Kilkenny Castle.
Such time as Ormonde could spare from his duties in London as Lord Steward, or in Dublin as Viceroy, he spent at Kilkenny Castle, which had escaped during the Civil War, and enjoyed a holiday there as only a hard worker can enjoy one. Hawking was his favourite sport. ‘I am gotten hither,’ he wrote in August 1667, ‘and am yet in the happiest calm you can imagine. Fine weather, great store of partridge, a cast of merlins, and no business; and this may hold for a week.’ Strafford found partridge so scarce about Dublin that he had to take to hawking blackbirds; and the garrison were great poachers then and later. Ormonde had gone fox-hunting with Castlehaven in the midst of the Civil War, and afterwards had a pack of beagles at Kilkenny who were so well trained that they always turned homewards at the sound of the castle dinner-bell. He kept bloodstock, importing both Barbs and Arabs, but was not very successful as a breeder, though he took some pleasure in the reflection that Irish horse-flesh generally would be improved. There is, indeed, no pursuit in which money is more easily lost or less easily got, unless it is made the chief business of life. We have inventories of the plate, furniture, and tapestry in Kilkenny Castle at the end of Charles II.’s reign. There were also many pictures, including three or four portraits of Strafford, and a library of nearly a thousand volumes. The catalogue contains Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and many lesser dramatists; Milton and Taylor, Hobbes and Stillingfleet, are well represented. There are many Latin and French books, and a few Italian. Inventories are also extant of Ormonde’s property in Dublin Castle when he was Lord Lieutenant in 1679. The clerks and upper servants were well lodged, but eight boy scullions had only four beds between them, and ‘two scavengers in the dark kitchen’ probably had no beds at all.[277]
Dublin Castle.
A viceregal progress.
As long as Charles II. lived, life in town and country was easy, except for occasional mischief done by Tories. During his short reign as Viceroy, Clarendon saw much company in Dublin Castle, but it is to be noted that ladies and gentlemen do not appear to have mixed at meals. He was accused of not taking enough notice of the King’s birthday, though he gave a state dinner to twenty persons at his own table, ‘besides the ladies who were with my wife and at other tables in the house.’ On New Year’s Day the Lord Mayor and aldermen dined with him and played cards afterwards. When the Lord Lieutenant withdrew, the men all went to the cellar, and after that it was perhaps as well that they did not have to join the ladies. Three days later all the citizens’ wives dined with Lady Clarendon, and his Excellency had to take refuge with the Lord Chancellor. There was, however, no objection to ladies attending the Curragh races, but Clarendon’s wife did not care to do so in company with Lady Dorchester. He found the racecourse much larger, and with much finer turf than Newmarket Heath. Later in the year he made a progress in the south. Lady Clarendon was left at Kilkenny Castle, Ormonde about the same time making some stay at Cornbury. At Waterford the Lord Lieutenant was very well received publicly, Lords Tyrone and Galway attending him, but not one of the many considerable Roman Catholics making any sign. He dined with Henry Boyle at Castlemartyr, and at Lismore; where Lord Burlington had given orders that he should be sumptuously entertained, he ‘destroyed some of my lord’s salmon.’ He visited Kinsale and Bandon, and at Cork Major-General MacCarthy brought Bishop Creagh and four Roman Catholic merchants with him, but not ten of his Church paid their respects all the way from Kilkenny. ‘Our people are mad,’ said one priest at Cork; ‘our clergy have forbidden gentlemen to appear.’ At Limerick things were a little, but only a little, better, the Irish citizens showing a determination to keep apart from the English. The see of Limerick was vacant, but Dr. Brenan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, was very civil. At Thomastown in Tipperary, Clarendon stayed with Ormonde’s half-brother, Captain George Matthew. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a very fine place, and the most improved of any situation I have seen since I came into this kingdom, especially considering that it is but fifteen years since he first sat down upon it, when there was not a house upon it.’ Clarendon admired the rich country about Clonmel, ‘but all pasture and employed in sheep walks, and feeding black cattle.’ Here and elsewhere he notes the want of population, which the exodus of Protestant settlers did not improve.[278]
An Irish Tunbridge Wells.
Macaulay’s description of Tunbridge Wells in the days when fine gentlemen, sick of the airs of actresses and maids of honour, refreshed themselves by flirting with the farmers’ daughters who brought them cream and butter, had a sort of counterpart in Ireland. Near the West Gate of Wexford is a mineral well which was brought into fashion by Dr. Patrick Dun, a Scotch physician, whose name is still well remembered in Dublin. While prescribing syrup of buckthorn as an addition to the waters, he did not forbid good claret if it was to be had in the town. The spa was nasty enough, but one grave visitor thought the ‘fantastical ladies, and fops, and lampoons in Wexford doggerel’ were as bad. The dietary in vogue was dry roast mutton and chicken without sauce, and the conversation turned, as at other watering-places, on the visitors’ ailments. Good lodgings were scarce, but Lord Chancellor Fitton, Accountant-General Bonnell, at least two bishops, and Dr. William King, afterwards the famous Archbishop, were among those who underwent the cure.[279]
Condition of the poor.
In general it may be said that people who were well-to-do lived in Ireland much as their equals did in England, and from the abundance of food money went farther in the poorer country. But in 1672, when the Restoration Settlement was well established, the great mass of the people lived miserably enough. In the absence of proper statistics, we must depend on Petty’s estimates, which in most important points are sustained by a cloud of witnesses, though his figures, by the nature of the case, may be inexact. He gives the total population as 1,100,000. Of the inhabited houses 16,000 had more than one chimney, 24,000 had only one, leaving 160,000 without any. Three-fourths of the land and five-sixths of the houses belonged to British Protestants, and ‘three-fourths of the native Irish lived in a brutish, nasty condition, as in cabins, with neither chimney, door, stairs, nor window, fed chiefly upon milk and potatoes.’ These cabins, which he elsewhere calls sties, were not in all worth more than 50,000l. Fifteen years later, Petty believed that the population had increased to 1,300,000. The 160,000 chimneyless cabins which sheltered the mass of the people could not be kept free from vermin or animals, and all the eggs ‘laid or kept’ in them were musty. Some cottars might have afforded a chimney, but preferred the warmth of the smoke. With or without one, they had to pay hearth-money. Even in a small farmer’s house near Kilkenny, Stevens found no food but milk, and had to lie on straw. Straw, indeed, was the usual bedding, and it was not always clean. Turf was abundant in most places. Between Dublin and Kildare Clarendon saw fine-looking men, poor and half-naked, idle, except when starvation stared them in the face, and ready to steal if they could not easily get work; the women did nothing but mind two or three cows, on whose milk they lived. ‘Their habitations,’ he said—‘for they cannot be called houses—are perfect pig-sties; walls cast up and covered with straw and mud; and out of one of these huts, of about ten or twelve foot square, shall you see five or six men and women bolt out as you pass by, who stand staring about. If this be thus so near Dublin, Lord! what can it be farther up in the country?’ During his tour in the south, he lamented the want of population, miserable as the people were. Yet improvements had been made, and there might be more if any encouragement was given. The rich county of Tipperary was given up to cattle, but the number of beasts had decreased because capital was frightened away by Tyrconnel’s proceedings. There was very little tillage. What could be expected of people when whole families, with sometimes a travelling stranger, or pack-carrier, or pedlar or two, lay nine or ten of them together, naked, heads and points? The bare necessaries of life could be had with little labour. Fourpence a day was the current rate of wages, while the lowest class of workmen in England received a shilling. ‘Their lazing’ seemed to Petty not so much natural as caused by want of employment and inducement to work. These people were content with potatoes, and one man’s labour could feed forty. They liked milk, and in summer one cow would supply three men. Fish and shell-fish were easily got, and a house could be built in three days. Why should they breed more cattle since it was penal to import them into England? Trade was so fettered that capital was kept away, and even land was not safe from legal trickery. Temple said much the same as Petty, and their almost verbal agreement suggests that they had consulted each other.[280]
Ploughing by the tail.