The English Parliament against the cessation.
The Irish Government insist on the truce,
Parliament having failed to support the war.
In April 1642 Ormonde had received a jewel and the thanks of the House of Commons for his services against the ‘wicked, bloody rebels.’ In the following August, a few days after the raising of the royal standard, Charles made him a marquis. After the cessation he was appointed Lord Lieutenant, and the farce of Leicester’s viceroyalty came to an end. The latter was a very good but very weak man, and his vacillations prevented his being trusted by any party. Meanwhile Ireland had been left to substitutes without either the ability or the position required to command success. The ruling party in the English Parliament, whatever their shortcomings may have been, were opposed to the cessation. The King having informed them of his commission to Ormonde, they retorted that they had ‘just cause to suspect an impious design on foot to sell for nought the crying blood of many hundreds of thousands of British Protestants, by a dishonourable, insufferable peace with the rebels, and then to lay the blame and shame of this upon the Parliament, a plot suitable to those counsels that have both projected and fomented this unparalleled rebellion’; for those who contrived the powder treason intended to lay it on the Puritans. The Lords Justices and Council informed both King and Speaker that their position was bad in the extreme, and that this was owing mainly to Parliament having failed to send the necessary supplies. To this the two Houses replied that they had made great efforts, and that in any case the direction of the war belonged to them, as well as the privilege of acting as bankers to the Irish Council. Full control had been conferred on them by Act of Parliament, and the King had no power to deprive them of it. This joint-letter is dated July 4, but was not delivered in Dublin till October 6, after the cessation had been actually concluded. The Lords Justices, with Ormonde and thirteen others of the Irish Council, rejoined in greatest detail, reviewing all that had passed between the two Governments. Such was the lack of money, after the great local efforts, that the sack of Dublin by the unpaid soldiery was a calamity daily expected. The parliamentary ships had failed to guard the coasts, so that the Confederate cruisers often intercepted such scanty supplies as were sent; and even captains employed by Parliament prevented the passage of necessaries from Liverpool to Ireland. A cessation was the only means of self-preservation, ‘and seeing that the charge of this war was referred to and undertaken by the Houses of Parliament of England, and that by those despatches they fully understood the condition of affairs here, we offer it to any man’s consideration whether or no we had not just cause to conceive and accordingly to express, that our difficulties were occasioned through the Houses of Parliament in England.’[44]
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Act for the speedy and effectual reducing of the rebels, &c., Scobell, i. 26. The royal consent was given March 19, 1641-2.
[32] Arthur Freke’s Narrative, printed from the Sloane MSS. in the Journal of the Cork Historical Society, 2nd series, i. 1; True Relation of God’s Providence in Ireland, by Hugh Peters, November 18, 1642; Day’s edition of Smith’s Cork, ii. 153, 1894; Exceeding Good and True News from Ireland, London, August 20, and Exceeding Joyful News, August 27.
[33] Hugh Peters and Smith’s Cork, ut sup.; Clanricarde’s Memoirs, August 1642, pp. 203-215.
[34] Clanricarde’s Memoirs, August and September, 1642; Bellings, i. 139-148; Hugh Peters, ut sup.
[35] Hugh Peters, ut sup. The narrative was ordered to be printed by a committee of the House of Commons immediately after Forbes’s return. Two letters from Forbes to the two Houses, dated Glin, September 27 and 28, were brought over by Peters and published October 11. He says the Irish were ‘so impudently bold as to father their rebellion upon his sacred Majesty,’ though they had never seen any warrant. Their ‘priests and prime commanders’ tried to make them fight desperately by saying there was no hope of pardon.