This plan was adopted at a general meeting of all the influential forces of the country, which assembled in May at Kilkenny, where many Parliaments had sat during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Writs were issued for elections under the new Constitution, and the date of the first assembly of the new Parliament was fixed for October. The new national body enjoyed abundant revenues, and no small state marked its deliberations in Kilkenny. We read of an endless series of illuminations, receptions, banquets and balls,--the whole of the Norman nobility of Leinster lavishing their great wealth in magnificent display. The Supreme Council journeyed in state from Kilkenny to Wexford, from Wexford to Waterford, from Waterford to Limerick and Galway, surrounded by hundreds of horsemen with drawn swords, and accompanied by an army of officials. We hear of "civil and military representations of comedies and stage plays, feasts and banquets, and palate-enticing dishes." The General Assembly, duly elected, finally met on October 23, 1642, at Kilkenny. On the same day was fought the battle of Edgehill, between the king of England and the forces of the English Parliament. This battle was the signal for division of counsels in the new Assembly. The Norman lords of Leinster, who stood on the ground of feudalism, and lived under the shadow of royal authority, were strongly drawn to take the side of the king against the English Parliament, and overtures of negotiation were made, which came near gaining a recognition and legalization of the General Assembly by the English Crown. While the leaders at Kilkenny were being drawn towards the royalists of England, Owen Roe O'Neill was successfully holding Ulster against the Puritan forces under Monroe and Leslie, with their headquarters at Carrickfergus. Thus matters went on till the autumn of 1643, when we find him inflicting a serious defeat on the English army under Monk and Moore at Portlester in Meath, in which Moore was killed and his forces driven back within the walls of Drogheda. The General Assembly continued to exercise sovreign authority at Kilkenny, collecting revenues, maintaining courts of justice in the provinces, and keeping several armies in the field, most effective of which was undoubtedly that of Owen Roe O'Neill. We find matters still in this condition three years later, in May, 1646, when Monroe and the Scottish forces prepared to inaugurate an offensive campaign from their base at Carrickfergus. General Robert Monroe had about seven thousand men at Carrickfergus; his brother George had five hundred at Coleraine; while there was a Scottish army at Derry, numbering about two thousand men. It was decided to converge these three forces on Clones, in Monaghan, and thence to proceed southwards against the government of the General Assembly, then centered at Limerick. Clones was sixty miles from Derry, and rather more from Coleraine and Carrickfergus, the two other points of departure.