FOOTNOTES:
[10] Hugh O’Neill to Ormonde, October 27, 1660, enclosed in Bennet’s letter of same date, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 226. The Breda declaration is in his Hist. of the Rebellion, xvi. 193, and in Somers Tracts, vii. 394.
[11] Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 209, 221.
[12] The Declaration of November 30, 1660, is incorporated with the Act of Settlement, 1662, 14 & 15 Car. II, cap. 2, which occupies 109 folio pages of the Irish Statutes.
[13] Irish Statutes, i. 252-260, sections 16 to 28 of the Declaration. Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 233.
[14] Sections 11 to 15 and 20 of the Declaration, ut sup.
[15] Sections 12-15, 29, 31 and 35 of the Declaration, ut sup.
[16] The names of the first Commissioners are in the Act of Settlement, Irish Statutes, ii. 264. Eustace to Ormonde, July 29, August 17 and 21, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi.; Lord Aungier to same, May 1, ib. The King to the Lords Justices, April 12, 1661, State Papers, Ireland. The persons ordered to be restored by the Lords Justices were Lords Clancarty, Clanricarde, Westmeath, Fingall, Dillon, Taaffe, and Galmoy, Colonel Richard Butler (Ormonde’s brother), and Colonel Fitzpatrick. The first and the last of these were married to Ormonde’s sisters, but it appears from the Act of Explanation that there had been a hitch in the cases of Lords Westmeath and Dillon and of Colonel Butler.
[17] Orrery to Ormonde, May 8 and 15, 1661, in Orrery’s State Letters, i. 35, 36. Jeremy Taylor’s sermon on May 8, Works, vi. 343; Lord Kingston to Ormonde, May 5 and 8, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi.; Irish Lords Journal, vol. i., May 8-25, Commons Journal, vol. i., May 8-17, Mervyn’s speech being in full; Declaration of Lords spiritual and temporal, May 17, separately printed for circulation.
[18] Irish Lords and Commons Journals, May to July 1661. Eustace to Ormonde, July 29, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. Montgomery to Ormonde, June 29, and Kildare to same, ib. There is an elaborate but not very clear account of all this in Carte’s Ormonde, book vi.
[19] Instructions incorporated in the Act of Settlement, 1662, no. 11, Irish Statutes, i. 269.
[20] Mountrath to Ormonde, June 19, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi.; Heneage Finch’s report, February 1, 1670-1, printed in Carte’s Ormonde, ii. appx. 91, p. 75. Finch is a first-rate authority for everything that happened in London.
[21] The Doubling Ordinance of July 14, 1643, in Scobell, i. 45, repudiated by section 126 of the Act of Settlement. Lord Aungier to Ormonde, April 17, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. Ormonde’s letter in full in Carte’s Ormonde, vol. ii. In his letter of June 1 to Ormonde Bellings says not one per cent. would regain their property ‘and yet they shall seem not to be excluded from all possibility of enjoying it when that imaginary thing a reprisal is found,’ Spicilegium Ossoriense, ii. 189.
[22] Order in Council, March 14, 1661-2, in Cox, supplementary letter, p. 5. Instructions to the Confederate envoys in Confederation and War, vi. 223-227. In the letter already quoted Bellings gives credit to Ormonde for having saved as many of the old proprietors as he could. He confines his sympathies to the ‘ancient families’ and warns Ormonde that it cannot be for a Butler’s interest to see the land possessed by ‘a generation of mechanic bagmen who are strangers to all principles of religion and loyalty.’
[23] Warrant for Ormonde’s appointment, November 4, 1661, State Papers, Ireland; Orrery and Eustace to Nicholas, December 19, ib., Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 234-238. On this occasion Clarendon gives one of his rare dates, and it is wrong, 1664 instead of 1662. Irish Lords and Commons Journals, December 6 and 7, 1661.
[24] Irish Commons Journal, March 6, 1661-2. Act of Settlement, 14 & 15 Car. II. cap. 2, from clause 86 to the end. For the harshness with which the Duke of York’s claims were enforced and the character of the men employed in the work see the letters printed in the 32nd Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, appx. i. pp. 170-181, particularly Colonel Cooke to Ormonde, June 6, 1668.
[25] Irish Commons Journals, May-July 1662. Orrery to Ormonde, May 17 and June 20, in his State Letters, i. 111, 123. The Bill of Settlement passed the Lords on May 30, 1662, without a dissentient voice. Forty-one peers were considered present, but of these twenty-three were proxies. Those who actually attended were three Archbishops; three Earls, Kildare, Roscommon, and Donegal; three Viscounts, Conway, Baltinglas, and Massereene; seven Bishops; two Barons, Caulfield and Colooney—Irish Lords Journal.
[26] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 257. Clarendon’s letter of July 17 in his Life by Lister, iii. 208.
[27] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 272. Burnet, ii. 99. Clarendon State Papers, iii. 81 (supplement). The letter in which Ormonde explained the State of the Land Question to Bennet when the Court of Claims had just ceased to give decrees is printed as an appendix.
[28] Lord Roscommon, the poet, made an eloquent speech for Clanmalier in the Irish House of Lords. The intrigues about this property may be followed in the Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1662-5, but the letters are too numerous to cite separately. That from Lord Aungier, calendared at April 2, 1662, must, I think, belong to 1663. Aungier, who possessed some of the land as an Adventurer, says all the Commissioners favoured Bennet: he was himself protected by law. Act of Explanation, sections 78 and 79. Dunlop’s Ireland under the Commonwealth, i. 154.
[CHAPTER XLII]
COURT OF CLAIMS AND ACT OF EXPLANATION, 1662-1665
The Court of Claims.
While Ormonde was on his way to Ireland the King appointed seven Commissioners for carrying out the Bill of Settlement as soon as it should become an Act. Great care was taken in choosing these, and Clarendon assures us that it would have been impossible to get fitter men. The first named was Henry Coventry, well known in the history of the time. Sir Edward Dering of Kent, a very good man of business, was second. The third was Sir Richard Rainsford, serjeant-at-law and afterwards a judge in England. Sir Thomas Beverley, one of the King’s remembrancers, was the fourth. Sir Edward Smith, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, came next, and was followed by Colonel Edward Cooke. The last named was Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough. Coventry was too useful at Court to be left long in Ireland, and after a few months he was recalled and replaced by the Surveyor-General Sir Alan Brodrick. Before the Commissioners could sit to hear claims of innocence, rules of procedure had to be made and a vast amount of preliminary work done. Petty’s Down Survey was used for the purposes of the settlement, his cousin John acting as Brodrick’s deputy. The Court of Claims was formally opened on September 20, its powers under the Act of Settlement and an amending Act being limited to one year from that date. The Lord Lieutenant was empowered by the Instructions to issue subsidiary commissions, and one to enquire into the value of estates restorable or reprisable was issued to independent persons, and another to Anglesey, Sankey and others, in conjunction with Coventry and his colleagues, to investigate frauds and irregularities in the distribution of lands beyond Shannon under the Cromwellian Government.[29]
Innocents and Nocents.
The Commons dissatisfied.
The result of the first day spent by the Commissioners in hearing claimants was that two were declared innocent and one nocent. ‘If,’ said Ormonde, ‘the lottery would hold out so to the end of their commission it would prove no ill one for the Irish,’ and they accordingly began to indulge in extravagant hopes. The more violent among them declared that Orrery and the other leaders who had restored the King should be rooted out as heretics and damned traitors as soon as the army became ‘Catholic loyal.’ It was said, probably with truth, that many forged conveyances were produced and admitted by the Court. There was angry consternation among the Adventurers and soldiers who did not believe in the impartiality of the Commissioners. The House of Commons, meeting after a short recess, lost no time in giving a voice to the prevailing discontent. Ormonde had forwarded the explanatory Bill as desired, but it was altered in England, and when it came back was, as he foretold, promptly thrown out by the Commons on the motion for a second reading. ‘When,’ he wrote to Clarendon, ‘anybody of credit among these people finds himself like to be pinched in his interest he causes a cry to be raised that all is lost to the English and that the Irish be their masters.’ Timid people sold their goods and departed, while the alarmists stayed and got cheap bargains. Monks and friars added to the panic by holding chapters as openly as in Spain, while prudent Roman Catholics would have liked a sharp proclamation against the regulars as a protection to themselves. The House of Commons were bent on making the Act of Settlement more stringent, and unanimously agreed to twenty proposals for the purpose. Founding an argument upon the last clause of the Act which gave the Lord Lieutenant power to alter the procedure of the Commissioners before a date which had already passed, they called upon him to define the English quarters as existing from time to time until he left Ireland in 1647, no witnesses outside the line being admitted to prove innocence, since the rest of the island was assumed to be rebels’ quarters. Another proposal was that no claimant once adjudged nocent should be allowed to make any other claim. Ormonde was asked to admit a committee of the House to confer with a committee of the Council, the action of the Commissioners being suspended in the interim. The House of Commons had of course no jurisdiction over the Court of Claims, and Clarendon reported that the King was ‘horribly angry’ at their presumption in seeking to treat with the Council.[30]
Speaker Mervyn represents the malcontents.
Titles not regarded as permanently valid.
Though fully determined not to yield to parliamentary pressure, Ormonde promised that the proposals of the House should have ‘such speedy answer as the weight and number of these would permit.’ The Lord Lieutenant was treated with respect throughout, but the Speaker’s speech on the occasion was not conciliatory in substance. The Act of Settlement, he said, was the Irish Magna Charta and not to be infringed in any way: ‘our strength lies in this as Sampson’s in his locks; if those be cut we are as weak as others when the Philistines shall fall upon us.... I shall never forget that expression of His Majesty at a full council "my justice I must afford to you all, but my favour must be placed upon my Protestant subjects."’ He descanted with some force upon the anomalous powers of the Commissioners who both found the facts and laid down the law. The House of Commons asked for juries, since they were certain to be composed of Protestant freeholders. Mervyn clearly understood that Irish claims would still be made whatever law or lawyers might say, and to defeat them proposed to impound all nocents’ title-deeds. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘in the North of Ireland, the Irish have a custom in the winter, when milk is scarce, to kill the calf and preserve the skin, and stuffing it with straw they set it upon four wooden feet which they call a Puckan, and the cow will be as fond of this as she was of the living calf; she will low after it and lick it and give her milk down, so it stands but by her. Sir, these writings will have the operation of this Puckan, for wanting the land to which they relate they are but stuffed with straw, yet, sir, they will low after them, lick them over and over in their thoughts, and teach their children to read by them instead of horn-books. And if any venom be left they will give it down upon the sight of these puckan writings, and entail a memory of revenge, though the estate tail be cut off.’ This was prophetic: for many generations and perhaps even to this day obsolete title-deeds were handed about, though useless for any purpose but to make property insecure and to perpetuate the memory of wrongs long past.[31]
The Court of Claims satisfied no one.
The Commissioners continued to sit during the spring and summer of 1663, but no one was satisfied, and the sheriffs made difficulties about executing their decrees unless they were backed by the ordinary courts of law. The time for hearing claims expired in August, when it was estimated that only one-sixth of the applicants had been heard, but that 800,000 acres had been restored to them. Many Protestants sought decrees of innocence, as a precaution no doubt, for Ormonde and Cork were among them. In March the Lord Lieutenant sent an answer to the Speaker reproaching the Commons with having caused general insecurity so that many English Protestants had been frightened into ‘selling their lots and adventures at vile and under rates, or compounding with the old proprietors on very ill terms.’ He announced the discovery of a plot by so-called Protestants to seize the Castle, and the Commons could only resolve to live and die with His Grace. Average politicians might be a little startled at the military conspiracy, but what they really feared was quite different, and they presented bills for the suppression of the Popish hierarchy and for imposing the oaths of supremacy and allegiance upon all officials and others in positions of trust. Five days later the House adjourned for six weeks, but before the time had expired the Lord Lieutenant prorogued Parliament by proclamation and it did not meet again for more than two years. Both he and the King were almost tempted to dissolve at once, and he was empowered to do so at his own discretion.[32]
Discontent among soldiers.
Many cavaliers served the Parliament.
Ireland could not be governed without a standing army, and the cost of maintaining one, even on the most reduced scale, made it impossible to balance the public accounts. As there was no money to spare in England, the force upon which everything depended was irregularly paid and of course discontented. Ormonde refused to be coerced by hot-headed cavaliers into discharging all officers and men who had served the Protector, though he weeded them as closely as possible. Those who were discharged all remained in the country. A wholesale proscription would affect nearly all the English in Ireland, ‘and many of your own party,’ he told the King, ‘were forced by the persecution that followed them in England to shelter themselves in Ireland, and as they were able to make friends, to get into the army some as inferior officers, some as private soldiers.’ The revolutionary politicians thought it safer to get them out of England even on these terms. They were Royalists all along, and showed it when the time came. Many who never served against the King and some who had actually fought for him in England, ‘their interest and detestation of the Irish assisting their mistake,’ thought they might conscientiously oppose him when treaties with the rebels were being made in his name. They also believed, or wished to believe, that the late King had handed over the whole war to the Parliament once for all. National feeling and the folly of the clerical party made them receive Cromwell in certain towns, but they had since repented. He declined to cashier such men, though he took care to admit no recruits that had not a clear record. There were therefore heads to conspire and plenty of hands to execute, but Ormonde was aware that the plot in the North of England had sympathisers in Ireland. It was reported that Ludlow had returned to put himself at the head of the malcontents, and the Ulster Presbyterians might have been goaded by the bishops into rebellion. Spies were not wanting, and Colonel Vernon, Henry Cromwell’s old antagonist, made himself very useful. Robert Shapcote, representing the borough of Wicklow, was arrested as a ringleader, and the House of Commons could not interfere during prorogation. It does not appear that more than two or three Presbyterian clergymen were in any way concerned, nor any of the more responsible sectaries. Ormonde’s suspicions fell, perhaps not unnaturally, upon Henry Cromwell’s old chaplain, Stephen Charnock, but there seems no reason to suppose that he was implicated, and in any case he eluded all attempts to arrest him either in England or Ireland.[33]
The Castle plot.
A Puritan visionary.
The villain of the piece was Thomas Blood, owner or former owner of a small property at Sarney, near Dunboyne, in Meath, whose mysterious life has never been fully cleared up but who is known to students of history and to readers of ‘Peveril of the Peak’ as the man who stole the crown in the Tower and tried to kidnap the Duke of Ormonde at the top of St. James’s Street. Plenty of dupes were to be had among the unpaid soldiery and the settlers who were likely to lose their lands through the action of the Court of Claims. One of these, Colonel Alexander Jephson, member of Parliament for Trim, disclosed the whole plot to Sir Theophilus Jones two days before the time fixed for its execution. Jones was living at Lucan, of which he disputed the ownership with the Sarsfield family, and was walking near the bridge looking at Colonel Jeffreys’ troop when Jephson appeared and asked him about his land case. Jones said the trial was fixed for June 17, and that he hoped to succeed. Jephson said he would be beaten but would recover the estate in 7000 years. After this apocalyptic speech he asked for a private interview, distrusting Jeffreys, who had been heard to say that the Commissioners were just men. They went into the House together, Jones promising secrecy provided his visitor’s suggestions were just and honest. Jephson laid his hand on his sword, which he had not worn for thirteen years, declared that he and his friends were going to Dublin ‘resolved to adventure their lives’ for the preservation of the English. Having a wife and thirteen children he had taken the precaution to make a will, but had no doubt of being able to seize Dublin Castle, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Clonmel. The conspirators had plenty of money ready in Dublin, some of which probably came from Holland, and 20,000 Scots excommunicated by the Bishop of Down and other prelates were ready to take the field in two days. The regular army would doubtless follow as soon as they had circulated their scheme, of which thousands of copies were already in print. Sir Henry Ingoldsby would appear in Dublin at the head of 1000 horse as soon as the revolutionary flag was hoisted on the Castle. All soldiers who joined would have their arrears at once paid in full, and all the English would be restored to their lands as they stood on May 7, 1659. The solemn league and covenant would be enforced once more with the help of many sympathising ministers who then went about in periwigs, and no popery would be tolerated. Jephson was to arrest Clancarty and Fitzpatrick, and the Lord Lieutenant to be civilly treated as a prisoner. There was to be no bloodshed and no plunder, but by peaceful means he had no doubt that they would have everything in their power long before seven thousand years. Jones himself was to be Generalissimo. Sir Theophilus wrote everything down at once and the next morning carried the news to Ormonde.[34]
Philip Alden, one of the chief conspirators, gave full information, and his escape from the Castle was probably connived at. He was an old adherent of Ludlow and kept up a correspondence with him to prevent suspicion.
Failure of the plot.
Escape of Blood.
The 21st of May, after at least one postponement, was fixed for the attack on the Castle. Blood’s plan, which he had been nine months hatching, was for six men to enter by the main gate at six in the morning and make their way to the back entrance in Ship Street, where some confederates were to be in waiting with a basket of bread. The loaves were to be dropped at the gate and in the confusion Blood was to rush in with 100 men and make himself master of the Castle. Nearly 300 old officers would be ready to clear the streets. The conspirators met about nine o’clock the night before at the White Hart in Patrick Street, where it was intended that there should be a large gathering before morning, but the landlady took fright and declared that if they did not disperse she would give the alarm to the Lord Lieutenant. This seems to have prevented the attempt, but Ormonde was already warned and prepared for any event. Blood escaped through Ulster and a proclamation appeared at once announcing the discovery of the plot, followed two days later by another, in which several conspirators were named and 100l. offered for the apprehension of any one of them. Many arrests were made, and the excited state of feeling may be gathered from what happened when the first batch of prisoners were arraigned. A soldier was killed by a musket accidentally discharged outside, and the fear of a rescue caused such a panic that the judges were near leaving the bench. Jephson was found guilty along with Colonel Edward Warren, Captain Thompson, and a Presbyterian clergyman named Lecky. The first three were executed a few days later, Jephson making a full confession and laying all blame on the vile Papists. Again there was an alarm and great confusion, the tradesmen beginning to shut up their shops, but the Sheriff and his guard restored order so that Warren’s speech could be heard. He talked of the good old cause ‘which now lieth in the dust and some days would have terrified the greatest monarchs.’ Thompson also spoke, saying he was fooled by Blood, praying for the King and dying a Church of England man.[35]
Presbyterians only slightly implicated.
The Rev. William Lecky, who was Blood’s brother-in-law, feigned madness after conviction so that sentence of death could not be passed on him. He perhaps hoped that Massereene and Speaker Mervyn would be willing and able to protect him, but if so he was disappointed. After nearly six months’ confinement he escaped out of Newgate prison disguised as a woman, his fetters having been filed off by two men also in female attire, but was caught again, sentenced, and hanged. His efforts to bring other Presbyterian ministers into the plot had little success, great as the discontent was. Many of them suffered detention, but only two, Andrew McCormick and John Crookshanks, seem to have been really implicated. They fled to Scotland and were both killed at Rullion Green in 1666. The most important person affected in Ulster was Major Alexander Staples, by whose means the conspirators hoped to possess Londonderry. Staples was in prison for a year, but having been active in the King’s restoration he received a pardon, and the same indulgence was extended to Shapcote, by whose example he had been guided. In Munster there was an attempt to tamper with the soldiers, but Orrery, with the help of his kinsman the Bishop of Cork, had no difficulty in dealing with the malcontents. In Connaught it was reported that Ludlow had actually arrived, and some suspected officers fitted out a ship nominally to search for the enchanted island of Brasil. They were taken at the Arran islands and discharged as ‘ridiculously enthusiastic’ dupes. Ludlow was at Vevay all the time, though rumours of his coming were rife long afterwards. He was in constant danger from Royalist assassins, one of whom, an Irishman named Riordan, ultimately succeeded in killing John Lisle.[36]
The Marquis of Antrim’s case.
Nothing caused more alarm among the Adventurers and the English generally than the judgment of the Commissioners declaring Antrim innocent. Much of his property was in possession of Massereene and of other soldiers and Adventurers who knew how to make themselves heard, and the case may have had something to say to the Castle plot. Within the meaning of the Act of Settlement Antrim was certainly not innocent, for he had lived long in the rebels’ quarters, worked for Rinuccini against Ormonde, and afterwards been Cromwell’s pensioner. He had, however, raised men who formed the nucleus of Montrose’s force, though he did not go with them himself as agreed, and though the number fell far short of what he had promised. He had been ruined by his extravagance at Court long before 1641, and his creditors, some of whom were secured by a mortgage, naturally maintained that if the men in possession were put out their claims should be preferred to those of the nominal owner. At first there was no inclination to treat Antrim favourably, and when he came to London soon after the Restoration he was imprisoned in the Tower by the King’s special order at the instance of the Commissioners of the Irish Convention, who impugned his conduct during the war, and he was also charged with having libelled the late King by suggesting his complicity in the Irish rebellion. His creditors would have arrested him if the Government had not. No evidence was offered, and at the end of March 1661 bail was accepted for his appearance before the Irish Council, Lords Moore, Dillon, and Taaffe being bound for him in the sum of 20,000l. He appeared in Dublin accordingly, was under restraint there for a short time, and was then bailed by orders from England. All the documents were forwarded and the case was committed by the Irish Council to Attorney-General Domvile and Solicitor-General Temple.[37]
Queen Henrietta Maria favours Antrim.
Charles had at first refused to see Antrim and showed no disposition to favour him. By the Act of Settlement he was placed on the same footing as Lord Netterville, who had to go before the Commissioners and failed to obtain a decree of innocence. Pressure in his favour was however applied by Queen Henrietta Maria, acting no doubt under the influence of Jermyn, now Earl of St. Albans. At first her advocacy had not much effect, and she was too cautious to write strongly in her own name though she entreated Ormonde to ‘forsake in part his own sense which will most singularly oblige her.’ She was above all anxious that the case should be entirely settled in England. Antrim had been sent to Ireland nevertheless, and when it was proposed to pass a special Act in his favour, Ormonde found his whole Council against it and declared that there was not the slightest chance of getting such a measure through the House of Commons. Moreover, Antrim had put in his claim of innocence. If he succeeded, no further legislation was wanted; if he failed, an Act to exonerate him would be unjust to other Adventurers and soldiers. An investigation was made by a Committee of the English Privy Council, of which both Clarendon and St. Albans were members. Ormonde and Anglesey, who best knew what could be said against Antrim, were absent in Ireland, and the report was favourable to him. The Chancellor, who admitted that he had always disliked him, did not think that he could be rightly condemned ‘except you have somewhat against him which we do not know; and that it is strange that you have never sent the information to us; for we know the King was not more inclined towards him than law and justice required.’ As it was, and in the absence of further information from the Irish Council, His Majesty wrote to them declaring his belief in Antrim’s innocency and desiring them to transmit his letters to the Commissioners. Several documents, he said, had been produced which showed that the late King was ‘well pleased with what the marquess had done, after he had done it, and approved the same.’ He added that Antrim’s English creditors were very unwilling to lose their security by leaving his great estate in the hands of Adventurers and soldiers ‘who have advanced very small sums thereon.’ The Lord Lieutenant and Council hesitated to transmit the letter to the Commissioners on the ground that the King had not all the facts before him, that Antrim had notoriously sided with the nuncio, prevented the Confederates from sending the stipulated 10,000 men to England, and opposed the peaces of 1646 and 1648. Antrim’s friends at Court then procured a second letter from the King addressed to the Commissioners of Claims directly, but containing the same matter as the first, and so matters stood when the case came on for hearing.[38]
A King’s letter held superior to an Act of Parliament.
Rainsford presided in the Court of Claims, and wished to find Antrim innocent at once upon the King’s letter only and without hearing any evidence. Dering objected to this, and the case proceeded, but Rainsford frequently interrupted saying that it was waste of time and that the letter covered all. At last it was proposed first to refer the case back to the King, then to adjourn it, and then to give further time for the production of the Council’s answer to the King’s letter. All these expedients were rejected by a majority and Antrim was adjudged innocent by four votes to three. According to the evidence he was clearly disqualified under the Act of Settlement which the Commissioners were sworn to administer, and their decree rested entirely on the King’s letter.[39]
‘Murder will out.’
Antrim is restored.
At the moment of this trial Roger Lestrange was appointed surveyor of the press, and his attention was very soon attracted to a pamphlet printed in London but sent from Ireland under the title of ‘Murder will out,’ in which it is maintained that ‘the King’s letter takes all imputations from Antrim and lays them totally upon his own father.’ The writer, whose name has never become known, said he was a young man and may well have been one of the junior counsel present. There can be no doubt that Charles I. did often communicate with the Irish through Antrim, but there is no evidence of his complicity in the rebellion itself, though he may have been quite ready to use and increase Strafford’s army and to make himself master of Dublin during the months preceding the actual outbreak. The pamphlet, however, made a great stir in England and was very useful to the extreme Protestant party. Charles was much in the habit of signing important papers without knowing their contents, but he now had this important letter read over to him in full Council along with the hostile petition of the Adventurers and soldiers. Ormonde had already complained that the restoration of over 100,000 acres to Antrim would falsify all calculations as to the amount of land available, nor could he naturally be much inclined to favour the man who had thwarted him on every possible occasion during the Irish war. Ultimately Antrim regained his estate through a proviso in the Act of Explanation, repudiating the decree of innocence, and setting forth that the marquis had since pleaded guilty to prevent a new trial. Certain quit-rents imposed by that measure—and on such an enormous tract of land they must have amounted to a considerable sum—were granted by the King to St. Albans, and no doubt that was the reward for Henrietta Maria’s interference. Her favourite is described by Evelyn as having ‘lived a most easy life, in plenty even abroad, while his Majesty was a sufferer ... a prudent old courtier and much enriched since his Majesty’s return.’[40]
The Bill of Explanation.
The first Bill of Explanation promoted by the Irish Parliament having been promptly rejected by the English Government, Ormonde and his Council were directed to prepare another. This was drawn by Rainsford and sent away at the end of September. Amendments to it followed a few days later, and Rainsford, who apparently had not had exactly his own way, sent over a separate draft by the same messenger. Consideration of the Bill was deferred until Sir Thomas Clarges arrived with these additional papers, but Richard Talbot gave out that the delay was his doing. Rainsford, Beverley, and Brodrick were sent for at once, and Churchill was allowed to follow at the end of the year. The Bill came before the Council in the middle of November, and was explained by Finch. Sir Nicholas Plunket was at once heard in reply, but admitted that the Solicitor-General had anticipated most of his objections. After this, though there was much discussion in Council, the Bill hung fire for months. Bristol’s attack on Clarendon and the stress of parliamentary work generally delayed the despatch of Irish business and gave time for countless intrigues. ‘There are very few,’ Clarendon told Ormonde, ‘who have spent a few months in Ireland and return hither who do not understand Ireland and the several interests there better than you.’ All parties were heard by April 1664, and as Clarendon had long foreseen the King then found it necessary to send for the Lord Lieutenant. He went over accordingly in May, leaving his son Ossory as Deputy. Orrery reached London about the same time, and for some months the scene of action was there, while Ossory kept Ireland quiet without much difficulty. ‘He is winningly civil to all,’ his grandmother wrote ‘and yet keeps that distance that belongs to his place, and manages his affairs with judgment and care.’[41]
Object of the Bill.
Dissatisfaction of Clarendon.
The Act of Explanation was not intended to alter anything in the Act of Settlement, but only to clear up doubts and supply omissions. Ormonde repeatedly declared that almost any permanent arrangement would be better than none, Ireland being a prey to uncertainty in the meantime. There was not land enough to satisfy everybody and it was necessary that each party should sacrifice something. In Ireland the English party had agreed to surrender one-sixth of what the Act of Settlement gave them, but the Irish agents in London thought this too little, and it was then arranged that 1,800,000 Irish acres of profitable land should be assigned to the English and the rest to the Irish. The latter being still dissatisfied, the English party consented to have the one-sixth raised to one-third, and upon that basis the Bill was settled by Finch with the help of a committee consisting of the Duke of Ormonde and of all the Irish Privy Councillors then in London, including Orrery and Anglesey, with the Commissioners of Claims excepting Smith, who seems not to have left Ireland. Clarendon wished the Bill to be strictly explanatory and opposed all provisos in favour of particular persons, as he had done in the case of the Act of Settlement, and all material alterations in the draft sent from Ireland. ‘To what purpose,’ he said, ‘is Poynings’ Act that all Acts shall be transmitted from thence hither if we under pretence of mending an Act shall graft new matter into it that hath not the least relation to the matter prepared there.’ Both he and Ormonde were opposed to such provisos. But he was overruled, for Charles’s good nature or indolence had induced him to give many promises, which had to be redeemed. ‘The first thing a King should learn,’ said Temple after some experience of the reigning monarch’s ways, ‘is to say No, so resolutely as never to be asked twice, nor once importunately.’ That lesson was never learned by Charles II., and the wrangle about the interests of particular persons continued for nearly a year after Ormonde’s arrival in England.[42]
Provisions of the Bill agreed to.
The Act of Explanation contains 234 clauses and occupies 136 folio pages. Forfeited lands were vested in the Crown as before, but decisions actually given under the former Act were confirmed. There was, however, no attempt to provide for further decrees of innocence, the power to grant which had expired on August 21, 1663. There had been over 800 decrees, but Plunket and his friends alleged that 8000 cases had been unheard for want of time, and Finch allowed that there were about 5000 such claims, including several that had been entered twice. By the Act of Settlement officers and soldiers were protected as to lands in their possession on May 7, 1659, but some doubts had arisen as to whether this did not exclude those who had left the army between that date and November 30, 1660, and it was now decreed that there was no such exclusion. It was laid down that Protestants should be first provided for, ‘of whom his Majesty ever had and still hath greatest care and consideration in the settlement of this his kingdom,’ and all Adventurers, officers, and soldiers were confirmed as to two-thirds of what they had held at the former date. Protestant purchasers of land from the transplanted in Connaught and Clare were confirmed, but Adventurers who claimed under the doubling ordinances of the Long Parliament had to be contented with the equivalent of what they had actually advanced. Of the thirty-eight persons specially named as restorable in the Act of Settlement, seventeen had received nothing, the stock of land available for reprisals having been exhausted. To these were now joined sixteen who had been mentioned but less particularly in the former Act, twenty-one fresh names were added, and the whole fifty-four were declared entitled to their principal houses and 2000 acres of land adjoining them. Very many of the provisos to which Clarendon objected were nevertheless included. The administration of the new Act and of the ‘matters of the former Act which remain in force’ was entrusted to five members of the former commission, Chief Justice Smith, Sir Edward Dering, Sir Alan Brodrick, Sir Winston Churchill, and Colonel Edward Cooke. Rainsford, now a judge in England, and Beverley, a master of requests, were very obnoxious to the English party in Ireland and were not reappointed, ostensibly by reason of their official duties. It was not till May 1665 that the Act was ready for transmission to Ireland, where it might be passed or rejected but not altered.[43]
Ormonde brings the Bill to Ireland.
The Court was at Salisbury in August 1665, and there the Great Seal was affixed to the Bill of Explanation. Business was at this time much interrupted by the plague, and some of the discussion had taken place at Sion House and Hampton Court. Ormonde set out about the middle of the month, stayed some days at Bristol, where as Lord Lieutenant of Somersetshire he was occupied in settling local disputes, and on September 2, having crossed the Severn at Gloucester and the Wye at Hereford, sailed from Milford Haven in the Dartmouth frigate, and after only eight hours at sea arrived at Duncannon next morning, where he found the Duchess and his two sons with their wives. The distinguished party were ill lodged and fed at the fort, whence they went to Waterford, and on the third day to Kilkenny, where the Lord Lieutenant stayed for six weeks. On October 17 he entered Dublin amid great rejoicings, the citizens marching in procession. The garrison were reinforced by a troop of mounted volunteers in handsome grey uniforms with scarlet and silver facings, mythological figures appeared at various points, and claret ran freely from a fountain in the Corn Market. Every available coach was in attendance, and when these vehicles were at last got out of the way fireworks were discharged in the streets.[44]
The Bill in the Irish Parliament.
After the adjournment of the Irish Parliament on May 25, 1663, the recess was prolonged by almost innumerable prorogations until October 26, 1665, when the Houses were at last allowed to meet. In order to observe their temper Ormonde withheld the Bill of Explanation for some days, during which he ordered it to be printed, and the Commons at once took up the Castle plot which had been exposed after their last sitting. A committee was appointed who had the documentary evidence before them, and Robert Shapcote, the member of the House chiefly implicated, was twice heard in his own defence. The result was that he and six other members were expelled and declared incapable of sitting in any Parliament, their further prosecution being left to the ordinary course of law. The conspirators’ declaration written by Blood was ordered, if the Lord Lieutenant should think fit, to be burnt by the hangman in the most public part of Dublin. The Bill of Explanation was read a first time on November 11 and a second time ten days later. Petitions were then presented from John Fitzgerald, Knight of Kerry, a Roman Catholic, and Captain John Magill of Down, a Protestant, whose estates were declared forfeited to the Crown by special words in the Bill. Counsel were heard at the Bar and the documentary evidence was referred to a select committee, who reported that the Knight was ‘a very well deserving innocent person’ and the captain ‘a very well deserving innocent Protestant.’ The House then resolved that they would entertain these cases after the Bill had been read a third time. Another committee was named to criticise the Bill, the chief doubt being as to the sufficiency of the vesting clause. Those who thought themselves aggrieved by the decisions under the first Act were determined to leave nothing to chance. The third reading was taken on November 29, and the House then proceeded to formulate its objections in the shape of a petition to the Lord Lieutenant.[45]
Two hard cases.
The most important question raised by the Commons’ petition concerned the interpretation of words in the first clause, which vested in the King all lands ‘seized or sequestered by reason of the late horrid rebellion which began on October 23, 1641.’ Some lawyers held that it was necessary to prove in each case separately that the owner of land on that fatal day had been actually engaged in rebellion, a doctrine which shook the title of all the men in possession. There was also some doubt whether the new proprietors would hold their land in fee or as tenants for life, but the Irish judges had decided in the former sense. The Lord Lieutenant, first orally and then in writing, answered, promising that doubts should be decided in a manner agreeable to the parliamentary majority and to the intention of those who had passed the Bill, which could only be amended by a subsidiary Act. Any attempt at fresh legislation was dangerous where so many discontented persons were involved, and the rock was avoided by asking the opinion of the English judges on the first point. Ten of them, including Sir Orlando Bridgeman and Rainsford, the late commissioner of claims, held that the disposal of land within the meaning of the Act would of itself be good evidence that it was vested in the King, and that the burden of proof lay upon the party whose former property had been seized or sequestered. As to Fitzgerald and Magill, whose lands had never been seized but who were treated as if they had been, the House of Commons were of opinion that they were innocent—nothing having been proved or even stated against them. Counsel for the Knight of Kerry said their client was ‘of English extraction, never attainted, a matter rare in an Irish pedigree, but constantly loyal.’ In these hard cases Ormonde promised to do his best, and this was something more than a common official answer since clause 159 provided that doubtful points might be decided by an order in council having the force of law.’[46]
Violent opposition to the Bill;
but it passes without a division.
There was much discontent, especially among those who wished to fish in the troubled waters of a new Bill. It was, however, decided by 93 to 74 that the Lord Lieutenant’s answer was satisfactory, but a violent debate took place upon the question that the Bill do now pass. Strong language was hurled across the floor and many swords were half-drawn. The December sun set upon a scene of confusion, and when candles were called for they were quickly blown out by the opposition. Some shouted that what they had gotten with the hazard of their lives should not be lost with Ayes and Noes. Others called for an adjournment, and ‘between you and me,’ says an eye-witness, the members, who were hungry as well as angry, ‘wanted very little of going to cuffs in the dark.’ A spontaneous adjournment followed, but the Bill passed quietly two days later. A division was challenged by Archer Upton—who held some of Antrim’s land and lost all by his reinstatement—but he did not find a seconder. Orrery kept his men so well in hand that only one Munster member had voted in the minority, and he was a great advocate for the doubling ordinance. Churchill attributed the final triumph entirely to Ormonde, who ‘by an eloquence peculiar to himself seemingly unconcerned but certainly extemporary, so charmed their fears and jealousies that they that were most displeased with the bill were yet so pleased with the overtures he had made them that when it came to pass it had only one negative.’ It passed the Lords without a single dissentient voice.[47]