Confederate agents at Oxford, March 1644.
Protestant agents follow, April.
The Irish Government separately represented.
As early as November 1643 the Supreme Council of the Confederates, acting by order of their General Assembly, nominated seven commissioners as agents to attend the King and to state their grievances to him. The persons chosen were Lord Muskerry, Antrim’s brother Alexander Macdonnell, Sir Robert Talbot, Nicholas Plunket, Dermot O’Brien, Geoffrey Brown, and Richard Martin. There is some doubt about Martin, but all the others went over. The Lords Justices granted them a safe conduct in January, but there was considerable delay first at Kilkenny, and afterwards in waiting for a wind at Wexford. They landed in Cornwall and reached Oxford March 24. As soon as it was known in Ireland that the King would be likely to receive the Confederate agents, the more zealous Protestants began to prepare for a counter-mission. Charles expressed himself ready to hear both sides. Lords Kildare, Montgomery, and Blayney were the chiefs of the Protestant movement, and a deputation waited on Ormonde the day after he was sworn in as Lord Lieutenant. Michael Jones was the spokesman. Ormonde answered that he was somewhat taken by surprise, but ‘for you English and Protestants, I assure you both of assistance and protection, and that, if need be, to the hazard even of my life and fortunes.’ The envoys first chosen were Sir Francis Hamilton, Captains Ridgeway and Jones, and Fenton Parsons. Jones, whose parliamentary sympathies led him to avoid the Court, refused to go, and Sir Charles Coote was substituted with the King’s consent. A petition of the Protestants was read in the Irish House of Commons on February 17, and approved by the House. The agents did not reach Oxford till April 17, and the King received them next day ‘in the garden at Christ Church,’ and desired them to prepare definite proposals. Charles had sent to Ireland for Chief Justice Lowther, Sir Philip Perceval, Sir William Stewart, and Mr. Justice Donnellan, who arrived about this time, accompanied by Sambach, the Irish Solicitor-General. Sir H. Tichborne and others went over later. Strafford’s old secretary, Radcliffe, who was already at Oxford, was ordered to join in their consultations. The whole case was then handed over to a committee of the Privy Council, consisting of the Earls of Bristol and Portland, Lord Digby, Secretary Nicholas, Colepepper, and Hyde.[55]
Attitude of Hyde, Digby and others.
Revised demands of Confederates.
Hyde and Colepepper were hostile to the Confederates’ demands, and Radcliffe was even violent, ‘which,’ says a correspondent of Ormonde, ‘makes the Irish swagger very severely.’ Digby, who was much more favourable to them, said their first propositions were scandalous, and that all negotiations would have to be broken off unless they amended them. Muskerry, on the contrary, had assured Ormonde that their demands were an irreducible minimum. ‘Neither,’ he said, ‘is the highest of them such a rock, but that the King may find a way to satisfy his people in Ireland without prejudice to his party in England. And the real advantage of the assurance of our kingdom, and of a nation so faithfully affected to his service, is much more considerable than the fears and jealousies to discontent a party.’ Unfortunately for this argument, Ireland was divided into parties quite as much as England, and concessions to Irish national feeling were certain to deprive the King of all effective English support. In spite of Muskerry’s assurance, Digby found him and his colleagues ‘beyond expectation counsellable, and they have this day, instead of the former, presented these enclosed propositions, which though in many things unreasonable for the King to grant, yet are not very scandalous for them to ask.’ Ormonde wrote to Muskerry advising moderation, and foretold that the time might come when ‘his Majesty might with more safety grant, than he can as yet hear propounded’ such of the agents’ desires as were in themselves just. The amended propositions demanded the repeal of all penal laws affecting the Roman Catholics, their relief from disabilities of every kind, and that a free Parliament, entirely independent of the English legislature, should at once be called. All proceedings of the Irish Parliament since August 7, 1641, should be annulled, as well as all outlawries, attainders, and other acts affecting the Roman Catholics prejudicially since that date. All forfeitures to the Crown in Connaught, Clare, Tipperary, Limerick, Kilkenny, and Wicklow since 1634 were to be abandoned, and the ancient possessors confirmed by law, the Court of Wards abolished, and trained bands established in every Irish county. The other demands were of less importance. Among the proposals waived by the agents was one which virtually placed all titles to land created since the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign at the mercy of the Irish Parliament. Another clause proposed to deprive the King of all right to maintain a standing army in Ireland. It was also required ‘that the present Government of the said Catholics may continue within their quarters and jurisdictions until the Parliament, and after until their grievances be redressed by Acts of Parliament, and for a convenient time for the execution thereof.’ The original propositions were such as might have been dictated by the victors to a conquered country. The amended propositions, though containing many things ‘in themselves just,’ involved the complete subjection of the Protestants in Ireland, and could never be granted by an English Government. If the King granted them it would only be because he had no longer any real power. The Irish Privy Councillors at Oxford, though more moderate than Coote and his colleagues, held that the toleration of Romish priests had been the cause of the rebellion, that what was called a free Parliament would contain few or no Protestants, most of them having been murdered or exiled, and that Poynings’ Act was one of the wisest ever made and ‘one of the precious jewels of his Majesty’s imperial diadem.’[56]
Protestant proposals equally extreme.
No compromise appears possible.
If the propositions of the Confederate agents seemed scandalous to Digby, those of Coote and his colleagues will not seem less so to modern readers. They demanded, among other things, that all penal laws should be strictly executed, that all the Roman Catholic clergy should be banished out of Ireland, that the oath of supremacy should be taken by every member of Parliament, mayor, sheriff, or magistrate; that no lawyer refusing to take that oath should be allowed to practise; and that there should be a ‘competent Protestant army.’ After a few days, the Protestant agents were summoned to meet Ussher, Henry Leslie, Radcliffe, and others. Radcliffe, on behalf of the Committee of Council, said their proposals were unreasonable, and that peace could never be made on any such terms. The agents then agreed to modify the demands, but still insisted firmly on the full execution of the penal laws, on maintaining the existing Parliament and Poynings’ law, on the encouragement of plantations, and on disabling lawyers who refused the oath of supremacy. They waived the expulsion of Roman Catholic priests and the oath ex officio, and also the demand that all churches should be restored to them, rebuilt and refitted ‘at the charge of the Confederate Roman Catholics.’ A week later the agents were summoned before the King in council. Charles asked them whether they wanted peace or war. They said they preferred peace, but only upon honourable terms; and the King answered that he also would choose the hazard of war rather than that they should suffer by a peace of his making. He could not, he added, help them with men, money, arms, ammunition, or victuals, nor could he allow them to join with those who had taken the Covenant. It was consistent with Charles’s love for tortuous ways that he had tried to prevent Coote and his friends from knowing what the propositions of the Confederate agents were. They had oozed out, of course, and, making a virtue of necessity, the King now gave them a copy and requested their answers. This was done, and the absolute incompatibility of the two sets of agents was conclusively shown.[57]