THE GRACES
THE reign of James the First had been, if we except one petty and
insignificant outbreak in Ulster, a period of tranquillity for Ireland;
and, at the accession of his son, the prospects of the country might
have seemed to a superficial observer more promising than they had yet
been. But, in fact, the ostensibly pacific and constitutional measures
of James had produced results more disastrous, and aroused animosities
more enduring than even the exterminating policy of his predecessor.
Henry Carey, Lord Falkland, who three years earlier had succeeded
Grandison as Lord Deputy, was at this time confronted with two problems
which have since taxed to the uttermost the abilities of many wiser and
more resolute men than he. During the preceding reign the laws which
prohibited the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion had been fitfully
and spasmodically enforced. Minorities have often been dragooned into
conformity; but it is not easy by such means to change the religion of
an entire nation; and the dread of a rebellion in Ireland, no less than
the necessity of maintaining friendly relations with foreign Catholic
powers, repeatedly led the English Government to place a curb upon the
frantic zeal of the ascendancy party at Dublin. The latter consideration
had recently derived additional force from the marriage of Charles, then
Prince of Wales, to a Catholic princess; and, on the accession of the
young king, the co-religionists of his consort began, not unnaturally,
to hope for something more than the precarious and extra-legal
toleration which was all that they had hitherto enjoyed. On the other
hand, the fact that the king was disposed to treat the Catholics with
leniency was in itself enough to inflame the hostility of the Puritan
party, which comprised the majority of the English middle class and had
already obtained the ascendancy in at least the Lower House of
Parliament. To satisfy the wishes of the Irish without raising a storm
in England was a task beyond the abilities of either Falkland or his
master.
A still more serious source of discontent was to be found in the general
sense of insecurity which pervaded the Irish gentry. During the last
years of James’s reign, the precedent which had been set in Ulster had
been followed on a smaller scale in Leitrim, Longford, Wexford, and
King’s County. All those counties, or parts of them, had, at some time
since the Norman invasion, been occupied by English colonists, who had
afterwards been driven out by the original inhabitants. During many
generations the latter had remained in undisturbed possession; but few
of them had taken the trouble to obtain title-deeds which would be valid
by English law—a science of whose mysteries they were profoundly
ignorant. If in a few instances such documents had once existed, they
had generally been lost or destroyed during the long period of anarchy
and civil war. It was now decided that these gentlemen, being unable to
produce satisfactory title-deeds, were intruders upon the estates of the
Anglo-Norman adventurers who had despoiled their ancestors some
centuries before; and, when the heirs of the latter were not
forthcoming, the lands, in default of any other claimant, were adjudged
to have lapsed to the Crown.[56]
The alarm and indignation to which these proceedings naturally gave rise
were especially great in the western province. During the last three
reigns a series of confiscations had been carried out in Leinster,
Munster and Ulster, but the Connaught landowners had hitherto escaped
spoliation, and they had very lately obtained for their estates a
security which, it might have been thought, would have proved a barrier
against the rapacity of the most unscrupulous government. In 1585 Sir
John Perrott, then Lord Deputy, had effected an arrangement, known as
the “Composition of Connaught,” by which the gentlemen of that province
were secured in the possession of their estates; but, owing probably to
the troubles which not long afterwards broke out in Ulster, the
formalities necessary in order to give validity to this transaction were
never carried out. In the thirteenth year of his reign, however, James
consented, in consideration of a bribe of £3,000, to issue a commission
remedying this defect. The Irish gentry loyally performed their part of
the agreement; but, owing to some negligence, or, more probably, some
trickery on the part of the officials of the Court of Chancery, the
patents were incorrectly enrolled, and were afterwards pronounced by
interested and unscrupulous lawyers to be null and void. Shortly before
the death of James it began to be rumoured that the Government intended
to avail themselves of this technical irregularity in order to establish
a Plantation in Connaught on the model of the Plantation of Ulster. The
rumour, as might have been expected, excited the most painful
apprehensions in Ireland; but no actual steps had been taken towards the
Plantation when the king died.[57]
Charles was not altogether indisposed to treat his Irish subjects with
fairness; but his strongest desire, then as always, was to secure a
revenue which would render him independent of the English Parliament.
The Irish Catholics, on their side, were willing enough to contribute to
the relief of the king’s necessities, if by so doing they might obtain
toleration for their religion and security for their estates. The first
act of the young sovereign was admirably calculated to attract the
popular goodwill. By a statute of the second year of Elizabeth, all
mayors, sheriffs, and other municipal officers were required to take the
Oath of Supremacy; but, owing to the scarcity of Protestants, the law,
except in Ulster, had generally been a dead letter. In 1618, however,
Sir Oliver St. John had procured the forfeiture of the charter of
Waterford—a city which had persistently elected recusant
magistrates.[58] As an earnest of the royal favour this charter was now
restored, and, to the scandal of zealous Protestants, a Roman Catholic
mayor was once more installed in office.[59]
A few days later, Falkland, acting under instructions received from
England, convened an assembly of the Irish nobility and gentry to
consider the measures to be taken to relieve the financial
embarrassments of the Government, and to hear the concessions which the
king was willing to make in return for their assistance.[60] But an
unexpected obstacle intervened. Justly conceiving that the proposed
concessions would put an end to the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by their
sect, the Protestant prelates, with Archbishop Usher at their head, drew
up and published a “Judgment concerning toleration in religion,” which
may be commended to the attention of those pious persons who are
accustomed to declaim against the bigotry of the Vatican.
“The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous; their
faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their Church, in respect of
both, apostatical. To give them, therefore, a toleration, or to consent
that they may freely exercise their religion and profess their faith and
doctrine is a grievous sin, and that in two respects. For,
“First. It is to make ourselves accessory, not only to their
superstitious idolatries and heresies, and, in a word, to all the
abominations of Popery, but also, which is a consequent of the former,
to the perdition of the seduced people which perish in the deluge of the
Catholic apostacy. Secondly. To grant them a toleration in respect of
any money to be given, or contribution to be made by them, is to set
religion to sale, and with it the souls of the people whom Christ our
Saviour hath redeemed with His Most Precious Blood. And as it is a great
sin, so it is also a matter of most dangerous consequence, the
consideration whereof we commit to the wise and judicious, beseeching
the God of truth to make them who are in authority zealous of God’s
glory, and of the advancement of true religion: zealous, resolute and
courageous against all Popery, superstition, and idolatry. Amen.”[61]
A little later Downham, Bishop of Derry, preaching before the Lord
Deputy, denounced toleration in still more unmeasured terms. These
outbursts of episcopal intolerance aroused the sympathy of the English
House of Commons, who passed a resolution: “That the Popish religion is
publicly professed in every part of Ireland, and that monasteries and
nunneries are there newly erected and replenished with votaries of both
sexes, which will be of evil consequence unless seasonably
repressed.”[62]
The opposition of the Protestant bishops in Ireland and of their English
sympathisers retarded for a considerable time the progress of the
negotiations between the Government and the recusants; but in the spring
of 1628 the agents of the latter had a personal interview with Charles
at Whitehall, when an agreement was arrived at which, it was hoped,
would prove satisfactory to all parties. In one important particular the
concessions which were now promised were less liberal than those which
in the preceding year the Catholics had been led to expect. Charles had
then been willing to consent to the repeal of the Act which imposed a
fine of one shilling on persons absent from the Protestant parish
churches on Sundays. Out of deference, probably, to the protest of the
episcopate, this concession was now withdrawn. But, in spite of this
omission, “the Graces,” as they were called, were well calculated to
redress the most serious grievances of the Irish. A new oath of a purely
civil character was substituted for the Oath of Supremacy, and recusants
were thus enabled to sue their liveries and to practise at the bar
without fear of molestation. An undisturbed occupancy of sixty years was
to afford a prescriptive title against all older claims of the Crown.
The deficiencies in the titles of the Connaught landowners were to be
supplied by an Act of the Parliament which, it was expected, would be
shortly summoned. Other grievances of a more general kind, which
affected Protestants no less than Catholics, were also remedied. In
return for these concessions the Irish agents undertook to raise a
“voluntary contribution” of £120,000, to be paid in quarterly
instalments ranging over three years.[63]
It was arranged that the Irish Parliament should meet in November. The
writs were issued, and some, at least, of the elections had actually
taken place, when the English Council discovered that by summoning a
Parliament without having first transmitted to England a statement of
the Bills which it would have to consider, the Lord Deputy had been
guilty of a technical violation of Poynings’ Act. The writs were
accordingly cancelled, and the holding of the Parliament indefinitely
postponed.[64] In spite of this disappointment the Irish, who had not
yet fathomed the duplicity of their sovereign, paid the first
instalments of the contribution with punctuality and were rewarded with
a less rigorous execution of the penal statutes.
Falkland did not long retain office after this humiliating rebuff. The
embarrassments which Charles anticipated from the promise of concessions
which he was already anxious to evade made him eager to entrust the
government of Ireland to stronger and more resolute hands, and a popular
pretext was soon found for the recall of the obnoxious Deputy. During
the reign of James, Falkland, urged on by Sir William Parsons,
afterwards the notorious Lord Justice, had attempted to despoil a sept
named O’Byrne by the kind of legal jugglery which was then fashionable,
but had met with unexpected opposition from the English Government,
which was beginning to entertain doubts of the merits of the Plantation
system. A few years later he discovered, or professed to have
discovered, a formidable conspiracy in which the O’Byrnes were involved.
Phelim O’Byrne, the head of the sept, and his six sons were arrested,
tried by a jury composed partly of their hereditary enemies, and partly
of persons who coveted their estates, convicted and imprisoned, and
their lands divided among English adventurers. In this transaction
Falkland had received the support of a majority of the council with Lord
Cork at their head, but had been opposed by a minority, among whom the
Chancellor, Lord Loftus of Ely, and Sir Francis Annesley, afterwards
Lord Mountnorris, were the most conspicuous. Neither Loftus nor
Mountnorris were men of unblemished character, and their opposition to
the Lord Deputy was probably due at least as much to personal jealousy
as to any disinterested sympathy with his victims; but to whatever
motives it is to be ascribed, there can be no doubt that their conduct
was in this instance fully justified. In the autumn of 1628 these
gentlemen induced Charles to institute an inquiry into the means by
which the evidence against the O’Byrnes had been obtained. Falkland
protested, but his protests were disregarded. It soon transpired that
his Excellency had had good reason to desire concealment. The original
accusers of the O’Byrnes turned out to have been criminals under
sentence of death who had been released on undertaking to swear as the
Lord Deputy desired. More respectable witnesses deposed that they had
been compelled by torture to corroborate the evidence thus obtained. In
consequence of this inquiry the O’Byrnes were released, but their lands
were not restored to them.[65]
This exposure effectually destroyed what little reputation Falkland had
left. In January, 1629, it was decided to recall him; but it was not
until the following August that he surrendered the sword, having a few
months previously issued a proclamation declaring that “the late
intermission of legal proceedings against Popish pretended or titulary
archbishops, bishops, abbots, deans, vicars-general, Jesuits, friars and
others of that sort, that derive their pretended authority and orders
from the see of Rome, hath bred such an extraordinary intolerance and
presumption in them as that they have dared here of late not only to
assemble themselves in public places to celebrate their superstitious
services in all parts of this kingdom, but also have erected houses and
buildings called public oratories, colleges, mass-houses, and convents
of friars, monks and nuns in the eye and open view of the State, and, by
colour of teaching and keeping schools in their pretended monasteries
and colleges, do train up the youth of this kingdom in their
superstitious religion, to the great degradation and contempt of his
Majesty’s regal power and authority”; and commanding them in his
Majesty’s name thenceforth to “forbear to preach, teach, or celebrate
their service in any church, chapel, or other public oratory or place,
or to teach any school in any place or places whatsoever within this
kingdom.”[66]
After the dismissal of Falkland the administration of Irish affairs was
entrusted to Lord Chancellor Loftus and to the Earl of Cork as Lords
Justices. Adam Loftus, grandson and namesake of the first Protestant
Archbishop of Dublin, brought to his high office an inherited instinct
for peculation, which he transmitted in undiminished splendour to his
descendants.[67] His colleague was in every respect a more remarkable
man. Born at Canterbury in 1566 Richard Boyle came to Ireland at an
early age with twenty-seven pounds in his pocket; obtained, by means of
letters of introduction which were afterwards discovered to have been
forged, one of those subordinate posts in the government of which the
direct emoluments were small, but which afforded boundless opportunities
for illegitimate gain; and, in the confiscations which followed the
Desmond war, acquired one of the largest estates in Munster. Like most
of the Munster planters he was for a while ruined by Tyrone’s rebellion,
but more fortunate than many better men, eventually regained more than
he had lost. In 1598 he was examined before the English Privy Council on
a charge of holding treasonable correspondence with Spain; but, though
his defence can scarcely be regarded as convincing, he succeeded, with
his customary good fortune, not merely in outwitting his accusers but in
recommending himself to the favour of his sovereign. During the reign of
James, Boyle throve rapidly, and not only rose to some of the highest
places in the State but built up a colossal fortune, which his family
motto ascribed to the providence of God, but which, in the general
estimation of his contemporaries, might be traced to a very different
source. His uniform severity towards the Catholics has won for him from
a certain school of historians the praise of exemplary piety; but an
impartial student of his political career will probably pronounce him an
unscrupulous adventurer, whose zeal against Popery sprang in large
measure from a desire to enrich himself at the expense of the
Papists.[68]
The Lord Chancellor was not less fanatical than his colleague; but, in
spite of the identity of their political opinions, the personal feud
between the two Lords Justices was so bitter that the king was obliged
to send a special agent from England to compose it.[69] The
reconciliation thus effected was superficial, but the two noblemen
cordially co-operated in repressive measures against the recusants. An
incident which took place not long afterwards throws a curious light on
the temper of the governing faction and the precarious position of the
Catholics. In the autumn of 1629, according to a contemporary Protestant
writer, “the Romish Catholics began to rant it in Ireland, and to
exercise their fancies called religion so publicly as if they had gained
a toleration. For, whilst the Lords Justices were at church in Dublin on
St. Stephen’s day, they were celebrating Mass, which the Lords Justices
taking notice of, they sent the Archbishop of Dublin, the mayor,
sheriffs and recorder of the town to apprehend them, which they did,
taking away the crucifixes, chalices and paraments of the altar, the
soldiers hewing down the image of St. Francis. The priests and friars
were delivered into the hands of the pursuivants, at whom the people
threw stones and rescued them. The Lords Justices, informed of this,
sent a guard and delivered them, and clapt eight Popish aldermen by the
heels for not attending their mayor. Upon the account of this
presumption fifteen houses, by direction from the Lords of the Council
here, were seized to the King’s use, and the friars and priests so
persecuted as two hanged themselves in their own defence.”[70] The
persecution, which had begun in the capital, was rapidly extended
throughout the country. During the next three years numerous monasteries
and convents were dissolved. In the summer of 1630, a university which
the Catholics, who were excluded from Trinity College by the Oath of
Supremacy, had recently erected for their own use, was suppressed, and
its revenues transferred to its Protestant rival. Two years later a
shrine of St. Patrick in Lough Derg, which was much frequented by
pilgrims, and was regarded by the people with a veneration no less
national than religious, was, by order of the Lords Justices, dug up and
destroyed.[71]
These oppressive proceedings were, no doubt, acceptable to the English
Council; but in other respects the administration of the Lords Justices
could not be considered satisfactory. A Parliament was again promised,
and again postponed. By the beginning of 1632 the revenue showed a
deficit, the pay of the troops was in arrear, the coast was exposed to
the attacks of Moorish pirates, and the public buildings—arsenals,
churches, even Dublin Castle itself—were everywhere in decay. The
voluntary contribution would soon be at an end, and it was unlikely that
the Catholics, who had begun to suspect the king’s sincerity in the
matter of the Graces, would consent to renew it. Their lordships could
think of no means of meeting expenses except the enforcement of the
shilling fines.[72]
Such was the condition of affairs when Thomas Wentworth assumed the
government of Ireland. His appointment bears date January, 1632, but it
was not until the middle of the succeeding year that he proceeded to
Dublin.[73] Before leaving England he had contrived with characteristic
dexterity to relieve the financial embarrassments of the Government.
Cork and Loftus had, as we have seen, been anxious to exact the
recusancy fines. Wentworth took care that their wishes should be
generally known. He then despatched an agent, himself a Catholic, to
negociate secretly with his co-religionists. This gentleman informed the
leading recusants that the Lord Deputy was averse to persecution, but
that, if no other means could be devised for the relief of the king’s
necessities, he would be compelled to act upon the Lords Justices’
advice. Alarmed at this intimation and eager to conciliate one who might
prove either a dangerous enemy or a most valuable friend, the Catholics
agreed to levy an additional “voluntary contribution” of £20,000. The
Protestants, who were wholly dependent on the Government, did not
venture to resist.[74]
The sum thus obtained was sufficient for his immediate requirements;
but, in order that the finances might be placed on a satisfactory basis,
it was necessary that the Irish Parliament, which had not met for nearly
twenty years, should be again summoned. The step was certain to be
popular, and Wentworth was eager to take it; but it was difficult to
convince Charles, whose experience of Parliamentary government in
England had not been happy, of its wisdom. The Lord Deputy, who prided
himself, not without reason, upon his powers of parliamentary
management, explained with great frankness the course which he intended
to adopt. As soon as the Houses met they were to be informed that
business would be extended over two sessions; the first of which was to
be devoted to the relief of the king’s necessities, and the second to
“the enacting of all such profitable and wholesome laws as a moderate
and good people may expect from a wise and gracious king.” With the hope
of a ratification of the Graces thus dangled before them, the Commons
might be relied upon to grant supplies for the next three years; and
when the money had been voted the Government could fulfil as much or as
little of their engagements as they found convenient. His Majesty had no
reason to be afraid of any dangerous exhibition of Parliamentary
independence. Apart from the restrictions imposed by Poynings’ Act,
which made the Irish Parliament a mere instrument for registering the
decrees of the English Privy Council, that body was so constituted as to
be wholly at the mercy of the Castle. In the Upper House the bishops and
the English adventurers who had been ennobled during the preceding reign
gave the Government a permanent majority over the old national
aristocracy. The management of the Lower House would be more difficult;
but Wentworth undertook to secure a majority by tampering with the
elections as Chichester had done. In one respect his task differed from
Chichester’s. In 1613 the entire body of the Protestants had been on the
side of the Government, and the Lord Deputy had been able to make sure
of a majority by multiplying boroughs wherever the colonists
predominated. Since that date the breach between the court party and the
Puritans had grown wider, and a large proportion of the new settlers
were now scarcely less hostile to the administration than the Catholics.
Wentworth had accordingly determined so to manage the elections “as that
neither the recusants nor yet the Protestants shall appear considerably
more one than the other, holding them as much as may be upon an equal
balance”; and at the same time to procure the return from some of the
smaller and more corrupt constituencies of “captains and officers, who,
having immediate dependence upon the Crown, may sway the business
betwixt the two parties which way they please.”[75] With many misgivings
Charles consented to the experiment. “As to that hydra,” he wrote, “take
good heed, for you know I have here found it cunning as well as
malicious.” “I fear,” he added, with an obvious recollection of his
unlucky promises, “they have some ground to demand more than is fit for
me to give.”[76]
In July, 1634, the Parliament met and the Lord Deputy’s forecast was
justified. The Catholic and Protestant parties were almost equal; the
officers turned the scale in favour of the latter. The result had not
been arrived at without some difficulty. The priests, who apprehended
fresh penalties against their religion, had exerted themselves on behalf
of the Catholic candidates. Wentworth put his foot down upon a policy
which threatened to divide the country into a Catholic and a Protestant
party, a thing, he wrote, “to be avoided as much as may be, unless our
numbers were the greater.” The sheriff of Dublin “carried himself
mutinously,” or, in plain English, refused to foist the Lord Deputy’s
nominees upon an unwilling constituency. The over-scrupulous official
was dragged before the Castle Chamber, fined, and deprived of his
office; a successor of more accommodating principles was found, and his
Excellency’s protégés declared duly elected.[77]
On the 15th the Lord Deputy addressed the Houses, warning them with
characteristic arrogance against imitating the factious conduct of the
late English Parliament. On the 16th his secretary, Wandesford, moved
for a grant of six subsidies, which were immediately voted. On the 2nd
of August the Houses petitioned for the introduction of the promised
Bills, and were informed that they would be considered in the following
session. On the 21st Parliament was prorogued.[78]
It met again in November. During the recess Wentworth had submitted to
his master his opinion of the course which it was expedient to adopt
with reference to the Graces. Some were to be granted immediately, some
others postponed; the two most important—that which established a
prescriptive right against the claims of the Crown, and that which
supplied the defects in the Connaught titles—were to be firmly and
finally refused. If his Majesty was unwilling to incur the odium of so
flagrant a breach of faith, the Lord Deputy was ready to take upon
himself the responsibility of having intervened between the people and
the royal favour.[79] To this magnanimous proposal Charles assented with
characteristic alacrity.[80] On November 27th Wentworth announced the
withdrawal of the expected concessions. The announcement provoked an
outburst of indignation, which was the more formidable because, “by the
negligence of the Protestant party,” the Government were for the moment
in a minority. The Catholics, assisted by some discontented Protestants,
notably by Sir Piers Crosby, a distinguished soldier and a member of the
Privy Council, “rejected hand over head all that was offered them by his
Majesty and the State. The Bill against bigamy they would not should be
engrossed; the law for correction houses they absolutely cast out; the
law against fraudulent conveyances and to secure purchasers against the
practised cozenage of the natives here they would have none of; a law
for the bailments tasted not with them; the burgesses that served for
the new boroughs, being most of them Protestants, they questioned, as
not having rights to sit there. The statutes of uses and wills we durst
not adventure a reading unto, for fear some blemish might be put upon
them by these men, that in all these things never gave or answered
reason, but plainly let us see their wills were set together to refuse
all, but to refute nothing.”
Wentworth acted with characteristic promptitude. Crosby was deprived of
his place at the Privy Council, the absent members were ordered to
resume their attendance, and a ministerial majority was again secured.
Within little more than a fortnight the Bills which the Lord Deputy
desired had been carried, and the Parliament was once more prorogued.
In the following year two other short sessions were held, and many wise
and useful laws enacted with the general concurrence of all parties. The
Lord Deputy was anxious that the Parliament should be continued. The
House of Commons, he wrote, was “very well composed”; there was a
Protestant majority “clearly and fully for the King,” and the recusants
could be coerced into voting as the Government dictated by an intimation
that the majority would otherwise be used “to pass upon them all the
laws of England concerning religion.” If there was a dissolution it
might not be possible again to manage the elections so successfully.[81]
Charles, however, in whose heart his English experience still rankled,
was of opinion that, supplies once voted, the sooner a Parliament was
sent about its business the better. “Parliaments,” he wrote, “are of the
nature of cats, they ever grow curst with age, so that, if you will have
good of them, put them off handsomely when they come to any age, for
young ones are ever most tractable.”[82] The Lord Deputy was obliged to
submit, and the Parliament was dissolved.
As soon as the revenue had been placed on a satisfactory basis Wentworth
began to turn his attention to the two great measures for which his
Irish administration is chiefly famous—the Plantation of Connaught and
the reform of the English Church in Ireland. It was to the latter
subject that his attention was first directed. It was certainly high
time that something should be done. It is difficult to say which stood
in more urgent need of improvement—the material condition of the
churches or the morals of the clergy. In a letter to Laud, Wentworth
graphically sums up the situation: “An unlearned clergy, which have not
so much as the outward form of churchmen to cover themselves with, nor
their persons anyway reverenced or protected; the churches unbuilt; the
parsonage and vicarage houses utterly ruined; the people untaught
through the non-residency of the clergy, occasioned by the unlimited
shameful numbers of spiritual promotions with cure of souls, which they
hold by commendams; the rites and ceremonies of the Church run over
without all decency of habit, order, or gravity, in the course of their
service; the possessions of the Church to a great proportion in lay
hands; the bishops aliening their very principal houses and demesnes to
their children, to strangers, farming out their jurisdiction to mean and
unworthy persons; the Popish titulars exercising the whilst a foreign
jurisdiction much greater than theirs; the schools, which might be a
means to season the youth in virtue and religion, either ill-provided,
ill-governed for the most part, or, which is worse, applied sometimes
underhand to the maintenance of Popish school-masters: lands given to
these charitable uses, and that in a bountiful proportion, especially by
King James of ever-blessed memory, dissipated, leased forth for little
or nothing, concealed, contrary to all conscience and the excellent
purposes of the founder: the college here, which should be the seminary
of arts and civility in the elder sort, extremely out of order, partly
by means of their statutes, which must be amended, and partly under the
government of a weak provost: all the monies raised for charitable uses
converted to private benefices: many patronages unjustly and by practice
gotten from the Crown.”[83]
There is abundant evidence that this disgraceful picture was not in the
least over-coloured. Bedell, writing to Laud four years previously,
informed his correspondent that the parish churches were “all in a
manner ruined and unroofed and unrepaired,” and that his diocese
contained only “seven or eight ministers of good sufficiency, and which
is no small cause of the continuance of the people in Popery still,
English: which have not the tongue of the people, nor can perform any
divine offices, or converse with them: and which hold, many of them,
two, three, four or more vicarages apiece: even the clerkships
themselves are in like manner conferred upon the English: and sometimes
two or three or more upon one man, and ordinarily bought and sold, or
let to farm.”[84] Even in 1638, in spite of the vigorous efforts of the
Lord Deputy, Leslie, Bishop of Down, found the clergy generally
negligent and disorderly, and the churches “kept no better than
hog-styes.”[85]
But even these were not in Wentworth’s eyes the most serious of the
abuses with which he had to deal. A Protestant Church established and
maintained by the civil power in the midst of an intensely Catholic
people inclined by an inevitable law towards an extreme and fanatical
form of Protestantism. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Irish
articles, which had been drawn up by Usher, then professor of divinity
in Trinity College, Dublin, and adopted by Convocation in 1615, should
have been decidedly more puritanical in tone than the Thirty-nine
Articles of the English Church.[86] “I doubt much,” wrote Bramhall,
“whether the clergy be very orthodox.”[87] At the same time, a great
number of benefices continued to be held by those whom the Lord Deputy
and the English Primate regarded as schismatics. On the one hand the
Catholic priesthood not only continued to exercise their functions in
contempt of penalties which it was practically impossible to enforce,
but remained in many places in possession of the churches.[88] On the
other hand, the Scotch settlers “brought with them,” in the words of an
Anglican historian, “such a stock of Puritanism, such a contempt of
bishops, such a neglect of the public liturgy and other divine offices
of the Church, that there was nothing less to be found amongst them than
the government and forms of worship established in the Church of
England.”[89] Ministers hostile to the doctrines and discipline of the
Establishment had been frequently introduced into livings after an
irregular ordination by the influence of lay patrons and the connivance
of puritanical bishops, and threatened to give at least as much trouble
to the ecclesiastical authorities as the Catholics.[90] Attacked by
Roman Catholics on the one hand and by Presbyterians on the other, the
English Church in Ireland was still more cruelly despoiled by the
rapacious oligarchy who yielded her a nominal allegiance. In the words
of Bramhall’s biographer, there was not one diocese in the province of
Cashel that had not “the marks of the sacrilegious paw upon it.”[91] The
ecclesiastical courts, whose duty it was to remedy these evils were in
the hands of unprincipled officials, who did little save plunder
Catholics and Protestants with complete impartiality. “Among all the
impediments to the work of God amongst us,” Bedell wrote to Laud, “there
is not any greater than the abuse of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”[92]
Bedell himself waged an unsparing war upon abuses of all sorts; but he
got little support from his brethren. Archbishop Usher sympathised, but
was too timid to swim against the stream.[93] The majority of the
bishops thought of nothing but their pockets.[94]
To this scandalous state of things Wentworth was fully determined to put
an end. His efforts to abolish pluralities and absenteeism, to repair
the churches, and to restore to the clergy the tithes which had been
dishonestly appropriated by laymen deserve high praise. But he had
another and less creditable object in view. He wished to drive both the
Puritan settlers and the native Catholics into the pale of the
Established Church, and at the same time to force that Church itself
into closer conformity to the English model. But if, in common with
most, if not all, of his contemporaries, he had scant reverence for the
rights of conscience, he was at least wise enough to see that the
internal reform of the Establishment must precede the attempt to enforce
conformity. It was idle, he told Laud, to inflict penalties for
recusancy “where as yet there is scarcely a church to receive or an able
minister to teach the people.”[95]
At a very early period of his administration Wentworth’s zeal for
ecclesiastical reform involved him in the first of those personal
disputes with powerful and corrupt officials which contributed far more
than his oppressive treatment of the native Irish to discredit his
administration in England. Lord Cork, who never allowed his Protestant
enthusiasm to interfere with strict attention to his pecuniary
interests, had contrived to appropriate property belonging to the
diocese of Lismore of the annual value of £1,600. He was summoned before
the Castle Chamber, and not merely compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten
gains, but sentenced to a heavy fine. Laud, with whom Wentworth kept up
a constant correspondence on the affairs of the Church, expressed his
satisfaction in very unepiscopal language.[96]
A second quarrel between Cork and Wentworth arose, like the former, out
of the ecclesiastical policy of the Lord Deputy. The earl had erected a
stately tomb of black marble, containing the remains of his wife, in St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, on the spot where the high altar had once stood,
where, as Laud thought, it ought still to stand. To an English High
Churchman such a proceeding seemed a wanton sacrilege. Urged on by the
archbishop, and probably only too pleased at the opportunity of
inflicting a fresh annoyance on his enemy, Wentworth caused the
unsightly monument to be removed to a less sacred place.[97] In both
these cases the Lord Deputy’s action was in full accordance with the
general principles of his policy; but the pertinacity with which Cork
had opposed his measures in the Council had probably some share in
exciting him to severity against that too acquisitive peer.
St. Patrick’s was not the only church with whose internal arrangements
the Lord Deputy felt called upon to interfere. He laboured, not always
successfully, to introduce into the public offices of the Church a
decency and a solemnity which had been too seldom seen, and at the same
time to force upon the clergy practices which would now be called
ritualistic. He was no fanatic; but he knew that uneducated men are more
readily influenced by ceremonies which appeal to their imagination than
by dogmas which they do not understand; and he probably thought that the
difficulty of inducing the Catholics to conform to the established
religion would be lessened if its form of worship did not perceptibly
differ from that to which they had been previously accustomed.
But it is by his dealings with the Convocation of 1634 that Wentworth’s
ecclesiastical policy must be chiefly judged. In England it had been the
custom from very early times for a Convocation of the clergy to be
summoned simultaneously with Parliament. In Ireland for many centuries
there had been no such custom. The division between the English and
Irish clergy before the Reformation, the prevalence of recusancy among
the priesthood since that epoch may perhaps account for this omission.
In 1560, it is true, Sussex had received instructions from Elizabeth
“signifying her pleasure for a general meeting of the clergy of Ireland
and the establishment of the Protestant religion through the several
dioceses of that kingdom.”[98] But it was not until the reign of James
the First, when the reformed Church had been, nominally at least,
extended through all parts of the island, that the first formal
Convocation of the Irish clergy was held.[99] The ecclesiastical
assembly which was then convened was modelled upon the Convocation of
Canterbury, with this difference, that, whereas the latter body
represented only the clergy of a single province, the Irish Convocation
contained delegates from all parts of the kingdom. It was by this body
that the Irish Articles, to which allusion has already been made, had
been adopted; and Wentworth now resolved to make use of the same
machinery to procure their reform. In accordance with the precedent
which had been set twenty years earlier, Convocation was again summoned
simultaneously with Parliament. Before it assembled Wentworth informed
Archbishop Usher, the compiler of the older formula, of the course which
he intended to adopt. Out of respect for the character and station of
the Archbishop, the Lord Deputy would not insist on the formal
abrogation of the Irish Articles. He proposed instead that they should
be tacitly but effectively superseded by the adoption of the Articles of
the Church of England—a course for which the expediency of bringing the
two Churches into closer harmony afforded a decent pretext. To this
suggestion, Usher, who was not remarkable for moral courage, gave a
reluctant assent.[100] In November their reverences assembled, and were
informed that it was the Lord Deputy’s pleasure that they should adopt
not only the Articles, but the Canons of the English Church. The upper
house, under the presidency of Usher, instantly complied. The
representatives of the inferior clergy were less submissive. Instead of
adopting the entire body of English Canons, as the Lord Deputy had
desired, they referred them to a committee, who divided the Canons into
two parts, expressing their approval of some, and setting others aside
for further consideration. Into the first Canon, which required
subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, they inserted a clause
declaring that these were not intended to supersede the Articles already
in use. It was some time before Wentworth, whose attention was wholly
engrossed by the management of the House of Commons, found leisure to
enquire into their proceedings.[101] When he was informed of the
attitude which they had adopted his anger knew no bounds. How he dealt
with the refractory clergy shall be related in his own words:—
“I instantly sent for Dean Andrews, that reverend clerk, who sat
forsooth in the chair at this committee, requiring him to bring
along the book of canons so noted in the margin, together with the
draught he was to present that afternoon to the House. This he
obeyed; but when I came to open the book and run over the
deliberandums in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since
I came into Ireland. I told him certainly not a Dean of Limerick,
but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however,
sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with
all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam; that I was
ashamed and scandalised with it above measure. I therefore said he
should leave the book and draught with me; and I did command him,
upon his allegiance, that he should report nothing to the House from
that committee till he heard again from me.
“Being thus nettled, I gave present directions for a meeting, and
warned the Primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe and Derry,
together with Dean Leslie, the prolocutor, and all those who had
been of the committee, to be with me the next morning.
“Then I publicly told them how unlike Churchmen, who owed canonical
obedience to their superiors, they had proceeded in their committee;
how unheard a part it was for a few petty clerks to presume to make
Articles of Faith without the privity or consent of State or bishop;
what a spirit of Brownism and contradiction I observed in their
deliberandums, as if, indeed, they purposed at once to take away all
government and order forth of the Church, and to leave every man to
choose his own high place where liked him best. But these heady and
arrogant courses they must know I was not to endure; nor, if they
were disposed to be frantic in this dead and cold season of the
year, would I suffer them either to be mad in the Convocation or in
their pulpits.”
Terrified out of their wits by the language of the overbearing Deputy,
the clergy made a hasty and ignominious submission, and accepted the
English Articles without further discussion. To punish Dean Andrews,
whom he regarded as mainly responsible for the opposition, Wentworth
promoted him to the See of Ferns, the emoluments of which were
considerably less than those which he had enjoyed as Dean of
Limerick.[102]
At the same time the University of Dublin, which from the date of its
foundation had been a hotbed of Puritanism, was made to feel the
reforming vigour of the Lord Deputy. The “weak provost” already referred
to—Robert Usher, a relative of the Primate—was, like Andrews, politely
kicked upstairs; and his successor, Chappell, a man after Laud’s own
heart, proceeded to remodel the college in accordance with the highest
standard of Anglican orthodoxy.[103]
One other innovation of a more serious character was made. Immediately
after the dissolution—for the step was too unpopular to be taken while
Parliament was sitting—Wentworth proceeded on his own authority to erect
a court of high commission in Dublin similar to that already existing in
England, “conceiving the use of it might be very great to countenance
the despised state of the clergy, to support ecclesiastical courts and
officers, to provide for the maintenance of the clergy and for their
residence, either by themselves or able curates, to bring the people
here to a conformity in religion, and, in the way of all these, to raise
perhaps a good revenue to the Crown.”[104]
Parliament and Convocation being both dissolved, Wentworth was at
leisure to devote his energies to the great business of his
administration—the establishment of an English colony in Connaught. It
would be difficult to say which was the more scandalous, the pretext
which the Lord Deputy put forward for this measure or the steps by which
he attempted to carry it into effect. More than four hundred years
earlier Henry the Third, with that princely generosity with which
sovereigns have so often disposed of the property of their subjects, had
granted the entire province to Richard de Burgh, with the exception of
five cantreds about Athlone, which were reserved to the Crown. De Burgh
had succeeded in making good his claim to a great part of the province,
corresponding to the modern counties of Galway and Mayo; the rest
continued in the possession of the aboriginal inhabitants. By the death
of the last Earl of Ulster about a century afterwards the title to these
lands passed to his daughter Elizabeth, then an infant; but the actual
possession remained with his collateral heirs, the MacWilliams,
ancestors of the Earls of Clanricarde and Mayo. By the marriage of
Elizabeth de Burgh to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the title to the
Connaught estates of her ancestors had descended lineally to Edward the
Fourth; and the actual occupants, whether of native or Anglo-Norman
descent, were pronounced by the Lord Deputy to be intruders on the
possessions of the Crown. Neither the prescriptive right derived from an
undisturbed occupation of centuries, nor the recent promises of James
and Charles, were suffered to constitute a barrier against this
monstrous claim. The Articles concluded with Perrott were pronounced
invalid on the plea that that statesman had exceeded his instructions;
the patents granted by James on the ground of the technical flaw already
noticed.[105]
Shortly after the dissolution a Royal Commission was issued “for inquiry
into defective titles;” and in July the Lord Deputy set out for
Connaught to superintend the work of robbery in person. The concurrence
of the judges had already been ensured by promising their lordships a
commission of four shillings in the pound upon the profits of the
plantation; “which, upon observation,” Wentworth afterwards declared, “I
find to be the best given that ever was. For now they do intend it with
a care and diligence such as if it were their own private. And most
certain, the gaining to themselves every four shillings once paid shall
better your revenue ever after at least five pounds.”[106] Great pains
were taken to seek out jurors who “might give furtherance in finding a
title for the King.” The sheriffs were instructed to select “gentlemen
of the best estates and understanding,” whose verdict in favour of the
royal title would carry the more weight, since they would be “as much
concerned in their own particulars as any other;” while on the other
hand they would be able to “answer the King a good round sum in the
Castle Chamber if they should prevaricate.”
The Commission was first opened in Roscommon, where Wentworth addressed
a jury, composed as he had directed, in a highly characteristic speech.
His Majesty, he said, desired only to make them “a civil and rich
people;” and a plantation was necessary in order to accomplish this
benevolent purpose. He did not intend “to take from them anything that
was justly theirs, but in truth to bestow amongst them a good part of
that which was his own.” He “came not to sue them to find for him as
needing any power of theirs to vindicate his own right, for without
them, where his right is so plain, he could not in justice have been
denied possession upon an information of intrusion. The Court in an
ordinary way of Exchequer must have granted it on the first motion of
the Attorney-General.” To the King, therefore, their decision was a
matter of indifference: with a verdict, or without it, he intended to
take their property; “the path to his right lay elsewhere, open and fair
before him.” But, as regarded their own interests, “as one that must
ever wish prosperity to their nation, I desired them, first, to descend
into their own consciences and take them to counsel, and there they
should find the evidence for the Crown clear and conclusive. Next, to
beware how they appeared resolved or obstinate against so manifest a
truth, or how they let slip forth of their hands the means to weave
themselves into the royal thoughts and care of his Majesty, through a
cheerful and ready acknowledgment of his right and a due and full
submission thereunto. So, then, if they would be inclined to truth and
do best for themselves, they would undoubtedly find the title for the
King. If they were passionately resolved to go over all bounds to their
own will, and, without respects at all to their own good, to do that
which were simply best for his Majesty, then I should advise them
roughly and pertinaciously to deny to find any title at all. And there I
left them to chant together, as they call it, over the evidence.”[107]
Owing partly to this adroit mixture of chicanery and menace, partly, as
it would seem, to private negotiations between the Lord Deputy and
individual jurymen,[108] a verdict acknowledging the royal title was
returned. The juries of Sligo and Mayo were equally complacent; but in
Galway, as Wentworth had anticipated, and indeed desired, considerable
opposition was made. The county was the headquarters of the De Burghs;
and the Earl of Clanricarde and his dependents were understood to be
very hostile to the proposed plantation. “But whether it be so or not,”
Wentworth wrote to Charles: “I could wish their county would stand out,
for I am well assured it shall turn to your Majesty’s advantage if they
do. For certain it is a county which lies out at a corner by itself, and
all the inhabitants wholly natives and Papists, hardly an Englishman
among them, whom they keep out with all the industry in the world; and
therefore it would be a great security if they were thoroughly lined
with English indeed.” His wishes were gratified. Although the royal
title was made out in such manner as appeared “most just, honourable,
and unquestionable to all equal-minded men,” the jury “obstinately and
perversely refused” to find for the Crown. For this obstinacy, Wentworth
offered three explanations. First, “there is scarce a Protestant
freeholder to be found to serve his Majesty on this or any other
occasion in this country, being in a manner altogether compounded of
Papists.” Secondly, “the counsellors at law, being all of them
recusants, showed themselves over-busy even to faction, in this service
against the King.” Lastly, the Earl of Clanricarde had exerted the
influence derived from his “great estate” and “far-spread kindred” to
frustrate the plantation. In support of this last assertion, Wentworth
appealed to the following facts. First, John Donnellan, the Earl’s
steward, had received messengers with letters from the Earl out of
England; “and, whereas we were certainly informed that divers gentlemen
were resolved to have acknowledged the King’s title, upon these men’s
arrival they altered their resolutions, and since stand in opposition
thereunto.” Secondly, Lord Clanmorris, a nephew of the Earl, “appeared
openly before us to countenance the opposition of the country.” Thirdly,
Richard Burke, of Derrymacoghlan, another nephew of the Earl and a
member of the jury, had pulled a fellow juror by the sleeve, “labouring
to divert the said juror from declaring that his conscience led him to
find for his Majesty.” Fourthly, “the Earl’s principal servant and
steward, John Donnellan, being one of the jury, we saw plainly that he
guided the rest which way he pleased.” Fifthly and lastly, “most of the
jurors are of the Earl’s kindred or near alliance, or his dependents.”
Wentworth was not the man to be deterred by an adverse verdict. He had
warned the jury that, if they refused to find the verdict which he
desired, it would be the worse for them, and he now showed that this had
been no idle menace. D’Arcy, the Sheriff, whom the Lord Deputy held
responsible for what he regarded as a gross miscarriage of justice, was
imprisoned and fined £1,000 “for returning an insufficient and, as we
conceived, a packed jury.” The jurors themselves were summoned before
the Castle Chamber and fined £4,000 each. A proclamation was next
issued, by which the other landowners of the county were recommended to
disassociate themselves from the recalcitrant jurors, and save a portion
of their estates by acknowledging the royal title. The Court of
Exchequer, by Wentworth’s direction, issued an order “to seize for his
Majesty the lands of the jurors, and of all that should not lay hold on
his Majesty’s grace offered them by the proclamation.” With Clanricarde
himself the Lord Deputy insisted that no terms would be made. The Earl
and his son were at this time in London; and there Wentworth advised
that they should be detained until the work of spoliation had been
carried out. Wentworth further advised that the fortifications of Galway
should be repaired, and that that city and Athenry should be strongly
garrisoned while the plantations were proceeding.[109] Charles signified
his concurrence.[110]
And now comes the mysterious part of the business. The Commission sat in
1635; the Lord Deputy continued to hold office until the spring of 1641;
yet the plantation was never carried out. No satisfactory explanation
has yet been offered for this omission. It is certain that, so long as
Wentworth lived, the scheme was never definitely abandoned.[111] In all
probability the task was found to be more difficult than had been
anticipated. The settlement of Ulster had been a simple matter in
comparison. In the northern province Mountjoy had prepared the way for
the planters by exterminating the best part of the original inhabitants;
and the flight of the earls had left the scanty remnant destitute of
their natural leaders. In Connaught, which had been comparatively
peaceful during the Elizabethan wars, there was a numerous and warlike
population, not yet cowed by famine and massacre, to be reckoned with;
and their leader, Lord Clanricarde, a great English noble as well as a
great Irish chieftain, could exert more influence at the Court of
England than any “mere Irishman” could have done. These considerations
may have induced Wentworth to proceed slowly and with caution. During
1636 and the two following years the province continued to be strongly
garrisoned, and a few English settlers seem to have been introduced; but
they were very few, and Connaught was still almost wholly in Catholic
hands when the troubles that broke out in Scotland compelled the Lord
Deputy to turn his attention elsewhere.[112]
During the next three years Wentworth devoted himself to securing for
his master a revenue independent of Parliamentary control. With this
object, inquisitions into defective titles were held not only in
Connaught, but in every part of the island. No fresh plantations were
made; but any landlord in whose title the smallest technical flaw could
be discovered was compelled to pay heavily for a fresh patent. These
exactions pressed hard upon natives and colonists alike. The former had
generally inherited their lands according to some Irish custom not
recognised by English lawyers; while many of the latter had neglected to
fulfil the onerous and intricate conditions imposed upon them by the
Articles of the plantations. The O’Byrnes of Wicklow, who had already
been so harshly treated, were compelled to pay £15,000 before they
recovered their estates.[113] The London companies were prosecuted in
the Star Chamber on a charge of mismanaging their Ulster property, and
condemned to forfeiture and a fine of £70,000.[114]
At the same time the Lord Deputy exerted himself with characteristic
energy to develop the material resources of the country. The
extraordinary advances which Irish commerce made under his government
have been acknowledged by historians the most hostile to his
memory.[115] In one respect, it is true, his commercial policy deserves
severe blame. He found in Ireland, on his arrival, the beginnings of a
flourishing woollen manufacture; and this manufacture, out of deference
to the jealous fears of English traders, he promptly proceeded to
destroy. The injury thus inflicted was more than compensated by the
enormous development of the linen trade; a development which must be
ascribed in large measure to the judicious and munificent patronage of
Wentworth. He imported great quantities of flax from Holland at his own
expense; introduced skilled workmen from France and the Low Countries;
and did so much for the improvement of this industry that, although it
had existed in Ireland at least as early as the fifteenth century, he is
still spoken of in popular tradition as its founder.[116]
In spite, however, of the increasing prosperity of the country, the Lord
Deputy continued to be an object of aversion to every section of the
community. His unpopularity was due in almost equal measure to the
merits and to the faults of his administration. The more violent
Protestants were indignant at the introduction of the English Articles,
as well as at Wentworth’s persistent refusal to exact the recusancy
fines. The Catholics were kept in constant alarm by the inquiries into
defective titles, and by the penal laws, which, though their execution
was temporarily suspended, the Lord Deputy, as they were probably aware,
was fully resolved to enforce, as soon as he should feel able to do so
with impunity.[117] At the same time a crowd of rapacious officials, who
had enriched themselves under the government of his incompetent
predecessor, were exasperated by his vigorous attempts to repress
jobbery and extortion. For this at least must be acknowledged to
Wentworth’s honour, that, if he was a tyrant, he suffered no tyranny but
his own.
The hostility of these men proved far more injurious to the Lord Deputy
than the indignation of the native gentry. Of his quarrel with Lord Cork
I have already spoken. His treatment of two other officials was made the
subject of still harsher criticism. At the beginning of his
administration Wentworth had been opposed by a majority of the Irish
Council, but supported by a minority led by Lord Chancellor Loftus and
Lord Mountnorris, both conspicuous for their hostility to his
predecessor.[118] Within a very few years he had made both these men his
bitter enemies. Mountnorris, when Wentworth took office, was
Vice-Treasurer, and was believed by Lord Cork, then Treasurer, to have
been guilty of gross mismanagement, if not of actual malversation.[119]
Wentworth was not as a rule disposed to pay much attention to Cork’s
statements; but misappropriation of public moneys was the last thing
which he felt inclined to tolerate; and he instituted an inquiry which
resulted in the conviction of Mountnorris, not, indeed, of personal
corruption, but of scandalous negligence in tolerating the corruption of
his subordinates.[120] Although Mountnorris was not at once deprived of
his office he evidently considered himself aggrieved, and thenceforth
intrigued persistently against the Lord Deputy. In the spring of 1635
the quarrel came to a head. A younger brother of Mountnorris, an officer
in Wentworth’s own regiment, was guilty of some trivial breach of
military discipline. He was rebuked by Wentworth, and answered with an
impertinent gesture. The Lord Deputy, whose naturally choleric temper
was at this time aggravated by an attack of gout, struck him lightly
with his cane, telling him that, if the offence was repeated, “he would
lay him over the pate.” A few days later, at a levée at Dublin Castle, a
gentleman-in-waiting, who was also related to Mountnorris, contrived to
overturn a stool on the Lord Deputy’s gouty foot. At a dinner party
given not long afterwards by the Lord Chancellor, the occurrence was
discussed, and Mountnorris hazarded an opinion that it had not been
entirely accidental. “Perhaps,” said he, “it was done in revenge of that
public affront that the Lord Deputy had done me formerly. But,” he
added, “he has a brother who would not take such a revenge.”[121]
What Mountnorris may have meant it is impossible to say. In all
probability he meant nothing, for the words were uttered after dinner,
and he was not a man of abstemious habits. Be that as it may, he had
soon reason to rue his imprudence. His words were repeated to the Lord
Deputy, probably by Adam Loftus the younger, who was anxious to succeed
him as Vice-Treasurer. Wentworth, who had previously been in
communication with the king on the subject of Mountnorris’s financial
irregularities, now wrote to request his Majesty’s permission to bring
the Vice-Treasurer before a court-martial on the monstrous charge of
inciting to a mutiny in the army. The permission was granted in
July,[122] but it was not until six months later that the trial was
held. The delay may have been due to the affairs of Connaught, which
left the Lord Deputy little leisure to prosecute a personal quarrel; but
it is also possible that Wentworth did not intend to proceed further in
the matter unless fresh provocation was given. In the autumn,
unfortunately for himself, Mountnorris engaged in an intrigue which
kindled afresh the smouldering anger of the Lord Deputy. He proposed to
the king an iniquitous scheme of taxation, which would, if it had been
adopted, have increased his Majesty’s revenue from £8,000 to
£20,000.[123] Wentworth, eager as he undoubtedly was “to raise a good
revenue for the Crown,” was wise enough to understand that there is a
point beyond which taxation cannot advantageously be pushed. He also
knew his master quite well enough to feel sure that the permanent
interest of the country would have little weight with him against the
prospect of an immediate pecuniary gain. He resolved to crush
Mountnorris without delay.
On December 12th, the unfortunate officer was summoned to a council of
war at Dublin Castle. On his arrival he found several other persons
present, but no one could inform him of the purpose for which their
attendance was required. Wentworth presently arrived and told the
company that it would be their duty to hold a court-martial on Lord
Mountnorris, whose language at the Lord Chancellor’s dinner-party
constituted a breach of two of the articles of war by which the army was
governed. By the 41st article it was ordered that no man should “give
any disgraceful words or commit any act to the disgrace of any person in
the army or garrison, or any part thereof, upon pain of imprisonment,
public disarming, and banishment from the army”; by the 13th that “no
man should offer any violence, or contemptuously disobey his commander,
or do any act or speak any words which are like to breed any mutiny in
the army or garrison, or impeach the obeying of the general or principal
officer’s directions, upon pain of death.” The words, “a brother who
would not take such a revenge” were intended, according to the Lord
Deputy’s interpretation, as an instigation to young Annesley to revenge
himself in some more violent fashion than by the mere dropping of a
footstool.
Mountnorris was stunned by this unexpected blow. He could neither deny
the words imputed to him, nor offer any plausible explanation of them.
The court, after a short deliberation, returned a verdict of guilty; and
Mountnorris was sentenced “to be shot to death or to lose his head at
the pleasure of the General.” Wentworth, who had been present at the
proceedings but had taken no part in them, then addressed the prisoner
and told him that he need be under no apprehensions so far as the
capital sentence was concerned. “I had rather,” he said, “lose my hand
than you should lose your head.” Mountnorris was kept for a short time
in prison, deprived of his office of Vice-Treasurer, and dismissed from
the army.[124]
These oppressive proceedings added yet another to the numerous enemies
of Wentworth. Lord Cork, who had been compelled to disgorge the
plundered revenues of the Church, and Lord Wilmot, who had been
disgraced for embezzling the property of the Crown,[125] were already
intriguing to procure his recall. With greater justice the De Burghs
complained of his severity to the Galway jury. The Earl of Clanricarde
was lately dead; and, though he was certainly an old man, his end was
generally believed to have been hastened by vexation at the tyranny of
the Lord Deputy.[126] D’Arcy, the sheriff of Galway, had also died not
long after his committal to prison; and his death too was laid at
Wentworth’s door.[127] By the beginning of the following year the outcry
against him had become so loud that he found it advisable to proceed in
person to London to justify himself before the king. He pointed with a
not unjust pride to the undoubted reforms which he had effected in the
government of Ireland. He had found the country on the verge of
bankruptcy; he had established a large and rapidly-increasing revenue,
and that without resorting to the dangerous and unpopular expedient of
exacting the recusancy fines. He had transformed the Irish army from a
disorderly rabble into a disciplined and efficient force; had suppressed
piracy; and had developed the material resources of the island. He had
set his foot upon the jobbery of the Dublin officials, and had done
something, if not much, to improve the scandalous condition of the
Established Church. His most arbitrary acts had been committed in his
master’s interests, and were therefore such as that master was only too
ready to condone. Charles signified his approval in the most gracious
terms. After a few months’ absence Wentworth returned to Ireland with
his enemies silenced and his position apparently impregnable.[128]
Rather more than a year after the Mountnorris court-martial Wentworth
became involved in a dispute with another official which brought upon
him an even fiercer storm of obloquy. In his conflict with Cork he had
had the support of Mountnorris and Loftus; he had afterwards had the
support of Loftus in his conflict with Mountnorris. The Chancellor
himself was destined to be the next victim. In 1621, on the occasion of
his son’s marriage to the daughter of Sir Francis Raishe, his lordship
had entered into an agreement to settle £300 a year on the bride, and
£1,200 in land on her children. Fifteen years afterwards he attempted to
evade his obligations, alleging some technical irregularity in the
marriage contract. On the petition of Sir John Giffard, the legal
representative of the lady’s family, the affair was referred to the
Privy Council. Loftus protested that the claim of the Privy Council to
interfere was unconstitutional, and that the plaintiff ought to have
filed a bill against him in his own court. He would then have been judge
as well as defendant—an arrangement which promised obvious advantages to
a litigant with a lax conscience and a bad case.[129] But it is
dangerous, the old proverb tells us, to prosecute Beelzebub in the court
of Hell; and Giffard was no doubt of opinion that it would be equally
imprudent to proceed against the Lord Chancellor in the Court of
Chancery. The Privy Council decided against Loftus, who renewed his
protests—protests which came with a singularly bad grace from one who
had repeatedly sat upon the same tribunal upon occasions when there had
been much less cogent reasons for a departure from the orthodox method
of procedure. He was thereupon deprived of the seals and imprisoned for
contempt; but subsequently released on acknowledging the jurisdiction of
the court. It does not appear that he had any defence on the merits; but
the exalted position of the delinquent and an abominable, but apparently
groundless rumour that his daughter-in-law had been Wentworth’s
mistress, induced the enemies of the Lord Deputy to give the affair as
much prominence as possible.[130]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
Footnote 56:
In Harris’s _Fiction Unmasked_, pp. 53-60, there is an excellent
summary of the pretexts put forward for these plantations. The most
important papers relating to the plantation of Leitrim will be found
in _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, II., 52-77. Miss Hickson (_Ireland
in the Seventeenth Century_, II., 276-299) has printed some
interesting papers relating to the plantations of Longford and Ely
O’Carroll. For an Irish view of the plantations, see David Rothe’s
_Analecta Sacra_.
Footnote 57:
For the Composition of Connaught compare Roderick O’Flaherty’s
_Chorographical Description of Iar-Connaught_, pp. 309-362, where the
articles are given in full; _Government of Ireland under Sir John
Perrott_, pp. 79-86; Rawlinson’s _History of Sir John Perrott_, p.
149; Wentworth to Coke, August 25, 1635. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
450-454.) In the _Calendar of Irish State Papers_, 1615-1625, there
are several letters containing suggestions for a plantation of
Connaught.
Footnote 58:
Docwra to ——, March 3, 1618. (_Calendar_, 1615-1625, 399.)
Footnote 59:
Falkland to Conway, September 11, 1626. (_Calendar_, 1625-1632, 438.)
Falkland, however, had recommended this step even before the death of
James. Falkland to the Privy Council, December 11, 1624. (_Calendar_,
1615-1625, 1324.)
Footnote 60:
Diary of the Assembly. (_Calendar_, 1625-32, 713.)
Footnote 61:
Elrington’s _Life of Usher_, pp. 73-74.
Footnote 62:
_A Remonstrance presented to his Majesty by the Parliament in June,
1628._
Footnote 63:
The Graces in their amended form are given in Wentworth’s letter to
Coke, October 6, 1634. (_Strafford Letters_, I., 312-328.) The earlier
draft is printed in the _Calendar of State Papers_, 1625-1632, 446.
The eighth article runs: “The fine of 12d. a Sunday and holiday for
not going to church shall be remitted for recusants except in
particular cases.”
Footnote 64:
Rushworth’s _Historical Collections_, II., 19.
Footnote 65:
These depositions, as well as the report of the Commissioners and
Falkland’s defence, are printed in Gilbert’s _History of the
Confederation and War in Ireland_, I., 167-217.
Footnote 66:
Proclamation, April 1, 1629. (_Rushworth_, II., 21.) Similar
proclamations had been issued in 1617, 1623, and 1624, but they had
had very little effect.
Footnote 67:
For the conduct of Archbishop Loftus, see Ware’s _Bishops of Ireland_
and Elrington’s _Life of Usher_, pp. 6, 115, and for that of some
later members of his family Lecky’s _History of Ireland_, V. 295. With
regard to the Chancellor himself, I have collected some evidence in a
later part of this paper.
Footnote 68:
Lord Cork was the author of an extremely mendacious autobiographical
fragment, entitled _True Remembrances_, which is prefixed to the
collected edition of his son’s works. In Wright’s _History of
Ireland_, Bk. V., ch. 21, this remarkable able paper is carefully
analysed and its statements compared with the evidence of more
trustworthy documents.
Footnote 69:
Charles to Wilmot, August 5, 1629. (_Calendar_, 1625-1632, 1449.) See
also with regard to this quarrel the repeated and bitter attacks on
Loftus in Lord Cork’s Diary (_Lismore Papers_, 1st series). The
quarrel seems to have originated in the refusal of the Chancellor to
decide a lawsuit in Lord Cork’s favour some years earlier.
Footnote 70:
Hammond L’Estrange, _Annals of the Reign of Charles the First_, p.
116. Compare _Foxes and Firebrands_, pt. 2, p. 71; Wilmot to
Dorchester, January 6, 1629-30. (_Calendar_, 1625-1632, 1570.)
“Tharchbishop of Dublin, and the Maior of Dublin, by the direction of
vs, the Lords Justices, Ransackt the howse of f. fryer in Cook
Street,” Lord Cork’s Diary, December 26, 1629.
Footnote 71:
The Catholic University seems to have given particular offence to the
Protestant clergy. Thus Bedell, writing to Wentworth, complains that
“his Holiness hath erected a new university at Dublin to confront his
Majesty’s college there.” (_Strafford Letters_, I., 147.) The
documents relating to the seizure of its property will be found in
Mahaffy’s _Epoch of Irish History_, ch. V.
For an account of St. Patrick’s Purgatory see Richardson’s _Folly of
Pilgrimages_, p. 44, and for its destruction Lord Cork’s Diary,
September 8, 1632. In October, 1638, the Queen wrote to Wentworth
begging him to allow it to be restored. He declined on the ground that
it was “in the midst of the great Scottish plantation.” (_Strafford
Letters_, II., 221, 222.)
Footnote 72:
Lords Justices to Wentworth, February 26, 1631-2. (_Ibid._, I.,
67-70.)
Footnote 73:
Charles to the Lords Justices, January 12, 1631-2. (_Ibid._, I.,
62-63.) Miss Hickson has quoted a most significant entry from the MS.
journal of an Anglo-Irish official: “July 23, 1633. The Lord Viscounte
Wentworth came to Ireland to govern ye kingdom: manie men feare.”
(_Ireland in the Seventeenth Century_, I., 52.) Lord Cork expressed
his dissatisfaction still more forcibly: “A moste cursed man to all
Ireland and to me in particular.” Diary, July 23, 1633.
Footnote 74:
Wentworth to Cottington, October 1, 1632. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
74-77.)
Footnote 75:
Wentworth to Charles, April 12, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 182-187.)
Footnote 76:
Charles to Wentworth, April 17, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 233.)
Footnote 77:
Wentworth to Coke, June 24, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 269, 270.)
Footnote 78:
Wentworth to Coke, August 18, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 276-282.)
Footnote 79:
Wentworth to Coke, October 6, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 304-328.)
Footnote 80:
“Your last public despatch has given me a great deal of contentment,
and especially for keeping off the envy of a necessary negative from
me of those unreasonable Graces that that people expected from
me.”—Charles to Wentworth, October 23, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 331.)
Footnote 81:
Wentworth to Coke, December 16, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 345-353.) For the
proceedings of this Parliament I have also consulted the _Irish
Commons’ Journals_, I., pp. 59-119, but they add very little to our
information. For its legislation see _Irish Statutes_, 10 and 11,
Charles I.
Footnote 82:
Charles to Wentworth, January 22, 1634-5. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
365.)
Footnote 83:
Wentworth to Laud, January 31, 1633-4. (_Ibid._, I., 187-189.)
Footnote 84:
Bedell to Laud, April I, 1630. (Burnet’s _Life of Bedell_, pp. 35,
36.)
Footnote 85:
_A full Confutation of the Covenant, lately sworn and subscribed by
many in Scotland: delivered in a speech at the visitation of Down and
Connor, September 26, 1638._ By Henry Leslie.
Footnote 86:
The Irish articles are printed in Elrington’s _Life of Usher_,
Appendix, xxxiii.—L.
Footnote 87:
Bramhall to Laud, August 10, 1633. (Collier’s _Ecclesiastical
History_, VIII., 72-75.)
Footnote 88:
“Every parish hath its priest, and some two or three apiece; and so
their mass-houses also; in some places mass is said in the churches.”
Bedell to Laud, April 1, 1630. Compare a report some years earlier on
the ecclesiastical state of the province of Armagh, from which long
extracts are printed in Mant’s _History of the Church of Ireland_, I.,
395-408.
Footnote 89:
Heylin’s _History of Presbyterianism_, p. 393.
Footnote 90:
See the autobiographies of Robert Blair and John Livingston, two of
the ministers who obtained benefices by these means; also Adair’s
_True Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Church in
Ireland_, 1623-1670; and Dr. Killen’s preface.
Footnote 91:
Vesey’s _Life of Bramhall_.
Footnote 92:
Bedell to Laud, August 7, 1630. (_Two Lives of William Bedell_, pp.
311-314.)
Footnote 93:
Clogy’s _Life of Bedell_, p. 118.
Footnote 94:
See much evidence of this in Ware’s _Bishops of Ireland_.
Footnote 95:
Wentworth to Laud, December, 1633. (_Strafford Letters_, I., 171-173.)
Footnote 96:
“My Lord, I did not take you to be so good a physician before as now I
see you are; for the truth is, a great many Church cormorants have fed
so full upon it that they are fallen into a fever; and for that no
physic better than a vomit, if it be given in time; and therefore you
have taken a very judicious course to administer one so early to my
Lord of Cork. I hope it will do him good, though perchance he thinks
not so, for if the fever hang long about him or the rest it will
certainly shake either them or their estates in pieces.”—Laud to
Wentworth, November 15, 1633. (_Ibid._, I., 155, 156.)
Footnote 97:
Laud to Wentworth, March 11, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 211.) See also
several letters in the _Lismore Papers_, 2nd series, and Mason’s
_History and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St.
Patrick_, pp. liii., liv.
Footnote 98:
Ware’s _Annals of Ireland_, A.D. 1560.
Footnote 99:
The best accounts of the Convocations of 1613-15 and 1634-35 are in
Elrington’s _Life of Usher_, pp. 39-49, and 165-187.
Footnote 100:
Wentworth to Laud, August 23, 1634. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
298-301.)
Footnote 101:
“The Popish party, growing extreme perverse in the Commons House, and
the Parliament thereby in great danger to have been lost in a storm,
had so taken up all my thoughts and endeavours that, for five or six
days, it was not almost possible for me to take an account how
business went among them of the clergy.”—Wentworth to Laud, December
16, 1634. (_Ibid._, I., 342-345.)
Footnote 102:
_Ibid._
Footnote 103:
Mahaffy’s _Epoch of Irish History_, ch. VI.
Footnote 104:
Wentworth to Laud, January 31, 1633-34. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
187-189.)
Footnote 105:
Brief of his Majesty’s title to Connaught. (_Ibid._, I., 454-458.) For
the history of the settlement of the De Burghs in Connaught compare
Matthew Paris, _Historia_, p. 230, etc.; _Annals of Lough Cé_; preface
to Lord Clanricarde’s _Memoirs_; The O’Conor Don’s _O’Conors of
Connaught_, pp. 88-95.
Footnote 106:
Wentworth to Charles, December 9, 1636. (_Strafford Letters_, II.,
41.)
Footnote 107:
Wentworth to Coke, July 14, 1635. (_Ibid._, I., 442-444.)
Footnote 108:
“Sir Lucas Dillon, the foreman of the jury, hath behaved himself with
so much discretion and expressed all along so good affections, as I
cannot choose but here to mention him, and hereafter to beseech his
Majesty he may be remembered when upon the dividing of the lands his
own particular come in question. In truth, he deserves to be
extraordinarily well dealt withal.”—(_Ibid._)
Footnote 109:
Wentworth and the Commissioners to Coke, August 25, 1635, and
enclosures. (_Ibid._, I., 450-458.) For the fining of the jury we have
Wentworth’s own admission; if his enemies may be believed, they were
also “pilloried with loss of ears, bored through the tongue, and
marked in the forehead with a hot iron, with other like infamous
punishments.”—_Irish Commons’ Journals._
Footnote 110:
Coke to Wentworth, September 20, 1635. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
464-465.)
Footnote 111:
It was finally abandoned in April, 1641. See Gardiner’s _History of
England_, X., 45, where a letter of the Lords Justices is quoted.
Footnote 112:
“The Plantations prove a most laborious work; I could not imagine
their march had been so heavy.”—Wentworth to Charles, June 5, 1638.
(_Strafford Letters_, II., 175.) In another letter he recommends that
a body of cavalry should be sent into Connaught “as fit lookers-on
whilst the plantations are settling.” Wentworth to Coke, August 10,
1638. (_Ibid._, II., 197-201.) For the influence of Lord Clanricarde
in preventing the plantation, see Wentworth to Coke, May 18 and July
9, to Charles, July 9 and August 13, 1639, (_Ibid._, II., 340,
366-369, 381.)
Footnote 113:
Wentworth to Charles, June 5, 1638. (_Ibid._, II., 175-176.)
Footnote 114:
Wentworth has been generally blamed for this sentence, which was one
of the principal matters urged against him at his trial; but, though
it is evident from several passages in his _Letters_ that he regarded
it with approval and was ready to turn it to the King’s advantage, the
case had actually been pending for some years before he came to
Ireland. See the correspondence between Charles I and the Lords
Justices in 1631. (_Concise View of the Irish Society._ Appendix, pp.
185-188.)
Footnote 115:
Reid’s _History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland_, I., 213.
Leland’s _History of Ireland_, III., 40, 41.
Footnote 116:
“There was little or no manufacture amongst them, but some small
beginnings towards a clothing trade, which I had and so should still
discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by his Majesty and
their lordships, in regard, it would trench not only upon the
clothings of England, being our staple commodity, so as if they should
manufacture their own wools, which grew to very great quantities, we
should not only lose the profit we made now by indraping their wools,
but his Majesty lose extremely by his Customs, and, in conclusion, it
might be feared they would beat us out of the trade itself, by
under-selling us, which they were well able to do.”—Wentworth to
Wandesford, July 25, 1636. (_Strafford Letters_, II., 13-23.) For his
encouragement of the linen trade see the same letter.
Footnote 117:
Wentworth to Coke, November 28, 1636. (_Ibid._, II., 38-39.)
Footnote 118:
Wentworth to Coke, August 3, 1633. (_Ibid._, I., 97.)
Footnote 119:
Townshend’s _Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork_, pp. 180-181.
Footnote 120:
Wentworth to Coke, March 25 and April 7, 1635 (_Strafford Letters_,
I., 391, 392, 400-407.)
Footnote 121:
Wentworth to Coke, December 15, 1635. (_Ibid._, I., 497-501.)
Rushworth’s _Trial of the Earl of Strafford_. The account in Clarendon
(_History of the Great Rebellion_, III., 111-114) is inaccurate.
Footnote 122:
Charles to Wentworth, July 31, 1635. (_Strafford Letters_, I., 448.)
Footnote 123:
Laud to Wentworth, January 2, 1635-6. (Laud’s _Works_, VII., 216) and
Wentworth’s reply, March 9. (_Strafford Letters_, I., 517.)
Footnote 124:
Wentworth to Coke, December 14 and 15, 1635. (_Ibid._, I., 497-501.)
Sentence on Lord Mountnorris, enclosed in the preceding. _Somers
Tracts_, IV., 202-208. Rushworth’s _Trial of the Earl of Strafford_,
pp. 186-204.
Footnote 125:
Coke to Wentworth, October 26, 1635, enclosing Lord Wilmot’s
submission. (_Strafford Letters_, I., 477.)
Footnote 126:
“This last packet advertised the death of the Earl of St. Albans, and
that it is reported my harsh usage broke his heart. God and your
Majesty know my innocency; they might as well have imputed unto me for
a crime his being three-score and ten years old.”—Wentworth to
Charles, December 5, 1635. (_Ibid._, 491-493.)
Footnote 127:
“I am full of belief they will lay the charge of D’Arcy the sheriff’s
death unto me; my arrows are cruel that wound so mortally; but I
should be more sorry by much the King should lose his fine.”—Wentworth
to Wandesford, July 25, 1636. (_Ibid._, II., 13-23.)
Footnote 128:
Wentworth’s own defence of his administration is contained in the
letter to Wandesford quoted in the preceding note.
Footnote 129:
“And, forasmuch as relief could only be sought for upon the said
agreement in a course of equity, which was most proper to be had in
the High Court of Chancery of this kingdom, where his lordship should
become both judge and party; therefore, and to the intent justice
might be done, he (Giffard) prayed that the said matter might be
referred to the Lord Deputy and Council of Ireland to be by them heard
and determined.”—Report by Arthur, Earl of Essex, August 18, 1674.
Footnote 130:
Report by J. T. Gilbert on the MSS. of the Marquis of Drogheda.
(_Historical MSS. Commission, 9th report_, pp. 293-330.) Clarendon’s
_History of the Great Rebellion_, III., 115-117.
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