STRAFFORD, PATENT-BREAKER.
When Lord Falkland left Ireland, the question of the validity of the
Wakeman grants was re-opened under the rule of the Lords Justices.
In 1630 a “case” was submitted to Sir Robert Oglethorpe, one of the
Barons of the Exchequer, who in 1623 had denounced their origin.
Oglethorpe retired in 1624 from his position in Dublin as judge
(probably owing to his uncomfortable uprightness in Patent matters);
and resumed his practice at the Bar in London. The “case” he received
was incomplete, and its framer is unknown, but though omitting much,
it is startling enough. It sets out that five Patents had been
issued on foot of Wakeman’s Letter for £100, “in value surmounting
£4,000 per annum,” including one for the fishery of the Bann. It
foreshadowed that further grants were in contemplation, and asked the
ex-Judge for his opinion as a lawyer if the King could have all of
them declared void by legal process?
Oglethorpe’s reply shows that he and the other Exchequer Barons
ruled against the Wakeman Patents in 1623, and that this decision
“was certified to the Lord Deputy (Falkland) upon referment from
his late Majesty.” He again branded them with “fraud” and “deceit,”
and advised that this taint would “extend to many Letters Patent in
Ireland”; for, quoth he, “this is a great and general case.”
When this “opinion” was delivered Lord Cork, prince of
Patent-mongers, wielded the Sword of State with Chancellor Loftus,
and of course no action was taken. In 1632 Charles I. made up his
mind to replace both Lords Justices; and in the following year
there arrived in Dublin a Viceroy less dishonest than Ireland had
known for some time. This was Wentworth, Lord Strafford. Whatever
his faults, the new Lord Lieutenant hunted down those who had preyed
on the country since Elizabeth’s reign, and in the eight years he
served as Viceroy he earned the hatred of every confiscator. Those
whose avarice he checked or penalised, including Patentees like the
Earl of Cork and Sir John Clotworthy, were Strafford’s chief enemies.
When he perished on the scaffold, their self-interested testimony
spoke his doom. Many of his processes were, of course, expedients to
provide revenue for the King in order to dispense with the summoning
of Parliament. Others were well-grounded investigations to recover
property of which the Crown had been cozened.
Strafford had to deal, not only with lawless Patents, but with
Patents which, if lawful, conveyed, in acreage and value, lands
largely in excess of what the King had authorised. He was not three
months in Dublin before he obtained an insight into the ways of
his predecessors. On the 23rd October, 1633, he reported that, “in
all the Plantations, the Crown had sustained shameful injury, by
passing in truth ten times the quantities of lands expressed in their
Patents, and reserving throughout base tenures in soccage.” As to
those who “held the Sword” before him, he remarked:—
“The late Lord Chichester had lands to the value of £10,000 in one
gift; and Lord Falkland £10,000 in money at once.” His Chaplain
(afterwards Bishop) Bramhall, wrote to Archbishop Laud five years
later:—“I think I should soon be able to show that the Crown has
been defrauded of many appropriations, for here it hath been usual
... upon a Letter for £20 to pass £30 or £40 ... to pass that for
nothing, in time of peace, which was found to have been worth
little or nothing in time of war; and to take up appropriations as
gentlemen do waifs in England.” These comments reveal only a surface
acquaintance with the misdeeds practised against the Crown by its
trusted servants.
In the year after Strafford’s arrival he provided a remedy for
some of the evils which corroded justice by causing Acts to be
passed extending the “Statute of Uses” to Ireland, and clothing
the Commissioners for Defective Titles with far-reaching powers.
The first Act made secret conveyances impossible; and the second
authorised the Commissioners to issue Patents which should stand good
against the Crown, even if wrongfully obtained or corruptly enlarged,
provided fines were paid. The Government was in debt; and, in order
to raise cash, many grants, new and old, were assailed. Fines were
then exacted as the price of indefeasible Patents.
In 1635, when the Star Chamber at Westminster declared the Charter
of the London Corporation forfeit, Strafford’s eye detected an
unforeseen consequence. The Londoners, being compelled to surrender
the Bann and the rest of their Irish estates, were left burdened with
a rent of £100 a year to the Chichesters for Lough Neagh under the
lease of 1622. Deprived of the river, Lough Neagh became useless to
them; and they probably petitioned the Crown for relief. Strafford
then caused the Chichester Patents to be scrutinised, and the
misdeeds of his predecessor came to light. Yet he dealt not ungently
with the dead peer’s heirs. Instead of re-seizing the whole of their
ill-gotten possessions, he confined himself to demanding a surrender
of Lough Neagh. At the outset the Chichesters resisted, but the
stream of authority against the validity of their grants soon swelled
to a torrent. Strafford knew that constant protests under two reigns
had been lodged against them.
Their base origin in 1603-4, Sir James Balfour’s inquiry of 1618,
Allen’s repugnant findings at Derry and Carrickfergus in 1621, the
ruling of the Exchequer Barons in 1623, the “discovery” of Sir
William Power in 1628, and the order of Charles I. on Colonel
Forbes’s petition in the same year, covered them with discredit. In
1630 the “opinion” of ex-Baron Oglethorpe openly alleged “fraud”; and
Strafford, backed by these accumulated condemnations, took action.
He first caused an inquisition to be held at Wicklow in 1636,
to impeach one of the Wakeman grants. The result was that lands
confiscated from the O’Tooles, which had been patented to Hamilton,
were declared re-vested in the Crown. Grants springing from Thomas
Irelande’s Letter (on which the title to Lough Neagh rested) evoked
no greater respect. After the death of Lord Chichester, his heir did
not even rely on the Patents of the fishery. For in 1625 Edward Lord
Chichester (the second in succession) besought Charles I. to appoint
his son Arthur (afterwords Lord Donegall) “Admiral and Commander of
Lough Neagh” at a salary of £30 6s. 8d., and to give him a “licence”
to fish in the Lough and the Bann. What owner would petition the
Crown for a “licence” to enjoy his own fishery?
Such a request amounted to an admission that the Patents of Lough
Neagh to Hamilton in 1606, to Bassett in 1608, and to Lord Chichester
in 1621 were waste paper, and that the hope of the family lay in
reviving the “life-estate” annexed to the quasi-military “command”
created by the Patent of 1604. It was at least possible for them to
argue that some germ of legality attached to that Patent, yet Charles
I. never granted the request.
Strafford was unaware of any claim by the family to the Bann; but was
resolute to enforce the surrender of Lough Neagh. The fact that since
1622 the Londoners had paid £100 per annum for it to the Chichesters,
and would have continued to do so if the Star Chamber had not
deprived them of the Bann, had to be taken into account. He made up
for the loss by offering an attractive compensation. He proposed
to allow Edward Lord Chichester to take out a fresh Patent for all
his uncle’s acquisitions minus Lough Neagh—and this under the new
Act would be valid for all time against the Crown. The family would
thereby be forever quieted in the enjoyment of rich territories which
had been stolen from the natives thirty years earlier. Negotiations
on this basis were conducted through the Commissioners for Defective
Titles, and lasted some years.
The records of that body were housed near Dublin Castle, and perished
by fire in 1711; but from the “memorials” enrolled in Chancery the
main story can be traced.
A King’s Letter of the 24th September, 1638, was obtained by the
Commissioners to authorise them to accept the surrender. No mention
was made of the Bann, for no one regarded it as Chichester’s. The
King’s Letter cast doubt even on his right to Lough Neagh, and
sarcastically narrates that his Majesty had been informed that the
fishing and soil thereof were “granted away” by Letters Patent to the
late Lord Chichester, but were found “so commodious for upholding the
fishing of the Bann that the London Corporation were necessitated to
farm the same at £100 a year—which fishing of the Bann is now come
to our hands.” Short work was thus made of the 1621 Patent and of
Allen’s “finding” at Carrickfergus. The Letter further recited that
Viscount Chichester had compounded for a surrender of Lough Neagh in
consideration of £40 a year; and that this sum could be deducted from
the rent payable to the Crown under a new Patent. The Chichesters
were to have liberty to take salmon for domestic use, and to retain
the eel-weirs at Toome, subject to royal regulations.
On the 7th December, 1638, the Commissioners made an “Order of
Composition” embodying these terms, but the family evidently
contended that the allowance of £40 a year was not a fair set-off
for the £100 paid by the Londoners. Brisk haggling followed, and at
length Strafford agreed to an amended “Order of Composition,” dated
the 19th September, 1639. This raised the £40 annual allowance to
£60, but all privileges of fishing were withdrawn. The Chichesters
agreed. This amendment brought their rent under the proposed new
Patent to within £2 16s. 6d. of that previously paid, and the fine
was fixed at £467 17s. 6d.
An indefeasible Patent was now to be granted them, and with this
bargain they and Strafford were satisfied. The arrangement dealt a
deathstroke at the oft-challenged title of the Devonians to the great
Ulster fishery. It submerged the Patent of 1604 with those of 1606,
1608, and 1621 in a common condemnation.
When the terms of the surrender came to be drawn up in 1639, although
the King’s Letter mentioned Lough Neagh only, Strafford required that
the Bann should be also renounced, and this was agreed to. Before he
finally left Ireland the new Patent was not ready. It was sealed in
September, 1640, by his Deputy, Wandesforde, after his departure.
Everything was accepted by the Chichesters without a murmur. Neither
on Strafford’s impeachment at Westminster in 1641 nor when the
Planters in the Dublin Parliament impeached his chaplain, Bramhall,
did they join in hounding him down.
Edward Lord Chichester then sat in the Irish House of Lords, and
his son, Sir Arthur, in the Irish Lower House; but they never took
the side of Strafford’s enemies, although both assemblies were
worked upon by Sir John Clotworthy and the Earl of Cork to purvey
testimony against him. This fact bears vitally on future events in
view of allegations made in 1661 by Sir Arthur (then Lord Donegall)
to befool Charles II. into making him a regrant of Lough Neagh and
the Bann. Sir John Clotworthy, who was Pym’s instrument in promoting
Strafford’s impeachment, sat with Sir Arthur in Dublin as member for
Antrim; and, if the Chichesters had a grievance against the Lord
Lieutenant, Clotworthy would not fail to refer to it in his evidence,
even if the family kept silence. The report of Strafford’s trial
proves that, while Clotworthy, Lord Cork, and others loudly testified
against him, no complaint of injustice on Chichester’s behalf was
made. This attitude amounted to a confession that the fisheries which
had been wrongly come by were rightly taken away.
Still, amidst the uncertainties of the times, the family were ready
to seize upon any chance that presented itself to win them back.
Departing from an otherwise universal practice, they left the new
Patent unenrolled, although the Crown at once enrolled the surrender.
Their omission was the more striking because the Patent was the
only unimpeachable evidence of title to their estates which they
possessed. Neglect could not be imputed as the reason for it. Their
calculation evidently was that, by keeping the terms of the Patent
secret, they might by some turn of fortune be enabled to recapture
the fisheries without the world knowing that they had been forced to
yield them up.
Nor was this a far-fetched expectation in those days, as, even if
the surrender became public, everyone knew that a surrender was not
an unusual prelude to a regrant. No one, therefore, could affirm,
as long as the Patent could not be inspected, that they had no
claim to Lough Neagh or the Bann. Non-enrolment hid its scope from
inquirers, and was part of a design to attempt the recovery of the
coveted waters whenever occasion offered. Strafford’s execution, and
the untimely death of Wandesforde, who perished in grief at the Lord
Lieutenant’s fate, helped their plans. Then sudden as a lightning
flash to sear the meshes of their webs broke the Ulster Rebellion of
October, 1641.
Sir Arthur Chichester was at that time Governor of Carrickfergus, and
his garrison there furnished the soldiers who massacred his Catholic
tenants (with their women and children) by night in Island Magee.
Whether this bloody business preceded the insurrection of 1641 and
provoked it, or was a reprisal following thereon, is a moot point
between the partisans of the Planters and those of the expelled
natives. The first attempt at its “history” by Chichester’s muse laid
the blame on Scottish regiments. It was soon proved that no Scotch
soldiers landed in Ulster till after January, 1642, the date assigned
for the crime by the Settlers. “January” was too hurriedly chosen by
the apologists for slaughter, and this, perhaps, because the Governor
of Carrickfergus would have been able to show that he was then
somewhere else.
When the time of the arrival of the Scotch regiments was established
it was too late to change “January” to another month. Sir Arthur
himself remained mute. He offered no defence or explanation for the
crime, nor announced that any of the garrison were punished, or even
admonished. As to whether he was a man capable of perverting dates or
inspiring falsehoods his conduct in other fields of enterprise may
assist to a conclusion. One test of his character in this respect is
supplied by the documents and statements he put forward to regain the
fisheries when kingly power was re-established. If he made a false
case concerning the title to real estate he may well have devised
excuses to escape the blame of blood-guiltiness for the killing of
his serfs.
Whenever massacre benefited the Planters enough murderers always
survived to inspire pamphleteers and historians with their version
of the “facts.” Native imitators generally ended their activities on
the gallows, and their epitaphs are framed by their executioners.
In tracing such incidents of conquest—from Gaul to Mexico—it is
inevitable that the earliest and best opportunities for penmanship
and “impression” should be always enjoyed by the triumphant faction.
That the rebellion of 1641 entailed sufferings on many Planters as
severe as those endured by the natives whom they had driven out a
generation earlier is beyond question. As the movement spread, the
clansmen of the O’Neills, O’Dohertys, O’Cahans, O’Donnells, and
Maguires retook their patrimonies, and again ate fish on Fridays
without paying toll to strangers. The South then took fire, and
England, having her own rebellion on hand, lost control over the
greater part of Ireland for a dozen years.
Not until 1653, when Cromwell, in command of the English rebels,
bloodily ended the struggle, was the country subdued. Then the
clearances of the Ulster Plantation were extended to Leinster and
Munster. “Commonwealth” ordinances proclaimed a new “settlement.”
James I. aimed at planting a province. The Ironsides applotted a
kingdom. One of the Statutes of the Long Parliament assured the
Irish, in an amiable preamble, that “it was not intended to extirpate
their nation as a whole.” Thanks to this moderation, only three
of the four provinces were parcelled out among the soldiers, and
the bracing crags and bogs of Connacht were left largely to the
Catholics. Still Oliver’s Plantation, though thorough, did not meet
with complete success. It withered with the despotism that begot it.
During his sway a strange chapter was added to the story of the
Northern waters.