The Supreme Council consisted of twenty-four persons, four taken from each province. Of these only four, an O’Neill and a Magennis from Ulster, an O’Brien from Munster and Lord Mayo, were not sworn in at the time. Lord Mountgarret was appointed president, Bellings secretary, and Richard Shee clerk. Of the whole twenty-four four were peers and five bishops. Provincial and county councils were also constituted, but they had no real existence, or a very shadowy one. That for Leinster was appointed, but was overshadowed by the Supreme Council, and events soon showed that military force and not new-fangled civil departments was the determining quantity during the revolutionary period.
Protestants and neutrals to lose their estates.
Church property to be transferred.
The assembly decreed that lands taken from their owners since October 1, 1641, should be restored on pain of the new possessor being treated as an enemy; provided that if the old owner ‘be declared a neuter or enemy by the supreme or provincial,’ then the land should be surrendered not to him, but to the council, ‘to be disposed of towards the maintenance of the general cause.’ The war was a religious one, and thus the lands of all who were not prepared to espouse the Roman Catholic cause were to be forfeited, or at the least sequestered. English, Welsh and Scotch Roman Catholics were to be treated as well as natives of Ireland. All Church temporalities were at one stroke transferred from Protestants to Roman Catholics. It must have been from the first evident to all cool observers that no accommodation on these terms could ever be made with any settled English Government. After sitting for about a month the assembly adjourned till May 20 next. They had ordered 4000l. worth coin to be struck, and 5820 men to be raised as the Leinster contingent. The Kilkenny government never had any real authority, except in the south-east of Ireland.[23]
The royal authority slighted.
Flags.
Coinage.
Indulgences and excommunications.
Free trade.
The Supreme Council assumed sovereign power, the King figuring largely in negotiations with Ormonde, but seldom appearing in documents intended for home consumption. Flags were devised with various religious emblems and mottoes; but in each case there was an Irish cross on a green field, ‘Vivat Rex Carolus’ below, and C R with a crown imperial above. Francis Oliver, a Fleming, was appointed vice-admiral, and letters of marque to prey upon ‘enemies of the general Catholic cause’ were freely granted. Half-crowns and shillings and copper money were struck with Charles I. on one side and St. Patrick on the other, but this was not done without much opposition, for the coinage was unnecessary, and was an evident encroachment upon the Crown. Agents were accredited to the Emperor, the King of France, the Pope, the Duke of Bavaria, the Viceroy in Belgium, and the Governor of Biscay. The Franciscan Luke Wadding, a native of Waterford, was agent at Rome, and as this was emphatically the Pope’s war, the instructions to him are of special interest. The first thing asked for was a supply of indulgences for the confederates and of excommunications for all opponents and neutrals. The Pope was requested to send letters in their favour to the Queen of England, to the Catholic princes of Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Poland, and Bavaria, to Genoa, and to the Catholics of Holland. Wadding was directed to impress upon his Holiness that the Catholic cause in Protestant countries would be much advanced by the success of the confederates. Free trade with France, Spain, and Holland was solicited through the Pope’s mediation. In general he was to be asked to give the council power over ecclesiastical patronage, and not to admit appeals during the war. In particular Thomas Dease, Bishop of Meath, had been suspended by the provincial synod of Armagh for refusing to approve of the war, and his appeal was to be rejected without trial. The Supreme Council thus engrossed to themselves all the chief prerogatives of the Crown which they professed to defend.[24]