AN EVIL PARTNERSHIP.
The system applied by Chichester to hoodwink the Crown and defraud
the subject went undetected for years. It consisted in availing
of spent King’s Letters, and issuing Patents upon them afresh—in
many cases to an extent enormously beyond the powers originally
contemplated. In this way the Ulster fisheries were annexed; and
equally lawless appropriations were made in nearly every county.
Where fishings were concerned, the Deputy’s maw was insatiable.
Until the Stuart era, Hugh O’Neill and Sir Randal MacDonnell largely
controlled the Bann; O’Donnell and O’Doherty Lough Foyle; and Maguire
Lough Erne. The Lagan had been included by Sir Arthur in his Patents
of 1603-4; when his scriveners conferred on him a life-estate in
Lough Neagh and the Bann, with the title of Admiral. Upon taking
Hamilton into partnership he treated his own Patents for both the
Lagan and Lough Neagh as worthless, and prepared fresh dispositions.
His old comrade, Captain Thomas Phillips, was commander of the fort
at Toome (where the Bann issues from Lough Neagh), and had been
allowed to become tenant of the fishery at Coleraine belonging to
Sir Randal MacDonnell (afterwards Earl of Antrim). Sir Randal was
brother-in-law of Hugh O’Neill, and had supported him in the war
against Elizabeth. Chichester nourished an implacable hatred of
MacDonnell and his clan, because in 1597 they defeated his brother,
Sir John Chichester, and beheaded him. During O’Neill’s revolt he
tried to get Sir James MacDonnell, Randal’s brother, poisoned;
and used to write of Randal to Cecil as “MacSorley,” in order to
recall the feud of his father, Sorley Bwee, with the Queen. The
MacDonnells, as Lords of the Isles, were Scottish as well as Irish
chieftains, and of old blood. King James was hardly six weeks on the
united Thrones when he confirmed Sir Randal’s estate of 333,000 acres
in County Antrim. This area MacDonnell occupied by ancient conquest;
but the legal recognition of his ownership was hateful to Chichester,
who planned to make the rival Scottish favourite the instrument of
his revenge.
Hamilton, being a stranger, needed a backer in the North, and one
having local knowledge. For this service Captain Phillips was well
fitted, and his price had to be paid. At the outset the Deputy
provided for it by stripping the Crown of stray escheats from the
monks. Then, on the 20th July, 1605, he issued to Hamilton, under
the Thomas Irelande Letter, a Patent for the Abbey of Coleraine,
with the monastery fishing in the Bann. Along with this went much
other spoil, lay and ecclesiastical, such as the Manor of Moygare, in
Meath, with several rectories, tithes and manors in Kildare, Queen’s
County, Down, and Antrim. The rent reserved to the Crown for this was
only £54 1s. 1d., and Cecil was advised that Hamilton, on the 23rd
September, 1605, had transferred to Captain Phillips the Abbey of
Coleraine with the fishery. So splendid a gift was no small handsel
from one who was himself entitled to receive only “the value of £100
a year.” It was intended as a “retainer” to Phillips to blood him for
an intended attack on Sir Randal.
Though the tap of the “Half-Moon” had poured much wealth into
Hamilton’s maw it left his thirst unslaked, and the exhausted
warrant to John Wakeman, which had lain fallow for over a year, was
next prepared for action. To employ it, the co-operation of Sir
Richard Cooke, the Secretary of State, was needed, as, by a “power
of attorney” from Wakeman in 1604, Cooke was entrusted to “sue out”
grants under it on Devonshire’s behalf. Chichester feared to make use
of Cooke. He wished for a more pliable nominee, who would consent
to deceive the Lord Lieutenant as well as the King. Whether Wakeman
agreed to this, or whether his name was abused, is uncertain; but
an altered “power of attorney,” dated the 21st October, 1605, was
put forth, purporting to have been executed by Wakeman, in which Mr.
James Ware, Auditor for “martial causes,” figures instead of Cooke.
No honest reason for such a change (inside a year) can be imagined;
and by this means the Auditor, whose office was intended to check
corruption, was enlisted for the corrupt obtainment of grants. Before
availing of Ware’s help, the Deputy issued to Hamilton, on the 5th
November, 1605, a Patent for Sir Con O’Neill’s estate—two thirds of
which was afterwards reconveyed to Montgomery and its true owner. In
this (as part of the process of mystification) was included a grant
of “the whole fishing of the River Lagan,” which Chichester had
snatched for himself in his Patents of 1603-4. He gave it to Hamilton
only by way of conferring valid title to it on a stranger, intending
subsequently to secure a transfer to himself. Thus one branch of the
1603-4 illegality was vested with seemly raiment.
At this time the Gunpowder Plot shook England, and emboldened in
guile the officials entrusted with the administration of Ireland.
Trumpeting a tale of Popish treason, the action of Guy Fawkes and
his gang deafened the ears of the King to the complaints of Irish
Catholics. Whatever lingering tenderness James might have retained
for them the Plot whiffed away. The severe measures which it excused
gave Chichester a larger command of power; and he used it to advance
his grasping policy. Having the Auditor-General in his pocket, he
soon prepared a dazzling stroke. The self-styled “Admiral,” who
purported to have received in 1604 a life-estate in the fisheries
of Lough Neagh and the Bann, gave them to Hamilton by Patent in
derogation of his own rights, on the 14th February, 1606. Using
the Thomas Irelande Letter as his authority, he presented “the
Scot” with these coveted waters in fee simple, and included in the
grant gigantic stretches of territory in Antrim, Down, Carlow,
and Roscommon, as well as a couple of abbeys and the advowsons
of half-a-dozen rectories. All was done in alleged compliance
with a warrant entitling its possessor to £100 a year. A haul so
comprehensive seldom weighted a single Patent. To-day it would be
worth a million of money. No Inquisition warranted this, and there
was nothing to show that the property belonged to the Crown, but by
Parsons’ dexterity the Inquisition at Antrim of the 12th July, 1605,
was made to serve as a shaky foundation for what was done, although
the Commission authorising the inquiry confined it to the estate of
Con O’Neill and to “concealed” lands to provide for Thomas Irelande’s
£100. The Inquisition was then carefully tucked away, and lay in
concealment nearly eighty years, while the Commission is defaced in a
style unusual amongst the records of the period.
The inclusion in Hamilton’s Patent of Lough Neagh and the Bann
exposes the hollowness of their pretenced donation for the Deputy’s
life in 1604. Had Chichester’s Patent been a reality, why should he
abandon them to Hamilton two years later without even paying the
existence of his life-estate the compliment of a “recital” in the
Inquisition over which his creature Parsons presided? It was the
counterpart of his device as to the River Lagan which he at the same
time made over to Hamilton with a like understanding as to its being
reconveyed to himself with, as he hoped, a less infirm title.
The mystery of this multiplied munificence is soon told, for
Chichester forthwith took a conveyance of the entire property from
Hamilton without a blush. The assignment to him was not enrolled
or published, and was kept a close secret. The system of privily
transferring property had not yet been made illegal in Ireland,
although in England, by the Statute of Uses, Henry VIII. forbade
“covinous” or furtive parchments. Not until Strafford’s Viceroyalty,
when Chichester’s malpractices stood partly revealed, was the
wholesome English law applied to Ireland in 1634.
Having swallowed Lough Neagh and the Bann, with other huge expanses,
the Deputy showed that he and his confederate were not men to make
two bites of a cherry. The tidal fishing of the Bann remained
ungrabbed; and to capture it the Auditor-General proved invaluable.
This reach of the river stood “in charge” as Crown property in the
books of the Exchequer; and was leased to Sir William Godolphin at
£10 a year. As Wakeman’s attorney Ware immediately “sued out” a grant
of the tidal fishery. The transfer was graciously sanctioned by the
Deputy; and next day Ware made it over to Hamilton (3rd March, 1606).
The tidal Bann was officially described by Sir John Davies as Crown
estate, and especially valuable. Yet the Auditor-General treated
it as a trifle which an exhausted King’s Letter might smuggle to a
stranger, with himself as conduit-pipe. By these expedients, Lough
Neagh and the Bann (tidal and non-tidal) were made away with—so far
as parchment and sealing-wax could do it. Ware was rewarded for his
accommodating ways by sundry emoluments and perquisites, and was also
graced with a knighthood.
His “power of attorney” was next availed of to generate a fresh
litter of Patents as monstrous as those previously begotten on the
spent Letter to Thomas Irelande. Ware knew, when Wakeman’s warrant
was abused for the third time, that its efficacy was dead. He had
been Auditor-General since the 6th September, 1603, and was empowered
when appointed “to search the records in the Auditor’s office”; so he
cannot have been ignorant of the bloated grants passed under it in
1604. He must also have felt, when Sir Richard Cooke was set aside
within a year and himself substituted as a recipient, that the change
portended a baleful purpose.