This naked statement was true, but not the whole truth. Its half-truth was equivalent to a finding that the property had escheated to the Crown in spite of the Royal Letters of Elizabeth and James recognising Felim. Zeal for the Crown was the pretext for Parsons’ inquisition; but once an escheat was declared the King’s interest sank out of sight and Graham was empowered to seize O’Byrne’s estate for himself. Once more the Chief appealed to England. There justice was slow, far off, and dear; but he got it; and on the 4th November, 1616, Felim obtained a King’s Letter requiring St. John to regrant him the lands. This command was flagrantly disobeyed. Piety was the badge of all plunderers, and Graham had promised to endow two churches in Cosha to spread the Lutheran gospel. Such love for religion, pure and undefiled, moved St. John on the 24th February, 1617, to give him a Patent for Cosha.
Again Felim resorted to London, and again a fresh Commission was issued to do him right. The new Commissioners, on the 17th December, 1617, confirmed O’Byrne’s title, but with dogged tenacity Graham got St. John to appoint judges to re-hear the dispute. The struggle seemed unending, and although evidence was taken afresh by the judges they dared not announce a conclusion either way. On the 23rd January, 1618, St. John transmitted their notes to London and asked for directions. Delay and expense provoked a compromise, and Felim by a new order was restored to three-fourths of his lands, but Graham’s piety in purveying a brace of churches for Cosha was rewarded by one-fourth. To leave O’Byrne insecure, no fresh Patent was issued to him; and soon afterwards Lord Falkland became Deputy.
Parsons was now promoted head of the Court of Wards and Receiver-General, but he remained as of yore a-swoop for prey. The plot against the O’Byrnes was revived. Felim, being the only Chief left in Erin, was treated as a blot on the landscape, and in 1622 Falkland reported him to the Privy Council as an ill-disposed person. He owned too big a property to be allowed to remain in his mountains undisturbed. The reply to the Deputy from England, however, discouraged attack. The “Spanish marriage” was at that moment being negotiated by Buckingham, and Falkland learnt that, if the heir to the throne were to wed a Catholic, a fresh persecution of his bride’s co-religionists might appear untimely. When the match with Spain was broken off in 1623 he took a freer hand.
On the 27th August, 1624, he authorised Parsons to hold a Commission to examine O’Byrne’s title, as if it were a new problem troubling the sages of the law. The Surveyor-General held “office,” and returned a finding that Felim’s estate had been forfeited by his father’s rebellion and death—ignoring both grants and pardons from King James and Queen Elizabeth. Falkland, ablaze for law and order, wrote to the Privy Council on the 25th March, 1625, asking them to consider “how vain a thing it is to suppose to content Felim and his sons by indulgently suspending the taking of the lands in his country.” The English authorities gave this presentation of the equities no countenance, and King James, in one of the last dispatches before his death (March, 1625), begged Falkland “to maintain inviolable the credit of his great office.”
Yet Charles I. was not a year on the Throne when the Deputy engaged himself in a still more cruel plot to uproot the O’Byrnes.
On the 13th March, 1626, he ordered the eldest and youngest of Felim’s sons, Brian and Turlough, whom he described as “the most civilly bred of all his sons,” to be arrested as “dangerous conspirators.” They were kept prisoners in Dublin Castle for five months; and all the enginery of the State was employed to suborn witnesses against them. Neighbours were seized and subjected to torture. One Archer “was put naked on a burning gridiron and burnt with gunpowder under his buttocks and flanks, and at last suffered the strapado till he was forced to accuse the brothers.” Two poor wretches named Kavanagh yielded on the rack and consented to swear falsely; but, when their agonies ceased, they retracted. For this they were sentenced to death, and were offered “pardon” if they would repeat the “evidence” in court. Their constancy remained unshaken, and both were hanged. This shortage of perjurers led to a crisis. “True bills” on which Brian and Turlough could be arraigned had to be “found” by a Grand Jury. Being Wicklowmen, the brothers were ordered for trial to another venue. Carlow was as illegal as any, but the Grand Jurors there twice declined to find “true bills.” Twice were they brought up in batches to the Star Chamber in Dublin and fined, but twice they refused to yield. They would not “find” for any fining. Perhaps they recalled the reward meted out to the foreman of the Lifford Grand Jury, Sir Cahir O’Doherty, for declaring Hugh O’Neill an “outlaw” twenty years earlier. Thanks to their obstinacy, the brothers were set free, and Brian O’Byrne sailed in triumph for England. There he was received at Court, and on the 29th August, 1627, he secured two fresh Letters from Charles I. recognising the family title.
Thus the warrants of three British Sovereigns—Elizabeth, James, and Charles—affirmed their rights. Still Falkland entertained no idea of being hindered by royal stumbling-blocks. The only effect of Brian’s success on his mind was to resolve him to a fiercer vendetta. This time he proceeded on a grand scale, and on the 2nd November, 1627, ordered Felim with his five sons (including Brian and Turlough) to be committed to prison in Dublin Castle. There they were loaded with irons, denied food for a long period, and were deprived of visits.
The crime of which they were accused was that they had relieved a banished man named Kavanagh who returned home before his seven years of deportation had run out. This was true, but the man was unknown to them. Kavanagh had never been convicted, nor was he outlawed, and hospitality was merely given to a passing stranger. This was no offence, although it might be docketed in the twentieth century as “hostile association.”
Falkland, having now the whole family in his clutches, prepared the finishing stroke. On the 5th July, 1628, he represented to Charles I. how “absolutely inconvenient” it would be to allow the O’Byrnes to hold “the territory of Ranelagh.” They were already bereft of Cosha, and on 22nd July, 1628, he began taking depositions against them, in secret signed with his own hand—with Sir William Graham (son to Richard) as Gaelic interpreter. A week later, without waiting for any reply or authority from his Majesty, or procuring their attainder, the Deputy proceeded to distribute the remainder of O’Byrne’s estate piecemeal amongst his confederates.
Seven Patents for Ranelagh (unsupported by any King’s Letter) were issued by Falkland to his subordinates in August, 1628. The recipients were Sir William Parsons, Sir William Graham (the translator), Lord Docwra, Lord Esmond, Sir Roger Jones (the “rascal’s” son, afterwards Lord Ranelagh), Sir Thomas Stockdale, and Lord Chancellor Loftus. The last-named, although an enemy of the Deputy, had as Lord Chancellor to be given a morsel, to keep his mouth shut, and consent to apply the Great Seal to the parchments of the other six.