179

of good knowledge and power among them, that a qualification of the penal statutes would do the work, he conceived it would be a dangerous improvidence to let them know more would be granted. However, he thought it much fitter that his majesty should know what would satisfy them, than that they should have it in their power, first to reject, and then to publish, what had been offered them, to the prejudice of his majesty's affairs elsewhere, and to their own advantage and credit abroad. Nor could there be any considerable loss of time by this conduct, since his majesty's directions might be sent over by the time that their assembly could agree on the propositions.

In the debates at this meeting the Irish agents were convinced that there was no occasion for the suspension of Poyning's act, all the concessions, intended them by his majesty, being as securely and speedily to be conveyed to them in another method, as by the suspension of that act. But in lieu of giving up that point, they made a new and very unreasonable demand with regard to the distribution of places of honour, command, profit, and trust in the kingdom. His majesty had agreed to promote them to these indifferently as his other subjects; and that the Roman catholics should be equally capacitated to receive them; it still remaining in his breast to determine what particular persons were most deserving, and had the best title to his favour in the disposal thereof. This was all they had asked, but now, by an extravagant interpretation of that concession, (contrary to their own explanation of it at first, when they desired it,) they insisted that his majesty should oblige himself to employ an equal number of papist natives and of protestants. This point so nearly touched the king's prerogative and the safety of the kingdom, that it was

z See Collection of Letters, No. CCCLXXXVIII.

thought proper to tell the agents in plain terms that it could not possibly be granted.

180 In other articles, by the advice of the council, (with whose concurrence the lord lieutenant proceeded in all this affair,) some further concessions were made to satisfy the agents. Ita was agreed they should have the security of the king's word that the penal statutes should not be executed; that an act of limitations, like that of 21 Jac. in England, should pass; that the lands in Connaught, Clare, Tipperary, and Limerick should be released of the great rents, the reducement whereof had been solicited since king James's time hitherto in vain; that some relief should be found for the old proprietors aggrieved by the plantations of Wicklow and Kilkenny; that the court of wards should be abolished upon the settling of a revenue of twelve thousand pounds a year in lieu thereof; that one or more inns of court should be erected; that the jurisdiction of the council-table should be restrained to matters of state, among which, as cases of plantation had been always reckoned, it was thought fit to limit it to the first rights of planters, and that all disputes arising afterwards should be tried, like other suits, in the courts of law; that the king should release them of the three years' rents and profits of his revenue, which they had received; that all their credits forfeited to his majesty should be restored to them; and that all indictments, attainders, and outlawries upon record against any of their party should be taken off the file and vacated.

181

It was hoped that these answers would produce a peace; one use at least the marquis of Ormond could make of them, being (as they were sufficient to satisfy the more moderate part of the Roman catholics) enabled thereby to divide their party, and baffle the measures and designs of the more violent. But from thence the king could derive little benefit, no assistance being in that case

a O. 280.

182

to be expected from the Irish, and his own servants, and the few protestants, whom no extremity could force from 542 their loyalty, being exposed to be rooted out by the Scots and their adherents. A peace was the only remedy for these inconveniences, and indeed was absolutely necessary (since no supplies could be had from England) to prevent the revolting, famishing, or other as certain destruction, of the army and all that appeared for his majesty in Ireland.

The conferences ended on May 6, and the agents departed in appearance well enough disposed for peace, and resolved to use their endeavours to engage the general assembly, to whose determination it was left to agree to it upon the terms proposed. But they had to do with a body of men divided into various factions, ba strong party whereof worked with all the industry imaginable to oppose or divert the peace of the kingdom. These were chiefly men of desperate fortunes, who had no prospect of getting any thing but in the confusions of their country; and gentlemen of the old Irish septs in Ulster, whose hopes and pretensions, founded on the setting aside of the plantations in that province, were by the terms of the peace destroyed for ever. As there were to be exceptions of some notorious crimes in the act of oblivion, a peace could not be agreeable to such, whose guilty consciences invited them to provide for their departure and settlement in some foreign kingdom, after they had ruined their own. The Irish clergy likewise were extremely averse to any peace which would not leave them in possession of the church's benefices and dignities, which the nobility and gentry, by a mistake in politics, had given them soon after the rebellion became general. These were most of them men of mean extract, the same folly which makes the natives disdain a

b See Collection of Letters, No. CCCLIII.

c Pluncket's Memoirs, book 3.

trade, putting them upon sending their children abroad, either to serve there as soldiers, or to return thence as missionaries, which last coming home fuller of the grandeur of the Roman catholic clergy abroad, than either of humility and piety, or of learning to beget a reverence to their own persons, amused their insignificant parents and relations with idle stories of that grandeur, and the respect themselves had met with in foreign parts, and had a vast influence on the commonalty. These had before the war subsisted merely upon the charity of the gentlemen who received them into their houses, and having since tasted the profits of church livings and preferments, did not care to relapse into their former precarious manner of subsistence; and being very ill judges of public affairs, and yet very meddling in all, filled every body's ears with their empty declamations about the splendour of religion, and made a powerful interest to obstruct and prevent all resolutions for peace.

183 The assembly met at Kilkenny on May 15, and the answers given to their several propositions were entertained with appearance of good satisfaction, (though somewhat of addition or explanation in some points was still farther proposed,) except in the article of religion, wherein very few would be satisfied without an absolute repeal of the penal laws, not for a time, but for ever. Lord Clanrickard thought in the beginning of that session, that if a repeal of those laws were then granted, a peace might suddenly be concluded, with the ready and sincere affections of the best of the nation, to hazard the uttermost of their lives and fortunes in his majesty's service. But the face of affairs soon altered, and the Irish clergy sitting at the same time in convocation, a question was on May 25 proposed to them by some lay members of the general assembly, who did not sign their names to d See Collection of Letters, No. CCCXCI.

e Nuncio's Memoirs, fol. 688 and 691, and P. 2 and 31.

184

There

it, about the extent of their oath of association. were four titular archbishops, and nine bishops, besides other dignitaries, in this convocation; among whom the 543 question was debated several days, but at length, on the last day of that month, a solemn decree was made upon the subject, and was subscribed by thirty-two of the members, the four archbishops and seven bishops being of that number. They determined, "that by the tenor and meaning of the said oath of association, the confederate catholics were bound in conscience, absolutely, expressly, and clearly, to set down in the treaty of peace a special article for keeping in their hands such churches, abbeys, monasteries, and chapels as were then in their possession;" though the insisting upon this article would certainly cause a rupture of the treaty, and if it were waved, a toleration of their religion might be obtained. This synodical decision gave great uneasiness to all that wished well to peace, who complained of it, as tending to stir up sedition, and to promote dissensions among the confederates, and as designed to deprive the laity of those many graces offered them for the security of their estates, and their enjoyment of places of trust and power, from which all of their party would receive benefit. But as they had admitted their titular bishops (though neither nominated by the crown, nor legally holding under it any baronies, in virtue of which spiritual persons sit in parliament) to have voices in their general assembly, it was so strongly supported there, that those who most dreaded the consequences thereof, could only prevail for a middle way to be taken in the case. Agreeable hereto, it was on June 9 ordered by the assembly, "that as to the marquis of Ormond's demand for the restoring of the churches to the protestant clergy, their agents should give an absolute denial to it, and the committee of instructions should draw an instruction to that effect.'

That committee who had drawn the former instruc