Strafford
PART I
The Graces
The reign of James the First had been, if we except one petty and insignificant outbreak in Ulster, a period of tranquillity for Ireland; and, at the accession of his son, the prospects of the country might have seemed to a superficial observer more promising than they had yet been. But, in fact, the ostensibly pacific and constitutional measures of James had produced results more disastrous, and aroused animosities more enduring than even the exterminating policy of his predecessor. Henry Carey, Lord Falkland, who three years earlier had succeeded Grandison as Lord Deputy, was at this time confronted with two problems which have since taxed to the uttermost the abilities of many wiser and more resolute men than he. During the preceding reign the laws which prohibited the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion had been fitfully and spasmodically enforced. Minorities have often been dragooned into conformity; but it is not easy by such means to change the religion of an entire nation; and the dread of a rebellion in Ireland, no less than the necessity of maintaining friendly relations with foreign Catholic powers, repeatedly led the English Government to place a curb upon the frantic zeal of the ascendancy party at Dublin. The latter consideration had recently derived additional force from the marriage of Charles, then Prince of Wales, to a Catholic princess; and, on the accession of the young king, the co-religionists of his consort began, not unnaturally, to hope for something more than the precarious and extra-legal toleration which was all that they had hitherto enjoyed. On the other hand, the fact that the king was disposed to treat the Catholics with leniency was in itself enough to inflame the hostility of the Puritan party, which comprised the majority of the English middle class and had already obtained the ascendancy in at least the Lower House of Parliament. To satisfy the wishes of the Irish without raising a storm in England was a task beyond the abilities of either Falkland or his master.
A still more serious source of discontent was to be found in the general sense of insecurity which pervaded the Irish gentry. During the last years of James’s reign, the precedent which had been set in Ulster had been followed on a smaller scale in Leitrim, Longford, Wexford, and King’s County. All those counties, or parts of them, had, at some time since the Norman invasion, been occupied by English colonists, who had afterwards been driven out by the original inhabitants. During many generations the latter had remained in undisturbed possession; but few of them had taken the trouble to obtain title-deeds which would be valid by English law—a science of whose mysteries they were profoundly ignorant. If in a few instances such documents had once existed, they had generally been lost or destroyed during the long period of anarchy and civil war. It was now decided that these gentlemen, being unable to produce satisfactory title-deeds, were intruders upon the estates of the Anglo-Norman adventurers who had despoiled their ancestors some centuries before; and, when the heirs of the latter were not forthcoming, the lands, in default of any other claimant, were adjudged to have lapsed to the Crown.[[56]]
The alarm and indignation to which these proceedings naturally gave rise were especially great in the western province. During the last three reigns a series of confiscations had been carried out in Leinster, Munster and Ulster, but the Connaught landowners had hitherto escaped spoliation, and they had very lately obtained for their estates a security which, it might have been thought, would have proved a barrier against the rapacity of the most unscrupulous government. In 1585 Sir John Perrott, then Lord Deputy, had effected an arrangement, known as the “Composition of Connaught,” by which the gentlemen of that province were secured in the possession of their estates; but, owing probably to the troubles which not long afterwards broke out in Ulster, the formalities necessary in order to give validity to this transaction were never carried out. In the thirteenth year of his reign, however, James consented, in consideration of a bribe of £3,000, to issue a commission remedying this defect. The Irish gentry loyally performed their part of the agreement; but, owing to some negligence, or, more probably, some trickery on the part of the officials of the Court of Chancery, the patents were incorrectly enrolled, and were afterwards pronounced by interested and unscrupulous lawyers to be null and void. Shortly before the death of James it began to be rumoured that the Government intended to avail themselves of this technical irregularity in order to establish a Plantation in Connaught on the model of the Plantation of Ulster. The rumour, as might have been expected, excited the most painful apprehensions in Ireland; but no actual steps had been taken towards the Plantation when the king died.[[57]]
Charles was not altogether indisposed to treat his Irish subjects with fairness; but his strongest desire, then as always, was to secure a revenue which would render him independent of the English Parliament. The Irish Catholics, on their side, were willing enough to contribute to the relief of the king’s necessities, if by so doing they might obtain toleration for their religion and security for their estates. The first act of the young sovereign was admirably calculated to attract the popular goodwill. By a statute of the second year of Elizabeth, all mayors, sheriffs, and other municipal officers were required to take the Oath of Supremacy; but, owing to the scarcity of Protestants, the law, except in Ulster, had generally been a dead letter. In 1618, however, Sir Oliver St. John had procured the forfeiture of the charter of Waterford—a city which had persistently elected recusant magistrates.[[58]] As an earnest of the royal favour this charter was now restored, and, to the scandal of zealous Protestants, a Roman Catholic mayor was once more installed in office.[[59]]
A few days later, Falkland, acting under instructions received from England, convened an assembly of the Irish nobility and gentry to consider the measures to be taken to relieve the financial embarrassments of the Government, and to hear the concessions which the king was willing to make in return for their assistance.[[60]] But an unexpected obstacle intervened. Justly conceiving that the proposed concessions would put an end to the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by their sect, the Protestant prelates, with Archbishop Usher at their head, drew up and published a “Judgment concerning toleration in religion,” which may be commended to the attention of those pious persons who are accustomed to declaim against the bigotry of the Vatican.
“The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous; their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their Church, in respect of both, apostatical. To give them, therefore, a toleration, or to consent that they may freely exercise their religion and profess their faith and doctrine is a grievous sin, and that in two respects. For,
“First. It is to make ourselves accessory, not only to their superstitious idolatries and heresies, and, in a word, to all the abominations of Popery, but also, which is a consequent of the former, to the perdition of the seduced people which perish in the deluge of the Catholic apostacy. Secondly. To grant them a toleration in respect of any money to be given, or contribution to be made by them, is to set religion to sale, and with it the souls of the people whom Christ our Saviour hath redeemed with His Most Precious Blood. And as it is a great sin, so it is also a matter of most dangerous consequence, the consideration whereof we commit to the wise and judicious, beseeching the God of truth to make them who are in authority zealous of God’s glory, and of the advancement of true religion: zealous, resolute and courageous against all Popery, superstition, and idolatry. Amen.”[[61]]