The northern rising had by this time nearly worn itself out by its own excesses.  Sir Phelim’s efforts to take Drogheda were ludicrously unavailing, and he had been forced to take his ragged rabble away without achieving anything.  Regarded as an army it had one striking peculiarity—­there was not a single military man in it!  Sir Phelim himself had been bred to the law; Rory O’Moore was a self-taught insurgent who had never smelt powder.  They had no arms, no officers, no discipline, no organization of any kind; what was more, the men were deserting in all directions.  In the south there was no one either to take the command.  The new levies were willing enough to fight, but there was no one to show them how.  The insurrection seemed in a fair way of dying out from sheer want of leadership.

Suddenly reinforcements arrived in two directions almost at the same time.  Owen O’Neill—­better known as Owen Roe—­an honourable and gallant man, who had served with much distinction upon the Continent, landed in Donegal, accompanied by about a hundred French-Irish officers.  He instantly took the command of the disorganized and fast-dissolving northern levies; superseded the incompetent Sir Phelim, who from that moment fell away into contempt and impotence; suppressed all disorders, and punished, as far as possible, those who had been foremost in the work of blood, expressing at the same time his utter detestation of the horrors which had hitherto blackened the rising.

Almost at the same moment Colonel Preston, a brother of Lord Gormanstown, and an officer who had also served with credit in the European wars, landed in the south, bringing with him a store of ammunition and field artillery, and between four and five hundred exiled Irish officers.  The two forces thereupon began to assume a comparatively organized appearance.  Both, however, were so far perfectly independent of each other, and both openly and avowedly hostile to the king.

To effect a union between these northern and southern insurgents a meeting was summoned at Kilkenny in October, 1642, consisting of over two hundred Roman Catholic deputies, nearly all the Irish Roman Catholic bishops, many of the clergy, and some fourteen peers.  A council was formed of which Lord Mountgarret was appointed President.  Owen Roe O’Neill was at the same time confirmed in the command of the northern forces, and Colonel Preston in that of the southern.  The war was declared to be a Catholic one, to be known henceforward as the Catholic Confederacy, and between old Irish and Anglo-Irish there was to be no difference.

Charles’s great aim was now to persuade the Confederates to unite with one another in his support.  The chief difficulty was a religious one.  The Kilkenny Council stood out for the restoration of the Catholic Church in all its original privileges.  This, for his own sake—­especially in the then excited state of feeling in England—­Charles dared not grant, neither would Ormond abet him in doing so.  Between the latter and the Catholic peers there was, however, a complete understanding, while between him and the Dublin Lords Justices there was an all but complete breach.