The great fraud of Ulster

by T. M. Healy

In framing the verdict, care was taken that the assertion of Chichester’s title should be made indirectly, only. The jury were got to do just enough to enable the Dublin confederates, when the “return” reached them, to shape the grant in the form he required. Nor was what Allen put on record untrue. All that was set forth was that Hamilton and Bassett obtained Patents for the Bann and Lough Neagh, and that these were assigned to Chichester—no more. There was no falsehood here—omission alone conveyed untruth. The Commissioners “forgot” the Charter to the Londoners; they “overlooked” Allen’s proceedings at Derry a fortnight before; they failed to remember the “surrender” of 1611 before the Archbishop of Dublin; or the “compensation” paid to Sir Arthur. As skilled practitioners they operated on the sheltry side of the law, and left the draftsmen of the Patent to do the rest.

If the trick had been discovered before the Patent was ready, Allen would have explained that no wrong to the Londoners was intended; and would rely on the fact that he had previously registered at Derry their title as the real owners. Any repugnancy between the two verdicts, he would protest, was for lawyers to settle, and not for a poor escheator like himself. Others of the Commissioners might have found it less easy to invent a plausible excuse if exposure had befallen them; but in those days honesty had no sentinel, and the ruse was entirely successful.

“Our trusty and well-beloved, the right reverend father in God, Theophilus, Lord Bishop of Dromore,” and Sir Francis Annesley, “knight and baronet, one of our principal Secretaries in our Kingdom of Ireland,” were of the party. They endorsed at Carrickfergus the verdict which gainsaid the Londoners’ Charter, and handed over the Bann to the official who not only did not own it, but had been rewarded for giving up a fraudulent claim to it. Both magnates were acquainted with State policy. They knew the wishes of the King, and of the gift of the river to the City. Yet they soiled their hands as readily as if they had served an apprenticeship to the office of Deputy. Nothing was then too dirty for a dignitary.

As for the Londoners, being denied notice, they were left in the dark and made no sign. Their title having been affirmed by Allen at Derry on the 26th March, 1621, they could hardly have foreseen that on the 6th April, 1621, he would strive to undermine it at Carrickfergus. Still less were they likely to imagine that the nobleman, in whose Deputyship the Bann was made theirs, could be engaged in a plot with a prelate and a Secretary of State to filch it for himself. So they lost the non-tidal river. When the Carrickfergus “return” reached Dublin Chichester’s joy was made full. A Patent was sealed for him on the 20th November, 1621, in which the Bann, from the Salmon Leap at Coleraine to Lough Neagh, with its bed and soil, were declared his property, in the King’s name. Lough Neagh, too, was included, and the grant conferred a power to spread nets on the banks both of river and lake.

Everyone responsible for this knew that justice was outraged, but that mattered not. Lord Chichester could now boast that the fisheries were set in his grasp as firmly as parchment and the Great Seal could assure them. This achievement placed him on the pinnacle of conveyancing greatness. He had successfully brigaded a Bishop and a Secretary of State with an escheator, to flout the King, and got his Deputy to grant a Patent by which the Londoners were robbed. No treachery to Irish chiefs, or slaughter of kern or cleric, could compare with such a triumph.

In one respect he slightly changed his tactics. Instead of working on a single Patent, he got two made out for him—one containing the estates lawfully his, and the other those he had crookedly come by. This plan of a double issue had not been sanctioned by the King, and in other respects he also disregarded the Royal Letter.

Not long, however, was he left in peace. Probably the Corporation got wind of the cheat, for within two months James I. took significant action. The Lord High Treasurer was suddenly ordered abroad on a mission to the Palatinate in January, 1622. His co-mate and brother-in-exile, Sir Oliver St. John, who had just been raised to the peerage as Lord Grandison, was at the same time removed from the Deputyship. It was an unexpected downfall; and evidently some detractor had again slandered them to his Majesty. Both had to quit Ireland forthwith; but their removal was dignified with solemn rites, as befitted their estate. No occasion for malicious glee was afforded to the watchful natives. Wholesome monitions were privily administered, and a new discipline as to Patents was laid down, but public scandal was avoided.

In the following May, when they were well away, the King issued a biting direction to “make stay” of future grants, surrenders, and confirmations “till some safe course might be taken for the preserving of his rents and tenures.” Chichester, too, was forced before his departure to make a lease of Lough Neagh to the Londoners in perpetuity at a rent of £100 a year. As the Lough feeds the Bann, this undid much of his victory, and amounted to an admission that the river belonged to the Corporation.

It was through Buckingham’s favour that the Lord High Treasurer was sent abroad, and, as his cash defalcations had probably became as notorious at Court as his Patent conjurings, the King, doubtless, sanctioned his German mission to rid Ireland of his presence. An outcry which, had he remained at home, might have led to his being brought to justice, was thereby stifled. He was told to his face in the King’s presence by one of the Privy Council that he had so profited by the Plantation that his conduct was “against the honour of the King and the justice of the Kingdom.”

Chichester never returned to the country which for twenty years he had afflicted. In January, 1625, he died in London, three weeks before the death of James I. Within three months steps were taken by Charles I. to compel his heir to make good the £10,000 embezzled from the Crown out of the rents of the forfeited estates.