“When I came to Belfast I learned the real cause of the insurrection in this neighbourhood. Lord Donegall, the proprietor of almost the whole country, came hither to give his tenants new leases. But when they came they found two merchants of the town had taken their farms over their heads; so that multitudes of them, with their wives and children, were turned out to the wide world. It is no wonder that, as their lives were now bitter to them, they should fly out as they did. It is rather a wonder that they did not go much further; and, if they had, who would have been most in fault? Those who were without home, without money, without food for themselves and families, or those who drove them to this extremity?”
A dispatch to the “Irish Society” of the London Corporation in 1802 says of the Right Hon. Richard Jackson, a middleman of the London Clothworkers’ estate near Coleraine:—
“It is commonly reported in the country that, having been obliged to raise the rents of his tenants very considerably, in consequence of the large fine he paid, it produced an almost total emigration among them to America, and that they formed a principal part of that undisciplined body which brought about the surrender of the British Army at Saratoga.”
Unmoved by a riven empire, the Nero-like Marquises of Donegall, in unbroken succession, were quietly hatching out schemes to enforce the recognition of their Patent for the waters of Lough Neagh and the Bann.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PLANTERS’ QUARREL.
In 1755 Lord Massereene’s lease of 1660 expired, and in 1769 the Lord Donegall of that day began to take thought of his “reversion” to the fisheries. The claim of the Chichesters had slept for over a century, and was unknown to the people. Its assertion was beset with difficulties, for the Irish Parliament and Executive would have set themselves against any attempt by such an individual to control Lough Neagh. Several Statutes treated it as both a public highway and a public fishery. But his plans to capture it were skilfully laid. The Londoners had, between 1744 and 1760, erected four traps in the Bann at the Leap of Coleraine near the sea for the capture of salmon. These necessarily diminished the catch further up, and Lord Donegall, without impugning their Charter, objected that their mode of fishing injured his rights in a corner of Lough Neagh. He laid his complaint of damage in a pool on the Armagh shore, forty miles from the traps, instead of in the Bann, and singled out as his quarry the lessee of the unpopular “Irish Society” to serve as defendant. In this way his grant of 1661 was for the first time brought to the notice of the public.
In 1781 and 1784 he launched actions, which miscarried, for trespass to the supposed fishing in Co. Armagh by the erection of the traps. In 1787 he made a fresh onset, and the third trial began in 1788 at Armagh, 33 years after the expiration of Lord Massereene’s lease. In framing his suit he astutely avoided anything which would raise a question as to the validity of his Patent. Hence he made no claim for damage to the fishery of the Bann, where the mischief from the traps would have been sorest, lest, as the Londoners’ Charter included the entire river, a battle as to title should begin. He rigidly confined his complaint within Lough Neagh, to which their Charter did not apply. At the trial, therefore, the only issue was: Did the erection of the traps injure the supposed fishery in the pool of Lough Neagh to which the Londoners could make no claim? If he had charged damages to the Bann he could have had a trial in Antrim, which is bounded by the river. There, a friendly Sheriff would have composed a jury more to his liking; but he laid the venue in Armagh, where he was without local influence, rather than force a conflict with the Londoners as to his pretensions to the Bann. The motive which inspired these tactics and its cunning is evident.
At the trial he did not attempt to prove that any part of Lough Neagh was injured. Still, as the traps must have hurt all the upper waters, the jury decided that, if they were ultimately held to be unlawful, the damages should be £45. This finding was elaborated into a “special verdict” drawn up between the opposing counsel, which set out their version of each litigant’s title. The question of the legal right to erect the traps was left over for argument in the Appellate Court in Dublin. The only point to be decided was: Whether as a possible hindrance to fish ascending to Lough Neagh the traps could be maintained.
The Londoners’ counsel at this stage was the Attorney-General (John Fitzgibbon), who allowed the “special verdict” to be so framed that their Charter and Lord Donegall’s Patent were mutually accepted as unimpeachable.
Soon afterwards Fitzgibbon became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Clare. When the appeal came on he presided at the hearing in 1789, and struggled hard to prevent the traps being condemned. The majority of the judges, however, decided that they were illegal, and the Londoners after some time raised a further appeal by means of a Writ of Error to the Irish House of Lords in 1795. There again the Chancellor figured as the leading member of the Court and strove to help his old clients.