That the Patents were without Royal sanction is clinched by the answer the King gave on the 4th September, 1628, to Falkland’s dispatch of the 5th July. Therein Charles I. tells him, after the Patents had been issued: “It is our pleasure that you shall set down your further opinions precisely what is the best course to be taken for the settling of those lands,” and he promised then to “declare his resolution touching the same.” A month previously the Patents had been distributed amongst the Seven Champions of Law and Order. Having stolen the property of the O’Byrnes, Falkland next proceeded to concert measures to do away with the family altogether.
In August, 1628 (the month in which the Patents were sealed) the Chief and his sons were arraigned at Wicklow. Warned by the Carlow fiasco, Parsons saw to it that the Grand Jurors should be men having no qualification to serve. He mustered a faction of stalwarts in Wicklow Courthouse as a counterfeit Grand Jury, who readily found “True Bills” against the prisoners. Their guilt, however, had still to be proved before a Petit Jury; so the trial was put off, and everyone likely to be a witness for them was seized under martial law and put on the rack, or hanged.
These oppressions, tortures, and captivities shocked the country, and the wail of the Clansmen arose on the westering winds. Its echo was heard even in England. Wherefore, Sir Francis Annesley (Lord Mountnorris), who had acted as one of the Commissioners in the dispute raised by Sir Richard Graham, as to Felim’s title, flamed up against Falkland. Annesley had assented to the Patent-outrage at Carrickfergus in 1621 in behoof of Chichester, but the Wicklow tragedy was too black for him. Largely by his influence a Royal Warrant of unusual peremptoriness was dispatched to Dublin on the 3rd October, 1628. It ordered the suspension of all proceedings against the O’Byrnes, and commanded the Deputy not to reply, lest he should make correspondence an excuse for delay. It appointed a Commission consisting of the Protestant Primate—Ussher; the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin—Bulkeley; Lord Chancellor Loftus; the Chief Justice (Sir George Shurley), and Sir Arthur Savage, Vice-Treasurer, to inquire into the case. Felim, however, was first declared by the Privy Council to be “not only unblamable, but to have been of extraordinary obedience.” The Duke of Buckingham’s assassination in the previous August had laid a powerful opponent low.
The Commissioners sat in Dublin for a fortnight in November and December, 1628, and took the depositions of 37 witnesses. They probed no point of title and confined themselves to the criminal charge; but in the result the O’Byrnes were fully exonerated, and were restored to liberty after a close confinement of 14 months. This blow at oppression resounded through the land; but it came too late to undo the Patents of August, 1628. The plunder of Felim, after a struggle lasting a quarter of a century, had been consummated. He died within a year of his release. His wife, heartbroken by the action of Parsons’ Grand Jury, which she supposed meant destruction for her sons as well as her husband, perished within two days of its finding. By order of Falkland her body was dug up and carried away three weeks after its burial in Wicklow Churchyard. The local vicar, Fox, attended to the exhumation, and the remains were removed to Rathdrum. There they were again disturbed, but after identification “the State” allowed the earth to be closed over the corpse. This indignity has never been explained or denied.
Falkland, in a letter to the Privy Council (8th December, 1628) tried to excuse his courses against the family, but his dispatch makes sorry reading. It consists of abuse of the Royal Commissioners (except the Primate and Chief Justice), and of attacks on the reputation of Felim. The father of the gallant who fell at Newbury attempts no reply to any of the evidence taken by the Commission as to the arrests and cruelties. That remains unanswered to this day.
In April, 1629, Falkland was recalled by the unanimous voice of the Privy Council. He wrote to Charles I. on the 13th April, 1629:—“I hear that the question of Felim is to be made the ground of my recall owing to the machinations of the Chancellor and Commissioners. It is a disgrace to your Royal Justice that I should be recalled before being heard in my defence.” The King did not reply. In July, 1629, the Lord Chancellor (Loftus) and Lord Cork were ordered to “take up the Sword” and act in his place.
Falkland remained in Dublin for several months, and the spirit which beset him burns fiercely through his final dispatches. He threatened Sir Francis Annesley with the Star Chamber for his “undutiful contempt” in saving Felim. He sued Sir Arthur Savage for alleged debt; and his warning to the English Secretary of State gleams with a comic touch:—“I pray you think of the results that will follow if Patents (which Gondomar[1] did term the common faith) be overridden. Your fortune rests on the sanctity of such Patents.”
He returned to England not hopelessly disgraced, for he was appointed to the Privy Council; and the King allowed him to name a Committee of that body in November, 1629, to investigate his conduct. If the Committee reached any conclusions or took any evidence they have been withheld from the world. On the 12th November, 1629, he boastfully wrote to Primate Ussher that at Court there was “not one wry look in any creature towards me.”
Falkland’s daughter married Sir Terence O’Dempsey, who was also implicated in the conspiracy to strip the O’Byrnes. In 1631 the ex-Deputy’s retirement was soothed by O’Dempsey’s being translated into “Lord Glenmalire.”
The King having ridded Ireland of Falkland, thought Deputies a trifle out of fashion. So Lord Cork and Chancellor Loftus were allowed to govern the country for nearly four years as “Justices.” In that interval their own Patents, at least, were safe from scrutiny. Lord Cork sometimes scattered gems of wisdom through his correspondence as lustrous as Falkland’s. In 1631 he sighed:—“This place is not a comfortable one unless a man consoles himself by making a private fortune—as has been the custom of my predecessors.”