Glamorgan was courteously received by the Nuncio, who, taking him and his credentials at once at their proper value, distrusted him and his power to induce the King to ratify the religious articles. Glamorgan, on the contrary, thought the Nuncio would throw no obstacles in the way of either treaty, and wrote to the Lord Lieutenant that the political treaty would be signed in a day or two. “I am morally certain,” he adds, “a total assent from the Nuncio shall be declared to the propositions for peace, and in the very way your Lordship prescribes.”
Rinuccini finding the Council on the point of coming to terms with Ormond for the political articles, while the religious ones were to be reserved under the secret treaty for the King’s acceptance, protested against the action of the Council. He then set to work to gain control of Glamorgan, who became as wax in his hands, and promised on behalf of the King that even if Ormond accepted the political treaty, it should not be published until Charles had confirmed his own secret treaty of August 25th, and that he would demand their ratification as soon as he landed with the Irish army in England. Rinuccini further induced him to make what was practically a second treaty, by which the King was to bind himself to never again appoint a Protestant Lord Lieutenant, that he would admit the Catholic Bishops to sit in the Irish House of Peers, pass an Act for a Catholic University, and grant the Catholics the churches and ecclesiastical revenues, not only those re-captured by the Confederates before the date on which Ormond’s treaty was signed, but all those taken after that signature and up to the confirmation of the religious articles by the King. Glamorgan, eager to lead 10,000 Irishmen to the help of the King, was ready to promise anything, and as Chester, the only port at which they could now be landed, was threatened by the Parliamentarians, the Supreme Council agreed to allow him take an advanced guard of 3,000 men there at once. But Glamorgan could not do so until he had Ormond’s consent to his appointment as commander of this force, and to the arrangement with Rinuccini by which the political treaty was not to be published until the religious articles, of which Ormond knew nothing as yet, had been ratified. To obtain Ormond’s consent Glamorgan set out for Dublin on the 24th December. On the 26th he was summoned before Ormond and the Privy Council on the demand of Lord Digby. On October 17th the Catholic Archbishop of Tuam had been killed at the siege of Sligo. On his body was found a copy of Glamorgan’s treaty, which was at once sent by the Scots to London and was thence forwarded to Ormond. Ormond at once saw that this revelation of the King’s duplicity would be fatal to his cause with the English people, and making a desperate effort to save the credit of Charles, had Glamorgan arrested on a charge of treason in exceeding his instructions. Charles took Digby’s advice and brazenly denied his instructions to Glamorgan, and declared his “amazement that any man’s folly and presumption should carry him to such a degree of abusing our trust.” The comedy was sustained by Glamorgan’s declaration that he had made the concessions on his own initiative through excess of zeal, and that what he had done was in no way binding on the King. Charles, moreover, disavowed Glamorgan in a letter to the Parliament, “That the Earl of Glamorgan having made offer unto him to raise forces in the Kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them to England for his Majesty’s service, had a commission to that purpose and to that purpose only. That he had no commission at all to treat of anything else without the privity and directions of the Lord Lieutenant, much less to capitulate anything concerning religion or any propriety (_i.e._ property) belonging either to church or laity.”