The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Meanwhile, the king's difficulties with his English subjects drove him to turn for hope to the Scotch, upon whom he had attempted to force Episcopalianism. The resistance of the Scotch, and the celebrated Covenant by which they bound themselves, are well known. Charles, finally, granted the Covenanters not only liberty of conscience, but even the religious supremacy of Presbyterianism, paying their army, moreover, for a portion of the time it passed under service in the rebellion against himself.

The example of the Scotch was certainly calculated to inflame the Irish with ardor, and drive them likewise into rebellion. What was the oppression of Scotland compared to that under which Ireland had so long groaned? Surely the final attempt of the chief minister of Charles to rob them of the one province which had hitherto escaped, was enough to open their eyes, and convert their faith in the Stuart dynasty into hatred and determined opposition. Yet were they on the eve of carrying their devotion to this faithless and worthless line to the height of heroism. The generosity of the nature which is in them could find an excuse for Charles. "He would have done us right," they thought, "had he been left free." From the rebellion of his subjects, in England and Scotland, they could only draw one conclusion—that he was the victim of Puritanism, for which they could entertain no feeling but one of horror; and it is a telling fact that their attachment to their religion kept them faithful to the sovereign to whom they had sworn their allegiance, however unworthy he might be.

Thus in the famous rising of 1641, when in one night Ireland, with the exception of a few cities, freed herself from the oppressor (the failure of the plan in Dublin being the only thing which prevented a complete success; the English of the Pale still refusing to combine with the Irish), the native Irish alone, left to their own resources, proclaimed emphatically in explicit terms their loyalty to the king, whom they credited with a just and tolerant disposition, if freed from the restraints imposed upon him by the Puritanical faction. A further fact stranger still, and still more calculated to shake their confidence in the monarch, occurred shortly after, which indeed raises the loyalty of the nation to a height inconceivable and impossible to any people, unless one whose conscience is swayed by the sense of stern duty.

When the Scottish Covenanters, whose rebellion had secured them in possession of all they demanded, heard of the Irish movement, they were at once seized with a fanatical zeal urging them to stamp out the Irish "Popish rebellion." King Charles, who was then in Edinburgh, expressed his gratification at their proposal, and no time was lost in shipping a force of two thousand Scots across the Channel. They landed at Antrim, when they began those frightful massacres which opened by driving into the sea three thousand Irish inhabitants of the island Magee.

When, according to M. O'Connor's "Irish Catholics," "letters conveying the news of the intended invasion of the Scots were intercepted; when the speeches of leading members in the English Commons, the declaration of the Irish Lord-Justices, and of the principal members of the Dublin Council, countenanced those rumors; when Mr. Pym gave out that he would not leave a Papist in Ireland; when Sir Parsons declared that within a twelvemonth not a Catholic should be seen in the whole country; when Sir John Clotworthy affirmed that the conversion of the Papists was to be effected with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other," and the King all the while seemed to allow and consent to it, the Irish were not in the least dismayed by those rumors, but set about establishing in the convulsed island a sort of order in the name of God and the king!

Then for the first time did native and Anglo-Irish Catholics take common side in a common cause. This was the union which Archbishop Browne had foreseen, which had shown itself in symptoms from time to time, but which had oftener been broken by the old animosity. But, at last, convinced that the only party on which they could rely, and the party which truly supported the reigning dynasty, was that of the Ulster chiefs, the Catholic lords of the Pale threw themselves heart and soul into it, and, under the guidance of the Catholic bishops who then came forward, together they formed the celebrated "Confederation of Kilkenny" in 1642.

Had Charles even then possessed the courage, honesty, or wisdom to recognize and acknowledge his true friends, he might have been spared the fate which overtook him; but all he did was almost to break up the only coalition which stood up boldly in his favor.

A circumstance not yet touched upon meets us here. Protestantism was at this time effecting a complete change in the rules of judgment and conduct which men had hitherto followed. In place of the old principles of political morality which up to this period had regulated the actions of Christians, notions of independence, of subversion of existing governments, of revolutions in Church and state, were for the first time in Christian history scattered broadcast through the world, and beginning that series of catastrophes which has made European history since, and which is far from being exhausted yet. The Irish stood firm by the old principles, and, though they became victims to their fidelity, they never shrank from the consequences of what they knew to be their duty, and to those principles they remain faithful to-day.

To return from this short digression: The Irish hierarchy, the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish lords of the Pale, had combined together to form the "Confederation of Kilkenny," in which confederation lay the germ of a truly great nation. Early in the struggle the Catholic hierarchy saw that it was for them to take the initiative in the movement, and they took it in right earnest. They could not be impassive spectators when the question at issue was the defence of the Catholic religion, joined this time with the rights of their monarch. They met in provincial synod at Kells, where, after mature deliberation, the cause of the confederates, "God and the king," freedom of worship and loyalty to the legitimate sovereign, was declared just and holy, and, after lifting a warning voice against the barbarities which had commenced on both sides, and ordaining the abolition and oblivion of all distinctions between native Irish and old English, they took measures for convoking a national synod at Kilkenny.

It met on the 10th of May, 1643. An oath of association bound all Catholics throughout the land. It was ordained that a general assembly comprising all the lords spiritual and temporal and the gentry should be held; that the assembly should select members from its body to represent the different provinces and principal cities, to be called the Supreme Council, which should sit from day to day, dispense justice, appoint to offices, and carry on the executive government of the country.