Irish Cromwellianism after the Restoration remained organised and formidable as before. It dominated the Government; and its mayors and sheriffs returned to Parliament such men as they listed. Out of 260 members in the Lower House, only 64 represented counties—the rest being sent up by hole-and-corner “Corporations” to which the natives were not admitted. These phantom bodies (dowered with two members) were manned by Ironsides who could hardly pronounce the names of their billets. Indeed statutory power was soon afterwards taken to replace the “barbarous and uncouth” Gaelic place-names (which limned every lineament of the landscape) with sweet-sounding “Jonesboroughs” and “Draperstowns.”
In the counties a bare handful of the inhabitants possessed the franchise. The voting was a mere taking of “voices” in the sheriff’s parlour. A “Legislature” constituted in this fashion consummated in 1662-5 the confiscations which the Acts of “Settlement” and “Explanation” enshrine. Lord Chancellor Eustace summed up the result in a letter to the Duke of Ormonde:—“Those who fought against his Majesty are to have the estates of those who fought for him.” The King’s secretary, Nicholas, in a letter to Eustace expressed his regret that the “soldiers” should command such influence in the new Parliament. Still his Majesty yielded himself up to those who helped to betray his father, declaring he was determined never to go “on his travels” again.
In the island which had been the most faithful of the Three Kingdoms to the Crown, Cromwellianism survived as hardily as in the days of Oliver himself. A packed Parliament, a ruthless Executive, and a venal judiciary made or declared the law to a prostrate people. In England and Scotland the Royalists came into their own again. In Ireland they were betrayed or plundered or forgotten.
The only clog on the Republican triumph was the King’s scruple against allowing the leading regicides to retain their booty. Estates in Ireland had been grabbed by Cromwell, Ireton, Ludlow, Bradshaw, Corbett, Jones, Axtell, and others, whose hands reeked with the blood of Charles I. These were declared forfeit; but their rightful owners were not allowed to get them back. Over 111,000 acres in seventeen counties, at a rent of £8,726 a year (which would now represent ten times that amount), awaited disposal. To prevent their restitution to the natives, it was slyly proposed to Charles II. that his dear brother, the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), should take them as a gift. James accepted the lands, and Charles consented—to the disgrace of both. After that, no assailant of the doings of the Dublin Parliament could lightly accuse it of unreasonableness to the King.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE “FAMOUS PAPER.”
In July, 1660 (two months after the Restoration), Clotworthy learnt that Sir Arthur Chichester, now Earl of Donegall, was travelling to London to greet the new sovereign. Lord Donegall and his father had fought for the royal cause as strongly as Sir John and his brother had supported the usurpers. An earldom was conferred on Sir Arthur in his father’s lifetime, at the request of the Duke of Ormonde, for services certified to have been performed in Ulster when the Scotch troops deserted Charles I. Lord Donegall was coming to town, relying on Ormonde’s help and the King’s gratitude, to work for the restitution of the fisheries surrendered to Strafford. Doubtless he knew of Cromwell’s lease to Clotworthy, but he also knew that such grants had become nullities. So, too, did Clotworthy, and a race hotly contested began between them for time and favour.
On the 1st August, 1660, a frigate left Dublin by royal command to fetch the Earl of Donegall to England. To forestall the enemy Clotworthy presented a petition on the 6th August, 1660, praying the King to confirm Basil’s lease. At the same moment the London Corporation was moving for a royal charter to replace Cromwell’s. Thus there were stirring around Whitehall three rival claimants for the northern fisheries. Charles felt bound, as Cromwell did, to respect the pledges made to the Corporation as to their Ulster estate. He was largely a stranger to events in Ireland during his exile; and was attended at Court for Irish affairs by Bishop Bramhall, late of Derry, and formerly chaplain to Strafford. Bramhall had followed Charles to the Continent, and exercised there “curiously unepiscopal functions as a Royalist prize-agent.” To him Clotworthy’s petition was referred; and, on the day it was received, the Bishop reported in its favour, without making the smallest inquiry. Such haste in an Episcopalian dignitary to help a Presbyterian “malignant” shows how these Christians loved one another.
Sir John’s petition was a network of falsehoods. It re-hashed a number of old fables about the long-lost “pension,” with a few new ones for garnish. Beginning with a lie in point of date, it set forth that Sir John had a pension of 6s. 8d. a day granted him by Patent on the 2nd July, 1640. In 1640 Bramhall was Strafford’s chaplain; and this romance cannot have imposed on him. Strafford sailed from Ireland in April, 1640, to crush the Scotch rebellion, knowing that Clotworthy was his bitter enemy. He left behind him as Deputy a loving friend, Wandesforde, who was also Bramhall’s patron; and Bramhall, of all men, was aware that Wandesforde would not have sanctioned a pension to an opponent deep in intrigue with the Parliamentarians to compass the Lord Lieutenant’s downfall. Besides in 1640 Sir John was only 34 years old, and had performed no service to merit reward. The pension to his father was dated the 2nd July, 1618, twenty-two years earlier. So a false date was put forward lest, if 1618 were mentioned, inquiry might be set on foot to unravel the mystery of a pension to a child under twelve years of age.
The Petition went on to pretend that Sir John had been “obstructed in the receipt of his pension by the usurper Oliver.” This was colossal mendacity, but the account given of Basil’s lease surpassed it:—“On application, the late Oliver granted him, in lieu of the said pension, a lease of 99 years for Lough Neagh and the River Bann, with the fishing thereof.”
No relevant fact was truthfully stated, yet Bramhall certified to the King that he had “studied the petition”; that Clotworthy “is certainly entitled to some compensation in respect of the pension of 6s. 8d. a day”; that both the fishing and soil of Lough Neagh, and of the Bann above Coleraine, were in the possession of the Crown, and that a lease should be granted to Clotworthy on the same terms which it was feigned Cromwell had sanctioned. Bramhall’s traffickings as a prize-agent may explain why an Anglican Bishop, who owed everything to Strafford, should favour the pietist who had not only sent his patron to the block, but had embittered and disturbed Archbishop Laud’s last moments on the scaffold.