[Footnote 1:  Carte’s letters, i. 391.  Charles’s counsellors at Breda had instilled into him principles which he seems afterwards to have cherished through life:  “that honour and conscience were bugbears, and that the king ought to govern himself rather by the rules of prudence and necessity.”—­Ibid.  Nicholas to Ormond, 435.  At first Charles agreed to find some way “how he might with honour and justice break the peace with the Irish, if a free parliament in Scotland should think it fitting” afterwards “to break it, but on condition that it should not be published till he had acquainted Ormond and his friends, secured them, and been instructed how with honour and justice he might break it in regard of the breach on their part” (p. 396, 397).  Yet a little before he had resolutely declared that no consideration should induce him to violate the same peace (p. 374, 379).  On his application afterwards for aid to the pope, he excused it, saying, “fuisse vim manifestam:  jam enim statuerant Scoti presbyterani personam suam parliamento Anglicano tradere, si illam declarationem ab ipsis factam non approbasset.”  Ex originali penes me.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  Sept. 15.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1650.  Sept. 16.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 15.]

the lord lieutenant to assume a bolder tone.  He professed[a] himself ready to assert, that both the king and his officers on one part, and the Catholic population on the other, were bound by the provisions of the treaty; but he previously required that the commissioners of trust should condemn the proceedings of the synod at James-town, and join with him in punishing such of its members as should persist in their disobedience.  They made proposals[b] to the prelates, and received for answer, that protection and obedience were correlative; and, therefore, since the king had publicly excluded them, under the designation of “bloody rebels,” from his protection, they could not understand how any officer acting by his authority could lay claim to their obedience.[1]

This answer convinced Ormond that it was time for him to leave Ireland; but, before his departure, he called a general assembly, and selected the marquess of Clanricard, a Catholic nobleman, to command as his deputy.  To Clanricard, whose health was infirm, and whose habits were domestic, nothing could be more unwelcome than such an appointment.  Wherever he cast his eyes he was appalled by the prospect before him.  He saw three-fourths of Ireland in the possession of a restless and victorious enemy; Connaught and Clare, which alone remained to the royalists, were depopulated by famine and pestilence; and political and religious dissension divided the leaders and their followers, while one party attributed the national disasters to the temerity of the men who presumed to govern under the curse of excommunication; and the other charged their opponents with concealing disloyal and interested views under the mantle of patriotism