3. Settlements of English in Munster, Ulster, and other parts.—The suppression of Slanes O'Neil's revolt in 1567 seems to have suggested the thought, or afforded the means, of perfecting the conquest of Ireland by the same methods that had been used to commence it, an extensive plantation of English colonists. The law of forfeiture came in very conveniently to further this great scheme of policy. O'Neil was attainted in the parliament of 1569; the territories which acknowledged him as chieftain, comprising a large part of Down and Antrim, were vested in the Crown; and a natural son of Sir Thomas Smith, secretary of state, who is said to have projected this settlement, was sent with a body of English to take possession of the lands thus presumed in law to be vacant. This expedition however failed of success; the native occupants not acquiescing in this doctrine of our lawyers.[524] But fresh adventurers settled in different parts of Ireland; and particularly after the Earl of Desmond's rebellion in 1583, whose forfeiture was reckoned at 574,628 Irish acres, though it seems probable that this is more than double the actual confiscation.[525] These lands in the counties of Cork and Kerry, left almost desolate by the oppression of the Geraldines themselves, and the far greater cruelty of the government in subduing them, were parcelled out among English undertakers at low rents, but on condition of planting eighty-six families on an estate of 12,000 acres; and in like proportion for smaller possessions. None of the native Irish were to be admitted as tenants; but neither this nor the other conditions were strictly observed by the undertakers, and the colony suffered alike by their rapacity and their neglect.[526] The oldest of the second race of English families in Ireland are found among the descendants of these Munster colonists. We find among them also some distinguished names, that have left no memorial in their posterity; Sir Walter Raleigh, who here laid the foundation of his transitory success, and one not less in glory, and hardly less in misfortune, Edmund Spenser. In a country house once belonging to the Desmonds, on the banks of the Mulla, near Doneraile, the three first books of the Faery Queen were written; and here too the poet awoke to the sad realities of life, and has left us, in his Account of the State of Ireland, the most full and authentic document that illustrates its condition. This treatise abounds with judicious observations; but we regret the disposition to recommend an extreme severity in dealing with the native Irish, which ill becomes the sweetness of his muse.
The two great native chieftains of the north, the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, a few years after the king's accession, engaged, or were charged with having engaged, in some new conspiracy, and flying from justice, were attainted of treason. Five hundred thousand acres in Ulster were thus forfeited to the Crown; and on this was laid the foundation of that great colony, which has rendered that province, from being the seat of the wildest natives, the most flourishing, the most protestant, and the most enlightened part of Ireland. This plantation, though projected no doubt by the king and by Lord Bacon, was chiefly carried into effect by the lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, a man of great capacity, judgment, and prudence. He caused surveys to be taken of the several counties, fixed upon proper places for building castles or founding towns, and advised that the lands should be assigned, partly to English or Scots undertakers, partly to servitors of the Crown, as they were called, men who had possessed civil or military offices in Ireland, partly to the old Irish, even some of those who had been concerned in Tyrone's rebellion. These and their tenants were exempted from the oath of supremacy imposed on the new planters. From a sense of the error committed in the queen's time by granting vast tracts to single persons, the lands were distributed in three classes, of 2000, 1500, and 1000 English acres; and in every county one-half of the assignments was to the smallest, the rest to the other two classes. Those who received 2000 acres were bound within four years to build a castle and bawn, or strong court-yard; the second class within two years to build a stone or brick house with a bawn; the third class a bawn only. The first were to plant on their lands within three years forty-eight able men, eighteen years old or upwards, born in England or the inland parts of Scotland; the others to do the same in proportion to their estates. All the grantees were to reside within five years, in person or by approved agents, and to keep sufficient store of arms; they were not to alienate their lands without the king's licence, nor to let them for less than twenty-one years; their tenants were to live in houses built in the English manner, and not dispersed, but in villages. The natives held their lands by the same conditions, except that of building fortified houses; but they were bound to take no Irish exactions from their tenants, nor to suffer the practice of wandering with their cattle from place to place. In this manner were these escheated lands of Ulster divided among a hundred and four English and Scots undertakers, fifty-six servitors, and two hundred and eighty-six natives. All lands which through the late anarchy and change of religion had been lost to the church were restored; and some further provision was made for the beneficed clergy. Chichester, as was just, received an allotment in a far ampler measure than the common servants of the Crown.[527]
This noble design was not altogether completed according to the platform. The native Irish, to whom some regard was shown by these regulations, were less equitably dealt with by the colonists, and by those other adventurers whom England continually sent forth to enrich themselves and maintain her sovereignty. Pretexts were sought to establish the Crown's title over the possessions of the Irish; they were assailed through a law which they had but just adopted, and of which they knew nothing, by the claims of a litigious and encroaching prerogative, against which no prescription could avail, nor any plea of fairness and equity obtain favour in the sight of English-born judges. Thus, in the King and Queen's counties, and in those of Leitrim, Longford, and Westmeath, 385,000 acres were adjudged to the Crown, and 66,000 in that of Wicklow. The greater part was indeed regranted to the native owners on a permanent tenure; and some apology might be found for this harsh act of power in the means it gave of civilising those central regions, always the shelter of rebels and robbers; yet this did not take off the sense of forcible spoliation, which every foreign tyranny renders so intolerable. Surrenders were extorted by menaces; juries refusing to find the Crown's title were fined by the council; many were dispossessed without any compensation, and sometimes by gross perjury, sometimes by barbarous cruelty. It is said that in the county of Longford the Irish had scarcely one-third of their former possessions assigned to them, out of three-fourths which had been intended by the king. Those who had been most faithful, those even who had conformed to the protestant church, were little better treated than the rest. Hence, though in many new plantations great signs of improvement were perceptible, though trade and tillage increased, and towns were built, a secret rankling for those injuries was at the heart of Ireland; and in these two leading grievances, the penal laws against recusants, and the inquisition into defective titles, we trace, beyond a shadow of doubt, the primary source of the rebellion in 1641.[528]
4. Constitution of Irish parliament.—Before the reign of James, Ireland had been regarded either as a conquered country, or as a mere colony of English, according to the persons or the provinces which were in question. The whole island now took a common character, that of a subordinate kingdom, inseparable from the English Crown, and dependent also, at least as was taken for granted by our lawyers, on the English legislature; but governed after the model of our constitution, by nearly the same laws, and claiming entirely the same liberties. It was a natural consequence, that an Irish parliament should represent, or affect to represent, every part of the kingdom. None of Irish blood had ever sat, either lords or commoners, till near the end of Henry VIII.'s reign. The representation of the twelve counties, into which Munster and part of Leinster were divided, and of a few towns, which existed in the reign of Edward III., if not later, was reduced by the defection of so many English families to the limits of the four shires of the pale.[529] The old counties, when they returned to their allegiance under Henry VIII., and those afterwards formed by Mary and Elizabeth, increased the number of the Commons: though in that of 1567, as has been mentioned, the writs for some of them were arbitrarily withheld. The two queens did not neglect to create new boroughs, in order to balance the more independent representatives of the old Anglo-Irish families by the English retainers of the court. Yet it is said that in seventeen counties out of thirty-two, into which Ireland was finally parcelled, there was no town that returned burgesses to parliament before the reign of James I., and the whole number in the rest was but about thirty.[530] He created at once forty new boroughs, or possibly rather more; for the number of the Commons, in 1613, appears to have been 232.[531] It was several times afterwards augmented, and reached its complement of 300 in 1692.[532] These grants of the elective franchise were made, not indeed improvidently, but with very sinister intents towards the freedom of parliament; two-thirds of an Irish House of Commons, as it stood in the eighteenth century, being returned with the mere farce of election by wretched tenants of the aristocracy.
The province of Connaught, with the adjoining county of Clare, was still free from the intrusion of English colonists. The Irish had complied, both under Elizabeth and James, with the usual conditions of surrendering their estates to the Crown in order to receive them back by a legal tenure. But, as these grants, by some negligence, had not been duly enrolled in Chancery (though the proprietors had paid large fees for that security), the council were not ashamed to suggest, or the king to adopt, an iniquitous scheme of declaring the whole country forfeited, in order to form another plantation as extensive as that of Ulster. The remonstrances of those whom such a project threatened put a present stop to it; and Charles, on ascending the throne, found it better to hear the proposals of his Irish subjects for a composition. After some time, it was agreed between the court and the Irish agents in London, that the kingdom should voluntarily contribute £120,000 in three years by equal payments, in return for certain graces, as they were called, which the king was to bestow. These went to secure the subject's title to his lands against the Crown after sixty years' possession, and gave the people of Connaught leave to enrol their grants, relieving also the settlers in Ulster or other places from the penalties they had incurred by similar neglect. The abuses of the council-chamber in meddling with private causes, the oppression of the court of wards, the encroachments of military authority, and excesses of the soldiers were restrained. A free trade with the king's dominions or those of friendly powers was admitted. The recusants were allowed to sue for livery of their estates in the court of wards, and to practise in courts of law, on taking an oath of mere allegiance instead of that of supremacy. Unlawful exactions and severities of the clergy were prohibited. These reformations of unquestionable and intolerable evils, as beneficial as those contained nearly at the same moment in the Petition of Right, would have saved Ireland long ages of calamity, if they had been as faithfully completed as they seemed to be graciously conceded. But Charles I. emulated, on this occasion, the most perfidious tyrants. It had been promised by an article in these graces, that a parliament should be held to confirm them. Writs of summons were accordingly issued by the lord deputy; but with no consideration of that fundamental rule established by Poyning's law, that no parliament should be held in Ireland until the king's licence be obtained. This irregularity was of course discovered in England, and the writs of summons declared to be void. It would have been easy to remedy this mistake, if such it were, by proceeding in the regular course with a royal licence. But this was withheld; no parliament was called for a considerable time; and, when the three years had elapsed during which the voluntary contribution had been payable, the king threatened to straiten his graces if it were not renewed.[533]
He had now placed in the vice-royalty of Ireland that star of exceeding brightness, but sinister influence, the willing and able instrument of despotic power, Lord Strafford. In his eyes the country he governed belonged to the Crown by right of conquest; neither the original natives, nor even the descendants of the conquerors themselves, possessing any privileges which could interfere with its sovereignty. He found two parties extremely jealous of each other, yet each loth to recognise an absolute prerogative, and thus in some measure having a common cause. The protestants, not a little from bigotry, but far more from a persuasion that they held their estates on the tenure of a rigid religious monopoly, could not endure to hear of a toleration of popery, which, though originally demanded, was not even mentioned in the king's graces; and disapproved the indulgence shown by those graces to recusants, which is said to have been followed by an impolitic ostentation of the Romish worship.[534] They objected to a renewal of the contribution both as the price of this dangerous tolerance of recusancy, and as debarring the protestant subjects of their constitutional right to grant money only in parliament. Wentworth, however, insisted upon its payment for another year, at the expiration of which a parliament was to be called.[535]
The king did not come without reluctance into this last measure, hating, as he did, the very name of parliament; but the lord deputy confided in his own energy to make it innoxious and serviceable. They conspired together how to extort the most from Ireland, and concede the least; Charles, in truth, showing a most selfish indifference to anything but his own revenue, and a most dishonourable unfaithfulness to his word.[536] The parliament met in 1634, with a strong desire of insisting on the confirmation of the graces they had already paid for; but Wentworth had so balanced the protestant and recusant parties, employed so skilfully the resources of fair promises and intimidation, that he procured six subsidies to be granted before a prorogation, without any mutual concession from the Crown.[537] It had been agreed that a second session should be held for confirming the graces; but in this, as might be expected, the supplies having been provided, the request of both houses that they might receive the stipulated reward met with a cold reception; and ultimately the most essential articles, those establishing a sixty years' prescription against the Crown, and securing the titles of proprietors in Clare and Connaught, as well as those which relieved the catholics in the court of wards from the oath of supremacy, were laid aside. Statutes, on the other hand, were borrowed from England, especially that of uses, which cut off the methods they had hitherto employed for evading the law's severity.[538]
Strafford had always determined to execute the project of the late reign with respect to the western counties. He proceeded to hold an inquisition in each county of Connaught, and summoned juries in order to preserve a mockery of justice in the midst of tyranny. They were required to find the king's title to all the lands, on such evidence as could be found and was thought fit to be laid before them; and were told that what would be best for their own interests would be to return such a verdict as the king desired, what would be best for his, to do the contrary; since he was able to establish it without their consent, and wished only to invest them graciously with a large part of what they now unlawfully withheld from him. These menaces had their effect in all counties except that of Galway, where a jury stood out obstinately against the Crown, and being in consequence, as well as the sheriff, summoned to the castle in Dublin, were sentenced to an enormous fine. Yet the remonstrances of the western proprietors were so clamorous that no steps were immediately taken for carrying into effect the designed plantation; and the great revolutions of Scotland and England which soon ensued gave another occupation to the mind of Lord Strafford.[539] It has never been disputed that a more uniform administration of justice in ordinary cases, a stricter coercion of outrage, a more extensive commerce, evidenced by the augmentation of customs, above all the foundation of the great linen manufacture in Ulster, distinguished the period of his government.[540] But it is equally manifest that neither the reconcilement of parties, nor their affection to the English Crown, could be the result of his arbitrary domination; and that, having healed no wound he found, he left others to break out after his removal. The despotic violence of this minister towards private persons, and those of great eminence, is in some instances well known by the proceedings on his impeachment, and in others is sufficiently familiar by our historical and biographical literature. It is indeed remarkable that we find among the objects of his oppression and insult all that most illustrates the contemporary annals of Ireland, the venerable learning of Usher, the pious integrity of Bedell, the experienced wisdom of Cork, and the early virtue of Clanricarde.
The parliament assembled by Strafford in 1640 began with loud professions of gratitude to the king for the excellent governor he had appointed over them; they voted subsidies to pay a large army raised to serve against the Scots, and seemed eager to give every manifestation of zealous loyalty.[541] But after their prorogation, and during the summer of that year, as rapid a tendency to a great revolution became visible as in England; the Commons, when they met again, seemed no longer the same men; and, after the fall of their great viceroy, they coalesced with his English enemies to consummate his destruction. Hate smothered by fear, but inflamed by the same cause, broke forth in a remonstrance of the Commons, presented through a committee, not to the king, but a superior power, the long parliament of England. The two houses united to avail themselves of the advantageous moment, and to extort, as they very justly might, from the necessities of Charles that confirmation of his promises which had been refused in his prosperity. Both parties, catholic as well as protestant, acted together in this national cause, shunning for the present to bring forward those differences which were not the less implacable for being thus deferred. The catalogue of temporal grievances was long enough to produce this momentary coalition: it might be groundless in some articles, it might be exaggerated in more, it might in many be of ancient standing; but few can pretend to deny that it exhibits a true picture of the misgovernment of Ireland at all times, but especially under the Earl of Strafford. The king, in May 1641, consented to the greater part of their demands; but unfortunately they were never granted by law.[542]