THE DEPUTY’S NEPHEW.
“Our dear Arthur Bassett of Dublin” was not of Dublin, but of
Umberley, in the County of Devon. He was brought over to serve as
jackal for his uncle, and the Patent suddenly made out for him
was simply a link forged in the chain of confiscation. It granted
Bassett all the enormous territories captured by Chichester through
Hamilton on the 14th February, 1606, with Sir Randal MacDonnell’s
“fourth” of the Bann thrown in. No King’s Letter authorised it, and
the Patent was issued without the knowledge of his Majesty or any
of his Council. Nevertheless, it emerged duly sealed from the Irish
Chancery; and its formal validity could not be denied. Here the
cunning hand of Davies was again at work, and the processes of law
were twisted by him to purposes which no one else had dreamt of. The
minting machine, the dies, the cranks, the pulleys, and every handy
engine for counterfeiting stood ready; but it was the brain of Davies
which turned them to account. How came he weaponed for this work?
Two years earlier a “Royal Commission for the Remedy of Defective
Titles” had been established by James I. on the Deputy’s advice. It
was set up as a local convenience, to enable Patents to be issued
in Dublin to owners whose grants had been held defective, without
the necessity of suing out King’s Letters from London. On payment
of a fine by approved applicants, the Royal Commissioners, who
comprised all the leading members of the Executive (17 in number),
headed by the Deputy and the judges, were empowered to make amended
grants. Their integrity and good faith were relied on by the King to
exercise the regal privilege entrusted to them without any check or
supervision.
This delegation of royal authority Chichester perverted to his
own purposes. His nephew owned no property in Ireland, and had no
title to be “remedied.” Yet to this landless upstart a parchment
was presented, as if he were some ancient and blameless Patentee in
whose deeds a flaw had been detected. His Majesty never heard of “our
dear Arthur Bassett,” who was “of Dublin” only because he had been
fetched there to abet a crime. He was for the moment Provost Marshal
for Munster, it being the Deputy’s habit to quarter as many of his
relatives as possible on the taxpayers; but there was no other link
to connect him with Irish soil. The property stolen through Hamilton
was all conveyed to him by this means, and with it was included the
“fourth” of the tidal Bann which MacDonnell was given by James I. on
his accession five years before.
This pilferage must be reckoned as one of Chichester’s most dexterous
fetches. In skill it outdid even the budding of the life-estate in
Lough Neagh on the thirteen-and-fourpenny “command” at Carrickfergus.
Still, its success was influentially contributed to by others.
The trick required the collusion of the Attorney-General, the
Solicitor-General, the Chancellor-Archbishop of Dublin, the Chief
Justice, the Chief Baron, the Master of the Rolls, the principal
Secretary of State, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Every high
official was needed as an accomplice; and not one of them flinched.
These were the men who embodied the civilising influences which
replaced the less facile justice of the “lewd” Brehon Code.
Latent merit also lurked in the Patent, as an instrument of chicane.
It vested great estates in an outsider, who could assign them to
the Deputy with a title free from apparent taint. It overlaid with
veneer the frauds connected with John Wakeman, John King, Thomas
Irelande, Auditor Ware, and James Hamilton. It wafted an air of
kingly approval over a barefaced theft. It stripped Sir Randal quite
noiselessly, and handed his fishery to a stranger alleged to be
“dear” to his Majesty. In form it was a royal grant, which, though
obtained by the prostitution of the Commission, was redolent of
legality.
When these shifts, re-shifts, and makeshifts to secure a semblance
of lawful origin for Chichester’s booty were accomplished, the grant
was garnished with the Great Seal of Ireland. Within six months of
that solemn rite Bassett transferred everything back to his loving
uncle. The conveyance from him, of course, was kept a secret, like
Hamilton’s assignment, and was never enrolled. A knighthood was
Bassett’s reward, and the Deputy prescribed in his will that he
should be buried in the same tomb with himself at Carrickfergus.
There each worthy now lies awaiting the judgment of the Resurrection.
Contrasted with Chichester’s refusal to remedy, by the same
machinery, the pretended blot in the Patent of Hugh O’Neill, the
parchment issued to Bassett attracts lasting interest. O’Neill’s
grant was the outcome of a National treaty which ended a nine years’
war. Bassett’s was a swindle carried out against the King and his
subjects. Criminality permeated it even to minor details. The fine
due to the Crown on its being issued was left unpaid, in spite of a
recital that £20 had been lodged in the Exchequer, and in this way
the King was both pettily and grossly cheated.
While this Patent was a-making, Sir Randal renewed his appeal to the
King. He was, however, unexpectedly thwarted at Court, and for the
first time tasted defeat. Umbraged and disconsolate, he was sent
home from London, but immediately recommenced his efforts, and not
altogether without success. The discouraged chief, who had never even
heard of Bassett, wrote to Cecil on the 19th August, 1608:—
“When I took leave of your lordship at the Court at Greenwich, you
were pleased that my fourth part of the fishing of the Bann, being
in controversy between Mr. Hamilton and myself, should remain, as it
was the former year, in sequestration; and that neither of us should
reap any benefit of the rent of the same, until the controversy was
decided by law.”
He went on to complain that the sequestrator, Captain Phillips, “pays
the yearly rent of the fishing privately unto whom Mr. James Hamilton
will appoint there; and thereby thinks to deprive me of my rights to
the fishing, to my great loss.” He, therefore, besought Cecil to let
him have the fishery again, and that meanwhile the Bishop of Derry
should be appointed sequestrator.
This protest led to an Order of the Privy Council on the 31st
October, 1608, setting Phillips aside. It runs:—“As Mr. Hamilton
has prayed that Sir Thomas Ridgeway be appointed sequestrator, and
Sir Randal MacDonnell has demanded that the Bishop of Derry be
appointed, the Lords of the Council suggest that they be appointed
joint-sequestrators; and, if they are not content with this
arrangement, the Deputy shall appoint some indifferent person as
sequestrator.” Chichester’s reply is not preserved. The State Papers
are at times mournfully vacant as to his correspondence. Cecil, whose
“Cabinet,” as the Earl of Northampton complained, “had been made the
treasury of the State’s whole evidences and intelligence,” lacked at
his death many precious papers. The “saint” and the sinner understood
one another.
Whatever answer Chichester sent, or rejoinder Sir Randal made, it
dawned on the Privy Council by the end of 1608 that the Bann had
been alienated by the Deputy. The King took the news bitterly. After
the Flight of the Earls he contemplated a grant of the river to the
London Corporation; and his anger was kindled against the devastators
of Ulster’s spoil. In January, 1609, Cecil was ordered to demand
explanations. He had commanded Sir Arthur in June, 1608, “not to
dispose of an acre” without authority from England. James I. assumed
that the grants fathered on Hamilton had been made in disobedience to
this injunction; but Chichester stoutly replied that they were gifts
for the benefit of the Earl of Devonshire under the Wakeman Letter. A
discreet silence was preserved as to the fact that he had transferred
to himself the non-tidal Bann and Lough Neagh along with MacDonnell’s
“fourth” under bogus patents.
Little as the Lords of the Council guessed the extent of his
profligacy, they grew suspicious. In April, 1609, Sir Randal obtained
an order that the Deputy should “direct trial of the controversy
with all convenient speed,” and “that his Majesty may be no further
importuned in the matter.” This command Chichester pigeonholed, and
his victim was left remoter than ever from justice.
New influences, however, were setting in which affected every
claimant to property in Ulster. The King, finding the North
swept of its Chiefs, and knowing naught of the practices of the
Deputy, determined to root Scottish and English settlers in the
seats of the stubborn septs. A Plantation would solve the Irish
difficulty. Chichester differed from his Majesty as to the future
of the Province, and saw in its desolation a means of personal
aggrandisement. James hoped to strengthen his garrison by planting
the battle-wasted area with British Protestants. The Deputy felt that
disarmed natives would be easier to deal with than cross-Channel
adventurers protected by royal favour. The King’s policy, besides,
exposed him to the risk that his crimes might be laid bare. He could
show no title, save what Bassett’s Patent afforded, to his most
important acquisitions. Excluding that document, the only parchment
he held for Lough Neagh and the Bann, or the countless acres seized
therewith, was a secret assignment from Hamilton. This had, for its
sole foundation, grants as shaky as Bassett’s, springing from his own
wrongdoing.
James I., ignorant of all this hocus-pocus, busied himself throughout
the year 1609 with the question of bestowing County Derry, the Bann,
and Lough Foyle, on the London Corporation. In January, 1610, a
treaty with the City was signed on behalf of his Majesty, and the
Ulster Plantation was begun. The play of forces in the struggle
between MacDonnell and Chichester now took new forms, and the final
bout in their long duel was postponed.