This assembly gave stability to the plan of government devised by the leaders. The authority of the statute law was acknowledged, and for its administration a council was established[a] in each county. From the judgment of this tribunal there lay an appeal to the council of the province, which in its turn acknowledged the superior jurisdiction of "the supreme council of the confederated Catholics in Ireland." For the conduct of the war four generals were appointed, one to lead the forces of each province, Owen O'Neil in Ulster, Preston in Leinster, Barry Garret in Munster, and John Burke in Connaught, all of them officers of experience and merit, who had relinquished their commands in the armies of foreign princes, to offer their services to their countrymen. Aware that these regulations amounted to an assumption of the sovereign authority, they were careful to convey to the king new assurances of their devotion to his person, and to state to him reasons in justification of their conduct. Their former messengers, though Protestants of rank and acknowledged loyalty, had been arrested, imprisoned, and, in one instance at least, tortured by order of their enemies. They now adopted a more secure channel of communication, and transmitted their petitions through the hands of the commander-in-chief. In these the supreme council detailed a long list of grievances which they prayed might be redressed. They repelled with warmth the imputation of disloyalty or rebellion. If they had taken up arms, they had been compelled by a succession of injuries beyond human endurance, of injuries in their religion, in their [Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 1.] honour and estates, and in the liberties of their country. _Their_ enemies were the enemies of the king. The men who had sworn to extirpate them from their native soil were the same who sought to deprive _him_ of his crown. They therefore conjured him to summon a new parliament in Ireland, to allow them the free exercise of that religion which they had inherited from their fathers, and to confirm to Irishmen their national rights, as he had already done to his subjects of England and Scotland.[1]