The part played by his spiritual confederate in this legal pantomime was worthy of “that rascal Jones.” His Grace wielded the Great Seal on Chichester’s behalf like a burglar’s “jemmy.” Whether the signet he affixed to the “surrender” was great or small it boots not to enquire. Large as was the gain made by the Archbishop out of the Church Establishment, he supplemented it by grants from the Deputy which lacked the King’s sanction.
Such depredations would have been impossible without the connivance of Court favourites who shared in the profits. Public virtue had either ceased to exist or had not begun to be cultivated. When anyone complained of the conduct of Chichester’s servitors, most of whom were scoundrels apt for his purpose, he shielded them in dispatches as “very honest men.” He fetched from Devonshire his brother and two nephews to assist him, and was at pains to embellish his practices with a garniture of profuse loyalty and solid piety.
In the Castle Chamber (or Star Chamber) he dealt with land, descent, and ownership. Removable judges, flanked by a few men-at-arms, with the Law Officers occasionally thrown in, formed its judicial ingredients. Before them were haled those who were to be fleeced or tortured. Excuse may be attempted for the profligacy of the officials who then found salary and place in Ireland by reference to the hardships of their service. They had to put up with much discomfort; and to confront, at times, the perils of war, famine, and pestilence. Conquest is a hard school. If they returned to London their journey might end in the Tower and their fee be the scaffold. The sea between the islands was infested with pirates lying in wait to assail their ships, and when they reached the metropolis it was part of their science accurately to know whom to bribe, whom to squeeze, whom to favour, and whom to flatter. Such was the age in which Chichester throve.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PLANTERS’ PARLIAMENT.
With the coming of the Planters, Chichester, being by law disabled from holding land without the King’s sanction, grew anxious as to the title of his ill-gotten estates. Many of his Deeds were open to attack, and safety could only be found in confirmation by Act of Parliament. James I. had contemplated, on his accession, the calling together of the Irish Legislature. His order of the 11th September, 1603, as to the pardoned chiefs, mentions “an Act to be passed in the next assembling of Parliament there for the restoration in blood of the Earl of Tyrone, his brother, and their heirs.” On the 16th October, 1604, when appointing Chichester Deputy, he informed him that he “intended to call a Parliament” in Ireland. Sir Arthur disliked the idea and blocked it, as he wished to compass the ruin of the native princes. Besides, a Parliament would have created a counter-authority to dwarf his power.
After the Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster the situation changed. Sway had forsaken the Gael, and a Parliament which native chiefs might control was no longer to be feared. As for the mass of the people, if the manufacture of a majority were attended to with foresight the Deputy knew they could easily be mastered. Conquered Ireland was now shired and sheriffed, with 17 new counties added. In the previous Parliament of Elizabeth only fifteen counties were represented. The drawback that the greater part of the inhabitants of the island were Catholics was one which called for circumspection lest a majority of their representatives should belong to that “damnable superstition.” It had become a cardinal part of State policy that the handful of imported Protestants should control everything, and arrangements were made accordingly.
In 1612 the King agreed that a Parliament should be summoned for the following year, and the Deputy was to see to it that the Planters should be enabled to outvote the natives. When Henry VIII. shired Wales, and admitted its representatives to a voice at Westminster, a different spirit prevailed. No trickery was practised on the Cymri; but in Ireland King James issued charters to 40 hamlets whereby sham “Corporations” exclusively Protestant, returning two members each, were set up at various cross-roads. In the quaint language of the day:—“They were erected in places that constantly pass the rank of the poor villages in the poorest country in Christendom.” Bunches of “freemen,” numbering a dozen or a score, were named in each charter to elect a brace of representatives, and thus at a stroke 80 reliable Protestants were secured. The sheriffs did the rest. In 1613 by this strategy a Protestant majority of 28 was created in the House of Commons of a country where the Catholics were twenty to one. To mark the King’s approval of Chichester’s courses he was made a peer and highly commended.
The Anglo-Irish gentry of the ancient faith protested against his electoral arrangements, but were laughed at. They carried their plaints to the King in London, and were imprisoned or abused as “recusants.” Such of them as were not lodged in the Tower or the Fleet were only allowed to return home to witness the Deputy’s triumph. “Hurly-burlies and other unnecessary stirs were moved in sundry places,” but all to no purpose. The packed Parliament met, and the Commons made Sir John Davies Speaker, after a feverish protest from the Anglo-Irish. When it proceeded to business its first enactment was that O’Neill and the Northern chiefs, dead or alive, stood attainted of high treason; that their estates were forfeited, and their Letters Patent void. The cleavage between the Anglo-Catholics and the disfranchised natives was such that the Bill of Attainder passed unanimously, and was proposed by Sir John Everard, the “recusant” candidate for Speaker, who had renounced a judgeship rather than take the oath of apostacy. Six Ulster counties were then made the Royal demesne.
Now came the moment for Chichester’s privy turn. He had a year before procured the assent of the English Privy Council to the “heads” of several measures which he desired to pass, including one “to confirm the Patents of Ulster Undertakers.” Some shift of wind afterwards set in at Whitehall against him, and his Majesty, scenting his purpose, thwarted it. No sufficient ground for this sudden disfavour anywhere appears. The records of State are often a blank at the most critical moments.
Perhaps the King was smarting at the havoc wrought by his lordship’s grants; perhaps he bemoaned the £2,500 “compensation” paid from his purse to free the Bann and Lough Foyle; perhaps he grudged the Deputy the £10,000 he extracted from Parliament “for extraordinary equipage and porte.” Perhaps he learnt of the £10,000 of the embezzled Ulster rents. At any rate, James I. was vexed with his new peer, and determined he would not allow him to “cook” statutes as he had cooked Patents. Cecil was dead, and the influence which the hunchback wielded was lacking. In the royal councils Cecil’s enemies openly complained of the way in which he had tolerated the devastation of Crown lands. Sir Richard Cooke, the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, urged Chichester’s removal, and wrote bitterly of the disorders he witnessed, although formerly he had supported the Deputy.