 CHAPTER VII THE CESSATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES While the Confederate delegates, reverently uncovered, and ormanned in Haddon Plume as representing royalty, were signing the cessation at Castle Martin, the memorable Monroe, with all his men, were taking the covenant, on their knees, in the Church of Furgus, at the hands of the informal Connolly, now a colonel in the parliamentary army, and tie in the confidence of its chiefs. Soon after this ceremony, Monroe, appointed by the English Parliament, Commander-in-Chief of all their forces in Ulster, united under his immediate leadership of Scots, English, and undertakers, not less than ten thousand men. With this force he marched southward as far as Newry, which he found an easy prey, and where he put to the sword, after surrender, sixty men, eighteen women, and two ecclesiastics. In vain the Confederates entreated Orman to lead them against the common enemy in the north, pursuing always a line of policy of his own, in which their interest had a very slender part, that astute politician neither took the field, nor consented that they should do so of themselves. But the Supreme Council, roused by the remonstrances of the clergy, ordered Lord Castlehaven, with the title of Commander-in-Chief, to march against Monroe. This was virtually superseding O'Neill in his own province, and that it was so felt, even by its authors, is plain from their giving him simultaneously the command in Canot. O'Neill, never greater than in acts of self-denial and self-sacrifice, stifled his profound chagrin and cheerfully offered to serve under the English Earl, placed over his head. But the northern movements were, for many months, languid and uneventful. Both parties seemed uncertain of their true policy. Both, from day to day, awaited breathlessly for tidings from Kilkenny, Dublin, London, Oxford or Edinburgh, to learn what new forms the general contest was to take, in order to guide their own conduct by the shifting phases of that intricate diplomacy. Among the first consequences of the cessation were the debarcation at Moistin in Scotland, of three thousand well-provided Irish troops, under Colchito, the left-handed, Alexander MacDonald, brother of Lord Antrim. Following the banner of Montrose, these regiments performed great things at St. Johnston, at Aberdeen, in Inverlochie, all which have been eloquently recorded by the historians of that period. Their reputation, says a cautious writer, more than their number, unnerved the prowess of their enemies. No force ventured to oppose them in the field, and as they advanced every fort was abandoned or surrendered. A less agreeable result of the cessation, for the court at Oxford, was the retirement from the Royal Army of the Earl of Newcastle, and most of his officers, on learning that such favourable conditions had been made with Irish papists. To others of his supporters, as the Earl of Shrewsbury, Charles was forced to assume a tone of apology for that truce, pleading the hard necessities which compelled him. The truth seems to be that there were not a few then at Oxford, who like Lord Spencer, would gladly have been on the other side, or at all events in a position of neutrality, provided they could have found a salve for their honour, as gentlemen and cavaliers. The year 1644 opened for the Irish with two events of great significance, the appointment of Ormond as Viceroy in January, and the execution at Tibernd by Order of the English Parliament of Lord Maguire, a prisoner in the Towers since October 1641. Maguire died with courage and composure worthy of his illustrious name, and his profoundly religious character. His long absence had not effaced his memory from the hearts of his devoted clansmen of Firmana, and many a prayer was breathed, and many a vow of vengeance muttered among them, for what they must naturally have regarded as the cold-blooded judicial murder of their chief. Two Irish deputations, one Catholic, the other Protestant, proceeded this year to the King at Oxford, with the approval of Ormond, who took care to be represented by confidential agents of his own. The Catholics found a zealous auxiliary in the Queen, Henrietta Maria, who as a co-religionist felt with them, and as a French woman, was free from insular prejudices against them. The Irish Protestants found a scarcely less influential advocate in the venerable Archbishop Usher, whose presence and countenance, as the most puritanical of his prelates, was most essential to the policy of Charles. The King heard both parties graciously, censured some of the demands of both as extravagant, and beyond his power to concede, admitted others to be reasonable and worthy of consideration, refused to confirm the churches they had seized to the Catholics, but was willing to allow them their seminaries of education, would not consent to enforce the penal laws on the demands of the Protestants, but declared that neither should the undertakers be disturbed in their possessions or offices. In short, he pathetically exhorted both parties to consider his case as well as their own, promised them to call together the Irish Parliament at the earliest possible period, and so got rid of both deputations, leaving Ormond master of the position for some time longer. The agents and friends of the Irish Catholics on the Continent were greatly embarrassed and not a little disheartened by the sensation. At Paris, at Brussels, at Madrid, but above all at Rome, it was regretted, blamed, or denounced, according to the temper or the inside of the discontented. His Catholic Majesty had some time before remitted a contribution of twenty thousand dollars to the Confederate Treasury. One of Richelieu's last acts was to invite Khan, son of Hugh O'Neill to the French court, and to permit the shipment of some pieces of ordinance to Ireland. From Rome the celebrated Franciscan Father Luke Wadding had remitted twenty six thousand dollars, and the Nuncio Scorampi had brought further donations. The facility, therefore, with which the cessation had been agreed upon, against the views of the agents of the Catholic powers at Kilkenny, without any apparently sufficient cause, had certainly a tendency to check and chill the enthusiasm of those Catholic princes who had been taught to look on the insurrection of the Irish as a species of crusade. Reminstances, warm, eloquent, and passionate, were poured in upon the most influential members of the Supreme Council, from those who had either by delegation or from their own free will befriended them abroad. These reminstances reached that powerful body at Waterford, at Limerick, or at Galway, whether they had gone on an official visitation to hear complaints, settle controversies, and provide for the better collection of the assessments imposed on each province. An incident which occurred in Ulster soon startled the Supreme Council from their Pacific occupations. General Monroe, having proclaimed that all Protestants within his command should take the solemn league in Covenant, three thousand of that religion, still loyalists, met at Belfast to deliberate on their answer. Monroe, however, apprised of their intentions, marched rapidly from Carrick-Fergus, entering the town under cover of night, and drove out the loyal Protestants at the point of the sword. The fugitives threw themselves into Lisburn, and Monroe appointed Colonel Hume as Governor of Belfast, for the Parliaments of Scotland and England. Castlehaven, with O'Neill still second in command, was now dispatched northward against the army of the Covenant. Monroe, who had advanced to the borders of Mieeth as if to meet them, contented himself with gathering in great herds of cattle. As they advanced, he slowly fell back before them through Louth and Armagh, to his original headquarters. Castlehaven then returned with the main body of the Confederate troops to Kilkenny, and O'Neill, depressed but not dismayed, carried his contingent to their former position at Belturbet. In Munster a new parliamentary party had time to form its combinations under the shelter of the cessation. The Earl of Itchican, who had lately failed to obtain the presidency of Munster from the King at Oxford, and the Lord Broghill, son of the great Southern undertaker, the first Earl of Cork, were at the head of this movement. Under pretense that the quarters allotted them by the cessation had been violated, they contrived to seize upon Cork, Yughal, and Kinsel. At Cork they publicly executed Father Matthews, a friar, and proceeding from violence to violence, they drove from the three places all the Catholic inhabitants. They then forwarded a petition to the King, beseeching him to declare the Catholics rebels, and declaring their own determination to die a thousand deaths sooner than condescend to any peace with them. At the same time they entered into or avowed their correspondence with the English Parliament, which naturally enough encouraged and assisted them. The Supreme Council met these demonstrations with more stringent instructions to General Purcell, now their chief in command, Barry having retired on account of advanced age, to observe the cessation and to punish severely every infraction of it. At the same time they permitted or directed Purcell to enter into a truce with Inchican till the following April, and then they rested on their arms in religious fidelity to the engagements they had signed at Castle Martin. The twelve-months truce was fast drawing to a close when the battle of Marston-Morris stimulated Orman to effect a renewal of the treaty. Accordingly, at his request, Lord Muscarey and five other commissioners left Kilkenny on the last day of August for Dublin. Between them and the viceroy the cessation was prolonged till the first of December following, and when that day came it was further protracted as would appear for three months, by which time, March 1645, Orman informed them that he had powers from the King to treat for a permanent settlement. During the six months that the original cessation was thus protracted by the policy of Orman the Supreme Council sent a broad new agents to know what they had to trust to and what suckers they might really depend on from abroad. Father Hugh Bork was sent to Spain and Sir Richard Belling to Rome, where innocent the tenth had recently succeeded to that generous friend of the Catholic Irish, Urban VIII. The voyage of these agents was not free from hazard, for whereas before the cessation the privateers commissioned by the Council sheltered and supplied in the Irish harbors had kept the southern coast clear of hostile shipping. Now that they had been withdrawn under the truce, the parliamentary cruisers had the channel all to themselves. Waterford and Wexford, the two chief Catholic ports in that quarter, instead of seeing their waters crowded with prizes, now began to tremble for their own safety. The strong fort of Duncannon, on the Wexford side of Waterford harbour, was corruptly surrendered by Lord Esmond to Inchekin and the Puritans. After a ten-week siege, however, and the expenditure of nineteen thousand pounds of powder, the Confederates retook the fort, in spite of all the efforts made for its relief. Esmond, old and blind, escaped by a timely death the penalty due to his treason. Following up this success, Castle Haven rapidly invested other southern strongholds in possession of the same party, Capucin, Lismore, Malo, Mitchelston, Donorail, and Liskaryl surrendered on articles. Rostelin, commanded by Inchekin's brother, was stormed and taken. Boghill was closely besieged in Yughal, but being relieved from sea, successfully defended himself. In another quarter, the parliament was equally active. To compensate for the loss of Galway, they had instructed the younger Cout, on whom they had conferred the presidency of Canot, to withdraw the regimen of Sir Frederick Hamilton and four hundred other troops from the command of Monroe, and with these, Sir Robert Stewart's forces and such others as he could himself raise to invest Sligo. Against the force thus collected, Sligo could not hope to contend, and soon, from that town, as from a rallying and resting place, two thousand horsemen were daily launched upon the adjoining country. Sir Clanrecard, the royal president of the province, as unpopular as trimmers usually are in times of crisis, was unable to make head against this new danger. But the Confederates, under Sir James Dillon, and Dr. O'Kelly, the heroic Archbishop of Tom, moved by the pitiful appeals of the Sligo people boldly endeavored to recover the town. They succeeded in entering the walls, but were subsequently repulsed and routed. The Archbishop was captured in torture to death. Some of the noblest families of the province and of Mi'eth also had to mourn their chiefs, and several valuable papers, found or pretended to be found in the Archbishop's carriage, were eagerly given to the press of London by the Parliament of England. This tragedy at Sligo occurred on Sunday, October 26th, 1645. CHAPTER VIII. Glamorgan's Treaty, the new Nuncio Renuccini, O'Neill's Position, The Battle of Ben Burb. Ormond had amused the Confederates with negotiations for a permanent peace and settlement, from spring till mid-summer, when Charles, dissatisfied with these endless delays, dispatched to Ireland a more hopeful ambassador. This was Herbert, Earl of Glamorgan, one of the few Catholics remaining among the English nobility, son and heir to the Marquis of Worcester, and son-in-law to Henry O'Brien, Earl of Thoman. Of a family devoutly attached to the royal cause, to which it is said they had contributed not less than two hundred thousand pounds, Glamorgan's religion, his rank, his Irish connections, the intimate confidence of the king which he was known to possess, all marked out his embassy as one of the utmost importance. The story of this mission has been perplexed and darkened by many controversies, but the general verdict of historians seems now to be that Charles I, whose many good qualities as a man and ruler are cheerfully admitted on all hands, was yet utterly deficient in downright good faith, that duplicity was his besetting sin, and that Glamorgan's embassy is one, but only one, of the strongest evidences of that ingrained duplicity. It may help to the clearer understanding of the negotiations conducted by Glamorgan in Ireland if we give in the first place the exact dates of the first transactions. The Earl arrived at Dublin about the first of August, and after an interview with Ormond proceeded to Kilkenny. On the twenty-eighth of that month preliminary articles were agreed to and signed by the Earl on behalf of the king, and by lords Montgarret and Muscarey on behalf of the Confederates. It was necessary, it seems, to get the concurrence of the viceroy to these terms, and accordingly the negotiators on both sides repaired to Dublin. Here Ormond contrived to detain them ten long weeks in discussions on the articles relating to religion. It was the twelfth of November when they returned to Kilkenny with a much modified treaty. On the next day the thirteenth, the new papal nuncio, apprelate who by his rank, his eloquence, and his imprudence, was destined to exercise a powerful influence on the Catholic councils, made his public entry into that city. This personage was John Baptiste Runicini, the Archbishop of Firmow, in the marches of Ancona, which, see, he had preferred to the more exalted dignity of Florence. By birth at Tuscan the new nuncio had distinguished himself from boyhood by his passionate attachment to his studies. At Bologna, at Perugia, and at Rome, his intense application brought him early honors and early physical ability. His health, partially restored in the seclusion of his native valley of the Arno, enabled him to return again to Rome. Enjoying the confidence of Gregory the Fifteenth and Urban the Eighth, he was named successively, Clerk of the Chamber, Secretary of the Congregation of Rights, and Archbishop of Firmow. This was the prelate chosen by the new pope, innocent the Tenth, for the nuncio-ture in Ireland, a man of noble birth in the fifty-third year of his age, of uncertain bodily health, of great learning, especially as a canonist, of a fiery Italian temperament, regular and even austere in his life, and far from any taint of avarice or corruption. Such was the admission of his enemies. Leaving Italy in May, accompanied by the Dean of Firmow, who has left us a valuable record of the Embassy, his other household officers, several Italian noblemen, and Sir Richard Belling, the special agent at Rome, the nuncio, by way of Genoa and Marseille, reached Paris. In France he was detained nearly five months in a fruitless attempt to come to some definite arrangement as to the conduct of the Catholic War, through Queen Henrietta Maria, then resident with the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II at the French court. The Queen, like most persons of her rank, overwhelmed with adversity, was often unreasonably suspicious and exacting. Her sharp woman's tongue did not spare those on whom her anger fell, and there were not wanting those who, apprehensive of the effect in England of her negotiating directly with the Papal Minister, did their utmost to delay or to break off their correspondence. A nice point of court etiquette further embarrassed the business. The nuncio could not uncover his head before the Queen, and Henrietta would not receive him otherwise than uncovered. After three months lost in Paris he was obliged to proceed on his journey, contenting himself with an exchange of complementary messages with the Queen, whom even the crushing blow of Naysby could not induce to wave a point of etiquette with a priest. On reaching Rochelle, where he intended to take shipping, a further delay of six weeks took place, as was supposed by the machinations of Cardinal Mazurin. Finally, the nuncio succeeded in purchasing a frigate of twenty-six guns, the San Pietro, on which he embarked with all his Italian suite, Sir Richard Belling, and several Franco-Irish officers. He had on board a considerable sum in Spanish gold, including another contribution of thirty-six thousand dollars from Father Wadding, two thousand muskets, two thousand cartouche belts, four thousand swords, two thousand pike heads, four hundred brace of pistols, twenty thousand pounds of powder, with match, shot, and other stores. Weighing from St. Martin's in the Isle of Ray, the San Pietro doubled the land's end and stood over towards the Irish coast. The third day out they were chased for several hours by two parliamentary cruisers, but escaped under cover of the night. On the fourth morning, being the twenty-first of October, they found themselves safely imbued in the waters of Kenmar on the coast of Cary. The first intelligence which reached the nuncio on landing was the negotiation of Glamorgan, of which he had already heard, while waiting a ship at Rochelle. The next was the surrender by the Earl of Thoman of his noble old castle of Bunradi, commanding the Shannon within six miles of limerick to the Puritans. This surrender had, however, determined the resolution of the city of limerick, which hitherto had taken no part in the war to open its gates to the Confederates. The loss of Bunradi was more than compensated by the gaining of one of the finest and strongest towns in Munster, and to limerick accordingly the nuncio paid the compliment of his first visit. Here he received the mitre of the diocese in dutiful submission from the hands of the bishop, on entering the cathedral, and here he celebrated a solemn requiem mass for the repose of the soul of the Archbishop of Tom, lately slain before Sligo. From limerick, born along on his litter, such was the feebleness of his health, he advanced by slow stages to Kilkenny, escorted by a guard of honor, dispatched on that duty by the Supreme Council. The pomp and splendor of his public entry into the Catholic capital was a striking spectacle. The previous night he slept at a village three miles from the city, for which he set out early in the morning of the thirteenth of November, escorted by his guards and a vast multitude of the people. Five delegates from the Supreme Council accompanied him. A band of fifty students mounted on horseback met him on the way, and their leader, crowned with laurel, recited some congratulatory Latin verses. At the city gate he left the litter and mounted a horse richly housed. Here the procession of the clergy and the city guilds awaited him. At the market-cross a Latin oration was delivered in his honor, to which he graciously replied in the same language. From the cross he was escorted to the cathedral, at the door of which he was received by the aged bishop, Dr. David Roth. At the high altar he entoned the tedium, and gave the multitude the apostolic benediction. Then he was conducted to his lodgings, where he was soon waited upon by Lord Muscarey and General Preston, who brought him to Kilkenny Castle, where, in the great gallery, which elicited even a Florentine's admiration, he was received in stately formality by the President of the Council, Lord Mount Garrett. Another Latin oration on the nature of his embassy was delivered by the nuncio, responded to by Heber, Bishop of Clogger, and so the ceremony of reception ended. The nuncio brought from Paris a new subject to difficulty, in the form of a memorial from the English Catholics at Rome, praying that they might be included in the terms of any peace which might be made by their Irish co-religionists with the king. Nothing could be more natural than that the members of the same persecuted church should make common cause, but nothing could be more impolitic than some of the demands made in the English Memorial. They wished it to be stipulated with Charles that he would allow a distinct military organization to the English and Irish Catholics in his service, under Catholic general officers, subject only to the king's commands, meaning thereby, if they meant what they said, independence of all parliamentary and ministerial control. Yet several of the stipulations of this memorial were, after many modifications and discussions, adopted by Glamorgan into his original articles, and under the treaty thus ratified, the Confederates bound themselves to dispatch ten thousand men, fully armed and equipped, to the relief of Chester and the general sucker of the king in England. Since the close of December the English Earl, with two commissioners from the Supreme Council, set forth for Dublin to obtain the viceroy's sanction to the amended treaty. But in Dublin a singular counter-plot in this perplexed drama awaited them. On St. Stephen's Day, while at dinner, Glamorgan was arrested by Ormond on a charge of having exceeded his instructions and confined a close prisoner in the castle. The gates of the city were closed and every means taken to give a claw to this extraordinary proceeding. The Confederate commissioners were carried to the castle and told they might congratulate themselves on not sharing the cell prepared for Glamorgan. Go back, they were told, to Kilkenny, and tell the President of the Council that the Protestants of England would fling the king's person out at his window if they believed it possible that he lent himself to such an undertaking. The commissioners accordingly went back and delivered their errand with a full account of all the circumstances. Fortunately the General Assembly had been called for an early day in January 1646 at Kilkenny. When therefore they met, their first resolution was to dispatch Sir Robert Talbot to the viceroy, with a letter suspending all negotiations till the Earl of Glamorgan was set at liberty. By the end of January, on the joint bail for forty thousand pounds of the Earls of Clannercard and Kildare, the English envoy was enlarged, and to the still further amazement of the simple-minded Catholics on his arrival at Kilkenny he justified rather than censured the action of Ormond. To most observers it appeared that these noblemen understood each other only too well. From January till June Kilkenny was delivered over to cabals, intrigues and recriminations. There was an old Irish party to which the Nuncio inclined, and an Anglo-Irish party headed by Mount Garrett and the majority of the Council. The former stigmatized the latter as Ormondists, and the latter retorted on them with the name of the Nuncio's party. In February came news of a foreign treaty made at Rome between Sir Kenelm Digby and the Pope's ministers, most favorable to the English and Irish Catholics. On the twenty-eighth of March a final modification of Glamorgan's articles, reduced to thirty in number, was signed by Ormond for the King, and Lord Muscarey and the other commissioners for the Confederates. These thirty articles conceded in fact all the most essential claims of the Irish. They secured them equal rights as to property, in the army, in the universities, and at the bar. They gave them seats in both houses and on the bench. They authorized a special commission of Oyer and Terminer, composed wholly of Confederates. They declared that the independency of the Parliament of Ireland on that of England should be decided by declaration of both houses agreeably to the laws of the Kingdom of Ireland. In short, this form of Glamorgan's treaty gave the Irish Catholics in sixteen forty-six all that was subsequently obtained either for the Church or the Country in seventeen eighty-two, seventeen ninety-three, or eighteen twenty-nine. Though some conditions were omitted, to which Runicini and a majority of the prelates attached importance, Glamorgan's treaty was, upon the whole, a charter upon which a free church and a free people might well have stood, as the fundamental law of their religious and civil liberties. The treaty, thus concluded at the end of March, was to lie as in a scroll in the hands of the Marquis of Clenricard till the first of May, awaiting Sir Kenelme Digby with the Roman Protocol. And then, notwithstanding the dissuasions of Runicini to the contrary, it was to be kept secret from the world, though some of its obligations were expected to be at once fulfilled on their side by the Catholics. The Supreme Council, ever eager to exhibit their loyalty, gathered together six thousand troops for the relief of Chester and the service of the King in England, so soon as both treaties, the Irish and the Romans, should be signed by Charles. While so waiting, they besieged and took Bunradi Castle, already referred to, but Sir Kenelme Digby did not arrive with May, and they now learned, to their renewed amazement, that Glamorgan's whole negotiation was disclaimed by the King in England. In the same interval Chester fell, and the King was obliged to throw himself into the hands of the Scottish Parliament, who surrendered him for a price to their English co-adjuders. These tidings reached Ireland during May, and, varied with the capture of an occasional fortress, lost or won, occupied all men's minds. But the first days of June were destined to bring with them a victory of national, of European importance, won by Owen O'Neill in the immediate vicinity of his grand-uncle's famous battlefield of the Yellow Ford. During these three years of intrigue and negotiation, the position of General O'Neill was hazardous and difficult in the extreme. One campaign he had served under a stranger, as second on his own soil. In the other two he was fettered by the terms of cessation to his own quarters, and to add to his embarrassments his impetuous kinsmen Sir Phelan, brave, rash, and ambitious, recently married to a daughter of his ungenerous rival, General Preston, was incited to thwart and obstruct him amongst their mutual clansmen and connections. The only recompense which seems to have been awarded to him was the confidence of the Nuncio, who either from that knowledge of character in which the Italians excel, or from bias received from some other source, at once singled him out as the man of his people. What portion of the Nuncio's supplies reached the northern general we know not, but in the beginning of June he felt himself in a position to bring on an engagement with Monroe, who lately reinforced by both parliaments had marched out of Carrick-Fergus into Tyrone, with a view of penetrating as far south as Kilkenny. On the fourth day of June the two armies encountered at Ben-Berb, on the Little River Blackwater, about six miles north of Armagh, and the most signal victory of the war came to recompense the long enduring patience of O'Neill. The battle of Ben-Berb has been often well described. In a naturally strong position, with this leader the choice of ground seems to have been a first consideration, the Irish, for four hours, received and repulsed the various charges of the Puritan horse. Then as the sun began to descend, pouring its rays upon the opposing force, O'Neill led his whole force, five thousand men against eight, to the attack. One terrible onset swept away every trace of resistance. There were counted on the field three thousand two hundred and forty-three of the Covenanters, and of the Catholics, but seventy killed and one hundred wounded. Twenty-one scottish officers, thirty-two standards, fifteen hundred draft horses, and all the guns and tents were captured. Monroe fled in panic to Lisburn, and thence to Carrick-Fergus, where he shut himself up till he could obtain reinforcements. O'Neill forwarded the captured colours to the Nuncio at Limerick, by whom they were solemnly placed on the choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, and afterwards at the request of Pope Innocent sent to Rome. William was chanted in the Confederate capital. Penitential Psalms were sung in the Northern Fortress. The Lord of Hosts, wrote Monroe, had rubbed shame on our faces till once we are humbled. O'Neill emblazoned the cross and keys on his banner with the red hand of Ulster, and openly resumed the title originally chosen by his adherents at Clones, the Catholic Army. CHAPTER IX. From the Battle of Ben Burb till the Landing of Cromwell at Dublin. The Nuncio, elated by the great victory of O'Neill, to which he felt he had personally contributed by his seasonable supplies, provoked and irritated by Orman's intrigues and the King's insincerity, rushed with all the ardour of his character into making the war an uncompromising Catholic crusade. In this line of conduct he was supported by the Archbishops of Dublin and Casual, by ten of the bishops, including the eminent prelates of the Limerick, Kilala, Ferns and Clogger, the procurator of Armog, nine vicars-general, and the superiors of the Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians. The Peace Party, on the other hand, were not without clerical adherents, but they were inconsiderable as to influence and numbers. They were now become as anxious to publish the thirty-nine articles agreed upon at the end of March, as they then were to keep them secret. Accordingly, with Orman's consent, copies of the treaty were sent early in August to the sheriffs of counties, mayors of cities, and other leading persons, with instructions to proclaim it publicly in due form, upon hearing which, the Nuncio and his supporters of the clergy, secular and regular, assembled in council at Waterford on the twelfth of August, solemnly declared that they gave no consent and would not, to any peace, that did not grant further, sure, and safer considerations for their religion, king, and country, according to the original oath of the Confederacy. The rupture between the clergy and the laymen of the council was now complete. The prelates who signed the decree of Waterford, of course, thereby withdrew from the body whose action they condemned. In vain the learned Darcy and the eloquent Plunkett went to and fro between the two bodies. Concord and confidence were at an end. The Synod decided to address Lord Mount Garrett in future as president of the late Supreme Council. The heralds, who attempted to publish the thirty-nine articles in Clonmel and Waterford, were hooded or stoned, while in Limerick the mayor, endeavoring to protect them, shared this rough usage. Ormond, who was at Kilkenny at the critical moment of the breach, did his utmost to sustain the resolution of those who were stigmatized by his name, while the Nuncio, suspicious of Preston, wrote urgently to O'Neill to lead his army into Lenster and remove the remnant of the late council from Kilkenny. All that those who held a middle course between the extremes could do was to advocate an early meeting of the General Assembly, but various exigencies delayed this much-desired meeting till the tenth day of January 1647. The five intervening months were months of triumph for Runucini. Lord Digby appeared at Dublin as a special agent from the King to declare his consent to Glamorin's original terms. But Ormond still insisted that he had no authority to go beyond the thirty articles. Charles himself wrote privately to Runucini, promising to confirm everything which Glamorin had proposed as soon as he should come into the Nuncio's hands. Ormond, after a fruitless attempt to convert O'Neill to his views, had marched southward with a guard of fifteen hundred foot and five hundred horse to endeavor to conciliate the towns and to win over the Earl of Itchican. In both these objects he failed. He found O'Neill before him in his county palentiate of Tipperary, and the mayor of Cachele informed him that he dared not allow him into that city for fear of displeasing the northern general. Finding himself thus unexpectedly within a few miles of the Catholic army, ten thousand strong, the viceroy retreated precipitately through Kilkenny, Carlo, and Kildare to Dublin. Lord Digby, who had accompanied him after an unsuccessful attempt to cajole the Synod of Waterford, made the best of his way back to France. The Marquis of Clen Ricard, who had also been of the expedition, shared the flight of Ormond. Towards the middle of September, O'Neill's army, after capturing Rosecray Castle, marched to Kilkenny and encamped near that city. His forces had now augmented to twelve thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse. On the eighteenth of the month he escorted the Nuncio and Triumph into Kilkenny, where the Ormondist members of the old council were committed to close custody in the castle. A new council of four bishops and eight laymen was established on the twenty-sixth, with the Nuncio as president. Glamorgan succeeded Castlehaven, who had gone over to Ormond as commander in Munster, while O'Neill and Preston were ordered to unite their forces for the Siege of Dublin. The Sanguine Italian dreamt of nothing less for the moment than the creation of viceroys, the deliverance of the king, and the complete restoration of the ancient religion. O'Neill and Preston, by different routes, on which they were delayed in taking several garrisoned posts, hid at Lucan in the valley of the Liffey, seven miles west of Dublin on the ninth of November. Their joint forces are represented at sixteen thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse, of which Preston had about one-third, and O'Neill the remainder. Preston's headquarters were fixed at Lexlip, and O'Neill's at Newcastle, points equidistant, and each within two hours March of the capital. Within the walls of that city there reigned the utmost consternation. Many of the inhabitants fled beyond seas, terrified by the fancied cruelty of the Ulstermen. But Ormond retained all his presence of mind and readiness of resources. He entered, at first covertly, into arrangements with the parliamentarians, who sent him a supply of powder. He wrote urgently to Monroe to make a diversion in his favour. He demolished the mills and suburbs which might cover the approaches of the enemy. He employed soldiers, civilians, and even women upon the fortifications. Lady Ormond setting an example to her sex in rendering her feeble assistance. Clan Ricard, in Preston's tent, was doing the work of stimulating the old antipathy of that general towards O'Neill, which led to conflicting advices in council and some irritating personal altercations. To add to the Confederate embarrassment the winter was the most severe known for many years, from twenty to thirty sentinels being frozen at night at their posts. On the thirteenth of November, while the plan of the Confederate attack was still undecided, commissioners of the parliament arrived with ample stores in Dublin Bay. On the next day they landed at Ring's End and entered into negotiations with Ormond. On the sixteenth the siege was raised and on the twenty-third Ormond broke off the treaty, having unconsciously saved Dublin from the Confederates by the incorrect reports of supplies being received, which were finally carried northward to Monroe. The month of January brought the meeting of the General Assembly. The attendance in the great gallery of Ormond Castle was as large and the circumstances upon the whole as auspicious as could be desired in the seventh year of such a struggle. The members of the old council, liberated from arrest, were in their places. O'Neill and Preston, publicly reconciled, had signed a solemn engagement to assist and sustain each other. The Nuncio, the primate of Ireland, and eleven bishops took their seats. The peers of oldest title in the kingdom were present, two hundred and twenty-four members represented the commons of Ireland, and among the spectators sat the ambassadors of France and Spain and of King Charles. The main subject of discussion was the sufficiency of the thirty articles and the propriety of the ecclesiastical censure promulgated against those who had signed them. The debate embraced all that may be said on the question of clerical interference in political affairs, on conditional and unconditional allegiance, on the power of the pontiff speaking ex-cathedra, and the prerogatives of the temporal sovereign. It was protracted through an entire month and ended with a compromise which declared that the commissioners had acted in good faith in signing the articles, while it justified the Synod of Waterford for having, as judges of the nature and intent of the oath of confederation, declared them insufficient and unacceptable. A new oath of confederacy solemnly binding the associates not to lay down their arms till they had established the free and public exercise of religion, as it had existed in the reign of Henry VII, was framed and taken by the entire General Assembly. The thirty articles were declared insufficient and unacceptable by all but a minority of twelve votes. A new Supreme Council of twenty-four was chosen, in whom there were not known to be above four or five partisans of Orman's policy. The church plate throughout the kingdom was ordered to be coined into money, and a formal proposal to cooperate with the viceroy on the basis of the new oath was made, but instantly rejected, among other grounds on this, that the Marquis had at that moment his son and other sureties with the Puritans who, in the last resort, he infinitely preferred to the Roman Catholics. The military events of the year 1647 were much more decisive than its politics. Glamorgan still commanded in Munster, Preston in Lenster, and O'Neill in both Ulster and Canot. The first was confronted by Inchican at the head of a core of five thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, equipped and supplied by the English Puritans. The second saw the garrisons of Dundalk, Drug Heta, and Dublin, reinforced by fresh regiments of covenanters, and fed by parliamentary supplies from the sea. The latter was in the heart of Canot, organizing and recruiting and attempting all things within his reach, but hampered for money, clothing, and ammunition. In Canot, O'Neill was soon joined by the Nuncio, who, as difficulties thickened, began to lean more and more on the strong arm of the vicar of Ben Burb. In Munster, the army refused to follow the lead of Glamorgan and clamored for their old chief, Lord Muscarey. Finally, that division of the national troops was committed by the council to Lord Teuf, a politician of the school of Ormond and Clan Ricard, holy destitute of military experience. The vigorous Inchican had little difficulty in dealing with such an antagonist. Casual was taken without a blow in its defence, and a slaughter unparalleled to the days of Drug Heta and Wexford deluged its streets and churches. At Noctnos, later in the autumn, November 12th, Teuf was utterly routed. The Galant Colchito, serving under him, lamentably sacrificed after surrounding his sword, and Inchican enabled to dictate a cessation covering Munster, far less favourable to Catholics than the truce of Castle Martin, to the Supreme Council. This truce was sighed at Dungarvin on the 20th of May 1648, and on the 28th the Nuncio published his solemn decree of excommunication against all its aiders and abetters, and himself made the best of his way from Kilkenny to Maryborough, where O'Neill then lay. The military and political situation of O'Neill during the latter months of 1647 and the whole of 1648 was one of the most extraordinary in which any general had ever been placed. His late sworn colleague, Preston, was now combined with Inchican against him. The royalist Clan Ricard in the Western Counties pressed upon his rear, and captured his garrison in Athalon. The Parliamentary General, Michael Jones, to whom Ormond had finally surrendered Dublin, observed rather than impeded his movements in Leinster. The lay majority of the Supreme Council proclaimed him a traitor, a compliment which he fully returned. The Nuncio threw himself wholly into his hands. Finally, at the close of 48, Ormond, returning from France to Ireland, concluded on the 17th of January a formal alliance with the lay members, under the title of Commissioners of Trust, for the King and Kingdom, and Rinconcini, despairing perhaps of a cause so distracted, sailed in his own frigate from Galway on the 23rd of February. Thus did the actors change their parts, alternately triumphing and fleeing for safety. The verdict of history may condemn the Nuncio, of whom we have now seen the last, for his imperious self-will, and his two ready recourse to ecclesiastical censures. But of his zeal, his probity, and his disinterestedness, there can be, we think, no second opinion. Under the Treaty of 1649, which conceded full civil and religious equality to the Roman Catholics, Ormond was once more placed at the head of the Government and in command of the Royal Troops. A few days after the signing of that treaty, news of the execution of Charles I having reached Ireland, the Viceroy proclaimed the Prince of Wales by the title of Charles II at Cork and Ugl. Prince Rupert, whose fleet had entered Kinsel, caused the same ceremony to be gone through in that ancient borough. With Ormond were now cordially united Preston, Inchican, Clan Recard and Muscari, on whom the lead of the Supreme Council devolved, in consequence of the advanced age of Lord Mount Garrett, and the remainder of the twelve commissioners of trust. The cause of the young Prince, and exile, the son of that Catholic Queen from whom they had expected so much, was far from unpopular in the southern half of the island. The Anglican interest was strong and widely diffused through both Lentster and Munster, and except to resolute Prelate, like Dr. French, Bishop of Ferns, or a brave band of townsmen like those of Waterford, Limerick, and Galway, or some remnant of mountain tribes in Wicklow and Tipperary, the national, or old Irish policy, had decidedly lost ground from the hour of the Nuncio's departure. O and O'Neill and the bishop still adhered to that national policy. The former made a three-months truce with General Monk, who had succeeded Monroe in the command of all the parliamentary troops in his province. The singular spectacle was even exhibited of Monk forwarding supplies to O'Neill, to be used against Inchican and Ormond, and O'Neill coming to the rescue of Coot, and raising for him the siege of London Derry. Inchican, in rapid succession, took Drugheada, Trim, Dundalk, Nury, and then rapidly counter-march to join Ormond in besieging Dublin. At Rathmines, near the city, both generals were surprised and defeated by the parliamentarians under Michael Jones. Between desertions, and killed and wounded, they lost by their own account nearly three thousand, and by the Puritan accounts above five thousand men. This action was the virtual close of Ormond's military career. He never after made head against the parliamentary forces in open field. The Catholic cities of Limerick and Galway refused to admit his garrisons. A synod of the bishops, assembled at Jamestown in Ruscommon, strongly recommended his withdrawal from the kingdom, and Cromwell had arrived, resolved to finish the war in a single campaign. Ormond sailed again for France, before the end of sixteen forty-nine, to return no more until the restoration of the monarchy, on the death of the great protector. An actor was now to descend upon the scene, whose character has excited more controversy than that of any other personage of those times. Honored as a saint, or reprobated as a hypocrite, worshipped for his extraordinary successes, or anethymized for the unworthy artifices by which he rose, who shall deal out with equal hand, praise and blame to Oliver Cromwell? Not for the popular writer of Irish history is that difficult judicial task. Not for us to re-echo cries of hatred which convince not the indifferent, nor correct the errors of the educated or cultivated. The simple, and as far as possible, the unimpassioned narrative of facts will constitute the whole of our duty towards the protector's campaign in Ireland. Cromwell left London in great state, early in July, in a coach drawn by six-gallant Flanders mayors, and made a sort of royal procession across the country to Bristol. From that famous port where Strongbow confederated with Dermid McMurrow, and from which Dublin drew its first Anglo-Norman colony, he went on to Milford Haven, at which he embarked, arriving in Dublin on the fifteenth of August. He entered the city in procession, and addressed the townsfolk from a convenient place. He had with him two hundred thousand pounds in money, eight regiments of foot, six of horse, and some troops of dragoons, besides the divisions of Jones and Monk, already in the country, and subject to his command. Among the officers were names of memorable interest, Henry Cromwell, second son of the protector, and future Lord Deputy, Monk, Blake, Jones, Irton, Ludlow, Hardress Waller, Sankey, and other equally prominent in accomplishing the king's death, or in raising up the English Commonwealth. Cromwell's command in Ireland extends from the middle of August sixteen forty-nine to the end of May sixteen fifty, about nine months in all, and is remarkable for the number of sieges of walled towns crowded into that brief period. There was, during the whole time, no great action in the field, like Marston Moore, or Ben Burb, or Dunbar. It was a campaign of seventeenth-century cannon against medieval masonry. What else was done was the supplemental work of mutual bravery on both sides. Drugheader, Dundalk, Neury, and Carlingford fell in September. Arklow, Innis-Corthy, and Wexford in October. Ross, one of the first seaports in point of commerce, surrendered the same month. Waterford was attempted and abandoned in November. Dungarvin, Kinsle, Bandon, and Cork were won over by Lord Broghill in December. Fethard, Callan and Cashill in January and February. Carrick and Kilkenny in March, and Clonmel early in May. Immediately after this last capitulation, Cromwell was recalled to lead the armies of the Parliament into Scotland. During the nine months he had commanded in Ireland, he had captured five or six county capitals, and a great number of less considerable places. The terror of his siege trains and iron sides was spread over the greater part of three provinces, and his well-reported successes had proved so many steps to the assumption of that sovereign power, at which he already aimed. Of the spirit in which these several sieges were conducted, it is impossible to speak without a shutter. It was, in truth, a spirit of hatred and fanaticism, altogether beyond the control of the revolutionary leader. At Drugheada the work of slaughter occupied five entire days. Of the brave garrison of three thousand men, not thirty were spared, and these were in hands for the Barbados. Old men, women, children, and priests were unsparingly put to the sword. Wetzford was basely betrayed by Captain James Stafford, commander of the castle, whose midnight interview with Cromwell, at a petty rivulet without the walls, tradition still recounts with horror and detestation. This port was particularly obnoxious to the Parliament, as from its advantageous position on the Bristol Channel, its cruisers greatly annoyed and embarrassed their commerce. There are, Cromwell writes to Speaker Lenthal, great quantities of iron, hides, tallow, salt, pipe, and barrel staves, which are under commissioners' hands to be secured. We believe that there are near a hundred cannon in the fort and elsewhere in and about the town. Here is likewise some very good shipping. Here are three vessels, one of them of thirty-four guns, which a week's time would fit for the sea. There is another of about twenty guns, very nearly ready likewise. He also reports two other frigates, one on the stocks, which, for her handsomeness's sake, he intended to have finished for the Parliament, and another most excellent vessel for sailing, taken within the fort, at the harbour's mouth. By the treachery of Captain Stafford, this strong and wealthy town was at the mercy of those soldiers of the Lord and of Gideon, who had followed Oliver to his Irish wars. The consequences were the same as at Drugheada, merciless execution on the garrison and the inhabitants. In the third month of Cromwell's campaign, the report of Owen O'Neill's death went abroad, palsying the Catholic arms. By common consent of friend and foe, he was considered the ablest civil and military leader that had appeared in Ireland during the reigns of the Stuart Kings. Whether in native ability he was capable of coping with Cromwell was for a long time a subject of discussion, but the consciousness of irreparable national loss, perhaps, never struck deeper than amid the crash of that irresistible cannonade of the wild towns and cities of Lentster and Munster. O'Neill had lately, despairing of binding the Scots or the English, distrustful alight of Coot and of Monk, been reconciled to Ormond, and was marching southward to his aid at the head of six thousand chosen men. Lord Chancellor Clarendon assures us that Ormond had the highest hopes from this junction, and the utmost confidence in O'Neill's abilities. But at a ball at Derry, towards the end of August, he received his death, it is said, in a pair of poisoned russet leather slippers presented him by one plunket. Marching southward, born in a litter, he expired at Claw Otter Castle, near his old Belterbit camp, on the 6th of November, 1649. His last act was to order one of his nephews, Hugh O'Neill, to form a junction with Ormond in Munster without delay. In the chancel of the Franciscan Abbey of Coven, now grass-grown and trodden by the hooves of cattle, his body was interred. His nephew and successor did honor to his memory at Clon-Mell and Limerick. It was now remembered, even by his enemies, with astonishment and admiration, how, for seven long years he had subsisted and kept together an army, the creature of his genius, without a government at his back, without regular supplies, enforcing obedience, establishing discipline, winning great victories, maintaining, even at the worst, a native power in the heart of the kingdom. When the archives of those years are recovered, if they ever are, no name more illustrious for the combination of great qualities will be found preserved there than the name of this last national leader of the illustrious lineage of O'Neill. The unexpected death of the Ulster General favored still farther Cromwell's southern movements, the gallant but impetuous Bishop of Clogger, Hebrew McMahon, was the only northern leader who could command confidence, enough to keep O'Neill's force together, and on him, therefore, the command devolved. O'Farrell, one of O'Neill's favorite officers, was dispatched to Waterford, and mainly contributed to Cromwell's repulse before that city. Hugh O'Neill covered himself with glory at Clon-Mell and Limerick. Daniel O'Neill, another nephew of O'Neill, remained attached to Ormond and accompanied him to France, but within six months from the loss of their Fabian chief, who knew as well when to strike as to delay, the brave Bishop of Clogger sacrificed the remnant of the Catholic army at the pass of Scariff Hollis in Donegal, and two days after his own life by a martyr's death at O'Mog. At the date of Cromwell's departure, when Ierton took command of the southern army, there remained of the Confederates only some remote glens and highlands of the north and west, the cities of Limerick and Galway, with the county of Clare, and some detached districts of the province of Connaught. The last act of Cromwell's proper campaign was the Siege of Clon-Mell, where he met the stoutest resistance he had anywhere encountered. The Puritans, after affecting a breach, made an attempt to enter, chanting one of their scriptural battle songs. They were, by their own account, obliged to give back awhile, and finally night settled down upon the scene. The following day, finding the place no longer tenable, the garrison silently withdrew to Waterford, and subsequently to Limerick. The inhabitants demanded a parley, which was granted, and Cromwell takes credit and deserves it when we consider the men he had to humor for having kept conditions with them. From before Clon-Mell he returned it once to England, where he was received with royal honors. All London turned out to meet the Conqueror who had wiped out the humiliation of Ben Burb, and humbled the pride of the detested papists. He was lodged in the Palace of the King, and chosen Captain-General of all the forces raised, or to be raised, by the authority of the Parliament of England. The tenth year of the contest of which we have endeavored to follow the most important events, opened upon the remaining Catholic leaders, greatly reduced in numbers and resources, but firm and undismayed. Two chief seaports and some of the western counties still remain to them, and accordingly we find meetings of the bishops and other notables during this year, sixteen-fifty, at Limerick, at Loggrey, and finally at Jamestown in the neighborhood of Owen O'Neill's nursery of the first Catholic army. The Puritan commander was now Henry Irton, son-in-law of Cromwell, by a marriage contracted about two years before. The completion of the protector's policy could have devolved upon few persons more capable of understanding, or more fearless in executing it, and in two eventful campaigns he proved himself the able successor of the protector. In August following Cromwell's departure, Waterford and Dunn Cannon were taken by Irton, and their only remain to the Confederates the fortresses of Sligo, Athlone, Limerick, and Galway, with the country included within the irregular quadrangle they described. The younger coot making a faint against Sligo, which clan Richard Hayson to defend, turned suddenly on his steps and surprised Athlone. Sligo, naturally, a place of no great strength after the invention of artillery, soon after fell, so that Galway and Limerick alone were left, at the beginning of sixteen-fifty-one, to bear all the brunt of Puritan hostility. Political events of great interest happened during the two short years of Irton's command. The assembly, which met at Jamestown in August, and against Loughray in November sixteen-fifty, made the retirement of Ormond from the government a condition of all future efforts in the royal cause, and that nobleman, deeply wounded by this condition, had finally sailed from Galway in December, leaving to clan-record the title of Lord Deputy, and to Castle Haven the command of the forces which still kept the field. The news from Scotland of the young King's subscription to the Covenant, and denunciation of all terms with Irish papists, came to aid the councils of those who, like the eloquent French Bishop of Ferns, demanded a national policy, irrespective of the exsendancies of the Stuart family. An embassy was accordingly dispatched to Brussels, to offer the title of King Protector to the Duke of Lorraine, or failing with him to treat with any other Catholic prince, state, republic, or person, as they might deem expedient for the preservation of the Catholic religion and nation. A wide latitude, dictated by desperate circumstances. The ambassadors were Bishop French and Hugh Rochefort, the embassy one of the most curious and instructive in our annals. The Duke expressed himself willing to undertake an expedition to Ireland, to supply arms and money to the Confederates, on the condition of receiving Athlone, Limerick, Athenrie and Galway into his custody, with the title of Protector. A considerable sum of money, twenty thousand pounds, was forwarded at once. Four Belgian frigates laden with stores were made ready for sea. The Canon de Hennin was sent as an envoy to the Confederates, and this last venture looked most promising of success, had not clan-recording Galway and Charles and Ormond in Paris, taking alarm at the new dignity conferred upon the Duke, countermined the Bishop of Ferns and Mr. Rochefort, and defeated by intrigue and correspondence their hopeful enterprise. The decisive battle of Worcester, fought on the 3rd of September, 1651, drove Charles II into that nine years' exile, from which he only returned on the death of Cromwell. It may be considered the last military event of importance in the English Civil War. In Ireland the contest was destined to drag out another campaign before the walls of the two gallant cities, Galway and Limerick. Limerick was the first object of attack. Ierton, leaving Sanky to administer martial law in Tipperary, struck the Shannon opposite Kililow, driving Castle Haven before him. Joined by Coot and Reynolds, fresh from the sieges of Athenry and Athalon, he moved upon Limerick by the Canot bank of the river, while Castle Haven fled to clan-recording Galway with a guard of forty horse, all that remained intact of the four thousand men bequeathed him by Ormond. From the side of Munster, Lord Muscarey attempted a diversion in favour of Limerick, but was repulsed at Castellation by the flying camp of Lord Broghill. The besiegers were thus not only delivered of a danger, but reinforced by native troops, if the undertakers could be properly called so, which made them the most formidable army that had ever surrendered an Irish city. From early summer till the last week of October the main force of the English and Anglo-Irish, supplied with every species of arm then invented, assailed the walls of Limerick. The plague, which during these months swept with such fearful mortality over the whole kingdom, struck down its defenders, and filled all its streets with desolation and grief. The heroic bishops, O'Brien of Emily and O'Dwyer of Limerick, exerted themselves to uphold, by religious exhortations, the confidence of the besieged, while Hugh O'Neill and General Purcell maintained the courage of their men. Clan Richard had offered to charge himself with the command, but the citizens preferred to trust in the skill and determination of the defender of Clonmel, whose very name was a talisman among them. The municipal government, however, composed of the men of property in the city, men whose trade was not war, whose religion was not enthusiastic, formed a third party, a party in favour of peace at any price. With the mayor at their head they openly encouraged the surrender of one of the outworks to the besiegers, and this betrayal, on the twenty-seventh of October, compelled the surrender of the entire works. Thus Limerick fell, divided within itself by military, clerical, and municipal factions, thus glory and misfortune combined to consecrate its name in the national veneration, and the general memory of mankind. The Bishop of Emily and General Purcell were executed as traitors. The Bishop of Limerick escaped in the disguise of a common soldier and died at Brussels. O'Neill's life was saved by a single vote. Sir Jeffrey Gabney, Alderman, Stritch, and Fanning, and other leading Confederates expiated their devotion upon the scaffold. On the twelfth of May following, seven months after the capture of Limerick, Galway fell. Ierton, who survived the former siege but a few days, was succeeded by Ludlow, a sincere Republican of the School of Pym and Hampton, if that school can be called, in our modern sense, Republican. It was a sad privilege of General Preston, whose name is associated with so many of the darkest, and with some of the brightest incidents of this war, to order the surrender of Galway, as he had two years previously given up Waterford. Thus the last open port, the last considerable town held by the Confederates, yielded to the overwhelming power of numbers and munitions, in the twelfth year of that illustrious war which Ireland waged for her religious and civil liberties, against the two forces of the two adjoining kingdoms, sometimes estranged from one another, but always hostile alike to the religious belief and the political independence of the Irish people. With the fall of Galway, the Confederate war drew rapidly to a close. Colonel Fitzpatrick, O'Dwyer, Grace, and Thorlag O'Neill surrendered their post. Lord's Inesquilin and Westmieth followed their example. Lord Muscarey yielded Ross Castle in Kilarney in June. Clan Ricard laid down his arms at Carrick in October. The usual terms granted were liberty to transport themselves and followers to the service of any foreign state or prince at peace with the Commonwealth. A favoured few were permitted to live and die in peace on their own estates, under the watchful eye of some neighbouring garrison. The chief actors in the Confederate war, not already accounted for, terminated their days under many different circumstances. Mount Garrett and Bishop Roth died before Galway fell and were buried in the capital of the Confederacy. Bishop McMahon of Clogger surrendered to Sir Charles Coot and was executed like a felon by one he had saved from destruction a year before at Derry. Coot, after the Restoration, became Earl of Montroth and Broghill, Earl of Orory. Clan Ricard died unnoticed on his English estate under the Protectorate. Inchican, after many adventures in foreign lands, turned Catholic in his old age, and this burner of churches bequeathed an annual alms for masses for his soul. Jones, Corbett, Coot and the fanatical preacher Hugh Peters, perished on the scaffold with the other regicides executed by order of the English Parliament. Ormond, having shared the evils of exile with the King, shared also the splendour of his Restoration, became a Duke and took his place, as if by common consent, at the head of the peerage of the Empire. His Irish rental, which before the war was but seven thousand pounds a year, swelled suddenly on the Restoration to eighty thousand pounds. Nicholas French, after some sojourn in Spain, where he was co-ajutor to the Archbishop of St. James, returned to Louvin, where he made his first studies, and there spent the evening of his days in the composition of those powerful pamphlets, which kept alive the Irish cause at home and on the continent. Ormond, patrician, did the honours of sepulcher to Luc Wadding and Cromwell and toer James Uster in Westminster Abbey, the heroic defender of Clonmel and Limerick, and the gallant, though vacillating, Preston were cordially received in France, while the consistent Republican, Ludlow, took refuge as a fugitive in Switzerland. Sir Philharmoniel, the first author of the war, was among the last to suffer the penalties of defeat. For a moment, towards the end, he renewed his sway over the remnant of Owen's soldiers, took Bally Shannon and two or three other places. Compelled at last to surrender, he was carried to Dublin and tried on a charge of Treason, a committee closeted behind the bench dictating the interrogatories to his judges, and receiving his answers in reply. Condemned to death, as was expected, he was offered his life by the Puritan colonel, Hueson, on the very steps of the scaffold, if he would inculpate the late King Charles in the rising of 1641. This he stoutly refused to do, and the execution proceeded with all its atrocious details. Whatever might have been the excesses committed under his command by a plundered people at their first insurrection, and we know that they have been exaggerated beyond all bounds, it must be admitted he died the death of a Christian, a soldier, and a gentleman. CHAPTER XII. ISLAND UNDER THE PROTECTORATE. ADMINISTRATION OF HENRY CROMWELL. DEATH OF OLLIVER. The English Republic rose from the scaffold of the King in 1649. Its first government was a Council of State of 41 members. Under this Council, Cromwell held at first the title of Lord General. But on the 16th of December, 1653, he was solemnly installed in Westminster Hall as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was then in his 54th year. His reign, if such it may be called, lasted less than five years. The policy of the Protector towards Ireland is even less defensible than his military severities. For the barbarities of war there may be some apology. The poor one, at least, that such outrages are inseparable from war itself. But for the cold-blooded, deliberate atrocities of peace, no such defence can be permitted before the tribunal of a free posterity. The long Parliament, still dragging out its date under the shadow of Cromwell's great name, declared in its session of 1652 the rebellion in Ireland subdued and ended, and proceeded to legislate for that kingdom as a conquered country. On the 12th of August they passed their act of settlement, the authorship of which was attributed to Lord Orore, in this respect the worthy son of the First Earl of Cork. Under this act there were four chief descriptions of persons whose status was thus settled. First, all ecclesiastics and royalist proprietors were exempted from pardon of life or estate. Second, all royalist commissioned officers were condemned of banishment and the forfeit of two thirds of their property, one third being retained for the support of their wives and children. Third, those who had not been in arms but could be shown by a parliamentary commission to have manifested a constant good affection to the war were to forfeit one third of their estates and to receive an equivalent for the remaining two thirds west of the Shannon. Fourth, all husbandmen and others of the inferior sort, not possessive lands or good exceeding the value of ten pounds, were to have a free pardon on condition also of transporting themselves across the Shannon. The last condition of the Cromwellian settlement distinguished it in our annals from every other prescription of the native population formerly attempted. The Great River of Ireland, rising in the mountains of Lethram, nearly severed the five Western counties from the rest of the kingdom. The province thus set apart, though one of the largest in superficial extent, had also the largest proportion of waste and water, mountain and moorland. The new inhabitants were there to congregate from all the other provinces before the first day of May, 1654, under penalty of outlawry and all its consequences, and when there they were not to appear within two miles of the Shannon or four miles of the sea. A rigorous transport system, to evade which was death without form of trial, completed this settlement. The design of which was to shut up the remaining Catholic inhabitants from all intercourse with mankind, and all communion with the other inhabitants of their own country. A new survey of the whole kingdom was also ordered, under the direction of Dr. William Petty, the fortunate economist who founded the house of Lansdowne. By him the surface of the kingdom was estimated at ten millions and a half of plantation acres, three of which were deducted for waste and water. Of the remainder above five million were in Catholic hands in 1641, three hundred thousand were church and college lands, and two million were in possession of the Protestant settlers of the reigns of James and Elizabeth. Under the protectorate five million acres were confiscated. This enormous spoil, two-thirds of the whole island, went to the soldiers and adventurers who had served against the Irish, or had contributed to the military chest since 1641, except seven hundred thousand acres given in exchange to the banished in Clare and Canot, and one million two hundred thousand confirmed to innocent papists. Such was the complete uprooting of the ancient tenetry or clansmen from their original holdings, that during the survey orders of parliament were issued to bring back individuals from Canot to point out the boundaries of parishes in Munster. It cannot be imputed among the sins so freely laid to the historical account of the native legislature that an Irish parliament had any share in sanctioning this universal spoilation. Cromwell anticipated the union of the kingdoms by a hundred and fifty years when he summoned in 1653 that assembly over which Praise God Bear Bones presided, members for Ireland and Scotland sat on the same benches with the Commons of England. Oliver's first deputy in the Government of Ireland was his son-in-law Fleetwood, who had married the widow of Irton, but his real representative was his fourth son, Henry Cromwell, Commander-in-Chief of the Army. In 1657 the title of Lord Deputy was transferred from Fleetwood to Henry, who united the supreme civil and military authority in his own person, until the eve of the restoration of which he became an active partisan. We may thus properly embrace the five years of the protectorate as the period of Henry Cromwell's administration. In the absence of a parliament, the Government of Ireland was vested in the Deputy, the Commander-in-Chief, and four commissioners, Ludlow, Corbett, Jones, and Weaver. There was, moreover, a High Court of Justice, which perambulated the Kingdom and exercised an absolute authority over life and property, greater than even Stratford's Court of Castle Chambers had pretended to. Over this Court presided Lord Louther, assisted by Mr. Justice Donilon, by Cook, solicitor to the Parliament on the Trial of King James, and the Regicide, Reynolds. By this Court, Sir Felimoniel, by Count Mayo, and Colonel's O'Toole and Bagnall were condemned and executed. By them the mother of Colonel Fitzpatrick was burnt at the stake, and Lord Muscarrey and Clanmelier set at liberty through some secret influence. The commissioners were not behind the High Court of Justice in executive offices of severity. Children, underage, of both sexes, were captured by thousands and sold as slaves to the tobacco planters of Virginia and the West Indies. Secretary Thurlow informs Henry Cromwell that the Committee of the Council have authorized one thousand girls and as many youths to be taken up for that purpose. Sir William Petty mentioned six thousand Irish boys and girls shipped to the West Indies. Some cotemporary accounts make the total number of children and adults so transported one hundred thousand souls. To this decimation we may add thirty-four thousand men of fighting age who had permission to enter the armies of foreign powers at peace with the Commonwealth. The chief commissioners sitting at Dublin had their deputies in a commission of delinquencies sitting in Athelone and another of transportation sitting at Logray. Under their superintendents the distribution made of the soil among the Puritans was nearly as complete as that of Canaan by the Israelites. Whenever native laborers were found absolutely necessary for the cultivation of the estates of their new masters, they were barely tolerated as the Gibbianites had been by Joshua. Such Irish gentlemen, as had obtained pardons, were obliged to wear a distinctive mark on their dress under pain of death. Those of inferior rank were obliged to wear a round black spot on the right cheek under pain of a branding iron and of the gallows. If a Puritan lost his life in any district inhabited by Catholics, the whole population were held subject to military execution. For the rest, whenever Tory or Recusant fell into the hands of these military colonists or the garrisons which knitted them together, they were assailed with the war cry of the Jews, that thy feet may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies and that the tongues of thy dogs may be read with the same. Thus penned in between the mile line of the Shannon, the four mile line of the sea, the remnant of the Irish nation past seven years of a bondage unequaled in severity by anything which can be found in the annals of Christendom. The conquest was not only a military but a religious subjugation. The twenty- seventh of Elizabeth, the old act of uniformity, was rigorously enforced. The Catholic lawyers were disbarred and silenced. The Catholic schoolmasters were forbidden to teach under pain of felony. Recusants, surrounded in glens and caves, offering up the holy sacrifice through the ministry of some daring priest, were shot down or smoked out like vermin. The ecclesiastics never, in any instance, were allowed to escape. Among those who suffered death during the short space of the protectorate are counted three bishops and three hundred ecclesiastics. The surviving prelates were in exile except the bed ridden bishop of Kilmore, who for years had been unable to officiate. So that now, that ancient hierarchy which in the worst Danish wars had still recruited its ranks as fast as they were broken, seemed on the very eve of extinction. Throughout all the island no episcopal hand remained to bless altars, to ordain priests or to confirm the faithful. The Irish church as well as the Irish state, touched its lowest point of suffering and endurance in the decade which intervened between the death of Charles I and the death of Cromwell. The new population imposed upon the kingdom soon split up into a multitude of sects. Some of them became Quakers, many adhered to the Anabaptists, others after the Restoration conformed to the established church. That deeper tincture of Puritanism which may be traced in the Irish, as compared with the English establishment, took its origin even more from the Cromwellian settlement than from the Calvinistic teachings of Archbishop Usher. Oliver died in 1658 on his fortunate day, the third of September, leaving England to experience twenty months of republican intrigue and anarchy. Richard Cromwell, Lambert, Ludlow, Monk, each played his part in the stormy interval, till, the time being right for a Restoration, Charles II landed at Dover on the 23rd of May 1660 and was carried in triumph to London.