THE PROBLEMS OF IRELAND
If the conditions of the new settlement in Scotland were a problem hard of
solution to Hyde, the entanglement was even greater in the case of
Ireland. He was ignorant of the real characteristics of Scotland, and
alienated from the country by his antipathy to Presbyterianism. But
Ireland was a hot-bed of faction, the intricacies of which baffled his
discernment. There was no party there which was not honeycombed with
treachery, and none to which there was not imputed, on fair grounds,
actions of flagrant cruelty and injustice to one another, and of
disloyalty to the Crown for whose favour they were now keen competitors.
No wonder that the Chancellor, in his own words, "made it his humble suit
to the King, that no part of it might ever be referred to him;" and that
even the Duke of Ormonde, whose own interests were most deeply concerned
of all in the future settlement there, "could not see any light in so much
darkness that might lead him to any beginning." In the whole of Ireland it
was difficult to find any one upon whose wholehearted loyalty the Crown
could rely. The best were those who could allege some fancied injury from
the late authority, which might atone for their own repeated acts of
opposition to the Royalist interests. The Presidents of the two provinces
of Munster and Connaught were Lord Broghill--who was created Earl of
Orrery in 1660--and Sir Charles Coote. Both had been in close confederacy
with Henry Cromwell, the son of the Protector, and both had "depended upon
him and courted his protection by their not loving one another, and being
of several complexions and constitutions, and both of a long aversion to
the King by multiplications of guilt." Under the short administration of
Ludlow, [Footnote: Ludlow, full of hope that true Republicanism was now in
sight, after Cromwell's death, had been sent over to Ireland as Commander-
in-Chief, in July, 1659, and remained there till October, during which
time he had established a regime that satisfied him, but that quickly fell
to pieces after his departure.
Edmund Ludlow's long life, from 1617 to 1692, saw many changes, in which
he was himself no inconspicuous actor, and for some part of which his
_Memoirs_ add considerably to our knowledge. He belonged to a family
of some importance, although its political sympathies alienated it from
its own class. His father, Sir Henry Ludlow, was a member of the Long
Parliament, and was referred to in one of the King's Declarations drawn by
Hyde (May 26, 1642) as having said in Parliament that the King was not fit
to reign; and he was one of those whose impeachment the King desired
(_Rebellion_, Bk. v. 280, 441). By that father's persuasion, Edmund
Ludlow joined the Parliamentary army when war broke out, and he proved
himself a zealous and doughty fighter. But he was stubborn and
quarrelsome, and fanatically attached to an abstract scheme of
Republicanism which was the abiding object of all his life. To him the
question involved was, "whether the King should govern as a god by his
will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts; or whether the
people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and under a
government derived from their own consent." It could hardly be possible to
express the dispute in terms more distant from the truth. But with all the
fanaticism of a narrow and pedantic nature he pursued this will-o'-the-
wisp to the end. He afterwards, in 1646, entered Parliament as member for
the village of Hindon, from which Hyde took his first title, of Baron Hyde
of Hindon (then returning two members), and attached himself to the party
led by Henry Marten. He was bitterly opposed to all compromise, and was
one of the most conspicuous of the regicides. He could not see how any
view but one was possible to any man who did not desire to be a slave; and
yet, in his fanciful scheme of liberty, he did not hesitate to apply
coercive measures to Parliament. The nation was to be governed by its own
consent; but its consent was to be interpreted by the will of his own
little clique. When Cromwell assumed more than monarchical power, he
fiercely opposed him, and hailed his death as offering new hopes for
Republicanism. He had long been employed in Ireland, and on this account
assumed its administration in 1659. When the Restoration took place, he
fled to Switzerland: and so active had he been, that his machinations were
dreaded for many years. In 1689 he returned for a time; but the memory of
his misdeeds as a regicide made even the Parliament under William III.
unwilling to receive him, and he was obliged again to withdraw.
He was a zealous, narrow, pedantic, but honest partisan, whose
enthusiastic belief in his own abstract ideas seemed to him to justify the
most ruthless cruelty in Ireland.] which followed the fall of Richard
Cromwell and his brother Henry, who had been Lieutenant of Ireland, they
had managed to hold their places and authority, and when Ludlow's power
crumbled it was a race between them who might first proffer their
obedience to the King, and enhance the value of that obedience by most
effective promises. They watched assiduously the action of Monk. Each was
anxious that his offers might be concealed from his rival. Each managed to
secure some informal recognition of his offers of loyalty, and presumed
himself authorized to make proposals to others on the King's behalf. They
both professed a single-hearted endeavour to settle the King's authority,
and each managed by underhand influence, and by lavish promises, to secure
some powerful support. Lord Broghill was the abler of the two, and by his
profuse devotion "quickly got himself believed." The Chancellor's scorn of
such a man is best expressed in his own words. Lord Broghill, he says--
"Having free access to the King, by mingling apologies for what he had
done with promises of what he would do, and utterly renouncing all those
principles as to the Church or State (as he might with a good conscience
do) which made men unfit for trust, made himself so acceptable to his
Majesty that he heard him willingly, because he made all things easy to be
done and compassed; and gave such assurances to the bedchamber men, to
help them to good fortunes in Ireland, which they had reason to despair of
in England, that he wanted not their testimony upon all occasions, nor
their defence and vindication when anything was reflected upon to his
disadvantage or reproach."
It was the familiar picture of which the Chancellor was already tired, of
a King whose experience had taught him that Government was a thing of
subterfuge, and of balancing between professed adherents whose loyalty was
to be valued according to the estimate which trickery could place upon it.
These new adherents vied with one another in promoting measures for
restoring the bishops, and the laws of the Episcopalian Church, of which
they had lately been bitter opponents. No wonder that the Chancellor has
more respect for such a man as Sir John Clotworthy, who did not dissemble
his dislike of bishops and their rule, even while he laboured honestly to
restore the prerogatives of the Crown.
The central difficulty in this seething mass of jealousy, corruption, and
self-seeking was the question of land settlement. A reckless system of
forfeitures and new grants, carried out under the successive supremacies
of different interests, had left an inheritance of hopeless confusion,
destined to be the lasting curse of Ireland. Twenty years of the
bitterness of civil war had ended in a rough and ready settlement under
the rule of Cromwell, where the spoils had been ruthlessly handed over to
the victors. The Irish had been evicted with a cruelty that had no thought
of justice, and those who had not been sent abroad to seek death or a
precarious livelihood in the ranks of foreign armies, had been driven into
the barren tracts of Connaught, any of them found outside those limits
being hunted down like wild beasts. To have shown any sympathy with the
Royalist cause, or even to have resisted the fierce rule of the
Cromwellian soldiery, was enough, when added to their adherence to a
tabooed religion, to mark them as beyond the pale of humanity. It was
counted even as a mercy that they were allowed to earn a scanty
subsistence in the most barren corner of the island. Strongly as he
disliked their deep-rooted attachment to the Roman Catholics' religion,
the Chancellor never deemed it an excuse for ruthless cruelty, and, in
spite of their religion, their occasional display of enthusiastic loyalty
to the Crown won for them something of his sympathy. But he is compelled
to admit the appearance of prosperity which was reared upon the military
oppression--an oppression which was rendered the more heinous in his sight
because it involved also the absolute forfeiture of their vast estates in
the case of Ormonde and other loyalists, against whom no suspicion of
Roman Catholic leanings could be alleged. Its very ruthlessness gave it an
appearance of outward settlement and peace.
"It cannot be imagined," says Clarendon, "in how easy a method, and with
what peaceable formality this whole great kingdom was taken from the just
lords and proprietors, and divided and given amongst those who had no
other right to it, but that they had power to keep it; no man having so
great shares as they who had been instruments to murder the King, and were
not likely willingly to part with it to his successor." "Ireland," he
tells us, "was the great capital, out of which all debts were paid, all
services rewarded, and all acts of bounty performed. And, what is more
wonder, all this was done and settled within little more than two years,
to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for
beauty, as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees and
fences and enclosures throughout the kingdom, as in a kingdom at peace
within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles.
And yet in all this quiet there were very few persons pleased or
contented."
It was the sort of settlement for which history has exacted, as it always
exacts in such cases, a rigid and long-drawn-out retribution.
But however specious might be the appearance of prosperity under the
recent settlement, it was beyond all question that it must be disturbed. A
Royalist Restoration could not leave in possession those whose property
was held as a reward for fighting against the Royalist cause. Certain
claims were of necessity revived, and no prescription could prevail
against them. The Church lands must be resumed, and the Episcopal domains
must be wrested from those who had gained them as the avowed enemies of
the Church. About these there could be no question. Crown lands also must
revert to the Crown, and had this source of revenue been duly husbanded,
it might have supplied a means of dealing with many claims that proved a
source of endless and insoluble difficulty. There were certain outstanding
Royalists, like Ormonde, whose loyalty was so indisputable, and whose
claims were so easy of proof, that restitution in their case was simple,
and any resistance to it would have amounted to a confession of rebellion.
Lord Inchiquin [Footnote: Murrough O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, had been
much concerned in the curbing of the Irish Rebellion, in which he acted as
the ruthless enemy of the Roman Catholics, whose religion he detested, and
upon whom he inflicted the most merciless vengeance. His ardent
Protestantism brought him to an understanding with the Parliament, and he
acted sometimes as their agent rather than that of the King. But, in 1654,
he had become as ardent a Roman Catholic, and managed to recover favour at
Court, and was restored to his property after the Restoration. He died in
some obscurity in 1674.] was able to bring himself within the same
category on somewhat more doubtful grounds. Fortunately large tracts of
domain had been retained by Cromwell, nominally as the property of the
State, and in reality to secure his own power; and out of these many of
the most indubitable claims could be met. But the harder questions were
those involving claims which were more doubtful, between claimants whose
rivalry rested upon more assailable grounds. Were all genuine Royalists to
have a right to claim what was once their property? If forfeitures were to
be redressed, were those who were forced to sell at nominal prices, or
under the pressure of innumerable fines, to have no redress? Which
Royalist support was the more valuable, that which had been steadfast from
the first, and had been crushed by Cromwell's soldiers, or that which had
atoned for rebellion in the past by opportune and efficacious support
during the last few months? Much of the land had been granted to the
"Adventurers," as those were called who had advanced money on the faith of
Parliamentary pledges to meet the expenses of crushing the Irish
Rebellion. The Adventurers could allege the security of an Act of
Parliament, to which the assent of the King had, however unwillingly, been
given. But it was well known that the most of the money so raised had been
employed, not to fight Irish rebels, but to crush English Royalists; and
those Adventurers alone had been able to retain their claims who had been
found ready to supplement their original contributions by payments
avowedly made to the war chest of the Parliament, when civil war in
England engaged all their attention. How were such grants to be dealt
with, and how was a due balance to be kept between condoning rebellion and
undermining the faith built upon an Act of Parliament? Others held their
lands in lieu of military pay long in arrear; and the fact that they had
not turned their arms against those who were contriving the Restoration,
might seem to give them a claim to generous treatment. The Irish Catholics
could adduce many instances of their own conspicuous loyalty in the past,
and it was difficult to furnish convincing proof of what might fairly be
suspected, that such loyalty was prompted more by bitter hatred of the
Presbyterians and Roundheads than by fervent devotion to their King.
The Chancellor might well be repelled from participation in this embroiled
struggle, where it was hard to find any satisfactory clue which might lead
to settlement. To satisfy all was impossible; and it was almost as
difficult to suggest any principle or set of principles which could be
uniformly applied. Every case varied; every claim was supported or opposed
by evidence, equally abundant, and equally suspect.
At first the Adventurers and the representatives of Cromwell's troopers
were most successful in establishing their claims before the commissioners
who were sent to inquire. One settlement after another was attempted. The
Roman Catholic Irish were able, a little later, to win some sympathy from
Charles, which the Chancellor seems to have partly shared. Another set of
commissioners reopened the inquiry, and suggested another settlement, in
which each faction was obliged to abate something of their claims. The
Irish claim to loyalty was refuted by proof of their readiness, in their
direst straits, to invite foreign aid, and to offer to repay it by the
betrayal of the Royalist cause, and by breaking their allegiance to the
King. One influence, and one influence alone, contributed to a solution,
and that was the earnest desire of all, even at the cost of some
diminution of their own claims, to escape from the palsying influence of
uncertainty and doubt. The Chancellor accepted the different reports of
the commissioners, and the successive projects of settlement, with a
certain despair of any scheme of abstract justice, with little hope of
even a peaceable solution, and with a not unnatural desire to rid himself
of the whole unsavoury embroglio, and to detach himself from the angry and
envenomed faction fight in Ireland. The Irish settlement was no part of
Clarendon's work, and enters only indirectly into his life. Even more
strongly than in the case of Scotland he abandoned any thought of an
incorporating Union, and was glad to see the revival of an Irish
Parliament. The task he had in hand was too hard to allow him willingly to
add to it the baffling problem of restoring peace to Ireland.
But he could find little satisfaction in contemplating the work of those
to whom the task was entrusted. The appointment of Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland had been only one of many gratifications which had been bestowed
upon Monk, when he was created Duke of Albemarle, in recognition of the
substantial benefits to the King which had resulted, when the long-drawn
disguises of his tortuous and self-interested policy had gradually
unmasked themselves. As general over the Irish army under the Cromwellian
administration, he had contrived to secure an estate in Ireland worth some
four thousand a year, and it was of the first importance to him to retain
a hold over any land-settlement in Ireland.
But Albemarle looked upon his post as Lord-Lieutenant only as an
enhancement of his own importance in the State, and as a means of assuring
that his own material interests in Ireland should be safeguarded. He had
no thought of taking upon himself the burden of Irish administration in
person, or of absenting himself from the English Court. It was necessary,
therefore, to find some one also who, as deputy, would undertake the
arduous task. "There were some few," says Hyde, "fit for the employment
who were not willing to undertake it; and many who were willing to
undertake it who were not fit." The powers of a deputy were liable to be
eclipsed, if Albemarle ever thought fit to go to Ireland; and such a post
was one which those of the highest rank scarcely cared to fill. Under
these circumstances the choice fell upon Lord Robartes, who had rendered
some good service in Cornwall, and who had the reputation of more than
respectable abilities, of careful and plodding industry, and of an
integrity which was at least above the moderate average standard of
Charles's Court. But he had defects of character which were apparent to a
judge so acute as the Chancellor, and these soon made themselves plain.
Clarendon gives expression to them with all the verve and dexterity of
analysis of which he was a past master. "Robartes," he tells us, "was a
sullen, morose man, intolerably proud, and had some humours as
inconvenient as small vices, which made him hard to live with." That he
was esteemed to have Presbyterian leanings did not make him the more
acceptable to the King, or to the Chancellor himself; but such suspicions
he was able to allay. But a long habit of associating with men inferior to
himself had crippled his intelligence, and made him suspicious and jealous
of his position. When he found himself deputy to Monk, he recalled, with a
grudge, the fact that, coming from the same south-western corner of
England, he was of superior birth, and he forgot the services which in
Monk's case more than squared the balance. In his dealings with those who
were to be associated with him in Irish administration, he showed the
jealousy of a small-minded man, and ensconced himself behind the bulwark
of reticence and inaccessibility. There could hardly have been a more
unfit instrument for that dexterous manipulation which the tangled knot of
Irish politics required than this narrow, pedantic, tactless peer. The
Chancellor soon saw that endless petty bickering would be the result of
continuing him in the post. His petty pride was offended by having to
serve as deputy to Albemarle. He was ingenious in detecting legal
difficulties, and wearied the patience of the Attorney-General by
pointless criticisms even on the wording of his patent of appointment. He
treated those Irishmen who were obliged to deal with him with a haughty
superciliousness which exasperated them to fury. The King soon found that
a morose gravity and a punctilious pride were the worst ingredients for an
Irish governor. The only question was how to get rid of one who was too
respectable to be contumeliously cast aside, but too much of a pedant to
be entrusted with a delicate administrative operation. "They who conversed
with him knew him to have many humours which were very intolerable; they
who were but little acquainted with him took him to be a man of much
knowledge, and called his morosity gravity." The Chancellor and Lord
Southampton were commissioned by the King to confer about his transfer to
another office, where his peculiarities might be less inconvenient. They
were to arrange that he should be Privy Seal, and the precedence which
that post would give him was to be a solace to his susceptible pride. The
transaction had to be managed dexterously. They found him in a suspicious
mood, but fortunately were able to persuade him that the new appointment
would enhance his dignity. He accepted the new post, and although his
touchiness and pedantry as to trifles were still a source of trouble, they
could lead to no such difficulty in the comparative obscurity of Privy
Seal, as they would have involved in Ireland. The transfer was carried out
with satisfaction to all concerned; and the fact is no small testimonial
to the tact of the Chancellor and Lord Southampton.
One source of friction was gone in getting rid of Lord Robartes. But the
tangled knot still remained, and after the restoration of the Crown and
Church domains, and the reinstatement of such notable Royalists as Ormonde
and Inchiquin, the greatest part of the problem still remained unsettled.
The fiercest fight was that between claimants of different race and of
different religion, all of whom inherited a tradition of bitter and
irreconcilable hatred. On the one hand there were the native Irish,
recommended to the King by that community, at least, in religious feeling,
which his residence abroad had instilled into Charles, although there is
no real evidence of the oft-repeated story of his having already become a
Roman Catholic. Linked to the Royalist cause by a common detestation of
Presbyterianism, the Roundheads, and the Cromwellian soldiery, and
attracting not unnatural sympathy both from Charles and from Hyde by the
oppressive cruelties which they had suffered, and by glaring instances of
injustice perpetrated upon them, they could fairly assert their early
loyalty, and could allege in excuse for subsequent defections the supreme
law of self-preservation. On the other hand, there were the soldiers and
Adventurers, fortified by the strong claim of possession; able to cover
their former rebellion by the indubitable benefit which they conferred in
abstaining from armed resistance to rebellion against Parliamentary rule,
and behind whose new-found loyalty there always lurked a veiled threat of
a fresh resort to arms which might prove dangerous. The commissioners sent
to compose matters found themselves suspected by all whose titles were
insecure, and actively opposed by those whom they dispossessed. They were
swayed by opposite factions, now to accept doubtful claims, and now to
confirm existing settlements upon insufficient evidence of right. The
examination of all claims was transferred to England; and Charles for a
time seems to have interested himself deeply, and with edifying industry,
in attempting to find a solution, and to have shown praiseworthy care in
hearing and investigating all complaints. During these hearings the
Chancellor must certainly have been an active and interested member of the
council, and could not divest himself, much as he may have desired to do
so, of participation in the decisions. Necessity drove the King and the
Chancellor himself into a course which was often repugnant to them. In
grave and well-considered words Hyde lays before us the paramount
considerations of supreme expediency which forced the hands both of his
master and of himself, and compelled them to accept a settlement which did
nothing to redress Irish wrongs, and left, as the baneful alternative to a
renewal of civil war, a legacy of bitter racial antagonism.
"It cannot be denied," he writes, "that if the King could have thought it
safe and seasonable to have reviewed all that had been done, and taken
those advantages upon former miscarriages and misapplications, as
according to the strictness of that very law, he might have done, the
whole foundation, upon which all the hopes rested of preserving that
kingdom within the obedience to the Crown of England must have been shaken
and even dissolved, with no small influence and impression upon the peace
and quiet of England, itself. For the memory of the beginning of the
rebellion in Ireland (how many other rebellions soever had followed as
bad, or worse, in respect of the consequences that attended them) was as
fresh and as odious to the whole people of England, as it had been in the
first year. And though no man durst avow so unchristian a wish as an
extirpation of them (which they would have been very well contented with)
yet no man dissembled his opinion that it was the only security the
English could have in that kingdom, that the Irish should be kept so low,
that they should have no power to hurt them." [Footnote: _Life_, ii. 44.]
These words expressing the deliberate opinion of Hyde, upon a fateful
crisis in history, are pregnant with tragedy. The memory of a great wrong
never can be obliterated; but dire necessity may leave no alternative but
to shape political action on the basis of that legacy from civil strife.
England and Scotland had redeemed their rebellion.
"But," thus writes Hyde, "the miserable Irish alone had no part in
contributing to his Majesty's happiness; nor had God suffered them to be
the least instruments in bringing his good pleasure to pass, or to give
any testimony of their repentance for the wickedness they had wrought or
of their resolution to be better subjects for the future; so that they
seemed as a people left out by Providence, and exempted from any benefit
from that blessed conjunction in his Majesty's restitution. And this
disadvantage was improved towards them by their frequent manifestation of
an inveterate animosity against the English nation and the English
Government, which again was returned to them in an irreconcilable jealousy
of all the English towards them." [Footnote: _Life_, ii. 47.]
Some settlement must be reached--that it should be good or bad was of less
importance than that it should be fixed. Commissioners were set to work.
But either they were too closely interested themselves in the decisions to
be reached, or, having no personal interest, they were slack in their
attendance. Those on the spot were too apt to be partial; others were sent
from England, and their methods were rough and ready. The available land
was squandered in lavish grants to courtiers, and amongst others Lady
Castlemaine managed to secure an ample share. It was in vain that the
Chancellor declined to pass such grants; the recipients found means to get
them passed by the Courts in Ireland.
The best that could be made of a bad business was to hurry on some
decision, before the means of even partially satisfying the most urgent
claims were dissipated by the King's reckless prodigality.
Meanwhile the administration of Ireland, after the transference of Lord
Robartes, was entrusted to three Lords Justices--Sir Maurice Eustace, the
Irish Chancellor; Lord Broghill (created Lord Orrery); and Sir Charles
Coote, created Earl of Montrath. The first was a worn-out old man. The
second was a dexterous manager, who knew how to captivate friends and how
to outwit enemies; the third was "proud, dull, and very avaricious." Both
Orrery and Montrath had their own ends to serve, and were bitter enemies;
and when Montrath died, as Hyde expresses it, "they who took the most
dispassioned survey of all that had been done, and of what remained to be
done, did conclude that nothing could reasonably produce a settlement, but
the deputing one single person to exercise that government." The Duke of
Albemarle had now reaped all the advantage that he could hope for from his
post of titular Lord-Lieutenant. His own estate had been secured, and as
an Irish landlord he desired a firm administration. He was not prepared to
undertake the task himself, and made his suit to the King that the Duke of
Ormonde should be sent in his place. To the mind of the King, this seemed
to offer the best prospect of a settlement, and he and Albemarle together
persuaded Ormonde to accept the charge before the Chancellor was
consulted. To Hyde it seemed a plan fraught with dangers and difficulties
on every side. In such a case, he was, as he was himself aware, too much
inclined to express his views with somewhat uncourtly directness. When the
King asked for his opinion of Ormonde's appointment, he could find no more
diplomatic answer than that "the King would do very ill in sending him,
and the Duke would do much worse if he desired to go." Charles took the
easiest course for one who wishes to push aside unpalatable advice: "the
matter was decided, and there was nothing for it but to prepare
instructions." Hyde was not to be turned aside; Ormonde, he urged, was
needful to the King in London, and would be useless in Ireland. Hyde did
not even take the trouble to make his objections palatable to Ormonde. The
Duke, he said, had since his return from exile led a life of ease and
indulgence, and was now unfit for the laborious task of Irish
administration. With still less of courtier-like complaisance, Hyde urged
that, however good the appointment might have been "when the Duke was full
of reputation, and the King was more feared and reverenced than presumed
upon," it was otherwise now when the Duke had withdrawn from business and
"let himself fall to familiarities with all degrees of men," and when the
King had been exposed to all manner of importunities, had received all
men's addresses and made promises without deliberation, had become so
desirous to satisfy all men that he was irresolute in all things. He must
first fix his own resolutions, and then only could the Lord Lieutenant do
him service, or save him from scorn and affronts. [Footnote: _Life_,
ii. 55.]
However sound the advice, Hyde's fashion of expressing it could scarcely
be called conciliatory; and even the easy humour of the King must have
found it hard to brook such plain speaking from his Minister. It was
fortunate, however, that Charles's sense of humour was sufficient to save
his vanity from suffering under contradiction, except when his own
personal ease was at stake. He might resent reflections on his behaviour
to a mistress, but his pride was not wounded by being told that his
statecraft was folly; it took at least a long course of such plain-
speaking from his trusted Minister before his patience was exhausted.
Ormonde, too, received from Hyde advice that was quite as candid.
"He would repent his rash resolution; he would not influence Irish affairs
in Dublin as much as he could have done in London; his absence would give
his enemies the opportunity of slander that they desired; he and the King
suffered from the same infirmity in equal degree--'an unwillingness to
deny any man what they could not but see was impossible to grant, and a
desire to please everybody, which whosoever affected should please
nobody.'"
Hyde's friends, as well as his master, had need to practise an almost
stoical imperturbability of temper.
It gives us a key to Hyde's attitude towards Irish affairs that he breaks
the chronological order of his narrative to tell the story to the end. It
was a subject that vexed and wearied him, and in regard to which he was
conscious only of work incompletely done; of business from which he vainly
strove to hold aloof, and of a huddled settlement from which his soul
revolted. He hurries on to the end of the whole transaction, which at last
deprived him of his most trusted ally and his most cherished friend.
Ireland stole away from him Ormonde, whose support had done so much to
uphold him in the dangerous currents of the Restoration. It was four years
and a half after the Restoration that, in the autumn of 1664, Ormonde
crossed to Ireland. The clouds were already gathering about the
Chancellor's course, and the loss of his closest friend increased the
gloom, and brought the threatening dangers nearer.
It was after Ormonde's entry upon the Lieutenancy that the third and final
settlement of the Land Commissioners was arrived at. The latest
Commissioners had allowed themselves to be swayed powerfully by the Irish
interest, and had raised, in the same proportion, the antipathy of the
English. Very weariness forced the combatants at length to a compromise.
The soldiers and Adventurers consented to abate one-fourth of their
claims; with this the most urgent of the Irish claims were appeased, and
the baneful unrest was at last ended.
Clarendon closes the sorry story of the Irish settlement by a disclaimer
of any share in Irish affairs, further than that which fell to him as a
member of the inner Council. Perhaps his influence was greater than he is
ready to admit; but Ireland certainly received no larger share of his
attention than necessity forced upon him. He is careful to give us a
succinct account of the one incident which involved him, almost against
his will, in some sort of personal interest in Irish property.
In the early days of the Restoration, when the question as to the disputed
settlements was only at its first stage, overtures had been made to Hyde,
which it was fancied might earn from him some mercenary favour for those
who might be the intermediaries, It was proposed that a special grant of
land might be made to him, or that a sale might be effected in his favour
on nominal terms, which would make it almost equal to a free gift. It was
consistent with all his action in such matters that these overtures met
with a peremptory refusal from Hyde. If he was to be of use in effecting a
settlement, he must have no title of his own to bias his inclinations.
Rather later, but when negotiations were still in their earlier stages,
certain sums raised upon Irish land were assigned for the King's use, "to
be disposed of to those who had served him faithfully, and suffered in so
doing." The grants were passed as a matter of official routine, without
the knowledge of the Chancellor. About two years later, Orrery, who was an
adept in the art of posing as the chosen instrument of convenient favours,
wrote to the Chancellor informing him that certain sums were standing at
his credit, and inquiring to whom they should be paid. Hyde had no doubt
that a mistake had been committed, and asked Ormonde, as Lord Lieutenant,
to inform him what the announcement meant. Orrery wrote again more
explicitly, stating that £12,600 had been paid in to his use, and that
another sum of the same amount would be received in the course of six
months. "To whom," he asked again, "was the money to be paid?"
It was only after this second letter that the Lord Lieutenant's
explanation arrived. The notification had its source, so it appeared, from
Lord Orrery himself, who had urged upon Ormonde that a portion of the
royal grant should be assigned to Hyde. The suggestion commended itself
both to Ormonde and the King, and by the special instruction of the King,
who knew Hyde's scruples and was resolved to overcome them, the royal
signature was given through Hyde's good friend, Secretary Nicholas, and
all knowledge of the matter was carefully kept from the intended
recipient. Nicholas had now to account for it to Hyde, and he could only
plead the strong injunction of secrecy that had been laid upon him by the
King. The plot was an instance, it may be, of mistaken and ill-judged
kindness; but not the strictest political purist of the day could have
arraigned the grant, and it would have been churlish for an old and
impoverished servant to have refused so gracious a favour from the King,
few of whose lavish grants had so much justification as this. It was
granted with delicacy, and was accepted with gratitude, as cementing that
bond of loyal affection which long years of faithful service had created.
At this juncture, as it happened, Bulstrode Whitelocke and Lord Lovelace
[Footnote: John, Lord Lovelace (1616-1670) was an ardent Royalist, and one
of those Peers who signed the Declaration at Oxford on behalf of the King
in 1642. Clarendon (_Hist. of Rebellion_, vii. 174) speaks of him as
one "of whose good affections to his service the King had always
assurance."] were involved in a dispute about some land in Wiltshire which
Whitelocke had bought when his own former party was in the ascendant, and
when Lovelace was hard pressed for money. The balance had now shifted, and
Lovelace, as the price of giving confirmation to Whitelocke's title, was
pressing for a sum more adequate to the value than that paid in
Whitelocke's day of triumph, when the dominant purchaser could coerce the
unwilling seller. It was expedient to end a dispute between two men who
were now both in the interest of the King, and Hyde thought that the most
convenient way of doing so was that he should become the purchaser of the
land, which adjoined his own property in Wiltshire. Relying on the Irish
windfall, he consented to do so, and thus became bound for a sum largely
in excess of anything he received. Instead of a double payment of £12,600,
he never received more than £6000 of the first instalment. Orrery's
promises were more lavish than his performances; and the only result of
Charles's kindly thought was to involve Hyde in a heavy debt and to give
food for baseless suspicions of his venality. Personally, therefore, he
had good ground to fear the gifts that came from Ireland. That country
remained an unhappy battle-ground of racial and religious feud; its
settlement had galled him by its many features of injustice; he saw its
resources crippled by lavish grants to a host of unworthy recipients which
he was powerless to prevent, and it had robbed him of that support which
he might have had from his most faithful friend, the Duke of Ormonde. It
is no wonder that he turns in disgust from the review of Irish affairs
which had in it so little that could satisfy his conscience or his sense
of political wisdom.