The “pension” story rested on the fact that originally Strafford agreed to allow the Chichesters £40 a year in lieu of the £100 received under the Londoners’ lease of Lough Neagh. This, to soothe the family, he increased to £60; and, instead of paying it by the clumsy method of a pension (as was at first intended), he reduced the rent under the Patent by £60. The change did away with the earlier proposal, and was gladly welcomed by Lord Chichester. Yet Charles II. was told that Wandesforde had robbed the persecuted and faithful peer of a £40 pension. To prove it Lord Donegall produced the first Order of the Commissioners as to the £40, and suppressed the second as to the £60. The first Order fitted in with Clotworthy’s £40 rental to the Crown, which Lord Donegall was seeking to capture, and balanced beautifully with the “equities” which he contended for. Any distorted story of this kind went unscrutinised by the gay advisers of Charles II.
It fell in with the purposes of Lord Massereene that Lord Donegall should secure a reversion of his lease. To him it was immaterial to whom he paid rent, or who succeeded to the fisheries after his term expired. Lord Donegall’s success would strengthen him against the Londoners as to the Bann, for each would have an interest in resisting their claims. Accordingly the twain “got together”; and thenceforth the new peer became the ally of his late rival.
The symmetry of the proposal that the “lost pension” of one nobleman should be supplied from the rent due to the Crown by the other, captivated the courtiers at Whitehall. It was such a pretty arrangement, and so historically just in the eyes of all who had been bribed to promote it. In the golden days of the Restoration, the thinnest coating of fact served to veneer any romance put forward by a favourite. Charles II. was an accommodating prince. What cared he for recitals in parchments? There was no one even to remind him that, in the draft of his Charter to the Londoners (then almost ready for his signature), the Bann was once more declared their property. So three months after Clotworthy’s triumph the King yielded to Lord Donegall’s prayer, and, on the 28th February, 1661, a “Letter” was made out authorising a Patent to him of “the reversion” of Lough Neagh and the Bann, with an immediate gift of the rent of £40 a year coming from the new lease of Lord Massereene.
The Royal Letter was embellished by recitals drafted by Lord Donegall and crammed with untruth. It set forth that James I., in 1621, granted the fishings unto Arthur, Lord Chichester; that in 1638, “to comply with our late royal father’s occasions,” they were surrendered to Charles I.; that in consideration of this generosity, the Chichesters should have received “an annuity, pension, or yearly rent-charge of £40 per annum,” with liberty to fish for the provision of their households; but that they were disappointed as to all these promises. This was a moving tale of unrequited loyalty; yet the brows of even the Merrie Monarch would have knit had he been told a tithe of the truth.
The parchments of the previous half-century contradicted every item of this rigmarole and showed what an accurate recital should have disclosed. This was:—
That James Hamilton, through the abuse of spent warrants, came by extravagant grants in collusion with Chichester;
That Hamilton made over much of the property to the Deputy, who, to cloak his rapine, issued a Patent for it to his nephew without kingly sanction, and by the misuse of a Royal Commission;
That the nephew assigned to his uncle all that the Patent conveyed, including the Bann and Lough Neagh;
That, after the Bann was given by Charter to the City of London, £4,500 was paid by his Majesty to “compensate” Hamilton and Chichester;
That a bogus “surrender” to the Crown of the Bann was then made;