garrisons within the Protestant quarters be garrisoned by the Confederate Catholics.’ They were to be held for the King, but only in name. ‘The madness of their propositions to you,’ Digby wrote to Ormonde after he had joined Clanricarde, ‘makes him almost despair of doing any good with Preston.’ Ormonde did not condescend to discuss the propositions at all, but contented himself with asking who composed the Council of the Confederates and by whose authority they were established. ‘These questions,’ says Bellings, pithily, ‘were too knotty to be resolved on the sudden, and therefore, as it is the custom in such cases, they were not answered.’ Four days later Clanricarde was at Tecroghan, near Trim, and at once opened communications with Preston. Safe-conducts were granted to him and Digby, but to the latter, who was still nominally Secretary of State, not without great difficulty. ‘I conjure you,’ said Ormonde, ‘(as you expect to serve our master, or his hereafter) not to venture any more among so faithless a generation, if you have any probable hope of getting away from thence. For, if I have any judgment, your coming will be fruitless.’ And fruitless it was. Two days later the Parliamentary commissioners reached Dublin, and O’Neill, probably fearing to be caught in a trap, threw an extempore bridge over the Liffey at Leixlip, collected his men by firing a gun, and passed them all over to the left bank. It was thought that Sir Phelim O’Neill, who was jealous of Owen Roe’s supremacy in Ulster and who had married Preston’s daughter, might be induced to join the latter. Digby’s plan was to make Clanricarde general, who would thus be in a position to make the best terms for his own Church, while loyally co-operating with the Lord Lieutenant. Preston and his friends bound themselves most solemnly to embrace the peace in consideration of such additional securities as Clanricarde undertook to procure. These included the repeal of the penal laws and enjoyment by Catholics of such churches and ecclesiastical possessions as they held at the conclusion of the peace, until a settlement by a free Irish Parliament, ‘his Majesty being in a free condition himself.’ To confirm these promises Clanricarde was to procure an engagement under the King’s hand as well as from the Queen and Prince of Wales and the French crown. The peace once concluded on these terms the Catholics were to be ‘forthwith invested in such commands by his Majesty’s authority, both in field and garrison, as may pass for a very sufficient part of the security.’ Ormonde was no party to this treaty, which could not be performed without his help, and he was not anxious for it after he had got rid both of O’Neill and the Parliamentary commissioners. Rinuccini’s influence was at work all the time, and it was insisted that the first thing should be the admission of a Prestonian garrison into Dublin. Ormonde insisted on the original peace being first accepted, and so the negotiations fell through. Digby thought that if Preston had been promptly dealt with he would have attacked O’Neill, but his judgment is not for a moment to be set against Ormonde’s. Preston was satisfied, and in a letter to the mayor and citizens of Kilkenny, urged the acceptance of Clanricarde’s terms. What the ultimate position of the Protestants would have been may be judged from this document. ‘We have,’ he said, ‘by the divine Providence, wrought the splendour of religion to that extension as from Bunratty to Dublin there is Catholic religion publicly professed and exercised, and from Waterford to the lower parts of Tyrone, and confined heresy in this province to Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk, and Trim, these places which in four days will be garrisoned by my army, by God’s help; and then think you in what posture of religion these parts are in, for us and ours, having all penal laws against Catholics repealed; all in our own hands, churches and church livings secured till the King in a free Parliament declare the same for us; the government in the Catholics’ hands; petitions of right allowed the parties grieved; and, to make this good, our arms in our own hands.’ This was written under the impression that Dublin would soon be in his hands, though in the same letter he admits that he could not take it even with O’Neill’s help. Rinuccini and his council had already left the camp, and Preston’s officers were soon induced to break with Clanricarde on the ground that no concessions would be of any use without a garrison in Dublin. ‘That being denied did beget a desperation of future performances.’[103]

The nuncio, says Bellings, entered Kilkenny, ‘very incognito in his single litter without guards or attendance, and the council and congregation dropped in one after another without pomp or ceremony.’ The tide had turned, and the odium which so often attaches to authority in Ireland, especially when it fails to make itself feared, was borne by the clerical party. Rinuccini, yielding very unwillingly to Nicholas Plunket and fearing lest the mob should do it without his leave, allowed the old council to be liberated, and devoted his attention to the elections for the next general assembly. All over the country the clergy administered oaths to candidates binding them to reject the peace. Absolution for other sins was denied to those who refuse to take such an oath, and O’Neill’s soldiers were everywhere called in to enforce the clerical decrees. The vacant places in the Ulster returns were filled up from the creaghts or nomad herdsmen whom Owen Roe had planted in the Queen’s County—‘nay,’ says Bellings, ‘with such an overcharge of supernumeraries, as for some boroughs three have been returned and actually voted.’ When the session began, the verification of these returns proved to be impossible, and after much wrangling the assembled members turned as they were to other business, ‘and all formalities, how necessary soever, were quite omitted.’ In the meantime Preston had again gone over to the nuncio. On December 10 Walter Bagenal wrote by his orders to Ormonde, pressing him to advance at once so as to join forces against the northern army, all the nobility and gentry being ready to support him. ‘If you fail or delay,’ Bagenal concluded, ‘you ruin us all and yourself in us.’ On the same day that this was written, Preston made his submission to the nuncio, who had threatened excommunication. Ormonde advanced to the neighbourhood of Gowran, which was to be the place of meeting. He found reason to believe that there was another plot to cut him off. A letter from Preston to Clanricarde was brought to him at Grangebeg in which the general said that ‘his officers not being excommunication-proof, were fallen from him to the nuncio’s party.’ On first receiving this Clanricarde had so far forgotten his usual serenity as to call Preston traitor. It was followed by a similar letter to Ormonde, and by an abject declaration of obedience to the nuncio’s commands. Ormonde professed to believe that the letter, which was printed and circulated, was ‘a forgery, as also the reports raised that some of your army are gathered in a body at Castle Dermot, with intent to intercept my return, or destroy the remainder of my quarters.’ He withdrew into Westmeath and Longford, where there was still some country undevastated by O’Neill, and where he maintained good discipline among his men. Dublin was relieved for a short time without distressing the country, and the Westmeath gentry actually scraped together a voluntary contribution of 1000l. At Kells an attack was made upon some of Ormonde’s men by a party of O’Neill’s soldiers. Ormonde says two officers were barbarously murdered. Bellings admits that a very bad impression was made, but O’Neill was hardly a party to the negotiations. After conferring with the Lord Lieutenant, Clanricarde went to Kilkenny in the vain hope that he might to some extent counteract the nuncio and induce the assembly to embrace moderate ideas. Ormonde soon found it necessary to reopen communications with the English Parliament.[104]

The Confederate assembly met at Kilkenny on January 10, ‘with all those signs,’ said Rinuccini, ‘of discord and intrigues which generally reign in such meetings.’ The tempers of the old council had not been improved by imprisonment, while the clergy, knowing that they had a majority, were in no conciliatory mood. Bellings admits that former assemblies had been turbulent ‘and loud in their ayes and noes, yet now it was grown clean another thing.’ Edmond Dempsy, Bishop of Leighlin, who was a famous preacher, and had probably a good voice, sat upon a lofty bench which recalls the revolutionary Mountain. He had only to wave his hat to raise a storm, the mass of members, ‘like a set of organ-pipes, as senseless and louder, depending for their squeaking, or being still, on the hand of another.’ After a few days the turmoil partially subsided, and then the nuncio demanded an audience. He was received with the same ceremony as at first, and proceeded to justify his assumption of dictatorial power. He declared in plain terms that the ecclesiastical authority was superior to the temporal, ‘and that ignorance of the true source of power had ruined the neighbouring kingdom.’ Above all things he urged the assembly to reject the peace with Ormonde, and to take a fresh oath adverse to it. A letter was read from Dumoulin, the French agent, who had positive orders from his government to press for confirmation of the peace, but this had no effect, though a letter from Mazarin had been previously received urging them to merit help from France by re-establishing the King of England. A remarkable speech of Walter Bagenal’s has been preserved by Bellings, in which he urged them to remember how strong England was and how certainly they would be overwhelmed if they did not support the King. Ormonde sent Lord Taaffe and Colonel John Barry to represent him at Kilkenny, but the clericals would listen to nothing, and it soon became evident that the peace would be rejected publicly. This was done after three weeks’ wrangling, but by no means unanimously, and Scarampi started at once to carry the news to Rome. It was found necessary at the same time to declare that the commissioners and others who had a hand in the peace had ‘faithfully and sincerely carried and demeaned themselves in their said negotiation pursuant and according to the trust reposed in them, and given thereof a due acceptable account to this assembly.’ This important matter being settled, a new and stringent oath of association was taken by which all bound themselves to make no peace without the consent of the General Assembly. One of the conditions precedent was that the Roman Catholic clergy should enjoy all churches and church property in as ample a manner as the Protestants enjoyed them on October 1, 1641, in all places which the Confederates should at any time possess ‘saving the rights of Roman Catholic laymen according to the laws of this kingdom.’ The law, in other words, was to protect Roman Catholics, but not Protestants. All this referred to the secular clergy only, for the question of abbey-lands was too dangerous to touch. To avoid the appearance of an open breach with the Lord Lieutenant, Dr. Fennell and Geoffrey Baron, who had just returned from France, were deputed to see him. Their proposals for a sort of offensive and defensive alliance with Ormonde came to nothing, but successive truces were patched up until April 10.[105]

CHAPTER XXVIII

SURRENDER OF DUBLIN AND AFTER, 1647

Rinuccini’s attempt on Dublin had completely failed, but Ormonde’s position there was nevertheless made worse. The two armies had descended like locusts upon the districts from which he had drawn his chief supplies. Excise could no longer be levied, and the citizens were reduced to penury for the support of the garrison, and yet the soldiers were half paid and half fed. As soon as it became evident that the Kilkenny assembly would reject the peace Ormonde offered to surrender the sword and his garrisons to the Parliament on the terms lately offered by their representatives. The despatch was long delayed upon the road, but the Parliamentary commissioners in Ulster at once agreed to the terms proposed. English or Anglo-Irish soldiers who had hitherto obeyed Ormonde found no difficulty in following where he led. Sir Henry Tichborne was continued as governor of Drogheda, and ‘embraced it with cheerfulness.’ In the meantime George Leyburn, whose diplomatic name was Winter Grant, visited Ireland for the second time with powers from Henrietta Maria and the Prince of Wales ‘to renew,’ in Ormonde’s words, ‘motions of peace or accommodation.’ He was a learned English priest, educated chiefly at Douai, and one of the Queen’s chaplains since 1630. He had been for a time in the Tower, and knew Monck, whose future greatness he foretold. Leyburn was sent to Dublin, but was driven by wind to Waterford, and found that the assembly at Kilkenny had just broken up. He had letters for the nuncio and clergy, but was forbidden by his instructions to deliver them until after showing them and all his other papers to Ormonde. The Queen would have made peace on almost any terms, but the clerical party at Kilkenny maintained their position. Dr. Fennell and Geoffrey Brown, who were despatched to Kilkenny, would not commit themselves so far as to make proposals in writing, nor even sign what Ormonde took down from their mouths. He asked for a continuation of the truce, but this was refused, and on April 10, the day on which it ended, Preston invested Carlow, which resisted only for a few days. Still Ormonde professed himself willing to delay the reception of Parliamentary troops in consideration of a truce, but to this no answer was given. Both parties were anxious to have the credit of making the last peaceful overture, the Confederates because they were alarmed at Inchiquin’s progress, Ormonde in order to make it clear that he did not close with Parliament till the last possible moment.[106]

At Kilkenny Leyburn attended the council, where his chair was placed next to Antrim’s, who presided. He told them that the Queen and Prince were anxious for peace, without which the Catholic religion would be ruined, but that he must see Ormonde first of all. Horses were provided and he was passed on to Dublin. The Lord Lieutenant, says Leyburn, expressed himself ready to cast away one son if necessary for the King’s service, but would ‘give up those places under his command rather to the English rebels than the Irish rebels, of which opinion he thought every good Englishman was. To this I answered nothing.’ It took the inexperienced diplomatist two days to decipher his instructions, which he then presented to Ormonde, who requested him to go back to Kilkenny and obtain a truce for three weeks from April 17 if possible, without binding him not to receive fresh Parliamentary forces during its continuance. Leyburn consulted the French agents Dumoulin, De la Monnerie, and Tallon, according to his instructions, but he found the Council sanguine about the probable successes of their army, and they refused any truce for less than six months. There were already two thousand Parliamentarians in Dublin, and Leyburn did not think it prudent to re-enter the city; but he was in constant communication with Digby, who had found quarters in Sir Nicholas White’s house at Leixlip, and who professed to know Ormonde’s mind. Leyburn accompanied Bishop Macmahon to Kilkenny, and informed the nuncio that the conditions of peace concerning religion had been referred to France, and that Ormonde would not treat except on the basis of the peace which the clergy had already rejected. Rinuccini said he wished for peace, but was against a preliminary truce, which Ormonde, who had already once deceived him, wanted only to gain time, and that he could not trust him. ‘I could see,’ says Leyburn, ‘he was not my Lord Lieutenant’s friend.... I found in him great animosity to my Lord of Ormonde’s person, my Lord of Clogher being a better hider of his thoughts.’ The Council of the Confederates as well as the clergy came to Clonmel about the beginning of June, and Daniel O’Neill brought a proposal from his uncle to establish a sort of joint government between the Lord Lieutenant and the Council; but he was arrested for not having a pass. Leyburn handed in the paper for him, but all these delays had been fatal, for a letter came to Digby to say that the Parliamentary commissioners had landed at Dublin with 1500 men, and that Ormonde would now be forced to conclude matters with them. Leyburn could come to no terms with the clergy, who would have nothing to say to the rejected peace, while Ormonde would treat on no other basis. They said God was not once mentioned in it, and he could only reply that questions of religion might be settled later. He continued to discuss matters with Digby and his secretary, Edward Walsingham, who, according to Nicholas, was ‘a great babbler of all his most secret employments,’ but it all led to nothing. Leyburn, however, persuaded Clanricarde not to leave Ireland, which he had made up his mind to do. In the end the best he could do for Digby was to procure him a safe-conduct through the Confederate quarters, and he escaped to France with some difficulty. At his earnest request Leyburn himself remained in Ireland, and was sheltered by Clanricarde at Galway from August 1647 until the following March. In November he received a letter of recall from the Queen dated three months back, and in February another from Digby to the like effect. He sailed in the same ship with Glamorgan and his wife, who had now become Lord and Lady Worcester, and reached Havre in five days.[107]

Leyburn, who was a very honest as well as intelligent man, favoured the peace of 1646. The demand for a Catholic governor, he says, was one which the King could not grant, and the objection to Ormonde’s religion was therefore invalid. He thought the divisions of Irish parties made effective action hopeless, and that the hatred of the Leinster men to O’Neill and the old Irish ‘overbalanced their reason.’ The cause of the rebellion and of its savage character was that the ‘Irish had not enjoyed such a pleasant bondage under the English, but that they had contracted ill will enough against their masters ... they ran hastily and furiously to all kind of bloody executions, and as their rebellion was without order so were their actions without measure, none that was called English and was within reach escaping their fury ... they either killed the English or forced them to forsake their habitations.’ The men of the Pale joined in because they had no arms, and were not trusted by the Government. The massacres had been amply revenged with much cruelty, the one committed ‘by a rude, headless multitude, the other by soldiers under order and command.’ Insurgent slaves, he says, seldom make good soldiers, and the Irish were always beaten until Charles drew away to England the army which had been ‘with his consent employed against them by the Parliament,’ which is perhaps the strongest argument against the cessation of 1643.

‘The marquis,’ says Clarendon ‘in his defence of Ormonde, believed it much more prudent, and agreeable to the trust reposed in him, to deposit the King’s interest and right of the Crown in the hands of the Lords and Commons of England, who still made great professions of duty and subjection to his Majesty, and from whom (how rebellious soever their present actions were) it must probably revert to the Crown, by treaty or otherwise, in a short time, than to trust it with the Irish, from whom less than a very chargeable war would never recover it, in what state soever the affairs of England should be; and how lasting and bloody and costly that war might prove, by the intermeddling and pretences of foreign princes, was not hard to conclude.’ To the Lord Lieutenant Ireland was essentially part of the same State as England, and the King being temporarily in abeyance, the actual wielders of power were trustees for the Crown. Parliamentary troops began to be received in Dublin at the end of March, and on June 7 the new commissioners arrived. At their head was Arthur Annesley, son of Strafford’s Mountnorris, and afterwards well known as Earl of Anglesey. Other forces followed, and arrangements were soon made. Ormonde sailed from Dublin on July 28, having left the sword of state in the hands of the Parliamentary commissioners. ‘He was,’ says Carte, ‘attended by the prayers of the distressed clergy, great numbers of whom, with their wives and children, had been kept from perishing through want by his and his lady’s bounty, and landed on August 2 at Bristol.’ Colonel Michael Jones became governor of Dublin for the Parliament. His father, the Bishop of Killaloe, had died there just nine months before.[108]

Lord Digby’s schemes were always unsuccessful, but he continued plotting to the last moment. After a meeting at Leixlip with Bellings, Sir Robert Talbot, and others of the Confederates who were more or less opposed to Rinuccini, Digby urged Ormonde not to leave Ireland after delivering the sword, but to go to Rathfarnham or some other country where his presence would be a protection to the well-affected. He might raise a force and transport it to France with Muskerry’s help, who was absolute in Munster. In this way he would avoid all appearance of joining with the English Parliament. Ormonde received this strange proposal only five days before he sailed. He replied that Preston and the rest who refused his help while he still possessed an army and fortresses would not be much impressed by his arguments in a private capacity, that the Parliament commanded the seas, and that the very worst way to get their leave to transport troops was to put himself into the power of the Confederates. For himself, he could always go from England to France, but to go from France to England would be virtually impossible. True to the policy which had prevailed since Strafford’s time, the dominant party in England refused to allow troops to be sent from Ireland into the service of any foreign prince. It was evident that they might be used against England if France or Spain were to espouse the King’s cause. Yet it is probable that unrestrained foreign enlistment would have gone far to settle the Irish question, and might have made Cromwell’s terrible campaign unnecessary.[109]

At the beginning of 1647 Clanricarde reported that Glamorgan was despised and dejected, and Ormonde said it mattered little what became of him or of Antrim ‘if it were not for a natural propension in this people to love their cozeners.’ But the Kilkenny assembly had made Glamorgan general of Munster, and an effort was required to make the appointment a reality. He told the King that he had been forced to undergo a seeming commission which should put him at the head of 12,000 foot and 2500 horse, but that his enemies never rested and that he had small hope of success. Rinuccini and his council moved to Clonmel at the beginning of June, and for a moment it seemed as if they were going to have their own way. Glamorgan, though not much of a soldier, had had some experience in raising troops, but in Munster he did little, finding it easier to multiply officers under the King’s commission of January 6, 1644-5, so that later on it was difficult to ‘dissolve even this airy structure, and to proportion the officers to the men the province was able to contain.’ Rinuccini, with the help of these new colonels and captains, thought he could establish clerical supremacy in Munster and displace all who adhered to Ormonde’s peace. Of these last Muskerry was by far the most important, for he had the confidence of the soldiers, and the nuncio had been unable to exclude him from the council. But his life was thought to be in danger, for three Dominican chaplains suggested that it would be no harm to murder him or the Munster commissioners. This kind of casuistry, as Rinuccini saw, ‘made the impression to be expected on these idiots.’ Muskerry came to Clonmel and took his seat amongst the hostile clericals, but feared a second arrest, and escaped to the camp. He found the old officers friendly and afraid of being superseded by Glamorgan’s creatures. Moreover they professed themselves excommunication-proof, and declared that they were ready to live and die with Muskerry. The men were then mustered, and it was explained to them that their pay would be diverted to the new officers, for that the province could not bear both. They gladly followed suit, joyfully repeating Muskerry’s name with cheers and casting up of hats. ‘And thus,’ says Bellings, ‘was the army, in the space of one hour, without noise, save what witnessed their public satisfaction, placed under his command.’ Their resolution proved irrevocable, and though the nuncio himself might be respected, his adherents could not venture into the camp. Rinuccini therefore went to Galway, and the Council returned to Kilkenny.’[110]