desire that they might gain nothing by the King's return."[1]
As for the King himself—good easy-going man—he had one fixed principle, a determination not to set out again on his travels. He personally attended most of the deliberations of the Privy Council; but he soon wearied of the interminable discussions. The balance began to turn decidedly against the Irish.
And it must be admitted that the Protestants, rebels though they had been, had some powerful arguments to use. They had recalled the King without, as far as was publicly known, demanding from him any conditions. They could point out that the interests of England seemed to demand that the Irish should be kept permanently in the powerless state to which Cromwell had reduced them. And they could point out that the Irish in defending the royal cause were urged not so much by loyalty as by self-interest. What they had aimed at, it was said, was the complete triumph of Catholicism, and it was only necessity which had made them unite with the King against the common enemy the Parliament of England.
Chance placed an important weapon in their hands. The Protestant agents were able to produce at the Council Board an original copy of the instructions issued by the Supreme Council of the
- ↑ Quoted by Wilson, op. cit.Curry gives a fuller quotation, "but be kept with the same rigour and under the same incapacity to do hurt, which they were under. And though eradication was too foul a word to be uttered in the hearing of a Christian prince, yet it was little less or better that they proposed in other words and hoped to obtain. Whereas the King thought that miserable people to be as worthy of his favor as most of the other party." (Civil Wars).
