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

Scope of Wentworth’s plansProfit by wardshipsProtestant coloniesTipperaryClareKilkennyConnaught

Among the twenty-six Acts passed in the second session of Wentworth’s obedient Parliament there were several relating to the tenure and alienation of land. Secret leases for long terms and other fraudulent conveyances were so common that titles to property were much obscured. Feudal burdens were shirked, and private injustice was often done. The general drift of Wentworth’s legislation was to secure the public registration of deeds and wills, and to make the actual possession of land presumptive proof of its ownership. This reform, he wrote, ‘will without question gain the Crown six wardships for one, besides an opportunity to breed the best houses up in religion as they fall, which in reason of state is of infinite consequence, as we see experimentally in my Lord of Ormonde, who, if he had been left to the education of his own parents, had been as mere Irish and Papist as the best of them, whereas now he is a very good Protestant, and consequently will make not only a faithful, but a very affectionate servant to the Crown of England.’ The gain through the Court of Wards he afterwards reported to be £4,000 a year. The gain to his great scheme of plantation was obvious. Here again there was much immediate profit to the Crown and more in prospect by the establishment of an English and Protestant population. ‘All the Protestants,’ he said, ‘are for plantations, all the others against them.’ If juries drawn from the Recusant majority could be got to find the King’s title to their lands, so much the better. If not, there was a Protestant majority in the House of Commons and the lands requisite for colonisation might be ‘passed to the King by immediate Act of Parliament.’ One of the districts selected was the north part of Tipperary called Ormond, where the Earl had grants which would have been fatal to Wentworth’s scheme, but that he at once declared himself willing to co-operate. In Thomond or Clare Lord Inchiquin prudently followed Ormonde’s example, but in neither case was time given to Wentworth for the establishment of his projected colony. The sept of the O’Brennans had long been in practical possession of Edough, the northern part of Kilkenny, which includes Castlecomer. The King’s title was found in the usual way, and the territory was granted to Wandesford, who bought out certain other claimants and who even made some attempts to compensate the O’Brennans. Many English tenants were established, and Wandesford’s representatives, after having been ousted during the rebellion, held their own under the Commonwealth and after the Restoration. Wentworth claimed the whole of Connaught for the Crown. The general idea was that one-fourth of the land should be given to settlers, and that the old owners should receive a valid title for the remainder. Leitrim had been lately planted, and the other four counties were now claimed. Galway was thought the most likely to resist, and was left to the last, lest its example should corrupt the others.216

Submission of Roscommon, July 1635The King to have his way in any caseWentworth’s charge to the jury

The Commissioners for the new plantation were the Lord Deputy himself, Lord Dillon, acting-president of Connaught, Lord Ranelagh, Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Wentworth’s friend Wandesford, his secretaries Mainwaring and Radcliffe, and Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham, who always supported him. The Commissioners arrived at Boyle on July 9, 1635, and went to work without delay. Before leaving Dublin Wentworth had directed the sheriff to enpanel a jury ‘of the best estates and understandings’ in the county of Roscommon. ‘My reason,’ he said, ‘was that this being a leading case for the whole province, it would set a great value in their estimation upon the goodness of the King’s title, being found by persons of their qualities, and as much concerned in their own particulars as any other. Again, finding the evidence so strong, as unless they went against it, they must pass for the King, I resolved to have persons of such means as might answer the King a round fine in the Castle-chamber in case they should prevaricate, who in all seeming even out of that reason would be more fearful to tread shamelessly and impudently aside from the truth, than such as had less, or nothing to lose.’ The threatened landowners asked for an adjournment, but Wentworth said the chancery proceedings begun twenty days before were notice enough. Counsel having been heard on both sides, Wentworth told the jury that the King’s great object was to make them a civil people, that a plantation was the readiest means to that end, and that his Majesty would not only take from them nothing that was theirs, but would also give them something that was his. In other words they were to be allowed to retain three-fourths of what they, and everyone else, supposed to be their own property. No legally valid grant should be questioned, ‘but God knows,’ he told Coke, ‘very few or none of their patents are good.’ The evidence, Wentworth told the jury, was clear, and if they acknowledged it frankly they should have easy terms. But the King would have his way anyhow, and perhaps it would be best for him that they should deny his title, for in that case he would get all he wanted by a process in the Exchequer, and they could then expect no mercy. With this threat hanging over them, the Roscommon gentlemen thought it prudent to submit, and found the King’s title to the whole county.217

Submission of Sligo and Mayo, July, 1635Resistance of GalwayOpposition of ClanricardeThreats against all concernedPunishment of sheriffs and jurorsGalway submits and the King approves of all

Sligo, on the 20th, and Mayo on the 31st, followed the example of Roscommon, but at Portumna in Galway the Commissioners met with a very different reception. The county, and especially the eastern part of it, was much under the influence of the Earl of Clanricarde; it contained hardly any Protestant freeholders, and the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy was very great. Clanricarde was in England with his son, but his nephew Lord Clanmorris attended to lead the opposition. Another nephew was on the jury, and so was John Donnellan, the Earl’s agent or steward. The jury with two exceptions found against the King’s title, and it was observed that those who voted after Donnellan did so with much greater decision than those who voted before him. Richard Burke, Clanricarde’s nephew, was fined 500l. for endeavouring to influence a brother juror by pulling his sleeve while he was speaking with the Commissioners. Wentworth was very angry, and resolved to carry out his plan notwithstanding, but with the difference that half the land in Galway was to be confiscated, instead of a quarter as in the other three counties. The disobedient shire should be ‘fully lined and planted with English,’ and bridles in the meantime with sufficient garrisons. ‘And for those counsellors at law,’ the Commissioners reported, ‘who so laboured against the King’s title, we conceive it is fit that such of them as we shall find reason to proceed withal, be put to take the oath of supremacy, which if they refuse, that then they be silenced, and not admitted to practise as now they do; it being unfit that they should take benefit by his Majesty’s graces, that take the boldness after such a manner to oppose his service.’ Wentworth had taken much credit to himself at Boyle for allowing counsel to appear before the Commissioners, and this was how he understood freedom of speech. The sheriff was fined 1,000l. and bound over to appear in the Castle-chamber on a charge of packing the jury, who were also bound over to be dealt with there. A proclamation was issued to give the county generally an opportunity of disavowing the jury, and this was so far successful that a verdict was obtained for the King at Galway in April 1637. Charles thoroughly approved of the fines, the imprisonments and the proclamations, and in particular held it ‘just and reasonable’ that the Galway landowners should lose half their property instead of a mere one-fourth.218

Death of Richard Earl of Clanricarde, for which Wentworth is blamedUlick, Earl of Clanricarde, Governor of Galway

The Earl of Clanricarde had distinguished himself by his courage and fidelity at Kinsale, and had enjoyed the especial favour of Queen Elizabeth. He had afterwards married Walsingham’s daughter, the widow of Sidney and Essex. His services thus entitled him to consideration, and his connections secured him friends at Court. In 1616 James I., after a full inquiry by two secretaries of state, had made him governor of the county and town of Galway in such a manner as to make him independent of the president of Connaught. This patent expired with James, but it was amply renewed by his successor for the life of the Earl and his eldest son. These facts were perfectly well known to Wentworth, but he advised the King to break his word and revoke the patent on the purely technical ground that a judicial office could not be granted in reversion. Clanricarde died within the year, and it was reported by Wentworth’s enemies that hard usage had broken his heart. ‘They might as well,’ said the Lord Deputy, ‘have imputed unto me for a crime his being threescore and ten years old.’ There was more reason for imputing to him the death in prison of Martin Darcy, the unfortunate sheriff of Galway. ‘My arrows,’ he said on this point, ‘are cruel that wound so mortally; but I should be more sorry by much the King should lose his fine.’ The King did not revoke the patent for the government of Galway, and the young Earl of Clanricarde, who was to play so important a part in the civil war, seems from the first to have enjoyed much influence at Court. The Galway jurors were tried in the Castle-chamber in May 1636, and sentenced to pay £4,000 each as a fine, to be imprisoned until payment, and to acknowledge their fault at the assizes upon their knees and in open court. The fine was afterwards reduced at Clanricarde’s request, and the difficulties with Scotland began before any real progress could be made with the new settlement.219

Nature of Wentworth’s policyThere was a substantial breach of faith

Wentworth maintained the King’s title to Connaught on purely legal grounds, not seeming to realise that mere legality was an inadequate foundation for what was virtually wholesale forfeiture. Some modern writers who admire or excuse his policy have stated that he set up a title which would satisfy lawyers; but no one had a greater contempt for the letter of the law when it stood in his way, and it is the substantial justice of his action that is really in question. The Elizabethan lawyers knew perfectly well that the feudal ownership of Connaught was vested in Edward IV. and his successors, but they did not, therefore, consider that the land was at the Queen’s mercy. The chiefs and landowners of the province had been acknowledged over and over again, and had always yielded something to the Crown by way of cess. Sidney and Perrott reduced this uncertain impost to a small but fixed rent, and by so doing confirmed the tenure of those who paid it. It is very true that the exact terms of the contract had seldom been fulfilled by the Irish, and that most of them had been engaged in rebellious actions after the composition. That might have been a reason for forfeiting their land at the time, and demands for arrears of rent might have been made much later; but this is a very different thing from confiscation after a generation of peace. Nor was this all: on July 21, 1615, James I. had written to Chichester directing that the Connaught landowners should have patents granted them, in consideration of the composition made by Queen Elizabeth, and reserving the same rent in future. To this Wentworth answered that the recitals in the letter as to the fulfilment of the composition covenants were grounded on false information; that ‘the inhabitants were intruders and had no such estates as could either be surrendered or confirmed.’ The patents actually issued were therefore void, as having been obtained under false pretences, and for some technical flaws also. The monstrous result is that the whole population of Connaught were squatters, and had no rights whatever. It is no wonder that the Irish Parliament had clamoured for a sixty years’ possessory title against the Crown.220

The Londoners’ plantationDestruction of the forests

Whatever other objects he may have had in view, profit to the Exchequer was always sought by Wentworth. In the case of the Londoners’ plantation the mere money consideration was greater, and the political advantage much less, than in the case of the Connaught proprietors. Sir Thomas Phillips had almost ruined himself in his contest with the great corporation, who had certainly done much, but who could easily be shown not to have done all that they promised. Londonderry and Coleraine had been secured against attack, but the number of houses was less than at first agreed upon, and in the country it was found much easier to take rent from the native occupiers than to bring over the full number of English settlers. Commercial corporations who become possessed of political power are always tempted to pay too much regard to present profit, and the Irish Society of London acted to some extent as the East India Company did in later times. In the Bann alone more than sixty tons of salmon were sometimes taken in one day, and this was much more lucrative than the slow process of settling English farmers upon the land. It was also much more convenient to convert the vast woods into ready money than to preserve them for local use, and their destruction was rapid. In 1803 the county of Londonderry, which had once contained the great forest of Glenconkein, was officially reported to be ‘perhaps the worst wooded in the King’s dominions.’ Wentworth saw his opportunity, and determined to exact his pound of flesh from the Londoners in Ulster, since they were unwilling to pay arbitrary taxes at home. A side blow might be dealt to Presbyterianism at the same time. Proceedings in the Star Chamber against the Corporation of London had resulted in the summer of 1631 in a Royal Commission to collect evidence in Ireland, and special attention was ordered to be given to the representations of Phillips. The cause dragged on for three years, and early in 1634 Wentworth wrote to Coke to advise that in any case the grant of the customs of Londonderry and Coleraine, for which the grantees paid no rent, should be resumed by the Crown, as unfit to be held by any subject, and especially by a body which owed the King 1,800l. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘my humble suit, that at least you take that feather from them again, as not fit to be worn in the round cap of a citizen of London.’221

A fine of 30,000l. refused, and one of 70,000l. imposedWentworth wished to confiscate the London plantation

The Londoners offered to compromise their case by paying a fine of 30,000l., but this was refused. After a hearing which lasted seventeen days, judgment was given in the Star Chamber at the end of February 1635, when a fine of 70,000l. was imposed and the charter declared forfeited. The actual sum levied seems to have been 12,000l., which was handed over to the Queen. ‘The King,’ said Wentworth’s correspondent Garrard, ‘now hath good store of land in Ireland.’ ‘The Londoners,’ said another gossip, the letter-writer Howell, ‘have not been so forward in collecting the ship-money, since they have been taught to sing heigh-down derry, and many of them will not pay till after imprisonment, that it may stand upon record they were forced to it. The assessments have been wonderfully unequal and unproportionable, which is very ill taken, it being conceived they did it on purpose to raise clamour through the city.’ In the following May an order was given in the Star Chamber to levy the fine in London, and to sequester the estates in Ireland. Bramhall, who had a dispute of his own about some of the lands, was appointed chief receiver, and the appointment was not likely to be a sinecure in his hands. Wentworth declared himself ready to carry out the forfeiture in the most drastic way. ‘Would your Majesty,’ he wrote, ‘be pleased to reserve it entire to yourself, it might prove a fit part of an appanage for our young master the Duke of York. It may be made a seigniory not altogether unworthy his Highness; and for so good purpose I should labour night and day, and think all I could do little.’ James’s experiences in connection with Londonderry were fated to be of a much less agreeable kind. The hostility of the Londoners had much to say to both Charles and Wentworth losing their heads.222

CHAPTER XV

CASES OF MOUNTNORRIS, LOFTUS, AND OTHERS

Laud’s warning to Wentworth

Towards the end of 1635 Laud warned Wentworth that he was making enemies at Court, especially ‘on the Queen’s side.’ They said that he was ‘over-full of personal prosecutions against men of quality,’ Clanricarde, Cork, and Wilmot being particularly mentioned. ‘I know,’ wrote the Archbishop, ‘a great part of this proceeds from your wise and noble proceedings against the Romish party in that kingdom; yet that shall never be made the cause in public,’ though every advantage would be taken underhand.

Case of Lord Wilmot

Wilmot had used his position as president of Connaught to build at Athlone, giving fee-farm grants of Crown land to the settlers. It does not seem to have been alleged that he took fines for his own use; but the main facts were not denied, and he thought it prudent to obtain a pardon. He resented Wentworth’s appointment as Deputy, and being himself of a choleric disposition he soon came into collision with him. The pardon was not held to cover the whole case, which was brought up again by Wentworth. Wilmot made an ample submission and tried to soften the Viceroy’s animosity, while indignantly denying any corruption on his own part. There can be no doubt that he exceeded his authority, and the tenants at Athlone seem to have been willing to increase their rents to the Crown; but the case dragged on, and was perhaps unsettled when Wentworth’s government came to an end. No doubt the law was against Wilmot, but considering the pardon and the fact that he had made improvements, his treatment might be described as persecution by those who disliked Wentworth.223

Case of Lord MountnorrisWentworth wishes to get rid of MountnorrisMountnorris accused of malversation

The Vice-Treasurer, Lord Mountnorris, was married to a near relation of Wentworth’s second and best-beloved wife. This had not saved him from a rebuke for staying away from his work in August 1632; but for some years afterwards things seem to have gone pretty smoothly. Mountnorris supported the Lord Deputy effectively on his first arrival in Ireland, and at his suggestion received the King’s thanks. But he was one of those who refuse nothing and resign nothing profitable, and he declined to surrender a reversionary patent in order to make room for an office-seeker favoured by Wentworth and by Secretary Coke. In May 1634 the Lord Deputy made his first serious complaint of the Vice-Treasurer for exacting sixpence in the pound as a fee out of all payments made to the officers of the Admiralty. The English Privy Council directed Mountnorris to forego these fees until the King’s further pleasure should be known; but the law of the case was probably doubtful, and he ventured to disobey. He supported the Deputy in other matters, and at the conference between the two Irish Houses of Parliament, ‘out of such scraps as he had gotten from the Parliaments of England, very gallantly and magisterially told the House of Commons that they had no power to administer an oath.’ Wentworth nevertheless became very anxious to get rid of him and to give his place to Sir Adam Loftus, who could be always trusted to obey orders. In April 1635 he told Coke that he considered ‘Lord Mountnorris to be an officer of no great nor quick endeavour to his Majesty’s service, a person held by us all that hear him to be most impertinent and troublesome in the debate of all business. And, indeed, so weary are we of him that I daresay there is not one of us willing to join with him in any private counsel. My Lord Chief Baron complains of him extremely in the Exchequer, that he disorders the proceedings of the whole court through his wilfulness and ignorance.’ He was a loose liver, fond of high play, winning often from young men and even lending money at interest for them to stake again. Payments from the Exchequer were said to be delayed until a bribe had been given to his brother-in-law, and one case was proved; but Mountnorris denied all knowledge of the matter, and made the recipient give back the money. Yet he continued to employ the culprit, and so gave good cause for suspicion. Mountnorris was evidently very unpopular, and doubtless with good reason; but he was not unwilling to resign his office for a consideration, and left the matter in Wentworth’s hands. The latter was long unwilling to undertake the negotiation from his knowledge of the other’s uncertain temper, and this caused so much delay that Mountnorris ultimately withdrew his offer, and the final rupture seems to have taken place at about this point.224

Mountnorris is charged with mutiny, 1635, for words spoken at dinner, tried summarily by a court martial, and condemned to death

Mountnorris had a relation of his own name who was a subaltern in the Lord Deputy’s troop of horse. He was checked by Wentworth at a review for some irregularity, and replied by an insolent gesture or grimace. Wentworth laid his cane against the young man’s shoulders, but without striking him, and threatened to ‘lay him over the pate’ if he offended so again. Annesley doubtless deserved punishment, but it was scarcely a Lord Deputy’s business to chastise offenders with his own hand. On April 18, 1635, Annesley, who was a gentleman-usher at the Castle, dropped a stool upon Wentworth’s gouty foot, and this became the subject of conversation at a dinner at the Lord Chancellor’s some three or four days later. Mountnorris said: ‘Perhaps it was done in revenge of that public affront which my Lord Deputy had done him formerly; but he has a brother that would not take such a revenge.’ Something of the kind was said, but the exact words must be very doubtful, for it is not pretended that any one took them down at the time, and they were not sworn to until nearly eight months later. In any case Wentworth should have remembered his own dictum that every word must not rise up in judgment against a man. Annesley had a brother in Mountnorris’s company of foot, and it was suggested that this was a hint to him from his superior officer ‘to have taken up resolutions of dangerous consequence.’ It seems much more probable that Mountnorris was praising his own subaltern at the expense of the Lord Deputy’s gentleman-usher. Late on the evening of December 11 he was warned by a pursuivant to attend a council of war at eight o’clock next morning. Shortly after the appointed hour Wentworth came in, said he had called the court to do himself right and reparation against Lord Mountnorris, read the alleged words from a paper which had been subscribed by Lord Moore and by the Chancellor’s eldest son, Sir Robert Loftus, and called upon the Vice-Treasurer to confess or deny them. The accused asked for counsel and to have the charge in writing, but he was told that councils of war allowed neither. To aggravate the case, Wentworth read the King’s letter of July 31 in which he had ordered the sixpenny fees to be stopped. Mountnorris said the letter was obtained ‘by misinformation.’ Wentworth said it was not his habit to misrepresent anyone, ‘and rebuked me,’ says Mountnorris, ‘with worse language than was fit to be used to a meaner man and not a peer.’ Moore and Loftus swore to the truth of what they had signed, and Wentworth then ordered Moore to take his seat as a judge in a case where he had already given evidence for the prosecution. The Lord Deputy took no actual part in the sentence, but he was present during the whole proceedings, and all men dreaded his frown. According to the account forwarded by Wentworth at the time, Mountnorris submitted to the court, ‘protesting that what interpretation soever his words might have put upon them, he intended no prejudice or hurt to the person of us the Deputy.’ Mountnorris himself, in his evidence given in 1641, says he offered to swear that he had not uttered the words, and to bring witnesses to prove that the part referring to the public affront was spoken by others. Among the witnesses whom he says he asked to have produced were the Lord Chancellor and Sir Adam Loftus’s son. He was ordered to withdraw, and after less than half an hour was called in again to hear his sentence of death, to which the court had unanimously agreed. ‘My Lord Deputy,’ he says, ‘took occasion to make a speech, and told me invectively enough there remained no more now, if he pleased, but to cause the provost-marshal to do execution; but withal added that for matter of life, he would supplicate his Majesty. And I think he said he would rather lose his hand than I should lose my head; which I took to be the highest scorn, to compare his the Lord Deputy’s hand with my head.’ The expression about his hand and his victim’s head occurs in Wentworth’s own letters. It was reported in London that Mountnorris had been actually shot, the parts of his body where bullets took effect being specified.225