Latent merit also lurked in the Patent, as an instrument of chicane. It vested great estates in an outsider, who could assign them to the Deputy with a title free from apparent taint. It overlaid with veneer the frauds connected with John Wakeman, John King, Thomas Irelande, Auditor Ware, and James Hamilton. It wafted an air of kingly approval over a barefaced theft. It stripped Sir Randal quite noiselessly, and handed his fishery to a stranger alleged to be “dear” to his Majesty. In form it was a royal grant, which, though obtained by the prostitution of the Commission, was redolent of legality.
When these shifts, re-shifts, and makeshifts to secure a semblance of lawful origin for Chichester’s booty were accomplished, the grant was garnished with the Great Seal of Ireland. Within six months of that solemn rite Bassett transferred everything back to his loving uncle. The conveyance from him, of course, was kept a secret, like Hamilton’s assignment, and was never enrolled. A knighthood was Bassett’s reward, and the Deputy prescribed in his will that he should be buried in the same tomb with himself at Carrickfergus. There each worthy now lies awaiting the judgment of the Resurrection.
Contrasted with Chichester’s refusal to remedy, by the same machinery, the pretended blot in the Patent of Hugh O’Neill, the parchment issued to Bassett attracts lasting interest. O’Neill’s grant was the outcome of a National treaty which ended a nine years’ war. Bassett’s was a swindle carried out against the King and his subjects. Criminality permeated it even to minor details. The fine due to the Crown on its being issued was left unpaid, in spite of a recital that £20 had been lodged in the Exchequer, and in this way the King was both pettily and grossly cheated.
While this Patent was a-making, Sir Randal renewed his appeal to the King. He was, however, unexpectedly thwarted at Court, and for the first time tasted defeat. Umbraged and disconsolate, he was sent home from London, but immediately recommenced his efforts, and not altogether without success. The discouraged chief, who had never even heard of Bassett, wrote to Cecil on the 19th August, 1608:—
“When I took leave of your lordship at the Court at Greenwich, you were pleased that my fourth part of the fishing of the Bann, being in controversy between Mr. Hamilton and myself, should remain, as it was the former year, in sequestration; and that neither of us should reap any benefit of the rent of the same, until the controversy was decided by law.”
He went on to complain that the sequestrator, Captain Phillips, “pays the yearly rent of the fishing privately unto whom Mr. James Hamilton will appoint there; and thereby thinks to deprive me of my rights to the fishing, to my great loss.” He, therefore, besought Cecil to let him have the fishery again, and that meanwhile the Bishop of Derry should be appointed sequestrator.
This protest led to an Order of the Privy Council on the 31st October, 1608, setting Phillips aside. It runs:—“As Mr. Hamilton has prayed that Sir Thomas Ridgeway be appointed sequestrator, and Sir Randal MacDonnell has demanded that the Bishop of Derry be appointed, the Lords of the Council suggest that they be appointed joint-sequestrators; and, if they are not content with this arrangement, the Deputy shall appoint some indifferent person as sequestrator.” Chichester’s reply is not preserved. The State Papers are at times mournfully vacant as to his correspondence. Cecil, whose “Cabinet,” as the Earl of Northampton complained, “had been made the treasury of the State’s whole evidences and intelligence,” lacked at his death many precious papers. The “saint” and the sinner understood one another.
Whatever answer Chichester sent, or rejoinder Sir Randal made, it dawned on the Privy Council by the end of 1608 that the Bann had been alienated by the Deputy. The King took the news bitterly. After the Flight of the Earls he contemplated a grant of the river to the London Corporation; and his anger was kindled against the devastators of Ulster’s spoil. In January, 1609, Cecil was ordered to demand explanations. He had commanded Sir Arthur in June, 1608, “not to dispose of an acre” without authority from England. James I. assumed that the grants fathered on Hamilton had been made in disobedience to this injunction; but Chichester stoutly replied that they were gifts for the benefit of the Earl of Devonshire under the Wakeman Letter. A discreet silence was preserved as to the fact that he had transferred to himself the non-tidal Bann and Lough Neagh along with MacDonnell’s “fourth” under bogus patents.
Little as the Lords of the Council guessed the extent of his profligacy, they grew suspicious. In April, 1609, Sir Randal obtained an order that the Deputy should “direct trial of the controversy with all convenient speed,” and “that his Majesty may be no further importuned in the matter.” This command Chichester pigeonholed, and his victim was left remoter than ever from justice.
New influences, however, were setting in which affected every claimant to property in Ulster. The King, finding the North swept of its Chiefs, and knowing naught of the practices of the Deputy, determined to root Scottish and English settlers in the seats of the stubborn septs. A Plantation would solve the Irish difficulty. Chichester differed from his Majesty as to the future of the Province, and saw in its desolation a means of personal aggrandisement. James hoped to strengthen his garrison by planting the battle-wasted area with British Protestants. The Deputy felt that disarmed natives would be easier to deal with than cross-Channel adventurers protected by royal favour. The King’s policy, besides, exposed him to the risk that his crimes might be laid bare. He could show no title, save what Bassett’s Patent afforded, to his most important acquisitions. Excluding that document, the only parchment he held for Lough Neagh and the Bann, or the countless acres seized therewith, was a secret assignment from Hamilton. This had, for its sole foundation, grants as shaky as Bassett’s, springing from his own wrongdoing.