DIVIDING THE SPOIL.
In November, 1610, the Deputy assembled his men-of-law in the Star
Chamber and proceeded to blot out the rights of Sir Randal in a way
the King could find no fault with. A report of the business was
published in 1615 under the title, “The Case of the Royal Fishery of
the Bann,” by Sir John Davies, in his collection of the new legal
decisions. This sets forth the Attorney-General’s contentions, as if
they were not mere byplay with a confederate posing as an impartial
judge. With great show of learning Davies argued that the tidal
Bann was a “royal river,” and its salmon fishery a “royal fishery,”
and that a grant of anything “royal” must be made by express words.
MacDonnell’s Patent, he said, only used words of exception—i.e., it
granted him fisheries “excepting three-fourths of the fishery of the
Bann.” This lack of express granting words failed, he maintained, to
pass the remaining “fourth” by implication. For, quoth he, words of
reservation pass nothing “royal” and make no good grant.
On behalf of Sir Randal nobody seems to have been allowed to say a
word. It was the second time the case was tried behind his back. If
any defects existed in his grant, Davies was the culprit, for the
King in 1606 had ordered them to be cured by a new Patent, which the
Attorney-General should have supervised. Nevertheless “the chief
judges of the Privy Council” cheerfully decided that no part of the
river belonged to MacDonnell.
Every inch of the Bann had, in the previous January, been granted
to the Londoners without regard to MacDonnell’s rights, while
Hamilton and Chichester, in the teeth of Sir Randal’s Patent, had
taken pay for it as the true owners. Yet with pompous cynicism
the Star Chamber, at Chichester’s call, elaborately took steps to
overlay the felony, and deck it with legal splendour in the shape
of a State Trial ostentatiously held in pretended vindication of
the prerogatives of the Crown. Lawless as the Star Chamber was,
even its procedure was befouled by the device adopted to mask the
illicit grants and their transfer to the Deputy. Thus was a love for
English law first implanted in the heart of Ulster! Davies blazons
the decision in Norman-French in his publication of the cases which
established the English Common Law as the basis of Irish justice.
With like emanations of the bewigged knavery of the period the
judgment is still cited as an authority in modern legal text-books.
The proof of Chichester’s participation in the £4,500 levied off
the Crown and the Corporation endures under his own hand in a
parchment which for 300 years mouldered unnoticed. In the compost
of conveyancing with which his Deputyship reeks no document is
more striking than that in which he commemorates this transaction.
Weighted with the winnings collected for him by Hamilton, Sir Arthur,
in April, 1611, thought it prudent to set down and enrol a pretext
for having pocketed them. By formal “surrender” he caused a deed in
the King’s favour to be witnessed before Jones, Archbishop of Dublin,
renouncing all claim to the Bann and Lough Foyle.
Jones, being Lord Chancellor, was head of the Rolls Office, and
entitled as such to accept “surrenders” without the authority of
a King’s Letter. The deed which Chichester executed set forth the
lie that the Castle of Culmore, with 300 acres and fishings (Lough
Foyle), had lately been given to him by two Letters Patent; that the
non-tidal Bann and one-fourth of the tidal Bann had been sold to him
by Hamilton, who had paid him £550 “for and in behalf of the King’s
Majesty, who hath given satisfaction to the said Hamilton for the
whole fishing of the Bann.” Then it granted the fishings, land, and
castle to the King; and wound up with this stately flourish:—“To
that part of these presents remaining with his Majesty, the said Sir
Arthur Chichester hath set his hand and seal; and to that part of
these presents remaining with the said Sir Arthur, his Majesty hath
caused a seal to be set.”
This masterly composition was mere make-believe. Smoothly smacking in
law-prate, it rose to the highest level of legal fiction. His Majesty
never heard of the surrender. Jones set his own seal to it without
James I. being the wiser. In all material respects the “preamble”
festers with falsehood. Chichester, it is true, got a “custodium”
of the Castle of Culmore on the 24th October, 1609, with provision
for the payment of gunners and warders. Three parchments issued in
the following year changed this arrangement, and Culmore Castle,
its fishings, and 300 acres were reserved to the Crown on the 22nd
February, 21st June, and 16th July, 1610. The new bargain was made
“for the furtherance of the intended Plantation by the Londoners,” to
whom they were given. Other benefits were conferred on Chichester in
exchange.
The pretence that he received only £550 out of the £4,500 is in
keeping with the rest of his romantic prose. If Hamilton took the
lion’s share it is strange that the surrender should show that his
interest was confined to three-fourths of the tidal Bann, while the
rest of the stolen property stood in the Deputy’s name. To suppose
that the captain of the brigands netted only an eighth of the profits
does injustice to his voracity.
If the surrender had been a reality, James I. would have learnt the
disagreeable news that, when he presented the Bann and Lough Foyle to
the Londoners fifteen months previously, he had had no title to make
the grant. Yet so formally was the surrender framed that Chichester
joined his wife, “Dame Lettice,” in the deed—in accordance with
the law governing feudal tenures. This told of the nicety of the
expert who (to facilitate confiscation from the natives) abolished
the ancient right of Irishwomen under the Brehon Law “to have sole
property in a certain portion of their husbands’ goods during
coverture”!
Chichester was then in straits. It appeared later that he had
embezzled £10,000 from the Crown out of the rents of the forfeited
Ulster estates, though he suffered from no lack of income. His salary
and allowances were enormous, without reckoning what came in from
confiscated lands. He even feigned poverty to cloak his defalcations,
but after his death his heir was called upon by Charles I. to make
them good.
The part played by his spiritual confederate in this legal pantomime
was worthy of “that rascal Jones.” His Grace wielded the Great Seal
on Chichester’s behalf like a burglar’s “jemmy.” Whether the signet
he affixed to the “surrender” was great or small it boots not to
enquire. Large as was the gain made by the Archbishop out of the
Church Establishment, he supplemented it by grants from the Deputy
which lacked the King’s sanction.
Such depredations would have been impossible without the connivance
of Court favourites who shared in the profits. Public virtue had
either ceased to exist or had not begun to be cultivated. When anyone
complained of the conduct of Chichester’s servitors, most of whom
were scoundrels apt for his purpose, he shielded them in dispatches
as “very honest men.” He fetched from Devonshire his brother and two
nephews to assist him, and was at pains to embellish his practices
with a garniture of profuse loyalty and solid piety.
In the Castle Chamber (or Star Chamber) he dealt with land, descent,
and ownership. Removable judges, flanked by a few men-at-arms,
with the Law Officers occasionally thrown in, formed its judicial
ingredients. Before them were haled those who were to be fleeced or
tortured. Excuse may be attempted for the profligacy of the officials
who then found salary and place in Ireland by reference to the
hardships of their service. They had to put up with much discomfort;
and to confront, at times, the perils of war, famine, and pestilence.
Conquest is a hard school. If they returned to London their journey
might end in the Tower and their fee be the scaffold. The sea between
the islands was infested with pirates lying in wait to assail their
ships, and when they reached the metropolis it was part of their
science accurately to know whom to bribe, whom to squeeze, whom to
favour, and whom to flatter. Such was the age in which Chichester
throve.