of Ormond was to consent to the appointment of the 1650, Rev. Ever M'Mahon, the titular bishop of Clogher, to command the confederated catholic troops in the North. The mitre gave no military skill, and they were utterly routed near Letterkenny by a very inferior force under the renegado Coote. The Bishop militant was taken in the pursuit, and executed as a traitor to the regicide power. of the con James So grossly inconsistent with the late peace was Proceeding Charles' II. subscription to the covenant, as well as federates at Ormond's insidious favor to the covenanters; so justly Town. suspicious was the uniform failure of every measure of Ormond against the regicides, that many of the principal confederates, with a large party of their clergy, assembled at James-Town, and in order to hinder their people from closing with the Parliament, determined, that the clergy should, as they actually did, publish an excommunication against all such catholics as should enlist under, feed, help, or adhere to his Excellency; or assist him with men, money, or any * Clarendon, who in all things defends Ormond, says in his History of the Irish Rebellion, that all the sober professors of the catholic religion abhorred these proceedings at James-Town. It is true, that the catholics generally remained firm in their duty to the King and his lieutenant. But if there were any differences in the confederates upon this excommunication, it arose out of one of these two causes; either the impropriety of resorting to this species of spiritual weapon in temporal warfare, (especially after the imprudent conduct of the Nuncio,) or because the conduct of the lord-lieutenant was so profligately contradictory to what they knew to be the duty, and believed to be the real disposition, of the King, that they considered him as no longer represent 1650. Desperate state of Ireland. other supplies whatever : but lest their loyalty to their constitutional monarch should be suspected, they involved in the same sentence of excommunication all such catholics as should adhere to the common ene mies of God, their King, and country: or should any ways help, assist, abet, or favor them, by bearing arms for or with them. Under the then existing circumstances, the observance of the late peace was the only security of the confederates for their religion, liberty, lives, and fortunes. Ormond was either unable or unwilling to oppose the rebel powers in Ireland. Having no other means of supporting the Royal cause, than the arms of the confederated catholics, he chose rather to give up the cause of his master, than co-operate with them in restoring it. He had long obtained leave to deposit the * ing, but opposing, the first executive magistrate, to whom they had sworn allegiance, and who had himself sworn to preserve the laws and constitution of the realm. * The conduct of Ormond is represented in such opposite extremes, that it is only safe to rest upon uncontroverted facts, or his own words. Leland, and most historians that have followed him, (Vol. III. 60), represent Ormond as necessitated from unavoidable pressures upon the royal party, to obtain the King's permission to retire from Ireland, and that he quitted it in consequence of these proceedings of the confederates and clergy at James-Town in September, 1650; whereas, on the 24th of the preceding De cember he had written to the King, and on the second of the ensuing February had obtained license to withdraw himself and his authority from the kingdom, if he should see occasion. So little, indeed, did the excommunication of the clergy at James-Town immediately occasion this resolution in Ormond to quit the country, that, in a letter written above ten months before that time, he royal authority with the Earl of Clanricarde, in whose 1651. loyalty and uprightness the Irish, with good reason, confided. Clanricarde had often remonstrated with Ormond upon his conduct, which tended so powerfully to alienate the affections of the nation from the royal cause: and when, on Ormond's embarking for France, he received the skeleton of government from him, he declared the utter impossibility of effecting any thing essential to the service of his Royal Master*. Whilst the King remained in the hands of the Scots, he dared not openly avow the treaty, which had by his own desire been opened with the Duke of Lorrain, to reestablish the royal authority in Ireland, yet he did all he privately could to forward it; but no sooner was he out of their hands, than he wrote to his Highness said, that the disappointment of a successless army, and other circumstances, began to breed in them such aversion "to myself, (these are his words) to whom all their misfortunes, the negligence, "cowardice and treachery of others are attributed, that I am told "that it was again in agitation with the violent party of the clergy " and others, set on by Lord Antrim, to procure a protestation "against my government." Col. Or. Pa. Vol. II. 419, 420. Ormond had been long conscious of the people's mistrust of him, and he well knew that it was not without reason; for he says of his catholic countrymen, "If they should be got forth (perhaps "with church censures) it would be with despair, not hope of "success, whilst they suspected the leader of having made condi"tions for himself upon their ruin." * The account which Clanricarde gives of the state of Ireland, on the 15th April, 1651, is an honourable and unquestionable proof of the unshaken loyalty of the nation in the last extreme, Clan. Mem. p. 24. for which, vide Appendix, No. XXXVI. to my Historical Review. For this letter, vide App. No. XXXVII. 1651. from Paris, to solicit his and the assistance of other Persever ance of the catholic Princes against their and his own enemies. Even Ormond, once more secure from personal danger, finding his royal master the dupe, as his father had been the victim, of his bigotted reluctance to permit the sovereign to avail himself of the services and attachment of his catholic subjects, now recommended the sending fitting ministers, and proposing apt inducements* to the Pope himself, for his interposition with catholic princes, and to enable the King's catholic subjects of Ireland to make head against the rebels. The Irish nation has been upbraided with too hasty Irish in the submission to the arms of Cromwell t. Orrery himself royal cause. allows that the Irish catholics were the last in the "three kingdoms that laid down their arms, and "gave over fighting for the royal cause." Propositions were received from the parliamentarian general, offering the citizens of Limerick the free exercise of their religion, the enjoyment of their estates, churches, and church livings; a free trade and commerce, without any garrison to be imposed upon them, provided they would allow his forces to march through their city into the county of Clare. They rejected the propositions §, though far more favorable than any Ca. Col. Pa. Vol. I. 461. Reply to a Person of Quality, p. 50. 3 Lel. 370. § The only disposition that appeared in any part of the nation to favour the rebels, was in the readiness of the peasantry to sup ply their camp with provisions. Cromwell issued a proclamation, forbidding his army, under pain of death, to hurt any of the inha 407 that had been granted or even promised by the King 1661. Whilst the general assembly, or his lieutenant. 66 the royal When Ormond resigned the government into the Seizure of hands of Clanricarde, all Ireland* except the province authority, and transplantation to Con bitants, or take any thing from them without paying for it in naught. ready money. Under this proclamation, even on his march to Drogheda, he ordered two soldiers to be hanged in the face of the army for having stolen two hens from a cottager. Under this security, and the false assurances of his officers, that they were fighting for the liberties of the commons, and that every body should thereafter enjoy their own religion and property in freedom, his camp was constantly better supplied than the army of Ormond, whose passage through the country was more dreaded by the peasantry than that of a ferocious enemy. * Clan. Mem. p. 56, where this nobleman's portrait of the distresses of the remaining loyalists in Ireland, at that time, contradicts the accounts of Borlase, and others of that description of writers, and is an honourable testimony of the persevering loyalty of the Irish confederates. |