CHAPTER XII.

THE CATHOLIC CONFEDERATION.

THE Irish Government lost not a moment in taking the most effectual measures for crushing the rebellion. Lord Ormonde, as Lieutenant-General, had soon at his disposal 12,000 men, with a fine train of field artillery, which had been provided by Strafford for the campaign in the north of England. The King, who was then in Scotland, got 1,500 men sent into Ulster, and authorised Lords Chichester and Clandeboye to raise regiments among their tenants. These together formed the Scottish army. The Irish, on the other hand, were ill provided with arms and ammunition; they had not time to make pikes enough for the occasion. The military officers who were to drill them did not make their appearance. Rory O'More had never seen service; Sir Phelim O'Neill was only a civilian when he assumed the high sounding title of Lord General of the Catholic Army in Ulster,' taking also the style and title of The O'Neill. It was not likely that such a man could do much in the way of organising an army and providing a commissariat. It was not so with the Protestants. The English soldiers who happened to be in Ireland in those times, if not taken quite by surprise, regarded an outbreak of rebellion with feelings of satisfaction, rather with joy, very much resembling what officers feel at the commencement of a war in some country where plenty of prize money can be won, where the looting' will be rich, and the promotion rapid. Relying with confidence on the power of England and the force of discipline, they knew that the defenders of the Government would be 'victorious in the end, and that their rewards would be estates. The more rebellions, the more forfeited territory, and the more opportunities for implicating, despoiling, and ruining the principal men of the hated race. The most sober-minded writer,

dealing with such facts, cannot help stirring men's blood while recording the deeds of the heroes who founded the English power in Ireland and planted there her feudal system on the basis of confiscation.

The immediate prospect of forfeitures, therefore, roused the ambition and cupidity of every man who was in a position to turn the troubles to account for his own advantage. In Munster, the aged Earl of Cork, still insatiable as ever for other men's possessions, worked with the president of Munster, St. Leger, for this end. He prepared 1,100 indictments against Roman Catholic proprietors in his district, 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 Leinster, 4,000 similar indictments were found in the course of two days, by the free use of the rack with witnesses one aged gentleman having been subjected to this torture. When such proceedings took place before the tribunals in peaceable cities, we may imagine what must have been the excesses of the excited soldiery in the open country. Lord Muskerry and other leading Catholics, who had offered their services to maintain the peace of Munster, were driven by an insulting refusal to combine for their own protection. The 1,100 indictments of Lord Cork soon swelled their ranks, and the capture of the ancient city of Cashel by Philip O'Dwyer announced the insurrection of the south. Waterford, Wexford, and Kilkenny-old strongholds of the Pale-declared for the Catholic cause. In the mean time Sir Charles Coote's troops in Wicklow and elsewhere were slaughtering the inhabitants in such a way as had not been equalled since the days of the Pagan Northmen. They did not spare the women, and little children were carried aloft and tossed about on the points of their spears, the gallant commander jocosely remarking that he liked such frolics.' In Ulster, by the end of April, there were 19,000 regulars and volunteers in garrison or in the field. The rebels were driven from Newry, Down, and Monaghan, while Sir Phelim O'Neill burned the towns of Armagh and Dungannon, and took his last stand at Charlemont. Lord Ormonde routed a large body of rebels in the county Kildare, leaving 700 men and a number of

officers dead on the field. For this victory the Long Parliament voted him a jewel worth 5007.

Refusing to trust the King with the control of the English forces in Ireland, the Long Parliament took the work of subjugation into their own hands. Having already confiscated 2,500,000 acres of Irish land, they offered it as security to adventurers' who would advance money to meet the cost of the war, and there was no lack of offers by well-affected Englishmen to raise forces at their own charge against the rebels of Ireland, and afterwards to receive their recompense of the rebels' estates.' Under the Act for the Speedy Reducing of the Rebels,' the adventurers were to carry over a brigade of 5,000 foot and 500 horse, and to have the right of appointing their own officers. They were to have estates given them at the following rates:-1,000 acres for 2007. in Ulster, for 3007. in Connaught, for 450l. in Munster, and for 6007. in Leinster. The nature of the war, and the spirit in which it was conducted, may be inferred from the sort of weapons issued from the military stores. They included scythes with handles and rings, reaping hooks, and whetstones, intended for cutting down the growing corn, that the inhabitants might be starved into submission or compelled to quit the country. Bibles also were issued to the troops, one Bible for every file, that they might learn from the Old Testament the sin and danger of sparing idolaters. The texts upon that subject seem, indeed, to have been well studied, and not without fruitful results. The rebellion in Ulster had almost collapsed before the end of the year. The tens of thousands who had rushed to the standard of O'Neill were now reduced to a number of weak and disorganised detached parties of armed men, taking shelter in the woods. The English garrison scoured the neighbouring counties with little opposition, and where any was encountered they gave no quarter. Sir William Cole proudly boasted of his achievement in causing 7,000 Roman Catholics to be starved to death, within a circuit of a few miles of his garrison.

The cause of the insurgents in Ulster seemed now all but lost. Sir Phelim O'Neill had proved himself utterly incapable as a general; but there was another man of that name, who had learned the art of war, and seemed born to be a great general.

He had been treated with favour at the English Court, and he had doubtless now the opportunity of winning honours and titles if he had, like many of his kinsmen, been false to his country and his race. This was Colonel Owen Roe O'Neill, the same to whom Mr. Froude refers when he says, 'if you treat a wolf as a dog, he will be a wolf still.' If, however, he had been a Pole or a Venetian, or a brave patriot of any other oppressed nation, who had hastened to his country's standard in the hour of peril, and saidOh give but a hope, let a vista but gleam

Through the gloom of my country, and mark what I'll feel

6

he would, doubtless, be celebrated by the English historian as a hero of the noblest type. But give to an Irish patriot the highest culture, and let him yield to the instinct which has prompted in all ages to acts the most heroic and heart-thrilling, and what is he at best but a tamed wolf? However, when the national cause seemed hopeless, when the Celtic population in Ulster were meditating a wholesale emigration to the Scottish highlands, a name that seemed to have a magic power was whispered on the coast, and like electricity it ran from Donegal to Donaghadee, and from Derry to Kinsale.' Owen Roe O'Neill had arrived with a single company of veterans, 100 officers, and a quantity of ammunition. He landed at Doe Castle, proceeded to the fort of Charlemont, met the heads of the Clans at Clones in Monaghan, was elected General-in-Chief of the Catholic forces, and at once. set about organising an army. Meantime the Catholics of the whole kingdom had joined in a confederation' which held its meetings at Kilkenny. A general assembly was convened there for October 23, 1642, the Catholic peerage being represented by fourteen lords and eleven bishops. A general was appointed for each of the provinces-Preston for Leinster, Barry for Munster, and Burke for Connaught.

The Catholic Confederation was from the first distracted and weakened by sources of division, which have proved fatal to every national combination in Ireland. With the Anglo-Irish members, the war was Catholic, and its object simply religious liberty. They had no animosity or antipathy to the English, being the descendants of Norman adventurers. The Pope's Nuncio was

there, thinking only of the interest of his master, having the prelates on his side. Next there were the chiefs representing the old Irish, either deprived of their lands or likely to become so. At the same time the King, then at Oxford, was importuned by the Confederation on the one side, and the Puritans on the other -the former petitioning for freedom of worship, the latter demanding the suppression of Popery. Pending these appeals, there was a cessation of hostilities between the Irish belligerents. Months were spent in Dublin with Ormonde in negotiations for a permanent peace and settlement. Charles, out of patience with the delay, sent over the Earl of Glamorgan, son of the Marquis of Worcester, and son-in-law of the Earl of Thomond. He belonged to a family which was said to have contributed no less than 200,000l. to the Royal cause in England. His religion, his rank, his Irish connections, as well as the enjoyment of the King's confidence, pointed him out as likely to be a successful ambassador. He arrived in Dublin, where Ormonde managed to detain him for ten weeks in discussions on the Articles relating to Religion, and it was not till November 12 that the celebrated Glamorgan Treaty was concluded. This treaty conceded all the most essential claims of the Irish-equal rights as to property, equal rights in the army, in the universities, and at the bar. It gave Roman Catholics seats in both Houses of Parliament and on the Bench, and it declared that the independence of the Parliament of Ireland on that of England should be decided by a declaration of both Houses agreeably to the laws of the kingdom of Ireland. In short, it gave to the Irish Catholics in 1646 all that was subsequently obtained either for the country or the church in 1782, 1793, and 1829.

The Catholic Confederation was a singular episode in the history of the country. The greatest personage that figured in it was the Pope's Nuncio, John Baptist Rinuncini, Archbishop of Fermo, who was there to look after the interests of the Court of Rome. He was in a state of very feeble health, and from Limerick to Kilkenny, where the Confederation sat, he was carried in a litter, escorted by a guard of honour. We read that the pomp and splendour of his public entry into the Catholic capital was a striking spectacle. Five delegates from the Supreme Council