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IRELAND UNDER THE STUARTS
Vol. III.

By the same Author

IRELAND UNDER THE TUDORS

3 vols. 8vo.

Vols. I. and II.—From the First Invasion of the Northmen to the year 1578.

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IRELAND UNDER THE STUARTS AND DURING THE INTERREGNUM

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Vols. I. and II.—1603-1660. With 2 Maps.

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IRELAND
UNDER THE STUARTS

AND

DURING THE INTERREGNUM

BY

RICHARD BAGWELL, M.A.

HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN), AUTHOR OF ‘IRELAND UNDER THE TUDORS’

Vol. III. 1660-1690

WITH MAP

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1916
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[CONTENTS]
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME

IRELAND UNDER THE STUARTS

[CHAPTER XL]
THE RESTORATION GOVERNMENT, 1660

The King enjoyed his own again, and England rejoiced exceedingly. Even Oliver’s unbeaten soldiers, disgusted with his incompetent successors, were for the most part ready to retire into private life. Yet the spirit of the Puritan revolution survived, and the Mayor of Dover presented a richly bound Bible to the restored monarch, who graciously accepted it, remarking that it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world. At Canterbury a crowd of importunate suitors gave him some foretaste of future troubles, but the entry into London was wonderful. ‘I stood in the Strand,’ says Evelyn, ‘and beheld it, and blessed God.’ With the shouts of welcome still in his ears Charles took refuge in the arms of Barbara Palmer, and next day issued a proclamation against vicious, debauched, and profane persons.

The Irish Convention.

Coote and Broghill were jealous of each other. There is reason to believe that the former was inclined to claim the whole credit of restoring the King, but that the latter proved his own priority by producing a letter from his rival acknowledging the fact. They agreed that the Restoration might be delayed or frustrated by hasty action in Ireland, and that it was better to wait until England herself was committed to it. The officers who had gladly pronounced for a free Parliament might not have been united had royalty been openly favoured. But the Irish Convention lost no time in repudiating Cromwell’s plan of one legislature for the whole of the British Islands, while strongly approving the restoration of the secluded members in England. They declared that ‘as for several hundreds of years last passed by the laws and laudable custom and constitution of this nation, Parliaments have been usually held in Ireland and that in those Parliaments laws have been enacted and laws repealed, and subsidies granted, as public occasion required so that right of having Parliaments held in Ireland is still justly and lawfully due and belonging to Ireland, and that the Parliament of England never charged Ireland in any age with subsidies or other public taxes and assessments, until after the violence offered to the Parliament of England in December 1648, since which time they who invaded the rights of the Parliament of England invaded also the rights of the Parliament of Ireland by imposing taxes and assessments upon Ireland.’ This important declaration was not made for more than a month after the first meeting of the Convention, and the leaders had prevented news from crossing the Channel until they were sure of unanimity. It is therefore not surprising that they were reported to favour separation from England. The Convention now stigmatised this as a calumny originating with Ludlow and his friends, for the idea of separation was hateful to Ireland as absolutely destructive, ‘being generally bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh.’ It was clearly seen that the colonists would have a majority, and means were taken to make it permanent. The Convention pledged themselves to favour education, and to assist in the establishment of a pious, learned, and orthodox parochial clergy supported by tithes or endowments. The adventurers and soldiers were to be secured in the lands they had acquired, and all arrears of military pay to be cleared off.[1]

Provisional taxation.

For some months before and after the Restoration all real power was in the hands of the army, but the Irish Convention gave a show of legality to the means by which the soldiers were paid. A poll tax was imposed for this and other public charges, every person of either sex under the degree of yeoman or farmer being assessed at twelve pence, which was the minimum, and the rate rose according to social position. A baron’s contribution was fixed at thirty shillings, and that of a marquis, marchioness, or marchioness dowager at eight pounds, which was the maximum. The chief Protestant gentry were appointed collectors in each county, Coote heading the list for Roscommon and Broghill for Cork. The royalist wire-pullers in London had been urging the managers of the Convention not to go too fast for fear of alarming the Presbyterians, and it was not till May 1 that they published a declaration condemning the high court of justice and the sentence on the late King. The people of Ireland, they said, took the first opportunity afforded them of denouncing the most foul murder recorded in sacred or profane history, considering that it had been committed in a country where the true reformed religion flourished, and that it was contrary to the solemn league and covenant which the murderers had themselves taken.[2]

Charles II. proclaimed May 14.

Charles II. was proclaimed in Westminster Hall on May 8, and six days later in Dublin; and there were general rejoicings though the central figure was wanting. The shops were shut, all the finery they contained having been transferred to the citizens’ backs. Hogsheads of wine were provided for the multitude, and the more they drank the better the givers were pleased. The guns of the Castle thundered salutes, volleys of musketry were heard on all sides, bonfires and fireworks blazed until midnight. A headless figure stuffed with hay and reclining on a rude hearse was carried in a mock funeral procession, and subjected to the blows and insults of the mob. The journey ended at the mayor’s door ‘where it was in part burnt before the bonfire there, and part trod to dirt and mortar by the rout.’ Such was the end of the mighty Long Parliament.[3]

Lords Justices appointed.

Sir Charles Coote had been President of Connaught since 1645, and there was no difficulty in his case, since service under the Protector was not to be considered a disability. Broghill’s appointment, if ever regularly made, was of much later date and of republican origin, but he had the military authority and the legal presidency was soon conferred on him also. With these two was associated Major, soon after Sir William Bury of Grantham, who had been one of the Irish Council under both Protectors. These three were appointed Commissioners for the Government of Ireland in January and were members of the Convention though keeping their official work separate. Broghill was generally in London for some time after the Restoration, and Bury, who had Presbyterian leanings and whom Adair calls a religious, prudent gentleman, did not always agree with Coote. Other Commissioners were afterwards added and all were paid at the rate of 1,000l. a year until the end of 1660. In compliance with the wishes of the Irish Convention some of the great offices were filled up very soon after the Restoration. The great seal of Ireland fell to Sir Maurice Eustace, who had been Prime Serjeant and Speaker of the House of Commons as early as 1634, and had afterwards endured seven years’ imprisonment which only ended in 1658. He thought himself too old for the work, and Clarendon was of the same opinion: ‘he was now old and made so little show of any parts extraordinary, that, but for the testimony that was given of him, it might have been doubted whether he ever had any.’ Sir James Barry, the chairman of the Convention, became Lord Chief Justice. He had been Strafford’s attorney-general, and very useful to him in making out the royal title to Irish land. Sir William Domvile, who was made Attorney-General, chiefly on the recommendation of Daniel O’Neill, showed great ability and presided in the Convention in succession to Barry, who became Lord Santry. Arthur Annesley was installed in his father’s old place of vice-treasurer, and was soon created Earl of Anglesey.[4]

Monck and Robartes.

Monck, now Duke of Albemarle, claimed the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland where he had an estate, but does not appear to have had any intention of living there. Clarendon says his chief object was to make money. It became necessary to find a deputy, and Charles fixed upon Lord Robartes, whose business capacity was undoubted and who had a good reputation for honesty. He was, however, of a morose temper, seldom agreeing with others, and was much offended at being made Deputy to Albemarle, and not to the King directly, though he was offered the usual power of viceroy. The negotiation dragged on for six months, during which Robartes made enemies of all with whom he had to confer on Irish business, and at last he accepted the Privy Seal, leaving the Government of Ireland to the old Commissioners, while Albemarle, who was too important to displace, remained Lord Lieutenant. In September Coote was created Earl of Mountrath and Broghill of Orrery, and the latter showed his astuteness in securing precedence by getting his patent passed one day before his rival. On the last day of the year the two new Earls were appointed Lords Justices along with the Chancellor Eustace. They were specially authorised by the King to assemble the Irish Convention again in order to provide funds for the payment of the army. The ancient framework of Irish government was completed by appointing a Privy Council of thirty-four members among whom was Sir Philip Mainwaring, made secretary by Strafford in 1634 and still in legal possession of his office. He died a few months later, having received little or no reward for old service and for more than twenty years of poverty varied by imprisonment.[5]

Negotiations with England.

Before the Restoration was accomplished the Irish Convention sent over Sir John Clotworthy and Major William Aston as Commissioners to communicate with the still sovereign Parliament of England. Clotworthy, created Viscount Massereene a few months later, was deeply interested in the Cromwellian land settlement and gained much influence by his activity. His unconcealed Presbyterian leanings were forgiven because, in Clarendon’s words, ‘he was of a generous and a jovial nature’ and a staunch Royalist. After the Restoration these two Commissioners were appointed to attend the King along with eleven others, including Coote, Broghill, Barry, Eustace, and Audley Mervyn. They carried with them 20,000l. for Charles and lesser gifts for each of his brothers. Their instructions were to petition for an Irish Parliament consisting of Protestant Peers and Commoners and freed for this turn from the restrictions of Poynings’ law, for an act of oblivion for all Protestants subject to parliamentary exceptions, and for an act for the attainder of such persons as Parliament should select. It was desired that adventurers and soldiers should be settled in their lands and the Irish in Connaught and Clare. Impropriate tithes in the King’s hand were to be restored to the Church, and taxation was to be controlled by the Irish Parliament. These were the chief points insisted on by the dominant party, while the Irish Roman Catholic gentry in London besought Ormonde, who had been the principal means of uniting the three kingdoms, to mediate for them ‘and the remnant of their miserable nation’ who were ready to lay down their lives for the King. Sir Nicholas Plunket was usually the spokesman of these suppliants. On July 27 Ormonde, who became an Irish duke, took his seat in the House of Lords as Earl of Brecknock, and on the same day Charles concluded his speech as follows: ‘I hope I need say nothing of Ireland, and that they alone shall not be without the benefit of my mercy. They have shewed much affection to me abroad, and you will have a care of my honour and of what I have promised to them.’[6]

Position of the Roman Catholics.

Unfortunately for the chances of the Irish Roman Catholics some of them would not wait, but took forcible possession of their old lands, and there were many outrages. The extent of the disorder may have been exaggerated, but the Convention Parliament believed the worst and the result was a royal proclamation, dated only two days after the King’s entry into London, in which he declared himself ‘very sensible of the innocent blood of so many thousands of our English Protestant subjects formerly slain by the hands of those barbarous rebels.’ To prevent the further spread of lawlessness all Irish rebels except those protected by articles were to be apprehended and prosecuted. Adventurers and soldiers were not to be disturbed except by Act of Parliament or due course of law. Many were imprisoned accordingly, and Ireland was quiet while the question of future legislation was being discussed in London. The pressure of business there was so great that little progress was made during the latter months of 1660. Mountrath carried on the provisional government, but his Presbyterian colleague did not expedite the settlement of Church and State. After the appointment of regular Lords Justices things went a little faster. In January five months’ pay was due to the army on which everything depended, beside an old arrear of fifteen months, and the King found it necessary to acknowledge the Irish Convention, thanking them for what they had done, promising a Parliament as soon as possible, and asking for supplies. A poll-tax, as authorised by proclamation of the Lords Justices and Council, was accordingly imposed, baronets being assessed at six pounds with a regular scale down to husbandmen, petty farmers, and handicraftsmen, who were to pay six shillings each. With a Parliament and possible impeachment in the near future, care was taken not to tax either spiritual or temporal peers. The Church, which never ceased to be legally established, had already been restored to its own.[7]

The Church re-established.

Eight Irish Bishops had survived the great storm, and the King with Ormonde and Clarendon beside him ventured to fill the vacancies without waiting for an Irish Parliament. Papists, Presbyterians, and Sectaries were all alike powerless against the Royalist reaction. Bramhall was named for translation to the primacy very soon after the Restoration, and early in 1661 every see was provided for. Two Archbishops and ten Bishops were consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on January 27, and this unique ceremony was no doubt very impressive.

‘All the orders of the kingdom,’ wrote the new Primate to Ormonde, ‘Justices, Council, Convention, Army, City, graced it with their presence.’ The anthem was supplied by the Dean, William Fuller afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, who sang in very tolerable verse of the essential unity of Church and Crown. Jeremy Taylor, who had been over two years in Ireland, was now Bishop of Down and preached the sermon. Henry Jones of Clogher, who had been Oliver’s scoutmaster-general, was not allowed, or was perhaps too penitent to lay on hands, but held a Bible and presented it to the Primate. Taylor had no doubts about the claims of episcopacy, but in another sermon preached three months later he practically describes his own not very enviable position among the Ulster nonconformists: ‘says the papist, "I will not obey the protestant kings, because, against the word of God, they command me to come to church where heresy is preached"; "and I will not acknowledge the bishops," saith the presbyterian, "because they are against the discipline and sceptre of Jesus Christ"; and the independent hates parochial meetings, and is wholly for a gathered church, and supposes this to be the practice apostolical; "and I will not bring child to baptism," saith the anabaptist, "because God calls none but believers to that sacrament"; "and I will acknowledge no clergy, no lord, no master," saith the quaker, "because Christ commands us to ‘call no man master on the earth, and be not called of men rabbi.’" And if you call upon these men to obey the authority God had set over them, they tell you with one voice, with all their hearts, as far as the word of God will give them leave; but God is to be obeyed and not man, and therefore if you put the laws in execution against them, they will obey you passively, because you are stronger, and so long as they know it they will not stir against you; but they in the meantime are little less than martyrs, and you no better than persecutors.’[8]

Attempts to enforce uniformity.

Nonconformists were now officially styled fanatics, and Mountrath suggested that the King should make 100,000l. by excluding them from the benefit of the new settlement. Orrery was less extreme or less outspoken, but both he and Eustace were willing to give Bramhall a free hand. Only five days before the great consecration a proclamation was issued against Papists, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Quakers, and other fanatical persons. Conventicles were prohibited, the bishops being charged to see that the sheriffs and justices did their duty, while military officers were ordered to support them. Another proclamation provided for the commemoration of King Charles the Martyr on January 30, and a third for the prosecution of Tories as traitors unless they surrendered before February 18, in which case those who had not committed murder might be received to mercy on giving security for good behaviour. It was found possible to reduce the army by 1,650 men and a proportionate number of officers during the first twelve months after the Restoration, but to do this 50,000l. had to be transmitted from England. These men no doubt were paid in full, but when that was done eight months of new and fifteen months of old arrears were due to those that remained under arms. It was time to summon a parliament.[9]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Declaration of the General Convention of Ireland, &c., newly brought over by a gentleman to the Council of State in England, London, 1660; Mercurius Politicus, 612 (Needham’s last number). Broghill reached Dublin on February 23, which occasioned much joy. Colonel Marcus Trevor to Ormonde, April 17 and 18, 1660, in Carte Transcripts, R.O., vol. xxx. Budgell’s Memoirs of the Boyles, 85-87, 3rd edition, 1737. Budgell was a disreputable person, but can scarcely have invented the story about Coote’s letter.

[2] Declaration of the General Convention of Ireland (dated March 12, 1659-60) with the late proceedings there, newly brought over by a gentleman to the Council of State in England, London, 1660; Ordinance of the General Convention ‘for speedy raising of money,’ April 24, 1660, in Marsh’s Library, Dublin; Lord Aungier to Ormonde, May 11, 1660, in Carte’s Original Letters; Declaration of General Convention, May 1, 1660, London and Dublin, 1660 (broadside); Proclamation of General Convention for proclaiming Charles II. (broadside), London and Dublin.

[3] Letter of Toby Bonnell, May 16, 1660, in English Hist. Review for January 1904.

[4] As a sample of the way in which Coote and Bury agreed to differ see their joint letter of October 4, 1660, in Cal. of State Papers, Ireland; Patrick Adair’s True Narrative, p. 236; Clarendon’s Life, Cont., pp. 124, 229; Eustace to Nicholas, October 3, 1660; Humble desires presented to His Majesty by the Commissioners of the General Convention, MS. Trin. Coll., June 20 and 21, 1600.

[5] Clarendon’s Life, Cont., pp. 125-128, 197-199; State Papers, Ireland, December 18 and 19, 1660. The instructions to Robartes calendared at July 1660 really belong to 1669.

[6] Rawdon to Conway calendared at March 17 and 28, 1660; Instructions for Broghill, Coote and others, n.d., but very soon after May 14 Irish nobility and gentry in London to Ormonde, May 6—the two last from Carte Transcripts, R.O., vol. xxx.; King’s speech to the Convention Parliament, July 27, Old Parliamentary Hist., xxii. 400.

[7] Proclamation of June 1, 1660 (broadside), reprinted in Old Parliamentary Hist., xxii. 311. Coote and Bury to Colonel Finch, September 3, and Lord Montgomery to Ormonde, October 31, 1660, enclosing letter from Jeremy Taylor—Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. George Rawdon to Lord Conway, January 23, 1660-1, in State Papers, Ireland. Ordinance of Irish Convention, March 1, 1660-1, in Marsh’s Library, Dublin.

[8] Taylor’s sermons of January 27 and May 8, 1661, in his Works, ed. 1839, vi. 301, 348. The words of Fuller’s anthem are in Mason’s Hist. of St. Patrick’s, 194, and in the 32nd Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, 107. The opening lines are:

‘Now that the Lord hath readvanced the Crown,
Which thirst of spoil and frantic zeal threw down.’

And the concluding chorus:

‘Angels look down, and joy to see
Like that above a Monarchy.
Angels look down, and joy to see
Like that above an Hierarchy.’

[9] Proclamations of January 19, 21, and 22, 1660-1, in State Papers, Ireland, and the Lord Justice’s speech, ib. calendared at May 11.

[CHAPTER XLI]
DECLARATION AND ACT OF SETTLEMENT, 1660-1662

Position of Irish Recusants.

In the autumn of 1660 Sir Henry Bennet, who then represented Charles at Madrid, forwarded a letter from Hugh O’Neill calling himself Earl of Tyrone. The brave defender of Clonmel and Limerick felt that his end was near and begged favour for his family ‘which a long and sad experience will have taught them to value as they ought to do.’ Roman Catholic refugees from Ireland, whatever part they might have taken in the long struggle with the Parliament, felt that only the King could now help them. At his command they had been ready to change from the service of Spain to that of France, and to go wherever his policy required them. They were included in the Breda declaration which promised oblivion for the past and toleration for the future. In London they found many sympathisers but also many enemies, and the latter proved much the stronger party. The adventurers and soldiers occupied all the best parts of Ireland, and by the proclamation of June 1 they were confirmed in their possessions until the King with the advice of the English or Irish Parliament should ‘further order, or that they be legally evicted by due course of law.’ Charles spoke under pressure at the dictation of the English Parliament, but he was bound by the Act of 1642 which pledged two and a half millions of Irish acres for the cost of the war. He was not the man to risk his own position from sentiment or from a sense of justice, but as far as he could do so safely he sympathised with the dispossessed natives. He owed his restoration to England, and Scotland and the English in Ireland, ‘but,’ says Clarendon, ‘the miserable Irish alone had no part in contributing to his Majesty’s happiness; nor had God suffered them to be the least instruments in bringing his good pleasure to pass, or to give any testimony of their repentance for the wickedness they had wrought, or for their resolution to be better subjects for the future.’[10]

Irish demands considered.

At first the Irish appeared as suppliants acknowledging their faults, pleading extenuating circumstances, and begging for royal favour. But as the King’s leaning towards them became evident they took higher ground, demanding their rights in strong language, and ‘confidently excused, if not justified, their first entry into rebellion’ as to the inexcusable barbarity of which Clarendon speaks as strongly as any of the Cromwellians. Rightly, from their point of view, but not wisely, they maintained that the English rebellion, stained as it was by the late King’s murder, was much worse than theirs. Charles attended regularly at the many Council meetings where the representatives of various interests were patiently heard, and the more boldly the Irish advanced their claims the more he was forced to listen to the case of the Cromwellians, who of course raked up the story of the original rebellion which in Clarendon’s words was ‘as fresh and odious to the whole people of England, as it had been the first year.’ As spokesman for his unfortunate countrymen, Sir Nicholas Plunket must have felt the weakness of his own position, for it was known, and he knew it was known, that during the last phase of the Irish war he was anxious for an accommodation with Cromwell and hostile to Ormonde and Clanricarde. He had plenty of help from men who knew all the facts, but Orrery and Massereene were no less well informed, and Ormonde himself was on the spot. Plunket had been a party to the peace of January 1649 and accepted office under it, but the terms were ill-kept, and even if Ormonde were disposed to treat them as still fully in force he was precluded by the King’s Dunfermline declaration that it was exceedingly sinful and unlawful. It was argued that those who had made the peace professed to represent all Ireland, and that they had been totally unable to manage the clerical party who reduced its value to waste paper.[11]

The Declaration.

Adventurers.

Soldiers.

49 officers.

At the end of November a Declaration was at last agreed to which for the most part left the adventurers and soldiers in possession, while making ostensible provision for Irish proprietors who had not engaged in the rebellion or who had earned favour by subsequent services. The whole settlement was founded on the principle that the property of all persons implicated in the rebellion from and after October 1641 was forfeited and actually vested in the Crown. The Declaration begins with an acknowledgment of what the King’s subjects in Ireland had done to further his restoration. A distinction is drawn between what was done by the Act of March 1642, to which Charles I. had consented, and the subsequent ordinances of the usurping Parliament, the result of both being that the adventurers and soldiers possessed the greater part of Ireland. The truce of 1643 and the treaties of 1646 and 1649 were forced upon the late King, and his son would have us believe that he had confirmed the latter to save his father’s life, though in fact he had done so long after his death. Attention is then drawn to the fidelity of the Irish during Charles’ exile who changed from one service to another to suit his interest ‘though attended with inconveniency enough to themselves; which demeanour of theirs cannot but be thought very worthy of our protection justice and favour.’ Nevertheless all the lands possessed by the Adventurers on May 7, 1659, were secured to them, while those whose claims had not been fully satisfied were to have the deficiency made up out of territory assigned to them as a body but not yet distributed. Officers and soldiers were next confirmed in their possessions with savings in the case of fraud. Church lands were excepted, as also the estates of men not protected by the Act of Indemnity or who had broken the peace since the Restoration. In these cases, as in those where valid incumbrances were proved to exist, reprisal was to be made. Commissioned officers serving before June 5, 1649, whose arrears had not been paid in money or land were to be satisfied out of undisposed land in certain counties or within the mile-line surrounding the transplanters’ district beyond Shannon. The forfeited houses in towns were also assigned to these officers, ‘satisfaction being first made to such protestants, who on leases, or contracts for leases, have built or repaired houses, or planted orchards or gardens.’ Protestants whose estates had been divided among adventurers or soldiers were to be forthwith restored, a reprisal of equal value being given to the latter.[12]

Innocent Papists.

Article men.

Ensignmen.

Nominees.

The next class provided for were known as Innocent Papists, that is Irish proprietors who had been dispossessed ‘merely for being papists,’ and who had received more or less of an equivalent in Connaught and Clare. Applying for such an equivalent was their own act, and might ‘without any injustice’ disentitle them to any relief, but they were admitted on equitable grounds. In many cases no doubt there had been only three courses open to them, exile without means to live, starvation at home, or land beyond Shannon. They were now to be capable of restoration to their old estates at any time before May 2, 1661, on condition of surrendering their transplanters’ portions to the King to reprise others. Any adventurer or soldier disturbed to make room for the restored Papist was to have a reprise of equal value. In the case of towns ‘planted with English, who have considerably improved at their own charges and brought trade and manufacture into that our kingdom and by their settlement there do not a little contribute to the peace and settlement of that country,’ the old Roman Catholic proprietors were to have reprise of equal values ‘near the said corporations.’ The difficulties of doing equal justice to all was acknowledged to be great, but those of the Irish who had acceded to Ormonde’s peace and had received land as transplanters were held bound by their own act. Their case was hard, no doubt, but said the King, ‘they can no more reasonably expect that we should further relieve them, than our friends in England and Ireland can expect that we should pay back to them all the moneys they were compelled in the evil times to pay for their compositions, which they would have avoided had it been in their power.’ Those who had chosen the better part and followed the royal fortunes abroad, Muskerry and many others being named, were to be restored if they had received nothing as transplanters, but adventurers and soldiers in possession were to be first reprised ‘out of the remaining forfeited lands undisposed of.’ This was all to be done by October 23, 1661. Eighteen peers, including Clanricarde, Westmeath, Clancarty, Mountgarret and Taaffe were specially named for restoration ‘without being put to any further proof’ along with twenty commoners of whom Richard Bellings was the most remarkable. Orrery had persuaded the English Council, or perhaps had only given them an excuse for declaring, that there was enough undisposed forfeited land to reprise everyone for his losses, and in the meantime the adventurers and soldiers were left in possession. The first to be restored were innocent Protestants and ‘those persons termed innocent papists, who never took out any decree or had lands assigned to them in Connaught or Clare.’ Innocent Protestants and Papists who had taken out such decrees came next, then the Irish Papists who had constantly served under the King’s ensigns abroad.[13]

Recipients of special favour.

All who had been in rebellion before September 15, 1643, and had received grants in Connaught or Clare were excluded from the benefits of the Declaration, but some persons were specially protected from its disabilities. Ormonde and his wife with all his tenants and mortgagees or those of his ancestors ‘barons of Arklow, Viscounts of Thurles, or Earls of Ormond or Ossory,’ were fully guarded. Inchiquin, who had procured a private Act in England for the purpose, was restored to his estate of which he had been deprived ‘for his eminent services and adhering unto us.’ Albemarle was confirmed in all his possessions, as were Orrery, Mountrath and his kinsmen, and several others including ‘the orphans of Colonel Owen O’Connolly,’ Sir Theophilus Jones, Arthur Annesley Viscount Valentia, and Major George Rawdon. If any restorable persons were ousted to make room for these eminent persons they were to be reprised, forfeited lands in Carlow being specially designated for those who were removed from the Ormonde estate.[14]

A satisfactory settlement was impossible.

It was intended that when the Declaration had been confirmed by law in Ireland, and its provisions carried out, it should be followed by a general act of pardon, indemnity, and oblivion on the English model, ‘notorious murderers only excepted,’ but excluding all who had conspired to seize Dublin Castle in 1641, and all who had any part in the execution of Charles I. down to the halberdiers on guard. But, unfortunately, this healing measure was withheld. The King, admitted the imperfections of his Declaration, pleading ‘that the laying of the foundation is not now before us, when we might design the model of the structure answerable to our thoughts.’ Thousands of Englishmen had possessed themselves of Irish lands after long and tedious legal process, they had brought over their families, sometimes selling all they had to do so, they had made great improvements, and it was impossible, as it would have been unjust, to confiscate their property, ‘reprisal not first being provided for.’ The enormous difficulty of the task must be admitted, but Charles proved himself no true prophet when he expressed a confident hope that mutual forbearance would bring about a good understanding between two parties who had nothing in common but the memory of an internecine war.[15]

The first Commission for claims.

The next step was the appointment of a commission to carry out the Declaration. It consisted of thirty-six persons, including many peers and all the King’s counsel. The attorney and solicitor-general were afterwards excluded lest the Crown should be made a judge in its own cause, but in truth there were but few disinterested men among these Commissioners, for they were all concerned in Irish land, though often differing in opinion. Massereene, Petty, and Audley Mervyn, for instance, were naturally inclined to maintain the Cromwellian arrangements, while Lord Montgomery, Domvile, and Lane were more in favour of the old Protestant inhabitants. Some of their colleagues were disposed to do justice to the Roman Catholics, but the latter had no direct representation. It is unnecessary to enlarge on the subject, for little or nothing was done by this unwieldy body, and the instructions for its guidance had to be applied by a smaller and less prejudiced commission. Of the three Lords Justices Orrery and Mountrath leaned towards the adventurers and soldiers, while Eustace thought more of ‘the old English interest which lately overspread the land far different from such as did rise up with Cromwell,’ mushrooms who considered themselves the true representatives of England and ignored those who came in with the Conqueror and never made any defection before 1641. Were they, he asked, all to be cast out for one fault? In several months the Commissioners had only succeeded in relieving one widow, though the streets were ‘full of those miserable creatures of all sorts noble as well as of inferior degree.’ He thought they were criminal who had deluded the King into believing that there was a great scope of available land. Orrery and Mountrath felt the responsibility though averse to restoring the Irish, and to avoid the odium of inaction did of their own motion restore a few notable Roman Catholics, but the great mass were reserved for the new commission.[16]

Composition of the Irish Parliament, May 1661.

Speaker Mervyn.

The composition of the first commission was not the sole cause of delay, for the judges held that it would not be safe to act on the Declaration until it had legal sanction. It was remembered how Strafford had contributed to his own destruction by boasting that he would make Acts of State equal to Acts of Parliament. The Irish Convention having done its duty by making some provision for the pay of the army, it was resolved to call a Parliament. As freeholds were for the most part in Protestant hands there could be no question about the majority. ‘The papists and anabaptists,’ said Orrery, ‘stood in several places to be chosen, yet but one of each sort was actually chosen, and they both in the borough of Tuam, an archbishop’s see; from which all collect that both these opinions will oppose the true church.’ The one Papist was Geoffrey Brown, much trusted by the late Confederacy but opposed to the nuncio. He was excluded by the oath of supremacy, and his seat seems to have been treated as vacant and filled up. Parliament met at Chichester House on May 8 after hearing Taylor preach on the texts that obedience is better than sacrifice and rebellion as the sin of witchcraft. Bramhall presided in the Lords, the Chancellor being disabled as one of the Lords Justices. Lord Santry was anxious for the post, but was considered a cold friend to the Declaration and rejected to his great disgust. For the Speakership of the Commons the King recommended Domvile the attorney-general, but the adventurers were too strong and the Lords Justices acquiesced in the choice of Sir Audley Mervyn, whose flowery speech before them contained much Latin and some Greek. Never, he said, since Ireland was happy under an English Government was so choice a collection of Protestant fruit that grew within the walls of the House of Commons. Their lordships had piped and the Irish danced, and ‘Japheth might perhaps be persuaded to dwell in the tents of Shem.’ This oration was ordered by the Commons to be printed, and it filled six crowded folio pages. Thanks were also voted to Bishop Taylor for his sermon. A jove principium exclaimed Mr. Speaker on taking the chair. The oaths of supremacy and allegiance were affirmed by both Houses, the civil authorities directed to co-operate with the bishops in re-establishing the Church, while the Solemn League and Covenant and the Engagement were ordered to be burned by the common hangman in Dublin and in all market towns.[17]

Debates on the Declaration.

After a little sparring between the two Houses, the Declaration was adopted by Parliament in a fortnight, but the Instructions for working it which had also been transmitted from England were still open to discussion. Commissioners were chosen by ballot, four peers, representing each rank, and eight members of the House of Commons.

In the Lords.

In the Commons.

In the Upper House the lot fell first upon Wentworth Earl of Kildare, the head of the Geraldines, who strangely enough held Ormonde’s proxy. His mother was a Boyle and his father had adhered steadily to the Parliament, but he was looked upon as in some sort the protector of the old English. For colleagues he had Lord Montgomery, Lord Kingston, and John Parker, Bishop of Elphin, afterwards Archbishop of Tuam, who had exerted himself in favour of the suffering Irish. Speaker Mervyn headed the Commoners’ contingent, and this shows how strong the Adventurers were. Among the others were Petty, Sir John Skeffington, Massereene’s son-in-law and heir, Sir Theophilus Jones, who held the Sarsfield property at Lucan, and Sir William Temple, afterwards so famous. All were of course interested in land. Temple, whose diplomatic cleverness was already recognised, acted for the Commons in their communications with the Upper House. His younger brother John, the Solicitor-General, was made acting Speaker during Mervyn’s absence. Being unable to agree as to what ought to be the contents of the coming Bill of Settlement, each House instructed its own emissaries separately. The Lords Justices also appointed agents to represent them in London and to carry over the Bill of Settlement: Michael Boyle, Bishop of Cork, afterwards Primate and Chancellor, Lord Kingston, and Colonel Thomas Pigott, Master of the Court of Wards. Pigott, in Eustace’s opinion, was ‘as right unto the poor people of this nation as any man living,’ but he could not say as much for the first two. Francis Lord Aungier, whose financial skill was valuable, had six months leave from the House of Lords. Massereene also had leave to go to the country, which he utilised to slip over to England and join his forces to the representatives of the Commons, but a letter was written on Kildare’s motion warning the English Government against hearing one who was not authorised to speak for the Peers. Of Roman Catholic suitors there was no lack in London, Sir Nicholas Plunket always figuring as their chief spokesman.[18]

Conditions of the Settlement.

It was from the first evident that there would not be land enough to satisfy all claims, and the Declaration made careful rules about priority. Innocents were to be first restored, but the Instructions raised so many barriers that their case might well seem hopeless. Not only were ‘adventurers and soldiers and other persons’ in possession to be fully reprised before anyone could be restored, but Innocent Papists were disqualified who came within any of the following categories:-

1. Those who were of the rebels’ party before the cessation of September 15, 1643.

2. Those who enjoyed their estates real or personal within the rebels’ quarters, an exception being made in favour of the inhabitants of Cork and Youghal who were ‘expelled and driven into the quarters of the rebels.’

3. Those who had entered the Roman Catholic confederacy before the peace of 1646.

4. Those who joined the nuncio against the King.

5. Those who having been excommunicated for adhering to the King owned it an offence and were relieved from the ban.

6. Those who derived title from any person guilty of the above crimes.

7. Those who pleaded the articles of peace for their estates.

8. Those who being within the royal quarters during the war communicated with the King’s enemies.

9. Those who before the peace of 1646 or 1648 sat in any assembly of the Confederate Roman Catholics, or acted under orders from them.

10. Those who empowered agents to treat with foreign papal powers or brought foreign forces into Ireland.

11. Those who had been woodkernes or tories before Clanricarde left the Government.[19]

Paucity of evidence.

With such a list of disqualifications it would seem hard for any Irish Roman Catholic to prove his innocence within the meaning of the Act. It was at first intended to exclude all who had paid contributions to the rebels, whether voluntary or not, but this was dropped as too manifestly unjust. A strong effort was made to do away with the disqualification from enjoying estates in the enemy’s quarters, but against this it was argued that in many cases there was no other applicable test. After twenty years there was little or no direct evidence, and if the presumption from residence was disregarded the great mass of the Irish would be restored, controlling future Parliaments and getting all the seaports into their hands. ‘Until the cessation,’ Mountrath wrote, ‘none but the rebels’ friends could live in their quarters, all others were expelled or destroyed’; and this reasoning prevailed. Yet it cannot be doubted that many remained in the Irish quarters only because they had nothing to live upon anywhere else.[20]

Available area insufficient.

The Doubling Ordinance.

Even those who could prove their innocence had to make reprisal to Adventurers and soldiers in possession before they could be restored. It soon became evident that Orrery had greatly exaggerated the amount of land available, but Lord Aungier drew attention to the fact that many Adventurers had received more than the value of the money advanced by them. This was largely the result of the Doubling Ordinance passed when the Parliament were in financial straits after Edgehill. As it never received the consent of Charles I., Charles II. could legally ignore it. By this it was provided that those who added one-fourth to their original stake should have the whole doubled and be recouped in Irish measure instead of the English acres originally intended. Thus one whose first subscription was 1000l. and who afterwards added 250l. would be credited with 2500l. As to the Irish acres the point had been conceded in the King’s Declaration. Nor was this all. If the original Adventurer refused to increase his stake a stranger might come in and do it for him, receiving double of the whole after deducting the original advance, and thus a speculator who never gave more than 250l. would receive credit for 1500l. Massereene and other interested persons endeavoured to maintain this arrangement, but the abuse was too glaring and the Bill of Settlement provided that the reprisal should extend only to the amount actually contributed. Even so the fund was still far from sufficient. ‘If,’ said Ormonde, ‘the Adventurers and soldiers must be satisfied to the extent of what they suppose intended unto them by the Declaration; and if all that accepted and constantly adhered to the peace in 1648 must be restored, as the same Declaration seems also to intend, and was partly declared to be intended at the last debate, there must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old will not serve to satisfy these engagements. It remains then to determine which party must suffer in the default of means to satisfy all; or whether both must be proportionately losers.’[21]

Incompatible claims.

Sir Nicholas Plunket.

Ormonde would have liked to restore many of the Irish, but they disregarded his advice. Instead of acknowledging, while endeavouring to minimise, their share in the rebellion they insisted that the Parliamentarians alone were rebels and sufficiently rewarded by being suffered to live. They themselves were the loyalists and worthy of reward. But their enemies were in possession, all-powerful in the Irish army and Parliament, and in a position to show that the Confederates had depended on foreign and papal support, and had done many things in derogation of the royal authority. During the winter of 1661-2 the wrangle continued, and at last Charles, probably much against his will, was constrained to cut the knot. The Solicitor-General Heneage Finch, afterwards Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham, acted as legal adviser in all the Irish business, and he brought up a report from the Committee of Council specially charged with it. The Commissioners from the Irish Parliament and Council had produced the instructions of January 18, 1647, from the supreme council to Bishop French and Nicholas Plunket as envoys to the papal court, a draft of similar instructions for France and Spain, and a copy of the Jamestown excommunication. Sir Nicholas Plunket was then called in and acknowledged his signature to the first and his handwriting throughout the second document. This report was presented when the King was present in Council supported by twenty members including the Duke of York, Clarendon, and Ormonde, and it was thereupon ordered ‘that in regard the said Romish Catholics have been already several times heard at this Board as to the Bill of Settlement, no more petitions or further addresses be required or admitted from them for obstructing the same,’ and the Solicitor-General was directed to go on with the engrossing of it. Sir Nicholas Plunket was at the same time ordered to ‘forbear coming into or appearing in His Majesty’s presence or court, notice of this order being given to the committees employed from the said Council and Parliament, to be by them transmitted into Ireland.’ Plunket was often heard again later on, but not till the Act of Settlement had passed.[22]

Albemarle resigns in Ormonde’s favour.

Mountrath died of smallpox on December 18, and a fresh patent was at once made out to the survivors, Eustace and Orrery. But it was already announced that this was only provisional, that Ormonde was to be Lord Lieutenant, and that no important step was to be taken until his arrival. Albemarle, who had a large Irish property, had for a long time opposed his appointment, and surprised everyone by suddenly recommending him as a most fitting person. It was, he said, useless for him to retain the office in his own hands since he could not well be spared from the King’s side. Charles did not consult Clarendon, whose opposition to his friend’s promotion is amusingly described by himself. The Chancellor objected that the King could not spare the Duke and that the latter would be able to do no good in Ireland. He might have been useful if despatched immediately after the Restoration, but now he had hampered himself by engagements with individuals, and ‘had given himself so much to his ease and pleasure that he would never be able to take the pains which that most laborious province would require.’ Ormonde answered good-humouredly that no one knew the difficulties better than he did and that he had not sought the viceroyalty but could not refuse it on public grounds, and that he would take indefatigable pains for a year or two to purchase ease for the rest of his life. His powers of work were enormous, but he knew how to unbend better than his friend. When the news reached Dublin the Irish House of Lords at once sent a letter of thanks to the King for choosing one ‘of whose noble and sweet disposition and prudent and just government void of all sinister and self ends we have formerly had full experience.’ His presence would offer the best chance of peace and settlement, and no kingdom ever needed them more. The House of Commons were no less complimentary, regarding Ormonde’s government as the most likely to maintain order and to establish an English and Protestant interest.[23]

Provisos in the Bill of Settlement.

Grant to the Duke of York.

The Houses were not allowed to do much until the Bill of Settlement had assumed its final shape. By Poynings’ law it could not be altered after its transmission by the English Council. A week before Plunket’s dismissal by the Privy Council the Irish House of Commons petitioned the King that no provisos should be inserted in the Bill which affected the interests secured by the Declaration. Many had, however, been already decided on and some were added later, which were not all such as the dominant party in Ireland could approve. Further favour was indeed extended without demur to Ormonde, Sir John Temple, Sir George Rawdon, Sir William Petty, and other well-known Protestants, and there was no opposition to what was done for the Established Church, but such eminent Roman Catholics as Sir Robert Talbot, Sir Valentine Blake, and Geoffrey Brown, while deserving well of the Crown, cannot have had the goodwill of the Adventurers. Antrim, who had been omitted from the Declaration, was by a special clause placed upon the same footing as those named in that document. The estates of all the regicides, except a small portion already given away, were granted to the Duke of York without any protection for the old proprietors. James proved his claim to 77,000 acres, and in 1668 his agents were in possession of at least as much more to which the title was disputed. Lest there should be any doubt as to what lands were ‘forfeited,’ it was declared and enacted ‘that the said word shall be deemed and taken not only of such lands, tenements, and hereditaments as are already forfeited by judgment, confession, verdict, or outlawry, but such as by reason of any act or acts of the said rebellion already committed by the several and respectable proprietors hereof shall or maybe forfeitable.’ And ‘undisposed land’ was defined to be all that was not disposed of by the Act.[24]

The Bill in the First Parliament.

The final touches were given to the Bill of Settlement early in April, and on May 6 it was read a first time in the Irish House of Commons, who had the power to reject but not to amend it. Speaker Mervyn had just returned to his post, and his influence was quickly visible. In the course of prolonged debates discrepancies were noticed between the original Declaration and the latter part of the Bill with which it was incorporated. There was some inclination to refuse the passage of the Bill until an explanatory measure was also passed, but Orrery pointed out that there could be no explanation until there was an Act in being to explain. The Commons proceeded, however, with the preparation of an explanatory bill, and the Lord Lieutenant was reminded that he would be expected to transmit it soon after his arrival in Ireland.[25]

Ormonde arrives a Lord Lieutenant.

Ormonde, in his capacity of Lord Steward, was detained in London by the King’s marriage, but reached Coventry on his way to Holyhead by the beginning of July. He was accompanied by many Irish peers, members of Parliament and claimants to land who were now hastening to defend their own interests in Ireland. In each county that he passed on the road to Chester the Lord Lieutenant came to meet him, and the local militia were paraded. He travelled by land to Holyhead, crossed in very rough weather and landed at Howth on July 27, the anniversary of the day on which he had surrendered Dublin to the parliamentary commissioners fifteen years before. He was at the Castle next day, and on the third received the House of Commons and had to endure a speech from Sir Audley Mervyn which was voted to express their sense and ordered to be printed. There were many other speeches and addresses, and on the 31st the Lord Lieutenant appeared in the House of Lords and gave the Royal assent to the Bill of Settlement.[26]

Bennet Secretary of State.

In October 1662, a few months after Ormonde’s arrival in Ireland, the faithful old secretary Nicholas was dismissed and Sir Henry Bennet appointed in his stead. He was soon made Lord Arlington, and by that name is but too well known in history. The correspondence with the Lord Lieutenant passed through his hands, and he set himself from the first to make money out of Ireland. Most of the officials, in co-operation with Colonel Talbot, did their best to advance the interests of a courtier who was likely to be very powerful. He was, says Burnet, ‘proud and insolent, a man of great vanity and lived at a vast expense without taking any care of paying the debts which he contracted to support that.’ Clarendon says much more to the same effect and adds that he was never guilty of friendship to any man. He married Lady Ossory’s sister, and was thus pretty closely connected with the Lord Lieutenant, but the relations between them were never very cordial. The nature of Bennet’s interest in Ireland was soon made clear in the case of an ancient proprietor who had no court interest.[27]

The Clanmalier Estate.

Foundation of Portarlington.

James I. had granted to the head of the O’Dempseys a great estate on both sides of the Barrow in King’s and Queen’s Counties, worth 4000l. a year in its unimproved condition and subject only to a small quit-rent. Sir John Davies had reported that the clan were inclined to live in a civilised manner, and the chief was created Viscount Clanmalier by Charles I. His son Lewis succeeded before the outbreak in 1641, commanded a regiment during the war, and was included in the Cromwellian Act of Attainder. He afterwards claimed to have adhered constantly to the peaces of 1646 and 1648 and to have preserved the land and goods of many distressed English, but received no consideration for his estate which had been given to soldiers and Adventurers. Not having served the King abroad he was not protected by any clause in the Act of Settlement, and Sir Henry Bennet coveted the property. Probably Clanmalier would have failed before the Court of Claims, for he had been a long time in the rebels’ quarters, but his case seems not to have been heard, perhaps through his lawyer’s mistake, and his position was hopeless from the first. In November 1662 the King granted the whole estate to Bennet who had just been made Secretary of State, and the Irish officials did their best to make the grant effective. Winston Churchill and Talbot were very active in the matter, and the latter showed very little anxiety about getting anything for Lord Clanmalier. Ormonde was more sympathetic, and discouraged the private Bill by which Bennet’s friends proposed to cut all knots. The Adventurers and soldiers had to be reprised, and they exerted themselves to find concealed lands, thereby reducing the stock available for working the Act of Settlement. Clanmalier was only tenant for life, but in the end the Act of Explanation gave the whole estate to Bennet without considering the reversion. The men in possession were to have two-thirds of their interests, which some valued at three and some at six years’ purchase, and the Manor of Portarlington was erected with great privileges and the right of sending two members to Parliament. If Lord Clanmalier got anything at all it was in the nature of a compassionate allowance. It is not surprising to find that Tories were numerous near the new borough, and that some of them bore the name of Dempsey.[28]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Hugh O’Neill to Ormonde, October 27, 1660, enclosed in Bennet’s letter of same date, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 226. The Breda declaration is in his Hist. of the Rebellion, xvi. 193, and in Somers Tracts, vii. 394.

[11] Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 209, 221.

[12] The Declaration of November 30, 1660, is incorporated with the Act of Settlement, 1662, 14 & 15 Car. II, cap. 2, which occupies 109 folio pages of the Irish Statutes.

[13] Irish Statutes, i. 252-260, sections 16 to 28 of the Declaration. Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 233.

[14] Sections 11 to 15 and 20 of the Declaration, ut sup.

[15] Sections 12-15, 29, 31 and 35 of the Declaration, ut sup.

[16] The names of the first Commissioners are in the Act of Settlement, Irish Statutes, ii. 264. Eustace to Ormonde, July 29, August 17 and 21, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi.; Lord Aungier to same, May 1, ib. The King to the Lords Justices, April 12, 1661, State Papers, Ireland. The persons ordered to be restored by the Lords Justices were Lords Clancarty, Clanricarde, Westmeath, Fingall, Dillon, Taaffe, and Galmoy, Colonel Richard Butler (Ormonde’s brother), and Colonel Fitzpatrick. The first and the last of these were married to Ormonde’s sisters, but it appears from the Act of Explanation that there had been a hitch in the cases of Lords Westmeath and Dillon and of Colonel Butler.

[17] Orrery to Ormonde, May 8 and 15, 1661, in Orrery’s State Letters, i. 35, 36. Jeremy Taylor’s sermon on May 8, Works, vi. 343; Lord Kingston to Ormonde, May 5 and 8, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi.; Irish Lords Journal, vol. i., May 8-25, Commons Journal, vol. i., May 8-17, Mervyn’s speech being in full; Declaration of Lords spiritual and temporal, May 17, separately printed for circulation.

[18] Irish Lords and Commons Journals, May to July 1661. Eustace to Ormonde, July 29, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. Montgomery to Ormonde, June 29, and Kildare to same, ib. There is an elaborate but not very clear account of all this in Carte’s Ormonde, book vi.

[19] Instructions incorporated in the Act of Settlement, 1662, no. 11, Irish Statutes, i. 269.

[20] Mountrath to Ormonde, June 19, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi.; Heneage Finch’s report, February 1, 1670-1, printed in Carte’s Ormonde, ii. appx. 91, p. 75. Finch is a first-rate authority for everything that happened in London.

[21] The Doubling Ordinance of July 14, 1643, in Scobell, i. 45, repudiated by section 126 of the Act of Settlement. Lord Aungier to Ormonde, April 17, 1661, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxi. Ormonde’s letter in full in Carte’s Ormonde, vol. ii. In his letter of June 1 to Ormonde Bellings says not one per cent. would regain their property ‘and yet they shall seem not to be excluded from all possibility of enjoying it when that imaginary thing a reprisal is found,’ Spicilegium Ossoriense, ii. 189.

[22] Order in Council, March 14, 1661-2, in Cox, supplementary letter, p. 5. Instructions to the Confederate envoys in Confederation and War, vi. 223-227. In the letter already quoted Bellings gives credit to Ormonde for having saved as many of the old proprietors as he could. He confines his sympathies to the ‘ancient families’ and warns Ormonde that it cannot be for a Butler’s interest to see the land possessed by ‘a generation of mechanic bagmen who are strangers to all principles of religion and loyalty.’

[23] Warrant for Ormonde’s appointment, November 4, 1661, State Papers, Ireland; Orrery and Eustace to Nicholas, December 19, ib., Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 234-238. On this occasion Clarendon gives one of his rare dates, and it is wrong, 1664 instead of 1662. Irish Lords and Commons Journals, December 6 and 7, 1661.

[24] Irish Commons Journal, March 6, 1661-2. Act of Settlement, 14 & 15 Car. II. cap. 2, from clause 86 to the end. For the harshness with which the Duke of York’s claims were enforced and the character of the men employed in the work see the letters printed in the 32nd Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, appx. i. pp. 170-181, particularly Colonel Cooke to Ormonde, June 6, 1668.

[25] Irish Commons Journals, May-July 1662. Orrery to Ormonde, May 17 and June 20, in his State Letters, i. 111, 123. The Bill of Settlement passed the Lords on May 30, 1662, without a dissentient voice. Forty-one peers were considered present, but of these twenty-three were proxies. Those who actually attended were three Archbishops; three Earls, Kildare, Roscommon, and Donegal; three Viscounts, Conway, Baltinglas, and Massereene; seven Bishops; two Barons, Caulfield and Colooney—Irish Lords Journal.

[26] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 257. Clarendon’s letter of July 17 in his Life by Lister, iii. 208.

[27] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 272. Burnet, ii. 99. Clarendon State Papers, iii. 81 (supplement). The letter in which Ormonde explained the State of the Land Question to Bennet when the Court of Claims had just ceased to give decrees is printed as an appendix.

[28] Lord Roscommon, the poet, made an eloquent speech for Clanmalier in the Irish House of Lords. The intrigues about this property may be followed in the Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1662-5, but the letters are too numerous to cite separately. That from Lord Aungier, calendared at April 2, 1662, must, I think, belong to 1663. Aungier, who possessed some of the land as an Adventurer, says all the Commissioners favoured Bennet: he was himself protected by law. Act of Explanation, sections 78 and 79. Dunlop’s Ireland under the Commonwealth, i. 154.

[CHAPTER XLII]
COURT OF CLAIMS AND ACT OF EXPLANATION, 1662-1665

The Court of Claims.

While Ormonde was on his way to Ireland the King appointed seven Commissioners for carrying out the Bill of Settlement as soon as it should become an Act. Great care was taken in choosing these, and Clarendon assures us that it would have been impossible to get fitter men. The first named was Henry Coventry, well known in the history of the time. Sir Edward Dering of Kent, a very good man of business, was second. The third was Sir Richard Rainsford, serjeant-at-law and afterwards a judge in England. Sir Thomas Beverley, one of the King’s remembrancers, was the fourth. Sir Edward Smith, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, came next, and was followed by Colonel Edward Cooke. The last named was Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough. Coventry was too useful at Court to be left long in Ireland, and after a few months he was recalled and replaced by the Surveyor-General Sir Alan Brodrick. Before the Commissioners could sit to hear claims of innocence, rules of procedure had to be made and a vast amount of preliminary work done. Petty’s Down Survey was used for the purposes of the settlement, his cousin John acting as Brodrick’s deputy. The Court of Claims was formally opened on September 20, its powers under the Act of Settlement and an amending Act being limited to one year from that date. The Lord Lieutenant was empowered by the Instructions to issue subsidiary commissions, and one to enquire into the value of estates restorable or reprisable was issued to independent persons, and another to Anglesey, Sankey and others, in conjunction with Coventry and his colleagues, to investigate frauds and irregularities in the distribution of lands beyond Shannon under the Cromwellian Government.[29]

Innocents and Nocents.

The Commons dissatisfied.

The result of the first day spent by the Commissioners in hearing claimants was that two were declared innocent and one nocent. ‘If,’ said Ormonde, ‘the lottery would hold out so to the end of their commission it would prove no ill one for the Irish,’ and they accordingly began to indulge in extravagant hopes. The more violent among them declared that Orrery and the other leaders who had restored the King should be rooted out as heretics and damned traitors as soon as the army became ‘Catholic loyal.’ It was said, probably with truth, that many forged conveyances were produced and admitted by the Court. There was angry consternation among the Adventurers and soldiers who did not believe in the impartiality of the Commissioners. The House of Commons, meeting after a short recess, lost no time in giving a voice to the prevailing discontent. Ormonde had forwarded the explanatory Bill as desired, but it was altered in England, and when it came back was, as he foretold, promptly thrown out by the Commons on the motion for a second reading. ‘When,’ he wrote to Clarendon, ‘anybody of credit among these people finds himself like to be pinched in his interest he causes a cry to be raised that all is lost to the English and that the Irish be their masters.’ Timid people sold their goods and departed, while the alarmists stayed and got cheap bargains. Monks and friars added to the panic by holding chapters as openly as in Spain, while prudent Roman Catholics would have liked a sharp proclamation against the regulars as a protection to themselves. The House of Commons were bent on making the Act of Settlement more stringent, and unanimously agreed to twenty proposals for the purpose. Founding an argument upon the last clause of the Act which gave the Lord Lieutenant power to alter the procedure of the Commissioners before a date which had already passed, they called upon him to define the English quarters as existing from time to time until he left Ireland in 1647, no witnesses outside the line being admitted to prove innocence, since the rest of the island was assumed to be rebels’ quarters. Another proposal was that no claimant once adjudged nocent should be allowed to make any other claim. Ormonde was asked to admit a committee of the House to confer with a committee of the Council, the action of the Commissioners being suspended in the interim. The House of Commons had of course no jurisdiction over the Court of Claims, and Clarendon reported that the King was ‘horribly angry’ at their presumption in seeking to treat with the Council.[30]

Speaker Mervyn represents the malcontents.

Titles not regarded as permanently valid.

Though fully determined not to yield to parliamentary pressure, Ormonde promised that the proposals of the House should have ‘such speedy answer as the weight and number of these would permit.’ The Lord Lieutenant was treated with respect throughout, but the Speaker’s speech on the occasion was not conciliatory in substance. The Act of Settlement, he said, was the Irish Magna Charta and not to be infringed in any way: ‘our strength lies in this as Sampson’s in his locks; if those be cut we are as weak as others when the Philistines shall fall upon us.... I shall never forget that expression of His Majesty at a full council "my justice I must afford to you all, but my favour must be placed upon my Protestant subjects."’ He descanted with some force upon the anomalous powers of the Commissioners who both found the facts and laid down the law. The House of Commons asked for juries, since they were certain to be composed of Protestant freeholders. Mervyn clearly understood that Irish claims would still be made whatever law or lawyers might say, and to defeat them proposed to impound all nocents’ title-deeds. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘in the North of Ireland, the Irish have a custom in the winter, when milk is scarce, to kill the calf and preserve the skin, and stuffing it with straw they set it upon four wooden feet which they call a Puckan, and the cow will be as fond of this as she was of the living calf; she will low after it and lick it and give her milk down, so it stands but by her. Sir, these writings will have the operation of this Puckan, for wanting the land to which they relate they are but stuffed with straw, yet, sir, they will low after them, lick them over and over in their thoughts, and teach their children to read by them instead of horn-books. And if any venom be left they will give it down upon the sight of these puckan writings, and entail a memory of revenge, though the estate tail be cut off.’ This was prophetic: for many generations and perhaps even to this day obsolete title-deeds were handed about, though useless for any purpose but to make property insecure and to perpetuate the memory of wrongs long past.[31]

The Court of Claims satisfied no one.

The Commissioners continued to sit during the spring and summer of 1663, but no one was satisfied, and the sheriffs made difficulties about executing their decrees unless they were backed by the ordinary courts of law. The time for hearing claims expired in August, when it was estimated that only one-sixth of the applicants had been heard, but that 800,000 acres had been restored to them. Many Protestants sought decrees of innocence, as a precaution no doubt, for Ormonde and Cork were among them. In March the Lord Lieutenant sent an answer to the Speaker reproaching the Commons with having caused general insecurity so that many English Protestants had been frightened into ‘selling their lots and adventures at vile and under rates, or compounding with the old proprietors on very ill terms.’ He announced the discovery of a plot by so-called Protestants to seize the Castle, and the Commons could only resolve to live and die with His Grace. Average politicians might be a little startled at the military conspiracy, but what they really feared was quite different, and they presented bills for the suppression of the Popish hierarchy and for imposing the oaths of supremacy and allegiance upon all officials and others in positions of trust. Five days later the House adjourned for six weeks, but before the time had expired the Lord Lieutenant prorogued Parliament by proclamation and it did not meet again for more than two years. Both he and the King were almost tempted to dissolve at once, and he was empowered to do so at his own discretion.[32]

Discontent among soldiers.

Many cavaliers served the Parliament.

Ireland could not be governed without a standing army, and the cost of maintaining one, even on the most reduced scale, made it impossible to balance the public accounts. As there was no money to spare in England, the force upon which everything depended was irregularly paid and of course discontented. Ormonde refused to be coerced by hot-headed cavaliers into discharging all officers and men who had served the Protector, though he weeded them as closely as possible. Those who were discharged all remained in the country. A wholesale proscription would affect nearly all the English in Ireland, ‘and many of your own party,’ he told the King, ‘were forced by the persecution that followed them in England to shelter themselves in Ireland, and as they were able to make friends, to get into the army some as inferior officers, some as private soldiers.’ The revolutionary politicians thought it safer to get them out of England even on these terms. They were Royalists all along, and showed it when the time came. Many who never served against the King and some who had actually fought for him in England, ‘their interest and detestation of the Irish assisting their mistake,’ thought they might conscientiously oppose him when treaties with the rebels were being made in his name. They also believed, or wished to believe, that the late King had handed over the whole war to the Parliament once for all. National feeling and the folly of the clerical party made them receive Cromwell in certain towns, but they had since repented. He declined to cashier such men, though he took care to admit no recruits that had not a clear record. There were therefore heads to conspire and plenty of hands to execute, but Ormonde was aware that the plot in the North of England had sympathisers in Ireland. It was reported that Ludlow had returned to put himself at the head of the malcontents, and the Ulster Presbyterians might have been goaded by the bishops into rebellion. Spies were not wanting, and Colonel Vernon, Henry Cromwell’s old antagonist, made himself very useful. Robert Shapcote, representing the borough of Wicklow, was arrested as a ringleader, and the House of Commons could not interfere during prorogation. It does not appear that more than two or three Presbyterian clergymen were in any way concerned, nor any of the more responsible sectaries. Ormonde’s suspicions fell, perhaps not unnaturally, upon Henry Cromwell’s old chaplain, Stephen Charnock, but there seems no reason to suppose that he was implicated, and in any case he eluded all attempts to arrest him either in England or Ireland.[33]

The Castle plot.

A Puritan visionary.

The villain of the piece was Thomas Blood, owner or former owner of a small property at Sarney, near Dunboyne, in Meath, whose mysterious life has never been fully cleared up but who is known to students of history and to readers of ‘Peveril of the Peak’ as the man who stole the crown in the Tower and tried to kidnap the Duke of Ormonde at the top of St. James’s Street. Plenty of dupes were to be had among the unpaid soldiery and the settlers who were likely to lose their lands through the action of the Court of Claims. One of these, Colonel Alexander Jephson, member of Parliament for Trim, disclosed the whole plot to Sir Theophilus Jones two days before the time fixed for its execution. Jones was living at Lucan, of which he disputed the ownership with the Sarsfield family, and was walking near the bridge looking at Colonel Jeffreys’ troop when Jephson appeared and asked him about his land case. Jones said the trial was fixed for June 17, and that he hoped to succeed. Jephson said he would be beaten but would recover the estate in 7000 years. After this apocalyptic speech he asked for a private interview, distrusting Jeffreys, who had been heard to say that the Commissioners were just men. They went into the House together, Jones promising secrecy provided his visitor’s suggestions were just and honest. Jephson laid his hand on his sword, which he had not worn for thirteen years, declared that he and his friends were going to Dublin ‘resolved to adventure their lives’ for the preservation of the English. Having a wife and thirteen children he had taken the precaution to make a will, but had no doubt of being able to seize Dublin Castle, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Clonmel. The conspirators had plenty of money ready in Dublin, some of which probably came from Holland, and 20,000 Scots excommunicated by the Bishop of Down and other prelates were ready to take the field in two days. The regular army would doubtless follow as soon as they had circulated their scheme, of which thousands of copies were already in print. Sir Henry Ingoldsby would appear in Dublin at the head of 1000 horse as soon as the revolutionary flag was hoisted on the Castle. All soldiers who joined would have their arrears at once paid in full, and all the English would be restored to their lands as they stood on May 7, 1659. The solemn league and covenant would be enforced once more with the help of many sympathising ministers who then went about in periwigs, and no popery would be tolerated. Jephson was to arrest Clancarty and Fitzpatrick, and the Lord Lieutenant to be civilly treated as a prisoner. There was to be no bloodshed and no plunder, but by peaceful means he had no doubt that they would have everything in their power long before seven thousand years. Jones himself was to be Generalissimo. Sir Theophilus wrote everything down at once and the next morning carried the news to Ormonde.[34]

Philip Alden, one of the chief conspirators, gave full information, and his escape from the Castle was probably connived at. He was an old adherent of Ludlow and kept up a correspondence with him to prevent suspicion.

Failure of the plot.

Escape of Blood.

The 21st of May, after at least one postponement, was fixed for the attack on the Castle. Blood’s plan, which he had been nine months hatching, was for six men to enter by the main gate at six in the morning and make their way to the back entrance in Ship Street, where some confederates were to be in waiting with a basket of bread. The loaves were to be dropped at the gate and in the confusion Blood was to rush in with 100 men and make himself master of the Castle. Nearly 300 old officers would be ready to clear the streets. The conspirators met about nine o’clock the night before at the White Hart in Patrick Street, where it was intended that there should be a large gathering before morning, but the landlady took fright and declared that if they did not disperse she would give the alarm to the Lord Lieutenant. This seems to have prevented the attempt, but Ormonde was already warned and prepared for any event. Blood escaped through Ulster and a proclamation appeared at once announcing the discovery of the plot, followed two days later by another, in which several conspirators were named and 100l. offered for the apprehension of any one of them. Many arrests were made, and the excited state of feeling may be gathered from what happened when the first batch of prisoners were arraigned. A soldier was killed by a musket accidentally discharged outside, and the fear of a rescue caused such a panic that the judges were near leaving the bench. Jephson was found guilty along with Colonel Edward Warren, Captain Thompson, and a Presbyterian clergyman named Lecky. The first three were executed a few days later, Jephson making a full confession and laying all blame on the vile Papists. Again there was an alarm and great confusion, the tradesmen beginning to shut up their shops, but the Sheriff and his guard restored order so that Warren’s speech could be heard. He talked of the good old cause ‘which now lieth in the dust and some days would have terrified the greatest monarchs.’ Thompson also spoke, saying he was fooled by Blood, praying for the King and dying a Church of England man.[35]

Presbyterians only slightly implicated.

The Rev. William Lecky, who was Blood’s brother-in-law, feigned madness after conviction so that sentence of death could not be passed on him. He perhaps hoped that Massereene and Speaker Mervyn would be willing and able to protect him, but if so he was disappointed. After nearly six months’ confinement he escaped out of Newgate prison disguised as a woman, his fetters having been filed off by two men also in female attire, but was caught again, sentenced, and hanged. His efforts to bring other Presbyterian ministers into the plot had little success, great as the discontent was. Many of them suffered detention, but only two, Andrew McCormick and John Crookshanks, seem to have been really implicated. They fled to Scotland and were both killed at Rullion Green in 1666. The most important person affected in Ulster was Major Alexander Staples, by whose means the conspirators hoped to possess Londonderry. Staples was in prison for a year, but having been active in the King’s restoration he received a pardon, and the same indulgence was extended to Shapcote, by whose example he had been guided. In Munster there was an attempt to tamper with the soldiers, but Orrery, with the help of his kinsman the Bishop of Cork, had no difficulty in dealing with the malcontents. In Connaught it was reported that Ludlow had actually arrived, and some suspected officers fitted out a ship nominally to search for the enchanted island of Brasil. They were taken at the Arran islands and discharged as ‘ridiculously enthusiastic’ dupes. Ludlow was at Vevay all the time, though rumours of his coming were rife long afterwards. He was in constant danger from Royalist assassins, one of whom, an Irishman named Riordan, ultimately succeeded in killing John Lisle.[36]

The Marquis of Antrim’s case.

Nothing caused more alarm among the Adventurers and the English generally than the judgment of the Commissioners declaring Antrim innocent. Much of his property was in possession of Massereene and of other soldiers and Adventurers who knew how to make themselves heard, and the case may have had something to say to the Castle plot. Within the meaning of the Act of Settlement Antrim was certainly not innocent, for he had lived long in the rebels’ quarters, worked for Rinuccini against Ormonde, and afterwards been Cromwell’s pensioner. He had, however, raised men who formed the nucleus of Montrose’s force, though he did not go with them himself as agreed, and though the number fell far short of what he had promised. He had been ruined by his extravagance at Court long before 1641, and his creditors, some of whom were secured by a mortgage, naturally maintained that if the men in possession were put out their claims should be preferred to those of the nominal owner. At first there was no inclination to treat Antrim favourably, and when he came to London soon after the Restoration he was imprisoned in the Tower by the King’s special order at the instance of the Commissioners of the Irish Convention, who impugned his conduct during the war, and he was also charged with having libelled the late King by suggesting his complicity in the Irish rebellion. His creditors would have arrested him if the Government had not. No evidence was offered, and at the end of March 1661 bail was accepted for his appearance before the Irish Council, Lords Moore, Dillon, and Taaffe being bound for him in the sum of 20,000l. He appeared in Dublin accordingly, was under restraint there for a short time, and was then bailed by orders from England. All the documents were forwarded and the case was committed by the Irish Council to Attorney-General Domvile and Solicitor-General Temple.[37]

Queen Henrietta Maria favours Antrim.

Charles had at first refused to see Antrim and showed no disposition to favour him. By the Act of Settlement he was placed on the same footing as Lord Netterville, who had to go before the Commissioners and failed to obtain a decree of innocence. Pressure in his favour was however applied by Queen Henrietta Maria, acting no doubt under the influence of Jermyn, now Earl of St. Albans. At first her advocacy had not much effect, and she was too cautious to write strongly in her own name though she entreated Ormonde to ‘forsake in part his own sense which will most singularly oblige her.’ She was above all anxious that the case should be entirely settled in England. Antrim had been sent to Ireland nevertheless, and when it was proposed to pass a special Act in his favour, Ormonde found his whole Council against it and declared that there was not the slightest chance of getting such a measure through the House of Commons. Moreover, Antrim had put in his claim of innocence. If he succeeded, no further legislation was wanted; if he failed, an Act to exonerate him would be unjust to other Adventurers and soldiers. An investigation was made by a Committee of the English Privy Council, of which both Clarendon and St. Albans were members. Ormonde and Anglesey, who best knew what could be said against Antrim, were absent in Ireland, and the report was favourable to him. The Chancellor, who admitted that he had always disliked him, did not think that he could be rightly condemned ‘except you have somewhat against him which we do not know; and that it is strange that you have never sent the information to us; for we know the King was not more inclined towards him than law and justice required.’ As it was, and in the absence of further information from the Irish Council, His Majesty wrote to them declaring his belief in Antrim’s innocency and desiring them to transmit his letters to the Commissioners. Several documents, he said, had been produced which showed that the late King was ‘well pleased with what the marquess had done, after he had done it, and approved the same.’ He added that Antrim’s English creditors were very unwilling to lose their security by leaving his great estate in the hands of Adventurers and soldiers ‘who have advanced very small sums thereon.’ The Lord Lieutenant and Council hesitated to transmit the letter to the Commissioners on the ground that the King had not all the facts before him, that Antrim had notoriously sided with the nuncio, prevented the Confederates from sending the stipulated 10,000 men to England, and opposed the peaces of 1646 and 1648. Antrim’s friends at Court then procured a second letter from the King addressed to the Commissioners of Claims directly, but containing the same matter as the first, and so matters stood when the case came on for hearing.[38]

A King’s letter held superior to an Act of Parliament.

Rainsford presided in the Court of Claims, and wished to find Antrim innocent at once upon the King’s letter only and without hearing any evidence. Dering objected to this, and the case proceeded, but Rainsford frequently interrupted saying that it was waste of time and that the letter covered all. At last it was proposed first to refer the case back to the King, then to adjourn it, and then to give further time for the production of the Council’s answer to the King’s letter. All these expedients were rejected by a majority and Antrim was adjudged innocent by four votes to three. According to the evidence he was clearly disqualified under the Act of Settlement which the Commissioners were sworn to administer, and their decree rested entirely on the King’s letter.[39]

‘Murder will out.’

Antrim is restored.

At the moment of this trial Roger Lestrange was appointed surveyor of the press, and his attention was very soon attracted to a pamphlet printed in London but sent from Ireland under the title of ‘Murder will out,’ in which it is maintained that ‘the King’s letter takes all imputations from Antrim and lays them totally upon his own father.’ The writer, whose name has never become known, said he was a young man and may well have been one of the junior counsel present. There can be no doubt that Charles I. did often communicate with the Irish through Antrim, but there is no evidence of his complicity in the rebellion itself, though he may have been quite ready to use and increase Strafford’s army and to make himself master of Dublin during the months preceding the actual outbreak. The pamphlet, however, made a great stir in England and was very useful to the extreme Protestant party. Charles was much in the habit of signing important papers without knowing their contents, but he now had this important letter read over to him in full Council along with the hostile petition of the Adventurers and soldiers. Ormonde had already complained that the restoration of over 100,000 acres to Antrim would falsify all calculations as to the amount of land available, nor could he naturally be much inclined to favour the man who had thwarted him on every possible occasion during the Irish war. Ultimately Antrim regained his estate through a proviso in the Act of Explanation, repudiating the decree of innocence, and setting forth that the marquis had since pleaded guilty to prevent a new trial. Certain quit-rents imposed by that measure—and on such an enormous tract of land they must have amounted to a considerable sum—were granted by the King to St. Albans, and no doubt that was the reward for Henrietta Maria’s interference. Her favourite is described by Evelyn as having ‘lived a most easy life, in plenty even abroad, while his Majesty was a sufferer ... a prudent old courtier and much enriched since his Majesty’s return.’[40]

The Bill of Explanation.

The first Bill of Explanation promoted by the Irish Parliament having been promptly rejected by the English Government, Ormonde and his Council were directed to prepare another. This was drawn by Rainsford and sent away at the end of September. Amendments to it followed a few days later, and Rainsford, who apparently had not had exactly his own way, sent over a separate draft by the same messenger. Consideration of the Bill was deferred until Sir Thomas Clarges arrived with these additional papers, but Richard Talbot gave out that the delay was his doing. Rainsford, Beverley, and Brodrick were sent for at once, and Churchill was allowed to follow at the end of the year. The Bill came before the Council in the middle of November, and was explained by Finch. Sir Nicholas Plunket was at once heard in reply, but admitted that the Solicitor-General had anticipated most of his objections. After this, though there was much discussion in Council, the Bill hung fire for months. Bristol’s attack on Clarendon and the stress of parliamentary work generally delayed the despatch of Irish business and gave time for countless intrigues. ‘There are very few,’ Clarendon told Ormonde, ‘who have spent a few months in Ireland and return hither who do not understand Ireland and the several interests there better than you.’ All parties were heard by April 1664, and as Clarendon had long foreseen the King then found it necessary to send for the Lord Lieutenant. He went over accordingly in May, leaving his son Ossory as Deputy. Orrery reached London about the same time, and for some months the scene of action was there, while Ossory kept Ireland quiet without much difficulty. ‘He is winningly civil to all,’ his grandmother wrote ‘and yet keeps that distance that belongs to his place, and manages his affairs with judgment and care.’[41]

Object of the Bill.

Dissatisfaction of Clarendon.

The Act of Explanation was not intended to alter anything in the Act of Settlement, but only to clear up doubts and supply omissions. Ormonde repeatedly declared that almost any permanent arrangement would be better than none, Ireland being a prey to uncertainty in the meantime. There was not land enough to satisfy everybody and it was necessary that each party should sacrifice something. In Ireland the English party had agreed to surrender one-sixth of what the Act of Settlement gave them, but the Irish agents in London thought this too little, and it was then arranged that 1,800,000 Irish acres of profitable land should be assigned to the English and the rest to the Irish. The latter being still dissatisfied, the English party consented to have the one-sixth raised to one-third, and upon that basis the Bill was settled by Finch with the help of a committee consisting of the Duke of Ormonde and of all the Irish Privy Councillors then in London, including Orrery and Anglesey, with the Commissioners of Claims excepting Smith, who seems not to have left Ireland. Clarendon wished the Bill to be strictly explanatory and opposed all provisos in favour of particular persons, as he had done in the case of the Act of Settlement, and all material alterations in the draft sent from Ireland. ‘To what purpose,’ he said, ‘is Poynings’ Act that all Acts shall be transmitted from thence hither if we under pretence of mending an Act shall graft new matter into it that hath not the least relation to the matter prepared there.’ Both he and Ormonde were opposed to such provisos. But he was overruled, for Charles’s good nature or indolence had induced him to give many promises, which had to be redeemed. ‘The first thing a King should learn,’ said Temple after some experience of the reigning monarch’s ways, ‘is to say No, so resolutely as never to be asked twice, nor once importunately.’ That lesson was never learned by Charles II., and the wrangle about the interests of particular persons continued for nearly a year after Ormonde’s arrival in England.[42]

Provisions of the Bill agreed to.

The Act of Explanation contains 234 clauses and occupies 136 folio pages. Forfeited lands were vested in the Crown as before, but decisions actually given under the former Act were confirmed. There was, however, no attempt to provide for further decrees of innocence, the power to grant which had expired on August 21, 1663. There had been over 800 decrees, but Plunket and his friends alleged that 8000 cases had been unheard for want of time, and Finch allowed that there were about 5000 such claims, including several that had been entered twice. By the Act of Settlement officers and soldiers were protected as to lands in their possession on May 7, 1659, but some doubts had arisen as to whether this did not exclude those who had left the army between that date and November 30, 1660, and it was now decreed that there was no such exclusion. It was laid down that Protestants should be first provided for, ‘of whom his Majesty ever had and still hath greatest care and consideration in the settlement of this his kingdom,’ and all Adventurers, officers, and soldiers were confirmed as to two-thirds of what they had held at the former date. Protestant purchasers of land from the transplanted in Connaught and Clare were confirmed, but Adventurers who claimed under the doubling ordinances of the Long Parliament had to be contented with the equivalent of what they had actually advanced. Of the thirty-eight persons specially named as restorable in the Act of Settlement, seventeen had received nothing, the stock of land available for reprisals having been exhausted. To these were now joined sixteen who had been mentioned but less particularly in the former Act, twenty-one fresh names were added, and the whole fifty-four were declared entitled to their principal houses and 2000 acres of land adjoining them. Very many of the provisos to which Clarendon objected were nevertheless included. The administration of the new Act and of the ‘matters of the former Act which remain in force’ was entrusted to five members of the former commission, Chief Justice Smith, Sir Edward Dering, Sir Alan Brodrick, Sir Winston Churchill, and Colonel Edward Cooke. Rainsford, now a judge in England, and Beverley, a master of requests, were very obnoxious to the English party in Ireland and were not reappointed, ostensibly by reason of their official duties. It was not till May 1665 that the Act was ready for transmission to Ireland, where it might be passed or rejected but not altered.[43]

Ormonde brings the Bill to Ireland.

The Court was at Salisbury in August 1665, and there the Great Seal was affixed to the Bill of Explanation. Business was at this time much interrupted by the plague, and some of the discussion had taken place at Sion House and Hampton Court. Ormonde set out about the middle of the month, stayed some days at Bristol, where as Lord Lieutenant of Somersetshire he was occupied in settling local disputes, and on September 2, having crossed the Severn at Gloucester and the Wye at Hereford, sailed from Milford Haven in the Dartmouth frigate, and after only eight hours at sea arrived at Duncannon next morning, where he found the Duchess and his two sons with their wives. The distinguished party were ill lodged and fed at the fort, whence they went to Waterford, and on the third day to Kilkenny, where the Lord Lieutenant stayed for six weeks. On October 17 he entered Dublin amid great rejoicings, the citizens marching in procession. The garrison were reinforced by a troop of mounted volunteers in handsome grey uniforms with scarlet and silver facings, mythological figures appeared at various points, and claret ran freely from a fountain in the Corn Market. Every available coach was in attendance, and when these vehicles were at last got out of the way fireworks were discharged in the streets.[44]

The Bill in the Irish Parliament.

After the adjournment of the Irish Parliament on May 25, 1663, the recess was prolonged by almost innumerable prorogations until October 26, 1665, when the Houses were at last allowed to meet. In order to observe their temper Ormonde withheld the Bill of Explanation for some days, during which he ordered it to be printed, and the Commons at once took up the Castle plot which had been exposed after their last sitting. A committee was appointed who had the documentary evidence before them, and Robert Shapcote, the member of the House chiefly implicated, was twice heard in his own defence. The result was that he and six other members were expelled and declared incapable of sitting in any Parliament, their further prosecution being left to the ordinary course of law. The conspirators’ declaration written by Blood was ordered, if the Lord Lieutenant should think fit, to be burnt by the hangman in the most public part of Dublin. The Bill of Explanation was read a first time on November 11 and a second time ten days later. Petitions were then presented from John Fitzgerald, Knight of Kerry, a Roman Catholic, and Captain John Magill of Down, a Protestant, whose estates were declared forfeited to the Crown by special words in the Bill. Counsel were heard at the Bar and the documentary evidence was referred to a select committee, who reported that the Knight was ‘a very well deserving innocent person’ and the captain ‘a very well deserving innocent Protestant.’ The House then resolved that they would entertain these cases after the Bill had been read a third time. Another committee was named to criticise the Bill, the chief doubt being as to the sufficiency of the vesting clause. Those who thought themselves aggrieved by the decisions under the first Act were determined to leave nothing to chance. The third reading was taken on November 29, and the House then proceeded to formulate its objections in the shape of a petition to the Lord Lieutenant.[45]

Two hard cases.

The most important question raised by the Commons’ petition concerned the interpretation of words in the first clause, which vested in the King all lands ‘seized or sequestered by reason of the late horrid rebellion which began on October 23, 1641.’ Some lawyers held that it was necessary to prove in each case separately that the owner of land on that fatal day had been actually engaged in rebellion, a doctrine which shook the title of all the men in possession. There was also some doubt whether the new proprietors would hold their land in fee or as tenants for life, but the Irish judges had decided in the former sense. The Lord Lieutenant, first orally and then in writing, answered, promising that doubts should be decided in a manner agreeable to the parliamentary majority and to the intention of those who had passed the Bill, which could only be amended by a subsidiary Act. Any attempt at fresh legislation was dangerous where so many discontented persons were involved, and the rock was avoided by asking the opinion of the English judges on the first point. Ten of them, including Sir Orlando Bridgeman and Rainsford, the late commissioner of claims, held that the disposal of land within the meaning of the Act would of itself be good evidence that it was vested in the King, and that the burden of proof lay upon the party whose former property had been seized or sequestered. As to Fitzgerald and Magill, whose lands had never been seized but who were treated as if they had been, the House of Commons were of opinion that they were innocent—nothing having been proved or even stated against them. Counsel for the Knight of Kerry said their client was ‘of English extraction, never attainted, a matter rare in an Irish pedigree, but constantly loyal.’ In these hard cases Ormonde promised to do his best, and this was something more than a common official answer since clause 159 provided that doubtful points might be decided by an order in council having the force of law.’[46]

Violent opposition to the Bill;

but it passes without a division.

There was much discontent, especially among those who wished to fish in the troubled waters of a new Bill. It was, however, decided by 93 to 74 that the Lord Lieutenant’s answer was satisfactory, but a violent debate took place upon the question that the Bill do now pass. Strong language was hurled across the floor and many swords were half-drawn. The December sun set upon a scene of confusion, and when candles were called for they were quickly blown out by the opposition. Some shouted that what they had gotten with the hazard of their lives should not be lost with Ayes and Noes. Others called for an adjournment, and ‘between you and me,’ says an eye-witness, the members, who were hungry as well as angry, ‘wanted very little of going to cuffs in the dark.’ A spontaneous adjournment followed, but the Bill passed quietly two days later. A division was challenged by Archer Upton—who held some of Antrim’s land and lost all by his reinstatement—but he did not find a seconder. Orrery kept his men so well in hand that only one Munster member had voted in the minority, and he was a great advocate for the doubling ordinance. Churchill attributed the final triumph entirely to Ormonde, who ‘by an eloquence peculiar to himself seemingly unconcerned but certainly extemporary, so charmed their fears and jealousies that they that were most displeased with the bill were yet so pleased with the overtures he had made them that when it came to pass it had only one negative.’ It passed the Lords without a single dissentient voice.[47]

FOOTNOTES:

[29] State Papers, Ireland, July 18, October 24, 1662. The Commissioners are given in 15th Report of Record Commissioners (1825), p. 34. Act for enlargement of time, Irish Statutes, 14 & 15 Car. II. cap. 12 (Royal assent September 27, 1662).

[30] Irish Commons Journal, February 10, 1662-3; Clarendon to Ormonde, February 28, in Carte Transcripts, vol. xlvii., and Lister’s Life of Clarendon, iii. 239.

[31] Speech of Sir Audley Mervyn delivered to the Duke of Ormonde in the presence chamber in Dublin Castle, February 13, 1662-3, in Irish Commons Journal, i. 617-630. The Speaker was ordered to have his speech printed and entered in the Journals.

[32] Egerton MS., p. 789, gives all the decrees of the Court of Claims, January 13, 1662-3, to Friday, August 21, 1663—Innocent Papists 566, Innocent Protestants 141, Nocent 113. Mervyn’s speech (14 folio pages) in Irish Commons Journal, February 10, 1663; Lord Lieutenant’s letter, ib. March 10; proposed bills, ib. April 10. Ormonde to Clarendon, February 21, March 7 and 12, April 8, 1662-3, to the King, March 28, Carte MSS., vol. cxliii.; Clarendon to Ormonde, February 28 and April 18, Carte Transcripts, vol. xlvii.

[33] Ormonde to the King, May 8, 1663, Carte MSS., vol. cxliii.; to Bennet, ib. June 10 and August 22.

[34] A narrative by Sir Theophilus Jones, &c., Trinity College MSS., f. 3, 18 (no. 47). This paper is unsigned but appears to be the original draft in Jones’s hand. Account of the Irish Plot in Ormonde Papers, 1st series, ii. 251; Firth’s Ludlow, appx. 450, 475. Life and death of the famed Mr. Blood, London, 1680. The Horrid Conspiracy of impenitent traitors, &c., London, 1663.

[35] State Papers, Ireland, May-July 1663, particularly James Tanner’s deposition, May 31, Sir George Lane to Bennet, June 25, and Robert Lye to Williamson, July 16. The last is a graphic description of the execution by an eye-witness. Lord Conway to Rawdon, November 18, 1663, in Rawdon Papers.

[36] Colonel Vernon to Williamson, July 1, 1663, in State Papers, Ireland; Lane to Bennet (with inclosure), ib. November 18; Pardons of Staples and Shapcote, ib. August 18, 1664. Patrick Adair’s True Narrative, chap. xvii.; Reid’s Presbyterian Church, chap. xviii.; Lang’s Hist. of Scotland. Orrery to the Munster officers, May 25, 1663, in his State Letters, vol. i.; Sir Thomas Clarges to Ormonde, May 15, in Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxii.; Firth’s Ludlow, appx. vi.

[37] State Papers, Ireland, from June 22, 1661, to May 8, 1662. Clarendon’s Life, pp. 259-267.

[38] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 277-284. Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 262-269. Clarendon to Ormonde, July 18, 1663, Carte Transcripts, vol. xxxii., and August 1, ib. vol. xxxiii. The King’s letter of July 13 to the Lord Lieutenant and Council is in Somers Tracts, v. 626. Documents calendared, State Papers, Ireland, under August 22.

[39] Dering’s notes of the evidence are printed in Hill’s Macdonnells of Antrim, pp. 309-317, and the decree of innocence, ib. appx. 11. The decree is signed by the majority, Rainsford, Beverley, Brodrick, and Churchill. Dering, Smith, and Cooke, forming the minority, do not sign. Ormonde saw the danger of inferring that Antrim acted under the order of Charles I. Writing to Arlington on August 22, 1663, he says it was argued but too plausibly ‘that the King may as well declare any of them who have most contributed to his restoration to be nocent ... without proof as my Lord of Antrim to be innocent against proof ... no security in an Act of Parliament,’ Carte MSS., cxliii. 164.

[40] Act of Explanation, clause 172, s. 99. Arlington to Ormonde, October 17 and 27, 1663, and January 30, 1663-4, in Tom Brown’s Miscellanea Aulica, and Ormonde’s answer to the first, October 27, in Carte MSS., vol. cxliii. Murder will out, published in London between August 22 and October 17, and reprinted in Somers Tracts, v. 624. Evelyn’s Diary, August 18, 1683. Grant of quit-rents to St. Albans, State Papers, Ireland, December 15, 1665. For some of St. Albans’ jobs see Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 295.

[41] Bennet to Ormonde, October 27, 1663, in Miscellanea Aulica, and November 17 ib.; Clarendon, February 7, 1663-4, Carte Transcripts, vol. xlvii. Lady Thurles to Ormonde, December 17, 1664, Carte MSS., vol. ccxv.; J. Hughes to Williamson, 1664-5, State Papers, Ireland.

[42] Clarendon to Ormonde, April 16, 1664, January 30 and March 18, 1665-6, Carte Transcripts, vol. xlvii. Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 302, and Finch’s report, ib. appx. no. 91. Temple’s Essay, written in 1668. Clarendon’s Life, Cont., 276, where one-third should be read for one-fourth.

[43] Irish Statutes, 17 & 18 Car. II. cap. 2, especially clauses 4, 5, 6, 148, 159. Finch’s report in Carte’s Ormonde, ii. appx. 91.

[44] Arlington to Ormonde, August 19, 1665, in Miscellanea Aulica. Sir Nicholas Armourer to Arlington, September 11, State Papers, Ireland. Robert Leigh to Williamson, October 18, ib. Carte’s Ormonde, book vi. Armourer calls Lady Ossory ‘the best woman in this world.’

[45] Irish Commons Journal, October 26 to November 29, 1665.

[46] The petition is in Irish Commons Journal, December 11, and Ormonde’s answer in State Papers, Ireland, December 15. Opinion of the English judges, ib. February 15, 1665-6.

[47] Irish Commons Journal, December 16-18, 1665. Leigh to Williamson, December 16, State Papers, Ireland; Orrery to Arlington, ib.; Churchill to Arlington, December 27, ib.

[CHAPTER XLIII]
ORMONDE AND THE IRISH HIERARCHY

Ormonde a consistent Royalist.

Loyalty to the Crown of England was Ormonde’s leading principle, and this is the key to his eventful life. He surrendered Dublin to the Parliament rather than to the Irish because he regarded the usurping power as the State for the time being. Later on and in still more desperate circumstances he was forced to ally himself with the Roman Catholic clergy, but he steadily refused to destroy the value of the reversion, and events proved that it was impossible to reconcile the claims of the Vatican with those of a sovereign who was constitutionally the supreme head of an Established Protestant Church. The idea of a free Church in a free State had not yet dawned upon Europe, and when the monarchy was restored the legal position of the Roman Catholics remained as it had been before the civil war. After a short struggle, which revealed great dissensions among those who sought relief, the recusancy laws were left untouched.

The Roman Catholics at the Restoration.

Peter Walsh and Orrery.

At the Restoration the dispossessed Irish Roman Catholics, especially those who had followed the King’s fortunes abroad, looked to Ormonde as the only man who might be willing and able to espouse their cause. As far back as 1653 Peter Walsh, Rinuccini’s determined opponent, was licensed by the Irish Government to assist in enrolling and transporting 4000 men for the Spanish service on condition of ceasing while in Ireland to exercise his office as priest. Later on he was allowed to live quietly in London, and when Ormonde returned he wrote to him on behalf of his co-religionists. The letter was published in the following year, and Orrery answered it. Walsh argued that the Irish were covered by the indemnity promised in the peace of January 1649, but Orrery truly answered that it could not cover offences of later date, and that the articles in question had been generally infringed, particularly by the excommunication of Ormonde and his expulsion from Ireland. Walsh naturally maintained that the rebels of Ireland, considered as rebels, were much less guilty than those of England, that many had expiated their fault by repentance and faithful service, and that the innocent or at least penitent majority ought not to suffer for the crimes of a few. Orrery, on the contrary, urged that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had been in rebellion over and over again during the last three reigns, while the Protestants had defended the royal authority, and that Ormonde had understood the real bearings of the question when he surrendered Dublin; and later when he allowed the loyal Protestants to make terms with ‘Ireton himself, esteeming them safer with that real regicide so accompanied than with those pretended anti-regicides so principled.’ Even if he had wished it Ormonde could not have expelled the bulk of the Adventurers and soldiers who were in possession of the forfeited land. What he did do was to obtain tolerable terms for a great many Roman Catholics, and it may well be that it was not always the most meritorious who came best off. The Celtic population had begun the quarrel, and they were the least considered. Walsh himself was always inclined to draw a distinction in favour of the Anglo-Irish.[48]

Richard Bellings.

Richard Bellings, whose opposition to Rinuccini had been no less strenuous than Walsh’s, left Ireland with Ormonde in 1650. He had married a Butler and was always on good terms with the head of that family. At Paris he was engaged in controversy with Bishop French, John Ponce, and others of the ultramontane party who did not forgive his hostility to the nuncio. His knowledge of papal diplomacy and influence among the Irish refugees abroad no doubt made him useful to Hyde, who befriended him after the Restoration, when he was at first in great difficulties. Early in 1662 Clarendon asked the King if he intended to ‘allow Dick Bellings anything to live upon, or that he shift as he can.’ Fox was thereupon ordered to pay him 400l. a year, and he ultimately got back all or most of his Irish property, though some difficulties were made about the merits of one who had been secretary to the council of rebels. In 1663 he was sent to Rome to solicit a cardinal’s hat for Aubigny, and more privately to take what steps were possible to bring about an understanding between Alexander VII. and the statutory head of the Church of England. He failed in both objects but without forfeiting the confidence of Ormonde and Clarendon, neither of whom perhaps were fully in the secret. Evelyn met him at Cornbury in 1664, and both before and after his Italian journey he tried to help the Lord Lieutenant in his dealings with the Irish Roman Catholics.[49]

His appeal to Ormonde.

In the summer of 1661, when the Royal declaration was known but before the meeting of the Irish Parliament which was to make it law, Bellings wrote from Dublin to Ormonde, who was still in London and not yet Lord Lieutenant. The letter is essentially a plea for the Anglo-Irish who never sought foreign help as long as there was a settled government. There is not a word about the Ulster settlement, and the conduct of Borlase and Parsons ‘who favoured the party opposing his Majesty,’ is represented as the beginning of troubles. The new settlers, or most of them, were ‘the scum of England,’ and the result of their supremacy would be to people Ireland with ‘a generation of mechanic bagmen who are strangers to all principles of religion and loyalty.’ Ormonde’s connections and natural allies would be ousted and in time his own family would suffer. ‘The King’s faithful subjects, those who have followed his fortune abroad, all the ancient families in Ireland and among them your Grace’s kindred, your allies and friends will be made slaves.’ Ormonde had saved some and might save more, and he was reminded that the eyes of Europe were upon him.[50]

Peter Walsh appointed procurator.

The Roman Catholics of Ireland had no share in the Restoration: that by a strange stroke of fortune was the work of their enemies, Coote and Broghill and the Cromwellian army. Three of their bishops were in Ireland at the moment and for some time after—namely, Edmund O’Reilly the Primate, Anthony McGeohegan, Clanricarde’s old antagonist, who had been appointed to Meath, and Eugene Swiney, who had driven Bedell from Kilmore. The first two were in hiding and the last was bedridden. There were also three vicars-general and the superiors of the Capuchins, Dominicans, and Carmelites; and Peter Walsh, who was in London, let these ecclesiastics know that they would be expected to congratulate the King and to declare their loyalty. They accordingly appointed Walsh their procurator with full powers and instructions on behalf of them all to kiss the sacred hands ‘of our most serene lord king Charles II.,’ to congratulate him on his restoration, and to solicit his favour. The least they thought themselves entitled to expect was his adherence to the terms agreed on (1648) between Ormonde and the Confederates. This paper was dated January 1, 1661, and received by Walsh eight days later. Other signatures were afterwards added, including those of Oliver Darcy, Bishop of Dromore, and Patrick Plunket, Bishop of Ardagh. Bishop French sent a proxy from Spain, and his representative signed the instrument of procuration in September 1662.[51]

A loyal remonstrance of the Roman Catholic clergy contemplated.

Signatures thereto.

Armed with this instrument, which does not appear to have been ever formally withdrawn, Walsh busied himself in London with endeavours to better the position of his co-religionists. With Orrery and Mountrath at the head of affairs little could be expected from the Irish Government, but he was able through Ormonde to bring influence to bear on the King, and procured the release of about 120 priests, many of whom had been long in prison, and this without distinction between the nuncionists and those who adhered to the peace of 1648. He opened communications with his brethren in Ireland, representing the necessity of their making some demonstration of loyalty. Bellings was in Dublin in the winter of 1661, and there drew up a paper founded upon a petition presented to the Long Parliament at the beginning of the troubles. The language closely resembles the English oath of allegiance but without clearly renouncing the Pope’s deposing power. The Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland set forth their hard case and the severe measures taken against them. In order to show how little they deserve such misfortunes they fully acknowledge the King’s sovereignty in all civil and temporal affairs and declare their readiness still to do so ‘notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope.’ They ‘openly disclaim and renounce all foreign power, be it either papal or princely spiritual or temporal’ pretending to release them from the obligations of allegiance. Irrespective of their religion all absolute princes and supreme governors are recognised as God’s lieutenants, and they repudiate the doctrine that it is lawful for a private person to kill the Lord’s anointed. In conclusion they maintain that their dependence on the see of Rome in no way interferes with the obedience due to their lawful sovereign, and they claim his protection in return. This document, without any signatures, was conveyed to Walsh by Lord Fingall and communicated to Ormonde, who after two days’ delay said that it might have been stronger but that it would nevertheless be acceptable if sufficient names were attached. As an anonymous paper it would be useless. The substance of the document was approved of by the King. There were in London at the time about thirty Irish priests, and of these twenty-four, including one bishop, Darcy of Dromore, affixed their signatures after two days’ discussion. Others followed, both in London and Ireland. Four or five more objected to the expediency of the Remonstrance but not to its contents. Walsh and his friend Caron published pamphlets in the same sense, which at first were well received; and between London and Dublin 121 Irishmen of position, including twenty-one peers, signed the Remonstrance. But at the beginning of 1663 the movement had long been hanging fire, and Ormonde hinted plainly that those who expected favour should give their names without further delay.’[52]

Primate O’Reilly opposes the Remonstrance,

which is discountenanced at Rome.

Primate O’Reilly was summoned to Rome in 1660, and arrived there at the end of 1661 soon after the Remonstrance was signed. He stayed three years, so that he knew, even if he did not inspire, the proceedings of the Roman Court in the matter. As a partisan of Rinuccini and opponent of the peace of 1648 he had been accused of being a firebrand, and the clergy of his province now testified in his favour as an earnest and devoted priest, who had suffered many things for denying the royal supremacy. Ever since his arrival in Ireland in October 1659 he had ‘lurked in woods, mountain caves, and similar hiding-places, with no bed but straw or hay and a cloak thrown over it, without comforts, contented with coarse bread, butter and flesh, drinking beer, water or milk, without wine except for the sacrament, and all day without a fire.’ He was careful not to commit himself by public utterances at Rome, but the action of the Curia was not long delayed. In July 1662, just as Ormonde was starting to assume the government of Ireland, Jerome de Vecchiis, the internuncio at Brussels, who had authority in the Irish Church, wrote to Bishop Darcy and to Friar Duff, who had also signed the Remonstrance, declaring that it contained propositions already condemned by the Holy See. Both letters fell into Clarendon’s hands. Still more strongly, and on the same ground, did Francesco Barberini blame the Irish gentlemen in the name of Pope and Propaganda. Before the year was out the theological faculty at Louvain condemned the Remonstrance, declaring that the guilt of sacrilege would rest alike on those who signed it in future or refused to revoke signatures already given. And this was significantly dated ‘on the day consecrated to the martyrdom of the glorious pontiff Thomas of Canterbury,’ formerly Primate of England.[53]

The Remonstrance hangs fire.

Royal and papal claims found incompatible.

Out of more than two thousand priests in Ireland, only seventy signed the Remonstrance, and but sixteen of these were of the secular clergy. Among the fifty-four Regulars all but ten were Franciscans. The lay signatures were 164. Even in his own order the majority soon appeared to be against Walsh, and ultimately agreed to a much weaker declaration of their own, which contained no definite mention of the Pope and was at once rejected by Ormonde as inadequate. Having made but little progress in Ireland, Walsh went to London in August 1664, and shortly afterwards heard that the internuncio had come there secretly. A meeting was arranged ‘in the back-yard at Somerset House,’ De Vecchiis being accompanied by Patrick Maginn, one of the Queen’s chaplains, and Walsh by his friend Caron. In argument the Roman representative was perhaps no match for the two learned Franciscans, but he took his stand on the fact of the Remonstrance being condemned by the Pope. To the assertion that His Holiness had been misinformed, he answered angrily that he was the informant—ego informavi. Caron continuing to urge that the Remonstrance contained nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine; he answered, ‘so you think, but the Apostolic See thinks differently.’ He seems nevertheless to have really wished for some accommodation, and suggested that a papal bull might be issued ordering the Irish to obey the King on pain of excommunication. This was plainly inadmissible as it made civil allegiance depend on the Pope; and the internuncio then proposed that His Holiness should create as many bishops as the King chose to name, and that these prelates should have power to banish from Ireland all clergymen whom they found disobedient to their Sovereign. Walsh liked this idea better than the other, but objected that the King, if he was a Catholic, could appoint what bishops he liked, but that he was in fact a Protestant and that the Pope had condemned the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, while the clergy had to swear fidelity to him. Moreover, the King could banish rebellious subjects without any help from Rome, and the total result of the proposed concordat would be to make ecclesiastics wholly independent of the Crown. The conference, which lasted three hours, ended in nothing as such encounters usually do, and De Vecchiis soon returned to Brussels, but afterwards made another effort in which he was assisted by Aubigny who still hoped for the red hat. Walsh and Caron were verbally invited over to Flanders, and to the latter a letter was sent inviting him to discuss the matter in dispute with his brethren at Brussels and Louvain, and describing the Remonstrance as a rock of offence (lapis scandali). Caron, who was ill and busy with controversial writing, refused to go, telling his colleague that he would not have done so in any case, for that the Court of Rome required a blind submission and no debate. Walsh was anxious to accept the invitation, and extracted Ormonde’s unwilling consent, but the King forbade him to stir, and Clarendon reminded him that he was a marked man on account of his opposition to Rinuccini, that safe conducts might not be regarded in such a case, and that the fate of Huss might be his. Walsh then restated his case in two very long letters, and to these he received no answer.[54]

A congregation summoned

Ormonde landed at Waterford on September 3, 1665, bringing the Act of Explanation with him. Father Maginn, who had been at the Somerset House interview, travelled with him, and went on to Dublin; while the Lord Lieutenant stayed at Kilkenny looking after his own affairs and waiting for the momentous law to be printed. Walsh had crossed by Holyhead and met Maginn, who offered to solicit subscriptions to the Remonstrance among his friends in the North, and went to Ulster for that purpose. He had but little success, and Walsh made up his mind that the only chance was a national congregation which he had opposed in 1662, chiefly on the ground that all previous assemblies of the clergy had ended badly for the Crown. The reasons which now weighed with him were the evident wish of O’Reilly and others to revisit Ireland, the prospect of war with France and Holland, and the probability that dangerous intrigues in Ireland would be defeated if the clergy could be induced to make a declaration of loyalty. Moreover, he fancied that he had himself gained influence and popularity by his answer to Orrery’s pamphlet. Bishop Darcy was now dead, but Patrick Plunket, Bishop of Ardagh, who lived in Dublin with his brother Sir Nicholas, was willing to sign the letter of invitation, along with Patrick Daly, Oliver Dease, and James Dempsey, vicars-general of Armagh, Meath, and Dublin. Dempsey was very reluctant, but his letters demanding a national congregation in 1662 were produced and he submitted. There was a general desire to postpone the day of meeting, and this did not promise success. Walsh suggested February, but the winter was objected to. After Easter the clergy would be collecting their revenue for the year, and ‘because horse-meat would be then scarce, they insisted upon the 11th of June as a time when the weather being warm and grass of some growth they might travel with more conveniency.’ Walsh had to accept the date, though he foresaw that time would thus be given to the enemies of his policy at Rome. The letters of invitation were signed on November 18 but not sent out until February, and Archbishop Burke of Tuam, who was in Ireland but refused to attend, observed sarcastically that his summons had been a long time on the road.[55]

Ormonde, Walsh, and O’Reilly.

Walsh had offered to intercede with Ormonde for Archbishop O’Reilly. This was soon after the Restoration, and the Primate reminded the friar of his promise when he left Rome in 1665. After some correspondence O’Reilly addressed the Lord Lieutenant in a very submissive tone. He ‘was the publican standing far off and not daring to lift his eyes to heaven, who begged for a share of His Majesty’s unparalleled mercies and solemnly promised compliance with his will as became a faithful subject.’ If otherwise, he concluded, ‘who am I? but a worm, the reproach of mankind, the vilitie of the people, a dead dog, a flea.’ This was written before the Congregation was decided on, and after the invitations had gone out Ormonde gave leave to Walsh to let the Archbishop know that he might come home safely provided that he would sign the Remonstrance. Walsh transmitted this assurance in four separate letters, but only in the second did he mention the condition. O’Reilly expressly says that this second missive was never received by him, otherwise he would not have come to Ireland. As it was he wrote to Walsh wishing success to the expected gathering and enclosing a letter to the members. The latter was purposely left open, and Walsh never presented it, for it avoided any approval of the Remonstrance and suggested that they should devise a fresh one. Walsh, he said, nevertheless deserved thanks for his pains, and he proposed to subscribe 13l. towards the expenses out of his slender revenue.[56]

Bishop French, as coadjutor to the Bishop of St. Jago, was living at Compostella in 1665 ‘well looked upon and enjoying a subsistence competent and decent for his quality.’ Having been a party to the Jamestown declaration, where all Ormonde’s supporters were excommunicated, and a prime mover in the invitation to Charles of Lorraine, he did not think it safe to visit Ireland without the Lord Lieutenant’s special leave. Charles II. had refused to see him at Paris. Walsh liked and respected him though their opinions were irreconcilable, and Ormonde admitted that he was ‘a good man, good priest, and good bishop, candid and without cheat.’ He justified the Jamestown proceedings though very civil to Ormonde personally, and regretting former strong language. In refusing to deny the Pope’s deposing power, he was, he said, supported by ‘seven saints, including St. Thomas, seven cardinals, one patriarch, three archbishops, ten bishops, and thirty-one classical authors with other eminent divines,’ and he challenged Walsh to match this array. Failing to find a passage from Galicia, he began his journey homewards by land, but a letter from Walsh reached him at St. Sebastian in which he was advised not to visit Ireland without having made a complete submission. Expressing surprise that leave had been given to O’Reilly and refused to him, he went on to Paris and thence to Belgium, where he spent the rest of his life.[57]

The Congregation meets, June 1666.

On June 11 the Congregation met as announced, the Remonstrance having been previously condemned by the new internuncio Rospigliosi and by Cardinal Barberini. Besides Walsh himself only three who had signed it were members of the assembly. The total number present were about sixty including many vicars-general and provincial heads of religious orders. There were but two bishops, Plunket of Ardagh and Andrew Lynch of Kilfenora. The latter was placed in the chair. Nothing material was done during the first two days, but on the evening of the second Primate O’Reilly came to Walsh’s rooms having just arrived from Flanders by way of England. He produced letters from Rospigliosi stigmatising Walsh and Caron as apostates and their supporters as a few nefarious brethren. The Primate was advised not to go to Ireland, and in any case to use all his influence against the Remonstrance. He came accordingly prepared to wreck the Congregation. At his first appearance there he claimed the chair as primate. Lynch refused to give way, and all the Armagh clergy followed their archbishop out of the room. An immediate dissolution seemed imminent, which was no doubt what O’Reilly wished for, but the chairman held his own, making a declaration that he claimed no supremacy, and matters were patched up for the time.

The Remonstrance rejected.

The Congregation dissolved.

From the first it was evident that the Remonstrance would not be adopted, but it would take a good-sized volume to contain even a full abstract of Walsh’s report. Ormonde employed Bellings as his intermediary, and adhered to the position that the Congregation had met only to pass the disputed instrument, that a most unexpected chance had been given them of showing their loyalty, and that they would never have such another. No serious motion to that effect was made, nor would the Congregation entertain the negative proposition that the Remonstrance contained nothing contrary to the Catholic faith. They were also required to consent to six propositions of the Sorbonne, the theological faculty of Paris, promulgated in May 1663 and declared binding by Louis XIV. in the same year. The first three laid down that the Pope had no temporal authority over the King, who had no temporal superior but God, and that his subjects could not be dispensed from their allegiance on any pretext. The other three declared that the Pope had no power to depose bishops, that he was not above an œcumenical council, and that he was not infallible without the consent of the Church. The Congregation accepted the first three but rejected the others, and agreed to an act of recognition differing widely from the original Remonstrance. They expressed loyalty to the King and repudiated the doctrine ‘that any private subject may lawfully kill or murder the anointed of God, his prince,’ but did not mention the Pope nor abjure his authority, though they declared themselves bound to resist rebellion or invasion. Ormonde was not satisfied, and no further progress was made, but those signatories of the original Remonstrance who happened to be in Dublin made a final effort and expostulated at great length. The letter was drawn up by Walsh, though he felt it to be useless, and read out at the Congregation, but had not the slightest effect. It was signed by fourteen Franciscans, two Dominicans, and two secular priests. Oliver Plunket afterwards noticed that priests ordained at Rome did not sign the Remonstrance, its chief support being in France and Belgium. The assembly offered on two occasions to compensate Walsh for his trouble and expense since the Restoration, first by voting a sum of 2000l. and afterwards by proposing an annual subscription for three years. They also declared their readiness to promote his interest at the Roman Court. Walsh refused all such offers, and the Lord Lieutenant, seeing that nothing could be got by further discussion, ordered the Congregation to dissolve themselves on the fifteenth day, and this was quietly done. ‘These twenty years,’ was Ormonde’s reflection, ‘I had to do with those Irish bishops, I never found any of them either to speak the truth or to perform their promise to me; only the Bishop of Clogher (Macmahon) excepted; for during the little time he lived after his submission to the Peace, and commission received from me I cannot charge him.’[58]

Primate O’Reilly and other prelates.

On the evening of the fourth day Ormonde received Primate O’Reilly at the Castle. According to Walsh he was the only other person present, but O’Reilly says Bellings’ father was there also and took an active part in the conversation. It is not easy to reconcile the two accounts, but it appears from both that the Lord Lieutenant treated his visitor civilly and that no ground of agreement was found. When the Congregation separated, the members were free to go where they pleased except the three bishops whom Ormonde wished to see first. Lynch of Kilfenora, the late chairman, slipped away quietly to the Continent. Plunket of Ardagh after a few days was allowed complete liberty, and he remained in Ireland busied in ordaining a vast number of priests without much regard to their qualifications. In the meantime the Lord Lieutenant received information from London which caused him to detain Primate O’Reilly a little longer. Lord Sandwich, on his journey through Galicia to Madrid, had heard through Bishop French that O’Reilly was on his way to Ireland intending to give all the trouble he could. He was told to have no fear and was not imprisoned, but a guard of soldiers was told off to prevent him from communicating with those about him. Ormonde had no good opinion of him and reminded Clarendon that Arlington had intended to employ him as a spy but thought his services too dear at 500l. He was conveyed at his own request to England and thence to Calais in charge of city-major Stanley. On reaching Louvain he wrote to Walsh that he had been fairly treated, but in a very different strain to Rome. He made the most of his discomforts, which were no doubt considerable, and said that Stanley was perhaps as inhuman as the ten leopards of St. Ignatius, bishop and martyr.[59]

Why the Remonstrance failed.

‘The proceedings at the meeting,’ said Ormonde more than fourteen years later, ‘are at large set down in a great book by Peter Walsh. My aim was to work a division among the Romish clergy, and I believe I had compassed it, to the great security of the Government and Protestants, and against the opposition of the Pope, and his creatures and nuncios, if I had not been removed from the Government, and if direct contrary counsels and courses had not been taken and held by my successors; of which some were too indulgent to the whole body of Papists, and others not much acquainted with any of them, nor considering the advantages of the division designed. I confess I have never read over Walsh’s book, which is full of a sort of learning I have been little conversant in; but the doctrine is such as would cost him his life, if he could be found where the Pope has power.’ This was written to his son, but he had said the same thing to Essex seven years before. No doubt his recall made a difference, but the Government had really very little to give, for all the revenues went to the Established Church and there was more to look forward to from Rome than from London. Many of Ormonde’s bitterest opponents found preferment abroad. He did indeed provide for Walsh to the end, and for Caron till his death just before the meeting in 1666. The Act of Explanation passed in the previous year made it impossible for him to make better terms even for Roman Catholic laymen. Walsh, who failed to make his party formidable, submitted to Rome just before his death, but to Burnet who liked and admired him he seemed ‘in all points of controversy almost wholly Protestant.’ He attended the Church of England service without scruple, and Evelyn, who met him at dinner at the Archbishop of York’s, says nearly as much as Burnet.[60]

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Licence from the Irish Council to Peter Walsh, May 26, 1653, in O’Flaherty’s West Connaught, p. 423. Eighteenth article of peace, January 17, 1648-9, in Confederation and War, vii. 198. Walsh’s letter to Ormonde written in October 1660, but not published till after March 30, 1661, when the latter was made a Duke, and the answer published in 1662, before Ormonde’s arrival in Ireland, are both reprinted in Orrery State Letters, ii. 355.

[49] Macray’s Privy Council Notes, Roxburghe Club. Notes in Nicholas’s hand, State Papers, Ireland, under July 20, 1661. Evelyn’s Diary, October 17, 1664.

[50] Bellings to Ormonde, June 1, 1661, in Spicilegium Ossoriense ii. 189. It was inevitable that Ormonde’s friends and the Irish generally should blame him for not doing enough, see Foxcroft’s Supplement to Burnet, pp. 60-62. The Plunket author of A Light to the Blind talks like Bellings of the ‘Cromwellian scum of England,’ and calls Clotworthy, Broghill, Coote, and the rest ‘little fanatic scabs.’ According to him Ireland really belonged to the Anglo-Norman Conquerors, being royalist and Catholic; the native Irish, having intermarried with them and remained Catholic, were of course loyal like them.

[51] Walsh’s Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 4-6. O’Reilly wrote at this time that he was lurking ‘nelle spelonche,’ and McGeohegan ‘in cavernis’—Brady’s Episcopal Succession, i. 226, 239.

[52] Walsh’s Hist. of the Remonstrance, i.-xii. 47. Ormonde to Walsh, January 26, 1662-3, ib. 94.

[53] Letter of Armagh clergy, December 13, 1660, Spicilegium Ossoriense, ii. 201. Letters of Card. Barberini and De Vecchiis, July 8 and 21, 1662, Walsh’s Remonstrance, pp. 16-19. James Rospigliosi, internuncio in 1666, calls himself ‘ministrum apostolicum cui res Hiberniæ incumbunt,’ ib. p. 634. Louvain judgment, December 29, 1662, ib. p. 102.

[54] Peter Walsh to Essex, August 4, 1674, in his Four Letters, 1686, p. 3; Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 511-513, 530-533.

[55] Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 570-574, 602.

[56] O’Reilly’s letters of August 31, 1665, and April 13, 1666, in Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 611-613. Writing to the Propaganda in the late autumn of 1666 he expressly says that he attended the congregation in order to defeat its object—‘ad istam congregationem ... festinavi ut impedirem quominus noster clerus amplecteretur præfate Walchæi remonstrantiam, ut vocat, suæ fidelitatis erga Regem’—Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 446.

[57] Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 618-625. Bishop French to the Pope, May 22, 1666, in Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 449. French’s Latin is better than his English for he uses such expressions as ‘from them parts.’ His great attack on Ormonde, the ‘unkind deserter,’ was not till 1676.

[58] The transactions of the Congregation are in Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 641-743, the French and Latin texts of the Sorbonne decrees at p. 660. The account given by the Rev. W. Burgatt, a hostile member of the Congregation, does not materially differ from Walsh’s, Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 440. Ormonde to Clarendon, June 9, 1666, and to Arlington, June 13, State Papers, Ireland. On July 7 Clarendon wrote: ‘If I were you I would expel all the priests out of Ireland who refuse to subscribe the declaration, and to my understanding if you consent to the least alteration, how insignificant soever, you overthrow the whole and absolve all who stand now obliged by the subscription.’—Carte Transcripts, vol. xlvii.

[59] Hist. of the Remonstrance, pp. 744-749. O’Reilly to the Propaganda, Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 448 (Latin). Sandwich left Portsmouth, March 3, 1665-6, and reached Madrid May 26, and these dates fit in with Walsh’s account. Ormonde to Clarendon, June 9, 1666, State Papers, Ireland.

[60] Ormonde to Arran, December 29, 1680, in Carte’s Ormonde, ii. appx. p. 101, and to Essex, December 9, 1673, in Essex Papers. Burnet’s Own Times, i. 194, 195. Evelyn’s Diary, January 6, 1685-6.

[CHAPTER XLIV]
GOVERNMENT OF ORMONDE, 1665-1668

Ormonde and his Parliament.

Disputes between Lords and Commons.

It was not surprising that there should be some difficulty about the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, since the private fortune of every member was concerned. But in other matters Ormonde had little to complain of in the behaviour of the Commons. When he informed them that France had joined hands with Holland, and that warlike preparations were going on in Brittany which might be meant for Ireland, the House made a solemn declaration of loyalty and promised eight subsidies of 15,000l. each. Twenty subsidies in all appear to have been granted by this Parliament. The royal assent to the money Bill and to the Bill of Explanation was given on the same day, and Ormonde made a speech in which he congratulated Parliament in having at last ‘got into the prospect of a settlement.’ He apologised for having practically confirmed much of what had been done by the late usurping Government, adding with grim humour that justice was sometimes done by unjust men, ‘Ireton at Limerick having caused some to be hanged that deserved it almost as well as himself.’ Of the later Acts passed by this Parliament, the most important was that for religious uniformity. Knight service and the Court of Wards had been already abolished, and hearth-money permanently settled on the King in compensation. Ormonde kept the Parliament in existence until August 1666, the time being largely occupied in disputes between the two Houses. The Commons claimed the right to sit at free conferences, but the Peers would not allow it.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Lord Drogheda, ‘you would all be lords.’

‘Another rebellion,’ replied Mr. Adam Molyneux, ‘may make us so as well as a former made your ancestors.’ Both Houses having appealed to the Lord Lieutenant, he reminded them that Strafford, who had long parliamentary experience, had recorded in Ireland that the English Commons stood uncovered at conferences. He dwelt on the danger of breaking ‘any ancient custom and practice,’ but the Commons were obdurate and declared that all the Irish precedents were in their favour. Having secured the legislation he wanted, Ormonde then decided to dissolve. Indeed the privileges of Parliament had become an intolerable burden. Scarcely any debts could be recovered, and the salaries of members, though all did not take them, came to nearly 100l. a day. An attempt was made to remedy these abuses by law, but it came to nothing. A Bill of Indemnity on the English model had been discussed at intervals since 1661, but without much enthusiasm, and the Parliament came to an end without passing any such healing measure. On August 6 the Lord Lieutenant proceeded in state to the House, sent for the Commons, underwent a long speech from Speaker Mervyn, and gave the royal assent to the subsidy and some other Bills. The Lord Chancellor then thanked the Houses for their services in ‘a most learned and eloquent speech,’ and dissolved them, to the great joy of thousands who had suffered in pocket from their protections and privileges. No legal Irish Parliament met again until 1692.[61]

Financial difficulties.

Soldiers mutiny for their pay.

Parliament had been liberal in granting subsidies, but it was hard to collect the money, and not more than 60,000l. could be reckoned on in any one year from this source: 164,000l. had been remitted from England since the Restoration, but large arrears were still owing to the army. The annual cost of Government was about 190,000l., and there was a deficit of some 37,000l. a year. Even with the greatest economy Ormonde did not see his way to do without 30,000l. a year from England. The restraint upon the cross-Channel trade in fat cattle had made matters worse, for the usual cash return was not made, and there was an actual scarcity of coin in Ireland, so that it was almost impossible to make any payments in ready money. The garrison of Carrickfergus exhausted their credit in the town, and were irritated by stoppages for the insufficient clothing supplied to them. The first outbreak, in January 1666, was easily suppressed; but the officers, who knew the sufferings of their men, were not supposed to have behaved very well. In May a large sum of subsidy-money was brought into Carrickfergus for transmission to Dublin; but the soldiers of four companies swore that it should not be removed until they had received nine months’ pay; and the townsmen, who saw some chance of shop debts being settled, sympathised with them. The mutineers were not above 200, many of whom surrendered to Lord Donegal, the governor; but there were enough left to hold the town, as they threatened to do, until they were paid. Of four captains, only Captain Butler was on the spot, the others being on leave. The chief ringleader was Corporal Dillon, but the non-commissioned officers were generally staunch. The statement of grievances was drawn up by illiterate men, and Lord Donegal’s representative found them ‘so drunk that no one can make them understand any reason ... mighty hot in their ale.’ As soon as the news reached Dublin, Ormonde sent off ten troops of horse by land and 400 men of the Guards under his son Arran. He himself rode to Dundalk in one day, and to Hillsborough on the second. Before he could reach Belfast, Arran had already landed, in spite of bad weather, forced the wall, driven the mutineers into the castle, and seen Dillon killed. He refused all terms, and six hours after his landing, the garrison surrendered at discretion. One hundred and ten men were tried by court-martial and found guilty, for there could be no doubt of the facts. Ten were selected for execution, and nine actually suffered. The rest were conveyed by sea to Dublin, and Ormonde at first intended to send them to the West Indies, but they begged to be allowed to redeem their offence, were formed into a separate company, and afterwards did good service. Ormonde had many enemies at Court, but Clarendon said that in his opinion, at least, the mutineers had not been too severely treated.[62]

Exclusion of Irish cattle.

Theoretical claims of the English Parliament notwithstanding, internal affairs were subject to the local legislature. In commercial matters, however, the power of the larger kingdom was unquestioned. Whatever benefit could be derived from Cromwell’s Navigation Act was shared by Ireland, and there was free trade between the two islands. But after the Restoration Irish members came no more to Westminster, and the usurper’s enlightened policy was abandoned. In 1663, by the ‘Act for the encouragement of trade,’ as it was absurdly called, Ireland was excluded from the colonial trade, and the importation of Irish cattle into England was forbidden between July 1 and December 20 in each year. All depended on grass, for the days of turnips and feeding cakes were still far off, and this was the season when stock were in good condition. A fine of 20s. was imposed for every beast landed notwithstanding, half to the King and half to the informer, for the influx of Irish fat cattle was considered ‘of infinite prejudice to most counties in England.’ Among the peers Anglesey only protested, and he had a strong case, though his first reason was the amazing one that the Act allowed free export of money and bullion which the wisdom of our ancestors had always restrained. But he also maintained the rights of people in Ireland ‘they being by law native Englishmen but debarred from the English markets,’ thus giving a monopoly to some of the King’s subjects to aid ruining others. It was erroneously supposed that English rents were depreciated by Irish cattle. Petty showed how impossible it was for imported cattle, whose gross value was 132,000l., to affect seriously a rental of 8,000,000l., which had fallen by one-fifth. Pepys more truly attributed the depression of agriculture to the low price of wheat. Shaftesbury, though he swelled the partisan chorus against Irish cattle, told the King that the mischief was really owing to depopulation, the plague and the Dutch war having added at least a quarter of a million to the normal number of deaths. There was also a constant stream of emigrants to the American colonies, where they might ‘enjoy the liberty of their mistaken consciences.’[63]

The Canary Company.

In spite of remonstrances from the Irish Government, the Act for excluding fat cattle came into force on July 1, 1664, and was to continue till the end of the first session of the next Parliament, which did not, in fact, meet for many years. Another question affecting Irish trade then became prominent for a time. The trade with the Canaries was entirely in the hands of the English, who had ‘an immoderate appetite’ for the wine, and the islanders therefore obtained very high prices. Certain London merchants represented that these prices would be reduced by giving them a monopoly, and though there was much opposition, a charter was granted in March 1665, followed by a proclamation in May. Promoting the privileges of the Canary Company was afterwards made an article of impeachment against Clarendon, and it was said that he received a bribe of 4000l. He admits having favoured the grant and received a present, but with the King’s knowledge and approval, and he says that every preceding Chancellor had done the same in like case. One object of the monopolists was to prevent a direct trade between Ireland and the islands carried on in part by enterprising Jews who worked the business from Dublin. The question had been discussed and the charter granted before Ormonde left England, but when he was ordered to issue a proclamation as in England, the Irish merchants at once protested. In those days cash payments for foreign goods were considered a drain upon the national wealth, and England had to balance her account with Canary by sending out specie, whereas the meat, fish, butter, leather, pipe-staves, and frieze sent from Ireland exceeded the value of the wine, the difference being paid in pieces of eight. As to the liquor being dear, Ormonde said that ‘if men will drink canary they should pay for their delicacy, and whatever they shall so pay is spent among us.’ He was ready to obey the King’s positive commands, but on no other ground would he consent to deprive Ireland of her most lucrative trade. In September 1666, he had to issue the proclamation, but the plague, the fire, and the Dutch war were all against the monopoly. The Spanish authorities gave every possible opposition, interloping merchants were allowed to compete, and in the end the company were fain to surrender their charter, which was much disliked by the English House of Commons. Ireland imported some 2000 pipes of Canary wine annually, but it is not improbable that some of this found its way to England, as the defeated monopolists asserted.[64]

Question of prohibiting Irish cattle.

The plague followed the Court to Salisbury and drove Charles to Oxford, where Parliament sat for three weeks in October 1665. Clarendon says that the members, for want of time and fear of contagion, ‘rejected all other businesses but what immediately related to the public,’ one of which was the atrocious Five-mile Act. Ormonde had hoped that the restrictions on Irish cattle might be repealed, but quite a contrary spirit prevailed, and a Bill for total prohibition passed the House of Commons. The first Act had been freely evaded, and a much more stringent one was called for. The King had no wish to be unjust unless it was very inconvenient to be just, and the Lords, not being subjected to Court pressure, held the Bill over until the prorogation. When the Houses met for business at Westminster nearly a year later, the question soon came up again. Pepys says the Prohibition Bill was the work of the western members, ‘wholly against the sense of most of the rest of the House; who think if you do this, you give the Irish again cause to rebel.’ The event, however, showed that the majority was the other way, and that it included the northern counties, but others, particularly Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent, whose business it was to feed, and not to breed, made the Irish cattle welcome. The larger towns, whose interest it was to have cheap meat, had little power, and both landlords and farmers were generally against Ireland, the former because they thought low prices affected their revenue, and the latter because their produce was subjected to competition. Sir William Coventry, whose character was much better than that of most contemporary public men, threw his weight into the scale against Ireland, persuading the King that he would get no supply if the Commons were thwarted, that their fury would soon burn itself out, and that the rejection of the Bill could then easily be compassed in the House of Lords. Coventry’s judgment was certainly not infallible, for it was his advice that made the Chatham disaster possible. But Clarendon was strongly opposed to the Cattle Bill, and animosity towards him may have affected the action of the younger statesman. Finch, the Solicitor-General, eloquently opposed the Bill at every stage, and Anglesey was sent to London to present the case of the Irish Government against it.[65]

Irish cattle worse than starvation.

The fire of London was a calamity of such proportions as in modern times would arouse the sympathy and perhaps excite the generosity of the whole civilised world. Ninety years later England gave 100,000l. to the sufferers from the Lisbon earthquake. Even in 1666 it was natural that Ireland should wish to help, and it was proposed to send over 30,000 head of ‘our proper and indeed our only coin.’ Instead of receiving the thanks of the House of Commons, this gift inflamed its fury, and was looked upon as a trick. The houseless citizens begged that they might be allowed to enjoy the supply, but the cavalier squires reviled them for their selfishness, and the pressure upon the reluctant Lords was increased. With much difficulty the Commons were induced to allow the importation in the form of salt beef, but under such restrictions that the city was not likely to profit much. Buckingham, who had neither conscience nor shame, and whose own rents had been reduced, saw that popularity was to be gained at the expense of Ireland, and Ashley, who knew better, found his account in fanning the flame. He excused himself in private by saying that he was in favour of a legislative union under which neither island would have power to hurt the other. In debate the Achitophel of Dryden’s great satire could find no better argument than that the rejection of the Bill would cause Irish rents to rise as those of England fell, and that the Duke of Ormonde would soon be richer than the Earl of Northumberland. Ormonde’s prosperity might indeed excite the envy of many who did not choose to remember that his loyalty had endured exile and penury while they lived at home at ease under the Protector. Some thought that Ashley was anxious to be Lord Lieutenant himself, but of this there does not seem to be much evidence. Ossory, whose temper was hot, and who was enduring great provocation, reproached the future Chancellor with having been one of Cromwell’s counsellors, for which he had to apologise in the House of Lords; but most readers of history will nevertheless sympathise with him.[66]

The Duke of Buckingham hated the Chancellor, who stood in his way. He also hated and envied Ormonde, whose fiery son resented his insinuations, so that lookers on foretold a quarrel. At last Buckingham said in debate that anyone who opposed the Cattle Bill must have an Irish estate or an Irish understanding. Mindful of the mistake he had made in Ashley’s case, Ossory forebore to answer, but a conversation outside led to a challenge, which Buckingham accepted, though he was thought to have taken good care that there should be no meeting. Ossory denied that he had intended to fight on account of words spoken in the House; Arlington and the Duke of York, who were both interested in Irish land, testified that the quarrel was of long standing. The challenger was sent to the Tower and his adversary committed to Black Rod’s custody, but they were soon released. Buckingham’s arrogance at this time was such that he suffered detention a few days later for a scuffle with the irascible Lord Dorchester in the House itself. Ormonde admitted that the Lords had dealt fairly with his son, and thanked Arlington for taking a friendly part in the matter.[67]

Irish cattle voted a public nuisance.

The Bill as introduced applied to Scotland as well as to Ireland, but this was altered after much discussion, and the final struggle was as to whether Irish cattle should be declared a nuisance. The word was insisted on by the Commons because it was thought likely to secure strict administration, since the King could not very well favour what he had himself declared to be a public nuisance. There were many conferences between the two Houses, but the Commons stood stubbornly by the obnoxious term. The Lords were willing to join in a petition to the King not to grant any licences, but the Lower House, by 116 to 57, voted to adhere to their word. If Charles had remained firm, he might have carried the peers with him, but he wanted money too badly. Some advised a dissolution, but he could hardly hope for a better House of Commons than one which contained nearly a hundred placemen and pensioners, and which was still stirred by the loyal tempest of 1660. Having been at first the strongest opponent of the Bill, he became its most strenuous supporter. Sir George Carteret, the King’s Vice-Chamberlain, was thought to have been chiefly instrumental in converting his master, who made it a personal matter with peers to swallow the word Nuisance, his conduct, in Clarendon’s words, ‘giving those who loved him not great argument of triumph, and those who loved him very passionately, much matter of mortification.’ Between fear and favour the Lords yielded, and four days later the Bill became law. The Poll Bill, which was the price of the King’s surrender, received his assent at the same time. Charles soon prorogued Parliament, telling the Commons that their session had borne little fruit, and that it was high time for them to be in the country. Eight peers protested against the Irish Bill, chiefly on the ground that the importation of cattle was no nuisance, and that the word was professedly introduced to limit the dispensing power, ‘a just, necessary, and ancient prerogative inherent in the Crown,’ as a means of dealing with unforeseen emergencies.[68]

Irish cattle totally prohibited