Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/19

Cromwell in Ireland Amid all the conflicting opinion upon Cromwell which exists to-day in England, few will be found to claim for him the quality of gentleness.

But to revert to Thomas Cromwell, Henry the Eighth cut off his head in 1540. One hundred and nine years later Oliver, great great great nephew of Thomas Cromwell, cut off the head of Henry the Eighth’s great great great nephew, Charles the First. History has strange ironies if we probe it deep enough.

If the death of the King had paralysed the Royalist and Presbyterian parties in England, its effect in Ireland and Scotland had been very different. King Charles the Second had been proclaimed in both countries, and the Catholics in one Kingdom and the Presbyterians in the other had, with few exceptions, rallied to the royal cause. After seven years of devastating civil war the treaty known as the peace of 1648-9 had been concluded at Kilkenny, between the Confederated Catholics and Ormond, the King’s Lieutenant. This peace had come too late to serve the cause of the unfortunate Charles. Indeed the negotiations which preceded it, coming at the moment when the Army and Cromwell had triumphed over all their adversaries in England, only served to increase 7