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Ireland was formally quiet, but it was not detached from the wider Nine Years’ War between William III’s coalition and Louis XIV’s France. The French court still sheltered James II and Jacobite exiles, while the possibility of a French-backed restoration remained a serious concern for Williamite governments. In February 1696, a plot in England to assassinate William III intensified official alarm across his kingdoms. On 4 March, the Irish administration issued a proclamation offering £1,000 for the apprehension of James FitzJames, duke of Berwick, James II’s illegitimate son, and his alleged associates. Berwick was a prominent Jacobite commander in French service. The proclamation did not mean that he had landed in Ireland; rather, it shows Dublin Castle treating Irish security as inseparable from the international struggle against France and the Stuart cause.
Ireland’s defenders were divided by religion, local interest, military rivalry and competing ideas of loyalty. The coalition associated with James Butler, marquess of Ormond, joined Irish Catholic Confederates to Protestant royalists in the name of Charles II. Yet its unity had always been precarious. In April, Cromwell secured an agreement with many Protestant royalist forces in Munster and Leinster. They undertook not to fight for the Commonwealth’s enemies; in return, Cromwell promised security for their lives and property. This mattered militarily because it removed much of the Protestant armed support on which Ormond’s alliance depended. It also sharpened the conflict’s confessional edge: those most determined to continue organised resistance were increasingly Irish Catholics.
