These commissions and instructions of Charles can only be viewed as the words of a desperate gambler willing to promise anything that would provide him with another stake to hazard in the game. He was not, however, dependent only on Glamorgan for Irish and Continental assistance. His Queen, Henrietta Maria, had escaped to France, and was actively engaged in procuring troops. She had been kindly welcomed by the Queen-Regent, Anne of Austria, but the Prime Minister, Mazarin, looked on her coldly. France, exhausted by her long but victorious struggle with the Emperor for those Rhine Provinces she was again destined to lose, was not in a position to make any effort from sentimental motives to help Charles. Mazarin had also no interest in seeing those troubles ended which prevented England from interfering with his designs on the Continent. He therefore received favourably Father O’Hartigan, the Confederate agent at Paris. His plans were such as to lead to the practically complete independence of Ireland. Mazarin, however, would not help unless everything was done in the name of Charles, and with the approval of the Queen of England. O’Hartigan was soon able to report that he had her support. A joint committee of English and Irish Catholics had been formed in Paris and had resolved that the Catholic Church should be first established in Ireland as a step to its establishment in England. By this resolution it was hoped to obtain considerable help in money from the Pope and other Catholic princes, but it was not so much of the interests of the Church in England O’Hartigan was thinking, as of Irish independence. Sir Kenelm Digby was to go to Rome to solicit the help of the Pope. O’Hartigan, writing privately to the Supreme Council at Kilkenny, recommended that after the enemy had been expelled from Ireland, the long talked of Irish army might be despatched to England to replace Charles on the throne. There was another scheme in which the Duke of Lorraine was to play the leading part. He had been deprived of his Duchy by Richelieu, and as a Catholic prince of the Empire, had fought against France. Mazarin was anxious to give his energies some other outlet, and told the Queen that if the Duke could be induced to lead his troops into England, money would not be wanting. The Duke engaged to enter England with 10,000 men, and the Prince of Orange was asked to supply the ships to carry them, as well as 5,000 the Queen was assured would be raised in France.
These projects—for they were never more than projects—show why Glamorgan had a commission to raise troops abroad as Charles placed no faith in O’Hartigan. O’Hartigan’s letter, in which he expressed his real hopes, had been captured by a Parliamentary cruiser and sent to Ormond. Charles therefore warned the Queen that O’Hartigan was a knave, and in a letter to Ormond mentioned that the Prince of Orange had consented to supply the ships for the continental troops. He urged Ormond to conclude peace, and said that he would consider the Irish army a good bargain even if he had to consent to Poynings’ Law being suspended, and to Ormond’s joining the Confederates against the Scots; he would make no further concession regarding the penal laws than he had already promised. A month later, when his position in England had become still more critical, he wrote “If the suspension of Poynings’ Act for such Bills as shall be agreed on between you there, and the present taking away of the penal laws against Papists by a law will do it I shall not think it a bad bargain, so that freely and vigorously they engage themselves in my assistance against my rebels in England and Scotland.” But even now Ormond was to make a better bargain if possible, and not to mention these greater powers except in the last extremity.
Even if Ormond were as willing as the King to make these concessions, he had to carry on his negotiations with the help of a Privy Council that would not be likely to view them favourably. For this reason the King decided that Glamorgan should now start for Ireland with powers not only as commander, but to enable him to treat with the Confederates “not indeed without Ormond’s knowledge, but in substitution for him if it proved to be necessary.” Charles gave Ormond a further commission with full powers to treat with the Confederates in such matters as had to be agreed to “wherein our Lieutenant cannot so well be seen in, as not fit for us at present public to own.” He urged him to proceed with all secrecy, and promised on the word of a King and a Christian, to ratify whatever Glamorgan should grant to the Confederates, “they having by their supplies testified their zeal to our service.”
In the meantime the King’s cause had grown much weaker, and it was doubtful even if the Irish army could be landed in England, or, if landed, whether it could be of any help. Not only was Charles severely defeated at Naseby, but his private papers were captured at Sherburne, and his instructions to Ormond made known to the Parliament. Glamorgan on his arrival in Ireland found that a new factor had been introduced into the negotiations by the General Assembly’s adoption of the demand of the Catholic clergy that they should be confirmed in the possession of the churches actually in the hands of the Confederates with the property appertaining thereto as well as all derelict churches. The Confederate Commissioners had been instructed to yield nothing on this point, and as Charles refused to concede anything more than he had done already, and as Ormond concealed his powers with regard to the penal laws, the treaty again broke down. Glamorgan seeing that he could do nothing with Ormond, accompanied the disappointed Confederate Commissioners to Kilkenny, where he privately resumed the negotiations, and acting on the very loosely-worded and wide instructions given him by Charles on March 12, he concluded a secret treaty with the Confederates.
By this instrument, which comprised what were called the Religious Articles, and which was signed on August 25, 1645, he agreed on behalf of the King to the free and public exercise of the Catholic religion. This, though set forth more definitely than Ormond would probably have agreed to, may be looked on as not exceeding the terms Ormond was authorized to grant. But in two other clauses Glamorgan’s treaty was far in advance of anything Ormond would grant or to which indeed Charles had consented, unless we regard the secret commission as empowering Glamorgan to promise anything as long as he could get the troops Charles so sorely needed. Glamorgan agreed that all churches fallen into the hands of the Catholics since the rising in Ulster, and the derelict churches “other than such as are now actually enjoyed by his ‘Majesty’s Protestant subjects,’ were to remain in their possession.” Next, he agreed that the Catholics were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Protestant clergy, and their own clergy were not to be “molested for the exercise of their jurisdiction over their respective Catholic flocks in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical.” This naturally left open the question of appeals to Rome, since there must be some authority over the clergy to decide what were civil and what were spiritual cases, and it was scarcely likely that the Confederates could consent to its being vested in the King.
Charles had not heard of the question of the churches before Glamorgan started, but when he did he wrote to him on July 31, and said he would consent only to the Catholics building chapels for themselves, and absolutely refused to allow them to retain any of the churches.
It seems probable that the King was sincere when he declared that he would look on the giving up of the churches as the abandonment of his religion, and that Glamorgan, eager to obtain the 10,000 men from the Confederates, had exceeded his instructions, but hoped to have his fault overlooked by Charles in view of the great assistance the Irish soldiers would be to his cause. At the same time, Gardiner, who has discussed this question very freely in his History of the Great Civil War, and in a special article in the English Historical Review, does not make sufficient allowance for the shifty vacillating character of Charles, and it is quite permissible to assume that when he gave his general instructions in such vague terms to Glamorgan, he contemplated the possibility of having to disavow any action he might take under them, while, if such action were not questioned by his enemies, he was quite ready to profit by it. It would, however, seem that Glamorgan knew he was acting in a way the King would very likely not agree to; for when he signed the treaty he handed the Confederates another document called a defeasance, in which he declared that he did not intend to bind the King to consent to anything “other than he himself shall please, after he hath received these ten thousand men being a pledge and testimony” of the loyalty of his Irish Catholic subjects. This document was not to be disclosed to Charles until Glamorgan had done all in his power to induce him to agree to the religious articles.
On this point Gardiner says, “It was hardly within the bounds of possibility that Glamorgan’s action should prove beneficial either to his master or to the Irish people; but he was surely right in thinking that if a military alliance was to be formed with the Confederates it could only be by the acceptance of their own terms. It was childish to expect the hearty co-operation of the Irish if their Church was to be maintained in the position of a merely tolerated sect, the organisation of which was in constant danger of a sudden application of the Statutes of Appeal and Præmunire; and if the ecclesiastical lands and buildings set apart for religious use by their ancestors, and now recovered after a deprivation of less than a century, were to be forcibly torn from them, and restored to the professors of an alien creed, from whom they had nothing but persecution to expect.”
The Supreme Council of the Confederates at once proceeded to test the new alliance they thought they had formed, and on August 29, asked Ormond to join his forces with theirs against the Scots under Monroe in Ulster, but Ormond gave no reply though pressed by Glamorgan, who assured him that the Confederates would now send the 10,000 men to England, and would resume the treaty for the political articles with Ormond. Glamorgan begged Ormond to grant as much as possible and let the Confederates appeal to the King for the rest. Ormond was, of course, kept in the dark as to the secret treaty for the religious articles by which the Confederates had been persuaded that they would get all they wanted from Charles, so that they were willing to accept such instalment as Ormond would offer.
The Confederates accordingly once more sent Commissioners to Dublin, and the discussion with Ormond continued for another two months, but Ormond refused absolutely to exceed his instructions or to yield anything in matters of religion. On November 20, a few days after Rinuccini arrived there, Glamorgan went to Kilkenny. He found the Supreme Council agreed that if Ormond persisted in refusing the terms they demanded as to religion, the political treaty should be published by itself whilst the religious articles should be kept secret until ratified by Charles. They also promised that the 10,000 men should be sent without waiting for the King’s ratification, but Glamorgan was to swear not to employ them in the King’s service until the religious articles were agreed to, and if refused, he was to either compel his consent by force of arms or bring the whole force back to Ireland.