Connaught.
Among the twenty-six Acts passed in the second session of Wentworth’s obedient Parliament there were several relating to the tenure and alienation of land. Secret leases for long terms and other fraudulent conveyances were so common that titles to property were much obscured. Feudal burdens were shirked, and private injustice was often done. The general drift of Wentworth’s legislation was to secure the public registration of deeds and wills, and to make the actual possession of land presumptive proof of its ownership. This reform, he wrote, ‘will without question gain the Crown six wardships for one, besides an opportunity to breed the best houses up in religion as they fall, which in reason of state is of infinite consequence, as we see experimentally in my Lord of Ormonde, who, if he had been left to the education of his own parents, had been as mere Irish and Papist as the best of them, whereas now he is a very good Protestant, and consequently will make not only a faithful, but a very affectionate servant to the Crown of England.’ The gain through the Court of Wards he afterwards reported to be £4,000 a year. The gain to his great scheme of plantation was obvious. Here again there was much immediate profit to the Crown and more in prospect by the establishment of an English and Protestant population. ‘All the Protestants,’ he said, ‘are for plantations, all the others against them.’ If juries drawn from the Recusant majority could be got to find the King’s title to their lands, so much the better. If not, there was a Protestant majority in the House of Commons and the lands requisite for colonisation might be ‘passed to the King by immediate Act of Parliament.’ One of the districts selected was the north part of Tipperary called Ormond, where the Earl had grants which would have been fatal to Wentworth’s scheme, but that he at once declared himself willing to co-operate. In Thomond or Clare Lord Inchiquin prudently followed Ormonde’s example, but in neither case was time given to Wentworth for the establishment of his projected colony. The sept of the O’Brennans had long been in practical possession of Edough, the northern part of Kilkenny, which includes Castlecomer. The King’s title was found in the usual way, and the territory was granted to Wandesford, who bought out certain other claimants and who even made some attempts to compensate the O’Brennans. Many English tenants were established, and Wandesford’s representatives, after having been ousted during the rebellion, held their own under the Commonwealth and after the Restoration. Wentworth claimed the whole of Connaught for the Crown. The general idea was that one-fourth of the land should be given to settlers, and that the old owners should receive a valid title for the remainder. Leitrim had been lately planted, and the other four counties were now claimed. Galway was thought the most likely to resist, and was left to the last, lest its example should corrupt the others.[216]
Submission of Roscommon, July 1635.
The King to have his way in any case.
Wentworth’s charge to the jury.
The Commissioners for the new plantation were the Lord Deputy himself, Lord Dillon, acting-president of Connaught, Lord Ranelagh, Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Wentworth’s friend Wandesford, his secretaries Mainwaring and Radcliffe, and Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham, who always supported him. The Commissioners arrived at Boyle on July 9, 1635, and went to work without delay. Before leaving Dublin Wentworth had directed the sheriff to enpanel a jury ‘of the best estates and understandings’ in the county of Roscommon. ‘My reason,’ he said, ‘was that this being a leading case for the whole province, it would set a great value in their estimation upon the goodness of the King’s title, being found by persons of their qualities, and as much concerned in their own particulars as any other. Again, finding the evidence so strong, as unless they went against it, they must pass for the King, I resolved to have persons of such means as might answer the King a round fine in the Castle-chamber in case they should prevaricate, who in all seeming even out of that reason would be more fearful to tread shamelessly and impudently aside from the truth, than such as had less, or nothing to lose.’ The threatened landowners asked for an adjournment, but Wentworth said the chancery proceedings begun twenty days before were notice enough. Counsel having been heard on both sides, Wentworth told the jury that the King’s great object was to make them a civil people, that a plantation was the readiest means to that end, and that his Majesty would not only take from them nothing that was theirs, but would also give them something that was his. In other words they were to be allowed to retain three-fourths of what they, and everyone else, supposed to be their own property. No legally valid grant should be questioned, ‘but God knows,’ he told Coke, ‘very few or none of their patents are good.’ The evidence, Wentworth told the jury, was clear, and if they acknowledged it frankly they should have easy terms. But the King would have his way anyhow, and perhaps it would be best for him that they should deny his title, for in that case he would get all he wanted by a process in the Exchequer, and they could then expect no mercy. With this threat hanging over them, the Roscommon gentlemen thought it prudent to submit, and found the King’s title to the whole county.[217]
Submission of Sligo and Mayo, July, 1635.
Resistance of Galway.
Opposition of Clanricarde.
Threats against all concerned.