We are now able to take up in its proper order the consideration of Rinuccini’s mission. In the winter of 1644 the Confederates had sent their Secretary Bellings to solicit help in money from the Pope and other Catholic princes. He was favourably received by the new Pontiff Innocent X, and was greatly surprised at hearing that the Pope would send a nuncio who would act directly in his name and report to him concerning the position of Irish parties. In the first instance the Pope selected Luigi Omodei, but as he being a Milanese was a Spanish subject, and his employment might give offence to France, and as the Pope wished to be perfectly impartial between France and Spain, he selected Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, who, as a subject of the Duke of Tuscany, could be regarded as neutral. Bellings, in after years, when his thoughts were perhaps embittered by disappointment, said it was a job to please the Duke of Tuscany. Rinuccini was born in 1592, a member of a noble Florentine family, and at the time we speak of was in his forty-third year. His father was Camillo Rinuccini, and his mother Virginia, daughter of Pier Antonio Bandini, sister of Cardinal Ottavio Bandini. He was educated first by the Jesuits in Rome and afterwards went to the University of Bologna in his eighteenth year. Then he studied law at Perugia, and took his doctor’s degree at Pisa, and distinguished himself so remarkably that he was elected a member of the Cruscan Academy though only in his twenty-first year. His first appointments by the Roman Court were those of Chamberlain to Gregory XV, and Secretary to the Congregation of Rites. When Urban VIII became Pope he continued his advancement, and made him Civil Lieutenant to the Cardinal Vicar, and soon after Archbishop of Fermo in 1625. At Fermo Rinuccini seems to have found his most suitable sphere of work, for he proved in all respects an excellent Archbishop, and was so loved by the people and felt so true an interest in them that he declined the metropolitan See of Florence in his native Duchy in 1631. In a religious sense he appears to have been an eminently holy and good man, though perhaps more than ordinarily imbued with the intolerant opinions of the age he lived in. He had, moreover, but small knowledge of the ways of men who live wholly in the world, and was absolutely ignorant of the feelings of people in political matters who had always possessed representative government of which he, as an Italian brought up amongst the despotic courts of the Peninsula, had no experience. The Pope, it must be remembered, was then a great temporal prince, and his government was as despotic in practice as any in Europe. He, too, appears to have shared the belief of Rinuccini, that it was only necessary to gain over the Sovereign of a country, and that no regard need be paid to its other inhabitants, heedless of the fact that where free institutions exist, a king who is disliked or distrusted by his subjects soon ceases to have any authority whatever. England was then leading the way in that struggle for popular liberty which was to continue in revolutions and bloodshed until our own time; but on the Continent at that epoch the great mass of any population simply did not count in political matters. To this ignorance and inexperience of Rinuccini’s of the feelings of men like the Irish who had lived under representative institutions however limited, and were striving to regain and extend them, must be attributed much of his failure in dealing with Irishmen of various parties. He was too autocratic in his methods, and being a man of resolute and inflexible character, determined to bend others to his will utterly regardless that such a course might cause him to lose many whom it was his interest to conciliate. He had, moreover, an exaggerated sense of his own dignity, and a fondness for details of etiquette, dress, and ceremonial, which, though to some extent natural to one brought up in the most ceremonious court of a ceremonious period, was carried by him to a point bordering on the ridiculous. It must be said of him, however, that though he had the ecclesiastical patronage of Ireland in his hands for some years, his appointments were made in the interest of the Church, and no charge of favouritism can be made against him. His object was the restoration of the Church in Ireland “in its full splendour,” and with this before him he did not pause to consider local feelings or local experience of the difficulties in his way in an age and in circumstances when such an enterprise could only be considered Quixotic. From these characteristics it may be inferred how well fitted he was to strike the final blows that broke up the newly-formed union of the Irish nation.
For a hundred years the Catholic Church had been conducting the counter-Reformation, and had already recovered the allegiance of a great part of Europe. To Innocent X it appeared that the time was ripe for restoring his spiritual authority in England. The Catholics there were still a numerous and wealthy body and comprised amongst their leaders many of the most ancient and most highly placed of the nobility, and would afford a solid foundation for such a reconstruction. The difficult position in which the King was placed seemed to render him a peculiarly suitable object for overtures, and if he could be restored chiefly by the aid of the Catholics and the Pope it was hoped that the Church might gain great advantages if not complete re-establishment. We find in the secret instructions given by Innocent to Rinuccini that these expectations are clearly expressed, and show, moreover, how badly informed the Pope was as to the true state of feeling regarding the Catholic Church in England. In the concluding paragraph the Pope says: “In fine, this rebellion in England has already caused so many divisions in religion and so many disputes amongst the Protestants themselves, that all who have some belief in a future life are beginning to waver, and would become Catholics if they were not restrained by the fear of losing their property and temporal comforts. If, then, by means of this Catholic army, you can obtain from His Majesty the revocation of the penal laws against the Catholics, the abolition of the proposed Oath of Fidelity and freedom in religion, that is that the Catholics be able to hold all appointments in the Kingdom and in Parliament like his other subjects, we may hope in a few years for the conversion of the whole Kingdom—a most important step towards the eradication of heresy from the whole North, and without which the Irish can never hope to enjoy in peace the conditions granted in favour of the true faith in Ireland.”
The Catholic army here referred to was to consist chiefly of the troops who had for the past three years formed the subject of negotiation between Charles and the Confederates. It is well to bear in mind the Pope’s instructions with regard to this army as showing that both in his eyes and in Rinuccini’s, the Irish were to be merely the convenient instruments of the greater design. He says: “To ensure success in these negotiations two points remain to be well considered; first, that the requisite conditions be well weighed so that the services we hope from this Catholic army be efficacious; the second, to facilitate by every means the agreement between the King and the Irish.” The first of these conditions may be reduced to the following articles:—
“1. That the Irish army shall never agree to land in England with less than ten or twelve thousand effective men, that they may be able to defend themselves without danger of being cut to pieces by the English who serve under the King.
“2. That two sea ports be placed in their hands to disembark their troops in England, and that those places be under the command of persons in their confidence.
“3. That the generals of the army and all the officers ... besides the governors of the said places be appointed by the Irish.
“4, 5. The fourth and fifth articles are unimportant and need not be quoted.
“6. That permission and authority from the King be accorded to the English Catholics to form themselves into a body of cavalry proportionate in strength to join them when and where appointed by the Irish general to serve in his army and under his command....
“7. That the Catholic general of this cavalry be a person whom the Irish can entirely trust, and must, therefore, be first accepted by their own general.”
That the political freedom of the Irish people, the independence of their Parliament, the right of Catholics to sit therein, in fact the political articles which the Confederates had demanded and which Charles was willing to concede were altogether a secondary consideration in the eyes of the Pope is evident from the following:—