The Viceroys of Ireland

by Charles Kingston O'Mahony

CHAPTER VIII

The Orange Government in Ireland was in the hands of two Lords Justices named Coningsby and Porter, but as soon as the Treaty of Limerick ended the hopes of the Jacobeans William decided to send one of his followers as viceroy. There were many claimants on the king's gratitude, but Henry Sidney, fourth son of Robert, second Earl of Leicester, one of Charles I.'s viceroys, had been well rewarded by the Dutchman for his treachery towards James. Sidney had been present at the Battle of the Boyne, being now a viscount, and when there was plenty of Irish land and money to be distributed Viscount Sidney received 50,000 acres and an allowance of £2,000 a year. During the reign of Charles II. Sidney had taken a prominent part in court life, and his beauty was such that he was regarded as 'the greatest terror to husbands' of his day. James, Duke of York, and his duchess, formerly Anne Hyde, took young Sidney into their confidence, and gave him a court appointment. He retorted by endeavouring to ruin the duchess's reputation, and when they dismissed him he continued his plottings. He was successful in so far that he caused a temporary separation between James and his wife; but at the accession of Charles's brother he was taken back into favour. Sidney, however, was determined to act the part of the traitor, and he quickly betrayed his cause to William. Besides this fondness for plotting Sidney found time to earn the reputation of one of the most immoral men, even in Charles's reign. He regarded every woman of beauty as fit prey for his passion, and even when he was nearly seventy his intrigues were the talk of London.

Protestant Party dissatisfied

This was the man William sent to represent him in Ireland, and when Viscount Sidney arrived in Dublin in 1692 he was fifty-one years of age, unmarried, and still very handsome. But he was not a statesman or a soldier, and his position alone made him great. He was not equal to the task of carrying out the changes created by the Treaty of Limerick—a treaty hotly repudiated by the Protestant party in Ireland, who, now that William's cause had triumphed, naturally looked for a return of their supremacy and the subjection of the majority. Sidney's conciliatory attitude towards the Catholics brought down upon him the wrath of the Protestant clergy and aristocracy; Parliament met, and denounced his indulgences to members of the rival faith, and, although Sidney dissolved it, the effect on the king was considerable. He dare not remove the viceroy, and yet Sidney was dangerous so long as he remained in Ireland. A way out of the difficulty was found by the 'promotion' of the viceroy to the post of 'Master-General of the Ordnance,' and in 1694—the year after he vacated office—he was created Earl of Romney.

Sidney never married, but he did not altogether escape the responsibilities of parentage. He complained very often of the worry many women gave him by pestering him with demands for the provision of their children. During his brief viceroyalty one of his numerous victims had the courage to beard him in Dublin Castle, and demand that he should contribute towards the maintenance of the three children she had borne him. Sidney dare not send the woman away empty-handed, and he gave her £500; but the majority of his victims never received anything, for he was as mean as he was vicious. Had it not been that by accident he could claim to have given William and Mary the Crown of England, Sidney would never have risen to any position at all. He became prominent by sheer chance.

Lord Capel of Tewkesbury

It was expected that care would be taken to make the new viceroy acceptable to the Protestant party; but there was a delay, and William allowed the Government to be conducted by three Commissioners, the most powerful being Sir Henry Capel, Lord Capel of Tewkesbury. Capel was a fanatical Protestant and a bitter opponent of Roman Catholicism in all shapes and forms. His fellow-commissioners were less ferocious, but Capel managed to gain his way in most things, and he was viceroy in reality, though not in name. Meanwhile the English party in Dublin used every atom of influence to secure the elevation of Capel to the viceroyalty, and in 1695 they succeeded. The cause of Protestantism seemed safe now, but Capel did not live long, and on May 14, 1696, he died in Dublin Castle. Capel is remembered mainly because he gave Jonathan Swift his first preferment—the benefice of Kilroot, worth about £100 a year. This was in 1695.

Commissioners in the persons of Lords Justices conducted the affairs of State without the supervision of a viceroy. One of these was the Earl of Berkeley, whose dealings with Dean Swift, when that eccentric cleric was seeking a high appointment, have become historic. Berkeley was one of the Lords Justices, and he had it in his power to bestow preferment, but Swift was unable or unwilling to pay his price, and one day in a rage he cried to Berkeley and his secretary: 'God confound you for a couple of scoundrels!' On December 12, 1700, William appointed his wife's uncle, Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, a nobleman who had accepted this office sixteen years before from Charles, and had not troubled to journey to Ireland. His second appointment did not arouse any enthusiasm either in the man or in the country he was called upon to govern, and it was not until the following September that he landed in Ireland. As a relative of the queen's—his sister, Anne Hyde, was her mother—the Earl of Rochester carried greater authority than many of his predecessors; but he was no statesman, and at sixty years of age he was not inclined to try experiments. William thought he was indolent and contemptuous of his duties, and in 1702 he informed him that he had been relieved of his office. Immediately, however, further news came from London continuing Rochester in his office. This was the result of the intervention by Queen Mary; but Rochester resigned on February 4, 1703, rather than be subjected any longer to the machinations of the Marlborough party at the court.

Lord Rochester returned to London in a passion scarcely cooled by the length of the journey; but he was mollified somewhat by the fact that his successor, the Duke of Ormonde, was his son-in-law. He had no objection to his daughter reigning at Dublin Castle.

The second Duke of Ormonde

The Duke and Duchess of Ormonde were received with an enthusiasm in Dublin that was reminiscent of the personal supremacy of the viceroy's grandfather, known as the 'Great Duke.' The new viceroy had been carefully educated for his position. A son of the celebrated Lord Ossory, he had been from his birth in 1665 educated with a view to future eminence in the service of the State. The boy's grandfather sent him to France in 1675 to acquire the French language and the polite arts of the centre of good manners and tone. When he was seventeen he was married to Anne Hyde, a daughter of Laurence Hyde, and a cousin to the Duchess of York. She died early the following year, and when, in 1686, he married a daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, he was a Lord of the Bedchamber to James II., and one of the most influential of the younger nobility. The year of the Revolution witnessed Ormonde's succession to the title and estates, and he became one of the most powerful pillars of the Protestant faith in the country. The ancient Universities were in grave doubt as to the king's intention, and Oxford, therefore, in order to secure the aid of such a powerful nobleman in the cause of the Protestant faith, elected him Chancellor. He had been a student at Christ Church, and the honour was, therefore, a fit one.

James went to work cautiously to win over the young duke to his new policy. He gave him the Garter, and hinted at even greater honours in store for one who by his birth became entitled to nearly everything that life had to offer. The question of religion, however, caused a breach between James and the duke, and William's invasion of England brought Ormonde to his side.

Ormonde's adhesion undoubtedly had the effect of bringing over to the new monarch a great many persons in Ireland who had acted previously like sheep without a shepherd. All that the dethroned king could do was to declare Ormonde's estates forfeited and his person guilty of high treason. But the acts of a fallen king are merely futilities, and the Duke of Ormonde was able to witness the triumph at Boyne and know that William's success meant his own. The duke's principal task in the war was to secure Dublin for the king, and he accomplished this without much difficulty, thanks to the weakness and mistake of his opponents rather than to his own skill. Later he entertained William at his ancestral home, Kilkenny Castle, in celebration of the royal successes.

The accession of Queen Anne, second daughter of James II., did not affect Ormonde's high position in the State. He had stood by the bedside of William, and he was one of those who settled the difficult question of the succession. Queen Anne must have guessed that Ormonde at heart wished for the success of the Jacobean cause, and it was during her reign that he was successively Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Captain-General of the Forces in England.

In 1703 Ormonde entered upon his first term of office as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and, of course, the Protestant party welcomed him joyfully. Parliament met, and subserviently voted him a subsidy, conscious of favours to come. But the viceroy did not fulfil their hopes. Ormonde was not the man to stoop to persecution and fraud, and, being only a layman, he could not see that religion covered a multitude of sins. His Parliament grew unruly, and from asking for favours began to demand them. This was too much for the grandson of the great duke, and so he dissolved the assembly, as his powers entitled him to do, and continued to rule, preferring, no doubt, the private criticisms of Jonathan Swift, who was in his favour, rather than submit to the arrogance of a minority as unscrupulous as it was intolerant.

Swift was at this time beginning to make himself known in those high circles which soon began to fear him. Ormonde liked the somewhat eccentric clergyman, while the duchess and her daughters were delighted with his witty conversation and his powers of repartee. Swift, however, was restlessly ambitious, and he was continually journeying to London, returning each time more disappointed and more ambitious.

Court intrigues

It was one of the most peculiar periods in the history of England. The daughter of James II. was on the throne, and it was the generally accepted national policy that she should be the last of her family and race to wear the crown. There were a dozen parties in the State, and the poor queen had to suffer herself to be buffeted by the numerous leaders, who plotted without principle, and were religious without having any religion. Marlborough, Godolphin, Somers, and half a dozen others buzzed round the queen. Ladies of high estate joined in the numerous intrigues, and every party had its literary hacks and hangers-on who wrote to order, and hoped to fatten on the carcass of the State when their particular masters had triumphed. It was the Golden Age of the wirepullers.

Ormonde's position in Dublin was at once safe and tantalizing. The government was entirely in his hands, and he could do what he liked; but the knowledge that the plotters in London might precipitate a revolution or ruin the country made Ormonde—an ambitious man himself—long to be free to take his own part in the underground fight. The triumph of his opponents in 1707 naturally relieved him of his office, and it was not until the end of 1710 that his party returned, and the queen reappointed him.

Meanwhile Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Thomas, Earl of Wharton, ran their brief careers in the viceregal court. Ormonde's second term lasted a little over two years, but his recall also brought with it the higher post of Captain-General of the Forces and the sweet satisfaction of seeing the Marlborough party in disfavour. No doubt, if it had been possible, Ormonde would have used his great position to insure the Jacobean succession, but he knew that public opinion was unanimous in its detestation of the Stuarts, and that Jacobinism was merely a harmless political theory to be debated by students and ignored by statesmen. Bowing to the inevitable, Ormonde signed the proclamation announcing the death of Anne and the accession of George I. But he could not conceal his dislike of the Hanoverian monarch, and he made his house at Richmond a meeting-place for those who desired the return of the Stuarts.

The remainder of his life is a record of disappointment. There was no chance of his cause succeeding, and without even a blow he fled from England and spent the last thirty years of his life in exile, visiting England but once, and experiencing the humiliating poverty of the harmless plotter, the recipient of pity when he expected hero-worship, and, worse than that, regarded generally as a hopeless crank. His estates were declared forfeited and vested in the Crown; but in 1721 the exile's brother, Lord Arran, was allowed by Parliament to purchase them. Thirty years after his flight Ormonde died, the year of his death—1745—marking the last attempt of the Jacobites to regain the throne of England. He outlived his glory, and those who met him during the last few years of his life could see nothing but a querulous old man who boasted of exploits forgotten if not altogether discredited; but he had been great once, and so merited their pity, and pity is all the fallen greatness earns in obscurity.

Lord Pembroke and Swift

The Earl of Pembroke remained in Ireland less than a couple of years, playing at governing, and amused by Swift. The post of Lord High Admiral was more to his liking, and he gladly resigned the viceroyalty to take it up. Swift acted as chaplain to Pembroke, but his principal duty appears to have been that of amusing the earl with humorous doggerel or by his caustic criticisms of Dublin's leading citizens, official and otherwise. The punning correspondence with the viceroy was the forerunner of a habit that lasted through Swift's life, and gained him a reputation for wit which, fortunately for the dean, was supplemented by something more recondite. During several viceroyalties he exercised considerable influence, and although Swift hotly repudiated the title of Irishman, at times he rendered some service to the country in which he was born. The Earl of Wharton was sixty when appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland on November 25, 1708, and there were forty years of profligacy behind him. He was an atheist, unscrupulous, licentious, witty, contemptuous, and absolutely without fear. From the first he had been an opponent of James II., and the invitation to William was suggested by Wharton. To send this man to Ireland to settle the religious question and maintain the supremacy of the Protestant party was a matchless piece of irony; but Wharton, who could insist upon an elaborate ritual of household prayers in his own home, undertook the task, undeterred by the sneers of his opponents, the amazement of his friends, and the bitter invective of that disappointed office-seeker, Jonathan Swift.

Lord Wharton

Wharton had done considerable service to the cause of William by the writing of a single song that proved to be worth an army to the Orange party. Like most of the English nobility, Wharton had been vastly amused by Tyrconnel's elevation to the viceroyalty. In his opinion the position was one for a gentleman, and not a bully with Irish leanings and unrepentantly Catholic. The famous song, set to music by Purcell, and known as 'Lilli Burlero, Bullen-a-la,' was the result, and, whistled and sung from one end of the country to the other, it ridiculed Tyrconnel out of existence. That was Wharton's first contribution to the history of Ireland.

His second took the form of a law declaring that all property held by Catholics must be inherited by their Protestant heirs—a statute which was declared to do more towards stamping out Popery in three months than all others had done in three years. The viceroy, however, took no pains to please anybody but himself. He lived in Dublin as he lived in London, and, when satiated with the pleasures of the Irish metropolis, he crossed over to London, following the example of his predecessors, who never became too fond of Dublin to prefer it to London.

Wharton's first wife, Ann Lee, brought him a large fortune and a plain face; his second, Lucy Loftus, was heavily dowered, but her character almost matched his own—and that is saying a great deal. During his viceroyalty most of the royalty was absent, and Dublin Castle became a glorified tavern and brothel. The viceroy's discarded mistresses were married to distressed profligates, whom Wharton promoted to office in the State or gave preferment in the Church. Once he recommended a boon companion for a bishopric, declaring that 'James was the most honourable man alive, and possessed of a character practically faultless save for his damnable morals.' This person did not secure the bishopric, but he found compensation in a deanery.

Joseph Addison

The only sober member of the viceroy's retinue was Joseph Addison, whose hackwork in the service of the party had been rewarded with this appointment, much to Swift's envy, for the Irishman was supposed to be entitled to payment before Addison, who served with zeal 'the profligate son of a Puritanical father, and the father of a son more licentious than himself.' When the Lord-Lieutenant left Ireland the Parliament actually thanked the queen for having sent 'one so great in wisdom and experience to be our chief Governor.' This was the man who had knighted potmen who served him with ale, tried to idealize the most abandoned women, and regarded with complacency the amours of his wife, who, having lost the affections of her husband, found consolation in a dozen other men. Cardsharpers, profligates, and every species of base adventurer had the entrée to Dublin Castle, where the viceroy reigned as a 'prince of good fellows,' many of whom had been kicked out of decent society in London. But Wharton was powerful enough to be more than unconventional, and it suited his peculiar sense of humour to shock even his most licentious companions-in-arms. When they roamed Dublin at night seeking for prey, Wharton behaved like a drunken madman, and he fondly imagined that his identity was not discovered, except when, in an intoxicated mood, he called for a sword and bestowed knighthoods indiscriminately on waiters and landlords, and even went through the farce of knighting women of the street. His motto was never to give a challenge and never to refuse one. When in his teens he had fought two duels with outraged husbands, and gained the victory in each encounter.

His viceroyalty was certainly unconventional. Dignified prelates, hovering in draughty rooms and corridors, were twitted mercilessly by my Lord Wharton, who was the most contemptuous enemy the Protestant faith ever knew. Once he declared that he hated all religions, but if he had to join one he would select the Presbyterian, because it was opposed to the Church of England. Swift's famous attack on him merely created a temporary annoyance in the English nobleman.

It was no misfortune for Ireland that the fall of the Government entailed Wharton's recall in October, 1710, and the Duke of Ormonde's reappointment was at once announced. Wharton, cynical and contemptuous, looked upon his supersession with indifference. He had exhausted all the pleasures Dublin had to offer, and so London knew him once more. He lived until 1715, and saw King George on the throne and his rival, Ormonde, a penniless fugitive. The latter fact must have enabled him to believe that there were compensations in this world even for a man who defied it. There is a story told of him which aptly illustrates his cynical sense of humour. When the famous 'twelve peers' were created by Queen Anne in order that the Government might carry a certain measure in the House of Lords, Wharton nicknamed them 'the jury,' and, rising in his place in the House of Lords, inquired blandly whether the twelve voted singly or through their foreman. He was nearing the close of his life when a marquisate was conferred on him, and he maintained his influence on public affairs right to the end.

The Duke of Shrewsbury

The second viceroyalty of Ormonde having terminated, Queen Anne selected Charles Talbot, twelfth Earl and only Duke of Shrewsbury, to succeed him in 1713. It was the queen's last important appointment, and Shrewsbury carried on the Government from 1713 to 1717, spending more time in England than in Ireland, and contenting himself by staying at Dublin Castle whenever the Irish Parliament was in session. He was an interesting person in many ways. Named after Charles II. because he was the first of that king's godchildren—being born in the year of the Restoration—he passed his childhood amid Catholic influences. His mother carried on an intrigue with the Duke of Buckingham which resulted in her husband's death. According to a contemporary, Lady Shrewsbury, disguised as a page, held Buckingham's horse whilst he killed her husband in the duel that followed the discovery of her infidelity.

In 1699 Shrewsbury, who had formed one of the seven who invited William to come to England, was offered the viceroyalty, but declined it, as well as half a dozen alternative proposals made to him. He was tired of politics, and for three years—1700-02—he lived in Rome, and then travelled about the Continent. He brought back with him an Italian wife, a lady whose jealousy, ambition, and unscrupulousness shortened his life. Shrewsbury was not ambitious, but his wife was, and it is supposed that she induced him to accept the viceroyalty so that she might play at being a queen amid the indifferent and unorganized state of Dublin society. Swift, who met him very often, described him as 'the finest gentleman we have'; and William referred to him more than once as 'the King of Hearts.' Lady Shrewsbury insisted upon his keeping his Irish appointment, and, bullied by her, he did, although he neither loved nor respected her. In London the Italian sought to place herself at the head of society as the wife of His Majesty's representative, but failed decisively. Her husband became the butt of the wits; he was mercilessly ridiculed, and even the gift of the office of Lord Chamberlain, to enable him to retire from the viceroyalty, could not help him to regain his prestige. He died in 1718, and all England ascribed his premature death to his wife.

Draining the Irish exchequer

Charles Paulet, Duke of Bolton and Marquis of Winchester, accepted the vacancy, and came to Dublin in 1719 to open the Irish Parliament. This was two years after his appointment, but it was not necessary in those days for the viceroy to govern in person. He had his share of the profits of the office remitted to him in London. These consisted of the official salary and such annual sums as were due to him by persons whom he either continued in office or appointed. It is related of Lord Wharton that, despite his wealth, he insisted upon all persons nominated by him paying a commission on their salaries, and in one particular instance he agreed with a certain lawyer to make him Lord Justice at a salary of £40 a month, the latter agreeing to hand over the balance of the official allowance of £100 per month to the viceroy. Ireland was regarded as a sort of till to be robbed by viceroys and their friends. For many years it had been the practice to include the heavy expenses of the numerous mistresses of royalty in the accounts of the Government of Ireland; but most of the money came from London. Yet Ireland got the reputation of being costly and useless, while every monarch and every English statesman continued to rob the Irish Exchequer and the people. They drained the country without troubling to insure its stability and prosperity; active attempts were made and succeeded in injuring Irish industries, and the greatest sufferers were the descendants of the English settlers. By now there was no 'English colony' to uphold the viceroy's rights or wrongs, and to every Englishman a resident in Ireland was 'savage and Irish.' Dean Swift, who spent a lifetime endeavouring to disprove the—to him—terrible accusation of being Irish, was moved to declare that the Anglo-Irish families spoke the best English, and were the most civilized persons under the dominion of the English Crown. It is amusing to read his letter to Pope (July 13, 1737), in which he scornfully protests against the confusion existing in English minds concerning the 'savage old Irish' and the 'English gentry in Ireland.' Five years before this he declared to Sir Charles Wigan that the peasantry were distinguished by 'a better natural taste for good sense, humour, and raillery than ever I observed among people of the like sort in England.' Swift's attack on the English administration of Ireland was, however, not intended for the benefit of the country as a whole. He represented the 'English in Ireland,' and was fond of describing them as 'English colonists.' Whigs and Tories alike used the unfortunate country for selfish reasons, and Irish trade was ruined to appease English voters or to guard the vested interests of great noblemen. There was no purely Irish party to attack the abuses of the administration in Dublin; the leading men were placated with office, or else had to join in the scramble for emoluments, for fear that they should be left out in the cold. The Protestant Church was in the ascendancy; the Catholic hierarchy looked on complacently, leaving it to the priests to show that the Catholic religion was not altogether selfish and political. Swift himself was a typical clergyman of the Established Church, irreligious, scornful of his trust, and seeking preferment in the Church because it was the only way to power for a man of humble birth in those days.

Irish society

Dublin Castle seldom housed the viceroy, the administration being left to one or more Lords Justices who escaped criticism, provided their remittances to the absent Lord-Lieutenant were regular and satisfactory in amount. Dublin society was scarcely half formed, and consisted of beggarly exiles from England, compelled to emigrate by reason of their debts and misdeeds, the friends and relatives of the Lords Justices, obscure army officers and their kind, and a few of the wealthier citizens who could not be ignored. Those with English names affected to despise those with Irish; it was considered sheer savagery not to speak well of the Government, for the viceroy and his lady set the fashions, and not to follow them was to court ignominy and insult.

It is said that the Duke of Bolton accepted the viceroyalty out of curiosity and on the condition that the Government paid the expenses of his journey to Dublin to see the Irish. Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, and Lord Townshend had allowed themselves in 1714 and 1716 respectively to accept the post, but neither nobleman troubled to visit Ireland; and the Duke of Bolton was regarded with a certain amount of admiration for his pluck and fortitude in surrendering the delights of London for the uncivilization of Dublin. Charles Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, a descendant of Charles II., became Lord-Lieutenant in 1721, and tasted some of the sweets of sovereignty as the representative of the king, whose occupancy of the throne meant the extinction of the Stuarts.

Grafton came to Ireland with no intention of overworking himself in the service of the State, and he was, therefore, disagreeably surprised when he found himself in the midst of a political turmoil. Dean Swift's satire was stinging everybody, irrespective of position or class. Roused by him, the people were actually protesting against the newest form of English tyranny, and they even dared to scream insults at the gilded fop as he drove about the city. It was the irony of fate that all the trouble should be caused by the king's fondness for his mistress. Grafton, however, was averse to facing a crisis; he was better in London—far from the maddening Irish—and when Grafton retired with alacrity in 1723, the Government decided to send John, Lord Carteret, to carry out their policy. The descendant of Charles II. was not eager to battle for the vindication of a policy arising out of the turgid German morals of the oddest figure that ever sat on the throne of England. King George's failing was that he possessed appetite without appreciation; he wanted the best, and yet never recognized it when he had it.