Ormond had not been able to advance far towards a settled peace, when, in the previous spring, the Lord Herbert (afterwards Earl of Glamorgan), the son of the Marquis of Worcester, of a devoted Catholic family and of great influence, announced his intention of going to Ireland on private business, and offered to assist the King with his influence among the Catholics. He had married a daughter of the great Irish house of Thomond, and undoubtedly possessed more influence in that island among the Papists than any other of the royal party. The King eagerly accepted his assistance, and Glamorgan afterwards produced a commission, undeniably signed by the King, in which he gives him ample powers to treat with the Papists, and to grant them any terms whatever which he should find necessary, consistent with the royal supremacy and the safety of the Protestants. In this extraordinary commission he creates him Earl of Glamorgan, bestows on him the Garter and George, promises him the Princess Elizabeth as a wife for his son, gives him blank patents of nobility to fill up at his pleasure, and promises him on the word of a King to endorse all his actions. The only limit which appears to have been set to the Earl was an obligation to inform the Lord Lieutenant of all his proceedings; and the only doubt respecting this commission appears to be whether it was filled up before the King signed it, or written on a blank signed by the King, in accordance with conclusions previously agreed upon between him and the Earl. The Earl left Oxford for Ireland, where the nuncio from the Pope had arrived, and proceeded in his negotiations with this dignitary and the Supreme Council of the rebel Papists and Irish—negotiations in which he found endless difficulties and delays, owing chiefly to a mutual distrust of all parties towards each other;—a distrust of the King not unnatural on the part of the Irish, who knew that nothing but the utmost distress induced the King to treat with them at all, and that to treat with them, or at least to make any important concessions to them, was to alienate the whole of the English Protestants—both Royalists and Parliamentarians—to an implacable degree. The Irish demanded perfect freedom of religion; the possession of all Cathedrals and Churches; and that all the strong places in Ireland, including Dublin, should be in the hands at any rate of English Roman Catholics; that the English Papists should be relieved from all disabilities; and that the King in the first Parliament, or settlement of the nation, should ratify and secure all these advantages to them. In return for this the Pope offered a large present of money, and the Earl was promised 10,000 men from the rebel forces—3000 immediately for the relief of Chester, and 7000 to follow before the end of March.