The Norman lords had meanwhile assembled and organized their retainers, so that there were now three armies in Ireland:  the garrison of the Scottish settlers under Monroe, strongly in sympathy with the Puritans; the tribal army under Owen Roe O’Neill; and the army of the Norman lords.  The General Assembly outlined a system of parliamentary representation in which the Lords and Commons were to form a single House, the latter, two hundred and twenty-six in number, representing all the important cities and towns.  A supreme Cabinet was to be formed, composed of six members for each of the four provinces, twenty-four in all, who might be lords spiritual or temporal, or commoners, according to the choice of the Parliament.  This Cabinet, thus selected from the whole Parliament, was the responsible executive of the country; and under the Supreme Council a series of Provincial Councils and County Councils were to be formed along the same lines.

[Illustration:  Donegal Castle.]

This plan was adopted at a general meeting of all the influential forces of the country, which assembled in May at Kilkenny, where many Parliaments had sat during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  Writs were issued for elections under the new Constitution, and the date of the first assembly of the new Parliament was fixed for October.  The new national body enjoyed abundant revenues, and no small state marked its deliberations in Kilkenny.  We read of an endless series of illuminations, receptions, banquets and balls,—­the whole of the Norman nobility of Leinster lavishing their great wealth in magnificent display.  The Supreme Council journeyed in state from Kilkenny to Wexford, from Wexford to Waterford, from Waterford to Limerick and Galway, surrounded by hundreds of horsemen with drawn swords, and accompanied by an army of officials.  We hear of “civil and military representations of comedies and stage plays, feasts and banquets, and palate-enticing dishes.”

The General Assembly, duly elected, finally met on October 23, 1642, at Kilkenny.  On the same day was fought the battle of Edgehill, between the king of England and the forces of the English Parliament.  This battle was the signal for division of counsels in the new Assembly.  The Norman lords of Leinster, who stood on the ground of feudalism, and lived under the shadow of royal authority, were strongly drawn to take the side of the king against the English Parliament, and overtures of negotiation were made, which came near gaining a recognition and legalization of the General Assembly by the English Crown.

While the leaders at Kilkenny were being drawn towards the royalists of England, Owen Roe O’Neill was successfully holding Ulster against the Puritan forces under Monroe and Leslie, with their headquarters at Carrickfergus.  Thus matters went on till the autumn of 1643, when we find him inflicting a serious defeat on the English army under Monk and Moore at Portlester in Meath, in which Moore was killed and his forces driven back within the walls of Drogheda.