Richard Bagwell

“ Strafford’s mind was wearing out his body, and he could hardly bear to speak of him, ‘if you did not love this man well. It is true, if the favour and grace of a Prince shall recover him he shall not perish, for those are heaped upon him every day; but if the good man’s heart be more willing to spend himself in great business than to contemplate his own safety, or to live upon such favours, who can help him? I know you love him, and you shall know when we hear better of him.’ When he seemed to be recovering Charles paid him a visit that nearly proved fatal. ”

“ If the King of Spain sent 10,000 men into Ireland ‘armed with the Pope’s indulgences and excommunications,’ all the modern English and Scotch would be [Pg 82] instantly massacred in their houses, ‘which is not difficult to execute in a moment by reason they are dispersed, and the natives’ swords will be in their throats in every part of the realm like the Sicilian Vespers, before the cloud of mischief shall disappear.’ The reconquest would be a Herculean labour. ”

“ On October 14, 1608, Ley and Davies left Ireland, carrying with them Chichester’s instructions as to the plantation of Ulster. He briefly described the position of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Donegal, Cavan, Armagh, and Coleraine or Londonderry, desiring them to note ‘that many of the natives in each county claim freehold in the lands they possess; and albeit their demands are not justifiable by law, yet it is hard and almost impossible to displant them.’ Even those who were tainted by rebellion should be considered, and only ‘the rest of the land’ passed to undertakers or to well-chosen servitors. ”

“ Spanish aid could not be hoped for unless there was a breach between England and Spain; and of that there was no likelihood. Tyrone must have understood this perfectly well, but Chichester had long realised that he would always be discontented at having lost the title of O’Neill and the tyrannical jurisdiction exercised by his predecessors. Perhaps he really believed there was an intention to arrest him in London. Some sympathy may be felt for a man who had lived into an age that knew him not, but the position which he sought to occupy could not possibly be maintained. ”

“ That which involved the death sentence was the thirteenth: ‘No man shall offer any violence, or contemptuously disobey his commander, or do any act or speak any words which are likely to breed any mutiny in the army or garrison, or impeach the obeying of the general or principal officer’s directions, upon pain of death.’ This article is perhaps not too severe for its purpose, especially in time of war, but does any lawyer, does any soldier, does any man of common intelligence suppose that it was intended to be applied or could properly be applied to conversation at a dinner-party? ”

“ His regiment was the admiration of the whole country, and commanding officers begged eagerly ‘for the loan of some of our soldiers to come and learn their soldiers to exercise.’ No glory was to be gained in that war, but the excellence of Willoughby’s men was so evident, that Charles determined to raise a new Irish army of 8000 men, expressly ‘to reduce those in Scotland to their due obedience.’ Wentworth had conceived this idea long before, but he intended all the men to be Protestants, and of British extraction as far as possible. ”

“ The number of victims cannot be ascertained.
‘There are,’ says Hume, ‘three events in our history which may be regarded as touchstones of party men: an English Whig who asserts the reality of the popish plot, an Irish Catholic who denies the massacre in 1641, and a Scotch Jacobite who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices.’ The fact of a massacre cannot be denied, but its extent is quite another matter. ”

“ They were considered just as good as the lawful children, and commonly shared the inheritance as well as the name. ‘I may truly affirm,’ he said, ‘that there are more able men of the surname of the Bourkes than of any name whatsoever in Europe.’ And so it was with all the great families, whether Anglo-Norman or Celtic. To scatter and break up these clannish combinations appeared to Davies an excellent policy. The judges slept at Dungarvan and Youghal, where they saw the chief people, dined with Lord Barrymore on their way to Cork, and found the gaols there pretty full. ”

“ Henry IV. is reported to have said that his brother of England was the wisest fool in Christendom. Macaulay thought him like the Emperor Claudius. Gardiner tried to be fair, but admitted that the popular estimate of James is based upon the ‘Fortunes of Nigel’; and therefore it is not likely to be soon altered. He has been more praised for his Irish policy than for anything else, and perhaps with truth; for there is such a thing as political long sight, clear for objects at a distance and clouded for those which are near at hand. ”

“ By what law, runs the sixteenth query, ‘are jurors, that give verdict according to their conscience and are the sole judges of the fact, censured in the Castle-chamber in great fines, and sometimes pilloried, with loss of ears, and bored through the tongue, and marked sometimes in the forehead with an hot iron; and other like infamous punishments?’ The judges did not deny the facts, but maintained that perjured jurors were properly censurable in the Castle-chamber, and they made a not very successful attempt to derive this jurisdiction from writs of attaint at common law. ”

“ The Irish will never condemn a principal traitor: therefore we have need of an English colony, that we may have honest trials. They dare not condemn an Irish lord of a country for fear of revenge, because we have not power enough in the country to defend honest jurors. ”

“ Radcliffe, who was in Dublin, kept this letter to himself, for he saw that the plan was impossible, and he knew that the House of Commons there was already getting out of hand. Strafford believed that something equivalent to a state of siege existed, and that he was therefore justified in the most extreme measures. History may make excuses, but to the Long Parliament he was the man who had encouraged them to oppose the King, who had then gone over to the side of prerogative, receiving titles and power as the price of desertion, and who was ready to dragoon better men into submission. ”

“ The disbanded soldiers in Ireland constituted a grave danger, as every one could see when the rebellion had actually broken out, and which some saw at the time of disbanding. But the other danger from great bodies of Irishmen in the pay of foreign powers seemed to many greater at the time, and was certainly not small. Antrim had failed, but Lord Barrymore had succeeded in raising men for service in England, most of whom must have drifted back to Ireland after the treaty of Ripon. ”

“ James begins by repudiating the idea prevailing in Ireland since the Queen’s death that he intended ‘to give liberty of conscience or toleration of religion to his subjects in that kingdom contrary to the express laws and statutes therein enacted.’ He insisted everywhere on uniformity, resenting all rumours to the contrary as an imputation on himself, and even, as was reported, declaring that he would fight to his knees in blood rather than grant toleration. ”

“ Next day Alexander Leslie was present and said Ireland would certainly be invaded if the King came to blows with his Scottish subjects—a threat which Leslie himself carried out, but not while Strafford lived. Wentworth proposed, and Charles agreed with alacrity, if, indeed, he did not himself make the first suggestion, that the Covenant should be met by a new and very stringent oath binding the Scots of Ulster not only to obey the King, but not even to protest against any command of his, and to renounce all covenants or associations not ordered by him. ”

“ He was not long enough at the head of affairs to make much figure in Irish history, but he was an upright judge, made many reforms in the Rolls Court, and seems to have been generally liked. He advised his son to lead a country life, excusing himself for having done the contrary. ‘The truth is, my affection to the person of my Lord Deputy, purposing to attend upon his lordship as near as I could in all fortunes, carried me along with him wherever he went, and no premeditated thoughts of ambition.’ Bramhall attended him on his deathbed and preached his funeral sermon in Christchurch. ”

“ Secondly, as your Majesty’s deputy I must tell him, if the state of this kingdom were the same as in Queen Elizabeth’s time, I should more apprehend the travel and disturbance which two hundred of these men might give us here, being natives, and experienced in their own faculty as soldiers, being sent to mutiny and discipline their own countrymen against the Crown, than of as many more Spaniards, as they sent in those days to Kinsale for relief of the rebels.’ This opinion he retained to the end. ”

“ John advised some garrisons and corporations, but relied rather upon making the Irish tenants of the Crown at high rents. The Irish, he said, were more used to esteem a landlord whom they knew than a king of whom they seldom heard. Make the King their landlord and they will turn to him, neglecting ‘their wonted tyrants whom naturally they love not.’ Salisbury had already turned his attention to the subject, and the Privy Council in England lost no time in expressing their general approval of Chichester’s plan. ”

“ There is no evidence of any general conspiracy of the Irish to destroy all the Protestants, but so far as Ulster was concerned there was no doubt one to regain the land and in so doing to expel the settlers. Rinuccini admitted that the northern Irish, though good Catholics, were often great savages; and it is not surprising that there should have been many murders, sometimes of the most atrocious character, and that a much larger number of lives should have been lost through starvation and exposure. ”

“ Rudyard probably expressed the ideas of the majority when he objected to strengthen France by recruiting her armies, or Spain in order to enable her to crush Portugal. ‘It was never fit,’ he said, ‘to suffer the Irish to be promiscuously made soldiers abroad, because it may make them abler to trouble the State when they come home. Their intelligence and practice with the princes whom they shall serve may prove dangerous to that kingdom of Ireland.’ He thought work could be found for them as harvesters in England. ”

“ The question of religious toleration was one of the first which Chichester had to consider, for the movement in the Munster towns was felt all over Ireland. Priests and Jesuits swarmed everywhere, and John Skelton on being elected Mayor of Dublin refused after much fencing to take the oath of supremacy. Sir John Davies, who had yet much to learn in Ireland, thought that the people would quickly conform if only the priests were banished by proclamation. Saxey, chief justice in Munster, was much of the same opinion, but both these lawyers admitted the insufficiency of the Established Church. ”

“ The Lord Treasurership of Ireland was vacant by the death of the old Earl of Ormonde, and it was conferred as a mark of honour upon the retiring viceroy. Chichester might probably have been an earl had he been willing to pay court to Somerset, but he excused himself to Humphrey May on the ground that his estate would only support a barony. James admired his letters so much that he advised the favourite to model his style upon them. ”

“ On April 12 in the council chamber at Whitehall, and in the presence of Chichester and of the recusant Irish peers and members of Parliament, James delivered the memorable speech which foreshadowed the course of Irish policy until the advent of Strafford. It manifests much cleverness, combined with a characteristic want of dignity. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the new comers on the whole improved the country, and much might be said for these schemes of colonisation if they had been always fairly carried out. The intentions of the King and his ministers were undoubtedly good, but many causes conspired against them. Not a few of the undertakers in each plantation thought only of making money, and were ready to evade the conditions as to building, and above all as to giving proper leases to their tenants whether English or Irish. ”

“ The people weary of Irish tenures.
When Sir William Jones was made Chief Justice of Ireland in the spring of 1617, Lord Keeper Bacon advised him to ‘have special care of the three plantations, that of the North which is in part acted, that of Wexford which is now in distribution, and that of Longford and Leitrim which is now [Pg 153] in survey. And take it from me that the bane of a plantation is, when the undertakers or planters make such haste to a little mechanical present profit, as disturbeth the whole frame and nobleness of the work for times to come. ”

“ As for religion, indeed, there would be good hope of filling the churches if they were first repaired. In fact he found them everywhere in ruins, and the State clergy were lazy and ignorant, which did more harm than could be done by the diligence of priests and Jesuits whose object was political and not religious, but only ‘to serve the turn of Tyrone and the King of Spain. They would be glad to be banished by proclamation, for they that go up and down the Cross of Tipperary get nothing but bacon and oatmeal, the people are so poor.’ [83]
Justice in Connaught. ”

“ The heretics once got rid of, no religion but that of Rome was to be allowed in Ireland, the King was to be reduced to his hereditary revenue, and the clergy to have representatives in Parliament. Poynings’ Law was to be repealed, and the kingdom entirely separated from England, civil authority resting in the hands of the ancient chiefs and nobility, each being absolute in his county or barony, but responsible to a native Parliament. The Earl of Kildare, who was an ardent Protestant, was to be removed, and all plantation lands restored to the previous owners. ”

“ By ‘under Scots’ he meant all who had not given hostage to fortune by acquiring considerable estates in land. There were 40,000 able-bodied Scots ready to welcome Argyle if he landed in Ireland, and that chief was cunning enough to tempt ‘the mere Irish, the ancient dependents of the O’Neills in that province,’ to strike a blow for lands and liberty. A vote of this kind in the Irish Parliament would help the King much, for it would infallibly create ‘a perpetual distrust and hatred’ between England and Scotland, and would add to his Majesty’s reputation in foreign parts. ”

“ In the meantime the Irish had taken Dundalk and were plundering all Protestants not five miles from Drogheda. ‘Miserable spectacles of wealthy men and women,’ says Bernard, ‘utterly spoiled and undone, nay, stripped stark naked, with doleful cries, came flocking in to us by multitudes, upon whom our bowels could not but yearn.’ The majority of the townsmen only smiled, but took care to ring alarm bells when the Protestants were at church. Sir Faithful Fortescue, who was married to Lord Moore’s sister, had been lately appointed governor of the town, and he also went to Dublin for help. ”

“ James had been very careful to tell Chichester that he did not distrust or blame him, but attributed the attacks on him to the priests and Jesuits. His great object was to teach the Irish to seek redress by an orderly petition to their Sovereign rather than ‘after the old fashion of that country, to run upon every occasion to the bog and wood, and seek their remedy that way.’ This inquiry would only strengthen the Deputy’s government. If the malcontents could be induced to get to work in Parliament by taking unopposed business first, probably the rest would follow in good time. ”

“ If the King wanted Irish soldiers let him send over money to the regular officials, and they would do the work much better and cheaper than these Irish lords, ‘who always either out of too much love to [Pg 295] their own, or out of over little knowledge of the customs of England in these cases, express some Irish manner or other, either very unseemly in itself, or pretending their own greatness, further than well consists with the modesty of subjects.’ Barrymore, however, proved a brave and loyal soldier in spite of this bad beginning. ”