[338] A great number of papers in Carew and Collins; see particularly Questions and Answers (Netterville & Co.), Carew, p. 61 (1577).
[339] Sidney to Leicester, May 19, in Carew; to the Queen, May 20; Walsingham to Sidney, April 8, in Sidney Papers; Privy Council to Sidney, May 14.
[340] Sidney to Leicester, Feb. 4 and Aug. 1577, in Sidney Papers; Waterhouse to Sidney, Sept. 16.
[341] Order of the Privy Council, March 31, 1579.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
LAST YEARS OF SIDNEY’S ADMINISTRATION, 1577 and 1578.
Lord Chancellor Gerard on the Pale.
The letters of Lord Chancellor Gerard give a vivid picture of the state of the Pale during the controversy about cess. He divides the inhabitants into three classes—gentlemen, idlemen, and churls. Every gentleman kept a number of idle hangers-on, who sponged upon the poor cultivators, and robbed openly when refused free quarters. Their nominal master gave them neither food nor clothes but merely countenance, in return for which they were always ready to avenge his real or fancied injuries. These locusts ate up all the scanty surplus which was left to the poor cultivator. Remonstrance was vain, and perhaps the landowners had really not much choice. ‘I will not put away my thieves,’ a gentleman would argue, ‘for then such a one’s thieves would rob me; let him put away his, and I will put away mine.’ The vicious circle was hard to break, for the Government was not strong or steady enough to repress all impartially. The judges went circuit with little effect, for the juries ‘more regard whether any of the parties are of kin or allied to the justice or of the sept of the justice, or counsellor, than to the matter, and that way commonly passeth the verdict.’ Nor was there much outward magnificence to hide the inherent defects in such a judicial system. At Trim the Court of Assize was like an English cattle-pen; there was no crier, no trumpeters or javelin-men to hedge the sheriff’s dignity, and no competent officer to see that indictments were properly drawn or prisoners duly arraigned. That a desire for justice existed was shown by the conduct of a Meath grand jury, whose members were of very humble position, but who took heart at the Chancellor’s visit, and, believing that right would at last be done, found bills against above 100 of the local oppressors for retaining idle followers.
Gerard’s scheme for governing Ireland.
Important causes, in Gerard’s opinion, were better removed into the Chancery or Star Chamber, but the thieves might be dealt with by the hangman provided the assizes were a little better conducted. English judges were much wanted to secure something like impartiality. Gerard had sixteen years’ Welsh experience, and he saw no reason why the policy which had succeeded there should not succeed in Ireland. The Lord Deputy should endeavour to keep the Irish from actual rebellion, and to persuade them to make some contribution to the revenue. Afterwards, on the borders of each county, English judges might ‘deliver justice with such severity as the poor fleas may have yearly comfort to be delivered from the webs and oppression of the great spiders, ... and so by little and little to stretch the Pale further, thereby to hit the mark long shot at, and hitherto missed, which is to save the revenue of England and bring somewhat from hence.’