Glamorgan was not satisfied with abandoning as worthless the treaty which had cost him so much, he must needs swear fealty to the nuncio in terms such as perhaps no other English layman has ever used. ‘I swear,’ he wrote, ‘to obey all your commands readily without reluctance and with a joyful mind. I make this perpetual protestation on my bended knees to your most illustrious and reverend lordship, not only as the Pope’s minister but also as a remarkable personage, and as witnesses of the purity of my intentions I invoke the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints of Paradise.’ The result of this alliance was the consent of the Supreme Council to prolong the cessation till May 1, so as to give time for the arrival of Sir Kenelm Digby’s original articles. Neither Digby nor the documents ever reached Ireland, for the Queen did not choose that they should, and peace was concluded with Ormonde on March 28, on the understanding that the terms were not to be divulged until May 1, Rinuccini failing to get a further postponement. ‘I command you,’ Charles had written, ‘to conclude a peace with the Irish, whatever it cost; so that my Protestant subjects there may be secure, and my regal authority preserved. But for all this, you are to make the best bargain you can, and not to discover your enlargement of power till you needs must.’ This was early in 1645. Six months later, after Naseby, the King ‘absolutely and without reply,’ commanded Ormonde to make the peace, with the consent of his Council if possible, but to make it anyhow. The contracting parties were Ormonde alone on the King’s part and the following commissioners for the Confederate Catholics: Ormonde’s uncle, Viscount Mountgarret, and his brother-in-law, Viscount Muskerry, Sir Robert Talbot, Tyrconnel’s eldest brother; Colonel Dermot O’Brien; Patrick Darcy of Plattin; Geoffrey Brown and John Dillon, two lawyers who were designated as future judges. The conditions of a peace which was no peace might seem hardly worth dwelling on, but that they mark clearly the furthest point to which Charles would openly, if not altogether willingly, go in his dealings with the Irish Roman Catholics. A few weeks after the peace was signed, and before it was published, he ceased to be a free agent, and the desperate expedients of a prisoner scarcely count. The articles occupy twenty-two printed pages, but the principal points may be clearly brought out in a short abstract.
Summary of the articles.
1. The oath of supremacy to be abolished, so far as concerns Roman Catholics, in the next Irish Parliament; and an oath of allegiance substituted. All statutory penalties and disabilities to be repealed by the same Act. ‘That his Majesty’s said Roman Catholic subjects be referred to his Majesty’s gracious favour and further concessions.’
2. An Irish Parliament to be held before November 30, when all the articles were to be performed by law, the King undertaking to make no alterations under Poynings’ Act.
3. All legal acts done against Roman Catholics since August 7, 1641, to be vacated. Debts to remain as they stood before the outbreak.
6. Titles to land to be confirmed under the graces of 1628.
7. All educational disabilities affecting Roman Catholics to be removed.
8. All offices, civil and military, to be open to Roman Catholics.
9. The Court of Wards to be abolished on payment of 12,000l.
10, 11. Peers without estates in Ireland to have no votes. Irish Parliament to be as independent as it ever had been.