According to what Echard believed to be unquestionable authority, Essex told the King that the charges against Plunket could not be true, and that Charles said the Earl might have saved him by saying as much at the trial, but that he himself dared not pardon him. Burnet seems to admit the royal plea as to Coleman because ‘the tide went so high.’ But two and a half years later it had much subsided, and there was little to be afraid of after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. At the time of Plunket’s trial Hetherington, who had contrived his arrest, was in prison for seditious speeches. A cloud of Irish witnesses continued to obscure the truth, and the weapon which Shaftesbury had sharpened was soon turned against him. David Fitzgerald shifted with the tide, and from being an informer became conspicuous against the plot, and declared his intention to ‘break Shaftesbury’s knot.’ He said he could get forty Irishmen for 40l. to swear whatever he wished, and that Hetherington and the other witnesses were all rogues, thieves, gaolbreakers, and turbulent persons. Soon after the judicial murder of Plunket Ormonde began an action of scandalum magnatum against Hetherington, who was bailed by Richard Rumbold, the Rye House conspirator. The evidence at the trial was strong and the defence weak, so that a substantial Surrey jury found a verdict without leaving the Court. The damages were assessed at 10,000l., though Ormonde had only asked for 1000l., and Hetherington went to prison in default of payment. Shaftesbury had already died in exile, and the Irish witnesses were no longer paid or countenanced. Ormonde had long before said they were all perjurers who ‘went out of Ireland with bad English and worse clothes and returned well bred gentlemen, well caronated, periwigged and clothed. Brogues and leather straps are converted to fashionable shoes and glittering buckles, which next to the zeal tories, thieves, and friars have for the Protestant religion, is a main inducement to bring in a shoal of informers.... The worst is they are so miserably poor that we are fain to give them some allowance; and they find it more honourable and safe to be the King’s evidence than a cowstealer, though that be their natural profession.[130]
Castlehaven’s Memoirs.
Anglesey answers him.
In 1680, about the time of Sir Miles Stapleton’s acquittal at York, but before the trial of Lord Stafford, Castlehaven contributed to the general confusion by publishing his memoirs. As a Roman Catholic royalist with a good personal record for courage and honourable conduct, he had not been molested, but his little book gave great offence to those who were interested in the parliamentary settlement of Ireland. Anglesey lost no time in answering Castlehaven, whom he calls ‘an enemy as keen as generous,’ condemning the whole conduct of the late war and asserting that the ‘Irish did the English more hurt and advantaged themselves more by the cessation and two first peaces than ever they did or could do by force after the first massacre.’ This was to reflect on Charles I., who had ordered the truce of 1643 and the peace of 1646, and upon Charles II., who had confirmed the peace of 1649. As to the Irish, they were all guilty of treason and liable to forfeiture, their grievances being dismissed as ‘crocodile tears and groundless complaints.’ Ormonde, whose relations were all Roman Catholics, had helped them, but was himself a great gainer by the confiscations, and so were Arlington and the Duke of York. The King did not at first take the trouble to read Anglesey’s pamphlet, but he let it be known that he thought an answer was required. Ormonde hesitated about a printed controversy with ‘a man I have seen detected in public of misinformation and mean artifices for sordid sums and yet never blush at the matter, but appear the next day as brisk and confident as his favourite Thornhill, when convicted of forgery in an open full court.’ A year later, after the Oxford dissolution, he saw less reason for caution, and published a letter in which he says he had at first supposed Anglesey’s production to be that of a suborned libeller. It was reported that his opponent was writing a regular history, and he was ready to help him with documents contradicting his endless misstatements. As for the present instalment he supposed it would be allowed to die after it had ‘performed its duty in coffee-houses.’ Anglesey printed and circulated an answer, asking for particulars and threatening revelations, especially as to Ormonde’s peaces with the Irish. He employed Edmund Borlase to write a second answer to Castlehaven, condemning the peaces and reflecting on Ormonde’s conduct throughout the Civil Wars.[131]
Anglesey is turned out of office.
When Ormonde returned to London in May he found the controversy raised by Anglesey raging, and a general expectation that his antagonist should be fully answered, if not by him, at least by an inspired writer. By this time the King had Anglesey’s pamphlet at his fingers’ ends, talked of it to all about him, and fully justified Ormonde’s conduct as to the first truce and two subsequent peaces with the Irish. In his application to the King and Council Ormonde said he had been in constant intercourse with his assailant for twenty years without hearing of the accusations now made, which were evidently timed to suit the prevailing atmosphere of suspicion. Anglesey’s knowledge of Ireland could not be denied, and ‘his pretended candour and impartiality’ might make people believe him. The accuser now became the accused, and he was carried before the Council in a fit of gout. Finding little disposition to favour him, he boldly denied their authority to try a peer for pretended libelling, and demanded an impartial jury. Charles’s answer was to deprive him of the Privy Seal and give it to Halifax, whose services against the Exclusion Bill were thus in some degree rewarded.[132]
Irish outlaws. Redmond O’Hanlon.
Brigandage in one form or other had annoyed all governors for centuries. As the tribal system yielded gradually and grudgingly before English law, there was never any lack of discontented men who would fight but who would not work. The ‘swordsmen’ whom Chichester strove to employ in foreign wars became ‘tories’ later, and after that ‘rapparees,’ when the older title had been assigned to an English party. The most famous leader of these outlaws was Redmond O’Hanlon, an educated gentleman who had lost his property through the operation of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. He had been abroad, and his exploits were chronicled in France as those of Count Hanlon. For many years he kept great part of Ulster in terror, many murders being charged against him. He sometimes retired to Connaught, and even ventured upon raids in the south. His chief place of abode was in the mountains to the north of Dundalk. From the ranks of the Tories came many of the witnesses for the plot, and spies retained for one purpose could often be used for another. At the end of 1680 there was a reward of 200l. for Redmond’s head and 100l. for his brother Loughlin’s. Redmond’s bitter enemy was Edmund Murphy of Killevy, who had to pay him regular tribute, and it may be that he put Ormonde on the scent. The Lord Lieutenant gave a special commission to Lieutenant William Lucas, who by a judicious use of threats and money procured the death of Redmond in the following April and of Loughlin a little later. Sir Francis Brewster, when reporting the death of Redmond O’Hanlon, had to go back to the fifteenth century for a parallel—‘considering the circumstances he lay under and the time he continued, he did in my opinion things more to be admired [that is, wondered at] than Scanderbeg himself.’[133]
Southern Tories. Richard Power.
The destruction of the O’Hanlons did not put an end to Ulster brigandage, and Captain Hamilton, who was indefatigable against the outlaws, earned the title of Tory Will. In Leinster the O’Brennans, who had lost most of their land in Strafford’s time, were the most troublesome, and in Munster Richard Power was the chief offender. Hugh Anderton, one of Ormonde’s chaplains, was attacked while reading the burial service in his own parish of Kilmallock, and he died of his wounds. There were riots in Tipperary, and the O’Brennans were bold enough to enter and rob Kilkenny Castle which the Lords Justices had omitted to watch. Primate Boyle said ‘Power is an absolute ubiquitous, and tarries in no place long enough to be discovered and taken. He is sometimes in the county of Waterford and sometimes in Kilkenny, and immediately after we hear of his pranks in the county of Limerick and in Kerry and Cork.’ At last a spy earned the fifty guineas which was his share of the price placed upon Power’s head. He was surrounded by soldiers in a house near Charleville and made a desperate resistance. As he refused quarter, the officer in command ordered the building to be set on fire. Power yielded rather than be burned to death. He was brought out badly wounded, and hanged at Clonmel three weeks later, ‘dying very magnanimously by the help of three bottles of sack, which he took that morning for his morning’s draught.’[134]