CHAPTER V.

PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS. A.D. 1643-1649.

THE news of an accommodation with the Irish insurgents was received in England with the greatest indignation. The people, who had been terribly excited by the reports of the massacres, and who looked upon the whole body of the Irish Roman Catholics as the instigators or accomplices of the murderers, loudly demanded revenge, and denounced the notion of peace until the insurrection had been stamped out in blood. Still stronger grew their anger when two thousand men from Ormonde's Leinster forces were landed in North Wales, and occupied Chester, and when a small force from the Irish rebel army passed over into Scotland to join Montrose. But the good fortune which had attended the king in the first twelve months of the war had now begun to desert him. Gloucester, reduced to its last barrel of powder, had been relieved by Essex; and the Irish contingent was cut to pieces at Nantwich by Fairfax. A still more powerful combination began to threaten, in the taking of the solemn league and covenant by the English peers and commons, in Saint Margaret's

Church, at Westminster. While the very fact of the king's overtures to the Irish so disgusted his English friends, that many of them threw up their commissions, left his service, and went over to the Parliament.

In Ireland, Monroe and his Scots refused to recognize the armistice, and solemnly took the covenant in the church at Carrickfergus. Inchiquin, disappointed at finding that the king had bestowed the presidency of Munster upon the Earl of Portland, openly declared for the Parliament, and expelled all the Roman Catholic population from Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale. Lord Esmond, in the fort of Duncannon, which commanded Waterford harbour, followed his example.

More and more the king began to look to his rebellious Irish subjects to crush his rebellious English subjects, and became more and more anxious to patch. up a peace with the former on any terms. Ormonde was accordingly advanced to the dignity of lord-lieutenant, and given full power to offer the confederates the most advantageous terms. The principal demands of the rebel executive were-a free Irish Parliament, untrammelled with Poynings' Act; the free exercise of their religion, unfettered by any penal statutes; and a general act of oblivion; and the reversal of all indictments and attainders. Some months were fruitlessly occupied with delegations from the rebels, and counter-delegations from the Protestant faction in Dublin, to the king at Oxford; and by that time Cromwell's Ironsides had destroyed Rupert's army at Marston Moor, and Cromwell, had he had his way, would have made Newbury

a no less crushing defeat. The king, who never meant to keep inconvenient promises, was perfectly ready to concede everything in return for the despatch of reinforcements, and simply instructed Ormonde to make the best bargain he could. Ormonde, however, saw that such concessions would be simply fatal to the royal cause, as it would not only drive every Protestant in Ireland, including the soldiers of his own army, into the arms of the Puritans, but would make it next to impossible for the king to come to any terms with the Parliament, with whom he was at that very time negotiating at Uxbridge. The marquis accordingly concealed the extent of his instructions, and would only promise that the penal laws should not be put in force, and that, without repealing Poynings' Act, the king would grant a variety of fresh graces. For months the negotiations dragged along; the Irish, who were fully aware of the king's necessities, and were expecting great things from their agents at the courts of France, Spain, and Rome, being in no hurry to conclude a treaty.

Charles, in the spring of 1645, impatient of Ormonde's wariness, despatched Edward Somerset, Earl of Glamorgan, to agree to the terms of the confederate council behind his back. The overthrow at Naseby, in June, crushed out the king's hopes in England, and the ransacking of his captured cabinet disclosed the fulness of Ormonde's instructions. The demands of the rebels now rose to include the public exercise of their religion, with the use of all the churches not then actually enjoyed by the Protestants, and a re-adjustment

by an Irish Parliament of all the plantation lands. Glamorgan agreed to everything unreservedly, only making it a condition that these concessions should be embodied in a secret treaty, which was not at present to be disclosed, and that a formal treaty, upon the basis of Ormonde's propositions, should be executed for immediate publication. The consideration for the king's concession was an army of ten thousand men, to serve the king in England, Wales, or Scotland, and a grant of two-thirds of the revenues of the clergy for three years. With this secret treaty in their pocket, the confederate commissioners came to terms with Ormonde, agreeing with him to waive the religious question for the present and refer it to the king's future arbitrament, without prejudice to any graces which the king might subsequently accord to them. The Irish appear to have had as little intention of despatching the soldiers as Charles had of ratifying the secret treaty when he was no longer necessitous.

During these months of protracted negotiation, the Scots in the north, and Inchiquin in the south, ignored the cessation, and from time to time indulged in hostilities with the Irish. As the English Parliament became aware of Charles's practices with the rebels, they began to pay more attention to the wants of their party in Ireland. Money and stores were sent over, and Sir Charles Coote, worthy son to him of Wicklow notoriety who had been shot in a skirmish in 1642, made a dash upon Sligo and captured the town. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, a warlike pre

late, raised the Connaught Irish in an attempt to recover it. The storming party was beaten off, and the Archbishop left dead on the field. On his person was found a copy of Glamorgan's secret treaty, which was at once sent to London and published, and thence transmitted to Dublin. The revelation of the king's duplicity was perceived by Ormonde to be fatal; and, as a desperate effort to save Charles's credit, he recalled Glamorgan from Kilkenny, and flung him into prison on a charge of treason in exceeding his instructions. Charles, prompted by Lord Digby, his confidential minister in Dublin, boldly denied his authority to Glamorgan, and declared his "amazement that any man's folly and presumption should carry him to such a degree of abusing our trust." Glamorgan himself joined in the farce by stating that what he had done was not binding on his majesty, but that he had acted out of excess of zeal in the king's service. Upon the angry demands of the confederates that he should be set at liberty, he was released on bail, and returned to Kilkenny and resumed the negotiations as if nothing had happened.

There had now appeared upon the scene a man who was to sow discord amongst the confederates. Rinucini, Archbishop of Fermo, had been despatched to Ireland by Pope Innocent X. as his nuncio, and had landed in October, 1645. He cared nothing for Charles, and had but one thing at heart, the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland, in all its original grandeur. On his arrival at Kilkenny, the seat of the rebel government, he at once threw all his energies into