“Oh, wha the deil hae we got for a king
But a wee, wee German lairdie!”
Ireland, broken in spirit and disgusted by the memory of King James II, remained quiescent, but, in 1715, Scotland and a portion of the north of England rose in rebellion, the former under the Earl of Mar and the latter under young Lord Derwentwater. They were not heartily supported. Both met with defeat, and Derwentwater, together with several English and Scotch adherents of note, was captured, beheaded, and had his estates confiscated to the “crown.” The English Parliament offered a reward of £50,000 ($250,000) for the “apprehension” of “the Pretender,” who had been previously “attainted,” but there were no takers, “the Pretender” aforesaid being safely housed in Paris. This bloody episode ended Jacobite “risings” in Great Britain for a generation.
CHAPTER III
Further Commercial Restrictions—Continued Exodus of Working People—Jonathan Swift—“The Patriot Party”—Tyranny of Primate Boulter
SEEING that Ireland had taken no part in the attempted Stuart revolution at the beginning of his reign, it might be imagined that George I showed some favor to the Irish people, but he did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the penal laws were enforced with greater virulence than ever, and several new enactments of a most oppressive character—chiefly bearing on the franchise—were passed. In 1719, the Patriot party in the Irish Parliament threw down a challenge to English supremacy. The Irish House of Lords annulled, on appeal, from the Dublin Court of Exchequer, a judgment in favor of one Annesley and gave it to the opposition litigant, Hester Sherlock. The former appealed to the English lords, who overrode the decision of the Irish House, by reversing judgment in favor of Annesley. As the sheriff in whose jurisdiction (Kildare) the writ ran refused to obey the English decree, he was heavily fined. The Irish House retaliated by remitting the fine, applauding the sheriff and arresting the judges of the Dublin court who had decided for Annesley. The anger of England became boundless, as it usually does when Ireland asserts itself, and the English Parliament, without color of right, passed the drastic enactment, known as the 6th of George I, which definitively bound Ireland by English enactments, and took the right of appeal away from the Irish House of Peers. Thus was the chain begun by the Poynings’ Law, in the reign of Henry VII, made complete, and, at one fell swoop, Ireland was reduced to a provincial status. Thenceforth, until 1780, the Irish Parliament was merely a machine for registering the will of England, in the matter of Irish government.
At the same time, England continued her war on the few remaining Irish industries—nothing seemed to satisfy the jealousy and covetousness of her merchants. The glaring outrages committed against the business of Ireland aroused the ire of the famous Jonathan Swift, Protestant Dean of St. Patrick’s, who was the son of an Englishman. He wrote, anonymously, several bitter pamphlets against the selfish policy of England, and urged the Irish people to use nothing but native manufactures. In one of these fulminations, he used the memorable phrase: “Burn everything that comes from England, except the coal!” But his patriotic influence rose to the zenith when he attacked “Wood’s half-pence”—base money coined to meet a financial emergency—in 1723. His philippics became known as the “Drapier’s letters” from the signature attached to them, and, in the end, he compelled the government to cancel the contract with Wood. England foamed with rage, and had the printer of the letters prosecuted. However, no judge or jury in Dublin was found vile enough to convict him.
Swift, although an Irish patriot, was a Protestant bigot, and detested the Celtic Catholics quite as much as he did the English, whom, from a political standpoint, he hated. Yet, he was the idol, during his long lifetime, of the Catholics, because he had stood by Ireland against the common enemy. This brilliant man, whose writings have made him immortal, and whose private sorrows can not be estimated, finally “withered at the top,” and died insane, after having willed his property to be used for the building of a lunatic asylum. In a poem written some time before his sad death, he alludes to his bequest in the following lines:
“He left what little wealth he had