The development of his “life-estate” into the full-blown perfection of the Fee Simple took years to accomplish and much ministering sleight-of-hand. In the process legal conjuring and covin more astounding than that which ushered in its illegitimate birth briskly unfold themselves. Toadies of Chichester depict him as a Christian of deep religious fervour. A hypocrite by habit, a churl by nature, and a thief by instinct he took care that his deceptions should not be easily unravelled. The consequences of the “amended” Letter, which the ’prentice Monarch of the United Kingdom was befooled into signing, reach down into a far futurity.
CHAPTER III.
CHICHESTER, DEPUTY.
At the outset of the Earl of Devonshire’s wooings, his Deputy in Dublin was one Cary, Treasurer at War. Cary, in comparison with his confederates, was a mere pedlar in villainy. As Treasurer at War he drew forged Bills of Exchange and passed off false moneys dexterously enough; but as Deputy he showed himself unskilled in the mystery of annexing broad acres by sealed sheepskins. Cary was ill-regarded by Chichester, who from his eyrie in Carrickfergus sped into England sly narratives of his misdeeds. Filled with remorse for his colleague’s sins, Sir Arthur humbly insinuated his own merits. Devonshire and Cecil were on the side of the cunning penman, and submitted his reports to the King. An inquiry into his charges was held, and although Cary’s audited accounts were found in order he was recalled. Then Chichester with great show of reluctance allowed himself to be installed in the vacant place.
On being invested with the “Sword of State” he displayed a rapacity in keeping with his increased power, but the more he robbed the Crown the more redolent of loyalty and piety grew his dispatches. He had written of Cary words which quickly waxed applicable to himself:—“The Deputy made such a hand of enriching himself in this land, as the like was never done by any other that supplied the place.” He marked down the pardoned Ulster Chieftains as his especial prey. Upon their possessions he had long cast envious eyes, and with cold watchfulness he set himself to weave a web around them.
Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, after three months at Court, had, on the 11th September, 1603, secured from James I. an order for the “restoration in blood” by Act of Parliament of himself and his brothers, and the re-grant of their lands by Patent. The King wished a Parliament to be summoned so that the Irish Princes and people should universally enjoy (for the first time) the protection of English Law. Two documents published in the year of his accession attest in this particular the statesmanship of the Stuart. Yet no Parliament was called, nor did any Patent issue in favour of the Chiefs from the Dublin fount of grants whose parchments alone a crafty Executive treated as binding. In the words of a Spanish Don, O’Neill and his comrades were “a very simple sort of men.” They had Latin pat, but little skill in lawcraft. Their warlike prowess won European renown, but they were easily outmatched in legal tourney. Despite Royal pardon, Royal parchments, and Royal promises, the Earls O’Neill and O’Donnell and their titles were blotted out within less than five years of the Treaty of Peace by the relentless Devonian.
Shortly after Chichester became Deputy (February, 1605) there appeared before him a Scottish suitor bearing “King’s Letters” entitling him to unexpected bounties. Their magnitude astonished the “Admiral of Lough Neagh.” At first he gibed at the stranger and thwarted his projects. Then he trounced him in letters of alarm to Cecil. The nature of the replies he received, however, was not encouraging. For Sir Arthur had to do with a Royal favourite—James Hamilton—reputed to be a mighty hunter of holes in other men’s grants. The son of a clergyman at Ayr, Hamilton during Elizabeth’s reign, served the Scottish Crown as a spy both in Ireland and England. His career is a romance of the Fee-Simple, and he ended his days as a Peer of the Realm, owning, as Lord Claneboy, an estate in Ulster and elsewhere as extensive as the greediest of the freebooters. In his youth Hamilton was a Scholar of Dublin University, which was then newly founded by Queen Elizabeth on lands seized from St. Mary’s Abbey. Afterwards he kept a Latin School near Dublin Castle with James Fullerton, and the pair acted as intelligencers for the Scottish Crown.
When the Tudor Dynasty was drawing to an end he hired himself to quest for the King of Scots on perilous errands to and fro between the Three Kingdoms. Finally he took pay from both Crowns, and after Elizabeth’s death the favour of James was his rich endowment. A subtle devisor of pretexts to bring about a lapse in the Patents of others, he often succeeded in persuading the King that the forfeits should fall to “discoverers” like himself. Such rewards cost his Majesty little, and the Ayrshireman’s influence and wealth grew apace.
Upon the Stuart Accession, Hamilton was entrusted with the task of pleading at Court the claim of the heirs of Sir Thomas Smith (Elizabeth’s Latin Secretary) to the lands of Claneboy. The Queen’s Charter of 1571 offered a large slice of East Ulster to Smith and his bastard son to encourage a warlike expedition against the eastern branch of the O’Neills. In pushing the raid, Smith’s son was killed, and this brought the adventure and the Charter to an end. When Ireland was subdued in 1603 the Smith family petitioned (in view of their sacrifices thirty years earlier) that the lapsed Charter should be revived in their favour, and Hamilton was hired to press their suit on the King. His retainer proved unprosperous: the Smiths got nothing, but their advocate managed to acquire the bulk of the property for himself. At this result cries of “treachery” arose from the disappointed Smiths, yet no one wasted a thought on the fate of the real owners, the O’Neills of Claneboy.
From Tudor times this branch of the O’Neills had been loyal to the Crown, but were afterwards found to be rather in the way. Holding choice spots of strength, they saw their possessions raided by those whom they had served. After James I. came to the throne, Chichester seized whatever part of their lands he chose to think fell within Sir Ralph Lane’s “custodium.” He had, as already mentioned, imprisoned Sir Con O’Neill; and the rage he felt when that chief escaped from his clutches was intensified on Hamilton’s arrival with the news of his pardon and King’s Letters for a Patent of his property. The O’Neills had dwelt a thousand years in Claneboy; but the Deputy was indignant that a rival should forestall him in spoliation, and avail of his own procedure to work it out.
Sir Con’s downfall came about because, being minded to import wine into the harbour at Carrickfergus, the garrison there looted it on the way to his cellars, and his servant killed one of the soldiers in a hasty affray in 1602. The chief and his retainers had been in the pay and service of Queen Elizabeth since 1600, yet this scuffle Chichester dubbed “treason.” Instead of punishing the thieves he attacked the owner of the wine, and Sir Con’s life and lands were put in jeopardy. He was arrested, thrust into a cell in Carrickfergus Castle, and tried as a rebel by “office of inquest” before the Provost-Marshal. There had been no Provost-Marshal at Carrickfergus in Elizabeth’s reign; and, in order to do service on Sir Con, Chichester got leave, on the 30th August, 1603, to appoint one. He and the Ulster Earls were then in London, and before Con could be executed he escaped from the Castle. A Scotch laird, Sir Hugh Montgomery, helped him to fly, and had him ferried across the narrow strait between Carrickfergus and Scotland. The Laird was brother to the new Court Chaplain under James I., the Rev. George Montgomery. To London he took Sir Con to see the reverend favourite and secure a Stuart pardon. O’Neill promised him a large fee, no less than half his estate, as the price of “forgiveness.”