of them officers of experience
and merit, who had relinquished their commands in the armies of foreign
princes, to offer their services to their countrymen. Aware that these
regulations amounted to an assumption of the sovereign authority, they
were careful to convey to the king new assurances of their devotion to his
person, and to state to him reasons in justification of their conduct.
Their former messengers, though Protestants of rank and acknowledged
loyalty, had been arrested, imprisoned, and, in one instance at least,
tortured by order of their enemies. They now adopted a more secure channel
of communication, and transmitted their petitions through the hands of the
commander-in-chief. In these the supreme council detailed a long list of
grievances which they prayed might be redressed. They repelled with warmth
the imputation of disloyalty or rebellion. If they had taken up arms, they
had been compelled by a succession of injuries beyond human endurance, of
injuries in their religion, in their

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 1.]

honour and estates, and in the liberties of their country. _Their_ enemies
were the enemies of the king.

The men who had sworn to extirpate them from their native soil were the
same who sought to deprive _him_ of his crown. They therefore conjured him
to summon a new parliament in Ireland, to allow them the free exercise of
that religion which they had inherited from their fathers, and to confirm
to Irishmen their national rights, as he had already done to his subjects
of England and Scotland.[1]

The very first of these petitions, praying for a cessation of arms, had
suggested a new line of policy to the king.[2] He privately informed the
marquess of Ormond of his wish to bring over a portion of his Irish army
that it might be employed in his service in England; required him for that
purpose to conclude[a] an armistice with the insurgents, and sent to him
instructions for the regulation of his conduct. This despatch was secret;
it was followed by a public warrant; and that was succeeded by a peremptory
command. But much occurred to retard the object, and irritate the
impatience of the monarch. Ormond, for his own security, and the service of
his sovereign, deemed it politic to assume a tone of superiority, and to
reject most of the demands of the confederates, who, he saw, were already
divided into parties, and influenced by opposite counsels. The ancient
Irish and the clergy, whose e