A general assembly meets, Oct. 1642.
The name of Parliament avoided.
The Catholic Church first.
The King second.
The Supreme Council.
Four generals appointed.
The provisional supreme council, which had been formed at Kilkenny in the early summer, did what they could to give their organisation something of a legal shape. ‘Letters,’ says Bellings, ‘in nature of writs were sent from this council to all the Lords spiritual and temporal, and all the counties, cities, and corporate towns that had right to send knights and burgesses to Parliament.’ The general assembly so constituted met on October 24, a year and a day after the first outbreak in Ulster, at the house of Robert Shee, heir to Sir Richard Shee. The Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons sat in one room, Mr. Pat Darcy bareheaded upon a stool representing all or some that sat in Parliament upon the woolsack. Mr. Nicholas Plunket represented the Speaker of the Commons, and both Lords and Commons addressed their speech to him. The Lords had an upper room for a recess for private consultation, and upon resolutions taken the same were delivered to the Commons by Mr. Darcy. The name of Parliament was eschewed, and Plunket was called prolocutor or president, and not speaker. Burgesses were to be paid five shillings a day, and knights of the shire ten shillings during the session, and for ten days before and after. The first act of the assembly was to establish the Roman Catholic Church as it had been in the time of Henry VII., and the statute law was to be observed so far as it was ‘not against the Catholic Roman religion.’ Allegiance to King Charles came second. For the protection of the King’s subjects against murders, rapes and robberies ‘contrived and daily executed by the malignant party, and for the exaltation of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the advancement of his Majesty’s service,’ a Supreme Council was appointed, with both executive and judicial authority; control over all officers, even generals, in the field; and power to hear and determine all matters capital, criminal or civil, ‘except the right or title of land.’ Owen Roe O’Neill was appointed general for Ulster, Preston for Leinster, and Colonel Gerald Barry for Munster. For Connaught, Colonel John Bourke was named lieutenant-general only, in the hope that Clanricarde would be induced to join. There were some bickerings between Owen Roe and Sir Phelim, who had just married Preston’s daughter, and who wished to be in command of his own province, and between Rory O’More and other Leinster gentlemen, but they were smoothed over for the time. All the generals had seen service on the Continent.[22]
Constitution of the Supreme Council.
Provincial Councils.