WAR’S AFTERMATH.
O’Doherty’s destruction, coupled with the imprisonment of O’Cahan,
Sir Cormac O’Neill, and Niall Garve O’Donnell, filled up the cup
of Chichester’s happiness. The few difficulties remaining in his
way in Ulster were easily adjusted. A degenerate Maguire skulked in
Fermanagh; but what of him? Having opposed his clan in the war he
was promised their seigneuries. When peace came Conor Roe Maguire
tasted the common lot of recreants, and found himself bereft of every
acre by the Deputy, save a petty ploughland. Such was “the State’s”
ingratitude that, among British settlers, an outcry was provoked
against the faithlessness of their rulers towards him. A Letter of
James I. guaranteed Maguire the entire County Fermanagh. Before that,
on 29th July, 1602, the then Deputy wrote to the Privy Council that
Queen Elizabeth “hath given the chiefry of the country of Fermanagh”
to Connor Roe Maguire, but in a flash the planters carved it up among
themselves.
Sir Oghy O’Hanlon owned the Barony of Orier in County Armagh, and
had always taken the English side. His son married the sister of
Sir Cahir O’Doherty, and had joined in his outbreak. Sir Oghy was
deprived of his property and given a pension of thirty shillings a
week to thrive upon. His son was shipped to Sweden, where wars were
toward.
In Cavan the scion of the O’Reillys was a minor, and naturally his
lands were seized by “the State.” His grandfather, Sir John O’Reilly,
fell on the English side at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, fighting
against Hugh O’Neill. His mother was one of the Ormonde family,
who never swerved in loyalty to the Crown. Accordingly the Deputy
applotted young O’Reilly out of his estate as much soil as was
allowed to any English ploughman who “planted” in Cavan. The purge of
the Irishry in Ulster was thereby consummated.
The entire North now lay chieftainless. All that was left of its
chivalry was represented by the Antrim Scoto-Irishman, Sir Randal
MacDonnell. He was the King’s friend and hawk-purveyor, and the story
of his persecution must be separately told.
Meanwhile Hugh O’Neill and his fellow-refugees were tracked through
Europe by calumniators and assassins. A Proclamation issued by James
I. imputed that they were base of birth, so as to lower their credit
in the eyes of the Continental grandees who offered them hospitality.
Spies dogged their footsteps while they lived, and when they died
their heirs were strangled or poisoned wherever they could be
trapped. At home their countrymen cowered in helpless humiliation.
The native swordsmen were disarmed or deported to Sweden or Poland.
Sheriffs and escheators, who were merely licensed freebooters seeking
what they might devour, quartered themselves on the country. The
fields of the husbandmen were ravaged; the poor were without bread.
Monks were cloisterless; priests churchless; harpers without a hall.
The only requiem for the dead was the howl of the wolf. Official
prelates and clergy, unmindful of duty to God or man, installed
themselves in ancient fanes, and the echo of the stranger’s ritual in
a strange tongue disturbed the slumber of the saints.
The upkeep of the discowled apostate or the Lutheran upstart was cast
upon the clansmen who spurned their worship. Evil-livers like Miler
Magrath, “Archbishop” of Cashel, or his mates from overseas, diverted
to their pleasure the incomes which the ancient Church held in trust
for the poor. Few of the imported divines could explain to a nation
whose speech they scorned their message from on High. The gift of
tongues was slow to descend on them.
Ecclesiastics who had escaped captivity or the sword, took to the
hills or went into exile. The handful who apostatised were the scorn
alike of the invader and the native. The gentry whose lands were
forfeited in the cause of “Gospel extension” became “recusants,”
for did they not reject the doctrine that they should be rooted out
like the Amalekites or Jebusites? Queen Elizabeth had made a gift
to the earlier missioners of a fount of Gaelic type, but the fund
was embezzled. So Chichester ordered the Book of Common Prayer to be
done into Irish; but disbelievers failed to recognise in him another
Patrick. Order was taken that the Brehons, who treasured the roll
of the mensal dues paid by each chieftain to the priests, should
yield up their crumpled parchments at Assizes so that the tribute
to the ancient Church might be earmarked as “tithe” for the new
“Establishment.”
The Deputy assisted at these soulful inquiries, and blended
delicately a spiritual jurisdiction with what was worldly. Who
so zealous in the Lord as he, if advancing godliness assisted
confiscation? Davies’ account of their progress in the North might
serve in part as a model for the diary of Anti-Christ. It notes with
wonder that, at this zero-point of national desolation, “all the
common people have a whining tone or accent in their speech, as if
they did still smart or suffer some oppression.” Other breeds of
men, of course, would have waxed merry at the sight of the intruder
enriching himself at the expense of their nobles, settling down
cosily in their pleasaunces, seizing their churches, defiling their
monasteries, corrupting their Courts, and becoming master of the
fields, woods, and waters which had come down to them from countless
generations.
The ancient code of justice, which the Brehons had administered for
over a thousand years, was judicially decided to be “a lewd and
barbarous custom.” The fictions of “John Doe” and “Richard Roe,”
with all the follies of the feudal law, were set up in its place—to
connote the higher civilisation. It was under a Scottish King that
the absurdities and cruelties of the English Common Law were forced
on Ireland, though the Scottish nation refused to adopt it. The
Brehons as judges were in character and training far above the
importations who administered the new system. In the native mind the
stranger’s zeal for equity ranked with that of the new clergy for the
religion to which they were asked to conform.
Spenser’s “View of Ireland” draws this contrast:—
“Wherein it is great wonder to see the odds which is between the zeal
of Popish priests and the ministers of the Gospel; for they spare not
to come out of Spain, from Rome, and from Rheims, by long toil and
dangerous travelling hither, where they know peril of death awaiteth
them, and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the people
into the Church of Rome. Whereas some of our idle ministers, having
a way for credit and estimation thereby opened unto them, and having
the livings of the country offered unto them without pain and without
peril, will neither for the same nor any love of God, nor zeal of
religion, nor for all the good they may do by winning souls to God,
be drawn forth from their warm nests to look out into God’s harvest,
which is even ready for the sickle and all the fields yellow long
ago. Doubtless those good old godly Fathers will (I fear me) rise up
in the Day of Judgment to condemn them.”
Thirty years later Charles I., in a letter (written with his own
hand) to the Irish Protestant Archbishops, complained that “the
clergy of Ireland are apt to be careless of God’s service and their
own honour.” One of his officials, Sir John Bingley, described them
in March, 1629, as “a set of very profane and drunken fellows.”
Sogarth aroon!