CHAPTER I
Confiscations and Penal Laws—The Iron Rule of Lord Strafford
THE first Anglo-Irish Parliament held within a period of twenty-seven years was summoned to meet in Dublin on May 18, 1613, and, notwithstanding the Act of Uniformity, it would appear that quite a large number of Catholics, styled in the language of the times “recusants,” because of their opposition to the spiritual supremacy of the king, were elected to serve in that body. They would have had a majority but for the creation of some forty “boroughs,” each entitled to a member, under the patronage of some Protestant peer. This was the beginning of that “rotten borough” system which finally led to the abolition of the sectarian Irish Parliament of after times. Scenes of great disorder occurred in this Parliament of 1613, chiefly occasioned by the intolerant, and even violent, proceedings of the anti-Catholic party, unreasonable bigots, having an eye to the main chance in the matter of confiscated property, to whom the presence of any “Papist” in that body was as gall and wormwood. This bitter prejudice led finally to the utter exclusion of all Catholics from the Anglo-Irish Parliament, and even the few Catholic commoners previously entitled to a vote were deprived of that privilege, or rather right, until the last decade of the eighteenth century. Still, the Catholic minority in the Parliament of 1613 succeeded in preventing ultra-tyrannical legislation, and, really, made the first stand for the constitutional rights of Ireland, from the colonial standpoint. It was finally adjourned in October, 1615, and no other Parliament was called to meet in Ireland until 1635, when Charles I had already been ten years on the throne. “Government,” meanwhile, had been carried on arbitrarily, without constitutional restraint of any kind, as under the Tudor sovereigns—only with far less ability. The Tudors, at least—particularly Henry and Elizabeth—were intellectual tyrants, which their immediate successors were not. Never was so shameful a system of public spoliation carried out as in the reigns of James I, and his equally despotic, and still more unscrupulous, son Charles I. The viceroy was not responsible to any power whatever, except that of the English monarch. Chichester was succeeded by Lord Grandison, and under his régime the infamous “Commission for the Discovery of Defective Titles” was organized, of which the surveyor-general, Sir William Parsons, ancestor of the Earls of Rosse, was the head. This Commission, “aided by a horde of clerkly spies, employed under the name of Discoverers (McGee), ransacked Old Irish tenures in the archives of Dublin and London with such good effect, that in a very short time 66,000 acres in Wicklow and 385,000 acres in Leitrim, Longford, the Meaths, and Kings and Queens Counties were ‘found by inquisition to be vested in the crown.’ The means employed by the Commissioners in some cases to elicit such evidence as they required were of the most revolting description. In the Wicklow case, courts-martial were held, before which unwilling witnesses were tried on charge of treason, and some actually put to death. Archer, one of the number, had his flesh burned with red-hot iron, and was placed on a gridiron over a charcoal fire till he offered to testify anything that was necessary. Yet on evidence so obtained, whole counties and towns were declared forfeited to the crown.” (Ibid.) Is it any wonder, therefore, that a people so scourged, plundered, and degraded should cherish in their hearts fierce thoughts of reprisal when opportunity offered? These wholesale land robberies were not confined to the Celtic Irish alone, but were practiced on all Irishmen, of whatever descent, who professed the Catholic faith. Add to these the bitter memories of the murder and persecution of many bishops and innumerable priests and communicants of that faith, and the only wonder is that the Irish Catholic people of the seventeenth, and most of the succeeding, century, retained any of the milder and nobler characteristics of the human family. They were stripped of their property, education, civil rights, and, in short, of all that makes life worth living, including freedom of conscience—that dearest privilege of a people naturally idealistic and devotional. The idea of religious toleration never seems to have entered into the minds of what may be called the “professional Protestant” ascendency, except, as we have seen, for purposes of diplomacy which tended to weaken and divide Irish national opposition to foreign rule. In addition to the grievances we have enumerated, the office of Master of Wards was bestowed upon Sir William Parsons, and thus “the minor heirs of all the Catholic proprietors were placed, both as to, person and property, at the absolute disposal of one of the most intense anti-Catholic bigots that ever appeared on the scene of Irish affairs.” (McGee.) This was one of the pernicious influences that, not for conscience’ sake, but for sordid gain, changed the religion of so many of the ancient families of Ireland from the old to the new form of belief; and no English policy was more bitterly resented and vengefully remembered by the Irish Catholic masses. And because of this dishonest system of proselytizing, carried on by one process or another from the period of the Reformation to the reign of Victoria, the Irish Catholic peasant has associated “conversion” of any of his neighbors to the Protestant belief with personal degradation. The Irish Catholic peasant has no feeling but that of utter contempt and aversion for a “turn-coat” Catholic; but he is most liberal in his feelings toward all Protestants “to the manor born,” as has been frequently and emphatically manifested by his choice of Protestant leaders, from Grattan to Parnell. Whatever of religious bigotry may linger in the warm heart of the Catholic peasant may be justly charged to outrageous misgovernment, not to his natural disposition, which, in the main, is both loving and charitable. The faults we can trace in the Irish character to-day are partially those of human nature, which averages much the same in all civilized peoples, but many of them, and the gravest, can be attributed, without undue prejudice, to the odious penal laws which were sufficient to distort the characteristics of angels, not to speak of mortal men.
Charles I, of England, was a thorough Stuart in despotic character, wavering policy, base ingratitude, and fatuous obstinacy. His reign was to furnish to Ireland one of the most consummate tyrants and highway robbers that ever cursed a country with his cruelty and greed. This moral monster was the infamous Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose “tiger jaws” closed on the unfortunate country with the grip of a dragon. This dishonorable “noble” counseled King Charles to commit an act of moral delinquency which, in our day, would be rightly, if coarsely, called “a confidence game.” The Irish Catholics, in convention assembled, had drawn up a sort of Bill of Rights, which they urged the king to confirm, and agreed to pay into the royal treasury the sum of £100,000, which they could ill spare, to show their “loyalty,” and also, no doubt, to influence Charles, who, like all of his family, dearly loved money, to grant “the graces” prayed for. Strafford advised the base king to take the money, but to manage matters so that the concessions he had solemnly promised should never go into effect! And the ignominious Stuart actually acted on the advice of this ignoble mentor. And so the poor Irish Catholic “gentry” lost both their money and their “concessions.” When we read this chapter of Irish history, we are tempted to feel less sympathy for the fate of Charles I, who was afterward sold to Cromwell and the English Parliament by the Scottish mercenary army of General Leslie, with which the king had taken shelter, for back pay, amounting to £200,000 (see Sir Walter Scott’s “Tales of a Grandfather”). This miserable monarch so far degraded himself, further, as to cause writs for the election of a Parliament to grant the Catholic claims issued in Ireland, but privately instructed Lord Falkland to have the documents informally prepared, so that the election might prove invalid; and, meanwhile, his Lords Justices went on confiscating Catholic property in Ireland and persecuting prelates, priests, and people almost as savagely as in the worst days of Mountjoy and Chichester. Strafford came to Ireland as Lord Deputy in July, 1633, and entered at once on his “thorough” policy, as he called it; and, to prepare himself for the task he had set himself to perform, he through the “Lords Justices” extracted a “voluntary contribution” of £20,000 additional out of the terrorized Catholic “nobility and gentry” of the “sister” island, who, no doubt, wrung it, in turn, out of the sweat of the faces of their peasant retainers. But this was a mere bagatelle to what followed. He compelled Ireland to pay subsidies to the amount of £200,000 in 1634, and imposed £100,000 more in the succeeding year. He carried the war of wholesale confiscation into Connaught, and compelled grand juries, specially “packed” for the work, to give the King of England title to the three great counties of Mayo, Sligo, and Roscommon. The grand jury of Galway County refused to return such a verdict. They were summoned to the court of the Castle Chamber in Dublin, and sentenced to pay a fine of £4,000 each to the crown. The sheriff who empaneled them was fined £1,000. (McGee.) The very lawyers who pleaded for the actual proprietors were stripped of their gowns; “the sheriff died in prison and the work of spoliation proceeded.” (Ibid.) Similar, if not quite so general, robberies went on in Kildare, Kilkenny, Cork, and other counties. It must be said, however, that Strafford was, in a manner, impartial, and robbed, his master granting full approval, without distinction of creed. We can not help feeling thankful that the London companies which swallowed, in the reign of King James, the lands of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, were compelled by “Black Tom,” as the earl was nicknamed, to pay £70,000 “for the use of the king.” Out of all this plunder, and much more beside, Strafford was enabled to maintain in Ireland 10,000 infantry and 1,000 excellently equipped horse, “for the service of his royal master.” When this great robber visited London in 1639, fresh from his crimes in Ireland, the king, on whom so much ill-deserved sympathy has been wasted, assured him, in person, that his actions in Ireland had his (Charles’) “most cordial approval” (McGee), and even urged the earl to “proceed fearlessly in the same course.” To still further mark his approbation of Strafford’s policy, the king promoted him to the rank of Viceroy of Ireland. Strafford took the king at his word and did proceed so fearlessly in Ireland that his name of terror has been overshadowed in that country by only one other—that of Oliver Cromwell. Every Parliament called to meet by the tyrant in the conquered country—for so the earl regarded Ireland—was used simply as an instrument wherewith to extort still more tribute from the impoverished Irish people. This terrible despot, having accomplished his deadly mission in Ireland, returned to England and there, as before, became chief adviser to the weak and wicked monarch. He counseled the latter to ignore, as far as he dared, the action of Parliament, and was imprudent enough to remark that he (Strafford) had an army in Ireland to support the royal will. He was, soon afterward, impeached by the House of Commons, led by stern John Pym, for treasonable acts in seeking to change the constitutional form of the English Government. This method of procedure was abandoned, however, and Parliament passed a bill of attainder, to which the “false, fleeting, perjured” Charles, frightened by popular clamor, which accused himself of being implicated in a plot to admit soldiers to the Tower for the rescue of Strafford, gave the “royal assent.” The earl, on learning this, placed a hand upon his heart and exclaimed, “Put not your trust in Princes!” And thus the master he had but too faithfully served consigned Strafford to the block. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, May 12, 1641. When the hour of his similar doom approached, nearly eight years thereafter, Charles said that the only act of his reign he repented of was giving his assent to the bill which deprived his favorite minister of life.
Some Irish historians, McGee of the number, claim that, outside of his land robberies and tributary exactions, the Earl of Strafford made an able ruler of Ireland, and that trade and commerce flourished under his sway. While this may be, to a certain extent, true, nothing can palliate the crimes against justice and liberty of which he was guilty. He was only a degree less contemptible than the treacherous master who finally betrayed and abandoned him.