THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, UNTIL THE END OF THE REIGN OF JAMES II.
The seventeenth century is a terrible period of European history. It
has been described as "the age of religious wars"; and those wars were
waged with a savage ferocity which it is impossible even now to read
of without a shudder.
It is a plain matter of history that from the very commencement of the
Reformation the idea of toleration never entered into the heads of
any of the authorities of the Church of Rome. France, Spain, Portugal,
Savoy and Germany all tell the same story. Except in countries such as
England where the sovereigns adopted the new opinions, the only chance
which the reforming party had of being able to exercise their religion
was by means of rebellion and all the horrors of civil war. What that
meant, the history of the rise of the Dutch Republic tells us. As Lord
Acton has said: "In the seventeenth century the murder of a heretic
was not only permitted but rewarded. It was a virtuous deed to
slaughter Protestant men and women until they were all exterminated.
Pius V held that it was sound Catholic doctrine that any man may
stab a heretic; and every man was a heretic who attacked the papal
prerogatives." And it is equally true that in those cases where the
reforming party succeeded in gaining the upper hand, they did not show
much more mercy than had been shown to them previously or was being
shown to their co-religionists in other countries at the time. Yet
it is only fair to add that when the idea of toleration did arise, it
arose amongst the reformed churches. Probably the only Roman Catholic
State in the world where toleration existed during the seventeenth
century was the little English colony of Maryland, of which Lord
Baltimore was the proprietor. And when at length the religious wars
died out it was, as far as Catholic countries were concerned, because
the lay mind had become thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing, and
men's minds were turning in other directions--not because the clerical
rulers showed the slightest desire to relax their efforts or change
their policy.
It would be well if the whole dreadful period could be buried in
oblivion. But it is necessary to mention the subject here, for the
Nationalist party are continually referring to the horrors of the
Cromwellian massacres and the penal laws; and if such matters are to
be gone into at all it is only fair, in order to make a just estimate
of them, to glance at the great European struggle of which they formed
an incident. In the century which saw Germany deluged with blood
for thirty years, and which witnessed the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes and the revival of vehement persecution in France, it was not
likely that Ireland should remain unaffected.
Soon after James I came to the throne he commenced his famous Scotch
plantation in the desolated and half-emptied province of Ulster. That
it was even a greater success than the plantation formed by Philip
and Mary everyone is of course aware; it is the descendants of those
immigrants who, though they live in a district not so highly favoured
by nature as other parts of the country, form the only really
prosperous and progressive section of the community at the present
day. The native Irish do not seem to have looked on the Scotchmen with
much disfavour, perhaps partly because there being plenty of room for
all in the desolated tract, and lands being assigned to them, they
realised that they were safer in the immediate neighbourhood of a
peaceful settlement than they would have been had they remained a prey
to unscrupulous adventurers like Shan O'Neill. A member of the legal
profession must feel shame and sorrow in recording the fact that
the chicanery of the lawyers added much to the harshness of the
politicians. That, however, is only another way of saying that
the humane policy of the nineteenth century was unknown in the
seventeenth. Had courts been established in Ireland like the native
land courts of New Zealand in which claims under customary law might
be investigated, and equitable awards made, the later history of
Ireland might have been very different. Yet one must remember that
even in the reign of Queen Victoria there was a strong party in
England and there were not a few people in New Zealand who argued
that Maori customary claims should be disregarded and the treaty
of Waitangi ignored. And in the seventeenth century such ideas were
unheard of. Lawyers searched for every technicality of English law
by which the titles of holders of land could be upset, in favour of
English claimants. Then matters became strangely complicated, as they
seem to be periodically throughout Irish history. The struggle between
Charles I and the Parliament began, and it soon became evident that
the Parliamentary party was the stronger of the two. To the Irish the
Parliamentarians meant the Puritans; and they believed, not wholly
without reason, that a determined attempt would be made not only to
seize all their lands but also to stamp out their religion. (It
must be observed that the Elizabethan anti-Roman Acts had never been
strictly carried out in Ireland, and during the reign of James I their
severity had been relaxed still further--a line of conduct which had
no parallel in any Roman Catholic country in Europe at the time.)
Thereupon in 1641 the Roman Catholics of Ulster broke into open
rebellion, and soon afterwards they applied to the kings of France and
Spain for aid; and the Pope issued a bull granting a full and plenary
indulgence and absolute remission for all their sins to all who would
do their utmost to extirpate and totally root out those workers of
iniquity who in the kingdom of Ireland had infected and were always
striving to infect the mass of Catholic purity with the pestiferous
leaven of their heretical contagion.
The stories told of the actual outbreak of the rebellion are
interesting as an illustration of the universal habit of exaggeration
about Irish affairs, to which I have already alluded. Clarendon
affirms that 40,000 English Protestants were murdered before they
suspected themselves to be in any danger; Temple states that in
the first two months of the rebellion 150,000 Protestants had been
massacred. The Jesuit, O'Mahony, writing in 1645, says "Persevere,
my countrymen, in the path you have entered on, and exterminate your
heretical opponents, their adherents and helpers. Already within four
or five years you have killed 150,000 of them, as you do not deny. I
myself believe that even a greater number of the heretics have been
cut off; would that I could say all." He had doubtless obtained
his information from the returns made by the priests engaged in the
rebellion to the military leaders, the figures of which were much the
same. Yet Lecky (who, though in certain passages of his history he
shows himself to be somewhat biassed in favour of the Irish Roman
Catholic party, is on the whole a remarkably fair and impartial
historian) argues with much force that there is no evidence of
anything like a general massacre, and brings down the number murdered
to about 8,000. Still, that there was a widespread rebellion and all
the consequent horrors of civil war, there can be no doubt. The rebels
of Ulster at one time tried to identify their cause with that of
Charles I by producing a forged commission from the king--which
annoyed the Royalists and made the Parliamentary party all the more
bitter. Charles certainly did his utmost to bring about a peace--no
doubt being anxious to obtain the assistance of his Irish subjects
in his Scotch and English wars. But his efforts were thwarted by the
Papal Nuncio, whose instructions from Rome were that the Holy See
could never by any positive Act approve of the civil allegiance of
Catholic subjects to an heretical prince; and thus the Royalist cause
became as completely lost in Ireland as it was in England. Before the
peace was finally concluded, Charles was a prisoner in the hands of
his enemies.
Then came the terrible episode of the Cromwellian war, in which
Romanist and Royalist alike went down before the Puritan force. Still,
though he would be a bold man who could attempt to excuse--much less
to justify--the barbarities that took place, it may be doubted whether
all the Cromwellian outrages put together equalled a single one of
those which the Imperial troops had committed during the war which
had been raging for thirty years in Germany--such for instance as the
sacking of Magdeburg. It is estimated, however, that about 600,000
people (of whom 500,000 were of the Irish race and 100,000 of the
English) perished by the sword, pestilence or famine in the fearful
years between 1641 and 1652--in other words, about a third part of
the population was wiped out. And the war was followed by a wholesale
confiscation--having fought for the king being considered as much an
act of treason as having rebelled against him. The confiscated lands
were allotted to soldiers, to persons who had supplied money to the
Parliamentary forces, and to other supporters of the new Government.
It is but just, however, to add that 700,000 acres of profitable land
in Connaught were allotted to dispossessed Romanists, and that they
were allowed to occupy 100,000 acres in other parts of the country; a
striking contrast to the lot of the unhappy Waldenses who were at that
time being driven from their homes and slaughtered without mercy for
no crime but heresy; or to the treatment a few years later by Louis
XIV of his Huguenot subjects whose lands were confiscated without
compensation and who were only given the choice of death or the
galleys.
At the Restoration some effort was made to undo the injustice of the
Cromwellian confiscations. But the matter was one of great difficulty.
In many cases land had been allotted by Cromwell in payment for money
received; in others the grantees had sold their holdings to purchasers
who had paid in cash, regarding the original grant as indefeasible.
A reconfiscation of such lands would obviously have worked a great
injustice; and it is a common maxim of law that between two claimants
each with a good title the one in possession is to be preferred. Still
it cannot be said that the decisions of the Royal Commissioners were
always equitable according to our ideas; for instance, the award of
80,000 acres to the Duke of York (afterwards James II) of land which
had been forfeited under Cromwell because the owner had fought for his
father, would be hard to justify on any possible grounds. Still, an
Act of Settlement was passed, by which a certain amount of justice
was done; it is difficult to arrive at the figures accurately, but
it appears that after the passing of the Act nearly one-third of
the Island was vested in Roman Catholic proprietors. Archbishop King
estimated that at the time when he was writing--1689--two-thirds
of the Protestant landowners held their estates under the Act of
Settlement. And Lecky says, "Only an infinitesimal portion of the soil
belongs to the descendants of those who possessed it before Cromwell."
But Archbishop King was influenced by the fear he had felt as to what
the effect of a repeal of the Act would be; and there can hardly be
a doubt that his feelings led him to overestimate the number. With
regard to Lecky's remark, one can only take it as a strange instance
of a gross exaggeration having crept into a book which is usually
careful and accurate. It may be that the statement was not very
incorrect according to the evidence the author had before him; but if
so, that only proves that the evidence was wrong; for the proceedings
in the Land Courts which have been set up in Ireland during the last
half century have shown that the proportion of titles to estates which
date from an earlier period was far larger than people had supposed.
During the peaceful and tolerant reign of Charles II the country made
steady progress.
Under James II, however, everything was reversed. That unhappy
monarch, having ascended the throne tranquilly, with many
protestations of toleration and justice to all, succeeded in less than
two years in making it clear to the people of England that his object
was to confine liberty to those who professed his own creed and that
his idea of good government was something like that which was then
existing in France and Savoy. Driven from Great Britain, on his
arrival in Ireland he issued a proclamation declaring that his
Protestant subjects, their religion, privileges and properties were
his especial care; and he had previously directed the Lord Lieutenant
to declare in Council that he would preserve the Act of Settlement
inviolable. But the Protestants soon had reason to fear that his
promises were illusory and that the liberty which might be allowed to
them would be at best temporary. In a word, what the one party looked
forward to with hope and the other with dread was "a confederacy with
France which would make His Majesty's monarchy absolute."
In order to understand what that meant, to Irish Protestants, it is
well to glance at the condition of France at the time. Louis XIV had
begun by directing that the Edict of Nantes was to be interpreted by
the strictest letter of the law; and soon after that the condition
of the Huguenots became more unhappy than that of the Irish Roman
Catholics ever was during the penal laws. The terrible "Dragonnades"
commenced in 1682; soldiers were billeted on heretics, and unfortunate
women were insulted past endurance; Huguenots were restricted even
as to holding family prayers; children at the age of seven were
encouraged to renounce their faith, and if they did so they were
taken from their parents who, however, were obliged to pay for their
maintenance in convent schools. Protestant churches were closed, and
their endowments handed over to Roman Catholic institutions. Huguenot
children were forbidden all education except the most elementary. No
heretic was allowed to sue a Catholic for debt. All this, however, did
not satisfy the monarch or his ecclesiastical advisers. On the 18th
of October 1685, he issued his famous Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes:--
"We by the present Edict which is perpetual and irrevocable,
revoke the Edict given at Nantes in 1583 together with every
concession to the Protestants of whatever nature they be.
We will that all temples of that religion be instantly
demolished. We prohibit our Protestant subjects to assemble
for worship in any private house. We prohibit all our lords
to exercise that religion within their fiefs under penalty of
confiscation of property and imprisonment of person. We enjoin
all ministers of the said faith to leave the kingdom within
fifteen days of the publication of this Edict, under penalty
of the galleys. We enjoin that all children who shall be
born henceforth be baptized by the Catholic curates. Persons
awaiting the enlightening grace of God may live in our kingdom
unhindered on account of their religion on condition that they
do not perform any of its exercises or assemble for prayer or
worship under penalty of body and wealth."
This Edict met with cordial approval from the Catholic party in
France. The famous Madame de Sevigné wrote: "I admire the king for the
means he has devised for ruining the Huguenots. The wars and massacres
of former days only gave vigour to the sect; but the edict just
issued, aided by the dragoons, will give them the _coup de grace_."
The Irish Protestants saw with alarm that amongst the soldiers who
came from France to aid King James were some who had taken an active
part in the dragonnades organized by Louis XIV in order to carry out
his edict. Then one Act was passed by the Dublin Parliament repealing
the Act of Settlement; and by another 2,461 persons were declared
guilty of high treason unless they appeared before the Dublin
authorities on a certain day and proved they were not guilty. What
steps King James was prepared to take in order to subdue the rebels of
Derry who held out against him can be gathered from the proclamation
which he directed Conrade de Rosen, his Mareschal General, to issue.
He warned the rebels that if they did not surrender immediately, all
the members of their faction, whether protected or not, in the whole
neighbourhood, would be brought close to the walls of the city and
there starved to death; that he would ravish the countryside, and see
that no man, woman or child escaped; and that if the city still held
out he would give no quarter and spare neither age nor sex, in case it
was taken by force.
Even if there had been no Derry to relieve and no Protestants in
other parts of the country, the conquest of Ireland was a political
necessity to King William. England was at this time in much the same
position that it had been in the days of Elizabeth, substituting the
name France for Spain. The continental powers were again united in a
supreme effort to stamp out Protestantism, and England once more
stood almost alone. In Spain and Portugal, heresy was of course still
punishable with death; the Pope had celebrated the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes with a triumphal _Te Deum_; a terrible persecution was
raging not only throughout the Protestant districts of France but also
on the Rhine, in Hungary, Savoy and the Alpine Valleys; if Ireland
had remained a separate kingdom ruled by the ally and admirer of Louis
XIV, the next step would certainly have been an invasion of England
by the joint forces of France and Ireland. All that we in modern
times include in the term "religious liberty" hung on the issue of the
battle that was fought and won on the banks of the Boyne.