The plan on which he and his friends worked bore the semblance of legality. A “King’s Letter” was employed to mask every fraud. Such a Letter was a warrant obtained by a petitioner for royal favour. It was usually submitted in draft by the applicant to his Majesty engrossed on parchment. Sometimes two or three skins were sewn together, making it of great size. Its terms, if approved, defined the royal bounty or prescribed the royal will. It was sent to the Signet Office in London when perfected, and was there copied into the Signet Book. Then it was dispatched to Dublin, where a fiant (or order) of the Law Officers to make it “patent” was issued. The Patent was supposed to put the Letter into legal form, but, by official connivance, it often included grants that had never been authorised. When sealed under the Great Seal of Ireland by the Lord Chancellor, a copy was generally “enrolled” in Chancery. This merely meant that its words were inscribed in the vellum rolls kept by the Court officials.
In Stuart days no system of comparing or checking the King’s Letters with the Patents existed, unless the Crown lawyers chose to direct that precaution. If they were corrupt, the Crown was robbed. In that era, official corruption was almost universal. No register of Patents was kept, and grantees constantly strove to extend the limits of their Letters, so as to secure more than the King intended. With influential backing, any fraud was possible. If the grantee did not enrol his grant the Crown was left without even a copy, and could not always tell which of its possessions had been given away. Looseness was fostered by lack of system as well as by lack of honesty.
The Attorney-General and Solicitor-General were supposed to oversee the Patents. They were often needy adventurers, imported from some London Inn of Court on the nomination of accomplices in the Executive. The Lord Lieutenant was their master, and they did not pretend to independence, but obeyed their superiors without question. Honesty injured their prospects, and they seldom affected to practise that unusual virtue. It was a time when much ecclesiastical property was forfeit, especially in Ulster, where the downfall of the Gael enabled the Statutes of Henry VIII. against the monasteries to be at last enforced. St. Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, at its dissolution by Henry VIII. reputed to be the richest in Ireland, held valuable possessions in every province, and several fraudulent Patents made raids on them. Many of these were given over to the Lord Lieutenant and his confederates on flimsy pretences. Public advantage from the confiscations was nil.
The King’s entourage was not fettered by vows of poverty. Courtiers who boasted no virtue themselves did not look for shining examples from Irish officials. They knew these men had left England for their advancement, to make what they could out of a conquered country. The Castle in Dublin was a coarse replica of the Court in London. The spendthrift habits of James I. bred extravagance in his underlings. To deceive that slobbering pedant seemed a small demerit to the Anglo-Irish harpies who regulated their profligacy by London standards.
The clearing-house of corruption in the metropolis for the sale of offices and favours was kept by Michael Hicks of Ruckholt, son of a Cheapside shopkeeper, who had been Burleigh’s secretary in Elizabeth’s reign. Hicks was Cecil’s playfellow in youth; and at his mart much was to be learnt of the schemes and foibles of great men.
After Devonshire’s arrival in England in June, 1603, he was held in thrall by a love affair with the wife of Lord Rich, and never returned to Ireland. He was made Lord Lieutenant by James I., and was able at Court to lend countenance to the malpractices of his friends. To hide his own share in them he worked behind nominees, the principal being henchmen named John Wakeman and John King. The latter he sent over from England to a post in Dublin. Devonshire’s participation in the loot began on the 8th November, 1603. He then secured a King’s Letter for a grant of lands to the value of £100 a year in favour of John Wakeman, on the plea that it represented the Royal gratitude for “services done unto Us and to be done and also in regard to a valuable consideration in money paid and to be paid by our order to an ancient and well-deserving servant of ours in Scotland” by Wakeman. The “old servant” was a myth. So was the money payment by Wakeman to him. So was the £100 a year limit of recompense. From November, 1603, till the Earl’s death in April, 1606, a stream of grants, nominally to John Wakeman, but really for the Lord Lieutenant, flowed from this source. In yearly value they amounted to several thousands of pounds.
Wakeman was a servant of the Levant Company who in 1603 had returned from trading with the Emperor of Morocco. That he had made any payment among the Moors to “well-deserving” Scotchmen in Elizabeth’s reign was unlikely, yet over a dozen Patents of enormous value were passed in his name, on pretence of rewarding him to the extent of £100 a year. Devonshire’s second go-between, John King, was made Clerk of the Crown in Dublin on the 12th July, 1603, and received much property on pretexts equally flimsy.
In order that these practices might be safely carried out, the Lord Lieutenant arranged with Cecil to dispatch to Ireland, as soon as John King was appointed, a law officer on whom they could rely. This was John Davies, a hungry lawyer from the Middle Temple, who afterwards was knighted for his part in fleecing Hugh O’Neill. Davies was nominated in September, 1603, and was sworn-in in Dublin during November, 1603. His unscrupulousness and cunning were beyond the common even of those spacious days. To him must be ascribed the feats of conveyancing, the multiplication of Patents, the shady trusteeships, the magnification of grants, and the plunder of the Gaelic gentry, which defile the reign of James I. His arrival worked an immediate improvement in the fortunes of Chichester and Carew.
On the strength of a warrant for £100 a year, Carew received three Patents. Each included lands far exceeding that sum in annual value. Like John King and John Wakeman, Sir George served as agent for others in the obtainment of grants. In one case, on receiving a King’s Letter in his own favour, he two days later assigned all rights under it to Richard Boyle, the notorious Earl of Cork. This helped Boyle to enlarge the huge estate in Munster which he had snatched from Sir Walter Raleigh—who had himself seized it from the Earl of Desmond. Other officials who dredged in the same muddy tide were Hibbots, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Cooke, Secretary of State; St. John, afterwards Deputy; and the law officers, Davies and Jacob, with many besides.
Before any Patent could legally be made out, the law required conditions to be fulfilled which these worthies entirely disregarded. Notice should first be given to the public, and an inquiry held into the nature of the grant, and the power of the King to make it. So strict was Statute on this point that Patents issued in default of prior inquiry were declared to be “void and holden for none.” This did not trouble Davies or his confederates, who set aside legal safeguards as lightly as moral principles. King James knew naught of their devastations, and it would have touched him nearly to hear the fate of St. Mary’s Abbey—which his predecessors were firm in retaining. Neither Henry VIII. nor Elizabeth would permit its possessions to be recklessly squandered.