the Irish Roman catholics, and exhorted him to maintain the natural supporters of royalty against presbyterians, anabaptists, quakers, independents, and fifth-monarchy men. This letter was published after a time, and drew forth a witty and vigorous but intemperate answer from Orrery, who said Irish royalism was for the pope and not for the king. In 1662 Orrery's pamphlet, ‘Irish Colours Displayed,’ was answered by Walsh in ‘Irish Colours Folded.’ Walsh does not deny the massacre of 1641, but objects to confounding the innocent with the guilty, and to the enormous exaggeration in the number of victims. He lays great stress here, as in all his writings, on the difference between Celts and Anglo-Irish.
In the winter of 1660 Walsh, writing from London, urged the clergy of his church in Ireland to make a loyal address to the king, and so efface the bad impression left by their share in the rebellion of 1641, and by their opposition to Ormonde during the civil war. There were then but three Roman catholic bishops in Ireland—Edmund O'Reilly [q. v.], the primate; Anthony MacGeohegan of Meath, a Franciscan, and one of Walsh's strongest opponents; and Swiney of Kilmore, who was bedridden and inaccessible. O'Reilly drew up a procuration or power of attorney of the amplest kind for Walsh, as their agent-general. He was to plead the cause of his church with the king, and at least to procure the terms agreed on in 1648 between Ormonde and the confederates, but which a clerical majority had rejected and denounced. This instrument, dated 1 Jan. 1660–1, was signed by MacGeohegan and by several representative seculars and regulars. The bishops of Dromore and Ardagh subscribed it at sight, and even Nicholas French [q. v.], bishop of Ferns, authorised a commissary to sign for him. The paper was at once transmitted to Walsh, who showed it to Ormonde, and the latter blamed him for undertaking the business of men who had been so hostile to the royal authority in Ireland. Yet Walsh had his help in mitigating the extreme oppression which Roman catholic priests in Ireland had lately suffered. About 120 were in prison, who, Walsh says, were all released by his means, without distinction of party. He even refused to accept terms for the anti-nuncionists only. On 4 Nov. 1661 Ormonde became lord-lieutenant, and a little later Walsh presented to him the loyal remonstrance drawn up by Richard Bellings [q. v.] on behalf of a few priests and gentlemen who met in Dublin. Ormonde said that it might be useful, though not fully satisfactory, but that without signatures it was waste-paper. Walsh pointed out the difficulties of his coreligionists, especially of those in orders, who dared not hold even secret meetings. About thirty were got together in London, of whom four or five excused themselves on grounds of expediency only; but Oliver Darcy, bishop of Dromore, and twenty-three others, of whom fifteen were Franciscans, subscribed the remonstrance then and there. Walsh signed last as procurator of all the Irish clergy, but without claiming special authority in the case. The total number of subscribers was afterwards stated by Walsh to have been seventy clergymen, of whom fifty-four were regulars and chiefly Franciscans, and 164 laymen (Four Letters, p. 3). Some Irish bishops abroad assented, but ultramontane influences were soon at work. ‘We openly disclaim and renounce all foreign power, be it either papal or princely, spiritual or temporal,’ interfering with the remonstrants' allegiance, were not words likely to pass unchallenged. Much of the opposition to the remonstrance turned upon its similitude to James I's oath of allegiance, which had received papal condemnation.
The Irish Dominicans, perhaps influenced by their old rivalry with the Franciscans, adopted a much weaker declaration of their own. The jesuits, though they had generally opposed Rinuccini, also objected. Letters describing Walsh's remonstrance as ‘most pernicious and temerarious’ were received from the internuncio at Brussels and from Francesco Barberini, cardinal protector of the Franciscans at Rome (Remonstrance, pp. 52, 514). In the summer of 1662 Walsh published ‘The more ample Account’ of the remonstrance, with a dedication to the Roman catholic hierarchy of Great Britain and Ireland. Caron and Philip Roche, under commission from Nicholas a Sancta Cruce, provincial of the English Franciscans, certified that the treatise was theologically sound, containing nothing ‘against the revealed doctrine of catholic faith’ or against Christian life, but making much for both.
Walsh went to Ireland in August 1662, after Ormonde had been installed as viceroy. He lived in Dublin in Kennedy's Court, near Christchurch, and his enemy, Peter Talbot [q. v.], accused him of dressing more gaily than became a friar, and of singing and dancing (Gilbert, Hist. of Dublin, i. 196). He made but little progress with the remonstrance, for the theological faculty at Louvain was against him, and the clergy living abroad were loth to give offence at Rome. They
