Ploughing by the horses’ tails had been made illegal by Strafford’s Parliament, but custom is often stronger than law, and the Confederates stipulated with Ormonde that the Act should be repealed. This excited Milton’s ridicule, but the practice continued long after his time. In the stony barony of Burren in Clare, Dineley, in 1681, saw horses four abreast, drawing by their tails, ‘tolerated here because they cannot manage their land otherwise, their plough gears, tackle, and traces being (as they are all over the rest of the kingdom) of gadds or withs of twigs twisted, which here would break to pieces by the ploughshare so often jubbing against the rock, which, the gears being fastened by wattles or wisps to the horses’ tails, the horses being sensible stop until the ploughman lifts it over.’ Seven or eight years earlier Temple found the custom general, and proposed more drastic legislation, but it survived in remote parts, and found defenders there as late as the earlier years of Queen Victoria.[281]
Dublin.
In 1685, the year of Charles II.’s death, there were 6500 houses in Dublin. No estimate gives less than five persons for each house, and some raise the average to eight. The population was therefore a good deal more than 32,000. There was a great increase between the Restoration and the end of the reign. The town was larger than Bristol, then the second in England, where there were 5307 houses. It was exceeded by London, Paris, and Amsterdam, and apparently by Venice, but the information about foreign cities at this time is scanty. During the first half of the eighteenth century, at least, Dublin was reckoned the fourth or fifth in Europe. A great number of houses were very poor, which is not to be wondered at, for about a quarter of them were inhabited by sellers of liquor. In this respect there had been no improvement since Elizabethan days. According to Petty, there were in 1672, 164 houses in Dublin with more than 10 chimneys, Lord Meath’s having 27. The Castle had 125, but no Lord Lieutenant found it comfortable. Clarendon says it was the worst lodging a gentleman ever lay in, each shower finding its way through holes in the roof or chinks in the windows. He was unwilling to spend his own or the King’s money on such a place, but Tyrconnel, who laughed at his scruples, made some improvements. There were serious fires in Strafford’s time and in 1684, and a much worse one in 1711, when many records were lost, after which the Castle was gradually modernised. The country house at Chapelizod was preferred by viceroys as a residence during the Restoration period. The great town-houses in Dublin, many of which still stand, and are converted to public uses, belong to the eighteenth century. Two older ones, which have now disappeared, deserve mention. Cork House, adjoining the Castle, was built by the first Earl of that name, turned to various purposes after his death, and demolished in 1768. Chichester House, where the Bank of Ireland now stands, was originally built by Sir George Carey for a hospital, and was afterwards sold to Sir Arthur Chichester. Here Lord Justice Borlase was living when the rebellion of 1641 broke out, and here sat the Parliaments of 1661 and 1692, after which it became the regular place of meeting. The old house was pulled down in 1728, and the fine building which succeeded it was taken by the Bank after the Union.[282]
After the Revolution.
In spite of much well-grounded discontent, Ireland prospered under Charles II. After his death there was an interval of doubt followed by civil war. In the two years preceding the Boyne a vast number of houses and cattle were destroyed, nor did the mischief cease until the full establishment of William’s government. Penal laws and commercial restraint notwithstanding, capital was gradually accumulated during the next century, and fine houses were built both in town and country. But the mass of the rural population were badly off, for reliance on the potato long prevented improvement and kept thousands upon the verge of starvation. There was nothing to make Irish peasants forget that their ancestors had been reduced to poverty or driven into exile.[283]
FOOTNOTES:
[275] Rawdon’s letters among the Conway papers are calendared with the Irish and Domestic State Papers. Some of Conway’s are in Berwick’s Rawdon Papers. The great Lisburn estate came later to the Marquis of Hertford, and that of Moira to the Marquis of Hastings. Archbishop Boyle to Conway, July 29, 1665. Dobbs’s description of Antrim in Hill’s Macdonnells of Antrim, appx. 385. Ulster Journal of Archæology, i. 250. Miss Masson’s Robert Boyle, p. 264. Gosse’s Jeremy Taylor. The great house at Portmore was entirely demolished in the eighteenth century. Some idea of its magnificence may be formed from the number of painted tiles—from Holland, no doubt. The bulk were broken through bad packing, but 7000 were saved.
[276] Essex to Arlington, August 27, 1672, Essex Papers, i. 21, and January 25, 1673, in State Papers, Ireland. Story’s Impartial Hist., p. 145. Evelyn’s Diary, October 26, 1690, where Ossory is named in mistake for Orrery. Smith’s Cork.
[277] Ormonde Papers, vol. vii. Temple on Irish horses, Works, vol. iii. Kilkenny Castle was never sacked, and John Dunton describes its grandeur in 1699.