partially of his authority as Lord Lieutenant, by sharing his power with twelve deputies appointed by the General Assembly-called "Commissioners of Trust." Without their approbation he could neither levy soldiers, raise money, nor erect garrisons. They were to take care that the articles of peace should be observed until ratified by Parliament. Thus, for a time, the Lord Lieutenant virtually committed a large part of the government into the hands of the Confederacy.

But these articles eventually secured to the Roman Catholics no substantial benefit. About a fortnight after the conclusion of the treaty Charles I. ended his career on the scaffold; and his death led very soon to important changes in the state of Ireland. Rinuccini had been already ordered by the Supreme Council to leave the kingdom;1 and passing events admonished him to hasten his departure. On the 23rd of February, 1649, he embarked at Galway; and as various complaints against him had already reached Rome, he is said, on his arrival there in the following year, to have met with rather a discouraging reception from the Pope, his master.2

Rinuccini did not long survive his unfortunate expedition to Ireland. The evils he brought on his co-religionists in this country were incalculable. By insisting on unreasonable conditions of peace and hurling anathemas against all who opposed him, he exhibited intolerable pride, ignorance, and obstinacy; exposed the discipline of his Church to contempt; and hastened the ruin of the Confederacy. The bitter spirit he evoked was not confined to Ireland. In 1642 Luke Wadding 3—an Irish Franciscan of great learning and ability

3

1 He certainly did not leave a blessing behind him. Hardiman remarks that "for upwards of a century after this period, war, pestilence, and persecution, succeeding each other in rapid and melancholy succession, afflicted its [Galway's] devoted community, and reduced this once opulent, populous, and respectable town to the most unenviable situation."-History of Galway, pp. 125-6. The plague appeared in it in July, 1649; and before the end of the following April, swept away upwards of 3,700 of the inhabitants. Ibid.

2 Cox, ii., Charles II., p. 3. See also Walsh's History of the Remonstrance. To the Catholics, &c., p. xxxiv.

3 See before, p. 66, note (2). Contemporary with Wadding was John Colgan, a native of Co. Donegal, and one of the most learned of Irish antiquarians. He

long resident in Rome-was appointed agent for the Confederates at the Court of the sovereign Pontiff. Wadding was much respected in the metropolis of Italy; and the leaders of the Irish Romanists again and again felt and acknowledged the importance of his services. He provided officers for their armies; raised money to pay their troops; and otherwise exerted himself with wonderful zeal to promote their cause. But, during the decline of the Confederacy, he suffered much from misrepresentation and ingratitude. In 1649 the Marquis of Ormonde, aware of his influence, sent him a communication in which it was suggested that, under the peculiar circumstances of the country, special care should be taken to select pious and loyal men to preside over the religious orders in Ireland. The Irish monks at Rome in some way heard of this letter, and understood that Wadding was not indisposed to sanction the policy it recommended. Their wrath was ungovernable; and neither the age, nor the fame for almost unrivalled scholarship, nor the remembrance of the past career of the great Franciscan, could protect him from their insults. On one occasion when the Pope-Innocent X.-appeared in public, a mob of Irish monks, headed by an Irishman named Francis Magruairck, fell down before him on their knees, and presented to him a memorial in which Wadding was denounced as a correspondent of the English heretics, a patron of apostates, and a man personally infamous. "He took this procedure of his countrymen so to heart," says a contemporary, "that he carried the grief thereof with him not long after to his grave." The monks, when presenting their complaint, cried out lustily, "Justice, Holy Father."2 Wadding

He was

spent much of his life on the Continent, and died at Louvain in 1658. the author of Acta Sanctorum, Triadis Thaumaturga, and other works. He succeeded, as lecturer on divinity at Louvain in 1635, another native of the Co. of Donegal, named Hugh Ward-a man noted for his acquaintance with the antiquities of his country. Ward left behind him a vast collection of manuscripts which Colgan turned to good account. Michael O'Clery, so well known as one of the compilers of the Annals of the Four Masters, was a fellow worker with Colgan and Ward in the field of Irish antiquarian literature. O'Clery died in his native Co. of Donegal in 1643, aged 63 years.

1 Walsh's History of the Remonstrance, pp. 592-3.

2 Ibid. p. 592.

appears never afterwards to have recovered his health and spirits. After lingering long in a state of infirmity, he died in 1657, in the seventieth year of his age.1

The seven years which embrace the history of the Catholic Confederation, from its commencement to the treaty with Ormonde immediately before the death of Charles I., present a series of exciting and extraordinary incidents. During all this period Ireland was in the throes of a political convulsion; but religion, instead of exerting a kindly and healing influence, only embittered the contention. Whilst the country was rent to pieces by civil strife, bishops and priests were among the fiercest belligerents. The voice of the Nuncio was still for war; and when the laity were anxious to beat their swords into ploughshares, they were forced into the battlefield by excommunications and interdicts. Prelates sat in the General Assembly: acted as members of the Supreme Council: managed diplomatic correspondence: and conducted military operations. If twenty priests perished at the siege of Cashel, it was absurd for Rinuccini to denounce the successful General as guilty of aggravated murder; for, when the clergy were so far forgetful of their sacred character as to engage in hand-to-hand encounters with their foes, they could not expect to escape the ordinary casualties of the conflict. The most daring wickedness was committed by those who were constantly charging others with impiety; for the Sacraments were horribly prostituted when they were employed as means to coerce men to act in opposition to the light of their own convictions, or to continue a bloody and useless contest.

The civil war was commenced for the avowed purpose of securing the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion; but it is noteworthy that its promoters refused to others a privilege which they asserted for themselves. Wherever the power of the Confederation was established, Protestant

1 Brenan, p. 526. Walsh surely exaggerates enormously when he says that Wadding “in his own days, and at least continually for thirty years of them, had seen and heard his own Annals [Annales Minorum] with so much esteem daily read, during that long extent of time, in the public refectory pulpits of above ferty thou and Franciscan monasteries, throughout all parts of the Christian world."-History of the Remonstrance, p. 592.

VOL. II.

H

worship was forbidden.1 At one time during the war the Roman Catholic lords and gentry of Leinster and Munster -apparently desirous to free themselves from the charge of intolerance-set forth a Declaration 2 repudiating the intention of extirpating the English and Scottish colonists, and stating that, on certain conditions, "each man known to be a moderate, conformable Protestant" might enjoy the freedom of his religion but Puritans or Presbyterians were excepted from this act of grace;3 and no consistent and conscientious Episcopalian could avail himself of the privilege on the conditions prescribed. In point of fact, Protestant worship in every form was put down throughout all those parts of Ireland in which the Confederacy had established its authority. Though the adherents of the Reformed faith constituted perhaps nearly the one-fifth of the entire population of Ireland,5 an attempt was now made to prevent altogether the celebration of their ritual. By the oath of association-framed at the commencement of the war, and still retained with certain additions-the Confederates were pledged to maintain their allegiance to the King; and yet so great was their intolerance that they disputed whether His Majesty should be

1 Cox, ii. 187; and Charles, ii. 8; Leland, iii. 310.

2 This Declaration, dated 9th of May, 1644, may be found in Cox, appendix xi., pp. 49, 50. See also Madden's History of Irish Periodical Literature, vol. i. p. 137. London, 1867. In Madden the oath, with the obnoxious conditions, is not given.

3 Dr. O'Conor admits that the Confederates contemplated "the expulsion of the Puritans."-Hist. Address, part i. 191, note.

The "moderate, conformable Protestant," that is, the lukewarm Episcopalian, was required to swear "in the presence of Almighty God, and all the angels and saints in heaven,” that he would “join with the Irish army,” that is, fight against the royal troops, and that “he would do no act, or thing, directly or indirectly, to prejudice the public exercise of the Roman Catholic religion "--by which the Confederates meant its restoration to its ancient power and splendour. See the oath in Cox, appendix xi.

* See before, p. 93, note (2); and Petty's Political Anatomy, p. 317. Tracts. Ed. Dublin, 1769.

6 Rothe and his associates boast, in their replies to the queries of the Supreme Council, that, according to the terms of the cessation with Inchiquin, the Protestant party were not to enjoy the benefit or liberty of their function or religion' Walsh's Hist. of the Remonstrance. The

in the quarters of the Confederates. Queries, p. 3.

allowed the use of one chapel in Dublin as soon as their dominion extended over the whole of the kingdom. It is therefore obvious that they aimed, not merely at Roman Catholic ascendency, but at the extinction of Protestantism.

Ministers of religion, as well as other men, are members of the commonwealth, and as such may exercise their share of political influence; but they are not properly entitled, by virtue of their office, to claim any civil authority. The history of the Catholic Confederation illustrates the folly and the danger of permitting them to interfere unduly in matters of statesmanship. The policy of Rinuccini would have been fraught with disasters to any community. Had he been suffered to carry out his views, Ireland, with the exception of the States of the Church,2 would have been the most priestridden country in Europe. The Pope would have been its sovereign; and the clergy would have regulated all its affairs. They would have framed its laws: guided its administration: and commanded its soldiers. The Church would have soon engrossed almost all the landed property of the kingdom; and there would have been no freedom, either civil or religious. But the mission of this Italian Nuncio was, from first to last, a most inglorious failure. He ruined the Confederacy, and contributed largely to bring down upon Ireland the more appalling misery with which it was soon afterwards oppressed.

1 Leland, iii. 310. During the war the Romanists exhibited their intolerance by refusing to permit the bodies of Protestants to be buried in the churchyards. See Borlase, p. 171. The Rev. John Yorke, Protestant Dean of Kilmacduagh (see Cotton's Fasti, iv. 203), was forced to bury the Protestants in his own garden. See answer of the Earl of Orrery to Peter Walsh's letter, dated October, 1660.

2 Since the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power, Rome and the parts adjacent have experienced the advantages of deliverance from sacerdotal government.