acknowledged that he was their king; it was, therefore, their duty to obey, maintain, and defend him; and the performance of this duty he should expect from the committee of estates, the assembly of the kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland.  They departed with this unsatisfactory answer; and Charles, leaving the United Provinces, hastened to St. Germain in France, to visit the queen his mother, with the intention of repairing, after a short stay, to the army of the royalists in Ireland.[1]

That the reader may understand the state of Ireland, he must look back to the period when the despair or patriotism of Ormond surrendered to the parliament the capital of that kingdom.[a] The nuncio, Rinuccini, had then seated himself in the chair of the president of the supreme council at Kilkenny; but his administration was soon marked by disasters, which enabled his rivals to undermine and subvert his authority.[b] The Catholic army of Leinster, under Preston, was defeated on Dungan Hill by Jones, the governor of Dublin, and that of Munster, under the Viscount Taafe, at Clontarf, by the Lord Inchiquin.[2][c] To Rinuccini

[Footnote 1:  Balfour, iii. 405; and the Proceedings of the Commissioners of the Church and Kingdoms of Scotland with his Majestie at the Hague.  Edinburgh, printed by Evan Tyler, 1649.]

[Footnote 2:  Rushworth, 833, 916.  In the battle of Dungan Hill, at the first charge the Commander of the Irish cavalry was slain:  his men immediately fled; the infantry repelled several charges, and retired into a bog, where they offered to capitulate.  Colonel Flower said he had no authority to grant quarter, but at the same time ordered his men to stand to their arms, and preserved the lives of the earl of Westmeath, Lieutenant-General Bryne, and several officers and soldiers who repaired to his colours.  “In the mean time the Scotch colonel Tichburn, and Colonel Moor, of Bankhall’s regiments, without mercy put the rest to the sword.”  They amounted to between three and four thousand men.—­Belling’s History of the late Warre in Ireland, MS. ii. 95.  I mention this instance to show that Cromwell did not introduce the practice of massacre.  He followed his predecessors, whose avowed object it was to exterminate the natives.]]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1649.  July.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1649.  August 2.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1649.  Nov. 13.]

himself these misfortunes appeared as benefits, for he distrusted Preston and Taafe on account of their attachment to Ormond; and their depression served to exalt his friend and protector, Owen Roe O’Neil, the leader of the men of Ulster.  But from such beginnings the nation at large anticipated a succession of similar calamities; his adversaries obtained a majority in the general assembly; and the nuncio, after a declaration that he advanced no claim to temporal authority, prudently avoided a forced abdication, by offering to resign his office.[a] A new council, consisting, in equal