While the Irish Parliament were thus manifesting their implacable hostility to his government, the Lord Lieutenant, who appears to have been wholly ignorant of the change which had taken place in their temper, submitted to Sir George Radcliffe one of the most remarkable proposals which have ever proceeded from a British minister. The Ulster Scots were now the great objects of his animosity, and the severities hitherto employed had served rather to irritate than to intimidate them. As a last hope of preserving the tranquillity of the country Strafford now proposed that, with the assent of the Irish Parliament and the assistance of the native Catholics, the entire colony should be transported back to Scotland—a most significant comment on the advantages which the English monarchy is popularly supposed to have derived from the Plantation of Ulster. “It will be objected,” he wrote, “that the Scots are many in number, every ordinary fellow still carrying his sword and pistol; and therefore unsafe to be too far provoked. I answer—’tis more unsafe to deal with an enemy by halves; and that, I fear, will fall out to be our case, if resolutely this design be not put in execution; for who sees not, if the now standing army be not able, without any manner of danger or difficulty, to give them the law, and send them forthwith packing—I say, who sees not that, upon Argyle’s landing and arming of them, we shall be exposed to a most assured scorn and certain ruin?” It is evident that Strafford, when he wrote these words, relied for the success of his project upon the servility of Protestant royalists and the traditional feud between the Catholic and Puritan parties; but Radcliffe, who had formed a juster estimate of the actual condition of the country, did not dare to communicate the proposal to the Irish Parliament.[[150]]
That body was by no means satisfied with its recent triumphs. In the first week of November the Commons, acting, it is said, at the instigation of some members of the English Parliament, which had met a few days earlier, notably of Sir John Clotworthy, a Presbyterian landowner, who had been driven from Ulster by the tyranny of Strafford, and now represented the borough of Malden, drew up a remonstrance enumerating the principal grievances from which the kingdom had suffered under the administration of the Lord Lieutenant. The remonstrance was composed of sixteen articles, of which the first related to the general decay of trade, said to be due to new and illegal methods of taxation; the second and third to the arbitrary interference of the Lord Lieutenant and Council with private lawsuits; the fourth and fifth to the refusal of the Graces and the inquiries into defective titles, particularly in the province of Connaught; the sixth and seventh to monopolies, especially the monopoly of tobacco; the eighth to “the extreme and cruel usage of the inhabitants of the city and county of Londonderry”; the ninth to the tyranny of the High Commission Court; the tenth to the exactions of the Anglican clergy; the eleventh to the misappropriation of the revenue; the twelfth to a proclamation issued in 1635 prohibiting gentlemen to leave the kingdom without license; the thirteenth to the disfranchisement of certain ancient boroughs, by which the Parliament was said to have been deprived of the services of many good and useful members; the fourteenth to the intimidation practised by ministers in the House of Commons; the fifteenth to the exorbitant and illegal fees demanded by subordinate officials in the courts of justice; and the last to the impoverishment of merchants and other subjects owing to the intolerable rapacity of the tax-farmers. On the 11th the House appointed a committee of thirteen members, four from Leinster, and three from each of the other provinces, who were instructed to proceed to London and present the remonstrance to the King. On the 12th the Parliament was once more prorogued.[[151]]
The committee, meanwhile, had sailed for England, without waiting for the license of the Deputy. On their arrival in London they found the Earl of Strafford a prisoner, accused of high treason, and the leaders of the popular party busily employed in collecting evidence against him. Ireland had been the principal scene of the fallen minister’s activity, and it was to his Irish administration that his accusers chiefly looked to furnish matter which might justify his impeachment. On the 6th of November, Pym had moved for a committee to enquire into the affairs of that kingdom; and the motion, which was seconded by Sir John Clotworthy, had been carried by a large majority. To this committee the Irish agents now addressed themselves. The remonstrance was laid before the House of Commons on the 20th, was made the subject of an exhaustive discussion, and was much used in the subsequent prosecution of the Lord Lieutenant.[[152]]
In Ireland, meanwhile, all was chaos. Wandesford died suddenly at the beginning of December, broken-hearted at the calamities of his patron and the alarming condition of the country. After an interregnum of some weeks Charles was reluctantly compelled to entrust the government to two Lords Justices, who were understood to enjoy the confidence of the English Parliament; Sir William Parsons, Master of the Court of Wards, and Sir John Borlase, Master of the Ordnance.[[153]] The first was an astute and rapacious official, who had amassed a vast fortune at the expense of the native proprietors; the second a rough soldier, inexperienced except in the business of his profession. The Houses met again in February and speedily gave fresh proofs of their unabated hostility to the Government. During the last session a remonstrance, identical with that voted in the House of Commons, had been proposed in the Lords, but had been defeated owing to the opposition of the Earl of Ormond. A few days after the prorogation, however, the principal Roman Catholic peers had at an informal meeting deputed three of their number to proceed to London and lay their grievances before the Parliament. These noblemen, with one other, were now authorized to act in the name of the entire body; to repeat the complaints of the Commons; and to adduce others relating to matters which particularly affected their own order.[[154]]
While the Lords were thus manifesting their implacable animosity against the Earl of Strafford, the Commons were adopting even more violent measures. The remonstrance had placed a formidable weapon in the hands of the managers of the impeachment; but its effect was much diminished by the fulsome panegyric upon the Lord Lieutenant which had been prefixed to the act of supply voted in the preceding year. The Commons now declared that this panegyric had been fraudulently inserted in the Act by the earl or his creatures; protested that the matter of it was entirely false; and petitioned the King that it might be expunged from the records.[[155]] A few days later a similar resolution was proposed in the Upper House, and carried in spite of the opposition of Ormond and other royalist peers.[[156]] The two Houses next prepared a list of constitutional questions, which were submitted to the judges for consideration. To these questions, which related to the judicial powers claimed and exercised by the Lord Lieutenant, the validity of acts of State, the jurisdiction of the Castle Chamber and the High Commission Court, the exercise of martial law in time of peace, the punishment of jurors who refused to find for the Crown, the right of the judges to accept bribes, and some other matters of less importance, the judges declared themselves unable to return immediate answers. The questions were thereupon forwarded to the Irish committee in London, who were instructed to communicate them to the English Parliament.[[157]] Finally, on the 27th of February, Audley Mervyn, the principal spokesman of the Puritan party, carried to the bar of the House of Lords articles of impeachment against Sir Richard Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John, Bishop of Derry, Sir Gerald Lowther, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Sir George Radcliffe, Kt., all of whom were jointly and severally charged with having traitorously conspired with Thomas, Earl of Strafford, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government and to subvert the liberties of Parliament and the fundamental laws of the realm.[[158]]
These impeachments were among the last acts of the coalition. An alliance between parties who agreed in nothing save a common hatred was inevitably dissolved by the destruction of the common enemy. Even before the Act of Attainder had received the royal assent, the Catholic section of the opposition had had some reason to be alarmed at the conduct of their Puritan allies. In the last week of April a petition, described as proceeding from “some Protestant inhabitants of the counties of Antrim, Down, Derry, Tyrone, and Armagh,” was presented to the House of Commons by Sir John Clotworthy. The petitioners complained that “partly by the cruel severity and arbitrary proceedings of the civil magistrate, but principally through the unblest way of the prelacy with their faction their souls were starved, their estates undone, their families impoverished, and many among them cut off and destroyed.”
Their chief grievance, however, appeared to consist in the laxity with which the laws against recusants were administered. Titular bishops were winked at. Mass priests were frequent and pretended a title to every parish in the kingdom. Masses were “publicly celebrated without controulment, to the great grief of God’s people, and increase of idolatry and superstition.” Friaries and nunneries were tolerated; and in many places Papists were permitted to keep schools, “unto some whereof such multitudes of children and young men do resort that they may be esteemed rather universities, teaching therein not only the tongues, but likewise the liberal arts and sciences.”[[159]]
The fanatical tone of this petition, the favour with which it was received by the Parliament, and the persecution of the English Catholics completely alienated the Irish from the Puritan party. At the same time the fall of Strafford had removed the main obstacle to a reconciliation between the King and the recusants. Urged on by the Queen, and alarmed at the critical condition of his other kingdoms, Charles at length resolved to conciliate his Irish subjects. In May the Lords Justices received instructions to prepare a Bill for the limitation of the royal title, and another for securing the possessions of the Connaught gentry.[[160]] These and some other less serious concessions effected a rapid change in the sentiments of the Catholic leaders, and the men who in the spring of 1641 had united with the Puritans to resist the tyranny of the Crown took arms in the autumn of the same year to defend the Crown against the encroachments of the Puritans.