By these means some hundred thousand acres were planted; but whole districts in the hills were never divided at all, whilst many of the undertakers managed to get immensely more land than they had any right to. It was at this time (1611) that the scheme, already mentioned, of creating baronets was proposed to James by Sir Anthony Shirley, as a means of raising money for the support of the army in Ulster. James caught eagerly at the idea, coined upwards of one hundred thousand pounds out of it, but neither sent any of the money to Ireland, nor gave a handsome gratuity to Shirley for the suggestion, as he promised.
After these measures, James ventured to call a Parliament in Ireland, in 1613, the first for seven-and-twenty years. He wanted money, and he wanted also to enact new laws. But the Catholics were naturally apprehensive of these intended laws, for the whole of James's policy went to crush their religion out of the majority of the inhabitants, and impose on them his own model church. So little had this shallow sovereign profited by the lessons of history, that he expected to convert a whole nation by the sword and confiscation. But Ireland had by all former English monarchs, down to Elizabeth, been taught to regard the Pope as the lord paramount of the island; it was a doctrine that secured the obedience of the people under all their oppressions. But since Elizabeth had separated from the Catholic Church, and stood excommunicated by the pontiff, this maxim, so convenient before, was become extremely inconvenient. To the political causes of discontent was now added the far more irritating one of violated religious faith, which has continued till our time.
Under these circumstances the Lord-Deputy summoned the Parliament, and soon found that, though he had a majority of more than twenty Protestants, the spirit of the Catholics was such that he did not dare to proceed. Since the former Parliament, no less than seventeen new counties and forty new boroughs had been created, and these had been filled by men devoted to the measures of the Crown; the boroughs, the Catholics complained, had been put into the hands of attorneys' clerks and servants, and they expected to find on the projected new plantations only evil-disposed persons, ready to insult and injure the old inhabitants. They objected to many of the returns; they complained that obsolete statutes had been revived for the purposes of oppression; that Catholics of noble birth were excluded from posts of honour; that they were expelled from the magistracy; that they were forbidden to educate their children abroad; that Catholic barristers were not permitted to practise; that Catholic citizens were excluded from all influence in the corporations; and that the whole community was subjected to fines, excommunications, and punishments, which spread poverty and misery over the island.
The Lord-Deputy prorogued the impracticable assembly, and both parties appealed to the king. The Catholics sent as deputies the Lords Gormansbury and Dunboyne, and two knights and two barristers to plead their cause. The expense of the mission was defrayed by a general collection, which was made in spite of a severe proclamation against it. James received them at first graciously, but his anger soon broke out when he found them impervious to his controversial eloquence; and, as usual, he threw two of them into prison—Luttrel into the Fleet, and Talbot into the Tower. He soon had Talbot before the Star Chamber, and strictly interrogated him on the point of loyalty to the Crown, and he severely reprimanded the whole deputation on the same ground; but Lord Delvin on his knees declared that he would ever be faithful to the king as his rightful liege, yet that nothing should ever induce him to abandon his religion. James dismissed them, after having appointed a commission of inquiry regarding the representatives of the new Irish boroughs, which decided that none of the four boroughs incorporated after the writs were issued had a right to sit that Session.
As to the religious grievances, no concession was made, and scarcely had the deputies reached home, when a proclamation appeared ordering all the Catholic clergy to quit Ireland on pain of death. When Parliament met again in Dublin, in 1615, there was an outward air of conciliation; the two parties avoided the grand subjects of discord, except that both Houses joined in a petition that Catholic barristers might be permitted to plead. The attainders of Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and O'Dogherty were confirmed, as well as the plantation of Ulster, and all distinctions between the two races of the Irish—that is, the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish—were abolished by statute, and a liberal subsidy was obtained.
The conciliatory air did not long continue. The Lord-Deputy Chichester made a cautious attempt to enforce the fines for absence from church, beginning with a few timid persons in each county, whose compliance might influence others. In 1623, Lord Falkland, then Lord-Deputy, repeated the proclamation ordering all Catholic priests to leave the kingdom on pain of death; but they only retired into the mountains and morasses and defied his authority. James saw that it was useless to hope for success in his scheme of crushing out Catholicism, till he had planted the whole island after the Ulster fashion, and this was set about in good earnest. Commissions were issued for the examination of all grants and titles, and, by the most iniquitous proceedings, hardly a single foot of land was exempted from the claim of forfeiture to the Crown. It was found that the proprietors of the vast counties of Connaught, Galway, and Clare, had been induced to surrender their titles to Elizabeth, on condition that they should receive fresh ones, and that they had paid three thousand pounds for the enrolment of these titles, but had never got them. On this discovery James was advised to claim the whole island, with the exception of the small portion which he had himself planted; but the owners declared on all hands that they would defend their lands with their swords rather than admit such a claim; and James preferred getting a sum of money. His pretensions were commuted for a double annual rent and a fine of ten thousand pounds. He, however, proceeded to plant the coast between Dublin and Wexford, then the counties of Leitrim and Longford, and finally Westmeath, and King's and Queen's Counties. In this business all law and justice were set aside. James gave orders that three-fourths of the lands should be settled on the original proprietors, but no regard was paid to this. Few of the old possessors obtained above a quarter of their lands again, and many were stripped of every acre which they had inherited from their fathers. Whole septs were removed to the parts most distant from their native localities. Seven such septs were transported from Queen's County to King's, and menaced with instant death by martial law if they dared return. Sir Patrick Crosby received the seigniory of Tarbert, on condition that he leased out one-fourth of it to those unhappy exiles, but very few of them got anything; and, in a word, Carte declares that the injustice and cruelty then committed are scarcely to be paralleled in the history of any age or country. At the same time, the north of Ireland, hitherto a mere wilderness, began immediately to assume an appearance of prosperity.
Such was the condition of Ireland as left by James. He imagined that he had pacified it; it was only the sullen lull before the storm which burst forth in the days of his successor, with a fury only the more terrible from its temporary delay.
During the king's absence in Scotland, Bacon had shown such arrogance in the Council, that he had disgusted everybody. He had appeared to imagine himself king, took up his quarters in Whitehall, and gave audiences in the great Banqueting-house at Whitehall. Mr. Secretary Winwood was so incensed at his presumption that he quitted the Council Chamber, declaring, that he would not enter it again till the king's return; and he wrote at once an account of Bacon's proceedings, assuring the king that it was high time that he returned, for his throne was already occupied. The vain, foolish conduct of the Lord Keeper was watched by an eye which owed him no favour, and a spirit smarting with envy, which was relentless in his revenge. Coke, by offending the favourite, lost his position, but he now saw a way to turn this opposition to Buckingham against Bacon. Buckingham, since his rising into favour, had taken care to promote the fortunes of his friends and relatives. He had cast his eyes on the daughter of the fallen Chief Justice Coke, by Lady Hatton, the widow of Queen Elizabeth's Chancellor; this young lady, who was likely to have a large fortune from her mother, he determined to obtain for his brother John Villiers, a sickly and nearly idiotic youth. Coke, who despised the favourite, and was at feud with him respecting the already mentioned patent place at Court, opposed the match, which was agreeable neither to the young lady nor her mother. But when Coke found himself deprived of his office, and his rival, Bacon, advanced, he bethought himself that by the means of his daughter he had the power of regaining the goodwill of the favourite, and pulling down the arrogant Lord Keeper. Before Buckingham had left for Scotland, Coke had had a private interview with him, in which he agreed to consent to the marriage on condition of regaining his honours and position in the Council and on the Bench.
During the absence of the Court in Scotland, and while Bacon was in the full tide of his assumed greatness, he discovered this compact, which boded him nothing but destruction. Without delay he incited the Lady Hatton, who was in almost everything violently opposed to her husband, to make haste and secure her daughter by secreting her with herself in the house of Sir Edward Withipole near Oxford, and by contracting her in marriage to Henry de Vere, Earl of Oxford, for whom the young lady really entertained a regard. Coke, enraged at this flight, and at the attempt to marry his daughter contrary to his own plans, applied for a search-warrant to enter the house where she was secreted. Bacon refused it, but Winwood was only too happy to grant it. Coke, supported by twelve armed men, made a forcible entry and carried away his daughter. On this Bacon procured the new Attorney-General, Yelverton, to file an information against Coke in the Star Chamber for a breach of the peace. Bacon also wrote to the king and the favourite in Scotland, representing to Buckingham that it was by no means to his honour or interest to ally his family to that of Coke, a fallen, disgraced man, and disliked of the king, especially as much better matches might be found. To James he represented the trouble which Coke had given to his majesty, his fondness for opposing the king's wishes, and the disturbances there had been in the kingdom and courts of justice so long as Coke had been in power. Sir Francis added that now everything was quiet, and that his majesty knew that he had in him an officer always anxious to do his will.
