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The Confederates Open Negotiations with the King

Jamese Marquis (subsequently Duke) of Ormond was now commander of thd King’s forces in Ireland ; next year (1643), he was appointed Lore Lieutenant. His character has been variously judged, according to the political  and  religious   standpoint  of his   critics, but it seems to be generally allowed that he was genuinely attached to the Royalist cause. For the ” Papist rebels ” he had the utmost contempt, and he did not hold himself bound by any laws of honour when dealing with them.

Meanwhile, in August 1642, the war between Charles and his Parliament had begun. The King’s greatest need was trained soldiers. Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill had brought with him from Spain, besides a good supply of arms, some 200 veterans, and, with the help of these, he had begun to drill and train the Irish levies, in such wise that they promised soon to be shaped into a valuable and efficient force. Charles was anxious to make some arrangement by means of which a part, at any rate, of these troops might be available for his service. The Confederates, at least the Palesmen, were only too anxious to treat.
They had already addressed an humble Petition to the King, setting forth their grievances, but of this no notice had been taken. Now, however, early in the year 1643, Charles appointed Ormond and the Earl of Clanrickard to inquire into these matters, and in fact, though not at first in name, to enter into negotiations with the insurgents.
The Parliamentary party in England was naturally enough very much averse to this move. It was, so they considered, an unworthy truckling with rebellion, and, worse still, it might result in substantial aids being supplied to the King.
Already, in the preceding year (March, 1642), the Parliament had caused a considerable Scottish army under General Munroe to be sent to Ulster, where it had joined with the English troops which still remained in the Province, and had been very successful in the north-east counties. Almost everywhere they, as well as the Government troops in the other provinces, had behaved to their enemies with terrible cruelty. Lord Lisle, Sir Charles Coote and afterwards his son of the same name, and Lord Inchiquin, long remembered in Ireland under the name of ” Murrogh the Burner,” were especially notorious for their atrocious deeds.

They, in most cases, put to death, not only the garrisons of captured fortresses or of those which had surrendered, but also very frequently non-combatants, women and even children, if any were found. Massacres of unarmed peasantry even were not unusual.
As before stated, the Irish party, after the first few months, cannot be charged with any such savagery. Captured garrisons were frequently suffered to depart where they would ; prisoners often remained for long periods in the hands of the Confederate troops and were finally released uninjured. Eoghan Ruadh punished with great severity any attempt of his soldiers to plunder or ill-use the civil population, and he treated his captives with the utmost consideration and courtesy. When the English  Parliament issued a decree (1644) tnat n0 quarter should in future be given to any Irishman ” taken in hostilities ” against it, the Confederate Council did not retort, as it might well have done, by a similar decree against the Parliamentarian soldiers.
A meeting was arranged to take place at Trim between the negotiators authorised by the King and representatives of the Confederates. Hostilities were not, however, suspended. Not only generals who, like Munroe and Coote, were now acting under the orders, not of the King, but of the Parliaments of Scotland or of England, but such Royalist Commanders as Ormond and Lisle, continued the campaign in various parts of the country. Lisle defeated Preston near New Ross, but the latter captured the important Castle of Ballinakill in Queen’s Co. In Ulster, O’Neill, conscious that his men were not yet sufficiently trained, avoided important engagements as far as he could. Owing, however, to the importunities of his own soldiers, who clamoured to be led to victory and threatened mutiny if refused, he was induced to join battle at Clones with an English army led by Sir William and Sir Robert Stewart.

Insurrection of Sir Cahir O’Doherty

The news of the flight of O’Neill and O’Donnell caused, throughout the greater part of Ulster, the utmost consternation. Abandoned like sheep without their shepherds, the clansmen of Tfr Owen and Tfrconnell knew not what fate might befall them. The English Government, fearing lest, in their despair, they might resort to desperate courses, endeavoured to allay their anxiety. A Proclamation was issued by the King, in which he declared that he would take into his own hands the possessions of the fugitive earls, and would protect the rights of all those who had held estates under them. At this very time a scheme for an extensive Plantation had been laid before James by Chichester.

 

In 1608, a singularly rash and ill-advised insurrection gave an excuse for extending still further the projected confiscations. Its leader was the young Sir Cahir O’Doherty, chief of Inishowen. He quarrelled on some private matter with Sir George Paulet, Governor of Derry, and, in the course of the dispute, Paulet struck him in the face. Vowing vengeance, Sir Cahir withdrew. Niall Garff was afterwards said to have encouraged the misguided youth to his ruin, and young O’Hanlon and some others certainly promised assistance.

The Clauses in the ” Submissions ” regarding Land

The Clause in the various submissions by which the chiefs agree to hold their lands from the King under certain feudal conditions should be noted; they furnish, in some sort, the key to the whole situation.

We have seen {Book I) that, according to the old Irish system the land of a clan was considered as fundamentally belonging, in its several portions, to the family groups, which, taken together, constituted the State. The chief’s mensal land was ultimately the property of the State as a whole. It was an appanage of the chieftaincy, and, on the death of an occupant, passed to the elected successor. However much the custom of limiting the succession in practice to the members of one family had obscured this notion, it was still present to the minds of the people, and a verbal or practical denial of it would be resented.

In the agreements made between the chiefs and Henry VIII the communal ownership of the lands was not indeed denied, nothing was said regarding it. All that was specifically done, with regard to possessions other than the mensal lands, was to give the chief a right under English law to the powers over them which previously he had exercised without it. Of his mensal lands he was now constituted absolute owner, and they were to be transmitted by primogeniture to his heirs. A few clans had been in the habit of practising primogeniture, but the great majority had not, preferring usually a brother or a nephew, the son of an elder brother, to the son of a deceased chief. In these clans the introduction of the new succession law became a fertile source of dispute. Again, from regarding himself as absolute owner of the mensal land to regarding himself as absolute owner of the rest of the clan territory, and the clansmen as merely his tenants, was, for an ambitious chief, an easy step, and one which English officials often, when it suited them, encouraged him to take. The chiefs who had bound themselves by these agreements would now, if they failed to carry out the conditions contained in them, and especially if they rebelled against the English Crown, be liable certainly to forfeit their mensal lands ; it might be convenient to pretend to consider that the whole of the clan land was also theirs, and so forfeit also.

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