THE GREAT FRAUD OF ULSTER
CHAPTER I.
THE MEN OF DEVON.
When Elizabethan England blazed with glory, martial and poetic, when the booty of the Spaniard enriched her adventurers, and the genius of her minstrels charmed every heart, the hills and valleys of the “sister island” echoed with horror, and her pleasant places were filled with the groans of wounded men. A group of Devon captains waged there a fearful war, led by the Queen’s Deputy, Lord Mountjoy. Reckless of their own lives, their deeds of valour scarcely noted by their countrymen, they ended their stubborn task, after a nine years’ death-grapple, by the levelling of every hostile stronghold and the reduction of the clansmen and their shielings into “carcases and ashes.”
At the moment when the victors expected to reap their reward and take possession of the domains of their enemies the course of history was changed by the death of Queen Elizabeth. As her successor the Privy Council selected the King of Scots, who had at times been the secret ally of the Irish chieftains. This choice baulked many a warrior’s hope of prey. James I. forgave O’Neill and O’Donnell (who, indeed, had never offended him), summoned them to London to receive pardon, and restored them to their honours and estates. They had rebelled, as he knew, to save their possessions from covetous officials who, by inventing charges of treason against them, deceived Elizabeth in order to make confiscation a virtue in her eyes.
In her reign the settled plan of the Executive was: to affect to further the interests of the Crown by promoting forfeitures, and then to divert them to the benefit of officials. The disgrace was a legacy bequeathed to her Majesty, her heirs and successors; the booty they kept for themselves. To-day the Crown lands of Ireland, despite three general confiscations, yield only £19,000 a year. In England, where, since the Wars of the Roses, there have been no wholesale spoliations, the Crown estates enrich the Exchequer by £488,000 a year. The cost of prostrating the Irish was borne by the British taxpayer. The profit from it went into private pockets.
James I. tried to reward the conquerors without beggaring the conquered. Lord Mountjoy, who, on the 6th June, 1603, led O’Neill and O’Donnell through London, was given grants of lands and Custom duties in England and was made Earl of Devonshire. His main assistants in the rebellion were two other Devon men—Sir George Carew, who commanded in Munster, and Sir Arthur Chichester, who ravaged Ulster. Between Mountjoy and Carew a close friendship existed. Mountjoy’s letters in the “Pacata Hibernia” manifest the warmth of their relations. Carew was equally confidential with his comrade-in-arms. His cipher of 1602 apprises Mountjoy of the dispatch of a poisoner to follow Red Hugh O’Donnell into Spain, after the defeat at Kinsale. Another tells of the murderer’s success, as O’Donnell was about to secure fresh aids from the Spanish King. Such secrets are entrusted only to bosom friends.
Sir Arthur Chichester was also the intimate of Mountjoy. He had, as a short-cut to end the rebellion, tried to compass the assassination of Hugh O’Neill; and, when this failed, he atoned for his ill-success by devices equally ruthless. The Deputy supported them in everything; and, when the Scotch succession came about, he wished that James I. should repay them royally. Cecil, the most influential Minister of the King, was the friend of all three; and he found it natural that, when James took back to favour Irish noblemen lately in arms, the recompense of those who had reduced them to submission should not be stinted. Chichester came to London from Ireland to push his claims and, accordingly, on the 8th August, 1603, he received in fee the Castle of Belfast, with lands adjoining of undefined extent, and was appointed Life Governor of Carrickfergus at 13s. 4d. a day.
Carew’s worth was recognised in what seemed a less grateful fashion, for on the 28th September, 1603, he was allowed an estate of the value only of £100 a year. This looked an unworthy return; but it represents in present money £1,000 a year. Neither Chichester nor Carew was content with his requital, for each believed that, if the reconciliation between James and the Northern chiefs had not taken place, their swords would have reaped a richer harvest. With this feeling Mountjoy (now Earl of Devonshire) sympathised. So it came to pass that a system was established by which the royal demesne was stripped, for their benefit, and his own. There was at least plenty of monastery plunder to be divided.
The looseness of the times, the feeling aroused among angry captains at the favour shown to surrendered rebels, the grasping example of the Scotch adventurers who swarmed over the Border after King James, the readiness of his consort to lend herself to their petitions—all tended to excite men in power in an unsettled land to batten on the public treasure. The Earl of Devonshire knew that it was illegal for him, as Deputy, or for his officials, to take or possess estate without royal licence. Still the chances offering were too alluring to be thrown away. Yielding to temptation, he abused his trust and soiled his hands.