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The Chicanery of Charles -
His Secret Commission to Glamorgan - He begs Ormonde to secure Peace -
Glamorgan and the Confederates - Rinuccini the Nuncio - Charles pens a
Letter to the Pope - Glamorgan's Letter to the King discovered on the
Battlefield of Naseby - The Nuncio in November enters Kilkenny - The
Glamorgan Treaty found on Dead Archbishop - The Ormonde Peace signed -
Deplorable State of Ulster.
The winter of 1644 was
one of complicated intrigues, for
Charles, painfully perplexed by the difficulties with which
he had to contend in England, and nervously apprehensive
of approaching danger, looked anxiously towards the only
quarter from which he could expect aid, to Ireland and the
support of his Roman Catholic subjects; and as he appears
never to have been in his element save in an atmosphere
charged with secretiveness, hypocrisy, and falsehood, he
now sought an agent on whom he could rely to scatter
broadcast, without any qualms of conscience, royal promises
never meant to be fulfilled. Such an emissary (Ormonde
having proved too captious for the wholesale dissemination
of falsehood under the guise of truth) the King found in
Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Marquis of Worcester, who
was devotedly attached to the royal cause, to which father
and son had already conjointly contributed some £200,000.
Charles, in gratitude, which in the King was a lively sense
of favours to come, created Lord Herbert Earl of Glamorgan
a creation which, owing to the troublous times, was never
formally made and on the 1st of April, 1644, granted him
under the Great Seal by far the most extraordinary patent
that has ever been issued bearing that august symbol.
By this document
Glamorgan was created Lord Paramount
of Ireland, with supreme command over all forces in the
island. He was constituted admiral over a purely imaginary
fleet, and authorized to pledge customs, woods, wardships,
and all hereditary property of the Crown. As a kind of
peripatetic irresponsible vendor of titles he was liberally supplied
"with several patents under our Great Seal of England,
from a Marquis to a Baronet, which we give you full power
and authority to date and dispose of without knowing our
further pleasure"; and it was hoped that on a promise of
the bestowal of one of these titles "persons of generosity"
would freely subscribe cash to replenish the royal coffers.
Thus armed with almost
royal powers, Glamorgan proceeded to Ireland, Charles promising "on the
word of a
King and a Christian" to ratify any acts for which the Earl
was responsible, thereby ignoring the powers of Ormonde
as Lord- Lieutenant, although a verbal promise was given
by Glamorgan to the King that in all matters he would consult with the
Viceroy.
Having thus secretly
given Glamorgan more ample
powers than were possessed by the Lord-Lieutenant, and
having constituted him his confidential agent in Ireland,
Charles recommenced to pester Ormonde with further proposals for peace,
promising in connection with the Roman
Catholics that "the penal statutes should not be put into
execution, the peace being made and they remaining in their
due obedience. And further that when the Irish give me
that assistance which they have promised, for the suppressing
of this rebellion, and I shall be restored to my rights, then
I will consent to the repeal of them by a law. But all those
against appeals to Rome and Prcemunire must stand." He
begged Ormonde "to conclude a peace with the Irish, whatever it cost",
and later directed him to "make the best
bargain he could". Even after Naseby the King, with
astonishing assurance, wrote: "If within two months you
could send me a considerable assistance, I am confident that
both my last loss would be soon forgotten, and likewise it
may (by the grace of God) put such a turn to my affairs, as
to make me in a far better condition before winter than I
have been at any time since the rebellion began". The
peace was to be concluded forthwith, and Ormonde, having
thus settled matters in Ireland, was to repair to England
with as large a force as he could collect to the aid of the
King.
The most sober-minded of
mortals must admit that Fate
or Fortune is occasionally ironical, otherwise it is impossible
to account for such strange freaks in human affairs as those
which decreed that a hemisphere discovered by Columbus
should be called after one Amerigo Vespucci, a pickle-dealer
of Seville, and that the Great Seal of England should on
April Fools' Day be attached to such a perfectly fatuous
instrument as the patent granted to Glamorgan. On that
document, although it is expressly stated that "for your
greater honour and in testimony of our reality we have with
our own hand affixed our Great Seal of England unto these
our commission and letters, making them patents", it is
believed that the affixing of the Seal was undertaken by
Endymion Porter and the Earl himself, "rollers and no screw
press" being employed in the work. The genuineness of
the patent is, however, unquestionable; and proud in the
consciousness of possessing the confidence of his King, by
whom he had been promised the dukedom of Somerset, with
power to "put on the George and blue dragon" at his pleasure, and to
bear the garter in his coat of arms, Glamorgan,
on reaching Dublin in August, 1645, had a conference with
Ormonde, after which he proceeded to Kilkenny, where he
explained to the Supreme Council the powers with which
he had been invested.
It is necessary here, for
the complete comprehension of
subsequent events in Ulster, to follow for a while the trend
of events in the south of Ireland, where the Confederates
were engaged in arranging the terms of a treaty with Glamorgan while
they awaited with impatience the arrival of
a Papal Nuncio.
By the treaty entered
into by Glamorgan on behalf of the
King, and Lords Mountgarret and Muskerry on behalf of
the Confederation, it was agreed that the Roman Catholics
should enjoy the free and public exercise of their religion;
that they should hold for their use all the churches of Ireland
not at the moment in the actual possession of the Protestants;
that they should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Protestant
clergy; and that neither the Lord-Lieutenant nor any
other person should have power to disturb them in these
privileges. The Confederates, on their side, undertook to
send to England under Glamorgan's command, for the service of the King,
10,000 men, one-half that number to be
armed with pikes, the remainder with muskets. As these
concessions had to be, on account of Charles's position, kept
secret, Glamorgan swore to tell the King everything, and
"not to permit the army entrusted to his charge to adventure
itself, or any considerable part thereof, until conditions from
His Majesty and by His Majesty be performed".
All these proceedings
took place behind Ormonde's back,
the Lord-Lieutenant, in blissful ignorance, continuing, in
accordance with the King's oft-expressed desire, to negotiate
with the Confederates as to the terms of the proposed peace;
while Charles, to further complicate matters, on hearing of
the approaching visit of Rinuccini, the Pope's Nuncio-Extraordinary,
wrote to Glamorgan enclosing letters, one of which
was addressed to the newly-elected Pope, His Holiness Innocent X, the
other to the Nuncio, both to be delivered to
Rinuccini on his arrival.
In his letter to the
Nuncio the King, having penned a
panegyric on Glamorgan, who was a Roman Catholic, and
having promised to ratify any agreement at which His
Majesty's agent and the Pope's legate should arrive, concludes the
epistle, which is written in French ("very far from
correct"), by stating that it is the first that he has ever
addressed to a representative of the Pope, and assures
Rinuccini of his friendship as soon as an understanding is
arrived at between him and the Earl.
On 14th June, 1645, the
battle of Naseby was fought, and
one of the consequences of Fairfax's victory was the discovery, in a
private cabinet belonging to the King, of a
letter addressed to Charles by Glamorgan, in which the
writer promised to land in Wales by the beginning of June,
and assured the King that the gentlemen of Monmouth,
Glamorgan, Brecknock, and Carmarthen would raise and arm
4000 men in those counties to join him. With the ships
which were to transport the Irish, Glamorgan undertook to
blockade Milford Haven while the Welsh troops marched
into Pembrokeshire. He further stated that he had £30,000
ready for this service, with 10,000 muskets, 2000 case of
pistols, 800 barrels of gunpowder, besides his own artillery,
and that he was assured of £30,000 more on his return from
Ireland. The discovery of this document did not improve
the King's position.
The long-expected
Rinuccini now arrived, landing on the
22nd of October in Kenmare Bay after a narrow escape from
"a Parliament frigate" by which he had been chased, and
entered Kilkenny on the 12th of November. Here the Pope's
Nuncio was received by his co-religionists with all the honours
due to his rank and profession, and, on the letters from the
King being delivered to him by Glamorgan, he, though at
first doubtful whether he ought to accept letters from a
heretic, however regal, decided on reflection to do so on
account of the Earl's recognized devotion to the Church
which he represented. The Nuncio could scarcely be regarded
as a harbinger of peace to Ireland, for while at Rochelle he
had purchased a frigate of twenty-six guns, and he brought
with him a large quantity of arms and ammunition, including
2000 muskets and cartouch belts, 4000 swords, 2000 pikeheads, 400 brace
of pistols, and 20,000 pounds of gunpowder.
These arms, on arrival, were stored in Ardtully Castle. The
potent factor Rinuccini was in Irish politics at this period
is proved by the fact that, in addition to the arms he supplied, he also
brought, in specie collected from Rome, from
Cardinal Mazarin, and other sources, no less a sum than
100,000 dollars for the use of the Irish.
Glamorgan, in the
fullness of his heart and to prove his
confidence in the Confederates, left the original of his treaty
in their hands when he himself took his departure for Dublin,
and Thomas Walsh, Archbishop of Cashel, possessing him-
self of it, had several copies of it made for distribution
amongst the clergy. One of those to whom a copy was sent
was Malachy Queely, Archbishop of Tuam; and that important town being
attacked by a combined force of English and
Scots, under circumstances into which we need not enter, the
Archbishop was taken prisoner and killed in a brutal manner.
On the body of the murdered Archbishop a certified copy of
the Glamorgan treaty was found. This, with a recital of
the Earl's private commission from the King and of his oath
to the Confederates, falling into the hands of Sir Charles
Coote, the younger, who with Sir Robert Stewart and Sir
Frederick Hamilton was with the invading army, were by
him sent in November to Lord Digby, Secretary of State,
who had just arrived in Dublin, and to Ormonde, with the
result that on Glamorgan's visiting the capital on Christmas
Eve, to treat about the levying of troops, he was on St.
Stephen's Day arrested on a charge of high treason by order
of the Viceroy.
Into the trial and the
consequences to Charles or Glamorgan we need not enquire. Suffice it to
say, so far as our province is concerned, that the result of the
exposure was
fatal to the peace negotiations, for it was generally accepted
without demur that "the Protestants of England would
fling the King's person out of the window if they believed
it possible that he had lent himself to such an undertaking".
The General Assembly met
early in January, 1646, and
negotiations for peace were renewed with Ormonde, the
result being that on the 28th of March a peace which was
no peace was signed by the Viceroy on behalf of the King,
and by Lord Muskerry, Sir Robert Talbot, and others on
behalf of the Confederates. The treaty contained thirty
articles, the only one of which bearing directly on the question of
religion being the first, which provided "that the
professors of the Roman Catholic religion in this kingdom of
Ireland, be not bound to take the oath of supremacy expressed
in the Second of Queen Elizabeth".
Ulster in the meantime
was in a deplorable state. While
the Confederates were confused by cabals in their councils,
and their army paralysed by the jealousy of their generals,
Sir Phelim O'Neill disliking Owen Roe as a rival both in
military fame and in his claim to the chieftaincy, Munro
plundered the province with impunity, and sent detachments
of his Scots to serve under Sir Charles Coote, who was now
Parliamentary Lord President of Connaught. Ormonde
would on no account pronounce the Scots to be rebels, for
many who had taken the Covenant were really Royalists.
The harsh treatment of the King, who had on the 5th of May
surrendered himself to the Scottish army, and the success of
Montrose in Scotland had a great effect in Ulster, and for
a moment Ormonde deemed it possible to unite the English
and Scots forces in the province under his own command.
The officers of the English forces in Ulster met at Antrim
on the 17th of May, and agreed to receive Commissioners
from the Parliament. They were ready, they said, to continue the war
until the conclusion of a safe and honourable
peace by consent of King and Parliament, but they added
that they "called heaven and earth to witness that it was not
their fault, if they were forced to take any other way for their
preservation and subsistence".
The war was to be
continued in a way which Ormonde
and the English officers little anticipated. |
