Rinuccini therefore protested against any treaty with Ormond until it should be known whether the Queen’s treaty was accepted by the King. “Preposterous as these terms were,” says Gardiner, “Rinuccini was, from his point of view, perfectly right in adopting them.” It is, however for adopting such a point of view at all that Rinuccini is to be blamed. How could he possibly place reliance on the desperate promises of a poor fugitive wife eager to save her husband by any means when he had been unable to trust her husband when his power was not so reduced as it had since become! Glamorgan, now completely in the hands of Rinuccini, wrote to Ormond urging him to accept the Queen’s treaty, and referring to the expenses he had in equipping the troops which would come to £100,000. He says “How cold shall I find Catholics bent to this service if the Pope be irritated I humbly submit to your Excellency’s better judgment? And here I am constrained ... absolutely to profess not to be capable to do the King that service which he expects at my hands unless the Nuncio be civilly complied with and carried along with us in our proceedings.”
This was an extraordinary letter to a man who if anything was anti-Papal. Ormond replied that he did not know what was meant by the advantageous peace to be obtained of the King by the Queen’s entreaties. “My lord,” he continued, “my affections and interest are so tied to his Majesty’s cause that it were madness in me to disgust any man that hath power and inclination to relieve him in the sad condition he is in; and, therefore your lordship may securely go on in the ways you have proposed to yourself to serve the King without fear of interruption from me, or so much as inquiring the means you work by. My commission is to treat with his Majesty’s Confederate Catholic subjects here for a peace upon conditions of honour and assistance to him and of advantage to them; which accordingly, I shall pursue to the best of my skill, but shall not venture upon any new negotiation foreign to the powers I have received.”
Glamorgan thereupon delivered himself up entirely to the Nuncio and wrote a long Latin oath by which he swore him unlimited obedience. An agreement was drawn up between the Nuncio and Glamorgan on the one hand and the Council on the other, by which the cessation with Ormond was to be extended to May 1, 1646, the extension being for the purpose of allowing the Nuncio to obtain the originals of the Queen’s treaty, as the Council had refused to support the new demands on the King merely from the copy. Rinuccini agreed that if he could not produce the original within the time he would be contented with whatever terms Glamorgan might get from Charles.
In view of this temporary agreement between the Nuncio and the Supreme Council, it seemed as if the troops could now start for Chester. On February 24, 1646, Glamorgan wrote to Ormond that not 3,000 but 6,000 men would be sent, and that he was going to Waterford to hasten the shipping. On March 8 bad news arrived. Chester had surrendered to Brereton and the port was closed against Charles’s Irish army. Still more ominous things happened at home, for a Parliamentary fleet had sailed up the Shannon and seized Bunratty Castle, thus showing that the Parliament felt itself so sure of overcoming the King it was at last in a position to commence active measures in Ireland. The Supreme Council wrote to Ormond that unless he would join forces with them they would neither make peace at Dublin nor send an army to England. Still they could not abandon the negotiation with the Lieutenant of a King who had not the power, and probably not the will, to fulfil the engagements made in his name. They now proposed to Ormond that the conclusion of peace should be postponed to the middle of June, so that Glamorgan should get ships together to carry the army to some port in Wales. In the meantime Glamorgan would send his brother to get a confirmation of his own treaty as to the religious articles from the King. If these were accepted, and if Ormond would agree to join forces with them against the Scots and Puritans, the Council would give him £3,000 for the pay of his troops.
On these terms Ormond signed on 28th March the peace on the understanding that it was to be kept secret until the 1st May. The articles which related to the civil government included some much-needed reforms, especially the admission of Catholics and Protestants to office on equal terms. Religious matters were postponed pending Charles’s answer. The Confederates agreed to send the 10,000 men, of whom 6,000 were to start on 1st April, and the remainder on 1st May. Ormond gave them a written promise that if the Confederates were attacked before the latter date he would join them against their assailants. It was too late. Like Chester, South Wales had now been occupied by the Parliament, Cornwall as well, and there was not a foot of English ground on which the army could land with any chance of maintaining itself. Officers and men refused to leave Ireland. Charles himself wrote that “the foot was to be kept back, as it would be lost if it should now attempt to land, we having no horse nor ports in our power to secure them.”
In May Rinuccini went to Limerick to support the Confederate army besieging Bunratty, and took credit for having, as he says, “adroitly prevented” the despatch of 10,000 Irish infantry to Charles. It was not much to boast of, helping the destruction of the man on whose continuance of power both he and the Pope were relying for the attainment of their religious aims. The original cessation of arms, when the still united Confederates could have made themselves masters of the whole country and treated with King or Parliament was a fatal error; but having decided to back the King and prevent the rise of the power that was destined to destroy them both, they should have helped him quickly. By insisting on conditions which would only tend to make him more unpopular in England, they had wasted valuable time and allowed their intended ally to be weakened and their common enemy to gain strength. The only merit Rinuccini had was that his delays prevented a useless waste of Irish lives; but it is evident that was not in his thoughts when pressing for the acceptance of the Queen’s treaty, as had that been accepted he would have consented, would have been bound by the Pope’s instructions to consent to the despatch of the troops. Charles, to do him justice, was the only one to warn the Irish against starting on account of the danger and uselessness of such a proceeding.
It has been necessary to enter into such a detailed account of these important negotiations that space does not admit of more than a brief reference to the chief events during the remainder of Rinuccini’s mission.
He now set himself to work to annul the lately concluded peace, and found a strong supporter in Owen Roe O’Neill, who with his followers persisted in the belief that the Pope would help the Irish to shake off the yoke of England. While we must sympathise with O’Neill’s true-hearted and enthusiastic patriotism, we must remember the Pope’s positive instructions to Rinuccini on that point. Rinuccini, moreover, warned O’Neill against nourishing such hopes, and expressed his annoyance at his calling his force the “Pontifical Army.” At the same time the Nuncio was only too glad to make use of O’Neill to overthrow the Confederation. After Owen Roe’s brilliant victory over the Scots at Benburb, on the 5th June, Rinuccini supplied him with funds and accompanied him to the siege of Bunratty, which surrendered in July. Ormond’s peace was proclaimed in Dublin on 30th July and at Kilkenny, but Rinuccini and the majority of the clergy procured its rejection at Limerick, Clonmel, Waterford, and other places. The Nuncio held a convocation of some of the clergy at Waterford, and on 12th August declared that the Confederate Catholics supporting the peace were perjured for having failed to obtain for the Church first of all such terms as they had sworn to obtain by their Oath of Confederation. He also issued an interdict against the places that had accepted it, ordered their churches to be closed, and the sacraments refused to the inhabitants. This exercise of his powers cost him a severe snub from Rome. The Cardinal Secretary wrote: “Moreover, having seen a printed paper, in which the authors and supporters of the peace between Ireland and the Marquis of Ormond are pronounced to be perjurers and a protest which the Ecclesiastical Congregation has made in these precise [Latin] words, ‘For these and other reasons moved only by our conscience and having only God before our eyes, that it may be known to all and singular both in Ireland and abroad, we have not given and should not give our consent to any such peace unless according to our oath it contains conditions for Religion, for King, and for Country, etc., etc.’ And this paper is subscribed first by your Excellency and then by the Archbishops, Bishops, and ecclesiastics of Ireland. It appears to His Holiness and to us that in this your Excellency has departed from your instructions, because it never was intended to maintain the Irish as rebels against the King, but simply to assist them in obtaining the assurance of the free exercise of the Catholic religion in Ireland.... From the specimen which I have taken from this printed document, in which occurs the Latin words I have quoted, your Excellency will be able to regulate your conduct on such other occasions as may present themselves, and thus observe the tenor of your instructions.”
All the same Rinuccini returned to Kilkenny in triumph, imprisoned most of the Supreme Council, and formed another entirely subservient to him, of which he constituted himself the President. He next excommunicated all adherents of the peace, though eight of the Bishops, including his own nominee De Burgo, Archbishop of Tuam, and the Jesuits and Carmelites, in fact all the regular clergy except the Dominicans and Capuchins, held the censures to be invalid, and appealed against them to Rome.
A plot was now formed for the escape of Charles from the Scots to Rinuccini and the clerical party and the joint armies of O’Neill and Preston, who were now reconciled by the Nuncio, marched to besiege Dublin.