We have seen that in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the titles of the great landed proprietors both in Connaught and Ulster had been called in question, and those monarchs had pretended to renew them on condition of certain payments. These conditions had been repeatedly fulfilled by the proprietors, but not by the Crown. Charles, in 1628, amongst the other benefits promised, had engaged to ratify these titles; but Wentworth showed him the folly of doing that while by alarming them on the point he might draw immense sums from them, or get possession of the lands. To this proposal Charles consented, and the experiment was begun with Connaught. Wentworth proceeded (1635) at the head of a commission, to hold an inquisition in every county of Connaught. He opened his proceedings at Roscommon, where he summoned a jury of "gentlemen of the best estates and understandings," that more weight might attach to their decisions if favourable, or that, if adverse, he might levy heavy fines upon them. He assured the jury that his majesty merely meant to ascertain the condition of all titles, in order that if defective he might render them legal. It was on this plea that the freeholders had been wheedled into the surrender of their deeds and patents by Elizabeth and James; but Wentworth added another alarming fiction. He contended that Henry III., reserving only five cantreds to himself, had given the remainder to Richard de Burgh, to be holden of him and his heirs of the Crown, and that those tenures had now descended to the present king, by the marriage of the heirs of De Burgh with the royal line. According to this the king was the rightful owner of every acre of land in Ireland. He assured the jury, therefore, that it was their best interest to give a general verdict for the king, as he could without their consent establish his right, and if compelled to do that in opposition to them, the result might be much worse for them. By these means he induced the juries in Roscommon, Sligo, Mayo, Clare, and Limerick, to return a verdict in favour of the Crown, but the people of Galway stoutly resisted. They declared that the title of the king, through Edward IV., from Richard de Burgh, could not be proved; there was a hiatus in the genealogy. They were all Catholics, and were the more resolute from having been so shamefully deluded in the matter of wardship. Wentworth was rather glad to be able to make an example of them, and he therefore fined the sheriff one thousand pounds for returning so obstinate and perverse a jury, and dragged the jury into his Star Chamber, the chamber of the Castle, and fined them four thousand pounds apiece. He fell with especial vindictiveness on the old Earl of Clanricarde, and other great landowners of Galway, and set about to seize the fort of Galway, march a body of troops into the country, and compel it to submit to the king's will. The proprietors, disbelieving that the king could know of or sanction such infamous breaches of faith and acts of oppression, sent over a deputation to Charles to lay the matter before him. But the king received them with reproaches, declared his full approval of the proceedings of the Lord-Deputy, and sent them back to Ireland as State prisoners. The old Earl of Clanricarde, whose son had been the head of the deputation, died soon after receiving the news of this conduct of the monarch, and Wentworth wrote to Charles that he was accused of being the cause of his death. "They might as well," he remarked haughtily, "impute to me the crime of his being threescore and ten." He was still busily pursuing other noblemen with the same rancour—the Earl of Cork, Lord Wilmot, and others—when the Catholic party in England, who had a friend in Queen Henrietta, made their complaints heard at Whitehall. Laud, who was acting as outrageously himself in England, informed Wentworth of it, and even hinted more caution, observing that if he could find a way to do all those great services without raising so many storms, it would be excellently well thought of. But Wentworth was as little disposed to avoid storms as his adviser himself. He proceeded in the same autocratic style both towards the public and individuals. It had been the original intention to return to the proprietors three-fourths of their lands, and retain one-fourth for the Crown, amounting to about one hundred and twenty thousand acres, which were to be planted with Englishmen, on condition of yielding a large annual income to the Crown. But now it was resolved to retain a full half of Galway as a punishment of its obstinacy, and Wentworth was proceeding with the necessary measurements, when his career proved at an end.
SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH (EARL OF STRAFFORD).
(After the Portrait by Vandyke.)
The individual acts of injustice which he perpetrated were done at the suggestion of his profligate desires or personal revenge, with the most unabashed hardihood. He had seduced the daughter of Loftus, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, wife of Sir John Gifford, and wanted to confer a good post on her relative Sir Adam Loftus. Such an opportunity soon occurred by an inadvertent expression of Lord Mountnorris, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. It happened one day that Annesley, a lieutenant in the army, accidentally set a stool on the foot of the Lord-Deputy, when he was suffering from the gout. This Lieutenant Annesley had some time before been caned by Wentworth in a paroxysm of passion, and Mountnorris hearing the incident of the stool mentioned at the table of Chancellor Loftus, said, "Perhaps Annesley did it as his revenge, but he has a brother who would not have taken such a revenge." This being repeated to Wentworth, he treated the observation as a suggestion to Annesley to perpetrate a more bloody revenge; and though he dissembled his resentment for some time, he then accused Mountnorris, who was also an officer in the army, of mutiny, founded on this expression. Wentworth attended the court-martial to overawe its proceedings, and obtained a sentence of death against Mountnorris. The sentence was too atrocious to be carried into execution, but it served Wentworth's purpose, for he cashiered Mountnorris and gave his office to Loftus. Much as the Irish had suffered before, this most lawless act excited a loud murmur of indignation throughout the land; but Wentworth had secured himself from any censure from the king by handing him six thousand pounds as the price of the transfer of Mountnorris's treasurership to Sir Adam Loftus.
The resentment of the Irish was becoming so strong against Wentworth, that the king thought it safest for him to come to England for a time; but he soon returned thither, with the additional favour of the monarch, where he remained till summoned by Charles to assist him by his counsels against the Scots. But the fatal and memorable year 1640 was at hand, to close the story of his tyrannies. We must now retrace our steps, and bring up the conflicts of Scotland with the same blind and determined despots to that period.
The storm against the despotism of Charles had broken out in that country. From the moment of his visit to Edinburgh with his great apostle Laud, he had never ceased pushing forward his scheme of conforming the Presbyterian Church to Anglican episcopacy. He had restored the bishops on that occasion, given them lands, erected deans and chapters, and Laud had consecrated St. Giles's Church as a Cathedral. As he could not persuade the Scottish Peers to submit to the liturgy as used in England, which his father had attempted in vain before him, he consented that a liturgy should be drawn up by four Scottish bishops, who were also to form a code of ecclesiastical canons. They were to introduce into the latter some of the acts of the Scottish assemblies, and some more ancient canons, to make the whole more palatable. These laws and the liturgy were afterwards revised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Norwich, and Charles ordered the amended copies to be published and preserved.
None but a monarch so foolhardy as Charles would have dared such an experiment on the Scots who had resisted so stoutly his father, and had driven his grandmother from the country for her adhesion to Popery. The people received the publication of the canon with unequivocal indications of their temper; and when, therefore, the first introduction, of the liturgy was fixed for the 23rd of July, 1637, in St. Giles's Church, they went thither in crowds, to give a characteristic reception. The archbishops and bishops, the Lords of Session, and the magistrates went in procession, and appeared there in all their official splendour. This display, however, so far from imposing on the people of Edinburgh, only excited their wrath and contempt, as the trumpery finery of the woman of Babylon. A considerable riot ensued, during which a woman named Jenny Geddes is said to have thrown a stool at the bishop's head. The story is, however, supported by indifferent evidence.
But it was not merely the base multitude, the nobility were as violent against the new Liturgy as the people, and came to high words with the bishops and their favourers amongst the clergy. Four ministers—Alexander Henderson, of Leuchars; John Hamilton, of Newburn; James Bruce, of Kingsbarns, and another—petitioned the Council on the 23rd of August, to give them time to show the anti-Christian and idolatrous nature of this ritual, and how near it came to the Popish mass, reminding them that the people of Scotland had established the independence of their own Church at the Reformation, which had been confirmed by Parliament and General Assemblies, and that the people, instructed in their religion from the pulpit, were not likely to adopt what their fathers had rejected as contrary to the simplicity of the Gospel. But the Bishop of Ross, Laud's right-hand man, replied for the Council that the liturgy was neither superstitious nor idolatrous, but according to the formula of the ancient Churches, and they must submit to that or to "horning," that is, banishment. Still the Council delayed, and the people were pretty quiet during the harvest time, but that over, the news having arrived of a peremptory message from the king, commanding the enforcement of the liturgy, and the removal of the Council from Edinburgh to Linlithgow, thence in the following term to Stirling, and for the next to Dundee, the people flocked into Edinburgh, and, incensed at the idea of their ancient capital being deprived of its honours as the seat of government, they became extremely irritated, attacked the bishops when they could see them, and nearly tore the clothes from the back of the Bishop of Galway. He escaped into the Council House, and the members of the Council in their turn sent to demand protection from the magistrates, who could not even protect themselves.
For greater security the Council removed to Dalkeith, and the Marquis of Hamilton recommended to Charles to make some concessions; but far from giving way, a more positive order for the enforcement of the obnoxious liturgy arrived from the king. But it was found impossible to enforce it: the Earl of Traquair was summoned up to London, sharply questioned as to the causes of the delay, and was sent back with more arbitrary commands. On the 18th of October these were made known, and fresh riots took place, Traquair and two of the bishops nearly losing their lives. The king then consented to the petitioners above mentioned being represented by a deputation personally resident in Edinburgh. The object was to induce the crowds of strangers to withdraw to their homes, when it was thought the people of Edinburgh alone might be better dealt with; but the advocates of the people seized on the plan, and converted it into one of the most powerful engines of opposition imaginable.