Digby remained at Kilkenny and made one more effort for the King. He proposed that the nuncio and three or four bishops should give an undertaking in writing to support the peace and unite with Ormonde against the common enemy, on condition of receiving a firm private assurance that the penal laws should be repealed and that they should not be disturbed in their church possessions until a meeting of a new Parliament to carry out the articles. Rinuccini would hear of nothing less than Glamorgan’s treaty fortified by part of Sir Kenelm Digby’s. Of the latter he never received the official text, and his instructions were not to proceed without it. He entered Kilkenny in triumph and took the city into his protection, relieving it from the interdict which Roth, Bishop of Ossory, had proclaimed. O’Neill’s army encamped in the immediate neighbourhood and made all resistance impossible. Rinuccini then proceeded to imprison the old Supreme Council. Mountgarret’s eldest son Edmond, Bellings the secretary and historian, and Lord Muskerry, the viceroy’s brother-in-law, were among those confined in the castle. Geoffrey Brown, who had been conspicuous among the commissioners for concluding the peace, and was intended to be a judge, was arrested at Galway, but the citizens refused to send him to the nuncio. O’Neill and Preston both entered Kilkenny, and assisted ‘the lord nuncio and congregation of the clergy’ in choosing a new council of seventeen members. Four were bishops, Walsh of Cashel, Bourke of Clonfert, Macmahon of Clogher, and French of Ferns; among the others were Glamorgan, who was appointed general of Munster in Muskerry’s place, Owen Roe O’Neill, Preston, and Sir Phelim O’Neill. The great object was now to take Dublin, and Ormonde was told that he had no chance of defending himself against 17,000 foot and 1700 horse. If the city was taken by assault it was likely that neither man, woman, nor child would be spared, but this might be averted if Ormonde would adhere to the Glamorgan treaty. ‘If,’ was the Lord-Lieutenant’s answer, ‘I could have assured the clergy my lord of Glamorgan’s conditions, I had not retired hither. They are things I have nothing to do with, nor will have. If they be valid in themselves, they need no corroboration; if invalid, I have no power to give them strength.’ After this Rinuccini concluded that if he wanted Dublin he would have to get it taken, while Ormonde, who felt his weakness, opened communications with the English Parliament.[99]
O’Neill threatens Kilkenny.
His army.
O’Neill and Preston on bad terms.
A clerical commissary.
The nuncio and his generals.
Rinuccini wished O’Neill to attack Dublin before Ormonde could return thither; but the Ulster general excused himself on the ground that he had no artillery, and came to Kilkenny instead. Benburb had been fought and won by men who were defending a strong position in their own country, and the means for a serious siege were wanting. An officer who was with the northern army near Birr described it as consisting of 5000 infantry, of which rather more than half were pretty well armed, ‘the rest as the rabble used to be in the beginning of the distractions.’ The horse were under 400, good and bad, and there were only five field-pieces ‘of about a foot and a half long.’ When O’Neill was at Kilkenny a month later Ormonde learned that his army was composed of 8000 foot, more than half of them without muskets, and seventeen or eighteen small troops of miserable horse ‘whereof not above two armed with pistol, and none with defensive arms.’ About 8000 ‘of the Ulster families, unarmed,’ accompanied the troops. Preston’s cavalry were well appointed, but it was estimated that the combined armies could not in any case exceed 13,000, with five pieces of artillery and very few stores of any kind. The two generals acted quite independently. O’Neill took all the castles and towns in Queen’s County, and made himself master of Athlone. Preston temporised, and both were much more intent upon outwitting each other than upon taking Dublin. The Leinster people did not like to see the hungry northerns devouring their province, and they flocked to Preston’s standard, so that he became as least as strong as his rival. Early in October Rinuccini went to Kilkea, then in the possession of Robert Nugent, provincial of the Jesuits, to whom it had been granted for the use of the Society by his kinswoman Elizabeth Countess of Kildare. Nugent lent 1500l. to the nuncio, and voluntarily undertook the task of victualling the army; but this clerical commissary was not more successful than a clerical general proved to be later on. ‘The good man,’ says Bellings, ‘how perfect soever his mathematical demonstrations might have been, failed in the practice, which affords a thousand circumstances that commonly lie out of the road of divinity and speculation.’ The two armies were together, though not united, in the neighbourhood of Kilcock, whence they advanced by Harristown and Naas to Lucan, within seven miles of Dublin. The Leinster men thought O’Neill’s object was to conquer them, while he believed, or perhaps only professed to believe, that Preston was conspiring with Ormonde to place him between two fires. Successful joint action under these circumstances was impossible, and it appeared to the nuncio that ‘arms at first devoted to religion were about to minister to private passions alone.’ The two generals met at Lucan, but could not agree, and Rinuccini joined them there in hopes of at least preventing a collision between Leinster and Ulster.[100]
Ulster and Leinster irreconcilable.
Dublin in danger.
Negotiations with the Scots,