CHAPTER V
Treason of Ormond to the Catholic Cause—Owen Roe O’Neill, Aided by the Nuncio, Prepares to Fight
The Papal Nuncio, although only in the prime of life, was in feeble health, and had to be borne on a litter by relays of able-bodied men, from his landing-place, at Kenmare in Kerry, to the city of Limerick, where he was received with all the ceremony due to his high rank, noble character, and chivalrous mission. From Limerick he proceeded by the same mode of conveyance to Kilkenny, the Confederate capital, where honors almost regal in their splendor awaited him. Lord Mountgarret, President of the National Council—a veteran soldier who had participated in the wars of Hugh O’Neill against Elizabeth—met the Papal dignitary, surrounded by a guard of honor, composed of the youthful chivalry of the Confederation, in the picture gallery of the Castle of Kilkenny—the palatial residence of the Duke of Ormond, the most politic nobleman of the age. The so-called Glamorgan treaty proceeded smoothly enough until certain demands of the exiled English Catholics, made through the Nuncio, were included in its provisions. Armed with the amended parchment, Glamorgan and the representatives of the Confederates returned to Dublin and laid the matter before Ormond. The latter acted in so strange a manner as to take the Confederate delegates completely by surprise. He had Glamorgan arrested while at dinner, on charge of having exceeded his instructions, and threw him into prison. The Confederate envoys were sent back to Kilkenny, charged to inform the President and Council that the clauses concerning the English Catholics were inadmissible and never could be entertained by the English people who supported the cause of Charles. Lord Mountgarret and his associates broke off all negotiations with Ormond pending the release of Glamorgan, which they firmly demanded. Ormond required bail to the amount of £40,000, and the bond was furnished by the Earls of Kildare and Clanricarde. When Glamorgan was enlarged, he proceeded to Kilkenny, where, to the amazement of the Confederates and the Nuncio he defended, rather than censured, Ormond’s course toward himself. On which McGee grimly remarks: “To most observers it appeared that these noblemen understood each other only too well.”
Frequent bickerings occurred at Kilkenny between Mountgarret’s followers, or the Anglo-Irish, and the Nuncio’s followers, the “Old Irish,” who were in the minority. Rinuccini’s heart was with the latter, for, by instinct as well as observation, he recognized that they were the only real national party among the Irish factions. The rest he put down, with good reason, as time-servers and provincialists—ever ready to go back to their gilded cages the moment the English power filled their cups with Catholic concessions. With a little more knowledge of Ireland and her people, the Nuncio would have been a marvelous leader. As it was, he did the very best he could for Ireland—according to his lights—and he was one of the very few foreigners who, on coming in close contact with the situation—remained true to the Irish cause through good and evil report. He was, of course, a devoted Catholic, but in no sense a bigot. Irishmen should always hold his name in high honor. Any mistakes the Nuncio committed were due to lack of familiarity with surrounding conditions, very excusable in an alien.
But the Glamorgan treaty would appear to have been taken up at Rome, where Sir Kenelm Digby and the pontifical ministers concluded a truce favorable to the interests of both Irish and English Catholics. The king needed the 10,000 Irish troops which he knew the Confederates could place at his disposal. In March, 1646, a modified Glamorgan treaty was finally signed by Ormond for King Charles, and by Lord Muskerry and other Confederate leaders for their party. “These thirty articles,” comments McGee, “conceded, in fact, all the most essential claims of the Irish; they secured them equal rights as to property, the army, the universities, and the bar. They gave them seats in both Houses and on the bench. They authorized a special commission of Oyer and Terminer, composed wholly of Confederates. They declared that ‘the independency of the Parliament of Ireland on that of England’ should be decided by declaration of both Houses, agreeably to the laws of the Kingdom of Ireland. In short, the final form of Glamorgan’s treaty gave the Irish Catholics, in 1646, all that was subsequently obtained, either for the Church or the country, in 1782, 1793, and 1829. Though some conditions were omitted, to which the Nuncio and a majority of the prelates attached importance, Glamorgan’s treaty was, upon the whole, a charter upon which a free church and a free people might well have stood, as the fundamental law of their religious and civil liberties.”
These concessions proved to be a new “delusion, mockery, and snare.” Ormond tricked the Confederates, and the poltroon king, just before his fatal flight to the camp of the mercenary Scots’ army of General Lord Leven, which promptly sold him to the English Parliament, for the amount of its back pay, disclaimed the Glamorgan treaty in toto—a policy entirely in keeping with his unmanly, vacillating nature.
Owen Roe O’Neill, notwithstanding many and grievous vexations, chiefly arising from the absurd jealousy of General Preston, had his army well in hand on the borders of Leinster and Ulster, prepared to strike a blow at the enemy wherever it might be most needed. He was in free communication with the Nuncio, who, according to all the historians of the period, supplied him with the necessary means for making an aggressive movement. The Anglo-Scotch army of General Monroe presented the fairest mark for O’Neill’s prowess, and against that force his movements were, accordingly, directed.