ime have been
formed exclusively of English or Scotch Roman Catholics, we have no
reason, and certainly no right to conclude that the event would have
been in any way different, or that the number of those slaughtered would
have been reduced by even a single victim.

It was not, however, to be expected that the English Protestants of that
day would realize this. It is not always fully realized even yet. The
heat awakened by that ruthless slaughter, that merciless driving away of
hundreds of innocent women and children, the natural pity for the youth
and helplessness of many of the victims has lasted down to our own time.
Even to us the outrage is a thousand-fold more vivid than the
provocation which led to it. How much more then to the English
Protestants of that day? To them it was simply a new massacre of St.
Bartholomew; an atrocity which the very amplest and bloodiest vengeance
would still come far short of expiating.

It is easy to see that any negotiation with those implicated in a deed
which had produced so widespread a feeling of horror was a proceeding
fraught with peril to the royal cause. Anger does not discriminate, and
to the Protestants of England, North and South, old Irish, and
Anglo-Irish, honourable gentlemen of the Pale, and red-handed rebels of
Ulster, were all alike guilty. Nor was this Charles's only difficulty.
The Confederates declined to abate a jot of their terms. The free
exercise of the Catholic religion, an independent Irish parliament, a
general pardon, and a reversal of all attainders were amongst their
conditions, and they would not take less. These Ormond dared not agree
to. Had he done so every Protestant in Ireland, down to his own
soldiery, would have gone over in a body to the Parliament. He offered
what he dared, but the Irish leaders would listen to no compromise. They
knew the imminence of the situation as well as he did, and every fresh
royal defeat, the news of which reached Ireland, only made them stand
out the firmer.

Charles cut the knot in his own fashion. Tired of Ormond's discretion
and Ormond's inconvenient sense of honour, he secretly sent over Edward
Somerset, Earl of Glamorgan, to make terms with the Confederates, who,
excited at finding themselves the last hope and mainstay of an
embarrassed king stood out for higher and higher conditions. The
Plantation lands were to be given back: full and free pardon was to be
granted to all; Mass was to be said in all the chur