Now, as to the inception of the war of the Confederate Catholics, and its objects, Lord Castlehaven’s narrative is equally convincing and clear.
Parliament met in the Castle of Dublin, Nov. 16, 1641. The Rebellion was laid before both Houses by the lords-justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlace. Concurrent resolutions were adopted, without a dissenting voice, by the two Houses, declaring their abhorrence of the Rebellion, and pledging their lives and fortunes to suppress it. Castlehaven had a seat in the Irish House of Lords as an Irish peer, and being then in Ireland, as before related, took his seat at the meeting of Parliament. Besides Castlehaven, most of the leaders of the war that ensued were members of the Irish House of Lords. These Catholic peers were not less earnest than the rest in their unanimous intention to put down the Rebellion. Both Houses thereupon began to deliberate upon the most effectual means for its suppression. “But this way of proceeding,” says Castlehaven, “did not, it seems, square with the lords-justices’ designs, who were often heard to say that ‘the more were in rebellion, the more lands should be forfeit to them.’” Therefore, in the midst of the deliberations of Parliament on the subject, a prorogation was determined on. The lords, understanding this, sent Castlehaven and Viscount Castelloe to join a deputation from the commons to the lords-justices, praying them not to prorogue, at least till the rebels—then few in number—were reduced to obedience. But the address was slighted, and Parliament prorogued the next day, to the great surprise of both Houses and the “general dislike,” says Castlehaven, “of all honest and knowing men.”
The result was, as the lords-justices no doubt intended, that the rebels were greatly encouraged, and at once began to show themselves in quarters hitherto peaceful. The members of Parliament retired to their country-houses in much anxiety after the prorogation. Lord Castlehaven went to his seat at Maddingstown. There he received a letter, signed by the Viscounts of Gormanstown and Netterville, and by the Barons of Slane, Lowth, and Dunsany, containing an enclosure to the lords-justices which those noblemen desired him to forward to them, and, if possible, obtain an answer. This letter to the lords-justices, Castlehaven says, was very humble and submissive, asking only permission to send their petitions into England to represent their grievances to the king. The only reply of the lords-justices was a warning to Castlehaven to receive no more letters from them.
Meanwhile, parties were sent out from Dublin and the various garrisons throughout the kingdom to “kill and destroy the rebels.” But those parties took little pains to distinguish rebels from loyal subjects, provided they were only Catholics, killing promiscuously men, women, and children. Reprisals followed on the part of the rebels. The nobility and gentry were between two fires. A contribution was levied upon them by the rebels, after the manner of the Scots in the North of England in 1640. But although to pay that contribution in England passed without reproach, in Ireland it was denounced by the lords-justices as treason. The English troopers insulted and openly threatened the most distinguished Irish families as favorers of the Rebellion. “This,” says Castlehaven, “and the sight of their tenants, the harmless country people, without respect to age or sex, thus barbarously murdered, made the Catholic nobility and gentry at last resolved to stand upon their guard.” Nevertheless, before openly raising the standard of revolt against the Irish government, which refused to protect them, they made several efforts to get their petitions before Charles I. Sir John Read, a Scotchman, then going to England, undertook to forward petitions to the king; but, being arrested on suspicion at Drogheda, was taken to Dublin, and there put upon the rack by the lords-justices to endeavor to wring from him a confession of Charles I.’s complicity in the Rebellion. This Col. Mervin Touchett heard from Sir John Read himself as he was brought out of the room where he was racked. But that unfortunate monarch knew not how to choose his friends or to be faithful to them when he found them. He referred the whole conduct of Irish affairs to the English Parliament, thus increasing the discontent to the last pitch by making it plain to the whole Irish people that he abandoned the duty of protecting them, and had handed them over to the mercy of their worst enemies—the English Parliament. That Parliament at once passed a succession of wild votes and ordinances, indicating their intention of stopping short at nothing less than utter extirpation of the native race. Dec. 8, 1641, they declared they would never give consent to any toleration of the Popish religion in Ireland. In February following, when few of any estate were as yet engaged in the Rebellion, they passed an act assigning two million five hundred thousand acres of cultivated land, besides immense tracts of bogs, woods, and mountains, to English and Scotch adventurers for a small proportion of money on the grant. This money, the act stated, was to go to the reduction of the rebels; but, with a fine irony of providence upon the king’s weak compliance, every penny of it was afterwards used to raise armies by the English rebels against him. “But the greatest discontent of all,” says Castlehaven, “was about the lords-justices proroguing the Parliament—the only way the nation had to express its loyalty and prevent their being misrepresented to their sovereign, which, had it been permitted to sit for any reasonable time, would in all likelihood, without any great charge or trouble, have brought the rebels to justice.”
Thus all hopes of redress or safety being at an end—a villanous government in Dublin intent only upon confiscation, a furious Parliament in London breathing vengeance against the whole Irish race, and a king so embroiled in his English quarrels that he could do nothing to help his Irish subjects, even had he wished it—what was left those loyal, gallant, and devoted men but to draw the sword for their own safety? The Rebellion by degrees spread over the whole kingdom. “And now,” says Castlehaven, “there’s no more looking back; for all were in arms and full of indignation.” A council of the leading Catholic nobles, military officers, and gentry met at Kilkenny, and formed themselves into an association under the title of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland. Four generals were appointed for the respective provinces of the kingdom—Preston for Leinster, Barry for Munster, Owen Roe O’Neale for Ulster, and Burke for Connaught. Thus war was declared.
When the Rebellion first broke out in the North, Lord Castlehaven had immediately repaired to Dublin and offered his services to the lords-justices. They were declined with the reply that “his religion was an obstacle.” After the prorogation of Parliament, as we have seen, he retired to his house in the country. Then, coming again to Dublin to meet a charge of corresponding with the rebels which had been brought against him, he was arrested by order of the lords-justices, and, after twenty weeks of imprisonment in the sheriff’s house, was committed to the Castle. “This startled me a little,” says Castlehaven—as it well might do; for the state prisoner’s exit from the Castle in Dublin in those days was usually made in the same way as from the Tower in London, namely, by the block—“and brought into my thoughts the proceedings against the Earl of Strafford, who, confiding in his own innocence, was voted out of his life by an unprecedented bill of attainder.” Therefore, hearing nothing while in prison but rejoicings at the king’s misfortunes, who at last had been forced to take up arms by the English rebels, and knowing the lords-justices to be of the Parliament faction, and the lord-lieutenant, the Marquis of Ormond, being desperately sick of a fever, not without suspicion of poison, and his petition to be sent to England, to be tried there by his peers, being refused, he determined to make his escape, shrewdly concluding, as he says, that “innocence was a scurvy plea in an angry time.”
Arriving at Kilkenny, he joined the confederacy, as has been related.
From this time the war of the Confederate Catholics was carried on with varying success until the cessation of 1646, and then until the peace of 1648, when the Confederates united, but too late, with the Marquis of Ormond to stop the march of Cromwell.