and, therefore, made all public officers, civil and military, dependant on them. During the war, they had the executive and the legislative, the sword and the purse; and therefore, none disagreeable to them could hold any high station, none that was not subservient; hence it was, that they were enabled to frustrate all the endeavors of the king and Irish insurgents towards a pacification. 'Tis true, at length, Sir William Parsons was displaced; but one of the same faction, Sir Henry Tichburne, succeeded him, According to Mr. Carte, his majesty, offered to create the marquis of Ormond lord lieutenant; which tender, for some reason or another he declined. It may have been, as his biographer or eulogist relates; but, in despite of all his glosses and colouring, the change would not have materially served either the king or his Irish subjects. Ormond gave many proofs of his inveteracy to the catholics, and his partiality to the English rebels. His opposition to the cessation, and his eagerness for protracting the Irish war, so injurious to the king, so favourable to his enemies; his attempt to break off the treaty, shew clearly whose partizan he was. His services were not the less acceptable to a set of canting hypocrites, on account of a congenial dissimulation that veiled them. They were the more efficacious, as, under the mask of loyalty to the king, he fought against him under his own colours, and by his own authority; like the rest of the traitors exercising royal authority in Ireland at that time.

At length the marquis condescended to notice his majesty's reiterated commands, and gave notice to the supreme council of the catholic convention, that he would receive their committee at Drogheda; where, accordingly, they waited on him, the twenty-third of June 1643. The arrogance of his manner; his cavilling about words, forms and etiquette; and his absolute rejection of the most reasonable propositions, for example, that violaters of the peace should be prosecuted by both parties, plainly bespoke him an enemy to the king, and to his country; as plainly as when he offered the justices, for the sum of ten thousand pounds, to recommence the war, and break off the treaty. His refusal to ratify the necessity of dissolving the packed parliament, which had ejected forty-six of its members, and afterwards excluded a much greater number, by disqualifying from a seat all who would not take the oath of supremacy, filling their places with clerks and attornies by their own arbitrary act, without election or constituents; all these overt acts of treachery, as well as others in the sequel, demonstrate that the English rebels came up to his price.

of

"On the twenty-third of June, 1643, the commissioners of the confederate catholics presented themselves before the marquis of Ormond in his tent, near Castle-Martin, in the presence divers colonels, captains, and others of his majesty's army, his lordship sitting in his chair covered, and the Irish commissioners standing bare-headed. After several passages between

them, all tendered in writing, the latter gave his lordship a copy of the authority they had received from the supreme council of the confederate catholics at Kilkenny, in these words:

"Whereas his majesty's most faithful subjects, the confederate catholics of Ireland, were enforced to take arms, for the preservation of their religion, for the defence of his majesty's just prerogatives and rights, and for the maintenance of the rights and liberties of their country, laboured to be destroyed by the malignant party; and, whereas his majesty in his high wisdom, and in his princely care of his said subjects welfare and safety, and at their humble suit, that his majesty might be graciously pleased to hear their grievances, and vouchsafe redress therein, did direct there should be a cessation of arms, and thereupon did direct the right honourable the marquis of Ormond, to treat of, and conclude the said cessation with the said confederate catholics; know ye, that the supreme council, by the express order and authority of the said catholics, by them conceived and granted in their general assembly at Kilkenny, on the twentieth day of the last month of May; and in pursuance of the said order and authority, reposing special trust and confidence in the wisdom, circumspection, and provident care, honor and sincerity of our very good lords, Nicholas lord viscount Gormanstown, Donogh lord viscount Muskerry, and our well-beloved Sir Lucas Dillon, Knight, Sir Robert Talbot, Bart. Tirlagh O'Niel, Esq. Geoffry Brown, Esq. Ever Macgennis, Esq. and

John Walsh, Esq. have constituted, appointed, and ordained the said Nicholas lord viscount Gormanstown, Donogh lord viscount Muskerry, &c. our commissioners, and do, by these presents, give and grant to our said commissioners, or any five or more of them, full power and authority to treat with the said lord marquis of Ormond, of a cessation of arms, for one whole year, or shorter, and to conclude the same for the time. aforesaid, upon such terms, conditions, or articles, as to the commissioners aforesaid, in their judgments, consciences, and discretions, shall be thought fit and expedient; by these presents ratifying and confirming whatever act or acts our said commissioners shall do or execute concerning the said cessation. Given at Kilkenny, the twenty-third of June, 1643.

Mountgarret. Castlehaven. Audley. Malach. archep. Tuam. Fleming, archep. Dublin. Maurit. de Rupe et Fermoy. Netterville. Nicholas Plunkett. Edmund Fitzmorice. Pat. Darcy. Robt. Lynch. Rich. Belling."

"But a difference arising upon two points, viz. the dissolution of the present Irish parliament, and liberty to use hostilities against all such persons as should appear in arms against either party, (which the commissioners of the confederate catholics were ordered to insist upon, and the marquis of Ormond peremptorily refused,) caused the treaty to be adjourned to the, following month.

"One reason, among many others, for insisting

" its

on the dissolution of that parliament, was, having expelled by an arbitrary order, all those members who had been indicted in the illegal manner, and by the iniquitous means already mentioned; and its afterwards having passed another order, that no persons should sit either in that, or any future parliament, till they had taken the oath of supremacy." By the first of these orders, forty-six members were expelled, and their places supplied by "clerks, soldiers, serving-men, and others not legally, or not at all chosen or returned; and by the last, a much greater number, unexceptionable," says Warner, "in all respects but that of their religion."

"The other point was insisted upon, from a well-grounded suspicion, that the Scottish forces in Ulster, that had taken the covenant, and received their pay from the English parliament, now in open rebellion against the king, would reject the cessation, as they soon after actually did. And of the reasonableness of that suspicion, the marquis of Ormond himself was then probably convinced, from his knowledge of their disposition and circumstances; at least, on the eighth of March following, he certainly was so, when he told lord Digby, "that the soldiers and common people in that quarter, were so deeply infected, that he had little hopes they could be unanimously, or in any considerable number, drawn to serve the king against the rebels in England or Scotland: of the new Scots," adds he, "your lordship sees there is no hope:" and yet, even at this juncture (as we shall hereafter