Limitation of Irish loyalty.
After staying a few days at Kilkenny, Ormonde went to his other house at Carrick, so that he might be near Waterford and in a position to confer with the clergy; but they were past the reach of argument. Rinuccini issued a decree ordering them all to denounce the peace publicly and to threaten actual excommunication by himself of all who favoured it. He had seen, he said, ‘with grief of heart that the Protestant ministers in some places appear, and threaten that they will recover both the churches and the exercise of their religion.’ Finding that nothing could be done on the Waterford side, Ormonde set out for Cashel, intending to encourage those who had proclaimed the peace there; but he was met on the road by a messenger from the mayor begging him not to draw down upon the town the vengeance of O’Neill, who was already at Roscrea. Piers MacThomas Fitzgerald, with the Munster horse, ‘appeared upon a hill to the left hand, near Clonmel.’ Preston had been summoned to attend, but he pleaded ill-health, and a few days later declared that, though he distrusted the Ulster army, he had ‘received a positive inhibition from the clergy that neither myself nor any of my commanders, upon pain of excommunication, shall obey any orders from my Lord lieutenant.’ The position of Ireland could scarcely be better described than in this letter of Preston’s. The Confederates had all along professed loyalty to the Crown, and had never denied that Ormonde was the King’s representative. But when it came to a trial of strength between the viceroy and the papal nuncio, it was the latter that they were forced to obey.[97]
Ormonde driven back to Dublin.
The many-headed monster.
Castlehaven was sent to sound the clergy at Waterford, but he found them impracticable, rejoined Ormonde near Cashel, and persuaded him to get back to Dublin as quickly as possible, lest he should be intercepted and captured. Castlehaven argued that the clerical party was getting stronger every day, ‘and that the Supreme Council were dissolved on the proclamation of peace, and consequently of no authority to make good the public faith.’ Other advices were to the same effect, and it seemed probable that O’Neill’s object was to get between the viceroy and his capital. Castlehaven tried in vain to gain over MacThomas, who followed Ormonde as far as Callan, but without coming to blows. Orders were sent to Willoughby to seize the fortified pass over the Barrow at Leighlin Bridge with his infantry. Colonel Walter Bagenal, who was in command there, offered no opposition, and Ormonde joined the main body at Kilcullen. He had sent Castlehaven and his brother-in-law, Sir George Hamilton, to the corporation of Kilkenny, offering to stand by them if they wished it and would adhere to the peace, but they begged him to pass on his way. The mob plundered his baggage, and the very men, says Bellings, ‘who a fortnight before had employed both cost and invention in erecting statues and triumphal arches adorned with inscriptions, setting forth his own actions, and the trophies of his ancestors, were suddenly as busy in pulling them down, and defacing the monuments of his solemn entry, lest the northern army, which could have easily mastered, might be incensed to their destruction.’ Willoughby, when expecting an attack, found that the bulk of his powder, which had been given in part payment of 30,000l. by the Confederates at the first cessation, was so bad as to be quite useless, and but for the eight barrels lately borrowed from Sir John Sherlock he would have been in no condition to fight.[98]
Lord Digby’s proposals.
Triumph of Rinuccini,
who imprisons the Supreme Council.
O’Neill and Preston at Kilkenny.
Ormonde ignores Glamorgan.