1669 Ormonde was recalled, and Walsh thought it prudent to go to London, where he chiefly lived for the rest of his life. It was reported that Robartes, the new viceroy, had threatened to hang him (Moran, Life of Plunket, p. 25). It is more certain that Peter Talbot, who was made archbishop of Dublin at least partly on account of his inveterate antipathy to Walsh (Spicilegium Ossoriense, iii. 92), persecuted him to the utmost, in the hope of forcing him to retract (ib. i. 479). ‘The imposture of Taafe,’ says Talbot, ‘has given us an excellent opportunity of hunting down the remonstrant Valesians, not as priests, but as scoundrels (nebulones)’ (ib. p. 471). ‘I confess,’ said Ormonde in 1680, ‘I have never read over Walsh's “History of the Remonstrance,” which is full of a sort of learning I have been little conversant in; but the doctrine is such as would cost him his life if he could be found where the pope has power’ (Carte, App. ii. 114). In the Franciscan chapter-general held at Valladolid on 24 May 1670 Walsh, Coppinger, and their followers were declared excommunicate for printing books without the general's license, and for disregarding Rospigliosi's censures (Causa Valesiana, App. i.). Nevertheless Walsh published in 1672 his ‘Epistola prima [no second appeared] ad Thomam Haroldum,’ a Franciscan who had been detained for years at Brussels against his will. This letter contains a strong attack on Gregory VII. In 1673 were published twelve controversial letters purporting to be between a church of England man and a Roman catholic, but evidently all written by Walsh. The general conclusion is, ‘I think the not-deposing doctrine is the truly Catholic doctrine.’
Walsh was not friendless, for the internuncio Airoldi listened to him; he had allies among the Gallican clergy, and Ormonde could protect him even when not lord-lieutenant (Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 489, 498, 505). Among the Anglican clergy his learning and candour commanded respect. In 1670 or 1671 he visited Oxford at the instance of Morley, bishop of Winchester, and in his name tried to persuade Thomas Barlow [q. v.] to answer the ‘Nucleus’ of the Socinian Christopher Sand (Four Letters, p. 132). Evelyn met him at dinner with Dolben, archbishop of York (Diary, 6 Jan. 1685–6). He considered Anglican orders valid, and went to church without scruple (ib.; preface to Four Letters). He was on friendly terms with Arthur, earl of Anglesey, who says, in his answer to Castlehaven, that he never knew any of the confederate catholics, even those of English extraction, who seemed really to repent the rebellion, ‘except only Peter Walsh, whom your lordship calls your ghostly father, and some few remonstrants with him’ (Letter to Castlehaven, pp. 33, 40; preface to Walsh's Prospect of the State of Ireland). Walsh used to prophesy that popery would bid farewell to England when James became king (Wood's Life, ed. Clark, iii. 261). During the viceroyalties of Robartes and Berkeley no mercy was shown to Walsh's party in Ireland, but under Essex they were again influential, and in 1675 it was supposed that the island would be too hot to hold a Dominican who had been active in exposing Taafe (Spicilegium Ossoriense, ii. 218). This may have been partly owing to an eloquent letter addressed by Walsh to Essex on 4 Aug. 1674, when a proclamation had been issued ordering all Roman catholic bishops and regular clergy to leave Ireland. Was it fair, he asked, to confound the innocent with the guilty, to exile friars who had signed the remonstrance, and to spare seculars who had refused? The remonstrants had suffered enough, and he felt that it was through trusting and following him (Four Letters, p. 21). Yet Walsh himself told Burnet that the true policy for the English government was to ‘hold an heavy hand on the regulars and jesuits, and be gentle to the seculars’ (Burnet, Own Times, i. 195). In 1674 Walsh published a ‘Letter to the Catholics of England, Ireland, and Scotland, &c.,’ written in the previous year and surreptitiously circulated, hoping that people would be as anxious to read it as they had been when they could not get it. It was reprinted as a preface to the ‘History of the Remonstrance,’ published in London later in the same year. This book of nearly a thousand folio pages is ill-digested and incomplete, but indispensable for the history of the time.
In the days of the remonstrance, at least, Walsh had an allowance of 300l. a year from Ormonde (Report on Carte Papers, p. 25). Afterwards the seneschalship of Winchester, worth 100l. a year, which was held by Ormonde, was settled on Walsh with Bishop Morley's consent (Carte, ii. 548). Only once during their forty years' friendship did Walsh try to persuade his patron to be reconciled with Rome, whose religion was full of abuses, ‘yet safer to die in.’ Ormonde replied that he had no wish to reproach those who had inherited that faith, but that he would not sin against knowledge, and he wondered why Walsh had not sooner reminded him of his danger (ib.) In 1682, at the suggestion of Castlehaven, Walsh published part of a history of Ireland from 1756
