enemies; and the consequence of this was, that the ranks of the insurgents were speedily reinforced by numbers of the old gentry of English descent, who, feeling themselves spurned and ill-treated by the government, could not afford, any longer, to stand in that suspicious neutrality, which would be more resented than even actual hostility by the insurgents.

The rebels were now in possession of almost the entire kingdom. The lieutenant-general was controlled and checkmated by the lords justices, in such a way as to render his services of very little use; and was, at one time, upon the point of throwing up his command, from a sense of personal indignity shown towards himself, by the inbuman and capricious execution of an honest Franciscan friar, one Father Higgins, who had been of great use in saving the Protestants from the fury of the insurgents at Naas, and whom Ormonde had brought up to Dublin, and taken under his special protection. This man, while Ormonde was absent from the city upon duty, Sir Charles Coote, (who had been appointed governor of Dublin, a man whose temper was naturally dark and sour, and whose injuries had rendered him savage and ruthless,) seized and hanged, without any of the formalities of trial, or, in truth, any other ground of accusation, than that he was a professing papist. When Ormonde returned and found what was done, he highly resented this outrageous proceeding, and would have flung up his commission in disgust, if he had not reflected that the act might have been designed to produce that very effect ; and that, as his appointment was directly from the king, he ought not to prejudice the royal cause, by giving way to the indignation with which he was filled, at a proceeding of which even Sir William Parsons was ashamed, while yet he refused to punish the author of it, by removing him from an office in which he had so grossly abused his authority. He therefore consented to retain his command, in the hope that occasions would still offer upon which he might yet render good service to his king and country.

Nor were the popish rebels slow to represent that he was a consenting party to the death of the poor friar, whose inhuman execution he so sharply resented. His own wife and family were at that time in the power of the rebels; and the military execution which he had felt it his duty to do

against them, provoked Lord Gormanstown and others to expostulate with him, by letter, very freely; and to threaten, that, if he did not mitigate his severity towards them, his wife and children should pay the forfeit of his temerity. Ormonde would not consent to hold any intercourse with the rebels, in any way that could be interpreted as correspondence; he therefore had the messenger brought before the council board, and, by their direction, he wrote an answer to Lord Gormanstown, in which, having sternly upbraided him for his ingratitude and rebellion, he vindicates himself from the charge of treachery, declaring that nobody was hanged by his authority; but that "he was ready to venture his life, and all that was dear to him, in prosecution of the rebels, and never to disavow anything that he should do, in pursuance of his Majesty's commands, for fear of what might befall him and his; and that if his wife and children, who were in their power, should receive injury from men, he would never revenge it upon women and children, which, as it would be base and unchristian, would be likewise infinitely below the value which he set upon his wife and children.”

The rebels had now straitly besieged Drogheda, and derived no small accession, both of numbers and reputation, from a victory which they gained in that quarter, over the king's troops. But when Ormonde, in person, appeared in the field, they quickly began to experience what it was to encounter the talents of a great commauder; although he had scarcely before had any military experience, and had been made a general almost before he was a soldier.

His position was one of no small difficulty. He was distrusted and hated by the government, while he was dreaded by the enemy. The consternation which his presence inspired, convinced him of the expediency of pressing briskly upon the rebels, who had retreated from before Drogheda at the news of his approach, and might have been utterly routed, if he were suffered to advance upon them. He accordingly called a council of war; and the officers being unanimously of opinion that it was by all means expedient to pursue the scattered and dispirited fugitives, he sent a special messenger with their resolution to the lords justices, and desired an enlargement of his commission, and that he

might be permitted to advance as far as Newry. His request was not complied with; and the enemy, who dreaded utter defeat, felt themselves again, for a season, at their ease, when they learned that, in obedience to an order from government, he was compelled to abstain from pursuing them, and to retrace his steps to Dublin.

The arrival of the parliamentary forces soon after, and the ease with which they dispossessed the rebels of many of their strong places, abundantly justified Ormonde's judgment in the course which he had advised; and, indeed, it must be said, to the credit of the parliament, that they were not slow to acknowledge his merits and services; and not only came to a resolution giving him their warm thanks, but voted that £500 should be expended in a jewel to be bestowed upon him, and that the house of lords should be requested to join with the house of commons, in beseeching his Majesty to make him a knight of the garter. This was after his victory at Kilrush, where he defeated a powerful body of the enemy, in a manner that impressed upon the most zealous of his political adversaries the warmest admiration. The nature of our sketches do not admit of the details into which it would be necessary to enter, to make his skill and bravery on that occasion clearly intelligible to our readers; but the house of commons, in publishing a relation of the battle, celebrates his conduct in no measured terms of culogy, and declares their high sense of "the important services which he did in his own person, ordering the battle and manner of fight, in all the parts of it, and doing it with very great judgment, laying hold, quickly and seasonably, on all opportunities of advantage that could be gained, and sparing not, resolutely, to expose his own person to hazard, equally with any other commander."

The Romish clergy, who, as Carte observed, had hitherto walked somewhat invisibly in these transactions, now made an open demonstration in favour of the rebels, and declared the war in which they were engaged to be just and lawful. This was done with the utmost formality, as well at a provincial synod held at Kells, at which the titular primate presided, as at a general synod of all the Romish bishops and clergy of Ireland, which met at Kilkenny, on the 10th of May, 1642.

Thus was a benediction pronounced upon this most horrible and unnatural rebellion, and the guilt of the perpetrators of the most atrocious acts of treachery, cruelty, and murder, sanctified, by clerical approbation, as meritorious in the sight of God, and calculated to draw down upon them the divine favour and protection.

Some slight reinforcements, and some inconsiderable supplies of money, had at length arrived for the royal army; while the rebels were greatly elated and encouraged by the arrival of Owen O'Neil, from Spain, an officer of consummate skill and great experience, and also by supplies of money and promises of foreign assistance, which, together with the disputes, which had now proceeded to an open rupture, between the parliament and the king, could not fail to cheer them with the hope of ultimate success in this sanguinary conflict. The noblemen and leaders of the party, together with the leading ecclesiastics, assembled, in a council, at Kilkenny, which sat with all the forms of a parliament, and assumed the chief direction of their affairs. There was thus imparted a unity and a consistency to their proceedings, which they did not possess before, and a sanguinary banditti began rapidly to assume all the insignia of a regular government, and were speedily in a condition to make their antagonists feel that they had now something more formidable to contend against than the desultory efforts of inhuman barbarians.

Meanwhile, the Earl of Leicester, who was Lord Lieutenant, and the Lords Justices, did all in their power to mortify aud embarrass the Earl of Ormonde in his command, and to seduce the army from their allegiance. The military appointments which became vacant, and which should have been filled upon his nomination, were disposed of contrary to his recommendations; until he at length took the matter into his own hands, and, greatly to the surprise of his superiors, filled the vacancies without consulting them, in the manner most likely to conduce to the good of the service. This was, at first, warmly resisted, until he produced the king's commission, directly authorising him so to do; for his Majesty had foreseen the inconvenience which was likely to arise from his being left without such power, and wisely provided against it. He now sig nified his approbation of the course

which the Earl had pursued, and created him, moreover, Marquis of Ormonde.

To detail the military services of this great man, would extend our notice of him to an inconvenient length. Suffice it to say, that he exhibited, whenever the occasion required it, prudence, vigour, promptitude, and determination; and this, under circumstances of difficulty and embarrassment, such as have rarely been encountered in the case of any other great commander. From the lords justices, he received none of that countenance or co-operation, which, holding the post he occupied, he had a right to expect ; and, while they checked him in the commencement of the war, when, by a vigorous prosecution of hostilities, the rebels might have been entirely subdued, now that the latter had gathered strength, by the arrival of foreign officers and money, and that the king's troops were reduced to the very greatest straits for want of provisions, and that Dublin itself was in such a starv ing condition, that numbers were driven from it, from the utter impossibility of furnishing them with the means of subsistence, they resolutely set themselves against any treaty with the rebels for a cessation of hostilities; a measure to which Ormonde had looked forward as the most likely of any other to contribute to the tranquillity of the kingdom.

The king's necessities, he knew, were urgent. He was now at actual war with his parliament, and looked with earnest expectation to the arrival of reinforcements from Ireland. These Ormonde hoped to be able to send him, and also no inconsiderable supplies of money, in case the confederates came into any terms that were at all reasonable; and, accordingly, he asked for, and obtained from the King, a commission to conclude with them a cessation from hostilities upon any terms which he judged most likely to conduce to his honour and interest, in the then very critical state of his af

fairs.

As Sir William Parsons had exhibited himself altogether as a partizan of the parliament, and shown himself heedful of their slightest wishes, while he paid but little attention to the commands of his sovereign, he was removed from the office of lord justice, and his place was supplied by Sir Henry Fishbourne, from whom the Marquis received, in all his proceedings, a tole

rably cordial co-operation. There was now but little difficulty in bringing the leaders of the confederate Roman Catholics into amicable conference with the government; and, after some ncgociation, a treaty of cessation-at first for six months, and afterwards for one year-was concluded ;—against which Sir William Parsons and others violently protested, but which was deemned, by wiser and better men, the only course which could then be pursued, with a due regard to the public safety. Immediately upon this event, Ormonde was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland.

His acceptance of this arduous post was, perhaps, as great an evidence of his devoted loyalty, as he exhibited at any period of his life. He thus, irrevocably, committed himself with the cause of the King, when the storm of parliamentary violence began to blow fiercest, and nothing surrounded him but difficulties and dangers. His instructions were, to procure what arms and ammunition he could for the service of the king; to dispose the principal Irish to a readiness to enter into the royal service, either in England or Scotland; to take the measures best calculated for detaining in Ireland the scattered troops which had already arrived there; and to use all wise diligence in preventing a breach of the articles of pacification. These were duties which required, at such a juncture, the exercise of temper and discrction, of judgment and firmness, of wariness and determination, in no common degree; and in all the various and complicated negociations in which he was involved, with the leaders of all the parties with whom he had to deal, there were few upon whom a deep impression was not made, of the wisdom and virtue with which he conducted himself, during the most trying emergencies of his arduous administration.

The cessation of hostilitics having been agreed on, he had to contend against a party amongst the Protestants by whom it was opposed, even while he sought to procure from the Roman Catholics such terms, in the treaty which was now on foot between the confederates and the government, as, while they satisfied the demands of the one party, for a free toleration of their religion, might not alarm the apprehensions of the other, by such concessions as would seem to lead to the establishment of Popery, or to the insecurity of the Protestant church. We

cannot afford space to enter into the details that would be necessary, to show the consummate address with which he managed that delicate business ;— and how difficulties, that seemed insuperable, were, by his patience and his prudence, surmounted; until he at length saw the terms of the treaty agreed on, and had good hopes that it would speedily take effect, and be scrupulously observed throughout the whole of the kingdom.

But the solemn league and covenant was now the bond of union amongst the forces of the parliament; and the Scots in this country sympathising with their brethren at home, the emissaries of the parliament found it not difficult to infect them with the same zeal by which they were themselves actuated, and to infuse into them a spirit of discontent with the measures of the viceroy, which could not be seriously entertained without ending in the overthrow of their allegiance.

The consequence of this was, a breach of the articles of the treaty on the part of Munro and the covenanting soldiery, while, up to that moment, it had, by the Roman Catholics, been rigidly observed. They, accordingly, called upon Ormonde to put himself at their head, for the purpose of vindicating this violation of an express agree ment. They represented to him the advantage which might thus accrue to the royal cause, from the additional authority he would derive from the large number of Irish troops thus placed at his disposal; and they urged many other plausible inducements to prevail upon him to accede to their wishes, and such as most other men would, in like circumstances, have found it difficult to withstand. But Ormonde consulted nothing, upon that or any other occasion, but his clear perception of duty, and his keen sense of honour.

His heart told him that he could not take such a step, no matter how great the provocation, without compromising his loyalty; and, although the Scottish soldiers were guilty of an act little short of rebellion, in taking the covenant, yet his good sense cautioned him against proclaiming them rebels; as such an act, at such a time, while it would have no tendency to reclaim them, might cause almost all the other Protestants to waver in their allegiance. He could not venture to offend the confederates, by any abrupt termination of the negociation; and he accordingly entertained them with a

treaty, in which he proposed, if they would furnish troops and provide for their payment, to dispose them iu such a way as would cripple the power of the covenanting Scotch, and prevent any further infraction of the terms of the pacification. But this proposal was rejected by the council at Kilkenny, whom the reverses of the King in England had buoyed up with strong hopes, that there must soon be an ample recognition of their most extravagant pretensions.

Meanwhile the King, at Oxford, was perplexed by the conflicting requisitions of a deputation of Protestants, who earnestly supplicated the strict enforcement of the penal laws, and the enactment of others of additional severity; and of Roman Catholics who sought, or rather demanded, such ample im munities and privileges as would not only relieve them from all restraint, but make theirs the ascendant religion in Ireland. Truly he was in a great strait. He knew not what to do. The conflicting parties were equally obstinate, and he could not gratify either without offending the other; and that, to the great, if not irreparable, detriment of his affairs. He therefore referred the case to the Marquis of Or monde, to be dealt with as might to him seem most expedient; and that nobleman now began to feel the difficulties of his position to be so great, that he earnestly supplicated to be relieved of the viceroyalty of Ireland.

But there was no other subject upon whom that office could have been bestowed, with any advantage to the king's service; and the Marquis was persuaded still to hold, for the same reason by which he was originally induced to accept it-namely, an earnest desire to contribute to the peace and the wellbeing of the kingdom. With this view, the treaty with the confederates was again renewed; and, notwithstanding multiplied obstructions, brought at length to a happy termination. And, had it not been for the arrival of the papal nuncio, Rinoccini, who fulminated his anathemas against all who sub scribed to an agreement which recognized the rights of an heretical prince, and made no sufficient provision for the exaltation, in all its splendour, of the Romish church, a peace would have been concluded between the hostile parties, which would have put an end, for a season at least, to "the war of religion."

But the thunders of the Vatican now

began to roll, to aggravate the political din by which the lovers of peace, in this harassed and wretched country, were dismayed and astounded. The people were prevailed on to believe that their leaders were ready to sacrifice their faith, and that it was necessary to rally around the pope's representative, in order to maintain the church in its integrity, against those who would fain betray it, either through latitudinarian indifference, or corrupt ambition. Ormonde was, in a special manner, the object of their hatred, inasmuch as to his dexterous plausibility was attributed the inclination of many to whom they had looked up for guidance, to a course of proceeding by which, as Catholics, they were scandalized. The nuncio and his partizans did not fail to represent to them, in glowing colours, the division amongst the Protestant party, and the reduced condition of the king, which seemed to promise an easy recovery of the country from the unrighteous and heretical hands into which, for their sins, it had been permitted to fall; that any doubt of the ultimate issue of the contest could only arise from a want of confidence in the overruling providence of Almighty God; and that they had only to persevere in their pious determination to vindicate the rights and privileges of his Holiness, and to prove, by their deeds, against impious hereti cal invaders, that they were deserving the appellation of the island of saints, in order to a speedy and satisfactory settlement of their affairs, and a glorious triumph over all their enemies.

Crippled as he was, and destitute of almost all resources, Ormonde was in no condition to make head against this insolent ecclesiastic, and to punish him as his meddling audacity deserved.Hemmed in on one side by the forces of the parliament, and on the other by those of the confederates, he saw before him no other prospect than that of surrendering his government either to the former, who were in a state of rebellion against their King or to the latter, who were under the influence of a wily and bigoted priesthood, and actuated by a spirit of vengeance, which was but too likely to lead to Protest ant extermination. The scenes of 1641 must, no doubt, have presented themselves to his mind; and he felt that his Majesty's authority would be safer in the hands of Protestants and Englishmen, who, however erroneous might be their scriptural views, recognized

the supreme authority of the Bible, than in the bands of those to whom that blessed source of illumination was a sealed book, and whose consciences were in the hands of blind guides, who darkened counsel by words without knowledge. He therefore opened a negociation with the parliament; and, having stipulated for the security of such unoffending popish recusants as had not aided the rebels, and for the payment of certain sums which he had borrowed for the public exigencies, and for which he was personally responsible; and also having represented to them the great scandal that would arise from any compulsory discontinuance of the English liturgy, a representation to which they paid but little attention; he, on the 28th of July, 1647, delivered up the insignia of his office to the commissioners, and, embarking in a frigate which had been put at his disposal, landed on the 2d of August at Bristol.

The king was now a prisoner at Hampton Court, and thither the marquis repaired, to lay before him an account of his proceedings in Ireland. His Majesty felt deeply sensible of the services of his lieutenant, and could by no means be persuaded to accept the resignation of his office saying, with much courtesy, that "either the marquis himself, or nobody, should ever, hereafter, use it with better success." The vigilant surveillance to which they were obnoxious, prevented that fulness of confidential intercourse, for which, no doubt, they mutually yearned; and as Ormonde was far too considerable a person not to provoke the jealousy of the ruling powers, he prudently anticipated the malice of his enemies, by effecting a retreat to France, before any measures could be taken for his detention.

The queen and the prince were at that time at the court of Louis, and Ormonde's arrival was almost identical, in point of time, with that of deputies from the confederates at Kilkenny, who were sent to interest the queen and the prince on their behalf, and to procure a promise of concessions, upon points of religion, which would have satisfied the papal party; and amounted, in fact, to the giving not only a legal establishment, but a constitutional ascendancy to the Romish religion in Ireland.

The queen, who was herself a papist, could not have understood the formidable objections which lay against