THE RAPE OF THE LOUGH.
The ingenuity of Davies helped to distend beyond all honest limits
the grants allotted to Chichester, who coveted properties too unique
and vast to be openly proposed for his reward. Sir Arthur’s Castle
at Carrickfergus lay neighbourly to Lough Neagh, and on this great
prize, with its outlet, the fishful Bann, he had set his heart. To
crave such guerdon for his services would have been in vain. It was
not the King’s to bestow, and never had been seized or claimed by
the Crown. With official connivance he might lay hands on it, but
his power in the State was limited. James I. had chosen him with
Sir Henry Docwra and Sir William Godolphin as a partaker in the
Government during Devonshire’s absence; but he shared a divided
authority, and had to beware of jealousy or exposure.
Lough Neagh lay outside the territory of every native chieftain,
while the Bann belonged to notables whose rights could not lightly be
trespassed on. In 1542 the Lough was fixed as the Eastern boundary
of Tyrone in the Patent of Henry VIII. to Con O’Neill after Con’s
acceptance, at Greenwich, of English allegiance. When that Patent
was renewed by James I. to Hugh O’Neill in 1603, the same landmarks
were maintained. On the opposite side dwelt the Claneboy O’Neills;
but, beyond their shore-fishings and those of the monks, they laid no
claim to it. Their Patent of 30th March, 1587, is confined to County
Down, and makes no mention of Lough Neagh. Queen Elizabeth gave Sir
Thomas Smith a Charter to conquer East Ulster in 1571, but the Lough
was not included in his grant.
The limits of tribal ownership were at all times acutely studied;
and to interfere with them without provocation or legal excuse, once
peace was established, would arouse angry protests and appeals to the
Throne. It was plain, moreover, that, whether English Law or Brehon
Law prevailed, there was no one against whom a forfeiture could be
enforced for Lough Neagh as a whole.
Inconvenient as this was for the official despoiler, with his nice
sense of quiddities, Sir Arthur saw its usefulness from another point
of view, since no great owner would suffer if a confiscation were
carried out. On this basis he laid his plans. Queen Elizabeth, during
her nine years’ struggle for supremacy, had established war-boats on
Lough Neagh, from which O’Neill’s territory was raided. The crews
hindered the natives from fishing when their kine and corn were
destroyed; and, after famine had enforced peace, the galleys were
ordered to be kept serviceable. Hugh Clotworthy, one of Chichester’s
warriors, remained in charge of them, and received from Sir Arthur
the lands of Massereene, near the shore, out of his own grant, at
a cheap rate. He calculated that, with proper backing, Lough Neagh
might be put under his “command” as Governor of Carrickfergus,
and that on this foundation a beginning might be made from which
ownership could be built up. The Lord Lieutenant was not privy to
this purpose; and had never conceived such an annexation, even for
his own benefit. He would have been staggered by its audacity in a
subordinate, but he unwittingly helped to bring about what Chichester
sought.
It has been told that on his visit to Court with the subjugated
Earls, Devonshire secured Sir Arthur’s life appointment as Governor
of Carrickfergus, with a gift of the property lying between the
Castles of Carrickfergus and Belfast. This served as a basis from
which Chichester operated. Most of these lands had been awarded to
Sir Ralph Lane, Muster-Master-General to Queen Elizabeth, under a
“custodium” (or lease) of 1598. They included Belfast Castle, with
its adjacent fishery of the Lagan, and other valuable perquisites.
Large areas comprised in the grant had, in Lane’s day, to be won
from the natives; and in 1603 the rightful owner, Sir Con O’Neill,
was held prisoner in Carrickfergus Castle by Chichester on a charge
of treason invented with a view to stealing what remained of his
property.
Before Sir Con could be brought to trial he escaped to Scotland; and,
Lane being displaced, everything in the “custodium” was given to
Chichester. The King’s Letter of the 8th August, 1603, ordered his
grant to be made rent free in perpetuity. Thus the soil on which the
City of Belfast now stands, under the name of “the Fall, Mylone, and
the Tuogh called the Sinament,” fell to a penniless freebooter with
scantier ritual than would to-day mark the transfer of an acre from
an African savage.
This recognition of Sir Arthur’s merits, though princely, left him
ungrateful. On the 23rd August, 1603, he wrote Cecil pretending that
the King’s Letter had been “by the learned counsel found defective,”
and praying that “some other to better purpose may be signed by his
Majesty.” He did not disclose what was amiss with the Letter, or that
its only “defect” was that it did not authorise what he coveted. The
help of the vulnerable Viceroy was also enlisted, but to him the plea
put forward was that the Letter “was not so ample as his Majesty
intended.” Without awaiting Cecil’s reply Chichester stretched the
Letter by taking out two Patents, in each of which he inserted grants
greater than his Majesty had sanctioned.
In the first Patent, dealing with Belfast, issued on the 10th
September, 1603, he included the entire of the river Lagan, although
the fishing at the Castle alone was given him. The second, relating
to the Carrickfergus Governorship, he enlarged by a still more daring
addition. The original of either Patent is no longer available,
as they were first concealed, and then cancelled; but from those
substituted for them the conclusion is irresistible that they swept
the “command” of Lough Neagh into his hands. So glaring were their
excesses that Sir Arthur shrank from enrolling them lest a comparison
between their text and the King’s Letter, on which they purported to
be based, should shock inquiring minds. The King’s Letter then (as
now) lay in the custody of the Master of the Rolls.
Davies’ arrival in Dublin in November, 1603, proved a godsend to all
jobbers. The new Solicitor-General brought the latest London gossip
of the extravagant largesse of the Scotch King and Queen, and of the
Lord Lieutenant’s careless amours. This intelligence and his lawcraft
lent aid to Sir Arthur’s purposes and shaped his methods. The system
under which swollen grants were called into being for the profit of
needy favourites had already been set in full swing; and Davies knew
that the absentee Viceroy was not squeamish about the scope of the
Patents taken out by his brothers-in-arms. The Solicitor-General
framed himself to that situation. The entanglement with Lady Rich
made the Lord Lieutenant reluctant to return to Ireland, and the
delicacy of his position was becoming notorious. Davies saw its
weakness, and discerned in Chichester a kindred spirit and a rising
power.
Before long their interchanges resulted in a dashing expedient.
Underlying the application for the new Letter lurked the design to
make it cover a Patent bulking the “command” at Carrickfergus with
a right over Lough Neagh. If the scheme prospered, the concealed
Patents could afterwards be destroyed; and, as they were not
enrolled, legal proof of malpractice in framing them would also
disappear. This plan bore upon its face the stamp of Davies’ mint.
Cecil was favourable to Sir Arthur, and the Lord Lieutenant doubtless
reflected that to extend his “command” to embrace Lough Neagh would
only increase his responsibility without enriching his estate or
enlarging his pay. They, therefore, furthered Chichester’s petition
without troubling as to the purpose to which an “amended” King’s
Letter might be turned. In the first profuse year of the Stuart
regime, small scrutiny was spent by James I. on requests of this
kind. Once Devonshire and Cecil backed up a suppliant’s prayer, no
difficulty was made in yielding it. His Majesty accordingly, on the
29th December, 1603, consented to sign a second Letter; and thereby
became anew the victim of servitors who prostituted regal forms to
corrupt ends.
The difference between the first and second King’s Letter related
chiefly to the “command” of Lough Neagh; but that difference enabled
the craftsmen to effect a far-reaching extension of the Patent it
authorised. The “amended” Letter was drawn to invest Chichester with
“the government of Carrickfergus and of all other forts, places, and
commands, with the Lough Neagh and the commodities thereof mentioned
in our Letters Patent formerly granted unto him, together with the
fee of 13s. 4d. by the day, for the term of his natural life.” This
phraseology shows that although Lough Neagh had never been mentioned
in the first King’s Letter, a patent was founded on it which
illegally dealt with the Lough.
On the strength of the new Letter, the rogues minted a fresh Patent
on the 9th May, 1604. This revealed the original design and reeked
with every kind of illegality. Having declared Chichester “Colonel
and Governor of our forces at Carrickfergus,” with the fee of 13s.
4d. a day for life, it created him “Admiral and Commander-in-Chief
of Lough Neagh for the disposal of all shipping and boats thereon.”
There was daring in that, but a greater marvel followed, for the
Patent thievishly went on to confer on him “the fishing of the said
Lough as far as the Salmon Leap in the River of the Bann.” In other
words, it annexed to the command at Carrickfergus a life estate
in the fishery of Lough Neagh and the Bann. This was a stupendous
encroachment on the nature and limits of the grant sanctioned by
the King. To transform a military “command” into the gift of a huge
fishery, and adjoin thereto the rank of “Admiral,” was a masterpiece
of perversion. The English Crown had never laid claim to the waters
so purloined. James I. did not mean to give them away; and had
neither power nor right to do so. The feigned dignity of “Admiral and
Commander-in-Chief of Lough Neagh” was usurped to mask a material
advantage, and its author vainly tried afterwards to confirm his
shaky title by dubbing the lake “Lough Chichester.” The mock baptism
was as scornfully rejected by the natives as his piratical claim of
ownership.
No inquisition had been held (as the law required) to establish the
right to make the Patent. Nor did any official notification of it
apprise the Crown or the public of what had been done. A spell of
black magic transmuted a military appointment into a life estate
in the richest fishery in Ulster, and attached thereto a bogus
“Admiralty.”
Uglier even than the uncanny graft on the “command” at Carrickfergus
was Sir Arthur’s crookedness as to the Bann. The river was nowhere
mentioned in either King’s Letter from first to last; yet the new
Patent captured it for Chichester. Ecclesiastics as well as laymen
owned the stream on either bank. It belonged to Hugh O’Neill in
part, to Sir Randal McDonnell in part, to the Bishop of Derry, to
the Bishop of Down and Connor, and other magnates. They never learnt
till too late that, by imposing the Great Seal on skins of vellum,
Sir Arthur had stolen their property. The fresh-water “Admiral” kept
his scrivenery secret until its victims were powerless and his sway
assured. His day was coming; and the spirit in which he trampled down
public and private ownership proves that the embittered captains
of Elizabeth never intended to respect the treaties of peace which
heralded the dawn of the Stuart reign. Chichester had as little
compunction in thwarting the policy of James I. as in stripping
chiefs and clansmen of their acres.
To baffle research as to his misdeeds, he inserted a proviso in the
Patents of 1604 declaring that those of 1603 should be annulled
before their substitutes were sealed. He had cunningly left them
unenrolled, lest their contents should rise up in judgment against
him, and thus they were for ever withheld from scrutiny and
subtracted from the archives of the State. Knowledge of them is
derived only from the King’s Letter and recitals in the Patents of
1604. The germ of the stranger’s claim to Lough Neagh and the Bann,
thus clandestinely called into being, animates the unnatural pedigree
of the Chichester title. In no essay of his descendants to trace it
back through the centuries to some legitimate source, nor in their
lawsuits to maintain a hold on what he filched, are the Patents of
1603-4 ever mentioned. In no legal proceedings concerning the Bann or
Lough Neagh (and they were frequent) was the pretenced life-estate
ever relied on or referred to. A modern affidavit, which boasts
a complete and accurate enumeration of the grants, piously avers
that the first was issued in 1606, and suppresses those of 1603-4.
The guilt-dyed originals were left buried out of sight, as if no
tell-tale ghosts haunted the Record Office. Yet they represented the
fairest flower of the handicraft which typified the majesty of the
law in Ireland when the Brehon Code was overthrown.
They were fabricated on the eve of Chichester’s promotion from
Carrickfergus to Dublin Castle, for his elevation to the Deputyship
was at hand; and on the threshold of his greatness this brace
of parchments exhibits him reeking in the mire of duplicity and
ingratitude. He requited James I. for the gift of a lordly recompense
by manifold falsehoods and fabrications. The whole River Lagan was
snatched instead of a mere fishing-reach at Belfast Castle. The
“command” of Lough Neagh was assumed without sanction under an
unenrolled Patent. The misrepresentation that his grants “were not so
ample as his Majesty intended” begot a fresh King’s Letter to furbish
title to that coveted command. By warping the Royal Warrant he
endowed himself with the honour of “Admiral and Commander-in-Chief”
in his watery jurisdiction, plus a life-estate in the fisheries of
a great inland sea. Unsated by this immensity, he absorbed long
leagues of the River Bann, the property of high-placed chieftains and
unoffending prelates, in defiance of treaty and law. To crown all,
an intrigue to gain the Deputyship was entered upon, to complete the
work so masterfully begun.
The development of his “life-estate” into the full-blown perfection
of the Fee Simple took years to accomplish and much ministering
sleight-of-hand. In the process legal conjuring and covin more
astounding than that which ushered in its illegitimate birth briskly
unfold themselves. Toadies of Chichester depict him as a Christian
of deep religious fervour. A hypocrite by habit, a churl by nature,
and a thief by instinct he took care that his deceptions should not
be easily unravelled. The consequences of the “amended” Letter,
which the ’prentice Monarch of the United Kingdom was befooled into
signing, reach down into a far futurity.