 Book IX of a popular history of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, from the accession of James I till the death of Thomas Cromwell, by Thomas Darcy McGee. James VI of Scotland was in his 37th year when he ascended the throne under the title of James I, King of Great Britain and Ireland. His accession naturally excited the most hopeful expectations of good government in the breast of the Irish Catholics. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, whom they looked upon as a martyr to her religion, and grandson of that gallant King James who styled himself Defender of the Faith and Dominus Hibernay in introducing the first Jesuits to the Oldster princes. His ancestors had always been in alliance with the Irish, and the antiquaries of that nation loved to trace their descent from the Scotto-Irish chiefs, who first colonised Argyle, and were for ages crowned at Scone. He himself was known to have assisted the late Catholic struggle as effectually, though less openly than the King of Spain, and it is certain that he had employed Catholic agents, like Lord Holm and Sir James Lindsay, to excite an interest in his secession among the Catholics, both in the British islands and on the continent. The first acts of the new sovereign were calculated to confirm the expectations of Catholic liberty thus entertained. He was anxious to make an immediate and lasting peace with Spain, refused to receive a special embassy from the Hollenders, his ambassador at Paris was known to be on terms of intimacy with the Pope's nuncio, and although personally he assumed the tone of an Anglican churchman, upon crossing the border he invited leading Catholics to his court, and conferred the honour of knighthood on some of their number. The imprudent demonstrations in the Irish towns were easily quieted, and no immediate notice was taken of their leaders. In May 1603, Montjoy, on whom James had conferred the higher rank of Lord Lieutenant, leaving Carew as Lord Deputy, proceeded to England, accompanied by O'Neill, Roderick O'Donnell, McGuire, and other Irish gentlemen. The veteran Tyrone, now past three score, though hooded by the London rabble, was graciously received in that court, with which he had been familiar forty years before. He was at once confirmed in his title the earldom of Tyr Connell was created for O'Donnell, and the lordship of Enniskellen from McGuire. Montjoy created Earl of Devonshire, retained the title of Lord Lieutenant, with permission to reside in England, and was rewarded by the appointment of Master of the Ordnance and Warden of the New Forest, with an ample pension from the Crown to him and his heirs for ever, the grant of the county of Lechel, or Down, and the estate of Kingston Hall in Dorsetshire. He survived but three short years to enjoy all these riches and honours. At the age of forty-four, wasted with dissipation and domestic troubles, he passed to his final account. The necessity of conciliating the Catholic Party in England, of maintaining peace in Ireland and prosecuting the Spanish negotiations, not less, perhaps, than his own original bias, led James to deal favourably with the Catholics at first. But having attempted to enforce the new Anglican cannons adopted in 1604 against the Puritans, that party retaliated by raising against him the cry of favouring the Papists. This cry alarmed the King, who had always before his eyes the fear of Presbyterianism, and he accordingly made a speech in the Star Chamber declaring his utter detestation of popery, and published a proclamation banishing all Catholic missionaries from the country. All magistrates were instructed to enforce the penal laws with rigor, and an elaborate spy system for the discovery of concealed recusants was set on foot. This reign of treachery and terror drove a few desperate men into the gunpowder plot of the following year, and rendered it difficult, if not impossible, for the King to return to the policy of toleration, with which, to do him justice, he seems to have set out from Scotland. Keru, president of Munster during the late war, became deputy to Mount Joy on his departure for England. He was succeeded in October 1604 by Sir Arthur Chichester, who, with the exception of occasional absences at court, continued in office for a period of eleven years. This nobleman, a native of England, furnishes in many points a parallel to his cotemporary and friend, Robert Boyle, Earl of Cork. The object of his life was to found and endow the donnable peerage out of the spoils of Ulster, as richly as Boyle endowed his earldom out of the confiscation of Munster. Both were Puritans rather than churchmen, in their religious opinions, Chichester, a pupil of the celebrated Cartwright, and a favorer all his life of the congregational clergy in Ulster. But they carried their repugnance to the interference of the civil magistrate in matters of conscience, so discreetly, as to satisfy the High Church notions both of James and Elizabeth. For the violence they were thus compelled to exercise against themselves, they seemed to have found relief in bitter and continuous persecution of others. Boyle, as the leading spirit in the Government of Munster, as Lord Treasurer, and occasionally as Lord Justice, had ample opportunities, during his long career of forty years, to indulge at once his avarice and his bigotry, and no situation was ever more favorable than Chichester's for a proconsul, eager to enrich himself at the expense of a subjugated province. In the projected work of the reduction of the whole country to the laws and customs of England, it is instructive to observe that a Parliament was not called in the first place. The Reformers proceeded by proclamations, letters patent, and orders and counsel, not by legislation. The whole island was divided into thirty-two counties and six judicial circuits, all of which were visited by justices in the second or third year of this reign, and afterwards semi-annually. On the Northern Circuit, Sir Edward Pelham and Sir John Davis were accompanied by the deputy in person, with a numerous retinue. In some places the towns were so wasted by the late war, pestilence and famine, that the vice regal party were obliged to camp out in the fields and to carry with them their own provisions. The courts were held in ruined castles and deserted monasteries, Irish interpreters were at every step found necessary, sheriffs were installed in Tyrone and Tyre-Connell for the first time. All lawyers appearing in court and all justices of the peace were tendered the oath of supremacy, the refusal of which necessarily excluded Catholics both from the bench and the bar. An enormous amount of litigation as to the law of real property was created by a judgment of the court of King's bench at Dublin in 1605, by which the ancient Irish customs of tannistry and gavelkind were declared null and void, and the entire feudal system, with its rites of promogeniture, hereditary succession, entail, and vassalage, was held to exist in as full force in England. Very evidently this decision was not less a violation of the Articles of Mellifont than was the King's proclamation against freedom of conscience issued about the same time. Sir John Davis, who has left us two very interesting tracks on Irish affairs, speaking of the new legal regulations of which he was one of the principal superintendents, observes that the old-fashioned allowances to be found so often in the pipe-rolls, pro-guidagio e spagio, into the interior, may well be spared thereafter, since the under-sheriffs in Bailiff's errant are better guides and spies in time of peace than they were found in time of war. He adds, what we may very well perceive, that the Earl of Tyrone complained he had so many eyes upon him that he could not drink a cup of sack without the government being advertised of it within a few hours afterwards. This system of social espionage, so repugnant to all the habits of the Celtic family, was not the only mode of annoyance resorted to against the veteran chief. Every former dependent who could be induced to dispute his claims as a landlord, under the new relations established by the late decision, was sure of a judgment in his favour. Disputes about boundaries with O'Cain, about the communion of chieftain rents into tenetry, about church lands claimed by Montgomery, Protestant Bishop of Derry, were almost invariably decided against him. Harest, by these proceedings, and all uncertain of the future, O'Neill listened willingly to the treacherous suggestion of St. Lawrence and Lord House, that the leading Catholics of the Pail, and those of Ulster, should endeavour to form another confederation. The execution of Father Garnet, provincial of the Jesuits in England, the heavy fines inflicted on Lord Storton, Mordent, and Montague, and the new oath of allegiance, framed by Archbishop Abbott, and sanctioned by the English Parliament, all events of the year 1606 were calculated to inspire the Irish Catholics with desperate councils. A dutiful remonstrance against the act of uniformity the previous year had been signed by the principal Anglo-Irish Catholics for transmission to the King, but their delegates were seized and imprisoned in the castle, while their principal agent, Sir Patrick Barnwell, was sent to London and confined in the tower. A meeting at Lord Houth's suggestion was held about Christmas 1606 at the Castle of Maynooth, then in possession of the Dowager Countess of Kildare, one of whose daughters was married to Christopher Nugent, Baron of Delvin, and her granddaughter to Rory, Earl of Tirkanal. There were present O'Neill, O'Donnell, and O'Cain, on the one part, and Lord Delvin and Houth on the other. The precise result of this conference, disguised under the pretext of a Christmas party, was never made known, but the fact that it had been held, and that the party's present had entertained the project of another Confederacy for the defense of the Catholic religion, was mysteriously communicated in an anonymous letter, directed to Sir William Usher, clerk of the Council, which was dropped in the Council Chamber of Dublin Council in March 1607. This letter, it is now generally believed, was written by Lord Houth, who was thought to have been employed by Secretary Cecil to entrap the Northern Earl's in order to betray them. In May O'Neill and O'Donnell were cited to attend the Lord Deputy in Dublin, but the charges were for the time kept in abeyance, and they were ordered to appear in London before the Feast of Mickelmus. Early in September O'Neill was with Chichester at Slain in Mieeth, when he received a letter from McGuire, who had been out of the country, conveying information on which he immediately acted. Taking leave of the Lord Deputy as if to prepare for his journey to London, he made some stay with his old friend, Sir Garrett Moore, at Mellifont, imparting from whose family he tenderly bade farewell to the children and even the servants, and was observed to shed tears. At Dunganon he remained two days. On the shore of Luxe-Swellie he joined O'Donnell and the others of his connections. The friendship in which McGuire had returned awaited them off Wreth-Mullen, and there they took shipping for France. With O'Neill and that sorrowful company were his last countess, Catherine, daughter of McGuinness, his three sons, Hugh, John, and Brian, his nephew, Art, son of Cormac, Rory O'Donnell, Caffar, his brother, Nuala, his sister, who had forsaken her husband, Niall Garve, when he forsook his country, the Lady Rose O'Dority, wife of Caffar, and afterwards of Owen Rowe O'Neill, McGuire, Owen McWard, Chief Bart of Tier Connell, and several others. Woe to the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that conceived, woe to the counsel that decided on the project of that voyage. Exclaimed the analysts of Donegal in the next age. Evidently it was the judgment of their immediate successors that the flight of the earls was a rash and irremediable step for them, but the information on which they acted, if not long since destroyed, has as yet never been made public. We can pronounce no judgment as to the wisdom of their conduct, from the incomplete statements at present in our possession. There remained now a few barriers to the wholesale confiscation of Ulster, so long sought by the undertakers, and these were rapidly removed. Sir Keherod Doherty, Chief of Ineshowan, although he had earned his knighthood while a mere lad, fighting by the side of Daukra, in an altercation with Sir George Pollitt, Governor of Derry, was taunted with conniving at the escape of the earls, and Pollitt in his passion struck him in the face. The youthful chief, who was scarcely one in twenty, was driven almost to madness by this outrage. On the night of the third of May, by a successful stratagem, he got possession of Cullmore Fort, at the mouth of Loughfoil, and before morning dawned had surprised Derry. Pollitt, his insulter, he slew with his own hand, most of the garrison were slaughtered, and the town reduced to ashes. Niall Garv O'Donnell, who had been cast off by his old protectors, was charged with sending him supplies and men, and for three months he kept afield, hoping that every gale might bring him assistance from abroad. But those same summer months and foreign climes had already proved fatal to many of the exiles, whose cooperation he invoked. In July, Rory O'Donnell expired at Rome. In August, Maguire died at Genoa, on his way to Spain, and in September, Cafar O'Donnell was laid in the same grave with his brother on St. Peter's Hill. O'Neill survived his comrades as he had done his fortress, and like other Belisarius, blind and old, and a pensioner on the bounty of strangers, he lived on eight weary years in Rome. Odority, enclosed in his native peninsula, between the forces of the Marshall Wingfield and Sir Oliver Lambert, Governor of Cannot, fell by a chance shot at the Rock of Dune in Kilmachrennan. The superfluous traitor, Niall Garv, was with his sons sent to London and imprisoned in the tower for life. In those dungeons, Cormac, brother of Hugh O'Neill, and O'Cain also languished out their days, victims to the careless or vindictive temper of King James. Sir Arthur Chichester received, soon after these events, a grant of the entire barony of Ineshowan, and subsequently a grant of the borough of Dunganon, with 1,300 acres adjoining. Wingfield obtained the district of Furcullen near Dublin, with the title of Viscount Powers Court. Lambert was soon after made Earl of Cavern, and enriched with the lands of Kerrig, and other estates in that county. To justify at once the measures he proposed, as well as to divert from the exiles the sympathies of Europe, King James issued a proclamation bearing the date of 5th of November, 1608, giving to the world the English version of the Flight of the Urals. The whole of Ulster was then surveyed in a cursory manner by a staff over which presided Sir William Parsons as Surveyor General. The surveys being completed early in 1609, a royal commission was issued to Chichester, Lambert, St. John, Ridgeway, Moore, Davis, and Parsons, with the Archbishop of Armagh, and the Bishop of Derry, to inquire into the portions forfeited. Before these commissioners, juries were sworn on each particular case, and these juries duly found that, in consequence of the rebellion of O'Neill, O'Donnell, and the majority, the entire six counties of Ulster, enumerated by baronies and parishes, were forfeited to the crown. By direction from England the Irish Privy Council submitted a scheme for planting these counties with colonies of civil men well affected in religion, which scheme, with several modifications suggested by the English Privy Council, was finally promulgated by the royal legislator under the title of Orders and Conditions for the Planters. According to the division thus ordered, upwards of 43,000 acres were claimed and conceded to the primate and the Protestant bishops of Ulster. In Tyrone, Derry, and Armagh, Trinity College got 30,000 acres, with six avowsons in each county. The various trading guilds of the City of London, such as the Drapers, Vintners, Cordwayners, Dry Salters, obtained in the gross 209,800 acres, including the City of Derry, which they rebuilt and fortified, adding London to its ancient name. The grants to individuals were divided into three classes, 2,000, 1,500, and 1,000 acres each. Among the conditions on which these grants were given was this, that they should not suffer any laborer that would not take the oath of supremacy to dwell upon their lands. But this despotic condition, equivalent to the sentence of death on tens of thousands of the native peasantry, was fortunately found impracticable in the execution. It was little worth without hands to till it. Laborers enough could not be obtained from England and Scotland, and the Hamilton's, Stewart's, Foylet's, Chichester's, and Lambert's, having from sheer necessity to choose between Irish cultivators and letting their new estates lie waste and unprofitable, it is needless to say what choice they made. The spirit of religious persecution was exhibited not only in the means taken to exterminate the peasantry, to destroy the northern chiefs, and to intimidate the Catholics of the Pale by abuse of law, but by many cruel executions. The prior of the famous retreat of Loch Derg was one of the victims of this persecution. A priest named O'Lochron, who had accidentally sailed in the same ship with the earls to France, was taken prisoner on his return, hanged and quartered. Connor O'Deveny, Bishop of Down and Connor, and Octogenarian, suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy at Dublin in 1611. Two years before, John, Lord Burke of British, was executed in like manner on a charge of having participated in the Catholic demonstrations, which took place at Limerick on the accession of King James. The edict of 1610 in relation to Catholic children educated abroad has been quoted in a previous chapter, apropos of education, but the scheme submitted to Knox, Bishop of Raffault, to Chichester in 1611, went even beyond that edict. In this project it was proposed that whoever should be found to harbour, a priest, should forfeit all his possessions to the crown. That quarterly return should be made out by counties of all who refuse to take the oath of supremacy, or to attend the English Church service, that no papist should be permitted to exercise the function of a schoolmaster, and moreover, that all churches injured during the late war should be repaired at the expense of the papist inhabitants for the use of the Anglican congregation. Very unexpectedly to the nation at large, after a lapse of twenty-seven years, during which no parliament had been held, rits were issued for the attendance of both houses at Dublin on the 18th of May, 1613. The work of confiscation and plantation had gone on for several years without the sanction of the legislature, and men were at a loss to conceive for what purpose elections were now ordered, unless to invest new penal laws, or to impose fresh burdens on the country. With all the efforts which had been made to introduce civil men, well affected in religion, it was certain that the Catholics would return a large majority of the House of Commons, not only in the chief towns, but from the fifteen old and seventeen new counties lately created. To counterbalance this majority, over forty boroughs, returning two new members each, were created by royal charter in places thinly or not at all inhabited, or where towns were merely projected on the estates of leading undertakers. Against the issue of rits returnable by these fictitious corporations, the lords Gormans Town, Slain, Killeen, Trumbleston, Dunseny, and Houth signed and humble remonstrance to the King, concluding with a prayer for the relaxation of the penal laws affecting religion. The King, whose notions of prerogative were extravagantly high, was highly incensed at this petition of the Catholic peers of Lentster, and Chichester proceeded with his full approbation to pack the parliament. At the elections, however, many recusant lawyers and other Catholic candidates were returned, so that when the day of meeting arrived, one hundred and one Catholic representatives assembled at Dublin, some accompanied by bands of from one hundred to two hundred armed followers. The supporters of the government claimed one hundred and twenty-five votes, and six were found to be absent, making the whole number of the House of Commons two hundred and thirty-two. The upper house consisted of fifty peers, of whom there were twenty-five Protestant bishops, so that the deputy was certain of a majority in that chamber, on all points of ecclesiastical legislation, at least. Although with the facts before us, we cannot agree with Sir John Davis that King James I gave Ireland her first free parliament. It is impossible not to entertain a high sense of admiration for the constitutional firmness of the recusant or Catholic party in that assembly. At the very outset, they successfully resisted the proposition to meet in the castle, surrounded by the deputy's guards, as a silent menace. They next contended that before proceeding to the election of speaker, the council should submit to the judges the decision of the alleged invalid elections. A tumultuous and protracted debate was had on this point. The Catholic party argued that they should first elect a speaker, and then proceed to try the elections. The Catholics contended that there were persons present whose votes should determine the speakership, but who had no more title in law than the horse boys at the door. This was the preliminary trial of strength. The candidate of the castle for the speakership was Sir John Davis, of the Catholics Sir John Everard, who had resigned his seat on the bench rather than take the oath of supremacy framed by Archbishop Abbott. The castle party having gone into the lobby to be counted, the Catholics placed Sir John Everard in the chair. On their return, the government supporters placed Sir John Davis in Everard's lap, and a scene, a violent disorder ensued. The house broke up in confusion, the recusants in a body declared their intention not to be present at its deliberations, and the Lord Deputy, finding them resolute, suddenly prorogued the session. Both parties sent deputies to England to lay their complaints at the foot of the throne. The Catholic spokesmen, Talbot and LaTrell, were received with a storm of reproaches, and committed, the former to the tower, the other to the fleet prison. They were, however, released after a brief confinement, and a commission was issued to inquire into the alleged electoral frauds. By the advice of Everard and others of their leaders, a compromise was affected with the castle party. Members returned for boroughs incorporated after the rits were issued were declared excluded, the contestation of seats on other grounds of irregularity were withdrawn, and the house accordingly proceeded to the business for which they were called together. The chief acts of the sessions of 1614, 15 and 16, besides the grant of four entire subsidies to the crown, were an act joyfully recognizing the king's title, acts repealing statutes of Elizabeth and Henry VIII as to distinctions of race, an act repealing the third and fourth of Philip and Mary against bringing Scots into Ireland, and the acts of a tainer against O'Neill, O'Donnell and O'Doherty. The recusant minority having been heavily censured by our recent historians for consenting to these attainers, though the censure may be in part deserved, it is nevertheless clear that they had not the power to prevent their passage, even if they had been unanimous in their opposition. But they had influence enough, fortunately, to oblige the government to withdraw a sweeping penal law, which it was intended to propose. An act of oblivion and amnesty was also passed, which was of some advantage. On the whole, both for the constitutional principles which they upheld, and the religious prescription which they resisted, the recusant minority in the Irish Parliament of James I, deserved to be held in honour by all who value religious and civil liberty. From the dissolution of James's only Irish Parliament in October 1615, until the 10th of Charles I, an interval of 20 years, the government of the country was again exclusively regulated by arbitrary proclamations and orders in council. Chichester, after the unusually long term of 11 years, had to be held in place in the Irish Parliament in October 1615 until the 10th of Charles I, an interval of 20 years, the government of the country was again exclusively regulated by arbitrary proclamations and orders in council. Chichester, after the unusually long term of 11 years, had leave to retire in 1816. He was succeeded by the Lord Grandesson, who held the office of Lord Deputy for six years, and he in turn by Henry Cary, by Count Falkland, who governed from 1622 till 1629, seven years. Nothing could well be more fluctuating than the policy-presuaded different periods by these viceroys and their advisers. Violent attempts at coercion alternated with the meanest devices to extort money from the oppressed. General declarations against recusants were repeated with increased vehemence, while particular treaties for a local and conditional toleration were notoriously progressing. In a word, the administration of affairs exhibited all the worst devices and weaknesses of a despotism, without any of the steadiness or magnanimity of a real paternal government. Some of the edicts issued deserve particular notice, as characterizing the administrations of Grandesson and Falkland. The municipal authorities of Waterford, having invariably refused to take the oath of supremacy, were, by an ordering council, deprived of their ancient charter, which was withheld from them for nine years. The ten-shilling tax on recusants for nonattendance at the Anglican service was rigorously enforced in other cities, and was almost invariably levied with costs, which not seldom swelled the ten shillings to ten pounds. A new instrument of oppression was also, in Lord Grandesson's time, invented, the Commission for the Discovery of Defective Titles. At the head of this commission was placed Sir William Parsons, the surveyor general, who had come into the kingdom in a menial situation, and had, through a long half-century of guile and cruelty, contributed as much to the destruction of its inhabitants by the perversion of law as any armed conqueror could have done by the edge of the sword. Ulster being already applauded, and Munster undergoing the manipulations of the new Earl of Cork, they remained as a field for the Parsons' commission, only the Midland Counties and cannot. Of these they made the most in the shortest space of time. A horde of clerkly spies were employed under the name of discoverers to ransack old Irish tenures in the archives of Dublin and London, with such good success that in a very short time sixty-six thousand acres in Wicklow, and three hundred and eighty-five thousand acres in Lettrim, Longford, the Miaths, and Kings and Queens Counties, were found by inquisition to be vested in the crown. The means employed by the commissioners, in some cases, to elicit such evidence as they required, were of the most revolting description. In the Wicklow case, courts-martial were held, before which unwilling witnesses were tried on the charge of treason, and some actually put to death. Archer, one of the number, had his flesh burned with a red-hot iron, and was placed in a grid-iron over a charcoal fire, till he offered to testify on anything that was necessary. Yet on evidence so obtained, whole baronies and counties were declared forfeited to the crown. The recusants, though suffering under every sort of injustice, and kept in a state of continual apprehension, a condition worse even than the actual horrors they endured, counted many educated and wealthy persons in their ranks, besides mustering fully ninety percent of the whole population. They were, therefore, far from being politically powerless. The recall of Lord Grandison from the government was attributed to their direct or indirect influence upon the king. When James Usher, then Bishop of Mieff, preached before his successor from the text, He Barith not the sword in vain, they were sufficiently formidable to compel him publicly to apologize for his violent illusions to their body. Perhaps, however, we should mainly see in the comparative toleration, extended by Lord Faulklin, an effect of the diplomacy then going on, for the marriage of Prince Charles to the Infanta of Spain. When, in 1623, Pope Gregory XV granted a dispensation for this marriage, James solemnly swore to, a private article of the Marriage Treaty, by which he bound himself to suspend the execution of the penal laws, to procure their appeal in Parliament, and to grant a toleration of Catholic worship in private houses. But the Spanish match was unexpectedly broken off, immediately after his decease, June 25, whereupon Charles married Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France. The new monarch inherited from his father three kingdoms, heaving in the throes of disaffectation and rebellion. In England the most formidable of the malcontents were the Puritans, who reckoned many of the First Nobility and the ablest members of the House of Commons among their chiefs. The restoration of Episcopacy, and the declaration by the subservient Parliament of Scotland, that no general assembly should be called without the King's sanction, had laid the sure foundations of a religious insurrection in the north, while the events, which we have already described, filled the minds of all orders of men in Ireland with agitation and alarm. The marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria gave array of assurance to the co-religionists of the young Queen, for they had not then discovered that it was ever the habit of the stewards to sacrifice their friends to the fear of their enemies. While he was yet celebrating his nuptials at Whitehall, surrounded by Catholic guests, the House of Commons presented Charles a pious petition, praying him to put into force the laws against recusants, a prayer which he was compelled by motives of policy to answer in the affirmative. The magistrates of England received orders accordingly, and when the King of France remonstrated against this flagrant breach of one of the articles of the Marriage Treaty, the same included in the terms of the Spanish match, Charles answered that he had never looked on the promised toleration as anything but an artifice to secure the papal dispensation. But the King's compliance failed to satisfy the Puritan Party in the House of Commons, and that same year began their contest with the Crown, which ended only on the scaffold before Whitehall in 1648. Of their twenty-three years' struggle, except insofar as it enters directly into our narrative, we shall have little to say, beyond reminding the reader, from time to time, that though it occasionally lulled down, it was never wholly elade on either side. Irish affairs in the long-continued suspension of the functions of Parliament were administered in general by the Privy Council, and in detail by three special courts, all established in defiance of ancient constitutional usage. These were the Court of Castle Chamber, modeled on the English Star Chamber, and the Ecclesiastical High Commissioner's Court, both dating from 1563, and the Court of wards and liveries, originally founded by Henry VIII, but lately remodeled by James. The Castle Chamber was composed of certain selected members of the Privy Council, acting in secret with absolute power. The High Commission Court was constituted under James and Charles of the principal archbishops and bishops, with the Lord Deputy, Chancellor, Chief Justice, Master of the Roles, Master of the Wards, and some others, laymen and jurists. They were armed with unlimited power to visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offenses, contempts, and enormities, as came under the head of spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. They were, in effect, the Castle Chamber, acting as a spiritual tribunal of last resort, and were provided with their own officers, registers, and receivers of fines, persuivants, criers, and jailers. The Court of wards exercised a jurisdiction, if possible, more repugnant to our notions of liberty than that of the High Commission Court. It retained its original power to bargain and sell the custody, wardship, and marriage of all the heirs of such persons of condition as died in the King's homage, but their powers, by royal letters patent of the year 1617, were to be exercised by a master of wards, with an attorney and surveyor, all nominated by the Crown. The Court was entitled to farm all the property of its wards during nonage, for the benefit of the Crown, taking one year's rent from heirs male and two from heirs female, for charges of stewardship. The First Master, Sir William Parsons, was appointed in 1622, and confirmed at the beginning of the next reign, with a salary of three hundred pounds per annum, and the right to rank next to the Chief Justice of the King's bench at the Privy Council. By this appointment the minor heirs of all the Catholic proprietors were placed, both as to person and property, at the absolute disposal of one of the most intense anti-Catholic bigots that ever appeared on the scene of Irish affairs. In addition to these civil grievances an order had lately been issued to increase the army in Ireland by five thousand men, and means of subsistence had to be found for that additional force within the kingdom. In reply to murmurs of the inhabitants, they were assured by Lord Falkland that the King was their friend, and that any just and temperate representation of their grievances would secure his careful and instant attention. So encouraged the leading Catholics convoked a general assembly of their nobility and gentry, with several Protestants of rank at Dublin in the year 1628, in order to present a dutiful statement of their complaints to the King. The minutes of this important assembly, it is to be feared, are forever lost to us. We only know that it included a large number of landed proprietors, of whom the Catholics were still a very numerous section. The entire proceedings of this assembly, says Dr. Taylor, were marked by wisdom and moderation. They drew up a number of articles in the nature of a Bill of Rights, to which they humbly solicited the royal assent, and promised that, on their being granted, they would raise a voluntary assessment of one hundred thousand pounds for the use of the crown. The principal articles in these graces, as they were called, were provisions for the security of property, the due administration of justice, the prevention of military exactions, the freedom of trade, the better regulation of the clergy, and the restraining of the tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts. Finally, they provided that the Scots, who had been planted in Ulster, should be seamed in their possessions, and a general pardon granted for all offenses. Agents were chosen to repair to England with this petition, and the assembly, hoping for the best results, adjourned. But the ultra- protestant party had taken the alarm, and convoked a Synod at Dublin to counteract the General Assembly. This Synod vehemently protested against selling truth as a slave, and establishing for a price idolatry in its stead. They laid it down as a dogma of their faith, that to grant to papus a toleration, or to consent that they may freely exercise their religion and profess their faith in doctrines, was a grievous sin, wherefore they prayed to God to make those in authority zealous, resolute, and courageous against all popery, superstition, and idolatry. This declaration of the extreme Protestants, including not only Usher and the principal bishops, but Chichester, Boyle, Parsons, and the most successful undertakers, all deeply imbued with Puritan notions, naturally found among their English brethren advocates and defenders. The king, who had lately for the third time renewed with France the articles of his marriage treaty, was placed in a most difficult position. He desired to save his own honor. He sorely needed the money of the Catholics, but he trembled before the compact, well-organized fanaticism of the Puritans. In his distress he had recourse to a counselor, who, since the assassination of Buckingham, his first favorite, divided with law the royal confidence. This was Thomas, Lord Wentworth, better known by his subsequent title of Earl of Strafford, a statesman born to be the wonder and the bane of three kingdoms. For such, for clearness, we must call him, boldly advise the king to grant the graces as his own personal act, to pocket the proposed subsidy, but to contrive that the promised concessions he was to make should never go into effect. This infamous deception was affected in this wise. The king signed, with his own hand, a schedule of fifty-one graces, and received from the Irish agents in London bonds for one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, equal to ten times the amount at present, to be paid in three annual installments of forty thousand pounds. He also agreed that Parliament should be immediately called in Ireland, to confirm these concessions, while at the same time he secretly instructed Lord Falkland to see that the rits of election were informally prepared, so that no Parliament could be held. This was accordingly done. The agents of the General Assembly paid their first installment. The subscribers held the king's autograph, their rits were issued, but on being returned were found to be technically incorrect, and so the legal confirmation of the graces was indefinitely postponed under one pretext or another. As evidence of the national demands at this period, we should add that besides the redress of minor grievances, the articles signed by the king provided that the recusants should be allowed to practice in the courts of law, to sue the livery of their lands out of the court of wards, on taking an oath of civil allegiance in lieu of the oath of supremacy, that the claims of the crown to the forfeiture of estates under the plea of defects of title should not be held to extend beyond sixty years, anterior to sixteen twenty-eight, that the undertakers should have time allowed them to fulfill the conditions of their leases, that the proprietors of cannot should be allowed to make a new enrolment of their estates, and that a Parliament should be held. A royal proclamation announced these concessions, as existing in the royal intention, but as we have already related, such promises proved to be worth no more than the paper on which they were written. In sixteen twenty-nine, Lord Falkland, to disarm the Puritan outcry against him, had leave to withdraw, and for four years, and unusually long into Regnum, the government was left in the hands of Robert Boyle, now Earl of Cork, and Adam Loftus, if I count Ely, one of the well-doward offspring of Queen Elizabeth's Archbishop of Dublin. Ely held the office of Lord Chancellor, and Cork that of High Lord Treasurer, as justices they now combined in their own persons almost all the power and patronage of the kingdom. Both affected a Puritan austerity and enthusiasm, which barely cloaked a rapacity and bigotry unequaled in any former administration. In Dublin, on St. Stephen's Day, sixteen twenty-nine, the Protestant Archbishop, Bulkley, and the Mayor of the City entered the Carmelite Chapel at the head of a file of soldiers, dispersed the congregation, desecrated the altar, and arrested the officiating friars. The persecution was then taken up and repeated wherever the executive power was strong enough to defy the popular indignation. A Catholic seminary, lately established in the capital, was confiscated and turned over to Trinity College as a training school. Fifteen religious houses, chiefly belonging to the Franciscan Order, which had hitherto escaped from the remoteness of their situation, were, by an Order of the English Council, confiscated to the Crown, and their novices compelled to emigrate in order to complete their studies abroad. A reprimand from the King somewhat stayed the fury of the Justices, whose supreme power ended with Stratford's appointment in sixteen thirty-three. The advent of Stratford was characterized of his whole course. The King sent over another letter concerning recusants, declaring that the laws against them, at the suggestion of the Lord's Justices, should be put strictly in force. The Justices proved unwilling to enter this letter on the council book, and it was accordingly withheld till Stratford's arrival, but the threat had the desired effect of drawing a voluntary contribution of twenty thousand pounds out of the alarmed Catholics. Equipped partly with this money, Stratford arrived in Dublin in July sixteen thirty-three, and entered at once on the policy, which he himself designated by the one emphatic word, thorough. He took up his abode in the castle, surrounded by a bodyguard, a force hitherto unknown at the Irish court. He summoned only a select number of the Privy Council, and having kept them waiting for hours, condescended to address them in a speech full of arrogance and menace. He declared his intention of maintaining and augmenting the army, advised them to amend their grants forthwith, and told them frankly he had called them to council, more out of courtesy than necessity, and ended by requiring from them a year's subsidy in advance. As this last request was accompanied by a positive promise to obtain the King's consent to the assembling of Parliament, it was at once granted, and soon after writs were issued for the meeting of both houses in July following. When this long prayed for Parliament at last met, the Lord Deputy took good care that it should be little else than a tribunal to register his edicts. A great many officers of the army had been chosen as burgesses, while the Sheriff of Counties were employed to secure the election of members favourable to the demands of the Crown. In the Parliament of 1613 the recusants were, admitting all the returns to be correct, nearly one-half, but in that of 1634 they could not have exceeded one-third. The Lord Deputy nominated their speaker, whom they did not dare to reject, and treated them invariably with the supreme contempt which no one knows so well how to exhibit towards a popular assembly as an apostate liberal. Surely, he said in his speech from the throne, so great a meanness cannot enter your hearts as once to suspect his Majesty's gracious regard of you and performance with you once you affix yourselves upon his grace. His object in this appeal was the sorted and commonplace one to obtain more money without rendering value for it. He accordingly carried through four whole subsidies of fifty thousand pounds sterling each in the session of 1634, and two additional subsidies of the same amount at the opening of the next session. The Parliament, having thus answered his purpose, was summarily dissolved in April 1635, and for four years more no other was called. During both sessions he had contrived, according to his agreement with the King, to postpone indefinitely the act which was to have confirmed the graces guaranteed in 1628. He even contrived to get a report of a committee of the House of Commons and the opinions of some of the judges against legislating on the subject at all, which report gave King Charles a great deal of contentment. With sufficient funds in hand for the ordinary expenses of the Government, Strafford applied himself earnestly to the self-elected task of making his Royal Master as absolute as any King in Christendom on the Irish side of the Channel. The plantation of Cannot, delayed by the late King's death and abandoned among the new King's graces, was resumed as a main engine of obtaining more money. The proprietary of that province had, in the thirteenth year of the late reign, paid £3,000 into the Record Office at Dublin for the registration of their deeds, but the entries not being made by the clerk employed, the title to every estate in the five western counties was now called into question. The commissioners to inquire into defective titles were let loose upon the devoted province, with Sir William Parsons at their head, and the King's title to the whole of Mayo, Sligo and Roscommon was found by packed, bribe or intimidated juries. The grand jury of Galway, having refused to find a similar verdict, were summoned to the Court of Castle Chamber, sentenced to pay a fine of £4,000 each to the Crown, and the sheriff that impaneled them a fine of £1,000. The lawyers who pleaded for the actual proprietors were stripped of their gowns, the sheriffs died in prison, and the work of spoilation proceeded. The young Earl of Ormond was glad to compound for a portion of his estates. The Earl of Kildare was committed to prison for refusing a similar composition. The Earl of Cork was compelled to pay a heavy fine for his intrusion into lands originally granted to the church. The oburns of Wicklow commuted for £15,000, and the London companies, for their dairy estates, paid no less than £70,000, a forced contribution for which those frugal citizens never forgave the thoroughgoing deputy. By these means and others less violent, such as bounties to the linen trade, he raised the annual revenue of the kingdom to £80,000 a year, and was enabled to embody for the King's service an army of 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse. These arbitrary measures were entirely in consonance with the wishes of Charles. In a visit to England in 1636, the King assured Straford personally of his cordial approbation of all he had done, encouraged him to proceed fearlessly in the same course, and conferred on him the higher rank of Lord Lieutenant. Three years later, on the first rumour of a Scottish invasion of England, Straford was enabled to remit his master £30,000 from the Irish Treasury, and to tender the services of the Anglo-Irish army, as he thought they could be safely dispensed with by the country in which they had been thus far recruited and maintained. CHAPTER III. Lord Straford's Impeachment and Execution. Parliament of 1639-41. The Insurrection of 1641. The Irish Abroad. The tragic end of the despot, whose administration we have sketched, was now rapidly approaching. When he deserted the popular ranks in the English House of Commons for a peerage and the Government of Ireland, the fearless Pym prophetically remarked, Though you have left us, I will not leave you while your head is on your shoulders. Yet, although conscious of having left able and vigilant enemies behind him in England, Straford proceeded in his Irish administration as if he scorned to conciliate the feelings or interests of any order of men. By the highest nobility, as well as the humblest of the mechanic class, his will was to be received as law, so that neither in church nor in state might any man express even the most guarded doubts as to its infallibility. Lord Mount Norris, for example, having dropped a casual and altogether innocent remark at the Chancellor's table on the private habits of the deputy, was brought to trial by court-martial on a charge of mutiny and sentenced to military execution. Though he was not actually put to death, he underwent a long and rigorous imprisonment, and at length was liberated without apology or satisfaction. If they were not so fully authenticated, the particulars of this outrageous case would hardly be creditable. The examples of resistance to arbitrary power, which for some years had been shown by both England and Scotland, were not thrown away upon the still-worse-used Irish. During the seven years of Straford's iron rule, Hampton had resisted the collection of ship-money, Cromwell had begun to figure in the House of Commons, the Sollum League and Covenant was established in Scotland, and the Scots had twice entered England in arms to seal with their blood, if need were, their opposition to an episcopal establishment of religion. It was in 1640, upon the occasion of their second invasion, that Straford was recalled from Ireland to assume command of the Royal Forces in the north of England. After a single indecisive campaign, the King entertained the overtures of the Covenanters, and the memorable long Parliament having met in November, one of its first acts was the impeachment of Straford for high crimes and misdemeanors. The chief articles against him related to his administration of Irish affairs, and were sustained by delegates from the Irish House of Commons, sent over for that purpose. The whole of the trial deserves to be closely examined by everyone interested in the constitutional history of England and Ireland. A third Parliament, known as the 14th, 15th and 16th of Charles I, met at Dublin on the 20th of March 1639, was prorogued till June and adjourned till October. Yielding the point so successfully resisted in 1613, its sittings were held in the castle, surrounded by the Vicerigal Guard. With one exception, the acts passed in its first session were of little importance, relating only to the allotment of glee-blans and the payment of 20th. The exception, which followed the voting of four entire subsidies to the King, was an act ordaining that this Parliament shall not determine by His Majesty's assent to this and other bills. A similar statute had been passed in 1635, but was wholly disregarded by Straford, who no doubt meant to take precisely the same course in the present instance. The members of this assembly have been severely condemned by modern writers for passing a high eulogism upon Straford in their first session and reversing it after his fall. But this censure is not well founded. The eulogism was introduced by the Castle Party and the Lords as part of the preamble to the Supply Bill, which on being returned in the Commons could only be rejected in Toto, not amended, a proceeding in the last degree revolutionary. But those who descended from that ingenious device at the next session of the House took care to have their protest entered on the journals and a copy of it dispatched to the King. This second proceeding took place in February 1640, and as the Lord Lieutenant was not arraigned till the month of November following, the usual denunciations of the Irish members are altogether undeserved. At no period of his fortune was the Earl more formidable as an enemy than at the very moment the protest against his manner of government was ordered to be entered among the ordinances of the Commons of Ireland. Nor did this Parliament confine itself to mere protestations against the abuses of executive power. At the very opening of its second session, on the 20th of January, they appointed a committee to wait on the King in England with instructions to solicit a bill in explanation of pointing's law, another enabling them to originate bills in committee of their own House, a right taken away by that law, and to ask the King's consent to the regulation of the courts of law, the collecting of the revenue, and the quartering of soldiers by statute instead of by orders and counsel. On the 16th of February the House submitted a set of queries to the judges, the nature of which may be inferred from the first question, vis, whether the subjects of this kingdom be a free people, and to be governed only by the common law of England and statutes passed in this kingdom. When the answers received were deemed insufficient, the House itself, turning the queries into the form of resolutions, proceeded to vote on them, one by one, affirming in every point the rights, the liberties, and the privileges of their constituents. The impeachment and attainer of Stratford occupied the great part of March and April 1641, and throughout those months the delegates from Ireland assisted in the pleadings in Westminster Hall and the debates in the English Parliament. The Houses at Dublin were themselves occupied in a similar manner. Towards the end of February articles of impeachment were drawn up against the Lord Chancellor, Bolton, Dr. Bramwell, Bishop of Derry, Chief Justice Louther, and Sir George Radcliffe, for conspiring with Stratford to subvert the Constitution and laws, and to induce an arbitrary and tyrannical government. In March the King's letter for the Continuance of Parliament was laid before the Commons, and on the 3rd of April his further letter, declaring that all his Majesty's subjects of Ireland shall, from henceforth, enjoy the benefit of the said graces of 1628, according to the true intent thereof. By the end of May the judges, not under impeachment, sent in their answers to the queries of the Commons, which answers were voted insufficient, and Mr. Patrick Darcy, member for Naven, was appointed to serve as Procolator at a conference with the Lords, held on the 9th of June, in the dining-room of the castle, in order to set forth the insufficiency of such replies. The learned and elaborate argument of Darcy was ordered to be printed by the House, and on the 26th of July, previous to their prerogation, they resolved unanimously that the subjects of Ireland were a free people to be governed only by the common law of England and statutes made and established in the Kingdom of Ireland, and according to the lawful custom used in the same. This was the last act of this memorable session, the great Northern insurrection in October having, of course, prevented subsequent sessions from being held. The constitutional agitators in modern times have been apt to select their examples of a wise and patriotic parliament, conduct from the opposition to the act of union, and the famous struggles of the last century. But whoever has looked into such records as remained to us of the 15th and 16th of Charles I, and the debates on the impeachment of Lord Chancellor Bolton, will, in my opinion, be prepared to admit, that at no period whatever was constitutional law more ably expounded in Ireland than in the sessions of 1640 and 1641, and that not only the principles of Swift and Mullenew had a triumph in 1782, but the older doctrines also of Sir Ralph Kelly, Audley Mervin, and Patrick Darcy. Strafford's deputy, Sir Christopher Wandsford, having died before the close of 1640, the King appointed Robert, Lord Dillon, a liberal Protestant, and Sir William Parsons, Lord Justices. But the pressure of Puritan influence in England compelled him in a short time to remove Dillon and substitute Sir John Borlus, Master of the Ordinance, a mere soldier, in point of fanaticism of fitting colleague for Parsons. The prorogation of parliament soon gave these administrators opportunities to exhibit the spirit in which they proposed to carry on the government. When, at a public entertainment in the capital, Parsons openly declared that in twelve months more no Catholic should be seen in Ireland, it was naturally inferred that the Lord Justice spoke not merely for himself, but for the growing party of the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters. The latter had repeatedly avowed that they never would lay down their arms until they had wrought the extirpation of Popery, and Mr. Pym, the Puritan leader in England, had openly declared that his party intended not to leave a priest in Ireland. The infatuation of the unfortunate Charles in entrusting at such a moment the supreme power, civil and military, to two of the devoted partisans of his deadliest enemies, could not fail to arouse the fears of all who felt themselves obnoxious to the fanatical party, either by race or by religion. The aspirations of the chief men among the old Irish for entire freedom of worship, their hopes of recovering at least a portion of their estates, the example of the Scots, who had successfully upheld both their church and the nation against all attempts at English supremacy, the dangers that pressed, and the fears that overhung them, drove many of the very first abilities and noblest characters into the conspiracy which exploded with such terrific energy on the 23rd of October, 1641. The project, though matured on Irish soil, was first conceived among the exiled Catholics, who were to be found at that day in all the schools and camps of Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands. Philip III had an Irish legion under the command of Henry O'Neill, son of Tyrone, which after his death was transferred to his brother John. In this legion Owen Rowe O'Neill, nephew of Tyrone, learned the art of war and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The number of Irish serving abroad had steadily increased after 1628, when a license of enlistment was granted by King James. An English emissary, evidently well informed, was enabled to report, about the year 1630, that there were in the service of the Archduchess Isabella in the Spanish Netherlands alone, 100 Irish officers able to command companies and 20 fit-to-be colonels. The names of many others are given as men of noted courage, good engineers and well-beloved captains, both Malaysians and Anglo-Irish, residing at Lisbon, Florence, Milan and Naples. The emissary adds that they had long been providing arms for an attempt upon Ireland, and had, in readiness, five or six thousand arms laid up in Antwerp for that purpose, bought out of the deduction of their monthly pay. After the death of the Archduchess in 1633, an attempt was made by the Franco-Dutch, under Prince Maurice and Marshal Chatalon, to separate the Belgian provinces from Spain. In the Sanguinary Battle at Avien, victory declared for the French, and on their junction with Prince Maurice, town after town, surrendered to their arms. The first successful stand against them was made at Louven, defended by four thousand Belgians, Walloons, Spaniards and Irish. The Irish, one thousand strong, under the command of Colonel Preston, of the Gormonston family, greatly distinguished themselves. The siege was raised on the 4th of July, 1635, and Belgium was saved for that time to fill up the fourth. At the capture of Breda, in 1637, the Irish were again honourably conspicuous, and yet more so in the successful defence of Eres, the capital of Artois, three years later. Not strengthened by the citadel of Vauban, this ancient Burgundian city, famous for its cathedral and its manufacturers, dear to the Spaniards as one of the conquests of Charles V, was a vital point in the campaign of 1640. Besieged by the French, under Marshal Millery, it held out for several weeks under the command of Colonel Owen Rowe O'Neill. The king of France, lying at Amiens, within convenient distance, took care that the besiegers wanted for nothing, while the Prince Cardinal, Ferdinand, the successor of the Archduchess in the government, marched to its relief at the head of his main force with the imperialists, under Launboy, and the troops of the Duke of Lorraine, commanded by that prince in person. In an attack on the French lines the Allies were beaten off with loss, and the brave commander was left again unsuckered in the face of his powerful assailant. Subsequently, Don Philippe de Silva, general of the horse to the Prince Cardinal, was dispatched to its relief, but failed to affect anything, a failure for which he was court-martialed but acquitted. The defenders, after exhausting every resource, finally surrendered the place on honourable terms, and marched out covered with glory. These stirring events, chronicled in prose and verse at home, rekindled the martial ardour which had slumbered since the disastrous day of Kinsel. In the ecclesiastics who shared their banishment, the military exiles had a voluntary diplomatic corps, who lost no opportunity of advancing the common cause. At Rome, their chief agent was Father Luke Wadding, founder of St. Isidore's, one of the most eminent theologians and scholars of his age. Through the friendship of Gregory XV and Urban VIII, many Catholic princes became deeply interested in the religious wars which the Irish of the previous ages had so bravely waged, and which their descendants were now so anxious to renew. Cardinal Richelieu, who wielded a power greater than that of kings, had favourably entertained a project of invasion submitted to him by the son of Hugh O'Neill, a chief who, while living, was naturally regarded by the exiles as their future leader. To prepare the country for such an invasion, if the return of men to their own country can be called by that name, it was necessary to find an agent with talents for organisation and an undoubted title to credibility and confidence. This agent was fortunately found in the person of Rory or Roger O'More, the representative of the ancient chiefs of Lex, who had grown up at the Spanish court as the friend and companion of the O'Neill's. O'More was then in the prime of life, of handsome person and most seductive manners. His knowledge of character was profound, his zeal for the Catholic cause intense, his personal probity, honour and courage, undoubted. The precise state of O'More's arrival in Ireland is not given in any of the contemporary reports, but he seems to have been resident in the country some time previous to his appearance in public life, as he is familiarly spoken of by his English contemporaries as Mr. Roger Moore of Ballinag. During the parliamentary session of 1640, he took lodgings in Dublin, where he succeeded in enlisting to his plans Conor McGuire, Lord Inniskellen, Philip O'Reilly, one of the members for the county of Coven, Costello McMahon, and Thor Lungeniel, all persons of great influence in Ulster. During the ensuing assizes in the northern province, he visited several country towns, where in the crowd of suitors and defendants he could, without attracting special notice, meet and converse with those he desired to gain over. On this tour, he received the important accession of Sir Philham O'Neill of Canard, in Tyrone, Sir Con McGuinness of Down, Colonel Hugh McMahon of Monaghan, and Dr. Heber McMahon, administrator of Clogger. Sir Philham O'Neill, the most considerable man of his name tolerated in Ulster, was looked upon as the greatest acquisition, and at his castle of Canard his associates from the neighboring counties, under a variety of pretexts, contrived frequently to meet. From Ulster, the Indefatagable O'more carried the threads of the conspiracy into Canard with equal success, finding both among the nobility and clergy many adherents. In Lester, among the Anglo-Irish, he experienced the greatest timidity and indifference, but an unforeseen circumstance threw into his hands a powerful lever to move that province. This was the permission granted by the king to the native regiments, embodied by Strafford, to enter the Spanish service, if they so desired. His English parliament made no demure to the arrangement, which would rid the island of some thousands of disciplined Catholics, but several of their officers, under the inspiration of O'more, kept their companies together, delaying their departure from month to month. Among these were Sir James Dillon, Colonel Plunkett, Colonel Byrne, and Captain Fox, who with O'more formed the first directing body of the Confederates in Lester. In May 1641, Captain Neil O'Neill arrived from the Netherlands with an urgent request from John, Earl of Tyrone, to all his clansmen to prepare for a general insurrection. He also brought them the cheering news that Cardinal Richelieu, then at the summit of his greatness, had promised the exiles arms, money, and means of transport. He was sent back almost immediately with the reply of Sir Phelan O'more and their friends that they would be prepared to take the field a few days before or after the Festival of All Hallows, the 1st of November. The death of Earl John, the last surviving son of the illustrious Tyrone shortly afterwards, though it grieved the Confederates, wrought no change in their plans. In his Cousin Germain, the distinguished defender of Arras, they were posed equal confidence, and their confidence could not have been more worthily bestowed. The plan agreed upon by the Confederates included four main features. 1. A rising after the harvest was gathered in, and a campaign during the winter months, when supplies from England were most difficult to be obtained by their enemies. 2. A simultaneous attack on one in the same day or night on all the fortresses within reach of their friends. 3. To surprise the Castle of Dublin, which was said to contain arms for twelve thousand men. 4. Aid in officers, munitions, and money from abroad. All the details of this project were carried successfully into effect, except the seizure of Dublin Castle, the most difficult as it would have been the most decisive blow to strike. Towards the end of August, a meeting of those who could most conveniently attend was held in Dublin. There were present O'more and McGuire, of the civilians, and Colonel's Plunkett, Byrne, and McMahon of the Army. At this meeting the last week of October, or first of November, was fixed upon as the time to rise. Subsequently Saturday the twenty-third of the first named month, a market day in the capital, was selected. The northern movements were to be arranged with Sir Philharmoniel, while McMahon, Plunkett, and Byrne, with two hundred picked men, were to surprise the Castle Guard, consisting only of a few pensioners and forty halbiters, turned the guns upon the city to intimidate the Puritan Party, and thus make sure of Dublin. O'more, Lord McGuire, and other civilians were to be in town in order to direct the next steps to be taken. As the day approached the arrangements went on with perfect secrecy, but with perfect success. On the twenty-second of October half the chosen band were in waiting, and the remainder were expected in during the night. Some hundreds of persons, in and about Dublin, and many thousands throughout the country, must have been in possession of that momentous secret, yet it was by the mere accident of trusting a drunken dependent out of sight that the first knowledge of the plot was conveyed to the Lord's justices on the very eve of its execution. Owen O'Connelly, the informant on this occasion, was one of those ruffling squires or henchmen who accompanied gentlemen of fortune in that age to take part in their quarrels and carry their confidential messages. That he was not an ordinary domestic servant we may learn from the fact of his carrying a sword after the custom of the class to which we have assigned him. At this period he was in the service of Sir John Clotworthy, one of the most violent of the Puritan undertakers, and had conformed to the established religion. Through what recklessness or ignorance of his true character he came to be invited by Colonel Hugh McMahon to his lodgings, and there, on the evening of the twenty-second, entrusted with a knowledge of the next day's plans, we have now no means of deciding. O'Connelly's information, as tendered to the justices, states that on hearing of the proposed attack on the castle he pretended an occasion to withdraw, leaving his sword in McMahon's room to avoid suspicion, and that after jumping over fences and palings he made his way from the north side of the city to Sir William Parsons at the castle. Parsons at first discredited the tale, which O'Connelly, who was in liquor, told in a confused and rambling manner, but he finally decided to consult his colleague, Borlaze, by whom some of the council were summoned. The witness's deposition taken down, orders issued to double the guard, and officers dispatched, who arrested McMahon at his lodgings. When McMahon came to be examined before the council it was already the morning of the twenty-third. He boldly avowed his own part in the plot, and declared that what was that day to be done was now beyond the power of man to prevent. He was committed, close prisoner to the castle where he had hoped to command, and search was made for the other leaders in town. Maguire was captured the next morning, and shared McMahon's captivity, but O'more, Plunkett, and Byrne succeeded in escaping out of the city. O'Connelly was amply rewarded in lands and money, and we hear of him once afterwards with the title of Colonel in the Parliamentary Army. As McMahon had declared to the Justices, the rising was now beyond the power of man to prevent. In Ulster, by strategy, surprise, or force, the forts of Charmont and Montjoy, and the town of Dunganon, were seized on the night of the twenty-second by Sir Philharmoniel or his lieutenants. On the next day, Sir Connor McGinnis took the town of Neury, the McMahon's possessed themselves of Carrick Macross and Castle Blaney, the Ohanlon's Tandrigui, while Philip O'Reilly and Roger McGuire raised Cavern and Fermanon. A proclamation of the northern leaders appeared the same day, dated from Dunganon, setting forth their true intent and meaning to be, not hostility to His Majesty the King, nor to any of his subjects, neither English nor Scotch, but only for the defence and liberty of our cells and the Irish natives of this kingdom. A more elaborate manifesto appeared shortly afterwards from the pen of Rory O'More, in which the oppression of the Catholics for Conscience's stake were detailed. The King's intended graces acknowledged, and their frustration by the malice of the Puritan Party exhibited. It also endeavored to show that a common danger threatened the Protestants of the Episcopal Church with Roman Catholics, and asserted in the strongest terms the devotion of the Catholics to the Crown. In the same politic and tolerant spirit, Sir Connor McGinnis wrote from Neury on the twenty-fifth to the officer's command to get down. We are, he wrote, for our lives and liberties. We desire no blood to be shed, but if you mean to shed our blood, be sure we shall be as ready as you for that purpose. This threat of retaliation, so customary in all wars, was made on the third day of the rising, and refers wholly to future contingencies. The monstrous fiction which were afterwards circulated of a wholesale massacre committed on the twenty-third were not as yet invented, nor does any public document or private letter, written in Ireland in the last week of October or during the first days of November, so much is allude to those tales of blood and horror, afterwards so industriously circulated and so greedily swallowed. Fully aroused from their lethargy by McMahon's declaration, the Lord's justices acted with considerable vigor. Dublin was declared to be in a state of siege, courts-martial were established, arms were distributed to the Protestant citizens and some Catholics, and all strangers were ordered to quit the city under pain of death. Sir Francis Willoughby, Governor of Galway, who arrived on the night of the twenty-second, was entrusted with the command of the castle. Sir Charles Coot was appointed military governor of the city, and the Earl, afterwards Duke of Orman, was summoned from Carrick on Sur to take command of the army. As Coot played a very conspicuous part in the opening scenes of this war, and Orman till its close, it may be well to describe them both, more particularly to the reader. Sir Charles Coot, one of the first baronettes of Ireland, like Parsons, Boyle, Chichester, and other Englishmen, had come over to Ireland during the war against Tyrone in quest of fortune. His first employments were in Cannot, where he filled the offices of Provost, Marshal, and Vice-General in the reign of James I. His success as an undertaker entitles him to rank with the fortunate adventurers we have mentioned. In Roscommon, Sligo, Letrim, Queens, and other counties, his possessions and privileges raised him to the rank of the richest subjects of his time. In 1640 he was a colonel of Foote, with the estates of a prince and the habits of a provost, Marshal. His reputation for ferocious cruelty has survived the remembrance even of his successful plunder of other people's property. Before the campaigns of Cromwell, there was no better synonym for wanton cruelty than the name of Sir Charles Coot. James Butler, Earl, Marquise, and Duke of Orman deservedly ranks among the principal statesmen of his time. During a public career of more than half a century, his conduct in many eminent offices of trust was distinguished by supreme ability, life-long firmness, and consistency. As a courtier of the House of Stuart, it was impossible that he should have served and satisfied both Charles' without participating in many indefensible acts of government and originating some of them. Yet judged not from the Irish but the imperial point of view, not by an abstract standard but by the public morality of his age, he will be found fairly deserving of the title of the Great Duke bestowed on him during his lifetime. When summoned by the Lord Justices to their assistance in 1641, he was in the thirty-first year of his age, and had so far only distinguished himself in political life as the friend of the late Lord Strafford. He had, however, the good fortune to restore in his own persons the estates of his family, notwithstanding that they were granted in great part to others by King James. His attachment to the cause of King Charles was very naturally augmented by the fact that the partiality of that prince, and his ill-fated favorite, had enabled him to retrieve both hereditary wealth and high political influence, which formerly belonged to the Orman butlers. Such an ally was indispensable to the Lord's Justices in the first panic of the insurrection, but it was evident to near-observers that Orman, a loyalist and a churchman, could not long act in concert with such devoted Puritans as Parsons, Borleys, and Coot. The military position of the several parties, there were at least three, when Orman arrived at Dublin, in the first week of November, may be thus stated. One, in Munster and Canot there was but a single troop of royal horse, each left as a guard with the respective presidents, St. Ledger and Willoughby, in Kilkenny, Dublin, and other of the Midland Counties. The gentry, Protestant, and Catholic were relied on to raise volunteers for their own defense. In Dublin there had been got-together fifteen hundred old troops, six new regiments of foot were embodied, and thirteen volunteer companies of one hundred each. In the castle were arms and ammunition for twelve thousand men, with a fine train of field artillery, provided by Strafford for his campaign in the north of England. Orman, as Lieutenant-General, had thus at his disposal, in one fortnight after the insurrection broke out, from eight thousand to ten thousand well-appointed men. His advice was to take the field at once against the northern leaders before the other provinces became equally inflamed. But his judgment was overruled by the justices, who had only consent, while awaiting their cue from the long parliament, to throw reinforcements into Drugheada, which thus became their outpost towards the north. Two. In Ulster there still remained in the possession of the undertakers Ineskellen, Denny, the castles of Killegg and Croen in Cavern, Lisburn, Belfast, and the stronghold of Carat-Fergus, garrisoned by the regiments of Colonel Chichester and Lord Conway. King Charles, who was at Edinburgh, endeavoring to conciliate the Scottish Parliament when news of the Irish rising reached him, procured the instant dispatch of fifteen hundred men to Ulster, and authorized Lord Chichester, Artis, and Clandiboy to raise new regiments from among their own tenets. The force thus embodied, which may be called from its prevailing element the Scottish army, cannot have numbered less than five thousand foot, and the proportionate number of horse. Three. The Irish in the field by the first of November are stated in round numbers at thirty thousand men in the northern counties alone, but the whole number supplied with arms and ammunition could not have reached one-third of that nominal total. Before the surprise of Charlemont and Montjoy forts, Sir Philharmoniel had but a barrel or two of gunpowder. The stores of those forts, with seventy barrels taken at Neury by McGuinness, and all the arms captured in the simultaneous attack, which at the outside could not well exceed four thousand or five thousand stand, constituted their entire equipment. One of Ormond's chief reasons for an immediate campaign in the north was to prevent them having time to get pikes made, which shows their deficiency even in that weapon. Besides this defect there was one, if possible, still more serious. Sir Philharmoniel was a civilian, bred to the profession of the law. Rory O'More also had never seen service, and although Colonel Owen O'Neill and others had promised to join them at fourteen days' notice, a variety of accidents prevented the arrival of any officer of distinction during the brief remainder of that year. Sir Philharmoniel, however, boldly assumed the title of Lord General of the Catholic Army in Ulster, and the still more popular title with the Gaelic-speaking population of the O'Neill. The projected winter campaign, after the first week's successes, did not turn out favorably for the northern insurgents. The beginning of November was marked by the barbarous slaughter committed by the Scottish garrison of Carrick-Fergus in the island McGee. Three thousand persons are said to have been driven into the fathomless North Sea, over the cliffs of that island, or to have perished by the sword. The ordinary inhabitants could not have exceeded one-tenth as many, but the presence of so large a number may be accounted for by the supposition that they had fled from the mainland across the peninsula, which is left dry at low water, and were pursued to their last refuge by the infuriated covenanters. From this state forward, until the accession of Owen Rowe O'Neill to the command, the Northern War assumed a ferocity of character foreign to the nature of O'More, O'Reilly, and McGuinness. That Sir Phelan permitted, if he did not sometimes in his gusts of stormy passion instigate, those acts of cruelty which have stained his otherwise honourable conduct is too true, but he stood alone among his confederates in that crime, and that crime stands alone in his character. Brave to rashness and disinterested to excess, few rebel chiefs ever made a more heroic end out of a more deplorable beginning. The Irish Parliament, which was to have met on the sixteenth of November, was indefinitely prorogued by the Lord's Justices, who preferred to act only with their chosen quorum of privy counsellors. The Catholic Lords of the Pale, who at first had arms granted for their retainers out of the public's doors, were now summoned to surrender them by a given day, an insult not to be forgiven. Lord Stillen and Toff, then deputies to the King, were seized at where by the English Puritans, their papers taken from them and themselves imprisoned. O'More, whose clansmen had recovered Dunmayes and other strongholds in his ancient patrimony, was still indefectagable in his propaganda among the Anglo-Irish. By his advice, Sir Phelan marched to besiege Dragheda at the head of his tumultuous bands. On the way southward he made an unsuccessful attack upon Lisburn, where he lost heavily. On the twenty-fourth of November he took possession of Meliphante Abbey, from whose gate the aged Tyrone had departed in tears twenty-five years before. From Meliphante he proceeded to invest Dragheda, Colonel Plunkett, with the title of general, being the sole experienced officer as yet engaged in his ranks. A strongly walled town as Dragheda was, well manned and easily accessible from the sea, cannot be carried without guns and engineers by any amount of physical courage. Whenever the Catholics were fairly matched in the open field, they were generally successful, as at Julianstown, during the siege where one of their detachment cut off five of six companies marching from Dublin to reinforce the town. But though the investment was complete, the vigilant Governor, Sir Henry Titchburn, successfully repulsed the assailants. Omar, who lay between Ardee and Dundalk with a reserve of two thousand men, found time during the siege to continue his natural career, that of a diplomatist. The Puritan party, from the Lord Justice downward, were indeed every day hastening that union of Catholics of all origins, which the founder of the Confederacy so ardently desired to bring about. Their avowed maxim was that the more men rebelled, the more estates there would be to confiscate. In Munster their chief instruments were the aged Earl of Cork, still insatiable as ever for other men's possessions, and the President St. Ledger. In Lenster Sir Charles Coot. Lord Cork prepared eleven hundred indictments against men of property in his province, which he sent to the Speaker of the Long Parliament, with an urgent request that they might be returned to him, with authority to proceed against the parties named as outlaws. In Lenster four thousand similar indictments were found in the course of two days by the free use of the rack with witnesses. Sir John Reed, an officer of the King's Bedchamber, and Mr. Barnwall of Kilbrew, a gentleman of three score and six, were among those who underwent the torture. When these were the proceedings of the tribunals in peaceable cities, we may imagine what must have been the excesses of the soldiery in the open country. In the south Sir William St. Ledger directed a series of murderous raids upon the peasantry of Cork, which at length produced their natural effect. Lord Muscari and other leading recusants, who had offered their services to maintain the peace of the province, were driven by an insulting refusal to combine for their own protection. The eleven hundred indictments of Lord Cork soon swelled their ranks, and the capture of the ancient city of Casual by Philip O'Dwyer announced the insurrection of the south. Waterford, soon after, opened its gates to Colonel Edmund Butler, Wetzford declared for the Catholic cause, and Kilkenny surrendered to Lord Mount Garrett. In Wicklow, Coot's troopers committed murders such as had not been equaled since the days of the pagan Northmen. Little children were carried aloft writhing on the pikes of these barbarians, whose worthy commander confessed that he liked such frolics. Neither age nor sex was spared, and an ecclesiastic was especially certain of instant death. Fathers Higgins and White of Nass in Kildare were given up by Coot to these lambs, though each had been granted a safe conduct by his superior officer, Lord Ormond. And these murders were taking place at the very time when the Franciscans and Jesuits of Casual were protecting Dr. Pullin, the Protestant Chancellor of that Cathedral and other Protestant prisoners. While also the Castle of Clow Outer in Cavan, the residence of Bishop Bettle was crowded with Protestant fugitives, all of whom were carefully guarded by the chivalrous Philip O'Reilly. At length the Catholic lords of the pale began to feel the general glow of an outraged people, too long submissive under every species of provocation. The lords' justices having summoned them to attend in Dublin on the 8th of December, they met at Swords, at the safe distance of seven miles, and sent by letter their reasons for not trusting themselves in the capital. To the allegations in this letter the justices replied by proclamation, denying most of them, and repeating their summons to lords Fingle, Gormonston, Slane, Dunsonny, Nutterville, Louth and Trimmelston to attend in Dublin on the 17th. But before the 17th came, as if to ensure the defeat of their own summons, Coote was let loose upon the flourishing villages of Fingle, and the flames kindled by his men might easily be discovered from the round tower of Swords. On the 17th the summoned lords, with several of the neighboring gentry, met by appointment on the hill of Crofty in the neighboring county of Mied. While they were engaged in discussing the best course to be taken, a party of armed men on horseback, accompanied by a guard of musketeers was seen approaching. They proved to be O'more, O'Reilly, Cosolomec Man, brother of the prisoner, Colonel Byrne, and Captain Fox. Lord Gormonston, advancing in front of his friends, demanded of the newcomers why they came armed into the pale, to which O'more made answer that the ground of their coming thither was for the freedom and liberty of their consciences, and maintenance of his majesty's prerogative, in which they understood he was bridged, and the making the subjects of this kingdom as free as those of England. Lord Gormonston, after consulting a few moments with his friends, replied, Seeing these be your true ends, we will likewise join with you. The leaders then embraced, amid the acclamations of their followers, and the general conditions of then, Union having been unanimously agreed upon, a warrant was drawn out authorizing the Sheriff of Mied to summon the gentry of the county to a final meeting at the hill of Terra on the 24th of December. End of Chapter 4. Read by Cibella Denton. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 5. Of Popular History of Ireland, Book 9 by Thomas Starcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 5. The Catholic Confederation. Its civil government and military establishment. How a tumultuous insurrection grew into a national organization, with a senate, executive, treasury, army, ships, and diplomacy, we are now to describe. It may, however, be assumed throughout the narrative that the success of the new confederacy was quite as much to be attributed to the perverse policy of its enemies as to the councils of its best leaders. The rising in the Midlands and Munster counties, and the formal adhesion of the Lords of the Pale, were two of the principal steps towards the end. A third was taken by the bishops of the province of Armog, assembled in provincial synod at Kells, on the 22nd of March, 1642, where, with the exception of Diece of Miethe, they unanimously pronounced the war just and lawful. After solemnly condemning all acts of private vengeance, and all those who usurped other men's estates, this provincial meeting invited a national synod to meet at Kilkenny on the 10th day of May following. On that day accordingly, all the prelates then in the country, with the exception of Bishop Diece, met at Kilkenny. There were present O'Reilly, Archbishop of Armog, Butler, Archbishop of Casual, O'Keeley, Archbishop of Tom, David Roth, the venerable Bishop of Ossary, the bishops of Clonfert, Elphin, Waterford, Lismore, Kildare, and Down and Conner, the Proctors of Dublin, Limerick, and Kililow, with sixteen other dignitaries and heads of religious orders, in all, twenty-nine prelates and superiors, or their representatives. The most remarkable attendants were, considering the circumstances of their province, the prelates of Connaught. Strafford's reign of terror was still painfully remembered west of the Shannon, and the immense family influence of Ulrich Burke, then Earl, and afterwards Marquis of Clonrecard was exerted to prevent the adhesion of the western population to the Confederacy. But the zeal of the Archbishop of Tom, and the violence of the Governor Galway, Sir Francis Willoughby, proved more than a counter-poise for the authority of Clonrecard and the recollection of Strafford. Connaught, though the last to come into the Confederation, was also the last to abandon it. The Synod of Kilkenny proceeded with the utmost solemnity and anxiety to consider the circumstances of their own and the neighbouring kingdoms. No equal number of men could have been found in Ireland at that day with an equal amount of knowledge of foreign and domestic politics. Many of them had spent years upon the Continent, while the French Huguenots had held their one hundred cautionary towns and leagues and associations where the ordinary instruments of popular resistance in the Netherlands and Germany. Nor were the advance transpiring in the neighbouring island unknown or unwayed by that grave assembly. The true meaning and intent of the Scottish and English insurrections were by this time apparent to everyone. The previous months had been especially fertile in events, calculated to rouse their most serious apprehensions. In March the King fled from London to York. In April the gates of Hull were shut in his face by Hotham, its Governor, and in May the Long Parliament voted a levy of sixteen thousand without the Royal Authority. The Earl of Warwick had been appointed to the Parliamentary Commander of the Fleet in the Earl of Essex, their Lord General, with Cromwell as one of his captains. From that hour it was evident the sword alone could decide between Charles and his subjects. In Scotland, too, events were occurring in which Irish Catholics were vitally interested. The contest for the leadership of the Scottish Royalists between the Marquises of Hamilton and Montrose had occupied the early months of the year and given their enemies of the Kirk and the Assembly full time to carry on their correspondence with the English Puritans. In April all parties in Scotland agreed in dispatching affords of twenty-five hundred men under the memorable Major Monroe for the protection of the Scottish settlers in Ulster. On the fifteenth of that month this officer landed at Carrot-Fergus, which was given up to him by agreement, with the Royalist Colonel Chichester. The fortress, which was by much the strongest in that quarter, continued for six years the headquarters of the Scottish General, with whom we shall have occasion to meet again. The State of Anglo-Irish Affairs was for some months one of disorganization and confusion. In January and February the King had been frequently induced to denounce by proclamation his Irish rebels. He had offered the Parliament to lead their reinforcements in person, had urged the sending of arms and men, and had repeatedly declared that he would never consent to tolerate popery in that country. He had failed to satisfy his enemies by these profuse professions had dishonored himself and disgusted many who were far from being hostile to his person or family. Parsons and borleys were still continued in the government, and Coot was entrusted by them, on all possible occasions, with a command distinct from that of Armand. Having proclaimed the Lords of the Pale rebels for refusing to trust their persons within the walls of Dublin, Coot was employed during January to destroy swords, their place of rendezvous, and to ravage the estates of their adherents in that neighbourhood. In the same month eleven hundred veterans arrived at Dublin under Sir Simon Harcourt. Early in February arrived Sir Richard Grenville with four hundred horse, and soon after Lieutenant Colonel George Mug, afterwards Duke of Abimarl, with Lord Lester's Regiment fifteen hundred strong. Up to this period Armand had been restrained by the Justices, who were as timid as they were cruel, to operations within an easy march of Dublin. He had driven the O'Mores and their allies out of Noss. He had reinforced some garrisons and killed air. He had broken up, though not without much loss, an entrenched camp of the O'Burns at Kill Salgan Wood, on the borders of Dublin. At last the Justices felt secure enough, at the beginning of March, to allow him to march to the relief of Drogheda. Sir Philharmoniel had invested the place for more than three months, had been twice repulsed from its walls, made a last desperate attempt towards the end of February, but with no better success. After many lives were lost, the impetuous lawyer's soldier was obliged to retire, and on the eighth of March, hearing of Orman's approach at the head of four thousand fresh troops, he hastily retreated northward. On receiving this report, the Justices recalled Orman to the capital. Sir Henry Titchburn and Lord Moore were dispatched with a strong force, on the rear of the Ulster forces, and drove them out of R.D. and Dundalk, the latter after a sharp action. The march of Orman into M'eth had, however, been productive of offers of submission from many of the Gentry of the Pale, who attended the meetings at Crofty and Terra. Lord Dunseny and Sir John Netterville actually surrendered on the Earl's Guarantee, and were sent to Dublin. Lords Gormonston, Netterville, and Slain offered by letter to follow their example, but the two former were, on reaching the city, thrust into the dungeons of the castle, by order of the Justices, and the proposals of the latter were rejected with contumily. About the same time the long parliament passed an act declaring two million five hundred thousand acres of the property of Irish recusants forfeited to the state, and guaranteeing to all English adventurers contributing to the expenses of the war, and all soldiers serving in it, grants of land in proportion to their service and contribution. This act, and a letter from Lord Essex, the Parliamentarian Commander-in-Chief, recommending the transportation of captured recusants to the West Indian colonies, effectually put a stop to these negotiations. In Ulster, by the end of April, there were nineteen thousand troops, regulars and volunteers, in the garrison or in the field. Neury was taken by Monroe and Chichester, where eighty men and women and two priests were put to death. McGuinness was obliged to abandon down, and McMahon Monahan, Sir Philham, was driven to burn Armagh and Dungannon, and to take his last stand at Charlemont. In a severe action with Sir Robert and Sir William Stewart, he had displayed his usual courage with better than his usual fortune, which perhaps we may attribute to the presence with him of Sir Alexander MacDonald, brother to Lord Antrim, the famous Kalkiddo of the Irish and Scottish Wars. But the severest defeat which the Confederates had was in the heart of Lenster, at the Hamlet of Kilrush, within four miles of Athe. Lord Orman, returning from a second reinforcement of Nass and other Kildare forts, at the head by English account of four thousand men, found on the thirteenth of April the Catholics of the Midland Counties, under Lords Montgarit, Icaron and Dunboyne, Sir Morgan Kavanaugh, Rory O'More and Hugh O'Burn, drawn up by his report, eight thousand strong, to dispute his passage. With Orman were the Lord Dillon, Lord Brabazon, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Charles Coot, and Sir T. Lucas. The combat was short but murderous. The Confederates left seven hundred men, including Sir Morgan Kavanaugh and some other officers dead on the field. The remainder retreated in order, and Orman, with an inconsiderable diminution of numbers, returned in triumph to Dublin. For this victory the long Parliament, in a moment of enthusiasm, voted the Lieutenant General a jewel worth five hundred pounds. If any satisfaction could be derived from such an incident, the violent death of their most ruthless enemy, Sir Charles Coot, might have afforded the Catholics some consolation. That merciless sabreur, after the combat at Kilrush, had been employed in reinforcing beer, and relieving the castle of Gishel, which the Lady Laetitia of Uffaly held against the neighbouring trite of Odentsey. On his return from this service he made a foray against a Catholic force, which had mustered in the neighbourhood of Trim. Here, on the night of the 7th of May, heading a sally of his troop, he fell by a musket shot, not without suspicion of being fired from his own ranks. His son in namesake, who imitated him in all things, was ennobled at the restoration by the title of the Earl of Montroth. In Munster, the President St. Ledger, though lately reinforced by one thousand men from England, did not consider himself strong enough for other than occasional forays into the neighbouring county, and little was affected in that province. Such was the condition of affairs at home and abroad when the National Synod assembled at Kilkenny. As the most popular tribunal invested with the highest moral power in the kingdom, it was their arduous task to establish order and authority among the chaotic elements of the Revolution. By the admission of those most opposed to them, they conducted their deliberations for nearly three weeks with equal prudence and energy. The first, on the motion of the venerable Bishop Roth, framed an oath of association to be publicly taken by all their adherents, by the first part of which they were bound to bear true faith and allegiance to King Charles and his lawful successors, to maintain the fundamental laws of Ireland, the free exercise of the Roman Catholic faith and religion. By the second part of this oath, all Confederate Catholics, for so they were to be called, as solemnly bound themselves never to accept or submit to any peace without the consent and approbation of the General Assembly of the said Confederate Catholics. They then proceeded to make certain constitutions, declaring the war just and lawful, condemning emulations and distinctions founded on distinctions of race, such as New and Old Irish, ordaining an elective council for each province, and a supreme or national council for the whole kingdom, condemning as excommunicate all who should, having taken the oath, violate it, or who should be guilty of murder, violence to persons, or plunder under pretense of the war. Although the attendance of the lay leaders of the movement at Kilkenny was far from general, the exigencies of the case compelled them to nominate, with the concurrence of the bishops, the first supreme council of which Lord Mount Garrett was chosen president, and Mr. Richard Belling, an accomplished writer and lawyer, secretary. By this body a General Assembly of the entire nation was summoned to meet at the same city, on the twenty-third of October following, the anniversary of the Ulster Rising, commonly called by the English Party Lord McGuire's Day. The choice of such an occasion by men of Mount Garrett's and Selling's moderation and judgment, six months after the date of the alleged massacre, would form another proof, if anywhere now needed, that none of the alleged atrocities were yet associated with the memory of that particular day. The events of the five months, which intervened between the adjournment of the National Synod at the end of May, and the meeting of the General Assembly on the twenty-third of October, may be best summed up under the head of the respective provinces. One. The oath of confederation was taken with enthusiasm in Munster, a provincial council elected, and General Barry chosen commander-in-chief. Barry made an attempt upon Cork, which was repulsed, but a few days later the not less important city of Limerick opened its gates to the Confederates, and on the twenty-first of June the citadel was breached and surrendered by Courtney, the governor. On the second of July St. Ledger died at Cork. It was said of vexation for the loss of Limerick, and the command devolved on his son-in-law, Lord Itchakin, a pupil of the School of Wards, and a soldier of the School of Sir Charles Coot. With Itchakin was associated the Earl of Barrymore for the Civil Administration, but on Barrymore's death in September both powers remained for twelve months in the hands of the survivor. The gain of Limerick was followed by the taking of Loughgar and Askeaton, but was counterbalanced by the defeat of Liscarole, when the Irish loss was eight hundred men, with several colours. Itchakin reported only twenty killed, including the young Lord Kennelmeakey, one of the five sons whom the Earl of Cork gave to this war. Two. In Cannot, Lord Clanrecard was still unable to avert a general outbreak. In vain the Western Prelates besought him in a pathetic remonstrance to place himself at the head of its injured inhabitants, and take the command of the province. He continued to play a middle part between the President, Lord Ranla, Sir Charles Coot the Younger, and Willoughby, Governor of Galway, until the popular impatience burst all control. The Chief of the Ophlarities seized Clanrecard's castle of Ogriner, and the young men of Galway, with a skill and decision quite equal to that of the dairy apprentices of an after-day, seized an English ship containing arms and supplies, lying in the bay, marched to the Church of St. Nicholas, took the Confederate oath, and shut Willoughby up in the Citadel. Clanrecard hastened to extinguish this spark of resistance, and induced the townsmen to capitulate on his personal guarantee. But Willoughby, on the arrival of reinforcements under the fanatical Lord Forbes, at once set the truce made by Clanrecard at Defiance, burned the suburbs, sacked the churches, and during August and September exercised a reign of terror in the town. About the same time local risings took place in Sligo, Mayo, and Roscommon, at first with such success that the President of the Province, Lord Ranla, shut himself up in the Castle of Athelone, where he was closely besieged. Three. In Lentster no military movement of much importance was made, in consequence of the jealousy the Justices entertained of Ormond, and the emptiness of the Treasury. In June the Long Parliament remitted over the paltry sum of eleven thousand five hundred pounds to the Justices, and two thousand of the troops, which had all but mutinied for their pay, were dispatched under Ormond to the relief of Athelone. Commissioners arrived during the summer, appointed by the Parliament to report on the affairs of Ireland, to whom the Justices submitted a penal code worthy of the brain of Draco or Domitian. Ormond was raised to the rank of Marquise by the King, while the army he commanded grew more and more divided, by intrigues emanating from the Castle and beyond the Channel. Before the month of October, James Toucheet, Earl of Castlehaven, and adventurous nobleman, possessed of large estates both in Ireland and England, affected his escape from Dublin Castle, where he had been imprisoned on suspicion by Parsons and Borleys, and joined the Confederation at Kilkenny. In September, Colonel Thomas Preston, the brave defender of Louvain, uncle to Lord Gormonston, landed at Wexford, with three frigates and several transports, containing a few siege guns, field pieces, and other stores, five hundred officers, and a number of engineers. Four. In Ulster, where the first blow was struck, and the first hopes were excited, the prospect had become suddenly overcrowded. Monroe took Dunluse from Lord Antrim by the same stratagem by which Sir Philham took Charlemont, inviting himself as a guest, and arresting his host at his own table. A want of cordial cooperation between the Scotch commander and the undertakers alone prevented them extinguishing, in one vigorous campaign, the Northern Insurrection. So weak and disorganized were now the thousands who had risen at a bound one short year before that the garrisons of Inneskellen, Denney, Nury, and Drugheada scoured almost unopposed the neighbouring counties. The troops of Coal, Hamilton, the Stewards, Chichesters, and Conways found little opposition, and gave no quarter. Sir William Cole, among his claims of service rendered to the State, enumerated seven thousand of the rebels famished to death within a circuit of a few miles from Inneskellen. The disheartened and disorganized natives were seriously deliberating a wholesale emigration to the Scottish Highlands when a word of magic effect was whispered from sea coast to the interior. On the 6th of July Colonel Owen Rowe O'Neill arrived off Donegal with a single ship, a single company of veterans, one hundred officers, and a considerable quantity of ammunition. He landed at Doe Castle and was escorted by his kinsman, Sir Philham, to the Fort of Charlemont. A general meeting of the Northern Clans was quickly called at Clones in Monaghan, and there, on an early day after his arrival, Owen O'Neill was elected General-in-Chief of the Catholic Army of the North. Sir Philham resigning in his favour, and taking instead the baron title of President of Ulster. At the same moment Lord Levin arrived from Scotland with the remainder of the ten thousand voted by the Parliament of that Kingdom. He had known O'Neill abroad, had a high opinion of his abilities, and wrote to express his surprise that a man of his reputation should be engaged in so bad a cause, to which O'Neill replied that he had a better right to come to the relief of his own country than his Lordship had to march into England against his lawful King. Levin, before returning home, urged Monroe to act with promptitude, for that he might expect a severe lesson if the new commander once succeeded in collecting an army. But Monroe proved deaf to this advice, and while the Scottish and English forces in the province would have amounted, if united, to twenty thousand foot and one thousand horse, they gave O'Neill time enough to embody, officer, drill, and arm, at least provisionally, a force not to be despised by even twice their numbers. End of Chapter 5. Read by Cibella Denton. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 6 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 9 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 6. The Confederate War. Campaign of 1643. The Cessation. The city of Kilkenny, which had become the capital of the Confederacy, was favourably placed for the direction of the war in Lentster and Munster. Nearly equidistant from Dublin, Cork, and Limerick, a meeting place for most of the southern and southwestern roads, important in itself both as a place of trade and as the residence of the Duke of Ormond and the Bishop of Osry, a better choice could not perhaps have been made so far as regarded the ancient southern half-kingdom. But it seems rather surprising that the difficulty of directing the war in the north and northwest from a point so far south did not occur to the statesmen of the Confederacy. In the defective communications of those days, especially during a war, partaking even the partiality of the character of civil strife, it was hard, if not impossible to expect, that a supervision could be exercised over a general or an army on the urn or the bond, which might be quite possible and proper on the Sur or the Shannon. A similar necessity in England necessitated the creation of the Presidency of the North, with its council and headquarters in the city of York. Nor need we be surprised to find that, from the first, the Confederate movements combined themselves into two groups, the northern and the southern, those which revolved round the center of Kilkenny and those which took their law from the headquarters of Owen O'Neill at Belturbet or wherever else his camp happened to be situated. The General Assembly met, according to agreement, on the 23rd of October 1642 at Kilkenny. Eleven bishops and fourteen lay lords representing the Irish peerage, 226 commoners, the large majority of the constituencies. Both bodies sat in the same chamber, divided only by a raised dais. The celebrated lawyer, Patrick Darcy, a member of the Commons House, was chosen as Chancellor, and everything was conducted with the gravity and deliberation befitting so venerable an assembly and so great an occasion. The business most pressing and most delicate was felt to be the consideration of a form of supreme executive government. The Committee on this subject, who reported after the interval of a week, was composed of Lords Gormanston and Castlehaven, Sir Philham O'Neill, Sir Richard Belling, and Mr. Darcy. A supreme council of six members for each province was recommended, approved, and elected. The Archbishops of Armagh, Dublin, and Tome, the Bishops of Down and Clonfert, the Lords Gormanston, Mount Garrett, Roche, and Mayo, with fifteen of the most eminent commoners, composed this council. It was provided that the vote of two-thirds should be necessary to any act affecting the basis of the Confederacy, but a quorum of nine was sufficient for the transaction of ordinary business. A guard of honour, a five hundred foot and two hundred horse, was allowed for their greater security. The venerable Mount Garrett, the head of the Catholic butlers, son-in-law of the illustrious Tyrone, who in the last years of Elizabeth had devoted his youthful sword to the same good cause, was elected president of this council, and Sir Richard Belling, a lawyer, and a man of letters, the continuator of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, was appointed secretary. The first act of this supreme council was to appoint General O'Neill as commander-in-chief in Ulster, General Preston in Lenster, General Barry in Munster, and Sir John Burke as Lieutenant General in Cannot, the supreme command in the west being held over for clan or card, who it was still hoped might be led or driven into the Confederacy. We shall endeavor to indicate in turn the operations of these commanders, thus chosen or confirmed, leaving the civil and diplomatic business transacted by the General Assembly or delegated to the supreme council for future mention. Contrary to the custom of that age, the Confederate troops were not withdrawn into winter quarters. In November General Preston, at the head of six thousand foot and six hundred horse, encountered Monk at Timmahoe and Ballinacale with some loss, but before the close of December he had reduced Burr, Banagher, Burris, and Fort Falkland and found himself master of King's County from the Shannon to the Barrow. In February, however, he sustained a serious check at Rathconnell in endeavoring to intercept the retreat of the English troops from Cannot under the command of Lord Ranley, and the younger Cout in March equal ill success attended his attempt to intercept Ormond in his retreat from the unsuccessful siege of the town of Ross. Lord Castlehaven, who was Preston's second in command, attributes both these reverses to the impetuosity of the General, whose imprudence seems to have been almost as great as his activity was conspicuous. In April and May, Preston and Castlehaven took several strongholds in Carlow, Kildare, and Westmiath, and the General Assembly, which met for its second session on the twentieth of May sixteen forty-three at Kilkenny, had on the whole good grounds to be satisfied with the success of the war in Lenster. In the southern province, considerable military successes might also be claimed by the Confederates. The Munster troops, under Purcell, the second in command, a capable soldier, who had learned the art of war in the armies of the German Empire, relieved Ross, when besieged by Ormond. General Barry had successfully repulsed an attack on his headquarters, the famous Old Desmond town of Kilmalach. In June, Barry, Purcell, and Castlehaven drove the enemy before them across the Function, and at Kilworth brought their main body under Sir Charles Vavasor to action. Vavasor's face was badly beaten, himself captured, with his cannon and colors, and many of his officers and men. Inchican, who had endeavored to form a junction with Vavasor, escaped to one of the few remaining garrisons open to him, probably Ugal. In Canot, the surrender of Galway on the twentieth of June eclipsed all the previous successes, and they were not a few of Lieutenant General Burke. From the day Lord Ronley and the younger Coot deserted the western province, the Confederate cause had rapidly advanced. The surrender of the Second Fort in the Kingdom, a seaport in that age, not unworthy to be ranked with Cadiz and Bristol for its commercial wealth and reputation, was a military event of the first importance. An English fleet appeared three days after the surrender of Willoughby in Galway Harbour, but nine long years elapsed before the Confederate colors were lowered from the towers of the Canot Citadel. In the north, O'Neill, who without injustice to any of his contemporaries, may certainly be said to have made, during his Seven Years Command, the highest European reputation among the Confederate generals, gathered his recruits into a rugged district, which forms a sort of natural camp in the northwest corner of the island. The mountain plateau of Lethram, which sends its spurs downward toward the Atlantic, towards Luck-Ern, and into Longford, accessible only by four or five lines of road leading over narrow bridges and through deep defiles, was the nursery selected by this cautious leader, in which to collect and organize his forces. In the beginning of May, seven months after the date of his commission, and ten from his solitary landing at Doe Castle, we find him a long march from his mountain fortress in Lethram, at Charlemont, which he had strengthened and garrisoned, and now saved from a surprise attempt by Monroe from Carrick-Fergus. Having affected that immediate object, he again retired towards the Lethram Highlands, fighting by the way a smart cavalry action at Clonish, with a superior force, under Colonel Stewart, Balfour and Mervin. In this affair O'Neill was only too happy to have carried off his troop with credit, but a fortnight brought him consolation for Clonish in the brilliant affair of Port Leicester. He had descended in force from his hills and taken possession of the greater part of the ancient Miedh. General Monk and Lord Moore were dispatched against him, but reinforced by a considerable body of methion confederates, under Sir James Dillon, he resolved to risk his first regular engagement in the field. Taking advantage of the situation on the ground, about five miles from Trim, he threw up some field works, placed sixty men in Port Leicester Mill, and patiently awaited the advance of the enemy. Their assault was overconfident, their route complete. Lord Moore and a large portion of the assailants were slain, and Monk fled back to Dublin. O'Neill, gathering fresh strength from these movements, abandoned his mountain stronghold, and established his headquarters on the river Urne, between Loch Otter, memorable in his life and death, and the upper waters of Loch Urne. At this point stood the town of Belturbet, which, in the plantation of James I, had been turned over exclusively to British settlers, whose cagework houses and four acres of garden ground each, had elicited the approval of a surveyor of Pinner twenty years before. The surrounding country was covered with the fortified castles and loop-hold lawns of the chief undertakers, but few were found of sufficient strength to resist the arms of O'Neill. At Belturbet he was within a few days' march of the vital points of four other counties, and in case of the worst, within the same distance of his protective fastness. Here, towards the end of September, busied with present duties and future projects, he heard for the first time, with astonishment and grief, that the requisite majority of the Supreme Council had concluded, on the thirteenth of that month, a twelve-months truce with Ormond, thus putting in peril all the advantages already acquired by the bravery of the Confederate troops and the skill of their generals. The war had lasted nearly two years, and this was the first time the Catholics had consented to negotiate. The moment chosen was a critical one for all the three kingdoms, and the interests involved were complicated in the extreme. The Anglo-Irish, who formed the majority of the Supreme Council, connected by blood and language with England, had entered into the war purely as one of religious liberty. Nationally, they had, apart from the civil disabilities imposed on religious grounds, no antipathy, no interest, hostile to the general body of English loyalists, represented in Ireland by the King's Lieutenant, Ormond. On his side, that nobleman gave all his thoughts to and governed all his actions by the incidences of the royal cause throughout the three kingdoms. When Charles seemed strong in England, Ormond rated the Catholics at a low figure, but when reverses increased he estimated their alliance more highly. After the drawn battle of Edge Hill fought on the very day of the first meeting of the General Assembly at Kilkenny, the King had established his headquarters at Oxford, in the heart of four or five of the most loyal counties in England. Here he at first negotiated with the Parliament, but finally the sword was again invoked, and while the King proclaimed the Parliament rebels, the Solemn League and Covenant was entered into, at first separately and afterwards jointly, by the Puritans of England and the Presbyterians of Scotland. The military events during that year, and in the first half of the next, were upon the whole not unfavorable to the royal cause. The Great Battle of Marstonmore, July 2, 1644, which extinguished the hopes of the royalists in the northern counties, was the first parliamentary victory of national importance. It was won mainly by the energy and obstinacy of Lieutenant General Cromwell, from that day forth the foremost English figure in the Civil War. From his court at Oxford, where he had seen the utter failure of endeavoring to conciliate his English and Scottish enemies, the King had instructed Ormond, lately created a Marquis, to treat with the Irish Catholics and to obtain from them men and money. The overtures thus made were brought to maturity in September. The cessation was to last twelve months. Each party was to remain in possession of its own quarters, as they were held at the date of the treaty. The forces of each were to unite to punish any infraction of the terms agreed on. The agents of the Confederates during the cessation were to have free access and safe conduct to the King. And for these advantages the Supreme Council were to present His Majesty immediately with fifteen thousand pounds in money and provisions to the value of fifteen thousand pounds more. Such was the truce of Castle Martin, condemned by O'Neill, by the papal nuncio, scarampy, and by the great majority of the old Irish, lay and clerical, still more violently denounced by the Puritan Parliament as favouring popery, and negotiated by popish agents, beneficial to Ormond and the undertakers, as relieving Dublin, freeing the Channel from Irish privateers, and securing them in the garrisons throughout the kingdom which they still held. In one sense advantageous to Charles, from the immediate supplies it afforded, and the favourable impression it created of his liberality, at the courts of his Catholic allies. But on the other hand disadvantageous to him in England and Scotland, from the pretext it furnished his enemies, of renewing the cry of his convivance with popery, a cry neither easily answered nor of itself liable quickly to wear out. End of Chapter 6. Read by Cibela Denton.