“Beasts with Claws”: The English Republic, the Presbyterian Peril, and the Ulster Question

Abstract Among the multitude of enemies facing the newly born English republic, the Presbyterians of Ulster posed a threat at once ideological and military. Such supporters of the new regime as John Milton derided the “blockish presbyters” of a “remote” province and denounced them as Scottish intruders upon English soil. But the threat they posed lay not only in their capacity to mobilize an armed population but to do so around religious and political positions drawn from a common stock of ideas present across the three kingdoms. The twin dangers could be made to serve polemical purposes within domestic English debate as the Commonwealth sought to counter the religious ambitions and constitutional challenges of those they branded as “Scottified” Presbyterians. In Ulster, the short-lived Presbyterian “revolt” proved a remarkable though fleeting success. Its proponents cultivated these transplanted ideas into fertile if fragile growth in the form of armed organization and communal mobilization. This episode attests to the importance of localizing ideology in precise contexts, and to the fact that print was only one vector, if a vital one, for its transmission.

Milton's disdain reflected his rooted animosity toward Presbyterianism, sprung from an abhorrence of all compulsion in matters of faith, and a disdain for the entwinement of the spiritual with the civil, to the detriment of both modes of human liberty. 3 But his intervention in the new republic's encounter with Ireland was part of a wider polemical struggle, one concerned with defining as well as defeating the new regime's enemies, and waged alongside an escalating military conflict. No mere specter conjured in a distant province, the Presbyterians of Ulster constituted a real and present danger to the new order, which was precisely why they could be made to serve polemical purposes within English debate, a danger not confined to a "remote" province. The threat they posed took form in language shared with the Commonwealth's opponents in England and in Scotland, though it was given substance in a mobilized and armed population in the northern counties of Ireland. My first aim of this paper is, then, to explore how that threat was conceptualized, and deployed, in the battles waged by the infant, isolated republic's supporters, of whom John Milton was but one. As he drafted his thoughts on Ulster, news was "brought, and too true, that the Scottish inhabitants of that Province are actually revolted." 4 There was strategic benefit in externalizing as Scottish, foreign, and intrusive a peril within the further territorial bounds of England's "Free State"; this was doubly so if that labeling could be used to brand and then banish from domestic English disputes "Scottified" Presbyterian critics, not merely from debate over the new religious order suited for a polity emergent from tyranny but by extension from the contest over the very meaning of "England" as a continuing constitutional order.
But attending to the Presbyterians of Ulster fulfils a second aim. Their remarkable, if fleeting, success in 1649 offers a demonstration of the importance of attending closely to the particular environments in which political and religious ideas could take root and flourish. Historians of the English Revolution have on occasion contrasted the range, novelty, or exuberance of its intellectual ferment to those generated by contemporary upheavals elsewhere in Europe, let alone within the other Stuart realms. But the case made here is that vitality of ideas need not be measured by the emergence of a major, systematic thinker or two, nor of clusters of activists operating in conditions of vibrant, even febrile, print production. Ulster in 1649 attested the potency of ideas as they were worked out in practice and embedded in community, adapted and transmitted to meet specific ends and needs and finding expression not just in texts but through communal actions and organizational commitments.
Reconstructing the perspective of the presbytery and its allies means reliance for the most part upon slivers of evidence, for what survives is often only short exhortations or rebukes, or sharp and specific exchanges of correspondence, not infrequently only surviving in printed form and more likely than not repackaged, or at least recycled, by the group's critics. This was a community, or an interest, without direct access to print, for whom no institutional archive survives from these years, and from among whom sustained narrative accounts are only known to have emerged decades after the events described. 5 These accounts have their value, if used with caution, for all indicate access Ireland? The sellers of the weekly sheets make answer, and cry aloud in the streets, Newes hot from Ireland." 9 In March, newsbook readers could be informed of Cromwell's acceptance of the command of an expeditionary army and reassured of Colonel Jones's fidelity in the face of Ormond's blandishments. At least readers could be confident that the new Irish peace terms, though endorsed by the exiled Charles II, "cannot possibly agree" with the stance taken by the king's other self-proclaimed subjects in Scotland and "their desires in the Covenant." 10 Or could they? Milton's first commission from the Council of State, on 28 March, had been the assignment of making "observations" upon the "Complicacion of interest . . . amongst the severall designers against the peace of the Comonwealth," intended for publication alongside a clutch of "papers out of Ireland" that Parliament had remitted for the council's consideration. 11 The "Observations" duly appeared as part of a composite printed text, probably in mid-May, 12 and have been reckoned Milton's, though he did not own them then or later. More than half of his text was directed at the shortest of the Irish papers, the "Necessary Representation" issued by the Ulster Presbyterians. 13 His closing shot was to urge the presbytery to "take heed, lest" their actions and words "have not involv'd them in . . . rebellion," "in the appearance of a co-interest and partaking with the Irish Rebells. Against whom . . . they goe not out to battell, as they might, but rather by these their doings assist and become associats." 14 A slight tentativeness remained, for they had only "in a manner declar'd" with "Ormond, and the Irish Rebels . . . and begun op'n war against the Parliament." 15 At this same moment, in mid-May, the Council of State affirmed its continued good faith in George Monck, though it was wary of the degree to which he seemed willing to comply with the wishes of the Presbyterian-inclined troops under his command. 16 13 Milton scholarship has generally referred to the printed text as a whole as the "Observations," but this is more properly applied to Milton's own contribution (231-49), following on from the printed "Irish papers." The Ulster document was included as "A necessary representation of the present evills, and eminent dangers to Religion, Lawes, and Liberties, arising from the late, and present practices of the Sectarian party in England: together with an Exhortation to duties relating to the Covenant, unto all within our Charge; and to all the well-affected within this Kingdome," dated 15 February (228-31). The full set of "Irish papers" had already been printed in London, without commentary, as had already occurred as March had turned to April. 17 In the northwest, one wellplaced observer detected and chronicled a "generall revolt of all the Scotch" in these weeks, moving from a refusal to pay a contribution to sustain Coote's forces to efforts to enforce such non-payment, escalating to armed clashes, if small scale at first; by 5 May, Derry was under "close siedg." 18 Further east, Monck had voiced his concern, on 29 March, that "all the Scots will shake off their dependence upon the kingdom of England." 19 His identification of his opponents in national terms, and his assertion of their intentions, were both telling and, as will be seen, contentious.
During the war years, a dense circuitry had been built up that transmitted correspondence, petitions, and orders between Westminster and the English provinces, through intricate connections of committees and representatives and entangled with the wiring carrying material for publication through London print shops and back outward to readers. The resulting network was more than logistical: it was ideological. National agendas were as much shaped by localities as imposed upon them. 20 Wartime Protestant Ireland had been partially wired in. Parliamentary committees with executive powers, appointees to regional offices and commands, lobbyists or experts eager to express or press Irish needs-or rather, the needs of Protestant or parliamentary interests-abounded. 21 As with English provincial disputes, so their rivalries, from personal quarrels to full factional roils, could be vented through the London press. 22 In the first months of 1649, the new regime's grip on publication had not yet tightened to the extent visible a year later, when the onset of war with Scotland would prompt a multidimensional propaganda campaign, spanning official statements, commissioned or sponsored polemic, and the gathering and spreading of news reports, with newsbooks 17 The most thorough and convincing account of events in Ulster is now Kevin  confined to a state-authorized few. 23 But already a conflation of views was apparent across printed texts, between officially sponsored responses to the trial and execution of the king, supportive newsbooks, and pamphlets at least ostensibly published on their authors' own initiative. 24 Milton's "Observations" was not the only printed response to the Ulster "revolt." Others also took the form of animadversions upon documents produced by the presbytery, or its challengers. 25 The Complaint of the Boutefeu, Scorched in his owne Kindlings . . . was "Published by Authority," as was Articles of the Peace containing Milton's "Observations"; both were from the same printer, Matthew Simmons, who was responsible for Milton's two other political works of 1649, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes, and for a dense body of publications supporting the army and its political allies across 1648-49. 26 As late as the summer of 1650, as the Commonwealth's army made ready to march into Scotland, Edward Husband and John Field, "Printers to the Parliament of England," brought out the longest of the pamphlets, News from Ireland, which conveyed a cluster of documents dating back to May-September 1649, and urged: "Read this book, and see the pitiful slavery they lie under, where a Presbytery is Established." 27 Yet such assaults only safeguarded one flank. Two days before Milton's commission, the Council of State had engaged on another front. The veteran Irish administrator Sir William Parsons 28 was mandated to ready his papers on Ireland, later clarified as "discourses asserting the English Interest in Ireland," including his "Examen Hiberniae" and "another discourse" addressing "certain questions, consideracons and obiections" to the Irish war. Parsons was also entrusted with "ordering, preparing & publishing" the "examinations" in the hands of Thomas Waring, formerly clerk to the commission that had collected "depositions" from Protestants in the aftermath of the 1641 Rising, to vindicate the "Protestant cause," perpetuate 23 Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum 28 Parsons had served as joint head of the Irish administration, as a lord justice, from 1641 to 1643, steering a belligerent course toward the Irish rising, which coincided with that of Westminster. Removed and briefly imprisoned on the king's orders, he had made his way to London where he joined a circle of advisors pressing a forward policy on Ireland; see Little, "Irish 'Independents.'" "BEASTS WITH CLAWS" ▪ 401 the infamy of "Irish Papists" and their abettors, and address "causelesse cavills and queries" raised about the "reliefe" of Ireland. 29 John Cunningham has revealed the importance of Parsons's substantial "Examen," surviving in manuscript though not published as composed (Parsons died in March 1650). In particular, "Examen" closely matches An answer to certain Jesuitical queres, published in 1651 and claimed by Waring, which Cunningham plausibly supposes to be in fact the second Parsons "discourse" considered by the council. 30 The implications may be worth pressing a little further, for the "Queres," which Waring described as a "seditious pamphlet" that had been "dispersed" among the soldiery intended for Ireland, has been prominent in discussions of English "radical" opposition to a renewed Irish campaign. 31 It was first tackled in print in May/June 1649 in a series of editorials in the newsbook the Moderate Intelligencer, which claimed that "in discourse, the same Queries have been put by some very active and eminent in the present Government." 32 Waring would later maintain that he had received the "Queries" from Theodore Jennings, who as press licenser was responsible for authorizing the Moderate Intelligencer and who "had delivered them over" to John Bradshaw, lord president of the council. 33 Bradshaw had alerted the council to Parsons's writings, and Milton has been seen as an admirer, if not indeed friend, of Bradshaw. 34 The connections are at least suggestive of a council, or a party within it, for whom Milton's "Observations" were but one component in its defense of its interests in Ireland, complementary to more direct assaults on Irish claims and resistance to any undermining of the case for intervention from among the regime's supporters. 35 Important studies of Milton's text have suggested that his "primary concerns . .  ▪ ARMSTRONG much less with Irish affairs than with a crucial phase of English domestic politics," the need to "discredit Presbyterian leaders" and detach from them their "rank-andfile supporters," 36 and have drawn attention to the significant Scottish dimension to a text produced in conditions of deteriorating relations between republican England and a Scotland that had proclaimed Charles II as ruler of all Great Britain and, of course, Ireland. 37 Milton's limited engagement with massacre themes, or even comparative neglect of Irish and Catholic iniquity in "Observations," would then not be due to any squeamishness or lack of zeal on his part, or determination to reorient his brief toward his own particular English concerns. 38 Rather, his outbursts in these directions were among the more conventional of his opinions, especially prevalent among supporters of Parliament or the Commonwealth especially; his priorities were reflective of an assignment that allowed for or even encouraged his attending to the "complication" between threats to the Commonwealth within and beyond Ireland, complementing publications designed to drive home the necessity of Irish war by foregrounding the fiendishness of the Catholic enemy. 39 News from Ireland alerted its readers to complications, how the "Presbyterians of Ireland" looked to the Scottish kirk for "infallible directions," such as were once issued from Rome, and to "how Reverentially" they received "Dictates and Opinions" from the Presbyterian Province of London. 40 The Ulster presbytery, for its part, had boasted the "laudable Examples" of "free and faithfull testimonies against the insolencies of the Sectarian party" 41 from the London ministers and the commissioners of the Scottish General Assembly. 42 38 Compare my reading with that of Joad Raymond: Raymond, "Complications of Interest." This is not, of course, to suggest that Milton did not intrude many of his own priorities. 39 Though too much may be read into the precise wording of the council minutes, these refer to "observations upon the Complicacion of interest which is now amongst the severall designers against the peace of this Commonwealth," unqualified with any such phrase as "in Ireland," but only noting that the observations are "to be made ready to be printed with the papers out of Ireland. raised by James Kerr and Jeremy O'Quinn, two dissidents from within their own ranks, they pointed them also to "the Paper emitted by the Ministers of Essex" and the "Agreement of the People," and contested with them readings of the army's "Remonstrance" of November 1648. 43 In "remote" Ulster, such materials, for the most part published in January, had been received and digested and their arguments incorporated into February's "Necessary Representation." Its political and constitutional stance echoed that of the Londoners' Serious representation, which expressed a like horror toward both the purging of Parliament and the actions against the kingevents "without parallel" or precedent and unacceptably acted by "private men." 44 For the London Presbyterians, the Covenant underwrote "those declared Grounds and Principles, upon which the Parliament first tooke up Armes, and upon which Wee were induced to joyne with them," and which no pleas of Providence or "necessity" could override. 45 The Ulster presbytery charged that those they deemed the "Sectarian party" had "despised the Oath in breaking the Covenant" and become "guilty of the great evill of these times . . . the despising of dominion"; covenanttakers must not "shake off the ancient, and fundamentall Government of these Kingdomes by King and Parliament" to which they had "deeply ingaged" themselves. 46 Though the London ministers alluded to anxieties around "opening a door to desperate and damnable Errors and Heresies," 47 Edinburgh placed this to the fore. Their "horror and amazement" was "that in a Land Covenanted with God," that "monstrous Iniquity may be established by a Law" of a "Toleration unto all Errours" save "expresse Popery and compulsion." 48 "Compulsion" they construed as referring to "those who plead for the Government of Jesus Christ by Presbyteries, and hold that all men are to walk according to the rule of the Word of God." 49 But they fell short of  46 Milton, "Articles of Peace, Observations," 230-31; A serious and faithfull Representation, 3-4, 9. The disparity between the Londoners addressing their representation to the lord general and the General Council of the Army, and the Ulster targeting of the "Sectaries" or "Sectarian party" throughout, was picked up and challenged by Kerr and O'Quinn, at least implicitly so as to exonerate an army that had done such "good service." News from Ireland, 10, 12-13, 18. 47 A serious and faithfull Representation, 9. 48 The phrase "so it be not compulsive or express popery" was found in the so-called Second Agreement of the People, published unilaterally by John Lilburne in Foundations of Freedom in December 1648. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, 362. 49 Solemn Testimony, 2-3.

404
▪ ARMSTRONG the Ulster detection not merely of "strong oppositions to Presbyteriall Government (the hedge, and Bulwarke of Religion)" but a looming "Universall Toleration of all Religions" that embraced "even Paganisme, and Judaisme." 50 The Ulster presbytery was as insistent on the Covenant as the strong foundation both for "Religion, and Liberties" as their brethren in the other kingdoms. 51 As they shared common concerns, so, in part at least, it was the very "dependency of this Kingdome upon the Kingdome of England" that "necessitated" their response to recent upheavals. 52 Their brief "Representation" omitted the extended argumentation of its counterparts in favor of the bold assertion and concrete application suitable to a text not to be mulled over in studies but declaimed to all congregations over which the presbytery bore sway, and to be enacted in plans for a renewal of commitment to the Solemn League and Covenant, 53 which had been first administered in Ulster communities in the spring of 1644. 54 Where they pressed beyond their models was in the concrete application of their "charge" in a fourfold set of "duties," each grounded on Covenant principles, radiating outward from the personal to the communal, to participation in tri-kingdom endeavors. Their hearers must "study more to the power of godlinesse, and personall reformation of themselves, and families"; "earnestly contend for the faith," "every one in their station and calling," avoiding even the company of those who promoted error or demoted public ordinances or church government; stand to the established political order; and support "the Union amongst the well-affected of the Kingdomes, not being swayed by any National respect," ensuring that, in avoiding "Sectaries," they not fall into the clutches of "Malignants" hostile to the "worke of Reformation." 55 The brethren of the presbytery represented themselves as "Watchmen in Sion" 56 and "Messengers of God"; 57 they had "from our watch-towre blowen the trumpet unto the people," and could not "forbeare to cry aloud to our flockes, to beware of ravenous Wolves." 58 They were "Overseers" owing duty to God "and his people," 59 empowered to wield the "Rod of Discipline" 60 or "denounce judgement." 61 Using scriptural and thereby commonplace terminology, they articulated that which was most indigestible to the opponents of full-blooded presbytery. This was neither its organizational particularities nor its doctrinal preferences but its conception and cultivation of a divine office, at once prophetic and governmental, that 50 Milton, "Articles of Peace, Observations," 229. 51 Milton, 228. 52 Milton, 228. 53 The Covenant had been renewed in Scotland in October 1648 following the overthrow of supports of the engagement between the regime and the then-imprisoned king. Mitchell and Christie, Records of the Commissions, 78-88. 54 Adair reports the representation as being read alongside the renewing of the Covenant, ministers performing this duty "in their own congregations first and thereafter each Minister in the Congregations next adjacent to his own." "True narrative," 174-76. In due course, Kerr acknowledged his offence in not "reading the Representation." News from Ireland, 38. 55 Milton, "Articles of Peace, Observations," 230-31. 56  would infuse into statements and diffuse across actions a moral imperative predicated on constancy, fidelity, and endurance, in the teeth of royalists or republicans. Milton's jab at Presbyterian deviation, "that John Knox, who was the first founder of Presbytery in Scotland, taught professedly the doctrine of deposing, and of killing Kings," reflected a tactical appropriation of "Scotchmen and Presbyterians" among the historical "examples . . . all Protestant and chiefly Presbyterian" in defense of the late actions against Charles. 62 Milton's far weightier blow was the assertion that "the generall exhortation to Justice and Obedience . . . is the utmost of their Duty" in "affaires of State"; it was "not for their Medling" as "busie Bodies, to preach of Titles, Interests and alternations in government." 63 Rather than offering a "nuanced" perspective on Presbyterianism, 64 or an accommodating gesture, Milton pressed his demand for a stilling of Presbyterianism's prophetic voice raised against social or political sin. Knox might be applauded for having voiced correct political doctrine, but his heirs must be barred from emulating a readiness to "Charge and obtest all who resolve to adhere unto truth" with duties necessarily political because grounded in moral and spiritual demands and commitments at once personal and public. 65 In April and again in the early summer of 1649, the Rump Parliament had made efforts to settle church government in England in the "Presbyterian way" by a declaration confirming and implementing existing legislation. 66 Such a measure embraced Ireland, and despite allowing some space for "godly" dissidents, roused concern or hostility, not least in the army. 67 On both occasions, those efforts coincided with the publication of anonymous attacks on the Ulster presbytery. Not they alone but "all others" should "take heed they be not found guilty of the great evils of the Priests of these times, which is to despite Dominion"; they should instead "cheerfully contribute their best endeavors for the establishing their own liberty, as it is now constituted in this Common-wealth." 68 The "shadow" of the Ulster presbytery could be detected "here in England," where only the absence of a "Consistory for the forming those dreadfull Thunder-bolts" confined ministerial misdeeds to the pulpit-trumpeting of rebellion: "[W]hat would our Priests doe, if they had the power of the Kirk of Scotland?" News that they had broken with the local grandee, James, Viscount Montgomery of the Ards, military leader of the Ulster "revolt" but now revealed as a royalist "malignant," was shaped into a warning for English pulpit-politicians whose "poore silly Brethren at Belfast" could "raise more such Devils than they can 62 John Milton, "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," in Keeble and McDowell, Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings, 151-85, at 166-68; Milton, "Articles of Peace, Observations," 246. 63 Milton, "Articles of Peace, Observations," 240. Daems, A Warr so Desperate, 33, notes that Milton implies that the presbytery are too ignorant to engage in state affairs, but that for Milton "they should not, as clergy, be meddling in the first place." 64 Maley and Swann, "'Is This the Region?,'" 142. 65 70 The royalist regime in Ireland was equally ready to bridle the prophets. Having secured from Protestant clergymen in the south of Ireland an acknowledgment that they should "keepe themselves within their owne Line, preaching faith, and good manners, with obedience to the Civill Magistrate" and ensure their "Discourses" not "intrench upon the Civill Government" nor "communicate any Mysteryes of State," 71 Ormond would in due course promulgate royal orders imposing punishments for "any Ecclesiastical Person" who "in his Prayer or Sermon, shall presume to exercise the People to Sedition or Disobedience, or shall intermeddle in Pulpit or Consistory with the managery of Civil Affairs." 72 The Ulster presbytery presented its actions as those of "lovers of the standing of Christs Kingdome" and upholders of "Christs throne." 73 Milton's exhortations to counter error and ungodliness through "diligent preaching . . . confuting not . . . railing down errors, encountring both in public and private Conference" and "the spirituall execution of Church discipline within their own congregations," were to render into metaphor all talk of spiritual "government." 74 The presbyters' figuration of "Presbyteriall Government" as "the hedge, and Bulwarke of Religion" 75 could allow critics some playfulness with this "thorny part" of their text, for a hedge was "no essentiall part of Religion it self: old hedges are commonly burned, and so will that amongst other superstructions of like combustible nature, that are built upon the foundation, when the fire shall try every mans work." 76 But their image of a secure garden or walled city depicted to good effect one necessary dimension of government: protection. Within the safe space that Presbyterian governance provided, pastoral ends could be attained: the cultivation of individual spirituality within parish and wider, national, communities; the reconciliation of internal and external dimensions of religious life, of private and public duties as set out in the fourfold 69 Complaint of the Boutefeu, 7, 14. 70 Journal of the House of Commons, 6:275. These measures followed from proposals in February, arising from publications by the London ministers and specifically targeting preaching or publication directed against the king's trial; they encompassed a series of resolutions in July whereby those who might "directly or indirectly, preach, or publicly pray, against the Power, Authority, or Proceedings of this present Parliament, or against the present Government" or avert to the Stuarts, save as "Enemies to this Commonwealth," would be considered as delinquents. charge. It was an image of security far removed from that designed as a refuge only for those who were already-or already considered themselves to be-the godly. 77 Milton's sense that such "compulsive power upon all without exception," with "fleshly" support, approximated "the Popish and Prelaticall Courts, or the Spanish Inquisition" was not far short of the view of an earlier printed attack on the Ulster presbytery. 78 The Necessary Examination of a Dangerous Design detected a Satanic transition from a deceiving and persecutory Rome to the promotion of "formality" and a drive to "persecute the Puritans" by means of "Protestant Bishop and a Protestant State" to "yet another secret transmigration of the deceiving serpent . . . now powerfully working in a faction of Presbytery, to persecute those for Sectaries, whom he can no longer call Puritans." 79 A pretended pity could be extended even to the "malignant" Ards, represented as preferring to acknowledge treason against the Commonwealth than "Treason against the Presbyterie, and Covenant, which may not be forgiven him, neither in this World, nor that to come." 80 The propensity of "priests" to usurp prophetic and kingly office in the church was what distinguished the "Scottified" among Presbyterians, so abhorrent to the army and its allies when detected in disparate corners of England. 81 Ulster demonstrated the full horror of presbytery, and on "English" soil; its "teeth and claws" showed it "not such a harmless Beast as it hath been represented." 82 Tensions among supporters of the Commonwealth might exist between those who regarded its Presbyterian critics as a "political problem," appropriately addressed through accommodation alongside repression, and those who detected "agents of Antichrist." 83 But the Ulster revolt signaled not only a regional challenge to the regime but a reminder, exploitable by the more adamant critics, and resonating with the more restrained, that any acceptable Presbyterianism was one domesticated and defanged.
Could even more ferocious beasts be tamed? Even as Milton was berating Ulster Presbyterians for nudging toward "a co-interest and partaking" with Irish rebels, it was in fact the republic's own commanders who had determined to "goe not out to battell . . . but rather by these their doings assist and become associats" of a Catholic Irish faction. 84  82 News from Ireland, A2. 83 Worden sees the former perspective as predominant within the Rump, which tended to steer a course away from either "high" Presbyterianism or "radical separatism." Worden, Rump Parliament, 82-83, 124. 84 Milton, "Articles of Peace, Observations," 249.

408
▪ ARMSTRONG immediate, mutual, practical military benefits. 85 George Monck expressed doubt about the "wonderful high" terms that O'Neill offered as a means of securing a "more absolute agreement" authorized by Westminster. 86 But there was more at play. Monck seems to have won O'Neill around to the important modification of his request for the repeal of all legislation "against the Roman Catholiques their Ministers or professors their liberty or exercise of the said Religion," the rock on which royalist negotiations with Catholic Ireland had once foundered, to that of assurance that O'Neill and those who joined him "in the service of the Parliament of England . . . may have liberty of Conscience for themselves and their issue." 87 This position, much closer to that put forward by Cromwell when in Ireland, 88 also bore some resemblance to the multiple conversations, negotiations, and propositions regarding accommodation for Catholics with the Commonwealth conducted in London. 89 The possible formula being worked out there balanced firm commitments of political loyalty with a paring back of autonomous church governance, or its surrender to state supervision, and a "liberty of Conscience" interpreted as a confined but secure pastoral ministry with no state impositions upon lay belief or private religious practice. However improbable of realization, the Catholic negotiations bespoke the furthest limits of the new moral geometry of the English Republic, at once authoritarian sponsor and monitor of "Christian liberty. George Monck sought to justify his dealings with O'Neill as encompassed within his "utmost endeavors to reserve the interest of England in the North" in a situation with "the Scots deserting me (although they are unwilling to own it)." 91 If his remarks caught the tone of rendering defection in national terms, which the Commonwealth's agents and adherents would continue to pursue toward Ulster, his response to challenges within his own ranks would be met with a mobilization of the language of Presbyterian constitutionalism, with an organization to give it voice, acting and speaking as trustees for the authority of an English crown and constitution temporarily in abeyance. Monck drafted a "Declaration" of common purpose against a "common enemy," silent on English political developments, and obligatory for any who would hold military command. His declaration was issued on 21 March from his headquarters, Lisburn, an "English" town within the plantation geography of Ulster and one that Adair would later describe as "a place where neither Landlord nor People (a very few excepted) did give Countenance or Entrance to the Gospell." 92 It was countered by a statement from an alternative gathering of officers at Scottish-inflected Newtown (or Newtownards), the family borough of the viscounts Montgomery, insistent that "any new association" could only be founded on covenant renewal. 93 For Lieutenant-Colonel James Wallace, covenant renewal was understood as a response to the discernment of divine judgment against "polesies" [policies] and "prudentiall wayes." It was the fruit of a welcome readiness to "no moir consulte with flesh and bloode" but, determining on duty, "with boldness and confidence chearfullie to stepe forward and tak upp Christ and his crosses in our airmes as the onlie meane even of our owne securitie." 94 But such zeal was fused with a remarkable and clear-eyed political initiative.
From a sequence of exchanges and a flurry of proposals emerged a "Declaration" in direct competition with that from Monck, perhaps authored by Viscount Ards, 95 issued from the alternative council of war, and endorsed by "the Gentry and others of the Country." In due course it would reach print in London (and perhaps Edinburgh), apparently transmitted in part through the south Ulster gentleman and officer Robert Ward, an important Ormond informant and conduit to Ulster. 96 91 Monck to Cromwell, 25 May 1649, True state of the Transactions, 6. 92 Adair notes that the presbytery had only met once at Lisburn, when Monck was posing as "their great friend and promoter of the work." Adair, "True narrative," 174, 192. Lisburn (which often appears as "Lisnegarvey" in contemporary accounts) eventually succumbed to covenant renewal, if unenthusiastically; see John Perkins to Sir George Lane, 29 April 1649, Bod., Carte MS 24, fol. 546. 93 95 The presbytery claimed that Ards had "first moved and framed a Declaration," and Adair would suggest that Ards "with his own hands formed a declaration . . . which was read and approved by the Presbytery after some alternations and additions." See Complaint of the Boutefeu, 1; Adair, "True narrative," 176. 96 The Declaration of the Brittish in the North of Ireland, with Some Queries of Colonel Monke, and the Answers of the Brittish to the Queries [. . .] ([London?], 1648-49). None of the three variant editions carry any publication details save that two, otherwise identical, bear the dates "1648" and "1649" respectively on the title page. These have generally been reckoned to be London imprints, the latter carrying a 410 ▪ ARMSTRONG James Kerr claimed that the presbytery had preached up the declaration and encouraged subscriptions to it, even stating that the Council of War had issued orders "to all Ministers and Elders" to return the names of those who would not subscribe or were covenant-refusers. 97 It is possible the presbytery had agitated for the establishment of a broad-based council of war, acting in cooperation with "country gentlemen" representing the two counties of Antrim and Down, and also that some organization emerged reflective of the interests being pressed by both "the Army" and "the Country." 98 What Monck considered "another posture and command" usurping his own 99 was one committed to "proceed to no thing whatsomever in reference to Religion, without advice of Gods Ministers and servants here given to us," but rather "to prosecute every mean of surety to our Religion, which they shall propose to us according to the word of God, and the Covenant." Eschewing any overtly Scottish identification, it spoke for "faithfull and loyall Subjects to the Crown of England." 100 From London to Londonderry to Lisburn, adherents of the Commonwealth were consistent in representing the Ulster revolt as "Scottish"; its adherents did not do so. As in the northern counties of England, so in Ulster, the earlier years of the decade had seen an army sent from Scotland prove burdensome in its demands for funds and other resources and provocative in its sponsorship of Presbyterianism. But it was a shattered force when it was finally rolled up by Monck in 1648. 101 The presbytery in Ulster, though its ministers were brisk, brusque young Scottish graduates, had expanded its hold well beyond army quarters, encountering anguished cries from supporters of prayer-book Protestantism and on occasion generating "national" tensions within the Protestant population between those of English or Scottish origin. It was never a neat divide. The covenanting alliance between Westminster and Edinburgh had meant that the English Parliament and its agents had countenanced the Ulster presbytery from the mid-1640s; nor was its support only Scottish. 102 But if Thomason date of 25 May. The only clue to the transmission of the documents is a brief cover letter dated 16 May 1649 and signed "R. W.," included in these two printings. It does not appear in the third version, which may be an Edinburgh imprint: see the National Library of Scotland online revision of H. C. Aldis's List of Books Printed in Scotland before 1700: "Scottish Books 1641-1660 (Aldis updated)", p. 76, https:// www.nls.uk/catalogues/scottish-books-1505-1700 (choose "1641-1660 (PDF)"), It may be a reprinting from a London copy, though it is possible that the documents were separately transmitted directly from Ulster. One tiny sliver of evidence may lie in the fact that both editions with the "R. W." letter carry a distinctive printer's mark on the title page, used in a number of 1649 publications connected to the royalist publisher Richard Royston, though it is of course possible that Royston's printer produced this text independently of any Royston or other royalist link. For Ward in 1649, see papers among those in Bod., Carte MSS 23-24. 97  a breach was now to occur, the republic needed to fall back on the call of "nationality," not only to mobilize support within England against hostile external forces 103 but to sustain an interest in Ireland, whether among Protestants of the type of Coote or Jones 104 or indeed those of more traditional liturgical tastes. 105 Though the movement associated with the declaration was centered on the two eastern counties of Antrim and Down, home of the densest clusters of parishes aligned with the presbytery, from the first it had sought with some success to tap support in the Derry hinterland. 106 Coote's response to the presbytery's initial "Representation" had insisted that there was no scriptural warrant "authorizing us, being but a Branch of a subordinate Kingdom, to declare against the Parliament of England . . . who are the visible Authority of both Kingdoms." 107 In the moment of constitutional hesitancy before the Rump Parliament declared England a "Commonwealth and Free State" in May, the language of "crown" and "kingdoms" could still be of use, 108 and the idea of inherited "dependency" of the Irish kingdom could be deployed by supporters of a regime determined to stress constitutional continuity over innovation, to see the remnant of the Commons as the last "deposit of lawful government." 109 One use was to drive home the Scottish peril. Milton alleged Ireland's historical "dependence on the Crown of England" against an Ormond treaty that enabled its adherents "by degrees to throw off all subjection to this Realme," "a whole Feudary Kingdome from the ancient Dominion of England." 110 Milton dismissed the presbytery's recognition of "the dependency of this Kingdome upon the Kingdome of England" as a "shamelesse untruth" belied by their actions, "driving on the same Interest" as that of the Irish rebels, "to loose us that Kingdome, that they may gaine it themselves, or at least share in the spoile." 111 The Necessary Examination, consistently more virulent in its anti-Scots rhetoric, insisted that the adherents of the presbytery "intend to destroy the interest of England in Ireland, and root out, if they can, the Soveraignty of England there, and transfer it to the Scots." 112 One newsletter cast an alignment of Ulster interests with the exiled Charles as tending toward a conquest of Ulster "to be called new Scotland." 113 These were hoary allegations, previously more associated with wartime English royalism. 114 And they would continue to be pressed. As the Commonwealth edged toward war with Scotland, Marchamont Nedham would construct a reading of prolonged Scottish determination to advance their interest in the "fat soil" of England, before and across the war years, with the covenant twisted and manipulated so that "grandees" could "domineer in the possessions, as their pharasaical priests would over the consciences, of the English." 115 So in another "Countrey better then thir own," 116 Scottish ambitions could be tracked from the reign of James VI and I, when "that whole Province [Ulster] was alreadie possessed in their hopes, and a design was laid in time to have in realitie, by finding some or other to forfeit also the English Plantations there." 117 As recounted in a text printed "by the Appointment of the Council of State" in 1650, the Scots had been deceived at the outset of the 1641 Rising by Irish claims to have "no quarrel" with them, "knowing their good natures such, as they would bee content to sit still, and see the English destroied, so they might escape, there would bee the more room for Colonies of their Nation." Even now, the English should be "taught of an Enemie" and remove Scots from the coasts of Ireland, if not from the land altogether. 118 The author of the Necessary Examination had charged the presbytery, "We would have you remember the dependence, for that is like to last, but forget the Kingdom in them both, for that is at an end." 119 Milton heartily disparaged Ormond's depiction, writing to Jones, of a legislature reduced from its ancient "three estates of King, Lords & Commons" to "a small number . . . the dregs and scum of the House of Commons," the mere "name of a Parliament." 120 In his subsequent correspondence, Ormond had pressed further. As he acted "by the same Power that in all ages since the Conquest, hath and only can dispose of the Government of this and Covenant," the army and its supporters would press ahead against the "Common Enemy." 129 As the Council of War clarified for Monck, their service to the king and Parliament of England would continue, "though (for a time) they be violently bereft of the exercise of their just and lawful power" and duty demanded they declare "against the Publick Enemies of our God, such as are now the prevalent party in England." 130 This was a Presbyterian appropriation of the good old cause, the embrace of a trusteeship for a suspended constitution. And it came with an army.
The danger was both the weakening of the Commonwealth's hold upon Ireland and the articulation-and mobilization-of a constitutionalist opposition that challenged the very premises upon which the regime founded its authority in England. The opportunity to enact such ideas in Ulster came not merely by its distance from the political center but also by Ulster's particular covenanting experience. Where the English and Scottish sister legislatures had set their seal on the Solemn League and Covenant, the Irish parliament (which had maintained a residual royalist existence) had roundly condemned it. 131 In due course, Ulster Presbyterian ministers would spin their willingness to obey Westminster-made law as partly due to "finding this Kingdom in such Posture by the Bloody Rebellion that from our own Parliament, wholesome Laws cou'd not Issue." 132 The covenanting regime in Scotland had always been ready, even eager, to acknowledge English legislative oversight of Ireland. 133 Westminster had slipped Ireland into the pledge to reform the Church of England in the text of the Solemn League and Covenant. 134 Like its Scottish counterpart, it had ordered that the Covenant be sworn by all troops in its pay in Ireland. But it was ministerial initiative and popular pressure that had extended the Covenant's reach to the civilian population. Those "distressed Christians in the North of Ireland" who petitioned the Scottish General Assembly of 1644 acknowledged that they had "made bold to lay hold upon the opportunity," long desired, "to joyne ourselves with the People of God in the aforesaid League." 135 The author of the Necessary Examination charged that the presbytery had been "very active sometime to impose it upon others, who were the subjects of England in Ireland, upon the authority of the generall Assembly of Scotland; a thing which in time may cost you the pain of praemunire, being within the letter of it." 136 The Ulster presbytery was as ready as its London brethren to renounce the revolutionary deeds in England as the lawless and furious actions of "private men." 137 Matters were less certain when it was spiritual craving that called forth actions beyond the boundaries set by national churches or national laws. 138 Milton had shown himself ready to burst the bounds of a conventional, regulated, "resistance