Dr. Birch has very lucidly narrated the particulars. The Popish Archbishop of Tuam, President of Connaught, and one of the Supreme Council at Kilkenny, going into Ulster to visit his diocese, and put into execution an order for arrears of his Bishopric, granted to him by that Council, met with a body of Irish troops marching to besiege Sligo, and joined with them. When they came near that town, the garrison made a sally on the 17th of October, charged the troops, utterly routed them, killing the Archbishop of Tuam in the encounter; among whose baggage was found an authentic copy, attested and signed by several bishops, of the treaty concluded with them by the Earl of Glamorgan; together with an order from the Supreme Council for the arrears of his Archbishopric; a bull of the Pope; and several letters between the Archbishop and his agents at Rome, Paris, and other places.[E] The result of these disclosures was, that when the Council was assembled at Dublin on the 26th of December, 1645, the Lord Digby came to the board, and charging the Earl with suspicion of high treason, moved that his person might be secured. This done, he proceeded to substantiate the charge on most irrefragable evidence; wherefore the Lord Lieutenant and Council gave a warrant for the commitment of the Earl to the custody of the Constable of Dublin Castle, in condition of a close prisoner.[13] We have uninterruptedly, thus far, followed Lord Herbert, seen him created Earl of Glamorgan, and eventually engaged by Charles the First in an extraordinary and extra-official capacity in Ireland; where he was delegated by the King to act in certain matters intended to promote the royal cause. So secret and so unheard of was this mysterious affair, that it is without a parallel in history. A Protestant monarch and a Roman Catholic nobleman are the sole actors in this strange drama; a monarch whose crown was tottering to its fall consequent on successive losses, opposed to surprising successes continually accruing to his enemies; for the battle fields of Marston Moor and of Naseby were alone sufficiently disheartening to have paralysed even a stouter heart; yet he finds in addition that, to the surrender of Bristol, he may soon have to add that of the strong city of Chester. His immediate necessities, added to the increasing expenses of the long continued war, were rapidly impoverishing not only his nobles but the country. While his own and the public distress thus gradually lessened every prospect of success, one last ray of hope seemed to present itself to the unhappy monarch. There was still a chance of succour from Ireland, the acceptance of which, however, was fraught with many difficulties. The loyalty of the Irish, it was quite evident, could only be ensured by nothing short of conciliatory measures of a more than ordinary nature, especially if desired to bring over to his service ten thousand of his Irish subjects.