Part 2 — “1641”

“On Friday, the 22nd of this month, after nine of the clock at night, this bearer, Owen Connolly, servant to Sir John Clotworthy, Knight, came to me, the Lord Justice Parsons, to my house, and in great secrecy (as indeed the case did require) discovered unto me a most wicked and damnable conspiracy, plotted and contrived, and intended to be acted, by some evil affected Irish Papists here.”

With these words begins the historic letter written on the 25th of October, 1641, by the Lords Justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase, and thirteen members of the Irish Privy Council, to the Earl of Leicester, the absentee Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The objects which those who planned this conspiracy had in view, the means by which they were to be accomplished, and the conduct of those who took part in the insurrection which resulted from it, are among the most controverted questions of Irish history. Those who 176have taken sides against the rebels represent the rising as an ebullition of blind hatred against the English and Protestant inhabitants of Ireland, entertained by the native and Catholic population, who were resolved on expropriating and exterminating them, and setting up a government independent of the Crown of England, and establishing the Catholic Church in Ireland. Those who have sided with the rebels argue that the conspiracy and the insurrection were the result of legitimate grievances, for the redress of which insurrection afforded the only means; that the insurgents were loyal to the Crown, sought, not religious ascendancy, but religious freedom; that, while it is true that one of the objects of the conspirators was the recovery of property of which they or their ancestors had been violently and unjustly deprived, they were averse to the unnecessary effusion of blood, and had no design of harming, much less murdering, their English and Protestant fellow-countrymen. As to the conduct of those who took part in the rebellion, English and Anglo-Irish writers have made charges of wholesale massacre and shocking cruelty against them. These charges have been not only repelled, but retorted on the Irish Government, and the officers and soldiers who acted under their orders.

177In addition to sketching briefly the main incidents of the rebellion, I propose in this paper, so far as its necessary limitations will permit, to discuss these different questions, and to see if it be not possible, with the materials in our possession, to come to a conclusion upon them.

As a preliminary step it will be necessary to endeavour to place ourselves in the position of a native Irish Catholic in the year 1641, so as to see what was his lot, and of what, if any, grievances he had just cause to complain. A short historical retrospect will help to an understanding of this matter.

In the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity had been passed. By these statutes Catholics were liable to a fine for not attending church; while those who failed to take the Oath of Supremacy could not obtain a university degree, practise at the Bar, hold the office of a magistrate, or sue out the livery of their lands.

The legal fine for not attending church was, indeed, only twelve pence, and was intended to go to the relief of the poor. But much more was exacted by clerks and officers for fees, and the proceeds of the tax were diverted from its statutory destination, the relief of the poor, on the pretext, as explained by Sir Arthur Chichester, 178the Lord Deputy, that the poor of the parishes were not fit to receive the money, being Catholics themselves; and therefore ought to pay the like penalty. Towards the close of the reign of James the First, the Catholics put forth a remonstrance in which their position is summarized in these words:—“That their children were not allowed to study in foreign universities; that all the Catholics of noble birth were excluded from offices and honours, and even from the magistracy of their respective counties; that Catholic citizens and burgesses were removed from all situations of power and profit in different corporations; that Catholic barristers were not permitted to plead in the courts of law; and that the inferior classes were burdened with fines, distresses, excommunications and other punishments, which reduced them to the lowest degree of poverty.”

From this it will be seen that the grievances under which the Catholics of Ireland, as such, laboured at the accession of Charles the First, were not confined to any rank or class, but were suffered by the highest as well as the lowest.

The same observation is equally true of another grievance to which I am about to refer, a grievance that had not ostensibly any connection with the race or the religious belief of those 179who complained of it, but at the same time in fact pressed almost exclusively upon the native Irish, and those who professed the Catholic faith. This grievance may be briefly described as insecurity of land tenure.

In the reign of James the First the great case, reported by Sir John Davies, under the name of the Case of Tanistry, decided that lands should descend, not according to the native custom by which the Tanist succeeded to a limited interest in the property, the estate itself being vested in the tribe, but should descend according to the law of England. In consequence of this decision, the owners or those who claimed to be owners, in order to obtain what they believed would be an indefeasible title, surrendered their estates to the Crown and took a new grant, on payment of certain fines and the expenses of the letters patent, and on the terms of paying a fixed quit rent. Unfortunately astute lawyers were able to pick holes in the patents. Sometimes the officer whose duty it was to enrol them had neglected to do so. Sometimes the lands were wrongly or insufficiently described. Sometimes they had been valued too low, or even too high. In any of these cases, and in many others, the letters patent, if impeached, would turn out worthless. I need not remind you, as you 180have recently had the advantage of hearing a learned discourse on Strafford’s government in Ireland, what use he had made of these flaws, for the purpose of confiscating the properties of the owners of land in Connaught and Clare, in order to procure money for his master, and land for the English plantation. You will remember that among the graces which Charles promised the Irish in return for £120,000, which they gave him, were one for freedom of worship, one for confirmation of titles, and one for limiting the right of the Crown to recover lands to a period of sixty years, after an uninterrupted and undisputed possession, and how basely Charles and Strafford behaved when the money had been paid over.

Such was the posture of affairs in Ireland when Strafford, broken in health, was summoned to England to take command of the army fighting against the Scots. This army having been defeated at Newcastle, he returned to London, there to meet his accusers, to be condemned to death, and to be sacrificed by the King who had promised that “the Parliament should not touch one hair of his head.”

Strafford’s successor was Sir Christopher Wandesford. The Irish Parliament met in June, 1640, in a very different temper from that 181displayed in their last preceding session. They had caught something of the spirit of their brethren in England, with whom they had been brought into touch by the proceedings against Strafford. The Commons drew up a Remonstrance of Grievances, and appointed a committee of sixteen, including four members of the Lords, to lay it before the King. In it they remind him of their liberality in contributing to his necessities, and of the fact that in them, the Catholic people, lay the strength of his revenue, and proceed to complain of their wrongs: the arbitrary decision of causes and controversies before the chief governor, the perversion of law by the judges in order to gratify the Court, the cruel punishments employed to repress freedom of speech and writing, the extended powers of the High Court of Commission, the increase of monopolies, the exorbitant fees exacted by the clergy, the denial of the Graces, and other grievances.

This committee did not receive the final answer from the King until he was on the point of setting out for Scotland. They returned to Ireland three weeks after the Parliament had been prorogued, bringing back the answer, with all the Bills which had been transmitted to England for the approbation of the Council there 182before being passed. Among these were the Bill for Limitation, which protected from the claims of the Crown all estates that had been enjoyed without claim for sixty years; the Bill for relinquishing the title of the Crown to the four Connaught counties, the county of Clare, and large tracts of land in Tipperary and Limerick, the title of which had been found for the King by several inquisitions, and which were ready to be disposed of on survey to British undertakers. These Bills were all to be passed when the two Houses met, and meanwhile care was to be taken to notify them to the whole nation.

These concessions, though, if intended to be honestly carried out, which might well be doubted, they might satisfy the Lords and Commons by whom they were obtained, failed to satisfy the native chiefs, and the Catholic population. The Ulster plantators of James, and the Munster plantators of Elizabeth, and the Leix and Offaly plantators of Mary, and the Wicklow plantators, who were enjoying the lands of the Byrnes, were all to remain in undisturbed possession of their estates. The Catholic religion was still to be under a ban, and those who professed it were to pay their twelve pence for every Sunday and holiday that 183they did not attend the parish church, and were to be exposed to the disabilities imposed by the Act of Supremacy on those that failed to take the Oath. Besides this there were sinister rumours in circulation. Sir William Parsons was reported to have said at a public entertainment in Dublin, “that within a twelvemonth no Catholic should be seen in Ireland.” A letter was intercepted coming from Scotland to a person named Freeman, in Antrim, stating that a covenanting army under the command of General Lesley was coming to extirpate the Roman Catholics of Ulster, and leave the Scots the sole possessors of the province. The English House of Commons had passed a vote that no toleration of the Romish religion should be allowed in Ireland, and they had shown their intolerance by having eight Catholic priests arrested for saying Mass in London, and having seven of them executed. Sir John Clotworthy, the employer of Connolly, the informer already mentioned, and a man well acquainted with the designs of the faction that governed the English House of Commons, was reported to have declared there in a speech “that the conversion of the Papists in Ireland was only to be effected by the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other.”

184The consequence was that a genuine and general alarm spread among the Catholics of all ranks throughout Ireland. At the same time the circumstances were favourable for striking a blow for religious liberty. The Scots, who had far less to complain of than the native Irish, had obtained religious liberty by taking up arms. Why should not the Irish, more especially seeing that the troubles in the sister isle made their attempt all the easier?

Roger O’More, commonly called Rory O’More, was descended from the chief branch of the O’Mores of Leix, whose lands had been confiscated for the benefit of the English colony planted there. He was connected by intermarriage with considerable families of English blood. He was handsome, courteous, and able, a man of high character, and the idol of the Irish, who celebrated him in their songs, and relied so much upon him that they used to say: “God and our Lady be our help, and Roger O’More.” He it was that, in connection with the son of the great Tyrone, contrived the rebellion.

As early as February, 1641, O’More had secured the adhesion of the best gentlemen of quality of Leinster, and of a great part of Connaught, subject to his getting the adhesion of the gentry of Ulster. In order to obtain their 185adhesion he, in February, 1641, approached Lord Maguire, Baron Enniskillen. Lord Maguire consented to join, and a meeting was held next day to which all the Ulster gentlemen then in town were invited. They readily engaged in the plot. It was desired to obtain the adhesion of the Lords of the Pale, who, though English in blood, and possessed of estates that had been the property of the native Irish, were Catholics, and smarting under the affronts put upon their religion, and apprehensive of further severities. Colonel Plunket, who was one of the first to join the conspiracy, and had, as he affirmed, broached the subject to Lord Gormanstown, and got his approval, undertook to win them over. But he effected nothing. By and by we shall see how they were forced to join.

It was ultimately arranged that the rising should take place on the 23rd of October. Every man had his place assigned to him. The Ulster gentry under Sir Phelim O’Neill, were to seize Derry; O’More, Colonel Byrne, Lord Maguire, and Bryan O’Neale were to lead the attack on Dublin Castle, which was to be made by two hundred men, to be provided equally out of each province by the principal conspirators. The secret of the plot had been kept with extraordinary success. It had been communicated 186to as few persons as possible, and those only who were leaders. The conspirators felt assured that the common people would unhesitatingly follow their native chieftains in any enterprise against the Saxon intruder, and in this, as the event proved, they were not mistaken. There was this disadvantage, however, in not taking the people into their confidence, that the latter were left in ignorance of the objects which their leaders had in view, and the means by which those objects were to be obtained. Apparently the people were allowed to form their own opinions on these subjects, and it may be that they thought, and that they proclaimed that amongst those objects was the erection of Ireland into an independent kingdom, and the establishment of the supremacy of the Catholic Church, and that among the means to be adopted for effecting those objects was the extirpation and expropriation of the English and Protestants.

Owen Connolly was a Protestant, and Sir John Clotworthy, his master, was bitterly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. How the secret came to be disclosed to him as it was by Oge O’Neill on the night of the 22nd, is a mystery; but it was, with the result that the attempt on Dublin Castle was forestalled.

187Some fresh light has been thrown upon the events of this period of Irish history by the recently published volume, issued by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, containing the manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormond, preserved at Kilkenny Castle, the second of which gives at full length the whole of the letters from the Irish Lords Justices to the King, the Earl of Leicester, Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Henry Vane, Sir Edward Nicholas, Lord Falkland, Secretary of State, and His Majesty’s Commissioners for the affairs of Ireland. This correspondence commences with the famous letter of October 25th, 1641, already quoted, and continues without interruption down to the 15th of January, 1644, when a letter is written to Sir Edward Nicholas. This is the first complete series of these despatches ever published. The originals were destroyed in a fire in Dublin Castle.

Whatever justification there may be for the charges of neglect of duty made by Carte against the Lords Justices, in not taking precautions against a rising as to which they had warnings, there can, I think, be no doubt but that from the time when at nine on the night of the 22nd of October, 1641, Owen Connolly made his disclosures to Lord Justice Parsons, down to the date when these letters cease, the 188Council, according to their lights, left no stone unturned to crush the rebellion. Parsons and Borlase have been accused of postponing the suppression of the rebellion in order to promote the confiscation of Irish estates. But both of these continued to attend the meetings of the Council, and to sign the letters, down to the end of June, 1643, and Borlase continued to attend and sign the letters to the very end. The letters afford a continuous record of the measures taken by the Lords Justices and Council for stamping out the rebellion.

Parsons immediately on receiving Owen Connolly’s communication repaired to Borlase, and they at once summoned a meeting of the Council, which sat all that night and all the next day. They caused the Castle to be strengthened with armed men, and the city to be guarded, and proceeded to have such of the insurgents as they could lay hands on apprehended. The first was Hugh MacMahon, whom they examined, and who, to use their own words, when he saw they “laid it home to him, confessed enough to destroy himself and impeach some others.” Calling to mind a letter they had received from Sir William Cole on the 11th of October, they determined to secure Lord Maguire immediately, and succeeded in arresting him in a cockloft in 189an obscure house far away from his lodging. He was also examined, and admitted knowledge of the conspiracy, and ultimately made and delivered to the Lord of the Tower the written statement to which I shall refer hereafter.

When the hour approached for surprising the Castle a large number of strangers were observed to come to town in great parties several ways, who, not finding admittance at the gates, stayed in the suburbs. The Council issued a proclamation commanding all men, not dwellers in the city or suburbs, to depart within an hour on pain of death, and making it alike penal in those who should harbour them. This had the desired effect. The concourse departed. On the following day the Council sent into all parts of the country another proclamation giving information of the failure of the plot to seize the Castle, so as to dishearten the insurgents, and to encourage the friends of the Government.

Meantime the rebellion had broken out in various places throughout the country. The Council did not know whether to believe MacMahon’s statement that all the counties in the kingdom were in the plot; but if it were so they say, “Then indeed we shall be in high extremity and the kingdom in the greatest danger it ever underwent, considering our want of men, money, 190and arms to enable us to encounter such great multitudes as they can make if all should come against us.”

It was no wonder that the Lords Justices and Council contemplated a general rising with dismay. “The army we have,” they say in their letter of October 25th, “consisting of but two thousand foot and one thousand horse, are so dispersed in garrisons in several parts of the four provinces, for the security of these parts ... as, if they be sent for to be all drawn together, not only the places whence they are to be drawn ... must be by their absence distressed, but also the companies themselves coming in so small numbers, may be in danger to be cut off in their marches, nor indeed have we money to pay the soldiers to enable them to march.”

The Council soon had reason to know that the insurrection was general. Lord Blaney came to Dublin at twelve o’clock on the night of October 23rd, with news of the seizure of his house at Castleblayney, and of a house of the Earl of Essex at Carrickmacross. At three o’clock on the morning of the 24th they learned that the store of arms and ammunition at Newry had been seized. In a postscript to the letter of October 25th they write: “As we were 191making up these our letters the Sheriff of the county of Monaghan and Dr. Teate having fled, came to us and informed us of much more spoil committed by the rebels in the counties of Monaghan and Cavan, and that the sheriff of the county of Cavan joins with the rebels, being a Papist and a prime man of the Irish.” On the 5th of November they write that the rebels had seized the houses and estates of almost all the English in Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Tyrone, Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, and a great part of Down, and were beginning to threaten the English plantations in the King’s County and Queen’s County, that Dundalk had surrendered to them without a blow, and that they were marching on Drogheda. On the 13th of November they announce that the Byrnes and others had risen in Wicklow; on the 22nd that some other parts of Leinster had joined; on the 25th that the whole county of Louth, both gentry and others, had joined; that some of the Wicklow rebels had come to within four miles of the city of Dublin, and that the cattle and houses of all the English in both Wicklow and Wexford were in the hands of the insurgents; on the 30th that several other counties had risen, and on the 14th of December that the defection then appeared to be universal throughout the whole four provinces.

192The burden of these letters, which are steeped in the gall of bitterness towards the Irish Papist and his religious teachers is principally, in the first place, a wholesale charge of acts of barbarity against the rebels, and in the second place, frantic appeals for help in men and money and material of war.

Now with regard to those charges it is to be observed first, that much weight is not to be attached to accusations made in general terms; and, second, that charges of this kind were very useful as excuses for barbarities committed by the Government troops, and as stimulants to the English Parliament and people to send over the required supplies, and therefore very likely to be greatly exaggerated; and third, that the writers of these letters may have more readily given credence to reports of such excesses having been perpetrated, because, if their first letter is to be believed, Owen Connolly had told them that it was part of the design “that all the Protestants and English throughout the whole kingdom that would not join with them should be cut off, and so those Papists should then become possessed of the Government and kingdom at the same moment.”

It is of importance, therefore, to see what were the actual objects which the organizers of 193the rebellion had in view. Presumably they would include two, namely, religious liberty, and the restoration of the confiscated lands. Now, we have documents which will throw great light on this question. One is the oath which, as mentioned in the letter of the Council to Leicester, of November 25th, 1641, was administered to all who joined the rebels; another is the written statement made by Lord Maguire and delivered by him, about 1642, to Sir John Conyers, the Lieutenant of the Tower. The oath was to maintain and defend the public and free exercise of the Catholic religion, to bear faith and allegiance to King Charles, his heirs and successors, and to support them against anyone who should attempt anything against their persons or estates, or endeavour to suppress their prerogatives, or do any act contrary to regal government, as also the power and privileges of Parliament, the lawful rights and privileges of the subjects. This oath, it will be observed, asserts:—

1. Religious liberty.

2. Loyalty to the Crown.

3. The power and privileges of Parliament.

4. Rights and privileges of the subject.

Speaking of Lord Maguire’s statement, Carte, Book iii., § II., says, “It carries with it an 194intrinsic evidence sufficient to merit belief, and hath accordingly been universally allowed to be a just and faithful account of that affair.” We may therefore, I think, rest satisfied that this statement contains an authentic account of the objects that the conspirators had in view, and the method by which they proposed to accomplish them. So far as it relates to the matter in hand it is to this effect:—Roger O’More approached Lord Maguire, and after representing in general the many grievances of the natives, especially the old Irish, who upon several plantations were turned out of their ancestors’ estates, and the favourable opportunity which the insurrection of the Scots and the disturbances in England afforded the gentry of Ireland to free the nation from like grievances in future, to get good conditions for themselves, and to regain the whole, or at least good part of their ancestors’ possessions, obtained from Maguire an oath of secrecy, and then disclosed to him the project for an insurrection, urging it as the only method of recovering his lordship’s vast estates and the power of his ancestors, and as being absolutely necessary for maintaining the Catholic religion which undoubtedly, he said, the Parliament of England resolved to suppress. Here, then, we have plainly stated the objects 195the conspirators had in view, namely, the restoration of the lands which had been ‘planted,’ and the preservation of the Catholic religion, which was threatened with extinction. It will be observed that in the design thus disclosed there is no mention of erecting Ireland into an independent kingdom, the establishment of Catholic ascendancy, or the extermination of persons of the English race or of the Protestant faith. So far from the last-mentioned being one of the objects in view, “there was,” says Maguire, “a fear of the Scots conceived, that they would presumably oppose themselves, and that would make the matter more difficult; to avoid which danger it was resolved not to meddle with them or anything belonging to them, and to demean ourselves toward them as if they were of us, which we thought would pacify them; and if the Scots would not accept that offer, we were in good hope to cause a stir in Scotland that might divert them from us.”

Lord Maguire and the northern gentry generally consented to join in the plot on the strength of these representations, and at a meeting of the leaders, including Sir Phelim O’Neill, and Lord Maguire, held on the 5th of October, 1641, at Loughrosse, county Armagh, final arrangements were made for a general rising to 196take place on the 23rd, “all forts and arms should be seized, all the gentry made prisoners for their own better security against any adverse fortune or disappointment, and that none should be killed, especially of the gentry; but when of necessity they should be forced thereto by opposition, a rule to be observed likewise by those appointed for seizing the Castle of Dublin.”

Furthermore, there is the “Remonstrance of the Gentry and Commonalty of Cavan of their Grievances, common with other parts of this Kingdom of Ireland,” addressed to the Lords Justices and Council in the early part of November, 1641, which was drawn up by Bishop Bedell. In this they complain of the oppression of governors who “respected more the advancement of their own private fortunes than the honour of his Majesty or the welfare of his subjects,” of finding themselves “of late threatened with far greater and more grievous vexations, either with captivity or utter expulsion from their native seats.” They further declare “that ... we harbour not the least thought of hostility towards His Majesty, or purpose any hurt to His Majesty’s subjects in their possessions, goods, or liberty; only we desire that your lordships will be pleased to make remonstrances to His Majesty for us of all our 197grievances and just fears, that they may be removed, and such a course settled, by the advice of the Parliament of Ireland whereby the liberty of our consciences may be secured unto us, and we may be eased of other burdens in civil government.” The Remonstrance then proceeds thus:—“As for the mischief and inconveniences that have already happened through the disorder of the common sort of people against the English inhabitants, or any other, we, with the nobility and gentlemen and such others of the several counties of this kingdom as are most ready and willing to use our and their best endeavours in causing restitution and satisfaction to be made, as in part we have already done.” The Remonstrance winds up by a request for a speedy answer so as to avoid “the inconvenience of the barbarousness and incivility of the commonalty, who have committed many outrages without order, consenting, or privity of ours.”

We have thus in black and white an account of the aims and objects of the leaders of the rebels, and of the means by which they hoped to succeed, and neither Catholic ascendancy, nor disloyalty, nor racial or religious antipathy, to be gratified by massacre, finds a place in their programme or plan of campaign. To do violence 198to any person on account of his religion is, indeed, a thing wholly averse to the Irish nature. No Protestant ever suffered persecution at the hands of the native Irish in Ireland, for his faith; and when Protestants fled from persecution, in the reign of Queen Mary, to Ireland, they were harboured and protected by the Irish Catholics. Nevertheless, the massacres of Protestants alleged to have taken place in this rebellion have ever since been cast in the teeth of the Irish Catholics, and made the excuse for organized oppression and persecution. The butcheries of Cromwell were justified on the ground that they were a just punishment for such barbarities, though the people that he butchered were never shown to have had, and in many cases could not have had, hand, act, or part in them.

I have gone carefully through all the letters and documents penned by the Lords Justices and Council, and while general charges of murder and cruelty are made and repeated again and again, and though the writers can be specific in their statements as to all other matters, in two cases only do they give any details by which the accuracy of their statements can be tested; one is the case of the killing of Lord Caulfield, who was undoubtedly shot dead while a prisoner on 199the 1st of March, 1642; the other is the case of Huibarts, who held the island of Lambay, and may have been killed while resisting an attack.

If the Lords Justices and Council confined themselves to general charges of massacre and barbarity, the English pamphleteers were, in all conscience, sufficiently precise. It is needless to say that the news of the rebellion caused a great commotion in England. Leicester received the letter of the 25th of October on the night of Sunday the 1st of November. He at once caused the Council to be summoned, and they resolved to go to the House of Commons the next day as soon as it sat, which they did, notice being first given to the House “that the Lords of the Council had some matters of importance to impart to them”; whereupon chairs were set in the House for them to repose themselves, and the Sergeant sent to conduct them. Clarendon describes the scene. “As soon as they entered the House the Speaker desired them to sit down, and, then being covered, Littleton told the Speaker that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, having received letters from the Lords Justices and Council there, had communicated them to the Council, and since the House of Peers was not sitting, they had thought fit, for the importance of the letters, to impart them to that 200House,” and so referred the business to the Lord Lieutenant, who, without any enlargement, only read the letters he had received, and so the Lords departed from the House. “There was,” says Clarendon, “a deep silence in the House, and a kind of consternation; most men’s heads having been intoxicated from their first meeting in Parliament with the instigators of plots and treasonable designs through the three kingdoms.”

The King, who was then in Scotland, received letters from Ulster telling him of the outbreak there. These he sent on to the Parliament, with a letter saying that he was satisfied that it was no rash insurrection, but a formed rebellion, which must be prosecuted with a sharp war, the conducting and prosecuting of which he wholly committed to their care and wisdom, and depended upon them for carrying it on. This exactly fitted in with their wishes, as up to the time they got this letter they had no authority to levy troops or make war. They appointed a committee of both Houses for the consideration of the affairs of Ireland, and providing for the supply of men, arms and money for the suppressing of that rebellion. The Lord Lieutenant was a member of the Committee, which sat every morning, and he communicated to them 201all the letters he received, to be consulted upon and to be then reported to the two Houses, which thus acquired a great accession of power and patronage.

Soon after the news of the rebellion was spread in England, the Press began to pour forth a stream of pamphlets. Some of these were devoted to advocating the plan adopted by the English Parliament for raising the necessary funds for prosecuting the campaign against the rebels, by giving grants of land that should be forfeited to those who advanced money for the purpose. In 1642 they decreed the confiscation of 2½ millions of acres in Ireland, and undertook to allot them to those who made advances, on the following scale: 2,000 acres in Leinster to anyone who advanced £600; and the same quantity in Munster, Connaught, and Ulster respectively, to those who advanced £450, £300, and £200 respectively. Others of those pamphlets were devoted to thrilling descriptions of massacres and atrocities said to have been committed by the Irish rebels. These were, Ormond says, “received as oracles,” and the extirpation of the Irish “preached as gospel.” As I said before, they were not open to the imputation of being wanting in details. They were most circumstantial. They describe the doings of such 202well-known rebel leaders as the Earl of Clare, whose portrait is given in one of the pamphlets, the great Lord MacDavo, Lord Matquess, Don Luce, Limbrey, Cargena and others, in such well-known counties, Monno otherwise Conno, and Warthedeflowr, and in such well-known towns as Rockcall, six miles from Dublin, Lognall, Toyhull, Kilwood, Kilmouth, Tormoy, and Cormack. The collection of these pamphlets made by Thorpe, and now in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, as well as those in the British Museum, enable one to judge of the way in which the ear of England was poisoned for the purpose of exasperation against the Irish Catholics.

Two months after the outbreak the Government issued a commission to seven Protestant ministers to take evidence upon oath as to the amount of the loss sustained by the British and Protestants that had been “separated from their habitations,” or “deprived of their goods,” the names of the robbers, and what traitorous speeches were uttered by the robbers or others. It is to be observed that in this Commission there is no mention of murder or violence. By a supplemental commission of the 18th of January, 1642, it was extended so as to include an inquiry as to “what violence was done by the robbers, and how often and what number have 203been murthered or perished afterwards on the way to Dublin or elsewhere.” This addition was an afterthought, and the fact is very significant, as pointed out by Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement, p. 60. A mass of such depositions was taken, and are now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. I have not perused them, but every historian who has done so, and has formed an impartial judgment upon them, has pronounced them to be practically worthless as evidence against the rebels. In the first place they were exparte statements, made in the absence of those whose conduct they impugned. Secondly, they were very largely hearsay, and not the evidence of eye witnesses. Thirdly, many of them are not made on oath. Fourthly, they were to a great extent made by persons intending to make claims for restitution and compensation, and may therefore be expected to be exaggerated, if not unfounded. Fifthly, they bear internal evidence of untruth, many of them deposing to apparitions and other supernatural phenomena. Sixthly, they in many instances gave evidence of the deaths of people who long survived the rebellion. Seventhly, many of the deponents were illiterate. Lastly, they afford no safe basis for a calculation of the numbers stated to have been killed, for the same alleged 204outrage is obviously referred to in different depositions.

The calculations made by English writers of the numbers slaughtered by the Irish are curiously conflicting. Milton, in his observations on the “Articles of Peace between the Earl of Ormond and the Irish,” set down the number “assassinated and cut to pieces by those Irish barbarians” at 200,000, which was about the total Protestant population of Ireland, inclusive of soldiers in garrison and officials in Dublin. The Lords Justices and Council in their despatch to the King, dated March, 1642-3, in opposition to any accommodation with the rebels, upon an alleged acknowledgment “by their priests appointed to collect the numbers,” set the number down at 154,000 “before the end of March last, ... besides many thousand others since that time.” Temple, whose object also was to obstruct the peace, says that in the first two months of the rebellion 150,000 had been massacred, and that “there were 300,000 Protestants murdered in cold blood or destroyed in some other way, or expelled from their habitations from the 23rd of October, 1641, to the cessation made on the 16th of September, 1643.” Petty fixes the number at 37,000, Walsh at 20,000. The Rev. Dr. Warner, a Fellow of 205Trinity College, Dublin, who describes many of the depositions as “incredible,” “ridiculous,” and “contradictory,” carefully examined the thirty-two closely written volumes which are in the library of Trinity College, with the result that he concluded that “the number of people killed upon positive evidence collected in two years after the rebellion broke out, adding them all together, amounts to only 2,109, on the reports of other Protestants, 1,619 more, and on the reports of some of the rebels a further number of 300, the whole making 4,028. Besides these numbers there is in the same collection evidence on the report of others of 8,000 killed by ill-usage.” These numbers he considered were the utmost to which “the cruelties of the Irish out of war” could be extended, though, having regard to the nature of several of the depositions, he could not in his conscience charge them with such a number of murders. In corroboration of his figures he quotes a letter which he copied from the Council books in Dublin written on the 5th of May, 1652, from the Parliament Commissioners in Ireland to the English Parliament, in which the Commissioners tell them that it appears “besides 848 families there were killed, hanged, burned, and drowned 6,062.”

That the rebellion at its first outbreak was not 206accompanied by any massacre, or even by considerable effusion of blood, appears from documents now extant. Lord Chichester wrote to the King from Belfast on October 24th, 1641, “The Irish in the northern parts of your kingdom of Ireland two nights last past did rise with force and have taken Charlemont, Dungannon, Tonragee, and Newry, with your Majesty’s stores there ... and have slain only one man.” The letter of the Lords Justices to Leicester of October 25th, does not make mention of a single case of violence to the person. The Remonstrance of the Gentry and Commonalty of Cavan already referred to, issued in the early part of November, 1641, speaks not of massacres or murders, which the Remonstrants would undoubtedly have deemed worthy of condign punishment, but of acts which would be proper subjects of restitution and satisfaction. The first instance of homicide committed by the rebels given by the Lords Justices in their correspondence is in a letter to Leicester of December 3rd, 1641, in which they announce the death of Mr. Huibarts. It is not until the 14th of December that any massacre is mentioned, when they state, in a letter of that date to Leicester, that the garrison of Longford had been massacred.

Your attention has already been called to the 207pregnant fact that in the first commission of inquiry issued by the Lords Justices and Council, which is dated December 23rd, 1641, no reference is made to murder or personal violence.

It thus becomes abundantly clear that during the first two months of the rebellion, not only was there no general massacre by the rebels, but there was little bloodshed. Indeed the Lords Justices, in their proclamation of February 8th, 1642, assert that the design of a general massacre had failed.

A period of several months elapsed between the end of December, 1641, and the organisation of the rebels under the Confederates. During this period, no doubt, it was that the serious cruelties were committed by the insurgents, for the proceedings of the Confederates were characterised by humanity, and the Supreme Council would not have tolerated murder under any circumstances, or under any provocation. Among the propositions they made to the King in March, 1644, was the following:—“Forasmuch as your Majesty’s Catholic subjects have been taxed with many inhuman cruelties which they never committed, your Majesty’s said supplicants, therefore, for their vindication, and to manifest to all the world to have such heinous offences punished, and the offenders brought to justice, do desire that in the next Parliament all 208inhuman murthers, breaches of quarter, and inhuman cruelties committed on either side may be questioned in the said Parliament (if your Majesty so think fit), and such as shall appear to be guilty exempted out of the Act of Oblivion and punished according to their deserts.” This principle was embodied in the fifteenth article of the first treaty between the King and the Confederates, signed on the 28th of March, 1646, and in the last treaty signed on the 17th of January, 1648-9.

If we wanted further proof of the scrupulous humanity of the Confederates, the following facts would supply it. The delegates of the Confederates in 1644, in an official communication made to the Marquis of Ormond as representative of the King, declared that one of the results that they most earnestly desired in connection with the removal of their grievances was that when the condition of Catholics and Protestants had been equalised they might all “be united more than ever before,” and neither party “have occasion to envy or oppress the other.” These aspirations were met in the following month by an ordinance made by the Parliament at Westminster, by which the Lords and Commons declared “that no quarter shall be given hereafter to any Irishman or any Papist whatsoever 209born in Ireland, who shall be taken in hostility against the English Parliament, either upon the sea or within this kingdom or dominion of Wales,” and they followed this barbarous declaration by a decree for carrying it out. In pursuance of this enactment many Irish sailors were brutally murdered, being tied back to back and thrown overboard, and in one instance seventeen Irish soldiers, fighting in the King’s army, when made prisoners, were hanged. Prince Rupert promptly hanged an equal number of his prisoners, at which the English Parliament was greatly shocked, and remonstrated with the Prince, threatening to retaliate, and justifying the butchery of the Irish. Rupert does not appear to have taken any notice of this amazing document, and probably would have hanged or shot a prisoner of English or Scottish blood for every one of Irish blood or the Catholic religion that the Parliamentarians had murdered. But the Confederates were too humane to countenance such atrocities; and they refrained from defiling the records of their assembly by any declaration or ordinance such as that which the pious champions of civil and religious liberty in England, to their eternal infamy, had placed upon their rolls.

What murders were committed at sea under 210this ordinance never will be known. But Bulstrode Whitelocke, a member of the Long Parliament, under date of May, 1644, records the following significant incident: “At the taking of Carmarthen by Captain Swanley, many Irish rebels were thrown into the sea.” Under date June, 1644, he records that “Captain Swanley was called into the House of Commons and had thanks from them for his good services, and a chain of gold two hundred pounds value.”

It is not to be denied, however, that in the earlier stages of the rebellion murders, and possibly outrages, were committed by the insurgents. It was, of course, necessary that if resistance was offered to the seizure of strongholds or arms, it should be overpowered by force, even to the extent of taking life; and what are described as massacres were probably, in many instances, homicides committed unavoidably in cases of such resistance. But apart from such occurrences, no doubt, lives were taken by the rebels. According to a declaration made under hand and seal by the Rev. John Ker, Dean of Ardagh, given by Nalson, vol. ii., p. 528, Phelim O’Neill, in the course of his trial, at which the Dean was present, said that there were several outrages committed by officers and soldiers, his aiders and abettors in the management of the war, 211contrary to his intention, which now pressed his conscience very much, and the Dean adds, that he heard several murders and robberies proved at the trial to have been committed by him, and that he had nothing to plead in his defence. This is probably true. It was hardly in human nature, even Irish human nature, to refrain from taking a signal and sanguinary vengeance on those by whom, or for whom, they were oppressed and plundered. Besides, there can, I think, be little doubt but that the massacres began with the butchery, possibly in the beginning of November, 1641, but not later than the beginning of January, 1642, of innocent persons, men, women and children, inhabitants of Island Magee, by the garrison of Carrickfergus; and the murders committed by the rebels in Ulster may not unfairly be attributed in a great measure to reprisals for this horrible carnage. Whatever massacres there were must have been practically confined to Ulster, for there were but few English or Protestants elsewhere, and as the Irish carefully avoided molesting the Scots in Ulster, who were by far the majority of the Ulster population, the numbers slain cannot have been large. There is no doubt, too, but that O’More was strongly opposed to all unnecessary violence, and when we remember that the generals of the 212Federation, which commenced its session at Kilkenny in October, 1642, were directed by their commission to protect the husbandmen, victuallers, and all other subjects of his Majesty from the extortions, violences, and abuses of the soldiers, we may be pretty sure that little or no blood was unnecessarily shed after the eminent men who led the troops of the Confederation took up their commands.

It is needless to refer to the measures taken by the rebel leaders to check the outburst of pillage which marked the struggle before the Confederation was formed, and to protect the Protestants and the English from molestation. The well-known instance of Bishop Bedell, whose house was the asylum of numerous refugees, and who was himself treated with marked respect while he lived, and buried with all possible honour when he died, is only one example out of many of the conspicuous humanity of the men who were responsible for the insurrection.

But let us look at the reverse of the picture. That the Irish “Papist” was regarded by the English as a creature outside the pale of humanity is evidenced by the ordinance excluding him from quarter already quoted. That the Scotch concurred in this estimate appears from the fact that they adopted this ordinance. That 213he was to be exterminated was, as Ormond wrote to Clanricarde, “preached as gospel.” That such a gospel was not to be a dead letter appears from documents under the hands of the Lords Justices and Council. “We have hitherto,” they write on the 7th of June, 1642, to the Lords Commissioners for Irish Affairs, “where we came against the rebels, their adherents, aiders, and abettors, proceeded with fire and sword, the soldiers sometimes not sparing the women, and sometimes not children, many women being manifestly very deep in the guilt of this rebellion, and as we are informed, very forward to stir up their husbands, friends and kindred to side therein, and exciting them to cruelty against the English, acting therein and in their spoils even with rage and fury with their own hands.” We have also the directions given by the Lords Justices and Council to Colonel Crawford for his expedition to County Wicklow, and to Colonel Gibson for his expedition to County Kildare. These were to go to these counties and remain there as long as they could find provision for their men, and in their journey to kill, slay, and destroy all rebels; to destroy by fire and sword all their goods, houses, and corn. It is easy to understand how these orders would be interpreted. They meant the extermination 214of the people by fire and sword, or by famine; for, so long as there was food for the soldiery, the soldiery were to remain; when they left there would be food for no one.

In their despatch to the King in opposition to an accommodation with the rebels, already quoted, the Lords Justices and Council admit the policy of extermination, but only partial extermination, be it observed. “And howsoever it be true,” they write on the 16th of March, 1642-3, “that all the peril and damage we undergo, and all the arms we desired to have used and borne here, is but (by God’s blessing) to bring on a safe and lasting peace, yet we can no way apprehend that it can be done till the sword have abated these rebels in numbers and power, yet not to the utter extirpation of the native which is far from our thoughts (though some to render us the more odious report so of us).”

A characteristic example of the methods of the Lords Justices and their troops is given in their letter of June 7th, 1642, to the Lord Lieutenant, describing the capture of Baldungan Castle, situated twelve miles from Dublin. Colonel Crawford took it by storm, and found therein to the number of 120 rebels, whom immediately his men put to the sword, saving a popish priest, whom Colonel Crawford brought 215to Dublin, and whom the Provost Marshal hanged. “This sharpness,” they write, “held with them when they maintain castles against us, will doubtless discourage them from presuming to keep castles against us hereafter, when they still find just vengeance thus taken on them for their boldness therein. There was then found in that castle an English gentleman whom the rebels had taken prisoner a few days before, and whom our men now released.”

This despatch would do credit to Cromwell. There is a touch of unconscious irony in the contrast between the treatment of the one English gentleman captured by the rebels, and the 120 rebels captured by the English.

The letters reek with such incidents. Ormond takes a priest at Ballymacur, Westmeath, “who was then immediately hanged.” Monck, on his way to join Ormond, captures a castle at Knock, near Trim, “killed four score men which had maintained it against him, and took some prisoners, who were instantly hanged.” Monck, again, took at the castles of Rathcoffey and Clongowes Wood, in Kildare, “three score and ten prisoners, and amongst the rest some priests, whom with the rest he brought hither to be proceeded with as we should think fit, which was all the quarter he gave them, and we have appointed 216them to be executed by martial law.” “We lately sent abroad two parties of the army, one towards Catherlagh, thirty-two miles from this city, and the other towards Arklow, thirty-six miles from hence, with direction to burn and spoil all the way, as they went and came, which they did accordingly.” Lord Inchiquin in Cork took fifty prisoners, “divers of them men of quality, and most of them officers in the army of the rebels, which fifty prisoners Lord Inchiquin caused to be hanged the next morning, saving only Colonel Butler, son of the traitor Lord Viscount Ikerrin, and one Purgett, Commissary General of the rebel army, which two still remain prisoners.” Lord Lisle’s performances are thus described: “Lord Lisle hath now caused that house”—Lord Fingall’s house near Virginia—“and all the villages and towns adjoining to be burnt, as also all the corn, hay, and turf in all that country round about them. He still proceeds in burning, wasting, spoiling, and destroying all the country about him, and all the rebels’ corn, hay and turf, and in depriving the rebels of all the cattle he can ... so as by that time he returns thence he will, by God’s assistance, have all that country in such a condition as that the rebels shall have neither house to lodge, nor food, nor fire, which course also 217we have begun, and God willing, shall hold in other places, as we shall be enabled by supply of provisions, and we have hoped (by the blessing of God upon our endeavours) if we be strengthened from thence, as we expect, suddenly to drive the rebels into such extremities as many thousands of them and their foreign aids (if they should arrive) must perish and starve through hunger and cold.”

This, of course, was a sentence of death on every man, woman, and child in the districts thus condemned to desolation.

In their letter to the Lord Lieutenant, of December 28th, 1641, the Lords Justices make two damning admissions. First they say that Sir Charles Coote, on his return from raising the siege of the Castle of Wicklow, had a skirmish with a numerous body of the rebels, slew some of them, and in that journey slew and caused to be hanged others of them, and amongst others one woman that had been active in robbing and spoiling the English, and had about her at her apprehension some of the clothes of the English she had robbed.

Now, this is merely an ingenious device to endeavour to mix up punishment inflicted on rebels in arms, with what is evidently a massacre of unarmed peasantry perpetrated during 218“that journey,” in which women, and probably children, were butchered at the instance of the notorious Sir Charles Coote.

The second admission is that four people were murdered at Santry, which they make light of, observing that therein “only four persons were slain, whereas they might have slain many more if they had intended a massacre.” The heads of the victims of this butchery were brought in triumph to Dublin, on poles, and there exhibited. One of them turned out to be a Protestant. This incident had momentous consequences, as we shall see.

O’Connell was quite justified in saying, as he did to O’Neill Daunt, when speaking of the rebellion of 1641: “History has been so completely falsified, that not only is the truth unknown, but the foulest falsehoods have passed current as gospel truths; the characters of the two contending parties have been quite reversed.”

But I must hasten to sketch the leading events of the insurrection.

I have already referred to the murders at Santry. The neighbouring gentry were alarmed at this occurrence. It seemed a precursor of what they might expect themselves, and they held a meeting and assembled their followers. 219The gentry of the Pale had been placed in a very difficult position. Being Catholics, they were distrusted by the Lords Justices. Being English, they distrusted the rebels. The Lords Justices ordered all persons not ordinarily resident in Dublin to return to their homes. The gentry of the Pale requested to be furnished with arms sufficient to enable them to defend themselves when they were thus surrounded by the rebels. This was at first granted to a limited extent, but when troops were promised from England, the arms supplied were largely withdrawn. The gentry were thus left defenceless. An attack was made by the Government troops on the house at Clontarf of one of them, named King, who owned the village of Clontarf, on the pretext that the fishermen of the village had plundered a bark that lay off the coast there, and that some of the booty was found in his house. The consequence of all this was that the gentry came to the conclusion that their only course was to join the rebels, who thus obtained a considerable accession of strength, both in numbers and weight, though the Lords Justices made light of the matter in their letters. This occurred in December, 1641.

In March, 1642, a Synod of the Ulster clergy met, and it was there suggested that an assembly 220of clergy and laity should be held to organize the national movement. This proposal was adopted, and the General Assembly of the Confederate Catholics was held at Kilkenny in the following October. They at once proceeded to organize the country, appointing a Supreme Council, and provincial Councils, and commanders of the armies in the four provinces. They made provisions for the administration of justice in the districts under their control, the levy of contributions, and the machinery of government generally. Their seal bore on it the legend: “Pro deo, pro rege et patria, unanimes,” their coins, “floreat rex.” The oath to be taken by the Confederates was similar in terms to that already mentioned.

The Confederates addressed a petition to the King, through Ormond, praying his Majesty, “with heads lower than our knees,” “to assign a place where with safety we may express our grievances.” In this they complain of the condition whereunto the misrepresentation of his ministers in Ireland, united with the malignant party in England, had reduced them, and of the resolution taken by some malevolent persons in England, “to supplant their nation and religion,” and they disclaim any intention of disturbing his Majesty’s Government, or invading any 221of his prerogatives, or oppressing any of his British subjects, of what religion soever, that did not labour to suppress them. They refer to the petition which they had addressed to the Lords Justices, “but therein,” they say, “we found, instead of a salve to our wounds, oil poured into the fire of our discontent, which occasioned that intemperance in the commonalty that they acted some unwarrantable cruelties upon the puritans, or others suspected of puritanism, which we really detest, have punished in part, and desire to punish with fulness of severity, in all the actors of them, when time shall enable us to it, though the measure offered to the Catholic natives here, in the inhuman murdering of old, decrepit, people in their beds, women in the straw, and children eight days old, burning of houses, and robbing of all kinds of persons without distinction of friend from foe, and digging up of graves, and then burning the dead bodies of our ancestors, in time of cessation, and in breach of public faith, have not deserved that justice from us.”

The King refused to receive delegates from the Confederates, but granted a commission to Ormond, Clanrickard, and others to hear what the delegates had to say. “Albeit His Majesty has not thought fit to admit any of them to his presence 222who have been ... actors or abettors in so odious a rebellion,” as the Commission expressed it. This passage went near to wrecking the project, for in the safe-conduct sent to the delegates these words were used, and the Confederates were highly incensed at being accused of rebellion. However, they ultimately consented to attend at Drogheda, and the meeting took place on the 17th of March, 1643.

The first result of these negotiations was a truce or “cessation” as it was called, which was originally for a short period, but afterwards renewed from time to time.

Ostensibly Ormond was the King’s mouth-piece in this affair, and he was authorized to make certain concessions, in return for which the Confederates were to furnish the King with 10,000 men for service against the English rebels. But Charles, who never could act straight, granted a secret commission to Lord Glamorgan, not under the Great Seal, empowering him to make further concessions. He accordingly concluded secret articles with the Confederates on August 25th, 1645. But the secret leaked out. Glamorgan was brought before the Castle Chamber on a charge of treason, on the 26th of December, 1645, and committed. He was examined on the following day, and released 223on the 30th from close custody, but still kept under a certain restraint. The fatal battle of Naseby had been fought on the 18th of June previous. Charles was in dire straits, and, as might be expected, he repudiated Glamorgan’s authority, in a statement given on the 24th of January, 1646, at Oxford, which was to be communicated by the Speaker of the House of Lords to both Houses. In it he says that Glamorgan had only a commission to raise forces, and concluding by asking for a safe-conduct, in blank, to be sent “for a messenger to be immediately dispatched into Ireland to prevent any accident that may happen to hinder his Majesty’s resolution of leaving the managing of the business of Ireland wholly to the two Houses, and to make no peace there but with their consent, which, in case it shall please God to bless his endeavour in the Treaty with success, his Majesty hereby engages himself to do.”

The “treaty” here referred to is a treaty with his rebellious English subjects. If such were made, the King was prepared to hand over his loyal Irish subjects to the tender mercies of the English puritans.

But the negotiations for the treaty with the Confederates went on meantime, and the treaty 224itself was signed on the 28th of March, 1646. It consisted of thirty articles, and dealt substantially with all the grievances complained of. Collateral with it there was an agreement that the Confederates should furnish the King with 10,000 men, of which 6,000 were to sail on or before April 1st, and 4,000 on or before May 1st. The treaty was to be conditional on the fulfilment of this agreement, and it was deposited in duplicate in the hands of Lord Clanricarde to be held by him as what lawyers call an “escrow,” until the agreement had been fulfilled. It was found, however, that the position of the King’s affairs was such that it was not practicable to carry it out, and that it would be more for his Majesty’s interest that the men should remain in Ireland. The condition was therefore waived.

Everything now appeared to be arranged, when one of these incidents occurred to mar the prospects of Irish nationality, of which the history of Ireland is so full.

The Confederates had been obliged to rely very largely on support from abroad, and among those who contributed most liberally was the Pope. Unfortunately, he not only contributed material support and moral support, but he sent a Nuncio with instructions placing the 225full establishment of the Catholic religion in Ireland above and before reforms in the political government.

The presence of the Pope’s representative imparted great strength to the Confederates; it was also productive of unexpected consequences. The Nuncio, Rinuccini, was not satisfied with the treaty. He did not think it conceded enough. In February, 1646, in anticipation of the conclusion of peace, he had a protest against the treaty drawn up and signed by several of the prelates, based on the principle that those who entered into it, or supported or favoured it, violated their oath. The peace was proclaimed by Ormond in Dublin on the 30th of July, 1646, and the Confederates ordered its proclamation on the 3rd August. A meeting of the congregation of the clergy was to be held at Waterford on the 12th of August. An attempt made to proclaim the peace there on the 9th failed, as the Mayor and Corporation refused to allow the function to take place. It was then proclaimed at Kilkenny, and the herald and pursuivant proceeded to Limerick, but the attempt at a proclamation provoked a riot, in which they were severely mauled. Finally, the bishops and clergy denounced the peace at Waterford on the 12th, and further efforts to proclaim it were 226abandoned. On the 1st of September, Rinuccini directed the clergy to publish to their flocks at High Mass, and otherwise, that they were not to adhere to the treaty on pain of excommunication.

Efforts were made to compose the dispute. The Confederation answered the Nuncio and the ecclesiastics; the latter replied, and stated that they would agree to nothing until a new General Assembly was called; and they formed a new government, called “The Council and Congregation,” which was to hold office until the meeting of a General Assembly, to be held on the 11th of January, 1646-7.

The Assembly was held accordingly, and debated the matter at great length, and with great heat. Bellings, who had been the Secretary from the foundation of the Confederation, contrasts the proceedings with the quiet and dignity with which those of the previous assemblies had been conducted. A bishop whom he mentions, could always, he says, get a shout of applause by merely waiving his hat. After a powerful speech by Colonel Walter Bagnall in favour of the treaty, which produced a great impression, the treaty was rejected on the 2nd of February, by a majority of votes. A new oath was then framed containing further 227clauses for the advantage of the Catholic religion.

The clergy thus won a disastrous triumph. Up to this the arms of the Confederates had been successful. In the previous June, Owen Roe O’Neill had won his famous victory over Monroe at Benburb. But now all went wrong. The Leinster army was defeated at Dungan Hill. The Munster army, under Lord Taaffe, was defeated at Kanturk on the 13th of November, 1647, and these reverses were followed in rapid succession by other defeats. Everywhere there was confusion and disunion. Owen Roe O’Neill sided with the Nuncio. The General and officers of the Leinster army at first took the other side, and only abandoned it when the General found that his men were not “excommunication proof.” The bishops were divided, and so were the convents and monasteries. No doubt, the laity, especially the common people, were bewildered. The Council revoked O’Neill’s patent for the command in Ulster. He threw the letters directed to him and to his officers into the fire, and he and his officers published a sharp declaration against the Council’s proceedings, to which they replied with equal asperity. The Assembly met in September, 1648, and accused the Nuncio. He embarked from Galway on the 22823rd of February, 1649, and, needless to say, never returned.

Meantime, efforts had been made to conclude another peace. Ormond, after he had been obliged to surrender Dublin to the English Parliament, had left Ireland; but Clanricarde, who had, in conjunction with Colonel Jones, won the battle of Kanturk, began to distrust the Parliamentarians, and made overtures to the Confederates. Ormond returned to Ireland in October, 1648, and concluded a peace with the Confederates on the 17th of January, 1649.

But it was too late. Events had marched with fatal rapidity in England. On the 5th of May, 1646, the King had surrendered himself to the Scots, to be by them handed over to the English Parliament. His head fell on the scaffold on the 30th of January, 1649. Cromwell landed in Ireland on the 15th of August, to find that Ormond had been defeated by Colonel Jones in the battle of Rathmines. We know what followed. Those who have listened to, or have read, the brilliant lecture on Cromwell, delivered before this Society, by Sir William Butler, need not be reminded of the tragic occurrences of that dark time. But in any case they are beyond the scope of this paper. The “Rebellion” of 1641 ended with the treaty of 1649.

229THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY

By JAMES DONELAN, M.Ch., M.B.,

Chevalier of the Crown of Italy

231The Confederation of Kilkenny

The period we are about to deal with is one of the most important, perhaps the most important of modern Irish history, as the events of that time influenced the destinies of Ireland more profoundly than anything that went before, and by their effects, continue to profoundly influence them even in our own times. It is also the most confused, not to say confusing, period of the history of Ireland or any other country that a student can attempt to deal with. Carlyle, rarely just to Ireland, in this instance describes it with both force and faithfulness, when due allowance is made for his prejudices. “The history of it,” he says, “does not form itself into a picture, but remains only as a huge blot, an indiscriminate blackness, which the human memory cannot willingly charge itself with! There are Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other. There are Catholics of the Pale, demanding freedom of religion under my Lord this and my Lord that. 232There are Old-Irish Catholics under Pope’s Nuncios under Abbas O’Teague of the excommunications and Owen Roe O’Neill demanding, not religious freedom only, but what we now call ‘Repeal of the Union,’ and unable to agree with the Catholics of the English Pale. Then there are Ormond Royalists of the Episcopalian and mixed creeds, strong for King without Covenant; Ulster and other Presbyterians, strong for King and Covenant; lastly, Michael Jones, and the Commonwealth of England, who want neither King nor Covenant. All these plunging and tumbling for the last eight years, have made of Ireland and its affairs, the black unutterable blot we speak of.” The object of this paper is to remove some of the blackness, and attempt to set forth clearly, if possible within the limits allowed, the relations and interactions of these various parties.

A brief reference to the rebellion of 1641 in Ulster gives us the most convenient starting-point. The dispossessed Clansmen, availing of the troubles between Charles I and the English Parliament, suddenly seized on their ancestral lands and drove out the settlers. Much has been written of the cruelties of both sides in a keen struggle for existence in a semi-barbarous age. The insurgents have been charged with a massacre 233of Protestants, the number of slain, according to some accounts, being greater than that of the whole English population of the island, as if the outbreak were one undertaken from religious motives. Religion had nothing to do with it. It was the eternal Land Question in its original and most crude form—nothing more. It was unfortunate as furnishing a valuable pretext that was readily availed of for a general confiscation by the Puritan Parliament that the settlers were Scotch and English Protestants, but it cannot be doubted that, had they been Spaniards or Italians with an Archbishop at their head, they would have fared in precisely the same manner. From the point of view of the great mass of the Irish proprietors both Old-Irish and Anglo-Irish, it was an enormous tactical blunder.

A detail of the rebellion which had serious consequences, was the use of a forged Commission from Charles I, whereby some chiefs and others of the old proprietors who were hanging back, were induced to come out. Charles was in Edinburgh collecting evidence against the Inviters at the time of the outbreak, but was unwilling to leave until he had finished. Seeing, however, the use that would be made of any hesitation on his part in putting down a rebellion 234alleged 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, 235were not to be paid into the Royal Exchequer, but to a Committee composed of Members of the House of Commons and Adventurers, and these were to appoint the Commander and Officers, the King being allowed only to sign the Commissions. The lands of the Irish were not to be set out to the adventurers until Parliament should declare the war at an end. The King was also deprived of the power to pardon the insurgents, for the effect of pardons would be to deprive the adventurers of their security. In this way, the mass of the Irish proprietors would be forced into rebellion, while for that reason the King would be prevented from entering into any terms with them, whereby he might call the English garrison in Ireland to his assistance in the coming struggle with the Parliament, or receive help from the insurgents.

In considering the attitude of the Parliament and the English people in all these matters, it must not be forgotten that they were then about to be forced into a life and death struggle against an autocracy. They knew that Strafford had, but a short time before, declared the King’s Government to be as autocratic in Ireland as that of any absolute monarch in Europe, and that both he and the King had 236lively 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.

237The Executive Government in Dublin Castle was, during most of the period with which we are concerned, in the hands of the Lords Justices in the absence of Lord Leicester, who had been appointed Lord Lieutenant, but who, already inclining to the popular side in England, never took up his office. The Lords Justices were, nominally, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase. Parsons, from a needy and vulgar adventurer, by the grasping chicanery then, and long after necessary to the establishment of a great position in Ireland, had wormed his way into his present eminence. Sir John Borlase, the Commander of the Ordnance, was an old soldier, well stricken in years, and practically a nonentity by the side of his powerful colleague. The English garrison in Ireland, already largely imbued with Puritan principles, was under the command of the Earl—afterwards Marquis—of Ormond.

The character of Ormond has been viewed from so many standpoints, that it is difficult to decide impartially between the extremely different views given of it. He was originally a Catholic, but taken to England by the Court of Wards in his youth, had been brought up a Protestant. By birth, the head of one of the greatest Catholic Anglo-Irish families of the 238Pale, 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.

239For some years, the Catholic Anglo-Irish proprietors, especially of the Pale, had been endeavouring, but in vain, to come to some accommodation with the King, heedless of what might befall their hereditary enemies, the Old-Irish. They had addressed petitions and remonstrances to Charles, but these, for the most part, had been suppressed by the Lords Justices. It would be impossible, in this rapid sketch to trace the course of these earlier negotiations. The passing of the Acts of Confiscation were a rude awakening for the Anglo-Irish. They were at once made to feel that for all their claims to English descent, they were looked on by those in power in England not as Englishmen, not even as “merely Englishmen with bad accents,” but purely and simply as Irish Papists, fomenters and favourers of rebellion and murder, whom it would be meritorious to exterminate.

They were accordingly forced, though, as they truthfully declared, most reluctantly, to ally themselves with the Old-Irish. This they did in a half-hearted way, being, most of them, rather inclined to temporise with the King through Ormond than to boldly adopt the policy of their allies, and by securing with their help the command of the country, be in a position to dictate 240terms. At a Synod of the Clergy of the Province of Armagh, in March, 1642, it was decided that an Assembly, representative of the whole of Ireland, should be convened. In May, a meeting of the clergy and principal laity took place at Kilkenny, and a Supreme Council of nine members was chosen as a Provisional Government to arrange the convention of the General Assembly. When the Lords Justices heard of the establishment of the Catholic Confederacy, they and the Irish House of Commons took steps to prohibit all intercourse with Catholics, and the House resolved that no one refusing the Oaths of Supremacy should be allowed to sit. The General Assembly of the Confederation held its first meeting on October 24, and the Rev. Father Meehan, in his History of the Confederation of Kilkenny, draws a glowing picture of the scene in St. Canice’s, where, for the first time probably since the battle of Clontarf, the representatives of the Irish nation assembled together for a common national object. Every county and every borough had chosen its representatives, and the body thus deputed was practically an Irish Parliament, though out of respect for the King, not having been summoned by his writs, it disclaimed that title. Its first business was to elect a new 241Supreme Council of twenty-five members. There were also Provincial and County Councils. The cumbrous procedure adopted, whereby every member of the Supreme Council had to be consulted in all important matters, did much to hamper its action, and was productive of delays in a time when rapid decision was most needful, and this contributed in some measure to its ultimate failure to effect the objects for which it was called into being.

Amongst the most important of the first declarations of the Assembly, was their resolution to maintain the rights and immunities of the Catholic Church agreeably to the Great Charter. They commanded all persons to bear faith and allegiance to the King, and to maintain his just prerogatives, while they denied and renounced the Irish Government administered in Dublin Castle by “a malignant party to his Highness’s great disservice and in compliance with their confederates, the malignant party of England.” The Church was to re-enter on its ancient rights, all ecclesiastical property was to be vested in the Bishops, but Abbey lands were not to be restored by the lay possessors, many of whom were sitting in the Assembly itself. This question of the Abbey lands at once became a bone of contention between the Religious 242Orders and some of the most powerful of the laity, and was a potent factor of the disunion which followed. The Assembly did not enter into the question of the ownership of land, beyond refusing to recognise the results of the insurrection. Land was to be considered the property of those who were in possession on October 1, 1641. On this point Gardiner says: “The land policy proclaimed was a policy of land owners, and was unlikely to conciliate those who had formed the strength of that agrarian revolution which had well nigh swept the English out of Ulster. It is, however, impossible to doubt that if the efforts of the Assembly had been crowned with success, it would have found itself powerless to reinstate the English and Scottish colonists in the lands which they had recently lost, and it is not very probable that Catholic Ireland would have granted to Protestants, a toleration which was denied to Episcopalians in Presbyterian Scotland, and had lately, when Charles’s authority was supreme, been denied to Presbyterians in Episcopalian England.” On this point of Gardiner’s, it may be remarked that where questions of religion alone were concerned, and apart from temporal considerations, Catholic Ireland has always shown an example of tolerance even in ages 243when tolerance was unknown in countries supposed to be more advanced in modern civilization.

While the land question threatened to divide the Old-Irish of Ulster from their co-religionists of the South, the Assembly deliberately—perhaps because it could not help itself—adopted a scheme of military commands which from the outset made for disunion. Owen Roe O’Neill was chosen General for Ulster; Preston for Leinster; Garret Barry for Munster, and Colonel John Burke for Connaught, the last with the title of Lieutenant-General, as it was hoped the Earl of Clanricarde would take the chief command in that province. No Commander-in-Chief was appointed, and nothing like concerted action between the various armies was ever seriously attempted. O’Neill had, moreover, little friendship for the Supreme Council, and was on bad terms with the Leinster General, Preston, who was father-in-law of Phelim O’Neill, Owen’s rival, who had but lately claimed the chieftainship of the O’Neills on the ground of lawful heirship, while Owen Roe, though possessing incomparably greater personal merit, was sprung from an illegitimate branch. Of the continued state of war which existed, it is impossible to give any detailed account here. It 244was a series of skirmishes and petty sieges, in which one side harassed the other without either gaining a decisive victory. The Royalists, under Ormond in Leinster, and the other English General, Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin in Munster, were in the greatest distress for want of provisions, pay, and munitions, and concerted action by the Irish forces under a skilled commander like Owen Roe, for instance, would soon have forced them to terms, but no such united effort was made. The Scottish army, which had landed in Ulster under Leven and Monroe, remained under the command of the latter, and possessed itself of the greater part of the province and extended its raids and forages as far as Sligo, but for the most part afterwards remained inactive, and was only distinguished by some massacres of the unarmed peasants. Of the general conduct of the war, Gardiner says: “There was no strategy on either side, it was an affair of skirmishes and sieges, of raids over the wide expanse of pasture-land, for the purpose of sweeping off the herds of cattle which were the main wealth of the people. Wherever an English force could penetrate, its track was marked by fire and the gallows. Exasperated at the Ulster murders, and seeing in every Irishman a murderer or a 245supporter of murderers, the English soldiery rarely gave quarter, and, unless the accounts of their enemies are entirely devoid of truth, when they did give it, it was often violated. The peasants retaliated by knocking stray soldiers on the head, and by slaughtering parties too weak to resist. Yet, whenever ... the Irish forces were commanded by officers of rank and authority, they were distinguished for humanity under circumstances of no slight provocation. The garrisons of fortified posts captured by the Irish, were uniformly allowed to find their way in safety to a place of refuge. On the whole, the balance of advantage was on the Irish side.”

The history from now until the arrival of Rinuccini is almost entirely that of a long series of tedious negotiations between Ormond, acting for the King, and the Supreme Council, for a cessation of arms. Ormond had recently been made a Marquis, and his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the English troops had been enlarged, so as to leave him independent of the nominal Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Leicester. Parsons still remained Lord Justice, and the King, did not venture to interfere with him. Leicester had got as far as Chester on his way to Ireland, but Charles, foreseeing that he would side with Parsons and make him still more 246powerful, summoned him to Oxford, this being practically the recall of his commission as Lord Lieutenant. The English interest in Ireland therefore remained in the hands of the Lords Justices, nominally acknowledging the King, but in reality, devoted to the Parliament and the policy of confiscation, and in those of the Marquis of Ormond, entirely devoted to the King, but with some sympathy for the Catholic nobility and gentry, especially those of the Pale, as he saw they had been driven through despair at the threatened confiscation, to join the Old-Irish in their uprising.

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

Charles, by this time at his wits’ end for forces to check the growing strength of the insurrection in England, had turned his thoughts to Ireland, and determined to enter into negotiations with the Confederates for a cessation so as to enable him to withdraw the English garrison from Ireland. He had proposed to 247make Ormond Lord Lieutenant, but left it to him to accept or decline the office. Ormond, however, advised him “to delay the sending him an authority to take that charge upon him,” and proceeded to the treaty with the Confederates as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. Amongst the reasons other than the King’s wish, which influenced Ormond in seeking a cessation, were the almost complete exhaustion of supplies of money and food for his troops. The £20,000 brought by Reynolds and Goodwin were spent, having for only a short time barely sufficed, as Carte pithily puts it, “to give soldiers twelve pence a week to keep them from drinking water.” Though Ormond had defeated Preston at Ross, he had no provisions to enable him to keep the field, and was at once obliged to return to Dublin with a starving army clamouring for food and pay. The Lords Justices besought the English Parliament to send money, but the Parliament wanted all the money they could lay hands on, including that subscribed by the Adventurers for the Irish War for their own war against the King, so that it may be truly said that the liberties of the English people were literally paid for by the spoliation of the Old-Irish and Anglo-Irish proprietors.

In January, 1643, Charles issued a commission 248to Ormond, Clanricarde, and others, to treat with the Catholic leaders, and this step was, of course, at once resented by the Lords Justices. The officers of the English garrison made some protest, but weary of waiting for supplies, which the English Parliament was unable to send, Ormond succeeded in getting them to place their hopes in the King’s power to satisfy their complaints. The King’s Commissioners and those of the Confederation met at Trim on St. Patrick’s Day, 1643, and the latter presented their Remonstrance of Grievances. In that document they described the disabilities they were under on account of their faith, the exclusion of their sons from University education and public employment, the tricks and chicaneries of the Puritan officials striving to make fortunes out of their unhappy position, Parsons being the worst of these; the boast of Parsons and others, that Catholics would be forced to change their faith, and the intention of the English Parliament to pass Acts for the extirpation of the Catholic religion in the Three Kingdoms. It denounced the misconduct of the Lords Justices, their dependence on the English Parliament, the Confiscation Acts passed at their instigation, which had forced the Anglo-Irish to take up arms in self-defence. It declared the Irish Parliament 249completely independent of that of England, and that the latter had no right to legislate for Ireland. That the Irish Parliament had sunk under the Lords Justices to be a mere section of their own partisans, where the majority of the members of the House dare not appear. The document concluded by praying for a Free Parliament, in which all matters affecting Ireland might be discussed irrespective of Poynings’ Act, and that no Catholic should be, on any account, excluded from sitting and voting. If these favours were granted to them, the Confederates were ready to send an army of 10,000 men to England to defend the King’s prerogative.

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

“Astounding as this statement was,” says Gardiner, “there was one point in the argument of the Lords Justices which had been passed over entirely by the Irish Commissioners. If the Irish, after all that had passed, were suffered to 250consolidate their power, would they allow the English to live on an equality with themselves?... Cynicism, however, has seldom gone further than the cool anticipation of slaughter which followed. They remember, say the writers, ‘that in the best of former times the Irish did so exceed in number, as that the Governors never cared or durst fully execute the laws for true reformation for fear of disturbance, having some hope always by civil and fair entreaty to win them to a civil and peaceable life; so if peace should now be granted them before the sword or famine have so abated them in number as that in a reasonable time, English colonies might overtop them.’ ‘No peace,’ the Lords Justices repeated, ‘could be safe or lasting till the sword have abated these rebels in number and power.’”

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

Charles was desirous of coming to terms with the Catholics without giving them any real power, so that he might strengthen his army in England. Though the manner in which even 251the rumour of an Irish Catholic army was received in England showed how dangerous it was for Charles even to think of it, still, by entering into negotiations he might gain time in Ireland, and be enabled to withdraw the English garrison—at any rate, temporarily. He first dismissed Parsons, and appointed Sir Henry Tichborne Lord Justice in his place, while Borlase, too old and inefficient to be of consequence, was allowed to remain. The King next authorized Ormond to treat for a cessation of arms for a year, and privately wrote to him to bring over the Irish garrison to Chester as soon as the cessation was agreed on.

The cessation was not, however, so speedily arranged as the King desired, and the Confederates were not so anxious to see Charles enter London in triumph as to forego the interests of religion and country. The earlier negotiations were broken off on Ormond’s refusal of the free Parliament asked for in the Remonstrance of Grievances. Nevertheless, delay was favourable to the Confederates, and their power was still extending over the country. In June, 1643, Ormond, conscious of his desperate military position, “and,” as Gardiner thinks, “perhaps willing to establish beyond dispute, the necessity of coming to terms with the insurgents, told the 252Lords 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.