Cromwell in Ireland
is time. He saw, served, and knew intimately the first four Stuart Kings, and it may be said of him at once that no subject in all the troubled time of the great Rebellion gave more faithful service to his King than he did. But that service had all, and more than all, the defects of its virtues.
Ormond was as obstinate as the first James, whose ward he had been; he was as apt in intrigue and as devious in action as the first Charles, whom he served so faithfully; he was as selfish as the second Charles, to whom he gave thirty-four years service; he was as bigoted as the second James, in the early days of whose reign he died.
In such a nature hate must be stronger than love, and, much as Ormond loved the King, he hated the King's Irish Catholic subjects with far more intensity of feeling. Two years earlier he had surrendered Dublin to the English Parliament rather than give it to the Catholic Royalists at Kilkenny. It may have been that by this act he hoped to bring about a treaty between the King, then a prisoner, and the victorious faction in England. But, if this were so, never was action more mistaken. Dublin in the hands of the Independent faction meant easy access at any time into Ireland; the door was always open. From
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