Leyburn and the nuncio.
Proposals from O’Neill.
Lord Digby’s schemes.
He is driven abroad.
At Kilkenny Leyburn attended the council, where his chair was placed next to Antrim’s, who presided. He told them that the Queen and Prince were anxious for peace, without which the Catholic religion would be ruined, but that he must see Ormonde first of all. Horses were provided and he was passed on to Dublin. The Lord Lieutenant, says Leyburn, expressed himself ready to cast away one son if necessary for the King’s service, but would ‘give up those places under his command rather to the English rebels than the Irish rebels, of which opinion he thought every good Englishman was. To this I answered nothing.’ It took the inexperienced diplomatist two days to decipher his instructions, which he then presented to Ormonde, who requested him to go back to Kilkenny and obtain a truce for three weeks from April 17 if possible, without binding him not to receive fresh Parliamentary forces during its continuance. Leyburn consulted the French agents Dumoulin, De la Monnerie, and Tallon, according to his instructions, but he found the Council sanguine about the probable successes of their army, and they refused any truce for less than six months. There were already two thousand Parliamentarians in Dublin, and Leyburn did not think it prudent to re-enter the city; but he was in constant communication with Digby, who had found quarters in Sir Nicholas White’s house at Leixlip, and who professed to know Ormonde’s mind. Leyburn accompanied Bishop Macmahon to Kilkenny, and informed the nuncio that the conditions of peace concerning religion had been referred to France, and that Ormonde would not treat except on the basis of the peace which the clergy had already rejected. Rinuccini said he wished for peace, but was against a preliminary truce, which Ormonde, who had already once deceived him, wanted only to gain time, and that he could not trust him. ‘I could see,’ says Leyburn, ‘he was not my Lord Lieutenant’s friend.... I found in him great animosity to my Lord of Ormonde’s person, my Lord of Clogher being a better hider of his thoughts.’ The Council of the Confederates as well as the clergy came to Clonmel about the beginning of June, and Daniel O’Neill brought a proposal from his uncle to establish a sort of joint government between the Lord Lieutenant and the Council; but he was arrested for not having a pass. Leyburn handed in the paper for him, but all these delays had been fatal, for a letter came to Digby to say that the Parliamentary commissioners had landed at Dublin with 1500 men, and that Ormonde would now be forced to conclude matters with them. Leyburn could come to no terms with the clergy, who would have nothing to say to the rejected peace, while Ormonde would treat on no other basis. They said God was not once mentioned in it, and he could only reply that questions of religion might be settled later. He continued to discuss matters with Digby and his secretary, Edward Walsingham, who, according to Nicholas, was ‘a great babbler of all his most secret employments,’ but it all led to nothing. Leyburn, however, persuaded Clanricarde not to leave Ireland, which he had made up his mind to do. In the end the best he could do for Digby was to procure him a safe-conduct through the Confederate quarters, and he escaped to France with some difficulty. At his earnest request Leyburn himself remained in Ireland, and was sheltered by Clanricarde at Galway from August 1647 until the following March. In November he received a letter of recall from the Queen dated three months back, and in February another from Digby to the like effect. He sailed in the same ship with Glamorgan and his wife, who had now become Lord and Lady Worcester, and reached Havre in five days.[107]
Leyburn’s opinions.
Effect of the cessation.
Leyburn, who was a very honest as well as intelligent man, favoured the peace of 1646. The demand for a Catholic governor, he says, was one which the King could not grant, and the objection to Ormonde’s religion was therefore invalid. He thought the divisions of Irish parties made effective action hopeless, and that the hatred of the Leinster men to O’Neill and the old Irish ‘overbalanced their reason.’ The cause of the rebellion and of its savage character was that the ‘Irish had not enjoyed such a pleasant bondage under the English, but that they had contracted ill will enough against their masters ... they ran hastily and furiously to all kind of bloody executions, and as their rebellion was without order so were their actions without measure, none that was called English and was within reach escaping their fury ... they either killed the English or forced them to forsake their habitations.’ The men of the Pale joined in because they had no arms, and were not trusted by the Government. The massacres had been amply revenged with much cruelty, the one committed ‘by a rude, headless multitude, the other by soldiers under order and command.’ Insurgent slaves, he says, seldom make good soldiers, and the Irish were always beaten until Charles drew away to England the army which had been ‘with his consent employed against them by the Parliament,’ which is perhaps the strongest argument against the cessation of 1643.
Ormonde’s reasons for surrender.
Ormonde leaves Ireland.