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effort, increasingly closely associated with zealous reformation, was stepped up in two distinct phases: one towards the end of the Oxford negotiations and extending into late April, the other in June and July. This process too led to some revision of the choices of 1642. By late summer, Parliament’s military fortunes were at a low ebb, radical administrative measures were being taken, supported by rhetoric which would not have commanded much support a year earlier. The core of the parliamentary cause was being more clearly defined and could not easily be presented as merely defensive. The problems this posed were obvious in the defections of 1643. Domestic radicalization had benefits in fighting the war, but also costs in threatening the solidity of the coalition of 1642. This was to become still more the case in the autumn, as Parliament concluded a military alliance with the Covenanters, and Charles negotiated a cessation in Ireland in order to allow him to bring troops across the Irish Sea. Meanwhile, Parliament had not really enjoyed the fruits of this escalation either, although the relief of Gloucester had lifted spirits.

Bruno Ryves’s strategy in Mercurius Rusticus, of contrasting the actions of parliamentarians with their rhetoric, was a common one, and manifested the much larger problem posed by the contested meaning of key terms. Publicity magnified the obvious problem: conditions of necessity had made the meaning of apparently plain words (law, reformation, treason, honour) obscure. The truth in these conditions was very elusive – both in the sense of reliable accounts of what was happening and, more importantly, what it meant. Versions of the truth could not be taken on trust either, as polemics consistently undercut the authority of the other side. Meanwhile, for an uncommitted reader of the flood of pamphlets that swept from the presses, it was difficult to identify the grounds of honourable personal conduct.

10

The War of the Three Kingdoms

The Irish Cessation and the Solemn League and Covenant, 1643

By late 1643 both sides had secured outside help, further complicating the politics of mobilization and the difficulty of negotiating an eventual peace. The King sought a truce in Ireland to release troops for service in England; Parliament sought military help from the Covenanters. The English civil war had been a consequence of crises in the other kingdoms; England was now to become the cockpit of a war of all three kingdoms.

There were three armies in Ireland. The confederated Catholics, the original rebels, had risen against the government, having been frustrated in their hopes of securing concessions from Wentworth in return for financial support for the crown. They were now seeking freedom of worship and security of their estates and religion. Given the climate in England freedom of worship was unthinkable, but security of estates and religion were, potentially, negotiable. The Confederates had been sensitive to the realities of English politics-for example, they did not refer to their assembly in Kilkenny (which met two days after the battle of Edgehill) as a parliament because the oath of confederacy had bound them to acknowledge the King’s rights, among which was the sole authority to summon parliaments. They also recognized the authority of English common law and statute, so long as they did not infringe the liberties of the Irish people or the free exercise of their religion. There were of course divisions over what these demands meant in practice, and it is significant that they were the confederated Catholics. rather than the united Catholics, or simply the Catholics. It was a loose coalition, formed in the months after the rising, in the light of military needs. Its politics are best understood in terms of a tension between a peace party, anxious for a rapid settlement with the King, and a clericalist wing, seeking to extract maximal religious concessions from the King now that a rising was underway. There was also a middle group, negotiating between these positions, led by Nicholas