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But this did not create the basis of a close alliance between Wentworth and the Protestant interests in Ireland. Wentworth also favoured bringing the Church of Ireland in line with the Church of England, which meant pushing it in a Laudian direction, and he was suspicious of the vested interests in the Dublin administration. In both cases a central priority was to uphold the direct authority of the crown, and these policies bear some resemblance to the priorities pursued in both England and Scotland during the same period. As in England the religious issue was particularly divisive. In 1634 Wentworth compelled adoption of the Thirty-Nine Articles in Ireland, and this was a prelude to sustained pressure to move Irish doctrine and practice in a Laudian direction. These measures acquired a directly political and strategic importance in the light of the Prayer Book rebellion. For many Protestants in Ireland, particularly in Ulster, the religion of the Covenanters was much more congenial than that of the Church of England. It was as a means of discouraging that alliance that Wentworth imposed the Black Oath – requiring them to abjure the Scottish National Covenant and to swear allegiance to King Charles.16

Crown policy was creating a common cause for advanced Calvinists in all the three kingdoms. Catholic leaders in Ireland, both Gaelic and Old English, on the other hand saw an obvious threat in the rise of the Covenanters and, in the Long Parliament, of English ‘Puritans’. Both Covenanters and English Puritans were hostile to Irish Catholicism and therefore relatively favourably inclined to plantation and the interests of the New English. But Gaelic and Old English leaders were also hostile to Wentworth because of his evident desire to promote Protestant interests in general, and their failure to secure the Graces. Thus, although there were obvious conflicts between the interests of Ireland’s various political groups, hostility to Wentworth was a common cause, and many parties in Ireland went along with the attack on Wentworth in the English parliament. This also reflected a more general pattern in Irish history – a willingness to go over the head of the Lord Deputy or Lord Lieutenant, and to appeal directly to the King. In 1640 the Irish parliament sent a remonstrance denouncing Wentworth’s government, and covering the whole gamut of Irish political interests, to the English parliament. This was, constitutionally speaking, something of an innovation. The English parliament had no direct role in the government of Ireland, but bringing Irish grievances to the English parliament gave that body a pretext for discussion of Irish affairs.17 Since the English parliament was a safe haven for anti-popish feeling of all sorts, this was not in the long-term interests of Irish Catholics – clearly the King was likely to be a better friend for them.

Hoping to make capital out of this obvious point, Charles had offered concessions to Old English leaders during Strafford’s trial. In return for financial support he promised to cancel future plantations, recognize the security of title of lands held for sixty years or more and to confirm other concessions initially offered in the Graces. Further concessions were offered in July, again in return for promises of financial support. These offers were tactical, of course, and the tactics soon changed. The Edinburgh parliament took up the case of an Ulster settler who suffered as a result of the Black Oath, forwarding his case to the English House of Lords. As the temperature rose in London, the offer to confirm the Graces was withdrawn and the Irish parliament was formally subordinated to the English one.18

These political disappointments led some prominent Irish leaders to rebel. In its inception the rising was an elite movement intended as a coup against the Dublin administration, which did not have the interests of many Irish people at heart, and against strongholds in Ulster which might become a threat to Catholic interests. The aims of the risings were to secure