SOCIAL IRELAND FROM RESTORATION TO REVOLUTION
[Sidenote: After the Civil War.]
Macaulay thought that under the Protectorate Ireland was probably a
more agreeable residence for the higher classes, as compared with
England, than at any time before or since. This may be true if we
understand by the higher classes the men whose property was granted
or confirmed by the Settlement after the Civil War. People bought and
sold with confidence and with little fear of coming change. Nor was
this confidence altogether misplaced, for we have seen that Charles
II., however unwillingly, was forced to leave most of the Protestant
settlers in possession. A certain number of Roman Catholic royalists
were restored more or less completely, but they were not enough to
disturb the balance of power, and in the Parliament of 1661 the House
of Commons was entirely composed of Protestants. The position of the
re-established Church was unassailable, and the Presbyterians, though
troublesome to bishops, could not seriously disturb social relations.
The destruction of property during the war had been great, but from
1652 onwards much was done to repair the damage. Ireland is studded
with ruined castles, but there are many modern houses where the thick
old walls have been utilised, and the process of conversion may be
readily traced.
[Sidenote: Country houses. Portmore.]
Civil war seeming unlikely to recur, it was natural that country houses
should be built or improved. One of the finest was erected soon after
the Restoration by the third Lord Conway at Portmore on the lake of
the same name, not far from his town of Lisburn. His predecessor's
library had been burned by the rebels at Brookhill, which belonged to
Sir George Rawdon. Rawdon, who acted as Conway's agent and married his
sister, built Moira on his own account. Portmore had every attraction
that a great mansion could possess. A park of 2000 acres, well stocked
with deer, magnificent oaks, a rabbit warren, a decoy, a glen specially
planted for woodcock, flocks and herds, hawks and hounds, racehorses,
vast stables, gardens, orchards, and fisheries are mentioned; and
Rawdon is to be praised for providing the Lisburn district with the
best roads in Ireland. Jeremy Taylor was brought over by Conway under
the Protectorate and became Bishop of Down. He in turn brought over
George Rust, who became Bishop of Dromore. Neither Conway nor Rawdon
loved the Presbyterians, but Lady Conway became a Quaker, and her
husband thought her circle would be too dull for Rawdon's daughter,
a lively girl who married Lord Granard's son. Valentine Greatrakes,
who was brought from the county of Waterford to treat Lady Conway's
headaches, was unsuccessful in her case, but successful in many others.
He practised a kind of massage, which, of course, did not suit every
patient, and Archbishop Boyle was inclined to call him an impostor; but
Robert Boyle thought there was something in the matter. Greatrakes,
who was not excessively modest, had more followers in England than in
Ireland. Conway in later life was much involved in Court intrigues,
but Rawdon remained generally in Ireland and continued his civilising
work.[275]
[Sidenote: Charleville.]
The Boyle family were great builders, both in England and Ireland.
In 1661 Orrery founded Charleville, abolishing what he called 'the
heathenish name of Rathgogan' in honour of his master. This great
house had an even shorter life than Portmore. Orrery had a patent
for fortifying it and mounting eighteen guns, and he sought a similar
privilege for Castlemartyr. Essex refused this request, and succeeded
in getting the clause in the patent surrendered. He feared that other
great men might arm in the same way, and then combine against the King
like the barons of England in former times. Castlemartyr, with or
without guns, made a faint attempt at resisting Tyrconnel in 1688. In
1690, when the owner of Charleville was a child and absent, the Duke of
Berwick, having dined in the house, ordered it to be fired and stood by
to see it consumed. According to Evelyn, it was a stately mansion and
had cost 40,000_l._[276]
[Sidenote: Kilkenny Castle.]
Such time as Ormonde could spare from his duties in London as Lord
Steward, or in Dublin as Viceroy, he spent at Kilkenny Castle, which
had escaped during the Civil War, and enjoyed a holiday there as only
a hard worker can enjoy one. Hawking was his favourite sport. 'I am
gotten hither,' he wrote in August 1667, 'and am yet in the happiest
calm you can imagine. Fine weather, great store of partridge, a cast
of merlins, and no business; and this may hold for a week.' Strafford
found partridge so scarce about Dublin that he had to take to hawking
blackbirds; and the garrison were great poachers then and later.
Ormonde had gone fox-hunting with Castlehaven in the midst of the Civil
War, and afterwards had a pack of beagles at Kilkenny who were so well
trained that they always turned homewards at the sound of the castle
dinner-bell. He kept bloodstock, importing both Barbs and Arabs, but
was not very successful as a breeder, though he took some pleasure in
the reflection that Irish horse-flesh generally would be improved.
There is, indeed, no pursuit in which money is more easily lost or
less easily got, unless it is made the chief business of life. We have
inventories of the plate, furniture, and tapestry in Kilkenny Castle
at the end of Charles II.'s reign. There were also many pictures,
including three or four portraits of Strafford, and a library of nearly
a thousand volumes. The catalogue contains Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and
many lesser dramatists; Milton and Taylor, Hobbes and Stillingfleet,
are well represented. There are many Latin and French books, and a few
Italian. Inventories are also extant of Ormonde's property in Dublin
Castle when he was Lord Lieutenant in 1679. The clerks and upper
servants were well lodged, but eight boy scullions had only four beds
between them, and 'two scavengers in the dark kitchen' probably had no
beds at all.[277]
[Sidenote: Dublin Castle.]
[Sidenote: A viceregal progress.]
As long as Charles II. lived, life in town and country was easy, except
for occasional mischief done by Tories. During his short reign as
Viceroy, Clarendon saw much company in Dublin Castle, but it is to be
noted that ladies and gentlemen do not appear to have mixed at meals.
He was accused of not taking enough notice of the King's birthday,
though he gave a state dinner to twenty persons at his own table,
'besides the ladies who were with my wife and at other tables in the
house.' On New Year's Day the Lord Mayor and aldermen dined with him
and played cards afterwards. When the Lord Lieutenant withdrew, the
men all went to the cellar, and after that it was perhaps as well
that they did not have to join the ladies. Three days later all the
citizens' wives dined with Lady Clarendon, and his Excellency had to
take refuge with the Lord Chancellor. There was, however, no objection
to ladies attending the Curragh races, but Clarendon's wife did not
care to do so in company with Lady Dorchester. He found the racecourse
much larger, and with much finer turf than Newmarket Heath. Later in
the year he made a progress in the south. Lady Clarendon was left
at Kilkenny Castle, Ormonde about the same time making some stay at
Cornbury. At Waterford the Lord Lieutenant was very well received
publicly, Lords Tyrone and Galway attending him, but not one of the
many considerable Roman Catholics making any sign. He dined with Henry
Boyle at Castlemartyr, and at Lismore; where Lord Burlington had
given orders that he should be sumptuously entertained, he 'destroyed
some of my lord's salmon.' He visited Kinsale and Bandon, and at Cork
Major-General MacCarthy brought Bishop Creagh and four Roman Catholic
merchants with him, but not ten of his Church paid their respects all
the way from Kilkenny. 'Our people are mad,' said one priest at Cork;
'our clergy have forbidden gentlemen to appear.' At Limerick things
were a little, but only a little, better, the Irish citizens showing a
determination to keep apart from the English. The see of Limerick was
vacant, but Dr. Brenan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, was
very civil. At Thomastown in Tipperary, Clarendon stayed with Ormonde's
half-brother, Captain George Matthew. 'This,' he said, 'is a very fine
place, and the most improved of any situation I have seen since I came
into this kingdom, especially considering that it is but fifteen years
since he first sat down upon it, when there was not a house upon it.'
Clarendon admired the rich country about Clonmel, 'but all pasture and
employed in sheep walks, and feeding black cattle.' Here and elsewhere
he notes the want of population, which the exodus of Protestant
settlers did not improve.[278]
[Sidenote: An Irish Tunbridge Wells.]
Macaulay's description of Tunbridge Wells in the days when fine
gentlemen, sick of the airs of actresses and maids of honour, refreshed
themselves by flirting with the farmers' daughters who brought them
cream and butter, had a sort of counterpart in Ireland. Near the West
Gate of Wexford is a mineral well which was brought into fashion by Dr.
Patrick Dun, a Scotch physician, whose name is still well remembered
in Dublin. While prescribing syrup of buckthorn as an addition to the
waters, he did not forbid good claret if it was to be had in the
town. The spa was nasty enough, but one grave visitor thought the
'fantastical ladies, and fops, and lampoons in Wexford doggerel' were
as bad. The dietary in vogue was dry roast mutton and chicken without
sauce, and the conversation turned, as at other watering-places, on
the visitors' ailments. Good lodgings were scarce, but Lord Chancellor
Fitton, Accountant-General Bonnell, at least two bishops, and Dr.
William King, afterwards the famous Archbishop, were among those who
underwent the cure.[279]
[Sidenote: Condition of the poor.]
In general it may be said that people who were well-to-do lived in
Ireland much as their equals did in England, and from the abundance
of food money went farther in the poorer country. But in 1672, when
the Restoration Settlement was well established, the great mass of the
people lived miserably enough. In the absence of proper statistics,
we must depend on Petty's estimates, which in most important points
are sustained by a cloud of witnesses, though his figures, by the
nature of the case, may be inexact. He gives the total population as
1,100,000. Of the inhabited houses 16,000 had more than one chimney,
24,000 had only one, leaving 160,000 without any. Three-fourths of the
land and five-sixths of the houses belonged to British Protestants, and
'three-fourths of the native Irish lived in a brutish, nasty condition,
as in cabins, with neither chimney, door, stairs, nor window, fed
chiefly upon milk and potatoes.' These cabins, which he elsewhere calls
sties, were not in all worth more than 50,000_l._ Fifteen years later,
Petty believed that the population had increased to 1,300,000. The
160,000 chimneyless cabins which sheltered the mass of the people could
not be kept free from vermin or animals, and all the eggs 'laid or
kept' in them were musty. Some cottars might have afforded a chimney,
but preferred the warmth of the smoke. With or without one, they had
to pay hearth-money. Even in a small farmer's house near Kilkenny,
Stevens found no food but milk, and had to lie on straw. Straw, indeed,
was the usual bedding, and it was not always clean. Turf was abundant
in most places. Between Dublin and Kildare Clarendon saw fine-looking
men, poor and half-naked, idle, except when starvation stared them in
the face, and ready to steal if they could not easily get work; the
women did nothing but mind two or three cows, on whose milk they lived.
'Their habitations,' he said--'for they cannot be called houses--are
perfect pig-sties; walls cast up and covered with straw and mud; and
out of one of these huts, of about ten or twelve foot square, shall
you see five or six men and women bolt out as you pass by, who stand
staring about. If this be thus so near Dublin, Lord! what can it be
farther up in the country?' During his tour in the south, he lamented
the want of population, miserable as the people were. Yet improvements
had been made, and there might be more if any encouragement was given.
The rich county of Tipperary was given up to cattle, but the number of
beasts had decreased because capital was frightened away by Tyrconnel's
proceedings. There was very little tillage. What could be expected
of people when whole families, with sometimes a travelling stranger,
or pack-carrier, or pedlar or two, lay nine or ten of them together,
naked, heads and points? The bare necessaries of life could be had with
little labour. Fourpence a day was the current rate of wages, while the
lowest class of workmen in England received a shilling. 'Their lazing'
seemed to Petty not so much natural as caused by want of employment
and inducement to work. These people were content with potatoes, and
one man's labour could feed forty. They liked milk, and in summer one
cow would supply three men. Fish and shell-fish were easily got, and a
house could be built in three days. Why should they breed more cattle
since it was penal to import them into England? Trade was so fettered
that capital was kept away, and even land was not safe from legal
trickery. Temple said much the same as Petty, and their almost verbal
agreement suggests that they had consulted each other.[280]
[Sidenote: Ploughing by the tail.]
Ploughing by the horses' tails had been made illegal by Strafford's
Parliament, but custom is often stronger than law, and the Confederates
stipulated with Ormonde that the Act should be repealed. This excited
Milton's ridicule, but the practice continued long after his time. In
the stony barony of Burren in Clare, Dineley, in 1681, saw horses four
abreast, drawing by their tails, 'tolerated here because they cannot
manage their land otherwise, their plough gears, tackle, and traces
being (as they are all over the rest of the kingdom) of gadds or withs
of twigs twisted, which here would break to pieces by the ploughshare
so often jubbing against the rock, which, the gears being fastened by
wattles or wisps to the horses' tails, the horses being sensible stop
until the ploughman lifts it over.' Seven or eight years earlier Temple
found the custom general, and proposed more drastic legislation, but
it survived in remote parts, and found defenders there as late as the
earlier years of Queen Victoria.[281]
[Sidenote: Dublin.]
In 1685, the year of Charles II.'s death, there were 6500 houses in
Dublin. No estimate gives less than five persons for each house,
and some raise the average to eight. The population was therefore
a good deal more than 32,000. There was a great increase between
the Restoration and the end of the reign. The town was larger than
Bristol, then the second in England, where there were 5307 houses. It
was exceeded by London, Paris, and Amsterdam, and apparently by Venice,
but the information about foreign cities at this time is scanty.
During the first half of the eighteenth century, at least, Dublin was
reckoned the fourth or fifth in Europe. A great number of houses were
very poor, which is not to be wondered at, for about a quarter of
them were inhabited by sellers of liquor. In this respect there had
been no improvement since Elizabethan days. According to Petty, there
were in 1672, 164 houses in Dublin with more than 10 chimneys, Lord
Meath's having 27. The Castle had 125, but no Lord Lieutenant found it
comfortable. Clarendon says it was the worst lodging a gentleman ever
lay in, each shower finding its way through holes in the roof or chinks
in the windows. He was unwilling to spend his own or the King's money
on such a place, but Tyrconnel, who laughed at his scruples, made some
improvements. There were serious fires in Strafford's time and in 1684,
and a much worse one in 1711, when many records were lost, after which
the Castle was gradually modernised. The country house at Chapelizod
was preferred by viceroys as a residence during the Restoration period.
The great town-houses in Dublin, many of which still stand, and are
converted to public uses, belong to the eighteenth century. Two
older ones, which have now disappeared, deserve mention. Cork House,
adjoining the Castle, was built by the first Earl of that name, turned
to various purposes after his death, and demolished in 1768. Chichester
House, where the Bank of Ireland now stands, was originally built by
Sir George Carey for a hospital, and was afterwards sold to Sir Arthur
Chichester. Here Lord Justice Borlase was living when the rebellion of
1641 broke out, and here sat the Parliaments of 1661 and 1692, after
which it became the regular place of meeting. The old house was pulled
down in 1728, and the fine building which succeeded it was taken by the
Bank after the Union.[282]
[Sidenote: After the Revolution.]
In spite of much well-grounded discontent, Ireland prospered under
Charles II. After his death there was an interval of doubt followed
by civil war. In the two years preceding the Boyne a vast number of
houses and cattle were destroyed, nor did the mischief cease until the
full establishment of William's government. Penal laws and commercial
restraint notwithstanding, capital was gradually accumulated during the
next century, and fine houses were built both in town and country. But
the mass of the rural population were badly off, for reliance on the
potato long prevented improvement and kept thousands upon the verge of
starvation. There was nothing to make Irish peasants forget that their
ancestors had been reduced to poverty or driven into exile.[283]
FOOTNOTES:
[275] Rawdon's letters among the Conway papers are calendared with the
Irish and Domestic State Papers. Some of Conway's are in Berwick's
_Rawdon Papers_. The great Lisburn estate came later to the Marquis
of Hertford, and that of Moira to the Marquis of Hastings. Archbishop
Boyle to Conway, July 29, 1665. Dobbs's description of Antrim in Hill's
_Macdonnells of Antrim_, appx. 385. _Ulster Journal of Archæology_, i.
250. Miss Masson's _Robert Boyle_, p. 264. Gosse's _Jeremy Taylor_.
The great house at Portmore was entirely demolished in the eighteenth
century. Some idea of its magnificence may be formed from the number of
painted tiles--from Holland, no doubt. The bulk were broken through bad
packing, but 7000 were saved.
[276] Essex to Arlington, August 27, 1672, _Essex Papers_, i. 21,
and January 25, 1673, in State Papers, _Ireland_. Story's _Impartial
Hist._, p. 145. Evelyn's _Diary_, October 26, 1690, where Ossory is
named in mistake for Orrery. Smith's _Cork_.
[277] _Ormonde Papers_, vol. vii. Temple on Irish horses, _Works_, vol.
iii. Kilkenny Castle was never sacked, and John Dunton describes its
grandeur in 1699.
[278] Clarendon's letters to Rochester, May 4, 1686, and from September
9 to October following, and a letter to Ormonde of September 28,
in _Ormonde Papers_, vol. vii. John Dunton saw the Curragh races
in September 1698. He found the plain partly covered with heath,
sheltering grouse and hares. _Life and Errors_, ii. 606. In 1673 Temple
gave Essex elaborate advice as to the encouragement of horse-racing,
_Works_, iii. 23.
[279] James Bonnell to John Ellis, August 7, 1688, _Ellis
Correspondence_, ii. 112. Dr. Dun to Dr. King, April 8 and 26, 1684,
in King's _A Great Archbishop of Dublin_. Dun was fond of claret and
of good living generally, see his prescription in Gilbert's _Hist. of
Dublin_, i. 177.
[280] Petty's _Political Anatomy_ of Ireland, published in 1691 after
his death, but written much earlier; his _Political Arithmetic_, and
his _Treatise of Ireland_, written for James II. in 1687. Clarendon's
letters of May 4 and September 28, 1686. Stevens's _Journal_ in
1689, p. 49. Dineley's _Tour_ in 1681, pp. 18, 21. Sir W. Temple's
observations on the United Provinces in his _Works_, ed. 1814, i. 165,
and his Advancement of Trade in Ireland, _ib._ iii. 3. In the quarto
edition of Arthur Young's _Tour_, 1780, there is a good picture of an
Irish cabin without chimney or window and with smoke rolling out of the
doorway. There were many such cabins a generation ago, and there may
still be a few in out-of-the-way places. The mode of constructing them
and the state of their inhabitants are described by John Dunton, who
saw many in 1699, _Life and Errors_, ed. 1818, ii. 605.
[281] Dineley's _Tour_, p. 162. Sir W. Temple on trade in Ireland,
_Works_, iii. 17. See above, vol. i. p. 124.
[282] Petty's _Political Anatomy_, chap. ii., _Dublin Bills_, appx.
(Graunt), further _Observations_ on these Bills (1681), postscript,
_Political Arithmetic_ (1686). Sir Charles Wogan to Swift, February
27, 1732-3, in Swift's _Works_, ed. Scott, xvii. 457. Walter Harris's
_Hist. of Dublin_, 1766, chap. v. Gilbert's _Hist. of Dublin_, ii. 11,
iii. chap. ii. _Clarendon and Rochester Correspondence_, ii. 101. See
the first two essays in C. L. Falkiner's _Illustrations of Irish Hist._
Not many years ago there was but one set of dining tables between the
Castle and the Lodge in Phoenix Park, and they had to be carried to
and fro. For the Dublin ale-houses, see my _Ireland under the Tudors_,
iii. 448. In _Additional MSS._ 14422, an 'exact account' makes the
population of Dublin 40,508 in January 1695, including Trinity College
and Kilmainham. Lord Meath's great house had formed part of St.
Thomas's Abbey.
[283] John Stevens found the Bantry people so poor that half a crown
could hardly be changed, 'and guineas were carried about the whole day
and returned whole.'