THE marquis of Ormonds' PROCLAMATION Concerning the Peace concluded with the Irish Rebels, By the KING'S Command, At the General Assembly at KILKENNEY; WITH A Speech delivered by Sir Richard Blake, Speaker of the Assembly at Kilkenney. Also a Speech by the marquis of Ormond in answer to the same. Together with a perfect List of their several Numbers of Horse and Foot by them raised, amounting to 20000. Foot, and 3500. Horse. Imprimatur. Gilbert Mabbott. LONDON, Printed for Francis Titan, and John Playford. Febr. 27. 1649. Carolus Rex. By the Lord Lieutenant General, and General Governor of Ireland. Ormond. WHereas Articles of Peace are made, concluded, accorded and agreed upon by and between Us JAMES Lord marquis of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant-generall, and General Governor of his Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland, by virtue of the authority wherewith We are entrusted, for, and in the behalf of his most excellent Majesty of the one part, and the general Assembly of the Roman Catholics of the said Kingdom, for and on the behalf of his Majesty's Roman Catholic Subjects of the same on the other part, a true copy of which Articles of Peace is hereunto annexed. We the Lord Lieutenant; do by this Proclamation in his Majesty's Name publish the same, and do in his Majesty's Name strictly charge and command all his Majesty's Subjects, and all other inhabiting or residing within his Majesty's said Kingdom of Ireland to take notice thereof, and to render due obedience to the same in all parts thereof. And as his Majesty hath been induced to this peace out of a deep sense of the miseries and calamities brought upon this his Kingdom and people, and out of a hope conceived by his Majesty, ●hat it may prevent the further effusion of his subjects blood, redeem them out of all the miseries and calamities under which they now suffer, and restore them to all quietness and happiness under his Majesty's most gracious government, deliver the Kingdom in general from those slaughters, depredations, rapines and spoils which always accompany a war, encourage the Subjects and others with comfort to betake themselves to trade, traffic, commerce, manufacture, and all other things; which uninterrupted, may increase the wealth and strength of the Kingdom, beget in all his Majesty's Subjects of this Kingdom a perfect unity amongst themselves, after the too long continued division amongst them; so his Majesty assures himself that all his Subjects of this his Kingdom (duly considering the great and inestimable benefits which they may find in this peace) will with all duty render due obedience thereunto. And we in his Majesty's Name do hereby declare, that all persons rendering due obedience to the said peace, shall be protected, cherished, countenanced and supported by his Majesty and his royal Authority, according to the true intent and meaning of the said Articles of Peace. Given at our Castle of Kilkenny the 17. of January 1648. God save the King. The Speech of Sir Richard Blake, Speaker of the Assembly at Kilkenny, TO THE marquis of ORMOND. May it please your Excellency, I Am commanded by the Prelacy, Nobility, and Gentry, of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, now assembled in the City of Kilkenny to represent unto your Excellency their ardent zeal naturally engrafted in their hearts to their sacred Sovereign King CHARLES his service, unto whom they ever have been, and will be most faithful and loyal Subjects; and in the next place their great affection to your Excellency, and the never dying memory they entertain, and will retain of your most noble and successful endeavours in the jointing and setting together of the much disordered frame of this Kingdom. Former Cessations, accommodations, and capitulations did but skin over the deep and wide wounds that were and are in the body of it; they received no life or perfection, they abortively perished in the Embryo, and vanished into the air, but the peace that by the great mercy of God, by the influences of his Majesty's graces, and by the ministry and co-operation of your Excellency is now to be established, will prove (as with joy and confidence we expect) a firm, stable, and lasting peace, a peace that will cure these bleeding wounds, search to the very core, and pluck out all the splinters that remain of them; a peace that will (as we hope, and is the height of our desires, as it shall be of our endeavours) reinvest his sacred Majesty in his most due and royal Rights and Prerogatives, and will restore this Nation in its former lustre and plenty and tranquillity, such a Peace as already ends all our doubts, fears and jealousies, in a mutual confidence, and rejoicing, and will make all the Members of this general Assembly, an Assembly unto which the present and future ages will justly give the glorious name of the peacemaking Assembly after their many distractions and long continued sufferings to return to their several respective Countries & dwellings, with olive branches, the Emblems of Peace in their hands, and the Word in their mouths, that were said of our Saviour, when upon the entrance into the City of Nani, he meets with a Funeral of a dead young man, the only son of his following weeping mother, whom graciously compassionating her tears, he restored from death ro life, the words were, and not unaptly to be applied to our present condi- Ecce propheta magnus surrexit in nobis & quiea deus recitavit plebem suam, Most excellent Lord, whom God Almighty hath preserved, and led, as it were, by the hand through a sea of troubles and dangers, to be the happy and essential instrument to mediate, actuate and consummate this great work, and to make Ireland like the heavenly Jerusalem to be a City of Unity within itself. I cannot sufficiently express the sense and joyous exultancy of these most venerable Prelates, most honourable Lords, most judicious and gallant Gentry, the Representative body of the Roman Catholics of this Kingdom, nor with what fervour and ardour they expect to reap the blessed fruits, which they have so long sighed for, and did sow in their blood and tears of this Peace, and of your Excellency's Government of this Kingdom, unto which being derived from his Majesty, who is the Spring from which these graces flow upon them. They will humbly pay all due obedience to your Excellencies fast and tried fidelity to his Majesty, your own great interest in the Kingdom, and the many great parts and talents that God and Nature hath endowed you with, giving them assurance that your government will produce effects suitable to their expectations, that will answer their design: it much transcends my weak abilities-to represent them, their affections, apprehensions and hopes, in their right and lively colours: And therefore I humbly beg, that your Excellency will vouchsafe to give as benign and interpretations of what by their command I have endeavoured humbly to offer to your grave Judgement and Consideration; and that your Excellency will be pleased to sign this instrument the everlasting Record and Monument of this blessed Peace, as by their commands, it having been solemnly and unimously by so valued; I have the honour (a greater honour than my low and humble thoughts ever aspired to) in their Chair to sign this counterpart, and in all their names most humbly to present it unto your Excellency. The L. Marquis of Ormonds' Speech in Answer to the Speech of Sir Richard Blake at the Assembly in Kilkenney. My Lords and Gentlemen, I Shall not speak to those Epressions of duty and loyalty, so eloquently digested into a discourse by the Gentleman appointed by you to deliver your Sense: you will have in your hands presently greater and more solid Arguments of his Majesty's gracious acceptance, than I can enumerate, or then perhaps you yourselves discern: for besides the provision made against the remotest fears of the severity of certain Laws, and besides many other Freedoms and bounties conveyed to you and your posterity by these Articles, there is a door, and that a large one, not left, but expressly set open, to give you entrance by your future merits to whatsoever of honour, or other advantages you can reasonably wish; so that you have in present fruition what may abundantly satisfy, and yet there are no bounds set to your hopes, but you are rathr invited, or according to the new phrase, but to an old and better purpose; you seem to have a Call from heaven to excercise your Arms, and your utmost in the noblest and justest Cause the world hath known; for let all the circumstances, incident to a great and good cause of War, be examined, and they will be found in that which you are now warrantably called to defend. Religion, not in that narrow circumscribed definition of it, by this or that late found out names, but christian Religion is our Quarrel, which certainly is more fatally struck at by the blasphemous licence of this age, than ever it was by the rudest incursions of the most barbarous and avowed Enemies to Christianity. The venerable Laws and Fundamental Constitutions of our Ancestors are trodden under impious and (for the most part) mechanic feet. The sacred person of our King, the life of those Laws and head of those Constitutions, is under an ignominious imprisonment, and his life threatened to be taken away by the sacrilegious hands of the basest of the people that own hsm obedience, and to endear the Quarrel to you, the fountain of all the benefits you have but now acknowledged, and of what you may further hope for by this Peace, and your own merits, is in danger to be obstructed by the execrable murder of the worthiest Prince that ever ruled these Islands. In short, Hell can add nothing to that desperate mischief, now openly projected. And now judge if a greater, a more glorious field, was ever set open to action, and then prepare yourselves to enter into it, and receive these few advices from one throughly embarked with you in the adventure. First, Let me recommend unto you, that to this, as to all other holy actions, you would prepare yourselves with perfect charity, a charity that may obliterate whatever of rancour a long continued civil War may have contracted in you, against any that shall now cooperate with you to so blessed a work, and let his engagements with you in this, whosoever he be, be as it ought to be, a bond of unity, of concord, of love, stronger than the nearest ties of nature. In the next place, mark and beware of those that shall go about to renew or create jealousies in you, under what petence soever, and account such as infernal Ministers, employed to promote the black design on foot, to subvert Monarchy, and to make us all slaves to those that are so to their own avaratious lusts. Away as soon, and as much as possible may be, with those distinctions of Nations, and of parties, which are the fields wherein the seeds of those rank weeds are sown by the great enemies of our Peace. In the last place let us all divest ourselves of that preposterous, that ridiculous ambition, and self-interest, which rather leads to our threatened ruin, then to the enjoyment of advantages unseasonably desired: And if at any time you shall think yourselves pinched too near the bone, by those Taxes and Levies that may be imposed for your defence; consider then how vain, how foolish a thing it will be, to starve a righteous Cause for want of necessary support, to preserve yourselves fat, and guilded sacrifices to the rapine of a merciless enemy: And if we come thus prepared to a contention so just on our part, God will bless our endeavours with success and victory, or will crown our sufferings with honour and patience; for what honour will it not be (if God have so determined of us) to perish with a long glorious Monarchy? Or who can want patience to suffer with an oppressed Prince? But as our endeavours, so let our prayers be vigorous, that they may be delivered from a more unnatural rebellion than is mentioned by any story, now raised to the highest pitch of success against them. I should say something to you for myself, in retribution to the advantageous mention made of me, and my endeavours to bring this Settlement to pass, but I confess my thoughts were wholly taken up with these much greater concernments; let it suffice, that as I wish to be continued in your good esteem and affection, so I shall freely adventure upon any hazard, and esteem no trouble or difficulty too great to encounter, if I may manifest my zeal to this cause, and discharge some part of the obligations that are upon me to serve this Kingdom. The Engagement of the several Parties in Ireland included in the late Peace made betwixt the Marquis of Ormond and the Rebels. . Foot. Horse. ORmond, Taffe, and that party engaged to raise for Munster 4000 800 The Supreme Council, and Preston, for Lemster 4000 800 Inchequeen 3000. 600 The Lord Clanrickard for Connaght hath engaged not to be behind with the best of them, at least 4000 800 15000. 3000 Owen Roe is certainly upon a design of conjunction with them, the marquis of Antrim being (about the 17 of this instant) up on his journey to Kilkenny to work a Reconciliation betwixt the Kilkenney party, and the said Owen Roes party, whose number by general computation cannot be less then, 5000. Foot, and 500 Horse. 5000. 500 In all 20000. 2500 FINIS.