Lord Deputy of Ireland

“ Richard of York was the last Lord Lieutenant of royal blood who actually ruled at Dublin. After his time the real government was in the hands of the Earls of Kildare, who were Lords Deputy, with but brief intervals, from 1478 to 1526. During that period the title of Lord Lieutenant, but the title only, was enjoyed by Edward, Prince of Wales, by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, by Jasper, Duke of Bedford, and by Henry VIII. [Pg 101] before his accession to the Crown. In the meantime, the word justiciar, or Lord Justice, had come to mean a temporary substitute for the Deputy or Lieutenant. ”

“ Particular instructions were given for reforming the military establishments, and officers were not to be allowed to have more than 10 per cent. of Irish among their men. Coyne and livery, the most fertile source of licence and disorder, was to be eschewed as far as possible. Irish noblemen were to be encouraged to exchange some of their lands for property in England, and thus to give pledges for good behaviour. In Leix and Offaly leases for twenty-one years were to be given; and religious reform was everywhere to be taken in hand. One very curious power was given to the Lord Deputy. ”

“ The Lord Deputy had not even a good clerk whom he could trust to copy despatches, still less could he do good service with soldiers who lived by plunder and were everywhere allied with the Irish. With 500 well-paid and well-appointed men he would chase Shane before him within forty-eight hours, or be accounted a traitor. Otherwise he might come to the walls of Dublin and go away unfought. Ulster was ready for the foreigner to seize, and a whole province would be worse to [Pg 105] England than the single town of Calais had been to France. ”

“ The counties of Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Louth, Kildare, Carlow, Wexford, and Kilkenny acknowledged themselves bound to victual as many of the 1,000 soldiers and officers as the Lord Deputy should appoint, and to pay 1d. a day for each man of that number whether present or no, deducting that sum in the case of those men whom they were required to victual fully. They were to furnish 9,000 pecks of oats to the horsemen at 10d. sterling, and to sell fresh provisions to the Lord Deputy at reasonable prices for ready money. ”

“ Given under our Signet, at Whitehall, the 14 day of June 1655.—To our right trusty and right well-beloved Counsellor, Charles Fleetwood, our Deputy of Ireland. The Form of the oath: Whereas you are appointed by his Highness the Lord Protector, with the approbation of his Council, one of the Lord Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, you shall swear, that well and truly, according to your skill and knowledge, you shall perform your duty in the execution of the said office, according to law, equity, and justice ”

“ The Lord Deputy and Councill, in behalfe of the State, have noe interest to impose unprofitable or intangled lands uppon the adventurers, nor to withhold any priviledge or advantage allowed by the Act of Parliament; nor will their Lordshipps doe any thing against the Acts and ordinances of Parliament, even allthough it were for the States advantage, and allthough the adventurers could bee supposed to petition them unto itt.
6thly. That even the army of Ireland have not used any meanes to putt hardshipp uppon the adventurers ”

“ Gerard had sixteen years’ Welsh experience, and he saw no reason why the policy which had succeeded there should not succeed in Ireland. The Lord Deputy should endeavour to keep the Irish from actual rebellion, and to persuade them to make some contribution to the revenue. Afterwards, on the borders of each county, English judges might ‘deliver justice with such severity as the poor fleas may have yearly comfort to be delivered from the webs and oppression of the great spiders, ... ”

“ The Minister representing Ireland in the House of Commons, though popularly called Secretary for Ireland, is really and legally only Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. Sometimes he sits in the Cabinet when the Lord-Lieutenant does not, and then he is his master’s superior. The Lord-Lieutenant, argued{443} Lord John, had all the responsibility, but never the freedom of action of a Minister of the Crown, and the abolition of his office would facilitate that blending of the Irish and Imperial administrations, which would go far to destroy the Separatist feeling in Ireland. ”

“ In practice, however, matters have worked out very differently, for the administration of Ireland has been far too important to rest under the wing of the Home Office. The Lord Lieutenant is always a great nobleman, and he is expected to keep up a vice-regal state, sometimes at an expense exceeding his enormous salary of £20,000 a year; but he is not ordinarily the real head of the Irish Office. ”

“ My view of the present state of affairs in Ireland would lead me to think that an impartial, equitable, and mild administration of the law (of which the alteration cannot be effected or attempted by a Lord Lieutenant) , is the only safe course which can now be pursued, and the only channel through which we can ever reach a happy and permanent settlement.
With this view I entertain no apprehension of interruption in my government from the influence mentioned by your Lordship, as the subject of alarm in some most respectable minds. ”

“ Some of the official members of this Council are not natives of Ireland; and the Lord Lieutenant himself is almost invariably an English or Scotch aristocrat of high rank and liberal fortune. No Catholic can fill the office of Viceroy of Ireland. The authority of the latter is, to all intents and purposes, absolute. In seasons of political agitation, even when there is no violence, he can suspend the ordinary law without having recourse to Parliament. This power has been frequently exercised even in this generation. ”

“ To make an end of the aspirations to independent nationality which had budded under the Duke of York, and bring Irish legislation completely under the control of the Crown, the Lord Deputy Poynings caused to be carried through the Parliament of the Pale the pair of acts which bore his name, subjecting Irish legislation to the control of the English Council. ”

“ I propose that another Secretary of State should be added to the present three Secretaries of State for the purpose of carrying on the important business connected with Ireland. I will not say that the arrangements that may be made will be exactly the arrangement that subsists at present, because there may be some of the functions which are now exercised by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland which it may be more convenient should be exercised by the Secretary of State for a Home Department ”

“ Parliament on their own terms. Irish politics was for these men a mere means of public plunder; they were glutted with pensions, preferments, and bribes in hard cash, in return for their services; they were the advisers of every Lord-Lieutenant and the practical governors of the country. The results were what might have been expected. For more than a century Ireland was the worst governed country in Europe. That its government was not even worse than it was, was due to its connection with England and the subordination of its Parliament to the English Privy Council. ”

“ Verbal messages and innuendoes contained in private letters seldom failed to undermine a man whom it might be neither safe nor decent to accuse openly. Grey now contented himself with saying that the late Lord Deputy had died in debt, and that his property was held in pledge for his creditors. But Lady Skeffington replied, and no doubt truly, that the official salary had never been paid, and that she could do nothing without it. Cromwell at least believed her, for he gave orders that her goods should be delivered to her, and that she should be sped on her homeward journey. ”

“ It surely could not be your wish, nor would it be desirable, to attempt to pledge any Irishman one step beyond that general proposition, that whatever is done by the authority of the British Parliament as to England, must be done in Ireland by the authority of the Irish Parliament ”

“ Among the men pledged not to accept office one was now Attorney-General, another Solicitor-General for Ireland, a third Lord of the Treasury, and a fourth, when the Ocean Chief left England, was the only Parliamentary Secretary or all the Colonies and Dependencies of the Empire. Irish Nationalists wanted for Ireland what the reformers of Victoria had won for their colony. Victorians were not contented with having their affairs managed in a distant city by ill-informed or indifferent persons, and why should Irishmen be content? ”

“ If we did not know that matters of higher import engaged the attention of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, it might almost appear that his chief business consisted in controlling the pretensions of a variety of persons to every office that fell vacant, and of keeping a host of disappointed expectants in check and good-humour, so large a space does this matter of patronage occupy in the semi-official correspondence of the period. ”

“ The evils are increased because the Irish members are turned into a delegation from the Irish State, and their action ceases to be influenced, as it now is, by the consideration—a very important one—that the Imperial Parliament not only in theory but in fact legislates for Ireland, and that the English Cabinet controls the Irish administration and directs the course of political promotion in Ireland. ”

“ That, in carrying out these resolutions, the representatives of the Irish people should always keep in mind the adopting such a prudent and wise course as shall enable them to realise for the Irish nation the greatest possible quantity of good, and as shall also enable them to support and sustain in office, without any violation of principle, the first and only true and honest government that has ever been known in Ireland. ”

“ Wherefore we wool and command you, and every of you, not only to accept and esteem him as thereto appertaineth, and that ye the Master of our Rolls, deliver unto him our Great Seal, being now in your custody, but also ye our Deputy, permit and suffer him to enjoy the same roume, with all commodities, and preeminencies thereto belonging, and especially the nomination and disposition of such benefices of our gift as be under the yearly value of 20 marks Irish, as ye tender our pleasure, and will avoid the contrary. ”

“ Nothing like such a chance has ever offered itself in Irish history before. Everything goes to show that this is our opportunity. England is weaker than she has been for centuries, is clinging desperately to the last tatters of her old prestige. She hasn’t a single statesman capable of thinking or acting vigorously. Her Parliament is the laughingstock of Europe. Her Irish policy may be summed up in four words—intrigue with the Vatican. In Ireland the power of the faithful garrison is gone. ”

“ In 1758 he became secretary to Bedford, who was lord lieutenant of Ireland, and in the following year he was given the sinecure office of master of the rolls for Ireland. Following the political fortunes of the duke he became vice treasurer of Ireland in 1765, and in 1768 he obtained the lucrative position of paymaster-general of the forces. ”

“ The power which gave the planters their land could laugh at their constitutional pretensions. So the Dublin Parliament idly strove to emulate its exemplar at Westminster, and clamoured in vain for responsible government, for control of the [pg 263] Irish Executive. In spite of its Irish Parliament, Ireland has never been given the chance of governing itself. ”

“ But if we are to consider what ought to be, as well as what is, why should Ireland have the greatest possible subordinate legislature? Is Ireland more numerous and more important to what is called the British empire than America? Subordinate as the Irish legislature is said to be, and a conquered country, as undoubtedly it is, the parliament of Great Britain, although they claim a power to bind Ireland by statutes, have never laid one farthing of tax upon it. ”

“ I trust that the opportunity of making a great advance on this question of Irish government will not long be delayed, and when that opportunity comes my firm belief is that a greater measure of agreement than hitherto as to the ultimate solution will be found possible, and that a keener appreciation will be felt of the benefits that will flow to the Irish communities and British people throughout the world, and that Ireland, from being disaffected, impoverished, and discouraged, will take its place as a strong, harmonious, and contented portion of the empire. ”

“ The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in Her Majesty the Queen, and the Lord Lieutenant, on behalf of Her Majesty, shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, in Her Majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Legislature. ”

“ For the due election of the persons to be chosen to sit in the respective Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on the part of Ireland, be it enacted, That on the day following that on which the Act for establishing the Union shall have received the Royal Assent, the Primate of all Ireland, the Lord Bishop of Meath, the Lord Bishop of Kildare, and the Lord Bishop of Derry, shall be and they are hereby declared to be the representatives of the Lords Spiritual of Ireland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the first session thereof ”