Why the Remonstrance failed.
‘The proceedings at the meeting,’ said Ormonde more than fourteen years later, ‘are at large set down in a great book by Peter Walsh. My aim was to work a division among the Romish clergy, and I believe I had compassed it, to the great security of the Government and Protestants, and against the opposition of the Pope, and his creatures and nuncios, if I had not been removed from the Government, and if direct contrary counsels and courses had not been taken and held by my successors; of which some were too indulgent to the whole body of Papists, and others not much acquainted with any of them, nor considering the advantages of the division designed. I confess I have never read over Walsh’s book, which is full of a sort of learning I have been little conversant in; but the doctrine is such as would cost him his life, if he could be found where the Pope has power.’ This was written to his son, but he had said the same thing to Essex seven years before. No doubt his recall made a difference, but the Government had really very little to give, for all the revenues went to the Established Church and there was more to look forward to from Rome than from London. Many of Ormonde’s bitterest opponents found preferment abroad. He did indeed provide for Walsh to the end, and for Caron till his death just before the meeting in 1666. The Act of Explanation passed in the previous year made it impossible for him to make better terms even for Roman Catholic laymen. Walsh, who failed to make his party formidable, submitted to Rome just before his death, but to Burnet who liked and admired him he seemed ‘in all points of controversy almost wholly Protestant.’ He attended the Church of England service without scruple, and Evelyn, who met him at dinner at the Archbishop of York’s, says nearly as much as Burnet.[60]
FOOTNOTES:
[48] Licence from the Irish Council to Peter Walsh, May 26, 1653, in O’Flaherty’s West Connaught, p. 423. Eighteenth article of peace, January 17, 1648-9, in Confederation and War, vii. 198. Walsh’s letter to Ormonde written in October 1660, but not published till after March 30, 1661, when the latter was made a Duke, and the answer published in 1662, before Ormonde’s arrival in Ireland, are both reprinted in Orrery State Letters, ii. 355.
[49] Macray’s Privy Council Notes, Roxburghe Club. Notes in Nicholas’s hand, State Papers, Ireland, under July 20, 1661. Evelyn’s Diary, October 17, 1664.
[50] Bellings to Ormonde, June 1, 1661, in Spicilegium Ossoriense ii. 189. It was inevitable that Ormonde’s friends and the Irish generally should blame him for not doing enough, see Foxcroft’s Supplement to Burnet, pp. 60-62. The Plunket author of A Light to the Blind talks like Bellings of the ‘Cromwellian scum of England,’ and calls Clotworthy, Broghill, Coote, and the rest ‘little fanatic scabs.’ According to him Ireland really belonged to the Anglo-Norman Conquerors, being royalist and Catholic; the native Irish, having intermarried with them and remained Catholic, were of course loyal like them.
[51] Walsh’s Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 4-6. O’Reilly wrote at this time that he was lurking ‘nelle spelonche,’ and McGeohegan ‘in cavernis’—Brady’s Episcopal Succession, i. 226, 239.
[52] Walsh’s Hist. of the Remonstrance, i.-xii. 47. Ormonde to Walsh, January 26, 1662-3, ib. 94.
[53] Letter of Armagh clergy, December 13, 1660, Spicilegium Ossoriense, ii. 201. Letters of Card. Barberini and De Vecchiis, July 8 and 21, 1662, Walsh’s Remonstrance, pp. 16-19. James Rospigliosi, internuncio in 1666, calls himself ‘ministrum apostolicum cui res Hiberniæ incumbunt,’ ib. p. 634. Louvain judgment, December 29, 1662, ib. p. 102.
[54] Peter Walsh to Essex, August 4, 1674, in his Four Letters, 1686, p. 3; Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 511-513, 530-533.