Rinuccini writing from Limerick on October 25, gives an exciting account of his voyage. He sailed from the island of St. Martin or Isle de Ré, on Monday the 18th, and the wind being favourable, expected to reach Waterford on Thursday. On Thursday, however, there was a fog, and owing to its being full moon, the sea was so rough that it was thought better to keep out to sea. In the grey of the morning on Friday they saw a large vessel in full sail and a small frigate giving them chase. These were commanded by Plunket, an Irishman, who, having joined the Parliament, had been ordered to watch the approaches to Ireland. The Irishmen with the Nuncio and Secretary Bellings in particular, knowing the fate awaiting them if captured, immediately armed, resolved to resist to the last. The Nuncio was ill in bed, the sea being no respecter of persons, “my illness greatly aggravated, and already for two whole days without any attendance whatever from my servants, as they were prostrated by sea-sickness, and as little able to hear as to obey any order.” Nevertheless, he felt his courage rise to a higher pitch than ever before, and prepared in his own heart to give up life and liberty in whatever way God should dispose of him, even if it seemed to him necessary that he and those in his care should be carried captives to London. However, his fortitude was not put to this test, for the chase ended at nightfall. He attributes their escape to a miracle obtained for him by St. Peter, whose image formed the figurehead of the ship; but Father Meehan sententiously remarks, “that he must have subsequently learned that the escape of his pursuers was still more wonderful, for Plunket’s cooking galley having caught fire, and being alarmed for his magazine, he was obliged to shorten sail and thus suffer the San Pietro to escape.” The chase had driven them a long way to the west and they had some difficulty in making the land, but they succeeded next day in reaching Kenmare Bay, where they landed on the 21st of October, 1645. His first lodging was in a shepherd’s hut, and he remained there two days “not so much to repose after our trial as to return thanks for our safety.”
Before leaving Paris he drew upon the Pope for 15,000 dollars; Cardinal Antonio Barberius gave him 10,000, and Mazarin 25,000, altogether 50,000. 20,000 were spent for arms and munitions, and these were now landed. The rest of the money was brought in specie. From Kenmare he started for Limerick with an escort furnished by the Supreme Council and the surrounding gentry. “On his journey he was much pleased at the fine appearance, hardihood, and activity of the men and the beauty and modesty of the women. He was amazed at the fecundity of the latter. There were married couples, he reported with astonishment, which were blessed with no fewer than thirty children still living, whilst he had been told families of fifteen and twenty were quite common.” He was hospitably received at Ardtully Castle by Donough M’Carthy and his wife, a sister of Lord Muskerry and niece of the Marquis of Ormond. At Macroom Castle he was received by the Lady Helena Butler, sister to Ormond and wife of Muskerry, who was then in Dublin. These names are mentioned to show incidentally the close connection between Ormond and the Anglo and Old Irish proprietors. At Dromsecane he was met by Richard Butler, Ormond’s brother, a member of the Supreme Council, at the head of two troops of horse, thence by Clonmeen and Kilmallock to Limerick. Limerick, hitherto neutral, had been persuaded by Scarampi to join the Confederation, and the Nuncio was received with full honours by the clergy, corporation, and the garrison. On November 12th he halted within three miles of Kilkenny, and received a deputation of welcome from the Council. Next day he entered his litter surrounded by a vast concourse of people and set out for the city. He left the litter on approaching the gate, and donning the Pontifical hat and cape mounted a richly caparisoned horse. A canopy was held over him by leading citizens, bare headed in spite of the rain which fell in torrents. At the Market Cross, a beautiful structure erected in 1400 and destroyed in 1771 during the oppression of the penal laws, he halted, and listened to a Latin oration, and then on to the cathedral of St. Canice, where he was received by the Bishop of Ossory. Here from the high altar he bestowed the Pontifical Benediction and the Te Deum was intoned by all present.
Having rested for two days he visited Lord Mountgarret and the Supreme Council who then occupied the ancient castle of the Ormonds. “At the head of the hall was seated Lord Mountgarret, President of the Council, who rose as I approached, but received me without moving at all from his place.” Rinuccini concludes his complaint to the Pope by saying that the reception was arranged by Bellings as one acquainted with Italian etiquette. The Pope replied that a hint should be conveyed to Mountgarret in the shape of an account of the Nuncio’s reception by the Doge of Genoa, who advanced four steps to meet him. Possibly Mountgarret knew it already, but thought the representative of the Irish nation should not condescend so much as the head of a small Italian Republic. The Nuncio addressed the President and Council in Latin, and assured them that the object of his visit was to assist the King as well as procure for the people of Ireland the free and public exercise of their religion and the restoration of the churches and church property. The Council made a grateful acknowledgment in an address to the Pope.
Muskerry and the other Confederate agents were still in Dublin and did not return to Kilkenny until the day after the Nuncio arrived. They found that the old Irish had resolved to rely entirely on the Nuncio, and the Pope, and such other Catholic princes on the Continent as might be induced to help them. The two parties in the Confederation grew daily more estranged, and henceforth were called “Ormondists” and “Nuncioists.” Rinuccini had no trouble in persuading the Old Irish to stand by him. They believed that notwithstanding his protests, he came to form a grand Pontifical army, and that they could rely on the Pope and through him on all Catholic princes for support and aid in throwing off the yoke of England completely. The Nuncio’s comparison of the intelligence of the two parties is not very flattering to the Old Irish. “Nature even,” he says, “seems to widen the breach of difference of character and qualities, the new party being for the most part of low stature, quick-witted and of subtle understanding, while the old are tall, simple-minded, unrefined in their manner of living, generally slow of comprehension, and quite unskilled in negotiation.” And yet it was these simple-minded men whom Rinuccini encouraged in breaking up the Confederacy and in setting aside those whom from his own account by their greater knowledge of affairs, and especially of England, were more likely to justly estimate the chances for and against the success of the Nuncio’s projects. Well has it been remarked of Rinuccini that “With hazy notions as to the meaning or strength of party divisions in Ireland, he made little allowance for local conditions in pursuing his aim of securing the full predominance of the Roman Catholic religion.”
Glamorgan was courteously received by the Nuncio, who, taking him and his credentials at once at their proper value, distrusted him and his power to induce the King to ratify the religious articles. Glamorgan, on the contrary, thought the Nuncio would throw no obstacles in the way of either treaty, and wrote to the Lord Lieutenant that the political treaty would be signed in a day or two. “I am morally certain,” he adds, “a total assent from the Nuncio shall be declared to the propositions for peace, and in the very way your Lordship prescribes.”
Rinuccini finding the Council on the point of coming to terms with Ormond for the political articles, while the religious ones were to be reserved under the secret treaty for the King’s acceptance, protested against the action of the Council. He then set to work to gain control of Glamorgan, who became as wax in his hands, and promised on behalf of the King that even if Ormond accepted the political treaty, it should not be published until Charles had confirmed his own secret treaty of August 25th, and that he would demand their ratification as soon as he landed with the Irish army in England. Rinuccini further induced him to make what was practically a second treaty, by which the King was to bind himself to never again appoint a Protestant Lord Lieutenant, that he would admit the Catholic Bishops to sit in the Irish House of Peers, pass an Act for a Catholic University, and grant the Catholics the churches and ecclesiastical revenues, not only those re-captured by the Confederates before the date on which Ormond’s treaty was signed, but all those taken after that signature and up to the confirmation of the religious articles by the King. Glamorgan, eager to lead 10,000 Irishmen to the help of the King, was ready to promise anything, and as Chester, the only port at which they could now be landed, was threatened by the Parliamentarians, the Supreme Council agreed to allow him take an advanced guard of 3,000 men there at once. But Glamorgan could not do so until he had Ormond’s consent to his appointment as commander of this force, and to the arrangement with Rinuccini by which the political treaty was not to be published until the religious articles, of which Ormond knew nothing as yet, had been ratified. To obtain Ormond’s consent Glamorgan set out for Dublin on the 24th December. On the 26th he was summoned before Ormond and the Privy Council on the demand of Lord Digby. On October 17th the Catholic Archbishop of Tuam had been killed at the siege of Sligo. On his body was found a copy of Glamorgan’s treaty, which was at once sent by the Scots to London and was thence forwarded to Ormond. Ormond at once saw that this revelation of the King’s duplicity would be fatal to his cause with the English people, and making a desperate effort to save the credit of Charles, had Glamorgan arrested on a charge of treason in exceeding his instructions. Charles took Digby’s advice and brazenly denied his instructions to Glamorgan, and declared his “amazement that any man’s folly and presumption should carry him to such a degree of abusing our trust.” The comedy was sustained by Glamorgan’s declaration that he had made the concessions on his own initiative through excess of zeal, and that what he had done was in no way binding on the King. Charles, moreover, disavowed Glamorgan in a letter to the Parliament, “That the Earl of Glamorgan having made offer unto him to raise forces in the Kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them to England for his Majesty’s service, had a commission to that purpose and to that purpose only. That he had no commission at all to treat of anything else without the privity and directions of the Lord Lieutenant, much less to capitulate anything concerning religion or any propriety (i.e. property) belonging either to church or laity.”
Of this disavowal Gardiner says, “It can be no matter of surprise that Charles should have acknowledged what he could not help acknowledging, and should have sought to cast a discreet veil over that which could not be concealed. His really unpardonable fault was that after engaging on such a negotiation with the Irish Catholics he should now have announced his ‘resolution of leaving the managing of the business of Ireland wholly to the Houses, and to make no peace there but with their consent.’ What sort of peace the Houses would establish in Ireland he knew full well. Rinuccini had looked into his heart and estimated his motives to more purpose than Glamorgan.”
Nevertheless, in spite of the perspicuity with which Rinuccini had examined the stuffing of this Stuart puppet he had urged the Supreme Council to hold out for conditions which he should have known very well Charles had no more chance of being able to grant than if he were an inhabitant of another planet.
The Confederates had demanded the release of Glamorgan who had himself made strong representations to Ormond that his imprisonment was a great disservice to the King. He was released on bail and returned to Kilkenny where he pressed the Council to complete the political treaty with Ormond on which all parties were agreed, and to give him at once the 3,000 men for the relief of Chester. On the 29th September he wrote to Ormond that the Council was only awaiting the meeting of the General Assembly to be empowered to conclude the peace, and that the men were ready to sail when the treaty was signed.
It is difficult to believe that Rinuccini could have had any real belief in the King’s powers or those of anyone acting in his name; but whatever the amount of his faith in the dwindling royal authority, it had at last received a rude shock, and he accordingly passed into an opposite phase of distrust. He now thought that Glamorgan by acting as agent between Ormond and the Council had played him false, and that his whole object had been merely to get the Irish regiments into England, leaving the Irish to content themselves with the political articles. He endeavoured, therefore, to prevent any agreement between Ormond and the Confederates, the more so that he had received a copy of the Pope’s treaty with the Queen, in which she had agreed to much more than anything Ormond or even Glamorgan would have conceded. Sir Kenelm Digby had signed with the Pope on behalf of the Queen a treaty by which the entire liberty of Catholic worship and a completely independent Parliament were to be granted to Ireland. Dublin and other towns garrisoned by the King’s troops were to be handed over to Irish or English Catholics, while the forces under Ormond were to join the Confederates against the Scots and English Parliamentarians. As regards England the King was to concede everything required by the Pope’s instructions to Rinuccini already quoted, and to revoke all laws placing the Catholics in an inferior position to the Protestants. This was to be confirmed by the next Parliament, and meanwhile the Supreme Council was to send into England 12,000 infantry under an Irish commander, and these were to be supported by 2,500 or 3,000 English Catholic cavalry. The Pope was to send 100,000 crowns, about £36,000, on ratification of the treaty by the King, a similar amount on the landing of the Irish in England, and the same payment annually for two years if required.