The peace proclaimed at Dublin, July 30, 1646.
These articles when duly executed were placed in Clanricarde’s hands, to be kept secret until such time after May 1 as Ormonde might choose for their publication. Before that day the Parliamentary fleets had begun their summer cruises and the sea was entirely at their mercy. Chester having fallen, it was almost out of the question to land men in Wales. Six thousand of the promised troops were ready, and orders were given for levying the remainder, but shipping could not be provided, and there was no money either at Dublin or Kilkenny. The attempt to put down the English people with Irish troops failed as it had failed in the days of Strafford, and as it was destined to fail in the days of Tyrconnel. In the meantime Lord Digby found a plan of his own for bringing the Prince of Wales to Ireland and rallying round him there all the forces opposed to the Parliament. Rinuccini dreaded the success of this scheme, but it was not he who prevented it. Digby sailed with two small frigates and 300 men to Scilly, where the Prince remained from March 4 to April 16, but did not get there till after the latter date. ‘The men of the island,’ wrote Plunket to Ormonde, ‘put themselves in arms and loudly cried that no Irish rebels should land there, the Lord Digby thereupon parted thence with one frigate, and one hundred of the men to Guernsey or Jersey.’ The other frigate with the remaining men returned to Waterford. According to Daniel O’Neill, the King’s principal secretary was ‘drunk nine days out of ten with white wine’ during the preparation of his little expedition, which may have had something to do with its being late. The Confederates depended on Glamorgan’s treaty for relief to their religion further than that promised by Ormonde. It was true that both sets of articles depended really upon the King’s word and upon his ability to keep it, but as professed Royalists they could not reject the first nor assume the permanent absence of the second. Rinuccini, who had no duties except to the Church, very rightly held that Charles’s word was worth nothing, and it was evident to him that if the royal power was destroyed in England it could not long survive in Ireland without foreign help. The King had justified the nuncio’s opinion by repudiating Glamorgan, and when this was known at Kilkenny he lost all credit, ‘with the merchants in particular, so that he really had not enough to live upon.’ He spoke to the French agent Dumoulin about leading the troops intended for England into Louis XIV.’s service, but there was no chance of that being allowed. The nuncio’s position was strengthened by a royal letter to Ormonde written from Newcastle under Scotch influence. ‘We think fit,’ the King said, ‘to require you to proceed no further in treaty with the rebels nor to engage us upon conditions with them after sight hereof’; the alleged motive being anxiety for the safety of the Irish Protestants. This came to Ormonde’s hands three months after the signature of the Dublin peace. A very few days later Digby returned from France, where a letter had been received from the King in which he declared that he was no longer free, and that Ormonde was to proceed as before. Digby accordingly publicly declared the Newcastle letter to be a forgery or written under duress. This satisfied the Council, and the peace was proclaimed in Dublin on July 30. On August 3 the Supreme Council at Kilkenny followed suit. ‘We require,’ they wrote, ‘the above proclamation to be printed, and do order and require the same to be published, and due obedience to be given thereunto by all the Confederate Catholics of Ireland.’[88]
Siege of Bunratty, March-July, 1646.
The castle in its grandeur
Fight at Sixmilebridge, April 1.
Barnabas O’Brien, sixth Earl of Thomond, had endeavoured to stand neutral during the early years of the war, and to live quietly in Clare. As a Protestant his natural leaning was to Ormonde, who could not protect him; and in October 1644 the Kilkenny assembly, treating neutrals as enemies, ordered his tenants to pay no rent, and took steps to sequestrate his vast estates for the benefit of the Confederacy. Finding his position intolerable, Thomond surrendered Bunratty to the Parliament in March 1646, and soon went himself to England. A Parliamentary fleet under Penn lay in the Shannon, and there was no difficulty about putting a garrison of 700 men under Colonel MacAdam into Bunratty Castle, which lies upon the estuary of the Ogarney river. It is now the most melancholy of ruins; but Rinuccini, who beheld it in its days of grandeur, thought it the finest thing he had ever seen, and Bellings’s description bears him out. ‘It is,’ he says, ‘a noble structure, reputed strong when engines of battery were not so frequent, and before time and experience had brought the art of taking in places to perfection. On the south it hath the river of the Shannon, distant from it about a mile of marsh and meadow ground. On the east it is washed by the river which falling to the Shannon at the end of a goodly plain, ebbs and flows with it. To the north at some distance from the castle it is environed with an eminent ridge of earth, which bounds a goodly park, save that it wanted the ornament of timber trees; it was then stored with the largest deer in the kingdom.’ Glamorgan, who was now entirely in the nuncio’s hands, went to Limerick and busied himself about preparations for the recovery of Bunratty; but the garrison were at first successful. A party of Irish, consisting of 120 horse and 300 foot, came from Sixmilebridge and burned a few houses, but were routed by a sally and lost eighty men, their commander, Captain Magrath, and his lieutenant, being taken prisoners. In the afternoon of the same day the victors, amounting to fifty horse and 600 foot, went to Sixmilebridge and attacked the Irish camp. About 1400 men were strongly entrenched there, but were driven out and took to the woods. A few were slain, but a more important success was the capture of 250 barrels of meal, which supplied the garrison of Bunratty with bread for six weeks. Next day they went as far as Ballyquin, where the Irish had first encamped, burned a large store of corn, and returned with some plunder to Bunratty. Magrath and his subaltern both died of their wounds and were buried with military honours.
Muskerry presses the siege.
Rinuccini joins the besiegers.
Bunratty capitulates, July 14.
It was not till the middle of May that the Irish began to press the siege by taking the outlying castles of Cappagh and Rossmanagher. The works of Bunratty itself were strengthened by the labour and skill of the sailors, but it became difficult to supply the garrison with food and ammunition. The besiegers encamped in the park, where the underwood supplied material for gabions and fascines, and ate the deer, which they roasted with the dry wood of the palings. Muskerry arrived at the end of the month, and after that the siege became closer. Letters were received from Broghill, but no relief came. Rinuccini came to Limerick about the middle of May, where he had the satisfaction of superintending the rejoicings for Benburb, but he found that the siege of Bunratty was likely to be raised for want of money to pay the soldiers. There were frequent sallies from the garrison, but nothing decisive on either side. The nuncio went himself to the camp at the end of June with all that remained of the Pope’s money, to which he added some of his own, and the attack was after that pressed with more vigour. Colonel MacAdam was killed by a stray round shot which came in at a window, and his loss proved fatal to the defence. Eighteen bags of money and some of Thomond’s plate had been guarded by the commandant; but this treasure was now divided among themselves by the officers who found it, in spite of Penn’s remonstrances. When Muskerry’s men succeeded in getting heavy guns down to the shore where the action of the defenders was weak, ships could no longer lie near, and want of provisions soon became felt. On July 14 the garrison capitulated, and were carried off in Penn’s boats. Rinuccini was satisfied that his presence and assistance during the siege would cause ‘the people to recognise it as an apostolic undertaking,’ and a Te Deum was sung in the cathedral, where ten captured colours were displayed.[89]