This formidable league, this union, cemented by interest and fanaticism, struck alarm into the breasts of the royalists.  They had found it difficult to maintain their ground against the parliament alone; they felt unequal to the contest with a new and powerful enemy.  But Charles stood undismayed; of a sanguine disposition, and confident in the justice of his cause, he saw no reason to despond; and, as he had long anticipated, so had he prepared to meet, this additional evil.  With this view he had laboured to secure the obedience of the English army in Ireland against the adherents and emissaries of the parliament.  Suspecting the fidelity of Leicester, the lord lieutenant, he contrived to detain him in England; gave to the commander-in-chief, the earl of Ormond, who was raised to the higher rank of marquess, full authority to

[Footnote 1:  Journals, Sept. 14, 21, 25; Oct. 3; Dec. 8.  Lords’ Journals, vi. 220-224, 243, 281, 289, 364.  The amendments were the insertion of “the church of Ireland” after that of England, an explanation of the word prelacy, and the addition of a marginal note, stating, that by the expression “according to the word of God,” was meant “so far as we do or shall in our consciences conceive the same according to the word of God.”—­Journals, Sept. 1, 2.]

dispose of commissions in the army; and appointed Sir Henry Tichborne lord justice in the place of Parsons.  The commissioners sent by the two houses were compelled[a] to leave the island; and four of the counsellors, the most hostile to his designs, were imprisoned[b] under a charge of high treason.[1]

So many reinforcements had successively been poured into Ireland, both from Scotland and England, that the army which opposed the insurgents was at length raised to fifty thousand men;[2] but of these the Scots seemed to attend to their private interests more than the advancement of the common cause; and the English were gradually reduced in number by want, and desertion, and the casualties of war.  They won, indeed, several battles; they burnt and demolished many villages and towns; but the evil of devastation recoiled upon themselves, and they began to feel the horrors of famine in the midst of the desert which they had made.  Their applications for relief were neglected by the parliament, which had converted to its own use a great part of the money raised for the service of Ireland, and felt little inclination to support an army attached to the royal cause.  The officers remonstrated in free though respectful language, and the failure of their hopes embittered their discontent, and attached them more closely to the sovereign.[3]

In the meanwhile, the Catholics, by the establishment of a federative government, had consolidated their power, and given an uniform direction to their efforts.  It was the care of their leaders to copy the example given by the Scots during the successful war

[Footnote 1:  Carte’s Ormond, i. 421, 441; iii. 76, 125, 135.]