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The justices and council of Ireland had been engaged, chiefly by the interest and authority of Ormond, to fall into an entire dependence on the king. Parsons, Temple, Loftus, and Meredith, who favored the opposite party, had been removed; and Charles had supplied their place by others better affected to his service. A committee of the English house of commons, which had been sent over to Ireland in order to conduct the affairs of that kingdom, had been excluded the council, in obedience to orders transmitted from the king.[**] And these were reasons sufficient, besides the great difficulties under which they themselves labored, why the parliament was unwilling to send supplies to an army which, though engaged in a cause much favored by them, was commanded by their declared enemies. They even intercepted some small succors sent thither by the king.
The king, as he had neither money, arms, ammunition, nor provisions to spare from his own urgent wants, resolved to embrace an expedient which might at once relieve the necessities of the Irish Protestants, and contribute to the advancement of his affairs in England. A truce with the rebels, he thought, would enable his subjects in Ireland to provide for their own support, and would procure him the assistance of the army against the English parliament. But as a treaty with a people so odious for their barbarities, and still more for their religion, might be represented in invidious colors, and renew all those calumnies with which he had been loaded, it was necessary to proceed with great caution in conducting that measure. A remonstrance from the army was made to the Irish council, representing their intolerable necessities, and craving permission to leave the kingdom: and if that were refused, “We must have recourse,” they said, “to that first and primary law with which God has endowed all men; we mean the law of nature, which teaches every creature to preserve itself.”[***]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 555. ** Rush. vol. vi. p 530. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 167. *** Rush. vol. vi. p. 537.
Memorials both to the king and parliament were transmitted by the justices and council, in which then wants and dangers are strongly set forth;[*] and though the general expressions in these memorials might perhaps be suspected of exaggeration, yet from the particular facts mentioned, from the confession of the English parliament itself,[**] and from the very nature of things, it is apparent that the Irish Protestants were reduced to great extremities;[***] and it became prudent in the king, if not absolutely necessary, to embrace some expedient which might secure them for a time from the ruin and misery with which they were threatened.
Accordingly the king gave orders[****] to Ormond and the justices to conclude, for a year, a cessation of arms with the council of Kilkenny, by whom the Irish were governed, and to leave both sides in possession of their present advantages. The parliament, whose business it was to find fault with every measure adopted by the opposite party, and who would not lose so fair an opportunity of reproaching the king with his favor to the Irish Papists, exclaimed loudly against this cessation. Among other reasons, they insisted upon the divine vengeance, which England might justly dread for tolerating anti-Christian idolatry, on pretence of civil contracts and political agreements.[v] Religion, though every day employed as the engine of their own ambitious purposes, was supposed too sacred to be yielded up to the temporal interests or safety of kingdoms.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 538. ** Rush, vol. vi. p. 540. *** See further, Carte’s Ormond, (vol. iii. No. 113, 127, 128, 129 134, 136, 141, 144, 149, 158, 159.) All these papers put it past doubt, that the necessities of the English army in Ireland were extreme. See further, Rush. vol. vi. p. 537. and Dugdale, p. *53 *54. **** Rush. vol. vi p. 537, 544, 547 v Rush, vol. vi. p. 557.
After the cessation, there was little necessity, as well as no means of subsisting the army in Ireland. The king ordered Ormond, who was entirely devoted to him, to send over considerable bodies of it to England. Most of them continued in his service; but a small part, having imbibed in Ireland a strong animosity against the Catholics, and hearing the king’s party universally reproached with Popery, soon after deserted to the Parliament.
Some Irish Catholics came over with these troops, and joined the royal army, where they continued the same cruelties and disorders to which they had been accustomed.[*] The parliament voted, that no quarter in any action should ever be given them; but Prince Rupert, by making some reprisals, soon repressed this inhumanity.[**]
* Whitlocke, p 78, 103. ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 680, 788.
1644.
The king had hitherto, during the course of the war, obtained many advantages over the parliament, and had raised himself from that low condition into which he had at first fallen, to be nearly upon an equal footing with his adversaries. Yorkshire, and all the northern counties, were reduced by the marquis of Newcastle; and, excepting Hull, the parliament was master of no garrison in these quarters. In the west, Plymouth alone, having been in vain besieged by Prince Maurice, resisted the king’s authority; and had it not been for the disappointment in the enterprise of Gloucester, the royal garrisons had reached, without interruption, from one end of the kingdom to the other, and had occupied a greater extent of ground than those of the parliament. Many of the royalists flattered themselves, that the same vigorous spirit which had elevated them to the present height of power would still favor their progress, and obtain them a final victory over their enemies: but those who judged more soundly, observed, that, besides the accession of the whole Scottish nation to the side of the parliament, the very principle on which the royal successes had been founded, was every day acquired more and more by the opposite party. The king’s troops, full of gentry and nobility, had exerted a valor superior to their enemies, and had hitherto been successful in almost every rencounter; but in proportion as the whole nation became warlike by the continuance of civil discords, this advantage was more equally shared; and superior numbers, it was expected, must at length obtain the victory..The king’s troops, also, ill paid, and destitute of every necessary, could not possibly be retained in equal discipline with the parliamentary forces, to whom all supplies were furnished from unexhausted stores and treasures.[*]
* Rush, vol vi. p, 560.
The severity of manners, so much affected by these zealous religionists, assisted their military institutions and the rigid inflexibility of character by which the austere reformers of church and state were distinguished, enabled the parliamentary chiefs to restrain their soldiers within stricter rules and more exact order. And while the king’s officers indulged themselves even in greater licenses than those to which during times of peace they had been accustomed, they were apt both to neglect their military duty, and to set a pernicious example of disorder to the soldiers under their command.
At the commencement of the civil war, all Englishmen who served abroad were invited over, and treated with extraordinary respect; and most of them, being descended of good families, and by reason of their absence unacquainted with the new principles which depressed the dignity of the crown, had enlisted under the royal standard. But it is observable, that though the military profession requires great genius and long experience in the principal commanders, all its subordinate duties may be discharged by ordinary talents and from superficial practice. Citizens and country gentlemen soon became excellent officers; and the generals of greatest fame and capacity happened, all of them, to spring up on the side of the parliament. The courtiers and great nobility, in the other party, checked the growth of any extraordinary genius among the subordinate officers; and every man there, as in a regular established government, was confined to the station in which his birth had placed him.
