[Sidenote: The dwindling Assembly at Kilkenny.]
[Sidenote: The nuncio's party outnumbered]
The General Assembly of the Confederates met at Kilkenny on November 12, the day before the battle of Knocknanuss. In the previous year there had been seventy-three members to represent Ulster, and these had given Rinuccini his majority. This time, 'from poverty or some other cause,' only nine appeared, who claimed to hold proxies for the whole number. This claim was disallowed, and Munster and Connaught, being under-represented owing to the difficulties of travel, the powers lay with 'the mob of Leinster, many of them the minions of Muskerry.' On the very day of meeting, apparently, the Assembly proceeded to pass what was in effect a new constitution. This document, extending to fifteen printed pages, and no doubt carefully prepared beforehand, begins by setting forth the ruin wrought by military violence. To repress this for the future a new Supreme Council was appointed, consisting of twelve from each province; but the real power was given to a committee of twelve 'residents,' three for each province, chosen out of the larger number. Bellings was one of the twelve, only two of whom were bishops; of these, Edmund O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, was a pronounced Ormondist; while Emer Macmahon of Clogher was by no means averse to treating with the Lord Lieutenant. When seven, being an absolute majority of the committee, came to any decision, the dissidents were to sign as if they had been assenting parties. Elaborate orders were made for the repression of malefactors, for raising money, and for the arming and training of a militia consisting of all men between sixteen and sixty, 'forcing such as are able to provide for themselves swords and muskets, and the rest pikes and skeyns.' It was recited that in all former assemblies many of the members had been 'serving-men and men uninterested in the kingdom,' and ordered that only estated gentlemen should be eligible in future. Finally, orders were given for the regulation of the 'creaghts' or nomad herdsmen of Ulster, who had followed Owen Roe O'Neill into the other three provinces and settled upon them like locusts, turning the cultivated country into a desert.[119]