[45] Irish Commons Journal, October 26 to November 29, 1665.
[46] The petition is in Irish Commons Journal, December 11, and Ormonde’s answer in State Papers, Ireland, December 15. Opinion of the English judges, ib. February 15, 1665-6.
[47] Irish Commons Journal, December 16-18, 1665. Leigh to Williamson, December 16, State Papers, Ireland; Orrery to Arlington, ib.; Churchill to Arlington, December 27, ib.
[CHAPTER XLIII]
ORMONDE AND THE IRISH HIERARCHY
Ormonde a consistent Royalist.
Loyalty to the Crown of England was Ormonde’s leading principle, and this is the key to his eventful life. He surrendered Dublin to the Parliament rather than to the Irish because he regarded the usurping power as the State for the time being. Later on and in still more desperate circumstances he was forced to ally himself with the Roman Catholic clergy, but he steadily refused to destroy the value of the reversion, and events proved that it was impossible to reconcile the claims of the Vatican with those of a sovereign who was constitutionally the supreme head of an Established Protestant Church. The idea of a free Church in a free State had not yet dawned upon Europe, and when the monarchy was restored the legal position of the Roman Catholics remained as it had been before the civil war. After a short struggle, which revealed great dissensions among those who sought relief, the recusancy laws were left untouched.
The Roman Catholics at the Restoration.
Peter Walsh and Orrery.
At the Restoration the dispossessed Irish Roman Catholics, especially those who had followed the King’s fortunes abroad, looked to Ormonde as the only man who might be willing and able to espouse their cause. As far back as 1653 Peter Walsh, Rinuccini’s determined opponent, was licensed by the Irish Government to assist in enrolling and transporting 4000 men for the Spanish service on condition of ceasing while in Ireland to exercise his office as priest. Later on he was allowed to live quietly in London, and when Ormonde returned he wrote to him on behalf of his co-religionists. The letter was published in the following year, and Orrery answered it. Walsh argued that the Irish were covered by the indemnity promised in the peace of January 1649, but Orrery truly answered that it could not cover offences of later date, and that the articles in question had been generally infringed, particularly by the excommunication of Ormonde and his expulsion from Ireland. Walsh naturally maintained that the rebels of Ireland, considered as rebels, were much less guilty than those of England, that many had expiated their fault by repentance and faithful service, and that the innocent or at least penitent majority ought not to suffer for the crimes of a few. Orrery, on the contrary, urged that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had been in rebellion over and over again during the last three reigns, while the Protestants had defended the royal authority, and that Ormonde had understood the real bearings of the question when he surrendered Dublin; and later when he allowed the loyal Protestants to make terms with ‘Ireton himself, esteeming them safer with that real regicide so accompanied than with those pretended anti-regicides so principled.’ Even if he had wished it Ormonde could not have expelled the bulk of the Adventurers and soldiers who were in possession of the forfeited land. What he did do was to obtain tolerable terms for a great many Roman Catholics, and it may well be that it was not always the most meritorious who came best off. The Celtic population had begun the quarrel, and they were the least considered. Walsh himself was always inclined to draw a distinction in favour of the Anglo-Irish.[48]