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Title: The great fraud of Ulster
Author: Timothy Michael Healy
Release Date: June 3, 2023 [eBook #70901]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT FRAUD OF
ULSTER ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
“STOLEN WATERS.”
SOME PRESS NOTICES.
“We can welcome Mr. Healy’s treatment of a difficult and obscure
episode in the history of Ulster as on the whole impartial, and
based on a judicial reading of a vast accumulation of documentary
evidence.... In his capacity as historical detective he is
fair-minded to a degree, which would amaze us if we were not so well
acquainted with the well-tempered quality of an intellect that for
subtlety and power and a dispassionate coolness is not surpassed
by that of any Irishman living.... The wonderful net of intrigue
by which all this was contrived has been carefully unravelled
by Mr. Healy with a pertinaceous ingenuity worthy of Sherlock
Holmes.”—_Morning Post._
“Mr. Healy has accomplished a difficult task with considerable
success. The result of his labours is an absorbing book.... The
author has succeeded in weaving a romantic story out of the dry
material of official records and legal documents.”—_Athenæum._
“The story that Mr. Healy tells has something of the flavour of
historical romance.... Mr. Healy’s method of argument on the main
issue is calm and temperate.... A wonderful effort in legal and
historical research.”—_London Daily Telegraph._
“It is a truism that only the busiest men have any time to spare,
and it is proved again by the publication of an elaborate historical
study by Mr. T. M. Healy, the famous Irish M.P., who is as
entertaining and brilliant with his pen as he is in speech. Mr. Healy
tells his story with enthusiasm and thoroughness.”—_London Express._
“Mr. Healy is a lawyer of original genius who, almost more frequently
than any other man of his time, has performed the unexpected. He has
done so once again in this extraordinary book, which tells, with many
touches of eloquence and here and there a characteristic sting, the
tangled story of a legal dispute.... A work of argument and legal
history written with sustained eloquence and frequent felicity.... A
task which only a passionate sense of duty and determined doggedness
could have achieved. As the author in his picturesque manner puts
it, the scent was often stale, but despite the difficulties and
uncertainties that confronted him, he has achieved what he sought,
and presents the result to the expert and the curious.”—_Outlook
(London)._
“Mr. Healy constructs a story of remarkable interest. By dipping
into it here and there some instructive glimpses will be obtained
of the fashion in which Irish history was made in bygone
centuries.”—_Observer (London)._
“It exhibits vividly enough some of the less favourable aspects of
past Irish administration, and it will serve the writer’s purpose of
stimulating a considerable amount of sympathy for the standpoint of
his contentions.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
“Those who love to extract information from Blue Books will revel
in this volume of strange facts.... It would be a needless task to
expend words of praise upon this fair-minded volume, prepared by one
of the subtlest intellects of our time.”—_Review of Reviews._
“‘Stolen Waters’ has to be welcomed as a monument of disinterested
advocacy.... Mr. Healy’s vivid, yet archaic, style; at all manner
of odd points the unusual word flashes out at you, and relieves the
gloom of technical narration.”—_Truth._
“Of the utmost value.... Mr. Healy is to be congratulated on the
manner in which he has fulfilled this work.”—_Tablet._
“A notable volume, ‘Stolen Waters.’ The book, which was noticed at
length in the leader columns of this paper, is a monument of patient
research.”—_Manchester Guardian._
“A series of remarkable investigations.... The book has every
appearance of minute accuracy in detail, and gives proof of a
remarkable skill in marshalling evidence. We shall be surprised if
his conclusions are successfully challenged.”—_Glasgow Herald._
“It is a tribute to the skill of Mr. Healy that he has made so
interesting a narrative out of a record of legal chicanery. As told
by him, the history of the title in the seventeenth century is an
amazing story of fraud in high places.”—_Scotsman._
“Written in the pungent style of which Mr. Healy is so great a
master, the book is eminently readable throughout.... This erudite
and eloquent volume.”—_Dundee Advertiser._
“Mr. Healy contributes to Irish literature a valuable
volume.”—_Sheffield Independent._
“Elaborate in its thorough investigation of the historical side....
Mr. Healy’s book is a formidable impeachment of one more chapter in
the horrid story of English mis-government in Ireland.”—_Yorkshire
Observer._
“Mr. Healy has written a very elaborate treatise.... Is, indeed, a
most scholarly essay, the result of exhaustive research.”—_Yorkshire
Post._
“It is evidently the result of a wonderful amount of labour in
delving among official and legal records, and the student of
Irish affairs will find that the author has collected a mass
of matter not to be found elsewhere except at the cost of much
trouble.”—_Nottingham Guardian._
“Learned and comprehensive as it is, the book is most interesting
throughout.”—_Belfast News-Letter._
“The book is a monument of the sort of painstaking industry that
most orators shirk in favour of easier-won bravura effects. ‘Stolen
Waters’ is less a fiery philippic than a sober historico-legal
study of a phase of Irish history, a solid piece of research work
of which we have had all too little in this country. Mr. Healy is a
formidable tracker, combining the pertinacity of the Red Indian with
the ingenuity of Sherlock Holmes.... Even the layman must realise the
patient and laborious scholarship that has gone to the making of this
book, and cannot fail to be impressed by his power of marshalling
great unwieldy masses of facts and the subtlety and dexterity of his
analysis.... It abounds in strange contrasts and dramatic surprises,
unravels a tangled tale of corruption and chicanery that might have
inspired a score of novels of intrigue, and links up in a startling
fashion the events of three hundred years ago with the happenings of
the day before yesterday.”—_Northern Whig._
“The compiling of Mr. Healy’s book was about as hard and as
distasteful work as any historian could undertake. He had to delve
into records and wade through State papers practically untouched
since the day they were written. And when the facts were revealed he
had to piece them together the way one would reconstruct a jig-saw
puzzle. All this infinite toil and trouble has been faced....
Mr. Healy’s book, with its wealth of historical lore and its
fascinating if grim tale of the way the Plantation of Ulster was
carried.”—_Ulster Guardian (Belfast)._
“Mr. Healy’s remarkable book.”—_Irish Independent._
“One of the most valuable practical contributions ever made to the
as-yet-unwritten history of Ireland.... He has done more than any man
since Lecky to furnish the Irish Gibbon of the future with new light
on the most obscure problems of the Ulster Plantation.... As a mere
collection of quotations he would have produced a book of enthralling
interest. The connecting narrative in which he strings them together
is worthy of Mr. Healy’s clear-cut, caustic, and vigorous English at
its best. Indeed, his style seems to have caught a new charm of Old
Testament austerity. The book will be a _Memoire pour Servir_ of the
highest service to the students of Irish history.”—_Cork Free Press._
“Mr. Healy has taken much trouble in using the original documents....
A great wealth of evidence, giving careful reference.”—_Church of
Ireland Gazette._
“Full digestion of its contents leads one to the conclusion that, if
not a novel, it is at least a good deal more interesting than many
such pieces of literature.... The erudite and witty pages of Mr.
Healy.... The many sidelights thrown on history by the painstaking
researches of the author.”—_Journal of the Ivernian Society._
“The story Mr. Healy’s valuable work tells, and tells well.... No
one who peruses the work—no matter what judgment he may form upon
the argument it contains—will be likely to lay it down without
an expression of admiration for the almost marvellous ability
and industry which have been devoted to its production.... The
preparation of the volume must have involved an enormous amount
of labour and research. In France it would be crowned by the
Academy.”—_The Irish Catholic._
“Mr. Healy’s most interesting book.... Contains on every page the
evidence of unending pains and research, is full of sidelights
upon Irish history.... The erudite, yet fascinating, pages of Mr.
Healy.”—_Catholic Book Notes._
“A notable volume.... The book is a monument of patient
research.”—_Manchester Weekly Times._
“Mr. Healy has written a remarkable book which is of considerable
interest.... The whole story is one of absorbing historic
interest.”—_The Fish Trades Gazette._
“Mr. Healy has devoted much time to research, and he has produced a
fascinating story.”—_Natal Mercury._
“What will please the general reader in ‘Stolen Waters’ is the
incidental information, the look-as-you-go glimpses at the great
Irish chieftains and clans.... Information of an unusual historical
character.—_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
“The volume is important from a historical and legal standpoint....
Mr. Healy’s interesting book.—_Boston Globe._
“Mr. Healy’s long but interesting narrative.”—_Catholic University
Bulletin (Washington)._
“A learned work.... If the decision of the House of Lords is proved
to be based on documents that are either forgeries or letters patent
obtained by a criminal act, then legislation would at once be
introduced to deal with the matter.”—_Contemporary Review._
“Proves the patience of the writer, who gives us a narrative of
historical interest as well as a work of real legal worth.... Many
would surmise that a work on such a topic must be necessarily a
‘dry-as-dust’ book. We have found it interesting indeed. We do not
think it possible to get a real insight into the Irish questions that
loom so very large in politics to-day without reading of some of the
methods adopted in ‘settling Ireland’ in Tudor times. The earlier
chapters of this learned work give some valuable information on those
matters. Historical and legal students will be indebted to the author
for so many quotations of rather inaccessible documents.”—_Western
Morning News._
“Of decided value to students of Irish history, for its pages show
the chicanery and thirst for plunder that have been dominant in the
past government of Ireland.”—_The Nation._
“Mr. T. M. Healy, M.P., is the raciest—and the bitterest—speaker in
public life. His abilities are altogether uncommon. But if he will
forgive us for saying so, he cannot write a book.”—_Birmingham Post._
“Dull, even at times ungrammatical, from a perusal of its pages we do
get a very clear idea of the terrible extent to which legal chicanery
was used by English officials to enrich themselves and their friends
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”—_Irish Times._
“For a full account one should read that epic of chicanery, Mr.
Healy’s ‘Stolen Waters’.”—_The New Witness._
“Mr. Healy has thrown some new light on an obscure and devious
by-path of Irish history.... The book is not pleasant reading, but
it illuminates the manner in which the English aristocracy has
‘governed’ Ireland.”—_Evening Post (New York)._
“A book which, founded though it is upon official records, will
challenge for rascality the most daring flights of fiction.... The
story is quite as thrilling as anything could be.... One of the most
readable books of our time.—_Sydney Freeman’s Journal._
“A monument to the extraordinary industry of Mr. Healy, and the time
and labour expended in the compilation.... Whether his law is good or
bad, affects not in the least the interest of his book, which is full
of fascinating details of Irish History.”—_Irish Law Times._
“We hope that it will be read, because the roots of many persistent
troubles in Ireland will never be understood until it is realised
that the cruelties committed under Elizabeth were accompanied—and
to a great degree followed in the next reign—by very clever and
systematic frauds upon the old inhabitants.”—_Saturday Review._
“The intrigues of past times, which are full of incident and
romance, written in such a way, make it a book to read carefully,
especially if one wants to understand the difficulties of Irish
history.”—_Scottish Historical Review._
“An interesting historical study which has its amusing sides.”—_New
York Sun._
“The author gives his authorities for every charge he brings.... The
hammer-like blows with which he clinches his statements are wearying
to a reader not as much absorbed as himself. But those who have the
patience to keep up with his argument ... will get many new lights
on the Tudor and Stuart period of Irish history. Especially clear is
the story of how the O’Neills were driven from Ulster.”—_American
Historical Review._
“This masterly volume of 500 pages ... sheds a luminous light on the
uses of legal machinery in the robbery of the Irish people. Mr. Healy
has the knowledge and ability to enrich his argument with a vast
amount of incidental information.”—_America._
“Sophistries, insinuations, mere rhetoric, and all kinds of
irrelevancies.... Prejudice and ignorance are invited to pronounce
judgment on what has already been determined by the highest judicial
authority.... But no mere list of mistakes could correct the false
impressions conveyed by innuendo, assumption, and special pleading.
It is simpler to regard the whole book as one vast _erratum_.”—_The
Times (London), 4th Sept., 1913._
THE GREAT FRAUD OF ULSTER
THE GREAT FRAUD
OF ULSTER
BY
T. M. HEALY, M.P.
Dublin:
M. H. GILL & SON, LTD.
50 UPPER O’CONNELL STREET
1917
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED BY
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS, LTD.,
111 MIDDLE ABBEY STREET,
DUBLIN.
IN STEDFAST MEMORY
OF
JOSEPH GILLIS BIGGAR,
OF BELFAST.
M.P. FOR CAVAN, 1874-1890.
THE MOST UNSELFISH, FEARLESS,
AND STRAIGHTFORWARD
PUBLIC MAN
THAT I HAVE KNOWN.
PREFACE.
These pages give a shorter, and, it is hoped, a less legal, setting
to facts published for the first time some five years ago under
the title, “Stolen Waters.” They chiefly concern those counties of
Ulster lately threatened with severance from the rest of Ireland. The
story, such as it is, has been re-told and simplified in the hope
that acquaintance with it may quicken and heighten the spirit of
resistance to the statecraft of Partition.
A stubborn fight for a great stake has been waged in the disputed
area for three hundred years, and the struggle to clutch the prize
exhibits more starkly than any other single theme the felonious
continuity of Anglo-Ulster administration.
Those in control of Irish government calmly look down on the
spectacle of a noble public heritage abandoned to a “privy paw.”
Wiseacres advise the losers and the wronged to “forget the past.” No
people have more need to remember it.
That the past has no bearing on the present, and that “brooding”
on it is ill for soul and body, is a conceit of despotism. Other
races are taught at their mother’s knee that their welfare has been
influenced, hindered, or promoted by the tyranny or the heroism, the
crimes or the virtues, of vanished men.
Every presentation of Irish records is rated by the ruling caste as
distorted or perverse unless oppression is garbed in justification
and rapacity garnished with slanders on its prey. The cant of
conquest always seeks to make the invaders paladins of virtue, and
their victims brutish monsters. The conquered are even liable to be
misled by the writings of their enemies.
To-day in warring Europe the despoilers of prostrate nations
doubtless have all the printing presses and all the hired authors
going full blast in their favour. Three hundred years hence such
output will still not be without its effect. In the dark ages of
Ireland Chichester was almost canonised, and his co-rogue, Sir
John Davies, left in a state of minor beatification, on their own
certificates of self-praise. This sketch attempts, on other evidence,
to do justice to their memories and their works.
T. M. HEALY.
Glenaulin,
Chapelizod,
8th September, 1917.
ERRATA.
Page 19 “1572” _should be_ 1571.
” 100 “this investigation” ” ” a previous investigation.
” 116 “suffering” ” ” sufferings.
” 156 “damage” ” ” damages.
” 179 “1613” ” ” 1615.
ADDITIONAL ERRATA.
Page 105 “Mountmorris” _should be_ Mountnorris.
” 172 “by previous grants” ” ” by a previous grant.
” 173 “Patent of 1621” ” ” Inquisition of 1621.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
AUTHORITIES xvi.
LEADING DATES xvii.
I. THE MEN OF DEVON 1
II. THE RAPE OF THE LOUGH 9
III. CHICHESTER, DEPUTY 17
IV. AN EVIL PARTNERSHIP 27
V. A VICEROY’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 32
VI. THE ULSTER LORDS 36
VII. CHIEFTAIN AND VASSAL 42
VIII. UPROOTING THE NOBLES 46
IX. WAR’S AFTERMATH 50
X. THE HARRYING OF SIR RANDALL 54
XI. THE DEPUTY’S NEPHEW 59
XII. CHEATING KING JAMES 65
XIII. DIVIDING THE SPOIL 71
XIV. THE PLANTERS’ PARLIAMENT 76
XV. A SCOTCH “DISCOVERER” 82
XVI. THE ESCHEATOR FOR ULSTER 88
XVII. MORE “DISCOVERERS” 94
XVIII. LORD FALKLAND’S SHAME 98
XIX. STRAFFORD, PATENT-BREAKER 109
XX. THE PURITAN SCRIVENERS 118
XXI. REBELLION REWARDED 124
XXII. THE “FAMOUS PAPER” 128
XXIII. LORD DONEGALL’S ROMANCES 137
XXIV. LAWLESS LORDS JUSTICES 144
XXV. HOW TO LOSE AN EMPIRE 148
XXVI. THE PLANTERS’ QUARREL 155
XXVII. TWO GREAT TRIALS 162
XXVIII. THE FINAL FORGERY 172
XXIX. THE LORDS DIVIDED 178
APPENDIX 185
INDEX 189
AUTHORITIES.
Abbotsford Club Miscellany.
Annals of the Four Masters (O’Donovan).
Appeal Cases, House of Lords (1878 and 1911).
Calendar of Border Papers.
” ” Carew Papers.
” ” Clarendon Papers.
” ” Patent and Close Rolls (Erck, and Morrin).
” ” State Papers.
” ” Treasury Papers.
Camden Society’s Publications.
Chartuleries of St. Mary’s Abbey (Gilbert).
Commonwealth Statutes.
Concise View of the Irish Society.
Cromwellian Settlement (Prendergast).
Davies’ (Sir John) Reports.
Davies’ Tracts.
Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica.
Dictionary of National Biography.
Docwra’s Narration.
Ecclesiastical Antiquities: Down, Connor, and Dromore (Dr. Reeves).
English in Ireland (Froude).
Fortescue Papers.
Granard, Life of Earls of (Forbes).
Hamilton MSS. (Lowry).
Hatfield MSS.
Hibernica (Harris).
Historical Manuscript Commission Reports.
History of Belfast (Benn).
History of Carrickfergus (McSkimin).
History of the Confederation (Gilbert).
History of Down and Connor (O’Laverty).
History of England (Froude).
History of England (Gardiner).
History of Gloucester (Rudder).
History of the Irish Presbyterian Church (Reid).
Histories of the Irish Rebellion, 1641 (Borlase and Temple).
History, Secret, of James I. (Sir A. Weldon).
History of London (Lambert).
Ireland (Sir James Ware).
Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (Lecky).
Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution (Prendergast).
Ireland Under the Stuarts (Bagwell).
Lansdowne Papers.
Liber Munerum (Lodge).
MacDonnells of Antrim (Hill).
Monasticum Hibernicon (Archdale).
Montgomery Manuscripts (Hill).
O’Donnell, Life of Hugh Roe (Rev. Denis Murphy, S.J.).
Old Belfast (Young).
O’Neill, Life of Hugh (Mitchel).
Ormonde (Carte).
Ormonde Papers.
Pacata Hibernia.
Plantation of Ulster (Hill).
Puritan and Cavalier (Lady Newdegate).
Ridgeway’s Reports, Vol. 2.
Salisbury Papers.
State Trials (Emlyn).
State Trials (Howell, Vol. 14).
State of Ireland, View of the (Spenser).
Strafford’s Letters.
Stuart Manuscripts.
Thurloe Papers (Birch).
Town Book of Belfast (Young).
Trevelyan Papers.
Tyrone and Tirconnell, Fate and Fortunes of (Meehan).
Types of Celtic Life (Hitchcock).
Ulster Land War (Bigger).
Ussher, Life of (Elrington).
LEADING DATES.
Con O’Neill accepts Earldom and Patent of Tyrone 1st October, 1542.
Title of King of Ireland conferred on Henry VIII. 23rd January, 1543.
Shane O’Neill slain by the MacDonalds June, 1567.
Act of Elizabeth confiscating Tyrone 1569.
Patent to Claneboy O’Neills 13th March, 1587.
Revolt of Hugh O’Neill 1594.
Sir Con O’Neill, of Claneboy, adheres to Elizabeth 1600.
O’Cahan, MacDonnell, and O’Byrne join Elizabeth 1602.
Submission of Hugh O’Neill 24th March, 1603.
Accession of James I. 24th March, 1603.
Mountjoy (Earl of Devonshire) sails with O’Neill and
O’Donnell for England 26th May, 1603.
Patent to MacDonnell includes fourth of tidal Bann 28th May, 1603.
King’s Letter appoints Chichester Governor Carrickfergus,
with Belfast estate 8th August, 1603.
King’s Letters regrant Tyrone to O’Neill 23rd August, and 1st
September, 1603.
Patents to Chichester under King’s Letter of 8th 10th September, and
August 5th November, 1603.
King’s Letter grants John Wakeman (Devonshire’s
nominee) £100 a year 8th November, 1603.
John Davies arrives as Solicitor-General 20th November, 1603.
King’s Letter to Chichester, amending Letter of 8th
August, 1603 29th December, 1603.
Wakeman’s Patent of St. Mary’s Abbey 28th February, 1604.
Wakeman’s Patent of Meath, Westmeath, and Kilkenny
lands 5th March, 1604.
Chichester’s Patents, under amended Letter, take
Lough Neagh and the Bann for life 9th May, 1604.
Chichester appointed Lord Deputy 15th October, 1604.
King’s Letter grants Thomas Irelande £100 a year 6th December, 1604.
Partition of Claneboy with James Hamilton and
Hugh Montgomery January, 1605.
Chichester sworn in as Deputy 3rd (? 24th) February,
1605.
Thomas Irelande assigns £100 a year to Hamilton 26th February, 1605.
King’s Letter to Hamilton for Claneboy, &c. 16th April, 1605.
Chichester’s protest to Cecil against Hamilton’s
grants 19th June, 1605.
Chichester’s Commission for Inquisition into Hamilton’s
grants 26th June, 1605.
Inquisition at Antrim as to Hamilton’s grants 12th July, 1605.
Chichester agrees to share spoil with Hamilton July, 1605.
Hamilton granted Coleraine Priory and Bann tithe
fishing (under Thomas Irelande’s Letter) 20th July, 1605.
Hamilton assigns Coleraine Priory and Bann tithe
fishing to Captain Thomas Phillips 23rd September, 1605.
Thomas Jones, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord
Chancellor 14th October, 1605.
Wakeman’s power-of-attorney to Auditor Ware 21st October, 1605.
Hamilton’s Patent for Claneboy (King’s Letter, 16th
April) 5th November, 1605.
Gunpowder Plot affects Anglo-Irish policy 5th November, 1605.
Hamilton’s Patent for Lough Neagh and Bann, &c.,
under Thomas Irelande’s Letter 14th February, 1606.
Auditor Ware (Wakeman’s assignee) granted tidal
Bann 2nd March, 1606.
Auditor Ware assigns tidal Bann to Hamilton 3rd March, 1606.
Hamilton’s Patent of Trim, &c., under Thomas Irelande’s
Letter 13th March, 1606.
Hamilton’s Patent of Westmeath lands under
Thomas Irelande’s Letter 17th March, 1606.
Earl of Devonshire’s will 2nd April, 1606.
Earl of Devonshire’s death 3rd April, 1606.
Hamilton assigns Lough Neagh and non-tidal Bann,
&c., to Chichester 10th April, 1606.
Hamilton’s Patent of Antrim and Down customs
under Wakeman’s Letter 11th April, 1606.
Hamilton assigns fourth of tidal Bann to Chichester 14th May, 1606.
Hamilton’s Patent, Westmeath and Longford lands
under Wakeman’s Letter 18th May, 1606.
John Davies promoted Attorney-General 29th May, 1606.
O’Cahan v. O’Neill tried by Chichester May and June, 1607.
Flight of the Earls (O’Neill and O’Donnell, &c.) 14th September, 1607.
O’Cahan’s imprisonment February, 1608.
Hamilton’s Patent of Wexford lands under Thomas
Irelande’s Letter 13th May, 1608.
Sir Cahir O’Doherty’s rebellion May-July, 1608.
Niall Garve O’Donnell’s imprisonment 1608.
Patent to Bassett of all Hamilton conveyed to
Chichester, with MacDonnell’s fourth of the
tidal Bann 1st July, 1608.
Bassett re-assigns contents of Patent to Chichester
23rd January, 1609.
King’s Letter to Chichester for Sir Cahir O’Doherty’s
estate 30th July, 1609.
Inquisition at Limavady declares Bann Chichester’s 30th August, 1609.
James I. grants Bann, Lough Foyle, and Derry to
City of London 28th January, 1610.
Hamilton’s additional Patent, St. Mary’s Abbey 23rd February, 1610.
Hamilton receives £4,500 compensation for Bann and
Lough Foyle June, 1610.
Chichester annuls grant to MacDonnell of “fourth”
of Bann November, 1610.
Chichester’s surrender, via Archbishop Jones, of
Bann and Lough Foyle 3rd April, 1611.
Sham Corporations created to pack Parliament 1612-1613.
Londoners’ Ulster Charter sealed 29th March, 1613.
Planters’ Parliament meets 18th May, 1613.
Recusants’ protest against packing Parliament July, 1613.
Chichester created a peer 25th February, 1614.
Planters’ Parliament escheats Ulster estates 1615.
Planters’ Parliament dissolved 24th October, 1615.
Sir John Davies’ legal reports published 1615.
Chichester dismissed from Deputyship 29th November, 1615.
Chichester appointed Lord High Treasurer 2nd July, 1616.
Hugh O’Neill dies in Rome 20th July, 1616.
Crown Rental describes Bann as Chichester’s 1618-1619.
Deputy St. John investigates Wakeman-Irelande
Patents October, 1618.
Archbishop Jones, Lord Chancellor, dies 10th April, 1619.
Davies resigns Attorney-Generalship 30th October, 1619.
King’s Letter for re-grant to Chichester 8th August, 1620.
Inquisition at Derry finds Bann for Londoners 26th March, 1621.
Inquisition at Carrickfergus finds Bann and Lough
Neagh for Chichester 6th April, 1621.
Patent to Chichester includes Lough Neagh and the
Bann 20th November, 1621.
Chichester made Ambassador to Palatinate January, 1622.
Chichester leases Lough Neagh to Londoners 1622.
Wakeman Patents condemned by Exchequer Barons 1623.
Chichester dies in London 19th February, 1625.
James I. dies 27th March, 1625.
Chichester’s embezzlements exposed 1625-1626.
Sir John Davies dies December, 1626.
Sir A. Forbes’ fishery “discovery” 21st October, 1628.
Opinion of ex-Baron Oglethorpe condemns Wakeman
Patents 26th April, 1630.
Strafford, Lord Lieutenant 3rd July, 1633.
Londoners’ Irish estate seized by Charles I. 1635.
Inquisition at Wicklow annuls Wakeman Patents 21st April, 1636.
King’s Letter requiring surrender of Lough Neagh
from Edward Chichester 24th September, 1638.
Edward Chichester surrenders Lough Neagh and
the Bann 1st July, 1640.
Patent to Edward Chichester for estate (less fisheries)
22nd September, 1640.
Commonwealth ordinance restores Londoners’ estate 4th September, 1655.
Cromwell leases Lough Neagh to Clotworthy 13th May, 1656.
Henry Cromwell inserts Bann in Clotworthy’s lease 14th August, 1656.
Cromwell’s Charter restores Londoners’ estate 24th March, 1657.
Oliver Cromwell dies 1658.
Charles II. confirms lease to Clotworthy 15th November, 1660.
Charles II. grants reversion of Clotworthy’s lease to
Lord Donegall 28th February, 1661.
Patent to Lord Donegall of reversion of Bann and
Lough Neagh 3rd July, 1661.
Charter of Charles II. restores estate to Londoners
10th April, 1662.
Chichester Patent of 1640 “enrolled” 1665.
Clotworthy’s lease expires 14th August, 1755.
Lord Donegall’s litigation with Londoners 1781-1801.
Londoners’ ejectment claims Bann from Lord
Donegall 1868.
Londoners accept lease of Bann under Lord Donegall 1872.
Public right in Lough Neagh challenged 1873-1878.
Public right in Lough Neagh annulled 1908-1910.
THE GREAT FRAUD OF ULSTER
CHAPTER I.
THE MEN OF DEVON.
When Elizabethan England blazed with glory, martial and poetic, when
the booty of the Spaniard enriched her adventurers, and the genius
of her minstrels charmed every heart, the hills and valleys of the
“sister island” echoed with horror, and her pleasant places were
filled with the groans of wounded men. A group of Devon captains
waged there a fearful war, led by the Queen’s Deputy, Lord Mountjoy.
Reckless of their own lives, their deeds of valour scarcely noted by
their countrymen, they ended their stubborn task, after a nine years’
death-grapple, by the levelling of every hostile stronghold and the
reduction of the clansmen and their shielings into “carcases and
ashes.”
At the moment when the victors expected to reap their reward and take
possession of the domains of their enemies the course of history was
changed by the death of Queen Elizabeth. As her successor the Privy
Council selected the King of Scots, who had at times been the secret
ally of the Irish chieftains. This choice baulked many a warrior’s
hope of prey. James I. forgave O’Neill and O’Donnell (who, indeed,
had never offended him), summoned them to London to receive pardon,
and restored them to their honours and estates. They had rebelled,
as he knew, to save their possessions from covetous officials who,
by inventing charges of treason against them, deceived Elizabeth in
order to make confiscation a virtue in her eyes.
In her reign the settled plan of the Executive was: to affect to
further the interests of the Crown by promoting forfeitures, and
then to divert them to the benefit of officials. The disgrace was a
legacy bequeathed to her Majesty, her heirs and successors; the booty
they kept for themselves. To-day the Crown lands of Ireland, despite
three general confiscations, yield only £19,000 a year. In England,
where, since the Wars of the Roses, there have been no wholesale
spoliations, the Crown estates enrich the Exchequer by £488,000 a
year. The cost of prostrating the Irish was borne by the British
taxpayer. The profit from it went into private pockets.
James I. tried to reward the conquerors without beggaring the
conquered. Lord Mountjoy, who, on the 6th June, 1603, led O’Neill and
O’Donnell through London, was given grants of lands and Custom duties
in England and was made Earl of Devonshire. His main assistants
in the rebellion were two other Devon men—Sir George Carew, who
commanded in Munster, and Sir Arthur Chichester, who ravaged Ulster.
Between Mountjoy and Carew a close friendship existed. Mountjoy’s
letters in the “Pacata Hibernia” manifest the warmth of their
relations. Carew was equally confidential with his comrade-in-arms.
His cipher of 1602 apprises Mountjoy of the dispatch of a poisoner to
follow Red Hugh O’Donnell into Spain, after the defeat at Kinsale.
Another tells of the murderer’s success, as O’Donnell was about to
secure fresh aids from the Spanish King. Such secrets are entrusted
only to bosom friends.
Sir Arthur Chichester was also the intimate of Mountjoy. He had, as
a short-cut to end the rebellion, tried to compass the assassination
of Hugh O’Neill; and, when this failed, he atoned for his ill-success
by devices equally ruthless. The Deputy supported them in everything;
and, when the Scotch succession came about, he wished that James I.
should repay them royally. Cecil, the most influential Minister of
the King, was the friend of all three; and he found it natural that,
when James took back to favour Irish noblemen lately in arms, the
recompense of those who had reduced them to submission should not be
stinted. Chichester came to London from Ireland to push his claims
and, accordingly, on the 8th August, 1603, he received in fee the
Castle of Belfast, with lands adjoining of undefined extent, and was
appointed Life Governor of Carrickfergus at 13s. 4d. a day.
Carew’s worth was recognised in what seemed a less grateful fashion,
for on the 28th September, 1603, he was allowed an estate of the
value only of £100 a year. This looked an unworthy return; but it
represents in present money £1,000 a year. Neither Chichester nor
Carew was content with his requital, for each believed that, if the
reconciliation between James and the Northern chiefs had not taken
place, their swords would have reaped a richer harvest. With this
feeling Mountjoy (now Earl of Devonshire) sympathised. So it came to
pass that a system was established by which the royal demesne was
stripped, for their benefit, and his own. There was at least plenty
of monastery plunder to be divided.
The looseness of the times, the feeling aroused among angry captains
at the favour shown to surrendered rebels, the grasping example of
the Scotch adventurers who swarmed over the Border after King James,
the readiness of his consort to lend herself to their petitions—all
tended to excite men in power in an unsettled land to batten on the
public treasure. The Earl of Devonshire knew that it was illegal
for him, as Deputy, or for his officials, to take or possess estate
without royal licence. Still the chances offering were too alluring
to be thrown away. Yielding to temptation, he abused his trust and
soiled his hands.
The plan on which he and his friends worked bore the semblance of
legality. A “King’s Letter” was employed to mask every fraud. Such
a Letter was a warrant obtained by a petitioner for royal favour.
It was usually submitted in draft by the applicant to his Majesty
engrossed on parchment. Sometimes two or three skins were sewn
together, making it of great size. Its terms, if approved, defined
the royal bounty or prescribed the royal will. It was sent to the
Signet Office in London when perfected, and was there copied into
the Signet Book. Then it was dispatched to Dublin, where a fiant (or
order) of the Law Officers to make it “patent” was issued. The Patent
was supposed to put the Letter into legal form, but, by official
connivance, it often included grants that had never been authorised.
When sealed under the Great Seal of Ireland by the Lord Chancellor, a
copy was generally “enrolled” in Chancery. This merely meant that its
words were inscribed in the vellum rolls kept by the Court officials.
In Stuart days no system of comparing or checking the King’s Letters
with the Patents existed, unless the Crown lawyers chose to direct
that precaution. If they were corrupt, the Crown was robbed. In
that era, official corruption was almost universal. No register of
Patents was kept, and grantees constantly strove to extend the limits
of their Letters, so as to secure more than the King intended. With
influential backing, any fraud was possible. If the grantee did not
enrol his grant the Crown was left without even a copy, and could not
always tell which of its possessions had been given away. Looseness
was fostered by lack of system as well as by lack of honesty.
The Attorney-General and Solicitor-General were supposed to oversee
the Patents. They were often needy adventurers, imported from
some London Inn of Court on the nomination of accomplices in the
Executive. The Lord Lieutenant was their master, and they did not
pretend to independence, but obeyed their superiors without question.
Honesty injured their prospects, and they seldom affected to practise
that unusual virtue. It was a time when much ecclesiastical property
was forfeit, especially in Ulster, where the downfall of the Gael
enabled the Statutes of Henry VIII. against the monasteries to be
at last enforced. St. Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, at its dissolution by
Henry VIII. reputed to be the richest in Ireland, held valuable
possessions in every province, and several fraudulent Patents made
raids on them. Many of these were given over to the Lord Lieutenant
and his confederates on flimsy pretences. Public advantage from the
confiscations was nil.
The King’s entourage was not fettered by vows of poverty. Courtiers
who boasted no virtue themselves did not look for shining examples
from Irish officials. They knew these men had left England for
their advancement, to make what they could out of a conquered
country. The Castle in Dublin was a coarse replica of the Court in
London. The spendthrift habits of James I. bred extravagance in his
underlings. To deceive that slobbering pedant seemed a small demerit
to the Anglo-Irish harpies who regulated their profligacy by London
standards.
The clearing-house of corruption in the metropolis for the sale
of offices and favours was kept by Michael Hicks of Ruckholt, son
of a Cheapside shopkeeper, who had been Burleigh’s secretary in
Elizabeth’s reign. Hicks was Cecil’s playfellow in youth; and at his
mart much was to be learnt of the schemes and foibles of great men.
After Devonshire’s arrival in England in June, 1603, he was held
in thrall by a love affair with the wife of Lord Rich, and never
returned to Ireland. He was made Lord Lieutenant by James I., and
was able at Court to lend countenance to the malpractices of his
friends. To hide his own share in them he worked behind nominees,
the principal being henchmen named John Wakeman and John King. The
latter he sent over from England to a post in Dublin. Devonshire’s
participation in the loot began on the 8th November, 1603. He then
secured a King’s Letter for a grant of lands to the value of £100
a year in favour of John Wakeman, on the plea that it represented
the Royal gratitude for “services done unto Us and to be done and
also in regard to a valuable consideration in money paid and to be
paid by our order to an ancient and well-deserving servant of ours
in Scotland” by Wakeman. The “old servant” was a myth. So was the
money payment by Wakeman to him. So was the £100 a year limit of
recompense. From November, 1603, till the Earl’s death in April,
1606, a stream of grants, nominally to John Wakeman, but really for
the Lord Lieutenant, flowed from this source. In yearly value they
amounted to several thousands of pounds.
Wakeman was a servant of the Levant Company who in 1603 had returned
from trading with the Emperor of Morocco. That he had made any
payment among the Moors to “well-deserving” Scotchmen in Elizabeth’s
reign was unlikely, yet over a dozen Patents of enormous value were
passed in his name, on pretence of rewarding him to the extent of
£100 a year. Devonshire’s second go-between, John King, was made
Clerk of the Crown in Dublin on the 12th July, 1603, and received
much property on pretexts equally flimsy.
In order that these practices might be safely carried out, the Lord
Lieutenant arranged with Cecil to dispatch to Ireland, as soon as
John King was appointed, a law officer on whom they could rely.
This was John Davies, a hungry lawyer from the Middle Temple, who
afterwards was knighted for his part in fleecing Hugh O’Neill.
Davies was nominated in September, 1603, and was sworn-in in Dublin
during November, 1603. His unscrupulousness and cunning were beyond
the common even of those spacious days. To him must be ascribed the
feats of conveyancing, the multiplication of Patents, the shady
trusteeships, the magnification of grants, and the plunder of the
Gaelic gentry, which defile the reign of James I. His arrival worked
an immediate improvement in the fortunes of Chichester and Carew.
On the strength of a warrant for £100 a year, Carew received three
Patents. Each included lands far exceeding that sum in annual
value. Like John King and John Wakeman, Sir George served as agent
for others in the obtainment of grants. In one case, on receiving
a King’s Letter in his own favour, he two days later assigned all
rights under it to Richard Boyle, the notorious Earl of Cork. This
helped Boyle to enlarge the huge estate in Munster which he had
snatched from Sir Walter Raleigh—who had himself seized it from the
Earl of Desmond. Other officials who dredged in the same muddy tide
were Hibbots, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Cooke, Secretary of State;
St. John, afterwards Deputy; and the law officers, Davies and Jacob,
with many besides.
Before any Patent could legally be made out, the law required
conditions to be fulfilled which these worthies entirely disregarded.
Notice should first be given to the public, and an inquiry held into
the nature of the grant, and the power of the King to make it. So
strict was Statute on this point that Patents issued in default of
prior inquiry were declared to be “void and holden for none.” This
did not trouble Davies or his confederates, who set aside legal
safeguards as lightly as moral principles. King James knew naught
of their devastations, and it would have touched him nearly to
hear the fate of St. Mary’s Abbey—which his predecessors were firm
in retaining. Neither Henry VIII. nor Elizabeth would permit its
possessions to be recklessly squandered.
Founded by a Gaelic Prince, its revenues were increased after the
Conquest by successive Norman Kings. The Abbey gave hospitality
to strangers who came overseas, and was frequently used as a
lodging by the Viceroys. Deputy Leonard Gray strove to save it from
confiscation, but he was recalled by Henry VIII., who suspected him,
and had him beheaded. Henry ordered the Dublin portion of the Abbey
to be reserved for the Royal ordnance; and Elizabeth, although she
gave a site to Trinity College out of its possessions, rejected
in 1567 the prayer of the Mayor and Burgesses of Dublin that some
portion should be let to them “in consideration of their loyal and
dutiful services.” The Queen requited their loyalty by a grant of
other lands; but her hold on St. Mary’s Abbey she would not lightly
relax.
This made the trick played on King James the more scurvy. Mere
monastery pickings, however, were trifles compared with the other
colossal thefts carried out under the new regime. At no period
before or since was there anything to equal them in hardihood. The
operations of Chichester were more extensive and ingenious than those
of his co-mates, and entailed larger historic consequences.
CHAPTER II.
THE RAPE OF THE LOUGH.
The ingenuity of Davies helped to distend beyond all honest limits
the grants allotted to Chichester, who coveted properties too unique
and vast to be openly proposed for his reward. Sir Arthur’s Castle
at Carrickfergus lay neighbourly to Lough Neagh, and on this great
prize, with its outlet, the fishful Bann, he had set his heart. To
crave such guerdon for his services would have been in vain. It was
not the King’s to bestow, and never had been seized or claimed by
the Crown. With official connivance he might lay hands on it, but
his power in the State was limited. James I. had chosen him with
Sir Henry Docwra and Sir William Godolphin as a partaker in the
Government during Devonshire’s absence; but he shared a divided
authority, and had to beware of jealousy or exposure.
Lough Neagh lay outside the territory of every native chieftain,
while the Bann belonged to notables whose rights could not lightly be
trespassed on. In 1542 the Lough was fixed as the Eastern boundary
of Tyrone in the Patent of Henry VIII. to Con O’Neill after Con’s
acceptance, at Greenwich, of English allegiance. When that Patent
was renewed by James I. to Hugh O’Neill in 1603, the same landmarks
were maintained. On the opposite side dwelt the Claneboy O’Neills;
but, beyond their shore-fishings and those of the monks, they laid no
claim to it. Their Patent of 30th March, 1587, is confined to County
Down, and makes no mention of Lough Neagh. Queen Elizabeth gave Sir
Thomas Smith a Charter to conquer East Ulster in 1571, but the Lough
was not included in his grant.
The limits of tribal ownership were at all times acutely studied;
and to interfere with them without provocation or legal excuse, once
peace was established, would arouse angry protests and appeals to the
Throne. It was plain, moreover, that, whether English Law or Brehon
Law prevailed, there was no one against whom a forfeiture could be
enforced for Lough Neagh as a whole.
Inconvenient as this was for the official despoiler, with his nice
sense of quiddities, Sir Arthur saw its usefulness from another point
of view, since no great owner would suffer if a confiscation were
carried out. On this basis he laid his plans. Queen Elizabeth, during
her nine years’ struggle for supremacy, had established war-boats on
Lough Neagh, from which O’Neill’s territory was raided. The crews
hindered the natives from fishing when their kine and corn were
destroyed; and, after famine had enforced peace, the galleys were
ordered to be kept serviceable. Hugh Clotworthy, one of Chichester’s
warriors, remained in charge of them, and received from Sir Arthur
the lands of Massereene, near the shore, out of his own grant, at
a cheap rate. He calculated that, with proper backing, Lough Neagh
might be put under his “command” as Governor of Carrickfergus,
and that on this foundation a beginning might be made from which
ownership could be built up. The Lord Lieutenant was not privy to
this purpose; and had never conceived such an annexation, even for
his own benefit. He would have been staggered by its audacity in a
subordinate, but he unwittingly helped to bring about what Chichester
sought.
It has been told that on his visit to Court with the subjugated
Earls, Devonshire secured Sir Arthur’s life appointment as Governor
of Carrickfergus, with a gift of the property lying between the
Castles of Carrickfergus and Belfast. This served as a basis from
which Chichester operated. Most of these lands had been awarded to
Sir Ralph Lane, Muster-Master-General to Queen Elizabeth, under a
“custodium” (or lease) of 1598. They included Belfast Castle, with
its adjacent fishery of the Lagan, and other valuable perquisites.
Large areas comprised in the grant had, in Lane’s day, to be won
from the natives; and in 1603 the rightful owner, Sir Con O’Neill,
was held prisoner in Carrickfergus Castle by Chichester on a charge
of treason invented with a view to stealing what remained of his
property.
Before Sir Con could be brought to trial he escaped to Scotland; and,
Lane being displaced, everything in the “custodium” was given to
Chichester. The King’s Letter of the 8th August, 1603, ordered his
grant to be made rent free in perpetuity. Thus the soil on which the
City of Belfast now stands, under the name of “the Fall, Mylone, and
the Tuogh called the Sinament,” fell to a penniless freebooter with
scantier ritual than would to-day mark the transfer of an acre from
an African savage.
This recognition of Sir Arthur’s merits, though princely, left him
ungrateful. On the 23rd August, 1603, he wrote Cecil pretending that
the King’s Letter had been “by the learned counsel found defective,”
and praying that “some other to better purpose may be signed by his
Majesty.” He did not disclose what was amiss with the Letter, or that
its only “defect” was that it did not authorise what he coveted. The
help of the vulnerable Viceroy was also enlisted, but to him the plea
put forward was that the Letter “was not so ample as his Majesty
intended.” Without awaiting Cecil’s reply Chichester stretched the
Letter by taking out two Patents, in each of which he inserted grants
greater than his Majesty had sanctioned.
In the first Patent, dealing with Belfast, issued on the 10th
September, 1603, he included the entire of the river Lagan, although
the fishing at the Castle alone was given him. The second, relating
to the Carrickfergus Governorship, he enlarged by a still more daring
addition. The original of either Patent is no longer available,
as they were first concealed, and then cancelled; but from those
substituted for them the conclusion is irresistible that they swept
the “command” of Lough Neagh into his hands. So glaring were their
excesses that Sir Arthur shrank from enrolling them lest a comparison
between their text and the King’s Letter, on which they purported to
be based, should shock inquiring minds. The King’s Letter then (as
now) lay in the custody of the Master of the Rolls.
Davies’ arrival in Dublin in November, 1603, proved a godsend to all
jobbers. The new Solicitor-General brought the latest London gossip
of the extravagant largesse of the Scotch King and Queen, and of the
Lord Lieutenant’s careless amours. This intelligence and his lawcraft
lent aid to Sir Arthur’s purposes and shaped his methods. The system
under which swollen grants were called into being for the profit of
needy favourites had already been set in full swing; and Davies knew
that the absentee Viceroy was not squeamish about the scope of the
Patents taken out by his brothers-in-arms. The Solicitor-General
framed himself to that situation. The entanglement with Lady Rich
made the Lord Lieutenant reluctant to return to Ireland, and the
delicacy of his position was becoming notorious. Davies saw its
weakness, and discerned in Chichester a kindred spirit and a rising
power.
Before long their interchanges resulted in a dashing expedient.
Underlying the application for the new Letter lurked the design to
make it cover a Patent bulking the “command” at Carrickfergus with
a right over Lough Neagh. If the scheme prospered, the concealed
Patents could afterwards be destroyed; and, as they were not
enrolled, legal proof of malpractice in framing them would also
disappear. This plan bore upon its face the stamp of Davies’ mint.
Cecil was favourable to Sir Arthur, and the Lord Lieutenant doubtless
reflected that to extend his “command” to embrace Lough Neagh would
only increase his responsibility without enriching his estate or
enlarging his pay. They, therefore, furthered Chichester’s petition
without troubling as to the purpose to which an “amended” King’s
Letter might be turned. In the first profuse year of the Stuart
regime, small scrutiny was spent by James I. on requests of this
kind. Once Devonshire and Cecil backed up a suppliant’s prayer, no
difficulty was made in yielding it. His Majesty accordingly, on the
29th December, 1603, consented to sign a second Letter; and thereby
became anew the victim of servitors who prostituted regal forms to
corrupt ends.
The difference between the first and second King’s Letter related
chiefly to the “command” of Lough Neagh; but that difference enabled
the craftsmen to effect a far-reaching extension of the Patent it
authorised. The “amended” Letter was drawn to invest Chichester with
“the government of Carrickfergus and of all other forts, places, and
commands, with the Lough Neagh and the commodities thereof mentioned
in our Letters Patent formerly granted unto him, together with the
fee of 13s. 4d. by the day, for the term of his natural life.” This
phraseology shows that although Lough Neagh had never been mentioned
in the first King’s Letter, a patent was founded on it which
illegally dealt with the Lough.
On the strength of the new Letter, the rogues minted a fresh Patent
on the 9th May, 1604. This revealed the original design and reeked
with every kind of illegality. Having declared Chichester “Colonel
and Governor of our forces at Carrickfergus,” with the fee of 13s.
4d. a day for life, it created him “Admiral and Commander-in-Chief
of Lough Neagh for the disposal of all shipping and boats thereon.”
There was daring in that, but a greater marvel followed, for the
Patent thievishly went on to confer on him “the fishing of the said
Lough as far as the Salmon Leap in the River of the Bann.” In other
words, it annexed to the command at Carrickfergus a life estate
in the fishery of Lough Neagh and the Bann. This was a stupendous
encroachment on the nature and limits of the grant sanctioned by
the King. To transform a military “command” into the gift of a huge
fishery, and adjoin thereto the rank of “Admiral,” was a masterpiece
of perversion. The English Crown had never laid claim to the waters
so purloined. James I. did not mean to give them away; and had
neither power nor right to do so. The feigned dignity of “Admiral and
Commander-in-Chief of Lough Neagh” was usurped to mask a material
advantage, and its author vainly tried afterwards to confirm his
shaky title by dubbing the lake “Lough Chichester.” The mock baptism
was as scornfully rejected by the natives as his piratical claim of
ownership.
No inquisition had been held (as the law required) to establish the
right to make the Patent. Nor did any official notification of it
apprise the Crown or the public of what had been done. A spell of
black magic transmuted a military appointment into a life estate
in the richest fishery in Ulster, and attached thereto a bogus
“Admiralty.”
Uglier even than the uncanny graft on the “command” at Carrickfergus
was Sir Arthur’s crookedness as to the Bann. The river was nowhere
mentioned in either King’s Letter from first to last; yet the new
Patent captured it for Chichester. Ecclesiastics as well as laymen
owned the stream on either bank. It belonged to Hugh O’Neill in
part, to Sir Randal McDonnell in part, to the Bishop of Derry, to
the Bishop of Down and Connor, and other magnates. They never learnt
till too late that, by imposing the Great Seal on skins of vellum,
Sir Arthur had stolen their property. The fresh-water “Admiral” kept
his scrivenery secret until its victims were powerless and his sway
assured. His day was coming; and the spirit in which he trampled down
public and private ownership proves that the embittered captains
of Elizabeth never intended to respect the treaties of peace which
heralded the dawn of the Stuart reign. Chichester had as little
compunction in thwarting the policy of James I. as in stripping
chiefs and clansmen of their acres.
To baffle research as to his misdeeds, he inserted a proviso in the
Patents of 1604 declaring that those of 1603 should be annulled
before their substitutes were sealed. He had cunningly left them
unenrolled, lest their contents should rise up in judgment against
him, and thus they were for ever withheld from scrutiny and
subtracted from the archives of the State. Knowledge of them is
derived only from the King’s Letter and recitals in the Patents of
1604. The germ of the stranger’s claim to Lough Neagh and the Bann,
thus clandestinely called into being, animates the unnatural pedigree
of the Chichester title. In no essay of his descendants to trace it
back through the centuries to some legitimate source, nor in their
lawsuits to maintain a hold on what he filched, are the Patents of
1603-4 ever mentioned. In no legal proceedings concerning the Bann or
Lough Neagh (and they were frequent) was the pretenced life-estate
ever relied on or referred to. A modern affidavit, which boasts
a complete and accurate enumeration of the grants, piously avers
that the first was issued in 1606, and suppresses those of 1603-4.
The guilt-dyed originals were left buried out of sight, as if no
tell-tale ghosts haunted the Record Office. Yet they represented the
fairest flower of the handicraft which typified the majesty of the
law in Ireland when the Brehon Code was overthrown.
They were fabricated on the eve of Chichester’s promotion from
Carrickfergus to Dublin Castle, for his elevation to the Deputyship
was at hand; and on the threshold of his greatness this brace
of parchments exhibits him reeking in the mire of duplicity and
ingratitude. He requited James I. for the gift of a lordly recompense
by manifold falsehoods and fabrications. The whole River Lagan was
snatched instead of a mere fishing-reach at Belfast Castle. The
“command” of Lough Neagh was assumed without sanction under an
unenrolled Patent. The misrepresentation that his grants “were not so
ample as his Majesty intended” begot a fresh King’s Letter to furbish
title to that coveted command. By warping the Royal Warrant he
endowed himself with the honour of “Admiral and Commander-in-Chief”
in his watery jurisdiction, plus a life-estate in the fisheries of
a great inland sea. Unsated by this immensity, he absorbed long
leagues of the River Bann, the property of high-placed chieftains and
unoffending prelates, in defiance of treaty and law. To crown all,
an intrigue to gain the Deputyship was entered upon, to complete the
work so masterfully begun.
The development of his “life-estate” into the full-blown perfection
of the Fee Simple took years to accomplish and much ministering
sleight-of-hand. In the process legal conjuring and covin more
astounding than that which ushered in its illegitimate birth briskly
unfold themselves. Toadies of Chichester depict him as a Christian
of deep religious fervour. A hypocrite by habit, a churl by nature,
and a thief by instinct he took care that his deceptions should not
be easily unravelled. The consequences of the “amended” Letter,
which the ’prentice Monarch of the United Kingdom was befooled into
signing, reach down into a far futurity.
CHAPTER III.
CHICHESTER, DEPUTY.
At the outset of the Earl of Devonshire’s wooings, his Deputy in
Dublin was one Cary, Treasurer at War. Cary, in comparison with his
confederates, was a mere pedlar in villainy. As Treasurer at War he
drew forged Bills of Exchange and passed off false moneys dexterously
enough; but as Deputy he showed himself unskilled in the mystery of
annexing broad acres by sealed sheepskins. Cary was ill-regarded by
Chichester, who from his eyrie in Carrickfergus sped into England sly
narratives of his misdeeds. Filled with remorse for his colleague’s
sins, Sir Arthur humbly insinuated his own merits. Devonshire and
Cecil were on the side of the cunning penman, and submitted his
reports to the King. An inquiry into his charges was held, and
although Cary’s audited accounts were found in order he was recalled.
Then Chichester with great show of reluctance allowed himself to be
installed in the vacant place.
On being invested with the “Sword of State” he displayed a rapacity
in keeping with his increased power, but the more he robbed the Crown
the more redolent of loyalty and piety grew his dispatches. He had
written of Cary words which quickly waxed applicable to himself:—“The
Deputy made such a hand of enriching himself in this land, as the
like was never done by any other that supplied the place.” He marked
down the pardoned Ulster Chieftains as his especial prey. Upon their
possessions he had long cast envious eyes, and with cold watchfulness
he set himself to weave a web around them.
Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, after three months at Court, had,
on the 11th September, 1603, secured from James I. an order for
the “restoration in blood” by Act of Parliament of himself and his
brothers, and the re-grant of their lands by Patent. The King wished
a Parliament to be summoned so that the Irish Princes and people
should universally enjoy (for the first time) the protection of
English Law. Two documents published in the year of his accession
attest in this particular the statesmanship of the Stuart. Yet no
Parliament was called, nor did any Patent issue in favour of the
Chiefs from the Dublin fount of grants whose parchments alone a
crafty Executive treated as binding. In the words of a Spanish Don,
O’Neill and his comrades were “a very simple sort of men.” They had
Latin pat, but little skill in lawcraft. Their warlike prowess won
European renown, but they were easily outmatched in legal tourney.
Despite Royal pardon, Royal parchments, and Royal promises, the Earls
O’Neill and O’Donnell and their titles were blotted out within less
than five years of the Treaty of Peace by the relentless Devonian.
Shortly after Chichester became Deputy (February, 1605) there
appeared before him a Scottish suitor bearing “King’s Letters”
entitling him to unexpected bounties. Their magnitude astonished
the “Admiral of Lough Neagh.” At first he gibed at the stranger and
thwarted his projects. Then he trounced him in letters of alarm
to Cecil. The nature of the replies he received, however, was not
encouraging. For Sir Arthur had to do with a Royal favourite—James
Hamilton—reputed to be a mighty hunter of holes in other men’s
grants. The son of a clergyman at Ayr, Hamilton during Elizabeth’s
reign, served the Scottish Crown as a spy both in Ireland and
England. His career is a romance of the Fee-Simple, and he ended
his days as a Peer of the Realm, owning, as Lord Claneboy, an
estate in Ulster and elsewhere as extensive as the greediest of
the freebooters. In his youth Hamilton was a Scholar of Dublin
University, which was then newly founded by Queen Elizabeth on lands
seized from St. Mary’s Abbey. Afterwards he kept a Latin School
near Dublin Castle with James Fullerton, and the pair acted as
intelligencers for the Scottish Crown.
When the Tudor Dynasty was drawing to an end he hired himself to
quest for the King of Scots on perilous errands to and fro between
the Three Kingdoms. Finally he took pay from both Crowns, and after
Elizabeth’s death the favour of James was his rich endowment. A
subtle devisor of pretexts to bring about a lapse in the Patents of
others, he often succeeded in persuading the King that the forfeits
should fall to “discoverers” like himself. Such rewards cost his
Majesty little, and the Ayrshireman’s influence and wealth grew apace.
Upon the Stuart Accession, Hamilton was entrusted with the task
of pleading at Court the claim of the heirs of Sir Thomas Smith
(Elizabeth’s Latin Secretary) to the lands of Claneboy. The Queen’s
Charter of 1571 offered a large slice of East Ulster to Smith and his
bastard son to encourage a warlike expedition against the eastern
branch of the O’Neills. In pushing the raid, Smith’s son was killed,
and this brought the adventure and the Charter to an end. When
Ireland was subdued in 1603 the Smith family petitioned (in view
of their sacrifices thirty years earlier) that the lapsed Charter
should be revived in their favour, and Hamilton was hired to press
their suit on the King. His retainer proved unprosperous: the Smiths
got nothing, but their advocate managed to acquire the bulk of the
property for himself. At this result cries of “treachery” arose from
the disappointed Smiths, yet no one wasted a thought on the fate of
the real owners, the O’Neills of Claneboy.
From Tudor times this branch of the O’Neills had been loyal to the
Crown, but were afterwards found to be rather in the way. Holding
choice spots of strength, they saw their possessions raided by those
whom they had served. After James I. came to the throne, Chichester
seized whatever part of their lands he chose to think fell within Sir
Ralph Lane’s “custodium.” He had, as already mentioned, imprisoned
Sir Con O’Neill; and the rage he felt when that chief escaped from
his clutches was intensified on Hamilton’s arrival with the news
of his pardon and King’s Letters for a Patent of his property. The
O’Neills had dwelt a thousand years in Claneboy; but the Deputy was
indignant that a rival should forestall him in spoliation, and avail
of his own procedure to work it out.
Sir Con’s downfall came about because, being minded to import wine
into the harbour at Carrickfergus, the garrison there looted it on
the way to his cellars, and his servant killed one of the soldiers
in a hasty affray in 1602. The chief and his retainers had been in
the pay and service of Queen Elizabeth since 1600, yet this scuffle
Chichester dubbed “treason.” Instead of punishing the thieves he
attacked the owner of the wine, and Sir Con’s life and lands were put
in jeopardy. He was arrested, thrust into a cell in Carrickfergus
Castle, and tried as a rebel by “office of inquest” before the
Provost-Marshal. There had been no Provost-Marshal at Carrickfergus
in Elizabeth’s reign; and, in order to do service on Sir Con,
Chichester got leave, on the 30th August, 1603, to appoint one.
He and the Ulster Earls were then in London, and before Con could
be executed he escaped from the Castle. A Scotch laird, Sir Hugh
Montgomery, helped him to fly, and had him ferried across the narrow
strait between Carrickfergus and Scotland. The Laird was brother to
the new Court Chaplain under James I., the Rev. George Montgomery.
To London he took Sir Con to see the reverend favourite and secure a
Stuart pardon. O’Neill promised him a large fee, no less than half
his estate, as the price of “forgiveness.”
When they arrived at Court the suppliants encountered the ex-spy, Sir
James Fullerton, brimful of craft and watchful of chances. He was
the old comrade of Hamilton, and contrived a turn for him out of Sir
Con’s distress. His influence was such that the King only granted
the “pardon” on condition that the chief’s bargain with Montgomery
should be recast and a third of his estate given to Hamilton. O’Neill
was kept dangling about the Court for over a year before this
composition was arrived at. Thus the chief was shorn of two-thirds
of his lands instead of half, as the price of “mercy.” To temper the
loss to Montgomery the King promised to throw in as many abbeys and
monasteries as would make it good, but Sir Con had to submit to the
condition that the new Patent should be made out in Hamilton’s name
and accept his promise to assign a third to himself and Montgomery.
Such was Fullerton’s fealty to his brother-spy. At his death
Fullerton was honoured with a grave in Westminster Abbey.
By such help James Hamilton won a lodgment in Ulster. He at once
hastened to Dublin, and presented two King’s Letters to the Deputy.
One of them, dated the 16th April, 1605, entitled him to the entire
of Sir Con’s property, while another of the 6th December, 1604, gave
him land (unspecified) to the value of £100 a year. These warrants
startled Chichester, who had expected to make his own of the whole of
O’Neill’s possessions. In his eyes they revealed a woeful situation,
for they conferred on an outsider “of his Majesty’s gift the
countries and territories of Upper Clandeboye and the Great Ardes.”
This manner of looting O’Neill fell out with his plans—a stranger had
struck sickle in the corn he had sown.
Hamilton’s second grant of £100 a year was framed on the elastic
“Wakeman” model, and surpassed it in the romance of its origin. In
his impoverished Elizabethan days the spy used when he came to London
put up at the “Half-Moon” Tavern in Bow Lane. It was a house of call
for Scotchmen; and the landlord, Thomas Irelande, hailed from “the
North Countrie.” At that date the Scotch were by Statute the “ancient
enemies” of the English; but Hamilton, while acting as a scout for
the Scots, was also in the pay of England. When James I. reached
the throne he cannot have suspected this, and his Letter of the 6th
December, 1604, with other gifts, attests his gratitude.
Suitors for King’s Letters who wished to baffle inquiry or avert
jealousy often put forward some “John Doe” or “Richard Roe” as a
feigned beneficiary (as the Earl of Devonshire did) to mask grants
intended for themselves. Hamilton preferred that the name of his
innkeeper should appear in the royal Letter instead of his own. He
had, on the 6th November, 1603, and 18th May, 1604, been given a
valuable monopoly for the export of linen yarn from Ireland, and may
have thought it would be easier or more speedy to obtain further
grants if he remained in disguise rather than appear as the original
beneficiary. Whatever his motive, he showed himself as skilful as
higher personages in employing the machinery for juggling with
Patents. The name of the Innkeeper, Thomas Irelande, chosen for
insertion as the nominal Patentee, corresponded with that of another
“Thomas Ireland,” an escheator of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, who might
be looked on as the grantee by those who did not burrow too deeply
below the surface.
Figments were recited about Thomas Irelande in the King’s Letter
which rival those palmed off on James I. by the Lord Lieutenant in
the case of John Wakeman. Its text made his Majesty certify that the
tapster of the “Half-Moon” had paid into the Exchequer £1,678 6s.
8d., but whether before or after he came to the throne of England was
not stated; and that, as a recompense, Thomas Irelande was to receive
an estate worth £100 a year “out of such castles, manors, etc., as
came to the Crown by forfeiture, attainder, etc.” The Privy Council
had just ordered the Irish Executive not to part with any such
“castles.”
In the year 1604 the sum of £1,678 6s. 8d. would represent nearly
£20,000 in to-day’s values. This a humble innkeeper is supposed to
have presented to the Exchequer without security or interest—an
unexplained and un-Scottish caprice. To have had such command of
money, Thomas Irelande must have amassed a fortune out of the tavern
“where Scotsmen lie”; although in Elizabeth’s reign no large muster
of Scots from whom it could derive custom repaired to London. A
Census of Foreigners in 1567 shows that there were only 40 resident
Scotchmen in the metropolis, as compared with 472 Frenchmen and 2,030
Dutch. So the Bow Lane philanthropist must have been as lucky under
the Tudors as he was lavish under the Stuarts.
His Majesty was in the habit of borrowing money wherever he could lay
hands on it. He took loans from Hugh O’Neill and never repaid them.
He also laid himself under obligation to wealthy London citizens; but
these were personal debts; and the landlord of the “Half-Moon” is not
alleged to have made the King a private loan, but to have lodged cash
in the public Exchequer. His place of abode is not mentioned in the
King’s Letter, where his innkeepership is disguised by misdescribing
him as a “merchant.”
The oddest part of the transaction has now to be recorded.
Having poured his largesse into the royal coffers, the tapster’s
openhandedness sought a fresh outlet. With boundless disregard for
bawbees, Thomas Irelande made over to Hamilton the grant of £100 a
year which had cost him £1,678 6s. 8d. This was expressed to be done
“for divers good considerations”—that being the common form for a
voluntary conveyance. In other words, he gave a valuable property
away for nothing. Few London hotel-keepers now endow their guests in
that way. These goodly giants of the prime are alas extinct.
Hamilton, armed with his landlord’s conveyance and the grant of Sir
Con O’Neill’s estate (in trust as to two-thirds), pressed the Deputy
for Patents to validate them. Legally his demand was irresistible;
but Chichester’s righthand men, led by Sir William Parsons (the
Surveyor-General), shared his reluctance to “passing” a grant so
extensive. They, like their master, felt wounded that an intruder
should try to carry off booty larger than any seized by the Lord
Lieutenant or the other Elizabethan warriors.
What was to be done? A blank refusal to honour the King’s warrant was
impossible, so they temporised and parleyed with Hamilton. Meanwhile,
the Deputy, smarting at the loss of the hoped-for escheat from Sir
Con (whom he would gladly have hanged), poured out his soul in
protest to Cecil. He wrote on the 19th June, 1605:—
“The King’s grants daily increase. There is come hither one Mr. James
Hamilton with two Letters from the King: one containing a gift of
£100 land in fee-farm, in the name of Thomas Irelande; the other
for passing to him the Great Ardes or Upper Claneboy—by virtue of
which words, if he have his desires, he will have more lands than
the greatest lords in this kingdom, and all is given in free and
common soccage, whereby his Majesty’s tenures are lost and everywhere
abridged. If copies of these letters be called for the grants will be
found to be extraordinary.
“When I was in England, it pleased the King, by your means, to
bestow on me the Castle of Belfast and other lands adjoining. I have
passed it twice, and as yet I understand by this gentleman—who,
it seems, has sought all the records—there are some questions may
be made thereon, by reason of some grants made long since to Sir
Thomas Smith. For albeit that deed be of no force, yet, not being
so found void in the ‘office,’ as the records of those deeds were
not in this Kingdom, I am subject to some danger. I pray, therefore,
that one Letter more may be granted to me for re-passing the same.”
While awaiting Cecil’s reply, Chichester, on the 26th June, 1605,
appointed a Commission of his most trusted officials and cronies to
hold Inquisitions preliminary to any grant being made, so that by a
rigid enforcement of the Patent laws (hitherto ignored), Hamilton
should not get a rood of land or a rill of water to which he was not
strictly entitled. The scope of the Commission was severely limited
to the text of the King’s Letters which Hamilton presented, and the
persons appointed to execute it were:—
Nicholas Kerdiff, Serjeant-at-Law,
Sir Charles Calthrop, Attorney-General,
William Parsons, Surveyor-General,
Nicholas Kenney, Escheator-General.
John Dallway of Carrickfergus,
Robert Barnwall,
and
Laurence Masterson.
Of these, the three last, with Parsons, alone acted, and they sat
to hold Inquisitions at Ardwhin, Co. Down (recte Ardquin), on the
5th July, 1605, and in the town of Antrim on the 12th July, 1605.
They were commissioned to ascertain what lands Sir Con O’Neill and
his father, Brian Fertagh, were possessed of in Upper Claneboy
and the Great Ardes, with the rents and “cuttings” to which they
were subject. Their other duty was to discover what property in
the Counties of Antrim and Down should have come to the Crown by
attainder or forfeiture, so that the £100 a year granted to Thomas
Irelande might be provided thereout. The verdict then found took
shape in a return, which was put to such an illegitimate use that it
was not enrolled for 79 years, lest its terms should leak out.
For by the time the Commissioners had completed their labours and
returned to Dublin, Cecil silenced the murmurings of the Deputy, and
counselled him to come to an understanding with Hamilton. The “one
Letter more” never was signed, for the policy recommended from London
made it unnecessary. Cecil having, in 1599, promoted Chichester
to the Irish command, acted as his protector ever after. He used
lovingly dub him “poor Arthur,” but “poor Arthur’s” appeal against
Hamilton made too large a draft on his power. Instead of procuring a
fresh King’s Letter he evidently warned him to make terms with the
royal favourite, for within a month the Deputy treated “the Scot”
as a bosom friend. The Antrim Inquisition was then availed of, with
the aid of the ductile Parsons, as the groundwork of an enormous
grant to Hamilton, who arranged to hand over a large slice of the
plunder to the Deputy. This dispensed Cecil from having to beseech
James I. for another “Letter” for Chichester, and from that forth a
working partnership was established between the Deputy and Hamilton.
This alliance in ill-doing linked them for life. Backed by Davies,
and with the help of the Lord Chancellor (Jones, Archbishop of
Dublin—called that “rascal Jones” by Dean Swift), they organised a
conspiracy to cheat the State unmatched in Anglo-Irish annals.
CHAPTER IV.
AN EVIL PARTNERSHIP.
The system applied by Chichester to hoodwink the Crown and defraud
the subject went undetected for years. It consisted in availing
of spent King’s Letters, and issuing Patents upon them afresh—in
many cases to an extent enormously beyond the powers originally
contemplated. In this way the Ulster fisheries were annexed; and
equally lawless appropriations were made in nearly every county.
Where fishings were concerned, the Deputy’s maw was insatiable.
Until the Stuart era, Hugh O’Neill and Sir Randal MacDonnell largely
controlled the Bann; O’Donnell and O’Doherty Lough Foyle; and Maguire
Lough Erne. The Lagan had been included by Sir Arthur in his Patents
of 1603-4; when his scriveners conferred on him a life-estate in
Lough Neagh and the Bann, with the title of Admiral. Upon taking
Hamilton into partnership he treated his own Patents for both the
Lagan and Lough Neagh as worthless, and prepared fresh dispositions.
His old comrade, Captain Thomas Phillips, was commander of the fort
at Toome (where the Bann issues from Lough Neagh), and had been
allowed to become tenant of the fishery at Coleraine belonging to
Sir Randal MacDonnell (afterwards Earl of Antrim). Sir Randal was
brother-in-law of Hugh O’Neill, and had supported him in the war
against Elizabeth. Chichester nourished an implacable hatred of
MacDonnell and his clan, because in 1597 they defeated his brother,
Sir John Chichester, and beheaded him. During O’Neill’s revolt he
tried to get Sir James MacDonnell, Randal’s brother, poisoned;
and used to write of Randal to Cecil as “MacSorley,” in order to
recall the feud of his father, Sorley Bwee, with the Queen. The
MacDonnells, as Lords of the Isles, were Scottish as well as Irish
chieftains, and of old blood. King James was hardly six weeks on the
united Thrones when he confirmed Sir Randal’s estate of 333,000 acres
in County Antrim. This area MacDonnell occupied by ancient conquest;
but the legal recognition of his ownership was hateful to Chichester,
who planned to make the rival Scottish favourite the instrument of
his revenge.
Hamilton, being a stranger, needed a backer in the North, and one
having local knowledge. For this service Captain Phillips was well
fitted, and his price had to be paid. At the outset the Deputy
provided for it by stripping the Crown of stray escheats from the
monks. Then, on the 20th July, 1605, he issued to Hamilton, under
the Thomas Irelande Letter, a Patent for the Abbey of Coleraine,
with the monastery fishing in the Bann. Along with this went much
other spoil, lay and ecclesiastical, such as the Manor of Moygare, in
Meath, with several rectories, tithes and manors in Kildare, Queen’s
County, Down, and Antrim. The rent reserved to the Crown for this was
only £54 1s. 1d., and Cecil was advised that Hamilton, on the 23rd
September, 1605, had transferred to Captain Phillips the Abbey of
Coleraine with the fishery. So splendid a gift was no small handsel
from one who was himself entitled to receive only “the value of £100
a year.” It was intended as a “retainer” to Phillips to blood him for
an intended attack on Sir Randal.
Though the tap of the “Half-Moon” had poured much wealth into
Hamilton’s maw it left his thirst unslaked, and the exhausted
warrant to John Wakeman, which had lain fallow for over a year, was
next prepared for action. To employ it, the co-operation of Sir
Richard Cooke, the Secretary of State, was needed, as, by a “power
of attorney” from Wakeman in 1604, Cooke was entrusted to “sue out”
grants under it on Devonshire’s behalf. Chichester feared to make use
of Cooke. He wished for a more pliable nominee, who would consent
to deceive the Lord Lieutenant as well as the King. Whether Wakeman
agreed to this, or whether his name was abused, is uncertain; but
an altered “power of attorney,” dated the 21st October, 1605, was
put forth, purporting to have been executed by Wakeman, in which Mr.
James Ware, Auditor for “martial causes,” figures instead of Cooke.
No honest reason for such a change (inside a year) can be imagined;
and by this means the Auditor, whose office was intended to check
corruption, was enlisted for the corrupt obtainment of grants. Before
availing of Ware’s help, the Deputy issued to Hamilton, on the 5th
November, 1605, a Patent for Sir Con O’Neill’s estate—two thirds of
which was afterwards reconveyed to Montgomery and its true owner. In
this (as part of the process of mystification) was included a grant
of “the whole fishing of the River Lagan,” which Chichester had
snatched for himself in his Patents of 1603-4. He gave it to Hamilton
only by way of conferring valid title to it on a stranger, intending
subsequently to secure a transfer to himself. Thus one branch of the
1603-4 illegality was vested with seemly raiment.
At this time the Gunpowder Plot shook England, and emboldened in
guile the officials entrusted with the administration of Ireland.
Trumpeting a tale of Popish treason, the action of Guy Fawkes and
his gang deafened the ears of the King to the complaints of Irish
Catholics. Whatever lingering tenderness James might have retained
for them the Plot whiffed away. The severe measures which it excused
gave Chichester a larger command of power; and he used it to advance
his grasping policy. Having the Auditor-General in his pocket, he
soon prepared a dazzling stroke. The self-styled “Admiral,” who
purported to have received in 1604 a life-estate in the fisheries
of Lough Neagh and the Bann, gave them to Hamilton by Patent in
derogation of his own rights, on the 14th February, 1606. Using
the Thomas Irelande Letter as his authority, he presented “the
Scot” with these coveted waters in fee simple, and included in the
grant gigantic stretches of territory in Antrim, Down, Carlow,
and Roscommon, as well as a couple of abbeys and the advowsons
of half-a-dozen rectories. All was done in alleged compliance
with a warrant entitling its possessor to £100 a year. A haul so
comprehensive seldom weighted a single Patent. To-day it would be
worth a million of money. No Inquisition warranted this, and there
was nothing to show that the property belonged to the Crown, but by
Parsons’ dexterity the Inquisition at Antrim of the 12th July, 1605,
was made to serve as a shaky foundation for what was done, although
the Commission authorising the inquiry confined it to the estate of
Con O’Neill and to “concealed” lands to provide for Thomas Irelande’s
£100. The Inquisition was then carefully tucked away, and lay in
concealment nearly eighty years, while the Commission is defaced in a
style unusual amongst the records of the period.
The inclusion in Hamilton’s Patent of Lough Neagh and the Bann
exposes the hollowness of their pretenced donation for the Deputy’s
life in 1604. Had Chichester’s Patent been a reality, why should he
abandon them to Hamilton two years later without even paying the
existence of his life-estate the compliment of a “recital” in the
Inquisition over which his creature Parsons presided? It was the
counterpart of his device as to the River Lagan which he at the same
time made over to Hamilton with a like understanding as to its being
reconveyed to himself with, as he hoped, a less infirm title.
The mystery of this multiplied munificence is soon told, for
Chichester forthwith took a conveyance of the entire property from
Hamilton without a blush. The assignment to him was not enrolled
or published, and was kept a close secret. The system of privily
transferring property had not yet been made illegal in Ireland,
although in England, by the Statute of Uses, Henry VIII. forbade
“covinous” or furtive parchments. Not until Strafford’s Viceroyalty,
when Chichester’s malpractices stood partly revealed, was the
wholesome English law applied to Ireland in 1634.
Having swallowed Lough Neagh and the Bann, with other huge expanses,
the Deputy showed that he and his confederate were not men to make
two bites of a cherry. The tidal fishing of the Bann remained
ungrabbed; and to capture it the Auditor-General proved invaluable.
This reach of the river stood “in charge” as Crown property in the
books of the Exchequer; and was leased to Sir William Godolphin at
£10 a year. As Wakeman’s attorney Ware immediately “sued out” a grant
of the tidal fishery. The transfer was graciously sanctioned by the
Deputy; and next day Ware made it over to Hamilton (3rd March, 1606).
The tidal Bann was officially described by Sir John Davies as Crown
estate, and especially valuable. Yet the Auditor-General treated
it as a trifle which an exhausted King’s Letter might smuggle to a
stranger, with himself as conduit-pipe. By these expedients, Lough
Neagh and the Bann (tidal and non-tidal) were made away with—so far
as parchment and sealing-wax could do it. Ware was rewarded for his
accommodating ways by sundry emoluments and perquisites, and was also
graced with a knighthood.
His “power of attorney” was next availed of to generate a fresh
litter of Patents as monstrous as those previously begotten on the
spent Letter to Thomas Irelande. Ware knew, when Wakeman’s warrant
was abused for the third time, that its efficacy was dead. He had
been Auditor-General since the 6th September, 1603, and was empowered
when appointed “to search the records in the Auditor’s office”; so he
cannot have been ignorant of the bloated grants passed under it in
1604. He must also have felt, when Sir Richard Cooke was set aside
within a year and himself substituted as a recipient, that the change
portended a baleful purpose.
CHAPTER V.
A VICEROY’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
If any interest in Wakeman’s Letter lingered, grants under it would
belong, not to Hamilton or Chichester, but to the Lord Lieutenant.
That lovesick absentee was now on his honeymoon in England. He had
of late mysteriously begun to fail in health; so his underlings
thought some additional risk might be taken. That Wakeman was privy
to cheating his master is hard to believe. Ware certainly was; and it
is more than probable that the power of attorney, which purported to
substitute him for Sir Richard Cooke, was a counterfeit. True, it was
enrolled, but enrolments during the Stuart epoch, when forgery was a
fine art, are not trustworthy. They can no more be accepted without
corroboration as proof of the existence of genuine deeds than those
of the Puritans. It is significant, too, that Cooke afterwards became
one of the Deputy’s severest critics.
Vast as were the annexations so effected, the artificers remained
unglutted. On the 13th March, 1606, they again plied the Thomas
Irelande Letter, and a Patent was issued under it to Hamilton of
lands in six counties—Meath, Queen’s, Wexford, Mayo, Galway, and
Dublin. Four days later (17th March, 1606) by a fifth Patent, a few
Westmeath castles were thrown in. On the 11th April, 1606, they
shifted back to the Wakeman Letter; and by its potency Hamilton
received a Patent of the Customs of Down and Antrim.
None of the Patents contains any recital showing how the property so
granted was supposed to have come to the Crown. No right existed to
confiscate lands without attainder (save those of the monasteries,
which vested in the King by Statute). No great Ulster proprietor had
then been attainted. To overleap this obstacle, the Deputy’s plan
was first to declare the estates to be Hamilton’s by Patent, next to
obtain an assignment to himself, and lastly to discover a pretext for
hunting the native owners out of the country or out of the world.
On the 3rd April, 1606, a tragic event thrilled England and smote
Ireland. It came as a portent athwart a troubled sky to both
conquerors and conquered. On that day the Earl of Devonshire died;
and his unlooked-for taking-off changed the course of history.
The influence of the victor of Kinsale over a prostrate country
was not without benignity. He restrained mere vengefulness after
O’Neill’s surrender in 1603, and bent towardly on the defeated
nobles. The new Court in London he despised, and, doubtless, ranked
his long-descended antagonists in Ulster high above the rabble who
infested Whitehall or “Tibbald’s” to importune scullions for writs to
plunder.
Between 1603 and 1606 the absentee Lord Lieutenant advised the
Privy Council on Irish affairs; and, by correspondence with his
subordinates, loosely governed Ireland. He befriended Hugh O’Neill,
and his death left the Earl without a protector at Court, where
Chichester sought to instil poison against the Ulster lords, in
order to forfeit their territories for his own benefit. Devonshire
had, a few months before his death, gone through a form of marriage
with Lady Rich, greatly to the King’s displeasure. The ceremony
was performed by his chaplain, Laud—who afterwards perished on
the scaffold under Charles I. as Archbishop. Devonshire’s will
(signed the day before he died) shows plainly that he was party
to the unmiraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes by the
Patent-mongers.
The frame of the will (a long Latin document) makes it evident that
he was ignorant of the giving of the power-of-attorney by Wakeman to
Auditor Ware to enable Hamilton to annex the tidal Bann. One of the
executors, Sir William Godolphin, was the lessee of that fishery from
the Crown under a demise made during the rebellion in 1600; and he
would hardly have kept silent had he learnt of the making of a grant
which might affect his lease. The will appointed John Wakeman and
John King “trustees” to enable Lady Rich to receive “the residue” of
grants to which they were entitled under the King’s Letter, though
that was already long exhausted. This was an ugly disclosure to
appear in the hurried will of a dying Statesman, for it made plain
that the intent of the King’s Letter to recoup “money paid to an
ancient and well-deserving servant in Scotland” was a mere device to
benefit the Lord Lieutenant. The appointment of Cecil as one of the
executors revealed the fact that the Secretary of State was also in
the secret.
Other Court nobles, including Lord Southampton, the patron of
Shakespeare, were named executors, and were thus saddled with notice
that the Royal revenues had been made away with, and were to be
further embezzled for a misliked woman. Yet they made no protest and
asked no questions. This put them all in Chichester’s power, and
emboldened him in depredation. On the 25th April, 1606, he wrote to
Cecil praying that his letters to the late Lord Lieutenant should not
be allowed to fall into the hands of any other member of the Privy
Council; and that “all my papers” in the dead man’s drawers should be
taken up by Cecil. This was treating the Secretary of State on the
footing of an accomplice, and Devonshire as a fellow-culprit.
Even the Earl’s widow became the victim of Chichester’s rapine.
Bequeathed everything springing from the Royal Letters to John
Wakeman and John King, she received nothing after her husband’s
death. Being out of favour at Court because of her divorce and
re-marriage, Lady Rich was further prejudiced by the fact that
Devonshire’s estate-broking had been furtive and illicit. The Deputy
availed of this to divert the profits from her into his own pocket.
Every official knew that the King’s Letters mentioned in the will
were over-spent, but Devonshire fondly supposed he could rely on them
to create grants for her benefit. Chichester tricked the widow, as
he had tricked the husband; and kept everything for himself. He even
used the death of his patron to saddle him with abuses committed in
his own interest.
In Chichester’s earlier dispatches after Devonshire’s death no coarse
suggestion of confiscation directed against the estates of the Ulster
lords appears. Ostensibly his sole concern was lest the chiefs
(who, as O’Neill complained, could not quaff a cup of wine without
chronicles of carouse being sent up by spies to Dublin Castle)
should suddenly amass force to overwhelm the might of England. His
dispatches are worded to suggest that he could hardly sleep o’ nights
in his alarmed loyalty for the safety of the kingdom. Diurnally by
post he trembled lest scathe should befall the interests of the
princely Scotchman whom he loved. He reported everyone who had
anything to lose by treason, as hourly engaged in plotting against a
benign Sovereign—with a view to pocketing the escheats.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ULSTER LORDS.
Hugh O’Neill owned in fee the counties now styled Derry and Tyrone,
with parts of Armagh and Monaghan. In Elizabeth’s reign he tried,
after defeating her troops, to bring in King James as Monarch of
Ireland; but, when the Scottish ruler came to lawful sway over
the Three Kingdoms, the Earl was discerned by Chichester to be an
ingrate traitor. O’Neill had just got back his lands by Royal orders
after much travail, and had received proof of the clemency of the
new King. He was over sixty years of age, and war-worn after a nine
years’ campaign. Many of his own clan hated him. Yet he was supposed
to harbour fierce designs of “rising out” against the son of Mary
Stuart, who had re-invested him in his earldom and estate, and to
whom he lent money freely. A sheriff’s report on his position tells
of his weakness, and was thought so important that Sir George Carew
made a copy with his own hand:—
“There are certain kindred or septs of the Neales in divers parts
of Tyrone, which ever did, and still do, as much as in them lieth,
oppose both against Tyrone and all those of his proper sept and
party: namely, in the Barony of Strabane, Tirlogh Oge O’Neale, son
to Sir Arthur, and all his followers and dependents, as well of the
Neales as of the Quins, and likewise of divers other septs on the
side of Sluagh Shees. Also in the Barony of Omagh, all that sept of
the Neales called the Sluagh Arts do deadly hate Tyrone’s sept. And
likewise in the Barony of Clogher are two other distinct septs of the
Neales, who hate Tyrone and his sept—one of which septs are the sons
of Shane O’Neale and their followers.”
How, then, could the weary and beaten head of a sundered clan be
engaged in compassing rebellion against a kingly benefactor? The
Deputy, to make his insinuations more plausible, called in aid
religious prejudices. In an owner so extensive as the Chieftain of
Tyrone, Popish superstition must needs lie at the root of Celtic
malice, and Chichester wrought much on that string. O’Neill, however,
had married a Protestant and accepted the blessing of Bishop Jones,
the new-fangled prelate of Meath, when he wedded the sister of the
English Marshal Bagenal. He had been brought up at Elizabeth’s Court,
and was once taunted by the Earl of Essex that “he cared no more for
religion than his horse.” He attended the Deputy at a Protestant
service, when Catholic Palesmen would go no further than the door.
He supplied beeves for the royal garrisons in Ulster; readily came
up to Councils in Dublin Castle when summoned, accepted the King’s
Sheriffs, and comported himself submissively as a country gentleman.
Chichester even certified that he hanged an unruly nephew who broke
the peace in Tyrone; but this was invented merely to show what an
unnatural person he was. True or false, the story did not support the
suspicion of disloyalty. O’Neill’s enormous estate alone gave ground
for ranking him with traitors.
Adjoining Tyrone lay the territories of O’Donnell, Earl of
Tirconnell, who had been O’Neill’s ally in the wars. The fisheries
of Lough Foyle were almost as valuable as those of the Bann; and
naturally O’Donnell also fell under the Deputy’s displeasure. Another
ex-rebel, Lord Maguire, owned Fermanagh and swept Lough Erne. There
were sub-chiefs besides, equally obnoxious by reason of their
possessions. That such owners, who, despite their fluent Latin and
Shakesperian English, used the Irish tongue and practised Popery,
should be allowed to breathe in their own land was an evident danger
to the State. Wherefore Chichester poured into the King’s ear, via
Cecil, the leprous distilment of his greed. No overt act could be
suggested against the Ulster lords. Their circumspection, after being
pardoned and reinstated, was proportioned to their knowledge of the
Deputy’s unscrupulousness. Chichester boasted that a dog could not
bark in the North without his hearing of it, and this was not mere
brag. Sheriffs, under-sheriffs, escheators, inquisitors, surveyors,
mapsmen, tax-collectors, and tithe-collectors infested the Province.
Kinsmen of the beaten chiefs who, in the hope of sharing their
estates, had taken the English side, were watchful correspondents
of Dublin Castle. When James succeeded Elizabeth, her officers in
local forts supplied the necessary rumours of warlike preparations or
Spanish descents for London consumption to further the plans of the
landsharks.
Once Chichester was firm in the saddle he resolved, a month after
Hamilton conveyed to him the fisheries and territories under the
Patent of the 14th February, 1606, to take over also from him
one-fourth of the tidal Bann. This he did by assignment of the 14th
March, 1606. The “fourth” belonged to Sir Randal MacDonnell, under a
Patent of 1603; and the Deputy spent himself in expedients to secure
a colour of title for it. He kept the transfer secret until he could
invent a device for “legally” relieving MacDonnell of his rights and
set on Hamilton, with the help of Captain Phillips, to assail Sir
Randal’s Patent by a suit in the “Castle Chamber” before himself.
All this was done within three years of the grants to O’Neill and
MacDonnell, when they must have been fresh in the mind of every
official.
The Bann Patents to “the Scot” (under way to Chichester) wronged
one or more of at least four persons. On the Antrim side the river
belonged partly to Sir Randal MacDonnell and partly to the Bishop of
Down and Connor; on the Derry side to the Bishop of Derry and Hugh
O’Neill. The fishing rights of the Bishops were so well-established
that when the Reverend George Montgomery received the See of Derry
later on, his share in the Bann was admitted by the Deputy, in spite
of the adverse Patents he had sanctioned. These grants, therefore,
transferred the property of two Bishops and two chieftains to a
Scotch interloper on a spent warrant by a secret process. To prevent
the facts being unravelled, they were complicated by a tangle of
technicality.
Throughout the first half of Sir Arthur’s sway, Cecil was Secretary
of State. While he lived the Deputy’s position was unshakable.
Chichester called him his “saint,” and reverently worshipped at his
shrine. Still, even the hunchback saint’s protection could not wholly
screen him from danger. He knew that the underground Patents were
mere parchment so long as the true owners were left in possession
of their domains. To assert them publicly, when no legal forfeiture
or escheat had taken place, would give rise to scandal. An appeal
to the King must ensue, and the exposure might end in disaster. He,
therefore, resolved to fasten the brand of “traitor” on those whose
title he had sapped by subterranean conveyances.
An ecclesiastical accomplice was convenient for this work, in view of
the “flagrant zeal” for Protestantism affected by James I. Hamilton
had helped to get promotion for the Reverend George Montgomery—with
whose brother he had partitioned Sir Con O’Neill’s estate. That
divine was advanced from a Court chaplaincy to the See of Derry, but
was loath to risk himself in a troubled diocese. For this he was
chidden by Attorney-General Davies, who wished him to come over and
preach the Gospel to the clans and chiefs in course of despoilment,
so that their distresses might be cheered by the consolations of
the new evangel. Three years flew by before the prelate could be
persuaded to venture into Erin. When he came he began his mission
by a severe survey of the temporalities of the diocese. The richest
part of it, the City of Derry, was a gift from the O’Dohertys to
Queen Elizabeth, but it also included large areas within O’Neill’s
jurisdiction. The devoted Bishop was, therefore, set on to dispute
with the Earl the nature and extent of the Church lands in his See.
These having heretofore been dedicated to Catholic uses, it is
possible that O’Neill was not speedy enough in handing them over to
help the spread of Lutheranism.
Nor was the business free from local complications. Before County
Derry was shired, it formed part of Tyrone, but lay under the chiefry
of the O’Cahans. That sept paid tribute to the O’Neills; and Bishop
Montgomery soon learnt of Sir Donal O’Cahan’s desire to be freed from
contribution to the Earl of Tyrone. O’Cahan was married to O’Neill’s
sister, and had joined him in the wars; but Chichester and Docwra, to
end the struggle, tempted him to take the Queen’s side by a promise
to relieve him from tribute to O’Neill and grant him his lands in fee
simple.
O’Cahan’s acceptance of this offer, and the breach of the bargain,
led to consequences that have furrowed deep tracks in Ulster history.
Hardly had the compact between him and Docwra in 1602 been concluded
than O’Neill was also persuaded to cease insurgency. The Earl yielded
upon a guarantee that his estate should be restored intact, and thus
the undertakings to chief and sub-chief were wholly repugnant to one
another. The treaty with O’Neill was signed on behalf of the Crown,
that with O’Cahan on behalf of Chichester. State policy compelled
the breach of one or other. For, when Elizabeth lay dying in March,
1603, the Lord Lieutenant thought it good to promise O’Neill pardon
ere the Scotch King, with whom the Irish were in amity, ascended the
united Thrones. O’Neill accepted conditions, knowing of the offer to
O’Cahan, but not of the Queen’s death-sickness. He refused at first
to parley, because a re-grant of his territory with undiminished
rights was denied. The Lord Lieutenant, though loath to concede
such terms, feared that, if the news of the accession of James I.
reached Ulster before peace was concluded, O’Neill would surrender
voluntarily, and so win grace with the new King. He, therefore,
ordered Sir Garrett Moore and Sir William Godolphin to confer
a second time with him, and to agree to all he asked. A treaty
embodying the bargain was signed at Mellifont; and, when O’Neill
afterwards visited England, a King’s Letter for Tyrone was handed to
him. He returned in triumph in September, 1603, having had all his
claims and those of his family honourably met at Court.
Naturally O’Cahan chafed at the breach of faith with himself; but,
for the three years during which Devonshire survived, the arrangement
with O’Neill—in spite of protests by Chichester—was respected. The
death of Devonshire wrought a complete change of spirit. The new
Deputy encouraged Montgomery to support O’Cahan, in order to curb
O’Neill’s power and clip his acres. The Bishop first stipulated with
Sir Donal that the Church should enjoy such lands as he selected
in Derry, and then promised that O’Neill’s suzerainty, with its
burdensome tribute of £200 a year, should be done away with. In
edifying epistles to Cecil the prelate enlarged on the advantage
which would accrue to religion from this scheme, and he backed up
O’Cahan in his refusal to pay rent to O’Neill. The contract between
the overlord and his vassal had been written down by the Brehons in
clear Gaelic; but at Devonshire’s death O’Cahan disowned it, hoping
to revive his peace-treaty with Chichester. Little did Sir Donal
suspect that both Deputy and Bishop were using him as a pawn, or
foresee the dire results that were to follow from his upsetting the
decree of the Brehons.
CHAPTER VII.
CHIEFTAIN AND VASSAL.
O’Neill, seeing his brother-in-law fall under evil influences, tried
to enforce payment of his rent by “distress.” In 1606 he resumed
possession from O’Cahan of the fishery of the Bann, and took a prey
of his cattle. This dispute was greedily welcomed by the enemies of
the chiefs. O’Cahan lodged a protest with “the State” against the
seizures; and O’Neill, although the King gave him sovereign control
in his territory, was cited to appear before the Privy Council in
Dublin to answer Sir Donal’s complaint. A splendid opening for the
spread of the Gospel loomed in sight of the “reformers.”
When the case came on the Deputy majestically presided over the
Council as supreme judge. The suit concerned a river for which,
a year earlier, he issued a Patent to Hamilton, and then had it
conveyed to himself. Montgomery attended the trial to give it a
spiritual solemnity and support O’Cahan. Without at first entering
deeply into the merits, Chichester—to gain time to prejudice the
King—ordered O’Cahan to send in a formal petition and O’Neill to
lodge a written reply. He then appointed the Attorney-General
(Davies) and the Solicitor-General (Jacob) to act as counsel for
O’Cahan, and adjourned the trial for a month. O’Neill, bereft of
legal assistance, was left to his own devices. Before the next
hearing Davies sent a report on the case to Cecil. He threw out that
O’Neill’s Patent was bad, but spared mention of the fact that a
petition for its amendment had been rejected on his advice—although
in other cases “defective title” was cured for the asking. Nor did
the Attorney-General relate that the Bann had been seized by the
Deputy, or that he sat, and would again sit, to try the title to its
waters without informing the litigants that he held spurious Patents
for it in his pocket.
In June, 1607, the Court re-assembled in Dublin Castle, and Davies
at once raised objections to O’Neill’s grant. He argued that,
notwithstanding the treaty of Mellifont, “Tyrone” did not include
“O’Cahan’s Country”: and, therefore, that the Earl’s seizures from
his vassal were unlawful. As no map was attached to the Patent
(which embraced several counties) it was easy to wrangle over
boundaries. The Deputy and his confederates patiently listened to the
Attorney-General. They thought his contention ingenious; although
it was marred by the blot that its logic required a decision in
O’Cahan’s favour. This would no more have suited than a victory for
O’Neill. Sir Donal had served his turn. Davies, therefore, also
argued that the Earl’s Patent was altogether bad. True, he was the
lawful heir to Tyrone under a prior Patent to his grandfather, Con,
from Henry VIII.; but that did not count, for had he not risen in
rebellion against Elizabeth? His subsequent pardon by King James
without attainder was not to be made too much of; and Davies rattled
on by the hour berating the fallen chief. Chichester gloated over
his victim’s plight; chid him betimes when he exploded against his
adversary; and in the end gave judgment against both of them. This
feat was unexpected by Sir Donal, but the decree was ingenious. It
ran:—“Upon examination of the whole matter, it seemed to them that
the right to that country still remaineth in his Majesty.” In other
words, the Treaty of Mellifont was broken, and O’Neill’s Patent
was declared void. Punic faith was honour bright with Sir Arthur
Chichester.
A trap was then laid for the Earl by a proviso that, until his
Majesty’s pleasure should be signified, O’Cahan was to have
two-thirds of the lands, and the Earl one-third, but that meanwhile
O’Neill was to repair to London before the following November,
to await the Sovereign’s pleasure. As to the Bann, the decree was
marvellously mute. Davies wrote to prepare Cecil for his victim’s
visit, and make up the King’s conscience. His falsehoods, dated 1st
July, 1607, were plenary:—“Plainly neither of them hath any title.
It is now, and ever hath been, vested in the actual possession of
the Crown since the 11th Elizabeth. Howbeit, the land lying in those
remote parts, the ignorance and negligence of officers was such that
it was never brought into charge.” All this, four years after the
Patent of 1603, and the pardon from James I. which alone would have
revived his rights (as grandson of Con O’Neill) under the Patent of
Henry VIII.
After such a trial O’Neill felt that the command to proceed to
London covered a plot to get rid of him altogether. London held a
grim keep called the Tower, familiar to the owners of Irish estates,
whither scores of chieftains had been lured aforetime. His experience
disinclined him to make the pilgrimage. He knew that the Deputy had
clouded the King’s mind with suspicions as to his loyalty, and he
brooded over some earlier essays to compass his assassination. The
dungeon or the scaffold was, he feared, to end the trip to Court.
An estate so unwholesomely extensive as his forbade much hope of
justice. The partition of Sir Con O’Neill’s patrimony in Claneboy was
not two years old, and the alliance between Hamilton, who contrived
it, and the Deputy, who abetted it, remained in full force. The Earl,
therefore, came to the conclusion that he was a doomed man, whether
he went to London or whether he remained at home. He took counsel at
Mellifont with Sir Garret Moore (who had persuaded him to sign the
treaty of 1603), and resolved to go into exile. Then he bade farewell
to Moore, and having also taken leave of the Deputy at Slane,
O’Neill, in September, 1607, sailed for France from Rathmullen, with
Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh, O’Donnell, Earl of Tirconnell, and their
kinsfolk. Such was the terror of Chichester that they were denied
water for their ship in one creek in Donegal.
Bards and Brehons have lamented that these Gaelic lords did not hold
their ground. Their critics have not explained whether the Earl of
Tyrone should have gone to London and risked being mewed up in the
Tower, or have disobeyed the order and resisted arrest without an
army to back him. The victim himself, living and acting in days when
he could measure and appreciate the consequences of obedience or
revolt, decided on flight. It may not have been a heroic course, but
it was a decision taken by a seasoned captain, who had faced death
on a score of battlefields, and whose deeds of daring still rang
throughout Europe.
CHAPTER VIII.
UPROOTING THE NOBLES.
Chichester had a second plan in reserve to undo O’Neill in case his
London plot should miscarry. One of his creatures called Weston, whom
he employed as a collector or farmer of “fines and amerciaments,”
claimed to hold a mortgage on the Earl’s fisheries in the Bann and
on those of O’Donnell in Lough Foyle. The Attorney-General certified
that O’Donnell had “suffered a recovery” in a suit against him by
Weston in 1605. O’Cahan was also registered as being in Weston’s
toils. The Deputy’s reckoning was that, if the design to send O’Neill
to the Tower failed, he could decree a foreclosure of his estate,
or at least of the fisheries. The news of the Flight of the Earls
reached him as unlooked-for good tidings. At one blow the great
Ulster chiefs were got rid of, and with them away the lesser thanes
could easily be dispatched or despoiled.
O’Cahan was the first of the remnant to taste the fruit of the
downfall of Gaelic power which he so largely brought about. Instead
of reaping the fulfilment of the hope that his bargain of 1602 would
be carried out, Sir Donal was seized by Captain Phillips and, without
cause assigned or pretence of trial, was lodged in Dublin Castle, and
thence transported to the Tower. There he was kept a close prisoner
till his death twenty years later. His treachery to O’Neill met its
reward in the only sterling current at Chichester’s mint.
Other native aids of the Deputy were similarly guerdoned. Queen
Elizabeth had no sturdier ally in Ulster than Niall Garve O’Donnell.
In the belief that he would be rewarded with the chieftaincy of
Tirconnell he gave her precious and constant help. When peace came
Niall expected a Patent, but the royal pardon to the Earls forbade
such a hope. Some years later he applied for a grant of the fishery
of Lough Foyle as part of his inheritance. To make him this award
would have been but a stunted acknowledgment of his loyalty, but
Chichester had now seized that prize for himself. Hamilton was
advanced from Tyrone to Donegal and put in possession when the Earls
fled. So the Deputy, on the 22nd May, 1608, suavely replied to Niall
Garve:—
“You shall have all the fishing which is the King’s on the Tirconnell
side, and you may make use of it for this season; but what belongs
to private men, as Mr. Hamilton and others, we cannot take from them
without agreeing with them, which you may do if you desire it for
your profit.”
This, of course, was mere byplay, and in a few months Niall Garve
discovered that, as the Tower was so convenient for the caging of
O’Cahan, he, too, was to be similarly housed. Blameless of aught
against the State save the wish to have a living in his own glens,
the Queen’s O’Donnell was arrested and deported to London. With
him went his son, Naghten, and his two brothers. Everything was
done quietly, without trial, charge, indictment, or legal parade.
There was no scandal—not even a court martial. Niall Garve and his
son, like O’Cahan, spent the rest of their lives in the Tower. His
brothers, when the Plantation was complete, were set free, only to
find on reaching their native shore that their lands were partitioned
among strangers.
In the Tower with O’Cahan and O’Donnell was lodged Sir Cormac O’Neill
of Augher Castle, Tyrone, a brother of the fugitive. His crime was
that he was the first to inform the Deputy of the Earl’s departure
and ask for a “custodium” of his estate while he was away. Sir Cormac
was married to Red Hugh O’Donnell’s sister, and as the kinsman of
suspects he, too, was deported to London and perished in the Tower.
Before the Earl’s flight Chichester had hanged the most brilliant of
the young O’Neills, Brian Art, for killing in self-defence a brawler
who assaulted him. The humbled Tyrone vainly offered ransom for his
kinsman (a brother of Owen Roe), whom he loved, but the Deputy’s
justice was the greatest of all his works. So the youth was slain
according to law.
This left few notables in the North. Young Sir Cahir O’Doherty,
with his taking carriage, was an eyesore for a short time, but he
was hunted down and killed without undue commotion. O’Doherty had
been brought up by the English, to whom his father presented the
site of Derry City. His Patent from King James in 1603 confirmed
an arrangement made by Sir John O’Doherty with Queen Elizabeth,
whereby in time of war his castle of Culmore, with 300 acres and the
fishery of Lough Foyle, should be reserved to the Crown. Chichester
took advantage of Sir Cahir’s youth to appoint in time of peace
a crony, Captain Hart, Governor of Culmore. In further breach of
treaty he gave Hart a “custodium” (or lease) of the castle in 1606,
with its 300 acres and the fishery, at 10s. a year for 21 years.
This faithless act he turned to his own advantage two years later.
In October, 1607, O’Doherty was made foreman of the Grand Jury at
Lifford to find the true bill which declared Hugh O’Neill an “outlaw”
for the crime of quitting Ireland. Sir Cahir was thanked by King
James for this service; but in May, 1608, on visiting Sir George
Paulett, the Governor of Derry, about his private affairs, occasion
was taken to insult him. The high-mettled stripling resented the
affront, whereupon Paulett struck him before the soldiery. Stung to
madness, Sir Cahir sought his kinsmen and flew to arms. He attacked
Culmore, took Hart prisoner, burnt Derry, and slew Paulett. In July,
1608, he was himself killed by the forces which the Deputy held in
readiness.
Chichester’s breach of trust as to Culmore then bore fruit. Hart was
sent to London to excuse himself for yielding up the castle, and was
removed from the Governorship. To console him he received an adequate
scope of ground elsewhere, but the transfer of his “custodium” to the
Deputy underlay the exchange. Chichester took possession of Culmore,
with its lands and fishery—as, by a like transfer of a “custodium”
held by Sir Ralph Lane in 1603 he acquired a Patent for the castle
and lands of Belfast. He dispatched Davies to London to crave a grant
of O’Doherty’s territory, although Innishowen or Culmore was not the
King’s, but the clan’s. James I. “granted” him Innishowen, with its
fourteen castles; but in his Patent reserved Culmore to the Crown
with the 300 acres and the fishery.
This the Deputy resented, and he removed the blot in his own staunch
way. The assignment of Culmore from Hart lay in his coffers, and he
applied it to defraud his Majesty of everything the King reserved. In
spite of the restraints of the Patent, he brazenly held himself out
as the owner of whatever appertained to the O’Dohertys. Their coveted
fishery he at once got into his clutches, and it was only rescued
later on by the payment of heavy compensation from the Crown. Davies,
who had just been knighted for his share in browbeating and banishing
Hugh O’Neill, abetted his patrons’ misdeeds.
In circumventing limitations in his own Patents and discovering flaws
in those of others there was no such artist as Chichester.
CHAPTER IX.
WAR’S AFTERMATH.
O’Doherty’s destruction, coupled with the imprisonment of O’Cahan,
Sir Cormac O’Neill, and Niall Garve O’Donnell, filled up the cup
of Chichester’s happiness. The few difficulties remaining in his
way in Ulster were easily adjusted. A degenerate Maguire skulked in
Fermanagh; but what of him? Having opposed his clan in the war he
was promised their seigneuries. When peace came Conor Roe Maguire
tasted the common lot of recreants, and found himself bereft of every
acre by the Deputy, save a petty ploughland. Such was “the State’s”
ingratitude that, among British settlers, an outcry was provoked
against the faithlessness of their rulers towards him. A Letter of
James I. guaranteed Maguire the entire County Fermanagh. Before that,
on 29th July, 1602, the then Deputy wrote to the Privy Council that
Queen Elizabeth “hath given the chiefry of the country of Fermanagh”
to Connor Roe Maguire, but in a flash the planters carved it up among
themselves.
Sir Oghy O’Hanlon owned the Barony of Orier in County Armagh, and
had always taken the English side. His son married the sister of
Sir Cahir O’Doherty, and had joined in his outbreak. Sir Oghy was
deprived of his property and given a pension of thirty shillings a
week to thrive upon. His son was shipped to Sweden, where wars were
toward.
In Cavan the scion of the O’Reillys was a minor, and naturally his
lands were seized by “the State.” His grandfather, Sir John O’Reilly,
fell on the English side at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, fighting
against Hugh O’Neill. His mother was one of the Ormonde family,
who never swerved in loyalty to the Crown. Accordingly the Deputy
applotted young O’Reilly out of his estate as much soil as was
allowed to any English ploughman who “planted” in Cavan. The purge of
the Irishry in Ulster was thereby consummated.
The entire North now lay chieftainless. All that was left of its
chivalry was represented by the Antrim Scoto-Irishman, Sir Randal
MacDonnell. He was the King’s friend and hawk-purveyor, and the story
of his persecution must be separately told.
Meanwhile Hugh O’Neill and his fellow-refugees were tracked through
Europe by calumniators and assassins. A Proclamation issued by James
I. imputed that they were base of birth, so as to lower their credit
in the eyes of the Continental grandees who offered them hospitality.
Spies dogged their footsteps while they lived, and when they died
their heirs were strangled or poisoned wherever they could be
trapped. At home their countrymen cowered in helpless humiliation.
The native swordsmen were disarmed or deported to Sweden or Poland.
Sheriffs and escheators, who were merely licensed freebooters seeking
what they might devour, quartered themselves on the country. The
fields of the husbandmen were ravaged; the poor were without bread.
Monks were cloisterless; priests churchless; harpers without a hall.
The only requiem for the dead was the howl of the wolf. Official
prelates and clergy, unmindful of duty to God or man, installed
themselves in ancient fanes, and the echo of the stranger’s ritual in
a strange tongue disturbed the slumber of the saints.
The upkeep of the discowled apostate or the Lutheran upstart was cast
upon the clansmen who spurned their worship. Evil-livers like Miler
Magrath, “Archbishop” of Cashel, or his mates from overseas, diverted
to their pleasure the incomes which the ancient Church held in trust
for the poor. Few of the imported divines could explain to a nation
whose speech they scorned their message from on High. The gift of
tongues was slow to descend on them.
Ecclesiastics who had escaped captivity or the sword, took to the
hills or went into exile. The handful who apostatised were the scorn
alike of the invader and the native. The gentry whose lands were
forfeited in the cause of “Gospel extension” became “recusants,”
for did they not reject the doctrine that they should be rooted out
like the Amalekites or Jebusites? Queen Elizabeth had made a gift
to the earlier missioners of a fount of Gaelic type, but the fund
was embezzled. So Chichester ordered the Book of Common Prayer to be
done into Irish; but disbelievers failed to recognise in him another
Patrick. Order was taken that the Brehons, who treasured the roll
of the mensal dues paid by each chieftain to the priests, should
yield up their crumpled parchments at Assizes so that the tribute
to the ancient Church might be earmarked as “tithe” for the new
“Establishment.”
The Deputy assisted at these soulful inquiries, and blended
delicately a spiritual jurisdiction with what was worldly. Who
so zealous in the Lord as he, if advancing godliness assisted
confiscation? Davies’ account of their progress in the North might
serve in part as a model for the diary of Anti-Christ. It notes with
wonder that, at this zero-point of national desolation, “all the
common people have a whining tone or accent in their speech, as if
they did still smart or suffer some oppression.” Other breeds of
men, of course, would have waxed merry at the sight of the intruder
enriching himself at the expense of their nobles, settling down
cosily in their pleasaunces, seizing their churches, defiling their
monasteries, corrupting their Courts, and becoming master of the
fields, woods, and waters which had come down to them from countless
generations.
The ancient code of justice, which the Brehons had administered for
over a thousand years, was judicially decided to be “a lewd and
barbarous custom.” The fictions of “John Doe” and “Richard Roe,”
with all the follies of the feudal law, were set up in its place—to
connote the higher civilisation. It was under a Scottish King that
the absurdities and cruelties of the English Common Law were forced
on Ireland, though the Scottish nation refused to adopt it. The
Brehons as judges were in character and training far above the
importations who administered the new system. In the native mind the
stranger’s zeal for equity ranked with that of the new clergy for the
religion to which they were asked to conform.
Spenser’s “View of Ireland” draws this contrast:—
“Wherein it is great wonder to see the odds which is between the zeal
of Popish priests and the ministers of the Gospel; for they spare not
to come out of Spain, from Rome, and from Rheims, by long toil and
dangerous travelling hither, where they know peril of death awaiteth
them, and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the people
into the Church of Rome. Whereas some of our idle ministers, having
a way for credit and estimation thereby opened unto them, and having
the livings of the country offered unto them without pain and without
peril, will neither for the same nor any love of God, nor zeal of
religion, nor for all the good they may do by winning souls to God,
be drawn forth from their warm nests to look out into God’s harvest,
which is even ready for the sickle and all the fields yellow long
ago. Doubtless those good old godly Fathers will (I fear me) rise up
in the Day of Judgment to condemn them.”
Thirty years later Charles I., in a letter (written with his own
hand) to the Irish Protestant Archbishops, complained that “the
clergy of Ireland are apt to be careless of God’s service and their
own honour.” One of his officials, Sir John Bingley, described them
in March, 1629, as “a set of very profane and drunken fellows.”
Sogarth aroon!
CHAPTER X.
THE HARRYING OF SIR RANDAL.
To complete the uprooting of the Ulster chiefs, an onslaught on
Sir Randal MacDonnell was undertaken. The persecution of the other
chieftains might be palliated by the plea of political necessity;
but, with the passing of Elizabeth, no such excuse in MacDonnell’s
case existed. He, like O’Cahan, had been induced by Chichester
to forsake O’Neill in 1602, and the surrender at Mellifont was
largely brought about by this desertion. His loyalty to James I.
as a Scottish noble was undoubted, but for full seven years he was
pursued by the malice of the Deputy, who thwarted the King’s wishes
in his regard, to feed a personal grudge and win private profit. This
vendetta ended in Chichester’s occupying the judgment seat to decide
the title to Sir Randal’s fishery, after he had secretly grabbed it
for himself.
MacDonnell’s Patent was the first issued by James on becoming King of
Ireland in 1603. It was a favour shown to Randal as the Scoto-Irish
Lord of the Isles, and the brother-in-law of Hugh O’Neill. It
confirmed to him 333,907 acres in Antrim—an enormous estate—but
reserved to the Crown three-fourths of the tidal fishery of the Bann.
This grant (dated 6th July, 1603) was distasteful to the hungry
Captains avid for spoil, and cavil was raised against it from the
outset.
To meet opposition, Sir Randal obtained a second King’s Letter,
instructing Deputy Cary to issue an amended Patent. Cary was slow
in his obedience, and was recalled before complying. Chichester, on
succeeding him, ignored the royal order altogether. He had forged for
himself a life-estate in the Bann and Lough Neagh, by “amplifying”
his Patents, and astutely worked to prevent recognition being given
to the title of any legitimate owner. Delay drove MacDonnell to apply
for a third King’s Letter, and James I. signed this in April, 1606.
Chichester’s hand was thereby forced; but—nimble in resource—he
dispatched Hamilton to London to crave permission to stay the Patent.
He wrote to Cecil in June, 1606: “Sir Randal MacDonnell is neither
faithful nor obedient ... as Mr. Hamilton can at large inform you.”
The pair who had fraudulently conveyed to themselves the entire
Bann (tidal and non-tidal) with Lough Neagh, on the 14th February
and 3rd March, 1606, now battled fiercely to block the making of a
genuine grant to Randal. They failed, however, for, such was the
King’s liking towards his Scoto-Irish liegeman, that MacDonnell, who
travelled to London to checkmate the intrigue, returned triumphant
with the royal warrant. The baffled Deputy was compelled to issue the
amended Patent in July, 1606. Still he was not to be baulked, and
cast about for a new expedient to undo the King’s will. Hot foot, he
set on Hamilton to bring a suit before himself in the Privy Council,
and allege a prior title in the Bann to that of Sir Randal. In this
litigation the validity of the fishery grant was disputed; and Davies
was enlisted to assail the Patent on that point. A trio such as
Chichester, Hamilton, and Davies was not easy to match; and in legal
jousting they easily outpointed the Lord of the Isles.
Bringing on the case in Randal’s absence, the Deputy, who had
previously acted as judge in the trial of O’Cahan v. O’Neill, where
his own claim to the Bann underlay the action, bettered that shameful
precedent. Judicially weighing Hamilton’s “rights,” but without
hearing the other side, he decided that MacDonnell’s “fourth” of the
Bann should be put in sequestration “pending a suit at law”; and he
appointed his henchman, Captain Phillips, Receiver over the profits.
MacDonnell was then in London, and only learnt of the sequestration
on reaching Ireland. Straightway upon his return he sent this protest
to Cecil:—
“Upon my arrival I found myself dispossessed of the fourth part of
the fishery of the Bann, which his Majesty was pleased to grant me
by Patent, being the best stay of my living. This was wrought by
means of one Mr. James Hamilton, who, searching and prying curiously
into my Patent (as he doth into many other men’s estates), seeks to
take advantage upon words and other sly causes, thereby to void my
interest and to pass it to himself, upon other men’s grants, which he
hath purchased.”
He added that Hamilton was abetted by Captain Phillips, who had
been his own tenant of the fishing; and that they had laid two
informations against him in the Star Chamber. He, therefore, begged
Cecil to write to the Deputy “not to be a partial judge betwixt me
and those that take my fishing from me.” Little did he know that
Hamilton was only a stalking-horse for the Deputy, who, two months
before, had taken a conveyance of his fishery.
Chichester, in a letter to Cecil of the 12th September, 1606, tried
to blunt Randal’s complaint by slandering his victim anew. “There is
not a more cankered and malicious person than Sir Randal MacDonnell,
who from a beggar is made great, and yet rests unthankful.” His
report, during O’Neill’s rebellion in 1601, belied the story of the
“thankless beggar made great,” for Sir Arthur then certified that
“Randal and O’Cahan are two of the richest and strongest adherents
of Tyrone.” MacDonnell’s Patent merely gave him what his ancestors
had held through several reigns, and, on an appeal to the King, the
sequestration was quashed.
The Deputy, however, returned to the attack. On the 2nd April, 1607,
he procured a King’s Letter reciting:—“Sir Randal’s followers having
riotously asserted his right to the fourth part of the fishing of
the Bann, and having by surprise obtained King’s Letters dissolving
the sequestration of said fishings made by the Deputy and Council
pending a suit at law, the sequestration is to be re-imposed until
the suit at law be determined.” This missive arrived in Dublin just
as O’Cahan’s petition against O’Neill was being heard in the Castle
Chamber. Taught by the treatment meted out to his brother-in-law,
MacDonnell realised that, if he submitted himself to this tribunal,
he was lost. Being not only an Irish, but a Scottish chieftain,
he wielded influence at Court which the Earl of Tyrone could not
command, and was less afraid to trust himself there. So he faced for
London a third time, and again urged and won his suit before the
King. A warrant from his Majesty announced his victory on the 22nd
August, 1607, and commanded Chichester “to dissolve the sequestration
of the Bann and to take order that Sir Randal MacDonnell should enjoy
his portion of it.”
The decision would have worked a complete overthrow of the Star
Chamberers but for an unexpected turn in affairs. In September,
1607, the Flight of the Earls startled the kingdom and threw supreme
power into Chichester’s hands. The event was revolutionary, and the
confiscation of Ulster was its consequence.
With the knowledge that a Plantation was resolved on, the Deputy,
on the 13th January, 1608, raised anew the question of Sir Randal’s
“fourth.” He coolly referred to it in a letter to Cecil as “the
case in controversy between Sir Randal MacDonnell and Mr. James
Hamilton, concerning the fourth part of the fishery of the Bann,
sometime debated before me, and order thereupon made by myself and
the Council.” He went on to announce that he had “caused the King’s
learned counsel here to draw the case according to the records,” and
was sending it to London for the information of the Privy Council.
This admission that he had acted as judge in the action might seem to
show candour, but no one then was aware that MacDonnell’s fishery had
been conveyed to him. The Deputy’s adjudication in Hamilton’s favour
was the counterpart of his decision in O’Cahan v. O’Neill; yet,
so obscure were his devices, that the fact that he was personally
interested in the suit lay hidden for three centuries. The Attorney
and Solicitor-General, who “drew the case according to the records,”
knew the truth, but suppressed it. So, the Privy Council, unaware of
the guilty secret, allowed the sequestration to be re-imposed for the
third time, to the despair of Randal, who hastened to London in June,
1608. This time he met with failure there, for Chichester was now
all-powerful. His journey, however, so much upset the Deputy that, to
baffle MacDonnell beyond hope of recovery, he resorted to a desperate
shift. It took the shape of transferring his fishery to a stranger;
by which device it was hoped to raise an insurmountable obstacle in
his path. To give solemnity to the stratagem, Chichester, by an act
of State, gave it validity in the King’s name. On the 1st July, 1608,
while MacDonnell was making his way to the steps of the Throne his
“fourth” was conferred by Patent (with much other gear) on “our dear
Arthur Bassett of Dublin.”
Here indeed was legerdemain. James Hamilton we know; Thomas Irelande
we know; Auditor Ware we know; John Wakeman we know; John King we
know; Carew and Cary we know; but who was this new ensign of the
brigand troupe? He appeared in the lists with vizor down, and was
previously unknown to fame. The stranger, however, was no less a
person than Chichester’s nephew—fresh landed a year before from
Devonshire.
The manufacture for him of a Patent purporting to affectionately
embody the royal wishes was a masterstroke.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DEPUTY’S NEPHEW.
“Our dear Arthur Bassett of Dublin” was not of Dublin, but of
Umberley, in the County of Devon. He was brought over to serve as
jackal for his uncle, and the Patent suddenly made out for him
was simply a link forged in the chain of confiscation. It granted
Bassett all the enormous territories captured by Chichester through
Hamilton on the 14th February, 1606, with Sir Randal MacDonnell’s
“fourth” of the Bann thrown in. No King’s Letter authorised it, and
the Patent was issued without the knowledge of his Majesty or any
of his Council. Nevertheless, it emerged duly sealed from the Irish
Chancery; and its formal validity could not be denied. Here the
cunning hand of Davies was again at work, and the processes of law
were twisted by him to purposes which no one else had dreamt of. The
minting machine, the dies, the cranks, the pulleys, and every handy
engine for counterfeiting stood ready; but it was the brain of Davies
which turned them to account. How came he weaponed for this work?
Two years earlier a “Royal Commission for the Remedy of Defective
Titles” had been established by James I. on the Deputy’s advice. It
was set up as a local convenience, to enable Patents to be issued
in Dublin to owners whose grants had been held defective, without
the necessity of suing out King’s Letters from London. On payment
of a fine by approved applicants, the Royal Commissioners, who
comprised all the leading members of the Executive (17 in number),
headed by the Deputy and the judges, were empowered to make amended
grants. Their integrity and good faith were relied on by the King to
exercise the regal privilege entrusted to them without any check or
supervision.
This delegation of royal authority Chichester perverted to his
own purposes. His nephew owned no property in Ireland, and had no
title to be “remedied.” Yet to this landless upstart a parchment
was presented, as if he were some ancient and blameless Patentee in
whose deeds a flaw had been detected. His Majesty never heard of “our
dear Arthur Bassett,” who was “of Dublin” only because he had been
fetched there to abet a crime. He was for the moment Provost Marshal
for Munster, it being the Deputy’s habit to quarter as many of his
relatives as possible on the taxpayers; but there was no other link
to connect him with Irish soil. The property stolen through Hamilton
was all conveyed to him by this means, and with it was included the
“fourth” of the tidal Bann which MacDonnell was given by James I. on
his accession five years before.
This pilferage must be reckoned as one of Chichester’s most dexterous
fetches. In skill it outdid even the budding of the life-estate in
Lough Neagh on the thirteen-and-fourpenny “command” at Carrickfergus.
Still, its success was influentially contributed to by others.
The trick required the collusion of the Attorney-General, the
Solicitor-General, the Chancellor-Archbishop of Dublin, the Chief
Justice, the Chief Baron, the Master of the Rolls, the principal
Secretary of State, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Every high
official was needed as an accomplice; and not one of them flinched.
These were the men who embodied the civilising influences which
replaced the less facile justice of the “lewd” Brehon Code.
Latent merit also lurked in the Patent, as an instrument of chicane.
It vested great estates in an outsider, who could assign them to
the Deputy with a title free from apparent taint. It overlaid with
veneer the frauds connected with John Wakeman, John King, Thomas
Irelande, Auditor Ware, and James Hamilton. It wafted an air of
kingly approval over a barefaced theft. It stripped Sir Randal quite
noiselessly, and handed his fishery to a stranger alleged to be
“dear” to his Majesty. In form it was a royal grant, which, though
obtained by the prostitution of the Commission, was redolent of
legality.
When these shifts, re-shifts, and makeshifts to secure a semblance
of lawful origin for Chichester’s booty were accomplished, the grant
was garnished with the Great Seal of Ireland. Within six months of
that solemn rite Bassett transferred everything back to his loving
uncle. The conveyance from him, of course, was kept a secret, like
Hamilton’s assignment, and was never enrolled. A knighthood was
Bassett’s reward, and the Deputy prescribed in his will that he
should be buried in the same tomb with himself at Carrickfergus.
There each worthy now lies awaiting the judgment of the Resurrection.
Contrasted with Chichester’s refusal to remedy, by the same
machinery, the pretended blot in the Patent of Hugh O’Neill, the
parchment issued to Bassett attracts lasting interest. O’Neill’s
grant was the outcome of a National treaty which ended a nine years’
war. Bassett’s was a swindle carried out against the King and his
subjects. Criminality permeated it even to minor details. The fine
due to the Crown on its being issued was left unpaid, in spite of a
recital that £20 had been lodged in the Exchequer, and in this way
the King was both pettily and grossly cheated.
While this Patent was a-making, Sir Randal renewed his appeal to the
King. He was, however, unexpectedly thwarted at Court, and for the
first time tasted defeat. Umbraged and disconsolate, he was sent
home from London, but immediately recommenced his efforts, and not
altogether without success. The discouraged chief, who had never even
heard of Bassett, wrote to Cecil on the 19th August, 1608:—
“When I took leave of your lordship at the Court at Greenwich, you
were pleased that my fourth part of the fishing of the Bann, being
in controversy between Mr. Hamilton and myself, should remain, as it
was the former year, in sequestration; and that neither of us should
reap any benefit of the rent of the same, until the controversy was
decided by law.”
He went on to complain that the sequestrator, Captain Phillips, “pays
the yearly rent of the fishing privately unto whom Mr. James Hamilton
will appoint there; and thereby thinks to deprive me of my rights to
the fishing, to my great loss.” He, therefore, besought Cecil to let
him have the fishery again, and that meanwhile the Bishop of Derry
should be appointed sequestrator.
This protest led to an Order of the Privy Council on the 31st
October, 1608, setting Phillips aside. It runs:—“As Mr. Hamilton
has prayed that Sir Thomas Ridgeway be appointed sequestrator, and
Sir Randal MacDonnell has demanded that the Bishop of Derry be
appointed, the Lords of the Council suggest that they be appointed
joint-sequestrators; and, if they are not content with this
arrangement, the Deputy shall appoint some indifferent person as
sequestrator.” Chichester’s reply is not preserved. The State Papers
are at times mournfully vacant as to his correspondence. Cecil, whose
“Cabinet,” as the Earl of Northampton complained, “had been made the
treasury of the State’s whole evidences and intelligence,” lacked at
his death many precious papers. The “saint” and the sinner understood
one another.
Whatever answer Chichester sent, or rejoinder Sir Randal made, it
dawned on the Privy Council by the end of 1608 that the Bann had
been alienated by the Deputy. The King took the news bitterly. After
the Flight of the Earls he contemplated a grant of the river to the
London Corporation; and his anger was kindled against the devastators
of Ulster’s spoil. In January, 1609, Cecil was ordered to demand
explanations. He had commanded Sir Arthur in June, 1608, “not to
dispose of an acre” without authority from England. James I. assumed
that the grants fathered on Hamilton had been made in disobedience to
this injunction; but Chichester stoutly replied that they were gifts
for the benefit of the Earl of Devonshire under the Wakeman Letter. A
discreet silence was preserved as to the fact that he had transferred
to himself the non-tidal Bann and Lough Neagh along with MacDonnell’s
“fourth” under bogus patents.
Little as the Lords of the Council guessed the extent of his
profligacy, they grew suspicious. In April, 1609, Sir Randal obtained
an order that the Deputy should “direct trial of the controversy
with all convenient speed,” and “that his Majesty may be no further
importuned in the matter.” This command Chichester pigeonholed, and
his victim was left remoter than ever from justice.
New influences, however, were setting in which affected every
claimant to property in Ulster. The King, finding the North
swept of its Chiefs, and knowing naught of the practices of the
Deputy, determined to root Scottish and English settlers in the
seats of the stubborn septs. A Plantation would solve the Irish
difficulty. Chichester differed from his Majesty as to the future
of the Province, and saw in its desolation a means of personal
aggrandisement. James hoped to strengthen his garrison by planting
the battle-wasted area with British Protestants. The Deputy felt that
disarmed natives would be easier to deal with than cross-Channel
adventurers protected by royal favour. The King’s policy, besides,
exposed him to the risk that his crimes might be laid bare. He could
show no title, save what Bassett’s Patent afforded, to his most
important acquisitions. Excluding that document, the only parchment
he held for Lough Neagh and the Bann, or the countless acres seized
therewith, was a secret assignment from Hamilton. This had, for its
sole foundation, grants as shaky as Bassett’s, springing from his own
wrongdoing.
James I., ignorant of all this hocus-pocus, busied himself throughout
the year 1609 with the question of bestowing County Derry, the Bann,
and Lough Foyle, on the London Corporation. In January, 1610, a
treaty with the City was signed on behalf of his Majesty, and the
Ulster Plantation was begun. The play of forces in the struggle
between MacDonnell and Chichester now took new forms, and the final
bout in their long duel was postponed.
CHAPTER XII.
CHEATING KING JAMES.
When Chichester realised that the Charter to the Londoners was to
include the Bann and Lough Foyle, he began a game of cross-purposes
to undermine the royal project. On the return of Sir John Davies from
London, bringing him the gift of O’Doherty’s barony of Innishowen
(July, 1609), he got the Attorney-General to join him in a fresh
intrigue against the King. They planned an excursion to Ulster,
ostensibly for the purpose of executing a Commission—long out of
date—to ascertain the ecclesiastical lands of the Sees of Derry,
Raphoe, and Clogher; but in reality to devise means to thwart his
Majesty’s policy.
The Commission was issued on the 2nd May, 1606, three years earlier,
and, therefore, was utterly stale. The Flight of the Earls was
already an event two years old, and one which left Bishop Montgomery
in undisputed enjoyment of Catholic dues. Yet the Deputy was smitten
with such heady zeal for Church interests in 1609 that he must needs
visit the Ulster vineyard in haste to care for the elect under the
pastoral eye of the Attorney-General.
Before setting out he performed a miracle worthy of his pen. This
was to “annex” to the spent Commission of 1606 “certain articles
of instruction under the Great Seal of Ireland” so that he should
be enabled “to inquire of divers things in the said Commission and
articles of instruction.” In vagueness nothing could be more studied.
The added “articles” were dated the 21st July, 1609, and they
completely altered the scope of the Commission. The King had directed
a merely ecclesiastical inquiry, but the Deputy, who for three years
neglected to hold it, “amended” the royal instructions in his own
behoof. Great was the magic of “amendment.” He was careful not to
enrol or record the alterations; and, therefore, the added “articles”
remain as undiscoverable as the Bassett-Hamilton conveyances, or the
Patents of 1603.
Under their authority Chichester sat with Davies and others at
Limavady on the 30th August, 1609, and held a Court. His purpose was
to set up a claim to the Bann in order to oust the Londoners, and
so overreach them that their Charter in that respect must prove a
nullity. In the castle of his prisoner, O’Cahan, knowing that the
Crown was striving to perfect the contract with the Undertakers,
he empanelled a jury of Brehons and leading natives to defeat
the intentions of his royal master. The jury, under the original
Commission, could only have ascertained the title to and scope of
Church rights, but under the invented “articles of instruction” the
Deputy got them to add a finding which declared that the Bann, from
Coleraine to Lough Neagh, with its bed and soil, belonged to himself.
The Brehon jury was first set on to make voluminous ecclesiastical
pronouncements; and, having spent the day thereat, they completed
their work with the verdict in Chichester’s favour. He presided over
the inquiry himself, as he did in the suits of “O’Cahan against
O’Neill” and “Hamilton against MacDonnell.” Doubtless, he strove
to impress the “lewd” Brehons by his judicial bearing, but they
understood little of his purpose. They spoke Gaelic and Latin, but
not English; and Sir Arthur laid before them his grant of the river
to Hamilton in Latin, and Hamilton’s Latin assignment to himself.
Their “finding” he set down in English—a tongue then rarely used in
legal documents. Its import was unknown to them, and his scribes,
doubtless, wrote out whatever he desired. It is tacked on at the
end of a long ecclesiastical verdict, with which it is wholly
disconnected. The Brehons had been assembled to declare and earmark
the local belongings of the Church, and were asked by the presiding
judge to decide that the Bann was his property. If they really did so
and if the “tack” was not subsequently made Davies must have enjoyed
the sight of the Deputy “charging” a wild Irish jury in Latin in his
own interest, and availing of their lack of English to cheat the
English King.
The verdict when engrossed was personally signed by Chichester. The
Archbishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Derry added their saintly
names. These were followed by the signatures of the Attorney-General,
the Chief Justice, the Surveyor-General, and the Vice-Treasurer.
The “lewd” Brehons’ finding was worthily witnessed in Church and
State. As Parsons subscribed it his mind must have turned back in
placid contemplation to the Antrim Inquisition of 1605, when he first
shuffled the cards to jink success to his master in the great game he
was playing.
The Deputy, from beneath O’Cahan’s roof, dispatched an austere
account of the proceedings to the King. Having circumvented the
royal policy, he edified his Majesty by inveighing against “the
insatiable humours of craving men,” and held forth on “the duty
and service I owe to my sovereign.” He wound up with the boast
that “the justice of the land, without being thought a praiser of
myself, was never distributed with more clean hands in this kingdom.”
Davies sent a companion report which glowed with ecstacy over their
visit, but omitted everything that the King ought to have known.
As they compared notes for these dispatches the walls of O’Cahan’s
castle must have rocked with laughter. The augurs sometimes enjoyed
themselves.
While this sport went forward the Corporation of London, which was
about to levy a heavy assessment on its citizens to defray the cost
of the Plantation, had its agents in the North to view the country.
They met the Deputy at Limavady just as his letters were being sent
off to James I. They discussed with him the terms of the proposed
Charter, and he gave them much wise counsel as to the carriage of
their adventure. The one point he forgot to mention was that he was
an adverse claimant against them for the Bann and Lough Foyle—the
chief ingredients in their bargain.
As they took their leave the agents warmly gave thanks, believing
him to be a stout ally; and, on reaching London, they reported in
favour of the Plantation. Five months later (28th January, 1610) the
City accepted a grant of County Derry, with the Bann and Lough Foyle,
and agreed to “plant” the North. No more solemn State contract is on
record. Yet it was cankered from its inception by official duplicity.
When James I. learnt through Sir Randal MacDonnell of the transfer
of the tidal Bann to Hamilton he did not realise—angry though he
was—that the non-tidal river and Lough Neagh had also been granted
away. He therefore promised to reacquire for the Londoners at his
own expense what he supposed had been inadvertently parted with.
Chichester never openly asserted ownership of the fisheries, for
he hoped that a breakdown would occur in the negotiations with the
City. These, indeed, were often on the verge of miscarriage; but, as
time and argument went on, one obstacle after another was overcome.
Finally the agreement of 1610 became the Charter of 1613.
Towards the end of 1610 the agents of the Londoners arrived to take
possession of their new estate. Their coming forced the Deputy to
change his tactics. He saw that the waters he had seized could
not all be retained, and arranged with Hamilton to make a partial
surrender of them and seek compensation for the “sacrifice.”
James I., unaware of the pretensions of any claimant to Lough Foyle
and the Bann, had covenanted to give the Londoners an unclogged
title. They naturally expected that all blots on it would be removed
before they made a venture costing (in present moneys) £600,000.
The Charter guaranteed that, if necessary, their rights would be
confirmed by Acts of Parliament both in England and Ireland.
The “bag” of the Ulster fisheries by Sir Arthur and his partner then
stood:—
Lough Foyle and Culmore Chichester’s.
Lough Neagh Chichester’s.
The non-tidal Bann Chichester’s.
One quarter of the tidal Bann Chichester’s.
Three-quarters of the tidal Bann Hamilton’s.
As deserving owners they were ready to make sacrifices for prompt
cash to further the royal policy, and yield up what had been
contracted to the Londoners. The Deputy modestly kept in the
background, and Hamilton represented him as Claims Agent.
With tradesmanlike particularity, the “Scot” sent in a bill to his
Majesty through Chichester, who frigidly transmitted it to London
as an impartial broker. It prettily set out that Hamilton, with
seven mythical partners, disbursed £4,760 in buying up the estates
of “sundry persons” in the Bann and Lough Foyle—over and above “the
costs and charges expended as well in suits of law as otherwise for
the clearing of sundry titles and claims.” This account was vouched
by the Deputy as accurate, and his disinterested corroboration of
its fairness was accepted by his royal master. Without further
investigation £4,500 (or, in modern values, £45,000) was paid to
Hamilton in June, 1610.
The King’s undertaking to defray the expense of clearing the title
for the Londoners weighed heavily on his cramped resources. Shrinking
at the outlay, he refused to provide more than £2,500, and left the
balance, £2,000, to be paid by the other victims—the Corporation.
Between regal meanness and viceregal greed, the Londoners were
effectively squeezed.
The Lords of the Council had, in April, 1609, commanded a trial of
Hamilton’s dispute with MacDonnell as to the “fourth” of the tidal
Bann; and, although Chichester then showed no sign of compliance, he
saw his advantage in reviving the quarrel, as soon as the money was
received. He and Hamilton for him had taken “compensation” on making
over to the Crown, fisheries which did not belong to them, and which,
as regards the Bann, were owned either by the Church or by O’Neill,
O’Cahan, and Sir Randal MacDonnell. O’Cahan was a captive, O’Neill in
exile, and against neither fugitive nor hostage had any forfeiture
been decreed. MacDonnell being a royal favourite could not handily
be banished, attainted, or imprisoned, yet his “fourth,” which the
Deputy had “put in sequestration pending a suit at law,” was airily
disposed of as a chattel of “the Scot’s.” Then a ponderous scheme to
“legally” divest Sir Randal of it was thought out. This grotesque
conception is described in the staid pages of the earliest volume of
law reports officially published to illustrate the wondrous workings
of English justice in Ireland when the overthrow of the Brehon Code
was decreed. The decision, like that which set aside as “barbarous”
the native system of equity, fell from caitiffs robed as Judges, as
inferior in worth and reputation as they were in learning, culture,
and honesty to the Brehons they replaced.
CHAPTER XIII.
DIVIDING THE SPOIL.
In November, 1610, the Deputy assembled his men-of-law in the Star
Chamber and proceeded to blot out the rights of Sir Randal in a way
the King could find no fault with. A report of the business was
published in 1615 under the title, “The Case of the Royal Fishery of
the Bann,” by Sir John Davies, in his collection of the new legal
decisions. This sets forth the Attorney-General’s contentions, as if
they were not mere byplay with a confederate posing as an impartial
judge. With great show of learning Davies argued that the tidal
Bann was a “royal river,” and its salmon fishery a “royal fishery,”
and that a grant of anything “royal” must be made by express words.
MacDonnell’s Patent, he said, only used words of exception—i.e., it
granted him fisheries “excepting three-fourths of the fishery of the
Bann.” This lack of express granting words failed, he maintained, to
pass the remaining “fourth” by implication. For, quoth he, words of
reservation pass nothing “royal” and make no good grant.
On behalf of Sir Randal nobody seems to have been allowed to say a
word. It was the second time the case was tried behind his back. If
any defects existed in his grant, Davies was the culprit, for the
King in 1606 had ordered them to be cured by a new Patent, which the
Attorney-General should have supervised. Nevertheless “the chief
judges of the Privy Council” cheerfully decided that no part of the
river belonged to MacDonnell.
Every inch of the Bann had, in the previous January, been granted
to the Londoners without regard to MacDonnell’s rights, while
Hamilton and Chichester, in the teeth of Sir Randal’s Patent, had
taken pay for it as the true owners. Yet with pompous cynicism
the Star Chamber, at Chichester’s call, elaborately took steps to
overlay the felony, and deck it with legal splendour in the shape
of a State Trial ostentatiously held in pretended vindication of
the prerogatives of the Crown. Lawless as the Star Chamber was,
even its procedure was befouled by the device adopted to mask the
illicit grants and their transfer to the Deputy. Thus was a love for
English law first implanted in the heart of Ulster! Davies blazons
the decision in Norman-French in his publication of the cases which
established the English Common Law as the basis of Irish justice.
With like emanations of the bewigged knavery of the period the
judgment is still cited as an authority in modern legal text-books.
The proof of Chichester’s participation in the £4,500 levied off
the Crown and the Corporation endures under his own hand in a
parchment which for 300 years mouldered unnoticed. In the compost
of conveyancing with which his Deputyship reeks no document is
more striking than that in which he commemorates this transaction.
Weighted with the winnings collected for him by Hamilton, Sir Arthur,
in April, 1611, thought it prudent to set down and enrol a pretext
for having pocketed them. By formal “surrender” he caused a deed in
the King’s favour to be witnessed before Jones, Archbishop of Dublin,
renouncing all claim to the Bann and Lough Foyle.
Jones, being Lord Chancellor, was head of the Rolls Office, and
entitled as such to accept “surrenders” without the authority of
a King’s Letter. The deed which Chichester executed set forth the
lie that the Castle of Culmore, with 300 acres and fishings (Lough
Foyle), had lately been given to him by two Letters Patent; that the
non-tidal Bann and one-fourth of the tidal Bann had been sold to him
by Hamilton, who had paid him £550 “for and in behalf of the King’s
Majesty, who hath given satisfaction to the said Hamilton for the
whole fishing of the Bann.” Then it granted the fishings, land, and
castle to the King; and wound up with this stately flourish:—“To
that part of these presents remaining with his Majesty, the said Sir
Arthur Chichester hath set his hand and seal; and to that part of
these presents remaining with the said Sir Arthur, his Majesty hath
caused a seal to be set.”
This masterly composition was mere make-believe. Smoothly smacking in
law-prate, it rose to the highest level of legal fiction. His Majesty
never heard of the surrender. Jones set his own seal to it without
James I. being the wiser. In all material respects the “preamble”
festers with falsehood. Chichester, it is true, got a “custodium”
of the Castle of Culmore on the 24th October, 1609, with provision
for the payment of gunners and warders. Three parchments issued in
the following year changed this arrangement, and Culmore Castle,
its fishings, and 300 acres were reserved to the Crown on the 22nd
February, 21st June, and 16th July, 1610. The new bargain was made
“for the furtherance of the intended Plantation by the Londoners,” to
whom they were given. Other benefits were conferred on Chichester in
exchange.
The pretence that he received only £550 out of the £4,500 is in
keeping with the rest of his romantic prose. If Hamilton took the
lion’s share it is strange that the surrender should show that his
interest was confined to three-fourths of the tidal Bann, while the
rest of the stolen property stood in the Deputy’s name. To suppose
that the captain of the brigands netted only an eighth of the profits
does injustice to his voracity.
If the surrender had been a reality, James I. would have learnt the
disagreeable news that, when he presented the Bann and Lough Foyle to
the Londoners fifteen months previously, he had had no title to make
the grant. Yet so formally was the surrender framed that Chichester
joined his wife, “Dame Lettice,” in the deed—in accordance with
the law governing feudal tenures. This told of the nicety of the
expert who (to facilitate confiscation from the natives) abolished
the ancient right of Irishwomen under the Brehon Law “to have sole
property in a certain portion of their husbands’ goods during
coverture”!
Chichester was then in straits. It appeared later that he had
embezzled £10,000 from the Crown out of the rents of the forfeited
Ulster estates, though he suffered from no lack of income. His salary
and allowances were enormous, without reckoning what came in from
confiscated lands. He even feigned poverty to cloak his defalcations,
but after his death his heir was called upon by Charles I. to make
them good.
The part played by his spiritual confederate in this legal pantomime
was worthy of “that rascal Jones.” His Grace wielded the Great Seal
on Chichester’s behalf like a burglar’s “jemmy.” Whether the signet
he affixed to the “surrender” was great or small it boots not to
enquire. Large as was the gain made by the Archbishop out of the
Church Establishment, he supplemented it by grants from the Deputy
which lacked the King’s sanction.
Such depredations would have been impossible without the connivance
of Court favourites who shared in the profits. Public virtue had
either ceased to exist or had not begun to be cultivated. When anyone
complained of the conduct of Chichester’s servitors, most of whom
were scoundrels apt for his purpose, he shielded them in dispatches
as “very honest men.” He fetched from Devonshire his brother and two
nephews to assist him, and was at pains to embellish his practices
with a garniture of profuse loyalty and solid piety.
In the Castle Chamber (or Star Chamber) he dealt with land, descent,
and ownership. Removable judges, flanked by a few men-at-arms,
with the Law Officers occasionally thrown in, formed its judicial
ingredients. Before them were haled those who were to be fleeced or
tortured. Excuse may be attempted for the profligacy of the officials
who then found salary and place in Ireland by reference to the
hardships of their service. They had to put up with much discomfort;
and to confront, at times, the perils of war, famine, and pestilence.
Conquest is a hard school. If they returned to London their journey
might end in the Tower and their fee be the scaffold. The sea between
the islands was infested with pirates lying in wait to assail their
ships, and when they reached the metropolis it was part of their
science accurately to know whom to bribe, whom to squeeze, whom to
favour, and whom to flatter. Such was the age in which Chichester
throve.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PLANTERS’ PARLIAMENT.
With the coming of the Planters, Chichester, being by law disabled
from holding land without the King’s sanction, grew anxious as to
the title of his ill-gotten estates. Many of his Deeds were open to
attack, and safety could only be found in confirmation by Act of
Parliament. James I. had contemplated, on his accession, the calling
together of the Irish Legislature. His order of the 11th September,
1603, as to the pardoned chiefs, mentions “an Act to be passed in
the next assembling of Parliament there for the restoration in
blood of the Earl of Tyrone, his brother, and their heirs.” On the
16th October, 1604, when appointing Chichester Deputy, he informed
him that he “intended to call a Parliament” in Ireland. Sir Arthur
disliked the idea and blocked it, as he wished to compass the ruin
of the native princes. Besides, a Parliament would have created a
counter-authority to dwarf his power.
After the Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster the
situation changed. Sway had forsaken the Gael, and a Parliament
which native chiefs might control was no longer to be feared. As
for the mass of the people, if the manufacture of a majority were
attended to with foresight the Deputy knew they could easily be
mastered. Conquered Ireland was now shired and sheriffed, with 17 new
counties added. In the previous Parliament of Elizabeth only fifteen
counties were represented. The drawback that the greater part of the
inhabitants of the island were Catholics was one which called for
circumspection lest a majority of their representatives should belong
to that “damnable superstition.” It had become a cardinal part of
State policy that the handful of imported Protestants should control
everything, and arrangements were made accordingly.
In 1612 the King agreed that a Parliament should be summoned for the
following year, and the Deputy was to see to it that the Planters
should be enabled to outvote the natives. When Henry VIII. shired
Wales, and admitted its representatives to a voice at Westminster, a
different spirit prevailed. No trickery was practised on the Cymri;
but in Ireland King James issued charters to 40 hamlets whereby sham
“Corporations” exclusively Protestant, returning two members each,
were set up at various cross-roads. In the quaint language of the
day:—“They were erected in places that constantly pass the rank of
the poor villages in the poorest country in Christendom.” Bunches of
“freemen,” numbering a dozen or a score, were named in each charter
to elect a brace of representatives, and thus at a stroke 80 reliable
Protestants were secured. The sheriffs did the rest. In 1613 by this
strategy a Protestant majority of 28 was created in the House of
Commons of a country where the Catholics were twenty to one. To mark
the King’s approval of Chichester’s courses he was made a peer and
highly commended.
The Anglo-Irish gentry of the ancient faith protested against his
electoral arrangements, but were laughed at. They carried their
plaints to the King in London, and were imprisoned or abused as
“recusants.” Such of them as were not lodged in the Tower or the
Fleet were only allowed to return home to witness the Deputy’s
triumph. “Hurly-burlies and other unnecessary stirs were moved in
sundry places,” but all to no purpose. The packed Parliament met,
and the Commons made Sir John Davies Speaker, after a feverish
protest from the Anglo-Irish. When it proceeded to business its
first enactment was that O’Neill and the Northern chiefs, dead or
alive, stood attainted of high treason; that their estates were
forfeited, and their Letters Patent void. The cleavage between the
Anglo-Catholics and the disfranchised natives was such that the
Bill of Attainder passed unanimously, and was proposed by Sir John
Everard, the “recusant” candidate for Speaker, who had renounced a
judgeship rather than take the oath of apostacy. Six Ulster counties
were then made the Royal demesne.
Now came the moment for Chichester’s privy turn. He had a year before
procured the assent of the English Privy Council to the “heads” of
several measures which he desired to pass, including one “to confirm
the Patents of Ulster Undertakers.” Some shift of wind afterwards set
in at Whitehall against him, and his Majesty, scenting his purpose,
thwarted it. No sufficient ground for this sudden disfavour anywhere
appears. The records of State are often a blank at the most critical
moments.
Perhaps the King was smarting at the havoc wrought by his lordship’s
grants; perhaps he bemoaned the £2,500 “compensation” paid from his
purse to free the Bann and Lough Foyle; perhaps he grudged the Deputy
the £10,000 he extracted from Parliament “for extraordinary equipage
and porte.” Perhaps he learnt of the £10,000 of the embezzled
Ulster rents. At any rate, James I. was vexed with his new peer,
and determined he would not allow him to “cook” statutes as he had
cooked Patents. Cecil was dead, and the influence which the hunchback
wielded was lacking. In the royal councils Cecil’s enemies openly
complained of the way in which he had tolerated the devastation
of Crown lands. Sir Richard Cooke, the Irish Chancellor of the
Exchequer, urged Chichester’s removal, and wrote bitterly of the
disorders he witnessed, although formerly he had supported the Deputy.
The first sign of royal estrangement appears in a Letter of the
25th March, 1615, which complains of slackness in forwarding the
Plantation. To it the King added a postscript in his own hand,
requiring “zeal and uprightness” from the Deputy. Accompanying this
querulous dispatch came a request for a subsidy, and his Majesty
promised that, if it were voted, the sittings of Parliament would
be prolonged. Chichester meekly bore the rebuke in order to get the
Bills he wanted passed, and asked Parliament to grant the money.
Both Houses obsequiously agreed, but no sooner had the subsidy
been sanctioned than James, in spite of his promise, dissolved the
assembly before the Bills could even be brought in.
This blow fell on the 22nd August, 1615; and deadlier thunderbolts
were to descend. The King’s excuse for breaking faith was the
expense to the public of “Members’ wages.” It was a hollow plea, for
the total cost only came to £223. Chichester dispatched a protest
against the Dissolution, and sent Davies to London to represent how
important, in the interests of a distracted people, were the measures
he needed. He hurried to Ulster himself, and from there sent a
cunning letter to the King describing the hardships of the Planters
and his zeal in their regard.
James was not moved, and even displayed a temper which the “subsidy”
had not sweetened. The crestfallen Attorney-General brought back
word from Court that “heavy imputations” had been laid against the
authors of the mis-government and maladministration of the country.
The alarmed Deputy tremblingly penned an elaborate defence, but a
week later (22nd November, 1615) a royal missive dismissing him
was signed. The packed Parliament had been dispersed without doing
anything to validate his grants.
The want of “zeal and uprightness” in forwarding the Plantation,
of which James I. accused the Government, is probably the smallest
fault that can be laid at the ex-Deputy’s door. The character of the
Planters affords some clue to this lack of enthusiasm. Chichester
had no wish to stimulate the import of undesirables, whereas the
King knew nothing of their calibre. The best justification of the
slackness alleged in encouraging such migrants is to be found in the
description of them by their own clergymen. Who and what they were
is told by the Rev. Mr. Stewart:—
“From Scotland came many, and from England not a few, yet all of them
generally the scum of both nations; who, from debt or breaking and
fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither, hoping to be
without fear of man’s justice, in a land where there was nothing,
or but little as yet, of the fear of God. And in a few years there
flocked such a multitude of people from Scotland that these northern
counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, etc., were in a good measure
planted, which had been waste before. Yet most of the people were
all void of godliness, who seemed rather to flee from God to this
enterprise than to follow their own mercy.... Thus on all hands
atheism increased, and disregard of God; iniquity abounded, with
contention, fighting, murder, adultery, etc., as among people who,
as they had nothing within them to overawe them, so their ministers’
example was worse than nothing.... For their carriage made them to
be abhorred at home in their native land, insomuch that going for
Ireland was looked on as a miserable mark of a deplorable person.
Yea, it was turned into a proverb; and one of the worst expressions
of disdain that could be invented was to tell a man that Ireland
would be his hinder end.”
Professor Reid, the historian of the Irish Presbyterian Church,
paints the same picture:—“Ulster was now occupied by settlers, who
were willing enough to receive and respect ministers when sent, but
who were far from being generally characterised by a desire for
enjoying religious ordinances. On the contrary, a great number of
those who accompanied the original proprietors, and who occupied
their lands, were openly profane and immoral in their conduct, and
were generally inattentive to the sacred institutions of the Gospel.”
A third minister, the Reverend Mr. Blair, writes:—“The most part
were such as either poverty, scandalous lives, or, at the best,
adventurous seeking of better accommodation, had forced thither,
so that the security and thriving of religion was little seen to
by those adventurers; and the preachers were generally of the same
complexion with the people.”
The Londoners sent a respectable contingent to County Derry; and
Chichester’s antipathy to them can only be connected with his
designs on the fisheries and his hope to break down the Plantation.
Constant complaint of his henchman, Captain Phillips, was made by
the Corporation, who, doubtless, represented their grievances to
the King. They left on record a protest against the antagonism of
Phillips, who was but a stirring-stick of mischief for the Deputy.
Commentators on the sudden “disburthenment” of that powerful satrap
have groped in the dark for an explanation. There can now be little
doubt that it was provoked by the remonstrances of the Corporation.
His lordship’s hostility to them sprang from the wish to upset their
enterprise in order to fasten a hold on Lough Neagh and the Bann.
CHAPTER XV.
A SCOTCH “DISCOVERER.”
Chichester’s place in Dublin Castle was taken by his old servitor,
Sir Oliver St. John. The veteran himself retired to Carrickfergus,
and there awaited his opportunity, spreading his nets patiently and
preparing for the future. Davies was retained as Attorney-General,
and this became a great comfort to the ex-Deputy.
St. John was a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer of the Davies School. He served
in the Elizabethan wars, and was a protégé of Devonshire and Cecil.
After James I. came to the Throne care was taken to provide him
with suitable posts in Ireland. As Deputy, St. John was not without
sympathy for his old master, although formerly he had smarted under
his lash. Before a year went by the position of Lord High Treasurer
fell vacant through the death of the Earl of Ormonde, and St. John
and Davies secured the place for their fallen friend. Chichester,
greatly mollified thereby, assured the Privy Council, on 24th
December, 1616, that “as matters are handled, I think Ireland is at
the height of her happiness.” Probably from anything that has since
occurred this was true enough.
The new post gave him control over the Crown rentals and other
records serviceable to his designs. It also helped him to cloak (for
the moment) the embezzlement of the rents of the fugitive Chiefs.
Accusing voices as to his misdemeanours were however raised, and
James I. tried in vain to fathom them. St. John (with the facts
staring him in the face) hesitated to expose his former patron.
Still the King was not blind; and in October, 1618, the storm broke.
Sir James Balfour was dispatched to Dublin with secret orders
from his Majesty to rip open the Patent scandal, and have Hamilton
cross-examined in the Star Chamber by St. John.
Balfour was a Scottish “discoverer” (or informer), who ferreted for
reward to lay bare the tricks of estated magnates against the Crown.
Having laid informations before the King as to the orgies of the late
administration, he was commissioned to unearth its misdeeds. His
arrival in Ireland caused consternation. St. John sent for Hamilton;
and, as his Majesty ordained, questioned him straitly. The perturbed
Deputy treated Balfour’s revelations as something which had suddenly
burst upon him; and Hamilton was naturally disinclined to add to
his knowledge. His uncommunicativeness led to a request for the
production of the originals of his Patents. No record of these had
been officially kept, in order to defeat investigation; and Hamilton,
aware of his advantage, demurred. He was, therefore, commanded by St.
John to take down in writing, as from the King, a behest to bring
them in forthwith for inspection. This was an awkward moment; and the
culprit, having written out the command, asked for time, and got it.
Before the day fixed for the next heckling, Hamilton consulted
Chichester; and, fortified by his courage, instead of obeying, sent
an evasive letter pretending that he did not understand the royal
wishes. At this St. John affected to be nonplussed; but the truth was
that the task of playing inquisitor against his old confederates was
distasteful to him, and ill became his past. So, instead of putting
on pressure, and forcing Hamilton to produce the parchments, he
weakened and suspended the inquiry.
Sir James Balfour, keen for the chase, beset him and demanded
effective action in the King’s name; but the sore-pressed Deputy
feared either to refuse or to comply. In his perplexity, he hit on
the expedient of sending a messenger to Court, begging to be spared
further part in an odious duty. His envoy was the Vice-Treasurer,
Sir Francis Blundell, an underling of the Lord High Treasurer. To
him the errand was entrusted of seeking out Villiers, Marquis of
Buckingham, the royal favourite, and plying him with “arguments” to
hush up the inquiry. Villiers (soon to be Duke of Buckingham) was
all-powerful with James I.
“Those who wanted to gain the King to their ends learned that the
easiest way was to approach him through his favourite.” So intimate
were their relations that his Majesty would say:—“Christ had his
John, and I have my George.” Buckingham took “presents” from suitors,
pestered the Lord Chancellor with attempts to interfere in Chancery
suits, and secured largesse for his pains. He retained his mastery
at Court into the following reign, when his excesses led to his
assassination. With such a courtier, no well-weighted appeal could
fail, and Sir Francis Blundell set out from Dublin supplied with a
letter from St. John, and other gear for the all-powerful Marquis.
The only copy of this letter which has been preserved was found
amongst the papers of Chichester’s relatives. It, therefore, probably
was composed by the Lord High Treasurer himself. It runs:—
“It has pleased his Majesty to employ Sir James Balfour hither, for
the examination of some articles exhibited unto his Majesty against
Sir James Hamilton, with especial warrant, by his princely letter
unto me and some of the Council here, to receive such informations
as his Majesty had committed unto Sir James Balfour’s trust, to be
imparted unto us. In obedience to which, we have, with all care and
secrecy, proceeded therein, and given his Majesty a just account
of what we have found, wherewith I hope his Majesty hath received
good satisfaction. And, albeit my duty must ever tie me to obey his
Majesty’s Royal commandments before all other respects, yet I have
suffered much in the opinion of noble and worthy personages, as well
in England as here, as if I had entered into a business unfitting
the place of his Majesty’s Deputy, who ought tenderly to preserve
his Majesty’s subjects in peace and contentment, and not be an
instrument of blemishing the reputations and questioning the estates
and fortunes of any man. The business of Sir James Hamilton is now
brought to that estate as I hope I shall hear no more of it.
“Yet, lest his Majesty may, by information given unto him in the
like nature, be drawn to employ my services again in that kind of
examination concerning the lives and estates of any of those who
are, by his Majesty’s princely favour, committed to my charge and
government, I hope his Majesty will be graciously pleased to join
to mine assistance his principal servants and councillors of this
kingdom, and that his warrants and commissions may be open, and the
proceedings in them fair and legal. Otherwise, if I be commanded to
handle them in a private manner myself alone, or with some only,
whatever misfortune shall light upon any, I shall be reputed the
causer of it, and cast myself into general hatred, and shall be
unable to do his Majesty that service in this kingdom which he may
expect from an officer employed in so weighty a charge.
“I humbly pray your lordship to hearken to Sir Francis Blundell, whom
I have entreated to wait upon your lordship in this particular, and
to vouchsafe unto me your honourable care for my preservation.”
This could only mean that Buckingham was to get the secret procedure
(which the King had ordained) quashed; and allow St. John to hold
any future inquiry in public before the Privy Council, where
Chichester’s creatures held the majority. Blundell’s “arguments”
were so powerful that Buckingham prevailed on the King to drop the
proceedings, and Balfour’s mission ended in smoke. The “articles
exhibited” by him, and the correspondence between the English and
Irish Executives, are not given a place in the State Papers. Only for
disjointed entries and letters in the family archives of Hamilton
and Chichester, posterity would never have heard of the perils they
ran or the struggles of St. John to rescue them. The official records
must have been made away with. Balfour before long was consoled
for the abandonment of the investigation. To keep his mouth shut
he was presented with lands in Ulster after his return to England,
and therewith rested content. Amongst his papers printed in 1837 by
the Abbotsford Club (Edinburgh) were copies of Hamilton’s “Thomas
Irelande” Letter of the 6th December, 1604, and that of the 16th
April, 1605, granting Sir Con O’Neill’s estate. These evidently
formed part of his “brief” for the Discovery.
Even if Balfour’s inquiry had been pressed home, the resourceful
Chichester would not have been taken unawares. He had skilfully
tampered with the State ledgers to prepare a bulwark of defence
if challenged as to his part in the seizure of the fisheries. On
becoming Lord High Treasurer, the rent-rolls of the Exchequer lay
under his hand, and these were manipulated with clerkly art. An
insertion in them in 1618 correlates with the period of Balfour’s
inquiry. It casually records that Lord Chichester is owner of the
Bann and Lough Neagh, although everyone knew that the river had
been granted to the Londoners in 1610—apart from the “surrender” by
the ex-Deputy in 1611. The entry seemed quite business-like, and
reads:—“Arthur, Lord Chichester, assignee of James Hamilton, knight,
holds the entire fishery of the lake called Lough Neagh, and the
river Bann—per annum 12s. 6d.” A casual scribe might have ledgered
it; yet the words amounted to a royal recognition of his title. No
earlier Crown rent-roll contains such a record, and it was made seven
years after the Bann had been awarded to the Londoners, by Charter,
rent free.
Chichester’s “surrender” disclaimed the river and acknowledged the
receipt of compensation. Still, embedded in the Crown rental, by way
of a scrivener’s note of the trifling rent of 12s. 6d., lurked an
official declaration that the Bann and Lough Neagh belonged to him.
The humblest clerk in State employ knew that no rent for the Bann was
due by anybody. Yet a ledger in Government custody was burdened with
this falsehood in the year in which Balfour “exhibited articles unto
his Majesty against Sir James Hamilton.” No reason can be assigned
for the entry save one—an attempt to build up a defence to meet an
expected attack by the “discoverer.”
The “cooked” ledger consorts with the Lord Treasurer’s past, and with
what remains to be told of his future. The sequel unfolds the same
unending game of grab. Each development reveals a fresh crime, and
evokes renewed wonder at the miscreant’s resourcefulness. As fertile
in the closet as he was ruthless in the camp, Chichester may be
regarded as the embodiment of those vices which, amongst the people
he oppressed, made a byword of the rule he represented and the creed
he sought to spread.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ESCHEATOR FOR ULSTER.
Once Buckingham’s protection had been purchased by the Lord High
Treasurer his confidence grew apace. Alive to the danger he had
escaped, Chichester strove to prevent further risks by providing
legal cover for his acquisitions. His attempt to shelter them behind
an Act of Parliament in 1615 had failed, but they would still, he
hoped, be safe if he could obtain a Patent for everything he held,
lawful or lawless, in his own name. The grants which Sir James
Balfour assailed rested on unenrolled assignments from Hamilton and
Bassett. Their origin could easily be traced by legal or official
prying; and Balfour’s foray, though thwarted, filled him with
concern. Since he had been appointed Deputy in 1605, Chichester had
not dared to take out any Patent in his own name unless with royal
authority, however freely he practised in the names of others. He
felt, nevertheless, that the stalking-horse system was out-worn; and
resolved to apply for an omnibus grant, directed to himself, which
should include the whole of his possessions—and as much of other
people’s as could be arranged for.
In 1619, assured of Buckingham’s help, he besought a King’s Letter
sanctioning a fresh Patent in his own name. In 1620 his Majesty’s
consent was signified; but it was limited to “a confirmation of all
his former grants by a re-grant.” The King, as a further precaution,
ordered a Commission “to ascertain the other persons in possession of
the territory, and to establish their rights.” His Majesty evidently
suspected his former Deputy’s pranks; but the royal attempt to
prevent their repetition was in vain. Chichester overleaped every
barrier; and, now armed with the King’s Letter, accomplished a feat
more daring than any he had previously ventured on.
The provision that the Commission was “to establish the rights of
others” he overcame by having his own backers named as Commissioners.
With a view to beguiling the Londoners as to the Bann, these
partisans ordered an inquisition respecting its ownership without
giving the city notice of their sittings.
They were given no authority to inquire into the Londoners’ property,
yet they met in Chichester’s pocket-borough of Carrickfergus, and
empanelled a jury of his friends and underlings to decide on the
title to the river. The legal extravaganza there enacted seems so
grotesque that, were it not vouched for by stiff parchment, it would
be scouted as impossible.
The principal Commissioner was Stephen Allen, Escheator for Ulster,
who owed his post to Chichester. At Derry, a fortnight before, Allen
held an inquisition for the Barons of the Exchequer, to ascertain by
a local jury the number of “royal” fisheries in Ulster, and the rents
payable thereout to the Crown. Allen truthfully recorded the Derry
jury’s finding as to the Bann, which was that the Londoners owned
the entire river from the sea to Lough Neagh, rent free. In this
verdict its fishing-places, tidal and non-tidal, were enumerated in
the most formal way. Yet, scarcely was the ink dry upon it when, at
Carrickfergus, the same Allen got a jury to make a wholly contrary
finding, and to bring in a verdict that the Bann, from Lough Neagh
to Coleraine, was Chichester’s. He bolstered up this enormity by
another. Allen’s duty was to lodge forthwith the Derry “return” in
the Exchequer in Dublin. Instead of doing so, he kept it back for
nine years. On the other hand, he lodged the Carrickfergus “return”
instanter, knowing that it was to be made the basis of a Patent
granting the Bann to his old patron. Highly-placed Commissioners,
including a Bishop, abetted this misconduct.
In framing the verdict, care was taken that the assertion of
Chichester’s title should be made indirectly, only. The jury were
got to do just enough to enable the Dublin confederates, when the
“return” reached them, to shape the grant in the form he required.
Nor was what Allen put on record untrue. All that was set forth was
that Hamilton and Bassett obtained Patents for the Bann and Lough
Neagh, and that these were assigned to Chichester—no more. There was
no falsehood here—omission alone conveyed untruth. The Commissioners
“forgot” the Charter to the Londoners; they “overlooked” Allen’s
proceedings at Derry a fortnight before; they failed to remember
the “surrender” of 1611 before the Archbishop of Dublin; or the
“compensation” paid to Sir Arthur. As skilled practitioners they
operated on the sheltry side of the law, and left the draftsmen of
the Patent to do the rest.
If the trick had been discovered before the Patent was ready, Allen
would have explained that no wrong to the Londoners was intended;
and would rely on the fact that he had previously registered at
Derry their title as the real owners. Any repugnancy between the two
verdicts, he would protest, was for lawyers to settle, and not for
a poor escheator like himself. Others of the Commissioners might
have found it less easy to invent a plausible excuse if exposure had
befallen them; but in those days honesty had no sentinel, and the
ruse was entirely successful.
“Our trusty and well-beloved, the right reverend father in God,
Theophilus, Lord Bishop of Dromore,” and Sir Francis Annesley,
“knight and baronet, one of our principal Secretaries in our Kingdom
of Ireland,” were of the party. They endorsed at Carrickfergus the
verdict which gainsaid the Londoners’ Charter, and handed over the
Bann to the official who not only did not own it, but had been
rewarded for giving up a fraudulent claim to it. Both magnates were
acquainted with State policy. They knew the wishes of the King, and
of the gift of the river to the City. Yet they soiled their hands
as readily as if they had served an apprenticeship to the office of
Deputy. Nothing was then too dirty for a dignitary.
As for the Londoners, being denied notice, they were left in the dark
and made no sign. Their title having been affirmed by Allen at Derry
on the 26th March, 1621, they could hardly have foreseen that on the
6th April, 1621, he would strive to undermine it at Carrickfergus.
Still less were they likely to imagine that the nobleman, in whose
Deputyship the Bann was made theirs, could be engaged in a plot with
a prelate and a Secretary of State to filch it for himself. So they
lost the non-tidal river. When the Carrickfergus “return” reached
Dublin Chichester’s joy was made full. A Patent was sealed for him on
the 20th November, 1621, in which the Bann, from the Salmon Leap at
Coleraine to Lough Neagh, with its bed and soil, were declared his
property, in the King’s name. Lough Neagh, too, was included, and the
grant conferred a power to spread nets on the banks both of river and
lake.
Everyone responsible for this knew that justice was outraged, but
that mattered not. Lord Chichester could now boast that the fisheries
were set in his grasp as firmly as parchment and the Great Seal
could assure them. This achievement placed him on the pinnacle of
conveyancing greatness. He had successfully brigaded a Bishop and
a Secretary of State with an escheator, to flout the King, and got
his Deputy to grant a Patent by which the Londoners were robbed. No
treachery to Irish chiefs, or slaughter of kern or cleric, could
compare with such a triumph.
In one respect he slightly changed his tactics. Instead of working
on a single Patent, he got two made out for him—one containing the
estates lawfully his, and the other those he had crookedly come by.
This plan of a double issue had not been sanctioned by the King, and
in other respects he also disregarded the Royal Letter.
Not long, however, was he left in peace. Probably the Corporation got
wind of the cheat, for within two months James I. took significant
action. The Lord High Treasurer was suddenly ordered abroad on
a mission to the Palatinate in January, 1622. His co-mate and
brother-in-exile, Sir Oliver St. John, who had just been raised to
the peerage as Lord Grandison, was at the same time removed from
the Deputyship. It was an unexpected downfall; and evidently some
detractor had again slandered them to his Majesty. Both had to quit
Ireland forthwith; but their removal was dignified with solemn
rites, as befitted their estate. No occasion for malicious glee was
afforded to the watchful natives. Wholesome monitions were privily
administered, and a new discipline as to Patents was laid down, but
public scandal was avoided.
In the following May, when they were well away, the King issued
a biting direction to “make stay” of future grants, surrenders,
and confirmations “till some safe course might be taken for the
preserving of his rents and tenures.” Chichester, too, was forced
before his departure to make a lease of Lough Neagh to the Londoners
in perpetuity at a rent of £100 a year. As the Lough feeds the Bann,
this undid much of his victory, and amounted to an admission that the
river belonged to the Corporation.
It was through Buckingham’s favour that the Lord High Treasurer was
sent abroad, and, as his cash defalcations had probably became as
notorious at Court as his Patent conjurings, the King, doubtless,
sanctioned his German mission to rid Ireland of his presence. An
outcry which, had he remained at home, might have led to his being
brought to justice, was thereby stifled. He was told to his face
in the King’s presence by one of the Privy Council that he had so
profited by the Plantation that his conduct was “against the honour
of the King and the justice of the Kingdom.”
Chichester never returned to the country which for twenty years he
had afflicted. In January, 1625, he died in London, three weeks
before the death of James I. Within three months steps were taken by
Charles I. to compel his heir to make good the £10,000 embezzled from
the Crown out of the rents of the forfeited estates.
Fact-free Mr. Froude frames the wretch’s portrait as “the great
Viceroy of Ireland—of all Englishmen who settled in the country the
most useful to it.” Mr. Bagwell certifies in “Ireland Under the
Stuarts” that “his integrity is unquestionable”!
CHAPTER XVII.
MORE “DISCOVERERS.”
Lord Falkland was appointed Deputy on the 1st April, 1622. This
change James I. emphasised a month later by the protest just
mentioned against the abuse of his Royal Letters under former
Deputies.
Shortly after Falkland’s coming (Chichester being in Germany) the
grants to Hamilton were impugned in the Irish Courts. Since the
breakdown of Sir James Balfour’s Inquiry in 1618, “discoverers”
had been dumb; but, in 1623, the Exchequer Barons took action, and
several “Wakeman” Patents were held to be invalid. The judgments
which condemned them are not extant; but Falkland was made aware
of their effect, and was urged to pursue still more sweeping
investigations. Counter-pressure, placed upon him by those to whom
exposure meant ruin, prevailed. He halted, and nothing further was
done.
At first the new Deputy (heedful of the warning of the King) tried to
enrich himself by ways which differed from those of his predecessors.
His most original proposal was to make Ireland a base for Algerine
corsairs, so as to draw wealth from their inroads on international
commerce. Large sums were offered by him to the Duke of Buckingham,
the Prince of Wales, and the Secretary of State for permission to
attract these raiders to prey on shipping from Irish harbours.
The design bespoke the man, and when it was rejected he gave
“protections” to Dutch pirates and other Freebooters who haunted the
coasts, trafficked with them, and dealt in their cargoes. Unsatisfied
by his gains from such sources, Falkland sought riches in other
fields. He applied for leave to confiscate the property of the loyal
Corporation of Waterford in order to seize it for himself, and when
courses like these proved unprosperous he fell back into the beaten
paths of previous Deputies.
Naturally he set his face against any attempt to unravel the threads
of the Patent scandals, but Chichester’s memory grew more and more
unfragrant, and in 1627 a Munster notable, Sir William Power,
lodged informations that the Wakeman Grants were “fraudulently
passed without the intention of King James.” Sir William at the
same time denounced the Patents lavished on Boyle, the new-made
Earl of Cork. Power was connected by marriage with Boyle, but was
at enmity with him over boundaries. On his complaint the English
advisers of the Crown proceeded to ransack Boyle’s title to the
42,000 acres of the Desmond Estate, which he captured from Sir Walter
Raleigh. The Attorney and Solicitor Generals for England, with three
Serjeants-at-Law, pronounced it void, yet no step was taken against
the “Wakeman” grants. A mysterious hand seemed outstretched to
protect them.
On the 28th August, 1627, Charles I. declared the Crown was
rightfully entitled to the Desmond lands annexed by Boyle under
Chichester, and in 1628 Sir William Power journeyed to London to feed
his grudge and fill his pocket. He saw Mr. Hadsor, the King’s Lawyer
in Irish affairs, who certified that Lord Cork’s Patent of 1614 was
unsigned, and that he “believed it may be false.” The reflection
on Chichester’s Deputyship which this carried was far-reaching.
Hadsor valued the Royal interest in the lands at £50,000 (now half
a million). He complained that the Attorney-General gave away his
legal secrets to Lord Cork, and on the 23rd August, 1628, the murder
of the venal Duke of Buckingham by Felton at Portsmouth removed one
mainstay to dishonesty. So on the 3rd September, 1628, King’s Letters
condemning the grant were sent to Lord Falkland by Hadsor. As to
the rest of Power’s “discovery” Hadsor (as before) said nothing.
Possibly after the Attorney-General’s treachery he thought his hands
too full to attack the Wakeman Patents. He was well-advised, for
hardly had he taken action when the inevitable fairy godfather to
rascaldom lit upon the scene. Lord Cork invoked the help of other
corrupt courtiers, and a “coat of darkness” was thrown over the
traffickings of landsharks both in Munster and Ulster. This saved the
Desmond Estate for Boyle, and by the same agencies the onslaught on
the Wakeman Patents was broken down. The knaves were all interlinked.
Later in the same year (1628) Colonel Forbes, a Scotch laird
(ancestor of Lord Granard), who had come to Ireland in 1620, with
his clan, to quell disturbances, appeared as a “discoverer.” Forbes
had been rewarded for past services with a baronetcy and grants of
land in Leitrim and Longford. Undiscouraged by former failures, he
brought the Wakeman Patents anew under the eye of Charles I.—probably
reckoning that Buckingham’s death had banished the chief obstacle to
justice.
Forbes’s petition was referred to the Commissioners for Irish Causes
in London, and they reported favourably on it to the King. Falkland
was ordered by his Majesty to recover the property for the Crown and
to confer on Forbes one-third of the Ulster Fisheries with a gift of
£300.
By this time, however, the Deputy was plunged in the throes of a
scandal springing from his own misdeeds. He had promoted the attempt
to seize the estate of the last Gaelic Chief, O’Byrne of Wicklow,
and dared not suffer his assistants to be impeached for former
wrongdoing. To allow Forbes to take the lid off the cauldron in
which the hell-broth of the previous reign lay simmering was not
Falkland’s notion of statecraft. The new “discovery” was no more to
him than that of Sir William Power or Sir James Balfour, and less
than that of the Exchequer Barons. Possibly he quieted Forbes with
the gift of £300, for the “discoverer” went abroad soon afterwards
and never returned, being killed in a duel in Hamburg in 1632. Still
his shipping-off did not benefit Falkland, whose agony was about
to begin. The eyes of England, as well as Ireland, were fastened
on his treatment of the O’Byrnes, and both kingdoms resounded with
rumour against him. Throughout two reigns and three Deputyships the
persecution of the O’Byrnes lasted. It comprised the whole art and
mystery of Patent-shuffling and confiscation. To understand the
story is to understand the methods and policy of Chichester and his
successors. It is the Southern counterpart of the Ulster tragedy.
The reasons which impelled the Northern Lords—O’Neill, O’Donnell,
and Maguire—to go into exile can best be realised by studying the
doom of the Wicklow chief who held his ground. Carte (an English
Protestant historian), writing in 1736, summarises the case as “very
extraordinary, and contains in it such a scene of iniquity and
cruelty that, considered in all its circumstances, it is scarce to be
paralleled in any age or country.” Since then, Carte’s disclosures
have been supplemented by State papers and other records which
furnish dates and details that he lacked. They confirm the judgment
on his work passed by Dr. Johnson, who styled it “that book of
authority.” Carte’s narrative largely follows the “Remonstrance”
lodged on behalf of the O’Byrnes, which fails to disentangle the
parts played by Chichester, by St. John, and by Falkland, but mingles
all together. In the following condensed account the action taken by
each Deputy is separately shown, while needful particulars are added
from the State Papers and Patent Rolls.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LORD FALKLAND’S SHAME.
The harrying of the O’Byrnes under Chichester was largely carried
out through Sir William Parsons, his Surveyor-General—a seasoned and
hardy pillager. Parsons was a Commissioner at Limavady in 1609, when
the inquisition which “found” the Bann for Sir Arthur to forestall
the Londoners was concocted. In 1621 St. John nominated him to take
“office” for the fabrication of the “Carrickfergus” Patent which
abstracted the non-tidal Bann from the Corporation. He was the chief
author of the Antrim inquisition of 12th July, 1605, which “found”
that the King owned the “pool” of Lough Neagh “towards Claneboy.”
For twenty years Parsons’ leisure had been devoted to trying to
rob Felim O’Byrne, who stood by the Crown in trying times, despite
the slogans of O’Neill and others to “rise out.” O’Byrne’s father
(fighting Feagh MacHugh) had been made prisoner, and his head spiked
over the Tower of Dublin Castle. His mother (Rose O’Toole) was
convicted of treason and sentenced to be burnt on the 27th May, 1595.
Queen Elizabeth, however, in 1598 ordered Felim Patents of his estate
as a reward for good service, and issued a “general pardon” to him
and his helpers on the 3rd March, 1603. James I. on 16th September,
1603, in his “instructions for Ireland,” commanded that O’Byrne’s
“country” be given to Felim according to such limitations as the Lord
Lieutenant should prescribe. Nevertheless Sir Richard Graham, one of
the Commanders at the victory of Kinsale, obstructed the issue of any
Patent, and got two “offices” taken by Parsons as Surveyor-General
on the 14th March, 1604, to try to oust Felim altogether. These
inquisitions—strive as they might—went in favour of O’Byrne, and
on 26th March, 1606, he received a Patent. His territory was set
down (by the usual trick of diminishing coveted land) at twelve
thousand acres, exclusive of bog, wood, and mountain. It included
the districts of Ranelagh and Cosha in Co. Wicklow, and the owner’s
proved loyalty was certified by Devonshire. A fortnight after the
date of Felim’s Patent, Devonshire died, but for some years O’Byrne
was left in peace. Then came the Ulster Plantation and the dispersal
of its Chiefs. When the North was crushed Chichester, in spite of
Royal Letters and “offices,” authorised Graham to seize part of Cosha
for himself.
Knowing to what this must lead, O’Byrne petitioned the English Privy
Council for justice. An Inquiry was ordered, and Graham thereat
contended (in the teeth of English policy) that the clan-lands
belonged to the kerns as freeholders, and not to the Chief. The
Commissioners scouted this doctrine and reported in Felim’s favour.
To hold otherwise would have knocked on the head the Tudor system
of vesting the tribal territories in the Chiefs and then voiding
their Patents so that escheats might be easily obtained. Sir Richard
Graham, smarting under defeat, and doubtless primed by Chichester
(although he had now ceased to be Deputy), sent his son to London
to bribe Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, to influence his
Majesty to disregard the Commissioners’ report.
The Earl (afterwards Duke) of Richmond, another favourite, was
procured to crave fair play for O’Byrne. The strife at the Council
table between the courtiers grew so high that the King allowed them
each to name two Commissioners to re-try the case. This was unjust to
Felim, who had already proved his right twice. Still he had to take
such mercy as he could buy. Mr. Hadsor and Sir Francis Annesley were
on this Commission, and Hadsor spoke Gaelic.
When the third hearing was opened, Parsons came forward to confirm
Graham’s story that the clan-lands were those of freeholders and were
not O’Byrne’s. He produced a book written out by himself to prove
it, but O’Byrne demolished the invention by giving in evidence the
“inquisitions” previously taken under Parsons’ hand. These certified
the Chief’s ownership, and proved that the “book” was trumped up.
Unabashed, Parsons and Graham fell back on the shift practised by
Sir John Davies in 1607 at the trial of O’Cahan v. O’Neill. They
reshuffled the cards and argued that the lands belonged to neither
disputant, but had escheated to the Crown on the death in rebellion
of Feagh MacHugh.
In England no escheat without trial and no post-mortem attainder
could take place unless Statute authorised it in a special case.
There an attainder after death was not tolerated, even against Jack
Cade (an Irishman), but Anglo-Irish lawyers disregarded everything
that tempered a violent prerogative. Therefore, although both King
James and Queen Elizabeth had granted the estate to Felim, and
Graham’s pretensions were exploded, the Commissioners adjourned the
Inquiry.
It was probably in connection with a previous investigation that
the “Egmont MSS.” record, under date 20th November, 1612, that Sir
Richard and Thomas Graham were fined and imprisoned for disturbing a
Commission which sat at Imaal, Co. Wicklow, to inquire into concealed
lands of the Crown. They beat the witnesses, calling them “a company
of garron-stealers and thieves,” threatened Peter Delahyde, one of
his Majesty’s counsel, and drew swords on a gentleman who rebuked
them. Years were now wasted over the dispute, and in 1616 St. John
succeeded Chichester. Parsons asked the new Deputy to appoint himself
and other choice spirits to inquire on behalf of the Crown into the
alleged escheat. St. John, as became a pupil of Chichester, cheerily
agreed, and on the 4th July, 1616, Parsons made a “return” declaring
that O’Byrne’s lands were the inheritance of Feagh MacHugh killed in
rebellion.
This naked statement was true, but not the whole truth. Its
half-truth was equivalent to a finding that the property had
escheated to the Crown in spite of the Royal Letters of Elizabeth
and James recognising Felim. Zeal for the Crown was the pretext
for Parsons’ inquisition; but once an escheat was declared the
King’s interest sank out of sight and Graham was empowered to
seize O’Byrne’s estate for himself. Once more the Chief appealed
to England. There justice was slow, far off, and dear; but he got
it; and on the 4th November, 1616, Felim obtained a King’s Letter
requiring St. John to regrant him the lands. This command was
flagrantly disobeyed. Piety was the badge of all plunderers, and
Graham had promised to endow two churches in Cosha to spread the
Lutheran gospel. Such love for religion, pure and undefiled, moved
St. John on the 24th February, 1617, to give him a Patent for Cosha.
Again Felim resorted to London, and again a fresh Commission was
issued to do him right. The new Commissioners, on the 17th December,
1617, confirmed O’Byrne’s title, but with dogged tenacity Graham
got St. John to appoint judges to re-hear the dispute. The struggle
seemed unending, and although evidence was taken afresh by the
judges they dared not announce a conclusion either way. On the 23rd
January, 1618, St. John transmitted their notes to London and asked
for directions. Delay and expense provoked a compromise, and Felim by
a new order was restored to three-fourths of his lands, but Graham’s
piety in purveying a brace of churches for Cosha was rewarded by
one-fourth. To leave O’Byrne insecure, no fresh Patent was issued to
him; and soon afterwards Lord Falkland became Deputy.
Parsons was now promoted head of the Court of Wards and
Receiver-General, but he remained as of yore a-swoop for prey.
The plot against the O’Byrnes was revived. Felim, being the only
Chief left in Erin, was treated as a blot on the landscape, and in
1622 Falkland reported him to the Privy Council as an ill-disposed
person. He owned too big a property to be allowed to remain in his
mountains undisturbed. The reply to the Deputy from England, however,
discouraged attack. The “Spanish marriage” was at that moment being
negotiated by Buckingham, and Falkland learnt that, if the heir to
the throne were to wed a Catholic, a fresh persecution of his bride’s
co-religionists might appear untimely. When the match with Spain was
broken off in 1623 he took a freer hand.
On the 27th August, 1624, he authorised Parsons to hold a Commission
to examine O’Byrne’s title, as if it were a new problem troubling the
sages of the law. The Surveyor-General held “office,” and returned
a finding that Felim’s estate had been forfeited by his father’s
rebellion and death—ignoring both grants and pardons from King James
and Queen Elizabeth. Falkland, ablaze for law and order, wrote to
the Privy Council on the 25th March, 1625, asking them to consider
“how vain a thing it is to suppose to content Felim and his sons
by indulgently suspending the taking of the lands in his country.”
The English authorities gave this presentation of the equities no
countenance, and King James, in one of the last dispatches before
his death (March, 1625), begged Falkland “to maintain inviolable the
credit of his great office.”
Yet Charles I. was not a year on the Throne when the Deputy engaged
himself in a still more cruel plot to uproot the O’Byrnes.
On the 13th March, 1626, he ordered the eldest and youngest of
Felim’s sons, Brian and Turlough, whom he described as “the most
civilly bred of all his sons,” to be arrested as “dangerous
conspirators.” They were kept prisoners in Dublin Castle for five
months; and all the enginery of the State was employed to suborn
witnesses against them. Neighbours were seized and subjected to
torture. One Archer “was put naked on a burning gridiron and burnt
with gunpowder under his buttocks and flanks, and at last suffered
the strapado till he was forced to accuse the brothers.” Two poor
wretches named Kavanagh yielded on the rack and consented to swear
falsely; but, when their agonies ceased, they retracted. For this
they were sentenced to death, and were offered “pardon” if they would
repeat the “evidence” in court. Their constancy remained unshaken,
and both were hanged. This shortage of perjurers led to a crisis.
“True bills” on which Brian and Turlough could be arraigned had to
be “found” by a Grand Jury. Being Wicklowmen, the brothers were
ordered for trial to another venue. Carlow was as illegal as any, but
the Grand Jurors there twice declined to find “true bills.” Twice
were they brought up in batches to the Star Chamber in Dublin and
fined, but twice they refused to yield. They would not “find” for any
fining. Perhaps they recalled the reward meted out to the foreman
of the Lifford Grand Jury, Sir Cahir O’Doherty, for declaring Hugh
O’Neill an “outlaw” twenty years earlier. Thanks to their obstinacy,
the brothers were set free, and Brian O’Byrne sailed in triumph for
England. There he was received at Court, and on the 29th August,
1627, he secured two fresh Letters from Charles I. recognising the
family title.
Thus the warrants of three British Sovereigns—Elizabeth, James, and
Charles—affirmed their rights. Still Falkland entertained no idea of
being hindered by royal stumbling-blocks. The only effect of Brian’s
success on his mind was to resolve him to a fiercer vendetta. This
time he proceeded on a grand scale, and on the 2nd November, 1627,
ordered Felim with his five sons (including Brian and Turlough) to
be committed to prison in Dublin Castle. There they were loaded with
irons, denied food for a long period, and were deprived of visits.
The crime of which they were accused was that they had relieved a
banished man named Kavanagh who returned home before his seven years
of deportation had run out. This was true, but the man was unknown
to them. Kavanagh had never been convicted, nor was he outlawed,
and hospitality was merely given to a passing stranger. This was no
offence, although it might be docketed in the twentieth century as
“hostile association.”
Falkland, having now the whole family in his clutches, prepared the
finishing stroke. On the 5th July, 1628, he represented to Charles I.
how “absolutely inconvenient” it would be to allow the O’Byrnes to
hold “the territory of Ranelagh.” They were already bereft of Cosha,
and on 22nd July, 1628, he began taking depositions against them,
in secret signed with his own hand—with Sir William Graham (son to
Richard) as Gaelic interpreter. A week later, without waiting for any
reply or authority from his Majesty, or procuring their attainder,
the Deputy proceeded to distribute the remainder of O’Byrne’s estate
piecemeal amongst his confederates.
Seven Patents for Ranelagh (unsupported by any King’s Letter)
were issued by Falkland to his subordinates in August, 1628. The
recipients were Sir William Parsons, Sir William Graham (the
translator), Lord Docwra, Lord Esmond, Sir Roger Jones (the
“rascal’s” son, afterwards Lord Ranelagh), Sir Thomas Stockdale, and
Lord Chancellor Loftus. The last-named, although an enemy of the
Deputy, had as Lord Chancellor to be given a morsel, to keep his
mouth shut, and consent to apply the Great Seal to the parchments of
the other six.
That the Patents were without Royal sanction is clinched by the
answer the King gave on the 4th September, 1628, to Falkland’s
dispatch of the 5th July. Therein Charles I. tells him, after the
Patents had been issued: “It is our pleasure that you shall set down
your further opinions precisely what is the best course to be taken
for the settling of those lands,” and he promised then to “declare
his resolution touching the same.” A month previously the Patents
had been distributed amongst the Seven Champions of Law and Order.
Having stolen the property of the O’Byrnes, Falkland next proceeded
to concert measures to do away with the family altogether.
In August, 1628 (the month in which the Patents were sealed) the
Chief and his sons were arraigned at Wicklow. Warned by the Carlow
fiasco, Parsons saw to it that the Grand Jurors should be men having
no qualification to serve. He mustered a faction of stalwarts in
Wicklow Courthouse as a counterfeit Grand Jury, who readily found
“True Bills” against the prisoners. Their guilt, however, had still
to be proved before a Petit Jury; so the trial was put off, and
everyone likely to be a witness for them was seized under martial law
and put on the rack, or hanged.
These oppressions, tortures, and captivities shocked the country,
and the wail of the Clansmen arose on the westering winds. Its echo
was heard even in England. Wherefore, Sir Francis Annesley (Lord
Mountnorris), who had acted as one of the Commissioners in the
dispute raised by Sir Richard Graham, as to Felim’s title, flamed
up against Falkland. Annesley had assented to the Patent-outrage
at Carrickfergus in 1621 in behoof of Chichester, but the Wicklow
tragedy was too black for him. Largely by his influence a Royal
Warrant of unusual peremptoriness was dispatched to Dublin on the 3rd
October, 1628. It ordered the suspension of all proceedings against
the O’Byrnes, and commanded the Deputy not to reply, lest he should
make correspondence an excuse for delay. It appointed a Commission
consisting of the Protestant Primate—Ussher; the Protestant
Archbishop of Dublin—Bulkeley; Lord Chancellor Loftus; the Chief
Justice (Sir George Shurley), and Sir Arthur Savage, Vice-Treasurer,
to inquire into the case. Felim, however, was first declared by
the Privy Council to be “not only unblamable, but to have been of
extraordinary obedience.” The Duke of Buckingham’s assassination in
the previous August had laid a powerful opponent low.
The Commissioners sat in Dublin for a fortnight in November and
December, 1628, and took the depositions of 37 witnesses. They probed
no point of title and confined themselves to the criminal charge; but
in the result the O’Byrnes were fully exonerated, and were restored
to liberty after a close confinement of 14 months. This blow at
oppression resounded through the land; but it came too late to undo
the Patents of August, 1628. The plunder of Felim, after a struggle
lasting a quarter of a century, had been consummated. He died within
a year of his release. His wife, heartbroken by the action of
Parsons’ Grand Jury, which she supposed meant destruction for her
sons as well as her husband, perished within two days of its finding.
By order of Falkland her body was dug up and carried away three
weeks after its burial in Wicklow Churchyard. The local vicar, Fox,
attended to the exhumation, and the remains were removed to Rathdrum.
There they were again disturbed, but after identification “the State”
allowed the earth to be closed over the corpse. This indignity has
never been explained or denied.
Falkland, in a letter to the Privy Council (8th December, 1628)
tried to excuse his courses against the family, but his dispatch
makes sorry reading. It consists of abuse of the Royal Commissioners
(except the Primate and Chief Justice), and of attacks on the
reputation of Felim. The father of the gallant who fell at Newbury
attempts no reply to any of the evidence taken by the Commission as
to the arrests and cruelties. That remains unanswered to this day.
In April, 1629, Falkland was recalled by the unanimous voice of the
Privy Council. He wrote to Charles I. on the 13th April, 1629:—“I
hear that the question of Felim is to be made the ground of my recall
owing to the machinations of the Chancellor and Commissioners. It is
a disgrace to your Royal Justice that I should be recalled before
being heard in my defence.” The King did not reply. In July, 1629,
the Lord Chancellor (Loftus) and Lord Cork were ordered to “take up
the Sword” and act in his place.
Falkland remained in Dublin for several months, and the spirit which
beset him burns fiercely through his final dispatches. He threatened
Sir Francis Annesley with the Star Chamber for his “undutiful
contempt” in saving Felim. He sued Sir Arthur Savage for alleged
debt; and his warning to the English Secretary of State gleams with
a comic touch:—“I pray you think of the results that will follow if
Patents (which Gondomar[1] did term the common faith) be overridden.
Your fortune rests on the sanctity of such Patents.”
He returned to England not hopelessly disgraced, for he was appointed
to the Privy Council; and the King allowed him to name a Committee
of that body in November, 1629, to investigate his conduct. If the
Committee reached any conclusions or took any evidence they have been
withheld from the world. On the 12th November, 1629, he boastfully
wrote to Primate Ussher that at Court there was “not one wry look in
any creature towards me.”
Falkland’s daughter married Sir Terence O’Dempsey, who was also
implicated in the conspiracy to strip the O’Byrnes. In 1631 the
ex-Deputy’s retirement was soothed by O’Dempsey’s being translated
into “Lord Glenmalire.”
The King having ridded Ireland of Falkland, thought Deputies a trifle
out of fashion. So Lord Cork and Chancellor Loftus were allowed to
govern the country for nearly four years as “Justices.” In that
interval their own Patents, at least, were safe from scrutiny. Lord
Cork sometimes scattered gems of wisdom through his correspondence
as lustrous as Falkland’s. In 1631 he sighed:—“This place is not a
comfortable one unless a man consoles himself by making a private
fortune—as has been the custom of my predecessors.”
Under Strafford, in 1639, a Statute was passed whereby the “Birns
Country” with “Ranelagh, Cosha, Shillela and Vartry” were declared
the King’s. This was done, apparently, for the purpose of enabling
valid Patents to be issued. By this arrangement some of the O’Byrnes
must have recovered patches of their estate, as they paid the Crown
£17,000 for “remedy of Defective Title.” Ere the century ended
Cromwellian and Williamite confiscations made this investment a
barren one for the family.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Spanish Ambassador to London.
CHAPTER XIX.
STRAFFORD, PATENT-BREAKER.
When Lord Falkland left Ireland, the question of the validity of the
Wakeman grants was re-opened under the rule of the Lords Justices.
In 1630 a “case” was submitted to Sir Robert Oglethorpe, one of the
Barons of the Exchequer, who in 1623 had denounced their origin.
Oglethorpe retired in 1624 from his position in Dublin as judge
(probably owing to his uncomfortable uprightness in Patent matters);
and resumed his practice at the Bar in London. The “case” he received
was incomplete, and its framer is unknown, but though omitting much,
it is startling enough. It sets out that five Patents had been
issued on foot of Wakeman’s Letter for £100, “in value surmounting
£4,000 per annum,” including one for the fishery of the Bann. It
foreshadowed that further grants were in contemplation, and asked the
ex-Judge for his opinion as a lawyer if the King could have all of
them declared void by legal process?
Oglethorpe’s reply shows that he and the other Exchequer Barons
ruled against the Wakeman Patents in 1623, and that this decision
“was certified to the Lord Deputy (Falkland) upon referment from
his late Majesty.” He again branded them with “fraud” and “deceit,”
and advised that this taint would “extend to many Letters Patent in
Ireland”; for, quoth he, “this is a great and general case.”
When this “opinion” was delivered Lord Cork, prince of
Patent-mongers, wielded the Sword of State with Chancellor Loftus,
and of course no action was taken. In 1632 Charles I. made up his
mind to replace both Lords Justices; and in the following year
there arrived in Dublin a Viceroy less dishonest than Ireland had
known for some time. This was Wentworth, Lord Strafford. Whatever
his faults, the new Lord Lieutenant hunted down those who had preyed
on the country since Elizabeth’s reign, and in the eight years he
served as Viceroy he earned the hatred of every confiscator. Those
whose avarice he checked or penalised, including Patentees like the
Earl of Cork and Sir John Clotworthy, were Strafford’s chief enemies.
When he perished on the scaffold, their self-interested testimony
spoke his doom. Many of his processes were, of course, expedients to
provide revenue for the King in order to dispense with the summoning
of Parliament. Others were well-grounded investigations to recover
property of which the Crown had been cozened.
Strafford had to deal, not only with lawless Patents, but with
Patents which, if lawful, conveyed, in acreage and value, lands
largely in excess of what the King had authorised. He was not three
months in Dublin before he obtained an insight into the ways of
his predecessors. On the 23rd October, 1633, he reported that, “in
all the Plantations, the Crown had sustained shameful injury, by
passing in truth ten times the quantities of lands expressed in their
Patents, and reserving throughout base tenures in soccage.” As to
those who “held the Sword” before him, he remarked:—
“The late Lord Chichester had lands to the value of £10,000 in one
gift; and Lord Falkland £10,000 in money at once.” His Chaplain
(afterwards Bishop) Bramhall, wrote to Archbishop Laud five years
later:—“I think I should soon be able to show that the Crown has
been defrauded of many appropriations, for here it hath been usual
... upon a Letter for £20 to pass £30 or £40 ... to pass that for
nothing, in time of peace, which was found to have been worth
little or nothing in time of war; and to take up appropriations as
gentlemen do waifs in England.” These comments reveal only a surface
acquaintance with the misdeeds practised against the Crown by its
trusted servants.
In the year after Strafford’s arrival he provided a remedy for
some of the evils which corroded justice by causing Acts to be
passed extending the “Statute of Uses” to Ireland, and clothing
the Commissioners for Defective Titles with far-reaching powers.
The first Act made secret conveyances impossible; and the second
authorised the Commissioners to issue Patents which should stand good
against the Crown, even if wrongfully obtained or corruptly enlarged,
provided fines were paid. The Government was in debt; and, in order
to raise cash, many grants, new and old, were assailed. Fines were
then exacted as the price of indefeasible Patents.
In 1635, when the Star Chamber at Westminster declared the Charter
of the London Corporation forfeit, Strafford’s eye detected an
unforeseen consequence. The Londoners, being compelled to surrender
the Bann and the rest of their Irish estates, were left burdened with
a rent of £100 a year to the Chichesters for Lough Neagh under the
lease of 1622. Deprived of the river, Lough Neagh became useless to
them; and they probably petitioned the Crown for relief. Strafford
then caused the Chichester Patents to be scrutinised, and the
misdeeds of his predecessor came to light. Yet he dealt not ungently
with the dead peer’s heirs. Instead of re-seizing the whole of their
ill-gotten possessions, he confined himself to demanding a surrender
of Lough Neagh. At the outset the Chichesters resisted, but the
stream of authority against the validity of their grants soon swelled
to a torrent. Strafford knew that constant protests under two reigns
had been lodged against them.
Their base origin in 1603-4, Sir James Balfour’s inquiry of 1618,
Allen’s repugnant findings at Derry and Carrickfergus in 1621, the
ruling of the Exchequer Barons in 1623, the “discovery” of Sir
William Power in 1628, and the order of Charles I. on Colonel
Forbes’s petition in the same year, covered them with discredit. In
1630 the “opinion” of ex-Baron Oglethorpe openly alleged “fraud”; and
Strafford, backed by these accumulated condemnations, took action.
He first caused an inquisition to be held at Wicklow in 1636,
to impeach one of the Wakeman grants. The result was that lands
confiscated from the O’Tooles, which had been patented to Hamilton,
were declared re-vested in the Crown. Grants springing from Thomas
Irelande’s Letter (on which the title to Lough Neagh rested) evoked
no greater respect. After the death of Lord Chichester, his heir did
not even rely on the Patents of the fishery. For in 1625 Edward Lord
Chichester (the second in succession) besought Charles I. to appoint
his son Arthur (afterwords Lord Donegall) “Admiral and Commander of
Lough Neagh” at a salary of £30 6s. 8d., and to give him a “licence”
to fish in the Lough and the Bann. What owner would petition the
Crown for a “licence” to enjoy his own fishery?
Such a request amounted to an admission that the Patents of Lough
Neagh to Hamilton in 1606, to Bassett in 1608, and to Lord Chichester
in 1621 were waste paper, and that the hope of the family lay in
reviving the “life-estate” annexed to the quasi-military “command”
created by the Patent of 1604. It was at least possible for them to
argue that some germ of legality attached to that Patent, yet Charles
I. never granted the request.
Strafford was unaware of any claim by the family to the Bann; but was
resolute to enforce the surrender of Lough Neagh. The fact that since
1622 the Londoners had paid £100 per annum for it to the Chichesters,
and would have continued to do so if the Star Chamber had not
deprived them of the Bann, had to be taken into account. He made up
for the loss by offering an attractive compensation. He proposed
to allow Edward Lord Chichester to take out a fresh Patent for all
his uncle’s acquisitions minus Lough Neagh—and this under the new
Act would be valid for all time against the Crown. The family would
thereby be forever quieted in the enjoyment of rich territories which
had been stolen from the natives thirty years earlier. Negotiations
on this basis were conducted through the Commissioners for Defective
Titles, and lasted some years.
The records of that body were housed near Dublin Castle, and perished
by fire in 1711; but from the “memorials” enrolled in Chancery the
main story can be traced.
A King’s Letter of the 24th September, 1638, was obtained by the
Commissioners to authorise them to accept the surrender. No mention
was made of the Bann, for no one regarded it as Chichester’s. The
King’s Letter cast doubt even on his right to Lough Neagh, and
sarcastically narrates that his Majesty had been informed that the
fishing and soil thereof were “granted away” by Letters Patent to the
late Lord Chichester, but were found “so commodious for upholding the
fishing of the Bann that the London Corporation were necessitated to
farm the same at £100 a year—which fishing of the Bann is now come
to our hands.” Short work was thus made of the 1621 Patent and of
Allen’s “finding” at Carrickfergus. The Letter further recited that
Viscount Chichester had compounded for a surrender of Lough Neagh in
consideration of £40 a year; and that this sum could be deducted from
the rent payable to the Crown under a new Patent. The Chichesters
were to have liberty to take salmon for domestic use, and to retain
the eel-weirs at Toome, subject to royal regulations.
On the 7th December, 1638, the Commissioners made an “Order of
Composition” embodying these terms, but the family evidently
contended that the allowance of £40 a year was not a fair set-off
for the £100 paid by the Londoners. Brisk haggling followed, and at
length Strafford agreed to an amended “Order of Composition,” dated
the 19th September, 1639. This raised the £40 annual allowance to
£60, but all privileges of fishing were withdrawn. The Chichesters
agreed. This amendment brought their rent under the proposed new
Patent to within £2 16s. 6d. of that previously paid, and the fine
was fixed at £467 17s. 6d.
An indefeasible Patent was now to be granted them, and with this
bargain they and Strafford were satisfied. The arrangement dealt a
deathstroke at the oft-challenged title of the Devonians to the great
Ulster fishery. It submerged the Patent of 1604 with those of 1606,
1608, and 1621 in a common condemnation.
When the terms of the surrender came to be drawn up in 1639, although
the King’s Letter mentioned Lough Neagh only, Strafford required that
the Bann should be also renounced, and this was agreed to. Before he
finally left Ireland the new Patent was not ready. It was sealed in
September, 1640, by his Deputy, Wandesforde, after his departure.
Everything was accepted by the Chichesters without a murmur. Neither
on Strafford’s impeachment at Westminster in 1641 nor when the
Planters in the Dublin Parliament impeached his chaplain, Bramhall,
did they join in hounding him down.
Edward Lord Chichester then sat in the Irish House of Lords, and
his son, Sir Arthur, in the Irish Lower House; but they never took
the side of Strafford’s enemies, although both assemblies were
worked upon by Sir John Clotworthy and the Earl of Cork to purvey
testimony against him. This fact bears vitally on future events in
view of allegations made in 1661 by Sir Arthur (then Lord Donegall)
to befool Charles II. into making him a regrant of Lough Neagh and
the Bann. Sir John Clotworthy, who was Pym’s instrument in promoting
Strafford’s impeachment, sat with Sir Arthur in Dublin as member for
Antrim; and, if the Chichesters had a grievance against the Lord
Lieutenant, Clotworthy would not fail to refer to it in his evidence,
even if the family kept silence. The report of Strafford’s trial
proves that, while Clotworthy, Lord Cork, and others loudly testified
against him, no complaint of injustice on Chichester’s behalf was
made. This attitude amounted to a confession that the fisheries which
had been wrongly come by were rightly taken away.
Still, amidst the uncertainties of the times, the family were ready
to seize upon any chance that presented itself to win them back.
Departing from an otherwise universal practice, they left the new
Patent unenrolled, although the Crown at once enrolled the surrender.
Their omission was the more striking because the Patent was the
only unimpeachable evidence of title to their estates which they
possessed. Neglect could not be imputed as the reason for it. Their
calculation evidently was that, by keeping the terms of the Patent
secret, they might by some turn of fortune be enabled to recapture
the fisheries without the world knowing that they had been forced to
yield them up.
Nor was this a far-fetched expectation in those days, as, even if
the surrender became public, everyone knew that a surrender was not
an unusual prelude to a regrant. No one, therefore, could affirm,
as long as the Patent could not be inspected, that they had no
claim to Lough Neagh or the Bann. Non-enrolment hid its scope from
inquirers, and was part of a design to attempt the recovery of the
coveted waters whenever occasion offered. Strafford’s execution, and
the untimely death of Wandesforde, who perished in grief at the Lord
Lieutenant’s fate, helped their plans. Then sudden as a lightning
flash to sear the meshes of their webs broke the Ulster Rebellion of
October, 1641.
Sir Arthur Chichester was at that time Governor of Carrickfergus, and
his garrison there furnished the soldiers who massacred his Catholic
tenants (with their women and children) by night in Island Magee.
Whether this bloody business preceded the insurrection of 1641 and
provoked it, or was a reprisal following thereon, is a moot point
between the partisans of the Planters and those of the expelled
natives. The first attempt at its “history” by Chichester’s muse laid
the blame on Scottish regiments. It was soon proved that no Scotch
soldiers landed in Ulster till after January, 1642, the date assigned
for the crime by the Settlers. “January” was too hurriedly chosen by
the apologists for slaughter, and this, perhaps, because the Governor
of Carrickfergus would have been able to show that he was then
somewhere else.
When the time of the arrival of the Scotch regiments was established
it was too late to change “January” to another month. Sir Arthur
himself remained mute. He offered no defence or explanation for the
crime, nor announced that any of the garrison were punished, or even
admonished. As to whether he was a man capable of perverting dates or
inspiring falsehoods his conduct in other fields of enterprise may
assist to a conclusion. One test of his character in this respect is
supplied by the documents and statements he put forward to regain the
fisheries when kingly power was re-established. If he made a false
case concerning the title to real estate he may well have devised
excuses to escape the blame of blood-guiltiness for the killing of
his serfs.
Whenever massacre benefited the Planters enough murderers always
survived to inspire pamphleteers and historians with their version
of the “facts.” Native imitators generally ended their activities on
the gallows, and their epitaphs are framed by their executioners.
In tracing such incidents of conquest—from Gaul to Mexico—it is
inevitable that the earliest and best opportunities for penmanship
and “impression” should be always enjoyed by the triumphant faction.
That the rebellion of 1641 entailed sufferings on many Planters as
severe as those endured by the natives whom they had driven out a
generation earlier is beyond question. As the movement spread, the
clansmen of the O’Neills, O’Dohertys, O’Cahans, O’Donnells, and
Maguires retook their patrimonies, and again ate fish on Fridays
without paying toll to strangers. The South then took fire, and
England, having her own rebellion on hand, lost control over the
greater part of Ireland for a dozen years.
Not until 1653, when Cromwell, in command of the English rebels,
bloodily ended the struggle, was the country subdued. Then the
clearances of the Ulster Plantation were extended to Leinster and
Munster. “Commonwealth” ordinances proclaimed a new “settlement.”
James I. aimed at planting a province. The Ironsides applotted a
kingdom. One of the Statutes of the Long Parliament assured the
Irish, in an amiable preamble, that “it was not intended to extirpate
their nation as a whole.” Thanks to this moderation, only three
of the four provinces were parcelled out among the soldiers, and
the bracing crags and bogs of Connacht were left largely to the
Catholics. Still Oliver’s Plantation, though thorough, did not meet
with complete success. It withered with the despotism that begot it.
During his sway a strange chapter was added to the story of the
Northern waters.
CHAPTER XX.
THE PURITAN SCRIVENERS.
In February, 1654, the London Corporation petitioned Cromwell to be
restored to their Irish estates. The Protector readily consented.
Indeed, his kingly victim had promised in 1641 to cancel the
confiscations of the Star Chamber. A Commonwealth Patent regranting
everything that had been seized from the City by Charles I. was
enrolled at Westminster and Dublin in March, 1657. The Londoners
retook possession beforehand, and once more became masters of the
Bann.
Hardly were they reinstated when they fell victims to a second
parchment-plot to filch the river away. This time it was contrived
not by the Chichesters but by one of their prayerful pupils, Sir
John Clotworthy. That adventurer (mentioned already as Pym’s tool in
compassing the death of Strafford) was son to an old servitor of the
“great Deputy,” Sir Hugh Clotworthy, who came to Ireland during the
Elizabethan wars, and was appointed “Captain of the Boats” on Lough
Neagh. In 1605 Hugh received from Chichester a grant of the lands of
Massereene, and was afterwards knighted by him. In 1618 Sir Hugh was
awarded a pension of 6s. 8d. a day for the joint lives of himself and
his son, John, then not twelve years old.
Much history turns on this episode. Pensions for joint lives had just
been prohibited by royal order, and Sir Hugh’s salary as “Captain
of the Boats” was only £40 a year, while a pension of 6s. 8d. a day
comes to £121 13s. 4d. a year. Even in Stuart days such a job could
not stand. It took four years to unmask; and then, under pressure,
the pension was gracefully “surrendered.”
After Charles I. came to the throne, Sir Hugh took advantage of
the ignorance of the new Crown officials to ask for compensation
for the “loss” of the pension. Although he deserved the stocks for
having originally outwitted the Exchequer, the King in 1628 gave him
£700, with a promise that his son should be appointed to a “company
of horse.” Sir Hugh died in 1631; and, two years later, Sir John
petitioned for his “company of horse.” The flight of time, and the
changes in the personnel of the Government, had caused the case to
be forgotten, so Sir John invented a new version of the pension, and
kept back the fact that his father had received compensation for its
loss. His petition was not granted; and when Strafford became Lord
Lieutenant Sir John’s prayers ceased, for his political and religious
leanings were not on the royal side.
As a member of the Irish Parliament, Clotworthy now began to mark
himself out as a pugnacious Presbyterian. Hence Pym, and his backers
in the English House of Commons, caused him to be elected for the
pocket-borough of Malden, to abet their designs at Westminster
against Strafford. There he became so zealous that for years he was
an outstanding figure on all Committees manned by the anti-royalists.
He helped to bring Strafford and Archbishop Laud to the scaffold,
as well as his old school-fellow, Lord Maguire, and was of use to
Cromwell in smoothing his path to power. In time, of course, Sir
John met with the usual fate of the zealot, being expelled from the
House of Commons and accused of embezzling war-stores intended for
Ireland. In 1648 he fled to France; and, on venturing to return,
was imprisoned. Cromwell released him, and later on admitted him to
favour. To Clotworthy the saying is attributed that: “Religion should
be preached in Ireland with the sword in one hand and the Bible in
the other.”
When the wars ended, such a man found Oliver easy of approach, and he
revived the demand for his “pension.” He had received his “company
of horse,” and his father had pocketed £700 compensation; but,
being a sturdy beggar, he got his petition referred to two leading
Undertakers and friends, Lord Broghill (son of Lord Cork) and Colonel
Arthur Hill. In spite of their kindliness towards him, they found his
case too full of holes, and reported against it. On their advice the
Cromwellian Privy Council resolved on the 25th April, 1656, that no
claim for arrears of pension from the late King should be admitted.
This was a courteous way of disposing of Clotworthy’s “grievance,”
for they might have added that the pension was unlawful in its
origin, and that both he and his father had been compensated for its
loss. Yet, stale and untenable as Sir John’s pretensions were, his
persistence carried the day. He stood in no awe of the Commonwealth
Council; and, passing over its head, he appealed to his old friend
the Protector, who called for a fresh report. This was enough.
What were the terms of the report, or who made it, is unknown; but
on the 13th May, 1656, Cromwell cited it as a reason for awarding
compensation to Clotworthy. He surmounted the objections which
subordinates had raised by basing his decision, not merely on the
ground of extinguishing the “pension,” but of rewarding past services.
The reward took the form of a grant to Clotworthy of a lease of Lough
Neagh for 99 years. Doubtless he craved the Bann also; but that
was pledged to the City of London. A Signet Letter from Cromwell
(patterned on a King’s Letter) authorised an Irish Patent in Sir
John’s favour, at a rent to be settled by the Commonwealth Council in
Dublin. That body was composed of his own cronies; Cromwell’s son,
Henry, being chief of the Executive there. Irish grants were cheaply
bestowed at that epoch; and, if the Lord Protector had been minded
to give anyone a lease of the whole island, at a peppercorn rent, his
power to do so could not be gainsaid.
Clotworthy at once journeyed to Ireland with the Signet Letter; and
in July, 1656, presented it to Henry Cromwell. Instead of being
content with the valuable gift he had received, he began an intrigue
to enlarge it. In this he was abetted by the son of the great Puritan
and his Council, who showed themselves as corrupt as the worst
parasites of the murdered King. They fixed the rent on Lough Neagh at
£5 per annum for the first seven years, and £6 thereafter. Then they
conspired to extend the lease enormously beyond what Oliver bestowed.
The men who had taken off a King’s head to found a Commonwealth, and
who opened business with a psalm, leaned to all the vices which had
made the monarchy of the Stuarts odious.
The Republican Attorney-General for Ireland was a person named
Basil, who had come over to “plant” in Donegal some years earlier.
Basil’s good fame in his own country was scanty; and when the
House of Commons nominated him as escheator in Ireland the House
of Lords for years withheld their approval to his appointment. His
behaviour justified their forebodings. Taking Sir John Davies for
his model, Basil played towards Clotworthy the part Davies had acted
for Chichester. Untrammelled by supervision, he smuggled into Sir
John’s lease of Lough Neagh a grant of the fishery of the Bann, from
the Lough to the Salmon Leap at Coleraine. It was an exploit as
remarkable in a Republican as any theretofore wrought in the name of
a King.
Basil knew, of course, that the entire river was pledged to the
Londoners, as his predecessor had known it in 1609. But, just as
Davies abetted its capture by Chichester, so the Commonwealth
Attorney-General in 1656 made State policy subservient to sordid
private interest. Indeed the excuse could be invented for Davies,
when he betrayed his trust, that the bargain with the Corporation
was not then finally settled by the King. Basil, in 1656, knew that
it had been perfected by the Lord Protector, and that the Bann
was actually in the Londoners’ possession, when he conveyed it to
Clotworthy. Moreover, having drafted a fraudulent lease, he certified
that it was framed “according to the tenor of his Highness’s Letters
of the 13th May, 1656.”
Every man of the Dublin Cromwellian Executive—viz., Henry Cromwell,
R. Pepys, Miles Corbett, Robert Goodwin, and M. Thomlinson, signed
the lease. These were the saints who represented all that was godly
in a land “darkened by the mists of Popish superstition.” Of the
five, Pepys was Chief Justice, and Corbett Chief Baron. That they
subscribed with consenting minds, and not mechanically, sufficiently
appears. Oliver’s Letter, in granting Lough Neagh, asked them to
decide on the rent which the State was to receive for it. To carry
out the cheat as to the Bann they had to fix two separate rents, one
for the Lough and the other for the river. The Bann they set down at
£35 for the first seven years, and £44 thereafter, and this brought
home to them the fact that the river was seven times a more valuable
fishery than Lough Neagh. Yet their instructions never mentioned the
Bann. To complete the trick the Clerk of the Council, Thomas Herbert,
certified that he had “entered and examined” the documents on which
the lease was issued. Guilt, therefore, sat on the consciences of
all, for not only had they given away Lough Neagh for a song, but
they sacrificed without authority what on their own showing was seven
times more valuable. The Londoners deemed the Lough worth £100 a year
in 1622.
When the lease was enrolled the gang grew alarmed. Clotworthy,
therefore, got Henry Cromwell to apply to his father’s secretary in
London, John Thurloe, to cloak the fraud. In December, 1656, Henry
implored Thurloe to obtain from his father a fresh Signet Letter
sanctioning a grant which would include the Bann. Thurloe ignored
his supplications, and thus the hypocrites were left in the plight of
men who, to rob the City of London, had betrayed their master.
The Commonwealth Charter, which restored the estate of the
Corporation, including the Bann, was issued three months later, and
thus two repugnant grants came into existence. The Dublin junta kept
their secret to themselves. Thurloe also held his peace, and in the
following year Cromwell died. Thurloe, however, carefully preserved
the correspondence, and after the Restoration hid it behind the
ceiling of a garret in his chambers at Lincoln’s Inn, with other
Cromwellian literature. There it was found fifty years later—embalmed
in the odour of sanctity.
Cromwell’s death soon led to a flood of intrigue among his
Anglo-Irish retainers. Each was intent on asserting one great
principle—how best to hold on to the spoil with which confiscation
had endowed them. If Republicanism would secure this, they were
Republicans. If possession must be tempered by monarchy—then “Long
live Charles II.”
CHAPTER XXI.
REBELLION REWARDED.
The Irish Republicans quickly came to the conclusion that monarchical
principles possessed a virtue which afforded the best guarantee for
their interests. Their budding royalism was threatened with blight
from one quarter only—the exiled Irish soldiers who had fought for
Prince Charles at home and abroad. These unreasonables had to be
reckoned with, for Gaelic swordsmen, gentle and simple, formed part
of his bodyguard and influenced his decisions. He even sympathised
with their religion while his exile lasted, for the Duke of Ormonde
relates that he once found his Majesty secretly hearing Mass in
Brussels in a fit of lonely piety.
The Cromwellians, awake to these difficulties, and ready to jettison
any inconvenient doctrines which blocked their way, held a Convention
in Dublin in 1659-60, to debate “the situation.” First they seized
Dublin Castle from the weaklings who represented the tottering
Commonwealth, and next they imprisoned all Catholic loyalists who
could be laid hands on, to prevent their having any credit in
bringing back the King or earning his gratitude. Then they sent an
embassy to Brussels to propose conditions to his Majesty. Sir Arthur
Forbes (son of the “discoverer” of 1628) was their messenger, and on
his return Forbes reported hopefully to their spokesmen, Sir Charles
Coote and Lord Broghill (Boyle). On the 16th March, 1660, the exiled
King wrote engaging that “whatever Coote should promise and undertake
on his behalf (which it was in his power to perform) he would make
good.”
Clotworthy was a leading member of the cabal; and on the 30th March,
1660, he was nominated to proceed to Flanders to conclude the
negotiations. When he reached London, his journey was stayed, as
General Monck had won over Speaker Lenthal to his views, and the
royal cause was thriving without the aid of cross-Channel converts.
Sir John, therefore, remained in England to influence opinion against
attempts to disturb the arrangements of the Irish confiscators. King
Charles, on the eve of his return, issued from Breda a Declaration
securing in their estates those of his enemies who had not taken
part in his father’s execution. At the same moment he promised that
the Irish who had served him should be restored to their lands.
Unhappily, the pledge to the Irish was broken, while the bargain with
Coote was kept.
Much huxtering and hugger-mugger went on at Whitehall when the
King came back. A large subscription was raised among the wily
“Undertakers” to bribe his courtiers, and using this lubricant,
Clotworthy and his friends found easy access to the Throne. Their aim
was to ensure that the confiscations should be legalised, no matter
who might suffer. Charles summoned a Parliament for each of the Three
Kingdoms, but the Irish Executive (staffed with men of Cromwell’s
mind) found no difficulty in packing the Dublin House of Commons
with prayerful freebooters. The Restoration, which brought a joyful
change in England and Scotland, made none in Ireland, unless for the
worse. The loyalty and sufferings in exile of the King’s friends were
forgotten. The squalid attornment of his enemies was remembered and
rewarded.
Irish Cromwellianism after the Restoration remained organised and
formidable as before. It dominated the Government; and its mayors and
sheriffs returned to Parliament such men as they listed. Out of 260
members in the Lower House, only 64 represented counties—the rest
being sent up by hole-and-corner “Corporations” to which the natives
were not admitted. These phantom bodies (dowered with two members)
were manned by Ironsides who could hardly pronounce the names of
their billets. Indeed statutory power was soon afterwards taken to
replace the “barbarous and uncouth” Gaelic place-names (which limned
every lineament of the landscape) with sweet-sounding “Jonesboroughs”
and “Draperstowns.”
In the counties a bare handful of the inhabitants possessed the
franchise. The voting was a mere taking of “voices” in the sheriff’s
parlour. A “Legislature” constituted in this fashion consummated
in 1662-5 the confiscations which the Acts of “Settlement” and
“Explanation” enshrine. Lord Chancellor Eustace summed up the result
in a letter to the Duke of Ormonde:—“Those who fought against his
Majesty are to have the estates of those who fought for him.” The
King’s secretary, Nicholas, in a letter to Eustace expressed his
regret that the “soldiers” should command such influence in the new
Parliament. Still his Majesty yielded himself up to those who helped
to betray his father, declaring he was determined never to go “on his
travels” again.
In the island which had been the most faithful of the Three Kingdoms
to the Crown, Cromwellianism survived as hardily as in the days of
Oliver himself. A packed Parliament, a ruthless Executive, and a
venal judiciary made or declared the law to a prostrate people. In
England and Scotland the Royalists came into their own again. In
Ireland they were betrayed or plundered or forgotten.
The only clog on the Republican triumph was the King’s scruple
against allowing the leading regicides to retain their booty. Estates
in Ireland had been grabbed by Cromwell, Ireton, Ludlow, Bradshaw,
Corbett, Jones, Axtell, and others, whose hands reeked with the blood
of Charles I. These were declared forfeit; but their rightful owners
were not allowed to get them back. Over 111,000 acres in seventeen
counties, at a rent of £8,726 a year (which would now represent ten
times that amount), awaited disposal. To prevent their restitution
to the natives, it was slyly proposed to Charles II. that his dear
brother, the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), should take them
as a gift. James accepted the lands, and Charles consented—to the
disgrace of both. After that, no assailant of the doings of the
Dublin Parliament could lightly accuse it of unreasonableness to the
King.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE “FAMOUS PAPER.”
In July, 1660 (two months after the Restoration), Clotworthy learnt
that Sir Arthur Chichester, now Earl of Donegall, was travelling to
London to greet the new sovereign. Lord Donegall and his father had
fought for the royal cause as strongly as Sir John and his brother
had supported the usurpers. An earldom was conferred on Sir Arthur
in his father’s lifetime, at the request of the Duke of Ormonde,
for services certified to have been performed in Ulster when the
Scotch troops deserted Charles I. Lord Donegall was coming to town,
relying on Ormonde’s help and the King’s gratitude, to work for the
restitution of the fisheries surrendered to Strafford. Doubtless he
knew of Cromwell’s lease to Clotworthy, but he also knew that such
grants had become nullities. So, too, did Clotworthy, and a race
hotly contested began between them for time and favour.
On the 1st August, 1660, a frigate left Dublin by royal command
to fetch the Earl of Donegall to England. To forestall the enemy
Clotworthy presented a petition on the 6th August, 1660, praying
the King to confirm Basil’s lease. At the same moment the London
Corporation was moving for a royal charter to replace Cromwell’s.
Thus there were stirring around Whitehall three rival claimants
for the northern fisheries. Charles felt bound, as Cromwell did,
to respect the pledges made to the Corporation as to their Ulster
estate. He was largely a stranger to events in Ireland during
his exile; and was attended at Court for Irish affairs by Bishop
Bramhall, late of Derry, and formerly chaplain to Strafford.
Bramhall had followed Charles to the Continent, and exercised there
“curiously unepiscopal functions as a Royalist prize-agent.” To
him Clotworthy’s petition was referred; and, on the day it was
received, the Bishop reported in its favour, without making the
smallest inquiry. Such haste in an Episcopalian dignitary to help a
Presbyterian “malignant” shows how these Christians loved one another.
Sir John’s petition was a network of falsehoods. It re-hashed a
number of old fables about the long-lost “pension,” with a few new
ones for garnish. Beginning with a lie in point of date, it set
forth that Sir John had a pension of 6s. 8d. a day granted him by
Patent on the 2nd July, 1640. In 1640 Bramhall was Strafford’s
chaplain; and this romance cannot have imposed on him. Strafford
sailed from Ireland in April, 1640, to crush the Scotch rebellion,
knowing that Clotworthy was his bitter enemy. He left behind him as
Deputy a loving friend, Wandesforde, who was also Bramhall’s patron;
and Bramhall, of all men, was aware that Wandesforde would not
have sanctioned a pension to an opponent deep in intrigue with the
Parliamentarians to compass the Lord Lieutenant’s downfall. Besides
in 1640 Sir John was only 34 years old, and had performed no service
to merit reward. The pension to his father was dated the 2nd July,
1618, twenty-two years earlier. So a false date was put forward lest,
if 1618 were mentioned, inquiry might be set on foot to unravel the
mystery of a pension to a child under twelve years of age.
The Petition went on to pretend that Sir John had been “obstructed
in the receipt of his pension by the usurper Oliver.” This was
colossal mendacity, but the account given of Basil’s lease surpassed
it:—“On application, the late Oliver granted him, in lieu of the said
pension, a lease of 99 years for Lough Neagh and the River Bann, with
the fishing thereof.”
No relevant fact was truthfully stated, yet Bramhall certified to
the King that he had “studied the petition”; that Clotworthy “is
certainly entitled to some compensation in respect of the pension of
6s. 8d. a day”; that both the fishing and soil of Lough Neagh, and of
the Bann above Coleraine, were in the possession of the Crown, and
that a lease should be granted to Clotworthy on the same terms which
it was feigned Cromwell had sanctioned. Bramhall’s traffickings as a
prize-agent may explain why an Anglican Bishop, who owed everything
to Strafford, should favour the pietist who had not only sent his
patron to the block, but had embittered and disturbed Archbishop
Laud’s last moments on the scaffold.
The King (with Ormonde beside him) could see no reason for the
haste with which his courtier urged that Sir John’s lease should
be renewed. He put aside the petition and left the Bishop’s report
unnoticed. Secretary Nicholas was then moved to jog his Majesty and
request “that a warrant be prepared for his royal signature for
drawing a Patent in Sir John Clotworthy’s favour, according to the
report of the Bishop of Derry.” Still Charles made no sign. Possibly
some recollection of his engagements to the London Corporation
crossed his mind; perhaps the Duke of Ormonde dropped a hint in
Chichester’s interest; or his Majesty may have sought for a reason
why he should extend such benevolence to Cromwell’s righthand man. At
any rate, the King was not touched to persuasion.
The feverish Clotworthy now tried another stratagem. He knew that
if a King’s Letter were sent to Ireland authorising a Patent (as
Secretary Nicholas recommended), this would involve delay and
inquiry, and that the arrival of Lord Donegall, or the intervention
of the Londoners, might prove fatal to his hopes. He, therefore,
changed his hand; and, instead of an Irish Patent, pressed for a
lease direct from the King at Whitehall. This would involve an
innovation in procedure startling to Crown lawyers. Even Cromwell had
not attempted any such inroad on ancient usage, but carried out his
behests by the olden method of sending a Signet Letter to Dublin to
authorise a Patent there under the Great Seal of Ireland. The needs
of Sir John, however, brooked no delay, and sticklers for form could
be “squared.” Still the King, in spite of the pressure put upon him,
refused to yield, and for three months he held firm.
Towards the end of September, 1660, Lord Donegall reached London,
greatly to Clotworthy’s discomfiture. To anticipate his arrival Sir
John sent £20 to the Crown Office in Dublin to pay a half-year’s
rent which would come due under Basil’s lease on the 29th September.
This thrusting of payment on the royal officials was an attempt to
rivet his claims and pretend they had been recognised on behalf of
the King. The rent was dispatched almost to the day, though the
lease gave six weeks for payment. Whether he had been as punctual
in the time of the “usurper”—if he paid at all—is more doubtful;
and no evidence of any other payment, before or after, exists. Then
to strengthen his influence at Court Sir John threw another cast,
and struck up relations with Colonel Daniel O’Neill, Groom of the
Bedchamber and head of the princely house of Ulster.
O’Neill was the intimate and trusted friend of Charles II., on
whom the growing difficulties of the Irish situation were pressing
awkwardly. He expected to be restored to his estates in Down,
having battled for the Crown on nearly every field in the three
kingdoms. O’Neill had no love for Clotworthy, but still less for the
Chichesters, because of the imprisonment of his father, Sir Con, in
Carrickfergus by the “great Deputy” in 1603, and the forced partition
of Claneboy with Hamilton and Montgomery to purchase pardon for a
trumped-up “treason.” Sir John to enlist his help promised to secure
the restitution of his property, part of which he had himself come
by, and an understanding between them was arrived at in the crisis
of Irish affairs at Court. Charles II., beset by conflicting and
distracting demands, saw no way of keeping his word to the rival
claimants who thronged upon him. In the Breda Declaration he had
pledged himself equally to the Catholic Royalists and to their
Republican supplanters. Compromise seemed impossible, and the King
was caught in a vice, without hope of honourable escape, for both
sides pressed pleas that could not be overlooked.
Coote’s faction, at the Convention in Dublin, demanded by resolution
that all the estates of the Adventurers, as they stood on the 7th
May, 1659, should be confirmed by Act of Parliament. Under such an
arrangement, Clotworthy’s lease, and many other frauds, would have
been legalised. A “settlement” so one-sided would destroy the hopes
of the natives, and the Catholic soldiers who had surrounded Charles
abroad raised such a protest that it was rejected by his Majesty.
The disappointed Cromwellians waxed wrathful, and to soothe them it
became known that any alternative they put forward which offered an
outlet for the King’s embarrassment would be accepted.
On the 9th November, 1660, there waited on Charles at Whitehall
a trio consisting of Clotworthy, Lord Broghill (Boyle), and Sir
Audley Mervyn. They produced a paper showing that all-round justice
could be done, and that there was land galore for every claimant.
The ingenious Clotworthy had found the key to the maze in which
his Majesty was enmeshed. It was a blessed discovery. His acreages
and estimates were accepted with royal grace and a total absence
of investigation. The scheme he broached—known afterwards as “the
famous paper”—became the basis of the “Act of Settlement” of 1662,
and was hailed by courtly experts as a solution of the insoluble. The
King could now turn away from a knotty problem to lighter themes,
and naturally his obduracy towards Sir John’s petition for a lease
melted away. Such was his gratitude that he not only promised to
confirm it, but conferred on the author of the “famous paper” the
peerage of Massereene. The lease secured the Bann, as well as Lough
Neagh, to Clotworthy, although the river had for years been in the
possession of the Londoners.
The “famous paper” in effect embodied the original demand of the
Cromwellian Convention under a different guise. More fair-seeming
than that project, it was equally fatal to Royalist hopes. Thus
Sir John was the artificer of both his own and his party’s fortune
on that famous night at Whitehall. When he bade his Majesty “good
evening” he might well deem himself a thrice-lucky adventurer. He
must have chuckled heartily as he strode to his lodgings at the
“Three Elms” in Chandos Street at the thought of the great ones he
had hoodwinked and the obstacles he had overcome. To take in Cromwell
over the “lost pension” and win his Signet Letter for Lough Neagh; to
bribe Henry Cromwell and the Dublin Executive to super-add the Bann;
were strokes of genius; but to beguile Charles II. into giving kingly
confirmation to a fraudulent lease about which even Cromwell had been
deceived, and gain a peerage in the process, was a success almost
uncanny. The King and the doomsman of his father alike outwitted;
the Corporation of London and their enemies, the Chichesters, alike
befooled; the friends of Laud and Strafford enlisted and placated;
and every minor difficulty surmounted—these made up a combination of
achievement which entitles the student of villainy to bespeak for
Clotworthy a special niche in the gallery of rogues.
To outpace his competitors in securing the grant he accepted a lease
from the King direct, instead of obtaining a Patent such as he got
from Cromwell. No authority existed for the issue of a lease of Irish
Crown property lacking the Great Seal of Ireland, and no such lease
was binding. Nevertheless, by this means a sidelong Royal sanction
was given light-heartedly to a grant of Lough Neagh as well as the
non-tidal Bann. At that moment the new Charter for the Londoners,
granting them the entire Bann, was being prepared, and was shortly
afterwards enrolled, in repugnancy to the Lease.
The new-made Lord Massereene next arranged to baulk Colonel O’Neill
so that he could retain the lands he had promised to restore him.
O’Neill was married to the Countess of Chesterfield and had been
schooled a Protestant under the patronage of Archbishop Laud. He was
famed as “of a courage very notorious.” The operation of the Act of
Settlement in his case illustrates the fate which befell Royalists
less favoured. To thwart O’Neill, a fair-seeming proviso was inserted
in the draft Bill of “Settlement.” It declared merely that, for every
estate given up by the Planters, they should receive equivalent lands
elsewhere. Nothing could sound more reasonable.
The new peer and his friends, however, were determined that the
“joyful Restoration” of his Majesty should bring joy to no one in
Ireland but the King’s late enemies. Their faction was led by men
well versed in affairs of State; while their victims were either
returned exiles or persons long estranged from Courts and Parliaments.
The “Settlement” Bill was a purely Cromwellian composture, for,
although it embodied the King’s recognition of the loyalty of his
Irish soldiers, this was offset by an envenomed tirade against the
mass of the people. The keynote was struck in a preamble which
recited “the unnatural insurrection, murther, and destructions of the
23rd October, 1641,” while the massacres and dispossessions which had
provoked the outbreak were left unnoticed.
When the Bill became law a Court of Claims was appointed to hear
applications for restoration from ancient owners, and applot the
territory to be awarded in exchange. This tribunal was presided
over by Sir Audley Mervyn, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons,
one of the trio who promoted the “famous paper.” He was a venal
parasite who ruled against every contention on behalf of the Irish.
To make sure that the Cromwellians should suffer no deprivation, his
“Court” announced, at an early sitting, that there were no lands
available out of which the Undertakers could be “reprized”—i.e.,
receive equivalent estate. This was in flat contradiction of the
assurance to the King in the “famous paper”; but it was true, for
the Adventurers so managed that all such property had meanwhile been
given away among themselves. This was done by way of what was blandly
called “cautionary reprize,” which meant that—taking time by the
forelock—they had annexed everything for their faction.
Colonel O’Neill, Protestant though he was, could not get back a rood
of his land. Even Charles II. proved powerless to help him. The King
created him Postmaster-General of the United Kingdom, but nothing
in the way of restitution could be wrung from Lord Massereene. When
O’Neill died his Majesty interested himself on behalf of one of his
cousins, Sir Henry O’Neill, whose lands were also in Massereene’s
hold. Pressed to make restitution in a debate in the Irish House of
Lords, the new peer rose and, taking the Royal Declaration in one
hand, he drew his sword with the other, exclaiming: “I will have the
benefit of it with this.”
When any Royalist soldier or “innocent Papist” asked for
reinstatement, the Planter in possession demanded what equivalent
land he was to get before being ousted? None was to be had, and the
intruders, after a fine parade of legality, retained their domains,
while the natives were left out in the cold. The promises made them
in the King’s Declaration, in the “famous paper,” and in the Act of
Settlement remained a dead letter.
Certain Catholic officers were mentioned by name in the Act and
guaranteed restoration by its clauses. This created a difficulty, so
they were left to die in London of hunger and plague. Charles II.
would not as much as pay their way to Dublin to enable them to seek
redress.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LORD DONEGALL’S ROMANCES.
At the height of Clotworthy’s intrigue for the confirmation of his
lease Lord Donegall reached London, being wafted across the Channel
in a royal frigate. He soon realised at Whitehall that those whom
he regarded as the “King’s enemies” had grown to influence and had
supplanted many of the “King’s friends.” Still he believed that
olden services would not go unrewarded, and he knew that the Duke
of Ormonde would stand by him. He and his father had hidden away
Strafford’s Patent for twenty years, unenrolled. To obtain a new
grant which should include Lough Neagh and the Bann was the wish of
his heart. He came to Court, not merely to pay homage to Charles
II., but to seek redress for the surrender forced on his family by
the Minister of Charles I. Lord Donegall knew the favour shown to
Clotworthy by Cromwell, and it roused his ire to think that the son
of an old subordinate should carry off the fisheries which he looked
on as a perquisite of the Chichesters. Were there gratitude in kings,
he thought, Cromwell’s gift must be recalled and bestowed on himself.
Yet his lordship found his rival as highly esteemed by Charles II. as
he had been by the Lord Protector. Nor did the support of the Duke
of Ormonde countervail his influence. All that their joint exertions
effected was to delay Clotworthy’s triumph. When the “famous paper”
begot the new lease Lord Donegall was almost in despair, but he
did not give up the struggle. The obstacles in his path which the
lease created, not to speak of the royal engagement to the London
Corporation to restore the Bann, seemed insurmountable. A tussle
with Sir John at Whitehall taught him that it was hopeless to think
of winning anything from that stout fighter. Still harder was it
to prevail against the Londoners. He found the influence of his
opponents overpowering, and their claims blocked his hopes. Lord
Donegall, therefore, cast about for some indirect means of gaining
his ends.
Wily councillors before long suggested a way out. He was advised
to abandon his original purpose and send in a petition for a
“reversionary” Patent for the fisheries. This was only to take effect
at the end of Clotworthy’s lease, but for immediate consolation
he also prayed for a grant of the rent payable under it to the
Crown. The plan was a catching one to recover lost ground, but what
reasons could be found to support it? None existed, so Lord Donegall
proceeded to invent them. He had to get over the difficulty that
Strafford compelled the surrender of 1640 as an act of restitution,
and had compensated his father and himself by the grant of an
indefeasible Patent for the rest of their ill-gotten estates with
an allowance of £60 a year in the Crown-rent. Acceptance of the
advantages conferred in 1640 could hardly be reconciled with a demand
for further compensation in 1660. To blame Strafford for enforcing
the surrender would be natural and tempting, but was unthinkable,
as any slight on the memory of the martyr-Viceroy who had given his
life to uphold Charles I. would be fatal in a suppliant to Charles
II. Lord Donegall, therefore, had to present matters in a way which
should make it appear that his father and himself in relinquishing
the fisheries were the victims of arbitrary power, and at the same
time find a scapegoat to accuse—an attack upon whom would not offend
the King.
The position was delicate, and needed the best-considered falsehoods.
Lord Donegall, however, was no witling, and the tradition of the
“great Deputy” stirred his brain until at length the necessary
culprit was hit upon in Deputy Wandesforde. He, in Strafford’s
absence, signed the Patent of 1640, and on him all the blame for
compelling the surrender was cast in 1660. The innocent Wandesforde
was charged with having deprived Lord Donegall of a pension of £40 a
year, and “forcing on him fresh Patents under colour of his having
defective title.” This was as gross a myth as the fables of the
Clotworthy pension or the promises of the “famous paper.” Wandesforde
merely carried out arrangements previously made by the Lord
Lieutenant; and had nothing to do with the surrender, or the question
of an allowance. Yet this blameless subordinate, who had been dead
twenty years, was saddled with the doings of his master and with the
hagglings of the Commissioners for Remedying Defective Titles.
The “pension” story rested on the fact that originally Strafford
agreed to allow the Chichesters £40 a year in lieu of the £100
received under the Londoners’ lease of Lough Neagh. This, to soothe
the family, he increased to £60; and, instead of paying it by the
clumsy method of a pension (as was at first intended), he reduced the
rent under the Patent by £60. The change did away with the earlier
proposal, and was gladly welcomed by Lord Chichester. Yet Charles II.
was told that Wandesforde had robbed the persecuted and faithful peer
of a £40 pension. To prove it Lord Donegall produced the first Order
of the Commissioners as to the £40, and suppressed the second as to
the £60. The first Order fitted in with Clotworthy’s £40 rental to
the Crown, which Lord Donegall was seeking to capture, and balanced
beautifully with the “equities” which he contended for. Any distorted
story of this kind went unscrutinised by the gay advisers of Charles
II.
It fell in with the purposes of Lord Massereene that Lord Donegall
should secure a reversion of his lease. To him it was immaterial
to whom he paid rent, or who succeeded to the fisheries after his
term expired. Lord Donegall’s success would strengthen him against
the Londoners as to the Bann, for each would have an interest in
resisting their claims. Accordingly the twain “got together”; and
thenceforth the new peer became the ally of his late rival.
The symmetry of the proposal that the “lost pension” of one
nobleman should be supplied from the rent due to the Crown by the
other, captivated the courtiers at Whitehall. It was such a pretty
arrangement, and so historically just in the eyes of all who had been
bribed to promote it. In the golden days of the Restoration, the
thinnest coating of fact served to veneer any romance put forward
by a favourite. Charles II. was an accommodating prince. What cared
he for recitals in parchments? There was no one even to remind him
that, in the draft of his Charter to the Londoners (then almost ready
for his signature), the Bann was once more declared their property.
So three months after Clotworthy’s triumph the King yielded to Lord
Donegall’s prayer, and, on the 28th February, 1661, a “Letter” was
made out authorising a Patent to him of “the reversion” of Lough
Neagh and the Bann, with an immediate gift of the rent of £40 a year
coming from the new lease of Lord Massereene.
The Royal Letter was embellished by recitals drafted by Lord
Donegall and crammed with untruth. It set forth that James I., in
1621, granted the fishings unto Arthur, Lord Chichester; that in
1638, “to comply with our late royal father’s occasions,” they were
surrendered to Charles I.; that in consideration of this generosity,
the Chichesters should have received “an annuity, pension, or yearly
rent-charge of £40 per annum,” with liberty to fish for the provision
of their households; but that they were disappointed as to all these
promises. This was a moving tale of unrequited loyalty; yet the brows
of even the Merrie Monarch would have knit had he been told a tithe
of the truth.
The parchments of the previous half-century contradicted every item
of this rigmarole and showed what an accurate recital should have
disclosed. This was:—
That James Hamilton, through the abuse of spent warrants, came by
extravagant grants in collusion with Chichester;
That Hamilton made over much of the property to the Deputy, who,
to cloak his rapine, issued a Patent for it to his nephew without
kingly sanction, and by the misuse of a Royal Commission;
That the nephew assigned to his uncle all that the Patent conveyed,
including the Bann and Lough Neagh;
That, after the Bann was given by Charter to the City of London,
£4,500 was paid by his Majesty to “compensate” Hamilton and
Chichester;
That a bogus “surrender” to the Crown of the Bann was then made;
That, seven years later, Chichester (after his removal from the
Deputyship), as Lord Treasurer, asserted title to the River by
means of false entries in the Crown ledgers;
That, by “favour” of the Duke of Buckingham, a King’s Letter was
procured in 1620 for a regrant of his estates;
That on this warrant, through the knavery of escheators and
inquisitors, another Patent giving him the non-tidal Bann was
fabricated in 1621;
That in 1640 Strafford, on discovering the facts, enforced against
his heirs a surrender of the river, with Lough Neagh; and
That for this they were lavishly recouped by a Patent granting them
valid title to vast properties unjustly come by, with an allowance
off their rent of £60 a year.
In the days of the Stuarts, truth and patents were estranged.
On the 10th April, 1662, the Charter to the Londoners was signed.
Charles II. gave them once more the River Bann, from Lough Neagh
to the sea, as if no adverse grant had been made to Chichester or
Clotworthy. He did so in the same words as it had been conveyed to
them by James I. and Cromwell.
Two Patents of the river to different interests, within 18 months,
was a monstrosity, even for Anglo-Ireland; but not a ripple was
raised thereby on the surface of official calm.
No idea of duty to the King appeared among his officers. The habit of
taking “presents” undermined their sense of public obligation; and
money was freely spent on them by suppliants. Cash payments preluded
the success both of Lord Donegall and of Lord Massereene. Even the
English Solicitor-General, for drafting the Act of Settlement, in
1662, to suit the ex-Cromwellians, was presented with a “small token
of thankfulness” by them on the motion of Lord Massereene in the
Irish House of Lords.
His lordship, though provided with such a willing penman as
conveyancer, made no attempt to have inserted in the Act a clause to
confirm his lease, while he availed of it to make all the rest of his
estates secure. As a “Commissioner for the execution of the Royal
declaration,” he wielded large influence in shaping its clauses,
yet he avoided anything which would risk bringing the lease under
discussion.
Three years later he procured in the Act of Explanation (Sec. 55)
a confirmation of his title to some property which he took under
the Act of Settlement; but again attempted nothing to legalise the
lease. It, therefore, never received recognition from either Statute
or Patent. Lord Massereene died in 1665, and for three centuries
afterwards his cajolement of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Cromwell, and
Charles II. remained unknown. A like penumbra shrouded the Chichester
conveyances, during the Irish “dark ages.”
Some 35 years after the Restoration, laws which forbade the teaching
of Catholics to read or write, or the sending of their children
abroad to learn, were artfully fashioned by the Planters. Edmund
Burke described their system as “wise and ingenious.” Illiteracy
checked premature scandal against a new and frail nobility, and gave
it time to become respectable before the story of the upstarts’
fortune and origin could be widely known.
CHAPTER XXIV.
LAWLESS LORDS JUSTICES.
In June, 1661, Lord Donegall set sail for Ireland, furthered by
Treasury permits freeing him from Customs duties. On arrival in
Dublin, he sued for a Patent under the King’s Letter of the previous
February. No Lord Lieutenant was yet installed, as Monck (the
newly-made Earl of Albemarle) failed to come over. Three temporary
Lords Justices formed the Executive—viz., Lord Chancellor Eustace
and the now ennobled Coote and Boyle. £1,500 a year apiece rewarded
them for carrying out their functions, and they discharged them
exactly in the spirit of the Council of Henry Cromwell five years
before. The King’s Letter was addressed to this trio. Doubtless they
had been privily bespoken by Clotworthy in Lord Donegall’s interest,
for they responded to his requirements with such alacrity that a
new Patent was sealed ten days after he landed. Usually years were
occupied from the time the King’s Letter was lodged before a grant
could be got out. Many legal formalities had to be complied with;
and amongst these the law prescribed, as the most essential, a prior
public inquiry in order to guard against encroachment on the rights
of others. So vital to validity was this Inquisition that the Statute
governing Patents declared void any grant made without it.
The Lords Justices ignored the law, and issued to Lord Donegall a
Patent which snatched the Bann from the Londoners, and Lough Neagh
from the public, without inquiry or notice to anyone. A dispensation
called a “non obstante” was inserted in the Patent, which purported
to make it valid despite the non-holding of the inquiry. To include
in it a waiver of the Statute was but an added illegality. The
Lords Justices could not “dispense” with an Act of Parliament; and
the King’s Letter did not pretend to authorise the dispensation. Yet
the Patent of these ’prentice hands loftily announced itself good
“notwithstanding the Statute.”
By the agency of this paltry trio, Lord Donegall on the 3rd July,
1661, was allowed to consummate the iniquity which the “great Deputy”
begot in 1603-4. Their grant empowered him to assert anew a claim to
Lough Neagh and the Bann, which had been branded as untenable five
times in the previous half-century. Scotched by Strafford, assailed
by Sir Arthur Forbes and Sir William Power, denounced by Baron
Oglethorpe, exposed by Sir James Balfour, arraigned by Deputy St.
John, and blighted by a pedigree entailing every vice, it was revived
by a tricky exercise of power in an unsettled State, as a sequence to
Lord Massereene’s lease.
So rank was the repute of its illegality that Lord Donegall in the
following year applied for another King’s Letter to give it a lacquer
of legality. With this object he induced Charles II. to affix his
signet to a second Royal Letter containing the falsehoods already
exposed.
The new Letter declared that:—“When Wandesforde was Deputy it was
sought to force fresh Patents on Lord Chichester, under colour of his
having defective title. These Patents, which were never enrolled or
paid for, shall be vacated; and new Patents for his estates shall be
given to Lord Donegall.”
Plainly a fresh effort was to be made to include the fisheries
in some legitimate grant covering the whole of the Chichester
properties—as in 1621. It was a subtle purpose.
For twenty-two years the Patent of 1640 had been left unenrolled; and
now its owner wished to discard it altogether with a view to getting
an omnibus Patent. Doubtless he calculated by this means to get rid
of the blot on the family escutcheon cast by Strafford, but, whatever
lay behind the scheme, it miscarried. An unlooked-for fatality
overwhelmed his plans.
While the new Patent was being prepared, Cromwellian strategy in the
Irish Parliament was at work; and in 1665 the “Act of Explanation”
provided that existing grants would become void unless enrolled
within two years. Busily as he strove, Lord Donegall could not get
out his new Patent in these two years; and, when the last days of
the period were approaching in 1667, he was driven, through lack of
time, to enrol the hated grant of Strafford. The new one was never
issued, and his whitewashing processes came to naught. He had hoped
that, with a title freshly furbished, the Chichesters would go down
to history unspattered, and that all proof of past disgrace would be
wiped out. Only by the aid of the parchments of 1640 and 1662 could
the mazy story of a sixty-year fraud be pieced together; and these he
strove to get rid of like those of 1603. The skeleton in the family
closet, however, still lay unburied and remained as grisly as before.
The failure to get the proposed Patent “past the Seal” in five years
contrasts suggestively with the celerities of 1661, when ten days
served the rinsings of a regicide Executive to produce a Patent
disposing of the greatest fishery in the Three Kingdoms. No grant
for the Donegall estates, therefore, exists (apart from that for the
fisheries) save the misliked Patent of Strafford which Charles II.
was prayed to “vacate”; after it had been sullenly left unenrolled
for a generation. Despite the allegation that it was “forced” on
Lord Chichester, it remains the sole title of a family of meritless
intruders to the lands of the O’Neills and O’Dohertys. If Strafford’s
wraith haunted Dublin Castle in 1667, what time his parchment was
tardily lodged for enrolment, the ghost even of “Black Tom” must have
wrestled with a smile.
As for the fishery Patent, hurriedly rushed forth by casual Lords
Justices to cheat the Londoners and the public, it is the only
warrant of the Deputy’s descendants to control Lough Neagh and the
Bann. By its “virtue” the right enjoyed by the people of a province
from time immemorial to earn a livelihood as their fathers did was
challenged, and an exasperating monopoly attempted to be established.
Those who applaud the statecraft which resulted in the spoliation of
the princes of Tyrone and Tirconnell may well ask themselves whether
the breed which supplanted them is such a vast improvement. No
catalogue heretofore drawn up of the sins of Irish chieftains brands
them as cheats or forgers—though many other libels against them are
extant from the pens of those by whom they were robbed.
CHAPTER XXV.
HOW TO LOSE AN EMPIRE.
In the century which followed the reign of the Stuarts no record
worth mention remains of the doings of Lord Donegall’S descendants.
Gaelic annalists, who would have cherished local chronicles, had
been driven out; and British civilisation had not overtaken or
undertaken their work. That the Chichester frauds formed part of a
long-continued system practised by the heads of the Executive appears
from another exposure made, nearly a century later, in the English
House of Commons. After the Revolution, Charles Montagu (subsequently
Earl of Halifax, who was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in
1694), was accused on the 16th February, 1698, of having in the
previous year obtained for himself a grant, under the name of Thomas
Railton, of forfeited estates in Ireland worth some £13,000. The
lands included those of Lord Clancarty. Montagu, having a majority
in the House, defiantly admitted the charge. In 1701, however, he
was impeached, on this and other grounds. He again did not deny the
facts, and pleaded the authority of King William III. Ultimately, the
impeachment was abandoned as impracticable, but Montagu was struck
off the Privy Council.
Many of the Elizabethan and Stuart grants reveal a purpose, not only
to seize the land of the natives, but to reduce them into slavery.
Elizabeth’s charter to the Smiths in 1571 gave, with the territory
to be conquered, “native men and women” as chattels. Chichester
declared in 1602 that the Irish “should be made perpetual slaves to
her Majesty”; and he wished to send O’Cahan to the Virginias instead
of to the Tower. In 1605 Hamilton was awarded by James I. “native
men and women villeins and their followers.” In 1613 the charter to
the Londoners enabled them to take “estrayed bondmen and bondwomen
and villeins and their followers.” A Patent of Charles I. presented
Hamilton, after he became Lord Claneboy, with “natives and villeins
with their sequels.” Cromwell’s shipments of Irish youth as slaves to
the Barbadoes was merely a development of this policy.
Small additional infamy, therefore, attaches to the “Protector” for
giving effect to the designs of his predecessors. The spirit of the
17th century monarchs and his was the same towards the nation of
which Attorney-General Davis declared:
“The Irish be a race of great antiquity, wanting neither wit nor
valour. They received the Christian faith above 1,200 years since,
and were lovers of music, poetry, and all kinds of learning, and
possessed of a land abounding with all things necessary for the civil
life of man.”
Earlier than Davies, Spenser of the “Faerie Queene” wrote in 1596:—
“The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this
end of the world.... They come of as mighty a race as the world ever
brought forth ... very present in perils, great scorners of death.”
For the uprooting of such a breed, high political and moral reasons
had to be invented, but when the natives were got rid of and their
persecutors could discover no political or religious pretexts to
cloak their greed, they fastened nakedly on the input and earnings of
the settlers from England and Scotland.
These supplanters of the Gael were in the third and fourth generation
harassed and skinned as thoroughly as if they had belonged to the
outcast race. In the province where Papists were almost forbidden to
breathe, the framers of the Penal Code, in the name of “the rights
of property,” taught the humbler Protestants the scantiness of their
mercies.
The descendants of the “great Deputy” did not attempt to enforce
their Patents while knowledge of their origin prevailed and
malodor beset them; but in the reign of George III. their baleful
activities had consequences which were empire-wide. The extravagance
and rapacity of the Chichesters led to the enforced emigration of
the children of the Planters, and powerfully contributed in 1776
to the loss of the American Colonies. The armies of Washington
were so largely recruited from the evicted tenants of Ulster that,
according to the evidence presented to a Parliamentary Committee,
half the Revolutionary soldiers were Irish. For this Lord Donegall
and his imitators were to be thanked. The “flight of the Earls,”
which the “great Deputy” promoted, had for its sequel the flight of
the peasants, provoked by his descendants; and with it the breakdown
of the imperial tie between Britain and the greatest part of North
America.
The American upheaval was itself preceded by a rebellion amongst the
Ulster Protestants. A close connection can be traced between the
failure of the one outbreak and the success of the other. In July,
1770—only eighty years after the Battle of the Boyne—the offspring of
the Planters in the Counties of Antrim, Down, Derry, and Tyrone rose
in arms. British writers like J. A. Froude and John Wesley, Irish
historians like Lecky and Benn, agree as to the responsibility of the
landlords who provoked the insurrection. Froude links together as
cause and effect the atrocities of the Marquis of Donegall and the
loss of the American Colonies.
He says:—“Sir Arthur Chichester, the great Viceroy of Ireland under
James I., was, of all Englishmen who ever settled in the country,
the most useful to it. His descendant, the Lord Donegall, of whom it
has become necessary to speak, was perhaps the person who inflicted
the greatest injury to it. Sir Arthur had been rewarded for his
services by vast estates in the County Antrim. The fifth Earl and
first Marquis of Donegall, already by the growth of Belfast and the
fruit of other men’s labours, while he was sitting still, enormously
rich, found his income still unequal to his yet more enormous
expenditure. His name is looked for in vain among the nobles who, in
return for high places, were found in the active service of their
country. He was one of those habitual and splendid absentees who
discharged his duties to the God who made him by magnificently doing
as he would with his own. Many of his Antrim leases having fallen
in simultaneously he demanded £100,000 in fines for the renewal of
them. The tenants, all Protestants, offered the interest of the
money in addition to the rent. It could not be. Speculative Belfast
capitalists paid the fine and took the lands over the heads of the
tenants to sub-let.
“Mr. Clotworthy Upton, another great Antrim proprietor, imitated the
example, and at once the whole countryside were driven from their
habitations. Sturdy Scots, who in five generations had reclaimed
Antrim from the wilderness, saw the farms, which they and their
fathers had made valuable, let by auction to the highest bidder; and,
when they refused to submit themselves to robbery, saw them let to
others, and let in many instances to Catholics, who would promise
anything to recover their hold on the soil.
“The most substantial of the expelled tenantry gathered their
effects together and sailed to join their countrymen in the New
World, where the Scotch-Irish became known as the most bitter of the
Secessionists.”
Mr. Froude traces to these evictions the uprise of the “Peep of Day”
and the “Hearts of Steel” conspiracies, and adds:—
“It is rare that two private persons have power to create effects so
considerable as to assist in dismembering an Empire and provoking
a civil war. Lord Donegall, for his services, was rewarded with
a marquisate; and Mr. Clotworthy Upton with a viscounty (Lord
Templetown). If rewards were proportioned to deserts, a fitter
retribution to both of them would have been forfeiture and Tower
Hill....
“Throughout the revolted Colonies, and therefore probably in the
first to begin the struggle, all evidence shows that the foremost,
the most irreconcilable, the most determined in pushing the quarrel
to the last extremity, were the Scotch-Irish, whom the Bishops and
Lord Donegall and Co. had been pleased to drive out of Ulster.”
Mr. Lecky declares the outbreak “was mainly attributable to the
oppression of a single man—the Marquis of Donegall.... The conduct
of Lord Donegall brought the misery of the Ulster peasantry to a
climax; and in a short time many thousands of ejected tenants, banded
together under the name of Steelboys, were in arms.”
Their “formidable insurrection,” he says, caused “the great
Protestant emigration” from Ulster to America. “In a few years the
cloud of civil war, which was already gathering over the Colonies,
burst; and the ejected tenants of Lord Donegall formed a large part
of the revolutionary armies which severed the New World from the
British Crown.”
Benn’s “History of Belfast” states:—
“An estate in the County Antrim, a part of the vast possessions of
the Marquis of Donegall (an absentee), was proposed, when its leases
had expired, to be let only to those who could pay large fines; and
the agent of the marquis was said to have extracted large fees on his
own account also. Numbers of the former tenants, neither able to pay
the fines nor the rents demanded by those who, on payment of fines
and fees, took leases over them, were dispossessed of their tenements
and left without means of subsistence. Rendered thus desperate, they
maimed the cattle of those who had taken the lands, committed other
outrages, and, to express a firmness of resolution, styled themselves
‘Hearts of Steel.’ One of their number, charged with felony, was
apprehended and confined in Belfast in order to be transmitted to
the county gaol. Provided with offensive weapons, several thousands
of the peasants proceeded to the town to rescue the prisoner, who
was removed to the barrack and placed under a guard of soldiers
(23rd December, 1770).... Being delivered up to his associates, they
marched off in triumph.... So great and wide was the discontent that
many thousands of Protestants emigrated from those parts of Ulster
to America, where they soon appeared in arms against the British
Government; and contributed powerfully, by their zeal and valour,
to the separation of the American Colonies from the Crown of Great
Britain.”
On the 6th April, 1772, George III. wrote to the Lord Lieutenant
(Townshend):—
“His Majesty’s humanity was greatly affected by hearing your
Excellency’s opinion that the disturbances owe their rise to private
oppression, and that the over-greediness and harshness of landlords
may be a means of depriving the kingdom of a number of his Majesty’s
most industrious and valuable subjects. The King does not doubt but
that your Excellency will endeavour, by every means in your power, to
convince persons of property of their infatuation in this respect,
and instil into them principles of equity and moderation, which, it
is to be feared, can only apply an efficient remedy to the evil.”
In November, 1772, the Lord Lieutenant proclaimed a pardon to
“the wicked and dangerous insurgents who in July, 1770, assembled
themselves in arms in large numbers in the counties of Antrim, Down,
Armagh, Derry, and Tyrone.” It was too late.
The Belfast “News Letter” of the 16th April, 1773, computed that
“within forty years past 400,000 people have left this kingdom to go
and settle in America.” In the three years from 1771 to 1773 alone,
101 ships left Ulster ports, carrying over 30,000 emigrants.
On the 15th June, 1773, John Wesley in his diary writes:
“When I came to Belfast I learned the real cause of the insurrection
in this neighbourhood. Lord Donegall, the proprietor of almost the
whole country, came hither to give his tenants new leases. But when
they came they found two merchants of the town had taken their farms
over their heads; so that multitudes of them, with their wives and
children, were turned out to the wide world. It is no wonder that, as
their lives were now bitter to them, they should fly out as they did.
It is rather a wonder that they did not go much further; and, if they
had, who would have been most in fault? Those who were without home,
without money, without food for themselves and families, or those who
drove them to this extremity?”
A dispatch to the “Irish Society” of the London Corporation in 1802
says of the Right Hon. Richard Jackson, a middleman of the London
Clothworkers’ estate near Coleraine:—
“It is commonly reported in the country that, having been obliged
to raise the rents of his tenants very considerably, in consequence
of the large fine he paid, it produced an almost total emigration
among them to America, and that they formed a principal part of that
undisciplined body which brought about the surrender of the British
Army at Saratoga.”
Unmoved by a riven empire, the Nero-like Marquises of Donegall, in
unbroken succession, were quietly hatching out schemes to enforce the
recognition of their Patent for the waters of Lough Neagh and the
Bann.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PLANTERS’ QUARREL.
In 1755 Lord Massereene’s lease of 1660 expired, and in 1769 the
Lord Donegall of that day began to take thought of his “reversion”
to the fisheries. The claim of the Chichesters had slept for over
a century, and was unknown to the people. Its assertion was beset
with difficulties, for the Irish Parliament and Executive would have
set themselves against any attempt by such an individual to control
Lough Neagh. Several Statutes treated it as both a public highway and
a public fishery. But his plans to capture it were skilfully laid.
The Londoners had, between 1744 and 1760, erected four traps in the
Bann at the Leap of Coleraine near the sea for the capture of salmon.
These necessarily diminished the catch further up, and Lord Donegall,
without impugning their Charter, objected that their mode of fishing
injured his rights in a corner of Lough Neagh. He laid his complaint
of damage in a pool on the Armagh shore, forty miles from the traps,
instead of in the Bann, and singled out as his quarry the lessee of
the unpopular “Irish Society” to serve as defendant. In this way his
grant of 1661 was for the first time brought to the notice of the
public.
In 1781 and 1784 he launched actions, which miscarried, for trespass
to the supposed fishing in Co. Armagh by the erection of the traps.
In 1787 he made a fresh onset, and the third trial began in 1788 at
Armagh, 33 years after the expiration of Lord Massereene’s lease. In
framing his suit he astutely avoided anything which would raise a
question as to the validity of his Patent. Hence he made no claim for
damage to the fishery of the Bann, where the mischief from the traps
would have been sorest, lest, as the Londoners’ Charter included the
entire river, a battle as to title should begin. He rigidly confined
his complaint within Lough Neagh, to which their Charter did not
apply. At the trial, therefore, the only issue was: Did the erection
of the traps injure the supposed fishery in the pool of Lough Neagh
to which the Londoners could make no claim? If he had charged damages
to the Bann he could have had a trial in Antrim, which is bounded by
the river. There, a friendly Sheriff would have composed a jury more
to his liking; but he laid the venue in Armagh, where he was without
local influence, rather than force a conflict with the Londoners
as to his pretensions to the Bann. The motive which inspired these
tactics and its cunning is evident.
At the trial he did not attempt to prove that any part of Lough
Neagh was injured. Still, as the traps must have hurt all the upper
waters, the jury decided that, if they were ultimately held to be
unlawful, the damages should be £45. This finding was elaborated into
a “special verdict” drawn up between the opposing counsel, which set
out their version of each litigant’s title. The question of the legal
right to erect the traps was left over for argument in the Appellate
Court in Dublin. The only point to be decided was: Whether as a
possible hindrance to fish ascending to Lough Neagh the traps could
be maintained.
The Londoners’ counsel at this stage was the Attorney-General (John
Fitzgibbon), who allowed the “special verdict” to be so framed that
their Charter and Lord Donegall’s Patent were mutually accepted as
unimpeachable.
Soon afterwards Fitzgibbon became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Clare.
When the appeal came on he presided at the hearing in 1789, and
struggled hard to prevent the traps being condemned. The majority
of the judges, however, decided that they were illegal, and the
Londoners after some time raised a further appeal by means of a
Writ of Error to the Irish House of Lords in 1795. There again the
Chancellor figured as the leading member of the Court and strove to
help his old clients.
The Dublin Parliament in 1782 had declared its independence of
English jurisdiction, and the air of its Court in College Green was
charged with Irish spirit. When the Writ of Error had been argued
for a day, one of the legal peers, Lord Pery, showed his mettle by
suggesting that the Londoners’ Charter was defective for lack of the
Irish Great Seal. This was a deadly thrust; but he then aimed a home
blow at their opponent. He suggested that, although Charles II. made
the grant to Lord Donegall earlier than the Charter, the Londoners
retained priority under their original Charter from James I., because
the annulment of the latter took place under an English decree of
Charles I., which did not extend to Ireland. Therefore, he contended,
they still possessed their ancient rights intact. These objections
raised the slumbering wraith of international conflict with Great
Britain at an embarrassing moment. They bristled with delicate
political problems, and the Lord Chancellor cleverly foiled them.
Dealing first with the Donegall Patent, he narrated that he had acted
as counsel for the Londoners at the trial at Armagh in 1788, and had
gone there “for the very purpose of showing that Lord Donegall had
no title—but a clause in the Act of Settlement put that out of the
case.” Turning to the Charter, he declared that the Londoners held
by possession for over a century; and, although the Great Seal of
Ireland might originally have been necessary to it, a good possessory
title had been acquired by the lapse of years. These statements
appeared conclusive.
Yet the Act of Settlement had no operation to legalise a Patent such
as Lord Donegall’s. The Chancellor was entirely mistaken on this
point. As to the Charter, the lack of the Great Seal was felt to be
so serious that a Bill was rushed through Parliament a few weeks
later to mend the flaw. Both of Lord Pery’s objections, therefore,
struck at the marrow of the case; and the Chancellor’s way of
meeting them showed that he was sapping for a channel of escape from
the political perplexities they presented. Perhaps, too, he sought to
screen his blunder at Armagh in failing to raise the question of Lord
Donegall’s title, for the Act of Settlement offered no obstacle to
his doing so. It merely legalized Patents of property vested in the
Crown, which had been confiscated because of the Rebellion of 1641.
The “special verdict” indicated (wrongly) that it was by virtue of a
confiscation then made that the Crown obtained the fisheries, whereas
such title as it possessed (if any) was enjoyed previously.
Equally erroneously the “special verdict” alleged that the fisheries
were sequestered by Cromwell. They were given away by Cromwell,
but had not been seized by him. Only Patents to property seized in
consequence of the Rebellion were “ratified and confirmed” by the Act
of Settlement, and Lord Donegall’s grant was not in that category.
The fisheries were given up by his ancestor a year before 1641,
and were, therefore, not “sequestered” owing to the Rebellion. The
Lord Chancellor, unaware of this, allowed the special verdict to be
misframed at Armagh, and then misapplied the law on the Woolsack. His
pronouncement that the Act of Settlement “confirmed” the Donegall
grant, coming from one who had been retained as counsel to oppose it,
silenced Lord Pery.
These high clashes between the Law Lords almost caused the fate of
the “traps” to be lost sight of, and probably helped to bring about
the rejection of the Londoners’ appeal. The House held unanimously
in favour of Lord Donegall, whose victory was the sweeter because
it had been won without provoking any challenge to the validity of
his Patent. His well-judged tactics won for it the sanctity of a
legal baptism. Soon afterwards he applied in Chancery for an order
to prostrate the traps. The Londoners fought on; and, under the
intricate procedure of that epoch, brought the matter from Court to
Court.
In 1801, after the Dublin Legislature had been abolished by the Act
of Union, a fresh appeal reached the Lord Chancellor. He delightedly
entertained it, and for the third time heard a case in which he
had been counsel for the appellants. The Irish House of Lords was
no more, and, sitting alone, he learnedly decided in favour of the
Londoners. Lord Donegall was not only beaten, but condemned in costs,
and the traps were saved. Safe though they were, his Patent was still
safer, for its validity had never once been called in question in any
Court, and the legal struggle was confined to the right to erect the
traps in a part of the river to which he laid no claim.
Thus ended a thirty years’ litigation. The plaintiff never stirred
more. The Londoners, grateful for their escape and for the Act which
dispensed with the Great Seal to their Charter, were content to
enjoy the tidal fishings with the traps, unmolested. Accepting the
view of their trusty Lord Chancellor, that Lord Donegall’s Patent
had received confirmation by the Act of Settlement, they silently
abandoned their rights in the non-tidal Bann.
Taking courage at this, Lord Donegall began to make lettings of the
river. He first gave his brother-in-law (and agent), the Reverend
Edward May, a lease of the Bann in 1803 for 61 years at £50 a year of
the salmon “within the known and accustomed limits of the fishery.”
In 1805 this lease was registered publicly, and as no one challenged
the letting, the Reverend Edward May assigned it in 1811 for £500
to Sir George Hill, Recorder of Derry, who was also a lessee of the
Londoners’ fishery in the tideway. Other persons then consented to
pay rent for the river to Lord Donegall, in the belief that the
litigation of 1769-1788-1795-1801 had made the Bann his. In 1827 Lord
O’Neill accepted from him a lease of the eel-fisheries of the river
at £369 a year, paying the enormous fine of £7,384.
Thus in the first half of the nineteenth century the Donegall
interest formidably entrenched itself behind the Patent. There was,
however, no attempt to exclude the public from Lough Neagh until
1873, and it was then only made as a consequence of the litigation
as to the Bann. For in 1868 the Londoners woke up to the fact that
they were owners of “the entire Bann.” After centuries of torpor they
claimed it by ejectment, as if nothing had happened since the reign
of James I. While, however, they lay asleep, successive Marquises of
Donegall had made themselves masters of the stream. The ejectment
was met by numberless defences; and, after some legal sparring, they
lost heart. In 1872 the suit ended in a settlement, whereby the
“Irish Society” bought up a lease of the non-tidal salmon fishery for
£2,250, and covenanted to pay a rent of £80 a year to Lord Donegall.
The valuable eel-fishery of the river they left in his hands.
By this compromise they acknowledged his ownership of their own
waters, and the long struggle between the City which financed the
Plantation and its adversaries fizzled out in a dismal attornment.
A title, guaranteed to them by the charters and promises of three
Kings and the parchments of Oliver Cromwell, was abandoned for ever.
Holding genuine and undoubted grants, they did homage to the suspect
scrivenery of the freebooters who for three centuries had plotted to
despoil them. What could explain such a nerveless breakdown? No doubt
Fitzgibbon’s bemusement as to the Act of Settlement misled them,
but why was there no one to unravel the mystery of iniquity lurking
behind the deeds of 1661, 1656, 1621, 1611, 1608, 1606, or 1603-4?
In 1872, when they capitulated, the work of the Irish and English
Record Offices had shed much light on the grants and confiscations of
the Stuart and Cromwellian periods. The documents in the Rolls and
Exchequer Offices had been translated, calendared, and indexed. State
papers, inquisitions, and MSS. from a number of libraries had been
published. It was with all these sources of information thrown open
that the Irish Society, having begun their assertion of title, tamely
acknowledged the overlordship of their ancient enemy.
When the richest Corporation in the world, and the Imperial city of
the Empire, could be baffled in such wise, what hope had the natives
in days of yore of retaining their property against the greed of
those who controlled the machinery of Irish government?
CHAPTER XXVII.
TWO GREAT TRIALS.
The acceptance by the Londoners of the parchments of Lord Donegall
was an event of mournful significance for East Ulster. The concern
of the public in it was immediate, for it created a new situation
which affected everyone along the banks of Lough Neagh. When such
powerful opponents confessed the validity of the Donegall grant, and
accepted a lease thereunder, they became almost as much interested in
maintaining it as the owner himself. Before their capitulation nobody
had ventured to dispute the ancient custom by which the public fished
in and trafficked over the Lough. The moment a great Corporation bent
the knee to wrong, an unexpected impulse was given to the spirit of
encroachment. Once they yielded, with what hope could poor men hold
out?
The thought, therefore, struck the Donegall lessee who claimed Lough
Neagh as being embraced in his demise that to turn a thousand free
fishermen into toll-paying serfs would prove a profitable enterprise.
To assert his “rights” he took proceedings to restrain them from
catching salmon in the Lough. For five years this action dragged from
Court to Court, and only ended in the House of Lords in 1878.
The plaintiff’s lease gave him dominion “within the known and
accustomed limits of the fisheries as formerly in the tenure of
Edward May.” What these limits were was not defined; and that they
included Lough Neagh was disputed by the fishermen. To ascertain the
extent of “the tenure of Edward May,” an examination of May’s lease
was indispensable; but at the trial (which took place in Belfast in
1874) its production was refused. No explanation for withholding
it was forthcoming, nor was the mystery which lay behind cleared up
for 40 years. Nevertheless, on the strength of the Clotworthy grant
and the Donegall Patent of 1660-61, Mr. Justice Lawson directed a
verdict for the plaintiff—who, he afterwards ruled, had “as clear a
documentary title as ever was submitted to a Court.”
The fishermen applied for a new trial, and the Court of Exchequer
granted it, largely because of the failure to produce May’s lease.
Against this decision the plaintiff appealed, but the Appellate
Chamber was equally divided, so in 1878 he took the case to the
House of Lords. There the “clear documentary title” produced small
impression. For though the Patent from Charles II. granted Lough
Neagh to Lord Donegall, the Law Lords agreed that the King’s power to
make the grant must be proved in the same way as if he were a private
individual.
Lord Chancellor Cairns laid down that it would be “a legitimate and
necessary subject of inquiry how and from whom, and subject to what
conditions or qualifications, this possession or proprietorship
was obtained.” Its history, and especially how it became vested in
the King, were “of very great importance,” and it was ruled that
to make the Crown title perfect there must, generally speaking, be
“office found.” The dispensation from the necessity for finding
“office,” which the Patent contained, was treated as a nullity,
while the withholding of May’s lease provoked adverse criticism. The
plaintiff’s appeal was, therefore, unanimously dismissed, and after
this defeat he troubled the fishermen no more.
The judgment of the House of Lords confirmed with remarkable
precision a legal opinion obtained in 1636 by Sir John Coke,
Secretary of State to Charles I., as to the title to a Wicklow
property which he was about to acquire. This old “opinion” ran:—“The
Letters Patent granted of those lands by King James to John Wakeman
are clearly void, for that there was never any inquisition taken
upon them whereby it could legally appear the King had title to those
lands, and the King could not grant that which he had not.” The view
of the law in 1636 was a pithy anticipation of that laid down in 1878.
Forty years passed before the right of the public to fish in Lough
Neagh was again contested. The Donegall interest meanwhile had
descended to Lord Shaftesbury, and in 1905 the descendant of the
great British philanthropist was induced for large moneys to make a
long lease of the eel-fishing in the Lough. The lessees undertook
to assert his exclusive ownership therein, but Lord Shaftesbury’s
confidence in his rights was so faint that he refused to give them
the usual covenant for “good title.”
No original of any Patent could be found; and the lessees had to
obtain copies (or rather extracts from such copies as served their
case) from the “enrolments” preserved at the public expense in the
Record Office. Researches to prepare for the litigation occupied two
years, and these were mainly entrusted to an expert, or “archivist,”
whose claim to scholarship was undoubted. He was secretary to the
Ulster King-of-Arms in Dublin Castle, an M.A. and LL.D. of Trinity
College, a barrister having “large experience in making searches,”
and “thoroughly acquainted with the Record Office and searches
there.” His task mainly was to provide material to enable the new
challengers of public right to meet the difficulties raised by the
House of Lords in 1878.
The peers had refused to regard the Patent of Charles II. as
decisive, and held that the Courts must probe behind it to ascertain
the root of royal ownership. Statutes might dispense the King from
holding inquisition if the previous owners were monks or traitors,
but the right of the Crown to make a gift of what could not prima
facie lie within its prerogative was not to be assumed.
The archivist, therefore, had cast on him the burden of discovering
how the Crown acquired the property, and of showing that inquisitions
had been duly taken beforehand. His clients had further to establish
that Charles II. possessed title as owner in 1660-1 to make a present
of Lough Neagh and the Bann to private individuals, without regard to
native user, or then existing rights. In 1907, when their researches
were deemed complete, an action was launched to restrain public
fishing in the Lough. Thanks to what is known as “legal reform,”
a jury was no longer necessary, and the trial took the form of an
application for an injunction before a Chancery judge (Mr. Justice
Ross) in 1908.
Every Court is dependent on the materials placed before it for
forming a judgment; and the archivist’s affidavits were those of an
official whose attainments and position lent much weight to the case
they presented. They were, therefore, unquestioningly accepted, but,
unhappily, contained grave errors. Capital amongst them were:—
1st. That the earliest Patent of Lough Neagh was the grant to James
Hamilton in 1606.
2nd. That before Hamilton’s Patent was issued, “office” had been
found on behalf of the Crown for something like half Lough Neagh—and
that the Commission which governed this “office” was “practically all
illegible.”
3rd. That “the only Inquisitions, Patents, and Grants” relating
to the Lough in the Record Office were those in the list he set
out—swearing he was “satisfied there were no others dealing with the
fisheries in Lough Neagh.”
These propositions, if true, went far to meet the judgment of the
House of Lords in the former trial. Yet, extraordinary to relate,
they were either wholly unfounded or very much astray. Only when
too late did the facts leak out. The archivist’s list was vitally
defective and incomplete, while the Commission was far from being
“practically all illegible.” The earliest Patent was not that of
1606 to Hamilton, but those concocted by Chichester in 1603 and
1604, which as regards Lough Neagh and the Bann were warranted by
no authority from James I. The Patents and King’s Letters of 1603-4
were not mentioned by the archivist, and they formed the key to the
position as defined by the House of Lords.
When Chichester in 1604 appropriated the title of “Admiral of Lough
Neagh” he snatched a life-estate in the fisheries without the King’s
knowledge. Neither Lough Neagh nor the non-tidal Bann then was
claimed by or “in charge” to the Crown. If the existence of these
Patents had been disclosed, and if the King’s Letter of 1603 had not
been withheld, the fact that the fishery grants originated without
Royal approval would have been established.
The Letters throw a piercing searchlight on the problem raised by the
House of Lords, for they prove that James I. nowhere mentions the
fisheries. Their silence, therefore, reveals that the origin of the
grant lay not with the Crown, but in fraud. This fact being shut out
from judicial cognisance, the cardinal principle laid down by the
House of Lords was frustrated—viz., that the existence of Royal title
to make a grant must be lawfully deduced.
To treat the Patent of 1606 as the earliest of the series not merely
got rid of the necessity for coping with the fatal parchments of
1603-4, but enabled the contention to prevail that Hamilton’s Patent
was based on a valid inquisition. For at the “office” at Antrim on
12th July, 1605, a jury was alleged to have found that a pool in
Lough Neagh was owned by the Crown. This verdict was arrived at on
the inquisition held by Parsons, and at the trial in 1908 it assumed
a fundamental importance. The terms of the Commission authorising it
became equally vital, and as to these the archivist swore:—
“The Commission for holding the inquisition is attached to the
original inquisition, and is practically all illegible. The
inquisition deals with the eastern side of Lough Neagh only, and
lands adjoining.”
Judge Ross, with true insight, saw the necessity of trying to
ascertain what powers the Commission conferred, so that he might
estimate what were the matters Parsons was inquiring into. He,
therefore, sent for the original parchment. It was sadly defaced,
and he, too, found it illegible. Since then, although portions
remain undecipherable, enough has been transcribed to show what the
Commission covered and authorised. This transcription reveals that it
was issued without any reference to Lough Neagh or the Bann. Despite
the fact that the decipherment is only partial, it shatters the case
the plaintiff made.
The Commission is set forth in the Appendix, and, although several
words are missing, enough is left to demonstrate that no inquisition
founded on such a Commission could establish Crown title to Lough
Neagh or the Bann (save as to a few monastic fishings). For what
duties were the Commissioners appointed to discharge? They were
ordered merely to report on the boundaries and extent of Sir Con
O’Neill’s possessions (to prepare for their partition between
Hamilton and Montgomery), and also what “concealed lands” should have
come to the Crown in Antrim and Down by reason of any forfeiture or
attainder to provide for Thomas Irelande’s £100 a year. Nothing more.
It was issued not by the King, but by Chichester on the 26th June,
1605, when he was thwarting Hamilton, and only a week after his
bitter complaint to Cecil of the extent of the grants to “the Scot.”
Then it would have been as repugnant to the Deputy’s feelings as to
his interest to allow Hamilton get a rood of land or a fathom of
water more than his two King’s Letters covered. Just a year before,
Chichester had concocted a Patent annexing to himself for life the
fisheries of Lough Neagh and the Bann; and it was hardly likely
that his earliest act after becoming Deputy should be to nominate
Commissioners to assist a stranger to oust the “Admiral of Lough
Neagh” from his new acquisitions and destroy the basis of his aquatic
title.
The Commission recites that it was sped by reason of the two King’s
Letters presented by Hamilton, one on behalf of Thomas Irelande for
£100 a year, and the other, on his own behalf, for the acquisition
of Sir Con O’Neill’s estate in Claneboy and the Great Ardes. The
“metes and bounds” of Sir Con’s territory were fixed by a Patent to
his father from Queen Elizabeth of the 13th March, 1587, and never
embraced Lough Neagh or the Bann.
The grant to Thomas Irelande could not have included them, for it
was to be carved out of “concealed or forfeited” lands in Antrim and
Down. There had been no previous confiscation of the fisheries. They
had never vested in the Crown, and could not have been captured under
the terms of Thomas Irelande’s “Letter,” even if Chichester had not
already seized them for himself, or was in the mood to befriend an
intruder.
In face of such facts can anyone imagine that the Inquisition
was appointed to help Hamilton to waters which the Deputy had
appropriated to himself? Had Judge Ross been afforded assistance in
deciphering the Commission the true effect of the Inquisition would
have been understood, and failure would have befallen any attempt to
wrest that record to purposes repugnant to what it imported.
Once the objects of the Commission are made clear, not even the
most partisan could suggest that it or the Inquisition control the
title to the Bann or Lough Neagh, or provide “office” for their
transmission to or ownership by the Crown.
Grim would have been the chuckling of the Deputy in 1605 had some
seer foretold to him that in the twentieth century three Courts would
decide that he signed the Antrim Commission to enable his rival and
enemy to claim the fisheries which he had taken over for himself the
year before!
In Claneboy there were attached to some of its fifteen religious
houses near Lough Neagh riparian fishings. All monasteries had vested
in the Crown since the Acts of Henry VIII., but these Acts had not
previously been enforceable in Ulster, which was unconquered ground.
So, after fixing the bounds of Sir Con’s estate, the Commissioners
set down what the monks owned in order that their property might
be the more readily placed at the disposal of James I. One of the
“findings” inserted in the portion of the verdict relating to the
monasteries declared that Queen Elizabeth was seized of various
religious houses in Claneboy and of fishings in Lough Neagh “towards
Claneboy,” of eel-weirs near Toome, and of another fishery on the
Bann in Claneboy, and that these vested in the King.
Whether this “finding” was really pronounced need not be discussed.
Parsons may have “spatch-cocked” it into the parchment which his
scribes prepared after his return to Dublin when he learnt that the
Deputy had joined hands with Hamilton in a conspiracy to utilise
Thomas Irelande’s Letter to manufacture Patents and divert the
property to himself.
That theory, however, is now immaterial; although Chichester
elsewhere speaks of “false inquisitions returned of latter times.”
Taking it to be the genuine “finding” of the local jury, what bearing
could it have on the ownership of the largest lake and richest river
in the kingdom? Its terms are set out in the Appendix.
At that date no “forfeiture or attainder” from which grants under the
Thomas Irelande “Letter” were to spring had been suffered by anyone
except the monks. It was under Irelande’s Letter they were given
to Hamilton, and, leaving Lough Neagh out of account, a test can
be applied to the bearing of the Commission and Inquisition by the
“finding” as to the Bann. This contained no allegation that the river
belonged to the Crown. In 1605-6 the owners of the Bann were as well
known and as rightfully in possession as the owner of the Throne of
England. If “half Lough Neagh” was found to be the King’s, why did
not the Inquisition declare the Bann to be Crown property, instead
of dealing merely with monastery fishings therein? Yet the whole
non-tidal river was seized as completely as the Lough by Hamilton’s
Patent seven months later.
The reason was that Chichester had made friends with Hamilton,
and arranged to pervert the grant into a conduit-pipe by which
the fisheries were passed to himself. Thereupon his “life-estate”
blossomed gaudily into flower as fee-simple by the magic of a secret
conveyance from “the Scot.” This was done without the payment
of a penny to Hamilton—so cheap was “the price of Admiralty” in
Chichester’s day.
The infected grants of 1603-4, therefore, are the real fount of
title, and furnish the clues which the House of Lords in 1878
declared should be traced. No confiscations had taken place in
Ulster in 1603-4 save those affecting monasteries. The province was
in profound peace under the treaty with O’Neill. Chichester had not
become Deputy, and the absence of royal authority or foreknowledge
as to the gift of fishery in the Patents is plain from the King’s
Letters. These were withheld at the trial as completely as the grants
they were supposed to sanction, for the archivist was “satisfied”
such trumpery was not to be met with in the Record Office—although he
declared himself “thoroughly acquainted” with searches there.
Another omission from the archivist’s list is markworthy. This was
the non-mention of the second master-Patent in the series—that by
Chichester to his nephew, Bassett, of the 1st July, 1608. It alone
provided a clue to the frauds. The list of documents, sworn to be
complete, was dank with error—however unwitting. Yet no thumbing of
musty vellum or conning over script in crabbed Latin was necessary to
discover the missing grants. Bassett’s Patent is printed both in the
State Papers and in the Calendar of the Record Office. Those of 1604
were published in 1846 in Mr. Erck’s “Repertory.”
The absence of such signal parchments from the archivist’s roster
contrasts oddly with what he put forward to enhance the value of the
grant of 1621—which flowed from Allen’s misconduct at Carrickfergus.
This was the only Patent purporting to give Lough Neagh and the Bann
direct to the “great Deputy.” It was the last in his lifetime. The
affidavit deposed that it reserved to the Crown a rent of £920 a year
(or in present moneys £9,000). So large a rent made for belief in its
genuineness; and the Courts were struck by the figure. Yet, plain on
the face of the enrolment, the true rent was shown to be £30 15s. 6d.
(thirty pounds fifteen shillings and six pence). Amazement is palsied
by such artistry.
A wry presentation was made of facts and Patents which it was
essential to justice to have rightly understood. The high position
of the archivist led to his affidavits being accepted trustingly,
while the fishermen were ill-equipped for a struggle needing years of
research.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FINAL FORGERY.
Apart from the mis-statements of the archivist, the absence of
information which has since become available told heavily for the
disputed Patents.
Although the King’s Letter to Thomas Irelande only authorised a gift
to the value of £100 a year, the Courts were not advised that it
had been drawn upon by a previous grant. Before 1606, if not then
sterile, its fecundity had been much diminished. Yet the Patent of
1606 gave away a million’s worth of property besides the fisheries.
The improbability of James I.’s consenting to this devastation of
Crown estate would naturally attract suspicion as to the genuineness
of the grant, had attention been called to its sweeping nature.
Even if the tapster at the “Half-Moon” had presented the Crown with
£1,678 6s. 8d., the likelihood of royal sanction for a grossly
excessive requital was slight. “New lamps for old” may be given away
in Aladdin-land; but in the England of James I. it was inconceivable
that his Majesty would consent to so reward such a payment. In any
case it was incredible that he would allow his subordinates to part
with a million on a warrant for £100, with leagues of river and
square miles of lake flung in as a “tilla” or “hors d’œuvre.”
The Courts were unaware of the extent of the Patent; and though, in
one sense, the rest of its contents did not touch the question of the
fisheries, its magnitude bore strongly on the question of a genuine
emanation of the Royal will. The same challenge to the realities
arose under the hasty conveyance of the plunder by Hamilton to
Chichester, for which no honest explanation could exist. Again, its
stowage away and muffling up in the bogus Patent to Bassett spoke
shrilly of illegality, but as to all this no warning hint came from
any expert to guide his Majesty’s Judges.
Chichester’s freak surrender before Archbishop Jones, and Allen’s
misconduct in fathering the Inquisition of 1621 in the teeth of his
Derry verdict, may be said to have been concerned with the Bann
alone. Still the grant of Lough Neagh was so intimately linked with
the river that any tribunal would have felt itself assisted by a full
disclosure of facts where questions of good faith and probabilities
had to be determined. An artificial darkness as to the origin and
bearing of the Patents prevailed, and in such murkiness the law
pronounced on their authenticity. Shade shaded shadiness.
This obscurity tended indirectly to the acceptance of another forlorn
document concerning the modern history of the fisheries. The lease
to May, which the House of Lords in 1878 was denied sight of, was
at last put in evidence, and its value had to be appraised. When
produced, the woeful spectacle it presented explained the reluctance
to allow it to be examined at the trial in 1874.
Erasures, in which battalions of interlineations lay entrenched,
pitted the parchment; and its plight spoke plainly of felonious
mutilation. Who had been at work to change it, and to what purpose?
The author of the forgery was long dead, but the extent and nature
of his operations could easily be traced. No sleuth hound was needed
to follow the track. The original lease had been registered in the
Dublin Registry of Deeds in 1805, and a “Memorial” of its contents,
signed by Lord Donegall, was lodged there. Such Memorials must (by
Statute) contain the description of premises in the exact words of
the deed presented for registration, and this one had been framed
on Lord Donegall’s behalf by his solicitor and was signed by his
lordship with his own hand.
Registry officials only receive and file Memorials when, by a
comparison with the originals, they are satisfied that the law has
been complied with. When, therefore, the so-called “lease to May”
was produced in 1908 its challengers straightway resorted to and
compared it with Lord Donegall’s Memorial. A glance at the “Memorial”
established that there had been foul play as to the lease. It showed
that what had been registered in 1805 was a lease of the Bann only
and of a salmon fishery therein, while the so-called “original”
granted “the salmon, trout, and scale fisheries of Lough Neagh and
the River Bann.” This laidly “fakement” explained the secret of the
non-production of the lease in 1874-8. A forgery had been committed,
and those who then had its custody felt too conscience-stricken to
attempt to make it evidence.
Other differences also exposed its falsity. One of the most
extraordinary was the contrast between the “Lease” and the “Memorial”
as to the mode of witnessing Lord Donegall’s signature. Two witnesses
attested the “lease,” whereas the “Memorial” showed there had
been three to the original. The same three persons attested Lord
Donegall’s signature to the “Memorial” itself. Had the case been
reversed, and if the names of three witnesses figured on the “lease”
while only two appeared on the “Memorial,” the absence of a name
from the latter might be explained by carelessness or mischance. No
such excuse could account for the disappearance of a signature from
an “original” and its presence in a secondary document. Only one
conclusion from such a variance seemed possible, yet the plaintiffs
insisted that the “Memorial” was unreliable, and the piebald
parchment genuine.
No Memorial had ever before been discredited in the centuries since
registration was established. The title to millions’ worth of
property, not only in Ireland but in wealthy Middlesex and vast
Yorkshire, depends on their trustworthiness. The manner of their
preparation and lodgment, as a system of verification of the contents
of deeds, is one prescribed by Statute to prevent fraud, or to detect
it if committed. Lord Donegall’s “Memorial” branded the so-called
“original” as a counterfeit. That was the function which the law
assigned to it, and it fulfilled its duty. Still the imputation of
forgery was too rude and uncourtly for the 20th century. A theory of
inadvertence and mistake was preferred. “Forgery” is a hard saying,
and any suggestion to explain it away attracts an honest mind. So the
“Memorial” was held to be inconclusive, and the counterfeit genuine,
by Mr. Justice Ross.
Fortunately for the repute of registration, research brought
afterwards to light collateral proof of its reliability. On the day
Lord Donegall executed the lease in dispute he also gave May a second
lease relating to a quarry. Both were registered on the same day and
by the same officials in Dublin. The “Memorial” of the quarry lease
showed there were three witnesses to Lord Donegall’s signature, and
that these were the same three persons who attested the fishery lease
and its “Memorial.” Thus the witnessing trio were certified to be
the same in the case of two leases and two “Memorials”—whereas the
document relied on by the plaintiffs bore the signatures of only two
witnesses. An independent and collateral registration, therefore,
corroborated the “Memorial” of the fishery lease in a vital respect.
To cast discredit on it in order to bolster up the decrepit Patents
of the Donegalls was an ill tribute to the system on which so much
property rests.
The judgment of the Court, however, turned mainly on the “additional
records” prior to the reign of Charles II. which have already been
analysed. Rightly regarded, every one of them multiplied discredit on
the Donegall title, but proofs had not then accumulated that official
frauds were palmed off as Royal grants, and instruments of crime as
genuine acts of kingly power. It is, therefore, hardly to be wondered
at that parchments of apparently reputable origin should sway a
Court guided by the reticences of an archivist—the main of whose
history and compilations met with no contradiction. So judgment went
against the fishermen and an end was decreed to public right in Lough
Neagh A.D. 1908.
An appeal was taken, and was heard in the same year. The chief
deliverance of the Appellate Court was made by Lord Justice Holmes,
who, too, had been captured by the “additional records.” He
said:—“Having some experience of Ulster titles, I have been surprised
to find that of King Charles II. to the fisheries of Lough Neagh
and the Bann at the date of the Patent of 1661 so satisfactorily
supported by earlier instruments.” If they be “satisfactory,” then
what must other “Ulster titles” be like?
Lord Justice Fitzgibbon remarked:—“I cannot believe that all the
documents of title in the case rest upon usurpation or pretence.”
This Court also decided against the possibility of public rights
of fishing in Irish inland waters, because no such rights exist in
England. The Irish Fishery Act of 1842, however, recognises that “a
general public right of fishing” may exist in fresh water, but its
provisions went for naught, as Lord Chancellor Walker explained that
this was a “misapprehension as to the law” on the part of Parliament.
In other words, mere enactments may be ignored. The history of the
Statute thus slighted shows that, instead of its words being a
“misapprehension as to the law,” they were the considered language
of the strongest and most representative Select Committee that ever
dealt with an Irish measure.
The Bill was discussed by a Committee of 27 members, including
lawyers like Daniel O’Connell and Lalor Sheil, as well as the
Solicitor-General for Ireland and the Chief Secretary. The landed
gentry manned the panel, and the ancestors of peers like Lord
Leitrim, Lord Newry, Lord Downshire, Lord Stuart de Decies, Lord
Fermoy, and Lord Dunraven, served upon it, with several members from
Ulster counties, and one from the City of London.
The Bill repealed all previous Fishery Acts, and, as introduced
by the Government, contained no recognition of a public right of
fishing, because the English Acts contain none. To this O’Connell’s
Committee demurred, and a clause was unanimously inserted overriding
the English principle and admitting the existence of public right in
Ireland. By decisive words solemnly agreed to, a vital difference
was established in the fishery law of the two countries. Confronted
by this fact, the Lord Chancellor of a Home Rule Ministry in 1908
overcame its force by laying down that “There was a misapprehension
as to the law” in the minds of the law-makers who framed the
enactment. Apparently, therefore, when the Imperial Parliament is
persuaded to legislate for special Irish conditions, and declines to
saddle Ireland with English usages, it “misapprehends the law.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE LORDS DIVIDED.
In 1910 the fishermen appealed to the House of Lords. After a week’s
debate that tribunal stood equally divided, and a second hearing
was ordered. The arguments were renewed before seven peers, but the
misdeeds of the Hamiltons, Chichesters, Clotworthys, and Donegalls
were then unknown. Still their Patents so little impressed Lord
Chancellor Loreburn, Lord Shaw, and Lord Robson that they refused to
allow them to prevail against ancient user.
In England and Scotland, neither Thames nor Tweed, Lake Windermere
nor Loch Lomond, is an appanage of royalty. The frontagers who own
the banks enjoy therewith the “bed and soil,” which is nowhere a
“flower of the Crown.” To enforce a contrary rule in Ireland strong
reasons should appear. Nevertheless, the Patents, in the light
presented by the archivist, satisfied Lords Halsbury, Macnaghten, and
Dunedin. They not unnaturally assumed that such grants would not have
been issued without the King’s sanction, nor unless the Crown owned
everything they gave away.
How James I. acquired the fisheries they could not explain, and Lord
Dunedin admitted this frankly:—“It is impossible to point to any
forfeiture which identified the Lough. Yet it was obviously very
probable that it was included in the various territories forfeited to
the Crown in the time of the O’Neills.”
Four dates slay this speculation—as dates often ambush the
adventurous. Chichester gave himself the grant of the fisheries for
life with the title of Admiral on the 9th May, 1604. The Patent to
Hamilton of Lough Neagh and the Bann was of 14th February, 1606.
Hugh O’Neill did not go into exile until the 14th September, 1607.
The escheat of his property was not declared until 1615, and for
three centuries afterwards no one ever conjectured that his estate
included Lough Neagh. Its boundaries in the Earl’s Patent from James
I. and in that of his grandfather from Henry VIII. prove that it did
not do so. Con O’Neill made his surrender to Henry VIII., and took
his regrant for “Tyrone” in 1542. Con MacNeale Oge O’Neill made his
surrender for Castlereagh (or Claneboy) to Queen Elizabeth in 1587,
and took a regrant. In the Patents given in exchange, the Crown
nowhere pretends to convey or deal with Lough Neagh. Its shores
bounded the O’Neill patrimonies, and no other Chiefs ruled beside
them. Consequently, no “forfeitures” from any O’Neill can have
vested its waters in the Crown. Nor can anyone except the O’Neills
be suggested as owners from whom the Crown could have derived. The
Act of Elizabeth attainting Shane O’Neill in 1569 does not help the
argument.
The territory of the Claneboy O’Neills was granted to Hamilton three
months before he received the Patent of Lough Neagh, which was
conveyed by the alchemy of the Thomas Irelande “Letter,” and not by
that authorising the stripping of Sir Con O’Neill. This alone refutes
the “forfeiture” theory.
Lord Macnaghten rested himself on a different basis. Misled by the
archivist’s failure to mention the Patent under which Chichester
first took over the fisheries, and without knowledge of the effect of
the Commission under which the Antrim inquisition was authorised, he
ventured the opinion that proof was afforded of Royal ownership by
that inquisition.
Quoth he:—“There is an inquisition which finds that Queen Elizabeth
was entitled to one-half of Lough Neagh. ‘How can you claim the
whole’? it was said, ‘when her Majesty did not pretend to more than
one-half’? Lord Justice Fitzgibbon cut the knot by saying that
‘medietas’ does not mean ‘one-half.’ There I think his lordship is
wrong, but it is the only mistake—if it be a mistake—that the Lord
Justice has made. It seems to me that the difficulty may be solved
by a glance at any map which shows the boundaries of the counties
bordering on Lough Neagh. The inquisition was an Antrim inquisition.
The jurors could only deal with her Majesty’s possessions in Antrim,
and the fact is that half of Lough Neagh, and no more, does lie
within County Antrim. The inquisition itself refers to an inquisition
taken in County Down only eight days before. Probably there were
other inquisitions dealing with the rest of Lough Neagh.”
This was a hopelessly mistaken deliverance. The Inquisition was an
“Antrim Inquisition,” but the Commission for it extended to Down as
well. It first sat at Ardwhin (recté Ardquin), where no reference to
the fisheries was made. Moreover, the Antrim Inquisition does not
find that “Queen Elizabeth was entitled to one-half of Lough Neagh.”
The translation by the “archivist” was:—
“All that moiety of the pool of Lough Neagh which lies towards the
east parcel of Claneboy aforesaid in the county aforesaid.”
This was merely a finding as to the half of a “pool” lying in the
district to which the jurors were confined, and not one for half
Lough Neagh.
The Record Office translation published years before the litigation,
the work of a brilliant scholar, does not even employ the word
“one-half.” Whatever be the meaning of “medietas,” it is in this
“return” confined to something in Claneboy. Dr. Smith’s Latin
dictionary gives for its equivalent “the mean,” and states it is “a
word doubtfully coined by Cicero from the Greek.”
In enlarging the scope of the Antrim Inquisition beyond Claneboy Lord
Macnaghten displayed much intrepidity. His conjecture that “Probably
there were other inquisitions dealing with the rest of the lough” is
still more rash. No trace of them exists, and none ever existed.
The confiscators took the utmost care to preserve all writings
which could warrant their possession. Chichester ordered the Antrim
inquisition, not to help Hamilton, but to block him. They were then
rivals, if not enemies. When they became allies soon afterwards no
Crown title existed to justify Hamilton’s Patent for Lough Neagh
and the Bann. Every stretch of the river was in legitimate private
ownership under English law, save the monastery reaches. The Lough
lay in no man’s private wallet—as was then notorious.
Never before was “fancy” History invented to decide the fate of real
property in the House of Lords.
Preferable, indeed, is the title invented by the ex-monk, Miler
Magrath, who, when converted into a Protestant Archbishop of Cashel,
was got to visit London in Elizabeth’s reign, and in a “book set
down in writing by her Majesty’s express commandment” declared in
1592:—“It is holden for an opinion in Ireland that her Majesty hath
special right and interest in all principal rivers, loughs, lakes and
great waters, in all islands and commodities contained upon them.”
Miler, however, added a doubt:—“If this opinion be true ... I am not
sure of it.” From that day to the present no one else has been able
to invent a better title for the Crown to grant away Lough Neagh.
Lord Macnaghten was deeply impressed by the litigation in the Irish
House of Lords. He quoted Lord Clare’s account of his going to Armagh
when Attorney-General to dispute Lord Donegall’s title (omitting his
error as to the Act of Settlement) and declared:—
“We know that the right or claim of the Donegall family to the
several fishery of the whole of Lough Neagh had been asserted openly,
and had been the subject of a litigation which lasted for thirty
years.... Such a judgment ... is entitled to the utmost weight, and
better evidence of possession than any old lease can be.”
Thus the Donegalls were depicted as boldly flinging their Patent in
the face of the world, and daring all comers to deny its validity
in 1788. The truth was that they challenged an English Corporation,
disabled from asserting any right in Lough Neagh, as to its mode of
fishing in the Bann, and in doing so took care to avoid raising any
question of title which would bring their Patent into discredit.
For an Ulsterman, Lord Macnaghten showed slight acquaintance with
the history of his Province. When he came to deal with May’s lease
he said it described the Bann “as being in the County of Tyrone as
well as in Antrim and Londonderry; and I suppose the Bann was never
in Tyrone since the days of the Flood.” Every Ulster peasant knows
that until the Planters carved up O’Neill’s dominions the Bann always
ran through “Tyrone.” The county now called “Londonderry” formed part
of “Tyrone,” and was only shorn from it in Stuart times after Derry
was allotted to the Londoners. Moreover, the Londoners’ Charter,
lodged in evidence before Lord Macnaghten, described the Bann in the
King’s name as being in “Tyrone,” in the same way as did May’s lease.
His geographical scorn reveals the extent of his knowledge of the
period he was discussing when trying to overturn the decision of his
predecessors—Lords Cairns, Hatherley, Blackburne, and Watson—in 1878.
The “old lease,” the importance of which Lord Macnaghten diminished,
was denounced by Lord Shaw as a forgery. Lord Robson agreed with
him in this. Its history lay within testable times, whereas little
was known of the Patents beyond what appeared on their face. Lord
Macnaghten and Lord Dunedin, while acknowledging that erasures
disfigured “that unhappy document” (as the former dubbed it),
and that interlineations had been inserted, treated these as
innocent. The tell-tale Memorial signed by Lord Donegall, and the
contradictions and variances between it and the lease, were passed
over in silence. It might have been expected that eminent lawyers
would regard it as more important to uphold the title to property
depending on registration in Ireland, Middlesex, and Yorkshire than
to throw doubt on its processes in order to buttress questionable
Patents.
Unless it should become part of public policy to discredit the
registration of title, both in England and Ireland, it seems probable
that the attitude of Lord Shaw and Lord Robson in viewing May’s lease
as a forgery will ultimately be regarded as the safer conclusion by
property-holders.
So far three Peers agreed with the Irish Courts and three declared
for the fishermen. The seventh member of the tribunal, Lord
Ashbourne, steered a middle course. He avoided discussing the forged
lease, and pronounced against restraining public right in Lough Neagh
as a whole, but wished to confine the injunction to the northern
part. This forced the Lord Chancellor to say that the sole question
before the House was whether the entire lough, or none of it, vested
in private hands.
Lord Ashbourne was reminded that he must declare himself “content”
or “non-content” when that question was put; and, so entreated, he
reluctantly sided with the Plaintiffs. He added a plea that costs
should not be awarded against the fishermen; but the other six Peers,
thitherto equally divided, were united in the determination that
his vote must carry its logical consequences. Accordingly, by one
quavering voice, the appeal stood dismissed, and the felonies of
three centuries were held law-worthy.
The perfume of legality now sweetens the memory of the deeds of
John Wakeman, Thomas Irelande, James Hamilton, Auditor Ware, Arthur
Bassett, Arthur Chichester, Henry Cromwell, John Clotworthy, and Lord
Donegall. Ermined innocence has arisen to bless their works. Spirits
of grace garland their graves with wreaths of equity. In other
words, the children of the clansmen, whose rights Brehon justice
guarded for a thousand years, have fallen among thieves.
When another national possession, the Curragh of Kildare, was
subtracted from the people, the excuse of State policy was advanced,
and Statute was obtained. Guile and wile sufficed to take in Lough
Neagh. Public playgrounds are rare. Hence doth wisdom (lacking other
present resource) lay up the ancient counsel:—
“Let these things be written for another generation.”
APPENDIX.
TRANSLATION OF THE COMMISSION SIGNED BY CHICHESTER, 26TH JUNE,
1605, ON WHICH INQUISITIONS WERE HELD AT ARDQUIN, CO. DOWN, 4TH
JULY, 1605, AND AT ANTRIM, 12TH JULY, 1605:—
James by the grace of God of England Scotland France and Ireland
king Defender of the faith &c. To our beloved and faithful Nicholas
Kerdiff esquire Serjeant at Law of our kingdom of Ireland aforesaid
Charles Calthrop knight our Attorney General of our kingdom aforesaid
William Parsons esquire our Surveyor General of our kingdom of
Ireland Nicholas Kenney esquire our Escheator general of our kingdom
aforesaid John Dalway esquire Robert Barnewell esquire and Laurence
Masterson gent greeting WHEREAS we by our letters signed with our
own hand and with our signet bearing date at Westminster the sixth
day of December in the second year of our reign of Great Britain
France and Ireland signified our royal will on the part of Thomas
Irelande of the city of London merchant that to him or his assigns we
should grant in farm so much of our manors castles lands tenements
and hereditaments in our kingdom of Ireland as should attain to the
annual value of one hundred pounds current money of England per
annum or thereabouts ... as should seem best to be granted to him
or his assigns in behalf of the said hundred pounds and WHEREAS by
other our letters by our hand bearing date the 16th day of April in
the third year of our reign of England France and Ireland and of
Scotland the thirty eighth we signified our pleasure on the part of
our servant James Hamilton ... all castles manors lands tenements
and hereditaments in the said country of Clandeboye and the Great
Ardes ... rents dues or customs of Ireland ..., especially confiding
in your fidelity prudence and foresight in transacting our business
... Nicholas Kerdiff Sir Charles Calthrop or William Parsons or
Nicholas Kenney we wish to be ... our commissioners ... or six five
four ... to inquire by the oaths of just and lawful men of the
several counties within the province of Ulster aforesaid as well
within liberties as without ... five four three or two of you in the
form aforesaid known or ... by whom the truth of the matter may be
better known or inquired of which ... Brian Fertagh O’Neale or either
of them in their life times or the life times of either of them
were possessed ... in English called “cuttings” in the country or
territory called the Upper Clandeboye and the Great Ardes ... and the
limits of the premises ... to you or six five four three or two of
you in form aforesaid ... or of either of them ... of Carrickfergus
in the province of Ulster aforesaid by ... ways means and ...
whatsoever ... and singular lands ... whatsoever ... the title
already or heretofore has been found and what ... which appertain or
belong to us or ought to belong or appertain to us by reason of any
attainder forfeiture or ... or concealed in the counties of Antrim
and Downe ... above reprise and of all and singular articles things
and circumstances ... and accordingly you or six five four three ...
aforesaid or six five four three or two of you in form aforesaid to
provide concerning all and singular the premises ... six five four
three or two of you in form aforesaid make and execute with effect so
that an Inquisition ... or six five four three or two of you in form
aforesaid ... or two of you in form aforesaid ... in the quinzaine
of St. Michael the Archangel next ensuing under your seals or the
seals of six five ... to be delivered ... all and singular Mayors
Sheriffs ... six five four three or two of you in form aforesaid in
the execution of the premises aforesaid.... Witness our Counsellor
Sir Arthur Chichester knight our deputy general of our kingdom of
Ireland at Dublin the 26th day of June in the third year of our reign
of England France and Ireland and of Scotland the thirty-eighth.
SUMMARY FROM 1894 REPORT OF RECORD OFFICE OF THE INQUISITION AT
ANTRIM.
Inquisition taken at Antrim, 12 July, 1605 (3° James I.), before
William Parsons, esq., surveyor general of Ireland, John Dalway,
esq., Robert Barnewell, esq., and Laurence Masterson, gent.; by
virtue of a commission under the great seal of Ireland.
Jurors: John Lugg, of Portmuck, Brian Ognive, of Larne, Hugh Magee,
of Ballindowne, Richard M’Jinkin, of Ballinlogh, Art ballagh O’Hary,
of Loughtoman, John or Shane Oge O’Hary, of Kells, Phelim duff
O’Hary, of same, Edmund O’Duffin, of same, Neale O’Duffin, of same,
Donat or Donogh M’Gloster, of Glanarme, Donel ballagh M’Gille, of
the Park, Alexander M’Randoll boy, of same, Art O’Hara, of Billy,
Richard M’Robert Carry, of Cross, and Cormac O’Mallon, of Killelagh,
gentlemen.
The Jurors say that Queen Elizabeth was seised as of fee, in right
of her crown of England, of all manors, castles, lands, and other
hereditaments in the lower part of the territory or country of
Claneboy, called Lower Clandeboy, in the county Antrim.
They say that Lower Clandeboy contains certain lesser parcels or
territories called tuoghs and oinaments, to wit: Tuoghnefuigh, &c.
The Jurors say that the bounds of the territory of Lower Clandeboy
are: towards the whole east side, the high sea; towards the south,
the bay of Knockfergus, the river Lagan to the ford of Garrifinbress,
thence by known bounds separating it from Killultagh to where the
little river Owen Camelin falls into Lough Eaugh or Sidney, as in an
inquisition taken at Ardwhin, co. Down, on 4 July, &c., &c.
[Here follow four-and-a-half printed pages of description of Sir Con
O’Neil’s lands.]
The Jurors further say that Bryan boy O’Maghallow, prior of the late
house of regular canons of Muckmaire, at the time of its dissolution,
was seised of the site of the priory and eight townlands, &c.
The prior was also seised of a free fishing of salmon, eels, and
other fishes in all waters within these townlands; of land called
Broaghnenaw on the north bank of Owen Neview; of an old fort called
Dunoare near Lough Eaugh; of land called Cloyenne Corp on the south
bank of Bealagh Negalvon; of land called Leighballi Islan bane in
Tuogh Moylinny near Ramoore of the tithes of the premises; of the
churches or impropriate rectories of Killede or Killelagh with the
presentation of the vicar (who receives two thirds of the tithes and
altarages), Emogall with the presentation of the vicar similarly
endowed, Carnemeve (except the third of the tithes for the curate);
and of the chapels of Reeltin, Duogh in Moylinny, Sillwoodan in
Tuogh Munter Rividy (with the tithes of, &c.), in which chapels the
prior was bound to maintain a curate; and of the chapel or rectory
of Whitekirk in Iland Maghy with tithes (except a third allotted to
the curate), the chapel of Ballimeighan with tithes (except a third
allotted to the curate), and two parts of the tithes and altarages
of Magherisergan in the Rowt, and Killgarne in the Larne. And of an
old religious house called the Friary of Masserine and the townland
of Ballydonogh in Ederdaowen belonging to it, and of 30 a. of land
belonging to it, and in occupation of the garrison there. There
is on the land of the priory an old Castle called Cloganmabree or
Castlemouybray almost overthrown. Queen Elizabeth was seised of the
dissolved priory and possessions, which are worth yearly 51s.
Queen Elizabeth was also seised of all fishings of salmon, eels,
and other fishes on Lough Eaugh towards Claneboy, and old eel wears
on the river Bann near Castle[Toome] and of a free fishing of eels,
salmon, and other fish in the same river; worth yearly 13s. 4d.
The Queen, by English Patent dated 16 Nov., 13th year, in pursuance
of Indentures 5 Oct., 13th, between the Queen and sir Thomas Smith
and Thomas Smith his son, gave such of the premises as lie south of
CastleBelfast, CastleMoubray, and CastleToome, and the Monastery
of Masserine together with great Arde and little Arde, as part of
the earldom of Ulster, to sir Thomas Smith and Thomas Smith, for
ever, under certain conditions as to the conquest of the land, its
settlement with Englishmen, and the furnishing of armed men to
hostings. [The Letters Patent, and Indenture are set out verbatim.]
The Jurors say that Thomas Smith the son on the 12th Oct., 1572, came
to Ulster with a few Englishmen but did not repress the Irish rebels,
nor plant or people the country, nor bring the armed men to general
hostings as required.
The prior of the hospital of S. John of Jerusalem at the time of
the dissolution was seised of the rectories of Moyuliske in Tuogh
Moylinny, &c.
Gilleragh McOownagh, abbot of the house of canons regular of S.
Augustin of Woodburne or Goodburne, was at the dissolution of the
abbey seised of the site of the abbey and 15 acres adjoining; and of
the rectory of Entroia or Antrim, &c. The premises are worth yearly
15s. Irish.
Murtha McAmullon, abbot of the house of regular canons of the order
of S. Augustin of the Blessed Mary of Desert or Kells, co. Antrim,
at its dissolution, was seised of the impropriate rectories of Dough
Connor, &c. Worth 15s. Irish.
Shane O’Boyle, prior of the house of friars, preachers of the order
of S. Dominic of Colrane, at the time of dissolution, was seised of
the site of the priory, and four townlands and a half, named, &c.;
and a fishery in the Bann for one day in each year (Monday after the
nativity of S. John the Baptist), receiving all fish caught in the
river on that day; also one salmon on every day during the fishing
season from each fisherman. The premises are worth yearly 40s. Irish.
Gerald Missett, provost or master, in Irish called oughteran of the
house of friars of the third order of S. Francis, of Inver, on the
1 Feb. 32° Hen. VIII. was seised of the site of the house, and the
townlands called Garrimore and Ballygrenlawy in Tuoghlarne, &c. Worth
yearly 6s. 8d. Irish.
Moriertagh M’Cann, abbot of the abbey of regular canons of S.
Augustin of Ardmagh, co. Ardmagh, at its dissolution, was seised of
land or territory called the Grange, &c. Worth yearly 8s. Irish.
The abbot of the abbey of monks of the order of S. Benedict called
Black Abbey, co. Down, at its dissolution, was seised of the
impropriate rectory of Dirreraghie, &c. Worth yearly 5s. Irish.
William O’Dorman, late abbot of the house of canons of S. Augustin of
Bangor, co. Downe, at its dissolution was seised, &c. Worth 13s. 4d.
To the preceptory of S. John of Ardes, co. Down, belonged a grange,
&c. Worth 5s. Irish.
James M’Gwilmer, abbot of the house of regular canons of the order of
S. Augustin of Movilla, co. Down, at its dissolution was seised of
the impropriate rectory of Dromma, &c. Worth 6s. 8d. yearly.
John O’Mullegan, abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Cumber, co. Down,
at its dissolution, was seised of the chapel or grange called
Templenelafin in Island Magee, &c. Value yearly 3s. 4d. Irish.
The prior of Inch, co. Downe, at the dissolution of the priory,
was seised of the chapel of Langualattin in TuoghBraden Iland with
tithes, &c. Value yearly 10s. Irish.
The prior of S. Patrick of Downe, co. Downe, at the dissolution of
the priory, was seised of the rectory of Seinkill in Tuogh Cinnament,
&c. The premises are worth 20s. yearly.
All the premises belong to King James as well in right of his crown
as by reason of the force and intention of divers statutes, &c.
INDEX.
Act of Explanation (1665), 126, 142-146.
Act of Settlement (1662), 126, 132, 134, 142, 157-160, 181.
“Admiral” of Lough Neagh, 13-18, 29, 112, 166-7.
Allen, S., Escheator, 89-91, 111, 113, 171-3.
American Revolution, 150-3.
Annesley, Sir F., 90-9, 105.
Antrim, Co., 25, 28, 30, 32, 38, 54, 80, 114, 150-6, 167-8, 181.
Antrim Inquisition, 25-6, 67, 166-9, 180.
Archivist’s affidavit, 164-171.
Armagh Co., 36, 50, 153-158, 181.
Armagh trial (1788), 155.
Ardes, Great, 21, 24, 25, 168.
Ashbourne, Lord, 183.
Bagenal, Marshal, 37.
Balfour, Sir James, 83-88, 94, 96, 111, 145.
Bann, River, 9-15, 29-46, 54-98, 109-147, 154-169, 171-182.
Bann, “fourth” of, 38, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 69, 70.
Barbadoes, 149.
Basil, Wm., Attorney-General, 121-131.
Bassett, Sir A., 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 66, 88, 90, 112, 170, 173.
Belfast, 3, 10, 11, 15, 24, 49, 150-162.
Bingley, Sir John, 53.
Blundell, Sir F., 84, 85.
Bondmen and women, 149.
Bow Lane, 21, 23.
Boyle (see Earl of Cork).
Broghill, Lord (Boyle), 120, 124, 132, 144.
Bramhall, Bishop, 110, 114, 128-130.
Breda, declaration, 125, 132-5.
Brehons, the, 10, 15, 41, 45, 52, 53, 60, 66, 67, 73, 184.
Buckingham, Duke of, 84-8, 92-99, 102, 106, 141.
Cade, Jack, 100.
Cairns, Lord, 163, 182.
Carew, Sir Geo., 2, 3, 6, 7, 36, 58.
Carlow, Co., 30, 103.
Cary, Deputy, 17, 54, 58.
Carrickfergus, 3, 9, 11-20, 60-89, 105, 115, 116, 171
Carte’s Ormonde, 97.
Castle Chamber, 38, 57, 74.
Cavan, Co., 50, 51.
Cecil (Lord Salisbury), 2, 11, 12, 13, 24-82.
Charles I., 33, 53, 74, 95-149, 163.
Charles II., 114, 123-176.
Charters to Londoners, 65-86, 90-182.
Charter to Sir T. Smith, 9.
Chesterfield, Countess, 134.
Chichester, Sir Arthur, 2-148.
Lord Edward, 112, 114, 139.
Dame Lettice, 73.
Sir John, 27.
Claneboy, 9-21, 24, 25, 44, 98, 131, 168-9, 179, 180.
Lord, 18, 149.
Clancarty, estate, 148.
Clare, Lord (see John Fitzgibbon).
Clotworthy, Sir Hugh, 10, 118, 119.
John, 110-163.
Coke, Sir John, 163.
Coleraine, 28, 66, 89, 91, 121, 130, 155.
Commission, ecclesiastical, 65, 66.
for executing royal declaration, 142.
Antrim Inquisition, 24, 25, 30, 166-8.
as to O’Byrnes, 101-106.
for Defective Titles, 59, 61, 108-139.
for Chichester Patent, 88-9.
Common Law, 53, 70.
Connacht, 117.
Convention, Republican, 124, 132-3.
Cooke, Sir R., 7, 28-32, 78.
Coote, Sir C., 124, 125, 132, 144.
Cork, Earl of (Boyle), 7, 95, 96, 107-120.
Corporations, created, 77, 125.
Court of Claims, 134.
Cromwell, Henry, 120-2, 133, 142-4.
Oliver, 117-129, 133-160.
Crown lands, 2, 78, 133.
rental, 86.
Culmore, 48-9, 71-3.
Custodium of Belfast, 10, 20, 49.
of Culmore, 48, 73.
of Tyrone, 47.
Davies, Sir John, 6-149, 181.
Derry, Bishop of, 14, 38, 62, 67.
Derry, 36, 40, 48, 64, 68, 80, 81, 150, 153, 182.
Desmond, estates, 95, 96.
Devonshire, Earl of, 1-41, 59, 63, 99.
Discoverer, 19, 83, 86, 94, 96, 97, 111.
Docwra, Sir Henry, 9, 40, 104.
Donegal Co., 47.
Donegall, Lord, 112-163, 173-181.
Down, Co., 9, 25, 28, 30, 32, 80, 131, 150-3, 167-8.
Down and Connor, Bishop of, 14, 38.
Dublin Castle, 35, 38, 43, 82, 102-3, 113, 124, 147.
Dublin, Co., 32.
Corporation, 7.
Dunedin, Lord, 178, 182.
Embezzlement, 78, 82, 93.
Elizabeth, Queen, 1-52, 76, 98-110, 148, 168-181.
Essex, Earl of, 37.
Eustace, Chancellor, Lord, 126, 144.
Everard, Sir John, 78.
Exchequer, 2, 22, 23, 31, 61, 86, 89, 94, 96, 109, 111, 119.
Falkland, Lord, 94-110.
“Famous Paper,” The, 132-135.
Fermanagh, 37, 50.
Flight of the Earls, 44, 45, 46, 57, 62, 65, 76.
Fishery Act (1842), 176.
Fitzgibbon, Lord Justice, 176-9.
John, Earl of Clare, 156-181.
Forbes, Sir Arthur, 96, 97, 112, 124, 145.
Forged Lease, 173-5, 182-3.
Froude, J. A., 93, 150-1.
Fullerton, Sir James, 19, 20, 21.
Galway, Co., 32.
Gaelic place-names, 126.
Gaelic type, 52.
Godolphin, Sir Wm., 9, 31, 34, 41.
George III., 150-3.
Graham, Richard, Sir, 98-9, 100-5.
Thomas, 100.
William, Sir, 104.
Gunpowder Plot, 29.
Hadsor, Richard, 95-9.
“Half Moon” Inn, 21-8, 172.
Halifax, Earl of, 148.
Halsbury, Earl of, 178.
Hamilton, James, 18-33, 38-72, 83-112, 131, 140-181.
Hart, Captain, 48, 49.
Hatherley, Lord, 182.
Hearts of Steel, 151, 152.
Henry VIII., 4, 5, 7, 9, 30, 43, 44, 77, 168, 179.
Hibbotts, Sir Thomas, 7.
Hicks, Michael, 5.
Holmes, Lord Justice, 176.
House of Lords’ decision (1878), 163.
(1911), 178.
(Irish) (1795), 157.
Innishowen, Barony, 49, 65.
Inquisition at Antrim, 25, 30, 67, 98, 166, 169, 180, 181.
at Ardquin, 25, 180.
at Carrickfergus, 89, 90, 91, 111.
at Derry, 89, 90, 91, 111, 173.
at Imaal, 100.
at Limavady, 66, 98.
at Wicklow, 112.
Insurrection of 1641, 115, 134, 158.
Protestant, of 1770, 153.
Irelande, Thomas, 21-32, 58, 60, 86, 112, 167-179.
Irish Parliament, 76-8, 125-6, 156-9.
Society, 154-5, 160-1.
Island Magee Massacre, 115.
Jacob, Solicitor-General, 7, 42.
James I., 3-117, 142-169, 172-9.
James II., 127.
Jones, Archbishop, 26, 37, 60, 72, 73, 74, 90, 173.
Sir Roger, 104.
Kildare, 28, 184.
King, John, 5, 6, 7, 34, 58, 60.
King’s Letters, 3-59, 89-130, 145, 166-8, 172.
Kinsale, battle of, 33, 98.
Lagan, River, 11, 15, 27, 29, 30.
Lane, Sir R., 10, 11, 20, 49.
Laud, Archbishop, 33, 110, 119, 130, 133, 134.
Lawson, Judge, 163.
Lifford, Grand Jury, 48, 103.
Leitrim, Co., 96.
Limavady, 66, 67.
Loftus, Lord Chancellor, 104, 105, 107, 109.
London Corporation, 62, 64, 67, 72, 81, 113, 118, 122, 128, 130, 133,
137, 154.
Longford, Co., 96.
Lords Justices, Irish, 109, 144, 145, 147.
Loreburn, Lord Chancellor, 178, 183.
Lough Erne, 27, 37.
Lough Foyle, 27, 37, 46, 47, 48, 49, 65, 68, 71, 72, 73, 78.
Neagh, 9-15, 27-182.
MacDonnell, Sir Randal, 14, 27-71.
Sir James, 27.
Sorley, 28.
Macnaghten, Lord, 178-182.
Magrath, Miler, Archbishop, 51, 181.
Maguire, Lord, 37, 44, 97, 116, 119.
Conor Roe, 50.
Massereene, lands, 10, 118, 132.
Lord (see Clotworthy, Sir John).
May’s lease, 159-183.
Mayo, Co., 32.
Meath, 28, 32.
Mellifont Treaty, 41-54.
Memorial of lease, 173-183.
Mervyn, Sir Audley, 132-4.
Monasteries, 5, 7, 8, 32, 168-9.
Monaghan, Co., 36.
Monck, General, 125, 144.
Montgomery, Bishop, 20, 38-42, 62, 65, 131.
Sir Hugh, 20, 21, 29, 167.
Moore, Sir Garrett, 41, 44.
Mountjoy (see Devonshire).
Mountnorris, Lord, 105.
Nicholas, Secretary, 126, 130.
“Non-obstante” clause, 144.
Northampton, Earl of, 62.
O’Byrnes, Story of, 96-108.
O’Cahan, Sir Donal, 40-67, 100, 116, 148.
O’Connell, Daniel, 176, 177.
O’Dempsey, Sir Terence, 107.
O’Doherty, Sir Cahir, 2, 48, 49, 50, 65, 103, 116.
John, 27, 40, 48.
O’Donnell, Earl of Tirconnel, 1, 2, 18-46, 97, 116.
Nial Garve, 46, 47, 50.
Red Hugh, 2, 47.
Oglethorpe, Sir R., 109, 112, 145.
O’Hanlon, Sir Oghy, 50.
O’Neill, Brian Art, 48.
Con (the lame), 43, 44.
Con, Sir, 9, 11, 20-44, 86, 131, 167-9, 179.
Con, McNeal Oge, 179.
Cormac, Sir, 47, 50.
Daniel, Colonel, 131-5.
Henry, Sir, 135.
Hugh, 1-27, 33-66, 77, 97-116, 170-9.
Owen Roe, 48.
Shane, 37, 179.
Lord, 159.
of Claneboy, 19, 20, 179.
O’Reilly, Sir John, 50.
Ormonde, Duke of, 50, 82, 124, 126, 128, 137.
Palatinate, 92.
Palesmen, 37.
Parliament, Chichester’s, wages of, 79.
meeting of, 76, 77.
dissolved, 79.
at Restoration, 125.
Parsons, Sir Wm., 24, 25, 30, 67, 98, 100-104, 166-7, 169.
Paulett, Sir George, 48.
Pery, Lord, 157-8.
Phillips, Sir Thos., 27, 28, 38, 46, 55, 56, 62, 81.
Pirates, 75, 94.
Poland, 51.
Plantation of Ulster, 47, 57, 63-68, 73-80, 93, 99, 116, 117, 142,
182.
Planters’ character, 80.
Power, Sir Wm., 95-6, 111, 145.
Privy Council, 1-148.
Pym, John, 114, 118, 119.
Queen’s Co., 28-32.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 77, 95.
Recusants, protest, 77.
Record Office, 15, 160, 164-5, 170, 180.
Registry of Deeds, 173.
Restoration of Charles II., 123, 125, 128, 134, 140.
Rich, Lady, 5, 12, 33, 34.
Richmond, Duke of, 99.
Ridgeway, Sir Thomas, 62.
Robson, Lord, 178, 182-3.
Roscommon, 30.
Ross, Mr. Justice, 165-6, 168, 175.
“Royal” fishing, 69, 89.
Savage, Sir A., 105, 107.
Scotch and Scotland, 3, 6, 18-57, 63, 80, 116, 128-9.
Seal, Great, 4, 14, 65, 73, 74, 91, 104, 131, 133, 146, 159.
Sequestration, 55, 57, 58, 62, 157-8.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 164.
Shakespeare, 34, 37.
Shaw, Lord, 178, 182-3.
Sweden, 50, 51.
Signet for patents, 4, 120-133.
Slaves, Irish, 148-149.
Smith, Sir Thos., 9, 19, 24, 148.
Sorley, Bwee, 28.
Southampton, Earl of, 34.
Spain and Spanish, 2, 18, 38, 102.
Spenser, Edmund, 53, 149.
Star Chamber, 56, 57, 69, 70, 71, 74, 83, 103, 107, 111, 112, 118.
Statute of Uses, 30, 111.
St. John, Sir Oliver, 7, 82-86, 92-101, 145.
St. Mary’s Abbey, 5, 7, 8, 19.
Strafford, Lord, 31, 108-146.
Surrenders, 72, 86, 90, 141.
Thurloe, John, 122-3.
Tower of London, 44-47, 75-7.
Trinity College, Dublin, 7, 164.
Toome, 27, 113, 169.
Tyrone, Co., 9, 36, 37, 40, 41, 43, 47, 150-3, 182.
Ussher, Archbishop, 105-7.
Villeins, 149.
Wakeman, John, 5, 6, 7, 21-34, 58, 60, 63, 94-112, 163.
Wales, 77.
Walker, Lord Chancellor, 176-7.
Wandesford, Deputy, 114, 115, 129, 138, 139, 145.
Ware, Auditor, 29, 31, 33, 58, 60.
Washington, 150.
Waterford Corporation, 95.
Wesley, John, 150-3.
Westmeath, Co., 32.
Weston, Nicholas, 46.
Wexford, Co., 32.
Whitehall, 33, 78, 125, 130-7, 140.
Wicklow Grand Jury, 105.
Inquisition, 112.
Co., 99, 100-3, 163.
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 43 Changed: it semed to them that
to: it seemed to them that
pg 74 Changed: Chichester’s serviters, most of whom were scoundrels
to: Chichester’s servitors, most of whom were scoundrels
pg 96 Changed: (ancester of Lord Granard)
to: (ancestor of Lord Granard)
pg 102 Changed: He owned too big a property be allowed to remain
to: He owned too big a property to be allowed to remain
pg 104 Changed: The recipients were Sir Willam Parsons
to: The recipients were Sir William Parsons
Errata and Additional Errata have been changed in text.
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