tention of
the council from Ireland, allow the royal party to resume the ascendancy
in that kingdom. But this hope quickly vanished. The resources of the
commonwealth were seen to multiply with its wants; and its army in Ireland
was daily augmented by recruits in the island, and by reinforcements from
England. Ireton, to whom Cromwell, with the title of lord deputy, had
left[a] the chief command, pursued with little interruption the career of
his victorious predecessor. Sir Charles Coote met the men of Ulster at
Letterkenny; after a long and sanguinary action they were defeated; and the
next day their leader, MacMahon, the warrior bishop of Clogher, was made
prisoner by a fresh corps of troops from Inniskilling.[1] Lady Fitzgerald,
a name as illustrious in the military annals of Ireland as that of Lady
Derby in those of England, defended the fortress of Trecoghan, but neither
the efforts of Sir Robert Talbot within, nor the gallant attempt of Lord
Castlehaven without, could prevent its surrender.[2] Waterford, Carlow, and
Charlemont accepted honourable conditions, and the garrison of Duncannon,
reduced to a handful of men by the ravages of the plague, opened its
gates[b] to the enemy.[3] Ormond, instead of facing

[Footnote 1: Though he had quarter given and life promised, Coote ordered
him to be hanged. Yet it was by MacMahon's persuasion that O'Neil in
the preceding year had saved Coote by raising the siege of
Londonderry.--Clarendon, Short View, &c., in vol. viii. 145-149. But Coote
conducted the war like a savage. See several instances at the end of
Lynch's Cambresis Eversus.]

[Footnote 2: See Castlehaven's Memoirs, 120-124; and Carte's Ormond, ii.
116.]

[Footnote 3: Heath, 267, 370. Whitelock, 457, 459, 463, 464, 469.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. June 18.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. June 25.]

the conquerors in the field, had been engaged in a long and irritating
controversy with those of the Catholic leaders who distrusted his
integrity, and with the townsmen of Limerick and Galway, who refused to
admit his troops within their walls. Misfortune had put an end to his
authority; his enemies remarked that whether he were a real friend or a
secret foe, the cause of the confederates had never prospered under his
guidance; and the bishops conjured him,[a] now that the very existence of
the nation was at stake, to adopt measures which might heal the public
dissensions and unite all true Irishmen in the common defence. S