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By Root 1240 0

Plunkett, a distinguished Dublin lawyer. Plunkett had acted against Wentworth on a number of occasions during the 1630s. Initially opposed to the rising he had risen rapidly in the ranks of the Confederacy once he had committed himself to its cause. He was one of the most prominent Catholic politicians of the mid seventeenth century, but his politics were not dogmatically confessional-his was a campaign for the rights of Catholics under the crown. His sense of what kind of peace would suffice was at odds with that of other influential figures in the Confederacy. Nonetheless, and despite their internal differences, the Confederates were surely correct in thinking that the King was a more likely friend than the English parliament and in October 1642 they had petitioned the King in these terms, ‘which granted, we will convert our forces upon any design your majesty may appoint’.1

English forces in Ireland were based in Dublin under the command of James Butler, Earl of Ormond. The son of a prominent family (he was the 12th earl), he is normally commended above all for his loyalty. The Butlers had remained Catholic at the Reformation and so, despite a long record of crown service, had become subjects of suspicion. James was taken into royal wardship in 1614, however, and educated under the austerely Calvinist eye of George Abbot. Although his education was otherwise rather neglected, this created a breach with the Catholic past of the family and opened the door to service of the crown, something essential to the interests of ambitious landowners and something that Ormond pursued enthusiastically ever after. Sympathetic to the royalist cause in England, and serving under a royal commission, he was securely royalist. But this was less true of other figures in the Dublin government. Fear of popery and (Catholic) rebellion, such a prominent part of the English parliamentarian case, played powerfully among Ireland’s Protestant elite. In October 1642, the month of the assembly at Kilkenny and of the battle of Edgehill, Parliament sent commissioners to Dublin hoping to get this army to renounce its loyalty to the King.2

A third army had been sent by the Covenanters in April 1642 to make Ulster safe for Presbyterianism, under the command of Robert Monro, and partly funded by the English parliament. A veteran of French, Danish and Swedish service, Monro had shown no hesitation in throwing in his lot with the Covenanters, and when he took up the commission of Major-General of the Covenanting army in Ireland he was probably in his mid-forties. The proposal for a Scottish army to preserve Protestantism in Ireland had initially come from both Parliament and the King, but by the time that the army was sent the King was no longer behind it. This army was obviously more likely to fight for Parliament than for the King, should it become interested in joining the English war. There were also a number of regiments raised in England, the Adventurers, on the promise of reward from confiscated lands, whose loyalties were clearly far more likely to be parliamentarian.3

Of these armies in Ireland the Confederates were most likely to be royalist, but an alliance with Irish Catholics would cost Charles support everywhere else. Monro, of course, was unlikely to be anything but pro-parliamentarian, but the allegiance of the English forces under the command of Ormond might be contested. Viewed strictly as a matter of military policy the King’s best option was to seek peace with the Confederates, hoping thereby to release Ormond’s forces for service in England. Early in 1643 Charles ordered the expulsion of the parliamentary delegation from Dublin, and sent a commission to Ormond and others to hear the grievances of the Catholics. This process went ahead despite a military initiative from Dublin, and despite the demands of the Confederates, which were too far-reaching to be granted. By April, a ceasefire seemed plausible, but not a full settlement, and over the summer of 1643 this is what was negotiated. On 15 September, after a year of military failure,