On February 21st, 1642, Colonel Monk landed in Dublin at the head of the Lord-General's regiment of foot. It was a splendid body of men, two thousand strong and officered by the flower of the disbanded army of the north. And with him was Sir Richard Grenville, commanding four hundred of Leicester's new regiment of horse. Over the scenes which followed there is no need to linger. In fire and blood the wretched Irish had to do penance for the outburst of savagery to which they had been goaded by Strafford's imperious rule. The most important operation of the campaign of 1642 was the expedition for the relief of the English settlements in Kildare and Queen's County. With two thousand five hundred foot under Monk, five hundred horse under Lucas, Coote, and Grenville, and six guns, Ormonde left Dublin on April 2nd, and by the 9th had successfully relieved Athy, Maryborough, and some smaller settlements. The work was accomplished with all the horrible accompaniments which characterised Irish warfare. "In our march thither," wrote an officer in Monk's regiment, "we fired above two hundred villages. The horse that marched on our flanks fired all within five or six miles of the body of the army; and those places that we marched through, they that had the rear of the army always burned. Hitherto we met not with any enemy to oppose, yet not a mile nor a place that we marched by, that the dead bodies of the rebels did not witness our passage." But the most difficult part of the enterprise yet remained. Some thirty miles beyond the river Nore, in a country swarming with rebels, lay several garrisons yet unrelieved. Ormonde's provisions were running so short that to reach them by a regular operation was impossible; but sooner than abandon them Grenville, Lucas, and Coote undertook to make a dash to their aid with the cavalry, while Monk covered the retreat. On the morning of Saturday the 10th, in the dead of night, the horse sallied from Maryborough, and succeeded in passing the river unobserved. The Irish at once took the alarm, and seized the only two fords by which they could return. That at Portnahinch they barred by an intrenchment, and leaving the other open they laid a strong ambush along the dangerous causeway by which it was approached. There, certain of their prey, they quietly waited to wreak a terrible vengeance on Grenville's ruthless troopers. On Monk rested the only chance of escape. Early on Monday morning, with a party of six hundred musketeers, he attacked a neighbouring castle, which belonged to one of the rebel leaders, hoping to draw to its relief the forces which held the fords; but not a man would they stir. In desperation he determined to force the pass at Portnahinch, but on reaching it he found the river so swollen that it was impassable for foot. The last hope seemed gone, but Monk was not to be beaten. Seizing every point of vantage on his own bank, he placed his musketeers with such skill that the Irish could neither abandon nor reinforce their intrenchments. Assured that the horse must mean to force a passage at this point under cover of Monk's fire, they at last withdrew the whole of their strength from the other ford, and while Monk occupied them with a deadly fusilade, Grenville and his exhausted comrades rode unmolested along the abandoned causeway and reached Maryborough in safety.[3]
The horse were saved, and, now his object was accomplished, Ormonde began to retire to Dublin. It was in the course of this march that he won his brilliant action at Kilrush. Monk was present with the staff during the general's reconnaissance on the eve of the battle, and we may credit him with at least a share of the masterly tactics by which the victory was obtained. That Ormonde appreciated his services is certain, for on this occasion he was mentioned in despatches "for the alacrity and undaunted resolution" he had displayed.
By the end of June eight more regiments, including Lord Lisle's carbineers, were landed in Dublin, and the Parliament seemed to have exhausted all the resources it could spare for Ireland. The Civil War was beginning. By straining every nerve it could only hold its own against the King in England, and the Irish army was left to shift for itself. Constant forays became a necessity, and indeed were the only operations possible. In these no one was so successful as Monk. He displayed in them all the qualities which endear a commander to his men, and soon no officer in the army was so popular with rank and file as he. No one, they used to say, was too sick or sorry for action, and nobody's boots were too bad for a march, when the word was passed that "honest George" was off foraying again. It became a joke that his regiment was the purveyor for the whole of Dublin.
This was hardly the work that Monk had promised himself when he volunteered for Ireland; but at any rate it was a great relief to him that he was leaving behind the politics which he detested and only half understood for some hard fighting which was his meat and drink. But he was to be sadly disappointed. Lord Leicester, commissioned by the King and paid by the Parliament, was still in England, detained by orders from Oxford. In Ormonde Charles knew he had a representative in every way satisfactory. He was a royalist above suspicion. The advent of Leicester could only strengthen the hands of the Lords Justices, who represented the Lord Lieutenant in his absence. These men were staunch Parliamentarians, and made it their business to oppose Ormonde's influence in every way. Indeed their enemies accused them of deliberately thwarting his operations in order that, by allowing the rebellion to spread, there might be a larger area of land for confiscation. In return for providing money for the suppression of the rebellion an influential body of London capitalists had obtained from Parliament a concession of one quarter of the land which should become liable to confiscation; and it is to be feared the Lords Justices were to some extent interested in this gigantic job. The Lords Justices had their fortunes to make, and they saw them in their power of distributing the forfeited lands. Their interests as well as their opinions were in sympathy with the parliamentary cause. Thus Ormonde represented for them a double danger, and without accusing them of actually fostering rebellion, it is certain that they did their best to discredit Ormonde with the King in order to procure his recall.
To seek Monk's attitude in the strife we need not go far. If he had any sympathies either way, which is very doubtful, they were certainly at this time parliamentarian. Indeed a slight he received about this time must have sharply spurred him to the side to which contempt for the King, anxiety about his pay, and the influence of his friends the Sidneys already inclined him. In May Sir Charles Coote, the governor of Dublin, had been killed in action. No one deserved to succeed him so well as "honest George." No one had done so much for the place, above all, in keeping in temper the troops who were always on the verge of mutiny for want of pay and clothes and food. Accordingly Lord Leicester, on the recommendation of the Lords Justices, sent over a commission by which he was appointed governor at a double salary of forty shillings a day, a little addition which made the post doubly dear to the soldier of fortune; but hardly had the commission arrived when there came a letter direct from the King approving the permanent appointment of Lord Lambert, who had been acting as Coote's deputy, and Monk found the governorship and his forty shillings a day snatched out of his very mouth.
Important as this affair was to poor Monk, it was but one of many such passages between the two parties. Ormonde, on the whole, was getting the upper hand; but the condition of friction which this state of things set up could have but one result. The rebels gained ground by strides. In September General Preston landed from Spain with quantities of supplies of all kinds for their use. A popish plot was winded once more. A new design was suspected of raising an army for the King in Ireland with Catholic money and arms. Ormonde's popularity was growing alarming. What was to prevent him suddenly joining hands with the rebels and turning with the whole army upon the Parliament? How could it then withstand the King? An old prophecy was in every one's mouth:
"He that would old England win
First with Ireland must begin."
The action which the Commons took at this crisis gives us a startling peep beneath the boards where the wire-pullers sat. Joint-committees were sent out to the various provinces, consisting each of two delegates, one nominated by the Commons and one by the Syndicate which was working the Irish concession. Reynolds and Goodwin were the two appointed for Dublin. On their arrival they were at once, without a shadow of right, admitted to the Council, and set to work to put Lisle at the head of the army instead of Ormonde, and oust from the governorship of Dublin the man who had supplanted the parliamentary candidate. They even tried to commit the army to an oath of fealty to Parliament, but £20,000 was all the money they had brought to satisfy arrears, and it was not enough to allay the distrust of the soldiers.
As the winter advanced the distress and discontent of the troops increased. Their clothes were in rags, many had not even boots to their feet, and proper food could hardly be obtained. They cried aloud for their pay, and the delegates saw a new device must be tried to silence the dangerous clamour. In testimony of the goodwill of the Parliament, they offered all such as should be willing to accept it a grant of rebel land in satisfaction of arrears. The idea was extremely ingenious and nearly succeeded. Monk was far too dull a man to see through it, and he at once subscribed the agreement. But there were many to point out what it meant. It was soon seen to be a mere device to commit the army to the cause of the Parliament, and those who had so hastily signed insisted on withdrawing, for ruin stared them in the face. Ormonde had received instructions from the King to negotiate a pacification with the Irish rebels. In him the army saw their only chance of redress, and in spite of all the delegates could do they set out their grievances in a loyal address and sent it to the King.