In the meantime Belling, the Secretary of the Supreme Council, was sent to Rome and presented to Innocent X., by Father Wadding, as the envoy of the Confederate Catholics, in February, 1645.  On hearing his report, the Pope sent John Baptist Rinuccini[479], Archbishop of Fermo, to Ireland, as Nuncio-Extraordinary.  This prelate set out immediately; and, after some detention at St. Germains, for the purpose of conferring with the English Queen, who had taken refuge there, he purchased the frigate San Pietro at Rochelle, stored it with arms and ammunition; and, after some escapes from the Parliamentary cruisers, landed safely in Kenmare Bay, on the 21st of October, 1645.  He was soon surrounded and welcomed by the peasantry; and after celebrating Mass in a poor hut,[480] he at once proceeded to Limerick.  Here he celebrated the obsequies of the Archbishop of Tuam, and then passed on to Kilkenny.  He entered the old city in state, attended by the clergy.  At the entrance to the Cathedral he was met by the Bishop of Ossory, who was unable to walk in the procession.  When the Te Deum had been sung, he was received in the Castle by the General Assembly, and addressed them in Latin.  After this he returned to the residence prepared for him.

In a Catholic country, and with a Catholic people, the influence of a Papal Nuncio was necessarily preponderant, and he appears to have seen at a glance the difficulties and advantages of the position of Irish affairs and the Confederate movement.  “He had set his mind,” says the author of the Confederation of Kilkenny, “on one grand object—­the freedom of the Church, in possession of all her rights and dignities, and the emancipation of the Catholic people from the degradation to which English imperialism had condemned them.  The churches which the piety of Catholic lords and chieftains had erected, he determined to secure to the rightful inheritors.  His mind and feelings recoiled from the idea of worshipping in crypts and catacombs; he abhorred the notion of a priest or bishop performing a sacred rite as though it were a felony; and despite the wily artifices of Ormonde and his faction, he resolved to teach the people of Ireland that they were not to remain mere dependents on English bounty, when a stern resolve might win for them the privileges of freemen."[481]

The following extract from Rinuccini’s own report, will show how thoroughly he was master of the situation in a diplomatic point of view:  “From time immemorial two adverse parties have always existed among the Catholics of Ireland.  The first are called the ‘old Irish.’  They are most numerous in Ulster, where they seem to have their head-quarters; for even the Earl of Tyrone placed himself at their head, and maintained a protracted war against Elizabeth.  The second may be called the ’old English,’—­a race introduced into Ireland in the reign of Henry II., the fifth king in succession from William the Conqueror; so called