CHAPTER VII
The Duke of Ormonde's career in London during his period of unemployment was not without excitement. As a great nobleman he frequented the court without ever becoming one of its favoured habitués. In his salad days Ormonde had been one of the gayest of the gay, but he was a veteran when Robarts succeeded him in Ireland, and his temperament was that of a statesman rather than a courtier.
His enemies, however, feared and detested him, and finding that they could not compel the complacent Charles to banish the duke, they took it into their own hands to try and murder him. One night, therefore—it was December 5, 1670—Ormonde's coach was stopped in St. James's Street by Thomas Blood and five other ruffians, who dragged the duke out and carried him off on horseback. The affair created a tremendous sensation, the most widely-spread rumour being that the five accomplices were well-known friends of the King's, inspired by him to assassinate a man who had helped Charles to regain his throne. Blood became famous in one quarter and infamous in another, while Lord Ossory, the duke's eldest son, believing that Buckingham had instigated the plot, went in search of the duke, and, finding him with the king, did not hesitate to tell him that if his father died a violent death he would pistol Buckingham, even if he sought shelter behind the king. Ormonde escaped mainly owing to the over-sureness of his captors. The strangest incident, however, was yet to come. Blood was captured—he made no attempt to escape—and it was expected as matter of course that he would be hanged, but Charles sent for the duke, and in a private interview persuaded that nobleman to pardon his would-be assassin. This action of the king's proved conclusively that if Buckingham paid Blood to attempt Ormonde's life Charles must have had cognizance of the matter, while it is certain that the germ of the whole idea originated with one of Charles's mistresses, who hated Ormonde, not because he was excessively moral or squeamish, but because he declined to treat seriously their pretensions to be considered members of the nobility.
Nearly seven years after this episode Charles reappointed Ormonde Viceroy of Ireland. The duke was now sixty-seven, but he took up office with all his old zest, and he made his entry into Dublin an elaborate ceremonial, behaving himself as though he were the King of Ireland, and not merely a king's deputy.
The Duke of Ormonde was not a patriot in the sense that the word is regarded nowadays. His policy was to increase the English ascendancy. His religion naturally placed him in the minority. He was a Protestant and a Royalist, but there can be no mistaking the earnestness of his views. He brought a conscientiousness to his task that distinguished him from the average viceroy, and he could pride himself upon knowing the country. The O'Neills, in their brief day of squabble and treachery, had taunted Ormonde with being English, and their fondness for creating parties within a party had helped to defeat Ormonde's policy more than once. In 1677, however, the duke had behind him the united power of England, and during his last viceroyalty he was all-powerful.
Proclamations against Catholics
The Popish plot that disturbed the Government towards the close of Charles's reign roused the fervid anti-Catholic spirit in Ormonde. He issued a proclamation banishing all ecclesiastics who took their orders from Rome; dissolving societies, convents, and schools, and commanding all Catholics to surrender their arms within twenty days. These measures, however, did not satisfy the bigots in London, and they clamoured for the viceroy's recall, declaring that he was in secret sympathy with the plotters. But the duke had a brave defender in the person of his son, Lord Ossory, the handsomest and most hot-tempered man of his day. Lord Ossory was his father's devoted friend, and during his long stay in London the younger man never lost an opportunity for confounding his father's enemies. In an impassioned speech he defended him in the House of Lords, and he had the satisfaction of defeating the intriguers.
The death of his son was a terrible blow to the duke, and he lost all interest in public matters. His supersession by the Earl of Rochester in 1683 was not unwelcome to him. Ormonde was seventy-three, and had aged considerably during the preceding ten years. On July 21, 1688, he died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, a fit sepulchre for a man whose loyalty and conscientiousness were rare virtues in his day, and who had given more to his king than he had received. His last public act had been to carry the crown at the Coronation of King James, but he was spared the knowledge of the second and final exile of the Stuart family from England. His eldest son, Lord Ossory, the most popular man about town in his day, a confirmed gambler and an intimate of King Charles, who occasionally paid his card debts for him, left behind a son who succeeded his grandfather in the title and estates, becoming second Duke of Ormonde, and later Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Evelyn's 'Diary' there is a notable tribute to Lord Ossory. Universal grief was occasioned by the announcement of his death at an early age.
The new viceroy was the Earl of Rochester, a dull creature who grew restive in Dublin, where he ignored the local nobility, and was for ever pining for the pleasures of London. The expenses of the viceroyalty were very considerable now, and there were few opportunities of making money out of the office. Lord Tyrconnel, the Commander-in-Chief, treated him with open contempt, as he had treated the Duke of Ormonde, a stronger man than either of them, and Rochester, a product of society, was not likely to succeed against the bullying, swaggering methods of Tyrconnel, who was clearly aiming at the viceroyalty for himself.
A Catholic régime
In 1683 Charles commissioned Laurence Hyde, brother of the Earl of Clarendon, to replace Rochester, but Hyde, who was anxious to remain in London at that particular time, managed to delay his departure for over a year, and when the king died and James ascended the throne, Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and brother-in-law of James, was selected for the task of permeating Ireland, especially official Ireland, with the new Jacobean policy. England was avowedly Protestant, and England in Ireland was similar. James, who was that human paradox—an insincere fanatic—instructed Clarendon to proceed cautiously in his difficult task of placing the Government and laws of Ireland in the hands of Roman Catholics, while at the same time maintaining outwardly a Protestant régime. Hyde, who was James's subservient minister, did his best, and within a year the majority of the judges, and nearly all the State officials, were Catholic. He found it comparatively easy to appoint Catholic officers to the highest positions in the army, for Tyrconnel, the Commander-in-Chief, was a Catholic, and he raised no objection to Clarendon's nominations. This was the only help the viceroy received from Tyrconnel, the most popular man in Ireland and the most powerful. He had the army behind him, and, knowing that he could take the viceroyalty whenever he cared to do so, he had sufficient sense of humour to wait until James had exhausted his stock of Pall Mall exquisites, and had to turn to him. It was characteristic of the king that he should try to carry out a Catholic policy with the aid of Protestant ministers, relying upon nepotism rather than upon conviction or sincerity, but the Stuarts were born to blunder, and they blundered.
Lord Tyrconnel pretended to obey the viceroy, but scarcely a single act from Dublin Castle was not ignored by him. He was jealous of the king's preference for English noblemen, firmly believing that Ireland should be governed by an Irishman and a Catholic. The Duke of Ormonde he had regarded as an Englishman, and that viceroy's terms of office were always noted for quarrels with Tyrconnel. The old Irish families and the common people looked to Tyrconnel to save them from the evil consequences of the mad policy of Charles II. and his successor. James certainly gratified them by his return to the old religion, but he went about it the wrong way, and with the usual result. Clarendon did his best, but Fate was against him. He was too weak to stand the strain fidelity imposed in such troublous times, and James removed him from office because he suspected his loyalty. The suspicion was correct. Clarendon was one of the first of James's intimates to go over to the party that invited William and Mary to ascend the throne of England. Later he plotted against William, and only the influence of great friends and a remembrance of previous services saved his life. He was released from prison, and permitted to live in semi-retirement until his death in 1709 at the age of seventy-one.
The Earl of Tyrconnel
When Clarendon's term of office ended there was only one man who could continue James's policy. This was Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, the man who had done his utmost to kill the authority of half a dozen occupants of Dublin Castle. Fate retaliated by making his viceroyalty stormy and tragic. At the time of his appointment in 1687 Tyrconnel was fifty-seven years of age, and he had a long record behind him which, despite the tendency to idealize in the course of more than two centuries, seems to prove that he was nothing better than a bully and an adventurer. He was at the same time a brave soldier and a cowardly statesman, but his greatest defect lay in his utter inability to acquire the art of obeying. He wished to rule always, and when the critical time came, this contributed more than anything else to the complete defeat of the Jacobean cause in Ireland.
Born in 1630, Tyrconnel was twenty years of age when Cromwell came to Ireland and besieged Drogheda. Even at that early age he was well known for his reckless courage, and he was certainly one of the most gallant defenders of the town. He owed his escape to the fact that he was so dangerously wounded that he was placed amongst the dead, and he took advantage of the lonely battlefield to make his way out of Drogheda disguised as a woman. Coming to London, Tyrconnel was arrested by Cromwell, but escaped to the Continent, where he quickly determined to enter the inner circle of the royal exiles. Charles and his brother, the Duke of York, later James II., did not care for the society of a person who lacked the finer polish, and who found his acquaintances at the point of the sword. Tyrconnel, however, was crafty enough to sum up James's character, and by offering to go to England and assassinate Cromwell, he was at once taken into the confidence of the duke. Fortunately, it was soon realized that such a foul deed would merely serve to strengthen the Commonwealth in England, and certainly extinguish all hopes of another Stuart régime. It is not at all unlikely that Tyrconnel knew this; anyhow, he gained his ambition, and by the time the Restoration was accomplished, he was one of the royal prince's most trusted companions.
Unfortunately for Tyrconnel, he cast in his lot with the Duke of York, and twenty-five years passed before his patron was in a position to give him his earldom. Talbot, who was a product of the battlefield, was not likely to shine in the court of Charles II. He played a part in it for a time, and he was the hero of several love affairs, but he had not the courtly graces of a Buckingham or a Rochester. Women were afraid of provoking him, for he brooked no rivalry, and the man who in one week fought five duels in London and wounded his opponent every time was no fit companion for ladies whose fame depended upon the number of conquests they made, but they admired his courage and success. In his only really serious love affair Tyrconnel was rejected, and the lady married Sir George Hamilton. Richard Talbot also found consolation, but some years later, when his wife had died, he married Lady Hamilton, a widow with six children.
Charles was speaking more than the truth when he declared that no one would ever assassinate him to make James king, and Talbot, leading an aimless life in London, a beggared gambler, distrusted by the old aristocracy and feared by the new, sought vainly for adequate employment for nearly ten years. Then in 1669 Charles appointed him Commander-in-Chief in Ireland on the earnest and persistent solicitation of the Duke of York. London society was not displeased to get rid of the bully so easily, for in their estimation Ireland was still a place of exile, especially so in view of the comfortable statesmanship practised by Charles and his satellites in the palace of Whitehall. Talbot went to Ireland eagerly, knowing that the qualities which had won for him contempt in London would idealize him in Ireland. With the aid of the Duke of York, and also helped by the indolence of Charles, he knew that he could make his office of Commander-in-Chief at least equal to, if not more powerful than, the viceroyalty. Ormonde had been superseded by Lord Robarts, and Talbot detested the duke, whose religion made him unpopular with the Duke of York and his friends.
'Lying Dick Talbot'
On the accession of James II., Richard Talbot—Macaulay's 'Lying Dick Talbot'—was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and his powers as Commander-in-Chief increased. It was the king's ambition to make himself independent of Parliament by means of the army, and he hoped that Tyrconnel would bring the army in Ireland to such a state of efficiency that would render it an important asset in the struggle between the king and his subjects. To a man of Talbot's temperament unlimited power was a spur to unlimited ambition, and successive viceroys found themselves in a humiliating position. The noted duellist and bully—the man at whom half London sneered and whom the other half feared—was set in authority over some of the best blood in the kingdom, and although they complained bitterly to the king, there was no redress.
The state of the country
The nomination of Tyrconnel to the vice-royalty was, therefore, the only way out of James's difficulties in Ireland. Nearly every class in the country welcomed the appointment. The new viceroy proceeded to strengthen his own position rather than that of the king's. He had been instructed to pack the state and the bench with Catholics, but Tyrconnel, with thoughts of the future, selected creatures of his own, and in a short time he was master of the country. The bench, the corporations, the Justices of the Peace, were all subservient to him. He made and unmade laws, and the spectacle of a bully ruling a country might have made the world laugh had it not been so tragic. The disarmed Protestants were left to the mercy of the criminal classes and the legalized highway robbers; consequently many of the most prosperous and law-abiding families were compelled to leave their lands and homes and emigrate to England. Justice was a travesty; householders in Dublin had to keep watch all night to guard their property because the fear of punishment for crime no longer existed. The viceroy and his wife reigned in Dublin Castle, where sectarianism influenced every single act.
Lady Tyrconnel, who had been in her youth one of the most fascinating of the group of ingenuous beauties gathered about the court of Charles II., was in her middle age ugly, spiteful, and fanatical. Her husband was rough and coarse; she was feline and fanciful, but she adapted herself to the ways of his policy, and the Catholic religion found in her a devout adherent. She was not popular in Ireland, however. The mother of six children, she was fond of recalling the glories of her Whitehall past. Secretly she disliked James, and even at times broke out into petulant diatribes against her husband's patron; but all the time she aped the youth of her early years, and tried to hide the plain present by means of paint.
There was no room for the finer arts of life in Tyrconnel. He was now acting the statesman, and the result was very soon evident. Ormonde, despite his defects and dislike for the ultra-patriots, had succeeded in improving the condition of Ireland, and his successors had been willing to continue his social policy if they could not improve upon it. The Earl of Tyrconnel, however, was not the man to imitate others, no matter how praiseworthy such imitation might be, and in less than a couple of years he 'reduced Ireland from a place of briskest trade and best-paid rents in Christendom to utter ruin and desolation.' Dublin had progressed amazingly under Ormonde, and it seemed as if the capital city would rise to a place amongst the most important cities of the world, when Tyrconnel came to set it back a hundred years. England had never done anything for Dublin or any other town in Ireland, and the progress of the capital had been made in the face of the bitterest opposition and the most relentless persecution. London, Bristol, and the other ports of England were jealous of Dublin, and they were able to get edicts passed interfering with the shipping and the trade of the country, in order that they might not lose in competition. Dublin, however, rose superior to edicts and statutes, and by the end of the seventeenth century it was not a mean city. Even in London it was realized with something approaching wonder that Dublin was not to be despised. For five hundred years it had been the headquarters of the English colony, but it was in Tyrconnel's day entirely Irish. The English families had been merged in the Irish, and the result was a population anxious for peace and freedom from the persecutions entailed by religious squabbles and political struggles.
The Earl of Tyrconnel was too patriotic, however, to let the country rest. His crude mind was full of ambitious schemes, and from England James fed him with ambitious food. Between them they were to make England, Ireland, and Scotland wholly Catholic, and in the remote event of England failing the king, Ireland was to be made a French protectorate, so that the supremacy of the Catholic religion might remain undisputed.
Suddenly James appealed for help, and Tyrconnel sent him 3,000 men; but they could not keep the king's throne, and on March 12, 1689, James landed at Kinsale from France, a king without a throne, a Catholic without a conscience, and a fanatic without a scruple. His visit to Ireland had an ominous precedent in the case of Richard II., and it had a similar result. It was obvious that the English monarch relied entirely upon his viceroy to save his throne. Ireland was even then renowned for its simple-hearted allegiance to the old faith, and James was under the impression that fanaticism can beat generalship and numbers.
King James in Dublin
Tyrconnel, ever optimistic when fighting was imminent, met James at Cork, and headed the triumphant procession into Dublin on March 24, 1689. The king was rapturously welcomed from Cork to Dublin as the friend of Ireland and of its religion, and Lady Tyrconnel organized a fête at the Castle, in which she endeavoured to remind the nervous and dejected king of the former glories of the Stuart dynasty when the family seemed all-powerful and secure. James, however, unwisely and needlessly irritated her by a display of indifference, and at a dance he exasperated her by leading out a less-known but more beautiful member of Irish society. The viceroy's wife was Duchess of Tyrconnel by now, for the Lord-Lieutenant had been created a duke on the arrival of the king; but it is as Earl of Tyrconnel that he is known. James had not the power to create peerages in 1689.
There is no need to enter minutely into any of the details of the Jacobean war in Ireland. It was a religious and a political contest, but the presence of James and the multitude of his counsellors were the chief causes of the Catholic defeat. In the Parliament James summoned at Dublin there was a member named Patrick Sarsfield, afterwards given the worthless and illegal title of Earl of Lucan, who was destined to play a leading part in the fortunes of James, and who might have won success for his royal master had his qualities been recognized in high quarters. Tyrconnel, however, always ready to sacrifice the good of his country for the good of himself, kept Sarsfield under, and James, who had been given proof of Sarsfield's devotion, distrusted his ability. At a time when everybody had deserted James, Patrick Sarsfield stood by him, and in the very first encounter with the army of William he proved his courage. The viceroy was now old and crippled by gout, but he insisted upon holding the principal place in James's Council, and when it was announced that William was coming to Ireland, it was he who insisted upon James fighting for his crown, although that monarch was secretly preparing for his return to France. James created defeat for himself, and his motley collection of adventurers made that defeat certain. No real attempt was made to bring a disciplined army into the field against the King of England, and only the bravery and genius of the troops made the Battle of the Boyne a battle at all.
The Battle of the Boyne
This decisive conflict was fought on Tuesday, July 1, 1690, and the stars in their courses fought for William. James was in the way of his own Generals, and in the many critical moments of the battle there were schisms in the Council. But it was James who contributed most to the defeat of his army, and well might Patrick Sarsfield exclaim bitterly: 'Change kings, and we will fight you over again.'
The ex-king was almost the first fugitive from the field, and he rode without cessation until he reached Dublin Castle, weary, travel-stained, but just the same sneering, disappointed incompetent, who had sacrificed many humble lives nobler than his own. When Lady Tyrconnel, flustered and alarmed, came down to greet him, James caustically informed her that the Irish ran well.
'Your Majesty seems to have won the race,' was Lady Tyrconnel's witty rejoinder; and the king remained silent.
From Dublin James, thanks to his forethought, was able to cross to France immediately, and he scandalized Paris by declaring that the Irish were cowards to a man, who had run away at the first shot from the enemy. The result of this libel was that the members of the Irish colony in Paris were mobbed in the streets, and long afterwards, when physical ill-treatment ceased, the name of an Irishman stood for cowardice in the best Parisian circles.
The ex-king left Tyrconnel, Lauzun, Boisseleau, and Sarsfield to fight his battle against William, and after the disastrous Boyne they retired on Limerick. William followed hastily, and presently his 28,000 men were besieging the city, which was garrisoned by not more than 15,000 troops. The hero of the siege was Sarsfield, and it is to his story that this belongs. Tyrconnel was anxious to get out of the country, and when Sarsfield had driven the English army from the walls of Limerick the viceroy followed King James into exile, the Duke of Berwick being styled 'viceroy.' A Council of Twelve assisted the duke, while Tyrconnel, having, with his wife, gone to France with all their available resources, interviewed James, and induced him to send him back to Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant. Furthermore, James was persuaded to give Tyrconnel a grant of £8,000. In such a state of war there could be no real viceroy, and Tyrconnel was compelled to pass his time between pleasures and fears. Chroniclers recount stories of the festivities given by him in his own honour during a stay at Galway. He was too old for anything else. Meanwhile the rival generals in the field proved easy victims for William's commanders. The Earl of Marlborough came to Ireland to supplement his small experience of warfare, and, of course, he performed creditably, for the Jacobean troops were badly clothed, fed, and armed. Sarsfield alone seemed worth his position, and his efforts were negatived by the incompetence of his colleagues.
The Treaty of Limerick
On August 14, 1691, Tyrconnel died, sixty-one years of age, but worn out and feeble. He was buried by night and in such haste that his burial-place quickly became a mystery. He died just before the end of the Jacobean struggle in Ireland, for a few days afterwards the Treaty of Limerick was signed, and Sarsfield left the country to fight as a soldier of fortune, and to die an honourable death on a foreign battlefield. In the contest between James's Irish army and that of William the latter had all the luck and the former all the traitors. It was, therefore, a matter for astonishment that the Jacobean troops should have gained any victories at all. Certain it is that the English commanders never gained reputations so cheaply. When Marlborough returned to London he was fêted as a victor by the king; but all he did was to overcome by means of sheer force small and irregular bodies of troops indifferently armed and often badly led. Marlborough did not learn anything of the art of generalship by his month's visit to Ireland. Patrick Sarsfield was the only man who proved his worth as a leader and his courage as a soldier. We know that he fought for a good cause but an unworthy man, and that the cause was something better than the restoration of James to the throne of England.