Peter Valesius Walsh - Biography

Biography

In 1646 Walsh went to Kilkenny, then in the hands of the rebel "confederate Catholics," and, in opposition to the papal nuncio Rinuccini, urged, and in 1649 helped to secure, peace with the viceroy Ormonde on behalf of King Charles I. Walsh was arrested by the militant Irish Confederate Catholic faction in 1646, along with other "peace party" advocates like Richard Bellings in 1646, after the Treaty they had negotiated with Ormonde and the English Royalists was rejected in the Confederate General Assembly. Those opposed to the Treaty included militant Catholic clergy led by the Papal Nuncio Rinuccini) who wanted Roman Catholicism established as the state religion in Ireland and Irish lords, such as Owen Roe O'Neill, who wanted to recover the lands and power their families had lost after the Plantations of Ireland. Walsh returned to favour in 1649, when military defeat made the Confederates accept a new Peace Treaty with Ormonde and Charles I. However, the new Royalist/Confederate alliance was crushed after Cromwell's conquest of Ireland in 1649-53. All Catholic clergy captured by the Cromwellians were executed and Walsh, in danger of death, fled Ireland. He subsequently lived obscurely in London and abroad.

Read more about this topic:  Peter Valesius Walsh

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)