Ireland under the Stuarts and during the Interregnum, Vol. I (of 3), 1603-1642

Conditions of the appointmentAdvice of ParsonsThe Lords Justices give offenceDeath of Sir John Eliot

When announcing the appointment of a new Deputy to the Lords Justices of Ireland, the King asked for a detailed account of the revenue and of the state of the army. He required them ‘not to pass any pardons, offices, lands, or church livings, nor to confer the honour of knighthood upon any, or to dispose of any company of horse or foot there in the interim.’ While waiting for the Deputy, they were to confine themselves to the administration of civil justice and the maintenance of military discipline. Wentworth wrote himself a few days later asking for information as to the state of Ireland. Sir William Parsons, with whom as well as with the Lords Justices he was quite unacquainted, wisely advised him to do nothing until he crossed the channel and could see for himself. In the meantime he made arrangements with the King by which power was concentrated in his hands. To secure secrecy and promptness it was agreed that he should correspond on financial matters direct with the Lord Treasurer, and on general business direct with Secretary Coke, instead of with the Privy Council or any committee of it. The whole patronage, civil and ecclesiastical, was made to depend on the Lord Deputy, while grants of places in reversion were annulled for the past and forbidden for the future. No new office was to be created without the Deputy’s advice, and it was promised that no Irish complaint should be entertained in England unless it had been made to him first. By direct orders from the King the Lords Justices were directed to pay no arrears or other debts, but to confine their expenses of government strictly to the current cost of the establishment. They nevertheless sanctioned payment of a large sum to Sir Francis Cook. Wentworth was highly indignant, but Cottington wrote that Mountnorris as Vice-Treasurer would probably refuse to pay the money out of an almost empty Exchequer. ‘Your old dear friend Sir John Eliot,’ he added, ‘is very like to die.’ He did die six weeks later in the unwholesome prison where he lay, as a consequence of adhering to the cause which the new Lord Deputy had deserted. Yet Wentworth seems to have been surprised at the abuse which his rather late found loyalty brought upon himself. He had bound himself hand and foot to the service of the magnanimous prince who had ordered that Sir John Eliot should be buried in the Tower, in the church of that parish where he died.178

Deficiency of the revenueFines for not going to churchFirst difference with Lord MountnorrisThe Lords Justices reprimanded

Wentworth was well inclined to take the advice given by Parsons, but there was one department of Irish affairs which would not wait, and that was the revenue. The Lords Justices announced that they would have to begin the financial year on April 1, 1632, with less than £14,000 still to be raised out of the £120,000 promised in 1628. This was not enough to pay the army till December, and they realised that it was impossible to decrease that force. They could suggest no better means of making the ends meet than by ruthlessly exacting the fines of one shilling a Sunday from the Irish Roman Catholics who refused to go to church. A worse kind of tax could scarcely be devised, but it was legal, and Wentworth had made no scruple of levying it in Yorkshire. He sent over a Roman Catholic agent to Ireland, who obtained a promise of £20,000 from his co-religionists on condition of escaping the Sunday dues for another year. This provided money for immediate necessities, but he had no idea of letting the Protestants escape. He told Cottington that it was safer to displease the minority than the majority, and grounded his action upon this. It is not surprising that he made enemies of the Protestants in the long run, and that he did not make friends of the Roman Catholics. Nor was he particularly anxious to conciliate the men with whom he would have to work in Ireland. Lord Mountnorris lingered at Chester on account of his wife’s health, and Wentworth ordered him to go over at once and attend to his financial business. The letter is civil enough in form, but contains the scarcely-veiled threat that Mountnorris would be the sufferer if he were untrue to him or suspicious of him in any way. Considering that he himself evidently distrusted the Vice-Treasurer it was hardly wise to bid him send over £2,000 of the new Deputy’s salary at once, ‘for,’ he said, ‘I have entered fondly enough on a purchase in Yorkshire of £14,000, and the want of that would very foully disappoint me.’ To the Lords Justices Wentworth was still more outspoken. They had disobeyed orders by keeping secret the King’s letter of instructions which they had been ordered to publish, by ordering the payment of Sir Francis Cook’s arrear, and by failing to send over a detailed statement of the Irish revenue. Wentworth said plainly that he would not allow such presumption in them as to ‘evacuate his master’s directions, nor contain himself in silence, seeing them before his face so slighted, or at least laid aside very little regarded.’179

Wentworth’s journey delayed by piratesRadcliffe goes before with Lady WentworthAudacity of the pirates, who plunder the Lord Deputy’s baggage

Wentworth intended to be in Ireland by Christmas 1632, but he did not go till more than six months later. One good reason for the delay was that the narrow seas were infested by pirates, though this did not prevent him from sending over his lately married third wife in January 1633. George Radcliffe escorted her and she lay hidden in the Castle for several months, which was considered most mysterious, and her identity was not disclosed until after her husband’s arrival. The Irish Government feared further attacks by the Algerines upon Baltimore or some other defenceless place; but it was not only Algerines who threatened the coasts and plundered the shipping, and the Lords Justices declared that the Irish revenue could hardly bear the expense of two pinnaces called the 5th and 9th Whelps, which were assigned to them as a protecting force. One or more rovers frequented the Welsh coast, preying on the trade from Ireland, and carrying off men from the Isle of Man where there was no means of resistance. Another cruised about Youghal, while the Pickpocket of Dover lay off Dublin. Trade was at a stand, and the Irish customs made unproductive. ‘The fear of being thought to linger unprofitably’ in England induced Wentworth to send over most of his household goods in May 1633, and the plate escaped, but the Pickpocket took £500 worth of his linen. The same pirate drove a Dutch ship on shore close to Dublin, took out the cargo, and burnt her to the water’s edge, the flames being visible from the Castle. ‘The loss and misery,’ said Wentworth, ‘is not so great as the scorn that such a picking villain should dare to do these violences in the face of that state, and to pass away without control.’ A notable pirate named Nutt had the impudence to send Wentworth word that he was ready to convoy him over. A powerful ship under an excellent seaman, Captain Richard Plumleigh, was provided after much delay, but she did not get out of the Medway till June, and it was July before Wentworth heard that the passage to Dublin was safe. He then hastened over, and lost no time in showing that King Stork had succeeded to King Log. Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury a few days later.180

Essex in IrelandWentworth lands, and is welcomed by Lord CorkVisits of ceremony

A few days before the Lord Deputy’s arrival Essex, accompanied by Lord Cromwell, landed some miles from Dublin, and was met by the Lords Justices and Lord Primate with all persons of quality about town. The streets were so crowded with spectators that the coaches could hardly pass, and an old Irish woman called out ‘Blessed be the time that I live to see a son of thy father there.’ When Wentworth appeared on July 23 the water was very rough, and he was probably not inclined to eat the dinner which Lord Howth had prepared for him. At all events he declined to land near the head, and came ashore close to Dublin, nearly opposite to where the Custom House now stands. He was unexpected, and not a gun was fired, but Lord Justice Cork was quickly on the spot with his coach, and the news spread fast. The Lord Deputy, with Lord Castlehaven, Sir John Borlase, Sir Francis Cook, and others started to walk, but Cork invited them all into his coach, and by the time they reached the Castle there was such a crowd that the drawbridge had to be raised behind them. Afterwards, Cork records in his diary, ‘I having the precedency, the Lord Deputy brought me to my coach.’ Next day was given to receiving visits, which were for the most part scrupulously returned, that of Essex the first, precedency as an Earl being granted him until the viceroy was sworn. Essex soon departed to his estate at Carrickmacross, but was back in London early in the following year, whence he wrote a letter of four lines thanking the Lord Deputy for his ‘noble usage.’ Wentworth replied very civilly in a letter of eight lines, but there appears to have been nothing like intimacy between the two. ‘I visited both the Justices,’ Wentworth wrote, ‘at their own houses, which, albeit not formerly done by other Deputies, yet I conceived it was a duty I owed, being then but a private person, as also to show an example to others what would always become them to the supreme governor.’181

Wentworth receives the sword, July 25, 1633The Lord Chancellor’s speechWentworth’s speechWentworth makes obeisance to the King’s picture

At two o’clock on the third day Wentworth received the sword in the Council-chamber. The ceremony had generally been performed in Christchurch, but some said the Archbishop of Dublin would not let the Primate deliver his prepared sermon, or perhaps the Lord Deputy wished to avoid publicity. After a short discussion with some of the Council ‘in his ear whispering like,’ he decided to go in procession through the rooms of the Castle instead of slipping in quietly by the gallery, as he originally proposed. When the Council were seated the Lord Deputy remained standing, while Wandesford, as Master of the Rolls, read the commission; then Lord Mountnorris, as acting secretary (having it in reversion after Sir Dudley Norton, who may well be ‘jubilayed’) read the King’s letter ordering the Lords Justices to deliver the sword, and explaining the reasons for the new governor’s late arrival. When he had been sworn, Lord Chancellor Loftus spoke of the state in which he and his colleague left the government. No fresh debt, he said, had been contracted during their time of office, everything was quiet, and they were ready to advise their successor as to many desirable reforms. ‘I for my part,’ says Cork in his diary, ‘did most willingly surrender the sword, the rather in regard the kingdom was yielded up in general peace and plenty.’ Wentworth then took the chair, and with the sword in his hand made ‘a very good speech.’ He said he would be no upholder of factions, but would most esteem those who did most for the King’s service. He had heard that there was some discontent about two men having been drafted from each company in order to raise a troop for himself. He did not want one, he said, but the creation of a permanent guard for the viceroy had caused his delay in England. The men should be restored at the first vacancy, and he thought it very unfit that a departing Deputy should retain his company. ‘Herein he touched the Lord of Falkland, who retained his.’ Grandison had done the same, with continuous leave of absence. On the return journey the sword was carried by the Earl of Castlehaven, a knight having been thought good enough to bear it before the Lords Justices, who now brought up the rear. When he came before the cloth of estate, in the presence chamber, Wentworth halted and made ‘two humble courtesies to the King’s and Queen’s picture which hang on each side, and fixing his eyes with much seriousness showed a kind of devotion.’ He knighted his brother George, his cousin Danby, who was the husband of Wandesford’s daughter, and a very young Mr. Remington, ‘not of age, who hopes to save his wardship thereby, his father being very old and sickly.’ On reaching the privy chamber, where Lady Wentworth stood with Lady Tyrconnel and others, he introduced the late Lords Justices to his wife, presenting her to be saluted with a kiss from each of them … who until that instant had no title or place given her here but that of Mistress Rhodes.’182

Wentworth’s opinion of his CouncilA Parliament proposed to provide moneySpeech of Wentworth, who finds Parsons ‘dry.’First appearance of Ormonde

‘I find them in this place’ – so runs Wentworth’s first published letter from Dublin – ‘a company of men the most intent upon their own hands that ever I met with, and so as those speed, they consider other things at a very great distance.’ Three weeks later he found the officials very sharp about their own interests, but ‘with no edge at all for the public,’ and all in league to keep the Deputy as much in the dark as possible. He determined from the first to trust no one but his friend Wandesford, who had just been made Master of the Rolls, and his secretary Radcliffe, who had been in Ireland since January, and who was made a Privy Councillor within a few weeks of his chief’s arrival. To these was afterwards added Sir Philip Mainwaring, who owed his appointment to Wentworth and Laud jointly. On the day week after taking the reins of office Wentworth summoned the Council to consider how money might be raised for the payment of the army. The members of the Board were slow to begin the discussion, but Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham at last proposed to continue the voluntary contribution for another year, and thus to provide the necessary funds until the end of 1634. At the same time he suggested a Parliament, not only for supply but for the settlement of disputed titles. Then there was another silence, and at last Wentworth called upon Parsons to give his opinion. The result was an expression of doubt as to the power of the Council to bind others, and a hint that the army might be provided for out of the King’s ordinary revenue, which Wentworth found ‘reduced to fee-farms’ and therefore quite unelastic. ‘I was then,’ he said, ‘put to my last refuge, which was plainly to declare that there was no necessity which induced me to take them to counsel in this business, for rather than fail in so necessary a duty to my master, I would undertake upon the peril of my head to make the King’s army able to subsist, and to provide for itself amongst them without their help.’ He had been but a week in Ireland, and was already talking about risking his head, which tends to show that Pym had really uttered the threat attributed to him, and that his old ally remembered it. The Chancellor, Cork, and Mountnorris thereupon agreed to the proposal of Loftus, and all, especially Cork, were eager for a Parliament. Wentworth, who had championed the Petition of Right, had so completely given himself to prerogative that he seems hardly to have realised that men might be very willing to pay a parliamentary tax, while shrinking from arbitrary exactions and from troops at free quarters. ‘As for Sir William Parsons,’ he said, ‘first and last I found him the driest of all the company.’ It was not Parsons, however, but Loftus, Cork, and Mountnorris who were destined to feel the weight of his hand, although they now received his thanks. The young Earl of Ormonde came next morning to the Lord Deputy, and for himself, his friends, and his tenants agreed to what had been done.183

Miserable state of the armyCase of Lorenzo CaryWentworth restores disciplineAn amateur generalImprovement in arms

Having thus provided money, Wentworth lost no time in looking closely into the state of the army upon which his government rested. There were but 2,000 foot and 400 horse, but Wilmot had solemnly warned the English Government that no revenue could be collected and no English settler subsist without their help. A larger force would do wonders if money could be found, but it was impossible to make any reduction. Discipline was very slack, officers having been in the habit of taking their duties lightly, and even of going to London without leave and staying there for an indefinite time. Before leaving England Wentworth procured a letter from the King checking such irregularities, and giving the Deputy power to cashier obstinate offenders. But Charles’s own conduct was not calculated to support his viceroy’s authority. It was the undoubted privilege of a Deputy to dispose of military commissions on the Irish establishment, and Wentworth had promised before he left England to give the first vacancy to Mr. Henry Percy, Lady Carlisle’s brother. He had told the King of this promise, and Charles had made no objection. Nevertheless when Lord Falkland, whom Wentworth believed to be his enemy and detractor, died in September from the effects of an accident the King gave his company, which he had left in very bad order, to his second son Lorenzo, who was little more than a boy, though he had seen service abroad. Wentworth struggled hard, but was obliged to submit. Charles had the excuse of yielding to the prayer of a dying man, and he may have thought that Falkland had not been very well treated. His elder son had lost his place and suffered imprisonment, and he actually held a patent for transmitting this command to the younger. Knowing that he kept his commission in spite of the Lord Deputy, Cary took little pains to please him, while Wentworth never ceased to resent his presence in the Irish army, and tried to get him transferred. He took care that neither Cary nor any one else should have a sinecure, where there was so much work to be done. The men were undrilled, their arms and armour defective, their horses of the worst kind. The captains left everything to their subalterns, while both officers and men were scattered about the country and seldom or never paraded. Every captain was now furnished with a paper describing the defects of his company, and he was ordered to make them right within six months on pains of severe punishment, and of being ultimately cashiered. Weekly field days were ordered, while two companies of foot and one troop of horse were to be always quartered in Dublin, but changed every month. Thus the whole army would be ready to march at any time, and would pass under the General’s eyes at least once in two years. Wentworth showed a good example by putting his own troop into a thoroughly efficient state, sixty such men and horses as had not been seen in Dublin before. He trained them himself, said a letter-writer, ‘on a large green near Dublin, clad in a black armour with a black horse and a black plume of feathers, though many there looked on him and on this action with other eyes than they did on the Lord Chichester, who had been bred a martial man.’ Clarendon observes that, ‘though not bred a soldier, he had been in armies, and besides being a very wise man had great courage and was martially inclined.’ The artillery was in as bad order as other things, and Wentworth asked for Sir John Borlase, an experienced soldier, as master of the ordnance; and this appointment was made in due course. Steps were also taken to see that landowners who were bound to furnish armed men or horses should have them actually available. The cavalry were armed for the first time with musket-bore carbines, and they were expected to fight on foot if required. Wentworth took steps to abolish the obsolete light pieces called calivers, of which the bore varied. ‘Muskets, bandileers, and rests’ were substituted, and Borlase knew how to prevent swords worth less than four shillings from being rated at ten, and the purchase at 23s. of firearms which were worth nothing at all.184

Church and State. Bishop BramhallBramhall reports to Laud. A dismal storySimony and pluralism

The Church of Ireland was in no better case than the army, and Wentworth resolved to be guided by the new Archbishop of Canterbury. John Bramhall, whom Laud had recommended to Wentworth for a stall in York Minster, was now his chaplain, and was very soon given the rich archdeaconry of Meath. He became Bishop of Derry a few months later. Bramhall’s first task was to make a general investigation into Irish church affairs, and to report on them to Laud, who had already begun to inform himself on the subject. A fortnight after Wentworth’s arrival Bramhall had collected enough information to inform the Archbishop that it was ‘hard to say whether the churches be the more ruinous and sordid, or the people irreverent.’ One parish church in Dublin was the viceroy’s stable, a second a nobleman’s residence, and a third a tennis court where the vicar acted as keeper. The vaults under Christchurch were from end to end hired to Roman Catholic publicans, and the congregation above were poisoned with tobacco smoke and with the fumes of beer and wine. The communion table in the middle of the choir was ‘made an ordinary seat for maids and apprentices.’ The deanery was held by the English Archbishop of Tuam, and the state of the cathedral was an instructive comment on the prevailing system of pluralities. Passing from the churches to the clergy, Bramhall found ‘the inferior sort of ministers below all degrees of contempt, in respect of their poverty and ignorance; the boundless heaping together of benefices by commendams and dispensations but too apparent; yea, even often by plain usurpation.’ Simoniacal contracts were common, the stipends reserved for the curates in charge being often as little as forty shillings and seldom as much as ten pounds. One bishop was reported to hold twenty-three benefices with cure. Few thought it worth while to ask for less than three vicarages at once. No one knew what livings were in the Deputy’s gift, and even some whole bishoprics were left out of the book of first fruits. Leases of church lands had been made at trifling rents, and this practice was general in spite of prohibitions by the Government. ‘It is some comfort,’ Bramhall grimly adds, ‘to see the Romish ecclesiastics cannot laugh at us, who come behind none in point of disunion and scandal.’185

The Boyle tomb in St. Patrick’sLord Cork as a benefactorLaud is puzzled, but Wentworth has no doubtsThe monument is shifted

The Earl of Cork held a good deal of what had once been church land. Wentworth had long been hostile to him, as appears abundantly from his letters, and his zeal for the restitution of temporalities was in this case sharpened by personal dislike. The Earl was rich and powerful, and the Deputy was impatient of any influence independent of his own. Lady Cork died in February 1630, and was buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with her father, Sir Geoffrey Fenton, and her grandfather, Lord Chancellor Weston, in a vault under the place where the high altar had formerly stood. Her husband then purchased that part of the church from Dean Culme for 30l., and proceeded to raise an immense monument of black marble in the pseudo-classical style then in fashion. The position of this monument did not strike him as odd, for his Protestantism was not of the Laudian type, and it seemed natural to him that the communion-table should stand detached in the middle of the church. He told Laud that he had been a benefactor rather than a defacer of St. Patrick’s: ‘Where there was but an earthen floor at the upper end of the chancel, which was often overflown, I raised the same three steps higher, making the stairs of hewn stone, and paving the same throughout, whereon the communion table now stands very dry and gracefully.’ Both Ussher and Bulkeley,’ wrote Laud, ‘justify that the tomb stands not in the place of the altar, and that it is a great ornament to that church, so far from being any inconvenience… I confess I am not satisfied with what they say, yet it is hard for me that am absent to cross directly the report of two Archbishops.’ The Lord Treasurer was inclined to resent the attack on his kinsman’s tomb, and Laud warned his ally against the danger of making enemies. But Wentworth pressed the matter on Charles’s own notice, and procured from him full powers to a commission consisting of the Lord Deputy, the two archbishops, four other bishops chosen by Wentworth, and the deans and chapters of the two Dublin cathedrals. The commissioners held, very rightly no doubt, that the tomb was ill-placed, and Cork, who had more important interests at stake, was too prudent to contest the matter. By the following spring the monument had been taken down stone by stone, and Wentworth reported with vindictive glee that it was ‘put up in boxes, as if it were marchpanes and banqueting stuffs, going down to the christening of my young master in the country.’ It was re-erected on the south side of the choir, where it still stands, and the story is important only for the light it throws on Wentworth’s other dealings with Lord Cork, and with all others who opposed him.186