A second quarrel between Cork and Wentworth arose, like the former, out of the ecclesiastical policy of the Lord Deputy. The earl had erected a stately tomb of black marble, containing the remains of his wife, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on the spot where the high altar had once stood, where, as Laud thought, it ought still to stand. To an English High Churchman such a proceeding seemed a wanton sacrilege. Urged on by the archbishop, and probably only too pleased at the opportunity of inflicting a fresh annoyance on his enemy, Wentworth caused the unsightly monument to be removed to a less sacred place.[[97]] In both these cases the Lord Deputy’s action was in full accordance with the general principles of his policy; but the pertinacity with which Cork had opposed his measures in the Council had probably some share in exciting him to severity against that too acquisitive peer.
St. Patrick’s was not the only church with whose internal arrangements the Lord Deputy felt called upon to interfere. He laboured, not always successfully, to introduce into the public offices of the Church a decency and a solemnity which had been too seldom seen, and at the same time to force upon the clergy practices which would now be called ritualistic. He was no fanatic; but he knew that uneducated men are more readily influenced by ceremonies which appeal to their imagination than by dogmas which they do not understand; and he probably thought that the difficulty of inducing the Catholics to conform to the established religion would be lessened if its form of worship did not perceptibly differ from that to which they had been previously accustomed.
But it is by his dealings with the Convocation of 1634 that Wentworth’s ecclesiastical policy must be chiefly judged. In England it had been the custom from very early times for a Convocation of the clergy to be summoned simultaneously with Parliament. In Ireland for many centuries there had been no such custom. The division between the English and Irish clergy before the Reformation, the prevalence of recusancy among the priesthood since that epoch may perhaps account for this omission. In 1560, it is true, Sussex had received instructions from Elizabeth “signifying her pleasure for a general meeting of the clergy of Ireland and the establishment of the Protestant religion through the several dioceses of that kingdom.”[[98]] But it was not until the reign of James the First, when the reformed Church had been, nominally at least, extended through all parts of the island, that the first formal Convocation of the Irish clergy was held.[[99]] The ecclesiastical assembly which was then convened was modelled upon the Convocation of Canterbury, with this difference, that, whereas the latter body represented only the clergy of a single province, the Irish Convocation contained delegates from all parts of the kingdom. It was by this body that the Irish Articles, to which allusion has already been made, had been adopted; and Wentworth now resolved to make use of the same machinery to procure their reform. In accordance with the precedent which had been set twenty years earlier, Convocation was again summoned simultaneously with Parliament. Before it assembled Wentworth informed Archbishop Usher, the compiler of the older formula, of the course which he intended to adopt. Out of respect for the character and station of the Archbishop, the Lord Deputy would not insist on the formal abrogation of the Irish Articles. He proposed instead that they should be tacitly but effectively superseded by the adoption of the Articles of the Church of England—a course for which the expediency of bringing the two Churches into closer harmony afforded a decent pretext. To this suggestion, Usher, who was not remarkable for moral courage, gave a reluctant assent.[[100]] In November their reverences assembled, and were informed that it was the Lord Deputy’s pleasure that they should adopt not only the Articles, but the Canons of the English Church. The upper house, under the presidency of Usher, instantly complied. The representatives of the inferior clergy were less submissive. Instead of adopting the entire body of English Canons, as the Lord Deputy had desired, they referred them to a committee, who divided the Canons into two parts, expressing their approval of some, and setting others aside for further consideration. Into the first Canon, which required subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, they inserted a clause declaring that these were not intended to supersede the Articles already in use. It was some time before Wentworth, whose attention was wholly engrossed by the management of the House of Commons, found leisure to enquire into their proceedings.[[101]] When he was informed of the attitude which they had adopted his anger knew no bounds. How he dealt with the refractory clergy shall be related in his own words:—
“I instantly sent for Dean Andrews, that reverend clerk, who sat forsooth in the chair at this committee, requiring him to bring along the book of canons so noted in the margin, together with the draught he was to present that afternoon to the House. This he obeyed; but when I came to open the book and run over the deliberandums in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam; that I was ashamed and scandalised with it above measure. I therefore said he should leave the book and draught with me; and I did command him, upon his allegiance, that he should report nothing to the House from that committee till he heard again from me.
“Being thus nettled, I gave present directions for a meeting, and warned the Primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe and Derry, together with Dean Leslie, the prolocutor, and all those who had been of the committee, to be with me the next morning.
“Then I publicly told them how unlike Churchmen, who owed canonical obedience to their superiors, they had proceeded in their committee; how unheard a part it was for a few petty clerks to presume to make Articles of Faith without the privity or consent of State or bishop; what a spirit of Brownism and contradiction I observed in their deliberandums, as if, indeed, they purposed at once to take away all government and order forth of the Church, and to leave every man to choose his own high place where liked him best. But these heady and arrogant courses they must know I was not to endure; nor, if they were disposed to be frantic in this dead and cold season of the year, would I suffer them either to be mad in the Convocation or in their pulpits.”
Terrified out of their wits by the language of the overbearing Deputy, the clergy made a hasty and ignominious submission, and accepted the English Articles without further discussion. To punish Dean Andrews, whom he regarded as mainly responsible for the opposition, Wentworth promoted him to the See of Ferns, the emoluments of which were considerably less than those which he had enjoyed as Dean of Limerick.[[102]]
At the same time the University of Dublin, which from the date of its foundation had been a hotbed of Puritanism, was made to feel the reforming vigour of the Lord Deputy. The “weak provost” already referred to—Robert Usher, a relative of the Primate—was, like Andrews, politely kicked upstairs; and his successor, Chappell, a man after Laud’s own heart, proceeded to remodel the college in accordance with the highest standard of Anglican orthodoxy.[[103]]
One other innovation of a more serious character was made. Immediately after the dissolution—for the step was too unpopular to be taken while Parliament was sitting—Wentworth proceeded on his own authority to erect a court of high commission in Dublin similar to that already existing in England, “conceiving the use of it might be very great to countenance the despised state of the clergy, to support ecclesiastical courts and officers, to provide for the maintenance of the clergy and for their residence, either by themselves or able curates, to bring the people here to a conformity in religion, and, in the way of all these, to raise perhaps a good revenue to the Crown.”[[104]]
Parliament and Convocation being both dissolved, Wentworth was at leisure to devote his energies to the great business of his administration—the establishment of an English colony in Connaught. It would be difficult to say which was the more scandalous, the pretext which the Lord Deputy put forward for this measure or the steps by which he attempted to carry it into effect. More than four hundred years earlier Henry the Third, with that princely generosity with which sovereigns have so often disposed of the property of their subjects, had granted the entire province to Richard de Burgh, with the exception of five cantreds about Athlone, which were reserved to the Crown. De Burgh had succeeded in making good his claim to a great part of the province, corresponding to the modern counties of Galway and Mayo; the rest continued in the possession of the aboriginal inhabitants. By the death of the last Earl of Ulster about a century afterwards the title to these lands passed to his daughter Elizabeth, then an infant; but the actual possession remained with his collateral heirs, the MacWilliams, ancestors of the Earls of Clanricarde and Mayo. By the marriage of Elizabeth de Burgh to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the title to the Connaught estates of her ancestors had descended lineally to Edward the Fourth; and the actual occupants, whether of native or Anglo-Norman descent, were pronounced by the Lord Deputy to be intruders on the possessions of the Crown. Neither the prescriptive right derived from an undisturbed occupation of centuries, nor the recent promises of James and Charles, were suffered to constitute a barrier against this monstrous claim. The Articles concluded with Perrott were pronounced invalid on the plea that that statesman had exceeded his instructions; the patents granted by James on the ground of the technical flaw already noticed.[[105]]