What followed after his death until the Restoration belongs to English history. Under his son Richard, and his associates, or advisers, the Protectorate proved a failure. Then followed the negotiations with General Monck, and the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, who landed on English soil, at Dover, May 22, 1660, proceeded to London, where he was cordially welcomed, and renewed his interrupted reign over a country which, at heart, despised and distrusted him and all of his fated house.
CHAPTER X
Ireland Further Scourged Under Charles II—Murder of Archbishop Plunket—Accession of James II
THE Irish Catholics had built high hopes on the restoration of Charles, but were not very jubilant when they learned that he had appointed as Lords Justices, in Dublin, their ancient foes and persecutors, Coote and Broghill, the latter now called the Earl of Orrery. In the Irish (provincial) Parliament, the “Undertaking” element was in the ascendant, and the Protestants, barely one-fifth of the nation, had, in the House of Lords, 72 peers of their faith to 21 Catholics. In the Commons the same disparity existed, there being 198 Protestant to 64 Catholic members. In England, the defenders of the crown, who had fought against Cromwell, were, in most cases, treated with justice, and many had their possessions restored to them. In Ireland, the Royalists, of all creeds and classes, were treated by the king and his advisers with shameful ingratitude. Most of the confiscations of the Cromwell period were confirmed, but the Catholic religion was tolerated, to a certain extent, and the lives of priests and schoolmasters were not placed in jeopardy as much as formerly. The Catholics made a good fight for the restoration of their property, and were faithfully aided by the Earl of Kildare in Ireland and by Colonel Richard Talbot—afterward Earl of Tyrconnel—in England. But the Cromwellian settlers maintained the advantage in property they had gained. In 1775, they still held 4,500,000 acres against 2,250,000 acres held by the original proprietors. The figures, according to the most reliable authorities, were almost exactly the reverse before the Cromwellian settlement. An attempt on the part of the Catholics, to be allowed greater privileges than they possessed, was met in a most unfriendly spirit in England. One of their delegates, Sir Nicholas Plunkett, was mobbed by the Londoners and forbidden the royal presence by the order of the Council, while Colonel Talbot, because of his bold championship of the Catholic cause, was sent for a period to the Tower. The Irish Catholics were, finally, forbidden to make any further address in opposition to the Bill of Settlement—as the act confirming the confiscations was called—and the perfidious Charles signed it without compunction, although he well knew he was beggaring his own and his father’s friends. An English tribunal, appointed to sit in Dublin and hear the Irish claims, declared in favor of the plundered native proprietors, but as it was met immediately by the intrigues of the ruthless Ormond, who again became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the duration of this honest English tribunal was limited to a certain day, when only about 800 out of 3,000 cases had been heard. A measure called “An Act of Explanation” was then passed (1665), by which it was decreed that “no Papist who had not been adjudged innocent under the former act could be so adjudged thereafter, or entitled to claim any lands or settlements.” “Thus,” remarks a historian, “even the inheritance of hope, and the reversion of expectation, were extinguished forever for the sons and daughters of the ancient gentry of the kingdom.”
An attempt made by the titled Catholic laity and the prelates and priests of that faith to establish their true position in regard to their spiritual and secular allegiance was also met in a hostile manner by Ormond, who so managed as to excite a bitter controversy in regard to a document called “The Remonstrance,” which was supposed to embody the Catholic idea of the period. The viceroy succeeded to the top of his bent. Dissension prevailed at a meeting of the surviving prelates of the Church, and the superiors of regular orders, held in Dublin, and Ormond made the failure of the gathering an excuse for persecuting the prelates and priests, whom he bitterly hated as a body he could not use, with penal severities, which the selfish and sensual king, who was himself a Catholic in secret, allowed to pass without interference.
In this same year (1666) the importation of Irish cattle into England was declared, by Parliamentary enactment, “a nuisance,” for the reason that when the Londoners were starving, at the time of the Great Fire, Ireland contributed for their relief 15,000 fat steers. Instead of being grateful for the generous gift, the English lawmakers pretended to believe it a scheme to preserve the trade in cattle between the two kingdoms. The Navigation Act—invented by Cromwell—which put fetters on Irish commerce, was also enforced, and these two grievances united, for a time, the Puritans and the Old Irish, as both suffered equally from the restrictions placed upon industry. Ormond showed favor to the discontented Puritans, and was recalled in consequence. His retirement lasted nine years, and during that period he became a patron of Irish manufactures, especially in the county of Kilkenny. A bogus “Popish plot”—an offshoot of that manufactured in England, during this reign, by that arch-impostor and perjurer, Titus Oates—was trumped up in Ireland for purposes of religious and political terrorism. The attempt to fasten it upon the masses of the people happily failed, but, without even the shadow of proof, the aged and venerated archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunkett, was accused of complicity in it, arrested and confined, without form of trial, for ten months in an Irish prison. Finally he was removed to London and placed on trial. One of his “judges” was the notorious Jeffreys—the English Norbury—a man destitute of a heart. Even one of the paid perjurers, called a crown agent, stung by remorse, offered to testify in behalf of the unfortunate archbishop. All was in vain, however. The judges charged the jury against the accused, violating every legal form, and the hapless prelate was found guilty. He was sentenced to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered” on July 1, 1681. This sentence was carried out in all its brutal details. When the Earl of Essex appealed to the king to save the illustrious martyr, Charles replied: “I can not pardon him, because I dare not. His blood be upon your conscience. You could have saved him if you pleased!” And this craven king, a few years afterward, on his deathbed, called for the ministrations of a priest of the Church outraged by the murder of an innocent prelate! The slaughter of Oliver Plunkett was the most atrocious political assassination in English history, which reeks with such crimes. The shooting of Duc d’Enghien by Napoleon did not approach it in cold-blooded infamy. The king, the minister, the court, the jury—everybody—believed the archbishop innocent, and yet he was sacrificed that his blood might satisfy the rampant bigotry of the times.
The Catholics were ferociously pursued in Ireland after this shameful tragedy. Proclamations were issued against them by Ormond, who had yet again become Lord Lieutenant. They were forbidden to enter fortresses or to hold fairs, markets, or gatherings within the walls of corporate towns. They were also forbidden the use of arms—an old English expedient in Ireland—and they were commanded to kill or capture any “Tory” or “outlaw” relative within fourteen days from the date of proclamation, under penalty of being arrested and banished from Ireland. This was the setting of brother against brother with a vengeance. Few of the Irish people were found base enough to comply with the unnatural order, but Count Redmond O’Hanlon, one of the few Irish chiefs of ancient family who still held out against English penal law in Ireland, was assassinated in a cowardly manner by one of Ormond’s ruthless tools. The blood stains from the heart of the brave O’Hanlon will sully forever the escutcheon of the Irish Butlers.
Just as the spirit of persecution of Catholics began to subside both in England and Ireland, Charles II, who had been much worried by the political contentions in his English kingdom, which resulted in the banishment of Monmouth and the execution of Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney, had a stroke of apoplexy, which resulted in his death on February 6, 1685. In his last moments he was attended by the Rev. Father Huddlestone, who received him into the Catholic Church, which he had betrayed so foully. He was immediately succeeded by his Catholic brother, the Duke of York, who ascended the throne under the title of James II. James was a man of resolute purpose, good intentions, no doubt, but had a narrow intellect and sadly lacked discretion—at least in the moral sense. His physical courage has been questioned, although the famous Marshal Turenne certified to it, when he, in his fiery youth, served in the French armies. He was destined, as we shall see, to ruin his friends, exalt his enemies, and wreck the ancient Stuart dynasty.