Confederate Ireland

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Irish Catholic Confederation Comhdháil Chaitliceach na hÉireann
1642–1652
Flag Great Seal
Motto: Hiberni unanimes pro Deo Rege et Patria ( King
• 1641–1649	Charles I
• 1649–1653	Charles II
Legislature	General Assembly
Historical era	Irish Confederate Wars
• Irish Rebellion of 1641	1641
• Established	1642
• Cromwellian conquest	1652
Preceded by Succeeded by Kingdom of Ireland Commonwealth of England

Confederate Ireland, also referred to as the Irish Catholic Confederation, was a period of Irish Catholic self-government between 1642 and 1652, during the Eleven Years' War. Formed by Catholic aristocrats, landed gentry, clergy and military leaders after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the Confederates controlled up to two-thirds of Ireland from their base in Kilkenny; hence it is sometimes called the "Confederation of Kilkenny".

The Confederates included Catholics of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman descent. They wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination within the Kingdom of Ireland and greater Irish self-governance; many also wanted to roll back the plantations of Ireland. Most Confederates professed loyalty to Charles I of England in the belief they could reach a lasting settlement in return for helping defeat his opponents in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.^[1] Its institutions included a legislative body known as the General Assembly, an executive or Supreme Council, and a military. It minted coins, levied taxes and set up a printing press.^[1] Confederate ambassadors were appointed and recognised in France, Spain and the Papal States,^[1] who supplied them with money and weapons.

At various times, Confederate armies fought

In 1647, the Confederates suffered a string of defeats at Dungan's Hill, Cashel and Knocknanuss. This prompted them to make an agreement with the Royalists, leading to internal divisions which hampered their ability to resist a Parliamentarian invasion. In August 1649, a large English Parliamentarian army, led by Oliver Cromwell, invaded Ireland. By May 1652 it had defeated the Confederate–Royalist alliance, although Confederate soldiers continued a guerrilla warfare campaign for a further year.

Formation

The Irish Catholic Confederation was formed in the aftermath of the 1641 rebellion, both to control the popular uprising and to organise an Irish Catholic war effort against the remaining English and Scottish armies in Ireland. It was hoped that by doing this, the Irish Catholics could hold off an English or Scottish re-conquest of the country.

The initiative for the Confederation came from a Catholic bishop,

On 10 May 1642, Ireland's Catholic clergy held a synod at Kilkenny. Present were the Archbishops of Armagh, Cashel and Tuam, eleven bishops or their representatives, and other dignitaries.^[4] They drafted the Confederate Oath of Association and called on all Catholics in Ireland to take the oath. Those who took the oath swore allegiance to Charles I and vowed to obey all orders and decrees made by the "Supreme Council of the Confederate Catholics". The rebels henceforth became known as Confederates. The synod re-affirmed that the rebellion was a "just war".^[5] It called for the creation of a council (made up of clergy and nobility) for each province, which would be overseen by a national council for the whole island. It vowed to punish misdeeds by Confederate soldiers and to excommunicate any Catholic who fought against the Confederation. The synod sent agents to France, Spain and Italy to gain support, gather funds and weapons, and recruit Irishmen serving in foreign armies.^[6] Lord Mountgarret was appointed president of the Confederate Supreme Council, and a General Assembly was fixed for October that year.^[7]

The first Confederate Assembly

The first Confederate General Assembly was held in Kilkenny on 24 October 1642, where it set up a provisional government.^[8] The Assembly was a parliament in all but name. Present at the first Assembly were 14 Lords Temporal and 11 Lords Spiritual from the Parliament of Ireland, along with 226 commoners.^[9] The Confederate's constitution was written by a Galway lawyer named Patrick D'Arcy. The Assembly resolved that each county should have a council, overseen by a provincial council made up of two representatives from each county council. The Assembly agreed orders "to be observed as the model of their government".^[10][11]

The Assembly elected an executive known as the Supreme Council. The first Supreme Council was elected on or about 14 November. It consisted of 24 members, 12 of whom were to abide always in Kilkenny or wherever else they deemed fitting.^[12]

The members of the first Supreme Council were as follows:^[13]

James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven, representing the Crown, was the final member of the Supreme Council.

The Supreme Council would have power over all military generals, military officers and civil magistrates.^[14] Its first act was to name the generals who were to command Confederate forces: Owen Roe O'Neill was to command the Ulster forces, Thomas Preston the Leinster forces, Garret Barry the Munster forces and John Burke the Connacht forces. Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde was named head general, as they thought he would sooner or later join the Confederates.^[15] The Supreme Council issued an order to raise £30,000 and a levy of 31,700 men in Leinster who were to be trained at once.^[16]

The Supreme Council also made its own seal, described as follows: "'Twas circular, and in its centre was a large cross, the base of which rested on a flaming heart, while its apex was overlapped by the wings of a dove. On the left of the cross was the harp , and on the right the crown." The motto on the seal was Pro Deo, Rege, et Patria, Hiberni Unanimes (For God, King and Fatherland, Ireland is United).^[17]

A National Treasury, a mint for making coins, and a press for printing proclamations were set up in Kilkenny.^[18][19] This first General Assembly sat until 9 January 1643.^[20]

Policies

The last piece of legislation agreed by

Confederate political demands included Irish self-government, secure tenure of their lands, amnesty for any acts committed during the Rebellion, an equal share in government positions and that these concessions be ratified by a post-war Parliament. In terms of religion, they insisted on toleration of Catholicism and in June 1645 added the stipulation that the Catholic clergy should retain all properties taken from the Church of Ireland since 1641.[21] In reality, these were almost impossible to achieve, since they were asking Charles to make concessions he had refused to make to Parliament, while the vast majority of his advisors opposed them on the grounds that doing so would fatally undermine the Royalist cause in England and Scotland.^[22]

The Confederate position was further weakened by divisions between the Old English, mostly descendants of those who arrived during the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1172, and the native Gaelic Irish. While many historians dispute the extent of the differences between the two groups, there are significant variations in terms of political, religious and economic objectives. In general, the Old English wanted to regain the power and influence they had lost under the Tudors and although they were sincere Catholics, did not support establishing the church as the state religion.^[23] Gaelic Irish leaders such as Owen Roe O'Neill wanted to reverse the Plantations of Ireland, since this was the only way to retrieve their ancestral lands; however, they were far less united in their demands than the Old English and it has been argued they formed a pressure group, rather than a distinct political philosophy.^[23]

The 1643 Cessation

In September 1643, the Confederates negotiated a "

The Jacobite historian Thomas Carte mentioned the financial terms of the Cessation, whereby the Confederates undertook to pay Ormonde £30,000 in stages up to May 1644, half in cash and half in live cattle.^[24]

In 1644 the Confederates sent around 1,500 men under

The Confederates received modest subsidies from the monarchies of France and Spain, who wanted to recruit troops in Ireland but their main continental support came from the Papacy.

The Supreme Council put great hope in a secret treaty they had concluded with Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester, under his new title of Earl of Glamorgan, on the King's behalf, which promised further concessions to Irish Catholics in the future. Being a very wealthy English Catholic royalist, Glamorgan was sent to Ireland in late June 1645 with secret orders from Charles to agree to the Confederates' demands in return for an Irish Catholic army that would fight for the King in England. The plan would be anathema to most English Protestants at the time. A copy of Glamorgan's secret orders was publicised by the Long Parliament, and to preserve his support in Protestant England the King had to deny his link and even proclaimed Glamorgan as a traitor. To deter the use of Confederate Irish soldiers in England the Long Parliament passed the Ordinance of no quarter to the Irish in October 1644.

The nuncio considered himself the virtual head of the Confederate Catholic party in Ireland. In 1646 the Supreme Council of the Confederates had come to an agreement with Ormonde, signed on 28 March 1646. Under its terms Catholics would be allowed to serve in public office and to found schools; there were also verbal promises of future concessions on religious toleration. There was an amnesty for acts committed in the Rebellion of 1641 and a guarantee against further seizure of Irish Catholic rebels' land by acts of attainder.

However, there was no reversal of

In return for the concessions that were made Irish troops would be sent to England to fight for the royalists in the

Many believed the Supreme Council were unreliable since many of them were related to Ormonde or otherwise bound to him. Besides, it was pointed out that the English Civil War had already been decided in the English Parliament's favour and that sending Irish troops to the royalists would be a futile sacrifice. On the other hand, many felt after O'Neill's Ulster army defeated the Scots at the battle of Benburb in June 1646 that the Confederates were in a position to re-conquer all of Ireland. Furthermore, those who opposed the peace were backed, both spiritually and financially, by Rinuccini, who threatened to excommunicate the "peace party". The Supreme Council were arrested and the General Assembly voted to reject the deal.

Military defeat and a new Ormonde peace

After the Confederates rejected the peace deal, Ormonde handed Dublin over to a parliamentarian army under

These setbacks made most Confederates much more eager to come to reach an agreement with the royalists and negotiations were re-opened. The Supreme Council received generous terms from Charles I and Ormonde, including toleration of the Catholic religion, a commitment to repealing Poyning's Law (and therefore to Irish self-government), recognition of lands taken by Irish Catholics during the war, and a commitment to a partial reversal of the Plantation of Ulster. In addition, there was to be an Act of Oblivion, or amnesty for all acts committed during the 1641 rebellion and Confederate wars – in particular the killings of British Protestant settlers in 1641 – combined with no disbanding of the Confederate armies.

However, Charles granted these terms only out of desperation and later repudiated them. Under the terms of the agreement, the Confederation was to dissolve itself, place its troops under royalist commanders and accept English royalist troops. Inchiquin also defected from the Parliament and rejoined the royalists in Ireland.

Civil War within the Confederation

However, many of the Irish Catholics continued to reject a deal with the royalists. Owen Roe O'Neill refused to join the new royalist alliance and fought a brief internal civil war with the royalists and Confederates in the summer of 1648. So alienated was O'Neill by what he considered to be a betrayal of Catholic war aims that he tried to make a separate peace with the English Parliament and was for a short time effectively an ally of the English parliamentary armies in Ireland. This was disastrous for the wider aims of the Confederacy, as it coincided with the outbreak of the second civil war in England. The Papal Nuncio, Rinuccini, endeavoured to uphold Owen Roe O'Neill by excommunicating all who in May 1648 took part in the Inchiquin Truce with the Royalists; but he could not get the Irish Catholic Bishops to agree on the matter. On 23 February 1649, he embarked at Galway, in his own frigate, to return to Rome.

It is often argued that this split within the Confederate ranks represented a split between Gaelic Irish and

The real significance of the split was between those landed gentry who were prepared to compromise with the royalists as long as their lands and civil rights were guaranteed, and those, such as Owen Roe O'Neill, who wanted to completely overturn the English presence in Ireland. They wanted an independent, Catholic Ireland, with the English and Scottish settlers expelled permanently. Many of the militants were most concerned with recovering ancestral lands their families had lost in the plantations. After inconclusive skirmishing with the Confederates, Owen Roe O'Neill retreated to Ulster and did not rejoin his former comrades until Cromwell's invasion of 1649. This infighting fatally hampered the preparations of the Confederate-royalist alliance to repel the invasion of parliamentarian New Model Army.

Cromwell's invasion

• History of Ireland
• Early Modern Ireland 1536–1691
• Confederation

Citations

Sources

• Austin, Sister M. Stanislaus (1913), "O'Reilly, Hugh", in Herbermann, Charles George (ed.), Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11, New York: The Encyclopedia Press, p. 294
• Carte, Thomas (1851), The Life of James Duke of Ormond, vol. 3 (new ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press – 1643 to 1660
• Cusack, Mary Francis (1871), A Compendium of Irish History, Boston: Patrick Donahoe
• Lowe, Lowe (1964). "Charles I and the Confederation of Kilkenny, 1643–9". Irish Historical Studies. 14 (53): 1–19.
  S2CID 164190317
  .
• Meehan, Rev. Charles Patrick (1882), The Confederation of Kilkenny (New revised and enlarged ed.), Dublin: James Duffy

Further reading

• Canny, Nicholas, Making Ireland British 1580–1650, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.
• Lenihan, Pádraig, Confederate Catholics at War 1641–49, Cork University Press, Cork, 2001.
• Ohlmeyer, Jane & Kenyon, John (eds.), The Civil Wars, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
• Siochrú, Micheál (1998). Confederate Ireland 1642–1649 A constitutional and political analysis. Four Courts Press.
  ISBN 1-85182-400-6
  .

• The Confederate Assembly of Kilkenny, British Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1638–1660

52°39′N 7°15′W / 52.650°N 7.250°W / 52.650; -7.250