[Footnote 1: Phil. Iren. i. 231. Carte's Ormond, ii. 102. Desid. Curios.
Hib. ii. 521.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Jan. 29.]
action the factions which had lain dormant since the departure of the nuncio. The recent treachery of Inchiquin's forces had engendered feelings of jealousy and suspicion; and many contended that it was better to submit at once to the conqueror than to depend on the doubtful fidelity of the lord lieutenant. Cromwell met with little resistance: wherever he came, he held out the promise of life and liberty of conscience;[1] but the rejection of the offer, though it were afterwards accepted, was punished with the blood of the officers; and, if the place were taken by force, with indiscriminate slaughter.[2] Proceeding on this plan, one day granting quarter, another putting the leaders only to the sword, and on the next immolating the whole garrison, hundreds of human beings at a time, he quickly reduced most of the towns and castles in the three counties of Limerick, Tipperary, and Kilkenny. But this bloody policy at length recoiled upon its author. Men, with no alternative but victory or death, learned to fight with the energy of despair. At the siege of Kilkenny the assailants, though twice repulsed from the breach, were, by the timidity of some of the inhabitants,
[Footnote 1: Liberty of conscience he explained to mean liberty of internal belief, not of external worship.—See his letter in Phil. Iren. i. 270.]
[Footnote 2: The Irish commanders disdained to imitate the cruelty of their enemies. "I took," says Lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred men) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the like with me, as any of mine should fall in his power. But he little valued my civility. For, in a few days after, he besieged Gouvan; and the soldiers mutinying, and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the governor, Hammond, and some other officers, to be put to death."—Castlehaven, 107. Ormond also says, in one of his letters, "the next day Rathfarnham was taken by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and though five hundred soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference betwixt our and the rebels making use of a victory."—Carte, Letters, ii. 408.]
admitted within the walls; yet, so obstinate was the resistance of the garrison, that, to spare his own men, the general consented to grant them honourable terms. From Kilkenny he proceeded to the town of Clonmel,[a] where Hugh, the son of the deceased O'Neil, commanded with one thousand two hundred of the best troops of Ulster. The duration of the siege exhausted his patience; the breach was stormed a second time; and, after a conflict of four hours, the English were driven back with considerable loss. The garrison, however, had expended their ammunition; they took advantage of the confusion of the enemy to depart during the darkness of the night; and the townsmen the next morning, keeping the secret, obtained from Cromwell a favourable capitulation.[1][c] This was his last exploit in Ireland. From Clonmel he was recalled to England to undertake a service of greater importance and difficulty, to which the reader must now direct his attention.
The young king, it will be remembered, had left the Hague on his circuitous route to Ireland, whither he had been called by the advice of Ormond and the wishes of the royalists.[d] He was detained three months at St. Germains by the charms of a mistress or the intrigues of his courtiers, nor did he reach the island of Jersey till long after the disastrous battle of Rathmines.[e] That event made his further progress a matter of serious discussion; and the difficulty was increased by the arrival of Wynram of Libertoun, with addresses from the parliament and the kirk of Scotland.[f] The first offered, on his acknowledgment of their authority as a parliament, to treat with him respecting the
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 449, 456. Castlehaven, 108. Ludlow, i. 265. Perfect
Politician, 70.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. March 28.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. May 8.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. May 10.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1649. June.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1649. September.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1649. October.]
conditions proposed by their former commissioners; but the latter, in language unceremonious and insulting, laid before him the sins of his youth; his refusal to allow the Son of God to reign over him in the pure ordinances of church government and worship; his cleaving to counsellors who never had the glory of God or the good of his people before their eyes; his admission to his person of that "fugacious man and excommunicate rebel, James Graham" and, above all, "his giving the royal power and strength to the beast," by concluding a peace "with the Irish papists, the murderers of so many Protestants." They bade him remember the iniquities of his father's house, and be assured that, unless he laid aside the "service-book, so stuffed with Romish corruptions, for the reformation of doctrine and worship agreed upon by the divines at Westminster," and approved of the covenant in his three kingdoms, without which the people could have no security for their religion or liberty, he would find that the Lord's anger was not turned away, but that his hand was still stretched against the royal person and his family.[1]