serted that it was founded, he found that they were determined to treat it as non-existent, and that some further resource was necessary. By promising to Glamorgan the succession to the viceroyalty he had persuaded him to disavow his own powers to negotiate; and when O'Nial's great victory over the Scotch at Benburb on the 5th of June had secured him a preponderating military power, he seems to have been ready to act at once. On the 20th of June he writes to the Queen of England a letter of devotion to her cause: on the 3rd of July he suggests to Panfilio the establishment of a foreign protectorate over Ireland, to be undertaken by France or Spain, or, according to his own wish, by the pope himself. On the 17th of the same month he communicates private offers from Don Eugenio (Owen O'Nial), and from Preston, to march at once upon Dublin, and he acknowledges his inclination to accept them-('gran tentazione ho sentito in questo negozio.)' But a difficulty had arisen in an unexpected quarter. The Queen of England and the French court were suspicious of the nuncio's proceedings, and the personal jealousy of Bagni, the French nuncio, led to the betrayal of some imprudent expressions in Rinuccini's despatches. Lord Digby went to Paris to enforce the opposition, and obtained a considerable sum from Mazarine for the joint use of Ormond and the confederated Catholics. It was even generally reported that the pope was about to recall his minister and disavow his proceedings, and in the uncertainty whether France would still further interfere, the nuncio thought it unsafe to add new cause of dissatisfaction to those which had so long existed between Paris and Rome. A few weeks of inaction removed his doubts, and determined him to adopt the course which he had so long meditated.

He instantly took measures for the siege of Dublin. O'Nial advanced with his victorious army through the north of Leinster; Preston marched from Connaught to join him, and they took up positions at Lexlip and Newcastle, about six miles from Dublin, while the nuncio pressed on their operations from his quarters in the neighbourhood, and baffled to the utmost all attempts at negotiation. By the advice of Castlehaven, who with Clanricarde had now joined the lord-lieutenant, Ormond had wasted the country for some miles round before he retired into Dublin; and consequently the Catholic armies were distressed for want of supplies, as well as impeded by the usual jealousies of the generals. Preston in particular was unwilling to serve against Clanricarde; and, to add to their difficulties, a parliamentary squadron appeared in the bay, and a premature report arose that Ormond had admitted the common enemy into his fortress. The effect produced on the generals is strikingly described in the memoir.

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'One day while the council was urging an advance, and all were assembled to discuss it, some one tapped at the door of the room, and Preston suddenly rose to open it-having heard three or four words from the person without he returned gasping, and said that the English were already in Dublin. In a moment Don Eugenio and the others, as if a serpent had stung them, sprang up from their seats, and thinking each man of himself, departed from his companions. The generals signalled by cannon-fire that every man was to return to his post, and the councillors in the utmost alarm mounted the next morning for Kilkenny, and never drew bit till they came, like fugitives with an enemy at their heels, into our quarters.' The nuncio soon followed them, and Clanricarde, informing Preston of the falsehood of the report, commenced a negotiation with him on Ormond's behalf, which ended in the signature of a new treaty. It was agreed that Preston's army should unite itself on a given day with a detachment which Clanricarde led out of the gates to join it. But in the meantime the nuncio had prevailed over the general's unsteady mind, so that Clanricarde found a letter of excuses instead of an army of allies, and with loud indignation (prorotto in molte maledicenze contro di lui') returned disappointed to Dublin. The despatches make no mention of a simultaneous negotiation between Ormond and O'Nial, in whose honour and firmness the marquis placed deserved confidence. The Ulster general sent his nephew to Kilkenny to persuade the congregation to an accommodation, but they had the audacity to detain the messenger in custody till the period allowed for the conclusion of peace was past. In the summer of 1647, Ormond, finding the impossibility of sustaining a double war, gave up the capital to the troops of the parliament, and retired for the time to England.

The nuncio's power had culminated when he retired to Waterford, and from this time it rapidly declined. All moderate men were offended with his presumptuous violence, and all loyal subjects united with the vast following of Ormond to destroy his alien and anti-national government. Even O'Nial's support discredited him, since the Ulster army were considered by themselves and others the troops of the pope, and the ravages of the wild creaghts were generally connected in the minds of men with the influence of the nuncio and his court. The government by the congregation of the clergy was in its nature provisional and temporary, and a new assembly which it was found necessary to summon showed early symptoms of alienation from the extreme Catholic party. Confirming the declaration of the nullity of Ormond's peace, they nevertheless acquitted the commissioners who had concluded it, and released the members of

the old council who had been imprisoned for supporting it. Glamorgan, now Marquis of Worcester, whom the nuncio had appointed to succeed Castlehaven in the command of the army of Munster, was irregularly superseded by Muskerry, and the change was ratified by the council. The general inclination for peace was stronger than ever, and it was proposed that the queen and the Prince of Wales should be sent for from France to unite all loyal subjects against the parliament. The nuncio had always feared the influence of Henrietta Maria, and he did not shrink from declaring that it was his duty to oppose the reception of a heretic prince: a strange doctrine to be announced by a minister accredited to the subjects of a heretic king that prince's father, whose throne he had the most direct and positive instructions to support. But we must again acquit Rinuccini of individual presumption. The severest censure he had received from Rome since his arrival in Ireland, had been addressed to him in consequence of a clause in the oath drawn up for the clergy, during the secession to Waterford, in which their allegiance to the king was reserved: 'paci nos non daturos esse consensum nisi pro religione, et pro rege, et pro patria.' No nuncio, he was told, must ever consent to any declaration by which it appears, or by possibility may appear, that the apostolic see applauds or assents to a declaration of Catholic subjects in favour of the defence of the estate or person of a heretic king. The nuncio admitted his error, and contrived to suppress all the copies of the oath.

The party of the malecontents was strengthened by the bad success of the war. On the 8th of August, 1647, the Leinster army under Preston was defeated at Dungan Hill by Colonel Michael Jones, governor of Dublin, who was only prevented from afterwards marching on Kilkenny by the masterly tactics of O'Nial. In November, Lord Taaffe, who had succeeded Muskerry in Munster, was routed by Inchiquin at Knocknoness, and the second in command, the gallant Alaster Macdonnell, better known as Colkitto, or the left-handed, refusing quarter, was slain.* The confederates were every day reduced to depend more and more on the army of O'Nial, a contingency not unwelcome to the nuncio, till he found that their fear and dislike of the general of Ulster made them more than ever anxious to relieve themselves from the bur

There is some strange confusion as to the death of Colkitto. In a document headed Relazione della battaglia di Trim (Dungan Hill) fra l' esercito Cattolico ed Inglese,' purporting to be enclosed in a letter to Cardinal Panzirolo, dated 29th of August, 1647, the death of Alexander Macdonnell, who was then alive, and had not been engaged in the battle, is related. It is again described in nearly the same words in an account of the battle of Knocknoness, where he really fell, dated 26th of November. The former paper was probably written some time after the ostensible date, by a secretary or other attendant of the nuncio.

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den of the war. Their prospects of success in negotiation were increased by the growing discontent of the Presbyterians and the moderate party in England and Scotland, with the rising dominion of the Independents founded on the support of the army. Ormond, the constant object of the nuncio's deepest hatred, arrived in Paris to support the royal cause; and early in 1648, Inchiquin himself, either from disinclination to extreme measures, or from resentment against Lord Lisle, the parliamentary lord-lieutenant, who had attempted without success to supersede him in his command, declared once more for the king, and at the same time protested against the continuance of the nuncio's power. Among the bishops, however, he had recently acquired an addition of strength. On his arrival in Ireland, he had found thirteen vacant sees, and had recommended candidates for appointment by the pope, who were selected for their support of the ultra-Catholic cause, and for their devoted obedience to Rome. At the end of 1647, the nominations arrived from Rome, for the most part in pursuance of his advice, although the Archbishopric of Tuam was given to de Burgh, a moderate prelate who was attached to the policy of Clanricarde, the chief of his name. The new bishops were admitted to vote in right of their sees, though Muskerry objected to the Bishop of Ross, the only candidate in whose favour the recommendation of the supreme council had not been obtained, that the pope of his own authority could confer no temporal barony in Ireland, and, therefore, no seat in the legislature. For the most part they supported the nuncio's measures, and they had a principal part in delaying the negotiations for peace.

But the resistance of the war party was now hopeless. We find Rinuccini still actively intriguing, but without rational hope or distinct plan. At one time the scrupulous prelate, who had doubted whether he could open a letter from the heretic king, or enter into negotiations with his heretic son, inclines to support a plan which Ŏ'Nial was meditating of a league with the bitter Scotch Presbyterians of Ulster. Somewhat later, however, he is of opinion that the alliance with heretics cannot be justified even by the object of hostility to Ormond. Again, we hear of constant negotiations with Winter Grant (Dr. Leybourne), the queen's agent in Ireland, whom he in vain solicits to procure the appointment of a Catholic viceroy; the scheme of a foreign protectorate is renewed, and money is eagerly and uselessly demanded from Rome. He loses by degrees all hopes from the assembly, and meditates recourse once more to the thunders of the church and to O'Nial.

The truce with Inchiquin, which soon followed, decided the nuncio's course. As in the case of the treaty of 1646, he summoned a

council of bishops, and procured from fourteen of them a condemnation of the truce, and a conditional power to excommunicate the favourers of it in conjunction with four specified bishops, or in default of their attendance with four to be selected by himself. About the 10th of May he left Kilkenny secretly, and joined O'Nial, who lay with a small army at Maryborough in fear of an attack from the combined forces of Preston and Inchiquin. His next halting-place was Athlone, where, on the refusal of the four authorised bishops to join him, he summoned four of his partisans in their room, and by their concurrence published a solemn excommunication against the author of the truce, and laid all parts of the kingdom, where it should be accepted, under an interdict. He then retired to Galway, where he remained for several months, observing the course of affairs. At first he thought that his measures had been successful-2000 zealous Catholics deserted from Preston to join the orthodox army of O'Nial; many cities and individuals applied submissively to be relieved from the interdict; and as he states, probably with some exaggeration, the great body of the clergy, and three-fourths of the population, still adhered to his cause. But all the strength lay with the minority, and there was a division among the bishops, which was fatal to his claim of wielding the whole authority of the church. The council forbad obedience to the excommunication, and they were supported in their resistance by eight bishops, by some of the monastic orders, and by the canon lawyers, who had been consulted in anticipation of the event. It was alleged that the excommunication and interdict were void, as founded on civil matters, as having been published without the consent of the delegated bishops, and as exceeding the powers of a nuncio, except by express authority from the pope, or by the additional commission of a legate a latere, to which Rinuccini could not pretend. An appeal to Rome was tendered to him, with a demand that he would suspend the sentence till a decision could be obtained: but the suspension was haughtily refused, and all friendly intercourse broken off. In the course of the discussion the Archbishop of Tuam demanded to see the terms of the bull from which the nuncio claimed his authority. Ego non ostendam,' was the answer; Et ego,' replied the archbishop, 'non obediam.' We cannot pretend to a confident opinion as to the question of ecclesiastical law. The bull by which Rinuccini was appointed is voluminous and apparently liberal in its powers, but much of the contents have the appearance of what lawyers call common forms, and we can find in it no authority to excommunicate or impose interdicts except in connexion with the exercise of ordinary jurisdiction over individuals or bodies in salutem animarum. There is, however, a clause which expressly

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