THE EVE OF “1641”
THE real or fancied grievances of Loftus and Mountnorris excited far
more indignation in England than the wrongs of the native population;
but it is not by his dealings with a few powerful and corrupt
functionaries, but by his treatment of the mass of the Irish people that
Wentworth’s administration must be judged. Of his action in the matter
of the Connaught plantation it is impossible to speak too severely. In
other respects his government was just and equitable; too equitable,
indeed, to secure the approbation of the colonists, who conceived that
they had an inalienable right to trample upon the older inhabitants. On
the subject of religious liberty his views, while by no means consonant
to modern notions of justice, were, on the whole, in advance of those of
his contemporaries.
Bacon, in the preceding reign, had recommended toleration, not as a
thing desirable in itself, but as a temporary expedient which the
peculiar circumstances of Ireland required.[131] Wentworth’s view was
substantially the same as Bacon’s. He undoubtedly looked forward to the
ultimate suppression of every religion other than that legally
established. But he was far too wise a man to have recourse to violent
and indiscriminate coercion. “I am not ignorant,” he wrote to
Cottington, “how much every good Englishman ought, as well in reason of
state as conscience, to desire that kingdom were well reduced to
conformity of religion with us here, as indeed shutting up the postern
gate to many a dangerous inconvenience and mischief. But,” he added, “it
is a great business, hath many a root lying deep and far within the
ground, which would be first thoroughly opened before we judge what
height it may shoot up into, when it shall feel itself once struck at,
to be loosened and pulled up.”[132] “It were too much,” he says in
another letter, “at once to distemper them by bringing plantations upon
them and disturbing them in the exercise of their religion, so long as
it be without scandal; and so indeed very inconsiderate, as I conceive,
to move in this latter till that former be fully settled, and by that
means the Protestant party become by much the stronger, which in truth
as yet I do not conceive it to be.”[133] Under his government,
therefore, the priests performed their functions without interference;
and this modified tolerance was afterwards made a prominent grievance by
the Puritan party.[134]
There was another section of the community which Wentworth was not
disposed to treat with equal leniency. As has been already mentioned, a
great number of the northern benefices were at this time filled by
ministers who refused to conform to the established ritual. During the
reign of James these persons had occupied an extremely anomalous
position, being unmolested by the Government, but not enjoying a legal
toleration. To Wentworth the sectaries, as they were called, were at
least as odious as the Catholics; and the bishops whom he promoted
exerted themselves for the suppression of irregularities at which their
more tolerant predecessors had connived. Bramhall, who had accompanied
the Lord Deputy to Ireland as his chaplain, and had subsequently been
advanced to the see of Derry, and Henry Lesley, Bishop of Down and
Connor, were especially active in the persecution of the
Nonconformists.[135] Clergymen who refused to subscribe the new canons
were deprived of their cures, and, in many cases, driven from the
country. Some fled to Scotland, others to New England. The majority made
a pretence of submission, while secretly animating their flocks to
resistance. After the riots which broke out in Edinburgh in 1637 the
situation became still more critical. Of the inhabitants of Ulster a
large majority were Scotchmen, and of the Scotchmen in Ulster at least
nine in ten were Presbyterians. Between these men and their kindred in
the western shires of Scotland a constant correspondence was
maintained—partly by itinerant preachers, partly by persons engaged in
trade, and partly by landowners who possessed estates in both countries.
It is not, therefore, surprising that the success of the Scotch
insurgents should have produced important results in Ireland. The
Puritan party, who had lately cowered beneath the tyranny of the
bishops, now adopted a firmer and more menacing attitude; openly
proclaimed their sympathy with the Covenanters; and began to express a
hope of obtaining concessions similar to those which the Government had
been compelled to make in Scotland.[136] In July, 1638, Charles,
realising that a peaceful accommodation with the Scots was no longer
possible, despatched a secret agent to Wentworth to inquire what
assistance he might expect from Ireland in the approaching struggle. The
Lord Deputy’s reply was not encouraging. During the past four years the
Irish army had been greatly improved in quality; but it was still very
inadequate in point of numbers. It amounted in all only to two thousand
foot and six hundred horse, “which, in a time better secured, is rather
too little than otherwise to ascertain the peace and tranquillity of
this government and subject.” The plantations in Connaught and other
parts of the kingdom, were still unsettled, “and the people more apt,
consequently, to stir upon so great an alteration as these will bring
amongst them than at another time.” There were also “great numbers of
Scotch in Ulster, undoubtedly of the same affections your Majesty finds
in Scotland, and by so much the more diligently to be attended, by how
much the nearer they are to the mutual encouragement and succours they
may communicate, the one to the other.” Under these circumstances to
withdraw any part of his small forces would be “a means to raise and
spread the flame, to have the fire here also kindled, whilst they find
us not in so full power to contain them, as now by God’s blessing I
conceive we are.” He thought, however, that it would be possible to
raise some additional levies, “whereof as many as may be to be English.
For, howbeit the Irish might do very good service, being a people
removed from the Scottish, as well in affections as religion; yet it is
not safe to train them up more than needs must in the military way,
which, the present occasion past, might arm their old affections to do
us more mischief, and put new and dangerous thoughts into them after
they are returned home again, as of necessity they must, without further
employment or provision, than what they had of their own before.”
Meanwhile he intended to move the greater part of his present army into
Ulster “as near Scotland as may be,” both to reduce that province to
obedience “and perchance cause some little diversion on the other side,
by reason of our being so close upon them.”[137] In November, in
response to a renewed appeal from his master, Wentworth agreed to send a
body of five hundred picked men to the defence of Carlisle; the places
of these troops being immediately supplied by new levies.[138]
At the beginning of the following year the Lord Deputy, finding that the
disturbances in Ulster still continued, and that a design had been
formed to surprise the town of Carrickfergus, had recourse to an act of
tyranny more outrageous than any upon which he had yet ventured. An
oath, called by the Presbyterians “the Black Oath,” was framed by the
Irish Council and imposed upon all the inhabitants of Ulster above the
age of sixteen years, “upon the holy evangelists, and that upon pain of
his Majesty’s high displeasure, and the uttermost and most severe
punishments which may be inflicted according to the laws of this realm
on contemners of sovereign authority.” The oath ran as follows: “I do
faithfully swear, profess and promise that I will honour and obey my
sovereign lord King Charles, and will bear faith and true allegiance
unto him, and defend and maintain his royal power and authority, and
that I will not bear arms or do any rebellious or hostile act against
him, or protest against any of his royal commands, but submit myself in
all due obedience thereunto; and that I will not enter into any
covenant, oath, or band of mutual defence and assistance against any
persons whatsoever by force, without his Majesty’s sovereign and regal
authority. And I do renounce and abjure all covenants, oaths and bands
whatsoever, contrary to what I have herein sworn, professed, and
promised. So help me God in Christ Jesus.”[139]
“The generality,” says a Presbyterian historian, “did take it, who were
not bound with a conscience; others hid themselves or fled, leaving
their homes and goods; and divers were imprisoned and kept in divers
gaols for a considerable time. This proved the hottest piece of
persecution this poor infant church had met with, and the strongest wind
to separate between the wheat and the chaff. However, God strengthened
many to hazard all before they would swallow it. In the county of Down
not only divers left their habitations and most of their goods, and
followed to Scotland, but others were apprehended and imprisoned, and
they were kept long in the prison, till thereafter Wentworth was
executed in England. In the county of Antrim, likewise, many were
necessitated to flee, wherein they sustained great loss in the goods
they left behind them; and yet were provided for, and lived sparingly in
Scotland under the Gospel; and those men who were fit for war were made
use of in the levies of Scotland about that time. The like suffering
befell those of the Scottish nation who were godly in the counties of
Tyrone and Londonderry; fewer of them going at first to Scotland they
were subject to the more suffering. Upon refusing the oath they had
their names returned to Dublin, from whence pursuivants were sent to
apprehend those who were refractory. Divers were apprehended and taken
prisoners to Dublin; others, though sent for, yet by special and very
remarkable providences escaped the pursuivants who were most earnest to
apprehend them. Thus that spirit raged amongst them before the
rebellion, persecuting and imprisoning all who would not conform and
take the Black Oath; amongst whom were divers women eminent in suffering
with patience and constancy, which become the godly.”[140]
It was by the common people that these oppressive proceedings, for which
a petition signed by a handful of Episcopalian residents in Ulster was
considered a sufficient pretext, were chiefly felt; but Wentworth was
equally ready to strike at more exalted offenders. Among the refugees
whom the tyranny of the Puritan party had driven from Scotland was a
clergyman of considerable literary talents named John Corbet. In the
summer of 1639 this gentleman fled to Dublin, where he published a
pamphlet in which he inveighed against the proceedings of his countrymen
with an acrimony which even the persecution which he had suffered cannot
wholly excuse.[141] This production recommended him to the favour of the
Lord Deputy, who presented him to a valuable living in the diocese of
Killala. The see of Killala was at this time filled by Archibald Adair,
a Scotchman, who, in spite of his episcopal office, appears to have
entertained a secret bias in favour of the Presbyterian discipline.
Adair was imprudent enough to rebuke Corbet with some asperity for his
hostility to the Covenant; the latter immediately complained to
Wentworth; and the bishop was dragged before the High Commission Court
and deprived of his bishopric. He was succeeded by John Maxwell,
formerly Bishop of Ross, one of the prelates who had been driven from
their sees during the recent ecclesiastical revolution in Scotland.[142]
On March 18, 1640, Wentworth, now Earl of Strafford and Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland, returned from England to Dublin, where a parliament met two
days later. The financial embarrassments produced by the Scotch war had
at length compelled Charles to summon a parliament in England; and
Strafford, who had himself urged his master to have recourse to this
most unpalatable expedient, thought it advisable that the Irish
legislature should meet some weeks earlier. He believed that he would be
able to extort from that body a sum which would not only prove extremely
serviceable to his Majesty, but might have the effect of stimulating the
liberality of his English subjects. Nor was his confidence altogether
misplaced. Although the whole country was seething with discontent the
Parliament professed the most extravagant loyalty. The Catholics,
intensely as they resented the plantations, dreaded the fanaticism of
the Puritans even more than the tyranny of the Viceroy. The settlers had
their own grievances, but, surrounded as they were by a hostile
population, did not dare to come to an open rupture with the Government.
Many of the smaller constituencies were represented by civil and
military officials who voted at the dictation of the Lord Lieutenant. A
grant of four subsidies was proposed, and carried with enthusiastic
unanimity. A few days later a letter from the King was received,
intimating that, if the rebellion in Scotland continued, even this
enormous supply might not be sufficient. Two additional subsidies were
proposed, and voted with equal alacrity. Not satisfied with these
practical proofs of their loyalty, the Commons prefixed to their grant
an elaborate panegyric on the Lord Lieutenant, and a declaration of
their unswerving devotion to the royal person.[143] Indeed the only
incident which occurred to disturb their harmony had its origin in the
intemperate zeal of the Upper House. The Lords were eager to concur in
the loyal declarations of the Commons; and, at the suggestion of the
Earl of Ormond, the zealous friend of the Lord Lieutenant, a resolution
was carried congratulating the Commons on their liberality, and
expressing a wish that the intended declaration might be made the joint
act of both Houses. This well-meant proposal aroused unexpected
indignation. The Commons claimed the exclusive right of taxation; they
resented the action of the peers as an unconstitutional encroachment on
their privileges, and peremptorily refused to unite with them in the
proposed declaration. The Lords were compelled to rescind the obnoxious
resolution and to content themselves with a separate declaration, which
was duly entered in their own journals.[144] On the 1st of April the
Houses, having served the purpose for which they had been convened, were
adjourned until the following June. Two days later the Lord Lieutenant
sailed for England, having entrusted the civil government to Wandesford,
and the command of the forces to the Earl of Ormond.
Strafford had resolved to devote the sums which were now at the disposal
of the Government to the increase of the Irish army. During his absence
the task devolved upon Ormond, who performed it with amazing rapidity.
By the middle of the summer a body of eight thousand foot and one
thousand horse was collected at Carrickfergus—the point whence they
might be most easily employed for the invasion of Scotland. It is
significant of the change which had taken place in Strafford’s views
during the past year that, whereas the old army had been exclusively
composed of Protestants, the new levies were mainly or entirely Roman
Catholic.[145] A few months earlier the Lord Lieutenant had been
vehemently opposed to the enlistment of the native Irish. In July, 1638,
Charles, who was then meditating the invasion of Scotland, had received
an offer of assistance from an unexpected quarter. In the preceding
century a number of clans from the Hebrides and the Western Highlands
had established themselves upon the coast of Ulster, and had
subsequently played an important part in the civil wars of the province,
occasionally assisting the Government, but generally co-operating with
the natives, whose language and customs did not materially differ from
their own. Of these clans the Macdonnells were by far the most
powerful.[146] During the reign of Elizabeth, Sorley Boy Macdonnell,
chief of the clan, had been engaged in frequent hostilities with
successive governors. On the accession of James his son Randal had been
confirmed in the possession of his estates, to which he had succeeded
two years previously. This gentleman married a daughter of the Earl of
Tyrone, and, after the flight of his father-in-law, appears to have
become an object of suspicion to Chichester, then Lord Deputy. He
speedily, however, made his peace with the Government, was raised to the
peerage in 1618 as Viscount Dunluce, and, a few years later, created
Earl of Antrim. His son, Randal, the second earl, married in 1635 the
widow of the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham, by whose means he obtained
a considerable influence at the court of England, where his fervid
Catholicism secured for him the favour of Queen Henrietta Maria. When
disturbances broke out in Scotland and it became known that the
Covenanters had entrusted the principal command to the Earl of Argyle,
the hereditary enemy of the Macdonnells, Antrim undertook to raise an
army of Irish and Highland Catholics to assist the King in the reduction
of the Scotch rebels. The offer was tempting, for the earl commanded an
extensive following in both countries, and Charles was eager to avail
himself of it; but Wentworth, who hated all Celts, and particularly
detested Antrim, expressed his disapproval in the strongest terms. To
Antrim himself, whom, in deference to the King’s wishes, it was
necessary to make a show of consulting, the Lord Deputy hinted that he
had perhaps underrated the difficulty of the enterprise; that, while it
would be easy to raise troops, it would be less easy to pay and feed
them; that the cost of arms and transports would be enormous; that the
hazards of the attempt would be great and the consequences, in the event
of failure, serious. To his colleagues in the English council he
explained his real objections with greater frankness. The earl was the
grandson of Tyrone, and therefore an object of distrust and aversion to
the Englishry. Of the officers whom he proposed to employ, some had
passed their lives in the Spanish service and were believed to retain
Spanish sympathies. His troops would necessarily be recruited from
amongst the native Irish, “children of habituated rebels,” from whom, if
they were once armed, some sudden outrage might be apprehended. It would
be a grave scandal if the King were to make use of a Roman Catholic army
and a Roman Catholic general. It would afford the Scotch, who were very
numerous in Ulster, a plausible pretext for arming to defend themselves,
and thus the whole province might be thrown into a blaze. These
arguments were pronounced by Windebank to be “very solid and
unanswerable”; and, after some months spent in fruitless negotiations,
the scheme was abandoned.[147] In the spring of 1640, however, the hour
for such scruples had gone by. It was necessary, if the Crown was to
retain any vestige of authority, to raise an army in Ireland. It was
impossible in their present temper to have any confidence in the loyalty
of the Protestant settlers; and Strafford, who never hesitated to adapt
his policy to circumstances, appealed to the native population. Perhaps
no act of his administration contributed in so large a measure to bring
upon him the vengeance of the English Parliament.
The Houses met again on the 1st of June. Although only two months had
elapsed since the last session, the political situation had completely
changed. The Covenanters were victorious in their own country, and were
preparing to invade England. A Parliament had been held at Westminster
in April, and, having refused to grant supplies, had been suddenly and
ungraciously dismissed. This arbitrary act inflamed the popular
discontent. The disaffected in Ireland—and there were few of any class
or creed in Ireland who had not good grounds for disaffection—were
encouraged by the disturbances in the sister kingdoms, and no longer
cowed by the presence of the terrible viceroy. The officers, on whom
Strafford had been wont to rely for the management of the House of
Commons, were absent, detained by their military duties; and the
Catholic and Puritan parties, whose mutual jealousies it had been a main
object of his policy to foster, had agreed to suspend their former
quarrels, and formed a close alliance for the purpose of embarrassing
the Government. On many points the wishes of the two parties were
irreconcilable; but there were two feelings which were shared in equal
measure by both sections of the opposition—indignation at the tyranny of
the Lord Lieutenant, and hatred of the Established Church. A
remonstrance denouncing the corruption of the ecclesiastical courts and
the exorbitant fees demanded by the Anglican clergy was proposed and
carried by a large majority. The Commons next complained that the
supplies voted in the preceding session were excessive; and, without
actually rescinding their recent grant, suggested an alteration in the
manner of collecting the subsidies which would greatly reduce their
value. Alarmed at their violence, Wandesford prorogued the Parliament
until October, when he perhaps hoped that the Lord Lieutenant might be
able to resume his duties.[148]
In October, however, Strafford was still in England; and the ill-humour
of the Houses had increased rather than diminished during the recess.
The third session of the Irish Parliament was even more turbulent than
the second. A number of unpopular laws had been enacted in the last
Parliament: these laws were now declared to be grievances, and an
address to the Lord Deputy was carried requiring him to suspend their
execution. In June the Commons had resolved that the remaining subsidies
should be collected “in a moderate parliamentary way;” they now
explained their wishes more precisely, and insisted that no man should
be taxed to more than the tenth part of his income. On both these points
Wandesford was obliged to comply with their demands.[149]
While the Irish Parliament were thus manifesting their implacable
hostility to his government, the Lord Lieutenant, who appears to have
been wholly ignorant of the change which had taken place in their
temper, submitted to Sir George Radcliffe one of the most remarkable
proposals which have ever proceeded from a British minister. The Ulster
Scots were now the great objects of his animosity, and the severities
hitherto employed had served rather to irritate than to intimidate them.
As a last hope of preserving the tranquillity of the country Strafford
now proposed that, with the assent of the Irish Parliament and the
assistance of the native Catholics, the entire colony should be
transported back to Scotland—a most significant comment on the
advantages which the English monarchy is popularly supposed to have
derived from the Plantation of Ulster. “It will be objected,” he wrote,
“that the Scots are many in number, every ordinary fellow still carrying
his sword and pistol; and therefore unsafe to be too far provoked. I
answer—’tis more unsafe to deal with an enemy by halves; and that, I
fear, will fall out to be our case, if resolutely this design be not put
in execution; for who sees not, if the now standing army be not able,
without any manner of danger or difficulty, to give them the law, and
send them forthwith packing—I say, who sees not that, upon Argyle’s
landing and arming of them, we shall be exposed to a most assured scorn
and certain ruin?” It is evident that Strafford, when he wrote these
words, relied for the success of his project upon the servility of
Protestant royalists and the traditional feud between the Catholic and
Puritan parties; but Radcliffe, who had formed a juster estimate of the
actual condition of the country, did not dare to communicate the
proposal to the Irish Parliament.[150]
That body was by no means satisfied with its recent triumphs. In the
first week of November the Commons, acting, it is said, at the
instigation of some members of the English Parliament, which had met a
few days earlier, notably of Sir John Clotworthy, a Presbyterian
landowner, who had been driven from Ulster by the tyranny of Strafford,
and now represented the borough of Malden, drew up a remonstrance
enumerating the principal grievances from which the kingdom had suffered
under the administration of the Lord Lieutenant. The remonstrance was
composed of sixteen articles, of which the first related to the general
decay of trade, said to be due to new and illegal methods of taxation;
the second and third to the arbitrary interference of the Lord
Lieutenant and Council with private lawsuits; the fourth and fifth to
the refusal of the Graces and the inquiries into defective titles,
particularly in the province of Connaught; the sixth and seventh to
monopolies, especially the monopoly of tobacco; the eighth to “the
extreme and cruel usage of the inhabitants of the city and county of
Londonderry”; the ninth to the tyranny of the High Commission Court; the
tenth to the exactions of the Anglican clergy; the eleventh to the
misappropriation of the revenue; the twelfth to a proclamation issued in
1635 prohibiting gentlemen to leave the kingdom without license; the
thirteenth to the disfranchisement of certain ancient boroughs, by which
the Parliament was said to have been deprived of the services of many
good and useful members; the fourteenth to the intimidation practised by
ministers in the House of Commons; the fifteenth to the exorbitant and
illegal fees demanded by subordinate officials in the courts of justice;
and the last to the impoverishment of merchants and other subjects owing
to the intolerable rapacity of the tax-farmers. On the 11th the House
appointed a committee of thirteen members, four from Leinster, and three
from each of the other provinces, who were instructed to proceed to
London and present the remonstrance to the King. On the 12th the
Parliament was once more prorogued.[151]
The committee, meanwhile, had sailed for England, without waiting for
the license of the Deputy. On their arrival in London they found the
Earl of Strafford a prisoner, accused of high treason, and the leaders
of the popular party busily employed in collecting evidence against him.
Ireland had been the principal scene of the fallen minister’s activity,
and it was to his Irish administration that his accusers chiefly looked
to furnish matter which might justify his impeachment. On the 6th of
November, Pym had moved for a committee to enquire into the affairs of
that kingdom; and the motion, which was seconded by Sir John Clotworthy,
had been carried by a large majority. To this committee the Irish agents
now addressed themselves. The remonstrance was laid before the House of
Commons on the 20th, was made the subject of an exhaustive discussion,
and was much used in the subsequent prosecution of the Lord
Lieutenant.[152]
In Ireland, meanwhile, all was chaos. Wandesford died suddenly at the
beginning of December, broken-hearted at the calamities of his patron
and the alarming condition of the country. After an interregnum of some
weeks Charles was reluctantly compelled to entrust the government to two
Lords Justices, who were understood to enjoy the confidence of the
English Parliament; Sir William Parsons, Master of the Court of Wards,
and Sir John Borlase, Master of the Ordnance.[153] The first was an
astute and rapacious official, who had amassed a vast fortune at the
expense of the native proprietors; the second a rough soldier,
inexperienced except in the business of his profession. The Houses met
again in February and speedily gave fresh proofs of their unabated
hostility to the Government. During the last session a remonstrance,
identical with that voted in the House of Commons, had been proposed in
the Lords, but had been defeated owing to the opposition of the Earl of
Ormond. A few days after the prorogation, however, the principal Roman
Catholic peers had at an informal meeting deputed three of their number
to proceed to London and lay their grievances before the Parliament.
These noblemen, with one other, were now authorized to act in the name
of the entire body; to repeat the complaints of the Commons; and to
adduce others relating to matters which particularly affected their own
order.[154]
While the Lords were thus manifesting their implacable animosity against
the Earl of Strafford, the Commons were adopting even more violent
measures. The remonstrance had placed a formidable weapon in the hands
of the managers of the impeachment; but its effect was much diminished
by the fulsome panegyric upon the Lord Lieutenant which had been
prefixed to the act of supply voted in the preceding year. The Commons
now declared that this panegyric had been fraudulently inserted in the
Act by the earl or his creatures; protested that the matter of it was
entirely false; and petitioned the King that it might be expunged from
the records.[155] A few days later a similar resolution was proposed in
the Upper House, and carried in spite of the opposition of Ormond and
other royalist peers.[156] The two Houses next prepared a list of
constitutional questions, which were submitted to the judges for
consideration. To these questions, which related to the judicial powers
claimed and exercised by the Lord Lieutenant, the validity of acts of
State, the jurisdiction of the Castle Chamber and the High Commission
Court, the exercise of martial law in time of peace, the punishment of
jurors who refused to find for the Crown, the right of the judges to
accept bribes, and some other matters of less importance, the judges
declared themselves unable to return immediate answers. The questions
were thereupon forwarded to the Irish committee in London, who were
instructed to communicate them to the English Parliament.[157] Finally,
on the 27th of February, Audley Mervyn, the principal spokesman of the
Puritan party, carried to the bar of the House of Lords articles of
impeachment against Sir Richard Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland,
John, Bishop of Derry, Sir Gerald Lowther, Lord Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas, and Sir George Radcliffe, Kt., all of whom were jointly
and severally charged with having traitorously conspired with Thomas,
Earl of Strafford, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government
and to subvert the liberties of Parliament and the fundamental laws of
the realm.[158]
These impeachments were among the last acts of the coalition. An
alliance between parties who agreed in nothing save a common hatred was
inevitably dissolved by the destruction of the common enemy. Even before
the Act of Attainder had received the royal assent, the Catholic section
of the opposition had had some reason to be alarmed at the conduct of
their Puritan allies. In the last week of April a petition, described as
proceeding from “some Protestant inhabitants of the counties of Antrim,
Down, Derry, Tyrone, and Armagh,” was presented to the House of Commons
by Sir John Clotworthy. The petitioners complained that “partly by the
cruel severity and arbitrary proceedings of the civil magistrate, but
principally through the unblest way of the prelacy with their faction
their souls were starved, their estates undone, their families
impoverished, and many among them cut off and destroyed.”
Their chief grievance, however, appeared to consist in the laxity with
which the laws against recusants were administered. Titular bishops were
winked at. Mass priests were frequent and pretended a title to every
parish in the kingdom. Masses were “publicly celebrated without
controulment, to the great grief of God’s people, and increase of
idolatry and superstition.” Friaries and nunneries were tolerated; and
in many places Papists were permitted to keep schools, “unto some
whereof such multitudes of children and young men do resort that they
may be esteemed rather universities, teaching therein not only the
tongues, but likewise the liberal arts and sciences.”[159]
The fanatical tone of this petition, the favour with which it was
received by the Parliament, and the persecution of the English Catholics
completely alienated the Irish from the Puritan party. At the same time
the fall of Strafford had removed the main obstacle to a reconciliation
between the King and the recusants. Urged on by the Queen, and alarmed
at the critical condition of his other kingdoms, Charles at length
resolved to conciliate his Irish subjects. In May the Lords Justices
received instructions to prepare a Bill for the limitation of the royal
title, and another for securing the possessions of the Connaught
gentry.[160] These and some other less serious concessions effected a
rapid change in the sentiments of the Catholic leaders, and the men who
in the spring of 1641 had united with the Puritans to resist the tyranny
of the Crown took arms in the autumn of the same year to defend the
Crown against the encroachments of the Puritans.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
Footnote 131:
Considerations touching the Queen’s service in Ireland. (_Cabala_,
II., 52).
Footnote 132:
Wentworth to Cottington, October 1, 1632. (_Strafford Letters_, I.,
74.)
Footnote 133:
Wentworth to Coke, November 28, 1636. (_Ibid._, II., 38, 39.)
Footnote 134:
“Certainly it is my duty to witness this truth for his Majesty, that,
since I had the honour to be employed in this place, he hath not been
pleased that the hair of any man’s head should be touched for the free
exercise of his conscience.” Wentworth to Con, May 15, 1637. (_Ibid._,
II., 112.) Compare the charge made against him at his trial of showing
favour to Catholics. Rushworth’s _Trial of the Earl of Strafford_.
Footnote 135:
Bramhall to Laud, February 23, 1638 (_Calendar of State Papers_,
181-183); Wentworth to Bramhall (_Rawdon Papers_, p. 43); Lesley to
Wentworth, September 22 and October 18, 1638 (_Strafford Letters_,
II., 219, 226, 227); Lesley’s _Confutation of the Covenant_. Adair’s
_Narrative_, chap. III.
Footnote 136:
Lesley to Wentworth, October 18, 1638. Laud to Wentworth, November 2,
1638. (_Strafford Letters_, II., 226, 227, 230, 231.)
Footnote 137:
Wentworth to Charles, July 28, 1638. (_Ibid._, II., 187-189.) For a
detailed account of the condition of the Irish army at this time see
Wentworth to Coke, August 10, 1638. (_Ibid._, II., 197-201.)
Footnote 138:
Wentworth to Charles, November 11, 1638. (_Ibid._, II., 233-236.)
Footnote 139:
Act of State by the Lord Deputy and Council, May 16, 1639. (_Ibid._,
343-346.)
Footnote 140:
Adair’s _Narrative_, chap. IV.
Footnote 141:
_The Epistle Congratulatory of Lysimachus Nicanor of the Society of
Jesus to the Covenanters of Scotland._
Footnote 142:
Clogy’s _Life of Bedell_, pp. 129-131. Compare _Lords’ Journals_, I.,
112.
Footnote 143:
_Commons’ Journals_, I., 141.
Footnote 144:
_Lords’ Journals_, I., 106.
Footnote 145:
Rushworth’s _Trial of the Earl of Strafford_, 517. This statement is
confirmed by a Catholic pamphleteer who called himself Antonius
Prodinus. “Thomas, comes Straffordiæ, Hiberniæ prorex, decem milia
Catholicorum Hibernorum militum a multis ante mensibus in armis habuit
in Ultonia.” _Descriptio regni Hiberniæ_, p. 41. Carte, however,
asserts that the officers and 1,000 of the private soldiers were
Protestants. _Life of Ormond_, I., 132.
Footnote 146:
For a full account of the Macdonnels of Antrim see _Clan Donald_ by A.
and A. Macdonald, vol. II., chap. 15.
Footnote 147:
Antrim to Wentworth, July 17, December 31, 1638, April 11 and 12, May
16, 1639: Wentworth to Windebank, March 20, 1639, enclosing Antrim’s
propositions: to Vane, May 16, July 7, 1639: Windebank to Wentworth,
April 13, 1639: to Antrim, April 13, 1639. (_Strafford Letters_, II.,
184, 266, 300-305, 321-323, 339-340, 419-424, _et alibi_.)
Footnote 148:
_Commons’ Journals_, I., 141.
Footnote 149:
_Ibid._, 156-161.
Footnote 150:
Wentworth to Radcliffe, October 8, 1640. This letter, which is not
included in the _Strafford Letters_, is printed in Whittaker’s _Life
and Original Correspondence of Sir George Radcliffe_, pp. 209, 210. It
is endorsed by Radcliffe, “Proposition, Scots, rejected by me and
crossed.”
Footnote 151:
_Commons’ Journals_, I., 165. Compare _Calendar of State Papers_,
252-256, where Radcliffe’s answers are given.
Footnote 152:
_Parliamentary History_, IX., 40.
Footnote 153:
Charles to the Privy Council, December 15 and 30. _Calendar of State
Papers_, 247-248.
Footnote 154:
_Ibid._, 261-262. _Lords’ Journals_, I., 152.
Footnote 155:
_Commons’ Journals_, I., 176-177.
Footnote 156:
_Lords’ Journals_, I., 157.
Footnote 157:
_Commons’ Journals_, I., 174-175. _Lords’ Journals_, I., 160.
_Calendar of State Papers_, 333-337.
Footnote 158:
Rushworth’s _Historical Collections_, IV., 214.
Footnote 159:
_A Sample of Jet Black Prelatic Calumny_, pp. 131, etc.
Footnote 160:
Lords Justices to Vane, May 8, 1641. (_Calendar of State Papers_,
281-283.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“1641”
BY ARTHUR HOUSTON, K.C., LL.D.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“1641”
“ON Friday, the 22nd of this month, after nine of the clock at night,
this bearer, Owen Connolly, servant to Sir John Clotworthy, Knight, came
to me, the Lord Justice Parsons, to my house, and in great secrecy (as
indeed the case did require) discovered unto me a most wicked and
damnable conspiracy, plotted and contrived, and intended to be acted, by
some evil affected Irish Papists here.”
With these words begins the historic letter written on the 25th of
October, 1641, by the Lords Justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John
Borlase, and thirteen members of the Irish Privy Council, to the Earl of
Leicester, the absentee Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
The objects which those who planned this conspiracy had in view, the
means by which they were to be accomplished, and the conduct of those
who took part in the insurrection which resulted from it, are among the
most controverted questions of Irish history. Those who have taken sides
against the rebels represent the rising as an ebullition of blind hatred
against the English and Protestant inhabitants of Ireland, entertained
by the native and Catholic population, who were resolved on
expropriating and exterminating them, and setting up a government
independent of the Crown of England, and establishing the Catholic
Church in Ireland. Those who have sided with the rebels argue that the
conspiracy and the insurrection were the result of legitimate
grievances, for the redress of which insurrection afforded the only
means; that the insurgents were loyal to the Crown, sought, not
religious ascendancy, but religious freedom; that, while it is true that
one of the objects of the conspirators was the recovery of property of
which they or their ancestors had been violently and unjustly deprived,
they were averse to the unnecessary effusion of blood, and had no design
of harming, much less murdering, their English and Protestant
fellow-countrymen. As to the conduct of those who took part in the
rebellion, English and Anglo-Irish writers have made charges of
wholesale massacre and shocking cruelty against them. These charges have
been not only repelled, but retorted on the Irish Government, and the
officers and soldiers who acted under their orders.
In addition to sketching briefly the main incidents of the rebellion, I
propose in this paper, so far as its necessary limitations will permit,
to discuss these different questions, and to see if it be not possible,
with the materials in our possession, to come to a conclusion upon them.
As a preliminary step it will be necessary to endeavour to place
ourselves in the position of a native Irish Catholic in the year 1641,
so as to see what was his lot, and of what, if any, grievances he had
just cause to complain. A short historical retrospect will help to an
understanding of this matter.
In the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth the Acts of Supremacy and
Uniformity had been passed. By these statutes Catholics were liable to a
fine for not attending church; while those who failed to take the Oath
of Supremacy could not obtain a university degree, practise at the Bar,
hold the office of a magistrate, or sue out the livery of their lands.
The legal fine for not attending church was, indeed, only twelve pence,
and was intended to go to the relief of the poor. But much more was
exacted by clerks and officers for fees, and the proceeds of the tax
were diverted from its statutory destination, the relief of the poor, on
the pretext, as explained by Sir Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy,
that the poor of the parishes were not fit to receive the money, being
Catholics themselves; and therefore ought to pay the like penalty.
Towards the close of the reign of James the First, the Catholics put
forth a remonstrance in which their position is summarized in these
words:—“That their children were not allowed to study in foreign
universities; that all the Catholics of noble birth were excluded from
offices and honours, and even from the magistracy of their respective
counties; that Catholic citizens and burgesses were removed from all
situations of power and profit in different corporations; that Catholic
barristers were not permitted to plead in the courts of law; and that
the inferior classes were burdened with fines, distresses,
excommunications and other punishments, which reduced them to the lowest
degree of poverty.”
From this it will be seen that the grievances under which the Catholics
of Ireland, as such, laboured at the accession of Charles the First,
were not confined to any rank or class, but were suffered by the highest
as well as the lowest.
The same observation is equally true of another grievance to which I am
about to refer, a grievance that had not ostensibly any connection with
the race or the religious belief of those who complained of it, but at
the same time in fact pressed almost exclusively upon the native Irish,
and those who professed the Catholic faith. This grievance may be
briefly described as insecurity of land tenure.
In the reign of James the First the great case, reported by Sir John
Davies, under the name of the Case of Tanistry, decided that lands
should descend, not according to the native custom by which the Tanist
succeeded to a limited interest in the property, the estate itself being
vested in the tribe, but should descend according to the law of England.
In consequence of this decision, the owners or those who claimed to be
owners, in order to obtain what they believed would be an indefeasible
title, surrendered their estates to the Crown and took a new grant, on
payment of certain fines and the expenses of the letters patent, and on
the terms of paying a fixed quit rent. Unfortunately astute lawyers were
able to pick holes in the patents. Sometimes the officer whose duty it
was to enrol them had neglected to do so. Sometimes the lands were
wrongly or insufficiently described. Sometimes they had been valued too
low, or even too high. In any of these cases, and in many others, the
letters patent, if impeached, would turn out worthless. I need not
remind you, as you have recently had the advantage of hearing a learned
discourse on Strafford’s government in Ireland, what use he had made of
these flaws, for the purpose of confiscating the properties of the
owners of land in Connaught and Clare, in order to procure money for his
master, and land for the English plantation. You will remember that
among the graces which Charles promised the Irish in return for
£120,000, which they gave him, were one for freedom of worship, one for
confirmation of titles, and one for limiting the right of the Crown to
recover lands to a period of sixty years, after an uninterrupted and
undisputed possession, and how basely Charles and Strafford behaved when
the money had been paid over.
Such was the posture of affairs in Ireland when Strafford, broken in
health, was summoned to England to take command of the army fighting
against the Scots. This army having been defeated at Newcastle, he
returned to London, there to meet his accusers, to be condemned to
death, and to be sacrificed by the King who had promised that “the
Parliament should not touch one hair of his head.”
Strafford’s successor was Sir Christopher Wandesford. The Irish
Parliament met in June, 1640, in a very different temper from that
displayed in their last preceding session. They had caught something of
the spirit of their brethren in England, with whom they had been brought
into touch by the proceedings against Strafford. The Commons drew up a
Remonstrance of Grievances, and appointed a committee of sixteen,
including four members of the Lords, to lay it before the King. In it
they remind him of their liberality in contributing to his necessities,
and of the fact that in them, the Catholic people, lay the strength of
his revenue, and proceed to complain of their wrongs: the arbitrary
decision of causes and controversies before the chief governor, the
perversion of law by the judges in order to gratify the Court, the cruel
punishments employed to repress freedom of speech and writing, the
extended powers of the High Court of Commission, the increase of
monopolies, the exorbitant fees exacted by the clergy, the denial of the
Graces, and other grievances.
This committee did not receive the final answer from the King until he
was on the point of setting out for Scotland. They returned to Ireland
three weeks after the Parliament had been prorogued, bringing back the
answer, with all the Bills which had been transmitted to England for the
approbation of the Council there before being passed. Among these were
the Bill for Limitation, which protected from the claims of the Crown
all estates that had been enjoyed without claim for sixty years; the
Bill for relinquishing the title of the Crown to the four Connaught
counties, the county of Clare, and large tracts of land in Tipperary and
Limerick, the title of which had been found for the King by several
inquisitions, and which were ready to be disposed of on survey to
British undertakers. These Bills were all to be passed when the two
Houses met, and meanwhile care was to be taken to notify them to the
whole nation.
These concessions, though, if intended to be honestly carried out, which
might well be doubted, they might satisfy the Lords and Commons by whom
they were obtained, failed to satisfy the native chiefs, and the
Catholic population. The Ulster plantators of James, and the Munster
plantators of Elizabeth, and the Leix and Offaly plantators of Mary, and
the Wicklow plantators, who were enjoying the lands of the Byrnes, were
all to remain in undisturbed possession of their estates. The Catholic
religion was still to be under a ban, and those who professed it were to
pay their twelve pence for every Sunday and holiday that they did not
attend the parish church, and were to be exposed to the disabilities
imposed by the Act of Supremacy on those that failed to take the Oath.
Besides this there were sinister rumours in circulation. Sir William
Parsons was reported to have said at a public entertainment in Dublin,
“that within a twelvemonth no Catholic should be seen in Ireland.” A
letter was intercepted coming from Scotland to a person named Freeman,
in Antrim, stating that a covenanting army under the command of General
Lesley was coming to extirpate the Roman Catholics of Ulster, and leave
the Scots the sole possessors of the province. The English House of
Commons had passed a vote that no toleration of the Romish religion
should be allowed in Ireland, and they had shown their intolerance by
having eight Catholic priests arrested for saying Mass in London, and
having seven of them executed. Sir John Clotworthy, the employer of
Connolly, the informer already mentioned, and a man well acquainted with
the designs of the faction that governed the English House of Commons,
was reported to have declared there in a speech “that the conversion of
the Papists in Ireland was only to be effected by the Bible in one hand
and the sword in the other.”
The consequence was that a genuine and general alarm spread among the
Catholics of all ranks throughout Ireland. At the same time the
circumstances were favourable for striking a blow for religious liberty.
The Scots, who had far less to complain of than the native Irish, had
obtained religious liberty by taking up arms. Why should not the Irish,
more especially seeing that the troubles in the sister isle made their
attempt all the easier?
Roger O’More, commonly called Rory O’More, was descended from the chief
branch of the O’Mores of Leix, whose lands had been confiscated for the
benefit of the English colony planted there. He was connected by
intermarriage with considerable families of English blood. He was
handsome, courteous, and able, a man of high character, and the idol of
the Irish, who celebrated him in their songs, and relied so much upon
him that they used to say: “God and our Lady be our help, and Roger
O’More.” He it was that, in connection with the son of the great Tyrone,
contrived the rebellion.
As early as February, 1641, O’More had secured the adhesion of the best
gentlemen of quality of Leinster, and of a great part of Connaught,
subject to his getting the adhesion of the gentry of Ulster. In order to
obtain their adhesion he, in February, 1641, approached Lord Maguire,
Baron Enniskillen. Lord Maguire consented to join, and a meeting was
held next day to which all the Ulster gentlemen then in town were
invited. They readily engaged in the plot. It was desired to obtain the
adhesion of the Lords of the Pale, who, though English in blood, and
possessed of estates that had been the property of the native Irish,
were Catholics, and smarting under the affronts put upon their religion,
and apprehensive of further severities. Colonel Plunket, who was one of
the first to join the conspiracy, and had, as he affirmed, broached the
subject to Lord Gormanstown, and got his approval, undertook to win them
over. But he effected nothing. By and by we shall see how they were
forced to join.
It was ultimately arranged that the rising should take place on the 23rd
of October. Every man had his place assigned to him. The Ulster gentry
under Sir Phelim O’Neill, were to seize Derry; O’More, Colonel Byrne,
Lord Maguire, and Bryan O’Neale were to lead the attack on Dublin
Castle, which was to be made by two hundred men, to be provided equally
out of each province by the principal conspirators. The secret of the
plot had been kept with extraordinary success. It had been communicated
to as few persons as possible, and those only who were leaders. The
conspirators felt assured that the common people would unhesitatingly
follow their native chieftains in any enterprise against the Saxon
intruder, and in this, as the event proved, they were not mistaken.
There was this disadvantage, however, in not taking the people into
their confidence, that the latter were left in ignorance of the objects
which their leaders had in view, and the means by which those objects
were to be obtained. Apparently the people were allowed to form their
own opinions on these subjects, and it may be that they thought, and
that they proclaimed that amongst those objects was the erection of
Ireland into an independent kingdom, and the establishment of the
supremacy of the Catholic Church, and that among the means to be adopted
for effecting those objects was the extirpation and expropriation of the
English and Protestants.
Owen Connolly was a Protestant, and Sir John Clotworthy, his master, was
bitterly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. How the secret came to be
disclosed to him as it was by Oge O’Neill on the night of the 22nd, is a
mystery; but it was, with the result that the attempt on Dublin Castle
was forestalled.
Some fresh light has been thrown upon the events of this period of Irish
history by the recently published volume, issued by the Historical
Manuscripts Commission, containing the manuscripts of the Marquess of
Ormond, preserved at Kilkenny Castle, the second of which gives at full
length the whole of the letters from the Irish Lords Justices to the
King, the Earl of Leicester, Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons,
Sir Henry Vane, Sir Edward Nicholas, Lord Falkland, Secretary of State,
and His Majesty’s Commissioners for the affairs of Ireland. This
correspondence commences with the famous letter of October 25th, 1641,
already quoted, and continues without interruption down to the 15th of
January, 1644, when a letter is written to Sir Edward Nicholas. This is
the first complete series of these despatches ever published. The
originals were destroyed in a fire in Dublin Castle.
Whatever justification there may be for the charges of neglect of duty
made by Carte against the Lords Justices, in not taking precautions
against a rising as to which they had warnings, there can, I think, be
no doubt but that from the time when at nine on the night of the 22nd of
October, 1641, Owen Connolly made his disclosures to Lord Justice
Parsons, down to the date when these letters cease, the Council,
according to their lights, left no stone unturned to crush the
rebellion. Parsons and Borlase have been accused of postponing the
suppression of the rebellion in order to promote the confiscation of
Irish estates. But both of these continued to attend the meetings of the
Council, and to sign the letters, down to the end of June, 1643, and
Borlase continued to attend and sign the letters to the very end. The
letters afford a continuous record of the measures taken by the Lords
Justices and Council for stamping out the rebellion.
Parsons immediately on receiving Owen Connolly’s communication repaired
to Borlase, and they at once summoned a meeting of the Council, which
sat all that night and all the next day. They caused the Castle to be
strengthened with armed men, and the city to be guarded, and proceeded
to have such of the insurgents as they could lay hands on apprehended.
The first was Hugh MacMahon, whom they examined, and who, to use their
own words, when he saw they “laid it home to him, confessed enough to
destroy himself and impeach some others.” Calling to mind a letter they
had received from Sir William Cole on the 11th of October, they
determined to secure Lord Maguire immediately, and succeeded in
arresting him in a cockloft in an obscure house far away from his
lodging. He was also examined, and admitted knowledge of the conspiracy,
and ultimately made and delivered to the Lord of the Tower the written
statement to which I shall refer hereafter.
When the hour approached for surprising the Castle a large number of
strangers were observed to come to town in great parties several ways,
who, not finding admittance at the gates, stayed in the suburbs. The
Council issued a proclamation commanding all men, not dwellers in the
city or suburbs, to depart within an hour on pain of death, and making
it alike penal in those who should harbour them. This had the desired
effect. The concourse departed. On the following day the Council sent
into all parts of the country another proclamation giving information of
the failure of the plot to seize the Castle, so as to dishearten the
insurgents, and to encourage the friends of the Government.
Meantime the rebellion had broken out in various places throughout the
country. The Council did not know whether to believe MacMahon’s
statement that all the counties in the kingdom were in the plot; but if
it were so they say, “Then indeed we shall be in high extremity and the
kingdom in the greatest danger it ever underwent, considering our want
of men, money, and arms to enable us to encounter such great multitudes
as they can make if all should come against us.”
It was no wonder that the Lords Justices and Council contemplated a
general rising with dismay. “The army we have,” they say in their letter
of October 25th, “consisting of but two thousand foot and one thousand
horse, are so dispersed in garrisons in several parts of the four
provinces, for the security of these parts ... as, if they be sent for
to be all drawn together, not only the places whence they are to be
drawn ... must be by their absence distressed, but also the companies
themselves coming in so small numbers, may be in danger to be cut off in
their marches, nor indeed have we money to pay the soldiers to enable
them to march.”
The Council soon had reason to know that the insurrection was general.
Lord Blaney came to Dublin at twelve o’clock on the night of October
23rd, with news of the seizure of his house at Castleblayney, and of a
house of the Earl of Essex at Carrickmacross. At three o’clock on the
morning of the 24th they learned that the store of arms and ammunition
at Newry had been seized. In a postscript to the letter of October 25th
they write: “As we were making up these our letters the Sheriff of the
county of Monaghan and Dr. Teate having fled, came to us and informed us
of much more spoil committed by the rebels in the counties of Monaghan
and Cavan, and that the sheriff of the county of Cavan joins with the
rebels, being a Papist and a prime man of the Irish.” On the 5th of
November they write that the rebels had seized the houses and estates of
almost all the English in Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Tyrone,
Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, and a great part of Down, and were beginning
to threaten the English plantations in the King’s County and Queen’s
County, that Dundalk had surrendered to them without a blow, and that
they were marching on Drogheda. On the 13th of November they announce
that the Byrnes and others had risen in Wicklow; on the 22nd that some
other parts of Leinster had joined; on the 25th that the whole county of
Louth, both gentry and others, had joined; that some of the Wicklow
rebels had come to within four miles of the city of Dublin, and that the
cattle and houses of all the English in both Wicklow and Wexford were in
the hands of the insurgents; on the 30th that several other counties had
risen, and on the 14th of December that the defection then appeared to
be universal throughout the whole four provinces.
The burden of these letters, which are steeped in the gall of bitterness
towards the Irish Papist and his religious teachers is principally, in
the first place, a wholesale charge of acts of barbarity against the
rebels, and in the second place, frantic appeals for help in men and
money and material of war.
Now with regard to those charges it is to be observed first, that much
weight is not to be attached to accusations made in general terms; and,
second, that charges of this kind were very useful as excuses for
barbarities committed by the Government troops, and as stimulants to the
English Parliament and people to send over the required supplies, and
therefore very likely to be greatly exaggerated; and third, that the
writers of these letters may have more readily given credence to reports
of such excesses having been perpetrated, because, if their first letter
is to be believed, Owen Connolly had told them that it was part of the
design “that all the Protestants and English throughout the whole
kingdom that would not join with them should be cut off, and so those
Papists should then become possessed of the Government and kingdom at
the same moment.”
It is of importance, therefore, to see what were the actual objects
which the organizers of the rebellion had in view. Presumably they would
include two, namely, religious liberty, and the restoration of the
confiscated lands. Now, we have documents which will throw great light
on this question. One is the oath which, as mentioned in the letter of
the Council to Leicester, of November 25th, 1641, was administered to
all who joined the rebels; another is the written statement made by Lord
Maguire and delivered by him, about 1642, to Sir John Conyers, the
Lieutenant of the Tower. The oath was to maintain and defend the public
and free exercise of the Catholic religion, to bear faith and allegiance
to King Charles, his heirs and successors, and to support them against
anyone who should attempt anything against their persons or estates, or
endeavour to suppress their prerogatives, or do any act contrary to
regal government, as also the power and privileges of Parliament, the
lawful rights and privileges of the subjects. This oath, it will be
observed, asserts:—
1. Religious liberty.
2. Loyalty to the Crown.
3. The power and privileges of Parliament.
4. Rights and privileges of the subject.
Speaking of Lord Maguire’s statement, Carte, Book iii., § II., says, “It
carries with it an intrinsic evidence sufficient to merit belief, and
hath accordingly been universally allowed to be a just and faithful
account of that affair.” We may therefore, I think, rest satisfied that
this statement contains an authentic account of the objects that the
conspirators had in view, and the method by which they proposed to
accomplish them. So far as it relates to the matter in hand it is to
this effect:—Roger O’More approached Lord Maguire, and after
representing in general the many grievances of the natives, especially
the old Irish, who upon several plantations were turned out of their
ancestors’ estates, and the favourable opportunity which the
insurrection of the Scots and the disturbances in England afforded the
gentry of Ireland to free the nation from like grievances in future, to
get good conditions for themselves, and to regain the whole, or at least
good part of their ancestors’ possessions, obtained from Maguire an oath
of secrecy, and then disclosed to him the project for an insurrection,
urging it as the only method of recovering his lordship’s vast estates
and the power of his ancestors, and as being absolutely necessary for
maintaining the Catholic religion which undoubtedly, he said, the
Parliament of England resolved to suppress. Here, then, we have plainly
stated the objects the conspirators had in view, namely, the restoration
of the lands which had been ‘planted,’ and the preservation of the
Catholic religion, which was threatened with extinction. It will be
observed that in the design thus disclosed there is no mention of
erecting Ireland into an independent kingdom, the establishment of
Catholic ascendancy, or the extermination of persons of the English race
or of the Protestant faith. So far from the last-mentioned being one of
the objects in view, “there was,” says Maguire, “a fear of the Scots
conceived, that they would presumably oppose themselves, and that would
make the matter more difficult; to avoid which danger it was resolved
not to meddle with them or anything belonging to them, and to demean
ourselves toward them as if they were of us, which we thought would
pacify them; and if the Scots would not accept that offer, we were in
good hope to cause a stir in Scotland that might divert them from us.”
Lord Maguire and the northern gentry generally consented to join in the
plot on the strength of these representations, and at a meeting of the
leaders, including Sir Phelim O’Neill, and Lord Maguire, held on the 5th
of October, 1641, at Loughrosse, county Armagh, final arrangements were
made for a general rising to take place on the 23rd, “all forts and arms
should be seized, all the gentry made prisoners for their own better
security against any adverse fortune or disappointment, and that none
should be killed, especially of the gentry; but when of necessity they
should be forced thereto by opposition, a rule to be observed likewise
by those appointed for seizing the Castle of Dublin.”
Furthermore, there is the “Remonstrance of the Gentry and Commonalty of
Cavan of their Grievances, common with other parts of this Kingdom of
Ireland,” addressed to the Lords Justices and Council in the early part
of November, 1641, which was drawn up by Bishop Bedell. In this they
complain of the oppression of governors who “respected more the
advancement of their own private fortunes than the honour of his Majesty
or the welfare of his subjects,” of finding themselves “of late
threatened with far greater and more grievous vexations, either with
captivity or utter expulsion from their native seats.” They further
declare “that ... we harbour not the least thought of hostility towards
His Majesty, or purpose any hurt to His Majesty’s subjects in their
possessions, goods, or liberty; only we desire that your lordships will
be pleased to make remonstrances to His Majesty for us of all our
grievances and just fears, that they may be removed, and such a course
settled, by the advice of the Parliament of Ireland whereby the liberty
of our consciences may be secured unto us, and we may be eased of other
burdens in civil government.” The Remonstrance then proceeds thus:—“As
for the mischief and inconveniences that have already happened through
the disorder of the common sort of people against the English
inhabitants, or any other, we, with the nobility and gentlemen and such
others of the several counties of this kingdom as are most ready and
willing to use our and their best endeavours in causing restitution and
satisfaction to be made, as in part we have already done.” The
Remonstrance winds up by a request for a speedy answer so as to avoid
“the inconvenience of the barbarousness and incivility of the
commonalty, who have committed many outrages without order, consenting,
or privity of ours.”
We have thus in black and white an account of the aims and objects of
the leaders of the rebels, and of the means by which they hoped to
succeed, and neither Catholic ascendancy, nor disloyalty, nor racial or
religious antipathy, to be gratified by massacre, finds a place in their
programme or plan of campaign. To do violence to any person on account
of his religion is, indeed, a thing wholly averse to the Irish nature.
No Protestant ever suffered persecution at the hands of the native Irish
in Ireland, for his faith; and when Protestants fled from persecution,
in the reign of Queen Mary, to Ireland, they were harboured and
protected by the Irish Catholics. Nevertheless, the massacres of
Protestants alleged to have taken place in this rebellion have ever
since been cast in the teeth of the Irish Catholics, and made the excuse
for organized oppression and persecution. The butcheries of Cromwell
were justified on the ground that they were a just punishment for such
barbarities, though the people that he butchered were never shown to
have had, and in many cases could not have had, hand, act, or part in
them.
I have gone carefully through all the letters and documents penned by
the Lords Justices and Council, and while general charges of murder and
cruelty are made and repeated again and again, and though the writers
can be specific in their statements as to all other matters, in two
cases only do they give any details by which the accuracy of their
statements can be tested; one is the case of the killing of Lord
Caulfield, who was undoubtedly shot dead while a prisoner on the 1st of
March, 1642; the other is the case of Huibarts, who held the island of
Lambay, and may have been killed while resisting an attack.
If the Lords Justices and Council confined themselves to general charges
of massacre and barbarity, the English pamphleteers were, in all
conscience, sufficiently precise. It is needless to say that the news of
the rebellion caused a great commotion in England. Leicester received
the letter of the 25th of October on the night of Sunday the 1st of
November. He at once caused the Council to be summoned, and they
resolved to go to the House of Commons the next day as soon as it sat,
which they did, notice being first given to the House “that the Lords of
the Council had some matters of importance to impart to them”; whereupon
chairs were set in the House for them to repose themselves, and the
Sergeant sent to conduct them. Clarendon describes the scene. “As soon
as they entered the House the Speaker desired them to sit down, and,
then being covered, Littleton told the Speaker that the Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland, having received letters from the Lords Justices and Council
there, had communicated them to the Council, and since the House of
Peers was not sitting, they had thought fit, for the importance of the
letters, to impart them to that House,” and so referred the business to
the Lord Lieutenant, who, without any enlargement, only read the letters
he had received, and so the Lords departed from the House. “There was,”
says Clarendon, “a deep silence in the House, and a kind of
consternation; most men’s heads having been intoxicated from their first
meeting in Parliament with the instigators of plots and treasonable
designs through the three kingdoms.”
The King, who was then in Scotland, received letters from Ulster telling
him of the outbreak there. These he sent on to the Parliament, with a
letter saying that he was satisfied that it was no rash insurrection,
but a formed rebellion, which must be prosecuted with a sharp war, the
conducting and prosecuting of which he wholly committed to their care
and wisdom, and depended upon them for carrying it on. This exactly
fitted in with their wishes, as up to the time they got this letter they
had no authority to levy troops or make war. They appointed a committee
of both Houses for the consideration of the affairs of Ireland, and
providing for the supply of men, arms and money for the suppressing of
that rebellion. The Lord Lieutenant was a member of the Committee, which
sat every morning, and he communicated to them all the letters he
received, to be consulted upon and to be then reported to the two
Houses, which thus acquired a great accession of power and patronage.
Soon after the news of the rebellion was spread in England, the Press
began to pour forth a stream of pamphlets. Some of these were devoted to
advocating the plan adopted by the English Parliament for raising the
necessary funds for prosecuting the campaign against the rebels, by
giving grants of land that should be forfeited to those who advanced
money for the purpose. In 1642 they decreed the confiscation of 2½
millions of acres in Ireland, and undertook to allot them to those who
made advances, on the following scale: 2,000 acres in Leinster to anyone
who advanced £600; and the same quantity in Munster, Connaught, and
Ulster respectively, to those who advanced £450, £300, and £200
respectively. Others of those pamphlets were devoted to thrilling
descriptions of massacres and atrocities said to have been committed by
the Irish rebels. These were, Ormond says, “received as oracles,” and
the extirpation of the Irish “preached as gospel.” As I said before,
they were not open to the imputation of being wanting in details. They
were most circumstantial. They describe the doings of such well-known
rebel leaders as the Earl of Clare, whose portrait is given in one of
the pamphlets, the great Lord MacDavo, Lord Matquess, Don Luce, Limbrey,
Cargena and others, in such well-known counties, Monno otherwise Conno,
and Warthedeflowr, and in such well-known towns as Rockcall, six miles
from Dublin, Lognall, Toyhull, Kilwood, Kilmouth, Tormoy, and Cormack.
The collection of these pamphlets made by Thorpe, and now in the Library
of the Royal Irish Academy, as well as those in the British Museum,
enable one to judge of the way in which the ear of England was poisoned
for the purpose of exasperation against the Irish Catholics.
Two months after the outbreak the Government issued a commission to
seven Protestant ministers to take evidence upon oath as to the amount
of the loss sustained by the British and Protestants that had been
“separated from their habitations,” or “deprived of their goods,” the
names of the robbers, and what traitorous speeches were uttered by the
robbers or others. It is to be observed that in this Commission there is
no mention of murder or violence. By a supplemental commission of the
18th of January, 1642, it was extended so as to include an inquiry as to
“what violence was done by the robbers, and how often and what number
have been murthered or perished afterwards on the way to Dublin or
elsewhere.” This addition was an afterthought, and the fact is very
significant, as pointed out by Prendergast, _Cromwellian Settlement_, p.
60. A mass of such depositions was taken, and are now in the Library of
Trinity College, Dublin. I have not perused them, but every historian
who has done so, and has formed an impartial judgment upon them, has
pronounced them to be practically worthless as evidence against the
rebels. In the first place they were _exparte_ statements, made in the
absence of those whose conduct they impugned. Secondly, they were very
largely hearsay, and not the evidence of eye witnesses. Thirdly, many of
them are not made on oath. Fourthly, they were to a great extent made by
persons intending to make claims for restitution and compensation, and
may therefore be expected to be exaggerated, if not unfounded. Fifthly,
they bear internal evidence of untruth, many of them deposing to
apparitions and other supernatural phenomena. Sixthly, they in many
instances gave evidence of the deaths of people who long survived the
rebellion. Seventhly, many of the deponents were illiterate. Lastly,
they afford no safe basis for a calculation of the numbers stated to
have been killed, for the same alleged outrage is obviously referred to
in different depositions.
The calculations made by English writers of the numbers slaughtered by
the Irish are curiously conflicting. Milton, in his observations on the
“Articles of Peace between the Earl of Ormond and the Irish,” set down
the number “assassinated and cut to pieces by those Irish barbarians” at
200,000, which was about the total Protestant population of Ireland,
inclusive of soldiers in garrison and officials in Dublin. The Lords
Justices and Council in their despatch to the King, dated March, 1642-3,
in opposition to any accommodation with the rebels, upon an alleged
acknowledgment “by their priests appointed to collect the numbers,” set
the number down at 154,000 “before the end of March last, ... besides
many thousand others since that time.” Temple, whose object also was to
obstruct the peace, says that in the first two months of the rebellion
150,000 had been massacred, and that “there were 300,000 Protestants
murdered in cold blood or destroyed in some other way, _or_ expelled
from their habitations from the 23rd of October, 1641, to the cessation
made on the 16th of September, 1643.” Petty fixes the number at 37,000,
Walsh at 20,000. The Rev. Dr. Warner, a Fellow of Trinity College,
Dublin, who describes many of the depositions as “incredible,”
“ridiculous,” and “contradictory,” carefully examined the thirty-two
closely written volumes which are in the library of Trinity College,
with the result that he concluded that “the number of people killed upon
_positive_ evidence collected in two years after the rebellion broke
out, adding them all together, amounts to only 2,109, on _the reports of
other Protestants_, 1,619 more, and on _the reports of some of the
rebels_ a further number of 300, the whole making 4,028. Besides these
numbers there is in the same collection evidence _on the report of
others_ of 8,000 killed by ill-usage.” These numbers he considered were
the utmost to which “the cruelties of the Irish out of war” could be
extended, though, having regard to the nature of several of the
depositions, he could not in his conscience charge them with such a
number of murders. In corroboration of his figures he quotes a letter
which he copied from the Council books in Dublin written on the 5th of
May, 1652, from the Parliament Commissioners in Ireland to the English
Parliament, in which the Commissioners tell them that it appears
“besides 848 families there were killed, hanged, burned, and drowned
6,062.”
That the rebellion at its first outbreak was not accompanied by any
massacre, or even by considerable effusion of blood, appears from
documents now extant. Lord Chichester wrote to the King from Belfast on
October 24th, 1641, “The Irish in the northern parts of your kingdom of
Ireland two nights last past did rise with force and have taken
Charlemont, Dungannon, Tonragee, and Newry, with your Majesty’s stores
there ... and _have slain only one man_.” The letter of the Lords
Justices to Leicester of October 25th, does not make mention of a single
case of violence to the person. The Remonstrance of the Gentry and
Commonalty of Cavan already referred to, issued in the early part of
November, 1641, speaks not of massacres or murders, which the
Remonstrants would undoubtedly have deemed worthy of condign punishment,
but of acts which would be proper subjects of restitution and
satisfaction. The first instance of homicide committed by the rebels
given by the Lords Justices in their correspondence is in a letter to
Leicester of December 3rd, 1641, in which they announce the death of Mr.
Huibarts. It is not until the 14th of December that any massacre is
mentioned, when they state, in a letter of that date to Leicester, that
the garrison of Longford had been massacred.
Your attention has already been called to the pregnant fact that in the
first commission of inquiry issued by the Lords Justices and Council,
which is dated December 23rd, 1641, no reference is made to murder or
personal violence.
It thus becomes abundantly clear that during the first two months of the
rebellion, not only was there no general massacre by the rebels, but
there was little bloodshed. Indeed the Lords Justices, in their
proclamation of February 8th, 1642, assert that the design of a general
massacre had failed.
A period of several months elapsed between the end of December, 1641,
and the organisation of the rebels under the Confederates. During this
period, no doubt, it was that the serious cruelties were committed by
the insurgents, for the proceedings of the Confederates were
characterised by humanity, and the Supreme Council would not have
tolerated murder under any circumstances, or under any provocation.
Among the propositions they made to the King in March, 1644, was the
following:—“Forasmuch as your Majesty’s Catholic subjects have been
taxed with many inhuman cruelties which they never committed, your
Majesty’s said supplicants, therefore, for their vindication, and to
manifest to all the world to have such heinous offences punished, and
the offenders brought to justice, do desire that in the next Parliament
all inhuman murthers, breaches of quarter, and inhuman cruelties
committed on either side may be questioned in the said Parliament (if
your Majesty so think fit), and such as shall appear to be guilty
exempted out of the Act of Oblivion and punished according to their
deserts.” This principle was embodied in the fifteenth article of the
first treaty between the King and the Confederates, signed on the 28th
of March, 1646, and in the last treaty signed on the 17th of January,
1648-9.
If we wanted further proof of the scrupulous humanity of the
Confederates, the following facts would supply it. The delegates of the
Confederates in 1644, in an official communication made to the Marquis
of Ormond as representative of the King, declared that one of the
results that they most earnestly desired in connection with the removal
of their grievances was that when the condition of Catholics and
Protestants had been equalised they might all “be united more than ever
before,” and neither party “have occasion to envy or oppress the other.”
These aspirations were met in the following month by an ordinance made
by the Parliament at Westminster, by which the Lords and Commons
declared “that no quarter shall be given hereafter to any Irishman or
any Papist whatsoever born in Ireland, who shall be taken in hostility
against the English Parliament, either upon the sea or within this
kingdom or dominion of Wales,” and they followed this barbarous
declaration by a decree for carrying it out. In pursuance of this
enactment many Irish sailors were brutally murdered, being tied back to
back and thrown overboard, and in one instance seventeen Irish soldiers,
fighting in the King’s army, when made prisoners, were hanged. Prince
Rupert promptly hanged an equal number of his prisoners, at which the
English Parliament was greatly shocked, and remonstrated with the
Prince, threatening to retaliate, and justifying the butchery of the
Irish. Rupert does not appear to have taken any notice of this amazing
document, and probably would have hanged or shot a prisoner of English
or Scottish blood for every one of Irish blood or the Catholic religion
that the Parliamentarians had murdered. But the Confederates were too
humane to countenance such atrocities; and they refrained from defiling
the records of their assembly by any declaration or ordinance such as
that which the pious champions of civil and religious liberty in
England, to their eternal infamy, had placed upon their rolls.
What murders were committed at sea under this ordinance never will be
known. But Bulstrode Whitelocke, a member of the Long Parliament, under
date of May, 1644, records the following significant incident: “At the
taking of Carmarthen by Captain Swanley, many Irish rebels were thrown
into the sea.” Under date June, 1644, he records that “Captain Swanley
was called into the House of Commons and had thanks from them for his
good services, and a chain of gold two hundred pounds value.”
It is not to be denied, however, that in the earlier stages of the
rebellion murders, and possibly outrages, were committed by the
insurgents. It was, of course, necessary that if resistance was offered
to the seizure of strongholds or arms, it should be overpowered by
force, even to the extent of taking life; and what are described as
massacres were probably, in many instances, homicides committed
unavoidably in cases of such resistance. But apart from such
occurrences, no doubt, lives were taken by the rebels. According to a
declaration made under hand and seal by the Rev. John Ker, Dean of
Ardagh, given by Nalson, vol. ii., p. 528, Phelim O’Neill, in the course
of his trial, at which the Dean was present, said that there were
several outrages committed by officers and soldiers, his aiders and
abettors in the management of the war, contrary to his intention, which
now pressed his conscience very much, and the Dean adds, that he heard
several murders and robberies proved at the trial to have been committed
by him, and that he had nothing to plead in his defence. This is
probably true. It was hardly in human nature, even Irish human nature,
to refrain from taking a signal and sanguinary vengeance on those by
whom, or for whom, they were oppressed and plundered. Besides, there
can, I think, be little doubt but that the massacres began with the
butchery, possibly in the beginning of November, 1641, but not later
than the beginning of January, 1642, of innocent persons, men, women and
children, inhabitants of Island Magee, by the garrison of Carrickfergus;
and the murders committed by the rebels in Ulster may not unfairly be
attributed in a great measure to reprisals for this horrible carnage.
Whatever massacres there were must have been practically confined to
Ulster, for there were but few English or Protestants elsewhere, and as
the Irish carefully avoided molesting the Scots in Ulster, who were by
far the majority of the Ulster population, the numbers slain cannot have
been large. There is no doubt, too, but that O’More was strongly opposed
to all unnecessary violence, and when we remember that the generals of
the Federation, which commenced its session at Kilkenny in October,
1642, were directed by their commission to protect the husbandmen,
victuallers, and all other subjects of his Majesty from the extortions,
violences, and abuses of the soldiers, we may be pretty sure that little
or no blood was unnecessarily shed after the eminent men who led the
troops of the Confederation took up their commands.
It is needless to refer to the measures taken by the rebel leaders to
check the outburst of pillage which marked the struggle before the
Confederation was formed, and to protect the Protestants and the English
from molestation. The well-known instance of Bishop Bedell, whose house
was the asylum of numerous refugees, and who was himself treated with
marked respect while he lived, and buried with all possible honour when
he died, is only one example out of many of the conspicuous humanity of
the men who were responsible for the insurrection.
But let us look at the reverse of the picture. That the Irish “Papist”
was regarded by the English as a creature outside the pale of humanity
is evidenced by the ordinance excluding him from quarter already quoted.
That the Scotch concurred in this estimate appears from the fact that
they adopted this ordinance. That he was to be exterminated was, as
Ormond wrote to Clanricarde, “preached as gospel.” That such a gospel
was not to be a dead letter appears from documents under the hands of
the Lords Justices and Council. “We have hitherto,” they write on the
7th of June, 1642, to the Lords Commissioners for Irish Affairs, “where
we came against the rebels, their adherents, aiders, and abettors,
proceeded with fire and sword, the soldiers sometimes not sparing the
women, and sometimes not children, many women being manifestly very deep
in the guilt of this rebellion, and as we are informed, very forward to
stir up their husbands, friends and kindred to side therein, and
exciting them to cruelty against the English, acting therein and in
their spoils even with rage and fury with their own hands.” We have also
the directions given by the Lords Justices and Council to Colonel
Crawford for his expedition to County Wicklow, and to Colonel Gibson for
his expedition to County Kildare. These were to go to these counties and
remain there as long as they could find provision for their men, and in
their journey to kill, slay, and destroy all rebels; to destroy by fire
and sword all their goods, houses, and corn. It is easy to understand
how these orders would be interpreted. They meant the extermination of
the people by fire and sword, or by famine; for, so long as there was
food for the soldiery, the soldiery were to remain; when they left there
would be food for no one.
In their despatch to the King in opposition to an accommodation with the
rebels, already quoted, the Lords Justices and Council admit the policy
of extermination, but only _partial_ extermination, be it observed. “And
howsoever it be true,” they write on the 16th of March, 1642-3, “that
all the peril and damage we undergo, and all the arms we desired to have
used and borne here, is but (by God’s blessing) to bring on a safe and
lasting peace, yet we can no way apprehend that it can be done _till the
sword have abated these rebels in numbers_ and power, yet not to the
utter extirpation of the native which is far from our thoughts (though
some to render us the more odious report so of us).”
A characteristic example of the methods of the Lords Justices and their
troops is given in their letter of June 7th, 1642, to the Lord
Lieutenant, describing the capture of Baldungan Castle, situated twelve
miles from Dublin. Colonel Crawford took it by storm, and found therein
to the number of 120 rebels, whom immediately his men put to the sword,
saving a popish priest, whom Colonel Crawford brought to Dublin, and
whom the Provost Marshal hanged. “This sharpness,” they write, “held
with them when they maintain castles against us, will doubtless
discourage them from presuming to keep castles against us hereafter,
when they still find just vengeance thus taken on them for their
boldness therein. There was then found in that castle an English
gentleman whom the rebels had taken prisoner a few days before, and whom
our men now released.”
This despatch would do credit to Cromwell. There is a touch of
unconscious irony in the contrast between the treatment of the one
English gentleman captured by the rebels, and the 120 rebels captured by
the English.
The letters reek with such incidents. Ormond takes a priest at
Ballymacur, Westmeath, “who was then immediately hanged.” Monck, on his
way to join Ormond, captures a castle at Knock, near Trim, “killed four
score men which had maintained it against him, and took some prisoners,
who were instantly hanged.” Monck, again, took at the castles of
Rathcoffey and Clongowes Wood, in Kildare, “three score and ten
prisoners, and amongst the rest some priests, whom with the rest he
brought hither to be proceeded with as we should think fit, which was
all the quarter he gave them, and we have appointed them to be executed
by martial law.” “We lately sent abroad two parties of the army, one
towards Catherlagh, thirty-two miles from this city, and the other
towards Arklow, thirty-six miles from hence, with direction to burn and
spoil all the way, as they went and came, which they did accordingly.”
Lord Inchiquin in Cork took fifty prisoners, “divers of them men of
quality, and most of them officers in the army of the rebels, which
fifty prisoners Lord Inchiquin caused to be hanged the next morning,
saving only Colonel Butler, son of the traitor Lord Viscount Ikerrin,
and one Purgett, Commissary General of the rebel army, which two still
remain prisoners.” Lord Lisle’s performances are thus described: “Lord
Lisle hath now caused that house”—Lord Fingall’s house near
Virginia—“and all the villages and towns adjoining to be burnt, as also
all the corn, hay, and turf in all that country round about them. He
still proceeds in burning, wasting, spoiling, and destroying all the
country about him, and all the rebels’ corn, hay and turf, and in
depriving the rebels of all the cattle he can ... so as by that time he
returns thence he will, by God’s assistance, have all that country in
such a condition as that the rebels shall have neither house to lodge,
nor food, nor fire, which course also we have begun, and God willing,
shall hold in other places, as we shall be enabled by supply of
provisions, and we have hoped (by the blessing of God upon our
endeavours) if we be strengthened from thence, as we expect, suddenly to
drive the rebels into such extremities as many thousands of them and
their foreign aids (if they should arrive) must perish and starve
through hunger and cold.”
This, of course, was a sentence of death on every man, woman, and child
in the districts thus condemned to desolation.
In their letter to the Lord Lieutenant, of December 28th, 1641, the
Lords Justices make two damning admissions. First they say that Sir
Charles Coote, on his return from raising the siege of the Castle of
Wicklow, had a skirmish with a numerous body of the rebels, slew some of
them, and in that journey slew and caused to be hanged others of them,
and amongst others one woman that had been active in robbing and
spoiling the English, and had about her at her apprehension some of the
clothes of the English she had robbed.
Now, this is merely an ingenious device to endeavour to mix up
punishment inflicted on rebels in arms, with what is evidently a
massacre of unarmed peasantry perpetrated during “that journey,” in
which women, and probably children, were butchered at the instance of
the notorious Sir Charles Coote.
The second admission is that four people were murdered at Santry, which
they make light of, observing that therein “only four persons were
slain, whereas they might have slain many more if they had intended a
massacre.” The heads of the victims of this butchery were brought in
triumph to Dublin, on poles, and there exhibited. One of them turned out
to be a Protestant. This incident had momentous consequences, as we
shall see.
O’Connell was quite justified in saying, as he did to O’Neill Daunt,
when speaking of the rebellion of 1641: “History has been so completely
falsified, that not only is the truth unknown, but the foulest
falsehoods have passed current as gospel truths; the characters of the
two contending parties have been quite reversed.”
But I must hasten to sketch the leading events of the insurrection.
I have already referred to the murders at Santry. The neighbouring
gentry were alarmed at this occurrence. It seemed a precursor of what
they might expect themselves, and they held a meeting and assembled
their followers. The gentry of the Pale had been placed in a very
difficult position. Being Catholics, they were distrusted by the Lords
Justices. Being English, they distrusted the rebels. The Lords Justices
ordered all persons not ordinarily resident in Dublin to return to their
homes. The gentry of the Pale requested to be furnished with arms
sufficient to enable them to defend themselves when they were thus
surrounded by the rebels. This was at first granted to a limited extent,
but when troops were promised from England, the arms supplied were
largely withdrawn. The gentry were thus left defenceless. An attack was
made by the Government troops on the house at Clontarf of one of them,
named King, who owned the village of Clontarf, on the pretext that the
fishermen of the village had plundered a bark that lay off the coast
there, and that some of the booty was found in his house. The
consequence of all this was that the gentry came to the conclusion that
their only course was to join the rebels, who thus obtained a
considerable accession of strength, both in numbers and weight, though
the Lords Justices made light of the matter in their letters. This
occurred in December, 1641.
In March, 1642, a Synod of the Ulster clergy met, and it was there
suggested that an assembly of clergy and laity should be held to
organize the national movement. This proposal was adopted, and the
General Assembly of the Confederate Catholics was held at Kilkenny in
the following October. They at once proceeded to organize the country,
appointing a Supreme Council, and provincial Councils, and commanders of
the armies in the four provinces. They made provisions for the
administration of justice in the districts under their control, the levy
of contributions, and the machinery of government generally. Their seal
bore on it the legend: “Pro deo, pro rege et patria, unanimes,” their
coins, “floreat rex.” The oath to be taken by the Confederates was
similar in terms to that already mentioned.
The Confederates addressed a petition to the King, through Ormond,
praying his Majesty, “with heads lower than our knees,” “to assign a
place where with safety we may express our grievances.” In this they
complain of the condition whereunto the misrepresentation of his
ministers in Ireland, united with the malignant party in England, had
reduced them, and of the resolution taken by some malevolent persons in
England, “to supplant their nation and religion,” and they disclaim any
intention of disturbing his Majesty’s Government, or invading any of his
prerogatives, or oppressing any of his British subjects, of what
religion soever, that did not labour to suppress them. They refer to the
petition which they had addressed to the Lords Justices, “but therein,”
they say, “we found, instead of a salve to our wounds, oil poured into
the fire of our discontent, which occasioned that intemperance in the
commonalty that they acted some unwarrantable cruelties upon the
puritans, or others suspected of puritanism, which we really detest,
have punished in part, and desire to punish with fulness of severity, in
all the actors of them, when time shall enable us to it, though the
measure offered to the Catholic natives here, in the inhuman murdering
of old, decrepit, people in their beds, women in the straw, and children
eight days old, burning of houses, and robbing of all kinds of persons
without distinction of friend from foe, and digging up of graves, and
then burning the dead bodies of our ancestors, in time of cessation, and
in breach of public faith, have not deserved that justice from us.”
The King refused to receive delegates from the Confederates, but granted
a commission to Ormond, Clanrickard, and others to hear what the
delegates had to say. “Albeit His Majesty has not thought fit to admit
any of them to his presence who have been ... actors or abettors in so
odious a rebellion,” as the Commission expressed it. This passage went
near to wrecking the project, for in the safe-conduct sent to the
delegates these words were used, and the Confederates were highly
incensed at being accused of rebellion. However, they ultimately
consented to attend at Drogheda, and the meeting took place on the 17th
of March, 1643.
The first result of these negotiations was a truce or “cessation” as it
was called, which was originally for a short period, but afterwards
renewed from time to time.
Ostensibly Ormond was the King’s mouth-piece in this affair, and he was
authorized to make certain concessions, in return for which the
Confederates were to furnish the King with 10,000 men for service
against the English rebels. But Charles, who never could act straight,
granted a secret commission to Lord Glamorgan, not under the Great Seal,
empowering him to make further concessions. He accordingly concluded
secret articles with the Confederates on August 25th, 1645. But the
secret leaked out. Glamorgan was brought before the Castle Chamber on a
charge of treason, on the 26th of December, 1645, and committed. He was
examined on the following day, and released on the 30th from _close_
custody, but still kept under a certain restraint. The fatal battle of
Naseby had been fought on the 18th of June previous. Charles was in dire
straits, and, as might be expected, he repudiated Glamorgan’s authority,
in a statement given on the 24th of January, 1646, at Oxford, which was
to be communicated by the Speaker of the House of Lords to both Houses.
In it he says that Glamorgan had only a commission to raise forces, and
concluding by asking for a safe-conduct, in blank, to be sent “for a
messenger to be immediately dispatched into Ireland to prevent any
accident that may happen to hinder his Majesty’s resolution of leaving
the managing of the business of Ireland wholly to the two Houses, and to
make no peace there but with their consent, which, in case it shall
please God to bless his endeavour in the Treaty with success, his
Majesty hereby engages himself to do.”
The “treaty” here referred to is a treaty with his rebellious English
subjects. If such were made, the King was prepared to hand over his
loyal Irish subjects to the tender mercies of the English puritans.
But the negotiations for the treaty with the Confederates went on
meantime, and the treaty itself was signed on the 28th of March, 1646.
It consisted of thirty articles, and dealt substantially with all the
grievances complained of. Collateral with it there was an agreement that
the Confederates should furnish the King with 10,000 men, of which 6,000
were to sail on or before April 1st, and 4,000 on or before May 1st. The
treaty was to be conditional on the fulfilment of this agreement, and it
was deposited in duplicate in the hands of Lord Clanricarde to be held
by him as what lawyers call an “escrow,” until the agreement had been
fulfilled. It was found, however, that the position of the King’s
affairs was such that it was not practicable to carry it out, and that
it would be more for his Majesty’s interest that the men should remain
in Ireland. The condition was therefore waived.
Everything now appeared to be arranged, when one of these incidents
occurred to mar the prospects of Irish nationality, of which the history
of Ireland is so full.
The Confederates had been obliged to rely very largely on support from
abroad, and among those who contributed most liberally was the Pope.
Unfortunately, he not only contributed material support and moral
support, but he sent a Nuncio with instructions placing the full
establishment of the Catholic religion in Ireland above and before
reforms in the political government.
The presence of the Pope’s representative imparted great strength to the
Confederates; it was also productive of unexpected consequences. The
Nuncio, Rinuccini, was not satisfied with the treaty. He did not think
it conceded enough. In February, 1646, in anticipation of the conclusion
of peace, he had a protest against the treaty drawn up and signed by
several of the prelates, based on the principle that those who entered
into it, or supported or favoured it, violated their oath. The peace was
proclaimed by Ormond in Dublin on the 30th of July, 1646, and the
Confederates ordered its proclamation on the 3rd August. A meeting of
the congregation of the clergy was to be held at Waterford on the 12th
of August. An attempt made to proclaim the peace there on the 9th
failed, as the Mayor and Corporation refused to allow the function to
take place. It was then proclaimed at Kilkenny, and the herald and
pursuivant proceeded to Limerick, but the attempt at a proclamation
provoked a riot, in which they were severely mauled. Finally, the
bishops and clergy denounced the peace at Waterford on the 12th, and
further efforts to proclaim it were abandoned. On the 1st of September,
Rinuccini directed the clergy to publish to their flocks at High Mass,
and otherwise, that they were not to adhere to the treaty on pain of
excommunication.
Efforts were made to compose the dispute. The Confederation answered the
Nuncio and the ecclesiastics; the latter replied, and stated that they
would agree to nothing until a new General Assembly was called; and they
formed a new government, called “The Council and Congregation,” which
was to hold office until the meeting of a General Assembly, to be held
on the 11th of January, 1646-7.
The Assembly was held accordingly, and debated the matter at great
length, and with great heat. Bellings, who had been the Secretary from
the foundation of the Confederation, contrasts the proceedings with the
quiet and dignity with which those of the previous assemblies had been
conducted. A bishop whom he mentions, could always, he says, get a shout
of applause by merely waiving his hat. After a powerful speech by
Colonel Walter Bagnall in favour of the treaty, which produced a great
impression, the treaty was rejected on the 2nd of February, by a
majority of votes. A new oath was then framed containing further clauses
for the advantage of the Catholic religion.
The clergy thus won a disastrous triumph. Up to this the arms of the
Confederates had been successful. In the previous June, Owen Roe O’Neill
had won his famous victory over Monroe at Benburb. But now all went
wrong. The Leinster army was defeated at Dungan Hill. The Munster army,
under Lord Taaffe, was defeated at Kanturk on the 13th of November,
1647, and these reverses were followed in rapid succession by other
defeats. Everywhere there was confusion and disunion. Owen Roe O’Neill
sided with the Nuncio. The General and officers of the Leinster army at
first took the other side, and only abandoned it when the General found
that his men were not “excommunication proof.” The bishops were divided,
and so were the convents and monasteries. No doubt, the laity,
especially the common people, were bewildered. The Council revoked
O’Neill’s patent for the command in Ulster. He threw the letters
directed to him and to his officers into the fire, and he and his
officers published a sharp declaration against the Council’s
proceedings, to which they replied with equal asperity. The Assembly met
in September, 1648, and accused the Nuncio. He embarked from Galway on
the 23rd of February, 1649, and, needless to say, never returned.
Meantime, efforts had been made to conclude another peace. Ormond, after
he had been obliged to surrender Dublin to the English Parliament, had
left Ireland; but Clanricarde, who had, in conjunction with Colonel
Jones, won the battle of Kanturk, began to distrust the
Parliamentarians, and made overtures to the Confederates. Ormond
returned to Ireland in October, 1648, and concluded a peace with the
Confederates on the 17th of January, 1649.
But it was too late. Events had marched with fatal rapidity in England.
On the 5th of May, 1646, the King had surrendered himself to the Scots,
to be by them handed over to the English Parliament. His head fell on
the scaffold on the 30th of January, 1649. Cromwell landed in Ireland on
the 15th of August, to find that Ormond had been defeated by Colonel
Jones in the battle of Rathmines. We know what followed. Those who have
listened to, or have read, the brilliant lecture on Cromwell, delivered
before this Society, by Sir William Butler, need not be reminded of the
tragic occurrences of that dark time. But in any case they are beyond
the scope of this paper. The “Rebellion” of 1641 ended with the treaty
of 1649.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY
BY JAMES DONELAN, M.CH., M.B.,
_Chevalier of the Crown of Italy_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Confederation of Kilkenny
THE period we are about to deal with is one of the most important,
perhaps the most important of modern Irish history, as the events of
that time influenced the destinies of Ireland more profoundly than
anything that went before, and by their effects, continue to profoundly
influence them even in our own times. It is also the most confused, not
to say confusing, period of the history of Ireland or any other country
that a student can attempt to deal with. Carlyle, rarely just to
Ireland, in this instance describes it with both force and faithfulness,
when due allowance is made for his prejudices. “The history of it,” he
says, “does not form itself into a picture, but remains only as a huge
blot, an indiscriminate blackness, which the human memory cannot
willingly charge itself with! There are Parties on the back of Parties,
at war with the world and with each other. There are Catholics of the
Pale, demanding freedom of religion under my Lord this and my Lord that.
There are Old-Irish Catholics under Pope’s Nuncios under Abbas O’Teague
of the excommunications and Owen Roe O’Neill demanding, not religious
freedom only, but what we now call ‘Repeal of the Union,’ and unable to
agree with the Catholics of the English Pale. Then there are Ormond
Royalists of the Episcopalian and mixed creeds, strong for King without
Covenant; Ulster and other Presbyterians, strong for King and Covenant;
lastly, Michael Jones, and the Commonwealth of England, who want neither
King nor Covenant. All these plunging and tumbling for the last eight
years, have made of Ireland and its affairs, the black unutterable blot
we speak of.” The object of this paper is to remove some of the
blackness, and attempt to set forth clearly, if possible within the
limits allowed, the relations and interactions of these various parties.
A brief reference to the rebellion of 1641 in Ulster gives us the most
convenient starting-point. The dispossessed Clansmen, availing of the
troubles between Charles I and the English Parliament, suddenly seized
on their ancestral lands and drove out the settlers. Much has been
written of the cruelties of both sides in a keen struggle for existence
in a semi-barbarous age. The insurgents have been charged with a
massacre of Protestants, the number of slain, according to some
accounts, being greater than that of the whole English population of the
island, as if the outbreak were one undertaken from religious motives.
Religion had nothing to do with it. It was the eternal Land Question in
its original and most crude form—nothing more. It was unfortunate as
furnishing a valuable pretext that was readily availed of for a general
confiscation by the Puritan Parliament that the settlers were Scotch and
English Protestants, but it cannot be doubted that, had they been
Spaniards or Italians with an Archbishop at their head, they would have
fared in precisely the same manner. From the point of view of the great
mass of the Irish proprietors both Old-Irish and Anglo-Irish, it was an
enormous tactical blunder.
A detail of the rebellion which had serious consequences, was the use of
a forged Commission from Charles I, whereby some chiefs and others of
the old proprietors who were hanging back, were induced to come out.
Charles was in Edinburgh collecting evidence against the Inviters at the
time of the outbreak, but was unwilling to leave until he had finished.
Seeing, however, the use that would be made of any hesitation on his
part in putting down a rebellion alleged to have been organized under
his Commission, he ordered the Parliament to arrange for sending an Army
into Ireland. That Assembly strung to the highest pitch of fanatical
fury by the grossly exaggerated accounts of the Lords Justices and
others interested in future forfeitures in February, 1642, passed an Act
whereby 2,500,000 acres of Irish land in parts not concerned in the
rebellion, were offered as security to whomsoever should subscribe
towards the raising of the army.