Roger O’More, commonly called Rory O’More, was descended from the chief branch of the O’Mores of Leix, whose lands had been confiscated for the benefit of the English colony planted there. He was connected by intermarriage with considerable families of English blood. He was handsome, courteous, and able, a man of high character, and the idol of the Irish, who celebrated him in their songs, and relied so much upon him that they used to say: “God and our Lady be our help, and Roger O’More.” He it was that, in connection with the son of the great Tyrone, contrived the rebellion.
As early as February, 1641, O’More had secured the adhesion of the best gentlemen of quality of Leinster, and of a great part of Connaught, subject to his getting the adhesion of the gentry of Ulster. In order to obtain their adhesion he, in February, 1641, approached Lord Maguire, Baron Enniskillen. Lord Maguire consented to join, and a meeting was held next day to which all the Ulster gentlemen then in town were invited. They readily engaged in the plot. It was desired to obtain the adhesion of the Lords of the Pale, who, though English in blood, and possessed of estates that had been the property of the native Irish, were Catholics, and smarting under the affronts put upon their religion, and apprehensive of further severities. Colonel Plunket, who was one of the first to join the conspiracy, and had, as he affirmed, broached the subject to Lord Gormanstown, and got his approval, undertook to win them over. But he effected nothing. By and by we shall see how they were forced to join.
It was ultimately arranged that the rising should take place on the 23rd of October. Every man had his place assigned to him. The Ulster gentry under Sir Phelim O’Neill, were to seize Derry; O’More, Colonel Byrne, Lord Maguire, and Bryan O’Neale were to lead the attack on Dublin Castle, which was to be made by two hundred men, to be provided equally out of each province by the principal conspirators. The secret of the plot had been kept with extraordinary success. It had been communicated to as few persons as possible, and those only who were leaders. The conspirators felt assured that the common people would unhesitatingly follow their native chieftains in any enterprise against the Saxon intruder, and in this, as the event proved, they were not mistaken. There was this disadvantage, however, in not taking the people into their confidence, that the latter were left in ignorance of the objects which their leaders had in view, and the means by which those objects were to be obtained. Apparently the people were allowed to form their own opinions on these subjects, and it may be that they thought, and that they proclaimed that amongst those objects was the erection of Ireland into an independent kingdom, and the establishment of the supremacy of the Catholic Church, and that among the means to be adopted for effecting those objects was the extirpation and expropriation of the English and Protestants.
Owen Connolly was a Protestant, and Sir John Clotworthy, his master, was bitterly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. How the secret came to be disclosed to him as it was by Oge O’Neill on the night of the 22nd, is a mystery; but it was, with the result that the attempt on Dublin Castle was forestalled.
Some fresh light has been thrown upon the events of this period of Irish history by the recently published volume, issued by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, containing the manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormond, preserved at Kilkenny Castle, the second of which gives at full length the whole of the letters from the Irish Lords Justices to the King, the Earl of Leicester, Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Henry Vane, Sir Edward Nicholas, Lord Falkland, Secretary of State, and His Majesty’s Commissioners for the affairs of Ireland. This correspondence commences with the famous letter of October 25th, 1641, already quoted, and continues without interruption down to the 15th of January, 1644, when a letter is written to Sir Edward Nicholas. This is the first complete series of these despatches ever published. The originals were destroyed in a fire in Dublin Castle.
Whatever justification there may be for the charges of neglect of duty made by Carte against the Lords Justices, in not taking precautions against a rising as to which they had warnings, there can, I think, be no doubt but that from the time when at nine on the night of the 22nd of October, 1641, Owen Connolly made his disclosures to Lord Justice Parsons, down to the date when these letters cease, the Council, according to their lights, left no stone unturned to crush the rebellion. Parsons and Borlase have been accused of postponing the suppression of the rebellion in order to promote the confiscation of Irish estates. But both of these continued to attend the meetings of the Council, and to sign the letters, down to the end of June, 1643, and Borlase continued to attend and sign the letters to the very end. The letters afford a continuous record of the measures taken by the Lords Justices and Council for stamping out the rebellion.
Parsons immediately on receiving Owen Connolly’s communication repaired to Borlase, and they at once summoned a meeting of the Council, which sat all that night and all the next day. They caused the Castle to be strengthened with armed men, and the city to be guarded, and proceeded to have such of the insurgents as they could lay hands on apprehended. The first was Hugh MacMahon, whom they examined, and who, to use their own words, when he saw they “laid it home to him, confessed enough to destroy himself and impeach some others.” Calling to mind a letter they had received from Sir William Cole on the 11th of October, they determined to secure Lord Maguire immediately, and succeeded in arresting him in a cockloft in an obscure house far away from his lodging. He was also examined, and admitted knowledge of the conspiracy, and ultimately made and delivered to the Lord of the Tower the written statement to which I shall refer hereafter.
When the hour approached for surprising the Castle a large number of strangers were observed to come to town in great parties several ways, who, not finding admittance at the gates, stayed in the suburbs. The Council issued a proclamation commanding all men, not dwellers in the city or suburbs, to depart within an hour on pain of death, and making it alike penal in those who should harbour them. This had the desired effect. The concourse departed. On the following day the Council sent into all parts of the country another proclamation giving information of the failure of the plot to seize the Castle, so as to dishearten the insurgents, and to encourage the friends of the Government.
Meantime the rebellion had broken out in various places throughout the country. The Council did not know whether to believe MacMahon’s statement that all the counties in the kingdom were in the plot; but if it were so they say, “Then indeed we shall be in high extremity and the kingdom in the greatest danger it ever underwent, considering our want of men, money, and arms to enable us to encounter such great multitudes as they can make if all should come against us.”
It was no wonder that the Lords Justices and Council contemplated a general rising with dismay. “The army we have,” they say in their letter of October 25th, “consisting of but two thousand foot and one thousand horse, are so dispersed in garrisons in several parts of the four provinces, for the security of these parts ... as, if they be sent for to be all drawn together, not only the places whence they are to be drawn ... must be by their absence distressed, but also the companies themselves coming in so small numbers, may be in danger to be cut off in their marches, nor indeed have we money to pay the soldiers to enable them to march.”