SECTION II.-REDUCTION OF IRELAND TO THE

COMMONWEALTH.

1. State of affairs in Ireland. After the Duke of Ormond had left Ireland, Rinuccini, the papal nuncio, held the office of president, till the defeat of the catholic party under Preston, at Dungan Hill, and under Taafe at Clontarf, forced him to resign. A new council was then formed of men of both parties in equal numbers, and a deputation sent to solicit aid and beg of Charles to come over to Ireland, or appoint a catholic lieutenant. Before an answer was returned, Inchiquin with his army, declaring in favor of the king and against the parliament, proposed terms to the Catholics; this was strongly objected to by the nuncio, and led to still further complications of party, and ultimately to open war. O'Neil, at the head of the Ulster men, concluded truces with Jones, the parliamentary commander in Dublin, and with Monk in Ulster; while Inchiquin allied himself with Preston, to support the catholic council. Ormond now returned as Lord Lieutenant, and having ordered Rinuccini to quit the kingdom, concluded a treaty with the Catholics: the latter undertaking to support an army of seventeen thousand five hundred men, the king granting permission for the free exercise of catholic worship, and the promise of the redress of grievances of religion and trade, and the establishment of the independence of the Irish parliament. The parliamentary cause in Ireland was now at its lowest ebb. Their generals were shut up to the immediate neighborhood of their garrisons, the fleet under Rupert commanded the seas, and the Scots in Ulster had proclaimed king Charles, who would himself have appeared in Ireland, but for the want of money and the opposition of his counsellors.

Carlyle, in his own peculiar style, thus sets forth the complications of parties in Ireland, at this period :

"The history of this war does not form itself into a picture; but remains only as a huge blot, an indiscriminate blackness; which the human memory cannot willing charge itself with! There are parties on the back of parties; at war with the world and with each other. There are Catholics of the Pale, demanding freedom of religion; under my Lord This and my Lord That. There are Old-Irish Catholics, under Pope's Nuncios, under Abbas O'Teague, of the excommunications, and Owen Roe O'Neil;-demanding not religious freedom only, but what we now call 'Repeal of the Union'; and unable to agree with the Catholics of the English Pale. Then there are Ormond royalists, of the episcopalian and mixed creeds, strong for king without Covenant: Ulster and other Presbyterians, strong for king and Covenant lastly, Michael Jones and the Commonwealth of England, who want neither king nor Covenant. All these plunging and

tumbling, in huge discord, for the last eight years, have made of Ireland and its affairs the black unutterable blot we speak of."

2. Cromwell's campaign in Ireland, 1649-50. Under the circumstances just narrated, the English government became anxious to reduce Ireland without loss of time. Cromwell was appointed to command the forces chosen for this purpose; after some hesitation he accepted the post, with the addition of the lord-deputyship, by which there were vested in one person full powers, both civil and military. He would not however move till he was put in possession of a sufficient force, with provisions and military stores, and £100,000 in ready money. Further delay was occasioned by the bad spirit of the army, which besides being disturbed by the Levellers, was now affected by a general distrust of the honesty of the men in power. For the English parliament had been holding out promises to the Catholics, in order to separate them from the king's interest, and in Ireland, Monk had made terms with O'Neil, including liberty of conscience for himself and his followers. The discontent which this agreement had created, was allayed only by the parliament's annulling it, and severely censuring Monk for his indiscretion. While Cromwell was thus delayed, the Irish party under Ormond received a paralysing blow from Jones, the parliamentary general in command of Dublin. The Marquis had laid siege to the capital, and suffered a surprise from Jones, which led (Aug. 2) to a general rout, and the loss on the part of the Irish of their artillery, baggage, and ammunition, beside two thousand prisoners. This fatal defeat is known as the battle of Rathmines.

Cromwell, with his force of twelve thousand men, sailed from Milford, and landed at Dublin, August 18. His first acts as Lord Lieutenant were to issue a proclamation against swearing and drunkenness; to prohibit pillaging, extortion, and oppression; and to invite the people to bring in provisions to his camp and garrisons, where they would have the benefit "of a free market, and receive ready money for goods or commodities they should so bring to sell". Having rested his troops for a fortnight, he left Dublin and opened the campaign with the siege of Drogheda, into which Ormond had thrown two thousand five hundred men under Sir Arthur Aston, a cavalier officer of good reputation. The result may be told in Cromwell's own words:-"It hath pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda; after battering, we stormed it, (Sept. 12, 1649). The enemy were about three thousand strong in the town. We refused them quarter, having the day before summoned the town. I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives: those that did are in safe

custody for Barbadoes. . . . . I am persuaded that it is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret."

The general now moved his forces, and formed the siege of Wexford, an officer of which opened its castle (Oct 9) while the commissioners were in treaty for a capitulation; resistance was now useless, and between two and three thousand fell by the sword. The capture of this place, included several ships of war, and large military stores, for it was the principal arsenal of the Catholics. Ormond successfully foiled the attempts made upon Duncannon and Waterford; but on the defection of some regiments under Lord Inchiquin, the garrisons of Cork, Youghal, Bandon, and Kinsale, submitted to the English parliament. The season being far advanced, Cromwell rested his troops about two months, and then (1650) took the field again with twenty thousand men. As life and liberty of conscience (liberty of internal belief, not of external worship) was offered to all, little resistance was met with; where a case did occur, either the officers alone, or the whole garrison, were put to the sword. Some few places however distinguished themselves by a noble defence. Kilkenny, in this way, won from the English general honorable terms; and the garrison of Clonmell repulsed the besiegers, inflicting on them considerable loss, and when their ammunition was expended, contrived to escape without notice, leaving the inhabitants to obtain from Cromwell, who was ignorant of what had taken place, favorable terms of capitulation. Cromwell's work in Ireland was terminated by this affair at Clonmell, being recalled by the English parliament, in May, to conduct an army to Scotland.

3, Reduction of Ireland completed by Ireton and Ludlow. 1650-52. Ireton, on the departure of his father-inlaw, was left in command of the forces, with the title of lorddeputy. His career was one of success, aided as it was, by the general distrust which the Irish royalists had towards Ormond, who was more anxious to clear his character than to meet the enemy in the field. The Irish were moreover disheartened at the conduct of Charles, who instead of coming to Ireland as they had been led to expect, had accepted the invitation of their sworn enemies, the Scots. And when they learnt further, that he had annulled the treaty between Ormond and the Catholics, and had bound himself by oath to root out the catholic religion, they in a synod which met at Jamestown, excommunicated alike, all persons who should abet either Ormond or Ireton. Close upon the

heels of this, came the declaration which Charles had published at Dunfermline, in which the king pronounced them a race of "bloody rebels". Ormond's position was no longer tenable, and in a general assembly, he gave up his command to Clanricarde, a catholic nobleman. Just at this juncture of affairs, an envoy arrived from the Duke of Lorraine, with arms and ammunition, and the promise of further aid, on condition of his being declared Protector of Ireland, agreeably to the stipulations entered into with Ormond, in the preceding year. Nothing further came of this, for before the negotiation could be completed, Charles was a fugitive in France; nevertheless, the timely supply of money put heart into Clanricarde.

Ireton opened the campaign with the siege of Limerick, which place was defended for fifteen months with heroic valor; a battery of heavy cannon landed from the shipping rendered their further defence hopeless. Even now (Sept. 1651), it was the civil power that opened negotiations in defiance of the garrison; a treaty was concluded which gave to the garrison and the inhabitants their lives and property, excepting however several leaders from these terms, and handing them over to the executioner. In less than a month after, Ireton fell a victim to the pestilence, which had been introduced into Ireland from Spain. Ludlow now assumed the command of the forces, and though Charles besought the Irish to keep open the contest, the leaders in succession, accepted the terms offered by the English general :safety for their persons and personal property: restoration of part of their landed estates; and permission to reside within the Commonwealth, or to enter the service of a foreign prince in amity with England. About forty thousand are said to have adopted the latter course. A few isolated bands kept up some feeble hostility, but these one by one were compelled to accept

terms.

4. The settlement of Ireland under Fleetwood and Henry Cromwell. Lambert, who had been appointed to succeed Ireton as lord-deputy, was set aside in favour of Fleetwood, the husband now of Ireton's widow. To aid the deputy in the civil government, four commissioners, Ludlow, Corbett, Jones and Weaver, were appointed. By their instructions, they were to observe the laws of England, in the exercise of their government and administration; but their principal work was the settlement of the country, which for twenty years had been in a state of disorganization. Enquiry was made into the murders growing out of the Rebellion of 1641. A high court of justice made a circuit of the island, but only about two hundred suffered death. The next point was the removal of all papists from offices of

trust, and otherwise to depress the catholic interest. This had indeed been a part of the policy of the successive English generals, and had already rid the country of thirty or forty thousand men. Their wives and families were now collected, as also those belonging to men who had fallen in the war, and shipped for the West Indies two thousand boys and girls were afterwards disposed of, in the same manner. Catholic proprietors were ordered to transplant themselves into Connaught and Clare: many however refused to do so, and took refuge in the bogs, whence they issued with arms and supported themselves by plunder. They were called Rapparees and Tories, and became so annoying, that head-money was offered for their capture. The lands vacated by the Catholics were partitioned out between the parliamentary soldiers in lieu of their arrears of pay, and those persons who had advanced money for the war. These colonists, by rebuilding the towns and cultivating the fields, effected in a short time, a most extraordinary change in the general aspect of the country. This was partly due to the wise and conciliatory management of Henry Cromwell, who held the government from 1654 to 1659.

SECTION III. REDUCTION OF SCOTLAND TO THE COMMONWEALTH.

1. State of Scotch Affairs. After the departure of Cromwell from Scotland in 1648, the government rested in Argyle, who was supported by the Kirk. A feeble effort was made by his party, in opposition to the death of Charles I. resulted in nothing, for in answer to the protest forwarded to the English par liament, they received intelligence of the king's execution. On the 5th February, the Scottish parliament proclaimed Charles II. in Edinburgh, with the proviso, that before he could exercise the royal authority, the parliament should be satisfied of his adhesion to the Covenant of Scotland, and to the League and Covenant between the two kingdoms. The Scotch commissioners in England, desired that the lawful succession of Charles should not be opposed, and declared that if it were, the Scots would be free from the guilt and blood it might cost the two kingdoms. The commissioners, being declared guilty of a libel, framed for the purpose of exciting sedition, were apprehended and conducted to the frontiers of Scotland. This insult, though tamely submitted to, did not prevent the purposes of the Scotch parliament. The Earl of Cassilis and others were sent to Holland, but could not prevail on Charles to take the Covenant, and before any decision could be come to, Charles was compelled to quit Holland, on account of the murder of Dr. Dorislaus, by the followers of Montrose. Charles remained three months at St. Germains, and then