Philip Wilson

“ The colonists would not part with their autonomy, nor the mother-country with her commerce; and the Cromwellians were as little disposed to surrender their exclusive privileges as were the Catholics to acquiesce in the loss of their estates. Another bloody rebellion, another savage conquest, a long period of religious persecution, of commercial oppression, of corrupt and demoralising government, had yet to elapse before even a small part of the reforms which had suggested themselves to the imagination of the philosopher could be effected by the practical statesman. ”

“ To carry a bill for the repeal of the Act of Settlement in a Parliament in which the Irish people were fairly represented would be an easy task. Nor would it be impossible to obtain the assent of James to such a bill. There was, however, another party to be reckoned with. It could scarcely be expected by the most sanguine Irishman that the English people would tamely submit to see property which they had bestowed upon men of their own blood and creed, restored to a despised and detested race. ”

“ The critical condition into which Ireland was rapidly drifting, and the violence of the opposition in England, rendered imperative the choice of a nobleman who should be neither suspected of Popish tendencies nor likely to become a tool in the hands of Lord Shaftesbury and his party. Such a nobleman it was by no means easy to find. A rumour that the selection had been entrusted to Richard Talbot, and that the office had been offered by him to the highest bidder, though widely current at the time, is too ludicrously extravagant to deserve attention. ”

“ But a moment's reflection will show that they were an essential part of the policy of the government. If Catholic disabilities were to be removed, if forfeited estates were to be restored, if the whole system of exclusion and monopoly was to be broken up, considerations of prudence and of humanity alike rendered it impossible to leave a great military power in the hands of men who would unquestionably have resisted those changes by force. ”

“ Clarendon to Rochester, March 14th, 1686. "Never a Catholic or other English will ever think or make a step, nor suffer the King to make a step for your Restoration; nor is there any Englishman, Catholic or other, of what quality or degree soever, that will stick to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England, and would as willingly see all Ireland over inhabited by English, of whatsoever religion, as by the Irish." ”

“ The rest were men of questionable character and broken fortunes, on whose subservience Tyrconnell could depend.
Nor was it in the civil government only that sweeping changes were made. It was not to be expected that the Irish people would, in the day of their emancipation, look with equanimity upon that wealthy and privileged establishment which ministered to the wants of a small minority of the nation and from which the majority had recently suffered atrocious persecution. ”

“ Tyrconnell, contemplating the question from a precisely opposite standpoint, was no less firmly convinced that it was only by a separation of the two kingdoms that the rights of the Irish gentry could be secured. With the full assent of his master he had, in August, 1687, entered into a negociation with the court of France, with the intention of making Ireland, should James die without male issue, an independent kingdom under the protection of that power. ”

“ With this end in view he framed an elaborate and comprehensive scheme, designed at once to quiet the apprehensions of the Protestant colonists and to redress the grievances of the native Irish. The Englishry, he maintained, "had at least a gambler's right to their estates"; the existing land settlement must be preserved inviolate, and, in the interest of the connection, English immigration into Ireland must be steadily encouraged. ”

“ But, when we consider the absurdity and the injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment and a Protestant educational system among a nation almost exclusively Catholic, they can scarcely be very strongly condemned. And it says much for the moderation of the Irish people that they made no attempt, now that the power was in their own hands, to retaliate the injustice which they had suffered. ”

“ The civil power was thus entirely in the hands of the Protestant caste. Their monopoly of the military power was not less absolute. A standing army of some 6,000 men, to which Roman Catholics were very seldom if ever admitted, and a Protestant militia of about four times that number, served to protect the Government and the Cromwellian landowners against the hostility of the aboriginal population. [62]
The great majority of the Irish people were thus excluded from all direct share in the government of their country. ”

“ Among the persons who had lately left Ireland, however, there were many of whose guilt no reasonable doubt could be entertained, but whom, according to the ordinary rules of evidence, it would be impossible to convict of any overt act of treason. ”

“ The Lord Chief Justice of Ireland urged the claims of the adventurers with an ardour scarcely suited to the dignity of his office [6] : Sir Nicholas Plunket, an Irish lawyer of eminence, pleaded the cause of his countrymen: after six months of wrangling, bribery and vacillation the Government dictated a compromise in the interest of the Cromwellians.
The declaration which the King published in November, 1660, [7] confirmed to the adventurers all lands granted to them under the Act of 1642 [8] in return for money advanced to carry on the Irish war. ”

“ It must be remembered that, when the Act was passed, five-sixths of the Protestants in Ireland were in arms against the government, and that most of those who continued outwardly submissive were suspected, not always unjustly, of sympathising with the rebellion of their co-religionists. Under these circumstances, although Tyrconnell and his colleagues vigorously exerted themselves to secure the observance of the toleration Act, they were not always able to restrain the violence of mobs actuated much less by hatred of heresy than by love of plunder. ”

“ If we may accept the estimate of the foremost statistician of that age, the total population of Ireland in the reign of Charles the Second amounted to about 1,100,000. [37] At least 800,000 of these, descended, some of them from the aboriginal Celts, some of them from the earliest English colonists, professed the Roman Catholic religion and were contemptuously classed together as "Irishry." The remaining 300,000 were Protestant colonists, for the most part recently settled in the country. ”

“ On one point, and on one point alone, the court continued to offer an obstinate resistance to the popular demands. At the beginning of his reign James had announced his intention of preserving the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. Clarendon, on taking office, had given the colonists a similar assurance; and even Tyrconnell, while denouncing those Acts in no measured terms, had admitted that they could not safely be repealed. ”

“ With a few exceptions the adventurers and soldiers were suffered to retain their estates. The engagements of 1648 were definitely and finally repudiated; but Irishmen who had had no hand in the rebellion were allowed to hope for restitution. As, however, "the rapines and massacres committed by the Irish and Popish rebels were not only well known to the present Parliament, but were notorious to the world" the first principle of criminal justice was reversed, and the accused were called upon to prove their innocence. ”

“ To frame an impartial narrative of this nobleman's administration is by no means an easy task. The most important events of Lord Clarendon's viceroyalty are known to us through the letters of the viceroy; and we are thus enabled to check the misrepresentations of partisan writers by the confidential correspondence of a very competent, though somewhat biassed, witness. We possess no documents of equal authority relating to the administration of his successor ”

“ For no man was to be restored as an innocent Papist who, at or before the cessation on September 15, 1643, was of the rebels' party, or enjoyed his estate, real or personal, in the rebels' quarters, or who had entered into the Roman Catholic confederacy before the peace of 1646. ”

“ The settlers had never formed more than a small minority of the population, and it was only by a rigid monopoly of civil and military offices that they had been enabled to preserve their property and their political consequence in the midst of a hostile and subjugated nation. With few exceptions those offices had now been transferred to their enemies, while during the past three years their numbers had been greatly diminished. Under the viceroyalty of Clarendon a steady emigration from Ireland had commenced, and had continued on a still larger scale after the appointment of Tyrconnell. ”

“ He was now "sensible of that mistake." "It appeared that one interest or the other must suffer"; and Charles, not altogether unnaturally "thought it most for the good of the kingdom, advantage of the Crown, and security of his Government," to conciliate the stronger and wealthier party at the expense of the poorer and weaker. "A contrary conduct," the same writer very justly observes, "would have been matter of discontent to the Parliament of England." [15]
The constitution of the Irish Parliament and of the Irish Executive materially facilitated this design. ”

“ Tyrconnell, however, continued to urge the claims of his countrymen, and to support those claims by arguments which, to the Catholics at least, must have appeared unanswerable. The King, he insisted, could not live for ever. The next heir was a Protestant; and, should a demise of the crown take place before the position of the English Catholics was assured, a virtually independent Ireland might be their only refuge from a bloody retribution. The justice of these representations was self-evident; and Clarendon was ordered to make a complete change in the government of Ireland. ”

“ In another letter, dated two days later, the same prelate again refers in terms of the warmest gratitude to the tolerant policy of the Government. "We experience in this kingdom, Holy Father, the benign influence of the King of England in favour of the Catholics, so that all enjoy great liberty and ease. Ecclesiastics may be publicly known, and are permitted to exercise their functions without any impediment. Our Viceroy is a man of great moderation and equity." [46] In the same year Archbishop Talbot celebrated Mass with great pomp in Dublin with the full approbation of the Government. ”

“ At all times fiercely hostile to the Catholic faith, the settlers were inevitably disposed to put the least favourable construction upon the actions of a Catholic king; and, while the Puritans denounced the Lord Primate as little better than a Papist, Episcopalians inveighed against Granard as a schismatic insidiously advanced for the purpose of dividing the Protestant interest. ”

“ Wiser far than most of those who in more recent times have advocated a similar measure, he instinctively perceived that a union of the legislatures would be useless or mischievous unless it were accompanied by a union of the nations. ”

“ Charles Lesley, who, during the reign of James the Second, filled the office of chancellor of the diocese of Connor, had in learning and abilities no equal among the Irish Protestant clergy, and is acknowledged even by hostile writers to have been by far the most subtle disputant in the nonjuring body. ”

“ It was, he urged, a monstrous absurdity "that men born in England, who have lands granted to them by the King for service done in Ireland to the Crown of England, when they have occasion to reside or negociate in England, should, by their countrymen, kindred and friends there, be debarred to bring with them out of Ireland food whereupon to live ”

“ According to a letter subscribed by eighteen Catholic clergymen and published by the same writer, "immediately [upon the Restoration] the persecution in this kingdom ceased by his Majesty's express commands." [44] Four years later, Lord Berkeley of Stratton being then Lord Lieutenant, Archbishop Plunket wrote to Rome in a similar spirit. "The Viceroy of this kingdom," says the Archbishop, "shows himself favourable to the Catholics, not only in consequence of his natural mildness of disposition, but still more on account of his being acquainted with the benign intentions of his Majesty." ”

“ Of these conditions he insisted, "not one is like to be observed in the intended reprisals." The reprisable persons would not obtain "equal value, worth, and purchase." "The parties themselves are not made the judges, but the commissioners." Lastly, "they are to be turned out immediately, and wait for a reprisal afterwards." Of these arguments the first alone is important, and it is flatly contradicted by the very words of the Act.
Within a few days after the passing of the Act of Repeal a bill was introduced into the House of Commons attainting more than two thousand persons [99] ”

“ By this Act every clergyman celebrating any religious service other than that legally established, every layman assisting at such service or contributing to the support of such clergyman, and every person, lay or clerical, reflecting on the liturgy of the Established Church, was rendered liable to penalties which amounted, on a third conviction, to confiscation of property and perpetual imprisonment. ”

“ Lesley maintains with much plausiblity that the Protestant episcopal clergy in Ireland were far better treated by the Catholic supporters of James than were their brethren in Scotland by the Presbyterian supporters of William. ”

“ No law as yet excluded Catholics from the House of Commons, but to the single parliament elected during this reign only one Catholic was returned. [54] The corporations, whose political importance it would scarcely be possible to exaggerate, had, before the Great Rebellion, been largely Catholic [55] ; Cromwell had made them exclusively Protestant; and a special provision had been introduced into the Act of Settlement to perpetuate this arrangement. ”

“ An Act "for Forfeiting and Vesting in his Majesty the goods of Absentees" has been sometimes represented as a flagrant example of legislative robbery; but its real object was to put an end to the indiscriminate seizure of absentee property by unauthorised persons which had been taking place in many parts of the country since the beginning of March. [80] A bill for the repeal of Poynings' Act and another for establishing Inns of Court at Dublin, are said to have been rejected owing to the personal interference of James. ”

“ Protestant officers, who had served against the Irish in the early years of the war, but who, having continued faithful to the royal cause, had received no lands from the Protector, were also to be provided for; and the municipal corporations, about a hundred in number, were set aside for their benefit. These arrangements disposed of four-fifths of the island; and the claims of the Irish had yet to be considered. "Innocent Papists," the declaration continued, were to be restored to their estates, compensation being promised to the actual occupants ”

“ In accordance with the policy agreed upon before the death of the late King the Duke of Ormond was removed from the viceroyalty; but, as Rochester, who had formerly been intended for his successor, was now selected by his brother-in-law to fill the great office of Lord High Treasurer of England, the government was temporarily entrusted to Michael Boyle, Archbishop of Armagh, and to the Earl of Granard, as Lords Justices. It was, perhaps, hoped that the appointment of the Primate would prove satisfactory to the Established Church; that that of Granard would conciliate the Presbyterians ”

“ The government accused these bodies of having violated the terms of their charters; and pretexts were readily found for pronouncing the great majority of those charters null and void. Fresh charters were then issued, and, in the new corporations, it was the general rule that two thirds of the freemen should be Catholics. [44] No exception was made even in the case of towns like Londonderry, where the population was almost exclusively Protestant. [45] Among the sheriffs, deputy-lieutenants, and justices of the peace the Catholic majority was equally great. ”

“ To that party the titular Archbishop of Dublin, a prelate whose factious and turbulent conduct had given offence to more moderate members of his own communion, [100] was of all men the most obnoxious. The earliest informations had spoken only of a conspiracy in England; but, had such a conspiracy existed, it could scarcely have failed to find supporters in a country where the Catholics were a numerous, and, in spite of their recent misfortunes, a still powerful body. Dr. Talbot was accordingly singled out by the informers ”

“ Three Protestant judges were at once dismissed, and two. Irishmen, Thomas Nugent and Denis Daly, and an English Catholic called Ingleby were selected to succeed them. Of the new judges the first mentioned seems to have been indebted for his promotion rather to the influence of his family than to his legal knowledge. [9] Daly is admitted on all sides to have been an able lawyer and an upright judge. [10] Ingleby declined the proferred office, which was eventually conferred on Stephen Rice, an Irish Catholic of great ability, noted for his implacable hostility to the Act of Settlement. ”

“ If this clause was not to be a dead letter an extensive confiscation was imperative; and, for such a confiscation the "horrid and unnatural rebellion" which "was lately raised and still is continued in this kingdom and in other your Majesty's dominions" afforded a not unreasonable excuse. In conformity with a long series of English precedents the estates of all persons engaged in the rebellion were pronounced forfeited, and from the lands thus placed at the disposal of the crown commissioners appointed under the Great Seal were instructed to assign reprisals to purchasers. ”

“ This policy Tyrconnell now set himself to reverse. Between two and three hundred officers, between five and six thousand privates, were dismissed, and their places filled with Irish Roman Catholics. [19] It was easier to cashier the Cromwellians than to find competent successors. The Irish as a nation have never been wanting in military talent; but exclusion from the army at home had driven most Irishmen of martial tastes to seek service abroad. ”

“ Fresh troops were, indeed, raised, suspected persons were disarmed, and sometimes roughly treated, and proclamations were issued, promising an amnesty to all who would lay down their arms, and threatening with punishment any who should continue in rebellion. [65] But no considerable military operations were attempted; and the insurgents, emboldened by impunity, became daily more numerous and more daring.
But the turn of events in England soon taught Tyrconnell that the hour for moderation had gone by. In December James fled the country ”