THE PURITAN SCRIVENERS.
In February, 1654, the London Corporation petitioned Cromwell to be
restored to their Irish estates. The Protector readily consented.
Indeed, his kingly victim had promised in 1641 to cancel the
confiscations of the Star Chamber. A Commonwealth Patent regranting
everything that had been seized from the City by Charles I. was
enrolled at Westminster and Dublin in March, 1657. The Londoners
retook possession beforehand, and once more became masters of the
Bann.
Hardly were they reinstated when they fell victims to a second
parchment-plot to filch the river away. This time it was contrived
not by the Chichesters but by one of their prayerful pupils, Sir
John Clotworthy. That adventurer (mentioned already as Pym’s tool in
compassing the death of Strafford) was son to an old servitor of the
“great Deputy,” Sir Hugh Clotworthy, who came to Ireland during the
Elizabethan wars, and was appointed “Captain of the Boats” on Lough
Neagh. In 1605 Hugh received from Chichester a grant of the lands of
Massereene, and was afterwards knighted by him. In 1618 Sir Hugh was
awarded a pension of 6s. 8d. a day for the joint lives of himself and
his son, John, then not twelve years old.
Much history turns on this episode. Pensions for joint lives had just
been prohibited by royal order, and Sir Hugh’s salary as “Captain
of the Boats” was only £40 a year, while a pension of 6s. 8d. a day
comes to £121 13s. 4d. a year. Even in Stuart days such a job could
not stand. It took four years to unmask; and then, under pressure,
the pension was gracefully “surrendered.”
After Charles I. came to the throne, Sir Hugh took advantage of
the ignorance of the new Crown officials to ask for compensation
for the “loss” of the pension. Although he deserved the stocks for
having originally outwitted the Exchequer, the King in 1628 gave him
£700, with a promise that his son should be appointed to a “company
of horse.” Sir Hugh died in 1631; and, two years later, Sir John
petitioned for his “company of horse.” The flight of time, and the
changes in the personnel of the Government, had caused the case to
be forgotten, so Sir John invented a new version of the pension, and
kept back the fact that his father had received compensation for its
loss. His petition was not granted; and when Strafford became Lord
Lieutenant Sir John’s prayers ceased, for his political and religious
leanings were not on the royal side.
As a member of the Irish Parliament, Clotworthy now began to mark
himself out as a pugnacious Presbyterian. Hence Pym, and his backers
in the English House of Commons, caused him to be elected for the
pocket-borough of Malden, to abet their designs at Westminster
against Strafford. There he became so zealous that for years he was
an outstanding figure on all Committees manned by the anti-royalists.
He helped to bring Strafford and Archbishop Laud to the scaffold,
as well as his old school-fellow, Lord Maguire, and was of use to
Cromwell in smoothing his path to power. In time, of course, Sir
John met with the usual fate of the zealot, being expelled from the
House of Commons and accused of embezzling war-stores intended for
Ireland. In 1648 he fled to France; and, on venturing to return,
was imprisoned. Cromwell released him, and later on admitted him to
favour. To Clotworthy the saying is attributed that: “Religion should
be preached in Ireland with the sword in one hand and the Bible in
the other.”
When the wars ended, such a man found Oliver easy of approach, and he
revived the demand for his “pension.” He had received his “company
of horse,” and his father had pocketed £700 compensation; but,
being a sturdy beggar, he got his petition referred to two leading
Undertakers and friends, Lord Broghill (son of Lord Cork) and Colonel
Arthur Hill. In spite of their kindliness towards him, they found his
case too full of holes, and reported against it. On their advice the
Cromwellian Privy Council resolved on the 25th April, 1656, that no
claim for arrears of pension from the late King should be admitted.
This was a courteous way of disposing of Clotworthy’s “grievance,”
for they might have added that the pension was unlawful in its
origin, and that both he and his father had been compensated for its
loss. Yet, stale and untenable as Sir John’s pretensions were, his
persistence carried the day. He stood in no awe of the Commonwealth
Council; and, passing over its head, he appealed to his old friend
the Protector, who called for a fresh report. This was enough.
What were the terms of the report, or who made it, is unknown; but
on the 13th May, 1656, Cromwell cited it as a reason for awarding
compensation to Clotworthy. He surmounted the objections which
subordinates had raised by basing his decision, not merely on the
ground of extinguishing the “pension,” but of rewarding past services.
The reward took the form of a grant to Clotworthy of a lease of Lough
Neagh for 99 years. Doubtless he craved the Bann also; but that
was pledged to the City of London. A Signet Letter from Cromwell
(patterned on a King’s Letter) authorised an Irish Patent in Sir
John’s favour, at a rent to be settled by the Commonwealth Council in
Dublin. That body was composed of his own cronies; Cromwell’s son,
Henry, being chief of the Executive there. Irish grants were cheaply
bestowed at that epoch; and, if the Lord Protector had been minded
to give anyone a lease of the whole island, at a peppercorn rent, his
power to do so could not be gainsaid.
Clotworthy at once journeyed to Ireland with the Signet Letter; and
in July, 1656, presented it to Henry Cromwell. Instead of being
content with the valuable gift he had received, he began an intrigue
to enlarge it. In this he was abetted by the son of the great Puritan
and his Council, who showed themselves as corrupt as the worst
parasites of the murdered King. They fixed the rent on Lough Neagh at
£5 per annum for the first seven years, and £6 thereafter. Then they
conspired to extend the lease enormously beyond what Oliver bestowed.
The men who had taken off a King’s head to found a Commonwealth, and
who opened business with a psalm, leaned to all the vices which had
made the monarchy of the Stuarts odious.
The Republican Attorney-General for Ireland was a person named
Basil, who had come over to “plant” in Donegal some years earlier.
Basil’s good fame in his own country was scanty; and when the
House of Commons nominated him as escheator in Ireland the House
of Lords for years withheld their approval to his appointment. His
behaviour justified their forebodings. Taking Sir John Davies for
his model, Basil played towards Clotworthy the part Davies had acted
for Chichester. Untrammelled by supervision, he smuggled into Sir
John’s lease of Lough Neagh a grant of the fishery of the Bann, from
the Lough to the Salmon Leap at Coleraine. It was an exploit as
remarkable in a Republican as any theretofore wrought in the name of
a King.
Basil knew, of course, that the entire river was pledged to the
Londoners, as his predecessor had known it in 1609. But, just as
Davies abetted its capture by Chichester, so the Commonwealth
Attorney-General in 1656 made State policy subservient to sordid
private interest. Indeed the excuse could be invented for Davies,
when he betrayed his trust, that the bargain with the Corporation
was not then finally settled by the King. Basil, in 1656, knew that
it had been perfected by the Lord Protector, and that the Bann
was actually in the Londoners’ possession, when he conveyed it to
Clotworthy. Moreover, having drafted a fraudulent lease, he certified
that it was framed “according to the tenor of his Highness’s Letters
of the 13th May, 1656.”
Every man of the Dublin Cromwellian Executive—viz., Henry Cromwell,
R. Pepys, Miles Corbett, Robert Goodwin, and M. Thomlinson, signed
the lease. These were the saints who represented all that was godly
in a land “darkened by the mists of Popish superstition.” Of the
five, Pepys was Chief Justice, and Corbett Chief Baron. That they
subscribed with consenting minds, and not mechanically, sufficiently
appears. Oliver’s Letter, in granting Lough Neagh, asked them to
decide on the rent which the State was to receive for it. To carry
out the cheat as to the Bann they had to fix two separate rents, one
for the Lough and the other for the river. The Bann they set down at
£35 for the first seven years, and £44 thereafter, and this brought
home to them the fact that the river was seven times a more valuable
fishery than Lough Neagh. Yet their instructions never mentioned the
Bann. To complete the trick the Clerk of the Council, Thomas Herbert,
certified that he had “entered and examined” the documents on which
the lease was issued. Guilt, therefore, sat on the consciences of
all, for not only had they given away Lough Neagh for a song, but
they sacrificed without authority what on their own showing was seven
times more valuable. The Londoners deemed the Lough worth £100 a year
in 1622.
When the lease was enrolled the gang grew alarmed. Clotworthy,
therefore, got Henry Cromwell to apply to his father’s secretary in
London, John Thurloe, to cloak the fraud. In December, 1656, Henry
implored Thurloe to obtain from his father a fresh Signet Letter
sanctioning a grant which would include the Bann. Thurloe ignored
his supplications, and thus the hypocrites were left in the plight of
men who, to rob the City of London, had betrayed their master.
The Commonwealth Charter, which restored the estate of the
Corporation, including the Bann, was issued three months later, and
thus two repugnant grants came into existence. The Dublin junta kept
their secret to themselves. Thurloe also held his peace, and in the
following year Cromwell died. Thurloe, however, carefully preserved
the correspondence, and after the Restoration hid it behind the
ceiling of a garret in his chambers at Lincoln’s Inn, with other
Cromwellian literature. There it was found fifty years later—embalmed
in the odour of sanctity.
Cromwell’s death soon led to a flood of intrigue among his
Anglo-Irish retainers. Each was intent on asserting one great
principle—how best to hold on to the spoil with which confiscation
had endowed them. If Republicanism would secure this, they were
Republicans. If possession must be tempered by monarchy—then “Long
live Charles II.”