THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
VOLUME I.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND
IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROTTDE, M.A
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN,
1884.
AND CO.
iungag :
CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS
TO
Sir #anui Mals.el.eg,
the most distinguished living representative
of
The English in Ireland,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
TTTIIEN" twelve years ago Mr. Gladstone undertook to
' ' restore health to Ireland, many persons acquainted with
the country believed that he was dealing with the outward
symptoms merely of a disorder of which he mistook the
nature, and that the measures which he was adopting would
make the patient rather worse than better.
The type of Irish agitation is so unchanging that the
disease at all times is obviously the same. Various modes of
treatment have been tried for it, and tried unsuccessfully ;
and the political physician should thus have unusual means of
learning the effect to be looked for from this or that proposed
remedy. It did not appear, however, ten years ago, from the
language of Mr. Gladstone and the supporters of his policy,
that they had taken advantage of their opportunities. They
talked vaguely and violently of past mistakes, but tliyv
betrayed an imperfect acquaintance with the character of
those mistakes. The subject itself indeed seemed never to
have been adequately studied; and the most important
authorities were only accessible in manuscript.
A scientific account of the past can be the work only of
many persons, one correcting the errors of another and
adding something of his own. I undertook for myself to
iv
PREFACE.
give as faithful a description as I could produce of the state
of Ireland in the last century. The chapter of Irish history
between the surrender of Limerick and the Act of Union
is complete in itself. It opens with conquest and submis¬
sion. It ends with another rebellion, and the collapse of the
form of government which Ave had established. I examined
the story in the correspondence which passed between the
English and Irish Administrations during the whole period,
in the proceedings of the Irish Parliament, and in the volum¬
inous and miscellaneous reports on the condition of the coun¬
try, which are preserved in Dublin Castle. The result was
the present book, Avliich was originally published seven years
ago. The effect of Mr. Gladstone's legislation has been pre¬
cisely Avhat my inferences would liaAre led me to anticipate ;
and that a new edition of the book is noAV called for implies,
I hope, a belief that at the present crisis it may not be
wholly uninstructive.
I have added a Supplementary Chapter; and I have
used the opportunity to correct a few mistakes of detail
which Sir Bernard Burke has kindly pointed out to me.
Sir Bernard Burke has charge of the Dublin State Papers,
and I have to thank him warmly for the courteous assistance
Avhich he has rendered to me throughout.
J. A. Euoude.
Onslow Gardens,
January, 1881.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
SECTION PAGE
I. Conditions of national independence ... 2
II. Relations of England with Scotland, "Wales, and
Ireland ... ... ... ... 7
III. The Norman Conquest of Ireland ... ... 15
IV. Norman degeneracy and its causes ... ... 21
Peculiarities of the Irish character ... ... 23
Effects of the Civil Wars in England ... 30
Ireland at the accession of Henry the Seventh 32
Poynings' Act ... ... ... ... 37
Early policy of Henry the Eighth ... ... 40
V. Rebellion of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, followed
Ly general submission ... ... ... 42
VI. Reigns of Edward and Mary ... ... 45
VII. Accession of Elizabeth ... ... ... 48
.Necessary hostility of the Catholics ... 50
Causes for extending the Act of Uniformity to
Ireland ... ... ... ... 52
Central faults of Elizabeth's Irish administration 54
A(tK
56
59
60
63
69
72
73
74
77
73
81
83
84
85
87
89
92
94
95
97
99
:c>4
06
:°7
°9
: 1 2
CONTENTS.
Rebellion of Shan O'Ueil
Rebellion of the Earl of Desmond ...
Extermination of the Minister Geraldines
Rebellion of the Earl of Tyrone
Consequences of these insurrections
CHAPTER II.
INSURRECTION OF 16U-
Expectations on the accession of James the Eirst
Disappointment and renewed revolt
The Ulster Settlement
Commencement of prosperity
Complaints and sufferings of the native Irish
gentry
Toleration of the Catholics
Division of the Protestant interest ...
Persecution of the Presbyterians
Viceroyalty of the Earl of Strafford
Intended Settlement in Connaught
An Irish army ...
Irish resentment against the Settlements
Disagreements among the Irish Catholics
Negotiations of Charles the Eirst with the Irish
leaders
Symptoms of approaching insurrection
The Irish Parliament in the summer of 1641 ...
Intention of the Catholics to take possession of
the Government
Underplot of Sir Phelim O'Heil
Conspiracy to surprise Dublin Castle
Outbreak of the Rebellion
General Massacre of Protestants
CONTENTS. vii
SECTION PAGE
The affair at Island Magee ... ... 116
Sufferings of the Protestant families ... 118
Scenes in Dublin ... ... ... 120
Estimate of the numbers destroyed ... ... 122
Effect of the news of the massacre in England 126
The Civil War ... ... ... ... 127
Arrival of a Uuncio ... ... ... 128
Catholic divisions ... ... ... 129
Destruction of Ormond's army at Rathmines ... 132
Y. Justice to Ireland ... ... ... 133
The landing of Cromwell ... ... 135
The storming of Drogheda ... ... 137
The storming of Wexford ... ... 140
Universal submission ... ... ... 141
YI. Theory of property in land ... ... 144
The Cromwellian Settlement ... ... 147
Union of the two Kingdoms ... ... 151
Principles of Cromwell's Government ... 152
Effect upon Ireland ... ... ... 154
CHAPTER III.
THE REVOLUTION.
I. The Restoration and the expectations of the Irish 156
A deputation sent to Charles the Second ... 159
Half measures ... ... ... ... 161
The Irish Parliament restored ... ... 163
The Act of Settlement ... ... ... 165
Establishment of a Court of Claims ... 166
The Down Survey ... ... ... 168
Final results of the Rebellion ... ... 170
II. The re-establishment of the Anglo-Irish Church 1 71
Persecution of the Nonconformists ... ... 173
viii CONTENTS.
SECTION EAQB
The Established Church unsuited to Ireland ... 175
Lord Clarendon's opinion of the condition of it 175
III. Suspension of the Penal Laws ... ... 177
Increase of wealth ... ... ... 179
English jealousy and commercial restrictions ... 180
IY. Catholic revival ... ... ... 183
Disarming of the Protestants 184
Yiceroyalty of the Earl of Clarendon ... 185
The Earl of Tyrconnell ... 190
Attacks on the Act of Settlement ... ... 192
Clarendon recalled ... ... ... 193
V. Approach of a fresh struggle ... ... 195
Eavour shown to Catholics ... ... 197
Attitude of the Established Church... ... 198
Closing of the gates of Derry ... ... 201
Siege of Derry ... ... ... ... 203
YI. The Irish Parliament ... ... ... 204
Eepeal of the Acts of Settlement ... ... 210
Protestant attainders ... ... ... 211
YII. Landing of King William ... ... 214
Battle of the Boyne ... ... ... 215
Confiscations ... ... ... ... 2x7
Battle of Athlone ... ... ... 219
Battle of Aghrim ... ... ... 220
Siege of Limerick ... ... ... 223
Articles of Limerick ... ... ... 225
The disputed clause ... ... ... 226
YIII. Review of the situation ... ... ... 229
Relations between Romanism and Protestantism 231
Justification of repressive laws ... ... 232
Effects of leniency in Ireland ... ... 233
The remedial measures required ... ... 236
Toleration of Nonconformists ... ... 237
Laws against Absentees ... ... ... 239
A union of the two realms ... ... 241
CONTENTS. ix
BOOK II.
CHAPTER L
OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA.
SECTION PAGE
I. False dice ... ... ... ... 243
Indulgence to the Catholics ... ... 244
Corruption in the disposition of the lands ... 246
Discontent of the Protestants ... ... 248
Viceroyalty of Lord Sydney ... ... 250
Session of 1692 ... ... ... 251
Quarrel between the "Viceroy and the Parliament 253
Impeachment of Chancellor Porter ... ... 256
II. Jacobitism in the Established Church ... 258
Education in Ireland ... ... ... 259
Disarming Act ... ... ... ... 260
Tories and Rapparees ... ... ... 261
III. Persecution of Nonconformists ... ... 264
Refusal of a Toleration Act ... ... 267
The Regium Donum ... .. ... 267
Condition of the Church ... ... ... 269
Distribution of patronage... ... ... 272
Remonstrance of the Bishop of Limerick ... 274
Ruin of Protestant Settlements ... ... 275
IY. General dishonesty ... ... ... 277
Jacobite Bishops ... ... ... 279
Favour shown to Catholics ... ... 280
Confirmation of the Articles of Limerick ... 283
Status of the Catholic clergy ... ... 285
Intermarriages between Catholics and Protest¬
ants ... ... ... ... 286
Conspiracy against the King ... ... 287
X CONTENTS.
SECTION PAGE
Rejection of the Security Act in Ireland ... 289
English indignation ... ... ... 291
V. English commercial jealousies ... ... 293
Restrictions on the export of wool ... ... 294
Destruction of the Irish woollen manufactories 296
VI. Corruption of the Court of Claims ... ... 300
The Resumption Bill ... ... ... 302
English Act against the growth of Popery ... 305
VII. Fate of the forfeited estates ... ... 307
Absenteeism ... ... ... ... 308
Tenures of Irish land ... ... ... 309
Formation of modern Irish society ... ... 311
Life in Dublin ... ... ... ... 313
The Bishops of the Establishment ... ... 315
CHAPTER II.
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
I. Growing estrangement between England and
Ireland ... ... ... ... 317
Desire of the loyal Irish for a legislative union... 319
Contrast between Ireland and Wales ... 321
Probable effects of the commercial restrictions... 324
Mr. H. Maxwell's Essay ... ... ... 325
II. English estimate of the value of Ireland ... 326
Viceroyalty of the Duke of Ormond ... 328
Act to prevent the further growth of Popery ... 329
Opening of the Session of 1703 ... ... 333
The Irish Parliament petitions for a Union ... 334
Letter of Sir Richard Cox ... ... 336
The Union refused ... ... ... 338
III. Catholic remonstrances against the Popery Act 341
Character of the Act ... ... ... 342
Agitation in Ireland ... .... ... 344
CONTENTS. xi
T'.ri'TMN PAGK
The Act as remodelled in England ... ... 345
Attached Test Clause against Dissenters ... 348
Object of the introduction of this clause ... 349
Catholics heard in opposition ... ... 350
The Bill passes ... ... ... ... 353
Act for the Registration of Priests ... ... 353
IV. The laws against Catholics unenforced ... 355
Vigorous prosecution of Nonconformists ... 356
Unstable character of English policy ... 357
Jacobite leanings of the Bishops and clergy ... 360
V. Intended descent of the French on Galway ... 362
Condition of Gal way ... ... ... 363
The Earl of Wharton ... ... ... 365
Swift and the Dissenters ... ... ... 366
Jacobitism in Trinity College ... ... 369
Second Act against Popery ... ... 370
Ineffective exhortation to union amongst Pro¬
testants ... ... ... ... 372
The Abjuration Oath ... ... ... 374
How evaded by the Catholics ... ... 375
VI. Devolution principles ... ... ... 377
The Students at Trinity College ... ... 378
Defacement of William's statue ... ... 379
Persecution of Presbyterians ... ... 380
Pecall of Wharton ... ... ... 381
Whig temper of the Army ... ... 382
Quarrel between the Lords and Commons ... 384
The Begium Donum suspended ... ... 386
Prorogation of Parliament ... ... 387
Address of Convocation ... ... ... 388
VII. Feud between the Government and the Cor¬
poration of Dublin ... ... ... 390
The Duke of Shrewsbury made Viceroy ... 391
Election riot ... ... ... ... 392
The Hew Parliament ... ... ... 393
xii CONTENTS.
SECTION PAGE
Renewed quarrel with the Lords ... ... 394
Complaints of the House of Commons ... 397
Suspected regiments disbanded ... ... 398
The Schism Act ... ... ••• 399
Death of Queen Anne and fall of the Tory
Administration ... ... ••• 4°°
CHAPTER III.
PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
I. Attitude of the Irish Catholics ... ... 402
Effect of severity on the Irish mind ... 404
The Wild Geese ... ... ... 405
Swift's opinion of the prospects of the Catholics 406
II. The operation of the Popery Acts . . ... 407
The Catholics in 17x5 ... ... ... 410
Cases under the Popery Acts ... ... 413
How the law was carried out ... ... 415
III. Strength of the Church establishment ... 417
Penal Code a dead letter... ... ... 419
Establishment of regular clergy in Dublin ... 420
The odium of the Penal Code thrown on the
Irish Protestants ... ... ... 422
IY. Attempts to repeal the Test Clause... ... 423
Successful opposition of the Bishops ... 426
Reasons for the promotion of Englishmen to
Irish Sees ... ... ... ... 428
Opinion of Mr. Henry Maxwell on the Dissenters'
question ... ... ... ... 429
The Test maintained ... ... ... 432
A Toleration Act ... ... ... 433
Protestant Emigration to America ... ... 435
Y. Condition of the Irish peasant .. ... 439
CONTENTS. xiii
SECTION PAGE
Sheep farming ... ... ... ... 441
Attempt to encourage agriculture ... ... 442
English jealousy ... ... ... 443
The Irish Corn Bill rejected in England ... 445
Character of Archbishop Boulter ... ... 448
VI. The gentry of the old blood ... ... 450
Arthur Young's portrait of them in 1770 ... 451
Accounts of them in the earlier part of the
century ... ... ... ... 452
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
IRISH IDEAS.
1. Gal way in 1711 ... ... .. 453
Sheep and cattle farming in Galway and Ros¬
common ... ... ... ... 454
Resolution to exterminate the settlers ... 455
Cattle houghing ... ... ... 456
Identification of the parties concerned ... 460
II. Abduction of women ... ... ... 464
Difficulty of interference ... ... ... 465
Specimen stories ... ... ... 467
Case of Elizabeth Dobbin ... ... 468
Case of Catherine Stackpole ... ... 469
Case of Honor Keris ... ... ... 470
Case of Rebecca White ... ... ... 472
Case of Jane Tubman ... ... ... 475
Combination of ferocity and piety ... ... 478
Execution of James Cotter ... ... 481
.niEL. 1. b
xiv CONTENTS.
SECTION PAGE
Revenge of the Irish on the Quakers ... 482
III. Conspiracy" to murder Captain Kewdigate at
Kilrush ... ... ... ... 485
IV. The Bodkin Murder ... ... ••• 492
CHAPTER II.
THE SMUGGLERS.
Premium on the wool smuggling ...
497
Mr. Hely Hutchinson's statement ...
498
Extent of the practice
500
Effects, political and social
5°2
The gentlemen of Kerry ...
5°3
The great Shelburne estate
5°4
Mr. Donell Mahony, of Dunloe
5°5
Kenmare Bay ...
5°7
Story of Morty Sullivan ...
508
The Bantry smugglers
5ii
Murder of John Puxley ...
5i3
The burning of Morty's den ... v..
516
Daniel Connell one of Puxley's murderers
5*6
The Smugglers at Valencia
5*9
Sylvester O'Sullivan a Government spy
521
O'Sullivan at Killarney ...
522
A Vicar-General of tire Established Church ...
524
Lord Fitzmtiurice at Ross Castle
526
Kerry law
528
O'Sullivan's perils and escapes
53o
General anarchy
532
The Croshies of Ballyliige...
533
"Wreck of a Danish East Indiaman on Ballyliige
Sands...
535
CONTENTS. xv
SECTION PAGE
Her crew and cargo, being silver bullion, saved
and carried to Ballyhige... ... ... 536
Conspiracy in the county to seize the bullion
chests ... ... ... ... 538
Attack on Ballyhige; the chests carried off ... 546
Division of the plunder ... ... ... 547
Complicity of the magistrates ... ... 549
Fruitless efforts of the Government to recover
the silver or punish the robbers ... ... 552
Remonstrance of the Danish Minister ... 555
BOOK IY.
CHAPTER I.
EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.
I. The bright side of the English settlers ... 557
Exertions of Dean Swift ... ... ... 560
Ineffectual prosecutions ... ... ... 561
Social and political tracts... ... ... 564
Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne ... ... 566
Berkeley's remedies for Irish misery ... 567
II. Education in Ireland; the Hedge Schools ... 570
Church Day Schools ... ... ... 571
Proposed extension of the system ... ... 572
The Charter Schools ... ... ... 573
Expenses and results ... ... ... 575
Limitation of funds ... ... ... 577
The Irish Pension List ... ... ... 578
Subscriptions and donations ... ... 579
Success and failure ... ... ... 581
xvi CONTENTS.
SECTION PAGE
ILL. The Duchess of Kendal and Mr. "Wood ... 582
Patent for the copper coinage : real injury to be
feared from it ... ... ... 5^3
Resistance of Ireland ... ... ... 5^4
Letter of Sir P. Walpole ... ... ... 5^6
Perplexity of the Government ... ... 5^9
Sir Isaac Newton's Report, and resolution to
persevere ... ... ... ... 591
The Drapier Letters ... ... ... 592
Yiceroyalty of Lord Carteret ... ... 594
Proposed prosecution of Swift ... ... 599
Enthusiasm for Swift in Dublin ... ... 600
Carteret advises concessions ... ... 604
Letter from Archbishop Eoulter ... ... 605
The Patent is withdrawn ... ... ... 607
IAr. Intended severities against the Irish priests ... 610
Fiction and fact ... ... ... 611
The registered and unregistered clergy ... 612
Uncertain dealings with them by the Govern¬
ment ... ... ... ... 616
Need of more systematic methods ... ... 619
Alteration of the heads of a Bill by the Council 620
Singular character of that alteration ... 621
The Bill thrown out in the Irish House of Lords 622
Further efforts in the Yiceroyalty of the Duke
of Grafton ... ... ... ... 623
Postponement of the question in England ... 625
V. Yiolent attempts to repress the Priesthood hence¬
forward abandoned ... ... ... 627
Doctor Synge's Sermon on Toleration ... 628
Necessary limitations in Ireland ... ... 631
Proposal for a legal recognition of the Catholic
clergy ... ... ... ... 633
Catholic Bishops in correspondence with the
Government ... ... ... ... 635
CONTENTS.
xvii
CHAPTER II.
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
SUCTION PAGE
I. Four methods of administering the Government
of a dependent country... ... ... 636
The method adopted in Ireland the worst ... 638
Attitude of the English Government towards the
Catholics ... ... ... ... 639
Selection of magistrates ... ... ... 642
England's policy ... ... ... 644
11. Doubts on the Disarming Act ... ... 646
The Catholic gentlemen resume their swords ... 647
Singular scene at Trim ... ... ... 648
Address of the Catholics to George the Second 652
Alarm of Insurrection ... ... ... 654
Hew Disarming Act and its consequences ... 656
ITL Ireland without a history ... ... ... 657
Efforts of the resident gentry ... ... 659
Reform of the gaols ... ... ... 662
Social Improvements ... ... ... 663
The abductions and the bench of Bishops ... 664
IY. The nobler section of the country gentlemen ... 666
Galwayini747 ... ... ... 668
Colonel Eyre and the Government ... ... 670
Disappearance of Protestants ... ... 674
V. Irish conception of liberty ... ... 675
Dawn of political patriotism ... ... 677
Charles Lucas ... ... ... ... 678
Parliamentary corruption ... ... ... 680
Primate Stone ... ... ... ... 681
VI Viceroyalty of the Duke of Bedford ... 686
Complaints of Parliament ... ... 687
Letter of Bedford to Lord Chatham ... 691
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Irish Politicians ... ... ... 693
Treasury scandal ... ... 694
French War ... ... ... ... 695
Kiot in Dublin ... ... ... ... 698
Lord Chatham on Irish magistrates and Govern¬
ment officers... ... ... ... 701
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
SECTION I.
WHEN two countries, or sections of countries,
stand geographically so related to one another
that their union under a common government will
conduce to the advantage of the stronger people, such
countries will continue separate as long only as the
country which desires to preserve its independence
possesses a power of resistance so vigorous that the
effort to overcome it is too exhausting to be perman¬
ently maintained.
A natural right to liberty, irrespective of the
ability to defend it, exists in nations as much as and
no more than it exists in individuals. Had nature
meant us to live uncontrolled by any will but our own,
we should have been so constructed that the pleasures
of one would not interfere with the pleasures of
another, or that each of us would discharge by instinct
those duties which the welfare of the community
requires from all. In a world in which we are made
IREJj. I. B
2 THE ENGLISH IN IEELAND. [bk. r.
to depend so largely for our well-being on tlie conduct
of our neighbours, and yet are created infinitely un¬
equal in ability and worthiness of character, the
superior part has a natural right to govern; the
inferior part has a natural right to be governed ; and
a rude but adequate test of superiority and inferiority
is provided in the relative strength of the different
orders of human beings.
Among wild beasts and savages might constitutes
right. Among reasonable beings right is for ever
tending to create might. Inferiority of numbers is
compensated by superior cohesiveness, intelligence,
and daring. The better sort of men submit willingly
to be governed by those who are nobler and wiser
than themselves; organization creates superiority of
force; and the ignorant and the selfish may be and
are justly compelled for their own advantage to obey
a rule which rescues them from their natural weak¬
ness. There neither is nor can be an inherent pri¬
vilege in any person or set of persons to live un¬
worthily at their own wills, when they can be led or
driven into more honourable courses; and the rights
of man—if such rights there be—are not to liberty,
but to wise direction and control.
Individuals cannot be Independent, or society can¬
not exist. With individuals the contention is not for
freedom absolutely, but for an extension of the limits
within which their freedom must be restrained. The
independence of nations is spoken of sometimes as if
it rested on another foundation—as if each separate
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
3
race or community had a divine titledeed to dispose of
its own fortunes, and develop its tendencies in such
direction as seems good to itself. But the assump¬
tion breaks down before the enquiry, What constitutes
a nation ? And the right of a people to self-govern¬
ment consists and can consist in nothing but their
power to defend themselves. No other definition is
possible. Are geographical boundaries, is a distinct
frontier, made the essential ? Mountain chains, rivers,
or seas form, no doubt, the normal dividing lines
between nation and nation, because they are elements
of strength, and material obstacles to invasion. But
as the absence of a defined frontier cannot take away
a right to liberty where there is strength to maintain
it, a mountain barrier conveys no prerogative against
a power which is powerful enough to Overleap that
barrier, nor the ocean against those whose larger skill
and courage can convert the ocean into a highway.
As little can a claim to freedom be made coinci¬
dent with race or language. When the ties of kindred
and of speech have force enough to bind together a
powerful community, such a community may be able
to defend its independence ; but if it cannot, the pre¬
tension in itself has no claim on consideration. Dis¬
tinctions of such a kind are merely fanciful and
capricious. All societies of men are, in the nature of
things, forced into relations with other societies of
men. They exchange obligations, confer benefits, or
inflict injuries on each other. They are natural friends
or natural rivals; and unite, or else find themselves in
B 2
4
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
collision, wlien the weaker is compelled to give way.
The individual has to sacrifice his independence to his
family, the family to the tribe; the tribe merges itself
in some larger community; and the time at which
these successive surrenders of liberty are demanded
depends practically on nothing else than the inability
to persist in separation. Where population is scanty
and habits are peaceful, the head of each household
may be sovereign over his children and servants,
owing no allegiance to any higher chief or law. As
among the Cyclops—
Oefuo-revet. e/cacrros
iraihoiv 778' aA.dx.cor ovb' aA\?/A.cor akiyovuLV.
Necessity and common danger drive families into al¬
liance for self-defence; the smaller circles of independ¬
ence lose themselves in ampler areas; and those who
refuse to conform to the new authority are either required
to take themselves elsewhere, or, if they remain and
persist in disobedience, may be treated as criminals.
A tribe, if local circumstances are favourable, may
defend its freedom against a more powerful neighbour,
so long as the independence of such a tribe is a lesser
evil than the cost of its subjugation; but an independ¬
ence so protracted is rarely other than a misfortune.
On the whole, and as a rule, superior strength is the
equivalent of superior merit; and when a weaker
people are induced or forced to part with their
separate existence, and are not treated as subjects,
but are admitted freely to share the privileges of the
nation in which they are absorbed, they forfeit nothing
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
5
which they need care to lose, and rather gain than
suffer by the exchange. It is possible that a nobler
people may, through force of circumstances, or great
numerical inferiority, be oppressed for a time by the
brute force of baser adversaries; just as, within the
limits of a nation, particular classes may be tyrannized
over, or opinions which prove in the end true, may
be put down by violence, and the professors of such
opinions persecuted. But the effort of nature is con¬
stantly to redress the balance. Where freedom is so
precious that without it life is unendurable, men with
those convictions fight too fiercely to be permanently
subdued. Truth grows by its own virtue, and false¬
hood sinks and fades. An oppressed cause, when it
is just, attracts friends, and commands moral suppoi't,
which converts itself sooner or later into material
strength. As a broad principle it may be said, that
as nature has so constituted us that we must be ruled
in some way, and as at any given time the rule inevit¬
ably will be in the hands of those who are then the
strongest, so nature also has allotted superiority of
strength to superiority of intellect and character; and
in deciding that the weaker shall obey the more
powerful, she is in reality saving them from them¬
selves, and then most confers true liberty when she
seems most to be taking it away. There is no freedom
possible to man except in obedience to law; and those
who cannot prescribe a law to themselves, if they
desire to be free must be content to accept direction
from others. The right to resist depends on the power
6
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[PK. I.
of resistance. A nation "which can maintain its inde¬
pendence possesses already, unless assisted by extra¬
ordinary advantages of situation, the qualities which
conquest can only justify itself by conferring. It may
be held to be as good in all essential conditions as the
nation which is endeavouring to overcome it; and
human society has rather lost than gained when a
people loses its freedom which knows how to make a
wholesome use of freedom. But when resistance has
been tried and failed—when the inequality has been
proved beyond dispute by long and painful experience
—the wisdom, and ultimately the duty, of the weaker
party is to accept the benefits which are offered in
exchange for submission : and a nation which at once
will not defend its liberties in the field, nor yet allow
itself to be governed, but struggles to preserve the
independence which it wants the spirit to uphold in
arms, by insubordination and anarchy and secret crime,
may bewail its wrongs in wild and weeping eloquence
in the ears of mankind,—may at length, in a time
when the methods by which sterner ages repressed
this kind of conduct are unpermitted, make itself so
intolerable as to be cast off and bidden go upon its
own bad way : but it will not go for its own benefit;
it will have established no principle, and vindicated
no natural right; liberty profits only those who can
govern themselves better than others can govern them,
and those who are able to govern themselves wisely
have no need to petition for a privilege which they can
keep or take for themselves.
7
SECTION II.
In the scene before Harfleur, in the play of Henry
the Fifth, there are introduced representatives of
the three nations which remained unsubdued after
England was conquered by the Normans, and the co¬
ordination of which, under a common sovereignty, was
a problem still waiting to be accomplished. Careless
always of antiquarian pedantry, Shakespeare drew men
and women as he saw them round him, in the London
of his own day; and Fluellen, Captain Jamie, and Cap¬
tain Macmorris were the typical Welshman, Scot, and
Irishman, as they were to be met with in Elizabeth's
trainbands.
Fluellen, hot-blooded, voluble, argumentative, is
yet most brave, most loyal, and most honourable.
Among his thousand characters there is not one which
Shakespeare has sketched more tenderly, or with a
more loving and affectionate irony. Captain Jamie
is 'a marvellous falerous gentleman,' well read in
the ancient wars, learned fin the disciplines of the
BornanSj' and able to hold discourse on them with any
man, but shrewd and silent, more prone to listen than
to speak, more given to blows than to words, and
determined only fto do good service, or ligge in the
ground for it.' Macmorris, though no less brave than
his companions, ready to stand in the breach while
' there were throats to be cut, or work to be done,'
8 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
yet roars, rants, boasts, swears by liis father's soul,
and threatens to cut off any man's head who dares to
say that he is as good as himself.
Captain Jamie never mentions Scotland : we learn
his country from his dialect, and from what others say
of him. Fluellen, a Welshman to the last fibre, yet
traces his Welsh leek to the good service which
Welshmen did, fin a garden where leeks did grow,'
at Crecy, under the English Edward. He delights in
thinking that all the waters of the Wye cannot wash
his Majesty's Welsh blood out of his body. Mac-
morris, at the mention of his nation, as if on the
watch for insults from Saxon or Briton, blazes into
purposeless fury. f My nation ! What ish my nation ?
Is a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal ?
What ish my nation ? Who talks of my nation ?'
Had William fallen at Hastings instead of Harold,
and had the Norman invasion failed, it is likely tha.t
the Lowland Scots would have followed the example
of Northumberland, and have drifted gradually into
combination with the rest of the island. The Con¬
quest made the difficulty greater; but if the Norman
kings had been content to wait for the natural action
of time, increasing intercourse and an obvious com¬
munity of interest would have probably antedated the
Union by several centuries. The premature violence
of Edward the First hardened Scotland irrecoverably
into a separate nationality. The determination to
defend their independence created the patriotic vir¬
tues which enabled the Northern Britons to hold at
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
9
bay their larger rival. The Union, when it came
about at last, was effected on equal terms. Two
separate self-governed peoples entered slowly and
deliberately into voluntary partnership on terms of
mutual respect. The material wealth which Scotland
contributed to the empire was comparatively insignifi¬
cant ; but she introduced into it a race of men who
had been hammered to a temper which made them
more valuable than mountains of gold; and among
the elements of greatness in the country known to
later history as Great Britain, the rugged Scotch
resolution to resist conquest to the death, tried in a
hundred battles, holds a place second to none.
The Lowland Scots were Teutons; the language
of the Lothians was not distinguishable from the
language of Northumberland; and the Union with
Scotland might have seemed so far an easier feat than
the Union with Wales. On the other hand, the
Welsh were fewer in number, less protected by situ¬
ation, less able to obtain help from other quarters.
They were neither slaves nor cowards. They loved
their freedom, they fought for it long and desperately,
rising again and again when civil wars in England
offered them a gleam of hope. When resistance
became obviously hopeless, they loyally and wisely
accepted their fate. They had not to suffer from
prolonged severity, for severity was unnecessary.
There was no general confiscation, no violent inter¬
ference with local habits or usages. They preserved
their language with singular success, and their cus-
IO THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
toms so far as their customs were compatible with
English law; while in exchange for independence
they were admitted to the privileges of English
citizenship in as full measure as the English them¬
selves. They continued proud of their nationality,
vain with true Celtic vanity of pedigrees which lose
themselves in infinity. Yet, being wisely handled,
restrained only in essentials, and left to their own
way in the ordinary current of their lives, they were
contented to forget their animosities; they ceased to
pine after political liberty which they were consciously
unable to preserve; and finding themselves accepted
on equal terms as joint inheritors of a magnificent
empire, the iron chain became a golden ornament.
Their sensibilities were humoured in the title of the
heir of the crown. In bestowing a dynasty upon
England they found a gratification for their honour¬
able pride. If they have contributed less of positive
strength than the Scots to the British empire, they
have never been its shame or its weakness; and the
retention of a few harmless peculiarities has not pre¬
vented them from being wholesome and worthy mem¬
bers of the United Commonwealth.
Ireland, the last of the three countries of which
England's interest demanded the annexation, was by
nature better furnished than either of them with
means to resist her approaches. Instead of a narrow
river for a frontier, she had seventy miles of danger¬
ous sea. She had a territory more difficult to pene¬
trate, and a population greatly more numerous. The
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
II
courage of the Irish was undisputed. From the first
mention of the Irishman in history, faction fight and
foray have been the occupation and the delight of his
existence. The hardihood of the Irish kern was pro¬
verbial throughout Europe. The Irish soldiers, in the
regular service of France and Spain, covered them¬
selves with distinction, were ever honoured with the
most dangerous posts, have borne their share in every
victory. In our own ranks they have formed half the
strength of our armies, and detraction has never chal¬
lenged their right to an equal share in the honour
which those armies have won. Yet, in their own
country, in their efforts to shake off English supre¬
macy, their patriotism has evaporated in words. No
advantage of numbers has availed them; no sacred
sense of hearth and home has stirred their nobler
nature. An unappeasable discontent has been at¬
tended with the paralysis of manliness ; and, with a
few accidental exceptions, continually recurring insur¬
rections have only issued in absolute and ever dis¬
graceful defeat.
Could Ireland have but fought as Scotland fought
she would have been mistress of her own destinies.
In a successful struggle for freedom, she would have
developed qualities which would have made her worthy
of possessing it. She would have been one more
independent country added to the commonwealth of
nations; and her history would have been another
honourable and inspiriting chapter among the brighter
records of mankind. She might have stood alone;
12 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. t-
she might have united herself, had she so pleased,
with England on fair and equal conditions; or she
might have preferred alliances with the Continental
powers. There is no disputing against strength, nor
happily is there need to dispute, for the strength
which gives a right to freedom, implies the presence
of those qualities which ensure that it will be rightly
used. No country can win and keep its freedom in
the presence of a dangerous rival, unless it be on the
whole a well and justly governed country; and where
there is just government the moral ground is absent
on which conquest can be defended or desired.
Again, could Ireland, on discovering like the Welsh
that she was too weak or too divided to encounter
England in the field, have acquiesced as the Welsh
acquiesced, in the alternative of submission, there was
not originally any one advantage which England pos¬
sessed which she was not willing and eager to share
with her. If England was to become a great power,
the annexation of Ireland was essential to her, if only
to prevent the presence there of an enemy; but she
had everything to lose by treating her as a conquered
province, seizing her lands, and governing her by
force; everything to gain by conciliating the Irish
people, extending to them the protection of her own
laws, the privileges of her own higher civilization, and
assimilating them on every side, so far as their tem¬
perament allowed, to her subjects at home.
Yet Ireland would neither resist courageously, nor
would she honourably submit. Her chiefs and leaders
CH. i.] PRELIMINARY. i'3
had no real patriotism. In Scotland, though the
nobles might quarrel among themselves, they buried
their feuds and stood side by side when there was
danger from the hereditary foe. There was never a
time when there was not an abundance of Irish who
would make common cause with the English when
there was a chance of revenge upon a domestic enemy,
or a chance merely of spoil to be distributed. All
alike, though they would make no stand for liberty, as
little could endure order or settled government. Their
insurrections, which might have deserved sympathy
had they been honourable efforts to shake off an alien
yoke, were disfigured with crimes which, on one
memorable occasion at least, brought shame on their
cause and name. When insurrection finally failed,
they betook themselves to assassination and secret
tribunals; and all this, while they were holding up
themselves and their wrongs as if they were the vic¬
tims of the most abominable tyranny, and inviting the
world to judge between them and their oppressors.
Nations are not permitted to achieve independence
on these terms. Unhappily, though unable to shake
off the authority of England, they were able to irritate
her into severities which gave their accusations some
show of colour. Everything which she most valued
for herself—her laws and liberties, her orderly and
settled government, the most ample security for
person and property—England's first desire was to
give to Ireland in fullest measure. The temper in
which she was met exasperated her into harshness
>4 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. L
and at times to cruelty; and so followed in succession
alternations of revolt and punishment, severity pro¬
voked by rebellion, and breeding in turn fresh cause
for mutiny, till it seemed at last as if no solution of
the problem was possible save the expulsion or de¬
struction of a race which appeared incurable.
15
SECTION III.
There are many ways in which a conquered but
still reluctant people may be dealt with, when the
interest of the conquerors is rather in the country
itself than in the inhabitants who occupy it. They
may be exterminated, either wholly, as the Red races
are being exterminated in North America, or in part,
as the Gauls were by Caesar, and the Mexicans by
Cortes and his successors; or they may be held con¬
tinuously down by the sword, as the North of Italy
was held by Austria; or, again, armed colonists may
be settled on the soil who, in exchange for land on
easy terms, undertake the maintenance of order, as
was done in Ulster under James the First, and in
Leinster and Munster by Cromwell.
The Norman occupation of Ireland in the twelfth
century differed materially from all and any of these
methods. The Normans were not properly colonists;
they were a military aristocracy whose peculiar mis¬
sion was to govern men. When a tract of land was
allotted to a Norman baron, it was not at first an
estate out of which to extract rents to spend upon his
own pleasures, so much as a fief, over which he was a
ruler responsible to the crown. The Irish, when the
Normans took charge of them, were, with the excep¬
tion of the clergy, scarcely better than a mob of armed
savages. They had no settled industry and no settled
16 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
habitations, and scarcely a conception of property.
The poor-spirited and the weak were told off for such
wretched tillage as could not be dispensed with. The
only occupation considered honourable was fighting
and plunder; and each tribe roamed within its own
limits, supported either by the pillage of its neighbours
or the wild cattle which wandered through the forests.
Tliey bad some human traits. They were fond of
music and ballad-singing. They were devout after a
fashion of their own ; and among the monks and friars
there were persons who had pretensions to learning.
But the religion of the Irish Celts, which three centuries
earlier had burnt like a star in Western Europe, had
degenerated into a superstition, and no longer served
as a check upon the most ferocious passions. When
Giraldus Cambrensis was sent by Henry the Second
to report on Ireland, their chief characteristics were
treachery, thirst for blood, unbridled licentiousness,
and inveterate detestation of order and rule.1 To
1 Giraldus attributes the moral I
condition of the people to the neg¬
lect of the bishops and clergy. ' In
episcopis et prcelatis,' he says, ' hoc
fere solum reprehensionis dignum
invenio quod in populi tam enor-
niiter delinquentis correctione de-
sides minis sunt et negligentes. . . .
Si pnelati a tempore Patricii per
tot annorum curricula praedicationi
et instruction! item increpationi et
correptioni pro officii debito viril-
iter institissent et prsenotatas gentis
enormitates aliquatenus extirpas-
sent, aliquam in eis procul dubio
formam honestatis et religionis im-
pressissent. Sed non fuit in ipsis
qui tanquam tuba vocem exaltaret.'
They lived, he said, retired in
their cloisters, given up to contem¬
plation.
' Hujus terras prselati intra ec-
clesiarum septa cle antique, con-
suetudine se continentes, contem¬
plation! solum fere semper indul¬
gent. . . . Unde accidit ut nec
verbum Dei populo praedicent nec
scelera eorum eis annuntient nec in
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
17
such a people, needing bit and bridle, liberty was only
mischievous, and the Normans came to take direction
of them. How their coming was brought about in
detail—how Dermot MacMurrough, prince of Leinster,
was driven out and fled for help to England—how he
made himself a vassal of Henry the Second—under a
compact already sanctioned in the famous grant of
Ireland by Pope Adrian—this and the history of the
conquest which followed does not need repeating. The
Normans in occupying both England and Ireland were
but fulfilling the work for which they were specially
qualified and gifted, and the grant of Adrian was but
the seal of approbation by the spiritual ruler of Chris¬
tendom. They did not destroy the Irish people ; they
took the government of them merely, as the English
have done in India, dispossessing the chiefs, changing
grege commisso vel extirpent vitia
vel inserantvirtutes.'—Topographia
Hibcrnica, Distinctio iii. cap. 28.
There has always been a difficulty
in understanding how, among so
lawless a people, the churches and
monasteries escaped destruction.
The supernatural character attach¬
ing to the clergy was perhaps in
part the cause. Giraldus, however,
says, that some stronger protection
was required, and attributes it to
the power of an Irish saint's curse,
and his quick, sharp promptitude
in pronouncing it. ' Hoc autem
inihi notabile videtur quod sicut
nationis istius homines hare in vita
mortali prae aliis gentibus irnpati-
entes et praecipites sunt ad vindic-
IREL. I. )
tam, sic et in rnorte vitali meritis
jam excelsi prae aliarum regionum
Sanctis, animi vindicis esse videntur.
Nee alia mihi ratio eventus hujus
occurrit nisi quoniam gens Hiber-
nica castellis carens, praedonibus
abundans, ecclesiarum potius re-
fugiis quam castrorum municipiis,
et praecipue ecclesiastici viri seque
suaque tueri solent, divina provi¬
dential simul et indulgentia, gravi
frequentique animadversione in ec¬
clesiarum hostes opus fuerat; ut et
sic ah ecclesiastical pace impiorum
pravitas procul arceatur et ipsis ec-
clesiis ah irreverent! populo debita
veneratio vel serviliter exhibeatur'
—Topographia llibernica, Distinc¬
tio ii. cap. 55.
0
18 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. r.
the loose order of inheritance into an ordei'ly succes¬
sion, giving security to life and property, and enabling
those who cared to be industrious to reap the fruits of
their labours without fear of outrage and plunder.
Their right to govern lay in their capability of govern¬
ing and in the need of the Irish to be governed. The
Pope may have had in view other objects of his own.
The Irish Church claimed immunities from the Roman
jurisdiction which the irony of fate selected the Anglo-
Normans to abrogate. Celtic Ireland was neither
Papal, nor inclined to submit itself to the Papacy, till
Henry the Second riveted the Roman yoke upon them.
But the true justification of the conquest lay in the
character of the conquerors. They were born rulers
of men, and were forced, by the same necessity which
has brought the decrepit kingdoms of Asia under the
authority of England and Russia, to take the manage¬
ment, eight centuries ago, of the anarchic nations of
Western Europe.
Nor did Ireland fail on the outset to profit by their
presence. Eor two centuries after the landing of
Strongbow and Fitzstephen large sections of the
country were subdued into some kind of order and
arrangement. The Celtic chiefs were driven into the
mountains. Eitzgeralds, Lacies, De Burghs, De
Courcies, Blakes, Butlers, Fitzurzes took the places
of AFCarthies, O'Neils, O'Briens, O'Sullivans, and
O'Connors. Those of the old race who remained in
the homes of their fathers were compelled to conform
to some kind of rule. The new-comers rooted them-
cir. i.]
PRELIMINARY.
19
selves into the soil,, built castles, gathered about them
retainers of their own blood, who overmastered, held
down, and, in some degree, transformed the wild and
wayward vagabonds, whom they forced to become their
subjects. The work begun by the Danes was carried
on and developed. Seaport towns—Dublin, Wexford,
Waterford, Cork, Limerick—of which the sea-rovers
from the Baltic had laid the foundations, were en¬
larged, strengthened, surrounded with walls, and
governed like English cities. Trading ships went
and came. Outside the fortifications, and within the
shelter of their garrisons, round Dublin especially, the
country became settled and cultivated. Tenants took
leases of lands and raised houses on them ; while in
the interior, with incessant fighting and arduous police
work which knew neither end nor respite, the heads
of the Norman families hammered the unwilling metal
of the Celts into some consistency, and forced them
into habits less extravagantly wild and confused.
The four provinces were mapped out into districts.
Inland towns were raised, fortified, and provided with
sovereigns (mayors) and aldermen, and the forms, at
least, of free municipal institutions. Sheriffs and
magistrates were chosen; and the Brehon traditions—
a code of customs in which crime had become a word
without meaning, and the most savage murders could
be paid for with a cow or a sheep—began to yield
before the English common law, as quiet and industry
recognized the need and value of protection. The
progress was slow. The prospect seemed often
0 2
20 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
desperate. Unstable as water, the Irish temperament
wanted cohesiveness to bear the shapes which were
imprinted on it. And the work was the harder because
—and it is the same difficulty which has been at once
the honour and perplexity of English relations with
Ireland from first to last—because the effort)# of the
conquerors was to govern the Irish not as a vassal
province but as a free nation; to extend the forms of
English liberty—her trials by jury, her local courts,
her parliaments—to a people essentially unfit for them;
and, while governing Ireland, to teach her at the same
time the harder lesson to govern herself.
In contrast with the age which succeeded it, the
century of Irish life which followed the Conquest was
comparatively humane and rational. Authority was a
real thing; and it might have seemed that, by the side
of the Anglo-Norman civilization which was shaping
itself into consistency in England, a Norman-Celtic
society, parallel to it though with subsidiary differences,
was tending to form itself with equal firmness in the
sister island. But the same causes which, at a later
period, undermined the Protestant ascendancy were
at work with equal potency four hundred years
before.
21
SECTION IY.
A conquering race can retain its peculiar character¬
istics, unaffected by the local influences and tend¬
encies of the people by which it is surrounded, as
long only as it preserves the most intimate relations
with its kindred elsewhere. Unless strengthened by
a continuous stream of importation the pure blood of
the conquerors declines. They recruit themselves by
intermarriages with the natives. They form alliances
and friendships; they find the work of government
more easy by humouring the customs and imitating
the manners which they see around them; and when
human beings are thrown together, especially if there
is no difference of religion to keep them apart, it is at
once inevitable that kindly associations shall rise
between them, and the character of both will tend to
assume a colouring in which the points of agreement
will be more visible than the points of difference.
Were the English in India cut off by any sudden con¬
vulsion from their native country, they would still
probably, if they so wished, be able to maintain their
sovereignty, but it would be at the expense of becoming
themselves Orientalised. Were there nothing else to
produce a change, their children would inevitably catch
a tone from their servants and nurses. Native wives and
mistresses would work alteration in the blood; and,
in spite of Christianity, six or seven generations would
22 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
find them half transmuted into an Asiatic type. The
Normans in England, though many of them retained
their estates in France, and went and came, and
French continued for centuries the language of the
conrt, and, for a time, it seemed as if England might
become a mere appanage of the Plantagenets' conti¬
nental dominions, yet in each generation approached
closer to the Saxons, till at length the distinction
disappeared. Their Irish kindred, filtered many of
them first through Wales, and in the process already
partially Celticized, were exposed to trials infinitely
more severe. Those to whom Ireland was distaste¬
ful refused to make their homes there, and foi'sook
it not to return. Those who remained were left for
the most part to themselves. The Irish Sea, thrice
the breadth of the Straits of Dover, cut them off from
their old connections. Surrounded by swarms of
enemies, they had to stand by such strength as they
could rally to them on the spot, and they made the
most of such of the Irish as they could persuade into
loyalty. In the Irish character too they came in
contact with elements peculiarly fitted to work upon
them. From a combination of causes—some creditable
to them, some other than creditable—the Irish Celts
possess on their own soil a power greater than any
other known family of mankind of assimilating those
who venture among them to their own image. Light-
hearted, humorous, imaginative, susceptible through
the entire range of feeling, from the profoundest
pathos to the most playful jest, if they possess some
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY
23
real virtues they possess the counterfeits of a hundred
more. Passionate in everything—passionate in their
patriotism, passionate in their religion, passionately
courageous, passionately loyal and affectionate—they
are without the manliness which will give strength
and solidity to the sentimental part of their disposi¬
tions ; while the surface and show is so seductive and
so winning that only experience of its instability can
resist the charm.
The incompleteness of character is conspicuous in
all that they do and have done ; in their history, in
their practical habits, in their arts and in their liter¬
ature. Their lyrical melodies are exquisite, their epic
poetry is ridiculous bombast. In the lives of their
saints there is a wild if fantastic splendour; but they
have no secular history, for as a nation they have done
nothing which posterity will not be anxious to forget;
and if they have never produced a tolerable drama, it
is because imagination cannot outstrip reality. In the
annals of ten centuries there is not a character, male
or female, to be found belonging to them with suffi¬
cient firmness of texture to be carved into dramatic
outline. Their temperaments are singularly impres¬
sionable, yet the impression is incapable of taking
shape. They have little architecture of their own, and
the forms introduced from England have been robbed
of their grace. Their houses, from cabin to castle, are
the most hideous in the world. ISTo lines of beauty
soften anywhere the forbidding harshness of their
provincial towns; rarely does climbing rose or
24 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [SK. I.
creeper dress the naked walls of farmhouse or cot¬
tage. The sun never shone on a lovelier country as
nature made it. They have pared its forests to the
stump, till it shivers in damp and desolation. The
perceptions of taste which belong to the higher orders
of understanding, are as completely absent as truth¬
fulness of spirit is absent, or cleanliness of person and
habit. The Irish are the spendthrift sister of the
Arian race. Yet there is notwithstanding a fascination
about them in their old land and in the sad and
strange associations of their singular destiny. They
have a power of attraction which no one who has felt
it can withstand. Brave to rashness, yet so infirm of
purpose, that unless they are led by others their
bravery is useless to them; patriots, yet with a
history which they must trick with falsehood to render
it tolerable even to themselves; imaginative and
poetical, yet unable to boast of one single national
work of art; attached ardently to their country, yet
so cultivating it that they are the byeword of Europe;
they appeal to sympathy in their very weakness; and
they possess and have always possessed some qualities
the moral worth of which it is impossible to over¬
estimate, and which are rare in the choicest races of
mankind.
Amidst their weaknesses, their confident boastings
and imperfect performances, the Irish have shown
themselves at all times, and in all places, capable
of the most loyal devotion to anyone who will lead
and command them. They have not been specially
CH. I ]
PRELIMINARY.
25
attached to chiefs of their own race. Wherever and
in whomsoever they have found courage and capacity,
they have been ready with heart and hand to give
their services; and whether at home in sacrificing
their lives for their chiefs, or as soldiers in the French
or English armies, or as we now know them in the
form of the modern police, there is no duty, however
dangerous and difficult, from which they have been
found to flinch, no temptation hoAvever cruel which
tempts them into unfaithfulness. Loyalty of this
kind, though called contemptuously a virtue of bar¬
barism, is a virtue which, if civilization attempts to
dispense with it, may cause in its absence the ruin of
civilization. Of all men the most likely to appreciate
it were the Norman barons; for personal fidelity of
man to man lay at the heart of the feudal organiza¬
tion. But nevertheless in Ireland it was their tempt¬
ation as well as their strength. To the Irish kern it
mattered little whether his chief was a Geraldine or
an O'Connor; it mattered much whether he was to
be ruled under the imported laws of the stranger, or
by the customs and traditions of his own people;
whether when he had found a chief who would lead
him to annual victory he was to be allowed to enjoy
the fruits of victory in the old fashion, or was forced
to be content with barren honour and the praise of his
master. He would have accepted the new conditions
had it been possible to enforce them for a few gene¬
rations while habits of order could grow. But the
times were pressing; the barons had much work to
26
THE EN GUSH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
do and few men of tTieir own to do it with. Money
was scarce with them, and rewards of other kinds
were equally scarce; while plunder was easy and satis¬
factory, and was the time-honoured mode by which
services in war were paid for. The baron and his
Irish retainers found the relations between them grow
easy when the customs of the country were allowed to
stand; and when a Butler or a Lacy, not contented
with leading his people to spoil and victory, adopted
their language and their dress, and became as one
of themselves, the affection of which they were the
objects among the people grew at once into adoration.
Then old Celtic names were dropped. The fighting
men of Galway became the De Burgh's men and called
themselves Burkes. In Kerry and Limerick half
the inhabitants became Geraldines. The Ormond or
the Desmond of the day became a kind of sovereign.
He forgot more and more that he was come to Ire¬
land to introduce English order and manners; and to
strengthen his authority and conciliate his subjects,
he left them to their own laws and their own ways,
while they in turn became the instruments of their
lord's ambition. His Norman dependents followed the
example, took Irish wives, and followed Irish fashions;
and if on one side, and in some places, the conquerors
had introduced civilization, elsewhere they had but
lent fresh strength and sinew to the very thing which
they were sent to subdue.
The metamorphosis of the feudal baron into the
Celtic chief was not completed without efforts from
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
27
the nobler part of the English settlers to arrest the
downward progress. By the statute of Kilkenny, in
1367, it was made treason for an Englishman of birth
or blood to accept or govern by the laws of the
Brehons. Intermarriage with the Irish, or fostering1
with the Irish, was made treason. Those who had
chosen to adopt Irish manners, Irish names or lan¬
guage, were threatened with forfeiture. Private war
between the great families had become as frequent
and as scandalous as before the Conquest. Swords
were forbidden to be drawn without orders from the
Lord Deputy; and wardens of the peace were named
for every county to see the law obeyed. The attempt
to keep the races apart has lately been considered
vain and impolitic; but the framers of these statutes
understood the conditions more clearly than those
who condemn them. The interfusion of races did not
mean the elevation of the Irish to the level of their
rulers, but the degradation of the ruler to the state of
those whose fashions it was his business to extirpate.
It meant that every separate potentate was to assume
a savage independence, and, for the sake of himself
and his immediate dependents, to extend and per¬
petuate the lawlessness which was Ireland's curse.
The Kilkenny Parliament was followed by fresh
efforts on the part of England. Richard the Second
appeared in person on the scene, brought the chiefs
upon their knees, read Ireland the often-repeated
1 Entrusting the children to Irish
foster-nurses, the most fatal of all
the means by which the degeneracy
was brought about.
2S
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
lesson that England had but to exert herself to assert
an instant and absolute supremacy. Absenteeism, the
deepest root of the mischief, had already been at work*
Lords and gentlemen, who retained most completely
the English character, and whose presence in Ireland,
therefore, was most indispensable, had learnt to prefer
the society of their friends at home to the pain and
trouble of coercing banditti in Donegal or Galway.
They had reduced their connection with their estates
to drawing rent or revenues from them ; and the old
families came back into their places charged with
payments which on such terms were no more than
robbery. Civilization was not sufficiently advanced
to tolerate modern views of the rights of property.
They were ordered back to their posts under pain of
confiscation.
Unhappily, a cycle of civil war was opening in
England itself. Richard, the slave of parasites and
courtiers, was shaking on his throne. Three times he
crossed to Ireland: on his last visit, in 1399, he was
perhaps looking to his subjects there, as Charles the
First and James the Second looked afterwards, to save
him from revolution at home. ITe failed and fell,
entailing in his overthrow a century of convulsions.
The House of Lancaster, to divert attention and
strengthen their imperfect titles by gratifying the
national vanity, flung themselves into conquest. Had
the army which conquered at Agincourt been directed
upon Ireland, had the genius which for a brief interval
turned France into an English province, been addressed
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
29
to the subjugation and settlement of England's own
dominions, Henry the Fifth might have left a less
distinguished name, but the Irish difficulty might
have been for ever ended, and he would have be¬
queathed to his son a less fatal inheritance. But
Ireland, as in a later century, was neglected as too
inglorious a field for enterprise, and was left to her
own will, to tear in pieces the parchment laws which
there was no longer a sword to enforce. As disaster
thickened in France the change in Ireland was signi¬
ficantly marked. So far from absenteeism being
checked, the wars had recalled a yet larger number
of the Norman-Irish leaders to take part in the strug¬
gle. The pretence of carrying English law through
the whole country was formally abandoned. The four
counties known as the English Pale1 were divided
from the rest of the island, where the Irish, except in
the sea towns, were left to themselves. The English
were required by a statute of Henry the Sixth to
distinguish themselves by a difference in the beard.2
Those of the natives who cared to be protected by
English law were allowed to live within the frontier on
condition of adopting the English characteristics.
Those beyond the Pale came to be called the king's
Irish enemies. The English were forbidden to hold
intercourse with them, visit them, or even ti'ade with
them ; and an Irishman found inside the border was
liable to arrest as a spy.3 Every ' liegeman' was
1 Dublin, Meatli, Kildare, and Louth. 2 Shaving the upper lip.
3 Irish Statutes, 25 Hen. YI. cap. 4.
30
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[ek. I.
permitted to kill notorious thieves/ and received a
reward from the county for each thief destroyed, which
the sheriff was bound to levy. As a corollary on this
statute arose the famous saying, that it was no felony
to kill an Irishman. Those who formally refused
submission to English law could not be allowed its
protection.
Such measures were symptoms of growing weak¬
ness, and of the recoveiung strength of the Irish clans.
The Wars of the Hoses followed, and completed the
collapse. England was disabled for half a century
from further efforts, and the counties of the Pale fol¬
lowed the rest of the island. The best of the remain¬
ing English went back to give their swords to Red
Rose or White, and the English interest in Ireland
was reduced to the families who cared least for their
old homes, and had identified themselves most com¬
pletely with the land of their adoption. The O's and
the Macs repossessed themselves of their old inherit¬
ances. Ulster they recovered altogether. In the south
and west the Anglo-Normans held their ground, but
only by having become denationalized themselves.
Geraldines, Butlers, and Burkes shared the country
with O'Neils, O'Donnells, O'Connors, O'Rourkes,
O'Briens, and O'Sullivans, scarce distinguishable from
them in habit or appearance, with no law but the
1 It was not necessary that they
should be caught in the act of
robbery. ' It shall be lawful to
every liegeman of our sovereign lord
the King — all manner notorious
known thieves, and thieves found
robbing and spoiling and breaking
into houses by night or day, and
thieves found in the manner—to
kill them.'—28 Hen. VI. cap. 3.
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
31
Brehon. They made war on each other, marauding,
burning, killing, driving each other's cattle, as if they
were no better than so many robber chieftains, and
owned no more obedience to England than an acknow¬
ledgment of titular authority. For the first time for
three hundred years Ireland was in full and ample
possession of all the privileges of home rule.1
Bosworth Field and the accession of the House of
Tudor gave peace to England, and brought with it the
necessity of facing the Irish problem once more. The
English sovereigns, though not yet calling themselves
Kings of Ireland, were Domini, or lords paramount
there; and, having claimed supremacy over the island,
were responsible to God and man for the administra¬
tion of some kind of justice. The unwelcome task
might still have been postponed, but the Irish lords
themselves forced forward the consideration of it.
They considered, as their descendants considered on
the deposition of James the Second, that, though
attached to the English Crown, they were not at¬
tached to England, and had a right to determine for
themselves who was or was not the lawful possessor of
the Irish throne. The White Hose was, on the tvhole,
the favourite with them; and pretenders, who came
to them as its representatives, were instantly made
welcome. They crowned Lambert Simnel in Dublin.
1 The sea towns remained Eng¬
lish, the magistrates seemingly
having so little to do in the way of
secular management, or so little
care to do it, that in 1483 the mayors
and bailiffs of AYaterford applied for
and obtained permission to go on
pilgrimage to St. James of Compo-
stclla.—Cox, vol. i. p. 175.
32 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. OK. I.
When Lambert Simnel broke down, they received
Perkin Warbecle, and met him in a Parliament, dhese
phantom figures soon vanished, but their reception
decided Henry the Seventh to make a resolute attempt
to put the bridle once more between their teeth. An
account of Ireland written at this time by an English¬
man calling himself f Panderus,' or the f Pander/ shows
with some clearness the problem to be solved.1
Ilalf Louth, half Dublin, half Meath, and half
Kildare were still nominally subject to English law;
but between the extortions of the officials of the
court, the subsidies paid for protection which was not
furnished, and the consequent necessity of paying
black mail to the chiefs of the Irish, ' the English
folk' within the Pale were reckoned f more oppressed
and more miserable than any others in the whole
country;' f none in any part of the known world were
so evil be seen in town and field, so brutish, so trod
under foot, and with so wretched a life.' Outside
these limits, the two great houses of the Geraldines
in Leinster and Munster, the O'Briens in Clare, the
Butlers in Kilkenny, the O'Neils and O'Donnells in
the north, exercised a rude supremacy. Under their
titular leadership the country was shared out between
sixty Irish chiefs of the old blood and f thirty great
captains of the English noble folk,' each of whom
Hived only by the sword, and obeyed no temporal
1 The Pander's account is em¬
bodied in ' A Report on the State of
Ireland in 1515,' and forms appa¬
rently the whole substance of that
report.—State Papers, Hen. VIII.
vol. ii. p. 1.
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
33
power but only himself that was strong.' These
ninety leaders, on an average, commanded seven or
eight hundred swords apiece; but their retainers,
when their services were unrequired by the chief,
were generally fighting among themselves. The cap¬
tains among the Irish were chosen by f fortinayne.'
The head of the clan was he that had ' the strongest
arm.' Every lad of spirit under him who could
gather a score or two of followers set up for himself,
seized or built some island or forest stronghold, where
he lived by his right arm on the plunder of his neigh¬
bours, and fought his way to the first place under his
lord.
Their private habits were wild as their occupations
were lawless. In the latter half of the sixteenth
century, when a distinct view of them begins to be
obtainable, the cattle and human beings lived herded
together in the earl of Desmond's castle. If Fynes
Moryson may be believed, the daughters of distin¬
guished Ulster chiefs squatted on the pavement round
the hall fires of their fathers' castles, in the presence
of strangers, as bare of clothing as if Adam had never
sinned. According to Spenser, in striking contrast
with the Irish of later experience, the women in all
their relations were emancipated to the fullest imagin¬
able extent; and, m Spenser's time, they had rather
improved than deteriorated since the visit of the
Pander. A hundred thousand families (the population
did not exceed, if it reached, half a million) divided
Ireland, whose ways of life, and whose notion of the
IREL. I. D
34 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
objects for which life was given them, were the ways
and the notions of savages. In unconscious simplicity
their historians reveal their character. The pages of
the Four Masters, the f Annals of Lough Ce/ are filled
with a monotonous series of murders and destruction.
Strife and bloodshed were the sole business of life;
and those of them took highest rank, and rose most
to favour in song and legend, who had slaughtered
rfiost enemies, and burnt and harried the largest
number of homesteads. Partial exceptions there may
have been. Within the walls of towns there must
have been some kind of human decency. In Ormondes
castle of Kilkenny, at Maynooth, and in the houses of
the great barons of the Pale, the example of the
English viceroy at Dublin was, perhaps, faintly imi¬
tated. Imagination may with difficulty approach, it
certainly cannot exaggerate, the condition of the rest
of the island.
' The holy woman Brigitta,' says the Pander em¬
phatically, conveying under an Irish legend his general
impressions as to the whole subject, 'used to enquire
of her good angel many questions of secrets divine.
And among others she enquired of what Crystyn lande
was most sowlles damned. The Angell shewyd her a
lande in the weste parte of the worlde. She inquiryd
the cause whye. The Angell sayd for there is most
contynuall warre, rote of hate and envye and of viceis
contrarye to Charytie. And the Angell dyd shew till
her the lapse of the sowlles of Crystyn folke of that
lande, how they fell downe into Hell as thyk as any
ch. i.] PRELIMINARY. 35
haylle sliewrys. And pytty tliereof movied the Pander
to consayn his said boke, for after his opinion tliys is
the lande that the Angell understode, for ther is no
lande in this worlde of so long contynuall warre within
hymselff, nor of so greate shedding of Crystyn blode,
nor of so greate rubbing, spoyling, preying, and burne-
ing, nor of so greate wrongfull extortion contynually
as Ireland. Wherefore it cannot be denyed by very
estymation of man, but that the Angell dyd under-
stande the lande of Ireland.'1
What could the King do more than had been
done ? it was asked. The land had been conquered,
and settled with English, and subjected to English
laws; ' and so did continue and prosper a hundred
years and more.' Then barbarism had come back as
if it were the fatal destiny of the country. Some said
that things had been never better ; others, that the
disorder was incurable and never could be removed.
The Pander thought that an account of Ireland would
be demanded by God at the King's hands ; and that,
for his own soul's sake, he must take it in hand. fIt
would be more honour to him to surrender Ireland
altogether, than suffer his poorer subjects to be so
cruelly oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles to be
at war with themselves, shedding blood always with¬
out remedy.' ' The herde must render account of his
folk and the king for his.'
Once more there was to be an attempt to govern;
1 ' State of Ireland and Plan for its Reformation, 1515.' State Papers,
vol. ii.
d 2
36
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
but how it was to be clone remained obscure as ever.
The despised ' churles,' or poor tillers of the earth,
were the worthiest part of the population, the worthiest
and the most cruelly oppressed. The Pander's pro¬
posal was to give the churles an English training, and
arm them against their lords, who would thus be
compelled to respect their properties, and, for want of
plunder on which to sustain their followers, would be
driven, in spite of themselves, to more peaceful habits.
But this was one of those paper measures so uncertain
in its results; for the churles after all might turn
their weapons against their patrons. It was a plan
easy to recommend, but impossible to execute without
a complete conquest, which Henry, shaking on his
throne, was unable to undertake. His hope was still
to conciliate, to reclaim by persuasion and favour the
least desperate of the great Irish families, and with
their assistance rule or influence the rest. The two
most powerful houses of Norman descent were the
Butlers and the Geraldines of Kildare. Each of them
had accepted earldoms from England. They held
their estates in feudal tenure, with regular descent to
the eldest son ; and their heirs in part or wholly were
educated at the English court. The Butlers, the sole
exception in Ireland, were traditionally loyal. They
had little influence beyond their own principality, as
having English sympathies, and were therefore less
available for Henry's purpose. The Kildares, far
advanced in intelligence beyond the Irish level, and
better aware than their countrymen of English strength,
CH. I.] PRELIMINARY. 37
had played fast and loose with the English connection
as the turn of events recommended, but they were
ready to fall back upon it if they could be regarded
as the hereditary representatives of their sovereign.
Earl Gerald, after crowning Lambert Simnel, shook
himself free from his falling cause ; in combination
with his kinsmen in Munster, he crushed the party
which had declared for Perkin Warbeck and drove the
new Pretender out of the kingdom. All Ireland, it
was said, was not a match for the Earl of Kildare.
Then, ' Let the Earl of Kildare govern all Ireland/
was the answer of Henry the Seventh. Gerald, the
eldest son, was married to the King's cousin, Lady
Elizabeth Grey.1 The Kildares were deemed the most
fit connecting links between the two islands. They
undertook to keep Ireland quiet in its allegiance, and
to govern, if nothing else, at least inexpensively.
Prince Henry, then a child and Duke of York, was
appointed viceroy, as a complimentary equivalent to
the title of Prince of Wales borne by his brother.
The political question raised by Simnel's coronation
had to be disposed of before a final settlement. Sir
Edward Poynings, sent over as Deputy, carried through
the Irish Parliament the two famous acts known by
his name, by which English law was constitutionally
established in Ireland;2 and the Irish legislature
surrendered its pretence to pass measures which had
1 From this marriage came the
fair Geraldine, who grew up at the
English court, and with her Irish
charms captivated the young Lord
Surrey.
2 io Hen. VII. cap. 22.
3» THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
not been first approved in London.1 This point con¬
cluded, tbe sword of justice was delivered over to tbe
Kildares, and was held by them for a quarter of a
centurv.
The establishment of the Tudor dynasty, it has been
sometimes supposed, was the most favourable oppor¬
tunity as yet offered for the erection of an Ireland
loyal to England, yet governed by her own people
according to ' Irish ideas ;' and had it been tolerable
for an orderly and well administered kingdom to
retain a dependency at its doors abandoned wholly to
those habits of lawlessness which governments exist
to repress, the administration of the Geraldines might
have been continued indefinitely without provoking a
collision. Poynings' Acts were an unfelt restraint,
when the statutes of an Irish Parliament were not
even nominally in force beyond the Pale. The Kildares
deriving their strength from their popularity could
govern only by humouring the f ideas,' which they
were chosen to represent; and where in other countries
anarchy works its own cure through the miseries
which it creates, in Ireland the misery was itself
enjoyment. The free right of eveiy one to make war
upon his neighbour at pleasure was the Magna Charta
of Irish liberty. To sacrifice the privilege of appeal
to the ordeal of battle was to sacrifice everything
which made life itself worth having.2 So long as
1 10 Hen. VII. cap. 4. English or Irish, that useyth the
2 ' Some sayen also that all the sayde extortions hadde lever to con-
noble folke of the lande of Ireland, tinue the same at tlier lybertye, and
fro the highest degree to the lowest, here the greate daunger of Godde
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
39
England left tlie Irish free to plunder and kill, they
were well contented that one of themselves should sit
in Dublin Castle with the title of King's Vicegerent.
Freedom such as Scotland fought for, the inhabitants
of the sister island never sought or cared for. Con¬
scious that they could not stand alone, they were
satisfied to live under a power which left them in
possession of all that they desired, without risk of
interference from other countries which might perhaps
prove less forbearing. If the absence of every element
which in the court of reason and conscience constitute
the justification for the forcible annexation of Ireland,
formed a hopeful ground for the establishment of
amicable relations between the two peoples, the at¬
tempt to govern by 1 Irish ideas,' as exemplified in
the administration of the house of Kildare, had only
to have been persevered in to have brought about the
desired union of heart and affections.
But England to her misfortune has never been able
to persevere long in any one policy towards Ireland.
She tries coercion, till impatience with the cost, and a
sense of the discredit, produce a hope that coercion is
and of tlieir enemyes, tlian to have
all the lande as well orderyd as
England and as obedyent to Godde
and to the King, if therhye they
shulde lose their lybertyes in vyceis
and the said extortions ; for ther is
no lande in all thys worlde that
have more lyhertye in viceis than
Ireland and lesse lyhertye in vertue ;
for every greate captayne within
his rome holdeyth by the sworde
imperyall jurysdyction at his lyher¬
tye that nature most desyre ; which
he shulde lose for ever if the lande
were orderyd and he at lyhertye in
vertue ; that is to be obedyent to
the Kynge's laws and to the Holye
Churche.'—' State of Ireland and
Plan for its Reformation.' State
Papers, Hen. VIII. vol. ii. p. 16.
4°
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. X.
no longer needed, or a belief that it bas been a mistake
from the beginning. Conciliation follows, and com¬
promise, and concession, and apology. The strain is
taken off, the anarchy revives, and again with mono¬
tonous uniformity there is a fresh appeal to the sword.
The ignominy of having a country nominally subject to
him, where the first elements of social order had yet
to be introduced, forced itself slowly and with difficulty
into the mind of Henry the Eighth. No one knew
better than he that order was a plant of slow growth,
that bad habits were a second nature, to be changed
only by time and forbearance. f Realms, nevertheless,
without justice,' he said, ' were but tyrannies and
robberies more consonant to beastly appetites than the
laudable life of reasonable creatures. Where wilful¬
ness did reign without law or justice, there was no
distinction of property: no man might say this is
mine; but by strength the weaker was oppressed.'1
Henry did not insist that the Irish, ill-trained as they
had been, should submit at once to English law ; but
he held it necessary ' that they should conform their
order of living to the observance of some reasonable
law, and not live at will as they had been used.' He,
like his father, was willing to try peaceful means, but
means which would lead to a result with a denned
purpose of improvement. He disavowed — and in
perfect sincerity, for throughout all his troubled rela¬
tions with Ireland he acted consistently on the same
1 'Henry VIII. to the Earl of Surrey, 1520.' State Papers, vol. ii.
P- 52.
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
4*
principle—lie disavowed all intentions of depriving the
chiefs of their lands, or confiscating their rights for
the benefit of Englishmen. He desired to persuade
them to exchange their system of election for a feudal
tenure, to acknowledge by a formal act of surrender
that they held their lordships under the crown, re¬
ceiving them again with English titles, and with
legitimate jurisdiction derived from the King. Under
this condition, instead of being Irish enemies, they
would become subjects entrusted with formal authority;
and in return might retain and administer the more
tolerable of their own Brehon laws, till a more settled
life brought a desire with it for the English common law.
The worst and weakest code ever digested into author¬
itative form would at least be better than no law at all.
A people who could understand an appeal of this
kind would perhaps have never required to be so
addressed. As spoken to Ireland it was like an in¬
vitation to water to become, of its own free will, solid
land, or to a sandy wilderness to clothe itself with
corn. It is well that so clear an answer remains on
record to the stereotyped slander, that England's only
object in her management or mismanagement of that
unhappy country, was to rob the ancient owners of the
land of their fathers. Yet the failure was inevitable,
and would have been followed at all events by rougher
measures, even without the new element of discord
which was flung out into Europe, and among its other
results gave coherence and defined form to Irish
disaffection.
42
SECTION Y.
On the rupture of England with the Papacy, the
Irish, by immediate instinct, threw themselves on
the Roman side. Could they have found Protestant
allies within reach, and had Henry continued in deed
as well as in name Defender of the Catholic faith, the
Church of Ireland might perhaps have remembered and
reclaimed her ancient liberties, have dated her slavery
from the grant of Adrian, and have fought for inde¬
pendence under the name of spiritual freedom. The
Celts of Wales and Cornwall are vehemently Protestant;
the Irish themselves lose their Papal fervour when
settled in countries where Popery is no longer identical
with patriotism ; and their tendency in all England's
quarrels to take the opposite side might have reminded
them that it was England which first riveted the
Eor.;an yoke upon their necks.
England, however, shook off the 'Italian Priest,'
and declared herself competent to decide her own
causes ecclesiastical and civil within her own borders.
The Irish, already uneasy at Henry's attempts to
meddle with them, declared themselves champions of
the true faith. The Pope claimed the right to absolve
them from their allegiance ; and rebellion became thus
a second duty. The first results were not encouraging
to the new ideas of patriotism. The trusted and
favoured house of Kildare put themselves forward as
CH. I.]
rRELIMINAR V.
43
champions of the Catholic faith. The Earl, who was
in London, was thrown instantly into the Tower, where
he died. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, his eldest son, who
at first carried all before him, was compelled, after
half a year of triumph, to surrender with his uncles, and
was hanged at Tyburn. Failure so absolute daunted
for awhile the insurrectionary spirit, and through the
King's adroitness and forbearance it seemed doubtful
whether it would revive. The Kildare Geraldines were
attainted, but their estates were left untouched, to be
restored as the return of their loyalty. Few if any of
the confederates were punished with loss of lands.
There were confiscations, but confiscations of the
estates not of the Irish but of the English absentees.
Those of the colonists who were unable, or who neg¬
lected, to discharge the duties attaching to their
places, were declared to have forfeited their tenures.
English noblemen who held lands in Ireland were
requii'ed to reside and maintain them. The rights
of property were made stringently conditional as
the fulfilment of its obligations.1 Justice so far was
even-handed, and justice being a rare virtue in that
country never failed to be appreciated.
A measure followed which, from another side, pro¬
duced a favourable effect on the Irish leaders. The
abbeys in Ireland as well as England were suppressed
so far as an act of Parliament could suppress them.2
The estates of the Chux-ch were passed on easy terms
1 Act of Absentees, 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 3. Irish Statutes.
2 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 5.
44 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
to the great persons in the different provinces, as a
bribe to purchase their assistance in carrying out the
statute. Superstition or piety in some places foi'bade
the sacrilege ; in others conscience was too weak to
resist temptation. The chiefs and nobles having con¬
sented to a share in the spoils, forgave the spoiler;
and the first singular results of this violent and
seemingly dangerous act were the acquiescence of the
O'Neills, O'Briens, and MacCarties, in the plans of
Henry for a change in their mode of tenure. They
surrendered their lands, to take them back again
subject to English conditions and to the English rule
of inheritance. They accepted earldoms in the place
of their Irish chieftaincies, and attended in their robes
at a Parliament in Dublin; while Henry himself,
seemingly with universal consent, took the title of
King of Ireland, when before he had been but Dominus,
or Lord.
The beginnings of a new oi'der of things were
happily laid, and there had never, since the Con¬
quest, been better promises of peace. As usual, when
England showed strength and resolution, Ireland be¬
came immediately submissive. If Henry had lived a
few more years, and if the quarrel with the Pope had
not been further complicated by differences of doc¬
trine, the emphatic success of an authoritative policy
at a critical time might have spared the need of future
outlawries, spoliations, and insurrections.
45
SECTION VI.
The short and unhappy reign of Edward the Sixth
produced less agitation in Ireland than might
have been anticipated. Attempts were ventured to
introduce and force upon the people the doctrinal
theories for which even England was unprepared.
Evangelical Protestantism of a serious kind was really
and truly better fitted to make its way among an
impressionable people like the Irish than the ambig¬
uous formulas of the Anglican Church; but spiritual
conversion was too tedious a process for the impatient
precipitancy of the advanced Reformers. Prelates
were thrust into the Irish sees under the naked au¬
thority of letters patent. John Bale, the most viru¬
lent and the most profane of the unfortunate party
whose excesses provoked the counter reformation,
commenced work as Bishop of Ossory, which would
have led, under ordinary circumstances, to an instant
explosion. In Ossory, the Bishop was under the ex¬
ceptional protection of Lord Ormond, who was him¬
self a protestant; the Irish leaders were as yet ap¬
parently uncertain whether to accept finally the bribe
of the Church lands; and the secular goveimment was
in the hands of Sir Edward Bellingham, one of the
ablest viceroys who ever wielded the Irish sword.
But the exasperation which would have soon burst
into rebellion rendered easy and complete the counter-
46
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
revolution under Edward's successor. On the mar¬
riage of Philip and Mary, and the formation of the
close alliance with Spain, religion was no longer a
cause of difference. The friars were reinstated in the
religious houses, and the English Church and the
Catholic clergy worked hand in hand for the restora¬
tion of order.
The two countries, notwithstanding, were no nearer
than before to a real union. No sooner was the quarrel
of the creeds suspended, than the old grounds of
jealousy revived; and Mary, before she died, found
herself at issue with the most powerful chief of the
native race on questions of jurisdiction and inherit¬
ance. Con O'Neill had accepted the earldom of
Tyrone from Henry the Eighth, with reversion to his
eldest legitimate son. The amours of Con had been
miscellaneous. His children irregularly begotten were
numerous. The custom of the tribe on the death of a
chief had been to choose in his place the bravest and
the strongest. The Bai*on of Hungannon, the lawful
heir under the patent of the earldom, was inefficient
and unpopular. His bastard brother, Shan or John, a
model Irishman, fierce, brave, and unscrupulous, the
idol of the clan, was elected by acclamation, not to
the English title, which he despised, but to the name
and place of the O'Neill. The Baron of Hungannon
was murdered; Shan O'Neill emerged for a brief period
of splendour into the championship of Irish liberty,
and prepared, Church or 110 Church, to vindicate the
right of his people to manage their affairs and elect
CH. I.],
PRELIMINAR V.
47
their rulers on their own principles. In the settle¬
ment of this dispute the life or death of Mary would
have made no difference; and if Ireland was to be
reclaimed to civilization, a reconquest would have
been equally a necessity, though the Reformation had
been no more heard of, and England had continued
thenceforward a loyal vassal of the Holy See. But
Mary went the way of her brother; Elizabeth suc¬
ceeded ; and with Elizabeth came the beginning of
modern Irish history.
48
SECTION VII.
The revolution on the death of Queen Mary re-estab¬
lished in England the supremacy of the Crown, the
Act of Uniformity, and the Reformed Prayer Book.
The majority even of the English were still Catho¬
lics ; yet the change, if largely nnwelcome to them,
was received without surprise. In the theory of
the constitution the law which undertook the direc¬
tion of conduct extended to the exercise of religion.
Opinion remained free; there was no inquisition into
the conscience; but public worship was a formal act
which, by universal consent, the Crown and Parliament
were held to have a right to control. The experience
of three hundred years has taught us that the widest
divergence of belief is compatible with equal purity
of life and equal fidelity to a common government.
But the conditions did not exist which make tolera¬
tion possible at a time when, though differing infinitely
in the articles of faith, all parties were nevertheless
agreed that heresy was the darkest of crimes, that to
hold the right faith was the first of duties, and that
the business of the civil magistrate was not only to
execute justice but to maintain truth. When feeling
was thus intense, and the conscience so keenly excited,
to have allowed the public and avowed exercise of
more than one religion would have led inevitably to
acts of violence. If the law had been silent, the
CH. I.J
PRELIMINAR Y.
49
several congregations as they were gathered under
their preachers into organized bodies would have
themselves attempted to give expression to the uni¬
versal sentiment; and so unanimous was the con¬
viction that the State could allow but one religion,
that the aspirations of the English Catholics were
less directed towards toleration and free chapels and
churches, which they would have counted it an im¬
piety to concede to their adversaries, than to a counter¬
revolution, which would replace the exclusive authority
in their own hands.
The Catholics, by the necessity of their situation,
made themselves liable to additional disabilities. So
long as the Pope claimed a right to absolve them
from their allegiance, and they on their part refused
to repudiate his pretensions, they could neither be,
nor be considered, loyal subjects of an excommuni¬
cated sovereign. To be a good Catholic was, in the
nature-of things, to be unfaithful to the secular prince.
All Protestant governments were obliged to regard
the adherents of the Roman see as secret enemies;
and although practice was not governed by logic, and
English gentlemen contrived subterfuges by which to
reconcile incompatible obligations, Elizabeth's govern¬
ment, when she had decided to go forward with the
Reformation, was compelled to watch them with
distrust.
At first there was the utmost forbearance. The
Act of Uniformity was the public law of the land ;
fines were attached to non-attendance at church ; an
IliEI/. I. E
5°
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
oatli of allegiance, excluding and denying the pre¬
tended rights of the Pope, was made a condition of
holding office under the Crown, of admission to the
Universities, or of the exercise of a learned profession.
But mass was said by connivance in private houses.
The allegiance of the peers was assumed as not need¬
ing to be confirmed by protestations. The fines were
not exacted. The widest toleration was permitted
consistent with the existence of the law. With some
it answered, with others it failed. The passionate
Papists murmured, conspired, fell into treason. Their
leaders were executed. The laws were enforced more
stringently. They conspired again, and invited help
from Spain. The nation, whose patriotism was
stronger than their superstition, stood by the Crown.
The cause of independence triumphed, and the Pope's
authority in England died utterly away.
The state of Ireland was materially different. In
England, at Elizabeth's accession, though the Pro¬
testants were a minority, they were the most ener¬
getic and vigorous of the population. In Ireland,
' of the birth of the land,' there were no Protestants
at all. Yet the difficulty of adopting a separate prin¬
ciple of government was enormous. Although there
was no legislative union, yet laws of Imperial con¬
sequence, which had been passed in England, were
re-enacted as a matter of course by the Irish Parlia¬
ment. The Ireland of the Statute Book was still only
the Pale and the port towns, and though even within
these narrow limits Protestantism had as yet made no
CH. I.]
PRELIMINAR Y.
51
progress, yet the need of defence against the Pope was
even greater there than at home. The Act of Uni¬
formity, therefore, and the Act of Supremacy were
pushed, by some means or other, upon the Irish
Statute Book. The Bishops of the Pale who refused
the oath of allegiance were deprived, and others in¬
stituted in their places. The sees in the rest of the
island were filled up when they fell vacant, only as the
Government found itself strong enough to maintain
Protestants there without danger of their being mur¬
dered. Meanwhile the private toleration allowed in
England received in Ireland a far larger latitude. The
Primate was a Protestant. In the Parish churches in
the Pale there was either a Protestant service or none.
But when over-zealous Deputies showed a disposition
to proselytize, they were invariably checked by the
Queen; and the policy which was succeeding in
England, it was supposed, not wholly without reason,
might produce analogous effects in the sister country.
The Prayer Book especially, when translated into
Latin, retained a Catholic complexion. The King of
Spain long turned a deaf ear to invitations from the
Irish leaders to interfere. If in Ireland, to begin with,
there were scarcely any Protestants at all, in England
they were in a minority of one to five or six,1 and were
almost limited to London and the large towns.
One difference was overlooked, and that a vital one.
In England, when her independence was threatened
1 Tlie highest estimate was one in three. The lowest, in the Catho¬
lic representations to Philip, made them but one in twelve.
e 2
52
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. X.
by the Catholic powers, the national spirit was on the
side of the Reformation. In Ireland, zeal for religion
identified itself with political freedom; and the more
ardent the orthodoxy, the greater the prospect of
obtaining sympathy and help from Spain and Italy
and France. Elizabeth, perhaps, considered that the
Catholic powers had work enough on their own hands ;
that, if the magistracy, the public offices, and the
learned profession were kept strictly in the hands of
conformists, the Pale would become gradually recon¬
ciled, and, with time and forbearance, the rest of the
island would follow. The calculation was utterly dis¬
appointed; the Queen's meaning towards Ireland was
nothing but good; she detested persecution, she was
scrupulously anxious, like her father, to protect the
Irish owners in possession of their estates; yet she
pursued a policy the most fertile in disaster that the
most malignant ingenuity could have devised. The
problem presented to her was, doubtless, complicated.
To have left religion alone and contented herself with
the secular government, would have been equivalent
to a declaration that there should be no Protestants in
Ireland at all; it would have furnished an unanswer¬
able argument for indulgence to her Catholic subjects
at home; while the Irish, from the nature of the case,
would have been in league with all her enemies within
the realm and without. To harmonize the laws of the
two countries was a political necessity; but, if the
Queen found herself compelled to establish a Church
which should be independent of the See of Rome, her
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
53
obvious duty was to secure the presence of a Protestant
community by a second influx of colonists, who would
be protected by the difference of creed from the se¬
ductive influences which had proved so fatal to the
descendants of the Normans. The Church property
of the Pale, the lands of the abbeys, which were again
suppressed, the estates attached to the bishops' sees,
had all of them lapsed to the Crown. There was land
enough, without dispossessing a single lay proprietor,
to have settled colonies of Protestants throughout
Dublin, Meath, and Kildare, who would have given
strength to the English interest, supported clergy,
and at least have shown the Irish people that, to be
a Protestant, was not to be an atheist. Elizabeth,
unfortunately, not choosing to have a war of creeds
in Ireland, preferred to postpone the introduction of
the Protestant religion to a more convenient season.
Irritated with the expenses of the government, she
farmed the Church lands, farmed even the benefices
themselves, squeezing out of them some miserable
dribblet of revenue; and gradually, as the English
power extended, applied the same method in the other
provinces. The priests withdrew from the churches
to the hill sides, or to the chiefs' castles. No ministers
took their places when there were neither houses for
them to live in, nor parishioners to protect them from
murder. Poofs and windows fell in, doors were
broken from their hinges, till at last there was neither
church nor chapel through which rain and wind had
not a free sweep; while grooms and horseboys
54 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
pattered through some mockery of a ritual at a beggar's
stipend.
It may be answered that all this was inevitable.
The priests made themselves apostles of insurrection,
and the life of a Protestant minister would not have
been worth a day's purchase. But Protestant colonies
could have maintained themselves with ease in the
Pale. So feeble for many years were the resources
of Irish insurrection, and so divided were the chiefs
among themselves, that a mere handful of English
soldiers were able, not, indeed, to keep order, but to
shatter any rebellion which assumed an organized form.
Had the Church lands been everywhere resolutely
taken possession of and distributed among English
families who would have undertaken to defend them,
and had four thousand soldiers been dispersed in
strong positions through the four provinces, with
wages regularly paid, the savage spirit of resistance,
which ultimately became so formidable, would never
have been able to grow ; and the frightful catalogue
of crimes which provoked, and in some degree ex¬
cused, that resistance, would never have been com¬
mitted. Elizabeth's soldiers, with their pay for ever
in arrears, and not choosing to starve, lived almost
universally on plunder. Placed in the country to
repress banditti, they were little better than banditti
themselves. Their scanty numbers were a temptation
to disturbance. Too few to be able to take prisoners
or hold a mutinous district in compelled quiet, their
only resource was to strike terror by cruelty. When
ch. r.j
PRELIMINA R Y.
55
sent to recover stolen cattle, or punisli a night foray,
they came at last to regard the Irish peasants as
unpossessed of the common rights of human beings,
and shot and strangled them like foxes or jackals.
More than once in the reports of officers employed on
these services we meet the sickening details of these
performances related with a calmness more frightful
than the atrocities themselves; young English gentle¬
men describing expeditions into the mountains f to
have some killing,' as if a forest was being driven for
a battue.
Every crime is entered in the register of nature.
Expiation sooner or later is demanded with mathe¬
matical certainty, and, three-quarters of a century
later, the bill was presented, to be paid with interest.
Meanwhile, neither the faults of particular soldiers,
nor the negligence of Queen Elizabeth, could alter
the essential nature of facts. The worst cruelties of
the garrisons were but the occasional copies of the
treatment of the Irish by one another. The best and
only hope for the country was the extension of English
influence over it, and by the necessity of things that
influence continued to grow. Gladly would Elizabeth
have let Ireland alone if the Pale would have been
decently obedient, and the chiefs have remained at
peace with her and with each other. It could not be.
They identified the wrongs of Ireland with the wrongs
of Holy Church; they made themselves soldiers of
the Pope ; they threw themselves on the support of
Philip the Second; and the Queen was driven, in
5& THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
spite of herself, to encounter them one after another,
and force them to acknowledge her authority.
Shan O'Neill was the first to try conclusions with
her. Shan, having established himself in his own
rights, proceeded to claim sovereignty over Ulster.
He crushed the smaller chiefs; he crushed the
O'Donnells; he corresponded with the French King.
He aspired to be the liberator of Ireland, and to assume
on Tara Hill the crown of his ancestors. Elizabeth,
after trying in vain the eternal policy of concession
and temporizing, varied with treachery and an attempt
at assassination, was at last forced into characteristic
activity. She did not conquer Ulster, but she bribed
the inferior tribes to rise against the O'Neills. She
assisted the O'Donnells. She made use of a piratical
colony of Scots, who had settled in Antrim, whom
Shan had injured. Sir Henry Sidney ravaged Tyrone,
and fixed a garrison in Derry. Shan's enemies closed
round him, and he was murdered. The immediate
danger was over; but the essential mischief, the
anarchy and turbulence of the clans had been fostered
and fed in the process.
The South rose next, and the same plan was fol¬
lowed. The house of Desmond and the house of Or-
mond were hereditary foes for generations. Munster
had been distracted by their quarrels. Sir Henry
Sidney while viceroy had insisted That Munster must
be made a presidency, and that both factions must be
forced into obedience to law. A presidency would
cost money; Elizabeth preferred so to manage the
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
57
rival noblemen that they should be a check upon each
other, while both should depend upon herself. She
was sure of Oiunond, for Ormond was a Protestant.
She insisted that her viceroy should take Ormond's
side in the quarrel between the two houses, whether
Ormond was right or wrong. Injustice and favour¬
itism never produced good fruit in Ireland. The
Geraldines were ardent Catholics. They had held
aloof from Shan O'Neill; they had no mind to build a
throne for a native Irish chief; but they were none the
less determined to resist the encroachments of Pro¬
testantism and England. The Earl of Desmond, who
had avoided compromising himself, was summoned to
London to explain suspicious features in his conduct.
He obeyed and was imprisoned. His heir was born
while he was in England. Leaving this precious
hostage for his good behaviour, he was released, was
again' arrested in Dublin, escaped, and was then
allowed to remain among his own people, because it
was dangerous to pursue him ; and the fatal lesson
was taught, that the English Government could be
defied with impunity.
Disgust with Irish anarchy had led to the discus¬
sion of projects for the resettlement of the South by
English undertakers. The country had been mapped
out. Yolunteers came forward who offered, in ex¬
change for lands, to bear the cost of military occupa¬
tion. Elizabeth listened coldly. Cecil said, in answer
to their petitions, that lands could not be escheated
till the owners had forfeited them by treason. But the
58
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
abortive scheme of the Earl of Essex to form a colony
in Ulster coupled with the revival of claims on estates
in Cork under Norman charters, long neglected and
forgotten, worked on the Irish susceptibilities. The
expectation that the attempt would be renewed hung
like a standing menace over an excited and agitated
race, who believed that England was watching for an
opportunity to sweep them out and destroy them.
The fanaticism of a few English divinity students
who had seceded to the Church of Home, fired the
mine which lay ready to explode. The celebrated
Nicholas Sanders, after libelling, as only an English
pervert could libel, the Reformation of his own
country, became a missionary agitator for a Catholic
crusade. He found Philip cold, but he wrought with
more success on the inflated imagination of the Pope;
and, having fallen in with an exiled Geraldine, who
assured him that if the Pope would speak the word
all Ireland would rise in enthusiasm, he procured a
commission thither as legate for the Holy See. He
obtained money and arms, collected a few hundred
Italian and Spanish volunteers, and landed on the
coast of Kerry. He leamt, as many others have had
to learn, that there were two Irelands—the Ireland of
imagination—the Ireland of eloquence and enthusiasm
—and the Ireland of fact and performance. Long
before, had there been any real genuine national spirit
in the Irish race, the pitiful handful of English would
have been pushed into the sea with all the ease that
Sanders counted on. But in Ireland, behind the most
CH. I.]
PRELIMINAR V
S9
fervid language, there lay always a cool calculation
of interest. When an Irish leader committed himself
to rebellion, his neighbours had their reasons for
hanging back and making a merit of their fidelity to
England. The Geraldines had held aloof from the
•O'Neills; the O'Neills and the O'Briens declined to
help the Geraldines; and the Butlers had their old
grudge, which the time was come at last to repay.
The Earl of Desmond himself, contented with passive
defiance and the partial sovereignty of the south¬
western counties, shrunk as long as he could from the
war to the knife to which the Anglo-Papal firebrand
was committing him. It was found necessary to force
his hand by the murder of an English officer, who was
his cousin's guest at Tralee, a crime for which lie knew
that there would be no forgiveness.
Then at last, desperate of other remedy, the Earl
of Desmond rose. The Geraldine clan gathered to
his side in the passionate personal fidelity which is
the noblest feature of the Irish character; and Lime¬
rick, Kerry, Cork, and part of Waterford, assisted
afterwards by some of the Barons of the Pale, entered
into a struggle for life and death with all the power
of Elizabeth. A rebellion so begun, and with such
objects, she well understood that for her own safety
she must trample out. She could not afford to leave
the Papal banner flying on any spot in her dominions.
Troops were sent over. A fleet came round to the
western coast. Lord Grey, the Yiceroy, by a rapid
march to Dingle, blocked the Italian troops into a
6o
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[UK. I.
fort from whicli there was no escape, bombarded it,
and destroyed them to a man. But the Queen was
not content to do the work alone. Against the Irish
fighting on their own soil, among bogs, and mountains,
and forests, other allies were more efficient than
English soldiers. The Butlers were let loose on their
ancient enemies. Every living thing was destroyed
by which the insurrection could maintain itself. The
corn was burnt in the field ; the cattle were driven
into the camp and slaughtered. The men who could
bear arms were out with their chief; the aged and
the sick, the women and the little ones perished all in
the flames of their burning homes. The official records
of this deadly war return the killed and hanged in
tens of thousands, and famine took up the work where
neither sword nor rope could reach. Finally, when of
the proud clan of the southern Geraldines there were
none left but a few scattered and desperate bands, the
last weapon was produced, which never failed to oper¬
ate. Pardon and reward were offered to those who
would kill their comrades, and the bloody heads of
noted leaders were brought in by sacksful to be paid
for in land or money. The legate, hunted like a wolf,
died wretchedly in a forest shanty. Desmond himself,
after three years of outlaw life, was betrayed by his own
people ; he was stabbed in his bed, and his head was
set on a spike on London Bridge; while so utterly
desolated was Munster, that the lowing of a cow, or
the sound of a ploughboy's whistle, was not to be
heard from Yalentia to the Rock of Casliel. Now
CII.I.]
PRELIMINARY.
61
would have been the time to have settled Munster
effectively and for ever. Half a million of fertile acres
were escheated to the crown. They were granted
away among Elizabeth's favourites as a reward for
sex-vice, or among undertakei'S who were allowed at
last to caivy out their project of occupation. But the
colonization was irregular, unsystematic, and imperfect.
The essential condition of residence, without which
confiscation was useless robbery, was evaded in act, if
insisted on in woi'ds; and the change over part at
least of the forfeited teri-itoiy did little more than
create a fresh poisonous batch of absentee pi-opl-ietors,
while the lands were still occupied by an Irish tenantx-y,
who waited for and in due time found their opportunity
for revenge.
For the moment, howevei*, rebellion was beaten
down, and the insui-gent spirit had to pause and
recover itself from the frightful chastisement which
had been inflicted on it. In the Pale, where Desmond
had found active sympathy, an extensive revolt had
been planned; but it bi'oke out prematurely. A few
of the leaders fled; others were taken, ti'ied, and
executed. Connaught, after a severe discipline from
Sir Nicholas Malby, was ovei-awed into outward quiet
by a gari-ison at Athlone. Ulster, the most Irish of
the four provinces, and very far the strongest, re¬
mained with its resoui-ces still unbroken. Tirlogh
O'Neill, who succeeded Shan, had the prudence to
avoid violent collision with the English, so long as he
was left uninterfered with. The experience of the
62
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
Desmond rebellion was an appalling proof of wliat the
English could do if provoked to extremity, while the
cost of suppressing that rebellion made Elizabeth
more than ever reluctant to provoke another.
Yet it was inevitable that English law and English
authority must make their way throughout the island,
and that Ulster's turn must come at last. Eleven
years of quiet followed, and the fire broke out once
more.
The defeat of the Armada, the English invasion of
Spain and Portugal, and the support which Elizabeth
was driven at last to extend to the United Provinces,
induced Philip, who had hitherto turned a deaf ear to
Irish overtures, to think more seriously of the oppor¬
tunities for revenge which Ireland seemed to offer.
The stupid ferocity with which the Western Irish had
robbed and murdered the crews of the wrecked
galleons of the Armada, left a painful impression of
the character of his intended allies. A few fortunate
cast-aways, however, who had been entertained kindly
in the North, reported more favourably. The success
of Elizabeth's government generally, the hopelessness
of a Catholic revolution in England—to which they
had long looked for deliverance—and the increasing
strength of the Protestant party in Europe, had created
a fear in the Irish Catholic gentlemen, that the for¬
bearance with which their religious scruples had been
hitherto treated might not be of long continuance.
Virtually they had enjoyed full religious liberty; but,
with every conquest made by England, the limits
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
63
were extended within which the country fell under the
statute law. Unless they could secure their rights by
formal concession, they might discover that the law
would be made a reality. Every Catholic in the
country was thus ready to join in a demand for the
free exercise of their religion; and if their request
was refused, and if Spain would help them, to redeem
the errors which they had made in leaving Desmond
unsupported.
The force of circumstances had carried Ireland
forward, in spite of herself, in the general stream of
civilization. Her bishops and clergy had been edu¬
cated in Italy, in France. Many of her gentlemen
had served in the French and Spanish armies. Some
had taken degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. Some
had been at the Inns of Court in London. They had
thus grown capable of more comprehensive political
views, and of larger and better considered combina¬
tions. In Hugh Q'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, Elizabeth
was now to find the most formidable Irish antagonist
which either she or her predecessors had encountered.
To her he was indebted for life, rank, and fortune.
He was the son of the Baron of Dungannon, whom
Shan had murdered, and the grandson of the first
Earl Con. Beyond doubt, he would have shared his
father's fate, had he not been sent to England, and
thus taken care of. He was brought up at the Court
as a Protestant, in the midst of the most brilliant
circle which any capital in Europe could show. Ho
pains were spared to make him a fit instrument for
64 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
the reclamation of his country; and when of age, he
received the patents of his grandfather's earldom,
and returned to Ireland. The wolf which is treated
as a dog remains a wolf still. O'Neil bound himself
to permit neither monk nor priest within his juris¬
diction who would not conform to the Established
religion.1 He became himself a Catholic.2 He pro¬
mised to introduce English law, to abolish the Irish
customs among his subjects, conform himself to Eng¬
lish rule and order. He assumed the title of 'the
O'Neil/ as the symbol of the Irish independent
sovereignty, and he adopted the customs which he
had forsworn. He asserted and enforced his authority
over the inferior chiefs, and Elizabeth discovered that
she had nurtured him, armed him with intelligence,
and restored him to his rank and his estates only that
he might be the better able to defy her. lie became
not only the unruly Irish chief, but a skilful and
dangerous conspirator; and while he was protesting
against being misunderstood, and affecting to desire
to recover the Queen's favour, letters were intercepted
from him to Philip, and to other Spanish nobles,
entreating assistance for the defence of the Catholic
Church.3 He still pretended to be ready to submit,
and- the Queen was willing to pardon him; Lord
Burgliley, to escape the expenses and dangers of
1 'Articles agreed on by the 3 ' The Earl of Tyrone and Hugh
Earl of Tyrone. June 17, 1590.'— O'Donnell to the King of Spain,
Calendar, Carew MSS. p. 38. &c. September, 1595.'—Calendar,
2 Ibid. p. 105. Carew MSS. p. 122.
CH. I.]
PREL1MINAR V.
65
another rebellion, advised that the terms of his for¬
giveness should be made as easy as the State conld
grant; but O'Neil proposed rather to prescribe con¬
ditions than receive them. He required the dismissal
out of almost the whole of Ulster of every English
soldier, sheriff, magistrate, or other officer whose
business was to set in action English law; he de¬
manded further, free liberty of conscience, by which
he meant free liberty of religious worship throughout
Ireland,1 and the restoration of the Church lands to
the Catholics.
The commissioners appointed by the Queen to
treat with him—so earnest were they to come to an
arrangement—replied that, fas her majesty had hither¬
to given full toleration without punishment of any, in
all likelihood she would continue the same/ It was
likely, also, she would let O'Neil have the spiritual
lands. The Queen herself, when she learnt what had
been offered in her name, repudiated so gross an
engagement. She had acted mercifully, she said, but
she could never listen to the request of a subject for
permission to break the law. She declared herself
' highly offended with his petition,' and required that
it should be withdrawn. O'Neil affected to comply.
He said he would submit in everything to the Queen's
wishes. He trusted only that she would not insist on
his expelling Catholic priests who might come into
Tyrone. This the Queen did not require. She had
1 ' Demands made by Tyrone, O'Donnell, and others, January 19,
1596.'—Ibicl. p. 133; and see p. 147.
IREL. I. F
66
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
f determined,' slie said, ' on a course of pacification.'
She pardoned O'Neil and O'Donnell, and all their
confederates,1 and she appointed a fresh commission to
make general enquiries into the condition of the
Government of Ireland, and redress whatever might
be found amiss. No sovereign could have shown more
forbearance, or a more anxious desire to avoid extremi¬
ties. But O'Neil's submission was affectation merely.
He had made up his mind to try the religious question
with the sword, and the ink was scarcely dry upon his
promise to be a good subject, before he had sent a
circular round to the Irish of Munster, inviting them
to join in a confederacy for the defence of ' Christ's
Catholic religion.'1
The war which followed lasted for six years. The
whole country was filled with blood and fury. O'Neil
showed high qualities both as a commander and as a
politician. He held the Irish together more success¬
fully than any insurgent leader had succeeded in doing
before him; and his career is unstained with personal
crimes and atrocities. He destroyed an English army
at the ford of the Blackwater. The Earl of Essex was
sent over with the largest English force which had
ever been seen in Ireland. Essex, who pei*haps was
already meditating treason, wasted his means and his
opportunities in an expedition into Munster, where
his presence was useless. When he moved at last
against Tyrone, it was with reduced numbers, which
1 'The Queen to Lord Deputy Russell, May 25, 1596.'—Calendar,
Carew MSS. p. 176. 3 July 6, 1596. Ibid. p. 179.
CH. I.]
PRELIMhVAR V.
67
was his excuse for producing no results. He had
known O'Neil personally in England. Instead of
meeting him in the field, he had a private interview
with him, at which no third person was present. He
agreed to a cessation of arms, left the Irish unharmed,
and returned, without orders, to Elizabeth, to disgrace,
conspiracy, and the scaffold.
Lord Mountjoy took his place in Ireland, and the
conduct of a war that had been too long trifled with
was at length in efficient hands. The negociations of
the Irish with Spain ripened into fruit. In September,
1601, Don Juan de Aguila landed at Kinsale with a
Spanish army 4000 strong. Mountjoy hurried down
with all the troops that he could collect, and drove
Don Juan within the lines of the town. O'Neil,
rallying the scattered Irish, came in haste to his relief,
but was utterly and ruinously defeated; Don Juan
surrendered, and reimbarked, glad on any terms to be
quit of service among allies so feeble in the field; and
gradually smouldering in scattered fires, which one by
one were trampled out, the rebellion burnt down and
was extinguished. A Nuncio came from Rome to
stimulate the failing energies of the rebel leaders.
No Catholic, it was solemnly proclaimed, could,
without sin, submit to a heretic sovereign, far less
take part against the faithful who were in arms for
Holy Church. This miserable doctrine, which was
the root and foundation of all Ireland's woes, which
made toleration impossible, and compelled the main¬
tenance of laws which in turn provoked insurrection,
F 2
68
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. r.
continued to work among the people, and had yet to
issue in fresh and terrible consequences. But for this
time O'Neil's insurrection had spent its force. The
country was so dreadfully wasted that children were
killed and eaten for food. In one place three wretched
little creatures were found feeding on their dead
mother. The horrors of such scenes were too power¬
ful for the apostolic exhortation. The Nuncio was
killed in a skirmish. Hugh O'Donnell, who had gone
to Spain for fresh help, died at the castle of Simancas,
possibly by poison.1 Fanaticism could do no more; and,
at the end of 1602, the last rebel laid down his arms.
The sufferings inflicted by the war had been so
dreadful that there was no further punishment, and
the bloody scenes of the Geraldine conquest were not
renewed. As the chiefs submitted they were received
to mercy. O'Neil himself was left in the enjoyment
of his earldom; few forfeitures were exacted any¬
where; and the lands which had fallen to the crown
from outlawed leaders killed in battle, were made the
rewards of such of the Ii-ish as had done service to the
crown.
1 In the desperation of such
scenes as were witnessed daily in
an Irish rebellion, any means seem
lawful which may help to end
them. On October 9, 1602, Sir
George Carew writes to Lord Mount-
joy ' O'Donnell is dead. The
merchant that bringeth me the
news I do trust; and I do think it
will fall out that he is poisoned by
James Blake, of whom your lord¬
ship hath been formerly acquainted.
At his coming into Spain he was
suspected by O'Donnell, because he
embarked at Cork ; but afterwards
he insinuated his access, and
O'Donnell is dead. He never told
the President in what manner he
would kill him, but did assure him
it should be effected.' — Calendar,
1602, pp. 350, 351.
CH. I.]
PRELIMINAR Y.
69
The re-establishment by law of the Catholic Church
of Ireland, which had been the object of the insurrec¬
tion, was once more rendered impossible. If the
popes would have renounced their pretensions to
control the allegiance of Catholic subjects—if the
Catholics themselves would have bona fide and by
some formal act acknowledged that they did not re¬
cognize any right in the Pope to interfere between
them and their sovereign, their claims for toleration,
notwithstanding abstract theories of the duties of the
State, neither could nor would have been long re¬
sisted. A right which was steadily refused by them¬
selves to members of a different communion in
countries where the power was in their hands, would
have been extended with only too much readiness to
them by every Protestant government in Europe.
Another century of fighting, however, was still ne¬
cessary, before the bishops of Rome could learn that
they were no longer sovereigns over the human con¬
science ; and no Protestant state could recognize,
without self-condemnation, the exercise of a religion
among its subjects which elevates rebellion into a
duty.
If the Catholics suffered under disabilities they
were themselves to blame. The four provinces of
Ireland had risen successively against England and
the Reformation, and had been one by one defeated.
At last, they had risen all together. They had been
supported by the Catholic Powers as they desired,
and they had again failed. Two at least of these
70 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
rebellions, and tbose the worst and the last, need
never have arisen under a wise government. They
were the fruits of the injudicious economy which left
the country inadequately garrisoned" at a time when
the religious passions had not yet assumed their viru¬
lent form; and of the neglect of the obvious duties
which a conquering power owes always to the people
subjected to it, and owes most of all at a crisis so
serious. The smallest evil of insurrections is their
immediate danger. Revolts are rarely without provo¬
cations, which in later ages excuse them, and ennoble
them; and their suppression in blood leaves a legacy
of hate which centuries fail to efface. Yet, after all,
the battle had been fought and England had proved
the stronger; and the Queen might now, had she so
pleased, have insisted on a universal confiscation, or
made a profession of Protestantism a condition on
which land might be held in fee. The estates of those
who had been in rebellion, or had refused conformity,
might have been granted to Englishman or Scot, or to
any other of the Reformed creed, whose allegiance
could be depended on; and though it might have
been hard measure, it would have been in strict con¬
formity with the usage and example of the Catholics
themselves.
Once more it was decided to try a gentler method
—to insist only on the abolition of the traditionary
tribal rights which bred perennial anarchy ; to leave
the Catholics in possession of their estates; to make
no curious enquiry into their creed; to let them be
CH. I.]
PRELIMINARY.
7i
sheriffs and magistrates; to allow them seats in Par¬
liament, and the same private toleration of their
religion which all along they had enjoyed. It was
hoped that they would recognize and respect the
leniency of their treatment, and that the further assi¬
milation of Ireland to English ways and character
might be left to the gradual action of time.
Experience was to show that the Irish did not
understand forbearance, that they interpreted lenity
into fear, and respected only an authority which they
dared not trifle with.
72
CHAPTER II.
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
SECTION I.
THE accession of James was looked forward to
by tbe Catholics of both England and Ireland
as the period of their suffering. So long as the
English Jezebel lived the son of Mary Stuart was
supposed to have concealed his true feelings. When
her death set him free he was expected to declare
himself a member "of the Roman communion. The
disappointment in England took the form of the Gun¬
powder conspiracy. In Ireland the corporations of
Cork, Limerick, and Waterford announced that they
were unable to allow the proclamation of a heretic
sovereign. They ensconced themselves behind a sup¬
posed decree of the universities of Salamanca and
Valladolid; and it seemed at first as if a general rebel¬
lion would again burst out. Waste, bloodshed, and
misery had no terrors for a population who for centuries,
of their own free choice, had lived in chronic war, and
deliberately preferred it to a state of peace. To rise
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
73
against England was a game in which success was
always possible, and defeat had no perils, for the con¬
querors either could not or dared not inflict effectual
punishment. The country, however, was exhausted.
There was no more present hope from Spain ; and
the late leaders were beaten to their knees. Mount-
joy, by abstaining from violence, succeeded in quiet-
ing opposition, and the new reign was inaugurated by
a general pardon. A wet sponge was passed over all
the crimes committed against the late Queen. Three-
quarters of the Catholic lords and gentlemen had been
in arms against the Crown; their disloyalty was for¬
given ; all who would surrender their lands received
them again under letters patent on the tenure of
English freeholds. Bory, the late O'Eonnell's brother,
was created Earl of Tyrconnell. Hugh O'Neil was
reinstated, promising to forget his illusions and to be
a good servant and subject in consideration of the
mercy shown to him. Once more Ireland was to be
conciliated.
The illusion lasted for four years. The English
undertakers, in the expectation of quiet, flocked over
into Munster and Leinster. English order and law
began to root themselves, and Protestantism to be¬
come a settled institution. The gentle dealing with
the insurgents was construed as usual into fear. They
determined on one more desperate effort to save their
country before it was too late. O'Neil and Tyrconnell,
whose sister he had married, were again the intending
leaders. They had written to Flanders to the Arch-
74
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
duke for support. The conspiracy was discovered.
The Earls tacitly confessed their guilt by flying abroad
and refusing to return. Sir Cahir O'Dogherty, a hot
youth of twenty-one, tried his hand alone, burnt Derry,
and murdered the governor. He was hunted down
and killed. A few of his followers were hanged, and
had places assigned them in the Irish martyrology;
and Ireland was once more quiet. But forbearance
was now exhausted; and the systematic colonization of
Ulster, long understood by English statesmen to be the
only remedy for the chronic disorder, yet delayed in
mistaken tenderness, was at last resolved on. Though
times were changing, the theory of landowning as a
beneficial possession, as something yielding an annual
profit, which the owner is entitled to spend on his
own pleasures, had not yet superseded the more
ancient principle. The lord of an estate was still
essentially a tenant of the Crown, entrusted with high
administrative powers for which he was liable to give
an account. When there was no standing army, and
every able-bodied man was called on, if necessary, to
defend his country or the law, the landlord was his
natural officer. A great nobleman could bring into
the field hundreds or thousands of retainers, who had
been trained to look to him as their leader, and to
whom he was the representative of authority. Mili¬
tary power carried with it military obligations, and a
commander who betrayed his trust was exposed, justly
and necessarily, to the extreme penalties of treason.
The desirableness of governing the Irish, wherever
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 75
possible, through chiefs of their own race, had hitherto
indisposed the English Government in the highest
degree to inflict forfeiture. It was a measure to
which, except in desperate extremities, they had never
resorted. But England had determined also that Irish
anarchy should end; and if the Irish leaders showed
themselves radically incurable, their opportunities of
mischief must be taken away. In the three southern
provinces the Irish element had been weakened. In
Ulster it remained substantially intact. By this last
treason of the two Earls and their confederates six
counties were escheated to the Crown—Donegal, Derry,
Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, and Armagh. Antrim
and Down were already partially occupied by Scots—
Western Highlanders, who for three centuries had
been forming settlements in Ireland. They had been
scarcely distinguishable hitherto from the native race,
but they were capable of being reclaimed. Their chief,
Sir Randal MacDonnell, or MacConnell, was created
Earl of Antrim. The six escheated counties contained
in all two million acres. Of these, a million and a
half, bog, forest, and mountain, were restored to the
Irish. The half million acres of fertile land were settled
with families of Scotch and English Protestants.
The long peace in England and the vast expansion
of practical energy which followed the Reformation
had produced hundreds of thousands of active enter¬
prising men, who were looking for openings to push
their fortunes. They had been turning their thoughts
to America, but here in Ireland was an America at
76
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
their own doors, with the soil ready for the plough.
The grants were eagerly taken up. Unlike the Nor¬
man conquerors, who were merely military leaders,
the new colonists were farmers, merchants, weavers
mechanics, and labourers. They went over to earn a
living by labour, in a land which had produced hither¬
to little but banditti. They built towns and villages ;
they established trades and manufactures; they en¬
closed fields, raised farmhouses and homesteads where
till then there had been but robbers' castles, wattled
huts, and mud cabins, or holes in the earth like rabbit
burrows: while, without artificial distinctions, they
were saved from degenerating into the native type by
their religion, then growing in its first enthusiasm
into a living power which pervaded their entire being.
Those who suffered were the chiefs, who were dispos¬
sessed by the forfeitures, they and their kerns and
their gallowglass, the idle lads of mettle, who counted
it shame to work, and looked on fighting and killing
as the only worthy occupation of man. ' The churles,'
' the earth-tillers,' those who desired to be industrious,
who by all writers on the state of Ireland, from the
Pander downwards, had been excepted in the general
condemnation—they were spared, and lived in peace,
scattered among the colonists, on taking an oath to
be loyal to the Crown. If the meaning of government
be the protection of the honest and laborious, and the
punishment of knaves, not the smallest gainers from
the Ulster settlement were the worthy among the
Irish themselves, who were saved at last from the in-
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
77
tolerable oppression under which they and their fathers
from immemorial time had groaned. Privileges and
prohibitions, which had separated the two races, were
abolished, so far as statutes could extinguish them,
and Irish and English were declared equal in the eye
of the law.1
Then, for the first time, the natural wealth of
Ireland began to reveal itself. Commerce sprung
up, as yet unhampered by navigation acts or dis¬
abilities. Busy fingers were set at work on loom and
at spinning-wheel. Fields, fenced and drained, grew
yellow with rolling corn; and the vast herds and
flocks which had wandered at will on hill and valley
were turned to profitable account. A live-cattle
trade was established with Bristol. Traders from
1 'Whereas in former times, after
the conquest of this realm by his
majesty's royal progenitors Kings
of England, the natives of this
realm of Irish blood, being descended
of those that did inherit and possess
this land before the said conquest,
were for the most part in continual
hostility with the English, and
with those that did descend of the
English, and therefore the said
Irish were held and accounted and
in diverse statutes and records were
termed and called Irish enemies ;
Forasmuch as the cause of the said
difference and of making the said
laws and statutes doth now cease,
in that all the natives and inhabit¬
ants of this kingdom, without dif¬
ference or distinction, are taken
into hismajesty's protection, and do
now live under one law, by means
whereof a perfect agreement is or
ought to be settled betwixt all his
majesty's subjects in this realm :
And forasmuch as there is no better
means to settle peace and tranquil¬
lity in this kingdom, being now in¬
habited with many worthy persons
born in his majesty's several king¬
doms, than by abolishing the said
laws and giving them free liberty
to commerce and match together,
so that they may grow into one
nation, and there be an utter ob¬
livion and extinguishment of all
former difference and disorder be¬
tween them: be it enacted . . .
that all these laws be for ever ut¬
terly repealed.'—Irish Statutes, 13
James I. cap. 5.
7S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
lialf the ports in Europe came to Cork for salt fish,
salt butter, and salt meat. The-exquisite Irish wool,
which the peasants' wives were learning to weave,
■but which grew in an abundance far beyond their
home consumption, was exchanged in the south of
Europe for wine. Portugal and Spain were supplied
from the Irish forests with pipe-staves ; and the Dutch
had their shipyards in Irish creeks and havens, where
the timber was excellent and cheap.1 Population,
wThich had remained stationary for a thousand years,
began swiftly to expand. In 1580 the inhabitants of
Ireland were reckoned roughly at half a million,2 and
the Protestants among them were too few to be worth
counting. In 1641 the population was almost a million
and a half,3 and among them were two hundred and
sixty thousand Protestants.4 When left to themselves
the Irish had killed each other down in their perpetual
wars, and the children had died for want of food.
The institution of the policeman and the cultivation ot
the soil enabled a race to multiply in geometrical pro¬
gression, which nature, by the habits with which she
had endowed them, intended perhaps to preserve only
in more manageable numbers.
The favourable picture had, indeed, another side.
If well with the earth-tillers, it was other than well
with those who had hitherto been lords paramount,
1 Macplierson's History of Com-1 MSS. Ireland, Record Office,
merce. | 3 1,466,000.
2 ' Report by A. Trollope, ad-1 4 Petty's Political Arithmetic.
dressed to Secretary Walsingliaii!.'j
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
79
and had lived at their own idle will. ' There was
peace,' says the latest and most accomplished ex¬
ponent of the historical wrongs of Ireland,1 fbut it
was the peace of despair; there was prosperity, but
among the supplanting strangers.' An Act of Parlia¬
ment, passed in Strafford's viceroyalty, shows the class
into whose souls the iron was entering. ' Whereas,'
says that Act,2 (there are many young gentlemen of
this kingdom that have little 01- nothing to live on of
their own, and will not apply themselves to labour,
but live coshering in the country, cessing themselves
and their followers, their horses and their grey¬
hounds, upon the poorer inhabitants, sometimes ex¬
acting money from them, to spare them and their
tenants and go elsewhere for their suppers and
breakfast, which the poor people dare not deny them
. . . and whereas by that lawless kind of life of these
idle young gentlemen and others, being commonly
active young men and such as seek to have many
followers and dependants, many other inconveniences
are likely to arise, for they are apt, on the least
occasion of disturbance, to rifle and make booty of
his majesty's loyal subjects, and to be heads and
leaders of outlaws and rebels, and in the meantime
do and must support their excessive and expenseful
drinking and gaming by secret stealth or growing
into debt,'—justices of the peace were empowered to
apprehend all such idle persons and commit them to
1 The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, by John Prendergast.
5 10 & II Charles I. cap. 16.
8o
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
gaol till they could find sufficient securities for their
honest and quiet behaviour.
These young gentlemen, being the dispossessed
heirs of the forfeited estates, are now held entitled,
though they were mischievous and idle, to be regarded
with sympathy, because deprived of their lawful in¬
heritance. Ireland would have benefited little from
such owners of her soil had they remained in occupa¬
tion. But the Act describes, in reality, only the in¬
veterate and immemorial habits of so-called Irish
gentlemen before forfeiture was heard or thought of.
Too vain of their birth to work, and enabled by the
custom of the country to live on the plunder of the
poor, they were finding at last the law too strong for
them. The peasants whom they robbed were also
Irish subjects, whose protection is made England's
crime.1
1 An expression in the Act shows
that the law was becoming feared,
and that government was at last a
reality. A farmer who a century
before had refused to feed and lodge
a party of these people would have
been promptly hanged or shot. He
was still afraid to shut his doors
against them, but for another rea¬
son. 'The poor people,' the Act
of Parliament says, ' dare not deny
them meat, drink, or money, for
fear of some scandalous rhyme or
song to be made on them, or some
worse inconveniency.'
Si
SECTION II.
Meanwhile, though, the Earls of Tyrconnell and
Tyrone had failed to repeal the penal laws, the
Catholics remained substantially unmolested. ^
There was a full staff of archbishops and
bishops. Chapels sprung up on all sides. Monasteries
were repaired and filled with friars. Priests multiplied
with the growth of the people, and were distributed
in parishes without need of concealment. The Church
throve with the country, and, while able to complain
of persecution, practically suffered nothing from it.
Two-thirds of the lands in the four provinces still
remained in Catholic hands. In the House of Com¬
mons, although their powers were controlled by the
representatives of the towns of the new settlements,
they returned nearly half the members. In the Upper
House they had a large majority. They were strong
enough to extort from Charles the First a promise of
a modification of the Supremacy Oath. It was neces¬
sary to remind them by proclamation that the Act of
Uniformity remained on the statute book, and that
their religious liberties depended on the Crown's in¬
dulgence. Fifteen religious houses, which they erected
as if in defiance in Dublin itself, under the eye of
Government, were seized and condemned. But these
houses were soon restored. The proclamations were
ridiculed; the hesitation in enforcing the law was
irel. i. a
82
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. r.
construed into cowardice; and instead of gratitude for
the connivance which left them the free exercise of
their own forms of worship, they cherished rather a
firm and growing1 determination to wrench the Church
o o
lands and the cathedrals out of the hands of their
Anglican rivals.
Had the Protestants stood on even terms with
them, superior energy might have asserted its suprem¬
acy by its own strength. Catholic landlords in the
North preferred English tenants to their own people,
when they felt in their purses the contrast between
the improving stranger and the slovenly and unprofit¬
able Celt; while every Irishman who conformed to
Protestantism adopted English habits, and became
English in interest as well, finding himself divided
by heresy from his countrymen, as effectually as if
English blood was in his veins.
But the Catholics were one body. The Protestants
to their misfortune were two. Of the Ulster settlers
half were Scots and Presbyterians; the Scots in Down
and Antrim followed the fashions of the new comers
introduced by James; and, among the English under¬
takers, the Puritan element was powerfully present.1
The peculiar conditions of England had arrested
the natural growth of the Beformation, and had
created an ecclesiastical policy, which even at home
was leading fast to civil war. The necessity of
1 Londonderry, which was built
by the London Company, and set¬
tled by London people, was from
the first the most Puritan town in
Ireland.
ch. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 83
identical institutions had extended to Ireland the
English forms, but they were forms which could
assume a complexion either Catholic or Protestant.
The colonists of the North had been chosen from the
energetic middle classes in Scotland and England,
who had small love for bishops and hated shams; and
the bishops themselves, Archbishop Usher especially,
the Primate, were so generous in their sympathies,
that but for the political ties whicb con¬
nected the established churches of England l60^
and Ireland, they would have brought about of their
own accord a fusion with the Presbyterian congrega¬
tions. In the Ulster settlement, for many years after
its foundation, there was no practical distinction be¬
tween Churchman and Dissenter. Both were alike
Calvinists with a real belief, and there and there only
Protestantism took root, and became aggressive, ener¬
getic, and strong.
The undertakers of Elizabeth in Munster and
Leinster sprung from another class. They were the
younger sons of the old country families; they had
transported labourers from their fathers' lands, they
had brought with tliern the feelings and habits of the
country party at home. Their creed was traditional,
and the main article of it was hatred of Puritans.
They too called themselves Protestants, but the vital
heat of Protestantism had never been kindled in
their veins. The Anglicanism, which in England had
a meaning, in Ireland was never more than a barren
exotic; and, until the new comers in the North had
a 2
84 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
introduced another spirit, the Church of Ireland had
existed only as if to give point to the sarcasms of the
Catholics. One of the Dublin churches was the
Viceroy's stable. The choir of another was a tennis
court, where the vicar acted as marker. The vaults of
Christ Church were used as tap-rooms, where soldiers
smoked, and drank, and jested; while the communion
service, feeble counterfeit of the mass, was chaunted
over their heads in the empty cathedral.1 When the
feeling of religion revived, such a man as Usher was
irresistibly drawn in the direction where life was
showing itself.
The church theories of Laud and Charles, however,
were not of the sort which would submit to be
corrected by facts. The Episcopal Church of Ireland,
it was said, was the Church of St. Patrick, holding the
true Catholic faith, and administered by successors
of the Apostles. When it was seen in its majesty,
when it had cast out the accursed thing, the Genevan
heresy which denied the sacraments, Popery would
bend before its authority, and acknowledge its claims.
The sore spot was Ulster, and in Ulster the reforms
were to commence. Two episcopalian Scots, Robert
Echlin and John Leslie, were introduced into the
sees of Raphoe and Down; Bramhall, a creature
of Laud's, was sent to Derry; and the Act of Uni¬
formity, which was left as a dead letter against the
Catholics, was enforced against the Presbyterian
1 Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
ch. n.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
85
ministers. They were required to obey the bishops,
and introduce and use the English Liturgy. All
who refused—all, that is, who were sincere and in
earnest—were deprived of their cures. A High Com¬
mission Court sate in Dublin; canons were passed
for ecclesiastical government; and dissent under any
Protestant form was utterly prohibited. The Catholics
were to be shown the true model of a church which
contained all that was most precious in their own
system, while it detested Calvinism as heartily as
themselves.
A shipload of the expelled ministers sailed for New
England to find there the liberty of conscience denied
them in the Old World. The vessel was di-iven back
by a storm. They re-landed, recovered courage, and
dispersed among their people, where they continued
privately to teach and preach. The Scots held sturdily
together, encouraged by the attitude of the English
Parliament and the firm resolution among their people
at home. Sterner measures became neces- g
sary. With the temper of England and
Scotland growing critical, it became politically desir¬
able to dragoon Ireland into a more submissive
attitude. Ireland, if there were to be civil war, might
be made at last useful to the Crown, the very Catholic
spirit of it promising for once to be of service, when
Protestants were the enemies to be crushed.
It was with some such purpose that, in 1633,
Went worth, better known as Earl of Strafford, was
appointed to the Irish viceroyalty. Promises had been
86
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
already made to relax tlie Catliolic disabilities. How
much could be safely done in this way—what reforms
could be introduced into the administration—how,
above all things, Ireland's resources might be made
available for the service of the Crown, could be de¬
termined only on the spot by a competent judgment ;
'and the ablest soldier and statesman on whom the
King could rely gave his services for the purpose.
Wentworth brought to Dublin with him a large
intelligence, and the spirit of a great Englishman. In
Church matters he carried out the views of Archbishop
Laud. Laud's principles were, perhaps, really his own;
at any rate, the enforcement of them seemed essential
to his broad political aim. A commission was sent
down into Ulster. Such ministers as could be found
were ai'rested. A general oath was demanded of the
settlers. They were required to abjure the Scotch
Covenant and to swear implicit obedience to the King.
To refuse was treated as treason. Multitudes fled into
the woods to escape the visit of the commissioners.
Some went home to Scotland, others were sent to
Dublin and imprisoned there. Wentworth, it
seemed, was determined either to make them
submit, or to drive them out of the country. Rebel in
the presence of the Irish they could not; and when
the choice lay between conformity and the loss of their
estates, he perhaps considered that he might calculate
safely on the result.
For Wentworth had not blinded himself to the
value of the Anglo-Scotch settlement. He saw Ire-
CU. ir.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 87
land with, the eye of a born ruler, and whatever con¬
cessions he might be prepared to make to conciliate
Catholics, he understood perfectly that it was only by
the presence of strong English colonies, laid down in
the middle of them, that their rebellious spirit could
be held in awe. He had no intention of opening a
door for anarchy to burst out again ; and his design
was to carry the principles of colonization a step
further, and settle Connaught as Ulster had been
settled. North, south, and east, the English interest
was now comparatively strong. Connaught was still
Irish. Old abbeys continued unsuppressed in Mayo
and Galway and Koscommon, the lands of which
belonged in law to the Crown. Few, if any, of the
gentlemen had availed themselves of James the First's
invitation to surrender their lands, and take them
back under letters patent. They still held under the
Irish custom of tanistry, and had no title-deeds to
produce. The country lay waste, the habits of dis¬
order continued unbroken. If Connaught were to
become a useful province of the Empire—if, for one
thing, it was to yield taxes, and the King's writ was
to pass current there—the spell must be broken west
of the Shannon, as it had been broken elsewhere.
The state of the tenures created an opportunity.
A commission was appointed to survey the
lands, and to trace and enquire into the titles 1639
of their professing owners. In strict construction,
four-fifths of Connaught was found to belong to the
Crown; and Wentworth meditated taking advantage
88
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. I.
of the situation to make a new plantation. The in¬
tention, scarcely concealed, following so soon on the
confiscation of the six counties, flung the Irish of the
old blood into a frenzy of rage. Religious indulgence
might satisfy the Anglo-Norman Catholics of the old
settlements. The passions of the true Irishman were
for the land, and he saw the land in large slices pass¬
ing away from him to the stranger. What to him was
King or Parliament, Calvinism or Anglicanism ? The
one fact, to which all else was nothing, was coming home
to his heart, that the Englishman, by force or fraud,
was filching from him the inheritance of his fathers.
The form of WentwortlPs proceedings was as
imperious as the matter was alarming. The parties
in Ireland which he respected, and of which alone,
perhaps, he expected that any good could be made,
were the late English settlers and the Catholics of
English descent. The inquisition into titles was ex¬
tended over the island. Claims were revived that
were indefinitely remote. Deeds and records had
perished in the Elizabethan rebellions, or had been
lost or destroyed in the savage carelessness of Irish
life. Yet the Viceroy insisted that the proofs must
be forthcoming, or the title could not be allowed;
and jurymen, who in such cases failed to find for the
Crown, were sent to meditate on their misdemeanours
in the county gaols.
The Irish Parliament remonstrated. The King
had promised that no claim should be revived
1640
from beyond sixty years. Wentworth con-
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 89
sidered tliat such a concession was impolitic and
uncalled for. Ireland, in his eyes, was a conquered
country, possessing no rights but such as he was
inclined to allow. Before he could have carried out
his policy, he would have had to deal, at all events,
with a native insurrection. Never till then had spoli¬
ation so direct and unprovoked been attempted.
He had not, however, altogether miscalculated.
The dread of the English Puritans was even greater
than the indignation at the imperious Viceroy. In
the midst of his other work, Wentworth had experi¬
enced no difficulty in raising an army. Parliament
voted money freely. The Catholic peasants enlisted
with eagerness, being willing, at all events, to be
armed and organized at the expense of the Govern¬
ment. The levies were intended avowedly for service
in Scotland. The Scots, finding that the Irish were
to be let loose on them, threatened to send a force to
Ulster, and raise and arm their own people there. The
rumour spread that the Calvinist fanatics were coming
over to destroy the Catholics root and branch; they
gathered the more eagerly to Wentworth's standard;
and, in the summer of 1640, when the Scots were
coming into England, eight thousand Irish infantry
and a thousand horse, recruited from the most danger¬
ous classes in Ireland, the f cosherers' of the Act of
Parliament, the marauding vagabonds to whom in¬
dustry, Protestantism, and England were equally
hateful and virtually synonymous, were assembled,
ready for mischief, at Carrickfergus. The straits to
90 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [ins x
which the King was reduced recalled Wentworth
prematurely" to England. The failure in the North,
and the attitude assumed by the Long Paiffiament,
pi'evented his retuim. Sir John. Clotworthy, an Ulster
Presbyterian, whose wife had been pei-secuted by the
High Commission, joined Pym in demanding that the
Irish Viceroy should be brought to trial. He had
meant—there could be no doubt of it—to use his
Irish army in crushing Scotch and English liberty.
He was impeached, attainted, and executed. Sir Chris¬
topher Wandsworth, whom he had left as Deputy,
suddenly dying, the charge of Ireland fell to Sir John
Parsons, the Master of the Court of Wards, and Sir
John Borlase, the Master of the Ordnance—Puritans
both of them, but men of no local weight or influence.
The Earl of Ormond commanded the army; and the
army, while it held together1, was the real master of
the country. The English Parliament, however,
furious at the use intended for these troops, and not
choosing that Ireland should be at the mercy of
Papists, extorted from Charles an order that they
should be disbanded. In appearance there was im¬
mediate obedience. The regiments dispersed. The
arms were collected and carried to Dublin. An oper¬
ation which threatened to be dangerous was accom¬
plished without difficulty and without objection. The
danger that remained was of another kind. There
was no longer any force at all on which the Govern¬
ment could rely. Three half-famished regiments were
all that were left, and Ireland was without a garrison.
91
SECTION III.
We are now upon the edge of the gravest event in
Irish history, the turning-point on which all ^
later controversies between England and
Ireland hinge. The facts, real or alleged, are all before
us ; for the excitement created was so terrible, that the
most minute particulars were searched into with agon¬
ized curiosity. Thirty-three volumes of depositions are
preserved in the library of Trinity College, which tell
the tale with perfect distinctness; and, as the witnesses
relate one consistent story, they are dismissed by those
who are offended by their testimony as imaginary
beiugs, forgers, liars, and calumniators. The eager¬
ness to discredit the charge is a tacit confession how
tremendous is the guilt if it can be proved; the most
certain facts can be made doubtful if they are stoutly
and repeatedly denied; and not evidence but sympathy
or inclination determines the historical beliefs of most
of us. Those who choose to think that the massacre
of 1641 was a dream will not change their opinion.
Those who see in that massacre the explanation and
the defence of the subsequent treatment of Ireland,
however unwilling to revive the memory of scenes
which rivalled in carnage the horrors of St. Bartho¬
lomew, are compelled to repeat the evidence once held
to be unanswerable.
That a rebellion should have broken out at that
92
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
particular time was in itself so natural tliat a looker-on
might have predicted it with certainty.
The Irish, still passionately attached to their own
habits and their own creed, had seen the conquerors
whom they had so long successfully held at bay, at
last definitely established among them. Plantations of
aliens were in their midst, owning the lands which
had once been theirs, and growing rich and powerful.
Forays out of the Pale they could defy and smile at.
The Saxon bands came and went; crops might be
burnt and cattle lifted; but, when the invaders were
gone, the air closed behind them, and the losses could
be made good by answering raids into the four
counties. The colonists, on the other hand, were an
ever-present affront, whom, by all laws of God and
man, they were entitled, when they had them at
advantage, to destroy. The English interest was
growing; their own was falling. Soul and body they
were alike being made slaves. The prelates of an
alien and heretic Church had seized their sanctuaries,
daring to call themselves the representatives of their
own saints, and claiming ex officio spiritual jurisdiction
over them. Anglican might persecute Calvinist; the
wolf might worry the wild dog : to the true Catholic,
wolf and dog were alike abhorrent; Anglican and
Calvinist were equally heretics, and the heretics were
children of hell. England offered them material pros¬
perity; they did not care for prosperity. England
talked of order; the order of England to them was
tyranny and spoliation. England might govern her
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
93
own affairs in her own way. What was Ireland to
her! Bogs might be drained, and forests fall, and the
green Erin grow black under the plough; towns might
rise, and mills, and looms, and warehouses; they were
but badges of Irish servitude. 'The Irish thought,'
said one of them, 'and will ever think, the English
government a yoke of slavery. They were determined
to shake off a chain under which for a hundred years
and more the whole nation had groaned.'1
In such a humour nothing was needed but oppor¬
tunity, and they might have thought Providence itself
was inviting them at that moment, to rise and free
themselves. There was no Viceroy and no army. The
Lords Justices, Parsons and Borlase, were unpopular
even among the English, and had no local influence or
connections. The whole country had been exasperated
and alarmed by Strafford's inquisitions. No one
knew whether he might not rise the next morning
and find himself a landless outcast. The High Church
Commission and the political crisis in England had
set the Protestants quarrelling among themselves.
The gentlemen were for the King ; the Ulster settlers
were for the Dublin Giovernment and the Long Parlia¬
ment. There were eight thousand disbanded Catholic
soldiers in the country, collected with the view of
fighting Calvinists in Scotland, and far more willing
to undertake the same business at home. Lastly and
chiefly, ' England's difficulty was Ireland's oppor-
1 ' Grave jugum sub quo a centum et quod excurrit annis tota natio
ingemiscit excutere statuunt.1
94 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. X.
tunity.' The war between the King and the Parlia¬
ment was on the point of breaking out, and neither
side would have means or leisure to attend to Ireland.
The scattered handful of men which the Lords Jus¬
tices could dispose of would be overcome at the first
effort; and, if it proved necessary or desirable to
colour the rising under a decent name, nothing could
be easier than to pretend that the troops were taking
arms in the King's name and for the King's service,
against the revolted Parliament. Add to this the
natural fear that if the Puritan party became dominant
in England the Catholic religion would be in danger
of violent extinction; and that, with a combination of
conditions so propitious, the Irish chiefs should have
designed a universal insurrection requires no explan¬
ation. The miracle would have been if they had
remained quiet.
But in so tangled a business there were many in¬
terests and many intervening purposes. The native
Irish saw their way clearly. Protestants, Scotch and
English, Anglican and Puritan, were their universal
and deadly enemies. On the other hand, the Anglo-
Normans of the Pale were Catholics, like the Irish,
but they had not forgotten their connection with
England. Ormond, though an Anglican, was one of
themselves ; he was the chosen general of the army
which had been disbanded; and again, most of the
English families who had settled in the South were
ardent Royalists. Thus it was no easy matter to
agree on a common eourse. From the first there can
ch. n.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 95
be traced two principles and two parties, which con¬
tinued divided throughout the whole rebellion and
perplexed the action of it. The great Catholic nobles
—Lord Gormanston, Lord Eingal, Lord Antrim, Lord
Castlehaven — had no sympathy with murder and
pillage. They were gentlemen with an honourable
purpose, and loyal at heart to the English Crown.
They believed, that by loyalty at such a crisis, they
could purchase the restoration of the Catholic religion,
and perhaps of the six confiscated counties; but they
had no intention of letting the settlers be destroyed,
or of staining their cause with acts which the con¬
science of mankind would condemn.
No scruples of this kind restrained the kinsmen of
the dispossessed chiefs of Ulster, or those others of the
old blood who had been threatened by Strafford's
inquisitions. To them the English were piratical and
heretic invaders, who were robbing them of their
lands, liberties, and faith—who had shown no mercy
and were entitled to none—whom by any and all
means they were entitled to destroy from out of the
midst of them. It mattered little with the O'Neils
and Maguyres who was king of England. They
desired to be quit of England. If Charles turned
Catholic, an English king would still be an English
king. Catholic or Protestant, he would not restore
the confiscated counties. Ireland was theirs, to live
in at their own will and in their own way, and they
meant to have it.
The aims of two parties so wide apart were neces-
9& THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
sarily irreconcileable, yet each, was willing to have
the assistance of the other for immediate measures in
opposition to the Puritans. Each had sufficient con¬
fidence in its own resources to believe that it could
control the work when the beginning was once made.
With the Barons of the Pale the King himself was
in private communication. The Irish Parliament had
passed the vote by which the army had been raised,
avowedly to assist the Government against the revolt
of the Scots. When Strafford had been executed and
the Parliament had forced Charles to dismiss the Irish
troops, he was not to be blamed if in his extreme
difficulty he turned his eyes to such of his subjects as
seemed loyal and had promised effective service. An
Irish gentleman, one of the Burkes of Clanrickarde,
had gone over, to see and speak with the King on the
part of the Irish nobility, in the summer of 1641.
The King sent him back with a letter of credit,1 and a
private message to the Earls of Ormond and Antrim,
that they should keep the disbanded men together,
add if possible to their number, and, when opportunity
offered, should seize Dublin Castle and give them
back their arms.
Ormond, understanding better perhaps than his
master the danger of attempting such an enterprise,
hesitated to obey ; and Antrim, at Ormond's desire,
despatched Captain Digby, the Constable of Dunluce,
1 ' Yo;i are to repair to Ormond
and Antrim in Ireland, who are to
give credit to what you say to them
from us. C. B,.'—' Information of
the Marquis of Antrim,' Iliberuia
Anglicana, Appendix, p. 49.
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
97
for more precise instructions. Charles repeated his
commands, even directing Antrim explicitly, if he
could collect the army, to declare openly against the
English Parliament.1
Antrim at once communicated with the leading
Barons of the Pale and with the Ulster chiefs. His
intention, as he afterwards admitted, was to move the
Parliament at Dublin to act as the King desired, and
to vote formally for the reassembling of the army.
If the Lords Justices interfered, he meant to carry
out his master's orders fully, take Dublin Castle, and
arrest everywhere the leading Protestants who might
threaten to be dangerous.
' The fools/ Lord Antrim said, 'well liking the
business, would not expect our time and manner for
ordering the work, but fell upon it without us, and
sooner and otherwise than we would have done,
taking to themselves and in their own way the
management of the work, and so spoiled it.'
' The fools' were the native Irish, who had other
and more practical objects than the Earl of Antrim.
For years past there had been uneasy symptoms
that the volcanic elements were working towards a
new eruption. In 1634 Emer Macmahon, afterwards
the notorious Bishop of Clogher, informed Went worth
that mischief was in the wind; he himself, as he said,
having been employed to feel the pulse of France
1 ' You are to repair to Ormond from us. C. R.'—' Information of
and Antrim in Ireland, who are to the Marquis of Antrim,' Hibernia
give credit to what you say to them Anglicana, Appendix p. 49.
IREL. I. II
98
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
and Spain. Flights of friars and priests, with old
soldiers who had served on the Continent, had been
observed latterly crossing back through England to
Ireland.1 Whispers were abroad that an insurrection
1 The Catholics had a majority
in the Irish Parliament, notwith¬
standing the Act of Elizabeth. How
completely the Catholic Church
was organized in Ireland is very
little realized. Of practical intoler¬
ance there was at this time none at
all. The Catholics were indulged
to the uttermost, and therefore
rebelled. The Irish Council, on
June 30, 1641, wrote to Sir Harry
Vane:—
' We lately received a petition in
the name of the archbishop, bishop,
and clergy now assembled in Dub¬
lin, wherein they complain that
they see in their dioceses a foreign
jurisdiction publicly exercised, and
swarms of Popish priests and friars
openly professing themselves by
words and habits, to the outdaring
of the law, the pressure of the sub¬
ject, and the impoverishing the
kingdom. And seeing that instead
of that due obedience which the
Popish pretended clergy ought to
have rendered to the law, they
break out into insolence and inordi¬
nate assemblies, holding of convoca¬
tions, and exercising jurisdiction, we
may not be silent, it being apparent
that such insolent beginnings may
proceed to further and so general
mischief as may prove the original
of dangerous alterations. At D10-
gheda there is a house for a nunnery
lately erected, so spacious as it con¬
tains four score windows of a side.
In and about this city are supposed
to be many hundreds of Jesuits,
friars and priests, which extraordi¬
nary convention of so many of them
cannot be for any good purpose.'
—'The Irish Council to Sir H.
Vane, June 30.' MSS. Record
Office.
Enclosed in this letter was
a curious illustrative sketch of
the condition of the diocese of
Tuarn:—
' Doctor Laughlin Ivaolly, titular
Archbishop of Tuam, is very public
among us. He presents himself
openly in general assemblies. He
travels up and down with great
companies. He is plentifully main¬
tained, generally respected, feeds of
the best, and it is a strife among
the great ones who shall be happy
in being the host of such a guest.
Every church living in the pro¬
vince of Connaught hath a Romish
priest as constantly as a Protestant
minister entitled or assigned there¬
unto. The country suffers griev¬
ously under the charge of a double
clergy ■— Protestant and Papist.
They have everywhere their mass-
houses, whereunto the people in
multitudes resort, and that not
privately but in a public braving
manner.
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
99
was at hand; and, early in 1641, Sir Harry Vane
warned the Lords Justices to be on their guard.
Catholic preachers had been inveighing louder than
usual from their pulpits on the progress of heresy,
commenting on the supposed malignant intentions
of the English Parliament towards Ireland, and com¬
mending vaguely to the prayers of the congregations
the success of some great design which was in hand
for the preservation of the faith.1 The Irish Parlia¬
ment, composed of Catholics and Protestants in nearly
equal numbers, the Catholics slightly predominating,
sate late into the summer. The members of the
House of Commons were the extremes of both parties,
and were equally bitter against Lord Strafford and the
'The friars swarm hie illic et
ubique, and are often most in the
highways in their habits. In Dun-
more is a house consisting of a prior
and thirty friars, which have their
oratory, dormitory, refectory, &c.,
and observe the rites of their order
as fully as when they were in Spain.
Another abbey at Kilconnell, with
as many or more ; and conspicuous
nunnery, wherein are many young
gentlewomen, daughters of lords,
knights, and the best of the coun¬
try.
' The titular Archbishop of
Tuam and his suffragans do publicly
and powerfully exercise jurisdic¬
tion, and such obedience is given
them by the natives, that the juris¬
diction of our Church is altogether
neglected.
' The nation, weary of the charge
of a double clergy, do much repine
at our ministers. They keep back
tithes, conceal their glebes, deny
them any place of residence, where
they might look to their flocks.
But, what is most grievous to us,
they do maliciously indict them
and their proctors at the assizes,
and call them to the Parliament to
their utter undoing, for no other
cause but for receiving such cus¬
toms as were antiently paid to their
predecessors.'—'Remonstrances of
Grievances in the Province of Tuam,
June 12, 1641.' AISS, Record
Office.
1 History of the Irish Rebellion,
by Sir John Temple. Temple was
made Master of the Rolls in Dublin
in 1640, and was the contemporary
of all, and eye-witness of many, of
the scenes which he describes.
IOO THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
Government. A knot of Catholic barristers, patriots
of the familiar type, had put themselves forward as
the spokesmen of Irish grievances ; clamouring for
self-government, the repeal of Poynings' Act, the
dismissal of the English garrisons, and the establish¬
ment of a militia; and the Protestant representatives,
with the infatuation which has so often distinguished
Irish Protestant politicians, had applauded them to
the echo.1 The Chancellor Sir Richard Bolton, Chief
Justice Lowther, Sir Geo. Radclitf, the Bishop of
Derry (Bramhall), and the Bishop of Cork (Chappel)
were impeached.2 A Committee of the Commons
1 Colonel Audley Mervyn, of
Fermanagh, a Protestant, was the
most eloquent of the patriotic
orators in this Parliament. He
repented and atoned for his folly
in the suppression of the rebellion.
—Relation of Occurrences as pre¬
sented to the House of Commons
in England, by Lieutenant-Colonel
Audley Mervyn, June 4, 1642.
2 The Irish Parliament was so
intent on these impeachments that
it claimed to be the supreme ju¬
dicial court of Ireland, and insisted
that, by the constitution, it had
power of life and death. The Lords
Justices tried to temporize, but the
Government party was in a minority
in both Houses. On June 30, 1641,
the Lords Justices and Council
wrote to Sir Harry Vane:—
' "What resolution they (the Par¬
liament) will take for deferring
or not deferring the proceedings
against those persons we know not
as yet, but conceive that most of |
the Papists in the House and some
of the Protestants incline to the
latter, whereby they are like to
carry it by majority of votes, for
in these two last sessions we find
many Protestants (and no Papists
at all, unless some few not able to
appear) removed from the House,
and new elections ordered to be
made, and in some of their rooms
Papists brought in, which is a great
weakening of the Protestant party
in the House.'—MSS,Ireland, 1641.
Record Office.
Finding the impeachment press¬
ed, the Lords Justices were obliged
to meet it by a bill of general par¬
don for all ofiences. Government
being completely paralyzed by the
action of the two Houses, and the
Lords showing a disposition to
accept the pardon as an alternative,
the bill was sent over for approval,
with a request that it might be
instantly returred.
' We conceive it necessary to he
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 101
carried the complaints of the House to London1—
complaints of injury to trade, monopolies, the High
so at this time,' the Council wrote
on July 1, ' whereby confidence and
security may be rendered not only
to all ministers of the Crown who
are now very fearful in the course
of their employments, but also to
all his majesty's subjects of the
kingdom in general. In this act of
free pardon persons impeached of
treason in Parliament here are in¬
cluded, which we think fit to men¬
tion to you, to the end his majesty
may be acquainted therewith as a
thing we hope not displeasing to
him.'
Even to this pardon it was ne¬
cessary to make two exceptions, so
hateful the High Church bishops
had m ade themselves. A postscript
adds:—
'We conceive that if the Lord
Bishop of Derry and the Lord
Bishop of Cork be not excepted in
the pardon it will be the more dif¬
ficult to pass it in both Houses.
Wherefore there is a clause inserted
in the pardon excepting them both
as to crimes, yet so as the treason
whereof the Bishop of Derry is
impeached in Parliament stands
pardoned.'—MSS. Record Office,
1641.
The bill was conceded, but the
Parliament did not choose to wait
for its return, but continued to press
violently for the judicial sovereign¬
ty. The two Houses passed a de¬
claration of rights, which Sir Wil¬
liam Parsons forwarded on July 21.
' You see,' he writes to Sir Harry
Yane, ' with what vehemency and
a kind of eager postulation they
press for jurisdiction. The danger
threatened to the English and his
majesty's servants in allowing them
jurisdiction in capital causes doth
daily more and more appear here,
and I doubt not is foreseen then.'
—' Sir Wm. Parsons to Sir Harry
Vane, July 21, 1641.' Ibid.
The invaluable letters of the
Lords Justices before and during
the rebellion, preserved in the Re¬
cord Office, have never been pub¬
lished, and dispose, with a ludi¬
crous completeness, of the plea of
the Irish Catholics, that they took
arms to defend themselves against
the supposed Puritan tendencies of
the English governors. Throughout
the summer of 1641, when Parsons
and Borlase were charged with
meditating a persecution, their let¬
ters display nothing but the most
profound alarm, and consciousness
of their helpless position.
1 Among the grievances present¬
ed by the Parliament was one which
showed how strongly the Irish ele¬
ment was already in the ascendant.
The Commons complained of
' the national distinction made in
the late plantations, by which it
was provided that the Irish nation
should be debarred from purchasing
or acquiring estates of inheritance
further than at the first distribution
I of the lands was assigned them.'
102
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
Commission Court, inquisitions into titles and arbi¬
trary powers; and tlie Parliament declared itself in
permanent session till part at least of their requests
were granted.1
Some uneasiness had been felt at the number of
disbanded soldiers at large and in idleness.2 A pro-
' The object,' the English Coun¬
cil observes, ' was that the British
undertakers should be maintained
at their first strength without en¬
croachment of the Irish upon them
to the lessening of their proportion,
so that none were allowed to pur¬
chase but such as were of English
descent.'
The Council—again a remark¬
able commentary on this supposed
intention of the Puritan English
Parliament to exterminate the Irish
nation—recommended that the dis¬
tinction should be abolished. —
'CouncilNote, May 27, 1641.' Ibid.
1 ' We daily expect the coming
of the Connauglit Act, and that of
Limitation, and the Parliament
will not incline to hear of an ad¬
journment until they come over.'—
' Sir Adam Loftus to Sir Harry
Yane, July 24.' MSS. Ireland,
Record Office.
The Catholics insisted after¬
wards clamorously on their loyalty
throughout to Charles the First.
Charles, in return for the Act of
Limitation and the surrender of his
rights on Connaught, had required
a better organization of the Customs
revenues. Loftus adds :—
' If these acts pass the royal
assent before the King's couriers be
likewise speeded, I fear if this can
be once finished, that which con¬
cerns his majesty will have but
slow motion ; and therefore I think
it would stand with all the reason
that can be, that in the first place
those things which concern his
majesty might first be agitated, and
then what concerns the people fully
be completed. And in truth all
that is desired for his majesty is in
no way valuable in respect of those
great graces and bounties which
they now expect and make them¬
selves sure of.'
3 There was a delay in disband¬
ing them from want of money. On
May 12 the Lords Justices write:—
' This kingdom is most fearfully
robbed and harassed by the soldiers
in every part where they come.
They go six or seven miles from
their garrisons, and rob houses, and
take all they meet with on their
way, and do all the mischief that
can be. We have not had a penny
these four weeks to give them.
There is no martial law to govern
them, which they knowing do what
they list. The people sutler (bear
with) much because they are Pap¬
ists, wherein there is some mystery,
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
103
posal had been made to i
Spanish or Portuguese se:
raised and it was dropped.
but certainly no good to us.'—'The
Lords Justices to Sir Harry Vane,
May 12.' Ibid.
1 Orders came in June to ship
part of the army for Portugal, and
transports came from England to
Cork harbour for them. The Catho¬
lic clergy became immediately sus¬
piciously busy in endeavouring to
keep them at home.
The Council write on June 30
to Vane:—
' There was great underhand
labouring among the priests, friars,
and Jesuits to dissuade the disband¬
ed soldiers from departing the king¬
dom. On receipt of your letter
we sent orders to all the ports for
seizing all Popish books that shall
be brought in ; as also to inform us
what number of Jesuits, priests, and
friars have arrived, and what num¬
ber of soldiers who have had com¬
mand abroad.'
On June 9 Captain Thomas Serle
deposed that 'as he rode from
Dundalk to Drogheda in company
of Lieutenant Flower, he observed
in the highway near Dunleary
thirty or forty of the late disband¬
ed army in a cluster. Also he saw
a man about fifty years old on
horseback, discoursing with them
in Irish. 14 Lieutenant Flower, who
speaks the language, after some
conference with the man, told him
(Captain Serle) he conceived the
man was a Eomish priest or friar,
;end them abroad into the
•vice, but objections were
Antrim had not at that
for he had seen part of his hairy
vestment; and besides, the priest
had declared to him that he had
advised the said soldiers on his
blessing, that none of them should
depart the kingdom to any foreign
employment, but rather they should
stay at home,. though they lived
only on bread and milk, for that
there might he use for them here.'
'The same day he observed
about a thousand others of the said
army travelling the same way.'—
' Examination of Captain T. Serle,
June 9.' MSS, Ireland, 1641.
Record Office.
On August 3, after the Parlia¬
ment had decided that the soldiers
were not to go, Parsons writes :—
' We send you the suit of Par¬
liament, and reasons for the stay
of the men to be sent over seas.
We formerly wrote to your Honours
how the priests had laboured in that
business. Now you see the strong
influence of those priests upon all
public business here, in so much as
they are able to guide the whole
Parliament, the Papist votes being
now strongest, to such a motion
quite cross to his majesty's com¬
mands, which we often declared
unto them [the Catholic leaders
knew Charles' secret wishes better
than the Lords Justices], specially
in a business which is really rather
against than for the public peace
and safety, and which few men of
104 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
time received his final orders from Charles. The Irish
committee lingered in England, but the Parliament in
Dublin having received assurances from them that their
petitions were granted, there was the usual separation
for the harvest at the beginning of August, and the
session was adjourned till November. Captain Digby
returned presently after; and had the ' fools/ as Lord
Antrim called them, remained quiet in the interval, the
King's orders would have probably been carried out,
and Dublin Castle been successfully seized as soon as
Parliament reassembled.
The Catholic leaders meanwhile had talked over
their plans among themselves. At the beginning of
October,1 the leading Catholic clergy and laity met
at a Franciscan abbey in Westmeath,2 to discuss the
course to be taken with the Protestant settlers who
were scattered over the country. That they must be
dispossessed was a matter of course; it was the price
of the co-operation of the Celts; but whether by death
or banishment was undecided. According to the
priests, heretics were disentitled to mercy. The less
understanding are not persuaded
of, save tliat they desire to keep as
strong a party here as they can for
other ends, chiefly if anything
touching religion should he in
earnest pressed upon them.'—'Sir
Wm. Parsons to Sir H. Vane,
August 3, 1641.' Ibid.
1 The priestshad been busy with
their meetings all the summer.
' In Whitsun week there was a
great assembly of them gathered
at the wood of Maynooth. Divers
gentlemen were solicited to meet
at that assembly, and some refused
to be there.'—'The Irish Council to
Sir H. Vane, June 30.' Ibid.
2 Deposition of Henry Jones,
Dean of Kilmore, JHernia Angli-
cana, Appendix, 9. Dr. Jones re¬
ceived an account of this meeting
from a Franciscan friar who was
present. Cf. Temple, p. 129.
CH. ii.] 7IIE INSURRECTION OF 1641. ' 105
violent party considered that massacres were ngly
things, and left an ill name behind them. The Spanish
princes, whose orthodoxy was above suspicion, had not
exterminated the Moors, but had allowed them to
return to Africa. More savage measures might per¬
haps be displeasing to God, and would certainly ex¬
asperate England in the highest degree.
On the other side it was urged, that the example of
the Moors told for the opposite conclusion. Europe
had suffered ever since from the Algerine pirates,
who, had there been a general massacre, would never
have existed. Ireland would, at all events, have to
count on the worst that England could do. Banished
men might come back with swords in their hands-;
and the policy, at once wisest and safest, would be
to destroy them when the opportunity was in their
hands.
The majority at the meeting declined these violent
counsels. They determined to be loyal to the King,
to stand by him in his present difficulties, and expect
in return from his gratitude the re-establishment of
their religion and the restoration of the lands. The
minority departed unconvinced, resolved to take their
own way.
The natural chief of the Irish at this time was the
nephew of the Earl of Tyrone, Owen Rory OMNeil.
Owen Roe—so he was called—was in Flanders. The
confederates wrote to him. He promised to return and
place himself at their head as soon as the insurrection
had broken out. The command meanwhile fell to
io6 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
liis cousin, Sir Phelim, who had been educated in
England as a Protestant, but on coming back to his
estates had relapsed to the creed of his ancestors. At
Dublin, during the session, and afterwards in the
autumn, at Sir Pheliin's house in Ulster, the patriot
leaders had met and concerted their plans. The
chief conspirators in this separate distinctively Irish
council were Sir Philip himself, Lord Maguyre of
Fermanagh, an Irish peer, a youth of twenty-five;
Philip O'Reilly, a lawyer and a popular speaker in
Parliament; Hugh MacMahon,1 and his brother Emer
the Vicar-General, afterwards Bishop of Clogher,2
Roger Moore, one of the Moores of Leax; and a friar
of Dundalk.
The Bishop of Clogher was the brain of the enter¬
prise, and in the main directed the course which was
to be pursued. Acquainted, as the conspirators were,
with the views of Antrim and the Pale Lords, they
had made up their minds to act independently of
them, and render temporizing and half-measures im¬
possible.
Rents and taxes were paid in Ireland on November
I. At the end of October the treasury at Dublin was
empty. The tenant's half year's rent was in his own
hand. His crops were housed. The high winds at
the fall of the year made communication with England
at that time always uncertain, and the autumn of 1641
1 Grandson of the Earl of Ty- 2 'Relation of the Lord Ma-
rone. Hugh MacMahon was a gen- guyre.' Borlase, History of the
tleman of good fortune. Irish Rebellion, Appendix, p. 2.
ch. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 107
was exceptionally wild. A blow struck simultaneously
and fiercely over the whole North, without a note of
warning, might crush the English settlement and the
English religion at once and for ever. The priests
were ready-made instruments by which such a plot
could be organized without a trace of it going abroad;
and Ulster, once delivered, the rest of the island might
be trusted to follow the pattern. The seizure of Dublin
Castle, part of Antrim's programme, was equally essen¬
tial to the plans of Sir Phelim O'Neil. Arms for nine
thousand men were in the cellars there, and the com¬
mand of Dublin would be the command over Parlia¬
ment and country.
October 23 was market day in Dublin, and strange
faces would attract no attention in the streets. It
was determined that, on October 23, Sir Phelim should
surprise Londonderry, Sir Henry O'Neil Carrick-
fergus, Sir Con Magennis Newry. Lord Maguyre
and Hugh Macmalion undertook the more difficult
enterprize at Dublin, while, in the whole North 011
the same day, the Irish people were to rise and dis¬
pose of the English settlers and their families. No
distinct directions were probably given about killing
them. An Irish mob let loose upon defenceless
enemies might be left to their own discretion in such
a matter. The order was to drive them from their
houses; strip them—man, woman, and child—of their
property, strip them even of the clothes upon their
backs, to take such chances of life as the elements
would allow, in the late autumn, to human existence
108 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [uk. i.
turned adrift amidst sleet and rain, without food or
covering. The Scots, of whom there were several
thousand families in Ulster, were to be left, if possible,
unmolested. To divide the interests of Scots from
English would make the work more easy ; and there
was a fear, perhaps, of offending the Earl of Antrim,
whose wife was herself a Protestant.
The secret was admirably kept. Sir William Cole,
of Fermanagh,1 reported at the beginning of the
month,2 that the Irish appeared restless. The meet¬
ings at Sir Phelim's house had been noticed, and
Maguyre's movements had seemed mysterious. On
the 21st more exact information enabled Cole to take
measures for the safety of Enniskillen; but the warn¬
ing letter which he despatched to the Lords Justices
was intercepted on the road.
1 The Coles came to Ireland among the colonists of James the First,
and settled in Fermanagh in 1611. 2 October, 1641.
log
SECTION IV.
On October 22 the Irish leaders repaired to their posts.
Lord Maguyre, Hugh Macmahon, and Roger Moore
came openly into Dublin, as if on ordinary 1641
business. Their friends stole in under cover 0ct-
of the market. The Government was so unconscious of
danger that no difficulty whatever was anticipated in
the surprise of the castle. When the arms were secured,
the intention was to call Parliament instantly, and to
raise an army in the King's name. At the last moment
the conspiracy was revealed, but in so strange a manner
that the information was almost discredited as an idle
tale. On the night of the 22nd, an Irishman named
Owen O'Conolly, who had lived in the family of Sir
John Clotworthy, had been converted there, and was
now a Presbyterian elder, came in a strange excited
state to Sir William Parsons and told him, that in a
few hours Dublin Castle would be taken by rebels.
His story was that he had been drinking with Hugh
Macmahon, and that Macmahon had taken him into
confidence, and invited him to join. Parsons bade
him to go about his business as a drunken fool.1 He
1 Sucli was the generally received
story. Parsons in his own account,
written within two days of the
event, says nothing of Conolly
being drunk, or of his having dis¬
believed his account.
'On Friday, the 22nd, at nine
o'clock,' he writes, ' Owen Conolly,
servant to Sir John Clotworthy,
came to me, the Lord Justice Par¬
sons, in great secresy, as indeed the
case did require, and discovered
no
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[l3K. I.
retired, but held fast to the thought which was ever
present in his mind. As the night went on, and he
became more collected, he went back, and persisting
in his account obtained attention at last. The castle
gates were closed and the watch manned; Macmahon
and Lord Maguyre were taken ; and Roger Moore, and
the rest, finding that their stroke had missed, escaped
out of the town. Dublin was saved. Unhappily there
had been no Owen O'Conolly to sound the alaxun in the
Ulster farmhouses. The Ulster farmers, dispersed,
surprised, and isolated, became the helpless victims of
Irish ferocity on a scale on which it has rarely had an
opportunity of displaying itself.
It does not fall within the purpose of the present
history to relate circumstantially the scenes which fol¬
lowed. Inasmuch, however, as Catholic historians
either deny their reality altogether, slur them over as
enormously exaggerated, or lay the blame on the
Protestants as the first beginners of violence; and
unto me a wicked and damnable
conspiracy, plotted and contrived
by the Irish Papists. The plot was,
on the then next morning, Satur¬
day, October 23, being Ignatius's
day, about nine o'clock, to surprise
the castle of Dublin, the principal
magazine of his majesty's arms and
munition; and it was agreed among
them that, at the same hour, all
other his majesty's forts and maga¬
zines of arms in the kingdom should
be surprised by other of the con¬
spirators. Further, that all the
Protestants and English through¬
out the whole kingdom that would
not join them should be cut off,
and so those Papists should become
possessed of the Government and
the kingdom at the same time.
' As soon as I heard that intelli¬
gence I repaired to the Lord Jus¬
tice Borlase. We assembled the
Council, and having sate in Council
all that night as also all the next
day, Oct. 23, we caused the castle
to be strengthened with armed
men,' &e.—'The Lords Justices to
the Earl of Leicester, October 25,
1641.' HSS. Record Office.
ch. ti.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 111
inasmuch as the justification of the subsequent policy
of England towards Ireland depends upon the truth
of events of which the recollection was kept alive for
a century by a solemn annual commemoration, it is
necessary to relate briefly the outline of those events
as recorded by eyewitnesses, who were examined in
Dublin, fresh from the scenes which they had witnessed,
before commissioners f of known integrity;' men of
all stations and of both nations, whose evidence is the
eternal witness of blood which the Irish Catholics have
from that time to this been vainly trying to wash away.1
On the morning of that fatal Saturday there ap¬
peared, before the houses of the settlers and their
tenants, in the six escheated counties, gangs of armed
Irish, who demanded instant possession, and on being
admitted, ejected the entire families, and stripped most
of them to the skin.
1 The sworn depositions remain,
as I said, in Trinity College. Al¬
ready, in Sir John Temple's time,
the Catholics had begun to declaim
against 'these evidences of their
cruelty, and lively attestations
given in to perpetuate the memory
of them, to their eternal infamy.'—
Temple, Preface, p. 16. Dr. Curry
dismisses 'the enormous heap of
malignity and nonsense,' as he calls
it, on the ground of a supposed
discovery that, in ' infinitely the
greater number' of the depositions
the commissioners' attestation of
them as ' being duly sworn' is
struck through with a pen, thus
reducing their value to random
statements. — Review of the Civil
War in Ireland, p. 176. Uo doubt
these volumes of evidence were
justly painful to Dr. Curry. An
examination of the originals, how¬
ever, shows that the erasures, so
far from being found in ' infinitely
the greater number,' are found in
relatively very few, and so far
from invalidating the authority of
the depositions, are rather a proof
of the scrupulous care with which
the commissioners distinguished be¬
tween fact and hearsay.—Compare
Reid, History of the I'resbyterians
in Ireland.
112
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. r.
Many resisted and were killed; many, the young
vigorous men especially, who could save their own
lives by flight, sought shelter for their women and
their little ones in the houses of their Irish neighbours,
with whom they had lived in intimacy. The doors of
their neighbours were opened in seeming hospitality ;
but within there were not human beings—not even
human savages—but ferocious beasts. f The priests
had so charmed the Irish, and laid such bloody impres¬
sions on them, as it was held a mortal sin to give
relief or protection to the English/ 1 Fugitives ad¬
mitted to shelter are sacred in the Arab tent or the
Indian wigwam. These helpless ones were either
betrayed to the ruffians out of doors, or murdered by
their hosts. There were of course exceptions. An
entire nation cannot at once and universally put off
the feelings which connect them with their kind. Some
families were sent with escorts to the sea; nor does a
universal massacre appear at first to have been any¬
where deliberately designed.2 Passion, however, was
1 Temple.
3 Tlie contemporary accounts
agree mainly that, during the first
week, there were few or no deliber¬
ate murders. On October 24, Lord
Chichester, writing from Belfast,
says that the Irish had taken Cliar-
lemont, Dungannon, Tonderagee,
and Newry, with all the military
stores in them. Fires were visible
all over the country ; farms and
villages burning ; hut, so far, Lord
Chichester could not learn that
' they had slain more than one man.'
—' Lord Chichester to the King,
October 24, Belfast.' HSS. Ireland
Record Office.
All the accounts agree, on the
other hand, that the pillaging,
stripping, and, burning were uni¬
versal. Colonel Audley Mervyn,
who was present in Ulster during
the first three months of the insur¬
rection, says that ' they were sur¬
prised so suddenly that the Irish
servant, who overnightwas undress-
ch. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 113
exasperated by the failure of parts of the scheme,
which would have given the leaders political control.
ing his master, the next morning
was stripping master and mistress.
In the twinkling of an eye, corpora¬
tions, towns, villages were blazing ;
men, women, and children, of all
ranks, exposed by hundreds naked
on the mountains, and dying of
cold.'
But the forbearance, such as it
might be, was soon ended.
' N akedness an d famine,' Colonel
Mervyn says, ' were judged over-
slow executioners. Then entered
the sword, destroying at first with
the scabbard on, the rebels, under
pretence of convoy, inviting the
scattered and hidden Protestants
into a body, that so they might
make each surviving man an exe¬
cutor to the last murdered in his
presence, and so the whole line one
by one extinguished; the Irish
priest, as ordinary, administered
for all.
' Out of the county of Fermanagh,
one of the best planted counties with
English, I could never give account
of twenty men escaped, except, which
is most improbable, they should flee to
Dublin. Having enquired from pri¬
soners by name for such and such, they
have informed me they were all mas¬
sacred. The Blackwater, in Tyrone,
had its streams dyed in blood, there
being at one time 200 souls mur¬
dered on the bridge and flung down
the river.'—Relation of Occurrences,
by Colonel Audley Mervyn.
On December 1—I am particular
IBEL. I.
about these dates, because it is in¬
sisted that the story of the massacre
was an afterthought, made up in
the following year to justify the
confiscation of the estates of the
insurgents—on December 1 a peti¬
tion was presented to the English
Parliament, signed by the Irish
Council, stating that there were
then 40,000 rebels in the field.
' Their tyranny,' says this docu¬
ment, 'is so great, that they put
both man, woman, and child that
are Protestants to the sword, not
sparing either age, sex, degree, or
reputation. They have stripped
naked many Protestants, and so sent
them to the city—men and women.
They have ravished many virgins
and women before their husbands'
faces, and taken their children and
dashed their brains against the
walls in the sight of their parents,
and at length destroyed them
likewise without pity or human¬
ity.'
On December 14 the following
letter from Ireland was read in the
English Parliament:—
' All I can tell you is the miser¬
able state we continue under, for
the rebels daily increase in men and
munition in all parts, except the
province of Minister, exercising all
manner of cruelties, and striving
who can be most barbarously ex¬
quisite in tormenting the poor Pro¬
testants, cutting off their ears,
fingers, and hands, plucking out
I
"4
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
The ill-success at Dublin was not the only disappoint¬
ment. SirWm. Cole saved Enniskillen. Naked men,
flying for their lives, carried the alarm to Derry,
Coleraine, and Carrickfergus, and the inhabitants had
time to close their gates. Murder, the Irish writers
say, was begun only in retaliation. The first blood,
they affirm, was shed at Island Magee, early in
November, when three thousand Catholics were killed
by the garrison of Carrickfergus.1 Were this story
their eyes, boiling the hands of ]
little children before their mothers'
faces, stripping women naked and
ripping them up,' &c.
Even Richard Beling, the pas¬
sionate defender of the Catholics,
one of the authorities for the charge
that Parsons and Borlase did not
try to stop the rebellion, but let it
extend for the sake of the expect¬
ed confiscations, half confirms in
shame, Sir Plielim O'Neil's bar¬
barities.
' O'Neillus,' he says, ' Neurium
aliasque munitiones cepit, nec con-
sternatus animo dum Baronis Ma-
guyre sortem rescit arma abjicit;
sed ad vindictam potius respiciens
plures in sua Provinci a turbas ac
tragcedias excitat, paucisque cum
copiis iisque inermibus plurima
praestat contra ejus provincire
Anglos et Scotos multum animo
consternatos, etiam minus, si vera
referuutur, in Catholico viro pro¬
banda.' — Vindicice Catholicorum
Ilibernice, by Richard Beling, 1650.
1 The Irish defences have taken
many forms. Nicholas French,
titular Bishop of Ferns, in the book
in which he compares Ireland under
the Cromwellians to the Bleeding
Ipliigenia, insists with admirable
audacity, that there had been at
first 110 rebellion at all—only a stir
of a few discontented people, which
was converted afterwards into a
national rising by the malicious
misrepresentations of the Lords
Justices.
' It is objected,' he says, ' that
the Irish were the first aggressors.
The objection is easily answered.
It is a common doctrine of divines,
that it is lawful to prevent an evil
that cannot be otherwise avoided
than by preventing. I see you
taking your pistol in your hand,
cocking it to shoot at me. In that
case it is lawful for me to discharge
my pistol and kill you. This was
the case of the confederate Catho¬
lics. There was no other door open
for them but by preventing the
Presbyterians' bloody design.'—The
Bleeding Ipliigenia, by the Right
Rev. N. French, Bishop of Ferns,
1674.
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
"5
true, there is something %
soldiers appointed to keep
Compare with this daring asser¬
tion a letter written on the spot
and at the time by Sir John Temple
to Charles the First, describing the
actions of these ' few insignificant
people,' and the real feeling about
it of the Dublin government. The
date is December 12, 1641 .—
' I humbly beseech your majesty
to give me leave to represent to you
the miserable condition of this your
kingdom, wli icli 1 ies no w desperately
bleeding and will expire under the
weight of the present calamity, un¬
less your majesty shall apply some
powerful remedy. The whole slate
lies now at stake, and our distem¬
pers are grown to that height as
thej' will not much longer attend
our expected supplies. We are
brought so low as unless succours
presently arrive we must here un¬
doubtedly perish, and your majesty
be put to a far greater expense of
blood and treasure for the recovery
of this kingdom than your royal
progenitors were in the first con¬
quest of it. The whole province of
Ulster is entirely in possession of
the rebels, except that part which
is possessed by the Scots, who stand
upon their guard, and for want of
arms and commanders dare not
adventure to attempt anything of
moment against the rebels. A
great part of Connaught is likewise
at their devotion, and the whole
province of Munster not only waver¬
ing but already hath in several
e in the complaint that
peace should have used
parts made a defection, and now, to
render our condition desperate here
in the city, the Lords of the Pale
stand upon their guard, have enter¬
tained several parlies with the rebels
of Ulster, and all their tenants and
followers inhabiting in these coun¬
ties are not only large contributors
to their subsistence here, but do
themselves rob and despoil the
English up to the very gates of
Dublin.
' But that which makes this
rebellion more dangerous and for¬
midable, and indeed makes it differ
from all others that have heretofore
happened in this kingdom, is that
they have profaned your sacred
name, and infused into the belief
of the people that what they do is
not only by your majesty's avow-
ment, but by commission under
your majesty's signature. Besides,
the cause of their taking arms they
pretend to be religion, wherewith
their priests and Jesuits have with
so great artifice and cunning enter¬
tained them, making them believe
that the Romish religion was pre¬
sently to be rooted out here, that
horrid persecutions were now in¬
tended, and cruel massacres to be
suddenly executed upon all pro¬
fessors of the same. By these and
other delusions they have drawn
together infinite multitudes of
people, and caused them to take
arms and an oath for the defence
of their religion and the delivery
1 2
Ii6 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
strong measures when the country was in the hands of
hands of robbers, who were confessedly plundering the
entire province. Every detail of that business, how¬
ever, is preserved, and can be traced to the minutest
of the kingdom from the present
government, which they resolve
no longer to endure, but will, as
they say, under your majesty, have
a governor designed unto them out
of their own nation.
' Thus enraged and armed by
these pretences, they march on,
furiously destroying all the Eng¬
lish, sparing neither sex nor age,
throughout the kingdom, most bar¬
barously murdering them, and that
with greater cruelty than ever was
yet used among Turks and infidels.
I will not trouble your majesty
with the sad story of our miseries
here. Many thousands of our nation
are already perished under their
cruel hands, and the poor remainder
of them go up and down desolate,
naked, and most miserably afflicted
with cold and hunger, all inns and
other places in the country being
prohibited, under deep penalties, to
entertain or give any kind of relief
to them, so as here we sit, wearied
with the most lamentable com¬
plaints and fearful outcries of our
poor distressed countrymen, and
have no means to afford them any
redress, nor indeed any great hopes
long to preserve ourselves and this
city from the fury of the rebels who
threaten us with ruin and desola¬
tion.
' The Lords Justices have not
been wanting to use the best means
they could for the preservation of
this place, not only by the most
earnest representations of their con¬
dition here, and the impossibility
to subsist without succour out of
England, but by raising of men
and gathering together such forces
as the place could afford. Yet, not¬
withstanding all their endeavours
(besides the 2000 men under Sir
H. Tichborne now besieged in
Drogheda), they are not able to
bring into the field above 5000
men, both horse and foot, most of
them citizens, many of them Irish,
who, we have just cause to suspect,
will, 011 the first encounter, desert
and carry over their arms to the
rebels.
' In this position we daily expect
to be besieged bystrange multitudes
of people, who have already come
from all parts, and have on all sides
encompassed this city, which is of
itself no ways defensible ; and if
it were, yet they will hinder our
markets and so bring a famine
among us, which at this present
they may the more easily effect by
ret son that many thousands of the
despoiled English women and chil¬
dren are now come in to take sanctu¬
ary among us.'—'Sir John Temple
to the King, December 12, 1641.'
MSS. Record Office.
CK. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
117
fibre of it. The date of the affair at Island Magee was
not November but January. Alaster Macdonnell had
destroyed some English families in their beds at
Kilrea. Seventy or eighty old men, women, and
children, had been killed on the road by the same
party near Ballintoy and Oldstown. On the Sunday
following, January 9, a party of the expelled farmers,
maddened by their losses, accompanied by a few
soldiers from Carrickfergus, did slay in revenge
thirty Catholics at Island Magee.1 Thirty persons
put to death, in the frenzy of provoked rage, on
January 9, 1642, when the cries of perishing men and
women were going up from every corner of Ulster,
have been converted into three thousand at the begin¬
ning of November in the preceding year, and the
crimes of the Irish represented as the self-defence of
innocent victims defending themselves against unpro¬
voked assassination. When will the Irish Catholics,
when will the Roman Catholics, learn that wounds
will never heal which are skinned with lying? Not
till they have done penance, all of them, by frank
confession and humiliation—the Irish for their crimes
in their own island—the Catholics generally for their
yet greater crimes throughout the civilized world—can
the past be forgotten, and their lawful claims on the
conscience of mankind be equitably considered.
1 The particulars are given ex¬
actly by Dr. Reid, History of the
Presbyterian Church in Ireland, vol.
i. pp. 326, 327. The Catholics, it
is to be admitted, are able to quote
their story from Lord Clarendon.
Lord Clarendon's imagination was
capable of a wide flight, when a
stone could be thrown at Presby¬
terians.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
Forbearance did not last beyond a few days, if so
long. Rallying from their first surprise, the Pro¬
testants gathered into bodies and made fight; and
from that moment the conduct of the rebellion fell en¬
tirely into the hands of the most violent. Charlemont
Castle, the strongest fortress in Ulster, was surprised
on the fatal 23rd of October by Sir Phelim O'Neil.
Lord Caulfield, who was taken there, was afterwards
murdered.1 A deed being found in the muniment
room with the gi^eat seal upon it, Sir Phelim forged a
commission from Charles, attached the seal, and went
forward in the King's name. In a fortnight, with the
exception of the few places mentioned as having
escaped, every town, village, fort, or private house
belonging to a Protestant in the six counties and in
Down and Monaghan was in the hands of the insur¬
gents, while the roads were covered with bands of
miserable fugitives dragging themselves either towards
Dublin, or Derry, or Carrickfergus, pursued and har¬
assed as they went by bands of wretches, who were
hunting them like starved jackals. Murder when the
spirit of it has gone abroad becomes a passion ; and
man grows more ferocious than a beast of prey.
Savage creatures of both sexes, yelping in chorus,
and brandishing their skenes; boys practising their
1 ' Not by Sir Phelim's order, or
with liis consent. Lord Caulfield
and his family were carried as pri¬
soners to Sir Phelim O'Neil's house,
and Lord Caulfield, in Sir Phelim's
absence, was shot dead by his foster
brother.' ' Sir Phelim on his re¬
turn,' says a contemporary writer,
' caused the foster brother and two
or three villains more to be hanged.'
—Relation touching the Rresent State
of Ireland. London 1641.
cm. n.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
119
young hands in stabbing and torturing the English
children—these were the scenes which were witnessed
daily through all parts of Ulster. The fury extended
even to the farm-stock, and sheep and oxen were
slaughtered, not for food, but in the blindness of
rage. The distinction between Scots and English
soon vanished. Religion was made the new dividing
line, and the one crime was to be a Protestant. The
escorts proved in most cases but gangs of assassins.
In the wildest of remembered winters the shivering
fugitives were goaded along the highways stark
naked and foodless. If some, happier than the rest,
found a few rags to throw about them, they were
torn instantly away. If others, in natural modesty,
twisted straw ropes round their waists, the straw was
set 011 fire. When the tired little ones dropped be¬
hind, the escort lashed the parents forward, and the
children were left to die. One witness, Adam Clover,
of Slonory in Cavan, sivore that he saw a woman
who had been thus deserted, set upon by three Irish
women, who stripped her naked in frost and snow.
She fell in labour under their hands, and she and her
child died.1 Many were buried alive. Those who died
1 Temple.
Robert Maxwell, Archdeacon of
Down, afterwards Bishop of Kil-
more, deposed that, by Sir Phelim's
order, they murdered his brother
James Maxwell. His wife, Grizzel
Maxwell, being in labour, they
stripped her naked, and drew her an
arrow flight to the Blackwater and
drowned her. They cut a collop
out of each buttock of Mr. "VYatson,
and afterwards roasted him alive.
They threw Mr. Starkey and his
two daughters into a turf pit.
They cut the flesh off living Eng¬
lish cattle to make them die in tor¬
ment. Maxwell knew a boy that
killed fifteen men with a skene,
120
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
first were never buried, but were left to be devoured
by dogs, and rats, and swine. Some were driven into
rivers and drowned, some banged, some mutilated,
some ripped with knives. Tlie priests told the people
' that tbe Protestants were worse than dogs, they
were devils and served the devil, and the killing of
them was a meritorious act.'' One wretch stabbed a
woman with a baby in her arms, and left the infant
in mockery on its dead mother's breast, bidding it
' Suck, English bastard.' The insurgents swore in
their madness they would not leave English man,
woman, or child alive in Ireland. They Hung babies
into boiling pots, or tossed them into the ditches to
the pigs. They put out grown men's eyes, turned
them adrift to wander, and starved them to death.
Two cowboys boasted of having murdered thirty
women and children, and a lad was heard swearing
that his arm was so tired with killing, that he could
scarce lift his hand above his head.
The towns could not hold the numbers which
flocked into them, and the plague came to add to
the general horrors. In Coleraine, in four months,
six thousand were said to have died of the pestilence
alone.1 The scenes in Dublin were still more frightful.
Sir John Temple was so affected by the terrible spectacle
they being disarmed, and most of
them in the stocks. . . A woman
killed seven men and women in a
morning, and the Popish children
used to kill the Protestant children
with lath swords well sharpened,
&c. &c.—Hibernia Anglicanct, Ap¬
pendix, p. 10.
1 Reid. But in all these cases
numbers must be received with
caution.
CH. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 121
passing under his own eyes, that his language in
describing it rises into a tone of profound and tragic
solemnity. *
' Multitudes of English daily came up in troops,
stripped and miserably despoiled; persons of good
rank and quality, covered over with old rags, and
even without any covering but a little twisted straw
to hide their nakedness. Wives came lamenting the
murder of their husbands, mothers of their children
barbarously destroyed before their faces. Some,
overwearied with long travel and so surbated,1 came
creeping on their knees; others, frozen with cold,
ready to die in the streets. The city was thus filled
with most lamentable spectacles of sorrow, which in
great numbers wandered up and down in all parts,
desolate, forsaken, having no place to lay their heads
on, no clothing to cover them, no food to fill their
hungry bellies. The Popish inhabitants refused to
minister the least comfort to them, so as those sad
creatures appeared like ghosts in every street. Barns,
stables, and outhouses were filled with them, yet many
lay in the open streets, and there miserably perished.
The churches were the common receptacles of the
meaner sort of them, who stood there in most doleful
posture, as objects of charity, in so great multitude as
there was scarce passage with them. Those of better
quality, who could not pass themselves to be common
beggars, crept into private places; and some that had
not private friends wasted silently away and died
The feet too bruised for walking.
122 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
without noise. So bitter was the remembrance of
their former' condition, and so insupportable the burden
of their present calamity to many of them as they
refused to be comforted. I have known some that lay
almost naked, and having clothes sent, laid them by,
refusing to put them on ; others that would not stir to
fetch themselves food, though, they knew where it
stood ready for them, but they continued to lie nastily
in their own rags, and even in their own dung; and
so, worn out with the misery of the journey and cruel
usage, having their spirits bent, their bodies wasted,
and their senses failing, lay here pitifully languishing;
and soon after they had recovered this town, very many
of them died, leaving their bodies as monuments of
the most inhuman cruelties used towards themd 1
The circumstantial minuteness of the picture is
itself a guarantee of its fidelity. Far the larger
portion of these miserable people died. The Dublin
churchyards could not hold the multitudes that were
crowding into them, and two large fields were enclosed
as cemeteries before the forlorn wretches could find
rest even for their bones.
Of the numbers that perished it is rash to offer so
much as a conjecture. In the midst of excitement so
terrible, extreme exaggeration was inevitable, and the
accounts were more than usually hard to check, be¬
cause the Catholics in their first triumph, were as eager
to make the most of their success as the Protestants
to magnify their calamity. In the first horror it was
1 Temple, pp. 93, 94.
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
123
said, diat 200,000 persons had perisned in six months.
For these enormous figures the Catholic priests were
responsible. They returned the numbers of the killed
in their several parishes up to March 1642, as 154,00c).1
To these may have been conjecturally added the
crowds who died of exposure, want, or the plague, in
Dublin and the other towns. Sir John Temple con¬
sidered that 150,000 perished in two months, and
300,000 in two years. At the trial of Lord Maguyre,
the figures were sworn at 152,000. Such guesses, for
they could have been little more, prove only that in
the presence of occurrences exceptionally horrible the
balance of reason was overturned. Clarendon, 011
cooler reflection, reduced the number to 40,000. Sir
William Petty, followed by Carte, to 37,000. Even
these figures will seem too large when it is remem¬
bered how appalling is the impression created by the
slaughter in cold blood of innocent unresisting people,
how little rage and terror can be depended on for cool
observation, and how inevitably the murdered were
confounded afterwards with the enormous multitudes
which indisputably perished in the civil war which
followed. The evidence proves no more than that
atrocities had been committed on a scale too vast to
be exactly comprehended, while the judgment was
1 ' They murdered, up to the end
of March last, of men, women, and
children, 154,000, as is acknow¬
ledged by the priests appointed to
collect the numbers.'—'The Lords
Justices and Council to the King,
March 16, 1643.' Hibernia Angli-
cana, Appendix, p. 4. The same
number is mentioned by the Bishop
of Kilmore as accepted in Sir Phe-
lim's camp.—Ibid. p. 10.
124 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
still further confounded by the fiendish malignity of
the details.1
The confused and furious struggle that ensued
would require a separate history.2 The purpose of the
1 A moderate and possible esti¬
mate of the number of those who
were killed in the first two months
of the rebellion is contained in ' A
True and Credible Relation of the
Massacre of the English Protestants
in Ireland; by a gentleman who
was eyewitness of most of the pas¬
sages which he describes ; who was
forced, with his wife, to abandon
house, estate, and country, for fear
of the rebels, and arrived in London
January 15, 1642.' Printed: Lon¬
don, 1642.
This writer says :—
' They have murdered and
starved to death of the English in the
Province of Ulster and other pro¬
vinces, of men, women, and children,
above 20,000. They have stripped
ladies and gentlewomen, virgins and
babes, old and young, naked as
rver they were born, turning them
into the open fields. Many hun¬
dreds have been found dead in
ditches with cold and want of food
and raiment. As for the Protest¬
ant ministers, they hang them up,
then cut off their heads, afterwards
quarter them, and then dismember
them, stopping their mouths there¬
with. Many of their wives they
have ravished in their sight before
the multitude, stripping them
naked to the view of their wicked
companions, taunting and mocking |
them with reproachful words, send¬
ing them away in such shameless
manner, that most of them have
died for grief.
' The priests and Jesuits com¬
monly anoint the rebels with their
sacrament of the unction before
they go to murder and rob, assur¬
ing them for their meritorious ser¬
vice, if they chance to be killed,
they shall escape purgatory and go
to heaven immediately. . . . Five
hundred English at Belturbet were
stripped naked and turned out in the
bitter cold, without a single rag to
cover them. . . . They report and
allege that religion is the cause of
this war ; hut that is false, for they
have had too 'much liberty and free¬
dom of conscience in Ireland, and
that hath made them rebel."
2 In the spring of 1642 the King
himself spoke of going over, uneasy
perhaps at the terrible results of his
correspondence with Antrim and
Ormond. The Long Parliament de¬
clined to trust him. Sir John Tem¬
ple, on April 25, when the King's
coming was still talked of, wrote to
some one, it is uncertain who : —
' If his majesty hold his resolu¬
tion to come over to this kingdom
to suppress the rebellion, and the
Parliament consent to it, I hope ho
will come so well furnished with
men and money as we shall go on
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
125
present work demands no more than the briefest sketch
of the leading incidents. It is almost enough to say,
that the blood spilt in the winter of 1641-2 was not
washed out till, according to the elaborate computa¬
tion of Sir William Petty,1 out of an entire popula¬
tion of a million and. a half, more than half a million
had, by sword, famine, and pestilence, been miserably
destroyed.
The conspiracy had spread over the island, and the
southern provinces soon followed suit with Ulster.
There was no second surprise, and scanty as they were
in number, the Protestants were not long in making
the insurgents feel that their game was not yet won.
Wicklow and Wexford broke out in November. The
expelled colonists in Dublin, burning for revenge, were
drilled and armed; Sir Charles Coote, of Castle Coote,
a veteran from the siege of Kinsale, led a few hundreds
of them into the Wicklow mountaius, and made free
use there of shot and halter. But want of means
gloriously to finish the work. I
must not impart to you my own
private thoughts at this distance;
yet let me tellyou that I cannot but
with much regret consider how
fatal this kingdom has been to all
the kings of England that have set
their foot within the isle. I wish that
and many other particulars of far
higher consequence may be seriously
laid to heart before his majesty fix
upon this journey If our
forces were come I am persuaded
we should have a sudden end of the
war. The destruction of the rebels
now'certainly draws near. They
are of the devil, and, like him, rage
most furiously towards their latter
end. They now exceed themselves
in the barbarous cruelty they exer¬
cise upon the English. The Lord,
I hope, will be pleased to put an
end to them.'—MSS. Ireland, Re¬
cord Office.
Temple thought the rebellion
was near its end in April, 1642 ; it
had still ten years to continue.
1 Political Arithmetic of Ireland.
126 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
pinioned the Lord Justices to Dublin and the imme¬
diate neighbourhood. The Lords of the Pale
1642 0
made Coote's severities an excuse for pretending
to believe that there was to be a massacre of the Catho¬
lics. They too joined the insurrection ; and the whole
country was in flame from Dunluce to Cape Clear.1
In England the effect was terrible. The bitterest
invectives of the Puritans against the scarlet woman
and her maintainers seemed justified by this new St.
Bartholomew. Shocked at the catastrophe which he
had assisted in forwarding, and to clear himself of
suspicion of complicity, the King made over to the
Long Parliament the entire management of Ireland.
A few companies of soldiers were sent across at once.
To raise a more sufficient force, two million acres and
a half of the rebels' lands were declared forfeited, with
Charles's consent, and were offered at easy rates to
adventurers who were willing to advance money on the
security of these estates. The bonds were taken up ;
an army was raised and sent to Bristol under Lord
Wharton, to be transported to Dublin. Unhappily
the war broke out in England before they could sail.
1 'This count}', the least disloyal
in Ireland, is in general revolt ; the
English most miserable, fallen from
plenty on a sudden to so much
poverty that they own nothing.
Every Irishman now declares him¬
self a rebel, and only Kinsale,
Cork, and Youghal, kept in awe by
the castles, stand out for the King.
There was a meeting on Tuesday
last of the chief men of these parts,
most of which pretended to be good
subjects. They have all taken oaths
to extirpate the English. There is
very little quarter given on either
side, and nothing to be expected
but destruction.' 'Sir H. Strad-
ling to Sir John Pennington, from
Kinsale, March 6.' MSS. Record
Office.
c! i. 11.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
127
The troops were detained for home service, and seven
years passed before the Long Parliament was again in
a position to pay effective attention to Ireland.
Lord Ormond meanwhile commanded there for the
King ; and Ormond's own endeavour was not to punish
the massacre, but to veil it, make peace with the Irish,
and to renew the scheme which Sir Phelim's haste had
marred.
Infinite and intricate negociations followed. The
English Parliament being occupied with fighting the
King, the Scots sent a force (England providing the
money) under General Monro, which gradually drove
the rebels out of Ulster. Monro, declining to take
orders from Ormond, contented himself with holding
the ground which he had gained. The Catholics,
meanwhile, established a council at Kilkenny, and
undertook in form the government of Ireland, and,
with the Pope's blessing 011 their gallant efforts, fto
extirpate and root out from among them the workers
of iniquity.'1
To this Kilkenny Council Ormond's efforts were now
addressed. Could Ormond but come to an under¬
standing with them, out of their united forces he might
lead an army to England, which might dictate terms
to the Parliament. Religion was of course the diffi¬
culty. The Irish Council demanded the restoration of
the Catholic Church to its pre-reformation splendour
and privileges. The King, though ready to promise
unlimited toleration, could go no further, without
1 Hibemia Anglicana, Appendix, p. 15.
128 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. X.
alienating hopelessly such friends as remained to him
in England.
The Irish Catholic Peers understood and allowed
for the difficulty, and were ready to meet Ormond half
way. The Clergy, standing on Providence and Divine
right, would abate no tittle of their pretensions; and the
Pope, to sustain their resolution, sent them a
1644
Legate, John Baptiste Rinuccini, Prince Arch¬
bishop of Firmo, with arms, powder, Spanish dollars,
and a supply of Italian priests. The Legate and his
chaplains ran a near chance of swinging at an English
yard arm. Captain Plunket, in a ship belonging to
the Parliament, chased him up the Kenmare river, and
would have caught him but for the breaking out of an
accidental tire. He landed safe and was received with
becoming honour at Kilkenny. But the differences
remained which had shown themselves at the meeting
at the Westmeath abbey. The Lords and Gentlemen
who, though Catholic, were of English blood or breed¬
ing, were for peace with the King, and the Legate
would have no peace till the Church had her own
again, threatening, if the Council were obstinate, to
take the bishops to Italy with him and leave the
kingdom unshepherded. The King's double dealing
came to the Legate's help. More eager than ever, as
the war went against him, for a peace which would
bring him the swords of the Irish Catholics, he had
empowered Ormond to treat on conditions which he
could acknowledge to the world; and at the same
time he had sent the Earl of Glamorgan with other
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
129
conditions, pledging himself, if only the secret were
kept till the war was over, to grant all that the clergy
demanded. He had gone so far as himself to write to
the Legate, promising to confirm whatever Glamorgan
and he might agree upon, and thus fortified the
Archbishop of course insisted on the most complete
concessions.
The secret was betrayed. The Glamorgan articles
were published, and Charles was forced to deny their
authenticity. The question became thus hopelessly
entangled. Two Catholic parties were formed,
following the lines of division which had ex¬
isted from the first. The native Irish went with the
Legate and the priests, and had their own army, under
Owen Roe O'Heil, who came over as he promised.
The Council of Kilkenny had another army, composed
of the Pale Lords and their retainers, still at issue with
the Legate, but staggering under threats of excom¬
munication. Ormond maintained himself with difficulty
in Dublin, supported by the Church of England loyalists.
Ulster was garrisoned by Monro and the Scots. To
these four parties and their various forces, whom the
miserable country was compelled to support, a fifth
was now to be added.
The war in England being ended by the surrender
of the King, Ormond found his own position no longer
tenable. The Pale Lords were too weak for the Legate
and the Irish, and concluding honourably that it was
better that Ireland should be governed by the Parlia¬
ment than fall into the hands of the faction on which
irel. 1. K
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
tlie guilt lay of the murders of 1641, Ormond surren¬
dered Dublin to the Parliament's officers, and left the
kingdom. Colonel Michael Jones brought strong
reinforcements in the spring of 1647, reorganized the
remnant of troops which Ormond left behind him,
and, after trying his strength with General Preston
and the Kilkenny army in two slight skirmishes,
caught Preston at advantage at Dungan Hill, hunted
his whole army into a bog, and cut it to pieces. The
defeat cleared the confusion. The Kilkenny Council
broke with the native Irish. The Legate withdrew to
Owen Roe, preaching damnation to the traitors who
were deserting the cause of Christ; and soon after he
shook the dust from his feet and returned to Italy.
Ormond came back at the invitation of the
1649
Council; the Catholic Lords, leaving Owen Roe
to his own devices, made a final peace with Ormond as
the king's representative, and prepared to act against
the common enemy.
Events in England appeared to favour their pro¬
spects. The ascendancy of Cromwell a.nd the army
created the same agitation among the Ulster Presby¬
terians as it had caused in England and Scotland.
They failed to see that Cromwell, and Cromwell only,
could give effect to what was true in Presbyterianism;
—that they were fighting for the husk, while the
substance was with the Independents and the Lord
General ;t and, on the news of the King's execution,
half Monro's soldiers declared openly for Charles the
Second. Prince Rupert landed at Kinsale, and the
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 131
broken remains of the Cavaliers came over in thou¬
sands to assist in saving Ireland. The peace had come
too late to save Charles; but it seemed for a moment
as if a coalition of enemies might revenge his death,
and that Catholic, Royalist, and Presbyterian, united
in common loyalty to the name of a king, would, in
Ireland at least, carry all before it. Ormond, with
Lord Taafe and the Earl of Castlehaven,1- led eighteen
thousand men into the Pale, seized Drogheda and
Dundalk, and proceeded to besiege Jones in Dublin.
Ormond was in haste, for he knew that he had no time
to spare. Cromwell, when his work in England was
over, had accepted the Irish command, and was pre¬
paring to put a close at last on these scenes of disgrace
and shame.
Owen Roe and his Irish still held aloof. With the
Kilkenny Lords his quarrel was irreconcilable; and,
forming a clearer estimate than others of Cromwell's
strength, he endeavoured to make a separate peace for
himself. It was a crisis in which English statesmen
cared more for principle than policy. At other times,
before and since, such a chance of dividing Irish in¬
terests would have been snatched at. But the stern
answer came back from the Parliament, f that the
innocent blood which had been shed in Ireland was
too fresh in their memory, and that House did detest
and abhor the thought of closing with any party of
Popish rebels.' To an ear which could still hear,
these words were as the doom of the judgment day.
1 1649.
£ 2
132 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
Owen Hoe perhaps felt it so, for he soon after died,
and was spared the sight of the vengeance now coming
for the atrocities of his kinsman, which none had
condemned more bitterly than he. Ormond received
before Dublin the same lesson in another form, though
he was less quick in perceiving its meaning. A few
regiments of the approaching English army having
arrived before the rest, Colonel Jones, thus strength¬
ened, sallied out on Ormond's camp at Bathmines,1
defeated him, took his artillery with two thousand
prisoners, and utterly routed him. The siege was
raised in haste. A fortnight later Cromwell had
landed.
1 August 2, 1649.
*33
SECTION y.
Justice to Ireland—-justice in all times and places—
means protection and encouragement to tlie indus¬
trious, the honest, and the worthy; repression and
punishment of the idle and the mutinous, who prefer
to live at their own wills on the spoil of other men's
labours.
The f earth-tillers ' of Ireland had, from immemorial
time, been the drudges and the victims of those of
their own race who, thinking it scorn to work, had
been supported by others' toil—who, calling them¬
selves rulers, were in no point morally superior to
their own wolves, and had nevertheless usurped to
themselves the name of the Irish nation, claimed before
the world to be the representatives of their country¬
men, and, while clamouring over their wrongs, had
meant only at bottom that they were deprived of their
own power to oppress.
It is in human nature, and beyond others in the
Irish form of human nature, that men should obey
and honour their boim superiors, however worthless
those superiors may be. Yet there is in the Irish¬
man's nature also a special appreciation of just dealing ;
and though the Celtic peasant is said to prefer the
tyranny of his own chiefs to the orderly rule of the
stranger, the experiment which of these two feelings
is the stronger has as yet scarcely had fair trial/
134 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
Justice, in tlie true sense, lias been tbe last expedient to
which England has had recourse in her efforts to har¬
monize her relations with her wayward dependency.
She has taken those who have made the loudest noise
at their own estimation. She has regarded the patriot
orator, the rebel, and the assassin as the representa¬
tives of Ireland. She has thought alternately, and
with equal unsuccess, how she can coerce or conciliate
those who give her trouble. How to encourage in¬
dustry and honest labour, how to prevent oppression
and save the working peasant from being pillaged by
violence or unjust law, she has rarely troubled herself
to consider.
For the first and last time a government was about
to be established in Ireland which, for the ten years
that it endured, was to administer the country in the
sole interests of honest labour—where the toiler was
to reap the fruit of his toil, the idle and the vicious to
reap the fruit of their devices. The perverseness of
tradition has made these years a byeword of tyranny.
They form the blackest page in Irish annals. The
victims of the Cromwellian settlement have had the
making of the history, and English carelessness and
prejudice have given them possession of the field. But
the last word is not yet spoken, and the Irish poor will
learn one day who have been their true friends—they
have not been troubled with very many.
Before Government could begin, however, Ireland
had first to be conquered ; and had Irish patriotism
been more than a name, the conquest would have
en. n.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 135
been impossible. The Confederate Catholics had re¬
presented themselves in one of their first programmes
as able, if united, to bring 200,000 men into the field.
Their factions were at last over. Owen Roe's fol¬
lowers, seeing no escape open to them, made up
their quarrel with the Kilkenny lords. All the force
which Catholic and Anglo-Catholic Ireland could
provide was at Ormond's disposition; and the Rath-
mines defeat had drawn closer the discordant parties.
The Ulster Scots had been driven into frenzy by the
execution of Charles the First. The English soldiers
in Ormond's army were some of the very best and
most determined that the Royalist party could furnish.
The Parliament held not an inch of land beyond
Dublin and Londonderry walls, and an invading force
would have to carry its supplies with it through every
mile of its advance. With these prospects, Oliver
Cromwell landed on Dublin quay on 15th August,
1649. The force which he brought with him was
small — nine thousand infantry and four thousand
horse. They were not soldiers merely: they had
entered the service on the understanding, that their
wages were to be Irish lands. They were to take
the place of those among the native proprietors who
by rebellion had forfeited their holdings. A vast
military Protestant settlement, extended over the
whole fertile parts of the island, was to terminate the
Irish difficulty at once and for ever. After stepping
on shore, the Lord General made a speech to the
remnant of the ruined colonists. As God, he said,
136 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I
had brought him thither in safety, he doubted not by
Divine Providence to restore them to their just liberties
and properties. To all who were zealous for the
establishing of truth and peace, to all who would assist
in restoring the bleeding Ireland to its former tran¬
quillity, he promised favour and protection from the
Parliament. General Jones's troops had Mien already
into Irish habits. Wages, as usual, had been irregu.
larly paid, and the soldiers, according to immemoi'ial
custom, had paid themselves by taking what they
wanted. Cromwell's first act was to publish, as a
standing army order, that no violence should be done
to any persons not in arms with the enemy; that
soldiers taking goods without payment should be
punished according to the articles of war; and that
officers who allowed the rule to be disobeyed should
forfeit their commissions.1
A fortnight sufficed for preparation. Ormond's
army lay in strong positions in and about Trim.
Several of the best regiments, almost wholly English,
had been thrown into Drogheda under Sir Arthur
Ashton, late governor of Reading. The safe keeping
of an open port was of great consequence. The best
skill in the Royalist service had been employed to
make the defences impregnable; and Sir Arthur
assured Ormond that he need be under no uneasiness.
Though Drogheda would naturally be Cromwell's first
object, Ashton undertook to hold it against any force
which could be brought against him till the winter rains
1 Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Carlyle, vol. ii. p. 161.
CH. XI.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
137
compelled tlie raising of the siege ; and lie was a man
who might he relied on to make good his words.
On 3xxl September Cromwell appeared under the
walls. lie waited a week, expecting that Ormond would
attempt a diversion, and give him an opportunity of
forcing an action in the field. Ormond, trusting to
Ashton's promise, did not move. The English guns
were placed in position. On Monday, 9th Sep¬
tember, they opened fire, and a summons was
sent in to the governor to deliver over the town to the
Parliament. No answer was returned; the guns having
broken a way, on Tuesday, at five in the after¬
noon the Parliament troops advanced to the
assault. The garrison fought with extreme courage.
Twice after forcing their way into the town the storming
parties were beaten back through the breach. The third
time, as the light was waning, Cromwell led them up in
person, forced Asliton upon his inner lines, stormed
those lines in turn, and before night fell was master of
Hrogheda. The summons to surrender having been
refused, the order was to put every man found in
arms to the sword. It was almost literally obeyed.
A few score held out till the morning in two detached
towers, and then surrendered at discretion. Eveiy
tenth man was shot; the remainder were sent to the
penal settlement at Barbadoes.1
1 The Irish histories say that
there was an indiscriminate mas¬
sacre of men, women, and children.
Cromwell's own account mentions
only men in arms and priests who,
as having been the instigators of the
worst crimes, were held less inno¬
cent than those who had committed
them. It is possible that, in such
a scene, women and children may
138 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
' I am persuaded/ wrote Cromwell, f that this is a
righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous
wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much
innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the
effusion of blood for the future, which are the satis¬
factory grounds to such actions, which otherwise could
not but work remorse and regret.'1
have been accidentally killed ; but
there is 110 evidence of it from an
eyewitness, and only general ru¬
mours and reports at second hand.
Of authentic evidence, in addition
to Cromwell's own letters, two
documents, one of them from a
Royalist, disprove conclusively the
story of a general massacre.
A printed official list of officers
and soldiers slain at the storming of
Drogheda, supplied to the Parlia¬
ment, brings the number to nearly
3000, besides many inhabitants.
The citizens in these instances
fought by the side of the troops,
and shared their fate.
A letter from an eyewitness to
the Marquis of Newcastle says:—•
1 Ashton doubted not of finding
Cromwell play a while, as certainly
he had done had not Colonel Wales'
regiment, after the enemy had been
twice repulsed, on the unfortunate
loss of their colonel in the third
assault, been so dismayed as to listen
before they had need to the enemy
offering them quarter, and admitted
them on those terms, thereby be¬
traying themselves and their fellow-
countrymen to the slaughter; for
Cromwell, being master of the
town, and told by Jones that he
had now in his hands the flower of
the Irish army, gave orders to have
all that were in arms put to the
sword. There were butchered near
3000 soldiers, and those reputed
the best the kingdom afforded, in
whose fate there is sadly observable
how great a number of them were
guilty of the breach of the unlucky
agreement made two years before,
between Lord Clanriekarde and the
Leinster army, at Sir Nicholas
Whyte's castle of Leixleap, several
of those that survived having perish¬
ed since, and few or none escaped
some remarkable affliction. The
massacre of Drogheda lopped off a
principal limb of my lord's army.'
For the treachery at Leixleap,
see Borlase's History of the Irish
Rebellion, p. 171.
Beling, mentioning the storming
of Drogheda, says that the whole
number of soldiers and citizens slain
amounted to about 4000. The
soldiers and officers killed were
about 3000; so that, if Beling's
account is accurate, and it will
certainly not be understated, the
so-called wholesale massacre is re¬
duced within narrow dimensions.
1 Letters ancl Speeches of Oliver
Cromwell, vol. ii. p. 177.
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 139
History, ever eloquent in favour of tlie losing cause
—history, which has permitted the massacre of 1641
to be forgotten, or palliated, or denied—has held up
the storming of Drogheda to eternal execration. The
English, though ready, when confronted with similar
problems in India or elsewhere, to use the same remedy
on lighter provocation, yet make a compromise with
their consciences, and, when the severity is over, and
the fruits of it in peace and order are gathered and
enjoyed, agree usually or always to exclaim against
the needless cruelty. The Irish insurrection had cost
nearly six hundred thousand lives. Those who had
suffered most had been those for whom pity was most
deserved—the weak, the sick, and the helpless. It-
was necessary to end such horrible scenes, and to end
them swiftly ; for every hour's delay only prolonged
the misery. The Drogheda garrison suffered no more
than the letter of the laws of war permitted; and the
wisdom of making a severe example was signally
justified in its consequences. Happier far would it
have been for Ireland if, forty years later, there had
been a second Cromwell before Limerick.
Ormond's army fell back as if stunned. Dundalk
and Trim, taught by frightful experience, surrendered
at the first summons. Wexford was the most im¬
portant position held by the Irish on the eastern coast
after Drogheda. Wexford pirates harassed the com¬
munication with England. The Catholic inhabit¬
ants had lately distinguished themselves by acts of
characteristic ferocity. They had filled a hulk with
140 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. X.
Protestant prisoners, and had sunk it in the harbour
there. They had imprisoned others in a Catholic
chapel and starved them to death.1
To Wexford Cromwell next addressed himself.
On the way he had occasion to show that his orders
against pillage were meant in earnest. Two soldiers
stole a fowl from a peasant's cabin, and were at once
hanged. Arrived before the gates he sent a summons
as before, with a promise that if the place was given
up at once the lives of everyone should be spared.
Not silent, like Ashton, but scarcely less imprudent,
the governor demanded security for lands and goods,
the maintenance in authority of the Catholic bishop,
protection for the religious houses, and generally all
privileges which Catholics could desire. Cromwell's
stern reply was an order to surrender in an hour.
The hour passed; the gates were not opened. The
town was stormed, and the garrison once more was
put to the sword.2
' I could wish, for their own good,' said Cromwell,
c they had been more moderate in the terms which
they demanded.'
These two terrible blows virtually ended the war.
Man for man, in a good cause, and under discipline
and command, the Irish were a match for any soldiers
in the world. Powerless only at home, disabled by
the consciousness of wrong-doing, like law-breakers
1 Letters and Speeches, vol. ii. p. killed in the chapel in which the
r. Protestants had been murdered.—
2 One or more of the priests was Letters and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 197.
CH. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 141
taken by tbe policeman, they were first bewildered,
then, as they collected their senses, they recognized
that they had to do with a person whom they neither
dared encounter in the field, nor could deceive or
trifle with in the game of words. Rebellion was
played out, and they had to choose between submission
and death. General Taafe1 attempted, before surren¬
dering Ross, to stipulate for liberty of conscience. f I
meddle with no man's conscience,' Cromwell answered
' but if by liberty of conscience you mean liberty to
exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing,
and let you know that, where the Parliament of England
has power, that will not be allowed.'2 General Taafe
had to accept the sentence, and go his way. The
mass, as a superstitious form of religious ritual, it
might be lawful, and even right to tolerate. The
mass, as a symbol of a Church whose supreme pontiff3
had applauded the insurrection of 1641, as his prede¬
cessor had applauded the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
it was not legitimate only, but necessary, to interdict,
till the adherents of it retired from a position which
was intolerable in civilized society.
The English of Munster, who had hitherto held with
Ormond, seeing now how events were turning, ^
with one consent went over to the conqueror.
Sir Charles Coote, in December, reduced the northern
Presbyterians. The Catholic bishops, in assumed
1 Lucas, Lord Taafe's second son. 2 Letters and Speeches, vol. ii.
His brother, a priest, had been p. 203.
killed at Drogheda. 3 Hihcrnia Anglicana, App. p. 15.
142 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. Lr>K- I.
horror of rebellion, continued to shriek against. f tlie
malignant murder of King Charles.' Emer MacMahon,
Bishop of Clogher, joint conspirator with Sir Phelim
O'Neil, made head in Coleraine. Coote set upon him,
defeated and took him prisoner, and the next day hung
him, and set his head on the gates of Londonderry.
Cromwell himself, after breaking the neck of the
coalition, went back to England ; but others could
now finish the meal which Cromwell had carved.
Ormond a second time left Ireland. Prince Rupert
had gone long before. Clanrickarde still struggled
feebly; but those who were loudest for fighting to the
last were manoeuvring secretly to make private terms
for themselves. ( The Irish,' said Castlehaven, ' are so
false that nobody is to be trusted; either the husband
or the wife are treating with the enemy, and in their
camp.' The Duke of Lorraine was appealed to passion¬
ately for help in the name of the young King. The
Duke answered coolly, ' that his majesty had nothing
in Ireland to treat for.' In the spring of 1652, Galway,
the last stronghold which the Irish held, capitulated
to Coote. Ross Castle, on Killarney, continued defiant,
and was thought impregnable; but Ludlow carried a
vessel over the mountains in pieces, launched and
armed it, and Ross gave in. Lord Muskerry and
Lord Westmeath, who were in the mountains, laid
down their arms, and all was over.
The remnant of the Ulster murderers who had
survived the wars, remained to be brought to
1652 late justice. A High Court of Justice, under
cn. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 143
General Fleetwood, was Held at Kilkenny, in the hall
of the assembly, to try them. Sir Phelim (FNeil and
two hundred others were convicted and executed. All
the rest had been consumed in a war, the waste of life
in which, compared with the population of the country
exposed to its ravages, stands unparalleled in the
annals of mankind.
144
SECTION VI.
Ireland was now a blank sheet of paper, on which
the English Commonwealth might write what
1652-60 ° .
characters they pleased. Owing to the double
character which the rebellion had assumed, there was
scarcely a Catholic landowner who had not, in one form
or other, exposed his property to confiscation. The
royalist English families who had gone with Ormond
were in no better condition; and it was neither reason¬
able nor tolerable that the cost of restoring peace
should be thrown on the taxpayers of England. The
common sense of all nations declares, that those who
risk the game of insurrection shall pay the penalty
of failure, and the enormous misery created by civil
war renders the punishment of it imperative on the
conquerors. The generosity of motive, or the mis¬
taken sense of duty, which may prompt men to take
arms against their government, exempts them from
the personal detestation which is the due of baser
criminals; but the character of those misleading influ¬
ences makes severity more necessary, as a counter¬
weight to imaginative seductions. No government
deseiwes to exist which permits those who have defied
its authority to suffer no worse consequences than dis¬
appointment, and to remain with unimpaired means to
renew the struggle at another opportunity.
The character of landed tenures—it cannot be too
CH. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 145
often repeated — renders forfeiture tlie appropriate
retribution. Private ownership in land is permitted
because Government cannot be omnipresent, and
personal interest is found, on the whole, an adequate
security that land so held shall be administered to the
general advantage. But seeing that men are born
into the world without their own wills, and, being in
the world, they must live upon the earth's surface, or
they cannot live at all, no individual, or set of indi¬
viduals, can hold over land that personal and irre¬
sponsible right which is allowed them in things of
less universal necessity. They may obtain estates by
purchase. They may receive them as rewards of
service, or inherit them from their ancestors. But
the possession, however acquired, carries with it hon¬
ourable and inseparable consequences in the respect,
the deference, or even positive obedience which the
possessor receives from the dependants by whose hands
those estates are cultivated, and with the privilege
is involved the responsibility. To some extent at
present—to a far greater extent two centuries ago
—the owner of the soil was the master of the fortunes
and the guide of the allegiance of his tenants. He
was an officer of the commonwealth — the natural
governor of tens, hundreds, or thousands of human
beings committed to his charge. If he was false to his
trust, the sovereign power resumed its rights, which
it had never parted with; and either sold or gave his
interest, and his authority along with it, to others who
would better discharge the duties expected of them.
IUEL. T. £
14S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [>:. it.
Times are changing, and suck theories may be
passing out of date. At best they could never be acted
upon more than approximately. In violent convulsions
however, when existing organizations are torn in pieces,
principles form the only guide. The Irish proprietors
had become intolerable. They were dismissed, and
their room was supplied by better men.
It will be remembered that, in 1642, the English
Parliament, in consequence of the dimensions which
the rebellion had then assumed, confiscated between
two and three million acres of Irish soil. Debenture
bonds were issued payable in land when the country
should be reconquered. Bonds for a million acres had
been taken up, and money had been raised on them,
for the troops sent to Ireland previous to Cromwell's
arrival. Similar debentures were issued afterwards
for Cromwell's own army, not thrown upon the market
like the first, but given to the soldiers in lieu of their
pay, and the time was come when all these engage¬
ments were to be redeemed. The intention was, that
the men who conquered Ireland should remain to hold
it. The country was to be occupied, in old Roman
fashion, by military colonies.
The scheme, though admirable in conception, could
only be executed imperfectly. Many of the soldiers,
in want of money, had sold their bonds. Keen-eyed
capitalists, like Dr. Petty, hung about the army, and
the sale of debentures became a trade. The officers
bought from the men, the men bought from one
another. The thrifty and prudent kept their claims,
ch. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
147
the improvident and careless were weeded out. Yast
numbers, however, remained. Adventurers came from
England to take the place of those who were unwilling
to stay. There was a fair prospect that Munster and
Leinster might be settled and occupied as completely
as the six counties had been. The whole country was
carefully surveyed; and a court was established to
examine the claims, and assign to every bondholder his
share.
The principles of the Oromwellian settlement were
generally these. The surviving population was esti¬
mated by Dr. Petty at about 850,000, of whom 150,000
were English and Scots. Experience had shown too
repeatedly that when the English and Irish were in¬
termixed, the distinctive English character in a few
generations was lost. To prevent a recurrence of a
transformation so subtle and so dangerous, Cromwell'
determined to make Connaught into a second Wales.
The Western province had a natural boundary in the
Shannon. Beyond this deep and effectual barrier, the
families of the chiefs, the leading members of the Irish
race—the middle and upper classes, as we should call
them, from whose ranks the worst elements of disorder
arose—might receive an equivalent for the lands of
which they were deprived. There living among them¬
selves they might die out or multiply as their lot might
be. A line of physical demarcation would then be
drawn between the Teutonic and Celtic population.
Ulster, Munster, and Leinster would be the exclusive
possession of Protestant English and Protestant Scots,
l 2
I4S
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 1.
reinforced, it might be, by Calvinist fugitives from the
Continent. The Irish peasantry might be trusted to
remain under their new masters, if the chiefs of their
own biood were removed; and with peace, order, and
good government, and protected from spoliation, they
might be expected to conform, at no distant time, to
the habits, language, and religion of their conquerors.
The f Swordsmen/ those who had been out in the
war, were offered the alternative of Connaught 01*
exile. Some chose the first, the larger number chose
the second, and went, with the most devoted of their
followers, into the French, Spanish, and Austrian
services. The Catholic priests were more sharply
dealt with. They were declared, in a sweeping judg¬
ment, guilty of high treason, and ordered to depart.
A thousand of them hastened away of themselves; but
as many or more remained, and it was a question what
to do with them. At first, such of them as did not
remove of their own accord were put on board vessels
bound for Spain. This proving no deterrent, they
were sent to the Barbadoes settlement. Finally, when
the numbers arrested were too great to be so provided
for, they were removed to two islands in the Atlantic,
the Isle of Arran and Inis Bofin, where cabins were
built for them, and they were allowed sixpence a day
for their maintenance.1
1 I cannot pass over tliis part of
my narrative without making my
acknowledgments to Mr. Prender-
gast, to whose personal courtesy I
am deeply indebted, and to whose
impartiality and candour in his
volume 011 the Cromwellian settle¬
ment I can offer no higher praise
than by saying, that the perusal of
it has left on my mind an impression
CH II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 149
On these principles Ireland was laid ont and re¬
settled by Cromwell's officers. In the apportionment
of the claims the soldiers were ashed whether their
lands should be selected by authority for them, or
divided by lot. They answered remarkably, f that
they would rather take a lot upon a barren mountain
as from the Lord, than a portion in the most fruitful
valley upon their own choice.' Both methods were
adopted in the final decision. The regiments were
kept together in bodies; the lot determined the situa¬
tion of individuals. ' They were settled down regiment
by regiment, troop by troop, company by company,
almost 011 the lands they had conquered.'1 The peasants
remained under them in their natural homes, as their
under-tenants, or farm servants. They built and
planted, they drained and ploughed. They went to
work with heart and will in the homes which they had
earned; and, by the natural enchantment which gives
to order and industry its immediate and admirable
reward, the face of Ireland began, once more, to wear
a look of quiet and prosperity.
The disorderly elements could not, at once and
altogether, be removed. In inaccessible hiding-places
—in the bogs and mountains, and still enormous forests
—bands of outlaws "who had escaped Connauglit lurked,
under the name of Tories, and continued a war of
precisely opposite to that of Mr.
Prendergast himself. He writes as
an Irish patriot—I as an English¬
man ; but the difference between
us is, not on the facts, but on the
opinion to be formed about them.
1 Prendergast.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. i.
plunder and assassination.1 Their extirpation was a
tedious process. The leaders were identified, and out¬
lawed by name, and, when they refused to give them¬
selves up, a price was set upon their heads, which their
own comrades were willing to earn. ' The Irish bring
them in,' said Major Morgan. f Brothers and cousins
cut one another's throats.' It was a hateful method,
yet, under the circumstances, an inevitable one. The
colonists found themselves shot at in the woods and
fields, and their farmsteads burnt over their heads.
They used the readiest means of ridding themselves of
enemies whom they regarded as no better than wild
animals—wild animals, or even worse. Yet even these
poor wretches scarcely deserve the sarcasm of their
modern champion. 'Yo wonder they betrayed each
other,' says Mr. Prendergast, 'when there was no
longer any public cause to maintain.'
Such was the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland—•
unrelentingly severe on the authors of the chronic
1 'Accustomed,'says Mr. Pren¬
dergast, ' to their own submissive
rural classes, who represented the
defeated and subdued Saxons, the
English expected that the Irish
would submit. They little knew
the hearts, full of the noblest fire,
that beat under the poorest rags in
Ireland.'
' Father Plunket,' Mr. Prender¬
gast continues, ' a friar of English
race,' was employed to persuade the
people into quiet. ' He reported
they would rather pull God out of
his throne, or throw themselves
headlong into the sea, than become
loyal to the crown of England.'
Such a state of feeling implies,
no doubt, extraordinary ill-success
on the part of the English in their
task of governing Ireland. But
an archical insubordination is neither
a noble quality in itself, nor is it
ever successful in obtaining its ends.
Hearts really ' full of the noblest
fire,' when they cannot resist hon¬
ourably, understand how to yield
manfully. The road to freedom has
never been found to lie through
murder and incendiarism.
CH. ii.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 151
misery under which the island had so long lain para¬
lyzed, infinitely favourable to her future prospects if
the wound, at last cauterized, was never allowed to
reopen. The owners of the soil had forfeited their
rights, and were deprived of them. The religion out
of which the worst of their crimes had originated was
proscribed. These two things accomplished, Ireland
was identified with England, and made a full parti¬
cipator in every advantage which England possessed.
The separate Parliament—fruitful mother of so much
mischief—was swept away. The Irish representatives
came to Westminster, and the two countries were made
one under Cromwell's administration. For the first
and last time, the sole object of the English Govern¬
ment was to further, to the utmost possible degree, the
advancement and prosperity of Irish industry. Even
the expatriation to Connaught was conceived and
carried out in no ill-will to those who were removed.
fNo one,' says Clarendon, fwas exported who had not
forfeited his life by rebellion; and it was the only way
to save them from utter destruction : for such was their
humour, that no English man or woman could stray a
mile from their homes, but they were found murdered
or stripped by the Irish, who lay in wait for them; so
that the soldiers, if they had been allowed to remain
in the country, would have risen upon them and totally
destroyed them.'1 There were plenty of persons, with
Scripture arguments to back them, who advocated
harsher work. ' The object,' said a Petition of Officers,
1 Life of Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 42.
152
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
' is to prevent those of natural principles1 from being
one with the Irish as well in affinity as idolatry, as
many thousands did who came over in Queen Elizabeth's
time, many of whom have had a hand in the murders
and massacre. The order to the Israelites was to root
out the heathen, lest they should cause them to forsake
the Lord their God.'
The argument was apposite, and, as the event
proved, not ill-grounded. But had Cromwell's mode
of government been persisted in — had there been
no relapse into the old combination of iniquity and
feebleness—events would have justified his resolution.
He meant to rule Ireland for Ireland's good, and all
testimony agrees that Ireland never prospered as she
prospered in the years of the Protectorate. He
yielded nothing which he held essential. He allowed
no penal statutes to be hung out, like scarecrows, to
be a jest and mockery. The execution of the soldiers
who stole the fowl was the symbol of the entire ad¬
ministration. He allowed no wrong-doing—no tyran¬
nous oppression of the poor. Ireland's interests were
not sacrificed to England's commercial jealousies. A
prosperous woollen manufacture had been set on foot
by James the First's colonists. The British weaving
interest took alarm, and Strafford, to please England
and weaken Ireland, destroyed the trade.2 Cromwell,
1 I. e. men without saving grace.
2 ' The Irish have wool in great
quantities, and if they should
manufacture it themselves the Eng¬
lish would not only lose the profit
they made by indraping the Irish
wool, and his majesty suffer in his
customs, but it was feared the
Irish would at last beat them out
of the trade itself by underselling
CH. II.]
THE INSURRECTION OF 1641.
153
recognizing no difference between the two countries,
removed Strafford's obstructions, encouraged manu¬
factures of every description, and gave entire liberty
of trade.1 The vice of Ireland was idleness; there¬
fore, by all means, he stimulated industry. lie abol¬
ished license, which the Irish miscalled liberty. lie
gave them instead the true liberty of law and wise
direction; and he refused to sacrifice to English
selfishness any single real benefit which it was in his
power to confer.
TJnguentem pungit, pungentem Hibernicus ungit. So
said a Hibernian proverb. The worst means of
governing the Irish is to give them their own way.
I11 concession they see only fear, and those that fear
them they hate and despise. Coercion succeeds
better: they respect a master hand, though it be a
hard and cruel one. But let authority be just as well
as strong; give an Irishman a just master, and he will
follow him to the world's end. Cromwell alone, of all
Irish governors, understood this central principle of
Irish management. He was gone before his adminis¬
tration could bear fruit in the feeling of the people,
and history remembers only in him the avenger of the
massacre. Yet, three years only after the settlement,
General Fleetwood could write that the country was
them. He considered further that,
in reason of state, so long as the
Irish did not indrape their own
wool, they must of-necessity fetch
their clothing from England, and
consequently in a sort depend on it
for their livelihood, and be disabled
to cast off that dependence with¬
out nakedness to themselves and
their children.'—Carte's ( rmond.
1 Arthur Young on Ireland, vol.
ii. p. 178.
154 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
perfectly quiet; Englisli people, if tliey would come
over and buy land, would find Ireland little different
from home; considering what the devastation had
been, the 'plenty' that had sprung up was' wonderful.'1
The English of all sorts, Munster Royalists as well as
the new settlers, submitted heartily and loyally. The
Presbyterians remained unforgiving,2 but they were
left unmolested, by-and-by to reap as they had sown.
The well-disposed among the Irish were reconciled
sooner than might have been expected to a rule which
gave them the reality of protection. Not a few of the
old sort, who had escaped the weeding, were taking
advantage of openings that offered themselves, and
renting lands from settlers who wished to return to
England.3 Priests and dispossessed proprietors were
hiding in disguise among the tribes, making mischief
where they Were able. But the peasantry seemed
proof against seduction. ' The mere husbandmen/
wrote Dr. Jones1 to Fleetwood, ' being now in very
1 ' Fleetwood to Thurloe, June
iS, 1655.'—Thurloe Papers.
~ ' Our dissenting, but I hope
godly, friends in this country carry
such a jealousy with the present
magistracy and ministry as I am
weary of hoping for accommoda¬
tion : everywhere they are unani¬
mous and fixed in separating from
us even to the ordinance of hearing
the Word.'—£ Nathaniel Brewster
to Thurloe, October 12, 1656.'
3 ' Here is one Marcus O'Decies,
who has been a notable trooper and
lieutenant of foot in the Irish army.
This man hath taken six or seven
great townlands from several land¬
lords, but lying together, whereby
he liatli many patrons to excuse
his transportation. Those lands he
hath planted all with strangers un¬
known in these parts. They behave
themselves proudly, not like other
churls, and under colour of plough¬
ing are able to make up among
them a reasonable good troop of
horse.'—'Dr. H. Jones to Fleet¬
wood, Dublin, January 23,1656-7.'
Thurloe Papers.
CH. II.] THE INSURRECTION OF 1641. 155
good condition, will hardly he driven into action.
What their priests may persuade them to I know not ;
I am confident the gentry will never be able to move
them from their resolution to enjoy their present ease
and quiet as long as by the State it shall be permitted
to them/2
Had the system thus established been continued
for a few more years, the industrial advantages of
Ireland, the abundance of soil, the cheapness of
labour, the boundless quantities of admirable wool,
the unrivalled rivers and harbours, could not have
failed to have attracted thither energetic men from
all countries, who, in turning the national resources
to account, would have acquired permanent mastery
over the old inhabitants. Romanism, sternly re¬
pressed, must have died out, as Protestantism died
in Spain and Italy. Industry wTas everywhere alive,
creating wealth and comfort, order and organization.
Intelligent and just authority laid an effectual
bridle on rebellion, and the progress made by
Ireland in the following century, when the most
beneficial of these conditions was unhappily absent,
and only the most galling were retained, encourages a
belief that, had Cromwell's principles been accepted
as the permanent rule of Irish administration, the
lines of difference between the two countries, now as
marked as ever, and almost as threatening, would
have long ago disappeared.
1 Afterwards Lisliop of Meath. 2 Thurloe Tapers.
i?6
CHAPTER III
THE REVOLUTION.
SECTION I.
HE problem wliicb presented itself on tbe Restor¬
ation of the Stnarts was incapable of ^
equitable solution. The Anglo-Irish leaders
of the rebellion of 1641, who, previous to the rising,
had undoubtedly received encouragement from Charles
the First—who, in the course of the civil war, had
given money and sent regiments to England to fight
011 the royal side, and had received their final defeat
from Cromwell himself, expected naturally to be re¬
stored to their estates, and to see the Parliamentary
adventurers, and the soldiers who had been the instru¬
ments of their oppression, flung out from the lands
which they had usurped. The perplexed and Protean
insurrection had settled itself at last into the form
which, as originally designed, it was to have assumed
from the first—a defence of the Crown against the
Parliament. All parties and both religions had ac¬
cepted the King's viceroy as their leader. The wreck
of the Royal army had crossed from England, and
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
157
had received their last overthrow in the Irish ranks,
and in defending Irish towns. Even the Nuncio
himself, the leader of the party most "bitterly antagon¬
istic to England, had been recognized by Charles as
a friend.
All factions—Ormond's own original Royalists, the
Lords of the Pale, and the Irish of Owen Roe—had
"been included in a common confiscation. All guilty
alike in the eyes of the Commonwealth, they expected
to be regarded in the Restoration as alike deserving-
reward ; or, if not reward, at least replacement in the
properties which they had lost in the King's service.
It was no less true, on the other hand, that the
rebellion, whatever the differences of opinion among
its chiefs, had been at its commencement a revolt of
Ireland against England, and as such denounced and
disavowed by the King himself. It had been a fero¬
cious effort of the Irish race to shake off English
authority, to exterminate the English settlers and the
Protestant religion. It had been attended by horrors
and atrocities which had burnt themselves indelibly
into every Saxon memory; and the Cromwellian
conquest had been in fact a resubjugation of Ireland
by England, and in the name of England. English
authority had been, for the first time, completely
established over the whole island, and it was as little
likely that England would consent to part with the
fruits of a victory so precious and so dearly bought
as that the English settled there would yield up,
without a struggle, their just reward for the blood
158 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
which, tlicy had sacrificed. The Cromwellians could
only be ejected by arming the native Irish against
them ; and the bare attempt or mention of sucfii a step
would have cost Charles his hardly recovered crown.
By all technical forms—by engagements written and
spoken—by the indisputable truth that, before their
final defeat, they had all been accepted by the King
as loyal subjects, and were all in arms in his favour,
his honour was pledged to do justice to the Irish
Catholic landowners. By the essential facts of the
case, which if he disregarded he must return to exile
—by his duty to Ireland itself, which, brief as had
been its period of repose, was rising into prosperity
such as it had never known before, under the impulse
of the vigorous race which had been established there
by the late Protector, he was compelled to leave un¬
touched in a large degree the disposition by which
the old owners of Ireland had been either driven
beyond the Shannon, or converted into landless
exiles.
As soon as it became clear that Richard Cromwell
would be unable to hold his place, his brother Henry,
who was then in command in Ireland, with a loyalty
supremely honourable to him, acquiesced without con¬
dition or stipulation in the restoration of the Stuarts.
He was popular with all parties; he might have made
a party among, his father's soldiers strong enough to
have enabled him to make terms for his own Irish
estates. The revolution was too momentous to allow
him to remember so small a matter as his personal
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
159
interest. Smaller men were naturally less high-
minded. After Henry Cromwell, the two persons
most trusted by the Protector were Sir Charles Coote,
who had assisted so efficiently in ending the rebellion,
and Hoger Boyle, Lord Broghill, third son of the
great Earl of Cork. Both had acquired enormous
estates under the new settlement. Their influence
with the army was second only to that of Henry
Cromwell, and seeing how the tide was running, and
foreseeing the difficulties which would arise, they
were among the first, in the army's interests as well
as their own, to speak of the Bestoration, and to bind
the King to them by inviting his return.
The Court of Charles on the Continent was
thronged with exiled Irish patriots. No sooner was
the approaching change known, than of course he was
beset on all sides by clamours for reparation. He put
the petitioners off with promises till he was established
in England. In the autumn of 1660 a Commission
sate at Westminster, to consider their claims; and
counsel were heard on their side.
The first attempt was for a really equitable com¬
promise. Sir James Barry, the Irish Lord Chief
Justice, sketched briefly the history of the massacre,
some scenes of which he had himself witnessed. He
proposed that the Irish claimants should be heard in
detail before separate juries, and that those who could
prove that they had borne no share, direct or indirect,
in murder, should have their claims allowed. Some
test of this kind was at last ultimately adopted; not
i6o THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
however till 011 botli sides there had been much unreal
declamation. Sir Nicholas Plunket, who represented
the Irish; spoke with national fervour of their loyalty
and their sufferings in the royal cause. Lord Broghill
showed in answer, that the King's real friends had
been the Protestant army, which had been so for¬
ward in promoting the Restoration. To the Irish
professions of loyalty he replied by producing three
documents, which, considering how confused a busi¬
ness the war had been, proved practically extremely
little: an order from the Kilkenny Council, at one
stage of the conflict, to prosecute Ormond with fire
and sword; an offer of Ireland, from the same Council,
to any Catholic prince who would take the country
under his protection; and lastly an acknowledgment,
signed by the Irish leaders in the last campaign, of
the authority of the Rump Parliament. To have
served under Cromwell was at least as great an
offence as to have acknowledged the Parliament;
and the charge, as coming from Lord Broghill, partook
of an insolence which probably arose from a know¬
ledge that the cause was already privately determined.
The Irish deputies were dismissed, and the King
declared his resolution. He admitted the difficulty of
the case. The Act of the English Parliament under
which money had been raised by debenture bonds on
Irish forfeited estates, and on which half the confisca¬
tions rested, had been confirmed by Charles the First,
and he could not disavow his father's act. It was true
that, when English rebels were subsequently meditat-
CH. HI.] THE REVOLUTION. 161
ing regicide, he had himself made peace with his Irish
subjects, and had accepted their help to prevent if
possible that infamous crime from being consummated.
He did not deny that, in so doing, he had entered into
obligations which he ought not to forget. Yet to fulfil
these obligations under existing circumstances would
be against the interests of Ireland herself. The titles
of the adventurers and soldiers might not bear perhaps
minute examination, but he found himself, he said,
rather inclined to mercy than to law. He had made
up his mind to leave them undisturbed, or, if disturbed
from their present holdings, to allow them an equiva¬
lent in land elsewhere. The debentures still unpaid
should be acknowledged also. But while justice was
thus done on one side, the other should not be left
unconsidered. When every bond was settled there
would still remain vast estates unallotted with which
to reward the really deserving. Protestant Boyalists
like Ormond and Lord Inchiquin were to be reinstated
at once, and intruders settled on their territories were
to receive lands in some other place. Innocent Catholics
too, whose only fault was their religion, were not to
suffer, and should be replaced in their homes; and a
list followed of persons said to have merited partic¬
ular favour—the great Anglo-Irish Catholic nobles,
Clanrickarde, Westmeath, Dillon, Gormanstown, Fin-
gal, Mountgarret, Netterville, and many others, who
in their hard position, compromised as they had been
in many ways, and responsible for terrible bloodshed,
had vet desired throughout to confine the insurrection
III EL. I. M
162 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
within the lines of opposition to Parliament and the
Puritans as distinct from the English Crown.
There remained others—those who had been crim¬
inal, but had shown repentance, and had done good
service later, either in Ireland or abroad. Of these,
such as had accepted lands in Connaught were expected
to abide by their bargains. They might consider their
case a hard one, but no more could be done for them.
Those who had preferred exile might look for favour
in time, but must wait and be patient. English
families who had sold their interests at home, had
transplanted themselves to Ireland, and built and
fenced and enclosed there, could not at once be dis¬
possessed and ruined. Great changes could only be
accomplished by degrees. The innocent must be
provided for first.
Two classes of persons were to receive no favour
—those who had been concerned actively in the mas¬
sacres, or, if they were dead, their heirs and represent¬
atives; and, to balance these, the regicides, whom,
although it was through them, and only them, that
England had any authority left in Ireland to exercise,
the conditions of the case made it possible, and even
necessary, to exclude.
Thus the King hoped all parties would be satisfied.
The wicked would be deterred from wickedness
by such signal evidence of justice, and the good
be encouraged in loyalty by the favour and mercy
shown to them.1
1 'The King's Declaration, November 30, 1660.' 14 & 15 Charles
II. Irish Statutes.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
163
More than this Charles could not have done ; less
he could not have honourably tried to do. However
miserable in its consequences might be the overthrow
of Cromwell's policy, however fatal the redistribution
over the country of so many elements of mischief—
some measure of the kind was a price necessary to be
paid for the blessing of a restored monarchy.
No less inevitably followed the re-establishment of
the Irish Church, the dissolution of the short-lived
union, and the restoration of the political constitution.
Coote, created for his services Earl of Mountrath,
and Lord Broghill, created Earl of Orrery, presided
as Lords Justices at the re-inauguration of the Royal
authority. The Parliament met in Dublin on May 8,
1661. In 1641 the Catholics were in a majority. In
1661, so completely had they been crushed, out of 260
members they had but one. But the Protestantism
of the assembly made its task only the more difficult.
They had to declare themselves happy in the restor¬
ation of a sovereign against whom most of them had
fought. They had to condemn, as an atrocious usurp¬
ation, the power of which they had been the instru¬
ments, yet to maintain the fortunes which they had won
for themselves in the service of that power, to preserve
the reality of the conquest, and to fling a veil over it
of unmeaning phrases and hollow affectations.
They acquitted themselves with incomparable skill.
The first session was a short one. The Act of Settle¬
ment was not yet ready ; but, in congratulating the
King on his return, the members made haste to show
m 2
164 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [ek. T„
' that they were none of the seditious rebellious rabble
whom it had pleased the Almighty to suppress by the
might of his power, but loyal subjects, preserved alive
amidst the storms of persecution, who abhorred the
rebellion and traitorous murder and parricide of his
majesty's father of blessed memory.' In the eagerness
of their loyalty they discovered that his majesty's title
to the Irish throne ' did not descend from Henry the
Second, but from times far more ancient, as by authen¬
tic evidence appeared.' They could not conceal 'the
unspeakable joy' with which they welcomed the revival
of ' the true worship of God' among them, and civil
government re-established on the fundamental laws of
the land ; and, while it was necessary to enact that the
proceedings in the courts of law which had passed
under the name of the Protector should be held valid,
they insisted, notwithstanding, that the Protectorate
itself was ' a wicked, traitorous, and abominable usurp¬
ation.' 1
Ormond, raised for his services to a dukedom, re¬
stored to his estates, and with expectations of vast
additions to them, as a reward for his exertions, came
back the next year as viceroy. Parliament again met
in April, 1662, and the great question was now ready
for solution.
The preamble of the Act of Settlement2 was a
miracle of ingenuity. The Lord-Lieutenant was the
same person whose defeat by Cromwell had rendered
1 Statutes of the Realm, Ireland: 13 Charles II. caps. 1 and 2.
2 14 & 15 Charles II. cap. 2.
ch. hi.] THE REVOLUTION. 165
possible the confiscation wliicli was now to be legal¬
ized. Cromwell was to be disowned with exe- ^
cration ; yet his work was to be defended, and
the fruit of it secured; while Coote and Broghill and
the rest were to be made to appear as if they had
acted as subjects of a sovereign against whom they
were openly in arms.
After repeating the story of 1641, the murder of
many thousand English subjects, the universal rebel¬
lion which ensued, and the establishment of an Irish
government at Kilkenny independent of England, the
Act went on to say, ' that Almighty God had given
his majesty, by and through his English Protestant
subjects, absolute victory and conquest over the Irish
Popish rebels and enemies, so as they, their lives,
liberties, and estates, were at his majesty's disposition
by the laws of the kingdom.' ' Compelled by neces¬
sity/ and ' to prevent the further desolation of the
country,' ' certain of his subjects,' f during his majesty's
absence beyond the sea,' had enquired into the origin
of the rebellion, had dispossessed the authors of it of
their lands, and had sold or otherwise disposed of them
to persons who, by money or immediate services, had
contributed to the conquest; and these persons were
the same who, having secured the power in their
hands, had invited his majesty to come home, and
had yielded Ireland to his obedience. Iiis majesty,
after due consideration, had made known his pleasure;
and the Parliament, having weighed the character of
the insurrection, and the obvious intention of the
166 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. T.
promoters of it to eradicate tlie British inhabitants
and the Protestant religion, having considered the
blood and treasure which had been expended, and the
unspeakable sufferings which had been undergone to
reduce the kingdom to the obedience of the Crown of
England, declared themselves heartily gratified with
the King's resolution. ' The rapines and massacres
committed by the Irish and Popish rebels were not
only well known to the present Parliament, but were
notorious to the world.' ' The artifices which had been
used for many years to murder witnesses, suppress
evidence, and vitiate and embezzle such records and
testimonies as, made against particular persons/ had
failed nevertheless to suppress the truth; and the
rebels, having thrown off their allegiance to the
English Crown, 'had become subdued and conquered
enemies, and had justly forfeited their titles and
estates.' The Parliament, therefore, concluded that
all confiscations legitimately growing out of the insur¬
rection ought to be held good. The lands of those
who could prove that they had borne no part in it
should be restored, and the adventurers or soldiers in
possession of them should be compensated in some
other district.
A Court of Claims was established to examine each
case in detail, and the innocent were allowed to hope
that they should have speedy satisfaction.1 The
working of an act so vaguely worded depended wholly
1 Irish Act of Settlement: 14 & 15 Charles II. cap. 2.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
167
011 the temper of the juries before whom the cases
came. Innocence was a wide term. Guilt might
mean anything, from mere knowledge of the intended
rising—under which construction every Catholic land¬
owner in Ireland ivould fall probably within the ex¬
cluded list—to active participation in massacre, and
this could be traced to a comparatively insignificant
number. The Act was construed so favourably to the
Catholic petitioners, that more of the soldiers and
adventurers were removed than there was land else¬
where to satisfy. A million acres cultivated, or
capable of cultivation, remained undisposed of;
and to these were to be added the allotments of the
regicides, Ireton, Fleetwood, Ludlow, and others, who
had bought estates, or received grants of them to their
families. But out of these lands half of Tipperary wras
given to the Duke of York. Ormond's vast domains
had to be restored, with additions, as well as those of
the loyal Protestants and of the Anglo-Irish peers and
gentlemen who had been specially named by the King,
and whose claims Parliament had allowed. Many
settlers were thus ejected for whom no compensation
could be found; a second Act was found necessary to
save the Protestant interest, and the tendency of the
Court of Claims to decide in favour of the old owners
became still more evident from the compromise to
which the Protestant colonists found it necessary to
submit. By the 17th and 18th of Charles II. cap. 3
(1665), the soldiers, adventurers, and debenture holders
consented to accept two-thirds of their legitimate
168 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
claims, and those already in possession, to part with a
third of the land they held to secure an unchallenged
tenure of all that remained.
By this sacrifice sufficient was obtained to meet
all demands that could fairly stand scrutiny ; and, in
return, to put an end to the uncertainty which must
have otherwise hung over half the new holdings, the
period within which Catholic claimants of estates
must have proved their innocence was limited to the
current year. Witnesses died off; particular things
were forgotten ; and innocence would be considered
established unless proof of guilt was forthcoming. If
the challenge might be postponed indefinitely, no
tenure at all under the Act of Settlement could be
considered secure. There was a frank admission that
the object of the second Act was to defend the Pro¬
testant interest. So great had been the tendency of
juries to favour the native Catholics that a clause was
inserted directly ordering the Act to be construed
beneficially to the Protestants. The King, in return,
' that more old proprietors might be restored,' agreed
to abandon debentures which had lapsed to the Crown
where part of the purchase - money had been left
unpaid.1
Thus, amidst confusion and heart-burning, the
ownership of the land of Ireland became once more
determined.
According to tne Down survey, made at Cromwell's
order by Sir William Petty, the entire surface of the
1 Second Act of Settlement: 17 & 18 Charles II. cap. 2.
CH. HI.]
THE REVOLUTION.
169
four provinces contained ten million five hundred
thousand Irish acres.1 Of these a million and a half
were bog', mountain, and lough. Another million and
a half was coarse land, commonly called unprofitable.
Of good land, arable and grass, there remained seven
million five hundred thousand acres. The three
million acres of wild country had been left wholly to
the native Irish. Of the good land there had fallen
under forfeiture from the rebellion, five million two
hundred thousand acres, nearly all of which, before
October, 1641, had been owned by Catholics. Two
millions belonged to the Protestants planted by Eliza¬
beth and James, who had been the objects of the
massacres, and had recovered their lands under the
Commonwealth. Three hundred thousand acres were
the property of the Established Church, belonging
either to the bishops7 sees, or to the deans and
chapters. These had been left untouched, being-
designed for the support of Cromwell's ministry, and
reverted to the Church on the Restoration. Of the
five million two hundred thousand acres which had
been forfeited, there were given' back to Catholics,
under the two Acts of Settlement, two million three
hundred and forty thousand acres. Two hundred
thousand more were restored to Ormond, Inchiquin,
Roscommon, and other Royalist Protestants; a hundred
and twenty thousand were given to the Duke of York
—substantially, therefore, to the Catholic cause. The
1 121 Irish 196 English, but the estimate was too low. The entire
surface of Ireland amounts to about 20 million English acres.
i?o THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [kk. t.
rest remained to tlie adventurers and soldiers, or the
speculators who had purchased their shares of them ;
and to this remainder were to be added eighty thou¬
sand acres in Connaught, sold by the transplanted
Irish to Protestant capitalists.
As a total consequeuce of their rebellion, therefore,
the Irish Catholics, who, before 1641, had owned two-
thirds of the good land of Ireland and all the waste,
were now reduced to something less than one-third;
Sir William Petty appending to his summary the
significant remai-ks, that of the Irish who pretended
innocency, seven out of eight had their claims allowed;
that those who, either under this plea or under the
special favour of the Crown, were restored, received
their estates again enlarged by a fifth, as a compen¬
sation for their losses; that by forged feofments of
what was more than their own they obtained an
additional third; and, finally, ' that of those adjudged
innocents, not one in twenty was really so.'1
1 Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland.
i7i
SECTION" II.
Shorn of a third of the lands which they had regarded
as their own, and with an inevitable sense of insecurity
from the return among them of their irreconcilable
enemies, the Cromwellian settlers were even more
seriously disturbed by the re-imposition of the author¬
ity of the Established Church. The Independents had
not been popular in Ireland; the Presbyterians had
not forgotten or forgiven the execution of Charles the
First; and, in their hatred of a form of religion which,
except politically, was indistinguishable from their
own, they acquiesced in the restoration of the Epis-
copalianism which, in the days of Strafford, had tram¬
pled on them and tyrannized over them.
The proportion of Protestants to Catholics had
increased very considerably since the settlement. Of
the latter there were now 800,000; of the former
300,000. A hundred thousand were Scots, and al¬
most to a man Presbyterians. Of the English, hall
only were Episcopalians; the rest were Presbyterians,
Independents, or Quakers. The Establishment, how¬
ever, was the religion of gentlemen. The events ot
the last years had brought discredit on Nonconformity.
Bramhall came back, and was made Primate. Two
archbishops and ten bishops were consecrated at St.
Patrick's on January 27, 1661. They lost not a
moment in teaching Dissenters of all kinds that their
172 THE ENGLISH IN IS ELAND. [BK. I.
day was over—in teaching the Presbyterians especially
the value to them of that loyalty to the Crown which
had made them so bitter against the ministers sent by
Cromwell.
The Cromwellian settlers were almost all Noncon¬
formists, the Scots in Ulster wholly so. To insist
that no one should officiate who had not been ordained
by a bishop was to deprive two-thirds of the Protest¬
ant inhabitants of the only religious ministrations
which they would accept, and to force on them the
alternative of exile or submission to a ritual which
they abhorred as much as Popery; while, to enhance
the absurdity, there were probably not a hundred
episcopally-ordained clergy in the whole island. Yet
this was what the bishops deliberately thought it wise
to do. They carried through Parliament a second
Act of Uniformity. To the already stringent con¬
ditions of ordination they added another, which was
like the offspring of lunacy. Not only was every
clergyman to profess before his congregation his full
acceptance of the Prayer Book; he had to subscribe
a declaration that a subject, under no pretence, might
bear arms against his King; that he abhorred the
traitorous position which distinguished between the
King's person and the King's lawful authority; and
that the oath to the League and Covenant, which had
been generally taken by the Protectorate ministers,
was illegal and impious. No person, for whose poli¬
tical and spiritual orthodoxy these securities had not
been taken, was permitted to hold a benefice, to
cir. hi.]
THE REVOLUTION.
173
teach, preach, or administer the sacrament in any
church, chapel, or public place.1 The form of prohi¬
bition extended to the Catholics, the practice applied
only to the Nonconformists, who became at once the
objects of an unrelenting and unscrupulous perse¬
cution. There were seventy Presbyterian ministers
in Ulster. Eight only accepted the bishops' terms
and were ordained; the l'est were deprived, and, when
persisting in recusancy, were imprisoned.2 Jeremy
Taylor, the impersonation and special jewel of Angli¬
canism, who came over with Bramhall, to be made
Bishop of Down, and afterwards of Dromore, at one
visitation declared thirty-six churches in his diocese
vacant,3 and sent people of his own to supply the
empty pulpits. The miserable division, in the face of
the common enemy, thus condemned the Church from
the first to irremediable failure as a missionary institu¬
tion. It made no converts from the Catholics. It
checked instantly and decisively the immigration of
Puritans and Presbyterians from England and Scot¬
land, who would gladly have welcomed a refuge in
Ireland. The more serious of the Cromwellians sold
their holdings, and left a country which could be no
longer a home for them; and then commenced that
fatal emigration of Nonconformist Protestants from
Ireland to New England, which, enduring for more
than a century, drained Ireland of its soundest Pro-
1 17 & 18 Charles II. cap. 6.
2 Reid, History of the Presby¬
terians in Ireland, vol. ii. p. 267,
Killen's edition, where the list of
the expelled ministers is given.
3 Ibid. p. 263.
174
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
testant blood, and assisted in raising beyond the At¬
lantic the power and the spirit which by-and-by paid
England home for the madness which had driveu them
thither. Ulster partially recovered its freedom. The
Scots were too numerous aud too resolute to be put
down, and they wrung from the bishops at last the
connivance which was allowed to the Catholics. The
southern provinces were less fortunate. The few
families of Independents which remained were con¬
demned to spiritual isolation. So long as the first
owners lived they retained their own beliefs; but,
deprived as they were of school or chapel, they could
not perpetuate them. Liturgyand mass were to them
alike detestable. To church they would not go;
separate family worship they were unable to maintain;
and thus their children were swept into the Irish-
stream, became Catholics, like those among whom they
lived and married, and trod in the old steps of the
generation who had gone before them.1
1 The immense majority of the
soldier settlers left the country.
Lord Clarendon, however—(Henry,
eldest son of the Chancellor, Lord-
Lieutenant in Ireland in 1686)—-
probably underrates the number
that remained. ' Your majesty,' he
wrote to James II., ' is said to be¬
lieve that the gross of the English
of this kingdom' are fanatics of
Cromwell's brood, the offspring of
those who served in the rebellion
against your sacred father, which
I presume to say is a very great
mistake. There are very few of the
original soldiers and adventurers
now left, or of their descendants.
Of the latter not twenty families,
and no great number of the former.
The generality of those two great
interests sold their lots, many of
them to honest men, who, at the
King's restoration, brought with
them out of England to lay out
here what little remained of their
fortunes, and many of them to a
new sort of people, who are always
to be found where fortunes are to
be made, and who never had any¬
thing to do in the rebellion.'—The
Earl of Clarendon to the King, Au¬
gust 14, 1686.' State Letters, vol. i.
cir. in.]
THE REVOLUTION.
i7S
Had the Church possessed an expansive power of
its own, there would have been at least some com¬
pensation. But the Anglican system was a creation
of compromise. It was the religion of educated
gentlemen: it was not and could not be the religion
of the poor, to whom emotion stands in the place of
knowledge. The Established Church of Ireland pr-o-
duced many excellent and some great men ; but in
the eyes of the Celtic peasantry it was the cold symbol
of Saxon supremacy. It could neither compete suc¬
cessfully with the priests for the adherence of the
people, nor could it resist the influences to which,
through its connection with the State, it was itself
peculiarly exposed; while the Catholic complexion of
the Prayer Book was exceptionally unfortunate in a
country in which the development of Protestantism
was the condition of a settled government. ' The
state of the Church,' wrote the Earl of Clarendon to
the Archbishop of Canterbury, after Bramhall and
Jeremy Taylor and Leslie of Raphoe, and their brother
prelates, had worked their will on the Dissenters, 'is
very miserable ; most of the fabrics are in ruins ; very
few of the clergy reside on their cures, but employ
pitiful curates, which necessitates the people to look
after a Romish priest or Nonconformist preachei*, and
there are plenty of both. I find it an ordinary thing
for a minister to have five or six cures of souls, and to
get them supplied by those who will do it cheapest.
Some hold five or six ecclesiastical preferments worth
900k a year, get them all served for 150/. a year,
176
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 1.
and preach themselves perhaps once a year. "When
I discourse with my Lords Bishops on these things
I confess I have not satisfactory answers, but, with
your Grace's help, I do not despair of doing some
good, for many things are redressed without any
other difficulty than men's doing their duties. Several
of the clergy who have been in England have sent to
me to renew their leave of absence; and they must
return ; for absence without leave forfeits the prefer¬
ment, and none shall be licensed without good grounds.
The Archbishop of Tuam,1 after three years' absence,
is resolved to come over, and I hear is on his way.
Down and Connor2 has been absent six years. He
wrote to renew his license. I refused.'3
1 John Vesey.
3 Dr. Hacket, afterwards de¬
prived for simony.
3 ' The Earl of Clarendon to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, May 25,
1686.' State Letters, vol. i.
179
SECTION III.
The salt of English Puritanism was driven out of
Ireland at a time when Puritanism represented
the most genuine element in the English mind. 1663
The place of it was taken by speculators seeking their
fortunes, solid, hard-hearted men, indifferent to creeds,
and well contented with an establishment which left
them alone. Toleration of the Catholics was a natural
part of the same policy. The penal laws were sus¬
pended at the special instance of the King ; and once
more it was the reign of conciliation. Though half the
penalty had been remitted, the Irish had been heavily
punished. They would now, it was to be hoped, show
themselves duly grateful for the indulgence extended
to them.
The rebellion was not, however, to be forgotten.
The 23rd of October was set apart, by Act of Parlia¬
ment, as a solemn anniversary, to be observed with a
religious service and a sermon, ' in perpetual memory
of a conspiracy so inhuman and cruel as the like was
never heard of in any age or kingdom.'1 The new
Protestant gentry were shrewd men of business, who
meant to incur no more risks than they could help.
They had come to Ireland to push their way by English
energy and enterprise. Whatever their political opin¬
ions, they were well aware that, as the world then was,
1 14 & 15 Charles II. cap. 8.
irel. i. n
17S THE ENGLISH IN IE ELAND. [bk. x.
skill and industry were mainly Protestant virtues; and
if Ireland was to become,, as they intended, a second
England, Irish Popery, with its idleness and its faction
fights and slatternly habits, could not be allowed to
recover the ascendant. With their eyes open to the
manufacturing resources of the country, they passed an
act to encourage French, Flemish, and Dutch Protestant
workmen to come and settle among them. They
failed to see, that the cause which was driving out the
Independents would serve equally to keep out the
foreign Calvinists; but the natural sense of Saxon men
of business would probably have soon enlightened
them had free trade been continued, and had they felt
the absence of skilled labour. Before the days of coal
and steam the unlimited water power of Ireland gave
her natural advantages in the race of manufactures,
which, if she had received fair play, would have
attracted thither thousands of skilled immigrants. The
Presbyterians held their ground in Ulster with the
help of the now rising linen trade. Had other trades
been permitted to grow, and an industrial middle class
established itself in the southern provinces, they would
speedily have wrung adequate toleration from the
dominant Church. This one true and real justice to
Ireland, unhappily, was pi'ecisely what the reconstituted
government of England refused to allow her. By the
parties now and for another century in the ascendant
there, Ireland was regarded as a colony to be ad¬
ministered not for her own benefit, but for the con¬
venience of the mother country.
CH. in.] THE REVOLUTION. 179
So rapidly under the Cromwellian despotism had the
wealth of Ireland increased, that, having been brought
to the lowest depth of ruin, she was now able, after
defraying all her own expenses, to settle on the King
a permanent revenue of 30,000I. a year. Home jealousy
took alarm at a growth so rapid. Ireland, if allowed
free trade, would, it was feared, undersell England in
the world's markets. Profits would fall. The value
of real estate would fall. The best artisans would
emigrate to a country where land was cheap and living
inexpensive. English commerce was about to be
ruined for the sake of the unruly island, which was for
ever a thorn in her side. Ireland was admitted to the
benefit of the first Navigation Act of 1660. English
ships possessed no privileges which were not extended
to Irish. The export of Irish as well as English wool
to foreign countries was prohibited, because it was the
best in Europe ; the fleeces of France and Spain could
not be woven into the finest kinds of cloths without an
intermixture of the wool of these islands; and while
they retained the material the English and Irish weavers
retained the monopoly of the manufacture. Ireland
was not injured so long as each country alike might
export her own cloths. But the equality of privilege
lasted only till the conclusion of the settlement and till
the revenue had been assigned to the Crown. In the
Navigation Act of 1663 Ireland was left out. She had
established an independent trade with New England ;
it was destroyed. All produce of the colonies sent to
Ireland, all Irish produce sent to the colonies, had first
N 2
i So THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
to be landed in England and thence resliipped in
English bottoms.1 She had established a large and
lucrative cattle trade with Bristol, Milford, and Liver¬
pool. It was supposed to lower the value of English
farm produce, and was utterly prohibited. Neither
cow or bullock, sheep or pig, fat or lean, might be
transported from Ireland to England.2 Salt beef and
bacon, even butter and cheese, lay under the same
interdict.3
With the restriction of her chief exports, her ship¬
ping interest suffered a simultaneous eclipse. Such
direct trade as she retained was with France, Spain,
and Portugal, as if England wished to force her, in
spite of herself, to feel the Catholic countries to be her
best friends.
It was the beginning of a policy which was to be
persevered in till it had for ever blighted the hope
of Ireland becoming a prosperous Protestant country.
Further, however, it was not immediately carried.
The woollen manufactures and the linen manufactures
were for the present permitted to stand side by side,
and to compete with the productions of Ireland's
powerful rival. The saffron shirt of the Irish, of
native make, had been celebrated from immemorial
time. Lord Strafford had encouraged further a form
of industry which would give least umbrage in Eng¬
land. He had imported choice kinds of flax-seed,
1 15 Charles II. cap. 7.
2 18 Charles II. cap. 2. English Statutes.
s 32 Charles II. cap. 2. English Statutes.
CH. in.] THE REVOLUTION. 181
and given bounties on the cultivation. The woollen
manufacture, which he had discouraged, had been set
on foot again by Cromwell. The prohibitions of the
export of the raw material was an encouragement to
the native weavers, and Irish woollens were acquir¬
ing a name in Europe. The two trades were equally
thriving; and, had they been allowed to stand, there
would have been four Ulsters instead of one. As it
was, the reign of Charles the Second, notwithstanding
some absurd restrictions, and the more absurd religious
persecutions of the Dissenters, was looked back upon
in the next century as Ireland's golden age. The
Catholics had not recovered from their punishment.
They were indulged, and they appeared to be grateful.
Trade was busy and growing; and the tenure of
property was too insecure to permit absenteeism. The
spent force of the impulse which had been imparted
by the vigorous administration of Cromwell was not
yet exhausted ; and the tendency, though at a slacken¬
ing rate, was still forward and upward.
182
SECTION IV.
The Church meanwhile was making no converts.
^ The Catholics were recovering strength. Every
parish had its priest again, and friaries and
convents sprung up as if the laws against them had
been blotted from the statute book. The elasticity of
the permanent customs duties dispensed for the present
with the necessity of another Parliament;1 but the
suspension of the constitution could not last for ever.
At the next election the Catholics were prepared to
resume their privilege of voting. A Catholic majority
might easily be returned in the House of Commons,
and a collision of the creeds would be inevitable. The
Acts of Settlement had done too much or too little:
too much, if Protestant ascendancy was to be main¬
tained and Ireland was to be treated as a conquered
country; too little, if the Catholic Irish were to be
really conciliated. Both parties felt, that with the
accession of a Catholic king the struggle must be
revived.
The f Tories ' continued to give trouble. The sons
of the dispossessed owners levied war upon the in¬
truders, supported by the sympathies of the people;
and, with a halo of spurious patriotism about them,
hung about the Protestant settlements, burnt the
1 After the session of 1665-6, no Parliament met in Ireland for
twenty-six years.
CH. in.] THE REVOLUTION. 183
farmhouses, and shot and stabbed their inmates.
The farmers armed in self-defence, and organized
themselves into regiments of militia, that there might
be no second surprise.
Dangerous influences were at work, even in
o ^
Charles's lifetime, at the English Court. The
• t • i^"°
secret advisers m Irish matters were the two
Talbots,1 Peter, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, and
Colonel Eichard—lying Dick, as he was called in the
London coffee-houses—known afterwards as the famous
Duke of Tyrconnell. Archbishop Peter was treated at
the Viceroy's Court with distinguished consideration.
He appeared in council in his episcopal robes. In 1670
he borrowed plate and hangings from the Castle for
a splendid religious celebration ; Lord Berkely, who
was Lord-Lieutenant, sending them to him with a
message that, in a few months, 'he hoped to see high
mass at Christ Church.' 2 Colonel Talbot prevailed
on Charles, in the following year, to reopen the Acts
of Settlement, and order an inquiry into the working
of them. The conspirators believed themselves even
then in a full career towards success, when they were
stopped by the English House of Commons, who in¬
sisted sternly that the acts should not be tampered
with ; that the Talbots should be sent about their
business ; 3 and the law be observed which disqualified
Catholics who declined the Supremacy Oath from being
1 Sons of Sir William Talbot, of
Cartown, Kildare, and related near¬
ly to tlie Talbots of Malaliide.
2 Harris, vol. i. p. 270.
3 Ibid. p. 274, 275.
184
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
members of corporations and in the commission of the
peace. The Papal party had shown their teeth too
soon, and slunk back out of sight; but with James's
accession the hour of triumph had come.
Let the enthusiasts who believe that Ireland can
be governed upon ' Irish ideas,' and that Irish Catho¬
lics can be contented with concessions which leave them
less than omnipotent, study the history of the last
attempt to do them 'justice' on these principles.
The first sign of what was coming was an order for
the Protestants to be disarmed. Ormond, whom
l686
Charles left at his death as Viceroy, and from
whom no help could be looked for in the measures
which James contemplated, was allowedto resign. Lord
Granard, and the Primate Michael Boyle, an old man
almost in his dotage, were made Lords Justices. By
them instructions were issued to take away the mus¬
kets of the militia, on pretence of preventing disturb¬
ances ; 'muskets of the militia' were construed to
cover the guns and pistols of the Protestant gentry;
and Sir Thomas Newcomen, Granard's brother-in-law,
when questions were asked in council said fiercely,
' that the English wanted no arms;' the work was
not half done, and ' he hoped they would never have
arms put into their hands again.'1 The Tories took
the hint, and went vigorously about their part of the
business. The Government could not proclaim them
for want of formal information, which the gentlemen
1 The Earl of Clarendon to Rochester, January 19, 1686.' Clarendon
State Letters, vol. i.
CH. III.]
7HE REVOLUTION.
were afraid to send in ; and a zealous officer at Cork,
Captain Aunger, who killed a notorious robber in
attempting to take him, was threatened with indict¬
ment.'' 1 Those who were not wilfully blind, saw plainly
how events were tending. There were still persons,
however, who could believe that if Protestant ascend¬
ancy were put down, and the two creeds be placed on
an equality, the lion and the lamb would lie down in
peace together; and, as long as plausibility and cant
of toleration would pass current, they formed a con¬
venient shield to the real purpose. The Primate
Chancellor resigned the great seal. Sir Charles Porter
was sent from England to succeed him. The Earl of
Clarendon was appointed Lord-Lieutenant; and James,
when Clarendon waited on him and took leave, gave a
distinct assurance that the Acts of Settlement should
be maintained. The Catholics as Catholics were to
have equality of privilege with the Protestants ; but
the Irish were still to understand that they were to
suffer the consequences of having rebelled.2 The
principle of the Government was to be religious toler¬
ation. Popery was to be no longer treated as a dis¬
qualification for office; and from this it seemed to
follow, that the anti-popery laws had been unfair, the
1 'Clarendon to Sunderland,
Jan. 19, 1686.' Letters, vol. i.
2 ' When the King sent me here
he told me, that he would support
the English interest, and that he
sent me that the world might see
that he would do so. They were to
have the freedom of their religion,
yet he would have them see too
that he looked upon them as a con¬
quered people, and that he would
support the settlement inviolably.'
—'Clarendon toKochester, October
2, 1686.' Clarendon Letters, vol. i.
186 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
rebellions against them justified, and tbe consequent
confiscation a crime. Principles, bow ever, were not
to be tested by tbe conclusions growing out of tbem,
and Clarendon came over witb an bonest intention of
carrying out bis master's wishes, so far as be under¬
stood those wishes. He was an Englishman, convinced
as bis father bad been, as every intelligent English
statesman bad been, that if Ireland was to be a whole¬
some member of tbe empire, the English interest must
be maintained. If he had been uncertain at his arrival,
a brief experience sufficed to show him what the native
race were, and what the country would become if
handed back into their keeping.1
The next practical step was the reconstitution of
the Courts of Law. The second Act of Settlement
appeared to preclude the revival of claims on the
Protestants' estates; but ingenious barristers could
find roads through statutes, if sure of a favourable
hearing; and it was therefore necessary to admit
Catholics to the bench. Clarendon made no objection,
but recommended that, if there were to be Catholic
judges, they should be Catholic Englishmen. He saw
1 ' It is sad to see the people—I
mean the natives — such proper,
lusty fellows, poor, almost naked,
but will work never but when they
are ready to starve, and when they
have got them a few days' wages
will walk about idly till that be
gone. If they cannot then get
work they steal. Their women do
nothing—not so much as spin or
knit; but have a cow, two or three,
according to the bigness of their
ground, which they milk, and on
that they live. Their houses are
pig-styes, walls cast up and covered
with straw and mud, and out or
one of these huts, ten or twelve
feet square, you shall see five or
six men and women bolt out as you
pass by, who stand staring about.'
—'Clarendon to Rochester, May 4,
1686.' Letters, vol. i.
cir. hi.]
THE REVOLUTION.
187
signs of uneasiness, he said, and apprehensions of
change; the Irish who had been restored by the Court
of Claims were as much afraid of re-opening so sore a
subject as the Protestants.1 lie advised—and his
opinion was endorsed by Chief Justice Keating, an
Irishman by birth—that if the King meant to admit
Catholics to high offices of state, he should first
appoint a commission to confirm the existing tenures,
and place the security of property beyond a doubt.2
The King, who had Colonel Talbot at his ear again,
listened neither to the Viceroy nor to the Chief Jus¬
tice. The judges in Ireland held their office durante
bene placito. All the Protestants except three were
removed, and their places filled by Catholics, one of
them, Mr. Justice Daly, being described by Clarendon
as c perfect Irish, of the old race, very bigoted and
national.' If equality of religion was to be the rule of
the Bench—a fortiori it applied to the secondary
offices. The army was thrown open and the commis¬
sion of the peace. Catholics were to be sheriffs of
counties. There had been Catholic sheriffs before
the rebellion, and therefore there might be Catholic
sheriffs again. "When Clarendon objected that they
must take the Oath of Supremacy, he was directed not
to require the Oath of Supremacy. The same rule was
applied to the Privy Council. The new judges were
introduced on the board, and most of the great Catho¬
lic peers.
1 ' To Rochester, May 8.'
2 ' To Rochester, March 14 and May 8, 1686.1 Letters, vol. i.
iSS THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
The hierarchy felt the ascending tide, and sounded
the war trumpet, disdaining disguise. A convention
was held at Dublin. Circulars were sent round by the
Bishops, directing lists to be furnished from every
parish of men able to bear arms.1 ' I wish I knew
how to act,' wrote the perplexed Clarendon to Lord
Bocliester. f If the Protestant Clergy were to hold a
convention without giving me notice, I would not
suffer them to meet. I would punish them for the
attempt, and I know the King would approve. These
meetings ought not to be held without the supreme
authority.' 2
The Protestants were honourably eager to prove
that they did not deserve mistrust. A Mr. Keating,
an Irishman, had been killed in a duel by a son of Sir
William Ashton. Ashton was in fault, and was put
on his trial. He excepted against every Catholic
that was empanelled. He was tried by a jury ex¬
clusively English, and the Irish clamoured that he
would be acquitted. He was found guilty and
hanged.
The exaggeration of justice was of course interpreted
into cowardice. The next step was to place the arms
of the militia beyond the reach of recovery. Chester
Castle was made the arsenal for Ireland ; and orders
1 ' I had lately an information
given me from a good hand to this
effect, that every parish priest
throughout the kingdom hath had
instructions from their respective
bishops, to give an exact list of all
the men in every of their parishes
which may be fit to bear arms, and
of what ability they are, and their
return is given to the several
bishops.'—' Clarendon to the Lord
Treasurer, May 15, 1686.' Letters,
vol. i.
2 Ibid.
CH. HI.]
THE REVOLUTION.
were given for the stores at Limerick, Athlone, and
Carrickfergus to be removed to Dublin, from tbence
to be shipped to England.
The generation which remembered 1641 had not
yet died out. The traditions of the massacre were
told by the fireside of every Protestant family, and the
circumstances which preceded it were all once more
present with the fatal aggravation, that the King was
now avowedly on their enemies' side, and there was
no longer a Long Parliament to hold his hand. Eng¬
land, it almost seemed, was running the same road,
and about to become Catholic itself.
Betrayed by their natural protectors, deliberately
deprived of the means of self-defence, and handed over
apparently to the mercies of exasperated and now
triumphant enemies, the Protestants began to set their
houses in order, and such of them as were able, to fly
out of the country.
' Never in my life,' Clarendon wrote passionately to
the King, f have I met with people fuller of duty to
your majesty, nor more desirous of opportunities to
manifest their loyalty.' ( The King does not believe
me,' he said, when he found remonstrance vain.
f Well, I have done my part. If the King finds his
subjects here desert the country every week, as I
am sure they do, perhaps I shall be believed
then.'1
Fast as the changes were hurried forward, the
revolution moved too slow for James's importunity.
1 'Clarendon to Rochester, June 3.' Letters, vol. i.
190 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
Colonel Talbot, promoted to the ominous name of Earl
of Tyrconnell, as if purposely to inflame the national
Irish spirit, was now sent over to quicken Clarendon's
hesitation. The army was to be remodelled. The
King, Tyrconnell said when he arrived, would not keep
a man in his service who had served under the Usurper.
The Protestant officers were displaced, and Irish
Catholics substituted. Since the sheriffs and magis¬
trates were to be Catholics, Clarendon had at least
nominated men of weight and station. The appoint¬
ments did not satisfy Tyrconnell. ' Moderate Catho¬
lics ' he was pleased to call f Trimmers.'1 ' By God !
my lord,' he said—every second sentence contained an
oath with him—f the sheriffs you made are generally
rogues. There has not been an honest sheriff in Ire¬
land these twenty years.' Tyrconnell and Nugent, one
of the new puisne judges, drew a list of sheriffs for the
year following, which Clarendon was forced to accept;
and the entire civil magistracy of Ireland was now at
the disposition of the Papist fanatics.
At length matters were ripe for the attack on the
Acts of Settlement. Tyrconnell introduced the sub¬
ject before the council in his peculiar manner.
' By God! my lord,' he said, rising from his seat
to speak, ' these Acts of Settlement and this new
interest are damned things ! '
Such words were unusual at the Council Board,
even in Ireland. The Viceroy interrupted him. f Their
business,' he urged, ' was to quiet men's minds, that
1 'To Rochester, June 15.' Letters, vol. i.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
the common interest might flourish, and trade and
revenue increase/
Tyrconnell was not to be stopped. ' We know/
he continued, 'the arts and damned roguish contriv¬
ances that procured those acts. I know it would
make a confusion if they were touched; but Mr. Jus¬
tice Keating and Sir John Temple told me that the
new interested men would give a third or half what
they have to secure the rest. I will say no move at
present; but, by God ! my lord, there have been foul
damned things done here/ 1
Tyrconnell was a remarkable specimen of a religious
leader. 4 In bare matters of fact/ wrote Clarendon to
Lord Rochester, 4 the truth will never be known from
my Lord Tyrconnell. It is impossible you can believe,
except you found it, as we do here, how wonderfully
false he is in almost everything he says.'
' Lying Dick,' however, such as he was, represented
the King's pleasure, and the Viceroy began to see
that he could no longer depend on James's words to
himself.
'All proceedings now look,' he said, 'as if the
King's mind was altered, and as if he intended a total
alteration. He consults only with the Irish whose
interest is to break the settlement. All power is in
the hands of the conquered nation, and the English,
who did conquer, are left naked, and deprived even
of the arms which by the patents of plantation they
1 'Clarendon to Rochester, June 8.' Letters, vol. i.
192 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. x.
are obliged to have in readiness for tbe King's
service.'1
A third of these grants had been sacrificed at the
second Act of Settlement. It was now broadly hinted
that a third or half of what remained would be further
expected of them. The moderate Catholics had desired
that the acts should be confirmed. Their advanced
representative on the council—the Chief Baron of the
Exchequer, Sir Stephen Bice—frankly insisted that the
acts must be repealed. It was assumed that, if time
had been allowed, every claimant for reinstatement
would have proved his innocence, and so have made
good his right. As a compensation for the long depriv¬
ation, Sir R. Nagle, the Attorney-General, proposed
that the ancient proprietors, who by the acts were
intended to be restored to their estates after the pre¬
sent possessors were reprised, should at once be put
in possession; and that the English occupants, after
twenty or even thirty years of occupancy, having built,
drained, fenced, and planted, and trebled or quad¬
rupled the value of the properties, should be paid oft
at the price of the original debentures.2
While judges and law officers spoke plainly, the
King still maintained an affected veil on his own inten¬
tions. He talked of summoning a Parliament; but
there was not a child of ten years old that could be
ignorant what a Parliament would do, assembled under
such auspices as the present. The most sinister
1 ' Clarendon to Rochester, October 12.' letters, vol. i.
2 ' Clarendon to Ormond, August 28.' Ibid.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
193
rumours were abroad. Clarendon continued to bope ;
but, sanguine as be tried to be, an autumn progress
through the south dispelled the possibility of illusion.
The priests forbade the people to appear at his levees.
Tyrconnell, not the Viceroy, was the representative of
James Stuart in Ireland.1 The next post from England
brought Clarendon word that he was in disgrace at the
Court. His recall had been determined, and Tyrcon-
nell was to take his place. Profoundly loyal as Claren¬
don was, he could not blind himself to what such an
appointment would mean. The English interest was
about to be sacrificed. The administration of the
country was to be thrown into the hands of a set of
men whose object was the same as that of the conspir¬
ators of 1641, though their road to it might lie through
less violent means. He had come over on a mission
of conciliation, and conciliation was found to imply,
extremely plainly, the extirpation of the Protestant
settlers. On the eve of his departure, he pointed out
to his brother his unwilling conviction that, unless
Ireland was to go her own way altogether, concession
to the Catholic clergy was a delusion and a folly.
f It is scarce possible for any that have not been
here/ he said, f to believe the profound ignorant
bigotry the nation here are bred in by the priests,
have forbid gentlemen to appear."
Says another, "We have among
us who pretend to govern and to
know more of the King's mind than
my Lord Lieutenant." '—' Claren¬
don to Rochester, October 2.'
Letters, vol. ii.
1 ' At Cork, some gentlemen of
both religions being together, and
discoursing with some wonder how
few of the natives had been with
me, a Roman Catholic priest in the
company, who will own it, said,
" Our people are mad : our clergy
irel. 1. 0
194 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. I.
who, to all appearance, seem to be as ignorant as
themselves. The generality of them do believe that
this kingdom is the Pope's; that the King has no
right further than the Pope gives him authority; and
that it is lawful for them to call in any foreign power
to help them against those who oppose the jurisdiction
of the Church, as has evidently appeared by the late
rebellion. And I do assure you the same principles
which carried on that rebellion have been since care¬
fully propagated, and are now too publicly owned.
True, many Roman Catholics declare against these
principles, and do detest them, even priests. But
these two things are observable ; first, that those who
detest those principles, and will not allow the Pope to
have so great an authority at this time when Roman
Catholics are put into all employments, are scarce
taken notice of, and upbraided with the names of whigs
and trimmers; and the children of the most active in
the rebellion, and those who set up the Pope's author¬
ity most, are in the employments; and secondly, not¬
withstanding the moderation of those Roman Catholics
I mention, not one of them will suffer any of the others
to be prosecuted for any offence they commit.'1
1 'Clarendon to Rochester, December 26, 1686.' Letters, vol. ii.
195
SECTION V.
The Irish believed that Ireland was theirs; that the
English were invading tyrants who had stolen ^
their land, broken up their laws and habits,
and proscribed their creed. The English believed
that Ireland was a country attached, inseparably, by
situation and circumstances to the English Crown;
that they were compelled to govern a people who were
unable or unwilling to govern themselves, and that
the spoliation with which they were reproached had
been forced upon them by the treachery and insubordi¬
nation of the native owners. Between these two views
of the same facts no compromise was possible. That
the Irish, being what they were, should bear the chain
impatiently was inevitable from the constitution of
their nature. It was no less certain that England
neither could nor would recede from the position
which she had taken up, and that, before the Irish
were allowed to be independent, they must win their
independence with the sword. Those who could look
beyond the moment, saw plainly that the struggle
which was recommencing must end at last in a con¬
flict between the two nations. Religion might serve
as a veil, for the present, over more vital questions;
and the religious question itself might conceal its real
nature behind the spurious plea of toleration. But,
even under the extravagant supposition that James
o 2
196
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 1.
could undo the Reformation and make England
Catholic again, no English Parliament would 01* could
consent that the settlers of English race should be dis¬
possessed, and that Irish rebellion, after its neck had
been so hardly broken, should be re-established in its
old strength. Tyrconnell meant to take back the
lands. England, whether Catholic or Protestant, was
sooner or later certain to interfere, and insist that it
should not be. For the moment, however, the Irish
were the winning side, and the game went merrily
along. Clarendon resigned the sword, paying a melan¬
choly but honourable compliment to the loyal hearts
of the Protestants, who were now to be made victims.
Tyrconnell, when he was installed, talked grandilo¬
quently, as James had done in England, of the immortal
principles of religious liberty, which were to be the
rule of his government; principles which, in practice,
were to mean that those who had been punished for a
detestable rebellion, which they were pleased to describe
as a religious war, were to be indemnified for their
sufferings at the expense of those who had punished
them. Chancellor Porter, as unavailable for the
purpose in view, was dismissed with Clarendon. His
office was given to Sir Alexander Fitton, whose
qualifications were, the having been convicted and
imprisoned for forgery, and whose merit in the King's
eyes was his being a convert to Popery. Protestant
officers were weeded out of the army; and the power
of the sword being now Catholic, Chief Baron Bice set
himself, as he described it, to drive a coach and horses
CH. ITT. 1
THE REVOLUTION.
197
through the Acts of Settlement: such statutes, he said,
' being contrary to natural equity, could not oblige.'1
The dispossessed families put in their claims. Out¬
lawries were reversed as fast as the courts could give
judgments ; and decrees of restoration were made out
so rapidly that it was said, 'if Pice had been left to him¬
self he would, in a few years, have given away most of
the estates of Protestants in Ireland without troubling
Parliament to attaint them.'2 Fitton said publicly
that, among forty thousand Protestants, there was not
one who was not a traitor, a rebel, and a villain. The
merchants and manufacturers being Protestants, and
in consequence governors of the corporate towns, the
corporation charters were revoked and cancelled, and
new charters issued, by which the Viceroy took to
himself the nomination of the aldermen. There was to
be no bloodshed; the work could be done by forms of
law, and there was no need of it. To make assurance
more sure, a second search for arms was made in the
Protestant houses. Their horses, swords, and pistols
were demanded, with a threat that, if they were found
with firearms in their possession for the future, ' their
lives and goods should be at the mercy and discretion
of the soldiers.' 3 The army, being Catholic, lived at
free quarters on the Protestant farms. Tories, lately
outlaws and bandits, received commissions as officers
in the King's service; and over those who had set
1 Life of William III. Harris, vol. ii. p. 8.
2 Harris, vol. ii. p. 8.
3 History of the Frotestants in Ireland. Archbishop King.
ips THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bic. i.
prices on their heads, they were left to work their will
as they pleased. Tenants of Protestant landowners
were bidden not to pay their rents, for the land would
soon be their own. Tyrconnell proposed to receive the
money meanwhile, to be used in the service of the King.
So went matters all through the year 1687, and f°r
ten months of 1688, when the news came that
1688 _ «
the Prince of Orange had landed, and that the
King was a fugitive. What now was to be the fate of
Ireland ? To those who believed in the foivns and
shadows of things the English revolution made no
difference, save that it might precipitate the severance
of the two countries, which the Irish so intensely de¬
sired. The Dutch usurper might be driven out again,
and the second revolution come to nothing like the
first; but should it be permanent, the King of England
need not be Kino; of Ii'eland. Ireland might remain
o o
loyal to James, though England disowned him. They
could fight against their old enemy, sheltered under
the same veil as the insurgents of 1641, keep still
within the limits of the constitution, and overthrow
the detested Pi'otestantism, while px^ofessing them¬
selves the devoted subjects of their lawful sovereign.
The membei's of the Established Church could not
oppose them. The bishops and clei'gy, in the exagger¬
ation of Royalism, had committed themselves to an
opinion that, ' under no pretence, might men take
arms against their king/ Tyrconnell, tyrant as he
might be, was still the representative of the lawful
prince. To resist Tyrconnell was to imitate the crimes
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
199
of Cromwell, whom it had been their special function
to anathematize. Secured against half the English
settlers from this singular reason, the fanatic Catholics
believed themselves safe in defying the rest. The
Ironsides, thanks to Bramhall and Jeremy Taylor,
were beyond the Atlantic. Except in Ulster, among
the persecuted Presbyterians, the English could count
on no friends in Ireland; and, without a party among
themselves, would be too weak to resist the reviving
energy of the native race.
There were others, however, longer-headed, like
Chief Justice Keating, on whom the experience of the
last rebellion had not been thrown away. Keating
warned Tyrconnell in council that in grasping at the
whole, the Catholics would lose in the end all that had
been left to them. Tyrconnell himself hesitated till
he saw how events would turn in England, and how
James would be received in France. He wrote
plausible letters, affecting a desire to come to terms.
"William, with England in confusion, was peculiarly
reluctant to court an Irish quarrel, and for some
months there seemed to be a chance of a peaceful
solution. The fanatics carried the day at last. Some
Irish regiments had been sent to England to support
James. They had thrown down their arms, and their
officers were under arrest. General Hamilton, who
was one of them, volunteered his services to William
to negotiate with Tyrconnell. His offer was accepted.
He returned to Dublin to tell the Viceroy that
W illiam's cause was desperate, and that in a few
200 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. t.
weeks, or months, James would be again on the
throne. The letters from France were equally en¬
couraging. Cannon were coming, and powder and
muskets and money; perhaps a disciplined French
army.
The uncertainty was at end. William's overtures
were construed into a consciousness of weakness, and
Catholic Ireland was called under arms. The property
of the Protestant farmers and gentlemen was gener¬
ally seized. Cows and sheep were driven off; ' all
was gone in three months, to the value of a million of
money.'1 What could not be consumed or carried
off was destroyed, that ' the damned Whigs might not
have the benefit of it.' The corn was cleared from the
farm-yards. A guard of soldiers surrounded the bake¬
houses, that no Protestant might purchase a loaf.2
The less reticent Catholics said publicly, f that they
designed to starve half the Protestants in Ireland and
hang the other half, and that it never would be well
till it was done.' 3
Passionate language was not to be construed liter¬
ally, but 1641 was not forgotten. When the Irish had
the bit between their teeth they were unrestrainable
savages; and this much they had determined, that, by
fair means or foul, Ireland was to be swept clean of
heretics. It was a less easy matter than Catholic
enthusiasm anticipated.
The siege of Derry, almost the only heroic piece
1 History of the Protestants in Ireland. Archbishop King.
3 Ibid. Dr. King was an eye-witness. 3 Ibid.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
201
of story which the long- chronicles of Ireland can
boast, does not need a fresh description. At the end
of 1688, an anonymous letter was addressed to Lord
Mount Alexander, telling him that there was to be a
second massacre. Whether such a design had or had
not been formed, the story seemed only too credible;
and in Ulster, where, though generally disarmed, the
Protestants were numerous, they formed associations
for general defence. The garrison of Derry had gone
to England among the troops which Tyrconnell had
despatched to James. Lord Antrim Avas sent with
another regiment to take its place. The inhabitants,
proud of their virgin city, which, through the ten
years of the last civil war, had kept their streets clear
of the Irish enemy, decided to refuse to admit him
till they had taken security for the character of his
soldiers. Ezekiel Hopkins, the Episcopalian bishop,
counselled submission; but the Derry Protestants
were mainly Calvinists, whose respect for kings and
bishops was not excessive. The apprentices closed
the gates in Antrim's face; and though they were
willing to admit half-a-dozen companies to take charge
of the town, they stipulated, successfully, that
half at least of the men should be of the same
religion as themselves.1
Enniskillen had been no less resolute. The gen¬
tlemen throughout Ulster anned their tenants as well
as they were able, and re-established their disbanded
militia. James, it was now known, was coming in
1 March, 1689.
202 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
person to Ireland; and Tyrconnell, to secure the
North, at once sent down a strong force to disperse
these incipient gatherings and seize the two towns.
The militia, under command of Colonel Lundy, a feeble
and perhaps treacherous officer, was easily broken up.
Lundy himself fled to Derry; and finding the forti¬
fications consisting of nothing but a half-ruined wall,
insisted that defence was impossible. English ships,
with two regiments, were in the lough. Lundy assured
the English officers that, if the men were landed they
could not be fed ; and that the town was totally unten¬
able. They sailed away, and left Derry to its fate ;
and Lundy prepared to surrender.1 James himself
was approaching in person to receive the capitulation.
After many difficulties, he had obtained at last the
promised assistance from France. He had landed at
Kinsale on the I2th of March, bringing with him
Marshal Rosen, several hundred officers for the Irish
regiments, cannon, ammunition, and arms for 10,000
men, with the Count of Rosen, an experienced general,
to command the army. He passed through Dublin
on the 24th, when writs were issued for a Parliament;
and he went on to the North, to return and open the
session in May, when the Ulster troubles should have
been put down.
Now was again witnessed what Calvinism, though
its fire was waning, could still do in making common
men into heroes. Deserted by the English regiments,
betrayed by their own commander, without stores and
1 Ajail.
CK. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
203
half armed, the shopkeepers and apprentices of a
commercial town prepared to defend an unfortified
city against a disciplined army of 25,000 men, led by
trained officers, and amply provided with artillery.1
Expresses were sent to England for help. Lundy, to
escape being torn in pieces, fled for his life. Major
Baker and Dr. Walker, a clergyman of the Established
Church, who had raised a regiment and seen service
against the Irish, were voted into the command.
Every assault failed. The siege was turned into a
blockade. They were cut off from the sea by a boom
across the river. Fever, cholera, and famine came to
the aid of the besiegers. Bats came to be dainties,
and hides and shoe-leather were the ordinary fare.
They saw their children pine away and die. They
were wasted themselves till they could scarce handle
their firelocks on their ramparts. As a shameful
example of cowardice, an English fleet lay for weeks
in the lough, the lazy ships visible from the church
towers. There, before their eyes, were meal - sacks
ready to be landed, hundreds of brave men ready and
eager to come to their help, all lying enchanted by
their commander's cowardice. Still indomitably they
held on through three miserable months, till, on the
30th July, the Dartmouth frigate came in with two
provision ships and an English officer who feared
other things worse than danger and death. The boom
was broken; the relieving squadron found their way
to the town. The Irish camp was broken up in despair,
and Derry was saved.
1 April 17.
204
SECTION VI.
Enniskillen had been as successful as Derry. There
too the Irish had failed. But the odds were desperate,
and unless an army came from England, the end could
not be far off.
Meanwhile James had met his Parliament, not
bringing with him the keys of Derry to grace the
opening, but leaving Rosen to complete a conquest of
which every day he looked for the news.
On the 7th May the Lords and Commons of Ire-
l68g land assembled in Dublin. By the constitution,
May 7 the Irish Parliament could only meet when sum¬
moned by the King of England, and James was King
of England no longer. By the constitution no mea¬
sures could be submitted to them which had not been,
considered and approved by the English Council.
Plead as they would that James was still King of Ire¬
land, having neither abdicated that crown, nor done
any act which could be construed into abdication, they
were ipso facto in revolt against England. The value
of their Parliamentary proceedings would depend on
whether their swords were at length sharp enough to
vindicate the independence which they had assumed.
The meeting was itself an act of rebellion, and every
person who took part in it was compromised. As
between the two countries, the position was simple.
If the Irish arms were successful, they were loyal sub-
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
205
jects. If they were defeated, they were insurgents,
and were again liable to forfeiture. The moral bear¬
ings of the question were less simple than the political.
The Episcopal Church of Ireland was still praying for
James as lawful King of England, and denouncing
William as a usurper. The lawful King being present
among them, might be held to cany with him his
constitutional powers. The maintainers of the divine
right were in hopeless embarrassment. In practice,
however, whatever this Paidiament might do could be
only provisional. If William were to remain sovereign
of England, Poynings' Act must be repealed on the
field of battle before the statutes of an Irish Parliament
could become law.
In prudence the Catholic leaders should have waited
till the fighting was over, without committing them¬
selves to acts which, unless they were victoi'ious, might
prove dangerous to them. But they were too impa¬
tient to bear delay. Ireland had an opportunity of
declaring her free opinion of England's dealings with
her, and was determined to use it.
The Parliament which passed the Acts of Settle¬
ment was almost exclusively Protestant. The Parlia¬
ment which met to destroy them was almost as exclu¬
sively Catholic. The Protestant nobles had fled to
England. Had Lord Clarendon called a Parliament,
the Upper House would have contained ninety-six lay
Protestant peers, with twenty-four bishops, and twenty,
two Catholics. Fifteen outlawries were reversed.
New Catholic peers were created. Boys under age
206 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. X.
were called to serve. Thirty-six in all presented them¬
selves in Dublin on 9th May. Among them were nine
Protestants only: four bishops — Munster, Ossory,
Limerick, and Cork, whose attendance was insisted on
to give a semblance of fairness to the proceedings ;
and five lay Protestant peers—the Earls of Barrymore,
Clancarty, and Longford, Viscount Ross, and Lord
Kinsale. The rest were Catholics of the most promi¬
nent type, the majority of them legally disqualified,
and called on to sit for the special business intended
for the session. The House of Commons consisted,
with five or six exceptions, of nominees of Tyrconnell.
Elections could not be free in the heat of a revolution,
and the sheriffs of counties and the mayors of the towns
being necessarily Tyrconuell's creatures, the returns
were managed without difficulty. Two hundred and
thirty members were sent up. Six Protestants, per¬
haps by accident, pei-haps for appearance, found places
among them. It was inevitable, under the circum¬
stances, that the most extreme men should be generally
chosen. So bitter were the Catholic electors of Dublin,
that Gerrard Dillon, the Prime sergeant, though of un-
impeached bigotry, was rejected by them because he
had bought an estate under the Acts of Settlement,
and he sate for Mullingar.
Immediate steps, it was well understood, would be
taken for the repeal of these detested Acts. Chief
Justice Keating, still confident whither all this was
tending, made a last appeal to the King's better under •
standing. The time was unpropitious, for Derry was
ch, hi.]
THE REVOLUTICN.
207
still closely blockaded, and the Irish were in a passion
of elation at the defeat of an English squadron in
Bantry Bay, which was sent to intercept the Erench
ships that had brought James to Kinsale. There were
principles of justice, however, not to be disregarded
with impunity, on which Keating ventured to insist.
The soil which had been taken from the Irish owner
was bare as nature made it. Thus it had been when
sold to the English. But it was no longer the same
country. The wild common had been fenced in, the
barren morasses turned to pasture, and ample stone
mansions had taken the place of cabin and castle. The
farms carried as abundant stock as farms in England;
and up and down were established manufactories, by
which the meanest peasant had been enriched and
civilized. All was panic now, but the panic in its
extent and magnitude showed how great the interests
had become which were about to be hazarded. The
English settlers had. bought their lands in good faith,
with a state title, and the honour of the government
as their security. They had made Ireland the most
improved and improving spot of earth in Europe, and,
if the Acts of Settlement were repealed, they would be
irretrievably ruined. The Chief Justice implored the
King to pause before encouraging or allowing so dan-
gei'ous and iniquitous a measure.1 To James himself
the justice of such an argument must have been obvious.
But James was swept away in the torrent of an Irish
1 Address to King James in behalf of the Protestants, by Judge
Keating. King, Appendix, p. 22.
208 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
revolution wliicli lie detested, wliile lie was obliged to
humour it. The improvement of their estates did not
diminish the anxiety of the old owners to return to
possession. If landlords in ordinary times may appro¬
priate without scruple the fruits of their tenants' indus¬
try, the lawful proprietors saw no occasion for Quixotic
virtue in resigning rights which the change of times
had restored to them, because spoilers and aliens had
raised the value of the lands which they had stolen.
The settlers should receive back their original purchase-
money, and ought to feel themselves happy in being so
equitably dealt with.
The bill for the repeal was introduced on 4th June.
The preamble, going back over the history of 1641,
retorted the charge of treason on the Government. It
accused the Protestants of having provoked the revolt,
to take ad.vantage of the forfeitures. It charged the
Lords Justices with ambition, avarice, traitorous com¬
bination with Puritan sectaries to murder the Catholics,
with an effrontery which seems natural in Ireland, but
would have been impossible in any other country in
the world. The guilty and the innocent were made to
change places, and the Irish Catholics presented them¬
selves as the injured victims of a perfidious conspiracy.
On these grounds the representatives of the loyal and
pious men who had lost life and lands in a holy cause,
claimed to be restored to the possessions of their
fathers.
Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath, had the extra¬
ordinary courage to rise in the House of Lords and
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
209
protest. He took the ground of Keating. The pre¬
sent proprietors, he said, had bought their estates in
good faith. They had sold their interests in England,
and had committed their fortunes to Irish soil. Out
of the wild, barren Ireland of the past they had made a
thriving, growing, and prosperous country. It was
pretended that, in justice to the old owners, they could
not be allowed to remain, and they were promised an
indemnity for their losses. He ventured to hint that
promise was not fulfilment, and that the assessment
was not likely to be equitable, when they were them¬
selves to be allowed no voice in it. To destroy so
many loyal and useful subjects was the height of
impolicy. The revenue would return to nothing, trade
and manufactures would perish, the plough would turn
the soil 110 longer, and the inhabitants would feed not
on bread, but on one another.
' My Lords,' he concluded, ' either there was a re¬
bellion in this kingdom, or there was not. If there
was none, we have been very unjust all this time in
keeping so many innocents out of their estates. God
forbid I should open my mouth in defence of so grave
an injustice. But, then, what shall I say to his
majesty's royal father's declaration, who owns that
there was a rebellion, and in pursuance of that opinion
passed an act to secure such as should adventure
money for the suppression of it. . . I take it for
granted that there was a rebellion, general or
partial. If general, then all were guilty, and none
can claim their estates. If partial, we ought to
IREL. 1. p
210 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. t.
distinguish, and not confound, the nocent with the
innocent.'1
The Bishop was not likely to he listened to with
patience by an assembly which had met with a fore¬
gone conclusion. The fatal policy of the late reign,
the retrogression from the steady principles of Crom¬
well, and the 'concession of part of their demands to
men who challenged all as their legitimate right, who
regarded instalments of so-called justice as a weakness
which they despised while they accepted it, was bearing
its legitimate fruit. The Restoration found the three
provinces exclusively Protestant, the rebellious ele¬
ments shut up in Connaught, and in Connaught dis¬
armed of power for mischief. ' Justice to Ireland'
had flung bridges over the Shannon, had allowed the
returning stream once more to flow over the land, and
this was the result.
The repeal was passed. Every one who held an
estate under the Acts of Settlement was dispossessed.
The old proprietors were reinstated in their inherit¬
ance, and made the happy owners of the wealth which
others had created there. The ejected colonists were
to receive compensation when they could get it. The
Irish Catholics were thus restored to all which they
had lost by the rebellion of 1641. There remained
to be recovered the forfeitures from the Elizabethan
wars and the six counties of the Ulster settlement.
The process taken upon these was as complete as it
was summaiy. Almost all the leading Protestants in
1 King's State of the Protestants in Ireland. Appendix, p. 23.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
211
Ireland were comprehended by name in one sweeping
act of attainder. Two thousand six hundred land¬
owners, commencing with the Archbishop of Dublin
and the Duke of Ormond, were declared guilty of
adherence to the Prince of Orange, and to have for¬
feited their estates by treason. Two months' respite
only was allowed to such of them as were still in
Ireland to present themselves in Dublin and take their
trial. Each member of the House of Commons gave
in a list of his Protestant neighbours, and guilt was
assumed in the absence of proof of innocence. The
habitual absentees were struck out, because, as residing
in England or Scotland under the usurpation, and not
having returned to Ireland to defend their natural
sovereign, their treason stood confessed. Those who
had fled since the disturbances, betrayed a conscious¬
ness of guilt, and were to be accounted guilty till they
cleai'ed themselves. The conditions of 1652 were
reversed. Then all Catholics were held responsible
for the rebellion of 1641 ; now all Protestants were
partisans of the Prince of Orange. The question at
issue was whether England had or had not a right to
govern Ireland, and the right depended on the relative
strength of the two countries. If the Irish could suc¬
ceed in driving the invaders out by force, history would
see only legitimate retribution in the proceedings of
James's Parliament.
Another act swept away the personal property,
goods, chattels, stock, debts, bonds, arrears of rent of
every person who was in arms against King James, or
v 2
212
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
who, by the previous statutes, was declared to have
forfeited his real estate. Schools and colleges were
transferred to Catholic management; the churches
and the Church property were given back to Catholic
bishops and priests. Poynings' Act was repealed, and
Ireland was declared independent; while, in harmony
with the language which . James had ingeniously used
to advance Pomanism behind principles which were
abjured in every Catholic country in Europe, laws
interfering with liberty of conscience were declared
repealed. Liberty of conscience might be safely con¬
ceded in a country where, ;if the present measures
could be maintained, no Protestant was likely to
remain.
The session, so momentous in its consequences,
closed on 20th July. Eleven days later, Derry was
relieved.
213
SECTION VII.
The Parliament had finished its work, and, so far as
words could accomplish it, had achieved a revolution.
Ireland was again Irish. It remained to be seen
whether the sword would ratify the statute roll. For
a time they had reasonable hopes that fortune would
at last favour them. On the 13th August, Duke
Schomberg, with a nominal force of 20,000 men,
landed in Down and took Carrickfergus. But, under
the training of Marshal Rosen and the French officers,
the Irish displayed capacity as soldiers. Supplies
continued to pour in from France, and Schomberg's
army, comprised of English, Dutch, Germans, and
French Huguenots, ill-furnished and worse-disciplined,
lay idle in Ulster, disabled with sickness, vice, and
division. Neither Schomberg, nor Schomberg's master,
understood the Irish problem. The clergy of the
Established Church were called Protestants, but, not¬
withstanding attainders and confiscations, were still
evei'ywhere praying earnestly for James, and denounc¬
ing the new usurper. The siege of Derry had shown
that all the Protestants were not of the same mettle ;
but Schomberg's officers did not care to distinguish,
and treated all alike ' as enemies to King William's
government.' 'The best of them,' it was said, 'had
either basely complied with King James, or cowardly
deserted their country.' The soldiers lodged at free
214 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bic. i.
quarters, plundering as they pleased, and living in
riot and debauchery.1 The Irish army itself showed
in favourable contrast to the discreditable force which
had come, it seemed, for no other purpose than
i69°* • • n
to bring the revolution into contempt. Forty
years had passed since Cromwell landed on the same
errand. The cause was unchanged, but the men who
were its champions were of another breed and soul.
In Schomberg's camp 4 religion was but canting/ and
whoredom and drunkenness the soldiers' natural
amusement.2 The defenders of Londonderry and
Enniskillen, few though they might be, were more
formidable to Rosen and Tyrconnell than the loose
companies of swearing ruffians who were dying of
the rot, through their own vices, in the Belfast
Hospital.
The situation could not continue. The English
Parliament grew impatient. A little more and France,
finding James succeed better than had been expected,
might throw its power seriously into the scale, and
Ireland might be irrecoverably lost. Scliomberg was
so sharply censured that William found it necessary,
as Cromwell had found, to take charge of the war in
person.
With a fresh army composed of better stuff, though
of the same motley materials, he crossed the Channel
on 14th June, 1690, and joined the camp at Carrick-
1 See the very remarkable letter
of Dr. George, Schomberg's secre¬
tary, to Colonel James Hamilton.
Plowden, vol. i. Appendix, p.
45- 2 Ibid.
CU. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
215
fergus. Following Cromwell's example, lie resolved
to strike at once, and with all his force. A few days
were spent in reorganizing Schomberg's troops, and
then, with 36,000 men, he commenced his march on
Dublin. Against the advice of his best officers, for
fresh troops from Brest were daily expected, and Louis
was meditating a descent on England in "William's
absence, which would distract him, and, perhaps,
compel his return, James determined to risk an im¬
mediate engagement. The Irish, he said, were now
confident; he had the advantage of numbers; and to
abandon Dublin, and retreat as the Council of War
advised, might dispirit and divide them.
The action of 1st July, on the Boyne, must be
passed over, like the siege of Derry and Enniskillen,
with the briefest notice. The result only concerns us
here. The Irish, though with every advantage of posi¬
tion, exhibited once more their unvarying inability to
encounter the English in the field in their own country.
The patriotic ecstasy which had flowed so freely in
torrents of rhetoric, congealed at the sound of cannon.
They did not even make a creditable stand. James,
who had shown personal cowardice, hid his disgrace in
flight, and stole back to France. William advanced
to Dublin, but lingered purposely in following up his
success, in the hope that Tyrconnell would now throw
up the game. Tyrconnell made no sign, and he went
on to Kilkenny. His discipline was now as stringent
as Oliver's. He saw some of his men once plundering
an old woman; he struck one on the spot with his
216 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
cane, and promptly hanged the whole party. But with
the Irish he was studiously lenient. lie promised
publicly that, if they would lay down their arms, all
that had been done should be forgotten. "When no
response came, he turned westward, made a feeble
attempt upon Athlone, passed on, and sate down
before Limerick. But he betrayed no intention, and
he felt no desire, to break down by violence a people
whom, in his inexperience, he believed it possible to
win by indulgent terms. He refused to look upon
them as rebels when they were in arms for one whom
they regarded as their natural sovereign. He either
did not or could not see that the essential enmity was
against England and the English settlement; and he
shrunk from pushing a war to extremities, which must
then be followed by fresh forfeitures.
The reality of the situation was obscured by the
confusion of political feeling, and instead of ending
the campaign promptly and decisively, and reviving
Cromwell's policy, which ought never to have been
abandoned, he imagined, as many an amiable person
has imagined before and since, that the native Irish
had been handled irrationally and cruelly, and needed
only kindness to become faithful subjects. Neither
should the Irish race be dealt with hardly, if William
could help it, nor the Irish religion. James's Parlia¬
ment had enacted liberty of worship. It would be a
shame if the champion of Protestantism was less
tolerant than an assembly of Catholics; and he was
purposely dilatory, as if to enable them to offer condi-
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
217
tions tvhich lie could grant. Sir Arthur Ashton
imagined that he could hold Drogheda for many
months. Cromwell stormed Drogheda the day after
his cannon opened on it. The same spirit would have
taken Limerick had the spirit been there. But William
lingered till the rains forced him to raise the siege;
and he returned to England, leaving Tvrconnell another
year for reflection. Lord Sidney,1 Sir Charles Porter,
the late Chancellor, and Thomas Coningsby,2 who had
stood by William at the Boyne and staunched his
tvound when he was hit, were left as Lords Justices,
and were all well inclined to moderate counsels. The
army went into winter quarters, and Baron Ginkel
remained in command.3
Cork was taken from the sea in September, and the
south and east of Ireland submitted; but Athlone
and all the country west of it continued in Tyrconnell's
hands. He held Connaught, Clare, Limerick, and
Kerry; and with the sea open behind him, and tbe
Shannon in his front, he trusted to the tide of events in
Europe and to possible revolution in England, or at
any rate to a continuance of assistance from France.
The English Parliament met on 2nd October. Large
money grants were necessary for the war with France;
the Irish expenses had been enormous; and naturally
and inevitably the House of Commons insisted that
1 Brother of Algernon Sidney, s Godard de Ginkel, one of
great grandson of Sir Philip, created William's most distinguished of-
afterwards Earl of Romney. fleers : created for his Irish services
2 Created Lord Coningsby of Earl of Athlone.
Clanbrassil.
218 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
the cost should not be borne by the English tax¬
payers ; the Irish lords and gentlemen who made a
tresh reconquest necessary must pay for it, and a
million at least of the estimates must be charged, as in
1642, on the anticipated confiscations. William's dis¬
position to leniency was understood ; but there would
be no escape from an Act of Parliament; and a bill
of attainder was introduced against all who had been
in arms.
Confiscations were now complicated with difficulties
unknown in earlier times. Estates were mortgaged,
charged with settlements, and otherwise encumbered
in their tenures. Creditors petitioned, and raised
difficulties, and a clause was introduced which would
have reduced the compulsory forfeitui*es by two-thirds,
and left the King free to grant what terms he pleased
to those who had not yet surrendered. The House of
Commons did not choose to be put off with
1691 . 1
evasions and excuses. But the bill was stopped
by the Lords, to leave William's hands unbound.
The King desired most earnestly to be allowed still
to hold out hopes to the Irish of favourable consider¬
ation. ' Touched by the fate of a gallant nation, that
had made itself the victim to French promises,' says
Sir Charles Wogan, ' the Prince of Orange, before the
decisive battle of Aghrim, offered the Irish Catholics
the free exercise of their religion, half the churches of
the kingdom, half the employments, civil and military
too, and the moiety of their ancient properties.'1 Sir
1 'Sir Charles AVogan to Swift.' SwiJ'l's Works, vol. xviii. p. 10, &o.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
219
Charles "Wogan was Tyrconnell's nephew ; he affects
to speak from personal knowledge, and he adds, that
' these proposals were to have the sanction of an Act
of Parliament.' If William ever made such an offer,
he was promising more than England would have
allowed him to perform ; but had Tyrconnell possessed
ordinary sense, there can be no doubt at all that he
might have secured conditions which would have left
the Catholics materially unweakened, and free to re¬
sume the struggle when a fresh chance offered. When
the siege of Limerick was raised, he went to France,
attended by Sir Richard Nagle and Chief Baron Rice,
to ascertain if he was to have further support. France,
unhappily for him and his cause, gave him just so
much help as encouraged him to persevere, not enough
to give him a serious chance of success. He returned
up the Shannon in January 1691, with three frigates,
clothes, arms, ammunition, and a little money. Louis,
like every foreign ally on whom the Irish have been
rash enough to lean, was contented that they should
make a brief diversion for him, whatever might be the
consequence to themselves.
One more campaign was thus inevitable, with fresh
bloodshed and fresh expense. Ginkel's army assem¬
bled in May at Mullingar; Mackay brought reinforce¬
ments from Scotland; Sir Richard Cox sent some
spare regiments from Cork; and Ginkel advanced to
Athlone, at the beginning of June, with 18,000 men.
The bridge was broken; the Irish were strongly posted
on the Connaught side. There were divided counsels
220 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. r.
in Ginkel's camp and a talk of retreat. It happened
that the spring had been dry ; the river was unusually
low, and could be crossed by wading a short distance
off. At six o'clock in the evening of 30th June, when
the Irish were in no suspicion of an attack, Maclcay
waded over with 2000 men. Covered by the smoke
of the muskets, he seized the end of the bridge and
repaired it; and before dark the whole army had
crossed. The castle capitulated ; the Irish fell back
among bogs and streams upon Aghrim Hill, five miles
from Ballinasloe, and prepared for the final battle
which was to decide the fate of the country.
At last they appeared really conscious of the great¬
ness of the stake which was being played for. They
were commanded by St. Ruth, a distinguished French
officer and a profound and passionate Catholic. Masses
were said and prayers offered in all the regiments.
St. Ruth addressed the officers as if they were Crusaders
engaged in mortal conflict with hell and heresy. Re¬
membering the disgrace of the Boyne, they took a
solemn oath not to forsake their colours, and to their
honour it must be said that most of them kept their
word. Not without reason does the anniversary of
the battle of Aghrim keep so fresh a hold on Irish
memory. If the conquerors look back upon it with
pride, that day1 was also the only one on which the
Irish people fought on their own soil, for their own
nationality, with the courage which so uniformly dis¬
tinguished them under other flags and on other fields.
o 0
1 July 12, 1691.
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
221
Sunday, the 12th July, dawned thick and hazy;
a damp fog lay spread over the marshes, which did
not lift till late in the afternoon. At half-past four,
with five hours of daylight remaining, the mist blew
off and the English advanced. English properly they
were not. English regiments were intermixed with
Danes, French Huguenots, Scots, Dutch, Branden-
burghers, and Anglo-Irish Protestants, the fitter to
try an issue which, however disguised, was an episode
in the long European struggle for liberty of con¬
science.
The battle was long doubtful. The ground was
trenched in all directions, and the ditches were lined
with Irish sharpshooters, who stood their ground
bravely, and again and again Ginkel's columns, rush¬
ing forward to close with them, were driven back in
confusion. Once St. Buth believed the day was his
own, and he was heai-d to swear that he would hunt
the Saxons into Dublin. Almost immediately after he
was killed by a cannon-ball. The Huguenot cavalry,
led by Henri de ftuvigny, made a charge, behind which
the English infantry rallied. At last, late in the even¬
ing, the Irish gave way, broke up, and scattered. Few
or no prisoners were taken, and few were reported
wounded. Those who escaped escaped, those who
were overtaken were made an end of. Seven thousand
men were killed before darkness and rain ended the
pursuit.
The wreck of the defeated army divided; part
went to Gal way, part to Limerick, where the last act
222 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
of the drama was to be played out. Galway's turn
came first. Whether William did or did not make
,the offer before the battle, which Sir Charles Wogan
says he did, that he had instructed Ginkel to wind up
the war on conditions easy to the Irish, the articles
allowed to Galway showed plainly. An English fleet
was in the bay, and commanded the approaches from
the sea. The town might have been completely in¬
vested by land, and compelled to surrender at discre¬
tion. Obviously this was not William's desire. The
French regiments, and such of the garrison as preferred
to continue the struggle, were allowed to march away
to Limerick, with drums beating and flags flying. The
governor, mayor, sheriff, burghers, freemen, all the
inhabitants, or reputed inhabitants, for the word was
construed with the utmost latitude, received a free and
complete pardon for all offences which they had com¬
mitted since the accession of James the Second. The
officers of the regiments which capitulated, whether
present or absent, were secured in the possession of
the whole of such estates as they had enjoyed under
the Acts of Settlement. Catholic gentlemen within
the walls were permitted to retain their arms; Catholic
barristers there were allowed to continue to practise.
The priests of the town received protection for person
and property; and a promise was given that their
religious services, so long as they were conducted in
private, should not be interfered with by the penal
laws. Cromwell f meddled with no man's conscience,'
but declared ' that the mass should not be allowed
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
223
where the English Parliament had power.' William,
though himself nominally a Calvinist, had unbounded
faith in the principles of toleration, and believed that
the Irish temperament was capable of being conquered
by generosity.
The surrender of Gal way carried with it the sub¬
mission of Connaught. Limerick remained. It had
baffled William the year before. The season was waning,
the summer wet, and there had been no second ' mas¬
sacre of Drogheda ' to show that resistance might be
dangerous. Ginkel approached at leisure. Tyrcon-
nell, who was in the town, either worn out by fatigue,
sick with disappointment, or else poisoned, for this too
was suggested, died before he came under the walls,
advising the Irish to make peace with so liberal a
conqueror, and not to sacrifice themselves any longer
to French ingratitude. The fleet came round from
Galway and sailed up the Shannon. The same terms
were offered which Galway had accepted ; but there
was a hope for more extended concessions ; and Sars-
field,1 who had succeeded St. Puth in command, under¬
took the defence.
Either Ginkel was purposely siow, or else was
culpably careless. He arrived before Limerick at the
end of August. For three weeks he left Sarsfield's
1 Patrick Sarsfield, created Earl
of Lucan by James the Second.
Tire Sarsfields were an old Anglo-
Norman family of the Pale. Pat¬
rick, father of Sarsfield who com¬
manded at Limerick, was one of
the Catholic proprietors who were
restored to their estates under the
Act of Settlement. His eldest son,
William, married a natural daugh¬
ter of Charles the Second.
224 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
communications open with the county of Clare, and it
was not till 22nd September that the town was com¬
pletely invested. A parley was then demanded, and
Sarsfield named his conditions.
He demanded almost the very concessions which
were mentioned by Sir C. Wogan—a general indem¬
nity ; a confirmation to the Irish owners of all the
estates throughout Ireland, which they had held before
the revolution ; religious liberty, with a priest in every
parish, recognized by the law; the admissibility of
Irish Catholics to all employments, military and civil;
a full and entire equality with Protestants in every
right and privilege, with a promise that the stipula¬
tions accepted by Gink el should be confirmed by an
Act of Parliament.
It was obviously impossible that terms such as
these could be conceded. William himself might
have consented, and an Irish Parliament, elected like
that which had met two years before at Dublin, might
have been found to ratify them. But the conduct of
the Irish in that Parliament had proved that between
them and the Protestant settlers there could be nothing,
if they were in a position of equality, but an internecine
war. JSTor could any English Parliament have listened
to an arrangement which would have left the settlers
at the mercy of their enemies; the revolt absolutely
unpunished; and the English taxpayers burdened
with the cost of a reconquest, which at any moment
might have to be repeated. Ginkel replied, that
although he was a stranger to the laws of Eng-
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
225
land, he was certain that what Sarsfield asked for
could not be granted. He had Sarsfield at his
mercy, but he declined to push his advantage.
In return, he drew himself, as a sketch of what
might be allowed, the celebrated Articles of Lim¬
erick, round which so many heartburnings were to
rage.
There was a mystery about these Articles which
has been left unexplained. They were accepted by
the Irish leaders as sufficient, yet, in the form in
which the Irish leaders signed them, they were less
favourable than in the draft first offered by Ginkel.1
The alteration was explained afterwards as an over¬
sight. This only is certain, that William had directed
Ginkel generally to grant the utmost that the Eng¬
lish Parliament would allow; that, by some means or
other, the concessions were at the last moment mate¬
rially reduced; that Sarsfield signed them in this
reduced form ; and that William endeavoured after¬
wards, without success, to restore them to their
original state.
The material stipulations, on which the doubts
afterwards arose, were these :—-
1. That the Roman Catholics of Ireland should
enjoy such privileges, in the exercise of their religion,
as were consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as
they did enjoy in the reign of Charles the Second;
the King promising, as soon as his affairs would
permit, to summon a Parliament in Ireland, and to
1 The allusion will he explained in the next page.
IREL. I. <J
226
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
endeavour to procure the Roman Catholics such
further security in that particular, as might pre¬
serve them from disturbance on account of their
religion.1
2. The inhabitants of Limerick, and of every other
garrison town in possession of the Irish, the officers
and soldiers in arms, under any commission from
King James, in the counties of Limerick, Cork, Kerry,
Clare, Sligo, and Mayo, and—so the words stood in
the original draft—all such as are under their protec¬
tion in the said counties, should retain such estates,
interests, and privileges as belonged to them in the
time of Charles the Second, or at any time during which
the laws of Ckanles the Second were in force. They
should retain their personal property untouched also,
and be at liberty to pursue their several trades and
professions as freely as before, subject only, they and
all other Catholics in the kingdom who made their
1 This article, intended obviously
to confer religious liberty, might
mean much or little, as it was in¬
terpreted. The 2nd of Elizabeth,
which was still in force, prohibited
the exercise of the Catholic reli¬
gion, and so far the article gave the
Catholics nothing. On the other
hand, the law of Elizabeth had
rarely been acted on. Under
Charles the Second the practice
had varied. At one time the Ca¬
tholic Archbishop had been received
in 1 is robes at Court. There was
a chapel and a priest in every
parish, where, for the greater part
of the reign, mass had been said
without disturbance, and Catholics
had been sheriffs and magistrates.
There had been an interval, how¬
ever, when the English Parliament
took alarm ; religious houses had
been closed and priests had been
imprisoned. The article might be
understood to refer to either of
these periods, and convey full tol¬
eration, or none at all; while the
word 'endeavour,' whicn might be
only a form of courtesy, might also
leave an opening to Parliament to
refuse its sanction.
en. hi.]
THE REVOLUTION.
227
submission, to take the simple Oath of Allegiance, as
modified by the English Parliament.1
The sixth article passed a sponge over the plunder
and violence which the Protestant farmers and gentry
suffered under at the beginning of the war.2
So long as the second of these three articles con¬
tained the contested words, printed in italics, it con¬
ceded nearly all for which Sarsfield had asked. Very
many of the Catholic gentry being in the army, were
protected as commissioned officers. The estates of
most of those who were absent, and yet were com¬
promised in the insurrection, were in the counties
thus carefully particularized; and thus it might be
said, that nearly every Catholic of consequence, with
a disposition to be dangerous, would be covered by
the broad vagueness of the word f protection.'
Inexperienced in Ireland, and in the spirit of the
not very profound saying that
He who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe,
William was expecting to win by kindness those
whom he had defeated in the field, and had studied
rather to spare their pride, and not to make their
overthrow too complete. The fact, however, was not
to be concealed, that in the Articles as signed by the
1 ' I, A. B., do sincerely promise
and swear that I will he faithful
and bear true allegiance to their
majesties King William and Queen
Mary.'
2 See the articles in Plowden,
vol. i. Appendix, p. 49. There were
forty-two articles in all—thirteen
civil and twenty-nine military. The
military articles referred to the
detailed winding up of the war;
the remainder of the civil articles
contained particular provisions of
no historical importance.
Q 2
228
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. I.
Irish generals the protection clause was not present.
The King, in his confirmation of the Articles in the
ensuing February, said, that 'the words had been
casually omitted by the writer ;' that ' the omission
was not discovered till the Articles were signed, but
was taken notice of before the town was surrendered;'
and. that 'the Lords Justices, or General Ginkel, or
one of them, had promised that the clause should be
made good, since it was within the intention of the
capitulation, and had been inserted in the rough draft J
He therefore for himself ' did ratify and confirm the
said omitted words/1
The deliberate assertion of William ought not to
be lightly questioned, yet it is difficult to credit that
the accidental omission of a paragraph of such enor¬
mous consequence should have passed undetected.
The more probable explanation is, that the Lords Jus¬
tices, who had arrived at the camp when the treaty was
in progress, narrowed down the King's liberality, and
extorted harder terms than he had prescribed or desired.
Once more, in conclusion, the conditional character
attached to the first of the Articles was extended to
the whole. The Lords Justices and the General
undertook ' to use their utmost endeavours that the
treaty should be ratified and confirmed in Parliament.'
They bound themselves to ' use their endeavours ;' more
they could not do ; and if words had a meaning, there
was still reserved to the legislature a power of revision.
1 'Confirmation of the Articles of Limerick, February 24, 1692.'
Plowden, vol. i. Appendix.
229
SECTION VIII.
Had the Articles of Limerick and Galway been carried
out in the spirit in which they were framed, it is some¬
times pretended that the reconciliation between the
English and Irish races, which unhappily remains
incomplete, would then have been effected. The alle¬
giance of the conquered would have been given freely
to a sovereign who, when they were at his mercy, had
forborne to punish them. The past would have been
forgotten, and the Catholics, grateful for a toleration
which they were conscious that they had not deserved,
would have settled down contentedly under a govern¬
ment which left them their religion undisturbed by
persecution, and uninsultedby penal legislation.
If I am unable to share this opinion, it is because
'William's policy, however natural, and for himself,
pressed as he was by his difficulties with France, con¬
venient, was but a repetition of an experiment which
had been tried many times and had invariably failed.
To allow the Irish to manage their own affairs, so far
as was consistent with a bare allegiance to the British
Crown; to interfere and punish when indulgence had
produced its unvarying consequences, and then to
tread over again the same round, in the hope that Ire¬
land had learnt her lesson and would at last recognize
forbearance, had been the principle on which Irish
affairs had been administered from Henry the Seventh's
230
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 1.
time downwards, and can be traced distinctly through
successive stages of failure, from the moinjent when
the Tudor sovereigns first became unconscious of their
responsibilities for the condition of their dependency.
If Ireland was not again in flames for the Pretender,
and was now, for the first time in its history, to enjoy
a century of political peace, it was because the experi¬
ence of the past had not been thrown away, and the
Irish Protestants were less ignorant than William of
the country which had fallen suddenly into his hands.
Fiercer ages, and nations less humane than the Eng¬
lish, would have ended the Irish difficulty by methods
which in the end would, perhaps, have been less pro¬
ductive of human wretchedness. Such races as could
neither defend their liberty with the sword, nor would
submit when defeated to live within the bounds of
order, have been transported generally to other lands,
or been steadily decimated till the unruly spirit has
been broken. William of Orange need have been
driven to no such excess of severity, for the main root
of Irish disaffection was exposed and visible, and at
that conjuncture might have been easily excised.
There were peculiar conditions at that particular
moment, such as had never occurred before, and such
as have never returned, by the skilful use of which
the two islands might have been completely and per¬
manently united.
The conquest first ought not to have been left im¬
perfect. Treaties, however vague, raise claims which
if unsatisfied leave festering sores; and had there
CH. III.]
7HE REVOLUTION.
231
"been a will to do it, the entire untrammelled reduction
of Ireland would have been accomplished by William
far more easily than by Cromwell. The religious con¬
dition of Europe, and the attitude especially of the ally
whose assistance Tyrconnell and James had unsuccess¬
fully called in, would have enabled and permitted the
English Government, without real injustice, to have
made Ireland a Protestant country. It is conveniently
forgotten by Catholic declaimers against the iniquity
of the penal laws, that in Catholic countries the laws
against Protestants were more severe than any code
which either England or any other Protestant country
has enforced against Catholics. In Spain and Italy
there was no liberty of religion. In France it had
just been withdrawn by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. The existence in those countries of Protest¬
ant communities was held inconsistent with the safety
of the State. Nonconformists were imprisoned, exiled,
deprived of their estates, or put to death. No schools
or churches were allowed to them to teach their creeds
in ; not so much as six feet of ground in which their
bodies might rest when dead, if they died out of com¬
munion with the Church. Catholic writers express
neither regret nor astonishment at these severities, and
reserve their outcries for occasions when they are
themselves the victims of their own principles. They
consider that they are right and that Protestants are
wrong; that in consequence, when Protestants perse¬
cute Catholics, it is an act of wickedness ; when Catho¬
lics persecute Protestants, it is an exercise of lawful
232 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. I.
authority. The modern Liberal finds excuses for the
Catholic which he refuses to the Calvinist. He per¬
ceives, or thinks he perceives, that in all creeds there
is both truth and error, that the essentials are to be
found in each, that mistakes of opinion are venial; and
he considers that the Protestant in claiming a right to
think for himself ought in consistency to have allowed
the same right to others. He, too, forgets that these
Latitudinarian reasonings are of recent growth ; that
earnest Protestants in past centuries, men of the high¬
est intellectual ability, believed the doctrines of the
Catholics to be poisonous lies. To a Sir Isaac Newton
the Pope was the scarlet woman of the Apocalypse;
and the feeling which made the Protestant an object
of horror to the orthodox Catholic, made the Catholic
equally detestable to the sincere Protestant. He
would have preferred to confine his opposition to
reason and conscience; but persecution begat perse¬
cution in self-defence; and deprived those who com¬
menced such methods of their right to complain, when
their own measure was retorted on them. To inflict
penalties on opinion becomes, in some cases, legitimate
in the sense that war is legitimate. It is a recourse
in good faith to force, to determine questions which
argument is not allowed to solve.
But, beyond this general excuse, there were features
in Ii*ish Romanism which might at that time have jus¬
tified any government in making a final end of it. At
the bottom of every rebellion in that country since the
Reformation, were to be found the Catholic bishops
ch. hi.] THE REVOLUTION. 233
and clergy. In the eyes of the Catholic Church the
lawful sovereign of Ireland was the Pope. Insurrec¬
tion was an act of piety ; those who fell in it were
martyrs; and crime in a holy cause lost its character,
and became sanctified. The lines of the two creeds
were identical with the lines of loyalty and disloyalty.
Irishmen who became Protestants were good subjects,
English settlers who became Catholics were drawn
into the ranks of the disaffected; and any Catholic
sovereign who, before the 18th century, was at war
with England, could calculate with certainty on a party
in Ireland to make a diversion on his side. Catholic
writers pretend that England was the aggressor in
proscribing the mass. In no Catholic country in the
world had so much toleration been shown for Protest¬
ants, as had been shown to Catholics in Ireland. Each
successive provocation had been repaid with larger
indulgence, and always with more miserable results.
The Act of Uniformity was the law of the land, but
Elizabeth never attempted to enforce it beyond the
Pale; and within the Pale, by the Catholics' confes¬
sion, it slept after the first few years. The bloody
rebellions of Shan O'Neil, of the Earl of Desmond,
and of the Earl of Tyrone, each encoimaged by the
clergy, each connected with a design to sever Ireland
from England, were the rewards of forbearance; yet
after each insurrection, and always, save when the
country was actually in flames, the successive governors
of Ireland were prohibited from meddling with religion.
The titular bishops exercised their jurisdiction without
234 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bit. r.
interference. The religious orders, friars, monks, and
nuns, remained in their houses wherever the Irish
chiefs were pleased to maintain them. The parish
clergy said mass, first in private houses and castles,
and then in chapels and churches of their own. As the
country grew more quiet under James the First and
Charles, they throve with the progress of prosperity,
and had never been more numerous or less disturbed.
The consequence was the massacre of 1641. "When
it was yet undecided, whether the rising was to be a
bloody one, the most ferocious counsels were traced
to a Catholic abbey. The civil war, with all its
miseries, was protracted by the interposition of the
Pope; and the fiercest resolutions against peace, and
the most determined irreconcilability with England,
was with the party of the Nuncio.
During the ten years of Cromwell's government, the
priests and their works were at an end. Ireland was
quiet, and, had Cromwell left a son like himself, must
in another generation have been Protestant. The
Restoration brought back the old system. Half, or
nearly half, the Catholic gentry were replaced in their
estates. The Catholic hierarchy was re-established.
Catholic prelates received a quasi recognition from the
State, and the Oath of Supremacy was dispensed with
as a condition of admission to the service of the State.
Protestant Dissenters were prosecuted and imprisoned.
Catholics were connived at and smiled upon. At last,
when James the Second was meditating the overthrow
of English liberty, he turned for help to the Irish
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
235
Catholics. The whole power of the State, civil and
military, was placed in their hands, and they instantly
snatched the opportunity for their own purposes.
They attainted every Protestant of consequence, and
reclaimed the land to themselves; and while they
proclaimed liberty of conscience, they took practical
measures which would have destroyed the English
settlements, and in a few years have rooted Protest¬
antism out of the country.
They appealed to arms to maintain their usurpa¬
tions, and they failed. The Catholic clergy had proved
that, so far as lay in them, Ireland should never be
at rest till they had their own way. What was there
in the circumstances of Ireland that, when it was once
more subdued, the English Government should have
hesitated to apply the same rule there, which Louis
the Fourteenth was finding necessary for France ?
The utmost stretch of toleration cannot reach to the
endurance of a belief which makes rebellion a duty,
and teaches temporal obedience to some other sove¬
reign as an article of faith. No government need
keep terms with such a creed when there is power to
abolish it. To call the repression of opinions which
had issued so many times in blood and revolt, by the
name of religious persecution, is mere abuse of words;
while at that time the best minds in England really
believed that, besides its treasonable aspects, the
Roman Catholic religion was intellectually degrading
and spiritually poisonous.
The results to the country, from the attempt at
236
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. x.
repression wliicli was actually made, lamed as it was
by impediments thrown deliberately in the way by
politicians, and with the flaw upon it of the breach
of promise made conditionally in the Articles of
Limerick, prove that with wisdom and firmness the end
could then have been completely attained, and Ireland
been made a Protestant country as entirely as Eng¬
land and Scotland. Had the Catholic bishops been
compelled in earnest to betake themselves elsewhere,
had the importation of priests from abroad been
seriously and sternly prohibited, the sacerdotal system
must have died a natural death, and the creed have
perished along with it.
But repression could not go alone. If in so vital a
matter the Government interfered with the natural
tendencies of the people, it was bound most strictly
to give them every other opportunity of real improve¬
ment. Industry, in the first place, ought to have been
encouraged in all directions by all legitimate means.
Infinite wealth was in the Irish soil if only it was cul¬
tivated ; rare virtues were in the Irish character if only
it had fair play ; and industry was the school in which
both might have been developed. England had no
natural advantages which Ireland did not share with
her. The seeds of trade and manufacture which had
been sown by James the First and Cromwell, though
blighted by the Navigation Act, were not dead, and if
let alone would revive. The persecutions in France
were driving out fresh swarms of Protestant artisans
to whom Ireland, were trade and manufactures free,
CH. III.l
THE REVOLUTION.
237
would be a welcome retreat. Scotch and English
capital was waiting to flow over there, and workmen,
who aspired to better their condition by emigrating,
and would prefer a nearer home than America. No
country in the world had a more brilliant commercial
future opening before her, if the opportunity had been,
wisely used.
Again ; experience had shown, that the form of
Protestantism known as the Anglican Establishment,
though entitled to remain on equal terms with other
reformed communities, ought not to have retained a
power of persecuting those who had carried out more
thoroughly the principles of the Reformation. The
creation of the English mind, arising out of the dis¬
position towards compromise which is so marked an
English characteristic, the Established Church had so
far failed in England itself, that the legal toleration of
Dissent had become a necessity. An assumption of
exclusive authority was more mischievous in Ireland,
where the conditions of the compromise did not exist,
where the Episcopalians formed but a third of the
Protestant body, and where there was an enemy to be
daily encountered, against whom they were the least
effective antagonists. The more robust forms of
Protestantism furnish no converts to Popery. Angli¬
canism, a limb incompletely severed, remains attached
to the old system by veins and ligaments, which allow
passage to the virus of sacerdotalism; it has always
been the favourite nursery in which Rome has sought
and found recruits, and has been singularly ineffectual
238
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[PK. I.
in making converts in return. A mind sufficiently
in earnest about religion to prefer truth to falsehood
listens only to teachers who speak with emphasis and
certainty, who do not think and say, but feel with
warmth and passion. Before a man can persuade
others to accept him as a guide, he must know his own
mind, and be ready with a Yes or No, on the questions
with which his hearers are perplexed. On the points
which divide Protestant from Romanist, the Anglican
answers Yes and No. Is there a Christian priesthood ?
There is and there is not. Is there a real presence in
the Eucharist ? There is and there is not. Is baptism
necessary to salvation ? It is and it is not. Such,
hesitating modes of thought may be prudent and
cautious, but they will make no converts. The only
Pr'otestants who could make an impression on the
Catholic peasantry were the Presbyterians, and it was
in them that the strength of Irish Protestantism lay.
The bishops had preached passive obedience, had
looked favourably on the Catholics, and had been
bitter and violent with the Nonconfonnists. In the
day of trial the Nonconformists of the North had been
found at their posts; while the clergy of the Establish¬
ment continued to pray for King James. The least that
the Presbyterians had deserved was an ample tolera¬
tion. If Ireland was to be a sanctuary for Protestant
refugees, the utmost possible freedom should have
been allowed them; the more complete the Protestant,
the more secured his allegiance to England, the less
danger of a repetition of the fatal mistake which had
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
239
driven out the Cromwellians. Repression too, it
should have been remembered, could not last for ever.
The Catholic peasantry were not to be expelled. Their
families could not grow up in Atheism; and, if they
were not converted, sooner or later, their liberty must
be given back to them. A respite only could be
secured at best, and if the opportunity were lost it
might be lost for ever.
And there was another matter of scarcely less vital
moment. The lands of the Irish chiefs had not been
taken from them that they might be owned by noble
lords and gentlemen residing the other side of the
Channel, and acknowledging no further connexion
with their estates beyond receiving rents for them.
The theory of attainders rested on the duties attaching
to property. If no such duties existed, the penalty
was absurd and irrational. The absentee grievance
was a very old one, and less easy to deal with than in
earlier times. Under the feudal system the responsi¬
bility was visible, and the claims of the State were
understood and admitted. When the State sold lands
to raise money, or allowed men to sell to one another,
it became necessarily more indulgent to neglect. But
if, 011 the one hand, London speculators, or Crown
favourites, could not be prevented from acquiring
large estates in Ireland, on the other the entire object
of the confiscation was defeated if the population were
left unshepherded; oi*, if for the landlord's convenience,
the sons and grandsons of the old owners were left in
possession as tenants retaining their local influence,
24° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
still to all intents and purposes the practical rulers;
and of tlie conquest, the only evidence was the exasper¬
ation of the returning rent-day. An ownership which
consisted merely in robbing a poor country of a per¬
centage of the fruits of its industry was no benefit, but
a curse ; and although it might have been impossible
to revive the laws of Henry the Eighth, a wise settle¬
ment of Ireland would have included a tax so heavy on
all rents sent out of the kingdom, as would have com¬
pelled proprietors to sell their lands to others who
would make their estates their home.
Lastly, as including in itself every other condition,
as, at that time, the warmest object of desire with
every intelligent Anglo-Irishman, the separate consti¬
tution should have been abolished, the two should have
been countries reunited, as Cromwell had designed,
and thus, better far than by any separate detailed con¬
dition, the Irish been admitted to the full participation
of every British privilege. So long as there were two
centres of political life, and two legislatures, the idea
of a separate nationality and of a separate interest
persistently survived; and absenteeism of the most
mischievous kind could not be prevented. To the
great peers, hereditary statesmen like the Shelburnes,
a public career in the larger country was an irresistible
temptation. The young barrister, conscious of real
powers, could not but prefer the ampler field of West¬
minster Hall for his energies and his abilities. A
man of letters or an artist would be drawn to London
as by a magnet. All the influences which could govern
CH. III.]
THE REVOLUTION.
241
healthily and nobly the public tone of Irish life would
be lost to her; and the provinces and the capital, the
legislature, the learned professions, the arts and sciences
—all which constitute the strength and greatness of a
nation, would be left to the second best. The nation¬
ality itself, perversely maintained, would survive, per¬
petually conscious of ill-usage, deficient in every ele¬
ment of moral health and life, to brood over its wrongs ;
and the mixed races, the conquerors and the conquered,
the Saxon and the Celt, would grow together as they
had grown before, in a common interest and common
resentment.
Certain principles, easily defined, had they been
steadily acted on at the close of the civil war, would
have made by this time the woes and the wrongs of
Ireland a thing of long-forgotten history.
A complete subjugation of the native faction un¬
trammelled by articles of capitulation.
The resolute exclusion of a Catholic hierarchy, and
stringent laws, stringently enforced, against the intro¬
duction of priests from abroad.
Entire toleration of all Protestant communities,
and an effective system of national education.
Sharp penalties against absentees ; a legislative
union of England and Ireland; the abolition of the
Irish Parliament, the separate government, and the
separate bars ; and a complete neutralization of all
classes of Irish as English citizens.
How England on all these points, treating Ireland
as a conquered country which she had no longer
J It EL. I. K
242 TILE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i.
occasion to fear, and might therefore safely misuse,
deliberately left undone what she ought to have done,
—refused the union when Ireland asked for it,—de¬
stroyed Irish manufactures,—ruined her trade,—in¬
curred the odium of penal laws while destroying their
efficacy—demoralized the entire people—and at last,
by the most ingenious complication of mismanagement,
exasperated Protestant and Catholic, Saxon colonist
and indigenous Celt, into a common revolt, will be
told in the following pages.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA.
SECTION I.
SIR THOMAS CLARGES, in a speech in the
English House of Commons on the state of Ire¬
land,1 said that ' King James's false dice were still
played with there.' The question which the politicians
who had charge of the new settlement asked them¬
selves was, not what they could best do to re-establish
order and industry, but how the dice could so be
thrown that they might make their own fortunes.
Marking, as it does, a turning-point in Irish his¬
tory, the campaign of 1691 is usually considered to have
decided beyond reversal the fate of the Irish Catholics;
yet the meaning of great events, however legible in
their consequences, is often concealed from the actors
in them. Notwithstanding Aghrim and the surrender
of Limerick, the Lords Justices2 either doubted their
power to hold the Catholics down, or they had received
1 December 14 1689.
2 Lord Sydney, Lord Coningsby, and Sir C. Porter.
R 2
244 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. it.
orders to indulge and protect them. Under the terms
of the Limerick convention, half the Irish army left the
country for France, intending to come back when a
new chance offered. The rest returned unmolested to
their estates, or were allowed to enter William's serv¬
ice. Coningsby and Porter were credited with having
removed the obnoxious clause from the second Limerick
Article, which, if sustained, would have left the rebel¬
lion unpunished. Yet the loyal colonists were dismayed
to perceive that the Catholics were handled as tenderly
as ever. Catholic gentlemen who had been in James's
army were admitted to, or continued in, the commis¬
sion of the peace. Catholic officers were taken back
into the army, and the oaths were altered to suit their
consciences. They swore allegiance in the simple
form prescribed by the English Parliament;1 but the
abjuration, which the law equally required, of the
Pope's pretended right to interfere with subjects' alle¬
giance, was dispensed with in their favour.2 The
reversals of outlawries, which the war had suspended,
recommenced. The disputed clause in the treaty was
treated as binding, and Catholics covered by it received
their pardons. The army, its wages being in arrear,
was again billeted upon the Protestant gentry and the
half-ruined farmers. The English House of Commons
had insisted that the expenses of the war should be
paid, in part at least, out of the sale of confiscated
1 3 & 4 "William and Mary, cap. 2. English Statutes.
~ 'Articles of Impeachment against Lord Coningsby and Sir C.
Porter before the English House of Commons, 1693.'
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 245
properties. It seemed as if tlie Government deliber¬
ately intended that there should be no properties to
sell.
Had there been no Limerick or Galway Articles,
3,921 Irish resident owners would have been liable
to forfeiture, and fifty-seven absentees. The estates
amounted to over a million plantation acres; their
market value to two millions and a half sterling.1 The
acts of James's Parliament had thrown the whole
country into confusion. The old owners had made
haste to take possession, and half the properties in the
country had changed hands. Commissioners were
appointed to hear claims, and reinstate the expelled
Protestants. They were accused of showing favour to
the Catholic interlopers, and of raising difficulties in
the way of the rightful proprietor. Of the lands newly
lapsed, a quarter was at once restored to the Catholics
under the Articles of Limerick and Galway. Sixty-
five great Irish proprietors, whom the Articles could
not be made to cover, were reinstated by special favour
from the Crown. The vast domains of the late King,
the grants to Tyrconnell, and the estates of others
who were not to be pardoned, were distributed, under
letters patent, to courtiers and favourites with the
most lavish and indiscriminate generosity.
The secrets of these transactions were imperfectly
1 Exact figures : — Plantation inheritance at thirteen.—Report of
acres, 1,060,792 ; rental, 211,623?.; the Commission appointed by Par-
total value, 2,685,130/., taking a liament to enquire into Irish Tor-
lite at six years' purchase, and an feitures.
246
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [ek. it.
ravelled out on subsequent enquiry. ' When we
touched on this subject/ reported the Parliamentary
Commissioners in 1699, 'we found difficulties too
great to be overcome, most of these, matters being
transacted in private/ They discovered, however,
that Lord Baby received 2000I. to procure the pardon
and restitution of Lord Bellew.1 Lord Albemarle 2
' consented to receive ' 7500/. from Lord Bophin for a
similar service,3 and these were but two instances out
of many of a similar kind. Considerations of pretended
merit were alleged in excuse of grants to favoured
individuals. Under a general plea of ' service done'
Lord Sydney received fifty thousand acres, and Lord
Albemarle a hundred thousand. A hundred and thirty
thousand were given to Bentinck, whose deserts were
held to be so self-evident that no explanation was so
much as offered.4 Coningsby, as one of the Lords
1 Walter Bellew, who command¬
ed a troop of horse in Tyrconnell's
regiment. His father, created by
James the first Lord Bellew, was
mortally wounded at Aghrim.
2 Van Keppel, Lord of Voorst,
created Earl of Albemarle by
William.
3 Lord Bophin was not restored,
and it is therefore uncertain whether
Van Iveppel actually received this
scandalous bribe. 'In pursuance
of this agreement,' says the report,
'a letter was sent to the Lords
Justices to go before the Commission
of the Court of Claims in favour
of Lord Bophin, to have him ad¬
judged within the Articles of Gal-
way. Nothing being done therein,
a bill was drawn, to be transmitted
to England, restoring Lord Bophin
to his estates and blood, the con¬
sideration suggested being to edu¬
cate his children Protestants, and
to set his estate to Protestants.
The bill was brought into the
House of Commons in Ireland, and
the House resenting their being
used to support a clandestine bar¬
gain, rejected,' &c.
4 Bentinck commanded a regi¬
ment at the battle of the Boyne,
and behaved well there.
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 247
Justices, rewarded liimself handsomely for his official
labours, and forty thousand acres were bestowed on
Henri de Ruvigny, created by William Earl of Galway.
These noblemen had contributed something towards
the reduction of the country on which they were quar¬
tered so liberally; but credit could be allowed for more
doubtful services in favour of those who had private
access to the dispensers of the royal bounties. James
Corry1 e obtained a heavy mortgage and an estate/
'the considerations mentioned in his letters patent being
that his house was burnt, and that he furnished the
garrison at Enniskillen with provisions and materials
to the value of 3000L at his own expense/ When
the commissioners enquired into the merits of this
gentleman, it appeared that he had given no assistance
whatever to the garrison at Enniskillen; that in the
town of Enniskillen ' he had declared publicly, that he
hoped to see all those hanged that took up arms for
the Prince of Orange;' and that his house had been
burnt by the Protestant soldiers as a punishment for
his disloyalty.2 The worst case was Lady Orkney's.
This lady's sole claim to consideration lay in her being
the daughter of Sir Edward Yilliers, Knight Marshal
of Charles the Second's household, and of Lady Yilliers,
who had been governess to the Princesses Mary and
Anne. To her were given the enormous Irish estates
of the late King. To William these estates were
represented as worth 50001. a year. They consisted,
1 Ancestor of the Earl of Belmore.
2 Report of the Commission.
24S
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 11.
in fact, of a hundred thousand acres of the finest land
in Munster. The rental was 26,000?. a year. The
selling value at the time of the grant 332,00c)?.1
To King William hiqiself the Irish Protestants
were enthusiastically grateful. He had come in per
son to fight their battle, and he had been wounded in
their cause. The descendant of a line of heroes, he
was upholding on the Boyne, on the Thames, and on
the Meuse, almost alone, the cause for which his great
ancestor had given his blood. Wherever he went he
freely risked his own life, and he was known to be in¬
capable of being influenced by mean considerations.
But he was a stranger in England ; of Ireland and
Irish history he was utterly ignorant; and he had to
rely for information on persons with whose character
and motives he had not leisure to acquaint himself.
It was too plain that, notwithstanding all that she had
gone through, Ireland was to be again sacrificed.
Corruption and interest were to reign supreme. The
wound was to be skinned over in the old false wa}r,
and Catholic to be still played against Protestant as if
1641 were forgotten, and the Tyrconnell Parliament
had never been.
False dice indeed! The cry ran through the
country that Ireland was betrayed. It was said that
the Articles of Limerick were a trick; that they were
invalid till the Irish legislature had sanctioned them,
and that sanction they should never have. Anthony
1 Report of the Commission, and see Parliamentary History, January
15, 1700.
cii. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 249
Dopping, Bishop of Meath, who had stood up so
boldly against James, preached in Christ Church that
'peace with a people so perfidious as the Irish' was
childishness. ' They observed neither article nor
oath longer than was for their interest.' ' They were
a conquered people, and as a conquered people only
could they be safely treated.' Dopping's name was
struck from the list of Privy Councillors ; but the
ferment was not allayed. A correspondence came to
light between two Catholic bishops in the late reign,
showing how determined was the animosity of the Irish
against the English, how utterly powerless was the
moderate Catholic to control the national fanaticism.
The creed made no difference in the opinion of these
prelates. An Englishman, whether Catholic or Pro¬
testant, was regarded as Ireland's enemy; a Saxon,
orthodox or heretic, would rather see Ireland occupied
by his own countrymen, of whatever religion, than by
the native race. The land, therefore, must be taken
back, the alien expelled, and Ireland be Irish once
more. Loyal to a Catholic King of England she might
be, if she had her own laws, and if her lands were her
own people's. Loyal to England she could never be.1
This was the feeling with which the colonists knew
that they had to reckon ; and to hope that by
time or indulgence it would be soothed or 1692
obliterated were to those who understood the country
the most idle of dreams.
1 ' Bishop Mahony to Bishop Tyrrell, March 8, 1690.' Printed among
the Appendices to Archbishop King's State of the Protestants.
250
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 11.
Supplies meanwhile were needed to pay the army ;
and for this and for other reasons Parliament must
now meet. Lord Sydney was appointed Viceroy.
Writs were issued for an election, the Catholics being
constitutionally disabled by the English Act,1 which
made the taking the Abjuration Oath and the Declar¬
ation against Transubstantiation conditions of a seat.
Little mystery was usually possible with the intended
business of an Irish session. The heads of the
Government bills were sketched in council, sent to
England for approval or alteration, and returned to the
council before Parliament began. The feeling of the
country was ascertained by conversation, or by direct
enquiry; and, for weeks before the opening, the State
coirespondence was generally filled with discussions of
the prospects of the meditated measures.
This time, so little conscious was Sydney or his
advisers of the humours which tbey were to encounter,
that not a misgiving was entertained. When the
members began to collect in Dublin, they were in¬
formed that a bill would be introduced to confirm the
Articles of Limerick in the extended form in which
the King had ratified them; and that the Acts of
Settlement were to be re-enacted, with further conces¬
sions to the Catholics. But it was intimated by the
Castle officials that there was to be no discussion;
' both measures had been amply considered by the
Privy Council; the two Houses were called up only
to ratify what was already determined; and, if any
1 3 & 4 William and Mary, cap. 2.
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA.
251
scruple was made, there would never again be a
Parliament in Ireland.'1
The brief and stormy session opened on the 5th
of October, 1692. Never had the temper of a public
assembly been more profoundly miscalculated. Lord
Sydney's speech was short and general. ' The King,'
he said, ' had risked his own person to give Ireland
quiet; and Ireland, he hoped, would remember in turn
the duties which it owed to its sovereign. A country
so advantageously situated for trade, and so favoured
in its soil, could need nothing but peace and good
laws to make it as fertile and flourishing as any of its
neighbours.' The address in reply was conciliatory.
Loth Houses expressed their most hearty thanks to
William for delivering them from the Papist tyranny.
They passed a Recognition Act with special expres¬
sions of gratitude. They admitted, without difficulty,
that the kingdom of Ireland was dependent on, and
inseparably united to, the Crown of England.2 An
act passed in Charles the Second's time,3 to encourage
the immigration of Protestant French and Flemings,
was renewed; an additional clause being attached,
giving them the untrammelled exercise of their
religion,4 and the rights of freemen without the dis¬
abilities of Nonconformity. So far the session went
smoothly, but so far only. The pent-up indignation
then burst out, and the entire policy of the Govern¬
ment was denounced in a torrent of declamation. The
1 ' Account of the Parliament 2 4 William and Mary, cap. 1.
of 1692.' IihSS. Ireland. Eecord 3 14 & 15 Charles II. cap. 13.
Office. 4 4 William and Mary, cap. 2.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. IT.
Lower House drew a petition to the Crown complain¬
ing of the reversals of outlawries, the misappropriation
of the forfeitures, the pardons and protections which
prevented Protestants from recovering their farms,
the idle and mischievous attempts at reconciling the
irreconcilable. If England intended to govern Ireland
on these principles, she was not to count on the as¬
sistance of the Irish Parliament. William, or William's
advisers, conceived perhaps that they, and not the
colonists, had conquered the Catholics, and that they
therefore were entitled to dictate the concessions which
were to make the Catholics into good subjects. The
colonists, on whom the immediate peril fell, and who
understood well that they must either rule or perish,
declined to be consenting parties to so wild a scheme.
To ask them, in their present humour, to confirm the
Articles of Limerick, was to ask them to sign away
their lives. To pass the first article was to give
Homanism a legally recognized existence. The second
article, with the omitted clause, ' would open a passage
to the Papists to repossess themselves of the estates
which they had forfeited.' Instead of showing a
readiness to confirm the Articles, they required to be
told by what means 'the additional paragraph had
been maintained.'1 They quarrelled on every line
of the new Act of Settlement. The Government
introduced a bill to declare void the acts of the late
pretended Parliament. This, it might have been
1 e Petition of the Irish House of Commons to the Crown, October,
1692.' MSS. Rolls House, Ireland.
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 253
thought, they would accept without objection; but
they threw it out, because it proposed that those acts
should be simply cancelled ; and the Commons ' found
it for their majesties'' service and the honour of the
Protestants of Ireland, to preserve the record of the
Irish barbarity, which would have been taken off the
file had the bill passed.'
Still more dangerously, they voted that persons
commissioned by the Crown to receive the forfeited
estates had broken their trust, and had fraudulently
diverted them to their own use. They ordered that
these persons should be prosecuted, even though they
were members of their own House; and, when the
Money Bill came on, the immediate object of their
assembling, they would not, indeed, ' in the present
exigencies of affairs,' refuse a supply altogether; they
voted part of what the Government asked; but, as an
assertion of independence, they threw out another
part, because ' the bill had not taken its rise in their
House;' and they carried a vote, that it was the
undoubted right of the Irish Commous to prepare
their own Money Bills, and not receive them from the
Crown. Finally, when the Mutiny Act was presented
as of pressing importance, and with a special request
that it should be unopposed, they threw out this also,
in resentment at the admission of Catholic officers into
the King's service.
Instead of the complacent assembly which Sydney
had expected to meet, he found himself in the midst
of a nest of exasperated hornets. He prorogued the
254 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii
Parliament till the spring with an angry rebuke.
Specially offended with the interference with the
Money Bill, and unconscious of the sore point on
which he was treading, he ' regretted/ he said, ' that
they who were under so many obligations to be loyal
should have entrenched on the rights of the Crown in
^ rejecting a bill which had not originated with
themselves/ He pronounced their vote to be
' contrary to the laws of their constitution/ and re¬
quired his protest to be entered in the journals in
vindication of the prerogative.
The hereditaiy revenue was unequal to the current
expenses. Without supplies the army could not be
paid, and must continue to live at free quarters.
Money must be raised in some way, and it appears,
from Sydney's language, as if the alternative contem¬
plated by the Government was to govern Ireland
directly as a province. The King, he said, must re¬
solve whether the Parliament should meet a second
time. For himself he thought the lesson had done
them good, and he was willing to try the experiment
again; but he was not disposed to yield a step of his
own policy. ' If they are as foolish and knavish as
they were,' he wrote to Lord Nottingham, ' they must
not sit a day.' e If they are so mad and absurd as not
to consent to what is proposed for their own good, if
they are afterwards undone, I suppose they will not
be pitied.'1
About the Catholics Sydney had speedy reason to
1 ' Sydney to Nottingham, Jan. 5 and Jan. 25, 1693.'
cn. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA.
255
discover that the Parliament had been wiser than him¬
self. There was this difficulty then and always in
schemes of conciliation, that they could not be acted
on consistently, and were liable to be continually re¬
versed under sudden alarms. Lord Sydney had invited
Catholics into the army. A report rose in the winter
of 1692-3, that a French invasion was to be looked for
in the spring. At once he confessed himself embar¬
rassed ' with a prodigious number of officers, who,
without doubt, would do mischief when it was in their
power/1 He had wished to extort from the Legislature
a formal toleration of Romanism. He found himself
within a few months obliged to recommend the sup¬
pression of all Catholic convents, schools, and colleges,
and the expulsion of the Catholic hierarchy ; he issued
an order for an indefinite arrest of priests and
regulars,2 and followed it by a warrant3 for the dis¬
missal of the Catholic officers and the substitution of
Protestants.
The mistake which he had made became more ap¬
parent from the action of the Parliament in England.
The revolution had given a fresh impulse to Pro¬
testantism, and revived the traditions of the past
generation. The massacre of 1641 was inseparably
connected with Irish Popery in every Protestant mind;
1 It is uncertain whether he was
alluding to officers in the King's
army, or to Tyrconnell's officers,
who were allowed to retain their
estates under the Limerick Arti¬
cles. In either case the Govern¬
ment policy, was equally con¬
demned.
2 MSS. Record Office, Ireland,
January, 1693.
3 May 30. MSS. Ibid.
256 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ir.
and, outside the Court circle, there was as much im¬
patience at Westminster as in Dublin at the incom¬
pleteness with which Ireland was being handled. The
complaints which Sydney had silenced were taken up
at St. Stephen's, and the Irish gilevances were embodied
in a second petition, which could be less easily disposed
of. The King was reminded of a promise which he
had made to reserve the forfeitures for the consideration
of Parliament. The Bishop of Meath and Sydney's
secretary, Mr. Pulteney, were sent for and examined
in committee ; and the indignation went so far that
Sir Charles Porter and Lord Coningsby were actually
hnpeached. Coningsby boldly defended himself. Most
Protestants, he said, considered that the proceedings
now called traitorous had saved Ireland. The Commons
decided that there was not matter to sustain a charge
of treason ; but both his conduct and Porter's were
censured as illegal and arbitrary.
The King's Government discovered that they must
consider with more courtesy the opinion of Ireland.
Sydney was recalled, and the Parliament with which
he had quarrelled was dissolved. The first attempt
at settlement had failed disastrously. A fresh begin¬
ning was to be made with new men; and Sir Henry
Capel, a distinguished member of the English House
of Commons, raised to the peerage as Lord Capel, was
sent over to heal the wounds which had been so
recklessly opened.
257
SECTION II.
Two years were allowed to pass before an Irish Legis¬
lature was again assembled. The Government
p ~i i695
was embarrassed by want of money, and great
questions were left open which the Protestants were
eager should be closed. Both sides were disposed to
a compromise when their heats cooled down, and the
situation could be discussed dispassionately. By judi¬
cious handling, by taking into the service of the Crown
the favourites of the House of Commons, and by pi'ivate
assurances that their wishes would be considered more
respectfully, Capel at last brought about a temper
which encouraged him to issue writs for a fresh elec¬
tion. Robert Rochfort, a son of an officer of Crom¬
well's, and Alan Brodrick, who, in the last Parliament,
had led the opposition, were made Attorney and
Solicitor-General. Porter was retained as Chancellor,
perhaps as a last chance of preserving the wide con¬
struction of the Articles of Limerick; but his general
policy was discredited, his views were abandoned, and
his power gone. The Court had perceived at last that
Ireland could be governed only by the Protestant
gentry, and with some return to the principles of the
rule of the Protector.
The Commons, it was understood, were willing to
leave in abeyance The sole right' of initiating money
bills. In return, the Government promised measures
258
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
for the repression of the Catholics, which on that side
would relieve the anxiety. A new difficulty was now
likely to rise from the leaven of Jacobitism in some
members of the Established Church, left behind by
the traditions of Bramhall and Jeremy Taylor. The
Churchmen had fared no better than the Presbyterians
at the hands of the Parliament of James; but, if they
feared the Catholics, they hated the Nonconformists.
There was a latent wish with some of them that the
Catholics might not be weakened beyond a point where
the Ormond and Stafford games might be played over
again ; and that, when the lawful sovereign came back,
he might still find a loyal Ireland to bear him up
against dissent and revolution.1
The ground, however, had been well prepared.
Capel was accused of having used undue influence.
He appealed to his own Parliamentary life in answer.
1 Eor thirty years he had taken a freedom in voting/
he said, and fthe liberty he claimed for himself he
allowed to others.' He had secured, at any rate, the
two most formidable opponents. ' Without Bochfort
1 C&pel, writing to the Duke of
Shrewsbury on the 16th May, 1695,
was sanguine that he had removed
all difficulties. 'I have,' he said,
' endeavoured with all industry to
prepare matters in order to a Par¬
liament, and do really find almost
a universal disposition in the Pro¬
testants to behave themselves duti¬
fully without insisting on the sole
right.'
On the 18th June, the horizon
was less favourable. Two bills
were coming from England, one for
disarming the Catholics, another
for ' restraining foreign education.'
'The first,' Capel said, 'if passed
will secure the Protestant interest;
the other, the Protestant religion
in this kingdom. The Irish Papists
will he solicitous to overturn any
foundation that may be laid for
preventing their future rebellions,
and may, perhaps, find Protestant
friends here to help them in it.'—
HSS. Record Office, Ireland, 1695.
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 259
and Brodrick,' lie admitted that he would have failed/1
The session opened on the 29th August. The Com¬
mons promised in their address, that they would avoid
heats and animosities, and do their best to pass useful
measures, which would give quiet to the country.
Money was voted, and ' the sole right' question was
not raised. The Articles of Limerick were left nnap-
proached. The King himself, perhaps, was unwilling
to precipitate a decision which was sure to be unfavour¬
able. But the objections to annulling the proceedings
of James's Parliament were not maintained. It was
decreed to have been an unlawful assembly, and its
measures to have been void. The Commons consented,
in express words, that the journals should be cancelled,
and the acts passed there should be erased from the
roll, ' that 110 memorial might remain among the
recoi-ds, of the proceedings of that assembly.' 2
By an Act of Henry the Eighth, which had been
revived by Elizabeth, every incumbent in Ireland had
been required to keep a free school in his parish for
instruction in English; and every diocese was to have
its public Latin school. Performance had lagged
terribly behind promise. Few parish schools or Latin
schools had Ireland seen of Protestant institution. But
now at last the dream was to become a reality. The
Act was revived. The magistrates were directed to
see to the obedience of the clergy. The judges on
1 'Lord Capel to Secretary Vernon, November 23 and December
7.' MSS. Record Office, Ireland, 1695.
2 7 William and Mary, cap. 3. Irish Statutes.
S 2
260 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
circuit were to report if magistrates were negligent;
and, a proper education being tbus provided by tlie
State_, the Catholics were forbidden to have schools of
their own at home; or to send their children to learn
disloyalty and Popery abroad; under penalties of out¬
lawry and forfeiture.1
The positive part of this Act was so gross a mockery;
that the prohibition remained necessarily dead. While
three-fourths of the benefices in Ireland were without
incumbents; and the stipends of the few who were
scattered about the country sufficed barely to keep
them alive; to order them to provide schools for the
whole population was to order a simple impossibility.
As little; so long as there was no substitute within
reach, could the Catholics be compelled to leave their
children to grow up savages. The Irish Parliament
awoke later to a keener sense of their responsibilities
in this matter; and nobly redeemed their neglect; till
then statutes such as this were worse than idle; remain¬
ing minatory merely, like scarecrows which the birds
soon learn to laugh at, they served but to teach the
Irish once more a lesson which they had no need to
learn, that laws were made to be disobeyed.
A disarming Act was more rational and more effec¬
tual. The measure which the Catholics, in their day
of power, had inflicted on the Protestants was retorted
on themselves. By the 5th of the 7th of William and
Mary all licences to bear arms were revoked, and the
Catholics were ordered to deliver up whatever guns,
1 7 William and Mary, cap. xo. Irish Statutes.
CTi. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 261
muskets, or ammunition they possessed. Lords and
gentlemen within the Articles of Limerick were per¬
mitted, on taking the oath of allegiance, to retain their
swords and pistol-cases, and to keep a fowling-piece
to shoot game. This was the sole exception to a
measure which implied that from them alone in Ireland
was violence to be anticipated. Magistrates were
empowered to search their houses. Horses it was
assumed that they did not need, except for agriculture;
and, therefore, they were forbidden to possess horses
above five pounds in value. Any Protestant might
demand and take a Catholic's horse from him, on
paying five guineas to the nearest magistrate for the
owner's use. Finally, gunmakers and sword-cutlers,
that the very knowledge of the art of making danger¬
ous weapons might be taken from them, were not
allowed to receive Catholics as apprentices; and they
themselves were required, before practising their trade,
to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and
subscribe the statutory declaration against Transub-
stantiation.1
On the breaking up of James's army the Tories
and Papparees, from which it had been recruited, fell
back to their old haunts and their old work. The
forests and mountains were again peopled with poli¬
tical banditti, who carried on a guerilla war against
their conquerors. f Out 011 their keeping,' as the legal
phrase described them, they lived,like their forefathers,
on plunder, but on the plunder of the invader. They
1 7 William and Mary, cap. 5. Irish Statutes.
262
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IT.
beset the high roads. They came down at night on the
outlying farmer, houghed his stock, burnt his haggard,
or cut the throats of himself and his family. To put
these villanies down by a regular police was found
impossible, 'the Popish inhabitants choosing rather to
suffer strangers to be robbed and despoiled of their
goods than apprehend the offenders, the greater part
of whom were people of the same country, and har¬
boured by the inhabitants.'1 If Ireland was to be a
civilized country brigandage must in some way be
ended ; and the methods hitherto found effectual were
again resorted to. The baronies were made responsible,
and the Catholic inhabitants were required to make
good any loss or injury inflicted within their bound¬
aries : persons presented by grand juries as ' on their
keeping' were to be proclaimed; and, unless they
surrendered to take their trials, they were outlawed.
To conceal or harbour them was made felony, and any
one who would bring in a proclaimed Tory, dead or
alive, might claim a reward of twenty pounds.2
These measures formed the most important part
of the work of the first successful session of William's
Irish Parliament: some wise in themselves; some
wise or unwise, according as they were or were not
put in force ; all natural, however, and, as times went,
inevitable, if the Irish Catholics were not to gather
courage from the fears of the Government, and venture
another rebellion.
One matter only of consequence the House of
1 7 "William III. cap. 21. Irish Statutes. 3 Ibid.
CH. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 263
Commons attempted, which threatened a renewal of
the former quarrel. Thev could not forgive Porter,
whom they accused of having been Lord Sydney's
chief adviser. The impeachment in England had
failed; it was renewed in Ireland, and the Chancellor
was accused, by Colonel Ponsonby, of having abused
his position to thrust Catholics into the commission
of the peace, and to favour them in their suits with
Protestants. Porter, after all, had been but the King's
instrument. Unusually irritated, William reproached
Capel for not having prevented an attack which he
interpreted as directed against himself.1 Capel ex¬
cused himself by saying, that the first vote against the
Chancellor had been taken before he had heard that
the prosecution was intended. He was, perhaps, wise
in abstaining from interference. Porter defended
himself in person. The House of Commons decided,
by a large majority, that his answers were sufficient;
and further difficulty about him was removed by his
death in the following year.
1 'Lord Capel to Secretary Vernon, November 23, 1695.' MSS.
Record Office.
264
SECTION III.
Among the Scotch and English settlers in Ireland
none had deserved better than the Noncon-
1692
formists. None had been worse rewarded.
When the High Church party went with Ormond and
the Kilkenny Council, at the close of the rebellion
of 1641, a Puritan army recovered the country to
England. The Restoration, which broug'ht back the
bishops, brought back the persecutions. The Presby¬
terian clergy had been suspended or imprisoned. Half
the Cromwellian settlers had been driven from the
country; and the children of the other half had been
flung back, for want of ministers or schoolmasters, into
open Popery.
The same story was repeated in 1689. The bishops
and clergy of the Establishment prayed for James
till William entered Dublin. The Ulster Calvinists
had won immortal honour, and saved England half
the labour of reconquest, by their share in the defence
of Derry. In them there was a vigorous and living-
power in antagonism to Popery. In the existence in
Ireland of free Protestant communities, beyond the
episcopal Pale, lay its chief attraction to the Huguenot,
the Palatine, and the English Puritan. The full and
free equality of privilege which they had honourably
earned, it was William's desire to secure to them by
law. The tolerant spirit which made him reluctant
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA'. 265
to interfere with tlie liberties of Catholics rendered
him donbly anxious to protect the rights of subjects
who had stood by him when others were found want¬
ing, and whose opinions were virtually his own.
To foreign immigrants the desired liberty had been
conceded. Dissenters, on the other hand, of Irish,
Scotch, or English birth, were still under the Act of
Uniformity, and their position was peculiar. In Eng¬
land the Toleration Act had given them their chapels,
but they were excluded by the sacramental test from
public employment. In Ireland there was no sacra¬
mental test. The Oath of Supremacy had answered
the purpose as long as it was maintained; but to the
substituted oaths of allegiance and abjuration their
objections did not apply. They had become eligible
for the magistracy, or for commissions in the army.
They could sit in Parliament, or be members of cor¬
porations. They were in possession of all their secular
rights as citizens ; yet, notwithstanding, the exercise
of any form of worship, except that of the Established
Church, was prohibited under sevex-e penalties.
The King, while personally in Ireland, had shown
his opinion of the state of the law, and his recognition
of the Presbyterians' services, by assigning a gi*ant to
their ministers, out of the Belfast customs, of 1200/.
a year — the oiiginal of the fund known afterwards
as the Regium Donum. The Church authorities re¬
fused to hold themselves bound by the pleasure of a
piince whom in their hearts many of them still looked
on as a usui'per. On the return of quiet, Lemuel
266 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. it.
Matthews, the Archdeacon of Down, took on himself to
imprison a Presbyterian minister at Hillsborough for
having presumed to preach a sermon. The King had
seen the necessity of placing the ministers beyond the
reach of the petty Church officials; and, in 1692, Lord
Sydney submitted to the Irish Council the heads of a
toleration bill, identical with the English, with a view
to its being laid immediately before Parliament.
To unite the Protestant interest in the presence of
a common enemy, to avoid the repetition of the worst
mistakes of the Restoration, and establish if not inter¬
communion yet political equality between parties who
had fought and suffered for the same cause, was so
obviously desirable, that it is hard to see how such
a proposal could have been opposed by reasonable
men.
It was not only opposed, but opposed with a bitter¬
ness of animosity which only the remembrance that
the parties to it were ecclesiastics, or under ecclesias¬
tical influence, enables us even faintly to understand.
The Irish Established clergy, the Irish peers, and the
great landowners were ardent High Churchmen,
dreading nothing so much as to be confounded with
the Cromwellians, to whom most of them owed their
estates; and, though reconciled outwardly to the
Revolution by the want of discrimination in James's
Parliament, which had not distinguished between them
and the Calvinists, yet they were loud as ever against
principles of church government which tended, as they
were pleased to say, to republicanism.
CII. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 267
Though forming- but a third of the nominal Pro-
o o
testants, and an eleventh of the entire population, the
Church party chose to believe that Ireland was theirs;
that it was for them to dictate the terms on which
either Catholics or Dissenters should be permitted to
abide among them. The bishops argued that, if they
agreed to a toleration act, they must be protected by
a sacramental test; Nonconformity must be laid under
a ban of some kind; and, if liberty of worship was
allowed, the army and navy, the learned professions,
and the Civil Service, must be reserved to Churchmen.
From a passage in one of Sydney's letters, it would
seem that he himself shared the prejudices of his
order, and that while he submitted to carry out the
King's instructions, he loved the Dissenters as
. 1695
little as the prelates loved them.1 He received
orders to go on with the bill whether the bishops
liked it or not, and though it would have been thrown
out by the Lords, it would have been laid before the
Commons, and probably in the existing humour of that
House, might then have been carried there but for the
altercation which broke up the Parliament. Relieved
of this danger, the bishops pursued their triumph.
They regarded the Regiurn Donum as an intolerable
affront. The payment was suspended, and Sir Cyril
Wych and Mr. Duncombe, who were associated with
1 ' Londonderry on the death of
the mayor has chosen another that
was never at church in his life.
It is the work of the Scotch fac¬
tion. If the King thinks of send¬
ing Scotch regiments here, advise
him not.'—'Sydney to Notting¬
ham, February 20, 1693.' MSS.
Record Office.
26S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. IT.
Capel on his first arrival as Lords Justices, advised, at
the bishops' instance, that the grant should be dis¬
continued. The King declined to yield to such intem¬
perate bigotry, and, when the Second Parliament met,
insisted once more on the introduction of the Toler¬
ation Act. The Dissenters belonged chiefly to the
middle and lower ranks. They were farmers, shop¬
keepers, and merchants, and even in the Lower House
were feebly represented. But the violent Protestant
humour of the first session, which might have shown
them favour, had cooled; and as it was understood
that the bill would be met in Parliament by a second
attempt to impose a test, they appealed to Irish
opinion in a general remonstrance. They said truly
that without toleration it was vain to expect that
Protestant settlements in Ireland could thrive. The
Test Act in England had been designed to exclude
Catholics. If extended to Ireland, it would cut off one
arm from the Protestant interest. They would prefer
to remain as they were, they said, liable to prosecution
under the Act of Uniformity, rather than be disabled
from doing service to their country.
The bishops, or the Bishop of Dromore as their
representative, replied that the Presbyterians were at
heart rebels and Covenanters. If they had deserved
well in the war, the Royal bounty was reward suffi¬
cient for them. To take the sacrament on admission
to employment, the Bishop of Dromore called 'a,
trivial and inconsiderable mark of compliance with
the State order;' and he added with pretty sarcasm,
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 269
' that Episcopalians were opposed to toleration that
they might preserve power to show their tenderness
to their Dissenting brethren/1 The Toleration Bill
was introduced into the Commons. Capel furthered
it to the best of his power, but it was lost. The
Earl of Drogheda tried to carry the heads of another
bill to the same purpose in the Upper House ; but
the bishops mustered in strength and defeated him.
Bishop King, writing bitterly to a friend in England,
in complaint of Capel, who had promoted a Noncon¬
formist to some post of consequence, said : ' If we
have such governors put upon us, 'twill be impossible,
whatever reason or Scripture be against schismatics,
to hinder them from multiplying. Most people value
their interest above their religion. If Dissenters be
picked out for places of honour, trust, and profit,
many will daily qualify themselves as they see their
neighbours do.' 2
And in what condition was the Church which was
thus determined to assert its sovereignty so
peremptorily ? Hacket, the Bishop of Down 1694
and Connor, who in Lord Clarendon's time had been
six years absent from his diocese, was residing still
undisturbed at Hammersmith, and openly sold his
preferments. Clarendon had ordered his return. He
had paid no attention. In 1691 the Primate of Ire¬
land applied to Archbishop Tillotson to appoint a
coadjutor. The Archbishop discovered difficulties, but
1 Heid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, voL ii. p. 45 r#
2 Ibid. p. 456.
270 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. it.
recommended that Hacket should be deprived 'for
scandalous neglect of his charge.' Two more years
passed. The diocese was reported as in hopeless
disorder; and, in 1693, the Bishops of Meath, Derry,
and Dromore went down as commissioners to examine
and punish.
The first offender who fell under their notice was
Archdeacon Matthews, the persecutor.
The character of this gentleman may be described
by the commissioners : ' Dr. Matthews, as Archdeacon
of Down, had four cures without any vicarages en¬
dowed, and five cures as Prebendary of Carncastle, in
the diocese of Connor. On some of them he never
had any resident curates; on others he had only
nominal curates, to answer at visitations, but not
perform other offices; on others curates altogether
insufficient and unfit. Where he had. curates he did
not allow them sufficient maintenance. Catechizing,
visiting the sick, administration of the sacraments,
were so neglected that many left the Church and
turned Presbyterians and Papists. To save charge
of curates, he corrupted visitation-books, procured
the Bishop to unite parishes in perpetuum, chose no
churchwardens, usurped the Bishop's office in some
parts of ordination. As Chancellor of the diocese of
Down his misbehaviour had been equally great.'1
Matthews was deprived of his archdeaconry and
suspended from his other offices. He scraped together
1 ' Report of Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 1694.' HSS. Ireland,
Record Office.
CH. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 271
what money he could lay hands on and rushed to
London to appeal; the Lords Justices thinking it
necessary to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury to
desire that no favour might be shown to him.1
Hacket's case followed. The Bishop was convicted
of non-residence and of flagrant simony. He had
delegated his authority to women. He had admitted
Papists to church livings, giving them false certificates
of subscription. He was past improvement. The com¬
missioners deposed him, and declared the see vacant.2
"VV ard, Dean of Connor, was deprived for adultery and
incontinence. Mylne, a prebendary of Kilrush, was
reprimanded for habitual drunkenness, and suspended
for neglect of his duties.
Down and Connor, it may be said, was an excep¬
tional diocese. Scandals had crept in through the
Bishop's absence, and when discovered were vigorously
reformed. But such exceptions should have ceased to
be possible before the prelates of the Church took on
themselves to punish others for doing work which
their own officials could leave undone ; work, it may
be said, which it was impossible in the nature of
things that they could ever discharge effectually. The
presentations to the great majority of benefices was
in the hands of the Government. Irish government
patronage, spiritual and secular, ran generally in
political grooves, and was disposed of to purchase
votes in Parliament. A corrupt secretary, if he chose
1 'The Lords Justices to the Archbishop of Canterbury.' MSS.
Ireland, Record Office. 2 Ibid.
272
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
to use his opportunity and distribute Church prefer¬
ment to his own advantage, was never at a loss
1702 0
for a clergyman who was eager to make a
simoniacal bargain with him.1
Every parish, according to law, was to have a local
school supported by the incumbent. A single instance
will show how vainly even the best bishops struggled
against abuses which turned the act, as a scheme of
national education, into an insult to the Irish people.
Among the waste lands thrown in as makeweights
among his other bargains by the Court of Claims in
1652, Sir William Petty had secured the larger por¬
tion of the mountains of Kerry. At that time they
were covered with forest, and Petty, who had a true
genius for turning opportunities to account, had estab¬
lished furnaces at Kilmakilloge on the Kenmare river,
at Kenmare itself, and at other spots in the neighbour¬
hood to which ore was brought from England to be
smelted. Small knots of Protestants had thus been
collected and dispersed over a district where their pre¬
sence, had they remained there, would afterwards have
been of incalculable service. They had cod and ling
fisheries, seal fisheries, and a rising trade. The Ken¬
mare colony had been strong enough and spirited
1 Secretary Southwell, writing
011 the 23rd July, 1703, to Lord
Nottingham, says:
' The clergy here seem mighty
dependent and very great courtiers,
for the livings are pretty good and
there is a constant expectation of
preferment and a very great greedi¬
ness to obtain. Nay, they hardly
scruple offering what they hope
will be the most prevailing argu¬
ment. I am sorry to say it. I
tell it only that your Lordship
may know something of their
humours.'—MSS. Ireland, Record
Office.
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 273
enough to sustain a four months' siege in the last
rebellion. The first care of a prudent Government
would have been to see that these people were not left
uncared for to sink away in the Catholic morass. Petty
himself cared little for religion in its spiritual aspect;
but he was aware of the money value of Protestant
tenants and of the terms on which they could be pre¬
served. On the Restoration two clergymen were sent
into the district, one to Kenmare and Kilmakilloge,
another to Templemore and Kilcroghan. The two
parishes lay along the opposite shores of the Kenmare
river for twenty miles, and the smelting colonies were
thus moderately provided for. The rector of Kenmare
died in 1673. A Mr. Palmer was appointed to succeed
him. The rector of Templemore dying in 1676, a
faculty was granted to Mr. Palmer to hold all the
benefices collectively, and thus a single clergyman had
charge of two groups of parishes divided by an arm of
the sea. The water, however, formed a convenient
highway at a time when there were no roads. With
the help of curates the scattered flocks still received
their due attendance, and in 1689, the furnaces were
in full work and the colonies prospering. Mr. Palmer
lived till 1701, and the downward progress marks the
ebb of the vitality of Irish Protestantism. Tralee is
forty miles from Kenmare, the Killarney mountains
lying between them; and Kilmakilloge is nearly twenty
miles beyond Kenmare. On Palmer's death, Dr.
Richards, Dean of Tralee, already overburdened with
Church preferments, set his mind upon annexing, in
IREL. I. T
274 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
addition, these remote and outlying benefices. He
made influence with the Castle, obtained the present¬
ation, and an order with it to the Bishop of Limerick
to institute him. With this introduction the following
letters from the Bishop of Limerick to Joshua Dawson,
the Castle secretary, will tell their own story.
' The Bishop of Limerick to Joshua Dawson, Esq., Secretary's
Office, Dublin.
' October 9, 1702.
' Sir,—This day I received yours of the 6th instant,
wherein you mention a former letter which I never
received. Dean Richards has imposed on the Lords
Justices by telling them that the livings of Mr.
Palmer, lately deceased, are contiguous to his deanery.
I believe they are at least twelve miles1 distant from
the nearest part of the Dean's livings; and there is,
moreover, a great mountain between them several
miles over. They are of very great extent, and there
is a considerable number of Protestants in them.
Dean Richards writes to me to befriend him in his
application for these livings; but I sent him word that
I did by no means think it proper that he, who had so
considerable a cure as that of Tralee to serve, should
likewise have so many and large pai'ishes at such a
distance from him to serve besides. He offered to
allow a curate what I should think fit, but I would
not hearken to it. Mr. Palmer's livings will be a
handsome competency for some deserving resident
1 Twelve Irish miles equal eighteen English.
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA.
275
incumbent, who shall make it his whole business to
serve those cures without any other plurality. The
Dean has, besides the parish of Tralee, eight or nine
more parishes to take care of, being the corpus of his
deanery, and his turn every fifth Sunday in the
cathedral of Ardfert to preach besides.'
The Irish House of Commons passed a resolution
in 1697, that the non-residence of the clergy with cure
of souls in many parts of the kingdom was a great
occasion of the growth and increase of Popery.1 Re¬
monstrances of bishops and resolutions in Parliament
weighed little, it seems, against the carelessness
or corruption with which the Castle government
trifled away the interests of Protestantism. The scat¬
tered sheep on the Konmare river were of less import¬
ance than some vote which it was desirable to secure.
The Lords Justices sent the Bishop word that Dean
Richards must be instituted notwithstanding, and
the Bishop could but leave on record his ineffectual
protest.
' The Bishop of Limerick to Joshua Dawson, Esq.
' January 12, 1703.
' Sir,—I received yours of the 5th instant this
morning, acquainting me with their Excellencies'
design of recommending Dean Richards for Mr.
Palmer's livings, to which I can only answer that since
I have used my endeavours to prevent what has been
1 Commons' Journals, December I, 1697.
T 2
276 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ir.
at all times so much condemned, I mean exorbitant
plurality of cures, for by the addition of these livings
the Dean will have at least fourteen parishes—I am
the less concerned—only give me leave to make one
observation, that, whereas you say his keeping an able
curate will in effect answer the end as well as if those
livings had been given to a resident incumbent, we
find by experience the quite contrary; and if it were
so, pluralities and non-residences would not be so
much cried out against as they are. However, I
submit to their Excellencies' wisdom, and am very
thankful to them for their condescension in express¬
ing their readiness in obliging me on some other
occasion.'1
The Irish Church Establishment has been re¬
proached for its missionary failures. What chance
had an institution so conditioned ? With what spirit
could the better kind of clergy go about their work,
with the poison breath of the Castle thus blighting
their endeavours ? The Dean of Tralee had his pro¬
motion, and the last English service had been heard
in the church of Kilmakilloge. The church itself still
lies a roofless ruin littered with skulls. The smelting
colony melted away, till the few families that were
left were carried off by French privateers, and the
harbour and the bay became the recruiting depot for
the Pretender, and a nest of pirates and smugglers.
1 ' Correspondence of Secretary Dawson, 1702-3.' MSS, Dublin Castle.
277
SECTION IY.
The Parliament had commenced a policy of repression
against the Catholic religion which could be
justified only by a united atid determined effort
for the regeneration of the kingdom. The steps taken
in this direction were so far singularly unpromising.
The King was giving away among favourites the lands
which should have been settled with Protestants.
The Church was oppressing the Presbyterians, the
Government was corrupting the Church. The High
Churchmen, Peers, Bishops, and Commoners are now
to be seen fostering secretly the common enemy in
their terror of Whigs and Dissenters.
In both kingdoms the history of these years is
woven of insincerity. Irish faction waa played off by
the English Jacobites as a means of embarrassing the
King; and the passions which bred the Assassination
Plot, and were blown into fury by its failure, are to be
traced working below the surface amidst the intrigues
of Dublin politicians. The Irish Parliament reassem¬
bled in the summer of 1697. Capel, who had been a
sound friend to the true Protestant interest, unhappily
died in 1696. Porter succeeded to the government
as Lord Justice, but died also in the same winter.
Party feeling ran so high that neither the sword nor
27$ THE ENGLISH IN-IRELAND. [bk. n.
the great seal could ho trusted in Irish hands ; and
He Puvigny, Earl of Gal way, with Paulet, Marquis of
Manchester, were sent to the Castle. Methuen, an
English barrister, who had been minister in Portugal,
took Porter's place as Chancellor.
The King had made up his mind to gratify what
he supposed to be the wishes of his Protestant Irish
subjects. They had clamoured against the leniency
shown to Catholic offenders. He sent over a bill in
which he relinquished for the Crown the power of
reversing Irish outlawries, and he allowed a clause to
be inserted, in the belief that it would be especially
grateful, by which the estates of persons who had
either been killed in rebellioi^ or had died in foreign
service, were included in the forfeiture. As a yet
greater sacrifice he had brought himself to consent, as a
price for the confirmation of the Articles of Limerick,
that the disputed clause should be withdrawn. When
the session of 1697 opened, the Lords Justices
were astonished to find that the position of
Crown and Parliament was precisely reversed,
that while five years before Protestant Ireland was in
mutiny on account of the favour shown by the Crown
to the Catholics, the House of Lords almost unani¬
mously and a powerful party in the Commons were now
inclining to protect the Catholics against the Crown#
Mr. Stanley, Lord Galway's English secretary,in despair
at the element in which he found himself, declared f that
he had fallen into the most eating, drinking, wrangling,
quarrelsome country he ever saw; there was no keeping
CH. x.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 279
tlie peace among tliem.'1 An Englishman accustomed
to consistency had sufficient reason for finding him¬
self bewildered.
In the Upper House the opposition was Episcopal
and Jacobite. ''There is a greater inclination at
present/ reported Lord Galway, ' to favour the Papists
here than in England. The bishops are great sticklers.
The Bishops of Killaloe,2 Killala/ and Derry 4 are the
leading men that govern the rest.' 5 In the Commons,
though the Anti-Catliolic feeling was vigorous, disgust
and indignation at the abuses in the distribution of
forfeitures made them look with suspicion 011 a pro¬
posal which would leave more lands for the Govern¬
ment to trifle away. Ireland had not been torn to
pieces that fortunes might be made for Countesses of
Orkney, and they determined to see their way more
clearly before they committed themselves.
'Mr. Stanley to Dr. Smith,
November 20, 1697.' Smith was
Dean of St. Patrick's, hut preferred
to reside in England. Stanley's let¬
ters to him throw additional light
on the manner in which Church
matters were managed in Ireland.
' Though you used to forget
me,' he wrote, ' for a year together
in the same town, I have been so
careful of your commands at this
distance, that I have got those of
your favourites made chaplains to
my Lord Lieutenant as you de¬
sired, Dr. Raymond, Mr. Forbes,
and Mr. Wade. I could not suc¬
ceed in getting in the whole forty
you named, because his Grace has
not in all above a dozen, being
unwilling to entertain more than
he has a prospect of providing for.
.... I can't but think you in the
right to hold your deanery of St.
Patrick's in London ; I should be
glad to hold my secretary's office
there too. I hear you have been
scribbling. Send me your works as
they come out, or you shall be sum¬
moned to attend your deanery.'
2 Dr. Lindsay.
3 Wm. Lloyd.
4 King, afterwards Archbishop
of Dublin.
5 ' The Lords Justices to Secre¬
tary Yernon, August 31.' MSS.
Record Office.
280 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
"When the Outlawries Bill was introduced in the,
Lower House, exception was taken that the interests
of Protestants had not been provided for, who had
purchased estates which fell under the Act from their
supposed owners, or had advanced money in mortgage
on them, or were otherwise interested. The omission
had been made, perhaps, intentionally by Jacobite in¬
fluence in England, to ensure the rejection of the bill.
The House passed it, but themselves sketched the
heads of a supplemental bill to meet the difficulty,
which was forwarded to London for approval. On
similar grounds they threw out altogether, on the
second reading, an act barring remainders in tail to
Catholics. The puzzled Lords Justices began to think
that the King's concessions to Irish Protestant preju¬
dice had been unnecessary after all. ' We find,' they
wrote, ' the interest in favour of Papists so much
greater than we expected, that perhaps the bill con¬
firming the Articles of Limerick may not meet with the
difficulties we at first apprehended, if the additional
article be inserted.'1 When the Outlawries Bill came
before the Peers the opposition was avowed and unam¬
biguous. Living men, who refused allegiance to the
reigning sovereign, might equitably be treated as dis¬
loyal ; but the bishops, by whom the Lords were wholly
controlled, protested against punishing by attainders
the families of men who had been killed in the service
(as they believed) of their rightful sovereign. They
1 ' Winchester and Galway to the Duke of Shrewsbury, August 26,
1697.' MSS. Eecord Office.
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 281
insisted on saving the estates of noblemen whose
present loyalty they declared above suspicion; and so
determined were they, that the Irish Council found it
necessary to withdraw their measure and send the
heads of another less sweeping, scarcely concealing
their fears that, in the present temper of the Upper
House, the second would share the fate of the
first.'1
The bill for the confirmation of the Articles of
Limerick was introduced next. Taught, perhaps, by
the Assassination Plot, "William himself no longer
desired to maintain the clause over which there had
been such angry contention. The omission of it, the
Lords Justices said, ' would be very pleasing to the
majority of good people ;' but they were unable, after
1 ' In the House of Peers the
opposition has been much stronger
from most of the bishops and some
of the temporal lords, whose objec¬
tion has chiefly been the subjecting
such persons to the forfeiture of
their estates who shall at any time
hereafter be found by inquisition to
have died in rebellion. And they
have likewise insisted on particular
provisoes in behalf of some lords
that are now Protestants who
apprehend themselves affected by
that bill. "We therefore . . . have
resolved that a new one shall be
prepared, wherein there may remain
no ground for the objections that
have been made to this .... We
shall take care that the intended
bill be transmitted as soon as may
be ; and we hope it will be sent
back with all convenient expedi¬
tion, at which time it will be more
evident whether the opposition
that has been made was only in
behalf of the Protestants, for we
cannot yet be positive.
' The several oppositions which
the bill has found here have been
no small encouragement to the
Papists of this kingdom. They do
not scruple to boast and promise
themselves the miscarriage of the
second bill when it shall be trans¬
mitted to England. All, or most
of them, design to make application
for particular provisoes, which it is
our earnest request that their Ex¬
cellencies will be pleased to refuse.'
■—'Winchester and Gal way to the
Duke of Shrewsbury, August 26,
1697.' MSS. Eecord Office.
282 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
their experience with the Outlawry Bill, to foretell
how it would be received in Parliament. There were
many members of the Lower House who denied that
the Catholics were entitled to articles of any kind.
There were others who desired to postpone the con¬
firmation altogether till the additional clause could be
carried. An opposition combined ont of these two
parties might, perhaps, be too strong to encounter.
Moderation and good sense carried the day. It would
have been far better had Limerick been made to
capitulate unconditionally; but the conditions which
were really promised it would have been unwise and
dishonourable to disallow. The Commons passed the
Articles deprived of the features which had been sur¬
reptitiously introduced into them; but the omission,
which secured the passing of the bill in one house,
was all but fatal to it in the other.
The High-Flying Bishops were again in the front
of the battle. Jacobites at heart, they looked on the
Catholics as their natural friends. After a violent de¬
bate the peers sent a message to Lord Galway desiring
to be informed on what grounds the clause had been
left out after being ratified by the King himself. Lord
Galway declined to answer. He said that the request
was without precedent, and could not be complied
with. 'The Lords Justices of England had detained
the bill before them,' he said, ' until they had laid
before the King all the difficulties which concerned
the same; and, after having received his majesty's
pleasure, had commanded them to present it to the
ch. i.J THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 2S3
Parliament witli a desire tliat it might be passed in
tlie present form.'1
The third reading was carried, but only by a ma¬
jority of a single vote. Seven bishops and seven lay
lords recorded a protest, which was entered on the
journals of the House. These fourteen noblemen in¬
sisted that the articles were not fully confirmed. ' The
Act as it passed, left the Catholics in worse condition
than they were in before;'2 the additional clause was
most material, and several persons who had been
adjudged within the Articles would now be excluded
from the benefit of them.'3
'The bishops,' wrote the Lords Justices, 'have
been extremely mischievous.' 4
The Outlawries Bill, newly drawn, arrived soon
after from England. It contained special provisoes
for such peers and gentlemen as the Upper House
desired particularly to favour. The Earls of Tyrone
and Kerry, Lord Kingston,5 Lords Lowth, Carlingford,
Athenry, and Bellew, Lord Wilson, Patrick Sarsfield,
1 ' "Winchester and Galway to
the Duke of Shrewsbury, Septem¬
ber 22, 1697.'
2 Ibid. -
3 See Lords' Journals, Ireland.
September, 1697. The vague word¬
ing of the Second Article of Lim¬
erick rendered necessary several
other definitions, of which the
Catholics complained. The pre¬
amble admits that 'so much' only
of the Articles were confirmed ' as
might consist with the safety and
welfare of his majesty's subjects in
Ireland.'—9 William III. cap. 2.
Ilencc much denunciation of broken
faith, &c. The fight, however, it
is evident from the Lords Justices'
letter, was entirely over the dis¬
puted clause. The remaining alter¬
ations aimed merely at precision of
statement.
4 'The Lords Justices to the
Duke of Shrewsbury, September
23.' MSS. Record Office. Ireland.
5 These three were among the
seven who protested against the
Confirmation Bill.
284 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
and many others, were exempted by name from its
operation. The High Chxxrclxmen were obliged to be
contented with securing their personal friends; and
these exceptions being allowed, the bill was permitted
to pass. Tyrconnell, Sir Richard Nagle, and the rest
of the leading Jacobites were described in the preamble
as having levied war against the King; brought the
French, his majesty's enemies, into the realm ; mur¬
dered and destroyed several thousands of his majesty's
good Protestant subjects, for no other reason but for
their being of the Protestant religion; and as having
encouraged an unnatural rebellion throughout Ireland.
All outlawries and attainders on account of the late
war, not already reversed, or affecting persons compx-e-
hended within the Articles of Limerick, or persons
exempted by name in the statute, were declaimed to
stand good for ever, any pardon from the King or his
heirs notwithstanding. Papists who had died in re¬
bellion before the peace failed no better; they were
adjudged traitors, ipso facto, and their estates passed
from their families.1
Besides the Outlawries Bill two other measxxx-es of
consequence were earned in the Protestant interest,
each of which attempts had been made, with partial
success, to defeat in England. By the first Article
of Limerick it had been px'omised that the Catholics
should enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their
religion as were coxxsistexxt with the law, or as they
1 9 William III. cap. 25. Irish Statutes.
ch. i.J THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 285
hud enjoyed in the time of Charles the Second. By
the Act of Uniformity the exercise of their religion
was forbidden; but, under Charles the Second, it had
been practically connived at. To make the Limerick
concessions into a reality it was determined, that the
secular priests might remain uninterfered with, saying
mass, hearing confession, and performing the other
rites of their Church; while the archbishops and
bishops, all officials exercising jurisdiction, and the
regular clergy, the members of religious houses or
societies, should depart and trouble Ireland no more.
A bill for this purpose was drawn by the Irish Council
and sent to England for approval. The English
ministers, hoping to secure a larger measure of toler¬
ation, endeavoured to defeat it by inserting a clause
which they trusted would secure its rejection, and had
so worded the provision for the suppression of convents
and monasteries, as to cover every guild and corpor¬
ation in the country.1 The Irish Parliament were too
determined on their object to be thus put off. They
redrew their bill, sent it again to England, from which
this time it was returned unaltered; and a law was
passed that, inasmuch as the late rebellion had been
notoriously promoted by the Catholic clergy, and the
public safety was endangered by the presence of so
1 It is to be remembered that
the Irish Parliament had no power
to alter bills that came over from
England. They could only accept
or reject. On the discovery of a
mistake fresh reference had to be
made to the English council; and,
if a bill came on at the end of a
session, the delay in the transmis¬
sion backwards and forwards was
often equivalent to its entire defeat.
286
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bic. II.
many of them, the members of the Catholic hierarchy,
and the entire staff of Jesuits and friars, must take
themselves away before the following May; if they
returned, or were found in Ireland after that time,
they should be held guilty of high treason.1 The virus
of Romanism lay in the religious orders, and in the
presence of prelates able to continue the succession.
Deprived of these elements it might be left to linger
and die at last a natural death.
A second act in the same direction, the first of a
long series on the same subject, attempted to provide
against intermarriages between Catholics and Protest-
o o
ants.2 Protestant heiresses had given themselves and
their estates to Papists. Protestant gentlemen who
married Popish wives, if not converted themselves, had
allowed their children to be educated in their mother's
faith. The Parliament considered that Almighty God
was thus dishonoured, and the Protestant interest
prejudiced. Thenceforward a Protestant woman having
real property, and married to a Papist, was pronounced
dead in law, and her estate was made to devolve on
the Protestant next of kin. A Protestant man marry¬
ing without a certificate from a bishop or magistrate
1 9 William III. cap. i.
2 Difficulties were raised inef¬
fectually against this bill also in
England. The draft of it was first
sent over from Ireland in July. On
the 12th the Lords Justices write
to the Duke of Shrewsbury :
' Mr. Vernon having acquainted
us that in the bill for preventing
the intermarriages of Protestants
with Papists now lying before the
Council in England some things
are found exceptionable ... we
do upon enquiry find that bill as it
is drawn to be judged very reason¬
able, and to be much desired by
the Protestants of this kingdom.'
—MSS. Dublin Castle.
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 287
(and sucli a certificate was only to be given in case of
his marriage with a person of his own faith) was held
to have become in law himself a Papist, to lie under all
the disabilities of his creed, to be unable to sit in Par¬
liament, or hold any office, military or civil.1
Both these measures were unwillingly conceded by
William, who, had he been able, would have carried
out in Ireland the principles of religious equality which
had been adopted into the constitution of the TJnited
Provinces. Unfortunately for a good understanding
between the two countries, where England was tolerant
Ii*eland was severe. Where England was most jealous
and susceptible, Ireland, impregnated with Jacobitism,
was suspiciously lenient. The discovery of the Catho¬
lic plot for the murder of the King in 1695 had awak¬
ened in all classes of Protestant Englishmen a profound
indignation. The Parliament, following the precedent
of 1584, had passed a bill which, in the event of any
such conspiracy succeeding, would defeat the object of
it; and an association, originating in the House of
Commons, had been signed almost universally through¬
out England and Scotland, those who enrolled their
names binding themselves to stand by one another in
defence of the King and English liberty c against the
late King James and his adherents.'
It was thought good to give Ireland the same
opportunity of displaying its loyalty.
A bill came over, identical, probably, with the act
1 9 "William III. cap. 3.
288
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
passed in England1 c for tlie security of his majesty's
person/ with a copy of the Association Bond, which
the Irish Parliament was invited to ratify. Coincidently
with the introduction of the bill, there was laid on the
table of the House of Commons a letter, in the hand¬
writing of an officer in James's army, found among
Bishop Tyrrell's papers, described as containing 'a
project for the extirpation of all the Protestants in
Ireland.' 2 The Commons, making no difficulty so far,
passed a series of resolutions, to which they invited the
Lords to agree. ' The Papists,' they said, ' ever since
the Reformation, had endeavoured to subvert the Pro¬
testant religion by conspiracies, massacres, and rebel¬
lions. They retained the same purpose, and designed,
if possible, to separate Ireland from the Imperial Crown.
Other laws, more stringent, were therefore absolutely
required to assure the reformed religion and the con¬
nexion of the two realms. The Catholics must be
excluded from voting at elections for members of Par¬
liament ; the oaths, which were the condition of hold¬
ing office under the Crown, must be exacted more
regularly; and a law must be made, that it should
be high treason to deny King William to be lawful
sovereign.' 3
The resolutions passed by acclamation. The bill
sent from England and the Association Bond were
1 7 & 8 William III. cap. 27. Office. Cf. Commons' Journals, IS0-
English Statutes. vember 29.
2 ' Resolutions of tlie House of 3 Commons' Journals, Nov. 29,
Commons, November 19, 1697.' 1697.
French. MSS. Ireland. Record
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 289
passed also by a large majority, although dissentient
voices were found to urge that it was unfair, in a
country like Ireland, to exact generally an abjuration
of the Papal power.1
In the House of Lords the general allegations of
the evil intentions of the Catholics were not denied.
It was admitted that, if they could, they would over¬
throw Protestantism, and that stricter laws were
needed. Individually they subscribed the Association
Bond. But a stand was made on the clause, which
had been opposed unsuccessfully in the Commons. A
motion was made in committee to strike it out; and
finally, on a division, a bill, the rejection of which,
under the peculiar circumstances, could not but be
construed into an avowal of disloyalty, was altogether
lost.2
To this unlucky vote is to be attributed the con¬
sent of England to the measures which immediately
followed for the destruction of the Irish woollen
manufactures. Ireland, it seemed, was determinately
disloyal. Even the Protestant Peers were determined
to throw a shield over the inveterate Jacobitism of
the High Churchmen. The only resource, therefore,
1 ' There were many who spoke
against the clause that requires all
persons, under penalty of a pre-
munire, to renounce the superiority
of any foreign power in ecclesias¬
tical or spiritual matters within the
realm when required by the justices
at their Quarter Sessions, and far
that reason opposed the bill; but
IKEL. I.
it passed by a majority of twenty-
four, and has been carried to the
House of Lords.'—' The Lords Jus¬
tices to the Duke of Shrewsbury,
November 24, 1697.' MSS. Dublin
Castle.
2 ' Lords Justices to the Duke of
Shrewsbury, November 29.' Ibid.
TJ
290
THE ENGLISH IN. IRELAND.
[bk. 11.
was to keep her weak and miserable. The deepest
resentment was conceived, and was loudly expressed.
A letter was addressed to a member of the English
House of Commons, making no distinction of creed
or race, involving the Irish altogether in a common
censure, and expressing a hope that ' the House would
make them remember that they were conquered.'1
Another chance was allowed to the Irish Parliament
to redeem their mistake. Unhappily they added to
their offences. The Irish Council were directed to
prepare a similar bill for the session of the next year.
To soften the objections, some members proposed to
exempt such Catholics from the oath as were included
under the Articles of Limerick ; and, when the heads
were sent for revision to England, a clause was added
to that effect The Lords Justices • admitted that if
the reasons alleged were of weight, they applied not
to the Article men only, but to every Catholic in
Ireland : if any Catholic could conscientiously take the
Abjuration Oath all might be required to take it; if
not, 'it seemed reasonable,' the Lords Justices pleaded,
' that it should not be demanded of any.' They left
the decision to England, intimating however at the
same time their own belief, that the oath 2 might be
1 ' Answer to a Letter from a
Gentleman in the Country to a
Member of the House of Commons
relating to the trade of Ireland.'
London, 1698.
2 ' I, A. B., do swear that I do
from my heart abhor, detest, and
abjure as impious and heretical
that damnable doctrine and posi¬
tion that princes excommunicated
or deprived by the Pope, or any
authority of the See of Rome, may
be deposed or murdered by their
subjects, or by any other whatso¬
ever ; and I do declare that no
foreign prince, person, prelate,
CH. i.] THE OPENING OF THE rENAL ERA.
291
taken by every one who was resolved to be a faithful
subject.1
The English Government was in no humour to con¬
sider the tenderness of Irish consciences. The Council
struck off the proposed exceptions. They returned
the bill in the form in which the Peers had rejected
it—to be thrown out again, and this time by the
House of Commons. Petitioners were heard in objec¬
tion at the bar. 'After some hours' debate it was
carried by a majority of ten, that the clause enjoining
the oath and expressing the penalties should not be
admitted.' The eager resolutions went for nothing,
where words and deeds so ill corresponded; and, in
the eyes of all loyal Protestant Englishmen, the un¬
fortunate country had made a public declaration of
Jacobitism.2
state, or potentate, hath or ought
to have any jurisdiction, power,
superiority, pre-eminence, author¬
ity, ecclesiastical or spiritual, with¬
in this realm.'
By the English act any person
might be required by a magistrate
to take this oath, and, on refusing,
was reduced to the condition of a
Popish recusant.
1 ' The Lords Justices to the
Duke of Shrewsbury, August 1698.'
MSS. Dublin.
2 Ibid. October 15, 1698. Ibid.
O 3
292
SECTION V.
The reconquest of Ireland had cost the English tax-
^ ^ payer nine millions sterling. The lands, out of
which he had hoped, in part, at least, to be re¬
paid, had been made away with by a corrupt commis¬
sion under specious pretences of rewards for invisible
services, or, if rescued from their hands by the inter¬
vention of the Irish Parliament, rescued only to be
restored to disloyal noblemen, who would use these
recovered opportunities to cause fresh trouble. The
last vote,1 the deliberate refusal of both Lords and
Commons to allow a test of allegiance there, which
would have sifted the treacherous from the faithful,
destroyed the last hope of dependence on the wretched,
uncertain, discontented, wavering island; and the
murmurs of the English clothiers, who had watched
her extending woollen manufactures with cowardly
jealousy, found willing and eager listeners. This
Ireland, with her harbours and rivers, her unnum¬
bered sheep flocks, fattened on her limestone pastures,
producing the finest fleeces in the world, this nest of
Popery and sedition, this bottomless morass of expense
and confusion, was to lift up its head and prosper,
tempt away their capital and their woi'kmen, rob
1 The vote of the Peers in 1697
decided the commercial fate of Ire¬
land. Had the bill been passed
in 1698, it is possible, though not
certain, that the disabilities might
have been taken olf.
CH. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 293
England of the secret of her wealth, her monopoly
in the world's markets of the broad cloth, frieze, and
flannel trade. Had these purblind commercial poli¬
ticians known what belonged to their peace they would
have welcomed the development of Irish industiy as a
better guarantee against future trouble than a hundred
Acts of Parliament. Ho spirit could have more effect¬
ually killed the genius of Popery and Jacobitism, or
could more surely have provided that Ireland should
ne'ver again be a burden on the English exchequer,
than the growth of trade and manufacture there. The
practical intelligence, the fixed and orderly habits, the
class of persons who would have been attracted over
to make their homes where land was cheap, and waited
only for labour and capital to be as rich and fair as
their own English counties, these things would have
formed the links of an invisible chain, which could
never have been broken, to bind the two islands into
one. Traders' eyes unhappily can never look beyond
the next year's balance sheet. They saw their artisans
emigrating. They saw, or thought they saw, the pro¬
duce of the Irish looms competing with theirs in the
home market, in the colonies, and on the continent.
They imagined their business stolen from them, their
towns depopulated, the value of their lands decreased,
their country itself plunged at last into ruin, all for the
sake of that miserable spot which had been a thorn in
England's side for centuries.
No language could sufficiently express the emo¬
tions of the exasperated English capitalist. The
294
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ix.
Parliament was called upon to ' make the Irish remem¬
ber that they were conquered.' They should not be
allowed to build or keep at sea a single ship. They
should not manufacture a thing except their linen, and
their commerce should be so tied and bound, that they
should interfere with England nowhere. To block
them from the water altogether, even their fishery
' must be. with men and boats from England.' Their
legislature, of which they made so ill a use, must be
ended, and they must be governed by the Parliament
of England. So argued English £ common sense.'1
In vain an Irish apologist replied, that to imagine Ire¬
land's competition could injure England was a dream.
The Irish ' seldom sailed farther than a potatoe garden,'
and traded but in cows. They ' knew as little of trade
and navigation as the American Indian.' They had
not five seamen of their nation, and not one ship of
their own at Dublin. Such little trade as they had
was carried on by English merchants and on English
account.2 Good sense and truth could find no hearing:
amidst the general clamour. It was not enough that
the Navigation Act had destroyed the Irish shipping
interest. The export of Irish fleeces to any country
but England had been already prohibited; but the
restrictions on the sale of the raw material was a tempt¬
ation to the Irish to work it up at home, and as long as
they might export their blankets and their friezes,
1 ' Answer to a Letter from a
Gentleman in the Country to a
Member of the House of Commons,
relating to the Trade of Ireland.
London, 1698.'
2 Ibid.
ch. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 295
England's trade was in danger from their competition.
The English manufacturers considered it politic and
fair to say to them, 'You shall not weave your wool at
home at all; you shall not sell your woollen cloth
either here or abroad; we will put you under such dis¬
advantages that it shall not be worth your while to
supply your own necessities ; you shall buy our cloths
and frieze to clothe your own backs ; you shall sell
your fleeces only to us; and, as it is our interest to
have it 011 easy terms, you shall take the prices which
we are pleased to offer.'1 In this spirit the English
cloth manufacturers addressed themselves to their own
Parliament; and Parliament, blinded by ill-humour
and prejudice, endorsed their petition, and carried it
to the King in language in which the baseness of the
motive was disguised faintly under pretence of national
interest.
The Peers represented ' that the growing manufac¬
ture of cloth in Ireland, by cheapness of the necessaries
of life, and goodness of materials, invited Englishmen
1 Hely Hutchinson, in a memo¬
rial to the Government in 1779,
thus briefly sums up the position :
'"We can sell our woollen goods
only to Great Britain. We can
buy woollen goods there only. If
such a law related to two private
men instead of two kingdoms, and
enjoined that in buying and selling
the same goods an individual should
deal with one man only in exclusion
of others, it would in effect ordain
that both as buyer and seller that
man should fix his own price and
profit, and would refer to his dis¬
cretion the loss and profit of the
other dealer ; while, again, other
English laws impose a duty on the
importation of the manufacture into
England equal to a prohibition,
which amounts to this, "You shall
not sell to us, and you shall buy
only from us.'"—'Memorial of Mr.
Hely Hutchinson to the Earl of
Buckinghamshire, July 1, 1779.'
MSS. Record Office, Ireland.
■296 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
with their families and servants to settle there. The
King's loyal subjects in England apprehended the fur¬
ther growth of it would prejudice the manufactures in
England. The trade of England would decline, the
value of land decrease, and the number of the people
diminish. They besought his majesty to intimate to
his Irish subjects that the growth of the woollen manu¬
factures there had been and would be always looked
upon with jealousy in England, and if not timely reme¬
died, might occasion very strict laws totally to prohibit
and suppress the same.'
The Commons said that the ' wealth and power of
England depended on her preserving a monopoly of
the woollen manufactures. They looked with jealousy
on the increase of it elsewhere, and must use their
utmost endeavours to prevent it from extending.
The Irish were dependent on and protected by Eng¬
land in the enjoyment of all that they had, and the
English Parliament would be obliged to interfere
unless the King found means to make Ireland under¬
stand its position.'
Both Houses insisted that the Irish woollen trade
should cease. The Irish linen manufacture, since
there were for the present no rival English interests
with which it competed, they were willing to leave
untouched, and even to encourage. Though no pledge
was given, there was an implied compact that the
sacrifice of one branch of industry should be compen¬
sated by the protection of the other.
The King replied briefly that the wish of Parlia-
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 297
ment should be carried out, and Ireland was invited to
apply the knife to her own tliroat. Two letters from
William to the Lords Justices survive in Dublin Castle,
embodying the words of the two addresses, and recom¬
mending to the attention of the Legislature there the
worst and most fatal of all the mistaken legislative
experiments, to which a dependent country was ever
subjected by the folly of its superiors.1
The Irish Houses, in dread of abolition if they
refused, relying on the promise of encouragement to
their linen trade,2 and otherwise unable to help them¬
selves, acquiesced. They laid an export duty of four
shillings in the pound on all broadcloths carried out
of Ireland, and half as much on kerseys, flannels, and
friezes, amounting in itself to a complete prohibition;
while, to make assurance more sure, the English Par¬
liament passed an act prohibiting the export out of
Ireland of either wool or woollen manufactures to any
country but England, to any port in England except
six on St. George's Channel, and only from the six
towns of Dublin, Waterford, Youghal, Kinsale, Cork,
and Wraterford.3
The belief that, with a coast line like that of Ire¬
land, and with a population which they were punishing
for disloyalty, such restrictions could really be enforced,
1 3ISS. 1698. Dublin Castle.
2 Macpherson, in the History of
Commerce, says ' that the suppres¬
sion of the woollen trade was agreed
to by Ireland in return for no less
than nine millions sterling expend¬
ed by England in the reduction of
Ireland at the Revolution.'
3 10 "William III. cap. 10. Eng¬
lish Acts. 10 "William III. cap. 5.
Irish Acts.
298 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [r,K. II.
was one of those illusions which only the intellect of
an English merchant could have entertained. The
result of this restriction was to convert the Irish,
beyond their other troublesome peculiarities, into a
nation of smugglers.
o o
How far England adhered to the linen compact
will be told in its place. For the present, Mr. Hely
Hutchinson's summary of the story will suffice.
' It is true you promised, in return for the re¬
straints, to encourage our linen manufacture. But
how have you done it ? By giving large bounties for
the making of coarse linen in the Highlands of Scot
land—bounties on the exportation of English linen—•
opening the linen manufacture to all persons without
serving apprenticeships, and imposing a tax of 30 per
cent, on all foreign linens, which has been construed
to extend to Irish printed, stained, dyed, striped, or
chequered.'
f Will you,' Hutchinson asked, with prophetic indig¬
nation, 'will you have an increased population employed
at home, where they will contribute to the wealth and
strength of the State; or shall they emigrate to
America, where it is possible they may assist in dis¬
membering the British empire ? 'x
1 ' Hely Hutchinson to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, July 1, 1779.'
JllSS. Becord Office, Ireland.
299
SECTION VI.
The indignation in England at tlie rejection of the
Security Act had been aggravated by the simultaneous
appearance of a book dear to Irish patriotism, by
William Molyneux, the member for Dublin, denying
the obligation of Ireland to submit to statutes passed
by the English Parliament, or to re-enact them unless
agreeable to herself. The bitterness with which her
commercial prosperity was immediately assailed arose
from a belief that Ireland was assuming deliberately
an attitude of defiance. The book was fiercely con¬
demned. The House of Commons insisted, in a memorial
to the King, that the laws which restrained the Irish
Parliament must not be evaded1—that Ireland was,
and should continue, a dependent country. It is likely
they considered weakness and poverty the best securi¬
ties that could be taken for her submission. Having
thus however, with one hand, struck so hard a blow at
her welfare, with the other they dragged her, or tried
to drag her, out of the slough of intrigue into which she
had been tumbled. The want of purpose at the Castle
and the hopeless entanglement of religious and poli¬
tical passions, had left the field wide open to avarice
and baseness. The lands available to repay the expenses
of the war had melted unaccountably into nothing.
Notorious Jacobite peers had recovered their property
1 Parliamentary History, vol. v. p. 11S1.
3QO THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
under the exceptions to the Outlawries Bill. The
Court of Claims, undeterred by the exposures of 1693,
had gone on with their work as quietly as if nothing
had happened. Estates were granted away. Indivi¬
duals who began with nothing were enormously rich,
but the exchequer was empty as ever. Evidently
there was no help in Ireland itself; and the House of
Commons in England at last,in angry despair, appointed
a committee to ravel out the mystery.
The Court of Claims, seeing their end approaching,
made the most of the time remaining to them, admit¬
ting shoals of Catholics under the Articles of Limerick
who had no business there.1 Slowly, and with extreme
difficulty, the seven commissioners traced out the
scandalous history. So strongly was the corruption at
work that their own body was tainted. When they
had drawn up their report, four only of them signed it.2
Sir Richard Levinge, one of the dissentients, himself
a large sharer in the public plunder, and dreading that
he might be made to disgorge it, sent in a conflicting
statement ; and, to damage his companions, charged
them with disloj^alty.3 The accusation was looked into
in England, and dismissed. Levinge was sent to the
1 ' One thing seems to us very-
extraordinary, that more persons
were adjudged within the Articles
since the commencement of our
enquiry than had been since the
making of the Articles.'—Report,
of the Commissioners appointed by
Parliament. London, 1700.
2 Francis Annesley, John Tren-
chard, James Hamilton, and Henry
Langford.
3 Trenchard had described the
grant to Lady Orkney as ' scandal¬
ous.' Lady Orkney was t lie late
Queen's favourite, and Levinge
hoped he could set the King against
the report by denouncing Tren¬
chard.
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 301
Tower for defamation. The House of Commons voted
thatc the four commissioners had conducted themselves
with integrity, courage, and understanding ;' and the
disposition of the forfeitures they considered so dis¬
graceful, that there was no remedy but to cancel every
grant which had been made.1
1 Some of the most glaring
instances of misappropriation were
mentioned in detail. Among other
curious features in the story it
appeared, that as many of the per¬
sons who had applied for and
obtained grants of property had
purposely understated its value, so
in turn they had been themselves
cheated by their agents, who, by sim¬
ilar frauds, had tempted them to dis¬
pose of lands worth tens of thousands
of pounds for as many hundreds.
Of Catholic proprietors who had
been in the rebellion, and were
covered by no articles, either of
Limerick or Galway, many were
never informed against; many were
tried, but acquitted. The ' free¬
holders who formed the juries, by
contracting new friendships with
the 1 risli, or by intermarriage with
them, but chiefly through a general
dislike of the disposition of the
forfeitures, were scarcely willing to
find any person guilty, even upon
full evidence.'
1 n Connaught ' the findings
were almost what the forfeiting
persons pleased.' Forty persons
not covered by articles were tried
at Galway. There were few Pro¬
testants free-holders, and the juries
were formed of gentlemen who, most
of them, had been officers in James's
army, and had been protected by
the Galway Articles. All the forty
were in consequence acquitted. Mr.
Kirwan, who was one of them, had
served in a regiment which had
been commanded by the foreman
of the jury. Even in Connaught
there was a difficulty in giving a
verdict in the face of evidence so
conclusive, so one of the jurors
absented himself.
The forfeitures, though in ap¬
pearance considerable, had been so
handled by the Court as to exhibit
an actual deficiency, tho cost of
management being made to exceed
the returns either of sale or rent—
'a thing,' the commissioners re--
marked, ' that might appear extra¬
ordinary till it was observed that
obscure men. who had little or no
property before the rebellion, had
become possessed of considerable
and even very great estates.' The
management had been made so
intricate that the accounts were
purposely unintelligible. The law
officers of the Crown, the members
of the Court, even the Lords Jus¬
tices themselves, had feathered
their nests out of the spoils. Lord
Coningsby, though be escaped im¬
peachment, had richly deserved it.
302 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [ek. ii.
A vote passed oil the 18th January, 1700, 'that the
advising, procuring, and framing these grants
had occasioned great debts and heavy taxes,
and highly reflected on the King's honour, and that
the officers and instruments concerned in the same had
highly failed in the performance of their duty.'1
Leave was given to bring in a bill to resume the
grants for the use of the public, and an address on
the subject was presented by the entire House to the
King.
Conscious of the integrity of his own motives, and
irritated at the seeming reflection on his personal con¬
duct, William replied briefly, that no private inclina¬
tion, but the obligations of justice only, had led him to
reward those who had served in the reduction of Ire¬
land out of the forfeited estates there. The taxes and
debts of which the Commons complained had been
occasioned by the wars on the Continent, and England
would best consult her honour by taking the burden
on herself.
William was thinking of Sydney and De Huvigny.
The Commons, not forgetting them, but differently
estimating their merits, were thinking also of the
Countess of Orkney and the English taxpayers. ' Who¬
ever had advised that answer,' they rejoined, in a
temper like the Long Parliament's, ' had used his
utmost endeavour to create a misunderstanding and
jealousy between the King and his people.'
To William's deep mortification, a Resumption
1 1'arUameutunj History, vol. v. p. 1214.
ch. T.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 303
Bill was brought in and carried. Every grant of a
forfeiture which had been made in the King's name
was declared null. In most instances the lands had
been resold, the high persons who had been the
recipients of the King's bounty not dreaming of seek¬
ing a home for themselves in Ireland; but, as the
original gift was invalid, the rights depending on it
were invalid also. Allowance was made for improve¬
ments, and the claims of those who had laid out money
on the lands which they believed to be their own were
recognized: but the purchase-money the purchasers
were left to recover from those to whom they had paid
it; and a significant clause was added to the Act,' that
the procuring or passing exorbitant grants by any
member of the Privy Council, or by any other that
had been a Privy Councillor, to his own use or benefit,
was a high crime and misdemeanour.'1
To secure the consent of the Upper House, the
Resumption Bill was attached to the Money Bill; and
the Money Bill was so framed that it must be passed
unmutilated, or else rejected. The Lords threatened
amendments. The Commons locked their doors, and
proceeded to comment more at length on the connexion
of the King's bounties with the list of Privy Council¬
lors. Amidst humiliation, rage, and pain, the bill
passed, and received the Royal assent. The Irish
forfeitures were recovered out of the harpies' talons,
and made over to thirteen trustees, to be sold to the
highest bidder.
1 11 William III. cap. 2.
304 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IT.
Another measure was carried also before the Eng¬
lish Parliament separated, which, though immediately
affecting England only, became to Ireland an example
of the deepest moment, and formed an eventual turn¬
ing-point in its history. The Catholic clergy, recover¬
ing from the first terrors into which they had been
thrown by the revolution, still dreaming of changes,
unable to part with a vision of a reconciled England,
which they had imagined to be on the eve of realiz¬
ation, were again at their eternal work of plots and
conspiracies, moving about in contempt of penal laws,
and deep in Jacobitism and treason. Heated with
their late success, and this time with William's sanc¬
tion, the Protestant majorities in the two Houses
passed the Act which formed the model of the Irish
Act f to prevent the future growth of Popery.'
By the 4th of the Iith of William the Third any
bishop or priest of the Roman Church convicted of
saying mass, teaching or keeping a school, or exer¬
cising any other religious function, was made liable to
perpetual imprisonment. A hundi'ed pounds reward
was offered for the apprehension of such persons ; and,
because experience had proved the insufficiency of
laws against opinions or acts of worship, without
touching more nearly the motives found powerful with
the laity, it was enacted further that no person, edu¬
cated in or professing the Popish religion, who had
not, within six months after attaining the age of
eighteen, taken the two oaths of allegiance and abjur¬
ation, and made the declaration disavowing Transub-
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 305
stantiation, should be capable of inheriting real estate
in England. Nor should any Papist be allowed to
purchase lands ; nor might he send his children to be
educated in foreign seminaries. And if any Papist
father, having Protestant children, should attempt to
punish or coerce them, by a refusal of adequate main¬
tenance, the Court of Chancery should have power to
interfere and compel the parent to make such children
a sufficient allowance.
The Act succeeded in England, and has, therefore,
been little heard of. Catholicism ceased practically
to exist among us, and has only revived within the
memory of middle-aged men. Its companion Act failed
in Ireland, and has, therefore, been held up as an
example of the folly and ineffectuality of religious per¬
secution. Experience, to which the appeal is',made so
confidently, gives opposite answers in the two coun¬
tries ; and, if the question be argued on broad grounds
of justice, the reply must still vary with the conditions
of time and place and with the active principles of the
creed proscribed. The imagination of ordinary men is
unequal to the reproduction of circumstances other
than those by which they are themselves surrounded;
and, when the political or moral mischiefs of particular
opinions seem to have disappeared, they condemn
measures as bigoted and tyrannical which, had their
lot been cast in other times, they would have them¬
selves been the loudest in applauding.
The condition of Ireland was not the condition of
England. A measure suited for one may, on this
irel. 1. x
306 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
ground, have been unsuited to the other; but, if it be
argued, that persecution is necessarily unsuccessful,
the history of England and Scotland is an adequate
answer.
The Catholics, at all events, had no right to com¬
plain. They, who had nevlir, professed toleration,
could not demand it. To them the same measure only
was meted out which they had allowed to others in
England while the power was theirs, and which they
continued to allow them in other countries, where the
power was still theirs. They suffered under no disa¬
bilities in Great Britain which Protestants did not
suffer under in France, and Spain, and Italy. So long
as differences of religion affected the public policy of
Catholic and Protestant governments, the English and
Irish Catholic was the natural ally of the enemies of
the English throne, and as such, in the opinion of the
times, a legitimate object of restraint.
3°7
SECTION VII.
Popular legislatures may pass laws in paroxysms of
emotion, but, unless the emotion is continuous, and
unless with the laws they provide an executive to
give effect to their resolutions, the interposition may
remain after all but a mute and helpless protest.
Their sessions end, their indignation dies away, satis¬
fied with what it seems to have achieved. Corruption
resumes its sway, and, after a brief pause, the stream
falls back into its old channels. The forfeited estates
were recovered from the grantees, and, by the Act of
"Resumption, were to be sold to Protestants, and to
Protestants only. The thirteen trustees were selected
for their supposed unimpeachable probity; no one was
admitted into their number who held office under the
Crown, who was in any way accountable to the King,
or who was in Parliament, and, therefore, liable to in¬
fluence. They entered into possession of estates worth
in fee simple nearly two millions; which were to be
disposed of at last to the best advantage for the benefit
of the nation. Yet either the situation was too difficult
for them, or the temptation was too strong. They sate
for two years. The rents were consumed by their
expenses. The lands were re-distributed. Yet, when
they were gone, the purchase-money was eaten up by
the demand as it arose; and the Protestant claim was
defeated or evaded. The trustees displayed, in all
x 2
308
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ix.
their decrees,' the same manifest partiality for Papists,'
which had been so passionately condemned. The spirit
which had thrown out the Security Act continued
dominant, fit being a maxim among all who favoured
King James's interest, to serve the professors of that
religion whose estates were confiscated for their
adherence to him.'1
There was no further interference. An attempt to
control the affairs of Ireland on principles of probity
and uprightness, was abandoned as hopeless ; but the
estrangement between the two islands was aggi'avated,
and the mutual resentment and suspicion; and, more
than ever, it became the policy of England to keep
her equivocal neighbour poor and helpless. Among
the immediate results was an increasing development
of absenteeism. In all empires the wealth and intel¬
lect of the provinces flow inevitably towards the ruling
country, where social life is more agreeable, pleasures
more refined, and the openings to ambition more
inviting. The absenteeism of Ireland was peculiarly
objectionable, for the justification of the forfeitures
was the necessity of settling English and Scotch rulers
on the soil. That land had become a chattel, to be
bought and sold at pleasure, however, rendered the
enforcement of residence impossible. The altered cir¬
cumstances of society threw estates into the market,
or made them the prey of political intrigue; and the
successful speculator, when his prize was secured,
carried the profits to enjoy them where he pleased.
1 Hauuis.
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 309
Enormous estates had fallen to English companies and
capitalists in a country where they never meant to set
their foot. Irish noblemen and gentlemen, as, from
increasing intercourse, they became conscious of the
contrast between the two countries, grew impatient of
the wretchedness of their Irish homes, and established
themselves in London or Bath. Ireland was robbed
of the men whom she could least afford to lose ; and
the estates were managed on the terms which would
yield the largest profit to the owner with the smallest
outlay of attention.
The country was still so insecure that small Pro¬
testant tenants could not venture to take farms beyond
the margin of the great towns. Protestants who
established themselves in the country were men of
substance, who could afford to build stone houses that
would not burn, and to keep retinues of servants who
would act as garrisons against attacks from Rapparees.
The land was divided, therefore, into large holdings,
often of several thousand acres. They were let
at long leases, leases for lives, or leases renewable
on fines for ever, persons of capital being un¬
willing to risk the adventure on any but favourable
terms; and the first tenant, perhaps, after some
unsuccessful attempts at farming and grazing on
a great scale, sub-let his holdings to Irish peasants,
and glided into the position of an independent idle
gentleman.
The power of taking these long leases was limited
by law to Protestants ; but the word Protestant came
3io THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
to be construed loosely, and a second class of great
tenantry rose beside tbe first, members of the dispos¬
sessed Irish families, who in their own districts could
still rule as chiefs with scarcely a sacrifice of dignity,
who lived at the old place, retained the old name, swore
an unpleasant oath or two at quarter sessions, or when
their leases were being signed, and having complied
with the lax requirements which, in the remote parts
of the country, were all that could be demanded,
troubled themselves no further with Church or
parson, and were bad Catholics without becoming
Protestants.
Into the hands of one or other of these two classes
of tenants the chief part of the soil of the three
southern provinces was now passing.
Those who were really Protestant retained, for a
generation or two, their distinguishing character;
but, like the Normans before them, they assimilated
themselves to their adopted element, as the fish takes
the colour of the gravel on which he lies ; and the race
of Irish gentry, which acquired so marked a notoriety
in the last century, began gradually to shape itself; a
race noted, among many characteristics, especially for
this, that they hated labour as heartily as the Irish
of earlier centuries. Everyone who could subsist in
idleness set himself up for a gentleman. Everyone
who held a farm, which he could divide and sublet,
became a landlord and lived on his rents. The land
was let, and underlet, and underlet again, till six rents
had sometimes to be provided by the actual cultivator
ch. i.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA. 31X
before be was allowed to feed himself and bis family ;1
wbile the proprietor and quasi proprietor grew into
the Irish blackguard, the racing, drinking, duelling,
swearing squireen, the tyrant of the poor, the shame
and scandal of the order to which he affected to
belong.
Of him, however, in his perfection, time was neces¬
sary for the full development. At the close of the
seventeenth century, there remained in many of the
Irish Protestants a leaven of Puritan severity; in the
High Churchmen a degree of Jacobitish piety. Thus
strangely composed, amidst commercial disabilities,
political discontent, religious division, and a blank and
menacing future, the society of the period, now in¬
juriously carped at as that of Protestant ascendancy,
began to settle into form. A picture of what it was
like will be found in the correspondence of Joshua
Dawson, the Castle secretary, which is preserved in
Dublin, even to his invitations to dinner. French
and Palatine Huguenots continued to flow in, having
been secured for a time against the penalties of home¬
grown dissent. Dublin grew rapidly, streets and
squares springing up outside the old walls, and Trinity
College spreading over its pleasant meadows.2 The
differences with King William were forgotten. He was
thought of only as the deliverer from Popery; and the
1 ' It is well known that over
most parts of the country the lands
are sublet six deep, so that those
who actually labour it are squeezed
to the very utmost.' — 'Captain
Erskine to Mr. Lee (a letter on the
Hearts of Steel), April 10, 1775.'
MSS. Record Office.
2 'CouncilNotes January 1699.'
MSS. Dublin.
312
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
bronze statue was erected in College Green to bis im¬
mortal memory. Rapparee bunts went on in tbe Cork
and Kerry mountains. Noted Tories were sbot like
goats among tbe crags ; cbance prisoners being ready
as ever to save tbeir lives by informing againt tbeir
comrades; and juries, as usual, refusing to find ver¬
dicts wben tbere was tbe faintest excuse for evasion.1
Noted murderers were bung in chains on the high
roads, and women were burnt for poisoning. Fairs
were established about tbe county of Dublin, tbe
Archbishop holding bis court of pie powder tbere, and
taking toll and custom.2 Tbe Catholic clergy, undis¬
turbed by tbe bill for tbe expulsion of their bishops
and regulars, and ostentatiously contemptuous of it,
built new chapels in garrison towns, if possible in tbe
1 Captain Cooper, writing from
Macroom, after a picturesque ac¬
count of a night foray in the hills,
says:
' I have taken a Tory, who offers,
if I will save his life, to inform
against some private Tories, who
are at home and in good reputation.
We now find the good effect of
■hanging harbourers, for it was this
Toiy's foster-father that informed
me of his being at his cabin: the
dread of being hanged frightened
the fellow to this discovery.
'You had an account of the
harbourers when Captain Lloyd's
soldiers were killed being tried,
and that they were plainly proved,
especially one Hierley, to have been
harbourers. But the landlord of
this Hierley, speaking of his cha¬
racter, said he knew him to be a
very honest man, because he paid
his rent punctually, though proba¬
bly made from the.Tories' robberies;
and the landlord's uncle being
foreman of the jury, they brought
him in not guilty, to the amaze¬
ment of the court.'—' Captain Cooper
to Secretary Dawson, February 23,
1702.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
2 '"Warrant from the Lords
Justices, Jkrch 18, 1700.' MSS.
Ibid. Pie ponder is pied poudreux,
dusty foot, a^iame for pedlars or
other itinerant vendors of wares.
The court was held at fairs and
markets, where such persons carried
on their trade, and dealt summary
and immediate justice.
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL EPA. 313
face of the barracks.1 English officers, in spite of test
acts and abjuration oaths, attended mass and confession
in Gal way, and walked in processions among friars
and nuns.2 So directly, so openly the law was defied
that, at last, a proclamation was issued, warning the
Catholics against presuming too far. To give emphasis
to its threats, the Government ordered the actual arrest
of a handful of friars ; but they were treated so mildly
as to invite disobedience. They were either directed
to transport themselves, to leave the country, and go
where they pleased, or they were placed on board the
first ship that was sailing to a Catholic country, and
were landed, at the country's expense, at Oporto,
Lisbon, or Ostend.3
Life in Dublin was sliding into its modern grooves,
with balls and parties, races and gambling-tables,
eating, drinking, and duel-fighting among the Phoenix
thorn trees. Chancellor Methuen runs into debt and
slips away from Ireland, owing 3000Z., and creating
scandal and confusion.4 Young Mr. Harrison, of
Armagh, marries a daughter of Secretary Yernon. The
young couple spend their June honeymoon on a rid¬
ing tour through Wales to Holyhead. The bride, on
1 The officer in command at
Dingle describes a large chapel as
being built there so near the
barracks that he believed the
object was to have the means
of collecting men unperceived,
and suddenly overpowering the
soldiers. MSS. Dublin Castle,
X702.
2 ' Information of Captain "Wil¬
liam Davidson, Royal Fusiliers.'
MSS. 1704.
3 Even such gentle measures as
these were rarely resorted to. I
find but six cases entered among
the Council notes for the five years
following the passing of the Act.
4 ' Mr. Harrison to Secretary
Vernon, January 28, 1701.' MSS.
Record Office.
314
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IX.
reaching Dublin, eats herself sick with strawberries;
and, in her letters to her father, leaves an unconscious
record of the state of education in the upper English
households.1
Joshua Dawson was buying land, draining, build¬
ing, planting, improving, and providing for his rela¬
tions out of his official patronage.2
1 ' Honored Father,
' I have reseved two of your
letters. I should have geven you
thanks last Post had I not being
ingageed a broad. All the newes
wee have hear is a duel betwixt my
Lord Shelborn and Couronel Cun-
ingame wich has a occasioned a
nagreement of a law suite be twixt
them. Wee get yn to our house
nex week. I will indever to acqueat
myself hear as well as I cane. I
am glad my brother nedey [then a
midshipman, afterwards the distin¬
guished admiral] is like to be in no
danger. I ame glad you have time
to go to hadley and to heare you
are well. My father [Mr. Harrison
senior] is stell in the countre. My
mother geves her servis to you and
Mr. harreson his humble duty.—I
remane your most Duty full Dotter
' Mary Harrison.
'Dublin, July 20, 1700.'
—MSS. Record Office.
2 Secretary Dawson was the one
successful member of a large family,
and being the most methodical of
men of business, has registered and
preserved his correspondence with
every member of it. Externally
he was as decorous as a Quaker;
but he seems, like other people, to
have had adventures behind the
scenes. He appointed his brother
Richard, a light-hearted vagabond,
to a situation in the customs at
Cork. Richard writes to thank
him:—
' Dear Joseph—for you shall be
no longer Joshua but Joseph—for
you, like him, have been the in¬
strument of making such provision
for your brothers that the plague
°f Egypt—I mean want of bread—
has not been able to reach them.
You also, like him, live in a prince's
court, and manage the affairs of
state. I'm now very inclinable to
believe the transmigration of souls
according to that of Pythagoras,
for certainly Joseph's soul has crept
into your body; and the very same
Joseph which presided in Pharaoh's
court is even now in the secretary's
office in the Castle of Dublin. I'd
fain know if you remember that
passage between you and Potiphar's
wife, when you left your' garment
in her hand. 'Twas certainly an
unpardonable crime so to treat the
lady having so fair an opportunity.
Had I been in your place I should
certainly have argued the case a
little with Marget, and have been
elbow deep in the liushpots of
CH. I.] THE OPENING OF THE PENAL ERA 315
The great folks, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
went and came between Dublin and the London
season; bishops applying for convoys to Holyhead,
and ' a sound vessel for my coach and twelve horses;'1
peers and judges asking permission to take with them
their 4000 or 3000 ounces of wrought plate duty free
' for my own use/ 2 The insurrection had ceased to
heave, but the death of the Duke of Gloucester, and a
little later of the King, revived the hopes of the Jacob¬
ites. With the accession of Anne, the High Church¬
men took courage, and again struck at the Dissenters.
Bishop King wrote to London to beg that the Regium
Egypt. In the first place, my
hearty thanks to you for all I have.
In the next, may you live as long
as Joseph did, and after death be
where he is, which shall always be
the prayer of yours,
' Richard Dawson.'
The customs appointment did
not save the unlucky Richard.
' The fleshpots of Egypt' and the
whiskey tumblers of Cork brought
him early to his end, and he died
two years after in great misery.
The secretary does not seem to
have wished to keep his relations
too near him. His brother-in-law,
Charles Carr, who had taken orders,
was sent to an incumbency in
Donegal. He, too, writes his gra¬
titude :—
' Dear brother,—Last night I got
safe to the famous city of Raphoe.
I hope all friends in the little city
of Dublin are well. When I have
time to look about me you shall
have a more particular account of
this place, which Haly Paly was so
much against the building of. To¬
morrow I design for my parish,
which is twenty-five miles nearer
to the. world's end. If you have
any service to the man in the moon,
or any of his neighbours, I'll hand
'em up a letter for you. The bishop
and all friends here give their ser¬
vice to you. I desire you'll send
the enclosed to Ballyrothery, and if
any letters come to you for me that
you'd frank them hither. No more
at present, but duty to my mother,
and love and service to my sister
and wee ones, and wherever else it
is due.—Yours most affectionately,
' Charles Carr.
'Raphoe, July 14, 1704.'
—Dawson MSS. Dublin Castle.
1 ' The Bishop of Derry to Daw¬
son, July 7, 1704.' Ibid.
2 ' Application to the Viceroy,
June 7, 1703.' Ibid.
316 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
Donum miglit cease. The Presbyterian marriages,
hitherto connived at, were declared illegal, and prose¬
cutions were threatened for incontinency. The Pres¬
byterians complained to the Earl of Rochester. The
Lords Justices, Archbishop Marsh, and Lord Drogheda
replied to Rochester's inquiries, that the treatment of
the Dissenters was peculiarly mild. They were of
opinion, that if the bishops should desist altogether
from the prosecutions, the Dissenters would be en¬
couraged to make further encroachments on the
Church, and their own clergy would be too much
discouraged.1
1 'The Lords Justices to the Earl of Rochester, 1702.' Clarendon
317
CHAPTER II.
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION".
SECTION I.
THOUGH the name of Cromwell was mentioned
only with execration; though all parties in Ireland,
Catholic and Protestant, Dissenters and Churchmen,
contended with each other which should most pas¬
sionately denounce the memory of the usurper and
parricide, yet in the face of the resentment of England
at the efforts of the Irish legislature to assert its inde¬
pendence, the savage retaliation for the refusal of the
Security Act, and the miserable prospects which now
lay before the dependent kingdom, thoughtful Irish¬
men began to look back regretfully on one feature o
the Protector's policy, and earnestly to desire that it
might be revived, The shadow of a separate national
existence might gratify their pride, but was dearly
bought at the price of national ruin. A second con¬
flict between the two Parliaments might lead to the
suppression of their liberties and to military govern¬
ment. Under the short-lived Legislative Union, Ire¬
land had enjoyed free trade and every advantage of
318 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
English citizenship. Her disabilities had commenced
with the restoration of her constitution ; and the more
she made her constitution a reality, the more grievous
became the burden under which she was crushed.
The artisans who had been employed in her woollen
trade were now leaving her in thousands. Her wool,
the most valuable of her products, she was forced to
sell to England only, on England's own terms, and
was at once robbed of occupation for her people, and
of the price which she might have commanded for her
raw material, had she been permitted to dispose of it
elsewhei-e. Under such treatment the two countries
became daily more estranged. Ireland considered
England unjust and tyrannical, England considered
Ireland ungrateful and unmanageable. Neither un¬
derstood the other; neither would make allowance for
the other; and, therefore, each went deeper into the
courses which most exasperated the other. Tho
interests of Protestantism, the interests of order and
liberty, were identical on both sides of St. George's
Channel. To England it was all-important that the
Anglo-Irish should identify themselves rather with
her than with the native race ; but she thought herself
secure of them, as if for their own sakes they must
adhere to the mother country, being unable to main¬
tain themselves without her help. With the same
recklessness with which she mismanaged later her
other colonies, she was forcing them in self-defence to
make common cause with the Celts, among whom
their fortunes were flung. The true remedy, could
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 319
England have seen it, was the abolition of the Irish
Parliament, and a political incorporation with Great
Britain. The Legislative Union with Scotland was
already determined on, the details only requiring to
be adjusted. At the accession of Queen Anne, could
the English manufacturers have looked beyond their
ledgers, a union with Ireland could have been brought
about with even greater facility. The Catholics were
in no condition to resist. The Protestants
1702
rather regarded their exclusion from the Eng¬
lish Parliament as a wrong, than valued or wished to
preserve the counterfeit at Dublin. At that time they
would have welcomed gratefully a proposal for union,
and Irish grievances and the Irish character, bred of
separation, would have dissolved into things of history.
A contemporary tract describes, with curious
minuteness, the feelings on the subject entertained in
Ireland by reasonable and educated men.1
The estates of the English settlers f might be held,'
the writer said, c to belong to England, from the sums
of money which England had spent to rescue them
from the Irish ; and yet, although so closely interested
in the welfare of a country which had cost her so
dear, England looked on Ireland only as a rival which,
if allowed to prosper, might become dangerous. She
did not trouble herself to distinguish between the indi¬
genous Celts and the Colonists, but regarded them all
1 Considerations concerning Ire- evidently immediately before the
land, and particularly in respect of Irish Session of 1703-4.
a Union. Undated, but written
320 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
in the gross as one people, and one people indeed they
were in the way to become, unless England, took more
pains to understand the Irish problem/ f While,' so
this writer continued, ' we looked on ourselves as a
distinct kingdom with a legislative power within our¬
selves, we were more ready to forget England and to
bandy and side with the Irish. This bred aversion in
the English mind, and increased ours to them. We
seemed strange and remote to them, a people setting
up for ourselves. They looked on us at a distance.
They wished Ireland sunk in the sea, when they might
with the same pains have wished it turned to gold.
They regarded Ireland as peopled with men of
I'? desperate fortunes, the scum of their nation
that had come over with the armies, or with bankrupts
and cheats, which had fled thither to defraud their
creditors.
' The English colonists, on the other hand, conceived
that the mother country had deserted them, left them
to shift for themselves, and only intended to repress
and keep them low. Having no representatives in
the Parliament at Westminster, the wildest calumnies
against them passed unanswered there. There was no
one to explain the difference between the English and
Irish inhabitants; and the one impression was, that
they were a disloyal and turbulent people, who could
only be rendered harmless so long as they were dis¬
abled by poverty.'1
1 Considerations concerning Ireland, and particularly in respect of a Union.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
32 *
Another Irish statesman, writing at the same time
and with the same purpose, repeated the charge in
almost identical terms, and foretold the same results.1
' England,' said Mr. Maxwell, ' had two ways of
keeping Ireland ; by an army in the hands of English¬
men, or by checking the growth of the kingdom in
trade or wealth, that it might not be dangerous. To
govern Ireland by an army was dangerous to English
liberty. To keep the country poor was to alienate
the inhabitants of all persuasions, and leave it open
to occupation by foreign enemies. Thus treated, the
Protestant colonists were disposed to close with the
Irish and set up a separate interest. An Englishman
settling among them quickly degenerated. There
was scarcely a man who had been seven years in the
country, and meant to remain there, who did not
become averse to England, and grow something
I 7O3
of an Irishman. From the earliest times these
influences had been at work, and Ireland had, in con¬
sequence, been a constant thorn in England's side.
Three times in a hundred years she had required to be
reconquered, and was always ready to take side with
England's enemies. That the Celtic and the Saxon
temperaments were not in themselves incompatible
was proved by the example of Wales; and, if the
methods which had proved successful in Wales were
applied to Ireland, the same result would follow. An
1 Essay on a Union of Ireland
with England, by Henry Maxwell.
Dublin, 1704. This writer was
irel. 1
probably the Right Hon. Henry
Maxwell of Finnibrogue.
322
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
Englishman moving to Wales did not forfeit his birth¬
right, or cease to be represented in the English Parlia¬
ment, and no one grudged him whatever wealth he was
able to acquire.1 When he settled in Ireland he fell
under other laws and another legislature. He lost
the benefit of trade, and, if less hardly taxed, he was
regarded with jealous eyes as a rival and a possible
enemy. So long as the separate government was con¬
tinued there would be disagreement and estrangement,
to be followed in the future by more serious catas¬
trophes. The true and complete remedy would be a
union. The colonists, when represented in the Imperial
Parliament, would no longer gravitate towards the
Irish, but would rather draw the Irish with them into
closer sympathy with England. The moment was
favourable. The army and militia were wholly in
English hands. Nine-tenths of the land were now held
by Protestants of English and Scotch extraction, and
under a union would instantly be filled with British
immigrants. The loyal population would increase,
bringing with them English habits and English inter-
1 How little intelligent Irish
Protestants wished to preserve the
local government, how entirely the
difficulty was on the English side,
appears distinctly from the form of
Maxwell's argument. The refusal
of the Union was one of the Anglo-
Irish grievances. ' In reason and
equity,' he said, ' Ireland had a
better plea than Wales. In reason,
because the people of Ireland were
the offspring of England, which
the Welsh were not; the Irish had,
therefore, a better title to a child's
portion. In equity, because all the
massacres, wars, and desolations
that the Protestants of Ireland
had undergone had proceeded from
the single reason, that they were
the bulwark and defence of the
English Government in Ireland,
which could never be overturned
till they were destroyed.'—Essay
on a Union.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
323
ests : while Ireland, admitted to be an integral part
of the Empire, with a fair share of its trade, would
cheerfully bear her part of the taxation. Her con¬
dition, having her own members to speak for her,
would be understood. Her wealth, if she became
rich, would be English wealth ; her grievances would
be English grievances ; and the trade of dishonest
schemers, who, in the severed condition of Ireland,
found means of promoting their own ends, would be
closed for ever.'1
If the present opportunity were allowed to escape,
Maxwell foretold, with instinctive sagacity, one inevit¬
able consequence.
' England,' he said, ' imagined that she could best
govern Ireland by keeping her poor and miserable,
and had, therefore, disabled her woollen trade. The
manufacture was destroyed. The wool, of which she
had enormous quantities, she was compelled to sell
only to England, and on England's own terms. England
had the monopoly of the European cloth and blanket
market, because English and Irish wool were the best
in the then known world. The relative price of it in
England and Ireland had been fixed as twenty-five to
seventeen, and the difference between the English and
Irish prices was made up by an export duty in the
1 Essay on a Union, by Henry
Maxwell. Similarly the author of
Considerations concerning Ireland
says, 'IVe all saw, for instance, by
what steps this last war grew, but
could not prevent it, because we
were not allowed a Parliament;
and the English Parliament could
neither fully understand nor pre¬
vent it. Had there been members
for Ireland there, and Ireland part
of Parliament's province, remedies
could have been found in time.
Y 2
324 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND [BK. II.
Irish harbours. Provided England could really secure
the Irish fleeces to herself on these terms, she would
draw a handsome profit. But the ingenious persons
who had made this arrangement had forgotten that
French and Spanish wool, if mixed with a portion of
Irish, would then produce as good cloth as the best
that came from the Lancashire looms. One sack of
Irish wool would work up three French sacks; and
thus there would be an enormous premium upon
smuggling. Dutch, French, and Irish contraband
dealers would outbid the English merchants in the
Irish market. The coast line was too long and too
difficult to permit effectual watching. The coastguard
officers would be bribed to look through their fingers.
The legitimate commerce would be suspended. The
wool would go to France after all. The French would
compete with England for a trade of which Ireland
would have been robbed in vain. The manufacturers,
who were almost all Protestant, would leave a country
where there was no longer employment for them.
The Scotch, English, and Dutch artisans would return
home, or would go to the American plantations.
When a nation was oppressed, men of capital and
skill were the first to take wing, as Philip the Second
found when he ruined Flanders; and Protestant
enterprise being thus driven from the field, Ireland
must in a few years relapse to the old proprietors,
whose natures were better suited to the lazy life of
grazing and sowing, who submitted unwillingly to the
thraldom of England, and who would throw themselves
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 325
away, as they had always done, upon any Popish
Prince who would offer to protect them.'1
No prophet ever spoke more accurately, or spoke
to deafer ears. Far-sighted political intelligence was
set aside as usual by the so-called common sense of
practical men. The proposal for a union was looked
at askance as a sinister attempt on English pockets,
and the fairest opportunity that had arisen since the
conquest for bringing together countries which before
and after have so sorely tried each other, was de¬
liberately sacrificed to supercilious pride and purblind
covetousness.
1 Essay on a Union of Ireland with England, by Henry Maxwell.
Dublin, 1704.
326
SECTION II.
In the summer of 1703 Queen Anne's first Irish
Parliament was about to assemble for the most
1703
eventful session in that country's history. Henry
Maxwell, expressing the general sense of intelligent
Anglo-Irishmen, had foretold, that, with discouraged
industry, and a continued separate political existence,
Ireland must inevitably fall back into the hands of the
Celts. The minds of the Irish Protestants were set
upon a Union. English politicians had determined
that there should be no Union. They believed that
they could invent means by which Maxwell's prophecy
could be defeated, without sacrificing the interests of
the Manchester manufacturers. They could not, for
their own sakes, allow the country to relapse into a
condition, out of which it had been extricated at a
cost so severe. As little did they desire it to become
strong enough to demand privileges and rights, which
they were too jealous to concede . . . The position
in which they wished to see Ireland, was that of a
dependent province, occupied in growing unlimited
wool for the English looms, with the relations of its
inhabitants to one another and to England so adjusted,
that they could never more be politically dangerous.
If they could not eradicate Popery, the Government
believed that they could establish a system which
would condemn the professors of it to helplessness.
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 327
But if their intentions may be conjectured from their
subsequent conduct, they did not desire the Protestant
supremacy to be too complete or too immediate. What¬
ever may have been their previous uncertainties, they
had now convinced themselves that the ownership of
land must henceforward be Protestant exclusively ;
yet a Catholic population might still be useful as a
check on Protestant encroachment. And Catholic
and Protestant could both be held in subjection, if
each section of the people was made to feel itself de¬
pendent upon England for protection against the other.
They hoped, probably, that as time wen* on the natural
superiority of the more rational form of religion would
assert itself, and that Popery would disappear; but,
like most English statesmen, they looked to the im¬
mediate problems which lay before themselves, leaving
future generations to solve their own difficulties. It
would be enough for them if they could invent means
to escape compliance with the demand for a Union,
which would have brought with it commercial equality.
By the English bill for the repression of Popery,
no Catholic was any longer able to buy or inherit real
estate in England. The disability had been already
so far extended to Ireland, that Catholics were unable
to acquire lands which had been forfeited, there. The
intention was now to extend the Act to Ireland in all
its completeness. The Bill for the Expulsion of the
Catholic Dignitaries had been, so far, little more than
a form ; and a form it might, if desirable, remain. A
bill which limited the right of inheriting or buying
328
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
real property to Protestants, would enforce itself of
its own nature; and, after a generation or two, must
destroy the last hold of Catholic owners on the soil of
their fathers.
The preparations for this remarkable commentary
on the Articles of Limerick were inaugurated with
due solemnity. The Duke of Ormond, fresh, from
his glories at Vigo, and decorated with the thanks of
the House of Commons, was sent over as Viceroy.
His greatness cast a lustre on his country. His
appointment was a compliment which might stand in
lieu of more essential concessions, and by his rank
and personal influence he was expected to overbear
opposition.1 The heads of the bills which were to
form the subject of the business of the session, were
carefully considered by the Irish Council through the
summer.2 Six measures which Sir Edward Southwell,
the Irish Secretary, described as most useful, and which
1 His influence was scarcely
sufficient, great as it was. Sir
Edward Southwell, the Irish Secre¬
tary, writes on the 25th September
•—' 'Tis a miserable fatigue we are
under ; we are forced to use a great
deal of claret, and a great many
arguments, and all little enough.
There is a most strange mixture
of Scotch and fanatical principles
which sours the mass. They are
jealous of everything, and, were it
not that my Lord Duke has a great
personal interest, and many are
ashamed to deny him whom they
have talked themselves into, no¬
thing at all would be done'—
' Southwell to the Earl of Notting¬
ham, 25 th September, 1703.' MSS.
Record Office, Ireland.
2 To soothe Irish sensitiveness,
Ormond allowed the Council to
discuss the form in which the
Money Bill should be presented.
He wrote to Nottingham to excuse
himself. 'The reason why I did
it, he said, ' was to let them be¬
lieve it was their own act, and that
nothing of this had been agreed on
in England, the people here being
jealous that everything is already
agieed on there.'—'Ormond to
Nottingham, June, 1703.' Ibid.
CH. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 329
' lie knew to be most acceptable,'1 were sent over in
June for the formal sanction of the English Council.
The first was an extension of the bill already passed to
prevent priests from coming into Ireland from abroad.
' The Act of the last session,' Ormond wrote, 'extended
only to dignitaries and regulars; but it being found
by experience, that secular priests, educated beyond
sea among her majesty's enemies, did imbibe their
sentiments, and at their return did become incendiaries
to rebellion, it was conceived necessary to prohibit
their return, and the new Act was, in fact, but to
reinforce a good law already in being against foreign
education.2
The second of the bills, of the acceptableness of
which the Secretary entertained no doubt, was the
notorious one, ' to prevent the further growth of
Popery.'3 There is, and there was at the time, an
impression that this too celebrated Act was the work
of the Irish Parliament; that the English Government
consented against their better judgment, and would
have preferred it to reject it altogether. Nottingham,
perhaps, was not unwilling that such an impression
should go abroad; but the correspondence of the Lord
Lieutenant and the Secretary tells a different story.
The principle of the bill had been recommended
1 'Southwell to Nottingham,
June 12.' JUSS. Record Office, Ire¬
land.
2 'The Lord Lieutenant and
Council in Ireland to the Earl of
Nottingham, June 26th.' MSS.
Record Office. This Act was appar¬
ently carried unaltered. It placed
secular priests coming from abroad
into Ireland on the same footing
as regulars. Irish Statutes, 2 Anne,
cap. 3. 3 1 Anne, cap. 32.
33° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. XI.
from England. The heads, as first drawn by the Irish
Council, were modelled immediately on the pattern of
the English Popery Bill and the English Act providing
for the disposition of the forfeited estates ; but the
model was departed from in one material point. The
object was confessedly to prevent Popery from recover¬
ing its lost ground, by a law f to punish those who
seduced others, or were seduced themselves from the
Protestant religion/ a law ' to prohibit Papists from
disinheriting or injuring their Protestant children ;
and a law ' to prevent estates, already in the possession
of Protestants, from descending to Catholics;' in other
words, to prevent Catholics from inheriting or pur¬
chasing such estates.
In this condition the heads were sent over. The
Privy Council immediately observed, and in writing
to the Lord Lieutenant appear to have severely com¬
mented on, a very considerable modification of the
English precedent. The English Act disabled Catho¬
lics from inheriting or purchasing lands anywhere or
from anyone The prohibition in the Irish heads
extended only to lands belonging to Protestants The
change had been made intentionally. Nine-tenths of
Ireland being Protestant, the Irish Council had design¬
edly left the Catholics free to inherit and purchase
from one another.
To those who consider such acts indefensible in any
form, the difference will seem small. It is of import¬
ance, however, as showing the respective attitudes of
the two governments towards the question. The Irish
CH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 33*
Council, with a pattern set before them to work from,
departed slightly from it in the Catholic interest.
The English Council complained. The Irish Council
answered, 'that if the Queen and Council in England
desired to make the Act co-extensive with the English
Act, they had no objection.'1
In another direction the Irish Bill was harsher
than England desired. ' Limerick and Galway being
in great part inhabited by Papists, and having been
in all rebellions of fatal consequence to the English,' a
provision was introduced that, with the exception of
twenty merchants at each place, to be licensed by the
Government, no Papist should for the future ' dwell or
inhabit' in either of those towns.2
To this clause, as directly contradicting the Articles
of Galway and Limerick, Ormond anticipated that
exception would be taken. He said that he would
have prevented the insertion of it, had he been able.3
The Irish Council, however, insisted that they were
the strongest places in the island; that Limerick had
endured two sieges in each rebellion, and on each
occasion had cost a year's war and half a million of
1 ' Remarks in the Irish Council
on the Bills returned from Eng¬
land.' MSS. Record Office.
2 ' Lord Lieutenant and Council
to Nottingham, 26th June.' Ibid.
3 Other intended clauses he
objected to successfully. ' The
clauses,' he wrote, 'concerning
Galway and Limerick, I believe,
you may think hard and incon¬
venient ; but I could not conveni¬
ently hinder it. There were seve¬
ral other things offered in that
bill, which I prevented putting in,
but those I could not well have
done. The others were very hard
indeed.' It is plain from the tone
of Ormond's letter, that in some
directions England wished the bill
to be lenient.—' Ormond to Not¬
tingham, 29th June.' MSS. Record
Office.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
money. They might have added, had they not shrunk,
perhaps, from an inconvenient allusion, that it had
cost also a treaty, which, though it ought never to
have been signed, yet existed as a fact, and had been
confirmed by Parliament.
The bill went to and fro several times between the
two Councils before it settled into the form in which
it was to be laid before the Irish Legislature. There
was general soreness of feeling, soreness about trade,
soreness about the conflict of jurisdictions, soreness
about the growing Pension List.1 Objections were
raised on both sides. On the purchase and inheritance
question England desired that the Act should corre¬
spond with the law passed in her own Parliament for
the Irish forfeited estates, placing them out of reach
of Catholics by any means and for evermore. On
other points the Irish Protestants desired more severe
restrictions than England would grant. A clause was
proposed, for instance, which, in the eagerness to pro¬
tect the Protestant children of Catholic fathers, would
have prevented Catholics from selling their estates
nnder any circumstances, and would have reduced
them universally to the position of tenants for life.2
1 'Southwell to Nottingham,
17th July.' MSS. Record Office.
2 The Irish Council deprecated
this interpretation. 'The hill,'
they said, 'is not intended to
hinder Papists from selling bona
file, hut to restrain them from
selling purposely to defeat their
Protestant heirs, and therefore 'tis
referred to a Court of Equity to
examine the circumstances of the
case, and determine accordingly ;
it heing impossible to prescribe
any other rule which may he
suitable to so many different cases.'
—'Remarks in the Irish Council,
on the Notes upon the P>ill re¬
turned from England.' Ibid.
ca. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNIOiV.
333
At last, as if in the hopelessness of agreement, or from
a wish to evade responsibility, the Privy Council sent
a general sketch of what they desired or were prepared
to allow, and left the Irish House of Commons to
draw the heads for themselves after the session had
commenced.1
September at length arrived, the session opened,
and business began. Ormond, in the speech from the
throne, intimated that there was an opportunity of
passing laws which might tend greatly to the establish¬
ment of the Protestant Beligion. On the subject of
which the minds of his hearers were most full, the
social prospects of Ireland, and the union of the three
kingdoms, he was silent. Both Houses responded
loyally; but the Secretary anticipated a stormy ses¬
sion.2 The Commons were occupied for some days in
hearing petitions from Protestant sons of Catholic
gentlemen threatened with being disinherited; expel¬
ling Mr. Asgill, the member for Enniscorthy, for having
1 On tlie 22nd July, Southwell
writes:—' As to the bill against
Popery I find many objections
occur to the attorney and solicitor.
'Tis certainly very hard to draw
such a bill where many severe
things are enacted, and to be able
to distinguish or except cases that
deserve compassion ; and if that
Bill is not thought fit to pass, since
what is here desired is expressed
therein, and that the House here
will certainly begin such a bill, it
would be of service before that
time to have some hint 01 inform¬
ation how far the Council of Eng.
land would think proper to come
up to in such a Bill.'—'Southwell
to Nottingham, July 22.' MSS.
Record Office.
2 ' I wish we may get through
as we are. "We found them mighty
hearty and frank before they were
chosen ; now they begin to look
angry, and forget what they pro¬
mised.'—' Southwell to Notting¬
ham, September 25th.' Ibid.
334
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. I!.
written a heretical book,1 denouncing the forfeiture
commissioners for having reflected scandalously on the
Protestants of Ireland,2 and appointing committees to
consider heads of bills. On the 29th they voted an
address to the Queen, protesting against the suspicion
that they wished to make Ireland independent, and
declaring their entire conviction that their welfare
depended on the maintenance of the connexion with
England. On the 4th of October Southwell wrote
' that the Commons had sate that day to consider the
state of the nation ; and, after some hours sitting and
considering the many misfortunes the country lay under
in point of trade and other circumstances, all the
speakers concluded that they did in most earnest
manner desire a Union with England/ There had
been no intemperance, or declamatory passion. The
Secretary was forced to acknowledge, in spite of him¬
self, 'that the temper and good disposition of the
debate surprised most people, the loudest grievances
being touched with all the true sense, but at the same
1 Curiously, Asgill was ex¬
pelled from the English House of
Commons four years later on the
same ground, and for the same
boob.
2 They resented especially the
charge of favouring the native
Irish. On the 24th September
they passed a resolution, ' That
the Protestant freeholders of this
kingdom have been falsely and
maliciously misrepresented, tra¬
duced, and abused as persons that,
through length of time, and con¬
tracting new friendships with the
Irish, or inter-purchasing with one
another, hut chiefly through a
general dislike of the disposition
of the forfeitures, are scarce willing
to find any person guilty of the
late Rebellion even upon full evi¬
dence ; and that such a represent¬
ation has been one of the great
causes of the misery of this king¬
dom.' MSS. Record Office.
C1I. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
335
time with all the true disposition, as if they desired
nothing more/1
So real were the grounds of complaint, so j ust the
demand which was based on those complaints, that the
House was disposed to assert its powers in the form in
which alone it could command attention. The Govern¬
ment had asked for supplies for two years. A party,
led by the Speaker, Solicitor-general Brodrick, insisted
that, unless their remonstrances received attention, the
money vote should pass for one year only • and, after
a hot debate, the Castle had but a bare majority of 122
to 119. The Pension List, a running sore and a scan¬
dal for a century, was brought up and sifted. The
Crown regarded the hereditary revenue as private pro¬
perty, which it might bestow at its own pleasure. On
the Irish Establishment was laid the Regium Donum.
On the Irish Establishment were quartered also court
favourites, royal mistresses and their bastards.2 Weary
of a separate constitution, which was abused for the
sustenance of infamy, and with an honourable eager¬
ness to cast off their shame, they voted that pensions
paid out of the kingdom should be taxed four shillings
in the pound; and on the 22nd October they framed
their more serious discontents and desires into a direct
address to the Crown.
They were, and always had been, they said, most
loyal; but Ireland, from many causes, was miserable.
1 'Southwell to Nottingham, the Second, had a pension of 5000^.
October 4.' MSS. Record Office, a-year from Ireland ; and the Duke
2 Catherine Sedley, Countess of St. Alban's, Charles the Second's
of Dorchester, mistress of James son, a pension of 8001.
336 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. ir.
Their trade was ruined, their industry paralyzed, their
manufactures violently taken from them. They were
overrun with paupers ; among whom, in consequence
of these unjust measures, were now to be found indus¬
trious Protestants. In a country where the Papists
were so formidable, they humbly conceived that Pro¬
testant immigrants ought to have been encouraged;
whereas Protestant families were now removing to
Scotland, or emigrating to the plantations. The com¬
merce of Ireland was utterly destroyed. The restric¬
tions and prohibitions had rendered it impossible for
any merchant to carry on business. Government
officials were intolerably corrupt. Some had made
enormous fortunes ; others, holding high and lucrative
employments, were residing in England. The Com¬
mons implored the Queen to consider their wrongs, and
concede the only measure which could really remove
them—a firm and strict union between Ireland and
England.1
Sir Bichard Cox, who had succeeded Methuen as
chancellor, supported the address of the Commons in
a powerful letter to Lord Nottingham: 'Your Lord¬
ship,' he said, ' will be pleased to consider, that this
country is inhabited by a people of several nations,
interests, and religions; and that incendiaries may
easily serve themselves of one party or the other ; that
all labour under great poverty, occasioned chiefly by
the English acts of woollen manufacture and resump-
1 ' Address to the Queen, October 22.' MSS. Record Office. Of.
Journal of the Irish House of Commons, October 1703.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
337
tion^that if tlie few English here find themselves
oppressed, they will return to their mother country, as
many as are able; and the rest, prompted by indigna¬
tion, necessity, or despair, will turn Scotch or Irish.
There is no remedy so proper for both kingdoms as
some sort of union which would enrich and strengthen
England, and establish the English interest here, and
make it prosper; for, in that case, all the British would
be good Englishmen. We do not capitulate. You
may be your own carvers. It seems worthy of your
serious thoughts to promote so good a work.' 2
The forces which govern the evolution of human
society are so complex that the wisest statesman may
misread them. The highest political sagacity, though
controlled by conscience and directed by the purest
motives, may yet select a policy which, in the light of
after history, shall seem like madness. The ' event'
may teach the inadequacy of the intellect to compass
the problems which at times present themselves for
solution ; the ' event' alone, therefore, will not justify
severe historical censure, where a ruler has endeavoured
seriously to do what, in the light of such knowledge as
he possessed, appeared at the moment most equitable.
But no such excuse can be pleaded for Queen Anne's
ministers, or for the English nation whose resolution
they represented, in rejecting these overtures of the
Irish Parliament. Opportunities occur in the affairs of
1 The Resumption of Forfeitures Act.
2 'Sir R. Cox to the Earl of Nottingham, February 13, 1704.' 3ISS.
Record Office.
IREL. I. Z
33S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bic. ii.
nations which, if allowed to pass, return no more.
The offered Union was thrown away when it would
have been accepted gratefully as the most precious
boon which England could bestow; was thrown away
in the meanest and basest spirit of commercial jealousy.
No rational fear of possible danger ; no anxiety to
prevent injustice; no honourable motive of any kind
whatever can be imagined as having influenced Lord
Nottingham, or the persons, whoever they were, that
were generally responsible for the decision. In fatal
blindness they persuaded themselves that the Union
would make Ireland rich, and that England's interest
was to keep her poor. The Queen returned a cold
reply, 'that she would give no particular answer at
present, but would take the request into considera¬
tion.'1 The consideration never came. The wisdom
of the precious resolution was never doubted or re¬
viewed ; and from this one act, as from a scorpion's
egg, sprung a fresh and yet uncompleted cycle of
disaffection, rebellion, and misery.
The union would not be conceded; that much was
certain; and the Irish Parliament was left face to face
with its own domestic skeleton, to determine by what
means the ever-germinating Popery could be held
down, and if possible destroyed. With an Ireland
united to England, and restored to trade and industry,
the Catholics would have sunk before the superior
vitality of their vigorous and thriving rivals. If there
1 Commons' Journals, Februaiy n, 1704.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
339
was to be no trade and no industry, a social condition
would establish itself, in which the natural superiority
would be on the Celtic and Catholic side; and unless
otherwise protected, such Protestants as remained in
the island would conform themselves to the only type
of character which could be happy in compelled
idleness.
34°
SECTION III.
The alternative which Ireland was to receive for the
* refusal of the Union was the Act for the Repres-
17°3
sion of Popery; and the unfinished work of the
Council was turned over to the House of Commons,
who appointed a Committee to draw the heads of a bill.
But further correspondence with England was neces¬
sary before they could make progress with their work.
The interest in the smaller measure, so long as they
were considering and debating on the Union, was com¬
paratively feeble ; and to prevent conflict and confusion
the House was unwilling to take active steps till the
views of the English Cabinet were ascertained with
precision. The most powerful influences were brought
to bear on the English Court in favour of the Catholics.
The heads of a companion act had been already sent
over, under which Catholic secular priests remaining
in Ireland were required to present themselves before
a magistrate, register their names, and take out a
licence, of which the Abjuration Oath was a condition.
A formal remonstrance, both against this measure and
the intended Popery Bill, had been submitted to Lord
Nottingham, and a large money subscription had been
raised among the Catholic gentry to insure the Privy
Council's attention. They appealed to the Articles
of Limerick and to the promise distinctly given them,
that they should be subject to no disturbance on
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 341
account of tlieir religion. King William had under¬
taken that they should retain all such privileges as
they had possessed under Charles the Second, and
yet they were threatened with being deprived of the
right of punishing disobedient children, or of buying
or inheriting property in the land of their fathers.
By the Articles of Limerick no oath was to be required
of Catholics but the simple Oath of Allegiance. If the
Abjuration Oath was to be made a condition of regis¬
tration, ' no priest could remain in Ireland; none
could come thither from abroad under penalty of high
treason; and no Catholic could continue to live there
being barred the exercise of his religion.' ' They
humbly hoped her majesty would refuse to consent to
a law which was a breach of faith. Public honour was
always sacred, and no people were more sensible of it
than the English.'1
The clause of the Articles of Limerick affecting
the religious position of the Catholics had been con¬
firmed by Parliament. It was part of the law of the
land. The appeal was not conclusive, for no treaties
can bind eternally when conditions change; but the
reply most consistent at once with honour and the
interests of Ireland would have been to concede the
Union. No Kepression of Popery Act would have
been then needed, if Protestantism had been allowed
fair play. But Ireland appeared to the English
ministry to be a country where honour, conscience,
1 ' Case of the Horn an Catholics in relation to the bill against the
repression of Popery.' MSS. Record Office.
342 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
and common-sense were words which had no applica¬
tion. General directions were given that the bill
was to be proceeded with, and, on the 19th November,
the heads were laid on the table of the House of
Commons by Tenison, the member for Lowth.
The summer work of the Council formed the evident
basis on which the Committee had proceeded. The
preamble stated, as a reason for further legislation,
' that the great lenity and moderation hitherto extended
in making and executing laws against the Popish reli¬
gion, had produced no other effect, or been otherwise
looked on by them, than as connivance or encour¬
agement.' The existing laws were evaded. Catholic
fathers disinherited their Protestant children. Papists
had recovered possession of estates which they had
forfeited by rebellion, by eluding the Intermarriage
Act. The priests, by secret proselytizing and perver¬
sions, were undermining the Protestant interest and
dividing families. It was proposed therefore, first,
that, according to English precedent, to seduce a Pro¬
testant from his faith should be treated as a crime,
both in the pervert and in the person perverting him.
The Foreign Education Act must be more strictly en¬
forced. Catholic parents must be compelled to allow
sufficient maintenance to their Protestant children;
and 'to the intent that no lordship, manor, or tene¬
ment, whereof any Protestant was, or hereafter should
be, at any time seised, should come into possession
of a Papist/ the Committee recommended that no
Catholic should be left in a position to recover such
CH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 343
lands under any circumstances whatsoever. Their
power to purchase or inherit from one another the
Committee, like the Council, still proposed to leave
undisturbed; with this provision only, that the estates,
real and personal, of a Catholic having only Catholic
children, should descend in gavelkind, and be divided
in equal portions among them. If the eldest son chose
to declare himself a Protestant, he might resume his
rights as heir-at-law.
The disarming Act had been neutralized by a dis¬
pensing power committed to the Yiceroy. This power
the Committee alleged to have been abused, and
begged that it might be withdrawn. The Limerick
and Galway clause reappeared, but was prospective
in its operation. No Catholic should, for the future,
acquire property in those towns, or come to reside
within them. The present inhabitants might remain
on finding sureties for their good behaviour.
These positions, with a clause disabling Catholics
from voting at elections without taking the oaths
of allegiance and abjuration, constituted the chief
features of the Repression of Popery Act, as the heads
left the Irish House of Commons and were sent to
England for final revision. It is to be observed that
the reservation of power to the Catholics to buy and
inherit land among themselves was still maintained, in
spite of the exception which had been taken by the
English Cabinet. The Speaker, attended by the whole
House, presented the bill to the Viceroy, to be for¬
warded to London.
344 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
' The opposition constantly made in England/ they
said, ' by the Papists of Ireland, against whatever
might tend to the security of her majesty's Protestant
subjects, induced them to lay the heads before his
grace in that solemn manner. They thought it the
more particularly necessary, being informed and con¬
vinced that great sums of money had lately been raised
by them to oppose the passing of a Bill of that nature
in England.'1
Communication between Dublin and London was
still irregular. In mid-winter especially the passage
yacht was sometimes detained indefinitely at Holy¬
head by heavy westerly weather; and Ireland, after
the despatch of the heads of this and the Priests
Registration Bill, remained for six weeks in a fever of
suspense and excitement.
Rumour said that England meant to favour the
Catholics. The short December days had brought
Rapparee outrages. The extreme Protestant party
made use of them to excite terror and indignation;
and the Solicitor-general (Brodrick) was so violent,
that Orrnond gave him a public reprimand.2 The
Commons intimated plainly, that if the Popery Bill
returned to them materially changed, they would re¬
fuse the supplies after all; and both Southwell and the
Viceroy wrote to deprecate alterations in the strongest
language. ' The House of Commons,' they said, ' was
1 Commons' Journals, November 24.
2 'Southwell to Nottingham, January 18, 1704.' MSS. Record
Office.
ch. ii.J FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 345
extremely intent upon it. They entreated Nottingham
to see personally to its progress and dispatch.'1
There was no occasion for their alarm. At the end
of January news came that the bill was coming back,
and coming in a shape which would be welcome to all
good Protestants. On the 10th February it arrived.
From Ormond's anxiety it might have been inferred,
that the disposition in England was really unfavour¬
able. Yet the bill had been changed, not in a direction
to make it bear less heavily on the Catholics, but to
bring it rather more close to the English Act, and to
abridge the small indulgence which the Irish Council
had endeavoured so earnestly to preserve.
In the shape in which this celebrated statute was
returned from England to be passed into law
by the Irish Parliament, the provisions of it 17°4
were these:—
The first part of the preamble had been struck out,
perhaps as reflecting too severely on the imbecility
of the executive government. f Emissaries of the
Church of Pome,' it was thought sufficient to say,
' taking advantage of the weakness and ignorance of
some of her majesty's subjects, and the sickness and
decay of their reason and senses, daily perverted them
from the Protestant religion, to the disquiet of the
realm, and the discomfort and disturbance of private
families. In their hatred of true religion, persons
professing Popery had refused to provide for their
1 ' Letters from Secretary Southwell and the Duke of Ormond,
December 1703 and January 1704.' MSS. Record Office.
34<5 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. LBK "■
Protestant children. They had evaded the laws de¬
signed to keep them in check. They had it in their
power to make divisions by their votes at elections,
and to use other means, to the destruction of the
Protestant interest. Perversions therefore from Pro¬
testantism to Popery were brought under the premu-
nire statute, as the heads had recommended. The
penalties of the Foreign Education Act were extended
to all Catholics who sent their children abroad without
licence. Power was given to the Court of Chancery
to compel Catholic parents to make sufficient allowances
to their children of another religious profession than
their own; and then coming to the great matter, the
Act declared, that where the eldest son of a Catholic
father was a Protestant, the father became tenant for
life only, and was disabled from selling his estate if he
desired it. No Catholic might be guardian or trustee
to orphan children though born of Catholic parents.
If the parents were living, and one of them was a
Protestant, the Court of Chancery was directed to
see that they were brought up in the Communion of
the Established Church.
A middle course was taken with the debated pur¬
chase and inheritance question. Under no condition
whatsoever were Catholics to be permitted to buy
lands, or gain any additional hold on the real estate of
the country. They were not even to take leases for
more than thirty-one years. Lands already in the
hands of Protestants must descend to the Protestant
.nearest of kin. Lands in possession of Catholics,
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UN I OFT.
347
whose children were Catholics also, were to descend
in gavelkind, as the Irish Committee had proposed
The eldest son, however, might inherit, as the Com¬
mittee recommended, under the common law, and
retain his privilege as sole heir to the real estate if he
declared himself a Protestant within a year of his
father's death.'1
An Act, passed under Charles the Second, had
required the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy as a
condition of acquiring pi-operty in corporate towns.
Had the law been observed, the late rebellion would
have been prevented.: Limerick and Galway being
places of great military importance, the English
Council had now consented to the clause which forbade
fresh Papist families from settling there ; while Papists
already occupying tenements within the walls were
required to find security for their good behaviour. A
blow was aimed also at local superstitions, by an order
that all crosses, pictures, inscriptions, and objects of
public . devotion should be destroyed by the magis¬
trates ; gatherings at stations and places of pilgrimage
were to be treated as riotous assemblies, and persons
collecting on such occasions were to be fined or
publicly whipped.2
Such was this Act as it affected Catholics after beinsr
1 The Court of Chancery in
such cases was to make an order
for the maintenance of the younger
children up to a third value of the
estate. Nor did the Act, as is
sometimes imagined, enable a
younger brother to supplant the
eldest by conforming. The eldest
son alone was laid under a direct
temptation to change his religion
from interested motives.
2 2 Anne, cap. 6. Irish Statutes.
34^ THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
remodelled by the English Cabinet; but provisions
were attached which reflected the double-edged intoler¬
ance of the members of the Anglican Communion. A
special section declared that no person should take
benefit by the Act as a Protestant, who did not con¬
form to the Church of Ireland as by law established.
If, on the death of a Protestant landowner, the natural
heir was a Catholic, the Catholic was disabled; but it
the Protestant next of kin, to whom the estate would
lapse, happened to be a Presbyterian, he was to be
passed over in favour of a more remote member of the
Establishment. As if this was not enough, the English
Test Act, of which in the previous correspondence not
a word had been breathed, was found to have been
introduced as a parenthesis. The taking the sacra¬
ment, according to the rites of the Established Church,
was made a condition of holding any office, civil or
military, under the Crown, above the rank of a con¬
stable. The exclusive privileges, so long desired by
Irish bishops, were thrown into their hands as a make¬
weight in a bill of a totally opposite tendency. The
Presbyterians, the Independents, the Huguenot im¬
migrants, the Quakers, not protected in their public
worship, like the English Dissenter, by a Toleration
Act, were swept under the same political disabilities,
and were at once cut off from the army, the militia,
the civil service, the commission of the peace, and
from seats in the municipal corporations.
What could have been the object of this most
strange and most unlooked-for episode ? Was it a
cir. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 349
move of Lord Godolphin's, as Burnet says, to defeat a
bill which he could not directly oppose, by introducing
a clause which he trusted would prove fatal to it ?
"Was it, as Dr. Reid considers, that Archbishop King,
finding his direct attacks on the Dissenters unsuccess¬
ful, induced his friends in England to insert the clause
in the last stage of a bill on which he knew the Irish
Commons to have set their hearts, when they must
either accept the form in which it was returned to
them, or lose it altogether ? The motives of public men
are rarely so complicated as the critics of their actions
conjecture. Lord Godolphin's object was to pacify the
Irish Parliament, and obtain the necessary supplies
without granting the Union, or making commercial
concessions which would irritate the English manufac¬
turers. The Catholics were politically powerless. No
favour shown to Popery would improve the Govern¬
ment majority. The Presbyterians, though half the
Protestant population, and incomparably the most
earnest in their Protestantism, were chiefly farmers,
tradesmen, and artisans. Out of three hundred seats
in the House of Commons they commanded but ten;
the little favour felt towards them had been shown in
a recent vote, which declared the Regium Donum an
unnecessary expense; while the Test clause was the
surest means to reconcile the bishops and High Church
Peers to an Act which their Jacobite sympathies might
have otherwise inclined them to resist.
A slight agitation followed the announcement of so
unexpected an addition to the Act, but not sufficient to
35° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
cause uneasiness at tlie Castle.1 The bill passed
through the first and second readings without discus¬
sion. On the 22nd of February the House of Com¬
mons went into committee. The Catholics had applied
to be heard by counsel in opposition; the request
had been considered fair; and Sir Theobald Butler,
who had been Tyrconnell's Solicitor-general, and Sir
Stephen Bice, who had been chief Baron, spoke at the
bar as their representatives. The appeal of course was
to the Articles of Limerick. The Act before the House
admitted no distinctions, and applied to the whole
of Ireland. Catholics specially comprehended in the
Articles of Limerick and Galway had been promised
undisturbed possession of their properties ; and if the
Act became law, their sons, it was urged, should they
choose to become Protestants, could take away their
control over their estates. By the Articles generally
all Catholics were restored to such rights as they had
enjoyed "under Charles the Second. In that reign
they had possessed an undoubted right of purchas¬
ing land, and of this they were to be deprived. In
that reign a son succeeded to his father's property
though the father might be a Protestant and the son a
Catholic ; while, if the gavelling clause was carried, in
a generation or two there would scarcely be a remem¬
brance of any Catholic family in any part of Ireland.
1 Southwell, who must have
known Godolphin's real wishes,
reported that the bills had been
well received : ' The Sacramental
test, added to the Popery Bill,' he
said, 'made a slight stir, which is
dying off.'—' Southwell to Notting¬
ham, February, 1704.' MSS. Ke-
cord Office.
en. ii.J FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. -551
It was needless to argue an inconsistency which
could not be denied. Treaties, it was admitted in
reply, were meant to be observed, but were not in¬
tended to last for ever. A power of revision resided
necessarily in the legislature ; and the legislature could
not be prevented from passing laws which might be
required for the safety of the Government.
This position the Catholics did not attempt to
question. No articles, Sir Stephen Rice acknowledged,
could take away the right of Government to protect
itself against dangerous enemies. He protested only
that the Catholics had given no fresh provocation, or
had made themselves in any way legitimate objects of
suspicion.
Here of course the real difficulty lay. To sincere
Protestants, the Catholics could not, in the nature of
the case, be other than objects of suspicion. They
had lost nine-tenths of their estates, and must, if they
were mortal, desire to recover them. As certainly,
they must be friends to the Pretender, and enemies
of the Hanoverian succession. They had themselves
admitted that no Catholic could conscientiously take
the Abjuration Oath.
f The arguments,' wrote Southwell, giving an
account of the discussion to Nottingham, ' were con¬
sidered and answered, and all the clauses against the
Papists passed unanimously, till we came to the sacra¬
mental test, on which we had a two hours' debate. It
was objected, that we were creating a new distinction
of Church and Dissenters, when there ought to be only
ZZ* THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bic. ii.
that of Protestant and Papist; that it weakened our
Protestant interest, when we were provoking the
Papists afresh; and that it was an ill-requital to the
Dissenters, who had so signalized themselves in the
defence of Derry; that, in case of foreign invasion, it
put them out of capacity, without great penalty, of
showing the same zeal; that it was more sensible to
the Dissenters here because they have no toleration by
law as in England ; and some very few, in the height
of their resentment, were pleased to say, they thought
this was added to hazard the bill. All this was
answered, and showed that no particular hardship was
designed towards them ; that, in fact, there were more
of the Church at Enniskillen and at least one-half in
Derry; that even in the North above eight in ten of
the gentry were Churchmen; that, although, in those
parts, the commonalty might exceed in Dissenters,
parish officers were excused in the bill; that, in cases
of public danger, all people were obliged, in duty and
interest, to oppose the common enemy ; that, if ever
we hoped a union with England, it could not be expected
they would ever do it, but upon the same terms that
they stand upon; and that, in England, the Dissenters
have both writ for and preached conformity when it
was for their interest and advantage.'1
To throw out the clause was to lose the work of the
session. Twenty members of the House of Commons
preferred even this alternative as a less evil than a
1 ' Sir Ed. Southwell to the Earl of Nottingham, February 26,
1704.' MSS. Kecord Office.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION
353
resolution so impolitic and unjust. But tlie bill was
carried by an enormous majority. It passed with
equal ease through the House of Lords, and became
law.
The Act requiring the Catholic priests who re¬
mained in Ireland to register their names and take out
licences was returned from England with the Popery
Act, and was passed simultaneously. It re-appeared
without the dreaded provision, which was to have
exacted the Abjuration Oath; but had the execution
of the law been equal to its verbal severity, it would
still have sufficed to extinguish Irish Popery within the
compass of a generation. The existing Secular Clergy
were allowed to remain and officiate; but their num¬
ber was not to be recruited from abroad, nor were any
more to be ordained in Ireland. To prevent evasion,
every priest was required to return his name, his
parish, his age, the time and place where he received
his orders. If he could prove that he was one of the
old set he was to receive his licence; if not, he was
required to leave the country, under pain of death if
he came back. To make the disappearance more rapid,
a pension of 201, a year, afterwards raised to 301., was
assigned to every priest who would come over to the
Establishment.1 Finally, as the English Parliament
had determined the descent of the crown in a Protest¬
ant line, should Queen Anne die without a natural heir,
and ' inasmuch as it most manifestly appeared that the
Papists of Ireland, and other disaffected persons, did
1 2 Anne, cap, 7.
IREL. 1. A A
354
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. n.
still entertain the hope of disappointing the succession
of the crown to the House of Hanover/ an attempt to
tamper with the Act of Succession in the Pretender's
interest, by act or deed, was declared to be high
treason.1
1 2 Anne, cap. 5. Irish Statutes.
355
SECTION IV.
Carefully as the Bill for the Repression of Popery-
had been drawn, it appeared at first as if it were to
take its place among the many statutes which existed
only as bugbears. By the 13th of the 10th of William,
Papists had been disqualified from practising as
solicitors; yet the courts were as full as ever of
Catholic attorneys; and the attorneys, having estab¬
lished their own existence in the teeth of one law,
found little difficulty in picking holes in another. Any
means were thought legitimate to defeat a statute in
itself unjust; and by annuities, by fictitious convey¬
ances, by incumbrances and settlements, by fines and
leases, by all the unnumbered weapons lying in a
lawyer's armoury, Catholic landowners were still en¬
abled to determine, after their own pleasure, the descent
of their properties; while the executive was equally
careless in enforcing the acts immediately penal.
Catholic gentlemen were not disarmed. Catholic
bishops held ordinations as usual, and were not in¬
terfered with. The majority of priests laughed at the
Registration Act, officiated without licence, and no
one meddled with them. Students went and came
between Ireland and the French and Spanish Uni¬
versities. Catholic schools continued open. Catholic
tutors taught their pupils undisturbed in private
houses. In vain, two years later, the Commons voted
A A 2
356 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
that magistrates who neglected their duties were ' be¬
trayers of the liberties of the kingdom and enemies of
the Protestant interest/ It seemed as if laws against
Celt or Papist in Ireland were only made to be laughed
at; as if they had been passed to silence the clamours
of Parliament, and were paralyzed by the purposed
inaction of those whose business was to see them
enforced. The coldness in one direction was the more
remarkable when contrasted with the heat and vigour
in another. The bishops had been bribed into con¬
senting to the Popery Bill by the clause against the
Dissenters ; and they settled to their work, when the
law was passed, with the zeal of heartfelt enjoyment.
The Presbyterian magistrates in Ulster were cleared
out. ' Men of little estate, youths, newcomers, and
clergymen, having nothing to recommend them but
their going to church/ were appointed in their places.
Out of twelve aldermen of Deny, ten were Noncon¬
formists, and were ejected. At Belfast, the entire
corporation was changed; and the power being now
in their hands in town and country, the bishops fell
upon the grievance which had so long afflicted them,
of the Presbyterian marriages. Catholic marriages
did not trouble them ; for Catholic priests were lawfully
ordained, and could perform valid sacraments. Dis¬
senting ministers were unsanctified upstarts, whose
pretended ceremonial was but a licence for sin. It
was announced that the children of all Protestants not
married in a church should be treated as bastards, and,
as the record of this childish insanity declares, f Many
tJH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 357
persons, of undoubted reputation, were prosecuted in
the bishops' courts as fornicators, for cohabiting with
their own wives.'1
Too late the English ministers became conscious
of their mistake, and endeavoured to repair it. The
absurdity of crippling the right arm of Irish Protest¬
antism, with the Pretender threatening a descent on
Scotland, was too glaringly obvious. If the Test Act
was to be the only reality, and the Popery Acts were
to be left to sleep, the Test must be taken off again,
and some fresh Acts passed against the Catholics, of
which evasion should be impossible. The Earl of
Pembroke was sent over in Ormond's place to intro¬
duce, if possible, some elements of common sense into
the distracted administration. Never constant for
more than a year or two to a definite policy, the history
of the English Government of Ireland is, from first to
last, a history of attempts to rule by humouring the
party which was for the moment uppermost, of the
wildest blunders permitted for an immediate object, to
be followed by efforts always ineffectual to undo them
after the mischief had been accomplished.
Pembroke came to Dublin in the summer of 1707,
bringing with him George Doddington as Sec-
I 707
retary. The Earl of Sunderland, brought for
a time into office, used the opportunity to press
a reversal, if possible, of the extraordinary policy of
the Test clause; and though his influence was far
from paramount in Godolphin's administration, it can
1 Loyalty of the Presbyterians in Ireland. Reign of Queen Anne.
358
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
be traced in Doddington's appointment, and in the
language of Pembroke's speech at the opening of the
Irish Parliament, which dwelt generally, but emphatic¬
ally, on the danger from the overwhelming numbers
of the Catholics, the necessity for unanimity among
Protestants, and the desirableness of discovering fresh
means to strengthen the Protestant interest.
The mind of the Commons was still fastened upon
the object which, in the Session of 1703, they had
sought so earnestly and so ineffectually. In the
address they expressed their hopes for ' a more com¬
prehensive union.' The Queen was made to answer,
as before, vaguely, that she would endeavour f to make
the union of all her subjects as extensive as possible.'
The words passed as more hopeful than an absolute
refusal; and the House settled itself to the work of
which the Journals indicate only what was done, being
silent over what was attempted. The supplies were
voted freely. Next to the supplies the Test had been
Lord Sunderland's chief anxiety. Doddington was
obliged to report that the bishops' influence among
the Lords, and the High Church leanings so strangely
visible in the Lower House, rendered the removal
of it impracticable.1 Suggestions for an improve-
1 Doddington's letter to Sun¬
derland on tlie subject throws the
most curious light on the temper
of the Irish Parliament: 'As to
the other grand affair,' he wrote,
on the 14th of August, after men¬
tioning the supply vote—' I mean
the taking off the Sacramental
Test; it was impracticable in this
House, and will ever be for as long
as this Parliament continues, which
is made up of two-thirds of as High
Churchmen as any in England.
You would hardly believe there
should be such a creature as an
Irish Protestant Jacobite, and yet
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
359
ment of the Popery Bill were received more warmly.
The Commons had been perplexed with details of the
many methods by which Catholic solicitors were un¬
tying the knots of the Act of 1704. Lands had been
given away, leases had been granted for a thousand
years to hinder Catholic estates from falling to apos¬
tate children. Heirs apparent, or eldest sons, of
wavering faith, had been smuggled away to England,
or married as minors to Catholic ladies, that the priest's
influence might be sustained by the wife's. Special
Acts were passed to meet particular instances ; and
the heads of a general Act, from which escape would
be at last impossible, were carried through the Lower
House with rapidity and enthusiasm; notwithstanding
all that Doddington had reported of the humour of the
majority of the members.
'tis most certain there are a great
many such monsters. I can prove
it. This country is very near as
much under the power and influ¬
ence of the clergy as the people of
Italy are ; and, if care be not taken
of them, they will put what mea¬
sures they please on the civil
power.' And again on the 28th:
' This people ought to he gratified
with all laws that are for the
better government of human so¬
ciety, and for their preservation
against the Papists and their adhe¬
rents the High Flyers, with which
this country swarms. I entirely
agree with you, that nothing less
than the taking off the Sacra¬
mental Test can remedy the grow¬
ing evils this country labours
under ; but unless the government
will call a new Parliament, and
sincerely espouse the taking it off,
it will not be done. Two-thirds
of the members of the present
House of Commons are High
Flyers. In the other House the
bishops, every man of them, are
as high as Laud was, and have so
great an influence over the Tem¬
poral Lords, most of whom have as
little sense as Lord Abercorn, that
they are at least six to one against
the honest Lords. Believe me this
country is priest-rid, very near as
much as the Portuguese and
Spaniards are.'—'Doddington to
Sunderland, August 14 and 28.'
MSS. Record Office.
360 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. U.
The Highchurchmanship, however, which in the
country gentlemen was controlled or modified by
Protestant traditions, appeared among the Spiritual
Peers in its true colours. To them a Catholic was
but an erring brother, while a Calvinist was a detested
enemy. The Catholics were good friends to the Pre¬
tender, and, in the event of a revolution, might unite
ultimately with themselves. Whigs, Low Churchmen,
and Nonconformists were malignant Hanoverians and
foes, to their very heart of hearts, of Sacerdotalism and
Episcopal authority. Measures which would give
additional strength to Protestantism in the true and
proper sense, were things to be deprecated and re¬
sisted. They did not attempt direct opposition, but
they introduced modifications, which would make the
bill as futile as its predecessors ; and in this condition
the heads of the New Popery Act were sent over with
others to the English Council.
' I beg leave in particular,' wrote Doddington in
transmitting them, ' to mention the bill for prevent¬
ing the further growth of Popery, which the holy
prelates have been mumbling and doing their best to
render it ineffectual. The Papists are alarmed at this
bill, which was designed to strengthen the one that
passed formerly, and prevent the settling their estates
in such a manner as would evade the first Act, and
hinder their estates from descending to their Protest¬
ant children. When I reflect how unaccountable an
act it is for a Protestant Government to authorize
Pomish priests to exercise their religion, and at the
CH. n.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION,361
same time the Dissenting ministers are made liable to
very severe penalties for acting according to their per¬
suasions, I cannot but hope some cure will be found
out to put an end to so unreasonable a proceeding.
We require alterations in the Council, which in truth
is a scandalous board, and by such steps may allay
that violent temper, which has been countenanced and
preached up here since the death of the late King.
And then a new Parliament, with the countenance of
the Government, will take off that scandalous distinc¬
tion, or rather infamous clause, and do such other
things as may be for the real honour of the Queen and
the good of her subjects/1
The Popery Bill came back, but the bishops'
handiwork being left entirely or in part undefaced,
a Committee of the Commons reported upon it un¬
favourably, and it was rejected.2 A second set of
heads were introduced by a private member, but at
so late a period in the session that nothing more could
be done with it. The Irish Parliament was falling
into a habit which became afterwards the rule, of
meeting only in alternate years. The Catholics were
reprieved, and the bishops had secured their gratitude
in the event of half foreseen contingencies.
1 ' Doddington to Sunderland, September 2.' MSS. Eecord Office.
2 Commons' Journals, October 18, 1707.
362
SECTION V.
While the Irish Jacobite House of Lords was thus
openly taking the side of the Catholics, the
Pretender was preparing at St. Germains for a
descent upon Scotland. An attack on Ireland, whether
as a feint or as a reality, formed an important part of
his plan. As soon as he should have established him¬
self among his Highland friends, a French squadron
was to come round to Galway, where the Catholic
inhabitants, led by the country gentlemen, who had
been officers in his father's army, were prepared to
receive their allies. The government had received
information of what was intended, and, so far as they
were able, had taken measures to secure so important
a town. The difficulties which they experienced suf¬
ficed to show, that the Limerick and Galway Clauses
in the Popery Act were no gratuitous insults to a loyal
and unoffending set of people, but resolutions of mere
self-defence, of which the fault was, that they were left
unexecuted. An order was sent to the mayor to call
before him the principal Catholic gentlemen of the
country, to offer them the Abjuration Oath, and, if
they refused to swear, to secure their persons. The
mayor, though of necessity a Churchman by profession,
yet wore his churchmanship as an official cloke, with a
sound Catholic body concealed below it. He invited
the gentlemen to repair to Galway as he was directed.
CH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 363
They obeyed—Lord Bophin and half a hundred others,
with their servants and retinue of friends. They
declined the oath as a matter of course. The mayor
directed them to consider themselves prisoners on
parole inside the walls, precisely in the place where
they would be most useful when the French should
arrive; and Colonel Eyre, the governor, with a hand¬
ful of soldiers in the castle, found himself overmatched
and virtually at their mercy.1 The condition of Gal-
way was the condition of all the counties where the
Articles of Limerick had left the Catholic strength
unbroken. In the event of an insurrection the only
force which could be relied upon to oppose the Pre¬
tender was as usual the Ulster Militia, and the Ulster
Militia had been annihilated by the Test clause. The
rank and file of the regiments had been almost ex¬
clusively Presbyterian. Being no longer permitted
to have a single officer of their own persuasion they
refused to obey the summons when invited to enlist ;
and Ireland, with Catholics, Protestants, traders,
landowners, farmers, all classes and all creeds, dis¬
united and mutually exasperated, lay at the time of
trial once more without defence. Most precious com¬
mentary on the proceedings of all parties who had
been concerned in bringing her to such a pass ! The
slightest success in Scotland would have led to the
landing of a French army, and although an insurrec¬
tion would have been less mischievous than in 1641,
1 ' Colonel Eyre to Secretary Dawson, March 30 and April 11, 1708.'
MSS. Dublin Castle.
3^4
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[liK. II
and in 1689, f°r there was as yet no glimmer of
returning prosperity which could be again ruined,
fresh millions must have been supplied from the
English exchequer, and the wretched business of re-
conquest undertaken once more from the beginning.
Happily the Pretender's expedition failed; the peril
passed by; and English statesmen who had leisure to
spare for the unlucky country, and intelligence enough
to be conscious of the disgrace which this perpetual
mismanagement entailed on them, renewed their reso¬
lution to take warning, and for the future to follow
wiser courses.-1
1 The Militia catastrophe in
Ulster gave a tempting oppor¬
tunity to the High Church party.
King William, whose popularity
among the Protestants had suffered
through his consent to the com¬
mercial disabilities, was again be¬
coming a national hero in contrast
with the Tory leanings of Queen
Anne. Whigs, Low Churchmen,
and Nonconformists looked back
on the memory of King William,
and looked forward to the Hanover
succession with passionate regret
on one side, and passionate hope
on the other. The bishops and
their friends took occasion, from
the refusal of the Presbyterians to
enlist, to represent to the Queen
that they, and only they, were
loyal to herself. An address was
drawn by Pooley, Bishop of Ra-
phoe, and signed by himself and his
clergy, which throws an amusing
light on the temper of these gentle¬
men.
To the Queen's Majesty. The
Humble Address of the Bishop
and Clergy of Raphoe at a Visit¬
ation held August 18, 1708, at
Raphoe in Donegal:
'Please your majesty,—We,
your majesty's most dutiful and
loyal subjects, daily remember your
happy accession to the throne,
with an entire affection, which ad¬
mits no rival alive or dead. We
admire the wisdom of your con¬
duct through the whole series of
your reign, particularly in that
stupendious (sic) instance the
Union. We adore God for the
various scenes of wonder which
have hitherto attended your arms
and those of your allies. By the
Pretender's coming, seeing, and
flying North Britain instead of
overcoming, Providence seems to
indicate your majesty shall not
need their swords who will not
draw them unless as officers. The
hero Eugene served as a private
ch. ii.]
FIRST ATTEMPI AT UNION.
365
The Irish High Churchmen required a bridle.
Lord Wharton, a more determined Whig than Pem¬
broke, was chosen to force the hand of those fanatical
or dishonest schemers, and, if possible, compel them
to consent to the repeal of the Test. The Irish
bishops, more fortunate than they deserved, found a
champion, where they might least have looked fop one,
in the vicar of Laracor. Jonathan Swift, against whom
Anne's prejudices had closed the hopes of advancement
in England, had been recommended by Lord Somers
soldier under your hero Marl¬
borough. 'Tis to be feared that
subjects who will not he for you,
hut on such conditions as repeal
those laws which are framed as
the bulwark against Popery and
all its adherents, may be against
you. As for us, we shall preach
active obedience for conscience sake
to her for whom God has done
marvellous things whereof we re¬
joice, and pray that these wonders
may reach from Oudenarde to
Versailles till Christendom and
your adversary shall humbly beg
that protection and honourable
peace which he proudly boasted to
give, but never on honourable
terms.
'John Raphoe.'
Unfortunately for the Bishop,
he could not forward this effusion
directly to the Queen. It could be
transmitted only through the Irish
Council, and he seems to have been
afraid of the satirical criticism of
Archbishop King. He enclosed it
to the Lords Justices with a letter,
in which he said :—' 'Tis signed by
all the clergy who were present at
the visitation, except one, who de¬
clined, because of the words, "with
an entire affection, which admits
no rival alive or dead." All the
rest thought an entire affection
for the Queen couldn't admit a
rival alive or dead, and therefore
wouldn't alter the paragraph to
humour one who entertained any
thought of a rival of her sacred
majesty, not foreseeing whither
such thoughts might tend.'
' If the address must be read
publicly by some belonging to the
Council, I humbly beseech your
Excellencies, that the Archbishop
of Dublin, or the Bishop of Clogher
may not read it, lest they give it
a turn of madness, or make it
look as if it were words tending to
sedition.'—MSS. Dublin Castle,
1708.
366 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
to Wharton's patronage. Wharton, for reasons of his
own, paid no attention to Somers's request; and Swift,
who never forgave an injury, paid home this fresh
instance of undeserved neglect. He sketched a cha¬
racter of Wharton himself which, merited or unmerited,
will cling to his memory while the English language
endures. The Dissenters he regarded with the intense
detestation which men of powerful minds entertain for
what they call fanaticism; and, in his own extraordi¬
nary misconception of the true character of the Iiash
problem, he left behind him one more evidence, that
the fanaticism of fools may be keener-sighted than the
most masculine of intellects. The removal of the dis¬
abilities being, as he knew, the measure which Wharton
most desired, he attacked it in a pamphlet, which sup¬
plied the Opposition with an armoury of arguments—
arguments at the moment unanswerable, which later
history has too effectually answered. The Presby¬
terians, he insisted, constituted the only political
danger to which Ireland was exposed. He compared
the Catholics to a chained lion bound fast, with teeth
drawn and claws pared to the quick ; the Presbyterians
to an angry cat free to fly at the throat of any innocent
passer-by. The Catholics, he said, were as incon¬
siderable as women and children, powerless to hurt
and doomed to certain disappearance in one or two
generations. The greater part of their lands were
taken from them; they could buy no more, and
the little that they retained must every year grow
less under the law. The priests were registered,
CH. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION 367
and, as they dropped off, could have no successors.
The peasantry without leaders, without discipline,
without natural courage, were but hewers of wood
and drawers of water, and, however well they
might be inclined, were for ever powerless to do
hurt.
The Viceroy, whatever his moral character, saw
deeper into the Irish problem than the future
. 1709
Dean of St. Patrick's. On the 5th May, 1709,
he met the Parliament. It was unchanged, for it had
no natural period except the death of the reigning
sovereign, and had not been dissolved. The two main
parties into which the House of Commons was divided,
were the nominees on one side of the peers and bishops,
and those on the other who inherited the principles of
the Devolution. Between them lay an undetermined
section, which in the last session had inclined to the
High Flyers, but had been frightened by the Pre¬
tender's attempt, and by the extreme danger to
which Ireland had for a few weeks been exposed. The
Viceroy said, that ' he was directed to lay before them
a consideration of infinite consequence,' ' to put them
in mind of the inequality in numbers between the
Protestants and Papists of Ireland,' and 'the melan¬
choly experience they had had of the good nature of
that sort of men when they had it in their power to
distress or destroy them.' ' They must consider, there¬
fore, whether bills were not wanting to confirm the law
for preventing the growth of Popery; and, secondly,
the evident necessity of cultivating and preserving, by
368
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
some means or other, a good understanding among all
denominations of Protestants/ 1
The Commons replied, ' that they had found, by
dearly-bought experience, that the Protestant religion
was no longer safe than while it was not in the power
of Papists to injure them.' '.They called to mind with
abhorrence the satisfaction which too visibly appeared
in the faces and in the insolent behaviour of the gene¬
rality of them in the late attempt of the Pretender/
' They felt themselves bound to maintain the Church
as by law established;2 but they were conscious of
the danger of division.' f They could not be negligent
of their common safety, or of the affection and coui-age
which had been shown by the Dissenters against the
French and Irish Papists/
The concluding words evidently referred to the
Test, and were a plain confession of the injustice of it.
But either Swift's arguments had been too successful,
or they represented too nearly the average opinions of
Churchmen. Direct measures of relief to Dissenters
were found as impossible as in the preceding session.
In the direction of safeguards against Popery, the
lower House required no exhortations. In spite of the
Act against reversals of outlawries, the Queen, it was
rumoured, meditated the restoration of many or of all
1 House of Commons' Journals,
May 5, 1709.
2 I11 a High Church pamphlet,
published five years after, there is
the singular confession, ' that the
phrase Protestant interest means
in Ireland an interest distinct from
and even opposed to the Established
Church; Atheists, Deists, Socin-
ians, Sectaries, going under the
name of Protestants.' — A Long
History of a Short Session of a cer¬
tain Parliament. Dublin, 1714.
CH. II.J
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
369
the families attainted for the last rebellion. If Ireland
was ever to have peace there must be an end of these
recurring threats of a disturbance of the existing set¬
tlement. In the rear of such a policy lay confusion,
insurrection, and bloodshed. The first act of the Com¬
mons was to demand a- promise, that the attainders
should be maintained, and they withheld the full sup¬
plies till it was given. A dangerous Jacobite spirit
had begun to show itself in Trinity College. Edward
Forbes, one of the fellows, ' had aspersed the memory
of King William/ The provost and the rest of the
society had expelled him; and the Lower House, in
words which were taken by the High Churchmen as
a declaration of war, petitioned the Queen to grant
5000Z. to the College for a library, as a reward for the
provost's zeal, and ' the encouragement of good litera¬
ture, and sound Revolution principles.'1
In this humour the rejected Penal Bill of the
previous session came again before them. It was
received in a spirit which showed the bishops that,
if they meddled further with it, they might have to
submit to the repeal of the Test as well. It passed
both Houses without difficulty, and the code of law
which was designed to transfer the entire soil of Ire¬
land to members of the established Church, and reduce
the Catholics to landless dependents, was finally com¬
pleted. The habit, so long indulged, of treating Irish
penal laws as only made to be disobeyed, had tempted
the Catholic gentlemen too far. Had they been
1 Commons' Journals. Session 1709.
IEEL. I. B B
37° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
contented to work quietly below tlie surface, tbey might
have undermined the first Act till all its purpose had
been eaten out. But they had danced upon it, and
defied it, and laughed it to scorn, and they had brought
their fate upon their own head.
By the new Act, every settlement, every lease on,
lives, every conveyance made by a Catholic owner
since 1704, by which any Protestant or Protestants
had been injured, was declared void, and the loopholes
were closed by which the Act of that year had been
evaded. To defeat Protestant heirs, Catholics had
concealed the true value of their property. Children
were now enabled to compel their fathers to produce
their title-deeds, and make a clear confession. Catholic
gentlemen had pretended conversion to qualify them¬
selves for being magistrates and sheriffs, for being
admitted to the bar, or for holding a seat in Parliament,
while their children were being bred up secretly in the
old faith. The education of their families was made
a test of sincerity, and those whose sons were not
brought up as Churchmen remained under the dis¬
abilities.
Nor, if words could hinder it, were the acts directed
against the priests to be any more trifled with. Fifty
pounds reward was now offered for the conviction
of any Catholic archbishop, bishop, or vicar-general;
twenty pounds reward for the conviction of friar,
Jesuit, 01- unregistered parish priest. To keep up
the supply of priests, and to enable a priest newly
made to swear that he did not know by whom he had
ch. 11.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 371
been ordained, large numbers of the Catholic clergy-
had been in the habit of meeting at stations or funerals,
with a bishop in the middle of them undistinguished
by dress or ornament; and they had held ordinations
' by laying on many hands together, that the party
receiving the orders might not know in whom the
power was lodged/ It was now made penal for a priest
to officiate anywhere except in the parish church for
which he was registered, and the last rivet was driven
into the chain by the compulsory imposition of the
Abjuration Oath, which every priest was made to swear
at his registration. As if this was not enough, any
two magistrates received power to summon any or
every Irish subject above the age of sixteen, to offer
-lim the oath, and to commit him to prison if he refused
it.1 They might also, if he was a Catholic, ask him
where he last heard mass, and by whom it was cele¬
brated. • If the priest officiating was found to have
been unregistered he was liable to be transported.
Once more, for the more effective detection of
illegal trusts, leases, mortgages, or conveyances by
which Catholics might still endeavour to defeat the
object of the statute, a fatal clause was added, that
any Protestant whatever who discovered and was
1 The Abjuration Oath, as modi¬
fied by the 22nd of the 1st of Anne,
contained nothing which cou1 d
have tried in any way a loyal Ca¬
tholic's conscience. It contained
simply an admission that Queen
Anne was lawful sovereign ; and
that the Pretender had no right or
title to the Crown. The oath was
to be faithful to the Queen, and to
defend her, and defend the succes¬
sion as determined by Parliament
in the Protestant line against the
Pretender and every other person.
To refuse it was, therefore, a con¬
fession of disloyalty.
b b 2
372 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
able to prove before a Protestant jury, tbe existence
of any purchase or lease of which a Catholic was to
have secretly the advantage, should himself be put in
possession of the property which was the subject of tlie
fraud.1
The evasion of a law so contrived that every un¬
scrupulous scoundrel in Ireland was its self-constituted
guardian became almost impossible. Of the operations
of the Act, now at last made really effective, I shall
speak in detail in a future chapter. That it was
unjust in itself, never occurred as a passing emotion to
any Protestant in the two kingdoms, not even to Swift,
who speaks approvingly of what he deemed must be
the inevitable result. . That neither this nor any other
penal legislation would of itself give peace to Ireland,
that it would not even repress the religion at which it
was aimed, unless Protestantism could assume a nobler
aspect, and gird itself to nobler work than in its. present
distracted and divided condition was likely or possible,
no one saw more clearly than Lord Wharton; no one
endeavoured more honourably to enforce that mucb-
needed and ever-neglected lesson on the obstinate and
bewildered Parliament.
' My lords and gentlemen,' he said, in closing the
session, ' I need not put you in mind that the good
laws we have passed will be of little advantage to
you unless life be given to them by a just and im¬
partial execution. That will now depend upon your¬
selves . . . and I make no question you understand
1 Irish Statutes : 8 Anne, cap. 3.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
373
too well the true interest of the Protestant religion
in this kingdom, not to endeavour to make all such
Protestants as easy as you can who are willing to
defend the whole against the common enemy. . . .
It is not the law now passed, nor any law that the will
of man can frame, will secure you against Popery,
while you continue divided amongst yourselves. Unless
there be a firm friendship and confidence among the
Protestants of this kingdom, it is impossible for you
either to be happy or safe; and I am directed to declare
to you, as her majesty's fixed resolution, that as her
majesty will always maintain the Church as by law
established, so it is her royal will and intention that
the Dissenters shall not be persecuted or molested in
the exercise of their religion.'1
The words were as if spoken to the wind. The
passions of Irish Churchmen were as the passions of
Swift. The Dissenters were not relieved of the unde¬
served note of ignominy which had been stamped on
them. The bishops and their officials continued to
harass them so far as their power extended; and the
Presbyterian emigration to New England continued
also, and gathered volume, to assist, as Hely Hutchinson
foretold, in dismembering the British Empire. The
Popery Act, meanwhile, was both operative and in¬
operative ; operative so far as it now at last compelled
Catholic land and leaseholders to affect an insincere
conversion to escape the eyes of informers; inoperative
so far as the Catholic religion itself remained vigorous
1 Commons' Journals, August 30, 1709.
374
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
as ever, gathering strength from the cowardice which
shrunk from acting upon its own laws. The Catholics
may feel legitimate pride in the triumph of their
principles over unsuccessful violence. There is no
disgrace like the disgrace of a religious persecution
which has failed in its object. Yet the means to which
the best of them condescended to escape the penalties
of an intolerant legislation furnish some justification
also of the desire to extinguish a creed of subtlety and
artifice.
The Abjuration Oath had been imposed at length
reluctantly in consequence of the last attempt of the
Pretender. The form had been purged of every
expression which could offend the conscience of a
loyal Catholic. The Pope was not named, and, except
so far as he assumed a right to decide between rival
claimants to the British throne, a right which no
government can be required to acknowledge, his
prerogative was not touched upon. The Catholic to
whom the oath was an offence, declared in his objection
that he regarded the Pretender as his lawful sovereign.
But, since laymen were no longer exempt, and the
parish priests must take the oath as it now stood, or
lose their licences and be transported, perjury under
the peculiar circumstances of the case was made a
venial sin, and a system was introduced in harmony
with those features of the Catholic organization which
Protestantism most dreaded and most denounced ; by
which an oath could be taken dishonestly, and the
falsehood be covered by absolution. Forswearing was
cu. ii.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
375
not encouraged or distinctly allowed. It was still
treated as an offence which required penitential expia¬
tion, and the power of pardoning it was reserved to
particular persons. Yet in that expiation, when it was
made, there was not included the only step which
would have given it real value, the public retractation
which would have taken away from the sinner the
advantage which he had gained by his guilt.
The following letter from a vicar-general to the
parish priest of Ballinrobe needs no explanation :—
e Beverend sir,—You know the abjuration, as public
and scandalous.perjury, was hitherto reserved specially,
and shall be still in this our district, save the few that
we design shall act for us, and by our own power,
which we cannot subdelegate. Wherefore, if any ab-
jurers within this our district should pretend to have
been hitherto absolved, you must know by whom, that
such maybe punished and made sensible of their errors
and ignorance, and those so unlawfully absolved must
be again absolved by you as one now authorized, upon
the following conditions and terms: First, that each
of them shall sign and acknowledge the annexed
declaration,1 which you must be sure to keep private,
for we do not design to expose anybody but as little
as we can. In the second place, they must oblige
themselves henceforth never to pretend to defend or
command the taking of said oath to anybody, but
rather, as far as shall lay in them, censure it as the
1 Not preserved.
376 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
Church does, and as it deserves. Thirdly, that each
of them shall, without delay, cause the holy sacrifice
of the mass to be at least once offered for them, and
perform what pilgrimages, fasts, alms, and praying,
you shall think fit to impose, according to the con¬
dition and constitution of each person, and finally
that, for the future, they protest against this and any
other such oaths censured by their pastors and
Church. Upon performing and engaging to
perform all which, you will admit as many as shall
come to you to the holy sacrament of penance and the
rest; but not otherwise.
f I rest, sir, your brother and servant,
' Dom Deane.' 1
1 'Instructions for absolving
those that have taken the Oath of
Abjuration, and the power of ab¬
solving committed to a few.' MSS.
Dublin Castle, 1709-10.
377
SECTION VI.
If Doddington was right in 1703* when he accused
two-thirds of the House of Commons of being High
Flyers, the half-dozen following years worked the
conversion of a great many of them. The Peers, lay
and spiritual, continued malignant; the Commons,
though ill inclined to Presbyterianism, were increas¬
ingly eager to vindicate their Protestantism. They
had petitioned the Queen to reward the provost and
fellows of Trinity for their stout adherence to 'Re¬
volution principles.' King William was become the
national hero of the country gentlemen and city
tradesmen and merchants. On the 4th November,
the Viceroy, Chancellor, and Judges, the Mayor and
Aldermen of Dublin, walked in procession round the
statue in College Green. The glorious memory of
the immortal deliverer from Tyrconnell, Popery, and
confiscation, became the toast at public dinners—
the criterion to discover the temper of doubtful dis¬
positions— a counter test, as hard for the High
Churchmen to swallow as the Dissenters found the
sacrament. The bishops struggled ingeniously, after
their methods, to resist the imposition of it. The
Bishop of Raphoe and his clergy allowed the Queen no
rival in their affections, alive or dead. The Bishop of
Cork announced in a sermon, that, to drink to the
memory of King William, was a blasphemous parody
378 TILE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
of tlie words used at the consecration of the sacra¬
mental cup. Another high dignitary discovered that
it was dangerously like prayers for the dead. In
Trinity College, among the younger students, the dis¬
play of loyalty to the Protestant champion provoked
hostile demonstrations extremely curious. The ex¬
pelled Edward Forbes was the leader of a party whom
his expulsion had neither terrified nor silenced. He
himself followed his (aspersion of King William ' by a
book directly in favour of the Pretender. The lads at
their supper parties, instead of the ' Glorious immortal
memory !' drank to James the Third under the disguise
of the f Three B.'s,'1 ' the Man that's far away,' or ' the
King before George.' There was something, perhaps,
of Irish contradictoriness about all this. Young Ire¬
land considered that it had a right to choose its own
sovereign. Scotland, beftme the union was decided,
had at one time threatened to r-eject the Hanover
succession. Ireland thought she had an equal right
to vindicate her liberty, since the union for which
she had asked had been refused. On the night of
the 4th November the students' chambers were dark;
on the night of the birthday of Ormond, whose
treason was divined instinctively, every window was
illuminated. fThe King shall enjoy his own again,'
was roared from a hundred throats; and curses and
execrations were yelled at the name of Marlborough.
By the side of the political Toryism there was a no1
less singular religious reaction. Serious students,
1 ' Best Born Briton.'
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 379
preparing to be clergymen, were beard maintaining
' that the orders of the Church of Rome were as
pure and holy as those of the Church of England;'
f that it would be better to be ordained by the Pope
than by any English bishop;' that the Revolution
had been a rebellion; that King William had been
an encourager of Presbyterians and Dutch rogues;
and that the nation was governed by Turks.1
These humours assumed at last a practical form.
On the morning of the 26th June, 1710, all Dublin
was agitated by the discovery, that the truncheon had
been stolen from King William's statue, and the face
plastered with mud. The opportunity had been taken
when Parliament, which had been sitting since May,
had adjourned for six weeks. Protestant feeling was
so grossly outraged, that even the Lords, who were
still in Dublin, were obliged to affect indignation.
They met and offered 100I. reward for the discovery of
the offenders, and they declared in their Proclamation,
' that the persons concerned in that barbarous fact,
had been guilty of the greatest insolence, baseness,
and ingratitude.'2 The guilty parties proved to be
three college students. They excused themselves on
the plea of boyish frolic. The explanation was ac¬
cepted, and no serious punishment was thought neces¬
sary. But when the Commons reassembled in August,
they expressed the most vehement indignation at an
1 'Enquiry into the State of
Trinity College, forwarded by Sec¬
retary Budgell to Addison, May
30, 1715.' MSS. Eecord Office.
2 ' Wharton to Sunderland,
June 27, 1710.' Ibid.
38° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. ii.
act which they interpreted as a direct manifestation of
Jacobitism, and they thanked Wharton for his exertion
in identifying ' the insolent miscreants' who had been
concerned in it.1
On all sides the temper was growing sore. The
bishops, exasperated at Wharton's intimation that
they would not be allowed to meddle with the Dis¬
senters, seized the first opportunity that offered to
measure strength with him on a point where they felt
confident of support. The Regium Donum had been
restored, and there was a tacit understanding that, so
long as they kept within the limits which they already
occupied, and did not endeavour to extend themselves,
the Presbyterian Congregations should not be inter¬
fered with.
The pluralism, gross and flagrant, of the Established
Church, left many districts entirely without spiritual
care. Some of these neglected places had applied to
the Presbyterian synod to send them ministers, and
the synod had complied. Much ill-feeling had ensued.
At last, Presbyterians had ventured to preach to large
bodies of people at Drogheda, a place where there was
no such excuse, and the bishops resolved to make an
example of them.
The congregation, desci-ibed,withunapostolic scorn,
as consisting of ' base persons, coopers, shoemakers,
and tailors,' were threatened with the stocks. The
ministers were arrested, carried before the mayor, and
bound over to take their trial at the Assizes. They
1 Commons' Journals, 1710.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
38i
appealed to tlie Viceroy, and Wharton ordered the
prosecution to be dropped.1
The House of Lords was now dragged into the
quarrel. The bishops, supported by the lay peers,
whom they moved like pawns on a chess-board, com¬
plained to the Queen. The Presbyterians, they said,
in the language which Swift had put into their mouths,
were the cause of all the disorders in Ireland, and the
Earl of Wharton was standing by them and encour¬
aging them. The synod defended themselves stoutly.
They protested that they had created no disturbance.
To settle ministers in places where there was no clergy¬
man, and to convert Catholics to Protestantism, was
not a crime. They bore 110 enmity to the Church. They
were willing to work side by side with the Church
against the common enemy. They charged the bishops
e with having placed an odious mark of infamy upon at
least half the Protestants in Ireland/ 2
The answer of the English Cabinet was Wharton's
recall. It was the moment of the great crisis of
Queen Anne's reign and the change of ministry.
Godolphin and Sunderland were driven from office,
and the Whig Viceroy fell with his friends. St. John
came into power, supported, through some strange
freak of popular feeling in England, by a majority
in the House of Commons. All the subtlety of his
genius was directed to the disappointment of the
1 The story is told at length in Church MSS. in Dublin Castle,
'the Loyalty of the Presbyterians 2 MSS. Record Office, Ireland
in Ireland.' There are also several 1710.
letters upon the subject among the [
382
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. 11.
Ilanover succession ; and the government of Ire¬
land was made over once more to Ormond, the idol
and "hope of High Churchmen and the Jacobite
traitors.
The gulf already opened between the High Flyers
and the Protestant conformists became at once wider
than ever. As the peers and prelates showed their
colours more distinctly, the country gentlemen grew
more passionately Hanoverian. Five-sixths of them
now were, or thought themselves, Whigs.1 They saw
before them the spectre of a new revolution. They
determined to stand by one another; to watch the
Government every moment; and if Ormond, like Tyr-
connell, attempted changes in the shrievalties and the
magistracy, to thwart them with all their force. In
the army there was the same feeling. Great as was
Ormondes popularity among the soldiers, Marlborough's
was greater. The officers of a regiment at Limerick
drank f Confusion, damnation, plague, pestilence, and
famine to all archbishops, bishops, and priests.' One
midnight they brought out their hounds, twenty couple
of them, led a fox round and round the bishop's palace,
laid the dogs on the scent, and with the baying pack,
1 ' Whiggism is what five parts
out of six are at present infected
withal, or seem to be so in their
common conversation. They toss
the Government as they would a
tennis ball; talk of the Queen and
her new ministry at such a rate as
any modest man would be ashamed
to repeat. They have so many
hundred thousand "Whigs in this
country that won't be run down.
If my Lord of Ormond comes to
the government, he will never be
able to do what he proposes to
himself, nor what will be expected
of him.' — ' Maurice Hussey to
Secretary Dawson, October 1710.
RISS. Dublin Castle.
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 383
and whoops and shouts, and winding horns, startled
the slumbers of the episcopal family.1
The bishops, on the other hand, were in high spirits
from an evident proof of the favour felt towards them
in London. Ormond arrived the following midsummer,
bringing with him, as the result of Swift's negotiations,
the remission of firstfruits to the clergy of the Estab¬
lishment ; and Ormond met Parliament in July with
the joyful announcement of the Queen's liberality.
Like Bolingbroke in England, he concealed the plans
of his party behind elaborate promises to support
Protestantism and the Hanoverian dynasty ; and he
informed the Commons also, with marked emphasis,
that the Queen had acceded to their request, and had
granted the 5000I. to Trinity College as a reward for
their Protestant zeal.
At first the signs were favourable for a short and
smooth session. The country gentlemen—it
speaks well for their as yet simple and uncor-
rupted habits2—were anxious to be at their homes for
the harvest, and so inclined to get through their work
rapidly.
Anticipating trouble, the Government had probably
deferred the opening of the session to a moment when
they knew that the members would be impatient of a
1 ' "William Parker to Secretary
Dawson, October 27.' MSS. Dub¬
lin Castle.
2 'Living men can remember
when we were as remarkable for
our sobriety as we are now for
rioting and drunkenness; when
our ancestors of the best families
had their wine brought in dozens,
and sack and spirits were sold at
apothecaries' shops as cordials for
the sick.'—Reflexions and Resolu¬
tions proper for the Gentlemen of
Ireland. Dublin, 1738.
3&4
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
long stay in Dublin.1 The elements of discord, how¬
ever, were too many and too various, and the prospect
rapidly clouded. The grant to the College, with the
reasons alleged for it by the Commons, the encourage¬
ment of 'Revolution 'principles,' was a morsel too hard
for Jacobite digestion. Jealous for the Queen's honour,
the Lords inserted a paragraph in the address, ' that
her majesty had extended her favour to the College at
Dublin at such a juncture as must testify to the world,
that what her majesty bestowed was not given to pro¬
mote those principles, upon which it was first applied
for, but to encourage university education, the neglect
of which had been the means of the growth of ignor¬
ance, profaneness, and infidelity, and the loose and
wild notions and tenets which had industriously been
spread abroad.'2
The Commons, deeply sharing the feelings with
which the whole country had been agitated, looked on
these words of the Lords as the first step of an ag¬
gressive campaign. Snatching at the glove that was
thrown to them, they voted by a large majority, that
the Lords had highly infringed their rights, privileges,
and liberties ; had misrepresented her majesty's good¬
ness ; and had insinuated, to the dishonour of their
House, that the principles upon which the application
was made were such as her majesty disapproved. The
1 'Sir Edward Southwell to
Lord Dartmouth, July IJ.' MSS.
Record Office.
2 Commons' Journals, August 4>
1711. Lords' Journals, July 17.
'Southwell to the Earl of Dart¬
mouth, July 20.' MSS. Record
Office.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
Lords pretended that, by Revolution principles, the
Commons had not meant the revolution under William,
but had desired to justify rebellion and anarchy. This
charge, the Commons said, was false, scandalous, and
malicious; highly and upjustly reflecting on their
loyalty and honour. They drew a fresh address of
their own, protesting ' that the principles on which
they had applied for her majesty's bounty to the Col¬
lege, were such as they could never be ashamed to
own, being no other than those to which they owed
the preservation of their religion, their liberties, and
properties.'1
In a House of which more than half the members
were nominees of the noble families and great land¬
owners, the passion must have gone deep before it
could have assumed a form so violent. The Lords
replied undauntedly with a double shot.
The first was an attack on the Dissenters, whose
interests they conceived that, in some way or other,
their antagonists designed to further. Possessed with
an extraordinary obliquity of vision, which inverted
the position of persecutors and persecuted, thirteen
bishops and eleven lay peers appealed to the Queen
against the Presbyterians as savages who denied to
their conforming brethren the common offices of
humanity. They demanded protection from the rage
and obstinacy which threatened the destruction of the
Church. They complained that the miserable 1200I. a
1 Commons' Journals, August 8. Cf. 'Southwell's correspondence
with Lord .Dartmouth, August 1711.' MS8. Record Office.
IREL. I. CO
386
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
year was applied to the propagation of schism and the
disturbance of the peace of the realm, and they required
that the grant should be withdrawn. St. John,1
already meditating the Schism Act, was but too willing
to advise compliance. For the remainder of the reign
the Regium Donum was unpaid.
To the accusation of the Commons the Lords re¬
joined in language as haughty as their own. The
Commons had charged them with f malice and untruth.'
They charged the Commons with having assailed them
iu language more opprobrious than had been used by
another House in another place, when ' it voted the
House of Lords useless/ Whatever cause her majesty
might have had to approve the conduct of the College,
they humbly conceived she could not mean to encour¬
age the principles of Revolution—principles they said,
sufficiently explained by a sermon preached on 30th of
January, and dedicated to the Lower House, £ in great
measure maintaining and justifying the execrable
murder of her royal grandfather, King Charles the
First.' 2
Harvest had come and gone. Determined to fight
out the quarrel, the Commons had been contented
with a short recess. On the re-assembling, the battle
raged furiously as ever. In an address to the Lord
Lieutenant, they re-affirmed with emphasisf their steady
adherence to the principles of the late Revolution.' The
1 Reid's History of the Presby¬
terians in Ireland, vol. iii. p. 16.
2 Lords'1 Journals, November.
A copy of the address is in tli9
Record Office.
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
387
Jacobite members moved to omit words so provocative,
but were defeated on a division; and, the day after,
anticipating a counter blow, they carried a vote, f that
whoever, by speaking, writing, or printing, should
arraign or condemn the principles of the Revolution of
1688, was an enemy to their own House, to the Con¬
stitution in Church and State, and to the Hanover
succession, and was a friend of the Pretender/ 1 With
this characteristic resolution ended the last session of
a House of Commons which had been coeval with the
reign ; which had passed the Acts for the repression of
Popery, and, though too late penitent, the Test clause,
and was now perishing in defence of the same prin¬
ciples of liberty which flung Romanism into chains
while it was dangerous, and struck them off when its
power to hurt had disappeared.
Pinding it impossible to proceed with such a House
in a policy which was to qualify Ireland to receive the
Pretender, Ormond got rid of it. The Parliament was
prorogued and never met again. When the constitu¬
encies should have been prepared sufficiently, and
there was ground for hope of a High Church majority
that could be depended on, the unusual experiment
was to be tried of a dissolution and a new election.
Ormond returned to London to repair to the army in
Plauders, and the government was left to the Chancel¬
lor, Sir Constantino Phipps, a friend of Swift and an
English Tory.
Convocation, meanwhile, which was still allowed to
1 Commons' Journals, November 8, 1711.
0 0 2
388 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bic. ii.
sit, kept the fire burning, and continued to inflame
the Queen against the unhappy Dissenters whom, in
the next Parliament, they hoped to annihilate. In a
highly curious address the bishops lamented over the
growth in Ireland of impiety and atheism, due in
reality to the school of Toland, and Tindal, and Asgill,
but which it pleased the clergy to attribute 'to the
sectaries who came over in the time of the wicked and
detestable usurper, Oliver Cromwell, and had spread
the enthusiasm which, under a specious pretence of
sanctity, was ever accompanied with sedition.' Both
Government and Church, they said, had erred in being
over-lenient. Concession had invited encroachment,
and but for the late happy change in government,
brought about by the providence of God, Episcopacy
had been utterly undone.
The form which Providence had assumed was that
of Bolingbroke, who believed extremely little in either
God or devil. These reverend gentlemen, however,
with the extravagant injustice which only religious
hatred can inspire, insisted that the Presbyterians
would make common cause with deists, socinians,
enemies of revealed religion, and even Papists them¬
selves, to dissolve the present form of government.
The Low Churchmen and Whigs, they said, were little
better. Impiety, profanity, and immorality universally
prevailed in the society affected by their influence.
' Wicked and blasphemous healths were used by
persons disaffected to the constitution ; the prayers in
the Litany for deliverauce from plague, pestilence, and
CH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNI6N.
389
famine, were turned into a curse upon bishops, priests,
and deacons, and all congregations committed to their
charge, who refused to drink to the glorious and
immortal memory of the dead.'
The bishops, and only the bishops, supposed that
they understood Ireland, and knew how to deal with
it. To the Dissenters and the Whigs they added, as
a third plague of Ireland, the Papists. ' The Papists/
they said, 4 lived continually in hope of aid from the
Catholic Powers to root out the Protestants, and
shake off the yoke of Britain/ They described them
as ' visibly exalted with any ill success to her majesty's
arms, and dejected with accounts of victory, their
dependence being on France for being restored to
their estates.' In noting the causes of the little im¬
pression which had yet been made upon the Roman
Catholic masses, they pointed, with some sagacity, to
' the unsteadiness of the measures which had been used
towards those of that persuasion; sometimes measures
of great severity, and then again indulgence and
toleration, the laws made against them being rarely
executed, and they in consequence, when in greatest
difficulties, hoping for a return of connivance.1
1 'Address of Convocation to the Crown, 1712.' MSS. Record
Office, Ireland.
39°
SECTION VII.
Meanwhile a second feud liad broken out, violent
as tbe quarrel of Lords and Commons, between the
Government and the city of Dublin. To secure
1712
a Tory House of Commons, the first step was
to appoint Tory sheriffs in the counties, and Tory
mayors in the towns. The Dublin corporation set an
example of resistance, and from the certainty that, if
successful, the precedent would be followed elsewhere,
the whole powers of the Castle were exerted to bend
or break them. The usual practice had been for the
aldermen to elect freely such members of their body
as the majority preferred. An obsolete claim was
revived by the Government to nominate a select
number of candidates, between whom the choice was
to lie. Both sides were obstinate. The city elected
a Whig mayor, whom the Government refused to
recognize. The Catholic mob were for the Castle;
the well-to-do citizens and free men were to a man
for the corporation; and, for two years, Dublin was
without a municipal government. The sheriff slipped
away to England to avoid compromising himself with
either party, and courts could not be held for want of
jurors, and justice was in abeyance through the sus¬
pension of all lawful authority.1
1 An enormous mass of papers pare Shrewsbury to Bolingbroke,
connected with this strange busi- February 2 and March 19, 1714.
ness are in Dublin Castle. Com- MSS. Ireland. He cord Office.
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
391
Ormond's continued presence being needed in Lon¬
don, the Duke of Shrewsbury took his place as Viceroy.
The English constituencies had returned a large Tory
majority. Queen Anne had by this time probably come
to a resolution to support the Pretender's claims to
the succession. Bo'lingbroke was growing confident of
success; and Shrewsbury, more uncertain of his own
intentions than Boliugbroke probably supposed, was
sent, over to make sure of Ireland. Rumour, busy
with his name before his arrival, announced that he
had been received into the Church of Rome, that the
duchess was a professed Catholic, that a chapel was
being fitted up for them in the Castle. To the sur¬
prise of everyone he allowed favourites of Lord Wharton
to remain in offices about his own person, and, more
remarkably, immediately after his arrival, he agitated
the Tory party by a signal celebration of King
William's birthday.1 This, however, might be only
part of a game which Boliugbroke had instructed him
to play. The important matters were the Parliament,
and an empty treasury; and the bishops' projects
against the Dissenters made it necessary to proceed to
an election. It was felt to be dangerous. If the new
House proved like the last, the Ministers seem to have
resolved to make an end of the Irish Constitution. -
1 Long History of a Short Session
of a Certain Parliament.
2 Swift, who was in England,
and in close communication with
Bolingbroke, sent a significant
warning to Archbishop King :—' If
your House of Commons,' he said,
' should run into any violence dis¬
agreeable to us here, it will be of
the worst consequence imaginable
to that kingdom ; for I know no
maxim more strongly maintained
at present in our court than that
her majesty ought to exert her
392
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
But the Tories expected a majority. ' They had the
Council with them/ they said, ' and the House of
Lords with them;' thus supported, ' they had the
House of Commons in their pocket,' and any one who
cautioned them was ' upbraided with the odious name
of Whig.'1 The Chancellor, when the elections were
in progress, reported the success as beyond expect¬
ation. He was specially delighted with ' the good
spirit of loyalty in the mob;' and assured Swift that,
'by the nicest calculations, the Castle would have a
majority of three to two.' 2
Sir Constantine's ' mob' specially distinguished
themselves in Dublin. He had been advised to end
the mayoralty quarrel before the election. Possibly he
power to the utmost upon any un¬
easiness given on your side to her¬
self or her servants. Neither can
I answer that even the legislative
powers here may not take cogniz¬
ance of anything that may pass
among you in opposition to the
persons and principles that are now
favoured by the Queen.'—' Swift
to Abp. King, October 20, 1713.'
Swift's Works, vol. xvi. It appears
from an unpublished letter of an
Irish judge (Mr. Justice Nutley),
that Swift might at this time have
exchanged St. Patrick's, to which
he had just been promoted, for an
Irish bishopric. 'His Grace the
Primate' (Narcissus Marsh), writes
Sir K. Nutley, ' died on the second
instant at two in the morning. I
am of opinion that the deanery of
St. Patrick's is a fine preferment
for a lord lieutenant's chaplain to
jump into after one or two months'
service ; and if you can be tempted
to part with your fine house in
Dublin for an ill-contrived one on
a country bishopric, I can easily
cut out a scheme for advancing
some eminent, worthy, active pre¬
late to the primacy, and so three
good persons may be promoted at
once.'—'Sir R. Nutley to Swift,
November 5, 1713.' MSS. Record
Office. The chaplain, Dr. Godwyn,
was made bishop of Kilmore and
Ardagh immediately after. The
Queen's objections to the Tale of a
Tub were as usual fatal to Swift.
1 Letters signed with a cypher
to Swift, December 1713. MSS.
Record Office.
2 'Sir Constantine Phipps to
Dean Swift, November 9, 1713.*
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
393
preferred to keep the fire smouldering, that it might be
the easier blown into flame. Any way there was an
Irish row of a genuine kind. The house of the Arch¬
bishop of Tuam, one of the few Liberals on the bench,
was attacked. A watchman on duty there was knocked
down, and, but for a reinforcement of police, the Arch¬
bishop himself would have been dragged into
the street ' for a Whig.'x The election going
in favour of the Opposition, young Cotter, Sir James
Cotter's eldest son,2 led an attack on the Protestant
voters as they were going to the poll. One man was
killed; many were injured. The Castle guard turned
out to disperse the rioters; but they were recalled by
an instant order within the gates, and the too officious
officers on duty were put under arrest. In the midst
of wild uproar the Castle candidates were declared
elected, and the Chancellor and the Council flattered
themselves, that, by the free use of such means, ' they
had secured such a House of Commons as was never
known in Ireland.' 3 They discovered that they had
made a serious mistake.
The first intimation of the truth was in the choice
of a speaker. Sir Richard Levinge, the Castle candi-
1 * The pretence, as well as the
tiling, was somewhat extraordin¬
ary,' wrote the Bishop of Kildare,
in describing the scene to Swift,
October 20, 1713. MSS. Kecord
Office.
2 Sir James Cotter had been a
distinguished supporter of King
James. His son, on his father's
death, had been placed by the
Court of Chancery under a Protest¬
ant guardian. He had been stolen
away, brought up a Catholic in
England, and married as a minor
to a Catholic lady. The career of
this idol of young Catholic Ireland
had a wild ending, as will be seen.
3 Long History of a Short Ses¬
sion.
394 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. XI.
date, was defeated in a close fight by Alan Brodrick.
The Liberal majority increased rapidly as the elections
were enquired into. The scenes at Dublin had been
repeated at half the towns in the provinces, and Tory
after Tory was unseated. 'We are threatened now
with an unquiet session/ Sir John Stanley wrote to
Bolingbroke. The Viceroy began to flatter and pay
court to Brodrick to stave off a quarrel. The last hope
was to get the money vote passed quietly and end the
session. But no such fortune was possible.
The Nonconformists, on Shrewsbury's arrival, had
presented him with an address for the removal of the
Test, intimating that, if their petition were refused,
large numbers of them intended to emigrate to New
England. Shrewsbury gave an icy answer; and in his
speech to Parliament he said, that it was rather the
Established Church which required laws for its better
security. The Lords announced, in words supplied
them by the bishops, 'that Ireland would be happy if
she could be saved from Popish priests and Dissenting
preachers/ The Viceroy replied, 'that the Church
should be supported against the designs of Papists
and the encroachments of any whatsoever.' The Lower
House, plunging at once into the conflict, and touching
lightly on the Church, reinsisted on the obnoxious word
Revolution. They complimented Shrewsbury, perhaps
ironically, on the part which he had himself taken in
1688 ;1 and proceeded to denounce, and even threaten
1 ' To complete your Grace's | eminent manner, been instrumental
character, you have also, in a most 1 in bringing about the glorious He-
CH. II.]
FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION.
395
to impeach, Sir Constantine Phipps for his interference
in the election to the Dublin mayoralty. They voted
that he had been the principal cause of the disorders
and divisions of the realm; that he was working in
secret in the interests of the Pretender; and they
petitioned the Queen to remove him from office.
An untoward accident blew the fire into a flame.
The two Houses of Convocation, having drawn an
address of their own, had an audience in the presence
chamber to present it to the Viceroy. Robert Moles-
worth, Lord Molesworth afterwards, the member for
Swords and a privy councillor, said in a whisper which
was audible over the room :
' They that have turned the world upside down are
come hither also/
Molesworth had long been noted as dangerous.
He had been a friend of Asgill. He was suspected
of intimacy with Toland. His opinions on religious
matters were probably no worse than Bolingbroke's.
But Bolingbroke's sins were mantled with the political
robes of Toryism. Molesworth was a "Whig and a
Hanoverian.
The clergy started as if stung by a snake. Church
and State, God and man, they said, were insulted
by such monstrous wickedness. Holy Scripture had
been profaned and the Queen outraged in the person
of the Viceroy, who was present when such shocking
volution in 1688, to which, under
God, we owe the preservation of
our religious liberties and proper¬
ties.'—'Address of the Commons,
November 30, 1713.' Commons'
Journals.
396 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
words were spoken. They laid tlieir wrongs before
the House of Lords. The Lords demanded a con¬
ference with the Commons. The whole Parliament,
they said, must combine f to do justice to that vener¬
able body the Convocation,' and make the guilty
person ' sensible of the horrid crime laid to his charge,
of impiously profaning the lively oracles of God/1
Moleswortli's name was struck from the list of Privy
Councillors. The Lords required the Commons to
show the same zeal which they had shown when they
removed Asgill, and expel him from their House.
The Commons passed to the order of the day.
They concerned themselves little with the wrongs of
the clergy. They desired only to secure themselves
and the country against the treachery of the secret
friends of the Pretender. A rumour spread that he
was coming to Ireland: they brought in heads of a
bill offeiung a reward for his capture alive or dead.
Edward Forbes, the ex-fellow of Trinity College, had
published a book advocating his claims. An indict¬
ment was drawn against him. He fled to England,
and threw himself on Ormond's protection, and Phipps
quashed the prosecution. A prologue had been spoken
in the theatre on the Queen's birthday, which, from
the high laudation of the f immortal memory of William,'
had been construed into an affront to the reigning
sovereign, and the orator had been arrested by Phipps'
order. Not wishing to be accused of faction, the
Commons did not choose to refuse the supplies, but
1 Commons' Journals, December 22, 1713.
CH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 397
tliey made a statement of grievances a condition of
their grant; and, when the Speaker presented the
money bill in one hand, in the other he presented a
list of complaints. The Commons again insisted that
the Chancellor should be dismissed ' for the peace and
safety of the Protestant inhabitants of the kingdom.'
' Distinctions of parties had been fostered ' at a time
when ' unanimity among Protestants ' was more than
ever necessary. ' Her majesty's loyal subjects had
been traduced as enemies to her person and govern¬
ment/ ' exposed to the insults of Papists, and the
vilest part of the people.' The persons who had been
instrumental in these misrepresentations, ( they could
not but suspect to have views directly opposite to her
majesty's service and good of the kingdom.'
Shrewsbury refused a money bill so accompanied.
He sent for the Opposition leaders. He told them
that 'the Queen was dissatisfied with their heats.'
He enquired whether, if they were allowed to con¬
tinue to sit, ' they would drop the matter against the
Chancellor.'1 They would not listen to him. They
threatened to send a Committee to London to lay
their grievances before the throne, and the Viceroy
found himself compelled to dispense with the supplies,
and to prorogue the Parliament till the following
autumn. The expenses of the Government were
reduced on all sides, to be brought, if possible, within
the limits of the hereditary revenue; and Bolingbroke
1 'Shrewsbury to Bolingbroke, January 5, 1714.' AISS. Record
Office.
398 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
determined to show Ireland that he intended to
be her master, and that if she could not be trusted to
legislate for herself, he could legislate for her from
London.
So closed the session, which was to have laid
Ireland at the feet of ecclesiastical Toryism, and
cleared the way for the accession of the Pretender,
and the exclusive dominion there of the peers and
High Church bishops, who were mad enough to
believe that, when the Whigs were put down, and the
Presbyterians and French Calvinists driven out of
the kingdom, they could themselves hold a monopoly
of power, and fashion people and country after their
own formulas. Shrewsbury returned to England,
leaving the sword in his absence to the detested
Phipps and the secretary Sir John Stanley. The
army had shown dangerous tendencies; being devoted
to Marlborough, and especially indignant at the peace
of Utrecht, it was feared that, in case of disturbance,
the soldiers might side with the Whigs, and orders
were sent to disband the suspected regiments. The
order was carried out with difficulty. Ker's dragoons
at Cavan and Colonel Pepper's at Athlone refused to
part with their arms ; five companies of infantry openly
mutinied. It was with difficulty that they were per¬
suaded into submission,1 and the country lay still in
sullen calm.
Bohngbroke, meanwhile, was carrying through the
1 'Stanley to Bolingbroke, April 15, 1714. MSS. Record Office.
CH. II.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. 399
English Parliament the famous Schism Act.1 By a
singular combination of accidents Queen Anne's last
ministry proved able for a time practically to repeal the
Toleration Act; and to prohibit Dissenters, under severe
penalties, from teaching their own opinions to high or
low, in school or college. Political liberty, as Boling-
broke well understood, had its root in liberty of religion.
With religion once safely encircled with an iron ring
of Prayer-Book and Articles, the revolutionary spirit
would be broken; and, under the supremacy of a
Church, where zeal was impossible and enthusiasm
was suffocated in formulas, intelligent statesmen could
resume a control, with which Protestantism, while it
continued alive, was for ever interfering. He carried
his bill through the Parliament at Westminster. He
had intended, doubtless, that a willing House of Com¬
mons should pass a similar bill for him in Dublin. As
Ireland was mutinous, he proposed to teach her that
her constitution existed on sufferance, and that the
desired work could equally well be accomplished by
a clause attached to the English Act. Bolingbroke
himself rose in the House of Lords, and moved that
the provisions of the law should be extended to
Ireland.
Shrewsbury, himself fresh from a conflict which
had taught him better to appreciate the relative
value of Irish parties, tried to stop him ; but the ^ 4
1 'Act to prevent tlie growth and Ireland as by law established.'
of Schism, and for the further Se- 12 Anne, cap. 7. English Statutes.
curity of the Churches of England
4°° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
Church bigots, led blindly by a cbief who in his heart
despised them more heartily than the most contemptu¬
ous of Whigs, clamoured down opposition. The motion
was carried, thirty-three liberal peers, among whom
to their honour were four bishops,1 leaving on record
their ineffectual protest.2 But the castle in the air
was no sooner finished than the foundation sunk, and
the ambitious superstructure fell to ruins. On the I st
of August, 1714, the day on which the Schism Bill
was to come into operation, the Queen died; and the
Tory ascendancy, on which the liberties of England
and Ireland had so narrowly escaped shipwreck, was
over. In a few weeks another Parliament met: Oxford
went to the Tower, and Bolingbroke and Ormond were
attainted fugitives. The House of Hanover was estab¬
lished on the throne, and the political supremacy of
1 Ely, St. Asapli, Bangor, and
Llandaff.
2 The miseries we apprehend
here are greatly enhanced by ex¬
tending this bill to Ireland, where
the consequences of it may he fatal.
For since the number of Papists
in that kingdom far exceeds the
Protestants of all denominations
together, and that the Dissenters
are to be treated as enemies, or at
least as persons dangerous to that
Church and State, who have always
in all times joined, and still would
join, with the members of that
Church against the common enemy
of their religion; and since the
army there is very much reduced ;
the Protestants thus unnecessarily
divided seem to be exposed to the
danger of another massacre, and
the Protestant religion in danger
of being extirpated. We may fear
the Scots in Britain, whose national
church is Presbyterian, will not so
heartily join with us in our defence
when they see those of the same
nation, same blood, and same re¬
ligion, so hardly treated by us.
And this will be still more grievous
to the Protestant Dissenters of
Ireland, because, while the Popish
priests are registered, and so in¬
dulged by law as they exercise their
religion without molestation, the
Dissenters are so far from enjoying
the like toleration, that the laws
are by this bill enforced against
them.' —Parliamentary History,
vol. vi. pp. 135, 136.
ch. ii.] FIRST ATTEMPT AT UNION. >or
the bishops of the Church of Ireland was at an end
for ever.
Yet the baneful influence of principles, the ab¬
surdity of which is now so patent to the simplest
student of the Irish problem, survived for two gener¬
ations to work disaster and confusion, and to paralyze
the sinews of Protestantism. Jealousy of the Presby¬
terians rankled still in the most powerful intellects
which the Church of Ireland produced. It made useless
to the true interests of his country the gigantic under¬
standing of Swift. It led Berkeley into the same
theories of passive obedience, which had crippled the
resistance to Tyrconnell; had perplexed and irritated
William ; had divided those who, united, might have
prevented the second civil war, and might have
made unnecessary the second series of confiscations.
Worse than all, it perpetuated the disunion of the two
great branches of the Protestant colonists, who, if
the Reformation was a lawful revolt against unjust
authority, were in essentials one. It prolonged the
disabilities of that section of the Protestants who
alone possessed missionary power, whose crime was the
ability to make proselytes among the Celtic Catholics.
Last of all, in our own days, the spent force of the
division of the Protestant interest in Ireland has shown
itself in the disestablishment of the once haughty
Church, which, had she taken the Presbyterians within
her limits, when they were willing and eager to be her
friends, might have defied for another century the
malice of her enemies.
402
CHAPTER HI.
PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
SECTION I.
THE loyalty or the apathy of the Irish Catholics in
the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 has been pleaded
as an argument to prove the injustice of the
^ ^ penal laws. We are asked to believe, that
their devotion to England was proof even against gra¬
tuitous cruelty; that twice they let pass an opportunity
for achieving their freedom, rather than soil their
honour with the taint of rebellion. It is true, and it
is the most remarkable fact in Irish history, that
Ireland did remain, on these occasions, undisturbed.
Even when, later in the century, encouraged by the
revolt of the American colonies, the Irish Protestants
rose at last and wrenched out of the grasp of the
English Parliament the legislative instruments of op¬
pression, by which they had been so long racked and
tortured; when the sympathy between the Irish
Nonconformists and the American States was so keen
that Paul Jones found a welcome in every Irish harbour
that was unoccupied by an English squadron; when
ch. hi.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 403
English commerce was swept out of St. George's
Channel, and the Holyhead passage yachts were
searched and plundered by privateers under the
American flag, fitted out and manned by Protestant
adventurers from Wexford and Dublin, it is true, that
the staunchest friends which the English Government
possessed in the island were the representatives and
great grandfathers of the Catholic Irish peasantry, to
whom America is now the land of promise, and whose
dream is a liberated Ireland under the protectorate of
the Stars and Stripes. In 1760, when Munster was
in agrarian revolt, and the French, striking, as they
supposed, at a vulnerable point in England's armour,
attempted an invasion there, there was little if
any correspondence or sympathy between Versailles
and the Tipperary Wliiteboys. In 1745, Irish Catho¬
lic bishops were in communication with the Castle,
prepared, should any movement be attempted in
favour of the Pretender, to give information of it;
but the occasion never arose. The inference, not¬
withstanding, that a people so well disposed ought
to have been trusted and encouraged, may be pre¬
mature, and even altogether erroneous. The attitude
of the Catholic clergy was due to their having learned
to look on England as their protector against the
Protestant Parliament. The Catholic masses, deprived
of political power, had ceased to struggle against their
chains. Mutilated and miserable as the penal legis¬
lature had been made, immoral in its details, unac¬
companied with any one of those remedial measures,
dd 2
4°4 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. "■
"without which coercion becomes tyranny, yet the
distinct assertion of authority had produced an impres¬
sion on the imagination of the people, and in its partial
success pointed to the only method by which England
and Ireland could really be made one. Among the
peculiarities of the Celtic peasantry, one of the most
stinking is a contempt for those who are afraid of
them; a submissiveness and even real attachment,
which is proof against muchinjustice and many cruelties,
to a master who is a master indeed. The relations of
men to one another become healthy only when the
truth is seen and confessed. Elizabeth forbade her
viceroys to meddle with religion, and she had to
encounter three bloody insurrections. Under Charles
the First there was a Catholic majority in the Irish
Parliament with the practical enjoyment of civil and
religious equality. The reward was the rebellion and
massacre of 1641. A third of the confiscated estates
was given back to the Catholics at the Restoration.
The titular bishops were received at the Castle. Catb olic
laymen became magistrates, sheriffs, judges, officers in
the army. At length they had their own Parliament;
and they showed their gratitude for these indulgences
by repealing the acts of settlement, and by attainting
3000 Protestant landowners.
Once more they had been made to yield to superior
force, and this time the force had not been afraid to
assert itself. The beaten party was compelled to
know that they had no alternative but to yield, and
ninety years followed of undisturbed political trail-
ch. in.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 405
quillity; goocl-lmmoured submissiveness in the place
of chronic revolt; and, instead of indignation against
a tyrannical law, a feeling rather of gratitude for
the comparative lenity with which, in general, the law
was enforced.
In 1715 the exasperation and bitterness produced
by the last war were subsiding, but had not yet dis¬
appeared entirely. There were many officers still in
Connaught who had fought at Aghrim, and Galway
had been lately prepared to receive a French expedi¬
tion. Tens of thousands of young Irishmen were in
the French service, and thousands more were con¬
tinually recruited under the name of Wild Geese, and
shipped off from the secluded bays of Cork and Kerry.
They went out as if for ever expatriated, but they in¬
tended to return in better days with the French army,
which was to give them back their liberties; and had
Bolingbroke succeeded in gaining a footing for the
Pretender in England, or had Ormond afterwards
effected his intended landing at Waterford, it would
have been seen that the old party of Tyrconnell and
Sarsfield had life enough remaining to strike once more
for Irish liberty. On the whole, however, except among
the bishops and Anglo-Irish Jacobites, the cause of
James the Third created no enthusiasm. The native
Catholics had no cause to love the House of Stuart.
They had not forgiven the Act of Settlement. They
had not forgotten the cowardice and flight of the
Pretender's father. Unless they could separate the
crowns of the two kingdoms as well as the legislatures,
406 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IT.
they had reason to believe that the policy of one
English king towards them would not differ very
widely from that of any other English king; and,
taught by the experience of 1692, they preferred that
the battles of Ireland should be fought elsewhere.
' The Papists/ said Swift in 1725, and his great
authority is echoed by every contemporary document,
' would doubtless gladly have their superstition restored
under any prince whatever, yet the Pretender's party
is at an end. Yery few now alive are in his interest.
The Papists in general of any substance or estate, and
the priests almost universally, are what we call Whigs
in the general sense of the term. They feel the smart
and see the scars of their former wounds. They well
know they must be made a sacrifice to the least attempt
towards a change.1
Thus the accession of the House of Hanover passed
off as quietly in the wilds of Kerry as in Kent and
Sussex. Guns were fired, bonfires lighted, tuns of
claret broached and emptied in the streets of every
town in the four provinces; and no word of dis¬
affection was heard above a whisper from the Giant's
Causeway to Yalentia.
1 ' Address of the Drapier to both Houses of Parliament.'— Swift's
Works, vol. vn.
4°7
SECTION II.
The persistent determination to govern under tlie
forms of the constitution, to maintain the exterior
show of liberty among a people who could not be
trusted with the reality, although under some aspects
plausible and honourable, yet prolonged the agony of
the Irish nation, and, like all insincerity, created more
evils than it cured. The Irish Parliament was to be
maintained; but, to prevent the Parliament from being
troublesome, it was chained by Poynings5 Act; three-
quarters of the population were disfranchised; and,
when the Parliament was recalcitrant, laws were passed
in England over its head. Trial by jury, the most
precious birthright of Englishmen, was regarded as
the inalienable privilege of every subject of the British
Crown, and as such it was maintained in Ireland; but
the forms of freedom avail only to those who can make
a wholesome use of them. Convictions could not be
obtained against Catholic bishops and unregistered
priests, and the destruction of the Catholic religion
had to be pursued through the circuitous action of a
law which undermined the foundations of society.
The Acts of Anne for the repression of Popery had
been framed to throw into Protestant hands the entire
land of Ireland. The opportunities for evasion had
been at length closed so carefully that, for a family
to preserve their estates who continued to avow
4oS THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
themselves Catholic, had been made really difficult.
The object aimed at may have been not in itself
unjust; the means by which it was pursued were
detestable. A son, who had quarrelled with his father,
could demand a maintenance on declaring himself a
Protestant, and there was thus a premium on dishonest
conversions, and an encouragement to disobedience in
children. A Protestant informer, who could convict
a Catholic of stealing his property, could dispossess
the owner in his own favour. The disabilities extend¬
ing to leases, to trades, and professions, the tempta¬
tion to spiritual dishonesty, was carried down among
the middlemen, the tenant farmers, the lawyers, and
the shopkeepers; and the ranks of the Protestants
were swelled by gentlemen and men of business who,
in forfeiting their self-respect, lost with it the sense of
right and wrong.
The first of the two Acts had been comparatively
unsuccessful. The loose wording of the penal clauses
had created a belief perhaps that, like so many other
laws in Ireland, it had been designed merely as a
threat. It had been neutralized by transparent con¬
cealments and fictitious conveyances, and in the six
years in which it remained unsupplemented, thirty-six
Catholics only had conformed. The second Act—the
clause especially which enabled any Protestant to make
his fortune by a successful information—convinced
them that if they would retain their properties they
must abandon their creed; and produced in reality or
appearance, instant and extensive conversions. Many
CH. in.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 409
Catholics, probably, sold their estates and emigrated
to France. Many more preferred their homes under
hard conditions to perpetual expatriation ; and, before
1738, a thousand Catholic families of rank and conse¬
quence had been received into the Establishment;
some in appearance only; some in indifference; some
from the common-place belief that truth is on the side
of the strong; some, possibly, but very few, from real
conviction. Whatever the motive, the result to the
country was the same.
' The greatest part of the Catholic gentlemen/ says
an Anglo-Irishman of the time, 'who are either distin¬
guished for understanding or fortune, have actually
come over to our Church, and renounced the errors of
Home. If some are not sincere, their children and
grandchildren will certainly be so, and it is likely
therefore that the people will follow.'' ' If once/ this
writer continues, and the parallel which he draws must
be remembered, since it was the moral justification of
these laws in the minds of the persons who passed them
—' if once the Popish clergy were as effectually removed
as the Huguenot ministers are in France, we should soon
see our churches filled with converts as much as theirs;
and as they are already sentenced by our laws as civil
enemies to our constitution and country, so nothing
but the executing of those laws, and providing for the
instraction of the Irish, can perfectly heal the wounds
and maims of our divided nation. I can by no means
think our laws are chargeable with a persecuting spirit
in this matter of the Popish clergy; nor do I think
4io THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [ISK. II.
there is a nation under heaven which would have borne
with them so long with such gentleness and lenity
under such dreadful provocation ; and their attempting
so often, by massacre and rebellion, to overturn our
constitution, and make one grave for our laws and
people.'1
With the accession of the House of Hanover and
the failure of the rising in Scotland in 1715, Romanism
had become, in fact, in the eyes of the intelligent laity,
a lost political cause. From an authoritative creed
controlling the actions of states it dwindled into a
mode of opinion; and whatever ground might be
found either in France or Spain for future interference
in Ireland, the occasion would no longer be religion.
The Catholic gentry, so long as they adhered to their
creed, were cut off from the public life of the empire,
and every motive of interest or ambition tempted them
to conformity. In the better cultivated parts of the
country, even among the peasantry who had 110 land
to lose, and no career to which to aspire, the feeling
for Popery from other causes was for a time rapidly
waning. They resented the extortionate payments
demanded of them for the support of the priests.
The potato, though spreading fast, was still an excep¬
tional article of food before the middle of the last
century. They continued to live chiefly upon meat,
and, when Lent came with its compulsory fasts, the
conscientious among them were in danger of being
1 Reflexions and Resolutiom for the Gentlemen of Ireland, 173S.
ch. HI.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 4"
starved.1 On all estates where the Protestant land¬
lords resided, their tenants transferred to them the
affectionate fidelity with which they had regarded their
hereditary leaders. Far unlike the Presbyterian arti¬
sans, they clung to their hom^s, and were e averse to
American rambles.' 2 ' When the leaven of Popery
had not soured their natures, they were faithful and
attached servants;' and when opportunities were
opened out to them they were ' capable of being made
excellent husbandmen, soldiers, sailors, workmen,
merchants, and scholars.' ' The earth-tillers,' as they
had been contemptuously called in the old days, were
in fact showing all the qualities which, when they were
kept at work and kindly treated, had always been seen
to belong to them. Their superstitions were dying
out, and they were ' Papists rather from custom than
conviction.' ' The living so long among Protestants
had itself introduced a kind of reformation among
them.' ' They thought charitably of the salvation of
Protestants, more slightly of the Pope's authority, and
they read the English translation of the Bible.' They
understood and acknowledged that they were suffering
the actual consequences of the rebellion and massacre
of 1641; 'that their contending for a Popish prince
1 'The observing of Lent is a
great canse of idleness. It is not
only a time of fast, but of famine.
The poor Irish are fed on very had
flesh seven-eighths of the year. In
Lent they are famished. They are
so hunger-starved in this dreadful
time that I have heard a good
Catholic wish the priests would
allow them to eat the kites and
hawks, rooks, crows, and foxes in
thit season.'—Reflexions and Reso¬
lutions.
2 Ibid.
412 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. 11.
and interest in Ireland3 was folly ; f and that their zeal
that way had been as vain and silly as the old sacrific¬
ing their lives in the quarrels between the Kildares and
Ormonds.' f They had obtained juster notions of Irish
history/ ' They saw how they had been made the tools
of other men's ambition/ ' The affectation of speaking
Irish was gone ; scarcely one in twenty of them did
not understand and speak English well/ ' They were
being brought to like and know English cust.oms,
manners, and habits;' and such of them as had made
money by trade or manufacture, f were running fast into
the neatness and plenty of the English way of living/1
Such is the description of the settled districts
in Ireland given by one of the resident Protestant
gentry in 1738, indicating a disposition which, had fair
play been allowed to the industry of the country, must
have soon obliterated the traces of old animosities.
Although there were remarkable exceptions, hereafter
to be noticed, religious differences were generally
losing their bitterness, and even the penal laws them¬
selves were made a means of extending charity and
good feeling. Many Catholic families retained their
properties without sacrificing their creed, by convey¬
ing them to a Protestant kinsman or neighbour. The
terms of the statutes were so stringent that they were
obliged to trust entirely to honour and good faith ; yet
in no known instance was their confidence abused.
Where children, really unworthy, claimed the protec¬
tion of the clauses which would render them independ-
1 Reflexions and Resolutions for the Gentlemen of Ireland, 1738.
ch. hi.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 413
ent of their parents, Protestant judges and chancellors
were not found to ignore in their favour the element¬
ary principles of morality.
A few instances of appeals for maintenance will
show how the law was practically worked.
The first recorded case is that of the Cusacks. By
the Act of 1703, a Catholic gentleman, whose eldest
son was a Protestant, became tenant for life; he was
placed in the position of an owner whose estate is
entailed; and since many children had been disinherited
by Catholic parents as a punishment for changing their
faith, the restriction, under the circumstances of the
country, was not unreasonable. Bobert Cusack 1 pos¬
sessed real property, worth something over a thousand
pounds a year. By his first marriage he had one son,
named Adam. Becoming a widower, he married again,
and had another son and a twin daughter. Family
quarrels followed. The eldest son, supported by his
mother's brother, insulted his stepmother, disobeyed
his father, squandered money in idleness and extrava¬
gance. The father withdrew his allowance; the son,
of course with the worst motives, declared himself a
Protestant, and appealed for maintenance to the Court
of Chancery. The case came before Sir Bichard. Cox,
in 1705. The son pleaded that the settlement made
at the first marriage had been tampered with. The
father replied, that he had acted only within his legal
powers. The original settlements were examined and
1 Younger brother and heir of Adam Cusack, puisne judge of the
Court of Common Pleas in 1672.
4I4
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
reported on. Tlie Court allowed tlie son 801, a year
during Ms father's lifetime, wMch was afterwards raised
to a hundred.1
Infants were not allowed to plead conversion,
though supported by Protestant relatives. Applica¬
tion being made for maintenance for a boy of nine
years old, the court ruled that the Act gave no relief
till ' a child had come to years of discretion to con¬
form.' 2 Fitz Patrick v. Fitz Patrick was a case re¬
sembling that of the Cusacks. An elder son married
against his father's consent, turned Protestant, and
applied for an allowance. The Chancellor, severely
condemning the son's conduct, gave him 8ol. a year, as
the least which the law would permit, and enabled the
father to encumber the estate very heavily, for the use
of his Catholic children.3
Although the law encouraged informers, their occu¬
pation was odious. Their attempts to possess them¬
selves of other men's properties were defeated when
defeat was possible; and again, informers' themselves
were often in collusion with those against whom they
informed, in trust for some concealed party.
Cases of course can be produced of an opposite
kind;4 and the practice of the courts was a very school
x Case of Cusack v. Cusack,
1704-5. MSS. Dublin Castle.
2 Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, June
10, 1762. Howard's Ropery Cases.
2 Ibid.
4 The case of Martin Blake is a
good illustration of the worst oper¬
ation of the Act, and shows among
other things, that it sometimes
defeated its own object.
Martin Blake, a Catholic, bought
some lands in the name of Sir
Henry Bingham, and other lands
in the name of Lynch. Sir H.
Bingham, evidently in collusion
with Blake, brought an action of
cir. in.]
PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
415
of lying, and a discipline of evasion. No laws could
have been invented, perhaps, more ingeniously de¬
moralizing. Yet unquestionably the Acts were not, as
a whole, carried out with the triumphant recklessness
of a dominant faction. The Catholics had themselves
rendered legislation necessary, by introducing the
question of religion into the disposition of inheritances.1
The judges in these decisions at least recognized the
necessity of preventing the law from being abused by
profligate children.
ejectment under the Popery Act,
for the lands bought by Lynch,
and got a verdict. Afterwards
Blake became a Protestant, and
Sir H. Bingham conveyed the
estate to him openly. But, on proof
twelve years later, that Blake had
enjoyed the profits of the lands
ever since the original purchase,
and that Sir H. Bingham never
meddled with them, all the lands
were decreed to the discoverers,
and Blake was made to account for
the rents which he had received
meanwhile, 'therebeing a manifest
combination to elude the Act.'—
Howard's Popery Cases, June 16,
1727.
1 The Nugents' case indicated a
real grievance. Hyacinthe Nugent,
eldest son of Thomas Nugent, of
Pallas, called Lord Riverstown, a
Catholic, with large estates, con¬
formed to the Established Church,
and married Susanne Catharine,
daughter of Sir Tristram Beresford
—the Popery Act being accepted
by the Beresfords as guaranteeing
a settlement 011 the wife. Lord
Riverstown refusing to make an
allowance, the son joined the Eng¬
lish army in Spain, and served as
a cornet of dragoons. Thence he
returned to Ireland, when, ' by
pernicious Popish counsels and
other wicked insinuations,' he was
prevailed on to forsake his wife
and return to Popery; and, ' in
order to elude the law and injure
his wife,' went, 'by means of his
Popish relations, into Prance to
the service of the French king.'
The case came before Parliament,
and, by a private Act, in 1711, the
wife was allowed a maintenance out
of Lord Riverstown's estates. —
MSS. Dublin Castle.
416
SECTION III.
The working of the second branch of the penal laws
directed against the succession of tbe clergy, may be
described more briefly. These laws, though more
definite in theory than the laws affecting property,
more in accordance with the general practice of Europe,
and justified by provocations with which no people in
the world but the English would have dealt so for-
bearingly, remained a dead letter on the statute book,
and were heard of only in periodical lamentations over
their neglect. The Catholic religion, though proscribed
and insulted, was suffered to grow unchecked, to take
exclusive possession of the increasing numbers of the
peasantry, to educate them, to mould and shape them
from their cradles to their graves, and to neutralize the
natural disposition to please their political superiors,
which, had they been let alone, would have swept
them into conformity.
' If the Popish clergy were as effectually removed as
the Huguenot ministers/ says the writer whom I have
so often quoted,1 ' we should soon see our churches
filled with converts.' It was first necessary that there
should be churches for them to fill. Zealous as they
had been for their own privileges—clamorous against
Dissenters—in possession of all the wealth of the an¬
cient sees—so rich that, when they went to England,
1 Reflections and Resolutions for the Gentlemen of Ireland.
CH. HI.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 4*7
they required separate vessels to carry their horses and
servants to Holyhead—with sufficient influence over
the peers and the leading gentry to perpetuate the
disabilities of the Presbyterians, and drive them by
swarms into exile, the hierarchy of the Irish Establish¬
ment had provided, in 1728, for the spiritual instruc¬
tion of the entire island 600 beneficed clergy.1 That
was the sum of their militant forces all told. So poor
were the incumbencies, that though pluralities were
unabated, and eight, nine, sometimes twelve or thirteen
cures of souls were heaped on one man, his whole
income did not always reach 100I. a year. On these
600 men were thrown, by the law, not only the Church
services, but the duty of providing schools in every
parish; yet the Government allowed the bishops to
prohibit the scattered Protestant settlements from
electing pastors of their own; and, in the face of so
extraordinary a combination of negligence and bigotry,
the execution of the law to*prevent the incoming of
priests from abroad, or the ordination of fresh priests
at home, was of course impossible. It was left to
stand a confession of impotence, to bring law itself
1 There are in Ireland 600 in¬
cumbents and, I fear, near 3000
Popish priests. ' The Primate
(Archbishop Boulter) to the Duke
of Newcastle, March 7, 172S.'
3ISS. Record Office. By contrast¬
ing the number of incumbents with
the number of priests, the Primate
indicates that the curates were
either too few in number, or too '
IREL. I.
insignificant in themselves to be
worth considering. ' The bulk of
our clergy,' he goes on, 'have
neither parsonage houses nor glebes.
Yet, except we get more churches
and chapels, and more resident
incumbents, instead of gaining
ground on the Papists, we must
lose to them as we do in many
1 places.'
E E
4iS
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. IT.
into contempt. While lie gave so miserable an account
of the Establishment, the Primate was obliged to add,
that there were 3000 priests in Ireland. All, or almost
all of them, were by that time, according to the letter
of the statute, liable to transportation; and to death
as felons if they returned. Yet chapels were built,
and mass was said openly without interference. Oc¬
casionally, when there were threats of invasion, some
spasmodic onslaught was directed half insincerely from
the Oastle. But sheriffs shrunk from issuing warrants.
Grand juries might send up bills, but petty juries
refused to convict. Informers, so ready to betray
Bapparees and Tories, could neither be bribed or
frightened into giving evidence against the clergy.
Country magistrates, without a certainty of support
from the Government, would not court unpopularity
by gratuitous activity, which might embroil them with
their tenants; and the Government at home, in alliance
usually with one or other of the Catholic powers, made
a merit of yielding to the intercession of foreign am¬
bassadors, and ordering the suspension of the laws
against their co-religionists.1 Even when there was
1 From the multitude of reports dence against them had been threat-
I select two almost at random. In
the alarm of 1715 the grand jury
of King's County desired Secretary
Dawson to acquaint the Viceroy,
' that the late insolent behaviour
of the Papists in that county was
owing to the priests not being
brought to justice,' and 'that
several persons who were active in
summoning persons to give evi-
ened.' ' That priests officiated
generally who had not taken the
Oath of Abjuration, and who were
not registered.' 'That many in¬
dictments had been presented by
the Grand Jury, but only one priest
in the county had been tried and
convicted.'
The Grand Jury of Gal way
reported that:—' Great numbers
ch. in.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
419
real alarm, and tlie Castle authorities had roused them¬
selves, the magistrates had learnt by experience, that
negligence was less dangerous to them than prompti¬
tude. In a common-place book of some responsible
person, perhaps one of the judges, there is a passage
on the subject which is curiously explicit. 'The
Papists/ says this writer, ' by law are allowed a priest
in every parish, which are registered in pursuance of
an Act of Parliament made ten years ago. All bishops,
regulars, and other priests, not registered, are banished,
and none allowed to come into the kingdom under
severe penalties. The design was, that there should
be no succession, and many of those then registered
are since dead. Yet, for want of due execution of the
laws, many are come in from foreign parts, and there
are in the country Popish bishops concealed that ordain
many. Little enquiry of late has been made into these
matters. As to the Poman Catholics I think it im¬
possible, while they continue such, to reconcile them
to his majesty's interest; and, therefore, all means
of friars had within very few years
come into the kingdom, and settled
themselves in that county. At the
close of the late reign great
discouragement had been given by
the men then in power to such as
were active in suppressing friaries
and putting the laws in execution.
After such discouragements they
conceived it would be of singular
use to issue commands to the
magistrates to be more vigorous
for the future, and to direct the
military power to assist them.
At the late quarter sessions great
numbers of priests had been pre¬
sented for celebrating mass, not
having taken the Oath of Abjura¬
tion, and several Papists of the
first rank for carrying arms, not
having qualified themselves so to
do. Those presentments were in
the hand of the clerk of the peace,
but no process had issued pursuant
to them.'—MSS. Dublin Castle,
I7I5-
e e 2
420
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. II.
ought to be used to prevent their doing mischief. Our
laws are already too severe against them, but meet with
no execution, and the management towards them has
been so uncertain for fifty years last past, in truth ever
since the Reformation, that none dare trust the Govern¬
ment so far as to exert themselves in earnest against
them ; for such an act, in a few years, it is imputed to
him as a crime.'1
As in later times, an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill
passed through Parliament with acclamation, yet, from
the first day that it received the consent of the Crown,
was treated with ostentatious contempt, so these seem¬
ingly barbarous statutes against the Irish Catholic
clergy were but as unshotted cannon, loud sounding
and conspicuously impotent. Those priests who went
through the form of registering themselves and taking
the oaths were treated as poor creatures, and were
removed from their cures to make way for bolder
spirits.2
In 1721, in Dublin itself, under the very shadow
of the Castle, the Catholic Primate resided, ordained
clergy, and exercised jurisdiction without attempt at
concealment. A bishop of Meath and a body of
1 MSS. Ireland. Record Office,
vol. cccxxxix.
2 ' Tire priests take tlie Oatli
of Abjuration, but confess it as a
sin to other priests, and receive
absolution. It is a melancholy
reflection of living among men
whom neither oath can bind, nor
justice and lenity oblige to fidelity
to our Established Church. "We
receive daily information of mul¬
titudes coming lately into this
kingdom, and their superiors turn¬
ing out the registered priests as a
dull inactive sort of people, and
placing others in their stead, who
will be more useful to their evil
purposes.' -— ' Gilbert Ormsby to
Secretary Dawson, October 13,
1712.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
CH. tii.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
421
Capuchins found shelter under the roof of an officer
in the service of the Crown;1 and there were other es¬
tablishments of Augustinians, Franciscans, Carmelites,
and Dominicans, whose existence was perfectly well
known to the authorities. The bishops lived in quasi
retirement for a few years after the passing of the
Act, but they emerged as they found themselves un¬
molested, and their assistance soon came to be made
use of in the Government of the country. English
administrations, one after the other, thinking of
nothing but the convenience of the moment, saw the
Catholic Irish doubling and trebling their numbers,
and took no heed of a phenomenon which would not
ripen in their time to mischief. The Catholics were
a weapon in their hands to keep the Protestant gentry
from being troublesome. They allowed the penal laws
to stand, and the odium of them to rest on the Irish
Parliament. But the success which would have been
the justification of those laws, they took care to make
impossible; thus ensuring their eventual repeal with
the ignominy which necessarily attaches to tyranny
which has failed.
So cruel or so careless was the administration of
Sir Robert Walpole, that he would not even make
known his real wishes. If the Catholic clergy were
not to be punished, they ought to have been recog-
1 1 Todos estos frailes capuchi-
nos viven en la misma capilla que
fue fabricada en la casa de M.
Clemens, pagador en la tesoria de
su Mag3.' MS'S. Record Office,
The account from which I quote
being in Spanish proves whence
these monks had come.'
422 TILE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
nized. A carefully considered plan was submitted
to the Crown, by which a supply of secular priests
could be maintained and licensed, while the regular
clergy should be removed.1 But the Irish Parliament
were still allowed to believe, that England sincerely
wished that Popeiy should be extinguished. Yiceroy
after Yiceroy was permitted to urge from the throne
a more thorough execution of the law; and the
Protestant gentry, conscious of the dangers to which
they were increasingly exposed by the multiplication
of the Catholics, in defiance of a law which it was
inevitable that they must resent, were encouraged in
their perplexity to invent fresh penalties of which
the threat might perhaps prove a deterrent. Left
to themselves they could have perhaps themselves
removed a law which they could not cany out. Sir
Robert Walpole preferred that they should stand over
the Catholics with a brandished whip, and that he and
England should earn the gratitude of the bishops and
priests, by arresting the arm ere it could fall.
1 'Charles Hogg to the King, December 10, 1723.' MSS. Record
Office.
423
SECTION IY.
Since forcible conversion was tacitly abandoned, tbe
form of Protestantism which, could hope to become the
religion of Ireland, could be only that which showed
spontaneous vitality. Congregations were willing to
support Catholic priests ; congregations were willing
to support Presbyterian ministers. The clergy of the
Anglo-Irish Church existed only on endowments. The
Presbyterians made converts among the Catholics;
the Church made none, or only such as she could have
better spared, which were made for her by the Popery
Act; while, for every reluctant or interested conform¬
ist, she lost ten, twenty, or thirty of the scattered
Protestant peasantry in the southern provinces, to
whom she forbade their own ministrations, and who,
since they could not have what they desired, preferred
the priest and the goodwill of their neighbours. Cruel
and even blind as England was to Ireland's interests
on so many sides, she at least perceived the absurdity
of maintaining the Test clause. If the peasantry were
not to be driven, there was still a chance that they
might be won; and no sooner was George the First
on the throne, and the Tory junta dismissed and scat¬
tered, than Wharton's policy was revived, and the
removal of the Test, so unhappily and inadvertently
imposed, became the most ardently desired object 01
the new ministers. When the rebellion began in
424 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ii.
Scotland, an insurrection in Ireland had been confi¬
dently looked for.1 The militia were again called out.
The Presbyterian leaders held a meeting at Belfast to
consider how they should act; and, though strictly
disqualified, they came to ah honourable resolution,
' to risk everything for his majesty's service/ and
trust to the clemency of the Government to screen
them from prosecution^ They communicated their
intentions to Mr. Conolly, a distinguished member of
the Irish Council. Conolly wrote to the Lords Justices,
guaranteeing their loyalty; and, at his request, com¬
missions were issued to the Presbyterian gentlemen.
The ranks of the regiments were immediately filled ;
and, over and above the regular troops, thirty thou¬
sand men were at once in arms, sufficient, if rebellion
had been attempted, to crush it out on the instant.
The lesson was not thrown away. Owing to the leaven
of Jacobitism in the Establishment, the Presbyterian
was the only body on whom England could thoroughly
rely in a struggle with the Pretender. The Queen's
death had dissolved the last Parliament. A new
election, it was hoped, would give the Liberal party
in the Lower House a sufficient majority to enable the
Government to force the repeal of the Test clause upon
the Peers.
The Pegium Donum, which had been discontinued
for four years, was restored and increased. Sunder¬
land, a tried friend to the Dissenting interest, was
1 'Sir William Caulfield to Secretary Delafaye, August i, 1715.
MSS. Record Office.
ch. hi.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION, 425
appointed Viceroy. Sunderland liimself was unable
to leave London; but lie received a deputation from
the Ulster Synod, and promised tliem all the aid in
his power. The Duke of Grafton and Lord Galway
came over as Lords Justices, and by them Parliament
was opened on the 14th of November.
The battle seemed to be won, when Conolly, the
Presbyterians' especial supporter, was elected Speaker
by a large majority.
The speech from the throne recommended f such
unanimity as might end all distinctions, save those
between Protestant and Papist.'1 The Commons, after
a passionate censure of the late Tory Ministry, charg¬
ing it with having brought the Protestant interest to
the edge of destruction, took into consideration the
heads of a bill for the security of the King's govern¬
ment, in which, among other provisions, was a clause
indemnifying the Presbyterians who had accepted
commissions, and declaring that, for tlie future, Non¬
conformists might hold rank in the army and militia
without danger of prosecution. A measure of relief
so small and tentative, so obviously politic and just,
was not carried without violent opposition. It was
carried, however, and was sent to the Upper House.
At once the animosities which had broken up the last
Parliament revived in all their fury.
The bishops and clergy had been unable to pre¬
vent the establishment on the throne of the House of
Hanover, the symbol of the principles which they
1 Commons' Journals November 14 1715.
<26 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. n.
most feared and hated; and disappointment made
them furious. So violent were the clergy, that few of
them could be found to mention the names of the King
and the Royal family in their prayers before their
sermons.1
The Peers and Commons formed themselves into a
loyal association for the protection of the King's per¬
son. The bishops could not refuse to join without
confessing themselves traitors ; but the Primate, after
a three days' struggle, when everyone but himself had
signed, at length only attached his name with an ill
grace on the margin of the page, from which it could
be cut off when the Pretender came to his own.2
To men in such a humour the Dissenters' Relief
Bill was as oil on the fire. Perceiving that the clause
would be carried in the Lower House, the Archbishop
of Dublin anticipated its appearance by introducing
the heads of a second Indemnity Bill of his own, hold¬
ing the Dissenters harmless for what they had already
done, but maintaining their disabilities for the future
as rigidly as ever. Everyone of the bishops support¬
ing him, he carried his point, and, instead of consider-
1 'Most of the clergy neglect
to mention his majesty and then-
Royal Highnesses in the prayers
before their sermons, which is an
omission we cannot redress without
a direct order from the King.'—
' Secretary Delafaye to Lord Stan¬
hope, January 22, 1716.' MSS.
Kecord Office.
J* 'The Primate signed at_the
bottom, from whence his name
might be cut off in time conve¬
nient. He did it, but with a very
ill grace, two or three days after
everybody else.' — ' Delafaye to
Stanhope, January 24,1716.' MSS.
Record Office. The bond with
Lindsay's name attached, as Dela¬
faye describes, is in the Record
Office.
CH. HI.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 427
ing the heads which came from the Commons, the
Lords sent in the Archbishop's bill by the side of the
other, for the Council to digest them into one, for
transmission to England.
In the Council the question was rediscussed, and
the Duke of Grafton laboured hard to bring about a
compromise. The bishops condescended to admit that
they did not wish the Dissenters to be prosecuted for
haying taken arms, when they were called on by the
Government, to defend the country. They agreed
at last that commissions in the militia should be opened
to them then and always; but the regular army, in
the fear that admission to military service would be a
prelude to future demands, they were determined to
keep for ever closed against them.1
A proposal by one of the Council, that Noncon¬
formists should hold commissions in the army during
the continuance of the rebellion, was carried only in
a full board by a majority of one. Unless the Church
was disestablished, or unless the Archbishop of Can¬
terbury could be persuaded to interfere, the Duke of
Grafton was obliged to tell Lord Stanhope that no
measure of relief, which was not a mockery, could be
carried through the Upper House as at present con¬
stituted. As qualified by the Council the bill might
1 Swift frankly explains the
reason :—
' However indifferent men may
be to religion,' he says, 'they
know if latitude was allowed to
Dissenters, the few such employ¬
ments left us in cities and corpor¬
ations would find other hands lay
hold on them.'—' Address to both
Houses of Parliament by the
Drapier.' Works, vol. vii.
423
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. it.
pass. If returned in tlie shape in which it left the
Commons, it would be infallibly rejected.1
The resolute obstinacy, three parts disloyal and
one part bigoted, of the Irish hierarchy, explains the
subsequent practice, which has been made a subject
of such bitter reproach by Irish patriotic writers, of
filling so many vacancies on the bench by Englishmen.
Something might be said for a genuine Pro¬
testant ascendancy in Ireland,—something for
the native Catholics who desired to increase their
hold upon a country which they believed to belong to
themselves. What plea of policy or equity could be
found for leaving so critical a part of the British
dominions at the discretion of a handful of prelates,
whose existence depended on the support of a King
whom they in their hearts disowned, and on the swords
of the northern Protestants whom they abhorred and
trampled on ? 2
1 ' Tlie House of Lords to ren¬
der the good intentions of the
House of Commons ineffectual, have
passed another bill with the same
title and to the same purpose, but
without the above clause. Both
are now before the Council to
frame one bill out of the two.
"We hope the clause may be
carried; but it is more than
probable, if the bill returns to us
without alteration, it will be re¬
jected in the House of Lords.
We advise, therefore, that the
bill be so altered by you that
the exemption relating to the army
might continue only during the
present rebellion, and from thence
to the end of the ensuing session
of Parliament. Thus qualified,
the bishops will let it pass
through the House of Lords, else
it will be lost by a large majority.
Better speak to the Archbishop
of Canterbury. The Archbishop
and others, we believe, have written
to him.'—' Grafton to Stanhope,
February 15.' 3ISS. Becord Office.
2 A remarkable letter was
written at this time by some
Irishman of consequence to Lord
Molesworth, and by Molesworth
forwarded, without the writer's
name, to Stanhope.
CH. HI.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 429
A way out of tlie difficulty was suggested, which,
shows in its very structure how proof against the
plainest monitions of prudence and justice was Irish
High Church prejudice.
' There must be no law/ wrote Henry Maxwell, a
distinguished member of the Irish Parliament, to Lord
Molesworth,'to hinder the Protestants of this country
to unite against the common enemy. The body of
our Dissenters consists of the middle and meaner sort
of people, chiefly in the North. Not many of them
are estated men compared with those of the Established
Church; so that, when these disabilities are taken off,
want of fortune and interest will always hinder them
from coming into the militia in dangerous numbers.
'The Archbishop of Tuam is
like to die. You know this coun¬
try, and our unfortunate condition
in relation to gentlemen of that
rank. There is not one that can
justly be called a "Whig, not among
those that were made since the
King's accession. Yet several were
as hearty Whigs as you and I be¬
fore they were made bishops. I
mean they seemed so. It would
be very good if we had three or
four eminent staunch bishops that
would not be shocked, and would
stand in the gap against the
majority. This would bring the
clergy round. The clause in the
Security Bill they are fighting
against would give liberty to at least
a hundred thousand able-bodied
entirely well-affected men. These
are they that bravely kept footing
in Ireland when other Protestants
fled the kingdom — that fought
naked for King William, our
liberties, our religion, and all that
was dear to us. We cannot ex¬
pect them to fight our battles if
we do not let them rise above
common soldiers. We are now
raising thirteen regiments here,
and I dare aver it, unless four parts
in six be dissenting common
soldiers, the most won't bo Protes¬
tants. . . . I am rather of opinion,
therefore, that bishops should be
sent from England. I used to
wish only Irish to be chosen ; but,
after being disappointed so often,
it seems hopeless to expect that
the most promising Irishman will
remain Whig.' MSS. Ireland.
Record Office, March 27, 1716.
43° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
Pass that part of the law, and you will do nothing but
good. As to the army, it would be highly to the pre¬
judice of the King and his service if that clause should
pass. The number of Dissenters in our House does
not exceed, if it reaches, to the number of six. In
the late Parliament they came to but four. They can
never have an interest to reach to ten, and they are of
little weight when they are there, for their education
is generally narrow. In the House of Lords there is
not one Dissenter of weight; so that if the clause
come over, it will divide and break the King's best
friends in our House, and will give the King's enemies,
which is the only thing they want, a handle of clamour;
it will widen and perpetuate our divisions, which, if
that law do not pass in your Council, are in a fair way
of being healed. Reject it, and it will be a handsome
compliment to the Church, and things will go easily
in both Houses.'1
Consistently anxious to remove these pernicious
disabilities, Stanhope and Sunderland declined to
act on Maxwell's suggestions. The military strength
of Protestant Ireland lay, as they well knew, in
the despised Dissenters; and to disqualify brave
and loyal men for advancement in the regular army
because they professed a creed which was the estab¬
lished religion of Scotland, was absurd. The bill was
postponed till the bench of bishops could be leavened
with some healthier elements. The Commons passed
1 'H. Maxwell to Lord Molesworth, April g, 1716.' MSS. Ireland.
Record Office.
CH. III.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 431
a resolution that the Dissenters who had received
commissions had done seasonable service, and that
whoever prosecuted them was an enemy to the King
and the Protestant interest. There, for the moment,
the matter was let drop. An attempt was made to
console the Presbyterians by promising them instead
of a removal of the Test, the English Toleration Act,
which would leave their religion undisturbed, while
the disqualifications for service were maintained.
They declined an offer which they justly regarded as
an insult. They insisted that they were entitled to
the same privileges which were conceded to the
Scotch Episcopalians; who, though as disloyal as they
were themselves loyal, and, like themselves, were
Dissenters from the Established religion, yet suffered
under no vexatious exclusion from civil or military
employment.
Stanhope would not part with the hope of securing
them substantial justice. After 1715 the Irish Par¬
liament met only in alternate years, voting double
supplies. In 1719, under the Yiceroyalty of the
Duke of Bolton, the opportunity was taken of a ^I9
fresh alarm to revive the question. The Duke, in opening
the session, recommended a better agreement among
Protestants in the presence of the strict union and
notorious disaffection of the Catholics. A sketch of a
bill had been sent from England to be produced if the
temper of the two Houses promised favourably. It
was an equivalent to a simple repeal of the Sacra¬
mental Test clause. Conolly, when asked his advice
432
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
by the Viceroy, recommended that the initiative should
be left to the Irish Parliament. Whether the Lower
House would concede a large measure of relief he
considered extremely doubtful. The Peers would
reject any measure of relaxation, however mild, if it
was recommended from England. The bill was,
therefore, kept back. The Viceroy told the Parliament,
that he trusted they would discover some means by
which an agreement could be brought about; and the
King sent a special message of earnest entreaty, that
the Presbyterian claims should receive consideration.
The humour of the Upper House, it very soon
appeared, was unchanged; while the Commons, as the
rebellion was forgotten, were less disposed to gener¬
osity than before. The Brodricks had hitherto been
steady on the Liberal side. The old Speaker, now
Lord Midleton, continued constant to his principles.
His son, young Alan, for some unknown reason, had
gone over to the bishops; and, backed by a knot of
High Churchmen, who were called the Cork squadron,
resisted a relaxation of the Test with the fiercest de¬
termination.1 Archbishop King, failing to see the
sarcasm which he was uttering against the Establish¬
ment, declared that the tests were its only protection,
1 The bishops had introduced
clauses into their leases, forbidding
the erection of meeting-houses on
any part of their estates. They
had induced many great land¬
owners to follow the example.
The practice was spreading. The
Government party brought the
subject before the Commons, and
proposed a resolution that, in lay
leases, such clauses should be
inadmissible. The opposition was
so strong, however, that they did
not venture to press a division.—
' The Duke of Bolton to Secretary
Craggs, July 16, 1719.' MSS.
Ireland. Record Office.
ch. in.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 433
and that, without them, Protestant Ireland would be
Presbyterian. A Toleration Act, such as they had
refused before, more meagre than that which now
stands on the Irish statute book—a bill giving Non¬
conformists a bare permission to meet for worship in
their own chapels, while the tests were sternly upheld—
this was all that could be obtained. The heads were
sent to England; and the Viceroy wrote, that nothing
more need be looked for.1
Stanhope gave up the contest. No longer at¬
tempting to throw open even the commissions in the
militia, he contented himself with adding a paragraph,
giving the benefit of the Act to Dissenters already under
prosecution. Even this slight amendment was received
with suspicion. Young JBrodrick argued that, under
cover of such a clause, a Dissenter might have stolen
into a fellowship at Trinity College, or might have
taught in a village school, and yet escape punishment.
His chimerical terrors were with difficulty removed by
the crown lawyers, and, on the 16th of October, this
wretched mockery of justice and common sense passed
through the Lower House.
Eor the Peers, lean as it was, the bill proved almost
too much. The majority of Irish noblemen were al¬
ready absentees ; but on a question on which passion
was stirred so deeply, the attendance was unusually
large. Had the bishops' phalanx been unbroken,
they would have been irresistible, and the bill would
1 ' The Duke of Bolton to Secretary Craggs, July 18.' MSS. Ireland.
Record Office.
iiiel. i. r r
434
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. ii.
have been lost. Fortunately the advice to supply the
vacant sees from England had not been neglected.
Sixteen prelates were in their places : of them the
Viceroy had now secured the support of six, and the
neutrality of a seventh. The three Archbishops strug¬
gled as if the Christian faith itself was at stake. The
Primate called schism a damnable sin. The Archbishop
of Dublin insisted, in the usual style, that a door was
being opened to every kind of wild extravagance. The
bill was eventually carried by a majority of 39 to 26.1
The minority, with the Archbishops at their head,
recorded their protest in their Journals. Archbishop
King complained to his brother of Canterbury, that
the good cause had been betrayed by false brethren
intruded on the bench from England. Unless God, by
unforeseen Providence, supported it, the Church of
Ireland he considered to be lost; and the occasion of
his panic was the simple permission to the Presby¬
terians, who had saved Ireland from Tyrconnell, who
formed two-thirds of the Protestant population of
Ulster, to open chapels of their own. Though they
were incapacitated from holding public employments,
though their marriages were invalid, though they were
forbidden to open a single school, or hold any office in
town or country above the rank of petty constable, the
mere existence of Nonconformists as a body legally
recognized was considered a fatal omen to the Church
1 Of the six bishops who voted only one was an Irishman. Of
for the Government five were the nine who were in the minority,
English Whigs appointed since the seven were Irish and two English,
accession of George the First, and
C H. III. ] PROTESTANT A DMINIS TP A TION.
435
of Ireland. The Church of Ireland must have been a
very feeble institution.1
And now recommenced the Protestant emigration,
which robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of
English interests, and peopled the American sea-board
with fresh flights of Puritans. Twenty thousand left
Ulster on the destruction of the woollen trade. Many
more were driven away by the first passing of the Test
Act. The stream had slackened, in the hope that the
1 Irish Statutes, George I. cap.
3. The hesitation of the Govern¬
ment and the long delay in the
promotion of Berkeley, is a favour¬
ite subject of complaint among
Irish Protestants ; nameless Eng¬
lishmen having been promoted over
the head of their most distinguished
scholar. Berkeley's Toryism was
more extreme than Swift's, and
what Irish clerical Tories were, the
reader will have partly seen. His
Treatise on Passive Obedience was
published during the Harley-St.
John ascendancy, and was written
avowedly in support of Phipps and
Ormond and the Jacobite con¬
spirators. Lord Stanhope had,
notwithstanding, been so struck
with Berkeley's genius, that he
nad intended to promote him in
1716. An Irish clergyman, an
acquaintance of Lord Molesworth,
wrote to remonstrate against an
appointment which would mis¬
chievously strengthen Archbishop
King. ' The treatise' (on Passive
Obedience), this person said, 'came
out at a time when a dangerous
attack was made by the late
ministry on the liberties of the
kingdom, for which service Dr.
Berkeley has been highly esteemed
by all the Jacobites in Ireland.
He travelled with Lord Peter¬
borough ; has been, and still is, a
creature of Dean Swift; and is
reckoned here as much in the Tory
interest as the highest Churchman
of them all.'—' Rev. Duke Tyrrell
to the Right Hon. R. Molesworth,
May 14, 1716.' MSS. Record
Office.
Molesworth interfered, and the
good intentions of the Government
towards Berkeley were postponed.
The world forms its judgments
heedlessly ; and seeing that Berke¬
ley was a great man, and that he
was long passed over in favour of
his inferiors, it rushes to the
conclusion that he was unfairly
neglected. When men of genius
lend themselves to politics and
the support of measures like the
Presbyterian disabilities, their
opinions may be at least as legiti¬
mate a disqualification for office as
the religious belief which they in¬
sist on persecuting.
43^ THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. »•
law would be altered. When the prospect was finally
closed, men of spirit and energy refused to remain in a
country where they were held unfit to receive the right
of citizens; and thenceforward, until the spell ot
tyranny was broken in 1782, annual shiploads of families
poured themselves out from Belfast and Londonderry.
The resentment which they carried with them continued
jO burn in their new homes; and, in the War of
Independence, England had no fiercer enemies than
the great-grandsons of the Presbyterians who had held
Ulster against Tyrconnell.
The Irish Council were startled at the dimensions
which the Exodus assumed. ' The worst of it,' wrote
Archbishop Boulter, f is, that it carries off only Pro¬
testants, and reigns chiefly in the North.'1 Parliament
ordered an inquiry and heard evidence, as if it was
some inexplicable mystery. An official report dis¬
tinctly stated, that the Test was at least one of the
causes.2 The ministers reminded the Government
that, when the Test clause was first passed, an early
repeal of it was promised : the promise had not been
kept, and ' the hardships under which their people
laboured on that account were so grievous, that they
were transporting themselves to America for the sake
>f the liberty and ease which they were denied in their
native country.'3 Still the Irish Parliament could not
1 ' The Primate to the Duke of 1729.' Ibid.
Newcastle, November 23, 1 728.' 3 'Address of the Protestant
MSS. Pecord Office. Ministers of the South of Ireland,
2 ' Report on the Causes of the 1729.' Ibid.
Emigration from Ireland, June 6,
CH. III.]
PRO PES TANT AD MINIS TRA TION.
437
recognize its folly. The Duke of Newcastle, in 1732,
intended to make another effort. A bill was
1732
sent over for the more effectual disarming of the
Catholics; and as the Test had been imposed by a
clause introduced in England into a Catholic penal bill,
the Duke thought it might be removed by a similar
manoeuvre. He consulted Archbishop Boulter who was
then Primate. But Boulter, though himself wishing
the Dissenters well, warned him that he would fail.
Times were changed, he said. There was less irrita¬
tion against Popery, and more anger against England.
A clause introduced by the English Cabinet would, on
that account alone, be rejected by the patriots of the
Lower House. The clergy would oppose it to a man
they were so bitter that the "Whig bishops sent from
England could hardly restrain them from railing
against Dissent in their sermons. 'Dean Swift' was
already in the field, and ' had sounded the alarm.' The
thing could not be done.1
' It is indeed extraordinary,' Newcastle replied,
'that such a clause should be liable to meet with
difficulties in either House in a country where no
distinctions should be kept up among Protestants,
which might be the occasion of disuniting them.'2
Extraordinary it might be, but it was a fact which
could not be changed.3
And so the emigration continued. The young, the
1 ' The Primate to the Dulce of
Newcastle, January 4 and 15, 1732.'
IISS. Record Office.
2 'Newcastle to the Primate,
February 5, 1732.' Ibid.
3 ' The Primate to the Duke of
Newcastle, February 19.'
458
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. II.
courageous, tlie energetic, the earnest, those alone
among her colonists who, if Ireland was ever to be a
Protestant country, could be effective missionaries, were
torn up by the roots, flung out, and bid find a home
elsewhere; and they found a home to which England
fifty years later had to regret that she had allowed
them to be driven.
Singular complication ! First a Protestant exodus
to America, and now a Catholic from the same country.
Each emigrant, and each class of emigrants, carrying
away in their hearts a sense of intolerable wrong, and
a hungry craving for revenge.
439
SECTION Y.
The responsibility for the mismanagement of Ireland
must be divided equally between England and g
the Irish colony. With a perversity of mis¬
understanding, whatever salutaiy measure England
recommended the Irish Parliament thwarted; when
the Irish Parliament saw their way clearly, England
was wilfully blind, or deliberately cruel.
With their shipping destroyed by the Navigation
Act, their woollen manufactures taken from them,
their trade in all its branches crippled and confined,
the single recourse left to those of the Irish who still
nourished dreams of improving the unfortunate country
was agriculture. The soil, at least, was their own; a
soil which needed only to be drained, cleared of weeds,
and manured, to produce grass-crops and corn-crops
as rich as the best in England. Here was employ¬
ment for a population three times more numerous
than as yet existed. Here was a prospect, if not of
commercial wealth, yet of substantial comfort and
material abundance.
The Irish peasant was indolent. The glorification
of idleness, the contempt of work as base and ignoble,
had been instilled into him for fifty generations, and
was in the granules of his blood. The earth-tillers
everywhere had been the drudges of the tribe —
wretches too mean for the honourable employments
440 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II. .
of stealing and murdering; and of tlie fruits of tlieir
ignominious toil they had been allowed no more by
their own chiefs, than sufficed to keep them alive.
The Elizabethan landlords had been scarcely lighter
masters. The peasants sowed the crop for the masters
to reap ; and it was not till the Puritans broke in
upon the pleasant ways of the old oppressors, and
instead of the sword of tyranny ruled Ireland with a
sword of justice, that any labourer could call his work
his own. The reign of Charles the Second, while the
Cromwellians were still in the land, was looked back
upon in the following century as an island of prosperity
in the ocean of general wretchedness. In Charles the
SecomPs time the absentees were few. The huge
estates had not yet devoured the smaller allotments,
nor the plough and peasant's spade been laid by to
rust, while the bogs crept back over the meadows
which the Cromwellians had reclaimed. The poor
Irish were brought for a generation into the same
condition with their fellow labourers in other parts of
the world, and they had the same encouragement to
industry. But the change was too shortlived to alter
a type which had been moulded by centuries of in¬
justice. The Puritan farmers, under the pressure of
Jeremy Taylor and his brother bishops, sold their
holdings. Tyrconnell and Catholic ascendancy broke
up the scattered Protestant establishments, destroyed
their stock, and threw the country into a wilderness
again. Many never came back to resume their profit¬
less task, and the land jobbing finished the ruin which
CH. iii.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
441
the war had left incomplete. Whole counties fell into
the hands of favourites or speculators; and the man¬
agement was left to middlemen, who again pared the
peasant to the bone. The trade in butter and salt
meat, which England had graciously consented to
leave, with the vast profits, of which I shall speak
elsewhere, to be made out of wool smuggling, tempted
alike landowners and leaseholders to stock meadow
and mountain with sheep and black cattle. In 1727
the average size of the farms, in the three southern
provinces, ranged from Soo to IOOO Irish acres.1 The
tenants were forbidden in their leases to break or
plough the soil.2 The people no longer employed were
driven away into holes and corners, and eked out a
wretched subsistence by potato gardens, or by keeping
starving cattle of their own on the neglected bogs.
Their numbers increased, for they married early, and
they were no longer liable, as in the old times, to be
killed off like dogs in forays. They grew up in com¬
pulsory idleness, encouraged once more in their in¬
herited dislike of labour, and enured to wretchedness
and hunger;3 and, on every failure of the potato crop,
1 ' Heads of a bill for promoting
husbandry, 1727.' MSS. Dublin
Castle.
2 ' Besides this, of late years,
many landlords have begun a
practice to tie down their tenants
by express covenants, not to break
up or plough their lands ; by which
covenants, highly prejudicial to
the public good of the country,
our desolation and want of tillage
is increasing.'—Ibid. Swift also,
in his pamphlet on The Use of
Irish Manufactures, says, ' The
landlords everywhere, by penal
clauses, prohibit their tenants from
ploughing.'
3 In 1729 the population of
Ireland was roughly guessed at a
million and a half. The author of
an Ess 1 y on Trade, published in
that year, and addressed to Lord
442
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[B1C. IX.
hundreds of thousands were starving. Of corn very
little was grown anywhere in Ireland. It was imported
from England, Holland, Italy, and France, but in
quantities unequal to any sudden demand. The dis¬
grace of allowing a nation of human beings to subsist
under such conditions, forced itself at last on the con¬
science of the Irish Parliament, and though composed
of landowners who were tempted as much as others to
let their farms on the terms most profitable to them,
the House of Commons in 1716, resolved unanimously
to make an effort for a general change of system, and
to reclaim both people and country by bringing back
and stimulating agriculture. They passed a vote that
covenants which prohibited the breaking soil with the
plough were impolitic, and should have no binding
force. They passed heads of a bill, which they
recommended with the utmost earnestness to the con¬
sideration of the English Council, enjoining that for
every hundred acres which any tenant held, he should
break up and cultivate five; and, as a further encour¬
agement, that a trifling bounty should be granted by
the Government on corn grown for exportation.
And what did England answer ?—England which
was so wisely anxious for the prosperity of the Pro¬
testant interest in Ireland ? — England which was
Carteret gives this number as the
estimate currently received ; but
he adds, that there was a difference
of opinion, and by a calculation of
his own raises it one-fourth higher.
The hearth-money collectors re¬
turned in 1726, he said, 374,286
houses in Ireland as paying duty,
besides colleges, hospitals, barracks,
and other exempt tenements. In
all he thought there might be
416,000 houses, which, allowing
five inmates to each, would give a
population of over two millions.
CH. m.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 443
struggling so pathetically to make the Irish Peers and
gentlemen understand the things that belonged to
their peace. The bounty system might, or might
not, have been well calculated to produce the effect
which Ireland desired. It was the system, however,
which England herself practised with every industry
which she wished to encourage; and it was not on
economic grounds that the Privy Council rejected a
bill which they ought rather to have thrust of their
own accord on Irish acceptance. The real motive
was probably the same which had led to the suppres¬
sion of the manufactures ; the detestable opinion that,
to govern Ireland conveniently, Ireland must be kept
weak. Although the corn consumed in Ireland had
been for many years imported, the English farmers
were haunted with a terror of being undersold in their
own and foreign markets, by a country where labour
was cheap. A motive so iniquitous could not be con¬
fessed—but the objections which the Council was not
ashamed to allege were scarcely less disgraceful to
them. The English manufacturers having secured, as
they supposed, the monopoly of Irish wool on their
own terms, conceived that the whole soil of Ireland
ought to be devoted to growing it. The merchants of
Tiverton and Bideford had recently memorialized the
Crown on the diminution of the number of fleeces
which reached them from the Irish ports. They
attributed the falling-off to the contraband trade be¬
tween Ireland and France, which shortened their sup¬
plies, enhanced the price, and gave the French weavers
444
TI-IE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
an advantage over tliem.1 Their conjecture, as will
be hereafter shown, was perfectly just. The contra¬
band trade, as had been foreseen, when the restrictions
were imposed, had become enormous. But the Com¬
missioners of the Irish Revenue were unwilling to
confess to carelessness. They pretended that the
Irish farmers, forgetting their obligations to England,
and thinking wickedly only of their own interests,
were diminishing their stock of sheep, breaking up the
soil, and growing wheat and barley.2 The allegation
unhappily was utterly untrue. But the mere rumour
of a rise of industry in Ireland created a panic in the
commercial circles of England. Although the change
existed as yet only in desire, and the sheep-farming,
with its attending miseries, was increasing rather than
diminishing, Stanhope, Walpole, Sunderland, and the
other advisers of the English Crown met the overtures
of the Irish Parliament in a spirit of settled hostility,
and with an infatuation which now appears like in¬
sanity, determined to keep closed the one remaining
avenue by which Ireland could have recovered a gleam
of prosperity.
The heads of the bill were carried in Ireland
without a serious suspicion that it would be received
unfavourably. A few scornful members dared to say,
that England would consent to nothing which would
really benefit Ireland, but they were indignantly
1 ' Petitions from Tiverton and 3 ' Reply of the Commissioners
Bideford, November 16 and De- of the Revenue, February, 1715.
comber 30, 1714.' MSS. Record Ibid.
Office. 1
CH. ill.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION.
445
silenced by the friends of the Government. It was
sent over by the Duke of Grafton, with the fullest
expectation that it would be returned. He learnt first,
with great surprise, that ' the Tillage Bill was meet¬
ing with difficulties.-' ' It was a measure/ he said,
' which the gentlemen of the country had very much
at heart, as the only way left them to improve their
estates, while they were under such hard restrictions
in point of trade.'1 ' It would be unkind,' he urged
in a second more pressing letter, ' to refuse Ireland
anything not unreasonable in itself.' ' He conceived
the Corn Bill was not of that nature, and therefore
earnestly requested his majesty would be pleased to
indulge them in it.' 2
Stanhope forwarded in answer a report of the Eng¬
lish Commissioners of Customs, which had the merit
of partial candour:—' Corn,' they said, 'is supposed
to be at so low a rate in Ireland in comparison with
England, that an encouragement to the exportation of
it would prejudice the English trade.'3
The Lords Justices returned the conclusive re¬
joinder that, for some years past, Ireland had imported
large quantities of corn from England, which would
have been impossible had her own corn been cheaper.
' They could not help representing,' they said, ' the
concern they were under to find that verified which
those all along foretold who obstructed the King's
1 'The Lords Justices to Lord Stanhope, January 30.' Ibid.
Stanhope, January 22, 1716.' 3 ' Lord Stanhope to the Lords
MSS. Record Office. Justices, March 2.' Ibid.
2 ' The Lords Justices to Lord
446 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
affairs, and which his friends had constantly denied,
that all the marks they had given of duty and affec¬
tion, would not procure one bill for the benefit of the
nation/1
The fact of the importation of corn from England
could not be evaded, but the commercial leaders were
possessed with a terror of Irish rivalry, which could
not be exorcised. The bill was at last transmitted,
but a clause had been slipped in,2 empowering the
Council to suspend the premiums at their pleasure;
and the House of Commons in disgust refused to take
back a measure which had been mutilated into a
mockery.
Re-introduced in 1719, under the viceroyalty of the
Duke of Bolton, the bill met with a fate no better.
The Duke, like his predecessors, gave it his warmest
support. He showed that the objections of the Com¬
missioners of Customs were childish. The proposed
bounties were but half those which were actually given
in England, and the relative prices in the two countries
made the under-selling of the English by the Irish
growers a complete impossibility.3 The ineffectuality
1 ' The Lords Justices to Stan¬
hope, May 22, 1716.' 1ISS. Be-
cord Office.
2 It had been done by some
surreptitious manceuvre in Ireland
itself after the heads left the
House of Commons. ' Duke of
Bolton to Secretary Craggs, August
14, 1719.' Ibid.
3 ' The price of corn is generally
as high in Dublin as in London.
A bushel of English wheat is one-
fifth heavier than Irish, and so
with other grain. The bounties
of the Irish bill are but half of
those in England ; so that it is
impossible for the exporters of
Irish corn to undersell the British,
but directly contrary, for the Irish,
though they have the premium
desired, can never sell to the same
advantage as the English, nor can
CH. in.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 447
of an argument so conclusive showed that the avowed
motive, bad as it was, yet was not the real one. Stan¬
hope and Secretary Craggs gave an evasive answer,
that the House of Commons in Ireland had already
rejected the bill when it was offered them, and this
time it was not returned at all.
Too inclined already to a passive acquiescence in
the destiny which England was forcing on them, drawn
by their immediate interests in the direction of the
convenient sheep-breeding, which the contraband trade
made so profitable, and ' driven/ as Swift bitterly
described it, ' into barbarity for the sake of peace,'1 the
Irish gentlemen might have been excused if they had
now given up the battle; and indeed each year saw
the ranks thinning of those who still struggled against
the destiny of the country. Many a landlord who,
with good examples round him, and in a wholesome
social atmosphere, would have lived usefully and
honourably, and have made Ireland the better for his
presence, was sinking down into a drinking, swearing,
duel fighting, scandalous being. But the few who re¬
fused to despair fought manfully on ; and, eight years
later, though direct encouragement they could obtain
none, yet after a famine, in which thousands of the
peasantry had died, they did succeed in wringing out
of the English Council a consent that the prohibitory
even expect markets but when Bolton to Secretary Craggs, August
corn is so very scarce and dear 14, 1719.' MSS. Record Office,
in England that tliey cannot be 1 Tracts on Irish affairs. Swift'3
supplied from thence.'—'Duke of Works, vol. vii.
44« THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [EK. II.
clauses in tlie leases should be cancelled, and tliat
in every farm a certain small portion should be under
the plough. After a great potato failure, when the
roads were covered with starving beggars, and in every
cabin there was one dead or dying, the Irish Parliament
did at length, in the year 1728, obtain thus much in
the way of concession. And even this poor instalment
of justice and common sense they owed less to them¬
selves than to the intercession of Archbishop Boulter,
who, though unable to persuade his brother prelates
to consent to the emancipation of the Dissenters, suc¬
ceeded in persuading the Duke of Newcastle that, to
condemn the Irish to recurring famine, was neither
safe nor wise.1
1 ' The Primate to the Duke of
Newcastle, March 7, 1728.' MSS.
Record Office. I quote from the
original. Boulter was an English
"Whig, and had been Bishop of
Bristol. He succeeded Lindsay as
Primate in 1724, and was, for many
years, the chief adviser of the Eng¬
lish Government in Irish affairs.
He is evil spoken cf in patriotic
histories as the upholder of the
English interest, and the advocate
of the promotion of Englishmen
to Irish offices. His prejudice in
favour of his countrymen was
owing simply to the inveterate
wrong-headedness in Church mat¬
ters of the Irish clergy and men of
rank. His main object, of which.
he never lost sight, was the repeal
of the Test Act. His advice on
matters of state, whether England
followed it or not, was always on
the side of liberality and justice.
Archbishop though he was, he was
free from the cant of his profession.
Yet his practical excellence would
have gained him credit had it been
found in a person more spiritually-
minded, as the visible fruit of doc¬
trinal piety. In the famine of 1741
he fed thousands of the Dublin
poor with meal for many weeks at
his single expense, spending, as a
brother bishop wonderingly said,
'no less than 251, a day.'—'The
Bishop of Dromore to -4 April
iS, 1741.' Ibid.
449
SECTION VI.
But neither can the history of Ireland be understood,
nor can the conduct of the English Government
1719
on the one hand, and that of the Protestant
Colony on the other, be equitably judged, without a
knowledge of the conditions and habits of another section
of the Irish people. The representatives of the great
Catholic families who preserved their estates, under the
Articles of Galway and Limerick, had either sold them
and gone abroad, and were serving in the French or
Spanish armies, or had conformed to the Establishment,
or else had taken shelter from the penal laws behind
some Protestant friend or kinsman, and had escaped
molestation by withdrawing into privacy. In Ireland
itself, few or no Catholic gentlemen of high birth or
connexion cared to put themselves forward in situations
which would draw attention to their humiliation, and
they preferred the repose of dignified seclusion to
noisy or complaining agitation. The names of men
like Lord Antrim, Lord Kenmare, Lord Fingal, Lord
Athenry, or Sir Stephen Rice, are unheard of in scenes
such as those which I am about to describe. But
there was a rank below them, men of moderate pro¬
perty, small squires or squireens; large middlemen,
holding long leases ; scattered over all the country—
Catholics in reality, if affecting Protestantism to
escape the inconveniences attaching to their faith:
IliEL. I. (J (J
45° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. II.
again there were sons and grandsons of the old
families, who had been dispossessed under the Act
of Settlement, still calling themselves gentlemen, too
proud to work, too poor to live honourably without it;
all together forming a section of society the least re¬
putable, the least manageable, the least worthy in a
human or intelligible sense of any class perhaps calling
itself civilized in the known world. These were the
men who, in old times, had formed the retinues of the
robber chiefs, or had sought for glory and the praise
of bards and harpers, by driving their neighbours'
cows, or burning down their neighbours' haggards.
These were the men who, in the long desperate
struggle of the Irish leaders to keep at bay the growing
rule of England, had fought at the side of Shan O'Neil,
or Desmond, or Tyrone; and when the English sword
proved at last the sharpest, had earned pardon and
reward by bringing their comrades' heads in bloody
sacksful to the conqueroi's. These were the men who,
when the Lords of the Pale, and the Earls of Ormond
and Antrim would have taken Ireland out of the hands
of the Parliamentarians, and sought redress of their
wrongs by loyalty to their lawful King, stained an
honourable if mistaken cause with innocent blood, and
made the name of Irish rebellion for ever infamous by
the massacre of 1641. These were the men who, when
the ten infernal years of civil war were ended in confis¬
cation and forfeiture, avenged the wrongs of their
bleeding country by midnight murders as Rapparees
and Tories, or else as cosherers were not ashamed to
CH. iii.] PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION. 451
be fed in idleness and vice by the tenants of the lands
which they had lost. These too are the same men
whom we have known in later years, either as the
spendthrifts who still lived by robbery in the shape of
debts which they could never pay; as the hard riders,
gamblers, drunkards, duellists; the rakes of Mallow,
the half savage, half humorous Irish blackguards
that figure in the legends of the first years of the
present century, as the professional political agitators,
as the place-hunters under the disguise of patriots, the
heroes of the tragi-comedy of the cabbage-garden,
or the Fenians of the raid of the ' Fed Fiver/
Of such men as these, all of them essential children
of anarchy, recruited by idle younger brothers, disre¬
putable members of otherwise honourable families,
landless heads of attainted houses, who lived in dreams
of a free Irish Parliament, and of re-instatement in
their old domains, there were always many thousands
in Ireland, who formed an element perpetually active
for evil. Had industry been allowed to grow, and to
bring with it, as it must have brought, order and law,
and steady occupation, they would have disappeared
before civilization like the Fed Indians, or like the
wild animals of the forest. In the wretchedness to
which Ireland was degraded, they throve as in their
natural element.
Arthur Young has drawn their portraits as he saw
them in 1770 :—
' I must now come,' he says, f to a class of persons
to whose conduct it is almost entirely owing, that the
GG 2
452 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. II.
character of that nation has not that lustre abroad
which it will soon merit. This is the class of little
country gentlemen, tenants who drink their claret by
means of profit rents, jobbers in farms, bucks, your
fellows with round hats edged with gold, who hunt in
the day, get drunk in the evening, and fight the next
morning. These are the men among whom drinking,
wrangling, quarrelling, fighting, ravishing, &c., are
found as in their native soil/1
Yixere fortes ante Agamemnona.
These gentlemen were flourishing in full vigour
under Queen Anne and the first George. Pictures
of them, more or less accurate, can be put together
out of the records in Dublin Castle, and they and
their doings will form the subject of the following
book.
1 Youita's Tour in Ireland, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 113.
453
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
IRISH IDEAS.
SECTION I.
HEN the Pretender attempted a descent on Scot¬
land in 1708 and the French fleet was to have
come to Gal way to make a diversion in Ireland in his
favour, preparations had been made for an extensive
Catholic rising throughout Connaught. The Scotch
expedition failed. The French did not show them¬
selves on the Irish coast. The exclusion of the Pres¬
byterians from the militia, had given the intending
insurgents a tempting opportunity; but the Catholics
knew that, unless supported by corresponding move¬
ments elsewhere, even if successful at the beginning,
they would have to deal once more with the whole
strength of England ; and they were too prudent to
risk another desperate struggle single-handed. But
though their hopes were quenched for the moment,
the purpose was not abandoned. In 1711,
1711
when the Tory ministers came into power, the
Pretender's chances seemed again favourable. Rumours
454
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. HI.
of a restoration were flying fast and thick in the Irish
air. Large companies of friars were reported as riding
through the Western counties from village to village,
telling the people ' that the ould abbeys were about
to be set up again.' There were f more of them than
had been seen for many years.' They were well-dressed
and well mounted, mysterious apparitions, risking
the dangers of the law for some unascertained pur¬
pose, yet creating, wherever they went, the vague
ferment of excitement and expectation of change.1
They had found the benefit in the last war of having
Connaught entirely to themselves. Estates there had
been bought in the interval by English speculators,
who had intruded themselves into Boscommon, Mayo,
and even Connemara itself. Encouraged by these
neighbours, more than one of the old Galway families
had deserted the national cause, turned Protestant,
and gone over to the enemy. If there was to be
another rebellion, a first step towards success would
be to purge the country both of the home renegades
and these dangerous aliens. Political speculations
were reinforced by agrarian grudges, which created
instruments ready made to the hand.
Between the scanty half-savage inhabitants of wild
districts, who claim a right to land which they will not
cultivate, and civilized men who desire to make a
rational use of it, there is always an irreconcilable
feud. The improver buys an estate, with a population
1 'Miscellaneous Depositions, 1711. Co. Roscommon.' HSS.
Dublin Castle.
CH. I.] IRISH IDEAS. 455
wlio Lave lived upon it from immemorial time in their
own barbarous way. lie perceives that, with more
intelligent treatment, he can treble the value of his
purchase, and raise the condition of his tenants by
compelling them to work. They have no desire to be
raised. They deny his right to meddle with them.
He clears them off, and introduces others who will do
as he tells them; and there is at once war—war in
which each side believes that justice is on its side, war
which can end only in the extermination of one or the
other party. The English settlers had taken possession
of vast tracts of mountains, built enclosures, raised
stocks of sheep and black cattle, and established
Scotch herdsmen, necessarily in exposed situations, to
take charge of them. Gentlemen of the old blood—
Sir Walter Blake especially—were following the ex¬
ample, adopting English habits, and, still worse, the
English creed. Before the example spread, or the
new system took deeper root, the Irish determined to
make an end of it.
The campaign opened in Eyre Connaught, a part
of Connemara. In the early winter of 1711, large
armed parties in white shirts traversed the country in
the long nights, ' houghing and destroying the cattle
belonging to persons who were unacceptable to the
Irish as having taken lands to farm/1 From Eyre
Connaught the movement spread with the mysterious
rapidity of a plan carefully concerted. It swept along
1 ' Petition to the Duke of Ormond from twenty Gentlemen of
Galway, Nov. 1711.' JlfSS. Dublin.
45<S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. HI.
Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, through Mayo, past
Castlebar to Sligo; then down through Roscommon
and Galway, and south into Clare. Notices were
dropped at the shepherds' cottages, or were nailed
against the doors, informing them that war was de¬
clared against the stockmaster, that it would be con¬
tinued till the stock was destroyed, and bidding them
stir at their peril. All night long would be heard the
roaring of the wretched cattle, as they fell under the
knife ; wild cries, and ' volleys of shots from bogs and
mountains, and the huzzas of the Hough ers.'1 If the
settlers or their servants ventured out, they found
their houses burning when they returned. At day¬
break the liill-sides were seen strewn with carcases of
oxen and sheep ]ying dead in hundreds or in thousands.
The bands by whom the slaughter was accomplished
seemed to have started from the earth. Nothing could
be traced to the local peasantry. They professed mere
ignorance, amazement, and terror. It was found only
that, wherever a butchery had taken place, they were
gathered in crowds on the morning following to buy
the bodies, which the owners were glad to dispose of
at any price which they could get. The warning let¬
ters were signed ' Evan;' but who Evan was none
could guess, for he was omnipresent in four counties.
Here and there suspected persons were arrested, but
no evidence could be found against them. The story
which they generally told was, that the gangs at work
1 ' Edward Crowe to the Bishop of Cloyne, February 7, 1712.' MSB.
Dublin. ' Sir William Caulfield to Secretary Dawson, February 16.' Ibid.
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
457
were 'King James's old soldiers/ and that the object
was to harass Connaught ' till an army could arrive
which they expected from France.' Beyond question
it was the work of Catholics, for Protestants were the
only sufferers. But whether it was really a prelude to
a rebellion, whether it was an agrarian attack on the
grazing system, or whether it was revenge for the
passing of the penal laws, no certain conclusion could
be arrived at. The accounts of the attitude of the
priests were contradictory. There was no doubt that
they knew the perpetrators, and as little that they
would tell nothing. Sir William Caulfield, who hated
them, confessed that he could find no proof of their
guilt. They would have preferred, naturally enough,
he said, to see people on the land instead of stock;
but in words, so far as he could hear, ' they had con¬
demned the barbarous method by which the ground
was being cleared.' Priests at Tuam, on the other
hand, had been heard to pray ' for Evan's good success.'
An Augustinian friar, at Kilmore, had desired all his
congregation to join with him in imploring a blessing
on Evan's head. Another father had read one of
Evan's proclamations in the pulpit, and preached a
sermon in his praise as the poor man's friend.1 The
High Sheriff of Galway arrested Dr. Maddin, the priest
of Loughrea, as one of the ringleaders. The mob rose
in fury, surrounded the house where the priest was
confined, and would have torn the sheriff in pieces but
for the appearance of a troop of dragoons.
1 'George Fowler to the Archbishop of Tuam, March 3 1712'
MSS. Dublin.
45S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [uk. HI.
The original mystery was never completely unra¬
velled. The English landowners were few and widely
scattered. The rising was so sudden, the surprise so
complete, and the destruction so universal, that they
were unable to combine or collect at any one point
sufficient force to attack the houghing parties at their
work. They had to lie still behind barricaded doors,
and congratulate themselves that the attack this time
was on their property and not upon their lives.
On one occasion only a gang was fallen in with,
which showed that the work was directed by men of
intelligence and education.
At the end of November, 1711, a soldier belonging
to the garrison, who was shooting near Galway, was
stopped by a number of men with blackened faces,
who took his gun from him. He observed that they
all spoke English. The leader wore several heavy gold
rings. He produced from his pocket a handsome
chased flask and drank some wine from it. He had a
bag full of Spanish coin, a handful of which he offered
his prisoner, promising that if he would join the band
he would make a gentleman of him. Apparently he
was one of the better born Rapparees, with the cour¬
tesies of his profession ; for when the soldier declined
his offers, he gave him back his gun, saying that he
had more arms already than he needed, and bidding
him go tell the Governor of Galway that, if the garri¬
son meddled with him, he would burn the town to the
gates, hough the soldiers as he had done the cattle,
and carry the officers' heads away on pikes.'
The vast area of country which was wasted proves
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
459
that the devastation was the worlc of many hands.
Yery few of the perpetrators were detected, and still
fewer were punished. One or two were executed.
Others, though caught red-handed, were acquitted by
the juries. Throughout Connaught the Irish Catholic
gentry combined to prevent any effective prosecution
or discovery; and, if innocent themselves, they proved
that their sympathies were entirely on the side of
those whom they knew to be guilty. To stop the
destruction, and, if possible, unravel the mystery, the
Government at length offered a free pardon to all
who would confess and give securities for future good
behaviour. The Houghers' object was substantially
accomplished. Terror had done its work. Con-
naught was recovered to the Irish for half a century,
for no stock breeders would risk their capital for mere
industrial use in a country where it could be thus
swept away with impunity, and those who remained
fell, for protection, into Irish habits, and reared their
sheep for the smuggling wool trade, which the native
ordinances were pleased to permit. Sixteen young
gentlemen in Galway then gave in their names, having
nothing to fear, and nothing more to lose. The most
substantial and most respected of the Irish proprietors
of the West became bail for them.1 One of a similar
1 List of persons tliat rendered
themselves as Houghers in the
county of Gahvay, pursuant to the
proclamation, and entered into
recognizances under John Stanton,
Esq. :—
Martin MacDonogh, of Ballydaly
Darby O'Flaherty
Bryan King
James Naghten
Denis Fahy
John McMoyle Burke
James Caheron
Daniel Grany
460
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. nr.
party in Clare, who surrendered under the proclam¬
ation, volunteered a detailed account of the proceedings.
Connor O'Loghlin, son of Bory O'Loghlin, a Catholic
gentleman of good birth and station, said that his
cousin, Captain Charles O'Loghlin, after making him
take an oath of secresy, invited him to join ' in
houghing the cattle of the merchants and new-comers
that were engrossing the lands.' He, his cousin, and
seven or eight companions, made up the gang. They
did not confine themselves to the settlers, for the first
object of their attentions was one of the purest
Milesians in Ireland, Sir Donogh O'Brien, who was a
Protestant. Sir Donogh, on second thoughts, they
concluded not to meddle with. He was capable of
' summoning all the priests in the country,' demanding
an account from them of the doings of their parishioners,
and afterwards fof taking account with such.' Sir
Walter Blake was a safer victim. They killed three
hundred cgreat rams and wethers' on Sir Walter
Blake's estate; afterwards, armed with guns and
swords, they stole away at night by bridle-paths into
the Galway mountains, took up their quarters at a
friend's house, where they were handsomely enter¬
tained; and, after a day or two of feasting and hard
Nicholas Supple
Bryan Morris
Richard Kearigane
Richard Pearle
Herbert O'Flaherty
Francis Murphy
John Armstrong
Henry Joyce
All these persons were gentlemen,
and entered into recognizances—
100/. each for themselves, and their
securities 50/. each.
Among the gentlemen who he-
came hail for them I find the names
of Edmund McDonogh, Bryan Fla¬
herty, Godfrey Daly, Robert Blake,
and Edmund Burke. MSS. Dub¬
lin Castle.
c.r. i.]
IRISH IDEAS.
461
drinking, went to tlieir work again, and cleared the
adjoining farms.1 The careless recklessness of the
party showed how needless was disguise, how com¬
pletely they felt themselves secure in the sympathy of
the county.2
For the present the work was effectually done.
No cattle-farmer remained in the West save those
who consented to submit to the laws and customs of
Connaught. The lesson was repeated when necessary.
Forty years later Lord St. George attempted to plant
a part of Connemara with Protestant families, build¬
ing them decent houses, barns, stalls, and cattle-sheds.
No Catholic tenants appear to have been removed to
make way for them; but the mere presence of these
heretical strangers was intolerable. The Houghers
rose, levelled houses and outbuildings, swearing that
no Protestant should settle in the district. In this
instance the guiding hand could be traced with cer¬
tainty. ' The priests/ wrote a gentleman on the spot,
'told the people they were contending for the Holy
Catholic religion/ 3
Later yet, and falling into a lower circle, the
Houghers became identified with the Whiteboys, and
spread over the four provinces. Unable to shake off
their enemies by open force, they could at least make
1 ' Information of Connor
O'Loghlin, sworn before Robert
Miller, Justice of the Peace, 1713.'
MSS. Dublin Castle.
2 The deposition ends with the
statement of young O'Loghlin, that
all the aforesaid persons—Captain
O'Loghlin, Lieutenant Markahan,
Ensign Connor Hogan, William
Ivempsey, Bryan Hogan, &c. —
were ' Papists to his certain know¬
ledge.'
3 ' Anthony Miles to the Earl
of Kildare, July 30, 1757.' Church
MSS. Dublin Castle.
462 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. HI.
the land, which the Protestants had usurped, a barren
possession to its new owners.1
1 The following proclamation is
a specimen of the literary capabili¬
ties of the later Houghers, men of
inferior station to the O'Loghlins
of Clare, bnt showing traces of
the classical education given in the
hedge schools:—
' Hougherstown, Co. Wexford,
July, 1779.
' Isaac Cullimore,
'We, the undernamed per¬
sons, doth insert these lines here
to give you notice that we are still
in very good health, thanks be to
God ! and doth intend to see justice
and equality rectified in our barony,
though much oppressed by domi¬
neering Quakers. So we dance
with joy, and reason we have to
see your brother John the Atheist
inhumed, and likewise doth deter¬
mine to pay the doleful Reedstown
a triumphing visit once more—and,
that before this day sennight, and
please God, to hough, maim, and
slain the oxen which are in your
possession on said lands under the
protection of M. M., and will erect
an altar on said lands, and offer
them as victims to the Infernal
Gods, who will conduce him with
security into Charons custody, who,
in his magnificent boat, will trans¬
port him over the river Styx into
Plutos region, and Devil speed him
and all the precedents of his in¬
fernal generation.
' Sowe suppose that you thought
we to have been dead, and to have
entirely omitted our antient cus¬
toms—we have been obscure this
time past and on that account you
have sent down cattle and after¬
wards a herd to produce benefit
out of said lands. But as long as
the Almighty God will leave us
breath to draw, you shall never
reap the value of one farthing out
of the above-mentioned farm. So,
Isaac, we take the more easy way
to conduce you to the state of ob¬
taining God's grace, and to come in
unity with your friends and neigh¬
bours. So, when we will transact
this precedent matter, if you do
not become more tranquil and mild,
you shall quickly be dispatched,
and shall be dismissed to a D. T. S.,
who will punish and smash you
according to your cruelty to your
clients in the parish of Tacumsliaw.
' And likewise, if you do not
desist from taking lands, and give
up them farms which you have in
the said parish, Isaac nor his family
shall be no more, and Neemstown
in like manner shall become a
Reedstown.
'So your inimical antagonists
remain in good health,
'John Houghcr, Peter Burn-
stack, Phil Slasher, Patrick
Fearnot, Column Kill, Syl¬
vester Quaker-rouser, Ed¬
mund Smart, Edward Stout,
and several others too laborious to
insert.
' This to infernal Isaac Culli¬
more, of Neemstown, Wexford.'
MSS. Dublin Castle.
463
SECTION II.
The immunity from ordinary crime, which so honour¬
ably distinguishes modern Ireland, was no charac¬
teristic of its condition in the last century. To settle
differences by fighting had been ingrained, by many
centuries of unbroken habit, into the temper of the
people. When private wars and forays were no
longer possible, duelling took their place, and was so
frequent and deadly, that it was proposed, at one time,
to make the survivor responsible for the maintenance
of his victim's family. Duelling, and the strange
forms which it assumed, will be treated of in a future
chapter. At present, the reader's attention is to be
1 I leave this section almost as I
wrote it, because it contains nothing
but what is true. The'facts which
I have related are taken from the
records in Dublin Castle. From
the records I have only taken speci¬
mens, and the practice was far
more eommon than even the records
shew. The Roman Catholics were
not the only offenders. The Act of
Parliament which I quoted speaks
of degraded clergymen officiating
on such occasions as well as priests.
There were blackguards enough
of both creeds in Ireland, and this
book is not written to cover the
sins of the Protestants. It is also
true that England and Scotland
were disgraced by similar atrocities.
But they were on a scale in Ire¬
land far beyond what could be
found in any other part of the
civilized world.
'Ireland,' says Arthur Young
in 1776, 'is the only country in
Europe where associations among
men of fortune are necessary for ap¬
prehending ravishers. It is scarce¬
ly credible how many young women,
even in late years, have been car¬
ried off and ravished in order, as
they have generally fortunes, to
gain the appearance of a voluntary
marriage.'
Ireland also was the only coun¬
try where the ravishers were pro¬
tected from punishment by the
sympathy of the people.
There is 110 evidence that the
Catholic bishops ever exerted
464
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. HI.
called to acts of violence of anotlier and yet more re¬
markable kind, which, like duelling, were sanctioned
by public opinion; and, notwithstanding repeated
efforts of the Irish Parliament, were practically shielded
from punishment. The Houghers revenged the wrongs
of their country by mere destruction. Another set
of young gentlemen of both religious persuasions were
in the habit of recovering equivalents for the lands
of which they considered themselves to have been
robbed, or of making their fortunes on easy terms, by
carrying off young girls of good condition to the
mountains, ravishing them with the most exquisite
brutality, and then compelling them to go through
a form of marriage, which a priest or parson in
attendance was ready to celebrate. The High Church
party in the English and Irish Governments could not
bring themselves to treat a sacrament as invalid how¬
ever irregularly performed, and the unfortunate victims
were thus driven, in the majority of instances, to make
the best of their situation, and accept the fate from
which there was no legal escape. In vain Parliament
passed bill upon bill making abduction felony, and
threatening penalties of the harshest kind against the
officiating ecclesiastics. So long as the marriages
themselves were regarded as binding, the families
injured preferred to cover their disgrace, and refused
themselves to check the practice,
and the discipline in which the
inferior clergy was held by their
superiors implies that they could
have checked it had they cared to
do so. The bishops of the Anglican
Church were active in the wrong
direction, to prevent a legislative
remedy.
ch. r.]
IRISH IDEAS.
465
to prosecute. The heroes of these performances were
often highly connected. Political influence was brought
to bear for them, and when convicted, which was
extremely seldom, the Crown pardoned them.1 The
priests, secure in the protection of the people, laughed
at penalties which existed only on paper, and it was
said encouraged practices which brought converts to
the Faith, and put money in their own pockets.2 High
sheriff's, magistrates, and grand juries took their cue
from the Castle, and hesitated to embroil themselves
with their Catholic neighbours when they knew that
they would not be supported. If occasionally, in
indignation at some exceptionally furious outrage, they
attempted to exert themselves, the faint assistance
which they were allowed even from the army, when
there were troops in the neighbourhood, taught them
that in future their safest course was to remain passive.
A remarkable instance occurred in Tipperary
in 1754. A young lady had been carried off and
violated with the usual brutalities. She escaped to her
1 Arthur Young says that there
was but one instance on record,
where a person guilty of forcible
abduction had been executed. This
was probably James Cotter, whose
case will be presently mentioned.
3 ' The Commons allege,' I be¬
lieve with truth, 'that the priests
direct their people to marry Pro¬
testants, as experience shows that,
in those cases, the whole family
become Papists.'—'The Duke of
Devonshire to the Duke of New-
IREL. I. '
castle, December 25, 1743.' 'We
have reason to believe the priests
are, in a great measure, supported
by gratuities on occasion of such
marriages as are made void by this
bill.'—■' Memorandum of the Irish
Council on sending to England
" the Heads of a Bill to make more
effectual an Act to prevent the taking
away and marrying children against
the wishes of their parents and
guardians." '—MSS. Dublin Castle,
1745-
h h
466 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. HI.
relations; the priest who married her was taken and
identified ; and the lady was bound over to prosecute at
Limerick. Mr. Lovitt, the high sheriff, undertook to
convey the prisoner thither from Clonmel. There were
several companies of soldiers in the town, and he applied
to the commanding officer for an escort. The officer
said that his orders were in no case to grant more
than a corporal's guard. He would give him twelve
men and no more. The high sheriff in vain insisted
that five times as many would not carry a priest
through Tipperary as a prisoner, if his life was supposed
to be in danger. The officer had his instructions from
Dublin, and could not exceed them. Three thousand
people gathered on the road. They stopped and
searched every coach and chair that passed, to find
the lady whom they meant to murder to silence her
evidence. The sheriff's party was attacked, the under-
sheriff was half-killed, the soldiers were beaten and
dispersed, and the priest was rescued; while such was
the general rage at the affront to the sacred person of
this reverend gentleman, that Mr. Darner wrote to the
Secretary that no Protestant in the country, who slept
in a thatched house, dared speak or act in such matters.1
Violence and paralysis of authority will be called
the consequence of unjust legislation. Had the
Catholics been treated equitably, it may be said, they
would have been orderly members of society. The
answer is that crimes such as these were the normal
growth of Ireland; they had descended from a
1 MSS. Dublin Castle. 1754.
ch. i.]
IRISH IDEAS.
467
time when Protestantism was an unknown word, and
Popery and Irish ideas were supreme in the land.
They were the native growth of the soil, which yielded
only to higher culture where the English sword gave
strength to English law. Abduction may mean any
thing, between the escape of romantic lovers from the
tyranny of parents, and the most villanous of imagin¬
able atrocities. A few stories taken almost at random
from the mass of depositions suffice to show that,
under any circumstances and under any conceivable
form of civilized government, the performers in them,
principals and accessories, secular and spiritual, could
have been only fit for the gallows. These outrages
were no deeds of stealthy revenge upon oppressors by
men whom injustice had driven mad. They were acts
of war done in open day, in the face of the whole
people, and supported by their sympathy.
A common and comparatively harmless specimen
is to be found in the deposition of Mr. Armstrong, a
Tipperary clergyman : ' Mr. Armstrong said that, in the
midst of divine service in the forenoon of June 6,
17 5 6, Henry Grady, with several ruffians, arrived 1
with a blunderbuss, guns, pistols, and other arms,
came into the church of the town of Tipperary, and,
with their arms cocked and presented, called out that
none should offer to stir, that if any offered to stir from
their seats they would shoot. The said Grady advanced
up the aisle with a cocked pistol presented in his
hand ; on which the informant went from the reading
desk, spoke to said Grady, and entreated him to retire
h h 2
46S THE ENGLISH TV IE EL AND. [bk. hi.
and desist. On which lie retired once or twice to
the door, and then advanced with two of his accom¬
plices, who were not known by the informant; but one
had a gun cocked in his hands, and swore he would
shoot the informant, and the other had a gun in one
hand and a hanger drawn in the other, with which he
struck the informant on the arm, and cut through the
surplice and gown. Immediately after Grady and one
of the said persons went into the pew in which Miss
Susannah Grove sate, and carried her off by force.
Most or all the ruffians who were armed retired with
their arms presented, and their faces towards
the congregation, till they came to the church
door, which they locked, and carried off the key. . .1
Personal passion rarely or never shows in these
brutal stories. Young girls were not the only victims.
Elizabeth Dobbin, a wealthy widow, at Belfast, sixty-
two years old, was one night seized in her bed,
dragged downstairs, flung upon a car, which was
waiting in the street, and conducted by an armed
party to a house in Carrickfergus. A priest was in¬
troduced dressed as a beggar. One of the ravishers
presented himself as the intended husband, who
answered her agonized entreaties to be spared by a
threat that, if she refused to marry him, ' he would
tear her limb from limb.' She was then stripped and
violated, one of the confederates f standing the while
at the bedside with a drawn sword in his hand.'2
1 MSS. Dublin Castle.
2 'Case of Elizabeth Dobbin, March 2, 1741.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
469
Catherine Stackpoole, another elderly widow of good
fortune, living in Cork, was disturbed in her sleep by a
clamour at her door. On rising to enquire the
meaning of the disturbance, she found herself
in the arms of Mr. Austin Fitzgerald, a gentleman of
unblemished Geraldine descent. Fitzgerald hurried
her down the stairs, tied her on a horse in her night¬
gown, and galloped off with her to the nearest
mountains with a dozen young fellows as his escort.
She was taken down at a lonely cabin, and compelled,
under the same threats of instant death, to go through
a form of marriage. A priest, ready prepared, pre¬
sented himself, said a few words, and declared the
ceremony complete. Fitzgerald was then left alone in
possession of his prize. A desperate struggle followed,
a scene indescribable here though laid accurately in
all its details before the Castle authorities. The
bridegroom ultimately took flight, bitten, scratched,
and torn. The woman escaped in the darkness, made
her way back to Cork, and at a cost of 500Z. to her¬
self succeeded in bringing Fitzgerald to trial. He was
convicted on the clearest evidence and was sentenced
to death. The execution was delayed. Applications
for pardon were put in by his relations. The high-
spirited lady wrote with her own hand to the Duke of
Devonshire, who was then viceroy, relating her story,
and insisting on justice being done. The Duke gave
her fair words, but month followed month, and no
warrant came down to send Fitzgerald to the scaffold.
At length the outraged woman died of her injuries, and
47o THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hi.
the Duke of Bedford, who had succeeded to the govern¬
ment, recommended the ravisher to the mercy of the
Crown.1
Let the reader understand that the cases which
came before the courts were but a fraction of those
which shame and dread of notoriety kept concealed,
and that universally there were the same accompani¬
ments of unmanly brutality, and he will form some
notion of this aspect of Irish life in the last century.2
A family of Protestants, named Keris, were settled
on a farm in Clare. The father and mother were in
prosperous circumstances. They had a single daughter
named Honor, a girl of fourteen, who was the heiress
of their wealth. One afternoon in March I7^U,
1733 /JJ'
two gentlemen, a Mr. Thomas Lucas and a Mr.
Edmond Stock, came to the Kerises' house; and inti¬
mated that some acquaintances of theirs, one of the
O'Loghlins, perhaps the Hougher, and a certain "William
Blood, intended to break into their house that night and
carry Honor to the hills. The object of the visit was to
frighten the mother, and to induce her to allow them
to remain to protect her and her child. The wolves
had stolen in in the shape of watch-dogs. There were
no police in those days. At nine o'clock in the evening
the door was burst open. Blood with two companions
rushed into the room where the family were sitting,
struck the father to the ground with a bludgeon, and
looked round for his victim. At the first alarm she
1 'Case of Catherine Stackpoole, 1757.' MSS. Ireland. Record
Ofhce. 2 See note, p. 664.
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
471
had flown upstairs. Blood proceeded to search the
house with a candle in one hand and a pistol in the
other, saying that he would shoot anyone that stirred.
He found the child cowering in the corner of a loft,
brought her down fainting, and swore he would carry
her away dead or alive. The wretched mother flung
her arms about her. The ruffian seized the mother by
the throat, and, with an oath, dashed her to the ground.
The gentlemen who had stood by, affecting terror,
threw open the windows, and bade the girl spring out,
where there were confederates waiting to seize her.
The women-servants now ran in to help their mistress.
The brave young fellows set upon them with their
sticks, and beat and mangled them till they fell on
the floor. The father lay stunned and senseless; the
mother's clothes were torn from her back ; and, amidst
curses and yells of triumph, Honor Keris wan dragged
to the door, flung upon a horse like a sack, and borne
away in the moonlight. The ravishers stopped at a
cabin a mile and a half distant to let her recover her
senses. There the mother, who had followed scream¬
ing along the road, came up with them. She found
her daughter shivering with cold and terror, and
implored them, in the name of mercy, if they would not
give her up, yet to let her rest for the night where she
was. That was not in the bargain, one of them cried,
snatched her up, tossed her back on the saddle, and
set off again at a gallop. By rare fortune this girl was
saved. The father, having recovered his senses, and
finding himself alone, made his way to the house of a
472 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hl
Mr. Boss Lewin, ail English magistrate in the neigh¬
bourhood. Lewin mounted half a dozen of his servants,
went off in pursuit, and overtook the ravishers before
they could reach the mountains. The young gentlemen
did not care to face Lewin's pistols; they dropped
their prey, insolently saying, however, as they rode off,
that they would have her again some day, and Lewin's
own daughter besides.1
Each magistrate depended 011 his own resources to
enforce the law. The parties were well known; they
did not even care to conceal their identity ; but there
was no force available to arrest them. The Keris
family lived in nightly fear of a new attack — of
finding their home in flames, or their cattle houghed.
But no one was punished. Authority was as powerless
in Clare, as in the days of the chiefs. Law, indeed,
all over Ireland was a phantom, which few had cause
to fear who dared defy it. Anarchy, not tyranny,
was Ireland's scourge; and the medicine which she
needed was not concession, but the forgotten hand of
Cromwell.
Escape on these occasions was the exception. Al¬
most always successful outrage was carried to the
utmost limit of enormity.
Eebecca White was an orphan girl residing in her
own house, on her own property at Cappagh, in
Tipperary. As such she was a tempting prey to the
young blades and bucks of the neighbourhood. An
1 Lublin HSS. Dublin Castle. 1733.
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
473
uncle lived with her as guardian, but was a poor pro¬
tector. On a dark night, in the middle of the
. . 1719
winter of 1718-19, three Fitzgeralds, a William
Brien, and several other persons, all described as gen¬
tlemen, armed to the teeth, with swords, guns, and
pistols, swooped down on Cappagh. The door was
broken open. The women who, knowing the object of
the visit, threw themselves in the way, were knocked
down and kicked into quietness. Rebecca White
was torn out of bed in her shift, dashed against the
wall to stupefy her, and to make her easier to handle,
and was then borne away many miles, to an empty
police barrack, among the bogs on the edge of county
Limerick. The key of the house was found, and the
door opened. A young unregistered priest came for¬
ward as usual ready to perform the sacrament, and
the whole party then surrounded their prisoner, who
had partially recovered from her swoon, and deliber¬
ately told her in a manner evidently serious, that,
unless she consented to marry one of the Fitzgeralds,
they would all violate her in turn, and then murder
her.
With this announcement ringing in her ears, she
was carried upstairs to what was called the officer's
room. The priest followed and began to read. Terri¬
fied as she was she still resisted and forbade him to go
on. He said that if he stopped he would be killed,
lie asked her if she would be Fitzgerald's wife. It
was like asking the lamb, with the butcher's knife at
its throat, if it would be slaughtered. The marriage
474 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. i".
was declared to be complete. The victim was left to
her ravisher; and her wild shrieks wrung some in¬
effectual pity from the wretches who were listening to
her agonies.1
The reader is requested to understand that he has
before him, in these stories, an account of real facts
which happened not much more than a hundred years
ago, in a country constitutionally governed by English
law, under the English Crown. The evidence is the
sworn deposition of the sufferers themselves, and of
such other witnesses as could be prevailed on to give
their testimony. Human creatures have at various
times made devils of themselves, but, probably, no
age, and no part of the world, have produced speci¬
mens quite so detestable as these Irish gentlemen.
In unmanliness, in cowardice, in ferocity, in a combin¬
ation of all the qualities most hateful and despicable
in man's nature, they had achieved a distinction as
yet unmatched. Yet such was the condition of Irish
public opinion, their performances were so much in
favour with general society, that they were allowed
to escape retribution. When all is said, the desire of
England to place the responsibilities attached to landed
tenure in safer hands was not indefensible, nor were
the objections unnatural to the intrusion into the
country of men calling themselves priests, who were
willing to lend themselves to such atrocious and ac¬
cursed acts of infamy.
1 ' Deposition of Rebecca "White.' MSS. Dublin Castle. 1719.
en. i.] 2 El SB IDEAS. 475
A combination of superstition with deliberate
villany has been many times observed in Catholic
countries. The brigand chief, who has cut a throat in
the morning, and burnt a village in the afternoon,
will go through his evening devotions at the shi'ine
of the Madonna with the ardour of unaffected piety.
A similar curious anxiety was at times displayed for
the soul of some outraged Protestant woman by men
whom, unless for the purpose of incurring merited
damnation for their unpunished wickedness on earth,
it would be difficult to credit with the possession of
souls themselves.
Among the wealthy yeomen of Cavan was a certain
Walter Tubman, residing near Carrigaline,
173°
who had an only daughter named Jane. On a
forenoon in November, 1730, her father, mother, and
brothers being absent at the neighbouring fair, and
no one being at home but Jane Tubman, her cousii
Margaret, and some servants, a young Edmund
McKiernan, an unwelcome acquaintance, lounged in,
and after a few jests, to which he received no answer,
he caught hold of Jane, and told her she must go with
him. McKiernan was apparently alone. There were
other houses within call. The woman flung open the
door, thrust her arm into the staple, and shouted for
help. McKiernan, unable to move her, swore if she
did not withdraw her arm he would break it. Imme¬
diately after she found herself in the grasp of half-a-
dozen powerful men, dragged into the road, and flung
across a horse's back. She was an unusually strong
476 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. ill.
girl. She clutched at their hair and pulled it off in
handsful. She tore their shirts open. Half-a-dozen
times she threw herself on the ground, to be tossed
back upon the horse with execrations : one of the men
at length held her on by force, another thrust his
hand into her mouth, and when she made her teeth
meet through his fingers, a third gagged her with a
handkerchief. At length senseless and exhausted,
the blood streaming from her nose, she lay swooning
on the saddle. The party then divided. Five fell
behind to prevent pursuit, and turned back the farm-
servants, who had followed to rescue their young
mistress. McKiernan and two others went on with
their victim over bogs and curraghs, till they arrived
late at night at the cabin of a widow Kilkenny deep
in the mountains. Sick, faint, and hoarse, covered
with blood, bruised and wounded in many places, the
unhappy girl was here lifted off and carried in, and
McKiernan at once, and without a moment's respite,
told her she must prepare to be his wife on the instant.
Dreadful as her condition was her spirit did not fail
her. She said he might murder her if he so pleased;
she would rather die than submit to his purpose.
The widow, pretending compassion, affected to
interpose. She said that no harm should befall the
poor creature that night; she should sleep with her
own daughter; the door should be locked, and
McKiernan should not come near her. She believed
the old wretch, as she had no choice but to believe.
In a romance she would have found a real protector,
CH. 1.]
IRISH IDEAS.
477
and before morning deliverance would have come.
Keality is more cruel than imagination. She' bad no
sooner thrown herself exhausted on the bed, than the
door was burst open; McKiernan rushed in, flung the
other woman out of the room, bound Jane Tubman
hand and foot, and then mercilessly violated her.
When she recovered consciousness in the morning
she found herself surrounded by a gang of desperadoes,
all Papists, and, as presently appeared, Papists who
attended to their religious duties. They told her that
they were McKiernan's guards, and that a hundred
men should not take her from them. For a week she
was carried from place to place, never resting two
nights under the same roof. At the end of it' an old
dirty fellow' was introduced, ' with a long beard, and
in his hand a string of beads.' She was made to stand
up, McKiernan holding her, while the priest repeated
a few words in Latin, and then said that she was
lawfully married. With admirable spirit she still
defied both of them; her body was in their power,
but her will and conscience were still her own; and
she sternly refused to make her chain more easy by
consenting to wear it. Her father and her father's
friends would find her yet, she said, and would see
them all punished.
Unless her father was strong enough to inflict the
punishment with his own hand, McKiernan knew,
unfortunately but too well, that from Irish justice
he had nothing to fear. ' Damn your father's soul,'
he coolly said. ' If you escape and go back to your
47S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iit.
friends, I'll burn your father's bouse over bis bead,
and take you away again.'
Tbere was a cbapel at no great distance from the
place where she was last detained; McKiernan and
bis guards were punctual in their attendance at mass ;
and, with a laudable zeal for her soul, tried to persuade
her to go with them. ' Damn you, you little bitch,'
was the beautiful exhortation of these pious children
of Holy Church, ' not one of your profession will ever
go to heaven.'
In the depth of her misery, the high-spirited Jane
Tubman refused to allow others to run useless risks to
save her. A woman named Susannah MacDowell, who
appeared afterwards as a witness in the prosecution,
offered to carry a message to her friends. Knowing
how feeble was the Castle government; how unwilling
to risk offending the Catholic mob, by assisting the
magistrates to act vigorously; and fearing too that
if her father interfered he might only expose himself
to popular vengeance, she bade the woman go tell both
him and her other relations that, for the present, they
must stay at home, and keep quiet. McKiernan had
sworn to her that, ' unless the magistrates sent a free
pardon for himself and his men, damn his soul, her
father and they should all sup sorrow.' ' Hitherto he
had kept his people from doing them harm; but, damn
him, he would keep them off no longer.'
At last, after three dreadful months, she stole away
into the darkness one night, when McKiernan was off
his guard, found her way over bogs and mountains to
ch. i.] IRISH IRE AS. 479
a Protestant settlement, sent word to lier father, and
was taken home.1 Her own story upon oath, the
evidence of the servants who had witnessed her carry¬
ing off, and the evidence of the woman who had
been with her in her captivity, were given before
the magistrates of the county and forwarded to
Dublin; but, as usual, there is no trace that, for the
sake of a miserable Protestant girl, the Government
thought it necessary to court a collision with Catholic
public opinion.
Was the Irish Parliament to be blamed because
they refused to believe that the tree on which
1720
such fruits grew had lost its old corruption ?
because they strove to uproot a system from the soil
which shielded the most atrocious of crimes ?
That the people approved of these accursed deeds,
that they regarded an attempt to punish them as a
tyrannical interference with their rights, appeared in
a still more remarkable instance.
Sir James Cotter, of Anngrove, in the county of
Cork, had commanded in chief for King James in
Munster, during the wars of 1690-91. He had been
governor of Cork city, had represented it in King
James's Parliament, and was otherwise a distinguished
adherent of the fallen dynasty. Though unprotected
by the Articles of Limerick, he appears to have es¬
caped attainder, and, dying in 1705, he was succeeded
1 ' Depositions of Jane Tubman,
Robert Linn of Killygar, Peter
McLoghlin, John Scott, and
Susannah McDowell.' MSS. 1730.
Dublin Castle.
480 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
by bis son, who, like bis father, was tbe idol and dar¬
ling of tbe Southern Catholics, and is represented, by
tbe tenderness of history, as having fallen a victim to
his devotion to the cause of the House of Stuart.1
This brilliant cavalier possessed other claims besides
loyalty to the Stuarts, for the bad elevation which he
obtained. Being fifteen years old at his father's death,
he was placed, in compliance with the Popery Act,
under the guardianship of a Protestant relative, one of
the Nettervilles. He was stolen away, however, by
his Catholic friends, sent to England, educated in the
orthodox faith, and afterwards, while still a minor,
married to the daughter of George Mathews, a Catholic
also.2 Having distinguished himself unfavourably in
the election riot in Dublin, in 1713, he confined his
public appearances thenceforward to his own county.
In 1719, either for amusement, or in pursuance of the
campaign against Protestantism, he earned off and
violated the daughter of a Quaker merchant at Cork,
named Elizabeth Squibb. The details of the adventure
have so far not been discovered. The Quakers, how¬
ever, never deficient in determination, and, on this occa¬
sion, perhaps, because the offender was concerned in
some political conspiracies as well, he was arrested,
tried, convicted, and sentenced. That justice should
not be defrauded of its due through the connivance of
the city officials, the Quakers maintained a watch of
their own upon the gaol, and prevented an attempt at
1 Burke's Peerage and Baronetage of Great Britain and Ireland.
2 Commons' Journals, September 29, 1707.
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
481
escape which was almost successful. Cotter was actu¬
ally hanged.1 All Cork and all the South of Ireland
burst into a wail of rage, and the Friends were marked
for retribution. Placards covered the walls.2 Quaker
girls were mobbed in the streets of Cork, and threat¬
ened with being ' Cottered.' No Quaker could show
1 That the violation, and not any
supposed conspiracy, was the offence
for which Cotter was executed, is
quite certain.
A petition of the Quakers pre¬
served in Dublin Castle, dated June
11, 1720, declares :—
' That since the execution of
James Cotter for the rape he com¬
mitted on the body of Elizabeth
Squibb many Quakers have been
assaulted and grossly abused,' &c.
2 Two of these were sent by the
Mayor of Cork to the Castle :—
The first is in prose. ' The fol¬
lowing lines,' writes the mayor,
'were posted at the Land's End,
going down to the house of Edward
Eenn, Quaker :—
' " Vengeance belongeth to me ;
I will repay, saith the Lord." Now
look to it, ye hell-born crew. Cot¬
ter's life shall be a sting to your
cursed carcases that shall be meat
for dogs, and your cursed souls to
burning Acheron, where they will
burn in flames during eternity.
Fenn, look sharp, and other bursen-
gutted dogs besides, the which
were instruments of taking Cotter's
breath. Other blackguard dogs
look sharp.
'God save King James the Third,
of England king, the whom will
IliEl. I.
soon pay anguish and punish in this
matter.'
> The other effusion is in verse.
The patriotic muse, however, was
under eclipse when it was com¬
posed : —
Poor grey-headed Ireland, with bloody-
tears, t
Sharp revenge will seek in her antient
years,
For being robbed of her famous peers.
Her drooping fabrics with grief opprest,
Her entombed heroes will take no rest,
Since Irish honour is a common jest.
Contented with losss he seemed to stand,
Erecting sweet Cotter, her head and
hand,
The illustrious front of a dejected land.
But since cruel fate, in its severest
course,
Did sacrifice his blood without remorse,
And not relenting signed his full divorce.
From nature and honour grown full
mad,
Their forces unto fury needs must add,
For such revenge as ne'er before was
had.
Or else old Ireland will resign her
breath,
And lose her life by his too sudden
death,
For seas of blood will overrun the earth.
Weep, mourn,and fight, all you that can,
And die with grief for that unspotted
man,.
A loss to nations more than I will scan.
If dead by sword, or if in field was
slain,
Although the loss was great, 'twould
---ease the pain,
And to his heirs leave neither spot nor
stain.
—' The Mayor of Cork to Secretary
"Webster, May 24, 1720.'
1 I
482
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. III.
in the streets. The mayor appealed to the Catholic
clergy to restrain the people. The Catholic clergy
either would not or could not. The passion spread to
Limerick, to Tipperary, and at last over all Catholic
Ireland. Quakers' meeting-houses were sacked and
burnt. Quakers travelling about the country were
waylaid and beaten. A girl in Dublin, who was mis¬
taken for Elizabeth Squibb, was beset by a mob of
several thousand people, and would have been torn in
pieces but for the arrival of a company of soldiers.1
The rage against the Friends continued unabated till
it culminated, five years after, in an outrage for which,
happily, no parallel can be found except in a Catholic
country. Human wickedness is a plant which will
grow in all soils and climates. The combination of
fiendish malignity with pretensions to piety are the
peculiar growth of the Church of Home. The story is
thus told by an eyewitness, Paul Lydy, who turned
informer.2
' On or about the 22nd of February, 1725, Paul Lydy,
with ten others, eleven in all, went to the house
1725
of Edward Johnstone, of Carroe, Quaker. Lydy,
having a sledge in his hand, broke open Johnstone's
door; seven or eight of them then went in and took
what money and goods they could find, pulled said
Edward Johnstone out of bed, tied him neck and heels
and dragged him into the kitchen, and then and there
1 'Examination of Rachel Carl- ' Repeated, with some additional
ton, servant to Ebenezer Pike, of circumstances, in a Proclamation
the city of Cork, merchant, May issued by Lord Carteret, a copy of
30, 1720.' MSS. Dublin. which is in the British Museui*.
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
483
heated a griddle on the fire. Three of them then put
said Johnstone on the griddle, stark naked, and heaped
hot coals upon him, and continued torturing him after
an inhuman and barbarous manner, and burned his
body, and most cruelly beat his wife. Lydy stood at
the door, and did see Johnstone striving to keep the
fire from his body; and James Matthias, one of the
party, still kindling the fire, and urging and saying,
"You son of a whore, you are no Christian/' John¬
stone often begged them to consider his grey hairs,
and told them he would send for 300Z. and give it
them if they spared him. At those words James
Matthias tripped Johnstone and kicked him on the
back to that degree that he soon after died/ 1 Their
work being done, the murderers sate down to
supper. ' They had bread and cheese, and such like/
' Being told that there was flesh there which they might
have, they said they would not eat flesh in time of
Lent/ 2
1 ' Examination of Paul Lydy,'
King's County Depositions, 1726.
MSS. Dublin Castle.
2 ' Proclamation on the murder
of Johnstone the Quaker, April 10,
1725.' The more common forms of
crime in Ireland, wherever Pro¬
testants were the victims, were dis¬
tinguished by a ferocity which goes
far to justify even the offer of re¬
wards for tire heads of proclaimed
outlaws.
In October, 1725, a party of
P.ipparces 'out on their keeping,'
broke into the house of a Protestant
miller in Wexford, named Hayes.
They tore the wife out of bed in her
shift; tied her to the wall naked,
by the fire ; and, in order to force
her to tell where her husband's
money was concealed, heated two
chisels red-hot, and seared her limb
by limb. The wretched husband
said she was with child to move
them to pity. One of the party
answered, that he would run a red-
hot chisel into her body to her child
if she would not give tlicm up her
money. Next they seized the hus¬
band himself, and were preparing
112
484
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. HI.
to bum him in the same way, when
some neighbours, who had heard
the cries, came to their help, and
the Rapparees fled.—' Examination
of Catherine Hayes.' MSS. Dublin.
A Dublin gentleman, a Mr.
Woodley, had purchased some pro¬
perty in Muskerry, near Headfort.
He placed upon it a resident Pro¬
testant steward, named Healy, who
in a lawless neighbourhood, had a
difficulty in holding his ground.
The McCarties especially, once
owners of all that county, but re¬
duced to a corner of their inheritance
in the Glenflesk mountains, looked
with jealous eyes on the intruder.
Some of McCarties' people, on one
occasion, stole a drove of Healy's
cattle. Healy took out a warrant
against McCarty himself, and to
prevent the warrant being served,
the tenants determined to be before¬
hand with him.
On March 4, 1729, five of them,
described as Papists and yeomen of
Glenflesk, armed with guns, clubs,
and long skenes, broke into his
house, and demanded possession of
the warrant. When they had got it,
to prevent him from giving trouble
in the future, they knocked him
down with their bludgeons, 'cut,
stabbed, and hackled him about the
face and head ;' then, tying him
hand and foot, forced open his
mouth, cut out his tongue, shaved
his ears close to the head, laid a
block of stone under his arm, and
smashed the bone upon it, and
finally drove their skenes into his
eyes and blinded him.
Even this was not enough. Leav¬
ing Healy weltering in his blood,
they then set upon his wife, who
was close on her confinement, beat
and slashed her, and cut out her
tongue also. — ' Examination of
John Healy, of Coolgariff, in Mus¬
kerry, March 15, 1729.' MSS.
Dublin.
4§S
SECTION III.
Abduction and rape were not the only weapons with
which the Irish carried on the war against their
1734
conquerors. More vulgar ruffians bore their
part in making Ireland a dangerous abode to those
who ventured to interfere with the national prejudices.
In the year 1734 there resided in Kilrush, in county
Clare, an active English gentleman named Captain
Mark Newdigate. He had made himself obnoxious
by threatening the parish priest, who was probably
unregistered. The priest was called Richard Thornton.
The priest's brother, Henry Thornton, was the Kilrush
attorney, a pretending Protestant, since, without con¬
formity and taking the sacrament, he could not have
obtained his licence to practise. Looking into the
main street of the town was the house of a Sylvester
Curtin. One evening in November, a man called
MacMahon, who afterwards turned approver and told
the story, said that, as he was going home from his
work, Curtin called him inside his door, telling him
he would make his foi'tune. In the kitchen he found
Thornton the attorney with seven or eight others
assembled. Curtin, in introducing him, said that he
knew him for a hardy fellow who could keep a secret.
Thornton took out a book and swore the party one by
one to silence, and then said that he had 3001, to
divide among them if they would go by night and kill
4<"6 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. HI.
Captain Mark Newdigate. It would, as they all knew,
be f a great act of charity to put such a Protestant dog
out of the world.' ' Cut they must make sure worlc,
a.nd avoid blundering about it, or Captain Mark would
be the death of their priest.' They all swore an oath
that they would do it, and dispersed for the moment,
waiting for a convenient time. Some of them were
Kerry men from across the Shannon, which at that
season was often difficult to pass.
Some days later Curtin again called MacMahon,
showed him a ' moidore,'1 which the attorney Thorn¬
ton had sent to drink success to their undertaking, and
told him the Kerry boys -were coming over, and they
must go down to the shore to meet them. They were
joined at the landing-place by several more of the con¬
federates. The boat arrived while they were waiting.
Two of her crew remained to keep her afloat to receive
the others when the work was finished. The rest
stopped, and the whole gang, nine or ten in number,
were ready for business. MacMahon, as the moment
for action drew near, showed signs of flinching. Darby
Hackney, one of the Kilrush party, held a pistol at his
head with a curse, and told him if he would not go he
should not live to tell their secrets. Being: in dread of
his life, and, as he innocently admitted, for the sake
of his proportion of the money, he gathered up his
courage. ' They all three kissed each other, and said
their fortunes would be ever made by performing such
a fact, and likewise that it was a good deed to destroy
1 Portuguese money was in common use in Ireland at this time.
CH. I.J
IRISH IDEAS.
487
such a rogue that was so bad to their priest and con¬
stitution.' It was already dark, and they started for
their work. But they stopped at Curtin's house on the
way to apply the moidore to its purpose. Supper was
laid out for them, and f they all got so drunk that they
could not pursue their business that night, and had to
wait till next night, being Sunday night.' One of the
party, Darby Hackney, availed himself ingeniously of
the postponement to prove an alibi, should the murder
get them into trouble. On the Sunday morning he
fell in with two strangers in Kilrush. Having a house
in the town he invited them to sleep there. He made
up beds for them between his own bed and the door.
He waited till they were both asleep to steal over them
and creep out; and having thus provided himself with
witnesses who would swear he was to their knowledge
at home, he rejoined the gang, who had been lying
quiet the whole day in Curtin's kitchen. At length,
at eleven o'clock that night, they sallied out sober and
determined. They were ingenious villains: one of
them named Gallivane, 01* Gaff, had induced Captain
Newdigate, a fortnight before, to take him as a serv¬
ant. He had thus learnt the disposition of the house,
the room in which Newdigate slept, and the place
where he kept his arms; and, which was equally
important, he had made acquaintance with the dogs,
which, at night, were loose about the premises. There
was no moon, and the stars were behind clouds. "With
Gaff for a guide they scrambled across the bogs, eight
or nine in all, to the house, Gaff instructing them the
488
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. III.
while as to the position in which they would find the
captain, and how to secure a large back sword which
hung at his bed's head. It was eleven o'clock when
they arrived. All was still. The dogs came out, but
Gaff spoke to them and they licked his hand. Curtin,
Darby Hackney, and three others, then each took a
large stone; they flung them together at the house
door, which flew open before the blow, and all rushed
through the hall into the room where Gaff said the
captain slept, meaning to stab him as he lay. Being
without a light they stumbled in the darkness. The
captain sprung from his bed in his nightgoAvn, flew to
the door, driving two of them before him back into the
hall, and across the hall into the chimney corner.
Frightened now for their own lives, these two cried
out that they were being murdered. The captain
shouted for his servants, calling them by their names,
and bade them bring his hatchet that he might cut off
the villains' heads. The servants dared not show them¬
selves. The rest of the gang blundered back, thrust¬
ing with their swords where they believed Newdigate
to be, but afraid to strike for fear of wounding one
another. The captain easily eluded them, and slipped
again into his bed-room for his gun. The assassins,
groping about and stabbing right and left, at length
collected in the faint light at the front door. Each
thought the rest had done the work; none however
could give any distinct assurance of having killed their
man. Gaff and the boys from Kerry plunged back
determined to find him, and f crying out to shoot him
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
4S9
or cut his throat.' A voice from the darkness answered,
' I can shoot as well as you.' A flash followed. New-
digate's powder was damp, and missed fire. Being a
powerful and extremely resolute person, he clubbed his
gun, dashed at them where the dusky figures were
visible coming in through the gloom, laid one dying
on the floor with his skull broken, and attacked the
rest so fiercely that they fled out dragging their
wounded comi'ade. Outside they found a shivering
servant girl, who begged them, if they meant to kill
her, to leave so much breath in her ' that - the clergy¬
man might overtake the life' before she died. fThat
much pardon she should have,' they said; but they had
other work to think of. They we're hurrying off, when
they found that in the confusion one had left his pis¬
tols, another his wig, another half his coat in the hall;
proof enough to identify and hang them. Ashamed to
be baffled thus by one man, they again went in and
blew the ashes on the hearth into a flame. But by
this time the house was roused. Newdigate's brother,
who slept in an adjoining building, was heard approach¬
ing with the farm servants. Curtin said he had run
the captain through the body, and he could not live
till day; and, with this comfort, they made off, drag¬
ging the dead body with them.
The sequel was highly characteristic. Captain
Newdigate, if wounded at all, was but hurt slightly
and recovered. The priest and the attorney and the
lads of Kilrush and Kerry never dared again to attack
so dangerous an antagonist. A wild affair had taken
490 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
place, meanwhile, a few miles down the coast, to be
related in the next chapter, in which a Danish ship
had been plundered of some chests of silver. The
notable device of the conspirators was to swear that
they were themselves the thieves, but that Newdigate
had shared the booty with them. He, as an English
officer, would be hanged, while they would be pardoned
as approvers. This plot too failed; or perhaps, as too
perilous, it was planned only and never tried. The
attempted murder, as usual, remained a mystery; no
evidence could be found, or none that sufficed for a
conviction. Two years later the story was told by
MacMahon, when a prisoner in the gaol at Ennis.
491
SECTION IV.
Irish crime, where the victim was a Protestant, assumed
the character of legitimate war. Ravishers
and murderers were avengers of the wrongs of
their country, and, as such, were protected by the
sympathies of the Catholic population. Under all
conditions, even where no religion or political passion
was concerned, violence was the first remedy which
suggested itself. The extraordinary ferocity, which
appeared occasionally in the better classes of Irish
society as late as the middle of the last century, shows
how inveterate by long indulgence national habits
may become, and how slowly an inherited tempera¬
ment can be brought to yield to the restraints of law
and civilization. Symptoms, however, were beginning
to show themselves of a better state of feeling, where
the juries were not misled by national prejudice.
The Bodkins of Galway were descended from an
Archbishop of Tuam, who, in the beginning of the
sixteenth century, so far disregarded the laws of the
Church as to beget and establish a family. There
were, by this time, several branches of them. They
had preserved their estates under the Articles, and
among them held considerable property. Among the
rest was a certain Oliver Bodkin, of Carnbane, a
gentleman with an estate worth nine hundred a year
—a large fortune for Ireland in the first half of the
492 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. III.
last century. He liad a brother called blind Dominick,
blind of one eye; a son by a first marriage, named
John; and, by his second wife, Margery, who was still
living, another boy, a young Oliver, named after him¬
self. The head of the family was a cousin, Mr.
Bodkin of Carnbegg, a place at no great distance from
Carnbane. All these Bodkins wei*e Catholics.
The birth of the son by the second marriage,
created jealousy and ill feeling. Alterations were
made in the settlements which the elder brother
thought himself entitled to resent. He quarrelled
with his stepmother. His uncle Dominick took his
side, and probably his kinsman at Carnbegg; for
young John had left his father's house with the
expectation of being appointed steward of the Carn¬
begg estate, where he had taken up his residence.
He was a loose vagabond, given chiefly to idleness
and horse-racing. Possibly he was found unfit for
the office, or, from other causes, his prospects were
unpromising. He preferred a nearer road to inde¬
pendence, which he could combine with the gratifica¬
tion of his revenge. 1 Blind Dominick,' ' a man of
huge bulk and horrid aspect,' had perhaps, also, some
private grudges of his own. Shan Reagh—Red Shan
—one of Oliver Bodkin's servants, was devoted to the
elder son's interests, and resented the disfavour into
which he had fallen. With the help of these two, and
a friend named Edmund Burke, young John deter¬
mined to f revenge the villany and roguery of his
father and stepmother,' and remove out of the way
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
493
the little brother who had stood between him and
his fortune. It was the race week at Tuam, in Sep¬
tember, 1741. Believing, or pretending to believe,
that suspicion would at once fall upon him, he pro¬
posed, at tirst, that he should himself attend the
races; that his uncle and the others should do the
work in his absence, and that the spoils should be
divided afterwards. This arrangement was not ap¬
proved. The youth himself being the person chiefly
interested, the other confederates insisted that he
must bear his part, and he agreed to remain. Their
number being still too small for so dangerous an
enterprise, one more confederate was wanted. A
certain Boger Kelly was pitched upon as a likely
person; and, as a preliminary, Kelly, young John,
Uncle Dominick, and Edmund Burke, dined together
at Carnbegg House, and discussed their plans over
tumblers of whiskey punch. Steel was preferred to
firearms as making surer work. Kelly was asked if
he had a knife fit for the purpose. He produced a
heavy clasp knife. Dominick, who was a judge of
weapons, objected that it would not answer, and
brought out two long keen Irish skenes, which he
said he would retouch upon a grindstone. Kelly was
a sufficiently hardened villain, but his blood ran cold
at these deliberate preparations. He went home,
feigned illness, and shut himself up in his house ; and
the others, not caring to betray their secret further,
concluded to act alone. A Galway merchant was
staying at Oarnbane, as Oliver Bodkin's guest, who
494 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. nr.
was reported to be a fearless, resolute man. They
would have preferred to wait for his departure; but
delay was dangerous. They met the following mid¬
night outside the yard, Blind Dominick leading a
large mastiff, e to worry the house-dog should he fly
at them;' and they four—young John, his uncle,
Edmund Burke, and Bed Shan—stole through the
gate together. The farm-servants, two men and two
boys, slept in the barn. Young John opened the
barn-door, and asked whether Mr. Bodkin, of Carn-
begg, was in his father's house that night. The men
knew the voice, and answered drowsily that he was
not, and turned over to sleep. It was a sleep from
which they never woke. A. few minutes later the
skenes were across their throats. Each murderer
secured his victim, and the four men and boys were
quietly despatched. Safe from alarm from without,
they then went on to the dwellmg-house. The dogs,
who knew them, let them pass in silence. They en¬
tered without noise. The situation of every bed being
familiar to them, they had no need of lights. Two
servants, a man and his wife, slept in the hall, on
the left of the door where they glided in. Blind
Dominick and Edmund Burke stabbed them both to
the heart. No witness was to be left alive to convict
the murderers. Young John disposed of the mer¬
chant in the stranger's room with equal swiftness and
decision. Red Shan undertook the master of the
house, and went direct to the room where old Oliver
was sleeping, with his wife and the little boy. The
CH. I.]
IRISH IDEAS.
495
wife, who had been roused by an unusual sound,
darted from the bed as he entered, and ran to the
door. Shan, ' having a mind/ as he said, ' that she
should escape,' allowed her to pass; but he cut the
old man's throat where he lay, and afterwards killed
the child. The mother reached the kitchen, only to
fall into the hands of blind Dominick, her brother-in-
law. She screamed for pity; he answered with a
stab of his skene, and she too fell dead on the floor.
The completeness of the work—for every human
creature in the house was destroyed—-did not save the
murderers. Public feeling, slowly as it changed, was
roused to horror at so enormous a crime. Suspicion
fell instinctively on those in whom alone a motive could
be imagined to prompt such a deed. Kelly, anticipat¬
ing discovery, told what he knew. Bed Shan, to save
his own life, turned approver, and described the horrid
scene in all its particulars. All the parties were taken
and brought to the bar immediately at the Galway
Assizes. So profound was the excitement, that every
detail was dwelt on with prolonged intensity. The
hearing of the evidence lasted fourteen hours. The
jury, with a promptitude which showed that here at
least there was no misleading sympathy with crime,
returned their verdict in ten minutes; and Burke, and
young John Fitz Oliver, as he was called, and the huge
one-eyed Dominick were instantly hanged.
The whole county was shaken with the horror of a
story the memory of which still vaguely clings about
the neighbourhood. Wild rumours filled the air.
496
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. III.
Dominick's ghost, it was said, had drawn the curtains
of a friend sleeping sixty miles away, at the hour when
the murders were being done, and muttered threats of
savage revenge. For once even the Galway mob were
on the side of justice, and the assassins went to their
doom amidst a chorus of execrations, unbroken with
the faintest note of sympathy.
Yet Ireland was but reaping the fruit of her own
leniency for patriotic criminals, whose deeds were in
no degree less infamous. Her tenderness for rape and
murder, where the victims were her imagined enemies,
familiarized the minds of men with violence ; and when
it is remembered, that all the parties concerned were
gentlemen, members of one of the best families in the
county of Galway, the Bodkin murder must be regarded
as characteristic of a condition of society in which alone
the passions could have been generated which prompted
such elaborate ferocity.1
1 For the history of the Bodkin
murder, see ' Confession and Exam¬
ination of John Hogan, otherwise
Reagh, of Carnbegg, Co. Galway,
September 23, 1741.'
' Confession of Roger Kelly, Sep¬
tember 26, 1741.' MSS. Dublin
Castle.
' The Bishop of Clonfert to the
Bishop of Dromore, March, 27,
1742.' MSS. Record Office.
497
CHAPTER II.
THE SMUGGLERS.
SECTION I.
WHEN England, in defence of her monopolies,
thought proper to lay restrictions on the Irish
woollen trade, it was foretold that the inevitable
173°
result would be an enormous development of
smuggling.
The price of fleece wool in Ireland in 1730 was
fivepence a pound; of combed wool twelve pence a
pound. In France Irish fleece wool was sold for two
shillings and sixpence a pound; combed wool from
four shillings and sixpence to six shillings.1 The
profits of the contraband trade were thus so consider¬
able, that the temptations to embark in it were irresist¬
ible. Out of the thirty-two counties of Ireland nine¬
teen are maritime. The coast round three-quarters
of the island is indented and pierced by deep bays
and intricate creeks, which from the sea it was impos¬
sible effectively to watch. On land, with the whole
1 ' Proposals to prevent the exportation of wool to France :' by Mr.
Knox, 1730. MSS. Dublin Castle.
irel. 1. K K.
49§ THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [be. nr.
population combined to embarrass and defeat them, an
army of revenue officers would have been insufficient
to prevent the running of cargoes. Enormous wages
would have been necessary if they were to be proof
against the corruption to which the gain of the trade
would ensure their being exposed; while, in the eyes
of the Irish themselves, the evasion of the iniquitous
law which had destroyed their lawful commerce was
exalted into a virtue.
Thus, in spite of English Acts of Parliament, and
the fleet of armed cruisers which hung about the
southern and western shores, four-fifths of the Irish
fleeces were carried annually to France. The rivalry
which the English clothiers so much dreaded became a
fact in spite of them. In 1779, when the Government
condescended at last to listen to the remonstrances
of the Irish Parliament, Mr. Hely Hutchinson laid
privately before Lord Harcourt a fair statement of the
system and of its consequences.
f As the law stands/ he said, ' we can sell our wool
and woollen goods only to Great Britain. We can
buy woollen cloths there only. If such a law related
to two private men instead of two kingdoms, and
enjoined that in buying and selling the same goods
one individual should deal with one man only in exclu¬
sion of others, it would in effect ordain that both as
buyer and seller, that man should fix his own price and
profit, and would refer to his discretion the loss and
profit of the other dealer. You have defeated your own
object. The exclusion of Ireland from the woollen
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
499
trade has been more injurious to you than to us.
One pack of Irish wool works up two packs of French
wool. The French undersell the English, and, as far
as they are supplied with Irish wool, the loss to Eng¬
land is double what it would be if the Irish exported
their wool manufactured. . . As to the practice of run¬
ning wool, Ireland has paid to Great Britain for eleven
years past1 double the sum she collects from the whole
world in all the trade which Great Britain allows her;
a fact not to be paralleled in the history of mankind.
"Whence did all this money come ? Our very existence
is dependent on our illicit commerce.' 2
Ingenuity could not have invented a commercial
policy less beneficial to the country in whose interests
it was adopted, or better contrived to demoralize the
people at whose expense it was pursued. A large and
fast-spreading branch of manufacture was destroyed,
which was tempting capital and enterprise and an
industrious Protestant population into Ireland. A
form of industry was swept away which would have
furnished employment to the native Irish, and brought
them under settled habits, which would have made
1 He might have said 50 years.
In 1729 the total acknowledged ex¬
ports of Ireland were <£1,053,782
The total imports . 8x9,761
Balance . £234,021
Out of which balance Ireland paid
in rents to absentees 600,0001. The
absentee rents rather increased
than diminished with the progress
of the century. Heavy pensions
were paid by the Irish Establish¬
ment to persons residing in Eng¬
land. There were no gold or silver
mines in Ireland. The money that
went out must have come in from
some quarter or other; and the
profits of the smuggling trade give
the only conceivable explanation.
2' Mr. Hely Hutchinson to Lord
Harcourt, .July 1 1779.' MS8.
Record Office.
K K 2
500 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
four Ulsters instead of one, and raised eacliof the four
to double the prosperity which the province which
preserved the linen trade has in fact obtained. But
even these consequences were not the worst fruits of
these preposterous restrictions. The entire nation,
high and low, was enlisted in an organized confederacy
against the law. Distinctions of creed were obliterated,
and resistance to law became a bond of union between
Catholic and Protestant—Irish Celt and English colon¬
ist,—from the great landlord whose sheep roamed in
thousands over the Cork mountains to the gauger who,
with conveniently blinded eyes, passed the wool packs
through the custom-house as butter barrels ; from the
magistrate whose cellars were filled with claret on the
return voyage of the smuggling craft, to the judge on
the bench who dismissed as frivolous and vexatious the
various cases which came before the courts to be tried.
All persons of all ranks in Ireland were principals or
accomplices in a pursuit which, however pardonable in
itself, could be carried on only by evasion, perjury, and
violence. The very industry of the country was organ¬
ized upon a system which made it a school of anarchy;
and good servants of the State, who believed that laws
were made to be obeyed, lay under the ban of opinion
as public enemies.
At the beginning there was neither attempt at nor
need of concealment. Cargoes of spirits were landed
at Dublin Quay. If notice was given to the Commis¬
sioners they, turned the other way.1 Packs of wool
1 ' One of the smugglers came 1 tely into Dublin harbour itself,
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
lay in open daylight in the warehouses at Cork, and
were shipped in vessels lying along the quay. The
officers of the customs looked on with undisturbed
composure. The few who might have wished to inter¬
fere knew that it would be useless, and did not care to
make themselves hated gratuitously.1 Finding them¬
selves defied in this way, the Government tried stricter
methods, substituted English officers for Irish at the
chief ports like Waterford and Cork, and stationed
cruisers along the coast to seal the mouths of the
smaller harbours. But the trade only took refuge in
bays and creeks where cruisers dared not run in. If
encountered at sea the contraband vessels were some¬
times armed so heavily that the Government cutters
and schooners hesitated to meddle with them. If un¬
armed and overhauled, they were found apparently
laden with some innocent cargo of salt provisions. \
The wool was pressed with screws into barrels, which
were washed with brine, that they might pass for
and was running her cargo at mid¬
night, when accidentally discovered
by an acquaintance of mine, who
seized the goods, and was tempted
by a good round sum to make up
the matter; hut being proof against
temptation would not, being per¬
suaded the goods would be for¬
feited. To his loss and my great
surprise they were acquitted, as I
hear, by the Commissioners of Cus¬
toms, to the great discouragement
of all honest merchants.'—'Hugh
Guyon to Lord Carteret, Jan. 20,
1725.' 21SS. Dublin Castle.
1 ' All officers that attempt to
obstruct the exportation are dis¬
countenanced, nor will a jury find
a seizure, or a judge condemn it.
Wool goes out by shiploads, and
warehouses at the water side are
crammed with it, and no notice
taken except by accident now and
then. Greater quantities are sent
to France than are consumed in
this country, or sent to England.'
—' Charles King to Lord Stanhope,
February 15, 1716.' MSS. Record
Office.
5a: THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
butter, herring, or salt pork casks. The more deter¬
mined the authorities showed themselves the more
resolute were the Irish, the lawlessness and wildness of
the trade giving it fresh zest. Driven from the Cork
warehouses the packs were stored in caves about the
islands, and cliffs, and crags, where small vessels took
them off at leisure; or French traders, on signal from
shore, sent in their boats for them. Chests of bullion
were kept by the merchants at Rochelle and Brest to
pay for them as they were landed. When the French
Government forbade the export of so much specie,
claret, brandy, and silks were shipped for Ireland in
exchange on board the vessels which had brought the
wool.1
Thus, by a curious combination, the system worked
the extremity of mischief, commercially, socially, and
politically. It fostered and absolutely bred and neces¬
sitated habits of lawlessness. It promoted a close and
pernicious connection between Ireland and France.
In times of war French privateers found shelter all
along the Irish coast in positions most convenient to
them, and most dangerous to English commerce. In
times both of war and peace, it inundated Ii-eland with
wine and brandy cheap and excellent, and produced
the hard drinking which gave social life there so ill a
fame. Singularly too, while the smuggling provided
an open road for the going and coming of the priest¬
hood, it linked itself to the service of the Pretender.
1 ' Proposals to prevent the exportation of wool to France,' by Mr.
Knox, 1730. MSS. Dublin.
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
503
Irish ' "Wild Geese' in thousands were drafted down
to Ken mare or Dingle, Galway or Roundstone, and
were shipped to France. If the Pretender was medi¬
tating a descent, Irish regiments were collected for
him at a few weeks' notice. If the Pretender himself
was lying quiet, there was always the Irish brigade,
earning pay and glory under the flag of England's
enemies. Wherever along the southern and western
coasts English authority and English civilization had
taken root, means were found to clear away the in¬
truders, or make them conform to the customs of the
country. An active offlcer like Captain Newdigate
could be shot or knocked on the head. The Protestant
settlements on the Kenmare river, which had been
established by Sir William Petty, dwindled slowly
away. Most of the families melted into the Irish
population. The few who retained their English creed
and habits, and were thus inconvenient neighbours to
the smugglers, were at last carried away as prisoners
by French privateers. The gentry entered heartily
into the game. ' Though there are several Protestant
gentlemen in the county of Kerry,' wrote the Duke of
Devonshire in 1740, ' yet for one odd reason or other
there is little prospect of doing good by their means.'
The Knight of Kerry, who was the occasion of the
Duke's observation, had his cellar regularly supplied
from Bordeaux, and in return was blind to everything
which it was not desirable that he should see.
504
SECTION II.
Singular pictures survive of some of these Kerry-
potentates who,' for one odd reason or another,'
^ ^ were found unserviceable for keeping order.
The enormous, but at the time when it was granted
entirely unprofitable, property there which fell into
the hands of Sir William Petty, had lapsed gradually
under long leases to middlemen, who, though com¬
pelled by law to profess conformity with the Establish¬
ment, earned absolution by the steadiness with which
they entertained and protected the priests. Petty
had bequeathed to his descendants along with his
fortune his political genius, and had the Shelburne
family consented to reside on their estates, these gen¬
tlemen would either have had no existence, or would
have found the sphere of their activity altogether
curtailed. But the Shelburnes became habitual ab¬
sentees. The small beginnings of civilized life, which
had been introduced there, disappeared; and, so long
as their rents were regularly paid, they asked no
questions, and troubled themselves with no responsi¬
bilities.
The great baronies of Dunkerron and Iveragh,
which form the north shore of the Kenmare Bay, ex¬
tending from Kenmare itself forty miles to Waterville,
and thence inland to the watershed where the streams
divide which run into the bays of Keamare or Ding'e,
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
5°5
were held along with other properties, in the early-
part of the last century, under a lease renewable for
ever by Mr. Daniel (or Donell) Mahony, of Dunloe.
In Dunkerron there yet lingered a dozen Protestant
families, the last remnant of Petty's colony, quiet
people who had come to make a living by industry,
and were unsuited to their present master. These
families had occasion, in 1719, to represent their
situation to the Viceroy. Mr. Mahony, they said,
' had for some years continued to make himself great
and dreadful in the county.' He had four thousand
people under him, under-tenants and their labourers,
all Catholics, whose business was to prevent the col¬
lectors of the revenue from troubling honest fellows
with their importunities; to keep at a distance the
whole race of bailiffs and process servers ; in short,
to make what are called law and order impossible in
Kerry. Going about by day disguised as women, at
night in large gangs, with blacked faces and white
shirts, they were called Mr. Daniel Mahony's fairies,
and never had wizard familiar spirits better disposed
to do his bidding. ' So mighty was Mr. Mahony's
power, that no Papist in Ireland had the like.' There
were still some few forests on the mountain sides
which Lord Shelburne retained ; but his rangers ex¬
isted on sufferance, and, if they gave trouble, were
immediately 'mortified.'1 ' Hearth-money collectors
and civil o leers went about in peril of their lives.'
Daniel himself was described as ' a wilful mam
1 Murdered ?
5o6 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. in.
without remorse or conscience.' Sheltered by Lord
Shelburne's name, and affecting to be bis represent¬
ative, fif be sent tbe least word, he was obeyed upon
all unlawful occasions ;' and be bad counsellors and
attorneys in bis pay at tbe Four Courts, who carried
bim through when a poor creature sought protection
against bim from tbe law. Once and once only tbe
Government bad meddled witb bim. On all tbe lands
beld under tbe Act of Settlement tbere was a quit rent
reserved to tbe Crown, wbicb was paid by tbe tenant.
It was surmised, witb excellent reason, that Mahony
bad made an imperfect return of tbe lands beld by bim
under bis lease from Lord Sbelburne ; and a surveyor,
named Maurice Kennedy, was sent down to Killarney
to make enquiries. Tbe Viceroy might be supreme
in Dublin Castle, but Donell Mabony was sovereign
at Killarney. Tbe ill-advised Maurice had made bis
notes ; had discovered, as he conceived, distinct delin¬
quency, and bad collected evidence to prove it. Tbe
Fairies one night burst rudely into bis lodging, dragged
bim from bis bed, beat bim with most ungbostlike
efficiency, plundered bim of tbe papers wbicb were to
bring Mabony to justice, and left bim to find bis way
out of tbe country a sadder and a wiser man. Tbe
Dunkerron memorialists could but pray tbe Viceroy
to quarter a company of soldiers at Dunloe to ' civilize
Mr. Mabony and bis spirits,' if Kerry was to remain a
borne for loyal subjects and peaceful industry.1
1 'Humble Address of His Majesty's loyal subjects of Macquinihy,
1719.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
ch. ii.] THE SMUGGLERS. 5°7
It is hardly necessary to say that a Dublin Lord
Lieutenant was no match for Daniel and his
. r75I
four thousand Fairies. The memorialists either
submitted to fate and to the ruler which the genius of
Ireland had set over them, or betook themselves to
some more quiet home. The singular figure of Daniel
Mahony is a specimen of the class of middlemen to
whom the wild districts, now frequented by tourists and
sportsmen, were surrendered for the greater part of
the last century. Absenteeism was bearing its legiti¬
mate fruit. The escheated lands of the chiefs had
been allotted to Englishmen to reclaim and civilize, and
to settle with Protestant colonies; and the English
owners, reducing their duties to the receiving of rents
and spending them, left the lands to those who have
created modern Ireland and the modern Irish race.
At times the type assumed a form yet wilder and
more picturesque. Sir "William Petty's domains ex¬
tended to the south as well as to the north side of the
Kenmare river. The long peninsula which divides the
bays of Bantry and Kenmare, had been the dominion
of the O'Sullivans of Berehaven, and Sullivan stiil
remains the name of half the families in the barony.
There, too, in the midst of the mountains, the descend¬
ants of the old chiePs family continued as the vice¬
gerents on the soil of their fathers, amidst the wrecked
remains of the once thriving Protestant colony. The
Wild Geese and the privateers swept off the handful
that remained, and had now the bay to themselves;
and the O'Sullivan of Derreen ruled without a rival, a
508 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hi.
great smuggling chief, and a trusted agent of the
Pretender, through whose hands the enthusiasts for his
cause were shipped for Nantes and the brigade.
Morty Oge O'Sullivan, 0'Sullivan Bere as he was
called—as much loved and honoured as his kinsman of
Derreen—had made his home ten miles nearer to the
Atlantic beyond the Shelburne boundary, on the wild
bay of Bally Quoilach, at a place called Eyris. Morty,
in his youth, had been a distinguished officer in
the Austrian army, where, had he chosen to remain,
he might have risen to rank and favour at the court of
Maria Theresa. His country and his King—his country
rather, and the adventurous life which opened to him
there, had charms too strong for him to resist. He
went home, and undertook the convoying of the Wild
Geese; and at Eyris, an outlaw with a price on his
head, yet secured on the land side by the idolatry of
the O'Sullivan clan, and at sea strong enough to be his
own protector, Captain Morty for a score of years
lived and throve, and defied the Government and its
myrmidons to meddle with him. His brigantine, which
lay moored before his door, carried eight heavy swivel
guns. She was so strong that no cruiser ventured to
engage her single-handed. The anchorage was so
dangerous, so intricate, and well-guarded, that no
combined force could venture in to assail her. In
peace time she was a smuggler. In war she carried
the French flag under letters of marque, and was the
pest and plague of English commerce; and Paul Jones
and ' Le Bon Ilomme Richard' were scarcely more
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
5°9
terrible thirty years later in the two channels than
Morty Sullivan and his Irish clipper.
At length, in the middle of the century, a brave and
honourable revenue officer named Puxley, inherited
from his brother an estate at Berehaven on Bantry
Bay, from which there was a near pass through the
mountains to Morty's den.
Revenue officers were usually rendered harmless by
quiet methods. Their pay was small. The Govern¬
ment was lax. They had only to accept a percentage
on the cargoes run out or in, and to be conveniently
absent when anything was to happen of which they
were to be kept in ignorance. Puxley, who is said to
have come from Galway, yet was English in character,
and had brought with him English notions of duty.
In 1751, soon after his arrival, he sent an account of
Morty to Dublin Castle, and suggested means by which
both he and his brigantine could be captured.1
As usual, no notice was taken. There being no
formal coastguard in those days, each officer was obliged
to rely upon his own resources, and, if he intended to.
be active, had to gather men about him on whom he
could depend. Puxley added to his lands about
Berehaven, either buying or taking leases for lives.
He inherited from his brother, among other places,
the famous Dunboy Castle, which was stormed by Sir
George Carew in the Earl of Tyrone's rebellion, after
a splendid defence by Morty's ancestors, in which the
1 ' Extract of a letter from John Puxley, September 14, 1751.'
MSS. Dublin Castle.
510 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
whole garrison perished. He had thus an important
position, but one which at the same time strengthened
the smuggler's hatred of him. Here, in their midst,
was one of the tyrants of Ireland of the true old
ruling stamp ; and either they must make short work
with Puxley, or Puxley would make an end of them.
He knew his danger, but, dangerous or not, he
had undertaken a work which he meant to go through
with. The brigantine went to and fro between France
and the Kenmare river. In the summer of 1752
Puxley reported her as lying at her moorings, having
just come in from the sea. She had brought a cargo
of arms, which had been landed, and were being dis¬
tributed among the people. Some French officers had
arrived in her, who were sent to recruit for the brigade.
She was taking in wool with which she was about to
sail for Rochelle, and on her next voyage she was to
carry back the officers and men.
If Morty's doings were known to Puxley, Morty's
own eye was fixed no less keenly on the English
officer. He had already disposed of one at least of
Puxley's predecessors who had been too officious.
Puxley himself was doubly hateful as the possessor
of Dunboy. He could stir nowhere without a guard.
' If these Raps could put him out of the way,' he said,
'they would govern as they pleased, and carry on free
trade with France and Spain.' He begged for a
frigate, with a company of soldiers from Kinsale.
With this assistance he undertook to make a clearance
of the two bays ; search all the hiding-places, discover
CH. II. J
THE SMUGGLERS.
511
the arms and the French officers, and, perhaps, take
even Morty himself.
If it was worth while to paralyze Irish trade with
prohibitory laws, it might have been expected that
means so simple and obvious would not have been
neglected to make those laws effectual. But the
smuggling interest was potent even in Dublin Castle
itself. No frigate came from Kinsale. Not a ship of
war of any kind, Puxley said, had been seen at Bere-
haven since he became an officer. Single-handed, he
was no match for Morty ; so till help came he kept to
his own side of the mountains, and made war with his
own armed boats on the petty smugglers of Bantry
and Glengariff. Through the autumn and winter of
1752 he worked bravely on. By the following summer
he had seized half-a-dozen cargoes; and had sunk as
many sloops, or driven them ashore on Whiddy Island.1
Morty, busy with his own concerns, or not caring to
meddle so long as he was himself left alone, left
Bantry to deal with him, and the Bantry men having
no stomach for a fight tried safer means.
All the country side was by this time furious ; the
wool-packs lay rotting in the caves; the stores of
claret and brandy ran low, and no full cargoes could
be run in Glengariff harbour to refill the empty bins.
Who was this miserable Puxley that he should spoil
the trade by which the gentry were making their
fortunes, which the Castle winked at, and which the
1 'John Puxley to the Revenue Commissioners, June 9.' MSS.
Dublin Castle.
512
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hi.
connivance of half a century had legitimatized ? In
the twilight of the South of Ireland civilization, it had
been discovered that the forms of self-government
which England had introduced could become, in
skilful hands, as good a weapon as the sword. Law ad¬
ministered by Irish juries and magistrates did the work
of anarchy, and violence ceased to be necessary, save
in the rare cases where law had been tried and failed.
'Necessity/ wrote the unfortunate officer to his
employers after four years' work at his post, ' obliges
me to give your honours the trouble hereof, and to let
you know the unhappy situation I am in at Berehaven,
ready to be devoured by my enemies the smugglers,
who have all concerted my banishment out of that
unhappy country — as well Protestants as Papists.
They are joined by some of the landlords of the
Berehaven estate to execute their design. To which
intent they keep me constantly going at assize and
sessions by laying themselves out in every respect to
provoke and abuse me both publicly and privately;
all which malice arises from no other provocation
given them more than my activity in serving the
Crown, and being a check to the trade formerly carried
on in this country, which I have destroyed. ... i
have been so unfortunate as to have six or seven land¬
lords to every denomination of land in that country.
I have better than half of what farms I hold in
I7^4 lease. The other parts which I have not in
lease I could not get by any means, which lays me
under the greatest difficulty, for the owners thereot
EH. II.] THE SMUGGLERS. 513
have put Papist tenants in common with me through¬
out the whole, and also in my dwelling-house they
have put a tenant. I assure you his majesty has not
a subject in the kingdom so much oppressed as 1 have
been; and, though my forefathers fought for liberty, I
am made a sacrifice to Papists supported by Protestants,
who will, if they can, deprive me of liberty and property.'1
The ingenious persecution either failed, or was too
slow in effecting its purpose. Or it may have been
that the Captain of the Eyris brigantine was stirred to
action by some fresh grudge of his own. At any rate
a revenue officer determined to do his duty was a
public nuisance of whom it was necessary to rid the
country; and, as Puxley stood to his work in spite of
legal annoyances, there remained the good old method
which could be better depended on. One Sunday in
March, two months after his last letter to the Com¬
missioners, as he was on his way to church at Glen-
gariff, he was waylaid ' at a smith's forge3 by Morty
and two companions, and there killed.2
The murder of an active public servant by so
notorious a person as Morty was too serious a thing
to be passed over. The brigantine was busy as ever,
and at that moment there was a special cause of
irritation with Morty, for a party of soldiers had been
tempted by his agents to desert from a regiment at
Cork, and were hiding in the mountains, waiting for
Morty to carry them to France. The f Garland' frigate
1 ' John Puxley to the Revenue
Commissioners, January 27, I754-'
MSS. Dublin Castle.
2 ' Samuel Morris to the Com¬
missioners of Revenue, March 14,
1754.' Ibid.
IKEL. I. L h
514 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hi.
lay at Kinsale. Orders were sent to the captain to
go round into Kenmare Bay, discover, and sink her.
The difficulties, whatever they were, which invariably
attended active measures against the Irish smugglers,
if overcome at the Castle, remained formidable at
Kinsale. The captain of the f Garland' wrote that he
was detained at his anchorage by a gale of wind. The
same cause, he pretended, must prevent the brigantine
from sailing, and when the storm lulled he promised
to go in search of her. Either the brigantine was a
better sea-boat than the ' Garland,' or Morty a better
seaman than her commander, for before the ' Garland'
left her anchorage the brigantine was away on the
coast of France. Morty, however, was not to escape
so easily. The half-awakened justice would probably
have sunk to sleep again, but for Puxley's two
nephews, Henry and Walter Fitzsimon, who shamed
or spurred the Governor of Cork into real exertion.
Walter had a small vessel of his own; another belong¬
ing to the Crown lay at Cove. Two months later,
when Morty was known to have returned to Eyris,
Henry Fitzsimon with these two boats and a company
of soldiers went round to Berehaven. They came in
from the sea after dark. The troops were silently
landed, and a rapid march of an hour in heavy rain,
through the pass in the hills, brought them about
midnight to Morty's dwelling-place.
It was a strange wild place, close to the sea, amidst
rocks and bogs and utter desolation. 'Near it stood
the wreck of a roofless church, and the yet older ruin
of some Danish pirates' nest. The shadowy form of the
ch. ir.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
5*5
brigantine was visible through the grey sheet of falling
rain at anchor in the harbour, and from the rocks at
the entrance came the moaning of the Atlantic swell.
Morty, looking for no visitors on such a night, had
neglected to post sentinels. The house was surround¬
ed, and the wolf was trapped. The dogs inside were
the first to take alarm. A violent barking was heard,
and then suddenly the door was thrown open. Morty
appeared in his shirt, fired a blunderbuss at the men
who were nearest him, and retired. A volley of small
arms followed from the windows and slits in the wall.
One soldier was killed and three others wounded. The
strictest orders had been given to take Morty if possible
alive, and the fire was not at first returned. The house
was evidently full of men; eighteen of them bolted,
one after the other, in the hopes of drawing off the
troops into pursuit. Each, however*, was caught and
examined, and, when found not to be the man whom
the party came in search of, was let go. At last there
were but five left in the house. Morty saw that his
time was come. - He did not choose to be taken, and
determined to die like a man. lie sent out his wife
and child, who were with him, with a request that
their lives might be saved. The officer in command
received them kindly, and gave them such protection
as he could. Moi'ty himself refused to surrender ; it
was determined to set fire to the thatch, and wild fire
was thrust under the eaves. The straw was soaked
with the wet, and long refused to catch. At last it
blazed up ; the flames seized the dry rafters; the roof
fell in ; and, amidst the burning ruins, Morty and his
ll 2
5x6 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND, [BK. III.
four remaining companions were seen standing at bay,
blunderbuss in liand. He was evidently desperate,
and to save life it was necessary to shoot him. The
soldiers fired ; Morty fell with a ball through his heart.
Two of his comrades fell at his side; the other two
were taken; the same two, it so happened, who had
been Morty's companions at the murder of Puxley.1
One of them, Little John Sullivan he was called, was
perhaps Morty's kinsman; the name of the other was
Daniel Connell. The barony of Iveragh and Derrynane
Abbey, where the Connells, or O'Connells, of later
celebrity had already established themselves, was but
seven miles distant across the water; and it is thus
possible, and even probable, that Daniel Connell, who
had assisted at Puxley's murder, and escaped the
bullets at Eyris, was a scion of the same family which,
in the next generation, produced the Liberator.
The weather making it impossible to carry off the
brigantine, she was sunk, when daylight came, at her
anchorage. The fire was extinguished ; the ruins of
the house were searched; and Morty's account books
(he was punctual as Dirk Hatteraick himself in his
money transactions), his bills, notes, and papers were
found uninjured. Among them were found letters
from many persons of consequence in the country,
showing that they wei*e accomplices in the assassination
1 Fitzsimon even says that they
had taken an active share in the
murder.
' We had the pleasure,' he
writes, ' of shooting him dead, and
two of liis accomplices, and like¬
wise took Daniel Connell and little
John Sullivan pr isoners, who were the
principal murderers.'—' Henry Fitz¬
simon to the Commissioners of the
Revenue, May 7, 1754.' JESS.
Dublin Castle.
CII. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
1754
of the revenue officer. Twenty ankers of brandy and
some chests of tea had been destroyed by the fire.
Morty's body was carried to Cork. His head
mouldered upon a spike over the gate of the
south gaol. The rest of him was buried in
the Battery. The prisoners can be traced to the gaol;
there is no mention that either of them were hanged,
but of their further fate the records are silent.
So ended one of the last heroes of Irish imagin¬
ation, 011 whose character the historian, who considers
that he and such as he were the natural outgrowth of
the legislation to which it was thought wise and just
to submit his country, will not comment uncharitably.
He had qualities which, had Ireland been nobly govern¬
ed, might perhaps have reconciled him to its rulers,
and opened for him an honourable and illustrious
career. At worst he might have continued to serve
with his sword a Catholic sovereign, and might have
carved his way with it to rank and distinction. He
was tempted home by the opportunities of anarchy and
the hopes of revenge. In his own adventurous way he
levied war to the last against the men and the system
under which Ireland was oppressed. "When he fell, he
fell with a courage which made his crimes forgotten,
and the ghost of his name still hovers about the wild
shores of the Kenmare river, of which he was so long
the terror and the pride.1
1 For the account of the death
of Morty Oge O'Sullivan see an ex¬
tract from the Cork Remembrancer,
May 9, 1754, quoted by Crofton
Choker in the Keen of the South of
Ireland: ' a Letter of the Captain of
H.M.S. "Garland," March, 1754;'
and the 'Letter of Henry Fitzsimon
to the Revenue Commissioners,
May 7, 1754.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
SIS
SECTION III.
I have told the story of one distinguished Sullivan.
I have now to tell the story of a second, himself
1727
also a representative Irishman, though of a less
worthy type.
Sylvester 0'Sullivan, a near kinsman of Morty,
perhaps his uncle, for he was of the highest blood of
the clan, bred like him on Kilmakilloge harbour, but
given rather to books than to the adventurous habits
of his relations, had, about the year 1718, been the
master of a Catholic school in Dublin. He might
have taught Virgil and Ovid to lads of his own creed,
even under the shadow of the Parliament, without
danger of the law interfering with him; but he had
the misfortune, or the rashness, to pervert two scholars
of Trinity College, whom the High Church fellows had
already led to the edge of the Catholic faith. For this
exploit he was tried under the penal statute, and re¬
quired to transport himself abroad. He went to Paris :
but the Continent disagreed with him; he began to
pine for home, and, after a few years, presented himself
to Horace Walpole, who was then English ambassador
at the French Court, expressed contrition for his sins,
and professed a desire to do some service to the Eng¬
lish Crown which might entitle him to pardon. Horace
Walpole enquiring what the service was to be, O'Sulli-
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
519
van produced a sketch in writing of tlie enterprise
which lie contemplated. It was nothing less than to
take advantage of the connexion of his family with the
Cork and Kerry smugglers, and of his own reputation
as having been persecuted for his religion, to wind
himself into their secrets, spy out their hiding-places,
discover and report on the persons of rank and position
whom he could find to be in correspondence with them,
procure, in fact, such information as would enable the
Government to break up the traffic.
If a man volunteered a disgraceful but useful oc¬
cupation it was not Walpole's business to discourage
him. He gave 0'Sullivan a letter of credit should he
be arrested on returning to Ireland. Thus provided
he went down to Nantes, fell in there with the master
of a Kinsale brig, which was taking in her contraband
cargo—brandy, linen, and tea ; and giving his name,
which seemed a guarantee for his honesty, was ad¬
mitted as passenger to Valencia, for which the brig
was bound. It was midwinter, when the cruisers were
off their stations, and the coast was clear. The main
channel into the roadstead of Valencia opens to the
north, with a passage practicable in all weathers.
Immediately within is a large, roomy, and perfectly
safe harbour, where, at this time a king's ship was
usually stationed. From the main harbour to the
south-western entrance, where the telegraph-wire now
plunges into the Atlantic, runs a strip of quiet water
ten miles long, which divides the island from the main
land. Here, sheltered behind the mountains, through
520 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. m-
a rift in wliioli the channel opens to the ocean, lies the
small basin of Port Maghee.
The approach on this side is supremely dangerous ;
the enormous seas which have broken on the Irish
shore for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions,
of years, 'have eaten their way through the rocks,
destroying the more yielding portions, and leaving the
harder nodules rising from the bottom in treacherous
ridges or invisible needle points, over which the
rollers pour in roaring cataracts of foam. A sailing
vessel attempting to enter with anything but a lead¬
ing breeze, if caught in the narrow outlet in heavy
weather by an eddy of wind among the hills, would
be broken against the crags like an egg. A stranger
O O Oo o
shuns the place as the ancient mariners shunned the
fatal cliffs of Scylla; and, for the same reason, it was
the chosen resort of the local smuggler. Here, three
days after Christmas, in the year 1727, the Nantes
brig made the Irish coast, and passing boldly in with
a west wind between the breakers, was soon at anchor
in the quiet cove, which was called after the family of
the Maghees, to whom the land belonged.
At this time the ruling potentate was a widow, the
widow Maghee she was called, once Bridget Crosby,
sister or cousin of Sir Maurice Crosby, of Ardfert, the
member for the county. The new-comer had a warm
welcome. Smuggler was to smuggler a friend that
sate closer than a brother. No informer as yet had
ventured into Kerry. The widow's own sloop was
lying at the pier taking in a cargo of wool. Boats and
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
52i
lighters came off in the daylight to carry in and dispose ,
of the Nantes' brandy kegs. In the middle of their
operations a man-of-war's gig came down from the
guardship at Valencia, with an order for the brig to
move np to the main harbour : not, however, for any
vexatious enquiries into her contents, which were
perfectly notorious, but only because the captain and
officers expected a percentage of the spoil. The
watch-dog was to share the carcase with the wolf, and
preferred to keep his eyes on the division. The brig
ran up as she was ordered, anchored within a cable's
length of the ship, and went on with her business.
The country people came on board in hundreds. . A
brandy auction was held on deck, and a hundred and
twenty ankers were disposed of as fast as the boats
could take them away, besides what the captain, and
officers, and crew of the man-of-war received for their
own perquisites.
All this pretty scene Sylvester 0'Sullivan was
noting down at his leisure, when by accident,
in drawing out his handkerchief, he dropped
Horace Walpole's letter on the brig's deck. Some one
picked it up, opened and read its contents. It was
merely a pass for protection, but it proved that the
pretended sufferer for conscience had closer relations
with the British Government than he had allowed to
appear. Fierce faces scowled at him. It was proposed
to send him on shore among the Bapparees of the
Beeks, where his shrift would be a short one. He was
attacked at last, and would have been killed, had he
522 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. ill.
not snatched a brace of pistols and kept his assailants
at bay, till a party of Sullivan s, his own clansmen, who
knew him, and stood by him for his birth's sake, inter¬
posed and carried him away. The Sullivans, he says,
would not allow him to be hurt; but in their eyes, as
well as in every man's, his coming to Kerry under
false colours was painfully questionable. They put
him on the road to Dublin, to which he professed to
be going, restored to him his doubtful credentials, and
left him to find his own way.
At Killarney he informs us that he injured a leg,
and was unable to proceed. To lose no time, and to
keep his word with Walpole, he wrote an account of
what he had seen at Valencia and Port Maghee, ad¬
dressed it to the Castle Secretary, and not liking to
trust a packet of such dangerous import to the ordinary
( carriers,' he gave it to a gentleman going to Tralee
to post in the general office there.
Superfluous caution often creates the mischief which
it seeks to avoid. The gentleman, whose name was
Wall, suspecting that the letter contained something
unusual, took the liberty of reading it. He too, like
every one else in the county, was interested in keeping
the smugglers undisturbed. Instead of taking it to
Tralee, he carried it to the smugglers' agents in the
town, and Sullivan was in a worse scrape than before.
Copies of the letter were circulated about Killarney.
The women howled at him as an informer. The boys
threw stones at him if he showed in the street. One
day a certain f Pat Kelly' the schoolmaster, who was
CH. II.] THE SMUGGLERS. 523
one of Donell Maliony's Fairies, fell upon liim with a
club, and meant to kill him. Providence, however,
and his sacred blood once more stood his friend. Some
ladies passing by,(moved with compassion for one who
was of antient and valuable extraction in the county,'
begged the Fairy to spare him, and again he escaped
with a beating.1
1 Other accounts confirm Sulli¬
van's account of the state of Kil-
larney.
The O'Donoghue was Donell
Mahony's son-in-law. Kichard
Hedges, writing in 1714 to Secre¬
tary Dawson, says, ' The Protest¬
ants in Killarney (besides those
linked to the O'Donoghue) don't
exceed a dozen. Pour of them are
in the county adjacent. The jus¬
tices of the peace in these parts are
Doctor Bland, Francis Brewster,
and Win. Griffin, Esq. Dr. Bland
lives in a thatched house (a security
for his good behaviour); Mr.
Brewster in Glenflesk is neighbour
to the O'Donoghue and their clan;
Mr. Griffin is almost a single man,
and often from home. These jus¬
tices, as well as the other Protest¬
ants, are in terror of their persons.
I'll give you two instances. Old
O'Donoghue told Mr. Griffin to his
face, that he hoped soon to see the
time that he and his would pull
out his throat, and often brags that
he has 500 men at his command.
George Eager, having committed
an affray in Killarney, was sent for
by Dr. Bland and another justice,
who, admonishing him for his
breach of the law, he replied to the
other justice that if 'twere not for
the respect he had to some of the
company, he would beat him with a
great cudgel he brandished in his
hand as long as his stick would
last, and called him many opprobri-
ousnames.' Mr. Eager was scon after
made high constable.—' R. Hedges
to Secretary Dawson, August 14,
1714.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
In 1729, the year after Sullivan
was in the town, Lord Fitzmaurice
writes from Ross Castle :—
' The robberies that are daily
committed in the neighbourhood of
this place 011 persons of all ranks
are so extravagant, that a man's
entire substance shall be taken
away in one night by persons that
carry skenes and pocket pistols
always about them. These persons
are continually in riots, and fre¬
quently fire numbers of pistols in
the night time in Killarney. But
though I have heard this myself,
yet I could not find a man that
would help me to bring these law¬
less people to justice, they being
all Papists that carry these weapons
of offence, as well as those whose
assistance I asked. All these per¬
sons are protected by different clans
here.' Ibid.
524 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
Unable to leave Killarney from bis lameness, Sul¬
livan now applied for protection to tlie magistrates,
lie found tbe magistrates either unable to help him, or
too much implicated with the smugglers themselves to
be willing to interfere. So making the best of a bad
matter, he pretended i^epentance, addressed himself to
Pat Kelly, whom he offered to assist in his school, and
being a Sullivan he was at last forgiven, and taken
into partnership.
Killarney at this time was the Catholic University
of Ireland. The law which forbade the Catholics to
open schools was observed as little as the law for the
expulsion of the regular clergy; but it was most
conveniently defied in counties like Kerry, where
law was in abeyance altogether, and Protestants
and Catholics were combined, from reasons of their
own, to manage the administration on independent
principles.
There was a person holding an important office
at this time in the neighbourhood of Killarney, who
will be heard of again, a character who deserves
the particular attention of the student of Irish
history.
The Pev. Francis Lawder was Yicar General of
the diocese of Limerick, and the chief judge in the
Bishop's Consistory Court. This gentleman had given
the smuggling transactions his most careful attention.
He was himself deeply concerned in the trade. He
had studied the conditions under which it could be
made to thrive in greatest security. According to
CII. II.]
TILE SMUGGLERS.
525
Sullivan's story, he had not only winked at, but
encouraged, the establishment of the Killarney Catholic
schools, to prevent the intrusion of English ideas, and
to strengthen the system under which the affairs of
the county were carried on. The education being his
peculiar province, his eye was soon drawn on Sullivaiq
He recognized him as a dangerous person of whom it
was desirable to rid the neighbourhood, and was
already casting about for means to dispose of him.
Finding himself in the very hotbed of the contraband
trade which he had come to Ireland to expose, Sullivan,
notwithstanding his danger, seems to have determined
to stick to Killarney, and to gain favour at the Castle
by real service. It is hardly conceivable, notwith¬
standing the sore leg, that he could not have left it
if he had wished. Hut his game was an extremely
dangerous one. He was safe on one side by connect¬
ing himself with the Fairies; but the Vicax*-General
was an antagonist of another creed. The Vicar-General,
who saw through him, could order his arrest as a
teacher in a Catholic school. To meet attack on this
side he presented himself in the parish church of
Killarney as a convert from Popery, and was formally
received into the Establishment. He was unaware as
yet that the Vicar-General and the Fairies were such
close allies as he found them. Donell Mahony himself
had become a nominal Protestant to qualify himself to
hold the Shelburne lease. Protestantism of this kind
was understood and laughed at. But Sullivan was
mistaken in supposing that his own conformity would
S26 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. HI.
be endured as easily. No sooner was it announced
that lie bad changed bis religion, tban tbe rage of tbe
town burst out again. Pat Kelly, bis partner, waylaid
him in tbe street with fan unmerciful cutlass,' and
threatened to run him through the body. He pre¬
tended that he dared not leave the town for fear he
should be followed and killed. If he stayed he was like
to fare no better. He did not venture a second appeal
to the magistrates, for the magistrates, he had learnt
already, were in league with the wool-runners. To
complete the absurdity of the picture, in the midst of
all this lawlessness there was a garrison of soldiers at
Poss Castle, not a mile distant from the town, under
the command of Lord Fitzmaurice, the eldest son of
the Earl of Kerry. To Lord Fitzmaurice, as his last
chance, Sullivan now applied, and declared that he
was in danger of his life from Pat Kelly and his cut¬
lass. Fitzmaurice was one of the Protestants who, for
f the odd reasons ' alluded to by the Castle Secretary,
were not much to be relied on. He looked his visitor
sternly in the face, and told him that ' Kerry did not
love informers.' At last, with much difficulty, he
issued a warrant for Kelly's arrest. The High Constable,
Mr. George Eager (who had recommended himself for
his office by threatening to break his cudgel on a magis¬
trate's back in his own court) insisted that the warrant
could not be executed. Mr. Donell Mahony appeared
on the scene immediately after, with all Killarney
howling at his back, and offered bail for Kelly, which
Fitzmaurice at once accepted. The unfortunate Sullivan
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
527
was turned out of Ross Castle among tlie mob, who
received him with yells of spy and informer, hunted
him to his house, and serenaded him from below his
window ' with execrations and blasphemies against the
Church of England and its ministers.' The blood of
the O'Sullivans had so far saved him from the worst
extremity. Now, however, he says it was decided that
he must die. The execution of a descendant of a noble
Irish house was only to be performed by a Milesian of
equal rank; and MacCartymore, thq landless chief of
the Mac Car ties, an outlaw given in his bankrupt
condition to drink, already liable to hanging for other
crimes, and to whom an extra sin would be of no conse¬
quence, was pitched upon to put him out of the world.
Either MacCarty could not be brought to the point,
or Eitzmaurice gave the smugglers to understand that
Sullivan, being an emissary of Government, they must
stop short of extremities, and the idea of murder was
postponed till other methods had first been tried. One
night, when he was in his bed, Pat Kelly and the
Eairies broke in, seized him, tied him hand and foot,
and bore him off to a lonely house outside the town.
His pocket-book, with Walpole's pass in it, was taken
from him ; and the next morning he was carried before
a bench of magistrates, consisting of the Rev. Francis
Lawder, Sir Maurice Crosby of Ardfert, Lord Fitz-
maurice's brother-in-law, and David Barry, seneschal
of the Ross ' Manor Court.' Mr. Lawder took the
charge of the case, and addressed the prisoner with
meritorious frankness.
528 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. lit.
' You rogue,' lie said ; ' do you tliink to get justice
against tlie county of Kerry gentlemen wlio are all
of a knot, and baffle the very judges on the circuit ?
You are mistaken. Our words are taken by the
Government before the depositions of a thousand wit¬
nesses who have no friends to back them. I wonder
you would be so mad as to enterprise the like affair !
Were you not afraid to be knocked on the head ? My
friend, this is not France; this is Kerry, where we do
as we please. We'll teach you some Kerry law, which
is to give no right, and take 110 wrong.'
The offence alleged was that Sullivan was a returned
convict. His identity with the transported school¬
master was not denied, and the passport being safe in
Pat Kelly's keeping, Lawder ironically asked him
whether he had received permission to come back to
Ireland. He pleaded that his papers had been stolen.
The magistrates threatened to have him flung out of the
window for insolence. The creature was not deficient
in courage. Being in extremity, as he afterwards
declared, and expecting no mercy, he turned on the
Vicar-General and asked him 'how it would be taken
by tlie Government, if a clergyman and a magistrate
was found to have employed a Rapparee to assault and
kidnap a new convert who had just read his public
recantation before the Rev. Mr. Bland, and the congre¬
gation.'
The Vicar-General seemingly paid no attention, but
wrote out his committal as a returned Papist, and
passed him over to the constable to take to Tralee gaol.
CH. II.] THE SMUGGLERS. 529
*
The magistrates, however, hesitated before completing
so glaring a piece of impertinence. Sullivan was con¬
fined for a few days at a private house in Killarney,
and was then turned out of doors, with the advice to
leave Ireland as fast as he could, and a promise that,
if he betrayed what had befallen him to the Govern¬
ment, he should be promptly killed.
Being, as he said, ' invincibly persuaded' that this
was true, he lay quiet in his lodging for two or three
months. He was closely watched, but the evident
tenderness for the Sullivan name and extraction again
befriended him. He ventured gradually to show him¬
self in the streets again, and at last reopened his school,
where, having a reputation for learning, he gathered a
knot of students about him ; amongst others another
young Connell of Iveragh, named Maurice.
Among these lads he contrived to ingratiate him¬
self. Some of them were strangers from other parts
of the country, unconnected with the Kerry faction,
and valued Sullivan for the learning which he was
really able to give them.1 His classes were well filled,
and the informer was forgotten in the professor, when
the unlucky arrival in the town of a heavy cargo of
smuggled brandy rekindled the smouldering exasper¬
ation. Once more he was waylaid, knocked down, and
1 A young McLaughlin, for in¬
stance, from Ardagli, co. Longford,
who was examined afterwards at
the Castle in connexion with Sulli¬
van's story, said that, ' living in a
place inconvenient to good teachers,
111 EL. I.
and hearing a famous character of
the teachers of Kerry, he had re¬
paired to Killarney to the school
of Sylvester O'Sullivan, professor
of various sciences.'—3fSS. Lublin
Castle, 1728.
51 31
53° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hi.
beaten. He escaped into bis school-room, where the
boys took his side, barricaded the door and windows,
and beat off the mob who continued howling outside ;
when Fitzmaurice, resolved, once for all, to be rid of a
nuisance which had grown intolei'able, sent a warrant
for his instant appearance at Ross Castle.
Sullivan says, that Fitzmaurice desired that he
should be torn to pieces in the riot, under circum¬
stances which could be represented as accidental. The
suspicion was so far justified that no escort of soldiers
was sent to conduct him down. Fitzmaurice was
disappointed however, if this was his object, by the
fidelity of the students who attended their master as a
bodyguard.
To expose the alleged occasion of a disturbance in
the stocks, in the middle of the mob, would not have
been considered, out of Ireland, a hopeful method of
appeasing it. This, however, was the remedy which
suggested itself to the Governor of Ross Castle. He
sentenced Sullivan to sit in that position for two hours,
in Killarney market-place. ' Sullivan made his hum¬
ble demonstration, that he was known to be descended
from a noble, antient, and valuable family in the
county/ The better the blood, in the opinion of Lord
Fitzmaurice, the deeper the disgrace. The prisoner
was taken back for the sentence to be executed—the
stocks were prepared—f evil persons' were filling their
pockets with stones, to make an end of him as soon as
he was secured. Once more the faithful students came
to the rescue. The stocks were upset and broken in
ch. ii.] THE SMUGGLERS. 531
pieces ; Sullivan was hurried away in the dusk to some
temporary hiding-place; and that night young Maurice
Connelly a young McLaughlin of Ardagh, in Longford,
and two other lads, conducted him, by byeways and
paths, over the mountains out of Kerry ; never leaving
him till they had seen him safe in Dublin, where he
told his singular story at the Castle.1
1 ' Examination of Sylvester
O'Sullivan, 1728. MSS. Dublin
Castle. Maurice Connell and
McLaughlin were examined as well
as O'Sullivan, and, so far as their
knowledge went, his account is
confirmed by theirs.
M M 2
532
SECTION IV.
On tlie most superficial insight into the condition of
three out of the four provinces of Ireland, the
i728
contrast between the laws on the statute-book
and the living reality is more than grotesque. The
Ireland of theory was law-ridden beyond any country
in Europe. The Ireland of fact was without any law
at all, save what was recognized by the habits of each
district and county. The forms of English jurisdiction
were admitted only when the chicanery of local attor¬
neys could abuse them for Irish purposes. The Pro¬
testant magistrates, who were the nominal rulers over
the Catholics, were as powerless as if they were dead,
when they set themselves in opposition to Catholic
prejudices. The Protestant gentry, clergymen as well
aa laymen, were rather driven to purchase toleration
for themselves by adopting the manners of those
among whom their lot was cast, than to stir sleeping
dogs by struggling against the stream. The Castle
government was best pleased when there was the
least disturbance, and assumed that all was well when
its composure was unruffled by complaints. Donell
Mahony might rule in Kerry, or Martin of Ballinahinch
in Connemara. The O'Donoghue might threaten one
magistrate on the bench with a visit from five hundred
Rapparees; the high-constable of Killarney might tell
another, that he would have broken his staff on his
CII. IT.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
533
head f save out of respect for the rest of the company/
Such things might be, but the Government desired to
hear as little as they might of evidences of adminis¬
trative "weakness. Soldiers might be quartered a few
roods off; but the soldiers were so ostentatiously in¬
different, that they must have been ordered at all
hazards to avoid unpleasant collisions. What could
magistrates do so circumstanced, but, since they were
forbidden to force the people to submit to the law,
submit the law and ultimately their own manners, and
sympathies, and characters to the ways of the people ?
A story, told by an informer like Sylvester O'Sullivan,
would, by itself, have been an insufficient witness to
the habits of the gentlemen of the South of Ireland.
Another incident, almost exactly contemporary, a matter
which became at last of international consequence,
and was made the subject of judicial investigation,
exhibits the country in the same aspect of lawlessness;
and one at least of the same parties—the Vicar- General
of the diocese—in a position which singularly confirms
0'Sullivan's account of him.
Ballyhige House, or Castle, the seat of a younger
branch of the family of Crosby, stands at the northern
extremity of the Bay of Tralee. The sand and pow¬
dered shells, which form the bed of the Atlantic, are
swept in by the eddying tides behind Kerry Head,
and lie for miles as a fringe upon the shore. The
shoals reach far to the sea, and the rollers with a
north-west wind break over them in sheets of yellow
foam. Blown sand-heaps, covered with long pale
534
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. iii.
grass, and burrowed by rabbits, divide the beacli from
the brown morass which stretches inland over the
level plain. At the north end of the sands where the
ground rises out of the bog is the castle, which was
the scene of the following story :—
The Crosbies of Kerry were descended from John
Crosbie, who in 1600 was made Bishop of Ardfert by
Queen Elizabeth. The Bishop bought estates in the
country, which his son increased by good management
and a judicious alliance. Sir Thomas, his grandson,
a staunch loyalist, was knighted by Ormond. He was
twice married, and left behind him eight sons and one
daughter. Daniel Crosbie, the eldest, inherited the
family property at Ardfert. From him it passed to
Sir Maurice, who married a Fitzmaurice, a daughter
of Lord Kerry, and, at the time to which our story
relates, was member for the county in the Irish Par¬
liament. Sir Maurice, it will be remembered, was one
of the magistrates before whom Sylvester O'Sullivan
was brought at Killarney. Thomas Crosbie, Sir
Maurice's uncle, the eldest son of Sir Thomas by his
second marriage, succeeded to the estates at Ballyhige,
which had belonged to his mother. Like the rest of
the family he was a fierce High Churchman,1 and sate
with the Knight of Kerry for the borough of Dingle.
1' Those of the Old Church, which
they call the High one, are in ex¬
pectation that either Mr. Meredith,
a very honest English gentleman,
or Mr. Crosbie, of Ballyhige, are
pricked as sheriffs by my Lord Chief
Justice, because they were never
yet sheriffs, and that they are
High Churchmen to their hilts, and
great champions for that cause in
this county.'—' Maurice Hussey to
Secretary Dawson, 171°.' MSS.
Dublin Castle.
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
535
He too Iiad married into tlie peerage, his wife, Lady
Margaret, being sister of the Earl of Barrymore.
Another Crosbie, a cousin William, was member
for Ardfert. Arthur, a cousin also, was Commissioner
of the Customs, and had a son who married a daughter
of Lord Mornington, the Honourable Fanny Wesley or
Wellesley.
The family, which was thus highly connected,
became the actors in one of the most remark -
1729
able episodes of Irish history in the last cen¬
tury; and the story of it illustrates how much could
be ventured with impunity in that country by persons
who commanded so many votes in the Parliament.
Ballyhige was at this time a long straggling house,
built low to avoid the storms, and thatched, which was
a proof of confidence in the people, and a sign that the
owner had no reason to fear incendiaries. On the east
side was a large fruit and kitchen garden; on the west,
attached by a wall to the main building, was a square
stone fire-proof tower of unknown antiquity. Between
the house and the sea there had been run up a set of
cabins forming a court or quadrangle, and occupied by
workmen ; for Mr. Crosbie, being a man of enterprise,
had erected a linen factory there, and was doing a
thriving business, with a Scotchman named Dalrymple
for a foreman. Behind the factory the ground sloped
away to the sand-hills, and thence to the shore.
It so happened that, in the autumn of the year
1728, a Danish East Indiaman, the ' Golden Lion,'
having on board twelve chests of silver bullion, which
536 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. nr.
she was bringing home from the East, was driven by
foul weather into the Bay of Tral'ee.1 The wind falling
round to the north-west, and blowing dead on the land,
she was unable to extricate herself, and at five in the
morning of the 28th of October she grounded, in the
shallow water, half a mile from shore. She had eighty-
eight men on board, and she carried twenty-two guns.
"When first seen the evening before the wreck, she had
been taken for a privateer. Iler character and the
value of her cargo, however, were very soon known.
As the tide went back a mob of wreckers and smim-
O
glers assembled, who, under pretence of giving help,
would have soon disabled and overwhelmed the con¬
fined and half-drowning crew. But Mr. Crosbie turned
out with his servants and workmen, drove away the
people, assisted the captain and sailors to land with
their bullion chests, and carried them into the shelter
of Ballyhige. The ship was lost. All her company
and everything of value which she had on board were
saved.
The silver coined and in bars was worth nineteen
or twenty thousand pounds.2 Mr. Crosbie showed
only the most honourable desire to preserve the pro¬
perty which had been recovered for its lawful owners.
Pie deposited the chests in a cellar, gave the com¬
mander, Captain Pleitmann, an acknowledgment for
1 Local tradition says that she
was tempted in by false lights. The
charge rose probably from the
habits of a later generation, and is
certainly unjust. In the contem¬
porary depositions there is not a
hint of anything of the kind.
2 The purchasing power of
money being more than double
what it is at present.
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
537
their delivery into his charge, and allowed the Danes
themselves to keep guard on the place where the
treasure was deposited.
The exposure on the morning of the wreck was
unfortunately fatal to him. lie caught a severe cold
from standing in the water, and being an old man he
died in a few weeks. A claim was put in for salvage
by his executors, seemingly exaggerated, for in De¬
cember an order was sent from Dublin Castle to the
Tralee Custom House to protect the Danes from ex¬
tortion ; but, until the question was settled, they were
not permitted to remove the treasure, and Captain
Heitmann was made uneasy at the tone in which the
subject was talked of in the county. Mr. Crosbie's
funeral drew together a crowd from all parts of the
neighbourhood. The Irish "were present there in over¬
whelming numbers, and their general tone was reckless
and menacing. The rejection of the salvage claims
had been resented in the household, and the servants'
ideas on rights of property were evidently loose. The
Captain at last asked Lady Margaret to make over to
him the detached stone tower, in which he could lodge
his seamen, and have the treasure with him under the
same roof. Lady Margaret refused. She wanted one
at least, she said, of the rooms in the tower for her
own purposes. She permitted the chests, however, to
be buried in the tower cellar in a position unknown to
any one except her butler. The hole was filled in with
broken glass and crockery, and earth was thrown over
it. The greater number of the crew went away. Ten
538 TILE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. III.
or twelve wlio remained were lodged in the tower
garret; a sentinel was stationed at the door at the foot
of the staircase; while Captain Heitmann himself con¬
tinued Lady Margaret's guest in the castle itself.
The months passed on; spring followed winter.
The salvage difficulty could not be settled, and the
unusual presence in Kerry of so large a quantity of
money, over the ownership of which meanwhile some
uncertainty was supposed to hang, set the whole county
in agitation.
The name of the Vicar-General of the diocese now
re-appears. The Kev. Francis Lawder resided but a
few miles from Bally hige. Towards the middle of April,
Mr. Lawder's steward was superintending a party of
labourers, who were thrashing out corn, when a stranger
entered the barn and whispered something to the
steward, who went away with him. The same evening
the steward told the labourers that there was a plan
on foot to carry off the Danes' treasure, and asked if
they cared to take a part in it. The exploit was
tempting ; but whether it might be safely ventured
depended on the opinion of the county. If all ranks
were implicated, none would be punished; a small
party would be discovered and hanged. They asked
whether the gentry approved. The steward answered
that all the gentry had consented, except the Earl of
Kerry who had not been consulted. They had pro¬
mised either to be present themselves, or else to send
their servants.
To men to whom smuggling had become a second
CM. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
539
nature, chests of bullion recovered out of the sea had
lost the character of private property; and the hesita¬
tion in paying the Crosbies' salvage claims removed
the scruples of the waverers. What, however, did
Lady Margaret think about it ? Lady Margaret was
the great person of the neighbourhood. Lady Mar¬
garet's supposed rights were the legal groundwork
of the proceeding, and, without her leave, the lowest
Lapp are e would not stir. The Ballyhige butler, Mr.
Banner, was taken into council. Banner was instructed
to inform his mistress that, if she would give the word,
the thing should be done, and a third or half the
spoil should be her ladyship's share. Lady Margaret
was neither better nor worse than other ladies and
gentlemen in the county; she could not live in an
atmosphere of lawlessness without contracting some¬
thing of the same temperament. Had she spoken her
real thoughts she would have answered like young
Pompey—
This tliou shouldst have done,
And not have spoke on't. Being done unknown,
I should heave found it afterwards well done,
But must condemn it now.
When the butler delivered his message, she affected
great displeasure. She would not hear of it, she said.
She would rather lose her own life than allow the
Danes to be robbed under her roof. She spoke
decisively, yet something in her manner indicated a
less fixed resolution. The butler inferred that, so
long as she was not herself compromised, she would
not be unforgiving. The report which he carried back
54° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
was sufficient. The plot gathered shape, stole into
the general air, and was whispered in hall and cabin.
The steward, who was a practised hand, and knew
that in such matters there was nothing more dangerous
than delay, collected, as he considered, a sufficient
force on the spot, and one midnight, with forty men
with blacked faces, and armed with guns and pick¬
axes, he stole up through the sand-hills, and sent a boy
into the house to tell the butler that the people were
come.
It happened that Mr. Arthur Crosbie, Lady Mar¬
garet's nephew, was that night a guest at Ballyhige.
Mr. Arthur was clerk of the Crown for the county,
and might be held exceptionally responsible. He
must, of course, have been taken generally into con¬
fidence, and have given a general approval, but he
was unprepared for such sudden action. The butler
ran to his room and woke him. He said, (he would
not for any consideration the thing should be done
while he was in the house; as soon as he was gone he
did not care what they did.' The butler, with much
difficulty, persuaded the gang to withdraw for that
night and to wait for another opportunity. Arthur
Crosbie departed, but it seemed now as if Lady
Margaret's own mind misgave her. Eager conspira¬
tors continued to flit about the house and gossip with
the servants. The Yicar-General's men were in haste
to be at work. The Ballyhige house steward assured
Lady Margaret from him that she should have her
part secured, and it would be more than she would
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
54i
get from the Danes. lie told her that the attempt
would certainly he made, indeed had all hut been
made already.
Lady Margaret still wavered. c She seemed to
ahlior the thought of it/ 01* it might he that she only
abhorred the officiousness which thrust an unwelcome
privity upon her. She desired and did not desire ;
approved and disapproved. She, perhaps, wished to
escape the temptation, and, by an effort of honesty, to
place the prize out of her reach. A day or two after
the first attempt she sent for one of the Danish
officers, called him into a private room, and told him
that the treasure was in danger. She bade him ask
Captain Heitmann if he was satisfied with the place in
which it was bestowed, and she offered, if he preferred
it, to keep the chests in her own bed-room. Captain
Heitmann said that the dwelling-house being thatched,
and therefore liable to be fired, he thought they were
safer in the tower. The officer carried back the
answer. Lady Margaret gave so odd a smile that he
was led to ask, how she knew that there were ill
designs on foot. In his own country, he said, persons
revealing intended crimes were brought before a
magistrate, and examined upon oath. If she had
serious grounds for suspicion there ought to be a
similar enquiry.
Lady Margaret said that this was not the custom in
Ireland. Information might be given privately, but
gentlemen did not like their names to be made public.
In fact, she could say no more, but she desired to let
542 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. HI.
him understand generally that mischief was in the
wind.
The Danes knew not what to make of information
so ambiguously given. They were strangers; most
of them understood no language but their own : one
or two spoke English imperfectly, and Irish not at
all.1 But they naturally assumed, that in the English
dominions, and under the English Flag, they were in
a country which respected the first principles of law.
Similar warnings continued to reach them : the butler's
wife told them one day they ought to be much obliged
to her husband; half-a-hundred villains had come to
the house one night, to make away with them, and but
for Mr. Banner, they would have been all murdered,
and the treasure taken away. She too, perhaps, like
her mistress, wished them to take precautions which
should make the robbery impossible; but they only
laughed at her. In the house of the sister of a peer
and the widow of a member of Parliament they refused
to believe that they could be really in danger. She
left them, they said afterwards, c very angry.'
The affair was by this time whispered over the
whole country-side, and, among others, reached the
ears of Mr. Collis, the vicar of Tralee. Mr. Collis had
not peihaps been long enough in Kerry to outgrow
his prejudices. He was stopped on a Sunday afternoon
in the middle of May, by one of his parishioners, who
said that he desired to consult him. The twelve chests
of silver at Ballyhige were about to be carried off and
1 The captain's deposition is in Latin.
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
543
divided : Lady Margaret was to have four of them;
four were for the gentlemen of the county; the four
remaining were to be shared among the party who
were to execute the robbery. He had himself, he
said, been invited to join, and he wished to know
whether it was robbery in the real sense of the word,
and whether it was an act which the vicar would
approve. Collis, astonished and shocked, told him
that it was a monstrous piece of wickedness, and that,
at all hazards, it must be prevented. He was unable
to conceive that a person in Lady Margaret's position
could herself be an accomplice ; and not being himself
acquainted with her, he desired a gentleman of Tralee,
whom he knew to visit at Ballyhige, to let her know
what was going on. The gentleman promised to tell
her, but he understood Kerry better than the vicar of
Tralee, and put it off from day to day. Collis himself
at last rode over to Ballyhige, had an interview with
Lady Margaret, and told her frankly that officious
friends of her own, under pretence of doing her the
justice which the Danes refused, were about to commit
a frightful crime in her supposed interest.
Lady Margaret was polite but unsatisfactory. She
expressed 1 a great dislike' to the idea, but had evi¬
dently not realized the criminality of it. She said
that she would speak to Captain Heitmann, and that
the chests should be removed to her own room. It
would have been more to the purpose if she had pro¬
posed to send them to the gaol or barracks at Tralee.
Collis left Ballyhige with more misgivings than he
544 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. hi.
had brought with him. He endeavoured to impress
upon her before he went, that, besides robbery, there
would be bloodshed and probably murder; and he
seriously entreated her to forbid an act, which a word
from her, spoken decidedly, would certainly prevent.
Lady Margaret's conscience was again moved. She
sent once more for the officer to whom she had spoken
before. Her present informant she was able to name.
Mr. Collis, of Tralee, she said, had told her that a
robbery would certainly be attempted. A second time
she suggested that the chests should be removed to
the dwelling-house and placed under her personal
charge.
Her object probably was less to prevent the robbery
than to prevent a collision between the Danes and the
Vicar-General's gang. The officer was still incredu¬
lous, that an act of open violence would be ventured
upon strangers in the house of a gentleman of fortune,
full of servants, with a linen factory swarming with
workmen not a hundred yards distant. He was per¬
haps less satisfied that, if the chests were transferred
from their present position, they might not myste¬
riously disappear. He declined to let them be re¬
moved. He took the precautions of placing a second
sentinel at the turret door during the night. He
again begged Lady Margaret to let the Danes have
the turret to themselves, and asked that some of his
own ship's muskets, which were in the castle, with
ball and powder, might be served out to his men.
The first request Lady Margaret declined; it would
CII. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS
545
be inconvenient, she said, and she could not allow it.
After some delay, eight or ten muskets were sent over,
and some balls, but, under one pretext or another, no
powder was sent with them.
Even yet the unfortunate Danes were not seriously
alarmed. The officers and seven sailors slept in the
upper rooms in the turret. One of the servants occu¬
pied the apartment on the ground-floor, so that they
were unable to barricade the door. They kept careful
watch, however; and Captain Heitmann had so far
seen no reason to move his quarters from the dwelling
house and remain with his men.
Lady Margaret meanwhile had given her definite
consent, and in keeping back the powder she trusted
that she had taken sufficient precautions to prevent
bloodshed. Everybody in the house was now in the
secret. Mr. Thomas Idassett1 came to stay at Bally -
hige with a number of servants. They were all taken
into confidence. Several other gentlemen's servants
were in attendance; their presence was the price they
were made to pay for their share of the booty. The
preparations were made with the utmost deliberation.
A sloop was brought round into the bay to be at hand
in case of sudden danger. The house steward sent the
wheel-barrows and truckles, which were in the yard,
to be repaired, that they might be in condition to bear
a heavy load. Mr. Lawder's servants put in readiness
his horses and carts. The night of the fourth of June
was fixed on for the attack. The gang were to come
1 Perhaps Benner or Blennerliassett.
Ill oL. I. N N
540 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. III.
up as before from the sea, through the sand-hills. The
servants undertook that they should find all gates and
doors unlocked.
No fresh warning was allowed to the Danes. The
officer in the turret had gone to bed, and was asleep.
He was awoke at midnight by a sound of shots. A
moment after one of his men was at his bedside,
wounded and bleeding. The two sentries had been
suddenly fired on, and had both been killed. Peter¬
son, the wounded man, who had been with them, had
dragged himself up the stairs, securing behind him
the door which divided the upper and lower stories.
The officer sprung up and flew with the rest to the
leads. He saw the court below swarming with armed
men, with guns and torches. By the flaming light he
recognized one of the Crosbie family, and more than
one of the household. The Danes had but a pair of
pistols and one gun with them, and no ammunition
for a second charge. To fire would be to throw away
their lives uselessly, so they remained behind the
parapets, watching the robbers' proceedings.
Captain Heitmann, in the dwelling-house, had in a
like manner been roused by the uproar. He too had
darted out of bed, and had run down to the hall, where
he found the family assembled. He went to the door
to open it. Lady Margaret threw herself in his way,
and implored him not to stir, as he would be killed.
He asked if she would not send some one down to
rouse the factory hands. She said it was impossible.
In fact they were already roused, and were at work in
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
547
the court with the rest. He appealed to the servants.
No one stirred. He appealed to Mr. Hassett. Mr.
Hassett sate still and made no reply. If he went out
alone, he feared they would lock the door behind him,
and leave him to be murdered. He flung himself, in
despair, upon a bench, and sate helplessly listening to
the yells and cries in the court.
The turret door meanwhile was wide open; the
cellar floor was torn up; the earth and broken bottles
were cleared away, and the twelve chests were lifted
out to be distributed, according to the arrangement.
Beforehand the division had appeared easy. Lady
Margaret was to have a third, the gentlemen a third,
and the robbers a third; but the question now rose,
who were the gentlemen, and who were the robbers ?
"Were the Ballyhige servants to be paid out of their
mistress's share, or out of the share of the Vicar-
General's gang ? The butler, the footman, the coach¬
man, a young David Crosbie, the Scotch factory fore¬
man, and six or seven others, all insisted that they had
borne their part in the robbery, and were entitled to
their part of the robbers' portion ; at last they laid
hold on six of the chests, and tried to carry them off.
A fight began, which, had there been time to finish it,
would have diminished the number of the claimants;
but the grey June morning was already breaking, and
for Lady Margaret's sake it was essential to prevent
daylight from overtaking them before they had finished
their work. A rough partition was effected: the
Ballyhige party secured what they had seized ; Lady
54§ THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. iii.
Margaret's four chests were buried in the garden ; two
were broken up and the contents rudely divided; and
the ' Dolphin ' sloop sailed in the morning, with young
David Crosbie and several others, who had staggered
down to the shore loaded with money-bags. The six
remaining chests were taken off in carts to the Vicar-
General's barn. One cart broke down on the way.
There was no time to repair it : the chest was opened
by the roadside, and ' the scum,' as the rank-and-file
of the gang were called, received their wages in hand-
fuls of silver. Mr. Lawder's proctor had marked three,
which he intended to secrete; perhaps for private and
careful distribution at leisure; but the other parties
interested were impatient or suspicious. Mr. Arthur
Crosbie's steward came over a day or two after to
enquire after the gentlemen's shares, and intimated
' that it would be,worse for those concerned, if they
were not sent.' Servants came on horseback, who
filled their hats and their pockets ; and thus, in a short
time, the whole disappeared.
The strangest part of the story has now to be told.
Even in Kerry it was not expected that an exploit
of this kind could be passed over without a show of
enquiry. The day after the robbery, Lady Margaret
sent word to Mr. Chester, chief collector of the revenue,
that her house had been broken into and the Danish
silver stolen. Her son and her servants, she said, had
attempted to trace the perpetrators, but had failed in
discovering them.
The son, who was a mere lad, was not likely to dis-
CH. II.J
THE SMUGGLERS.
549
cover them. Lady Margaret, perhaps, hoped that the
excuse would be accepted, but the affair had been on
too large a scale. The leading magistrates in the
county were Sir Maurice Crosbie, county member and
high sheriff; William Crosbie, member for Ardfert;
Mr. Blennerhassett, Edmund Denny, and the Knight of
Kerry. Mr. Blennerhassett, if not related to the Hassett
who was an accomplice, certainly assisted afterwards
in suppressing investigation. The Crosbies' first duty
was to their own family. The Knight had too many
transactions of his own with the smugglers to be able
to exert himself if he had wished. Mr. Denny could
not act alone in a matter which might bring him into
deadly feud with his neighbours. The robbery was on
the night of the 4th of June. A week passed. No
arrests had been made, and no steps taken. On the
15 th there came a sharp reprimand from Dublin from
Mr. Lingen, the first commissioner of the Customs.
The Government, Mr. Lingen said, were at a loss to
understand such extraordinary remissness in an affair
of so much consequence. The magistrates were com¬
manded to exert themselves instantly to recover the
money, and ' prevent the damage which would other¬
wise fall on the inhabitants of the neighbourhood/
For decency's sake it was necessary to do some¬
thing, but something which should furnish no clue to
the real perpetrators. A man named Anderson, who
had not been concerned, was taken up, and sent to
Dublin to be examined. Anderson pleaded his own
innocence, and of course there was no evidence against
55° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. HI.
him. He could not call himself wholly ignorant of
what evei'yone knew ; but when pressed by Sir Edward
Southwell, the principal secretary, for the names of the
parties guilty, he said, that he could mention no one in
particular ' unless he named the whole commonalty on
that side of the county of Kerry/
If the commonalty were all implicated there was,
at least, the Earl of Kerry, the lord-lieutenant of the
county. Carteret, the then viceroy, was in England.
The Lords Justices, Archbishop Boulter, and the
Speaker, Conolly, wrote in real indignation to require
the Earl to bring the offenders to justice, and compel
them to restore their plunder. Lord Kerry himself
promised to do his best. His own hands were clean,
and, for himself, he had nothing to conceal; but he
acknowledged, frankly, that there would be great
difficulty. He could expect no help from the magis¬
trates. The money, he feared, was beyond recovery.
His son, Lord Fitzmaurice, if his behaviour at
Killarney was a specimen of his general conduct, was
probably less scrupulous than his father. On Lord
Fitzmaurice and the Earl, however, the responsibility
was now thrown so seriously that they could not evade
it. The steward and the butler at Ballyhige were
arrested, threatened with the gallows, and frightened
into full confessions; but, the more they confessed,
the more perplexing the situation became. The first
families in the county; high officials in Church and
State; members of Parliament who had votes, and
who required to be conciliated; the Earl of Kerry's
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
55*
own kindred, for Sir Maurice Crosbie was bis son-in-
law ; the whole county side, as Anderson truly said,
were implicated. There was no longer a difficulty in
getting at the truth. Captain Heitmann and his
officers gave their evidence. The Ballyhige servants
made a clean breast of it. The Vicar-General's serv¬
ants, seeing concealment useless, were as plainspoken
as the rest. Mr. Collis, of Tralee, deposed to his con¬
versation with Lady Margaret. The depositions were
sent to the Castle, and Lingen returned Lord Kerry
his hearty thanks, f for having unravelled such an
enormous piece of villany, which was now set in the
truest light.'
But the difficulty now was the truth itself. There
had not been robbery only, but murder, and murder
of a dastardly kind—murder of two shipwrecked
foreign seamen—in violation of the sacred rights of
hospitality. Yet no one, high or low, seemed aware
of its wickedness. The origin of the crime was the
utter demoralization of the gentry of an entire Irish
county. Those who, by the constitution, were the
natural governors of the people, were their leaders in
depravity. They, if any, ought to have been selected
for punishment.
The public trial and execution of an earl's sister,
a vicar-general of the Irish Establishment, and a mem¬
ber or two of the Irish Legislature, would have been
an example that would have lifted forward the civiliz¬
ation of Kerry by three-quarters of a century.
But the days of George the Second and Sir Robert
552
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. III.
Walpole were not the days of Cromwell. The judges
came to Tralee on their summer circuit, and the assizes
were opened at Tralee. One or two of the gang were
tried and sentenced; but the Earl of Kerry pleaded
justly, ' that it would be small service to the county to
let the poor rogues be hanged, while the principals
escaped/ The judges shared Lord Kerry's opinion,
or, when they came into the county, they assumed the
habits of .thought which prevailed there. If no one
was to be punished, an effort might at least be made
to recover the plunder. Here the apathetic magis¬
trates affected a real zeal, and gave the concluding
touch of the grotesqueness of the picture. Since they
were not wanted for the gallows, there could be no
longer a reason for detaining the prisonei-s. The
Knight of Kerry had written generally to Mr. Lingen,
that he knew of persons who, if assured of pardon,
would assist in discovering the money. Lingen re¬
plied with general encouragement; and under the
shelter of Lingen's letter, and pretending to be acting
by order of the Government—the Knight, Sir Maurice
Crosbie, Mr. Blennerhassett, and two other magis¬
trates—signed an order to the governor of Tralee
gaol to release the Vicar-General's servants, the most
prominent of the actual perpetrators of the crime; and
to two of these persons—one of them the steward who
had planned the robbery and divided the plunder,
they committed the recovery of it from hands of those
among whom it had been distributed. No choice could
have been better if there had been a real desire to find
CH. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
553
the money, but the object was merely to turn ridicule
on the whole affair. The released prisoners strutted
about the county showing their commissions amidst
universal amusement, saying openly, that if the thing
had been still to do they would do it again, and
parading the protections which they professed to
have received from the Castle.
If the most notorious villains were selected for
special favour, those who had promoted the investiga¬
tion became naturally alarmed for themselves. The
Earl of Kerry wrote to the Castle, that he expected
nightly to have his house burnt over his head. On his
own authority he re-arrested the two scoundrels who
had been thus ridiculously pardoned. Lingen wrote
in towering indignation to the Knight. The Kerry
gentry should not be allowed to carry matters with
so insolent a hand. For decency's sake they were
forced to undertake an appearance of a real search
for the money, and hopes were held out from
time to time that the greater part would soon be
collected.
Unfortunately for the Irish Administration there
was a party in the case which declined to be satisfied
with mere restitution. Two Danish subjects had been
killed, and a third wounded. The Copenhagen Govern¬
ment, when Captain Heitmann's report reached them,
insisted not only that the stolen silver should be
restored, but that the guilty persons should be brought
to justice. Walpole felt or affected a proper displea¬
sure. He admitted that England's honour was con-
554
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. III.
corned in punishing crime, and gave Carteret orders to
prosecute. He discovered that a mode of administer¬
ing justice, which may answer well among a people
who have a natural love for right and abhorrence of
wrong, is the worst gift which can be bestowed on
those who do not know what justice means. Carteret
set in motion the usual machinery. A hundred obstruc¬
tions were at once flung in the way. Arthur Crosbie,
the clerk of the Crown, was at last actually tried in
Dublin. The Danes remained in Ireland to give evi¬
dence. The confessions of the Ballyhige servants
proved as plainly as possible that he knew what was
about to be done, and that neither by word nor deed
had he attempted to prevent it. Yet the judge summed
up in favour of the prisoner, and the jury acquitted ?
him. Captain Heitmann complained indignantly f that
the judges were in a conspiracy to suppress the
enquiry;' that f they showed partiality to shield the
Crosbies.' The judges answered, ' that Mr. Arthur
Crosbie was acquitted for want of such proof as was
according to law/ and affected to feel injured and
insulted by the suspicion of favouritism.
The robbery had been committed in 1729. In
1731 Carteret retired from the viceroyalty, and as yet
there had been no redress. The Kerry magistrates
pretended that 9000 pounds worth of bullion had been
found, and that they were ready to account for it; but
three more years went by; the Danes had lingered on,
besieging the Castle with their complaints, yet the
Irish disliked f paying back' as heartily as Falstaff.
CII. II.]
THE SMUGGLERS.
555
They had so far not received an ounce of it. ' During
all this time/ wrote the Duke of Newcastle in 1734 to
Carteret's successor (the Duke of Dorset), ' the master
and sailors of the " Golden Lion " have not been able to
obtain satisfaction for their loss, nor restitution of the
money and plate which were recovered from the persons
concerned.'1
Dorset was as powerless as Carteret had been. He
could but act by forms of law, and law in Ireland was
organized iniquity. Again there was a delay
of two years, and in January, 1736, the Danish
minister in London laid his last remonstrance before
Newcastle and the English Cabinet.
f In an affair so odious,' he said, ' every trick and
stratagem has been employed to screen parties who
are notoriously guilty from the punishment which
they have deserved. The chief authors and accom¬
plices of this infamous conspiracy are as well known
to your Grace and to the Lords of the Council as
to the whole of Ireland. Your Grace has many
times expressed to me your indignation at the manner
in which the Danish Company has been dealt with
in that country throughout the whole affair. His
Majesty, my sovereign, instructs me now to say to
you, that if justice is longer refused, the Danish consul
will be recalled from Dublin; and if any British
vessels are so unfortunate as to be cast away hereafter
on the coast of Denmark, the Irish Administration
1 'Newcastle to the Duke of Dorset, July 17, 1734.' MSS. Record
Office.
556 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. HI.
will be responsible for any misfortune wbicb may over¬
take them.'1
With this letter the curtain drops on the scene.
Whether the Danes went back empty-handed to their
own country, forming their own reflections on the
English method of civilizing Ireland, or whether the
Kerry gentlemen at length unwillingly relaxed their
clutch upon their prey, no evidence has as yet been
discovered to show.2
1 ' The Danish Minister to the
Duke of Newcastle, January 3,
1736.' MSS. Ireland. Becord
Office.
2 For the story of the Danish
treasure see the Irish MSS. in the
Record Office, from November 23,
1730, to January 3, 1736, and the
depositions of the prisoners, the
correspondence between the Castle
and the Earl of Kerry, the evidence
of Mr. Collis of Tralee, and of the
Danish officers and seamen, the
letters of the judges and of the
Duke of Newcastle, among the
MSS. in the tower at Dublin. It
is to be observed that the story is
not mentioned in Smith's Antiqui¬
ties of Kerry, although that book
was written almost immediately
after, and contains a minute and
complimentary account of the
Crosbie family.
557
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.
SECTION I.
T that still far distant period when religious and
political passion will allow a hearing to
historical truth, the merits of a small section of
resident Anglo-Irish gentlemen who, under their heavy
disadvantages, refused to despair of their country, will
not fail of honourable recognition. Wherever the
traveller through Ireland discovers, in the midst of
the wilderness, the exceptional signs of cultivation long
continued—where the fields are cleared of rocks and
drained and fenced, where green meadows contrast
with the usual brown, where the hill-sides are clothed
with thriving plantations, and the farm-buildings are
of stone, and the clothes of the human inhabitants
show signs of being washed and mended—there, he
may assure himself, are the hoof-prints of some Eng¬
lish family which has stood to its post through many
generations. An English colonist has resided there,
and his sons, and his sons' sons, after him; and, to the
558
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[EK. IV.
best of tlieir ability, the}1- have done their duty to the
land and the people. Even among the colonists, how¬
ever, the immense majority fell off into recklessness and
waste. The peasantry took to whiskey-drinking and
Whitebo.yism. The squire and the squireen raced,
betted, smuggled, fought, ravished, drowned them¬
selves and their fortunes in claret, debt, and prodi¬
gality. Of those who lacked backbone to swim against
the stream, but who were unable, in such an atmo¬
sphere, to find satisfaction for their ambition or their
conscience, the larger number deserted their posts,
and disowned all connexion with Ireland, save in the
due exaction of their rents. A few fought bravely
on, striving still, under hard conditions, to lift their
country out of the slough, and imitate, so far as Eng¬
land would allow them, the forethought and industry
which gave her strength to their jealous mistress.
In the first rank of this honourable body stood
Swift, the Dean of St. Patrick's. It could hardly be
said of Swift that he had chosen to remain in Ireland;
for he, too, had the chance been allowed him, would
have preferred an English rectory to the metropolitan
cathedral of the miserable land of his birth. But
fate had cast him there, and disdaining the tricks by
which he might have flattered his way, even under
Walpole and the House of Hanover, into the high
places in the Church, he became, in the best and
noblest sense, an Irish patriot.
Perverse as Swift was, and worse than perverse in
his hatred of the Presbyterians, it was the single
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 559
crack in the clear granite of his intellect. Fettered
with restrictions, robbed of her markets, blockaded
round with prohibitions, he saw that, if her people
were worthy of her, Ireland might still be sufficient
for herself, and, out of her own resources, might de¬
velop her own industry. England might lay a veto
on every healthy effort of Parliamentary legislation;
but England could not touch the self-made laws which
the conscience and spirit of the nation might impose
upon themselves. By their own energy the Irish
might still, if they chose, rise superior to their miseries,
and, by their success, inflict the bitterest humiliation
on their tyrant. England might close their ports,
reject their tillage bills, discourage the legislative
efforts for the better management of their lands; but
she could not prevent them from ploughing their own
fi|lds, wearing their own frieze jerkins, and buying and
selling among themselves. Excluded through his Tory
connexions from all share of public business, after
years of silence and personal study of the country,1
the Dean, on the second rejection of the Tillage Bill,
broke from his retirement, and shook the Council and
the Castle secretaries with a pamphlet which no hand
but his could have written.
' Agriculture,' he said, ' the principal care of all
wise nations, and for the encouragement of which
1 It is sometimes said that Swift
had little knowledge of Ireland,
and never travelled there save
between Laracor and Dublin. A
moderately careful examination of
his writings shows that, at least
with Leinster and Munster, he was
intimately acquainted.
560 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
there were so many statute laws in England, was in
Ireland so well countenanced, that the landlords pro¬
hibited their tenants from ploughing by penal clauses/1
' The wealth of a country was in the people whom it
could raise/ ' The politic gentlemen of Ireland' ' de¬
populated ' their estates f for the feeding of sheep/
By England the Irish were looked on ' as if they were
one of their colonies of outcasts in America.' ' Pallas,
defeated in spinning by Arachne, had turned her rival
into a spider/ Ireland had been dealt with yet more
hardly, ' for her bowels and vitals were extracted,
without allowing her even to spin and weave them.'
' Oppression,' it was said, ' made a wise man mad.
The reason,' he supposed, e why Irishmen were not
mad, was because they were not wise.' ' It was to be
wished, then, that oppression might teach wisdom to
fools.' If Irishmen would resolve that bare Irish backs
should be clothed only with Irish broadcloth, frieze, or
linen; that Irish houses should be furnished with Irish
stuffs and carpets, and Irish stomachs fed with home¬
grown corn, and ale, and milk, the money that went
abroad for silks and velvets, and claret, and brandy,
and the other idle luxuries of ladies and gentlemen
would set the Irish looms at work again, and supply
work yet for every idle hand. The late Archbishop of
Tuam, Dr. Yesey, had remarked that Ireland would
never be happy till a law was made for burning every¬
thing that came from England except the people and
1 It will be remembered that the object of the bill which England
so long refused to sanction was to make these clauses illegal.
CH. I J EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 561
the coals. Swift acknowledged a strong sympathy
with the Archbishop's sentiment. He urged the Irish
Lords and Commons, though they could pass no Act
of Parliament to such effect, yet to vote a unanimous
resolution that no cloth or stuff should be used in any
of their families wThich was not of Irish manufacture,
and, setting the example themselves, stigmatize every
Irishman as an enemy of his country who refused to
follow it. The clergy, he said, must preach it from
their pulpits. The entire nation must act upon it.
One and all, f they must agree never to appear in
public wearing any single thread that came from Eng¬
land, till even an English staylace was thought scan¬
dalous, and a common topic for censure at tea-tables.'1
The pamphlet was anonymous, but, containing
genuine fire, and the combustible matter lying thick
and ready to kindle, it produced a sensation so con¬
siderable, that the Government was rash enough to
order a prosecution. The author being unknown, the
printer was tided for propagating sedition; and Chief
Justice Whitshed, in charging the jury, laid his hand
upon his breast, and swore that the object of the
publication was to bring in the Pretender. This time
Irish proclivities were on the side of equity and good
sense. Nine times the jury returned a verdict of f Not
Guilty;' nine times they were sent back to reconsider
themselves. Worn out at length, they gave a neutral
verdict, leaving the printer to the judge. But the
1 'Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures,' Swift's
Works, vol. vii.
IltEL. I. 0 0
562 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. IV.
judge, on such a doubtful answer, did not venture
to pass a sentence. A second trial was intended ; but
wiser counsels prevailed in time to prevent another
defeat, and the prosecution was dropped.
Swift meanwhile, having drawn the sword, did not
mean again to sheathe it while strength and mind re¬
mained. The Drapier letters and the Copper swindle
will have a section to themselves. Besides these,
before and after them, he poured out tract on tract
denouncing Irish misgovernment, each one of which
was composed with supreme literary power, a just and
burning indignation shining through the most finished
irony, and played like a flash of forked lightning round
tae exasperated Castle politicians. In these tracts,
in colours which will never fade, lies the picture of
Ireland, as England, half in ignorance, half in wilful
despair of her amendment, had willed that she should
be. Three parts in four of the land were owned by ab¬
sentees whose tenants had once been kindly dealt with,
but were then ground by agents who were as hard as
the most brutal resident squireen ; the manufactures
were destroyed ; the plough was driven from the fal¬
lows ; the splendid timber, which a century previously
had clothed plain and mountain, was swept away, was
rotting in the bogs, or built into ships for strangers;
without liberty, without trade, half the profits of such
wi'etched culture as remained were sent out of the
country and spent in England ; industry was paralyzed
by a million discouragements, and the population was
starving in unwilling wretchedness on a soil which,
CU. I.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT 563
fairly treated, would support twice the number in com¬
fort and abundance. Such was Ireland, as Swift traced
it on his canvas. If she flourished, she must flourish,
he said, like the Glastonbury thorn, which bloomed in
midwinter. The landlords' rents were squeezed out of
the blood, vitals, clothes, and dwellings of the peasants,
who lived worse than English beggars; and their
rulers, like Pharaoh, called them idle, and set them to
make bricks without straw. In one singular paper,
the most bitterly sarcastic perhaps ever written by
man, he proposed, as a means of saving the children of
the poor from being a burden on their parents, and
of utilizing them for the public good, that at a year
old they should be cooked and eaten, dwelling with
prolonged refinement on the care which would then
be taken to feed and fatten them, and the variety of
dishes which could be composed out of their carcases.
There were few solvents which would bring Swift into
the melting mood; but overcome, for once, by the
piteousness of his own conception, he said he could
pursue his irony no longer; and, falling back into
seriousness, he again insisted on the only remedy
which was left within Ireland's reach. Flanders laces,
English cloth, Lyons silks, teas, coffees, chocolates,
profusion of wines—these were no fit things for a
country which was steeped in desolation. She was
undone first by England, but next by her own pride
and folly. If the landlord would plough, drain,
plant, build schools, encourage home production and
home consumption, discard every imported article
002
5^4
THE ENGLISH IN LEE LAND.
[CK. TV.
not; necessary for health, and live as if the island had
a wall of brass about it, Ireland might defy her enemies
still, and rise out of her ashes.1
Swift wrote as if he thought, like Elijah, that there
was none left in Ireland but himself to speak the
truth; but, as with the Hebrew prophet, more of his
countrymen than he knew of were thinking the same
thoughts, and, so far as their power extended, were
doing the things which he bade them do. England
closed the door against legislative remedies; but, soon
after the Dean's tracts were published, there appeared
a series of ' Resolutions proper for the Gentlemen of
Ireland,' which expressed rather the united purpose
of many than the personal conviction of a single
thinker.2 f We will live at home,' the Irish gentry
were invited to sa}7, f we will build houses, drain,
plough, and plant, and sow our estates with inhabit¬
ants. We will watch over our people'—[wonderful
that it should be necessary to avow such a determin¬
ation, yet it is as much forgotten now as it was then]
—we will watch over our people ' as much as over our
horses, bullocks, and sheep.' ' So shall we keep at
home the swarms that now go to the West Indies,
valued, like negroes, at thirty shillings a head.'. A¥e
will no more rack our fields and waste our substance.
We will be thrifty and prudent. 'We will,' adopting
Swift's proposal, ' use no sort of clothes or fur¬
niture not of Irish manufacture; and whereas
1 ' Miscellaneous Tracts on the 2 Reflexions and Resolutions
State of Ireland,' Swift's Works, proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland.
vol. vii. Dublin, 1738.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 565
several hundred thousand of our fellow-creatures in
this island get their bread—or would, if we would let
them—by spinning, weaving, and dyeing, we will come
into no iniquitous fashions to beggar or starve them.1
Every sixpence spent in foreign goods is robbed from
our people, and is bread taken from their hungry
mouths.2 We will set ourselves against the.smuggling.
This infamous trade is a nursery for idlers, thieves,
rebels, and vagabonds. It ruins the fair trader, and
breaks the natural compact between the merchant and
the nation.3 We will educate our children, laying up
in their minds the great principles of truth and honour,
virtue and wisdom, love of country, and love of God
and of our holy religion. We will put away these
great stocks of cattle. We will cultivate our soil, and
employ our people, and raise ourselves above the hazard
1 The male portion of the upper
classes had resolution enough for
a time really to wear nothing but
Irish manufacture. 'The gentle¬
men of Ireland,' says this writer,
in another part of his book, ' except
some very fine gentlemen indeed,
have shown their humanity and
good sense in this particular. Our
broadcloths have not the beauty
and fineness with which they are
made up in England, but we think
ourselves sufficiently fine in our own
feathers. If anything could lessen
the charm of our Irish ladies 'tis to
see them dressed out in the spoils
and pillage of their country, and
riding, like barbarous conquerors,
great by the murder of half a
nation.'
2 Bad political economy, but true
nevertheless ; the foreign goods, it
may be urged, unless paid for in
gold, of which there was none in
Ireland, must have been exchanged
for something else, either grown or
manufactured there. But, in fact,
the French silks and clarets were
paid for by the smuggled wool,
which, being raised on sheep's
backs, gave no employment to the
poor, and brought a profit only to
the rich.
3 The writer mentions a curious
fact as to the profits of smuggling.
' In England,' he says,' the common
wages for a smuggler is a guinea
a day, by which means the farmers
on the coast can hardly get in their
harvests.'
566
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
which for ever hangs over us of famine.1 Finally, in
spite of all that we have suffered, we will be English;
we will stand by England and the English interest;
and we will hope that England will at last look favour¬
ably on us, and in time admit us to union/ 2
In the same strain followed Berkeley, raised, in
due time, to his natural place on the Irish bench as
Bishop of Cloyne. Berkeley, who, while his promo¬
tion lingered, had been in the West Indies, and had
visited France and Italy with Lord Peterborough,
brought with him a more instructed insight than was
possible to his untravelled countrymen. He could
believe that there were ills in the world which arose
from other roots than Popery. He insisted—no one
insisted more emphatically—that Bomish priests, it
they remained in Ireland, must give securities for
their allegiance, and abjure the temporal authority of
the Pope; but he was not afraid to acknowledge that
they had won their influence fairly, by zeal and indus¬
try, nor to invite them to use it to rouse their flocks
out of their sloth and filthiness. He had seen Flanders,
and Piedmont, and Lombardy, all Popish countries,
cultivated like gardens. In Turin idleness was a crime,
and f to give charity to a strolling beggar was penal.'
Berkeley urged the priests—the words sound like
mockery, but they represented a real fact—' in return
1 The writer justly insisted on
the enormously improvable charac¬
ter which Ireland showed that she
possessed whenever the chances
were allowed her. ' Between 1652
and 1673 the value of land had
increased fourfold,'he said; 'and
the exports and imports sevenfold.'
2 Reflexions and Resolutions for
the People of Ireland. Abridged.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 567
for the lenity and indulgence of the Government/ to
make themselves really useful to their countrymen,
and endeavour to extirpate their habits of idleness,
which were worse than infidelity.1 The trade
. 1735
restrictions might account in part for the misery
of Ireland, but did not account for all of it. They
might ruin the middle classes, and perhaps demoralize
them; but they did not directly injure the poor. The
peasants, Berkeley said, might at least clean their
houses, dress their potato gardens, and till their fields,
however scanty. Their greatest crime, after all, was
idleness. Irishmen were already the world's byeword.
f The Negroes on the plantations had a proverb, that if
Negro was not Negro, Irishman would be Negro/ But
they were so proud of their filth, that one of his own
kitchen maids had refused to carry out cinders, ' be¬
cause she came of an old Irish stock.' A hut, a pot,
a bundle of straw, a garden overgrown with nettles,
and a heap of children tumbling on a dunghill—this
was the picture of an Irish family in the richest county
of Munster ; and a cynical content in beggary among
them, beyond what was to be seen in any people on
earth. Granted that the woollen manufactures were
taken unjustly from them, there was still room, and to
spare, for productive labour. Ireland, for one thing,
could grow hemp and flax enough to supply the British
navy. She could manufacture paper. She, if she had
the spirit for it, could thrive on the home consumption.
1 A Word to the Wise. Address by the Bishop of Cloyne to the
Roman Catholics of Ireland.
568
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IV.
of her own produce. The plough and the spade would
supply the place of foreign commerce, except in feeding
vanity and luxury. It might he better for Ireland if
all the fine folk of both sexes were shipped off to
foreign countries, instead of spending their rents at
home in foreign luxuries, and spreading moral conta¬
gion among the people. In the ancient English spirit,
the Bishop of Cloyne called on the Government to
re-affirm its old authority, restrain the licentiousness of
the gentry, compel them to educate themselves, and
educate the poor under their charge. When the in¬
dustry of the country was once more in healthy activity,
the incorrigibly idle, the sturdy and valiant mendicant,
the rogue that preferred to live on other men's earn¬
ings by theft or beggary, might then be lawfully
enslaved by the State, and set to labour whether he
would or no. The public had a right over those who
could and would not find employment; and temporary
servitude was the best cure for idleness. Vagrants
might be made slaves for a term of years. The sight
of them, chained in pairs and compelled to work, would
be a wholesome lesson to the rest of the community;
and the rogue himself, who was thus earning, however
unwillingly, his own food and clothes and lodging, so
far from being degraded, was lifted on the first step of
the ladder by which he could rise to manhood.1
So wrote the gentle Berkeley in days when liberty
and human right retained their original meanings;
1 ' Several Queries proposed to Cloyne.' Works, vol. iii. p. 149,
the Consideration of the Public, &c. The Querist was first published
by George Berkeley, Bishop of in 1735.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 569
when slavery was still conceived to consist in bondage
to evil habits, and it was not yet understood that the
first privilege of a free man was to do wrong, if he
happened to prefer it to doing right.
But when a country is to be governed, there must
first be found men to govern, and England could not
govern Ireland, nor would she allow the Irish Pro¬
testants to govern it for her. And indeed, handled
as they had been, they were fast unfitting themselves
for the office. The Puritan spirit of the seventeenth
century settlers was dying out. The industrial spirit
which should have taken its place had been forbidden
to grow. A moiety of the landowners were lounging
in England or abroad. Of those who remained, a
select few of the highest in the land had formed them¬
selves into a society of Blasters, men whose religious
service was a liturgy of execrations, and whose aim in
life was to invent untried forms of impiety and pro-
fiigacy. The choice spirits set the tone. Those less
gifted, either in fortune or genius, imitated, at a
distance, the more splendid vices of their leaders.
The better sort, weary of the hopeless struggle, dropped
off one by one, as the century waned, from the narrow
road to the broad; till the English policy completed
its work, and the ruling race so painfully planted, to
hold and civilize Ireland into a Protestant country,
degenerated into the politicians of 1782, and the heroes
of the memoirs of Sir Jonah Barrington.
57°
SECTION II.
By the statute law of Ireland neither Papist nor
Presbyterian was permitted to open or teach in any
school or college in the four provinces. The
1730 r
Parliament had provided for the education of
the Irish nation by an Act requiring the clergy to
provide schools in each separate parish; and in this
condition the Government had been content to leave
the matter, satisfied with having prescribed an im¬
possibility.
The Catholics, with the same steady courage and
unremitting zeal with which they had maintained and
multiplied the number of their priests, had established
open schools in places like Killarney, where the law
was a dead letter. In the more accessible counties,
where open defiance was dangerous, they extemporized
class teachers under ruined walls, or in the dry ditches
by the roadside, where ragged urchins, in the midst
of their poverty, learnt English and the elements of
arithmetic, and even to read and construe Ovid and
Yirgil. "With institutions which showed a vitality so
singular and so spontaneous, repressive Acts of Parlia¬
ment contended in vain. A Government which under¬
took to coerce a Catholic country with penal statutes
was bound in justice and prudence to provide a better
substitute for the system which it proscribed. After
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 571
waiting in vain for Popery to die of itself, intelligent
Protestant gentlemen discovered, that if conversions
were to make progress they must take some active
measures with the education of the children, and provide
schools which should offer greater temptations than
those of their rivals. Wealth, power, superior en¬
lightenment, all were in their favour. It was the
boast of Protestantism that it was the religion of
intelligence. The hold of the priests, Protestant
writers were never weary of repeating, was 011 the
ignorance and superstition of their flocks. Yet the
priests were caring more for knowledge than they,
beating them on their own ground, and fighting them
with their own weapons, of which they were neglecting
the use. Shamed and alarmed into exertion, the clergy
and gentry took the matter into their own hands.
From the beginning of the eighteenth century, and
perhaps earlier, charity day schools had been scattered
about by the exertions of individuals, where the children
of the peasantry had been taught the catechism, and
had received some kind of industrial training. In 1710
there were 30 of these schools, where 700 boys and
girls, who would consent to be made Protestants, were
being taught to read and write, to cultivate the ground,
to grow hemp and flax, and spin, and knit, and sew.
In 1719 an educational association had been formed :
130 of these day schools had been established, and
the number of children receiving education was 3000.
In 1730, in the viceroyalty of Lord Carteret, and in
connexion with the general effort described in the last
572 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
section, to arrest tlie country in its downward progress,
many peers, archbishops and bishops, the chancellor,
the judges, and the justices of the peace, united in a
joint representation of the necessity for larger exertion;
and, without demanding the intervention of the State,
professed themselves ready, if permitted, to establish
a system of education which in time might become
as extensive and as effectual as the admirable insti¬
tutions which had been founded by the Reformers in
Scotland.
The voluntary efforts hitherto had been confined
chiefly, if not wholly, to Ulster. In the Southern
provinces the colonies of Protestant peasants, which
had been sown in so many parts by the Common¬
wealth leaders, had wasted away. Scanty handfuls
only survived anywhere, when under the protection
of some resident powerful family. There was but
one means left to recover the lost ground, f That a
sufficient number of English Protestant schools should
be established where the children of the Irish nation
might be instructed in the English tongue and in the
principles of true religion.' ' The clergy,' it was said,
' had done their best, but they were powerless to cope
with so great a difficulty.' ' To the intent, therefore,
that the youth of Ireland might be brought up in the
true faith and loyalty in all succeeding generations,
the Crown was requested to grant a charter for a cor¬
poration which might be empowered to hold lands and
receive donations and bequests for the supporting of
such schools as might be erected in the most necessary
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 573
places, where the children of the poor might be taught
gratis / 1
Some subtle assault upon English interests, or the
English purse, was usually assumed to lurk under
Irish petitions. Too much education, if there were no
other objection, might become an element of strength
to the country, and to keep Ireland weak was the first
principle of English policy. Walpole took three years
to consider whether the gentlemen of Ireland should
or should not be encouraged to educate the peasantry.
At length, in 1733, he came to a conclusion
that the experiment might be ventured on a
small scale. He wrote to the Duke of Dorset, who
had succeeded Carteret as Viceroy, for a list of the
persons who were to form the corporation ; and he
fixed a margin within which their funds were to be
limited. The Viceroy satisfied his anxieties. The
trustees were the first men in the kingdom. The
endowment, since - the English Government required a
limit, they were willing to restrict to 2000/. a year.2
On these terms consent was graciously given. Estates
were purchased, large donations were contributed, and,
on the 24th of October, the long-celebrated Charter
Schools, so fiercely condemned by the Catholic priests,
whose worst enemies in fact they were, became part of
the institutions of Ireland.
The schools were of two kinds—day schools, and
1 * Humble Petition of the
Primate, the Chancellor, Arch¬
bishops, Noblemen, Bishops,
Judges, Gentry, and Clergy of Ire¬
land, May 7, 1730.' 3ISS. Record
Office.
2 ' The Duke of Dorset to the
Duke of Newcastle, June 14, 1733.'
574
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. iv.
schools where the children were separated from their
parents, the trustees undertaking their complete
maintenance. At both the general system was the
same. The object was briefly described in 1738 by
the Bishop of Blphin in a sermon before the Society.
' English Protestant working schools were established
for English and national interests, from whence little
colonies, instructed in religion and enured to labour
from their tender years, might be sent out to cultivate,
the barren and neglected parts of the kingdom, and
raise a spirit of industry and activity in the nation/1
Book learning, on the model of the schools already
existing, was made introductory and subsidiary to real
work. The catechism was taught, and reading, and
writing, and arithmetic were taught, but for two hours
a day only out of the seven or eight of which the
school day consisted. The motto of the corporation,
' Peligione et lab ore/ implied a sound and wholesome
conception of the meaning of the word religion. The
arms were the plough, the spade, the spinning-wheel,
and a Bible, opened at the text that the poor have the
Gospel preached to them. The children were collected
in the school-houses at seven in the summer and at
eight in the winter. The business of the day opened
with prayers. Lessons in grammar and writing fol¬
lowed, as has been said, for two hours. The rest of
the time was given up to labour. Spaces of ground
were attached to each school-house, extending to ten
or more acres, which the boys were taught to cultivate.
Charter Society's Tracts, vol. i.
CH. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 575
They trenched and drained. They ploughed and dug.
They raised corn, potatoes, flax, hemp. They fed
cattle on their meadows, and grew and stored hay for
the winter food. The girls learnt spinning, reeling,
sewing, washing, brewing, and the business of a dairy :
' all such work as might prepare them for being put
out apprentices, or going into service.' Each boy and
each gii*l was provided with a suit of clothes annually.
The materials were raised, the linen and woollens were
woven, and the clothes themselves were cut out and
made up at the school-house.
The children remained at school for five years; at
the end of which time they were bound out as appren¬
tices to tradesmen, farmers, or artisans at the expense
of the society. The cost at which these results were
obtainable was not the least remarkable part of the
system. It shows that there was a degree of practical
intelligence in some heads, at least in Ireland, as good
as could be found in the most favoured parts of Europe.
To establish a school, to give clothing and instruction
gratis, and to provide the apprenticing, was found, in
most instances, temptation sufficient to induce Catholic
parents to send their children to the day schools. In
that case they were fed and lodged at home, and the
annual cost for 20 boys, including all expenses, was
but 35?. a year. The schoolmaster had a house and
garden. His salary was 81. in the country, and in
town 10Z. 'The 20 suits of clothes cost iyl., and 4
of the 20 children were annually apprenticed to a trade
for iol.' The whole charge, therefore, for rescuing
576 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
each poor child from the utmost misery that could
spring from poverty, ignorance, and wickedness, edu¬
cating him for five years, and putting him in the way
of being good and happy, was but gl.1
At the charity schools proper, the schools in which
complete possession was taken of the children, the
expense was greater, and the number which the
society could maintain was proportionately smaller.
At the outset, from the smallness of the funds, one
only was established in each of the four provinces.
The first which was opened was founded by the Earl
of Kildare, at Castledermot, for ten boys and ten
girls, and formed a model to others, which increased
gradually till, by the middle of the century, fifty schools
were at work in different parts of the country. In all
of them the education was of the same admirable kind
as that which was provided in the day schools; with
this difference only, that the society, when a child was
once entrusted to it, took entire charge of such child's
welfare, material and moral. Boys and girls alike
were fed, lodged, educated, apprenticed; at the end
of their apprenticeships, they were settled in life with
a marriage portion. Where so much was done fo.
them, care was taken that the cost and labour should
not be thrown away. Admission into a charity
school was, to a poor man's son or daughter, equiva¬
lent to ensuring their fortunes. In return, to avoid
the danger of their relapsing into Popery, they were
1 ' Report on Schools in Ireland.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
cii. i.] EFFORT'S OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 577
usually removed to schools remote from their friends
and relations.
The priests were fuxuous. The temporal advan¬
tages offered were so considerable, that the strongest
admonitions failed to keep the children away. The
refusal of the sacraments was even tried with imper¬
fect effect. The education itself was probably the very
best which has ever been devised in modern times,
eclipsing in its conception the Scotch system, which it
was intended to emulate. Tor the first and last time
the Irish gentry were really and thoroughly discharg¬
ing their duties to the people committed to them ; and,
wherever the Charter Schools were fairly tried, they
carried all before them. Pity only that for so large a
harvest there were but few reapers, and that the work
that could be done was limited by restrictions of finance.
As Ireland then was, and in the existing humour of
its inhabitants, a tax of 25 per cent, on the rents of
absentee proprietors applied to multiplying schools,
would have ended the Irish difficulty. Nay, the sums
charged annually on the Irish hereditary revenue for
royal mistresses, royal bastards, and court favourites
generally scandalous, would have more than sufficed
for the same purpose. Although the hereditary revenue
did not cover much more than half the ordinary ex¬
penditure, and was, therefore, supplemented always by
an additional vote, the King regarded it a3 his private
property, with the appropriation of which Parliament
had nothing to do. Out of this revenue 2000I. a year
was now granted annually to the Presbyterian clergy
irjel. 1. r P
573 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
and it was accounted a mighty matter. In addition to
the 20001, a year, secured by private endowments to
the Charter Schools, the King was pleased, from the
same source, to grant an additional iooo?. The muni¬
ficence ceases to be striking when compared with the
objects which were the usual occasions of the bounty
of the Hanover princes. In the latter half of the
century Ii'ish pensions were used for Parliamentary
corruption. The unhappy country was then made to
supply, out of its taxes, the material for its own de¬
moralization. Under the first and second George, such
grants, if less politically mischievous, were more dis¬
graceful to the administrations who consented to enter
them in the public accounts. In 1723 the charge for
pensions on the Irish Establishment was no more than
30,0001. In 1733, the year in which the charter was
granted, it had risen in a total annual expenditure of
half a million to 69,000?.
Among the distinguished persons in whose favour
this annual burden upon the Irish establishment had
been more than doubled, are to be found the Duchess
of Kendal, Duchess of Munster in the Irish peerage,
with a pension of 30001, a year; Sophia Kielmansecke,
another mistress of George the Second, created Count¬
ess of Leinster, with 20001, a year; Lady Walsingham,
daughter of the King and the Duchess of Kendal,
with 1500I. Besides these, Lady Stanhope had 2600I.
a year, Lady Darlington 2000/., and old Baron Bern-
storff, who, whatever his claims may have been on
George the Second, had certainly none on Ireland,
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 579
received 2500Z. a year;—almost a sixth of the Irish
revenue thus scandalously squandered, and an annual
thousand pounds all that could be spared to a fund
which was a very fountain of the waters of life ! So
it was; and, still more strangely, complaints from
Ireland on the abuse of the Pension fund were
received in London with exclamations of indignant
astonishment. Among the remarkable qualities of
English statesmen during the last two centuries,
the most striking, perhaps, has been their inability
to recognize a political iniquity till it has become
so flagrant as to be intolerable, and an inability
equally great, when the iniquity has been redressed,
to understand how it could ever have been toler¬
ated.
The Irish gentlemen, meanwhile, were not deterred
by the coldness of the English Government. The
hereditary revenue continued to be squandered. The
Dublin Parliament created funds out of fresh taxation,
and raised their own grants to the society to four,
five, and six thousand a year. Peers and gentlemen
established schools on their own estates, which were
affiliated to the central corporation. Archbishop
Boulter came forward in practical liberality, and built
and endowed a school in Dublin almost at his own
expense. More than 30,0001, was collected in England
by pi'ivate subscription. Other sums were sent from
the American colonies. The bishops of the Church
began, in a few years, to congratulate themselves that
the talisman which was to dissolve the spell of Papal
p p 2
5 So THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
dominion had been at last discovered.1 So vigorous,
so effective, had become the society by the middle of
the century, that Parliament appropriated a special
branch of the revenue, the annual proceeds of hawkers'"
and pedlars' licences, to the support of the schools, and
grafted on them an effective statute for the repression
of Irish beggary.
' In every part of the kingdom,' said the eleventh
of the 23rd of George II., ' mendicant children were
seen wandering about the country; the Charter Schools
had furnished means of educating and providing for
them, so that they might become useful members
of society.' The ministers and churchwardens had
already powers to bind such children as apprentices,
with the parents' consent; but this remedy had proved
inefficient, and the numbers had still increased. It
was enacted, therefore, that, after Michaelmas, I75°>
the Charter Society might appoint officers in every
province, with powers to take up children between the
ages of five and twelve years who might be found
begging, and convey them to the nearest Charter
School, there to be taken charge of, bred up in in¬
dustry, and bound out, when at sufficient age, as
servants or apprentices to Protestants : and whereas
children taken into the schools with their fathers' and
mothers' consent had been afterwards demanded back
on various pretences, for the defeat of the purposes
1 See the three volumes of the
Charter Society's tracts, with the
annual reports and the sermons of
the bishojjs at the annual meetings,
See also a series of ' Letters from
Henry Maule, Bishop of Dromore,
1741-1744.' IDS. Kecord Office.
c11. i.] EFFORTS OF THE 'IRISH PARLIAMENT 581
for which, the schools had been erected, the Parliament
decided also that a child once received into a charter
school was thenceforward a child of the public j and
that, unless the parents could prove that it had been
admitted against their will, it was not to be given
back to them.1
How the very best system of education ever set on
foot in Ireland, came at last to nothing, will be told
in its place. The fierce and bitter opposition of the
priests would have itself been inoperative. Irregulari¬
ties in the management created occasional scandals;
but these were promptly punished. Schoolmasters
who allowed girls, under their charge, to be seduced,
were three times publicly whipped in the nearest
county town.2 The Charter Society failed partly from
the disorganized condition of general Irish society,
which spoilt the healthy working of the apprentice
system, partly from the spirit of the age, with which,
as the century waned, it found itself in too harsh hos¬
tility. The catechism and industrial training were too
unspiritual to suit the sentiment of revived emotional
Christianity; and when the schools, instead of turning
out hardworking labourers and artisans, were turned
to purposes of soul-saving and propagandist enthusi¬
asm, they came in conflict with modern liberal ideas,
and were held to violate the sacred rights of conscience
to choose its own religion, and, in its own wisdom, to
believe whatever theories about divine things it happens
to prefer.
23 George II. cap. xi. Irish Statutes. 2 Ibid.
582
SECTION III.
The Duchess of Kendal was not contented with her
^ pensions, and her name is connected with an¬
other Irish scandal which obtained an unenvi¬
able notoriety. The rapacity of this lady was on the
scale of her person. Wherever the curtain can be
lifted which screened the secrets of the Court and
Cabinet of the first Georges, the hand of Erengard
Schulenberg can be generally detected, raking together
ill-gotten plunder. 1't was alleged with truth—for
when the storm was over a real deficiency was left to
be supplied—that Ireland required an addition to her
copper coinage. The Duchess of Kendal, in return for
a share of the anticipated spoil, procured a patent for
a rich ironmaster named Wood, to coin and circulate
in that country io8,OOoZ. worth of halfpennies and
farthings. The metal, by the terms of his patent, was
to be identical in purity with the metal coined for
England. The weight of the coins was to be some¬
thing less. The market price of copper in England
was thirteen pence the pound avoirdupois: wrought
into bars and prepared for the mint, it was reckoned
to be worth eighteen pence the pound. The pouud
was coined into twenty-three pence, and allowing two¬
pence for waste and for the cost of cutting and stamp¬
ing, the gain to the mint on each pound of copper
coined in England was threepence. By Mr. Wood's
CM. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 533
patent the pound of copper was confessedly to be made
into sixty halfpence or thirty pence, and the gain on
his grant, when carried out, if the letter of it had been
strictly adhered to, that remained to be divided be¬
tween himself and his patroness, would have amounted
to something like 40,0001. The copper coin already in
use in Ireland was inferior in sterling value to that
which was now to be introduced. But the quantity
was to be considered as well as the quality. The entire
specie currency of Ireland, gold, silver, and copper, in
1724, was estimated only at 400,000^. In England the
copper coinage in circulation was but a hundredth part
of the whole. In Ireland, when the patent was exe¬
cuted, it would become a fifth of the whole. Copper
would enter necessarily into all payments. It would
displace and drive out gradually the gold and silver, it
would confuse prices, offer an irresistible temptation
to coiners, and create all the evils which invariably
accrue when an inferior coin, intended only for small
purchases, becomes the ordinary standard of ex¬
change.1
The patent was granted in March 1723. The stream
of halfpence commenced at once to flow; yet, though
to some extent confessedly needed, they were received
with dislike and suspicion, and the Duke of Grafton
came over as Viceroy in August, furnished by Walpole
with arguments which, as he hoped, would remove the
objections.
1 ' Archbishop Boulter to the Duke of Newcastle, January 19,
1725.' MSS. Record Office.
5 §4
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IV.
The Duke found Dublin in an unpropitious humour.
The city was fermenting under a pamphlet recently
issued, entitled Ireland's Consternation. Every per¬
son was open-mouthed about the new halfpence, and
the very servants of the Crown were afraid to defend
what was so universally and indignantly execrated.
Parliament met immediately after. Hawkers were
screaming the pamphlet about the streets, as the
Viceroy went from the Castle to the opening. His
instructions being unsuited to the condition of feeling,
he evaded the subject in the speech from the throne;
but the first act of the Commons was to appoint a com¬
mittee to go into it, and, after ' three weeks' reasoning
and enquiry,' the Duke declared himself unable to find
a single member who would support the Government.
Alan Brodrick, the son of the Chancellor, hinted at an
impeachment of Walpole in England.1 A series of
resolutions were passed, condemning the patent, and
an address to the Crown was drawn up, insisting that
it had been obtained by notorious misrepresentations ;
that if the terms were complied with there would be a
loss to Ireland of 150I. on every 100L worth of copper
issued ; 2 and that to grant patents of coining to private
individuals was ' highly injurious.' The terms them-
1' Brodrick, after some very odd
expressions in a debate, said yes¬
terday that nobody was too great
in another kingdom for what he
had done in prejudice to this ; for
a first minister in England had
been impeached for grievances
complained of by this nation.'—
' Grafton to Walpole, September
14, 1723.' IISS. Record Office.
2 ' The value of the copper
coined into sixty halfpence cannot
be reckoned above a shilling ; thus
the kingdom will lose eighteenpence
in every half-crown.'—' Objection
to the Coinage.' Ibid.
cm. x.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 585
selves, however, it was said, were not observed, bad as
they were. Chemists appointed to analyze specimen
pieces reported that the metal used was below the
standard which the patent required. The corporation
of Dublin sent in a petition that Wood should be
required to exchange his halfpence on demand for gold
and silver at the market price of copper. Lord Midle-
ton wrote privately to Walpole, that in the humour
of Ireland the project could not be carried out, and
that the readiest way out of the difficulty would be to
grant the corporation's request;1 while the Duke re¬
ported that young Brodrick had sworn to expose the
mystery before the Parliament of England, e and did
not doubt but that he should there discover other guise
persons than this villanous projector Wood, who had
been obscure but for this infamy.' 2
The first emotion of the two men who at this time
governed England was of passionate surprise. Lord
Townshend3 wrote a letter to the Duke of Grafton so
violent that Walpole threw it in the fire, and composed
another, making the question a personal one between
himself and the Viceroy. Conscious of a bad cause,
and exasperated at an opposition which he knew not
in what way honourably to meet, he flung himself on
the first object on which he could safely vent his in¬
dignation.
' I will not enter into the merits of the question,'
1 'Lord Midleton to Walpole, tember 24.' Ibid.
September 15.' MSS. Kecord 3 Charles, second Viscount
Office. Townshend, President of the
2 ' Grafton to Walpole, Sep- Council.
5-5 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
he said; ' I write merely as a friend. Parliament,
under your administration, is attacking a patent
already passed in favour of whom and for ivhose salce
you know very well. Will it be for tlie service to suffer
an indignity in this vein ? The patent was passed by
those that you have hitherto looked upon as pretty
nearly engaged with you in your public capacity. Are
they no longer worth your care or trouble ? It was
passed under the particular care and direction of one
upon whom the first reflection must fall, that never
yet was indifferent when you were concerned. That
consideration, I dare say you will be told, is not worth
the hazarding the quiet of the session ; for all attempts
of this kind have always secret springs and supports ;
as this, I believe, has from both sides of the water.
Do you think the principal actors on that side aim at
your friends here only, and have no eye to the Lord
Lieutenant ? or do you think those on this side, who
chiefly point at your humble servant, are incapable in
a proper place to turn it upon you, and impute the
whole either to your want of credit and capacity, or to
indifference, when you think yourself not immediately
concerned ? And do you think it impossible that such
representations should have any effect in a certain
place ? In short, does your Grace think you will be
thought to make a glorious campaign if, by compound¬
ing for this, you should be able to carry all the other
businesses through without difficulty ?
' The objections to the patent now come over, I
venture to pronounce, are frivolous, and such as a very
en. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. S°>7
common understanding with a willing mind may easily
refute. I never knew more care taken than in passing
this patent. I am still satisfied it is very well to be
supported. What remedy the wisdom of Ireland will
find out for this supposed grievance I am at a loss to
guess, and upon whom the consequence of this Irish
storm will fall most heavily, I will not say. I shall
have my share, but, if I am not mistaken, there are
others that will not escape. I hope your Grace is not
mistaken when you are persuaded thus to be indiffer¬
ent. There are some people that think they are ever
to fatten on the expense of other men's labours and
character, and be themselves the most righteous fine
gentlemen. It is a species of mankind I own I detest.
But I'll say no more ; and if your Grace thinks I have
said too much I am sorry for it; but mark the end.
I am, &c.
f R. Walpole.' 1
This singular letter must have crossed on its road
the despatch, which informed Walpole of the threat¬
ened impeachment and the violent proceedings of the
Irish Parliament. The news was not calculated to
improve the humour of the imperious minister. lie
was specially irritated at the Duke's taking credit to
himself for having prevented the Irish Houses from
passing a direct censure on the advisers of the Crown.
' What is all this ? ' He wrote again on the 3rd of
1 'Walpole to the Duke of Grafton, September 24, 1723.'
IISS. Record 0trice.
588 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. IV.
October: ' I know what these things mean in an
English Parliament. I suppose you talk another
language in Ireland. I have weathered great storms
before now, and I hope I shall not be lost now in an
Irish hurricane. If I am capable of thinking at all
right upon this subject, I would willingly consider
what is now to be done. You seem to think we must
give in. Where then is Mr. Brodrick's crime if we,
by withdrawing the grant, acknowledge that we were
wrong ? Consider what answer we are to make, and
pray, don't do in this as you have done in every other
step, stay till all is over and then speak.'1
Lord Townshend followed ten days later in the
same strain ; and from the letter which he was allowed
to send may be inferred the character of that which
Walpole burnt.
'The Irish,' Townshend said, 'are so absurdly
wrong that I can only laugh at them. Can anyone in
his right judgment think the King will part with his
unquestionable prerogative for such weak objections ?
It is so tender a point, that it is the highest folly in
any one to attack it, unless there is manifest evidence
of misapplication. Nor is the prerogative all. The
King is touched more nearly, and feels his honour
highly concerned in the affair.' 2
The honour of kings, it seemed, was composed of
material unlike that of common men. Unsoiled by the
1 'Walpole to the Duke of Grafton, October 3.' MSS. Record Office-
3 'Lord Townshend to the Duke of Grafton, October 14, 1723.
Ibid.
CH. I.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 5°9
doing of wrong things, it was only tarnished by the
exposure of them. Grafton had an ordinary conscience.
He saw that the patent was iniquitous. He disliked
being made the instrument by which it was forced
down the Irish throats, and he resented the reproaches
which had been flung on himself.
' 'Twas impossible to stop the torrent,' he replied
calmly to Walpole. 'You ask what is to be done?
Let the grant be declared void, as having been ob¬
tained on a misrepresentation. Do not irritate a
country where there is such a visible coolness of affec¬
tion, and so much ill blood stirring as may prove very
hurtful to his majesty's interest. I must not conceal
from you, that the article of pensions has a great share
in keeping on foot these murmurings.'1
Unable to resolve what to do, perhaps secretly en¬
deavouring to compromise the matter with Wood, or
induce the Duchess to forego her expected plunder,
Walpole wrote no more letters. The Irish Parliament
had forwarded their petition. Weeks passed, and it
remained unanswered. They supposed that the Eng¬
lish Minister was waiting for the Money Bill, and,
when it was passed, meant to close the session. There
was a call of the House of Commons. Members came
up from the farthest parts of Ireland. All other busi¬
ness was suspended. Lords and Commons passed a
vote, that they would sit till some answer came, and
that no power should adjourn them but their own
1 ' Grafton to Walpole, October 19.' J ISA. Record Office.
59° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. IV.
consent.1 They intimated plainly that the supplies
should not be voted till the patent was withdrawn.
Finding the Parliament thus obstinate, and not
being on the spot to apply his usual methods of dis¬
solving hostile Parliamentary majorities, Walpole had
recourse to cunning. The money was indispensable
to him, and at the same time he, or those whom he
dared not offend, were resolute not to give way. The
King, after three months' delay, wrote to express his
regret that the patent had given offence, to promise
an enquiry, and to promise also, that if Wood had
been found to have broken his engagements, he should
be severely punished.
The words were vague, but thrown, as they were,
into the form of an apology, the Irish leaders per¬
suaded themselves that they amounted to a confession
of defeat; that their expostulation had taken effect;
and that they could now afford to be generous. The
two Houses replied, that they were grateful for his
majesty's kindness; they trusted that means would be
taken immediately to prevent the coin from being put
in circulation ; and, as a proof of confidence, they voted
the supplies for the usual two years. They assumed
that the dispute was at an end; and with an under¬
standing that it was not to meet again for business
till the autumn of 1725, and with mutual compliments
and expressions of good will, the Parliament broke
up, and the Duke of Grafton sailed for England,
Pid of his immediate difficulty, and choosing to
1 ' Grafton to Walpole, November 2.' JilSS. Record Office,
en. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 591
believe that the opposition bad been a mere explosion
of unmeaning Parliamentary faction, Walpole now
imagined that the course was clear before him, and
that he could do as he pleased. The King's promise
was observed to the letter. A committee of the Privy
Council was appointed to examine a matter which was
already determined on. A few bags of the halfpence
were made over to Sir Isaac Newton to be analyzed;
and when it was found that, so far as these specimens
were concerned, the terms of the patent had been
observed, Sir Isaac's name was paraded to shield a
transaction which, whether they were observed or
not, was still an abominable fraud. The Committee
reported that the new coin was purer than that already
in circulation ; that there had been no misrepresent¬
ation; that Ireland needed an addition to its copper
currency; that the King was acting within his un¬
doubted prerogative; that the patent was granted,
and that it could not be legally recalled.1
The report was sent to Dublin, with the results of
Sir Isaac Newton's investigation. A hope was ex¬
pressed that the Irish would perceive that they had
been unnecessarily alarmed. The issue of halfpence
recommenced; and Wood, in an evil hour for himself,
was heard to swear that he would force the Irish
people to swallow them, whether they liked it or not.
It was now that the champion of Irish rights
appeared on the scene, whose genius has condemned
a transaction to an infamous immortality which, but
1 'Report of the Privy Council, July 24, 1724.' MSS. Record Office.
592
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [uk. IV.
for him, might have been forgotten among the
thousand scandals of those evil days. Since the
prosecution of the printers of his Address to the
People of Ireland, Swift had published nothing which
could bring him into collision with the Government;
not, however, out of any love for Walpole or the
Whigs. The Whig policy was hateful to him.
Against Walpole he had an unrequited grudge. He
had been watching, doubtless, for an opportunity to
quit scores with him, and the time was come. Per¬
fectly well acquainted with the secrets of the English
Court, and possessed in consequence with a scorn
which gave him threefold strength, the Dean of St.
Patrick's stepped down into the arena, in the disguise
of a Dublin draper or haberdasher. He laid bare, in
a series of letters, the scheme of which Ireland was
being made the victim, and covered all the actors in
it with a cataract of infamy which no ablution could
cleanse. Dealing with unscrupulous men, he was
himself far from careful of the exact truth. He wrote
like a man in the hands of swindlers, and not particular
by what name he called them. In a good cause there
was no need to stand on trifles. He could not, of
course, directly attack the Government. The miser¬
able Wood was made the scapegoat, and Walpole was
struck at through his side. He advised his country¬
men, at all hazards, and at all inconvenience to them¬
selves, not to admit the halfpence among them. lie
represented Wood, who was a wealthy Wolverhampton
iron-founder, as a Wile fellow,' 'a base mechanic,' a
CH. I.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT 593
speculating wretch, 'who had bought up the old
copper in Ireland to make an artificial scarcity/
Wood had under-taken, as a compromise, to limit his
first issue to less than half the original quantity : the
rest he had promised to keep back till it should be
wanted. What security could Ireland find, enquired
the Drapier, so long as Wood was to be his own judge
of her necessities? ' Let Wood and his crew of
founders and tinkers,' he said, e coin on till there is
not an old kettle left in the kingdom; coin old leather,
tobacco pipes, clay, street dirt, and call it what he will,
we will not take it. By his own computation we are
to pay three shillings for what is worth but one. . . .
A whole kingdom is in dismay at the threats of one
single diminutive, insignificant mechanic. We are to
be eaten alive by this little arbitrary mock monarch;
devoured alive by a rat. If Mr. Hampden chose
rather to go to prison than pay a few shillings to
Charles the First, I will rather choose to be hanged
than have all my substance taxed at the arbitrary will
and pleasure of the venerable Mr. Wood.'
Three letters of the terrible Drapier, all in the same
strain, appeared in rapid succession. Already
indignant at the trick which had been played ^ 4
upon the Parliament, the people were like fuel ready
dried for the fire. The author was recognized notwith¬
standing the disguise of the name, and Swift became
the idol of the Dublin populace. Mobs walked in pro¬
cession through the streets, carrying Wood's effigy,
a rope to hang him, and a coffin, and a winding-sheet.
IREL. I» Q Q
594 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
The Government, alternately bewildered and furious,
knew not which way to. turn. ' What would you
have ?' wrote the Duke of Newcastle to Lord Midle-
ton; ' the patentee has a right of property in his
patent, of which nothing but force can deprive him.
The King cannot revoke it. The patentee has com¬
plied with his terms, and the copper money is the best
that ever was coined for Ireland.'1 Unreasonable
Ireland, that refused to be pacified with smooth words !
The situation was one of a kind to which the Duke
of Grafton was evidently unequal: a stronger hand
and a stronger head were required to cope with it.
Lord Carteret, then about thirty-seven years old, one
of the ablest, if not the very ablest, statesman that
Walpole had at his command, was selected, in Graf¬
ton's place, to dissolve the Opposition, and to use all
means which experience in England had proved
successful in such cases: corruption and resolution,
adroitness and good dinners, ' Burgundy,' ' closeting,'
and ' palaver.'
Carteret went to his work with commendable mis¬
givings. f I will do my best,' he said; f I have had
difficult things to do before. The pitcher goes often
to the well, and is broken at last; but the proverb
frightens me not. If I have the fate of the pitcher,
people shall say, I deserved better luck.'2 He landed
on the 23rd of October, a day which was still observed
1 ' The Duke of Newcastle to
the Lords Justices, October 3,
1724.' HSS. Record Office.
2 'Carteret to the Duke of
Newcastle, September 10, 1724.'
Ibid.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 595
with anniversary solemnities commemorative of the
massacre. The Drapier was on the watch for his
coming. At the moment of his arrival, the famous
fourth letter, just newly issued, was being hawked
through the streets. So far Swift had kept clear of
politics. He might have been indicted for a libel upon
Wood, but he had written nothing on which the State
could found a prosecution. He had now deliberately
touched a more dangerous chord. The sore point in
the connexion between the two kingdoms had been the
alleged dependence of Ireland upon England. Ireland
with her own Parliament, and her own laws, had
claimed to be a free country; under the same sovereign
with England, it might be; but still free. If England,
for her own purposes, chose to alter her succession; to
expel one King and choose another; Ireland, unless
with her own consent, held herself entitled to hold her
old allegiance. She was vain of her supposed loyalty
to Charles the First. She had rejected William and
adhered to James, and had insisted that she was
within her rights in doing so. By the 9th of the 1 st
of William and Mary, the English Parliament had
replied by a statutory declaration that the kingdom of
Ireland was annexed and united to the imperial Crown
of England, and was subject to the English sovereign
whoever he might be. The connecting link between
them was not the person of the king or queen. The
smaller country was attached to the larger as an
inseparable appendage; and it was in virtue of this
statute that the war of 1691 was regarded and treated
q q 2
596 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
as rebellion. The resistance of Ireland to the half¬
pence had been desciibed as unbecoming in a depend¬
ent kingdom. The Drapier, so choosing his words as
to combine affected loyalty to the House of Hanover
with loyalty to Irish liberty, and making it peculiarly
difficult to construe his language into treason, yet gave
voice to the inmost thoughts of Irish nationality, in
denouncing the alleged dependence. ' Next under
God/ he said in this fourth letter, ' I depend only on
the King and on the laws of my country. I am so far
from depending on the people of England, that, if ever
they rebelled against their sovereign, I would take
arms against them at my sovereign's command: and
if such a rebellion should prove successful, so as to fix
the Pretender on the throne of England, I would
venture to transgress that statute so far as to lose
every drop of my blood to hinder him from being
King of Ireland.'
With these words, street and square were ringing
when Carteret arrived in Dublin. Boys were stand¬
ing at every corner, bawling out the last letter of the
Drapier. The 'fly sheets' were being sold to eager
buyers ' within the gates of Dublin Castle.' Without
so much as an hour to collect himself after his voyage,
the new Yiceroy had at once to address himself to
the battle. There was no time for dinners and Bur¬
gundy. 'To try,' as he said, 'the tempers of the
leading people,' he summoned the late Lords Justices,
the Privy Council, and the judges. He insisted on the
lawfulness of the patent, the folly of the objections,
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 597
and the determination of the Government not to allow
itself to be insulted. ' The meaning of the movement,'
he said, ' was now explained. It was not to escape
the miserable halfpence. The Irish people intended
to shake off their allegiance, and their dependence
upon England. They would find themselves mistaken.
He should immediately offer a reward for the discovery
of the writer of the letter, and instruct the law officers
to prosecute the printer.'
Many years had passed since words like these had
been heard in Dublin Castle. Pity only that, when
spoken, they were spoken on the wrong occasion. A
violent debate followed. The Lords Justices, Midle-
ton, and Speaker Conolly, supported the Viceroy.
The Archbishop of Dublin,1 Swift's constant friend,
and the Bishop of Elphin,2 said coldly that such high¬
handed measures would fail of their object. A prose¬
cution would add to the discontent, and endanger the
peace of the realm. Under the existing circumstances
no jury would find a bill.
Carteret fiercely replied, that 'the peace of the
kingdom should be kept.' The Chief Baron3 said
that ' things were in a bad way, if the board were to
be intimidated, and the laws suspended, from a fear
that sedition should be justified by a jury.' After
a stormy discussion of six hours, a majority were
brought to consent that a reward of 3001, should be
1 King, now a very old man. 3 Bernard Hale, rewarded after-
2 Godwin, an Englishman, who wards by a seat on the English
had been Archdeacon of Oxford. bench.
508' THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
offered for the detection of the Drapier. But the
consent was unwillingly wrung from them. The entire
Council agreed in condemning the halfpence. They
required, and the Viceroy found himself unable to re¬
fuse, that the Proclamation should be directed solely
against c seditious and scandalous paragraphs' in the
letter, and should contain nothing which could be con¬
strued into an approval of Wood. Even with these
precautions, Archbishop King declared, on leaving the
room, that ' the Viceroy would have reason to repent
so precipitate a resolution.'1
Carteret was receiving an Irish welcome to his
uneasy office. Like so many other statesmen before
and after him, he had brought with him a conviction
that Ireland required only a firm government; that
authority had only to assert itself, in order to be obeyed.
Had he remembered that a government must be just
as well as firm, he would have brought the key to un¬
lock the riddle with him ; but with this remembrance
he would scarcely have come to Ireland at all on his
present errand. Unjust violence, alternating with
affected repentance for past oppression, and childish
prate about Irish ideas: this has been the eternal
seesaw in the English administrations of the unlucky
country. Who but Cromwell has ever tried to rule
her by true ideas ?
The Archbishop, with forty years' experience of
public life in Dublin, understood the situation better
than Carteret. Two days after he came privately to
1 ' Carteret to Newcastle, October 28.' MSS. Record Office.
oh. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, 599
tlie Castle, and, after talking in what the Viceroy called
' a very extraordinary manner/ told him that ' the
Drapier had some thoughts of declaring himself, and
might safely put himself on the country and stand his
trial/ Carteret knew who the Drapier was as well as
the Archbishop, and was aware that he had a danger¬
ous person to deal with. But he had not yet dreamt
of yielding. ( No one,' he said, ' however consider¬
able, was of weight enough to stand a matter of such
a nature. If the author desired the glory of a prose¬
cution, he might apply to the Chief Justice of the
King's Bench ; the libel contained treason, and his
duty was to bring the writer of it to justice.'
c You will tell the King,' Carteret wrote in sending
information of what had passed to the Duke of New¬
castle, c that if the author's boldness should be so great
as the Archbishop says, I am determined to summon
him before the Council; and, though I should not be
supported by them, to order him to be taken into cus¬
tody, to refuse his bail, and keep him till I know his
majesty's pleasure. The Chief Baron thinks that if
we do act it must be with the utmost rigour. Lord
Shannon tells me the chief citizens of Dublin are in a
strange humour. Dr. Swift is said to be the author,
but it will be hard to prove, though many think he
may be spirited up to own it.'1
The haughtier Carteret's attitude the fuller became
the cup of humiliation which in the end he was com¬
pelled to drink. All Dublin, from highest to lowest,
1 'Carteret to Newcastle, October 31.' MSS. Record Office.
6°° THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. XV.
was openly defiant. The Proclamation was issued, but
the criers dared not carry it into the streets. A de¬
claration against the halfpence, signed by several of
the Council, was printed on large sheets, and hung up
framed in the most public parts of the town. A hack¬
ney coachman had an altercation with an officer about
a fare. A mob collected; the coachman declared f that
the gentleman had offered to pay him in Wood's
money,' and the officer was hustled and beaten. The
Corporation presented Swift with the freedom of the
city in a gold box. The story of the deliverance of
Jonathan was made into a recitative and chanted about
the streets :
' Then Saul said to Jonathan, What hast thou done ?
God do so, and more also, for thou shalt surely die,
Jonathan. And the people said to Saul, Shall Jona¬
than die who hath wrought this great salvation in
Israel ? God forbid; as the Lord liveth there shall
not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he hath
wrought with God this day. So the people rescued
Jonathan that he died not.'1
In England the Lord Lieutenant's vigour gave
supreme satisfaction. The King said, that even ' if
Swift came forward his acknowledgment would make
no difference either in the crime, or in the manner in
which it should be punished. The Lord Lieutenant
should proceed according to law.'2 The law itself,
1 'Thomas Tickell to Secretary Delafaye, November i.' MSS.
Record Office.
2 'Newcastle to Carteret, Novembers.' Ibid.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT 601
justice itself, which the sentiment of Ireland was
defending against English authority, proved too strong
both for King and Viceroy. The Drapier having
reconsidered his intention of declaring himself, the
threatened prosecution was undertaken against the
printer, a person named Harding. "With characteristic
audacity the Dean published an anonymous address to
the grand jury, inviting them to throw out the bill.
The worst that could be alleged against the Drapier,
he said, had been but an unwary expression ; otherwise
he had deserved well of Ireland, and ought to be sup¬
ported ; the grand jury, being merchants and shop¬
keepers, had nothing to gain by returning the bill,
and nothing to fear by rejecting it; ' they expected no
employment in the State to make up in their own
advantage for the destruction of their country.' This
sarcastic stroke of insolence was received also with
applauding clamour,1 and the aspect of things was so
1 Swift at one time undoubtedly
contemplated, if not avowing the
authorship of the letters, yet taking
up the Drapier's quarrel in his own
name. At the height of the storm
he addressed a letter to Lord
Midleton from the deanery, which
he evidently intended to publish.
He assumed that the Chancellor
agreed with him, and the Drapier
having been silenced, he said that
he must himself take up the pen.
The English, he declared, knew no
more of Ireland than of Mexico.
They regarded it as a country sub¬
ject t® the King of England, full
of bogs, inhabited by wild Irish
Papists, and kept in awe by mercen¬
ary troops. They thought it would
be better for them if Ireland were
sunk in the sea ; and if an Irish¬
man came among them they
crowded about him as if he were a
wild beast. In reality, the Papists
of Ireland were as inconsiderable
as the women and children. Mr.
Wood's victims were Englishmen
and Protestants.
He explained in detail, as he
had done before, under the name of
the Drapier, the nefarious character
of the patent; still, however, throw¬
ing the blame on Wood, and sug¬
gesting that the bellman of each
602
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. TV.
unfavourable, that even Carteret's own mind began to
misgive him. Grafton perhaps had been less to blame
after all than he and Walpole had imagined. 'The
rage/ he admitted, e was universal.' A general hope
was expressed, he said, e that his majesty would recede
and withdraw the patent;' and he confessed that he
hesitated what to advise. ' The Protestants having
universally taken so unaccountable a turn, the Papists
naturally followed suit to keep up the ferment.
Commerce and credit suffered, and imaginary fears
had become real evils. The troops were in good con¬
dition, and showed the best spirit, but they were weak
in numbers.'1
English soldiers were spared the disgrace of forc¬
ing light halfpence upon Ireland to fill the pockets of
a King's mistress. The prosecution of the printer was
pressed. The grand jury took Swift's advice, and
threw out the bill. They were sent back with a repri¬
mand. They divided, twenty-seven to eleven in favour
of persisting. The judges sent for them, man by man,
to expostulate. They had but one answer, that the
presentment of the paper would bring in the halfpence.
' Even treason,' Carteret said, ' would not be found by
parish, as he went his midnight
round, should cry, ' Past twelve
o'clock. Beware of Wood's half¬
pence !' He himself, he said, if
forbidden to speak, would go when
he was in danger of bursting,
and whisper among the reeds,
' Beware of Wood's halfpence !'
Midleton, as Chancellor, ob-1
jected probably to the appearance
of a letter of such a character ad¬
dressed to himself. It was kept
back at the time, but appeared
afterwards as Ho. 6 in the Drapier
Series.—Swift's Works, vol. vii.
1 'Carteret to Newcastle, No¬
vember 14.' MSS. Record Office.
CH. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 603
an Irish jury if coloured over with popular invectives.'
La Touche, the banker, who had voted with the
minority, was all but ruined by his temerity. ' There
was so violent a run upon him, that it was feared he
would be obliged to stop payment.'1
Amidst universal execrations, contrary to prece¬
dent, and contrary, it was alleged, to law, the first
grand jury was discharged, and another summoned.
Fourteen of the new jurymen were notorious Jacobites.
Their humour was so confessed that the Chief Justice
dared not press them to a decision. But being
assembled, they refused to be passive. Instead of
presenting the printer of the Drapier Letters, 1 the
grand jury of the county and city of Dublin presented
all persons who had attempted, or should endeavour
to impose, Wood's halfpence upon Ireland as enemies
to his majesty's government and the welfare of the
kingdom.'2
Two alternatives only now lay before the Govern¬
ment. Either they must suspend the constitution,
declare Ireland in a state of siege, and govern by the
army, or they must accept their defeat. Walpole,
already fearing that he might have gone too far, had
sent an order to Carteret, ' not to exceed the law, what¬
ever the provocation.' He had bidden him f consult
such persons as retained their reason,' and let him
know their opinions.3 Carteret, with evident relief,
1 'Carteret to Newcastle, No- cember 1.' Ibid,
vember 22 and November 24, 1724.' 3 'Newcastle to Carteret, De-
MSS. Record Office. cember 3.' Ibid.
3 ' Carteret to Newcastle, De-,
604 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
replied that the matter must be ended; and that if
the King could make up his mind to let the patent
drop, a way of retreat would be opened to him. Men
whose estates were in Ireland were shy of giving
advice when public feeling was so violently agitated.
Every one with whom he spoke, however, was of
opinion, that something must be done before the
Government could encounter the Parliament. So
long as the patent was maintained, the public busi¬
ness could never be carried on. If the patent
was cancelled, the House of Commons might be
brought to vote some compensation to Wood, pro¬
vided it was done indirectly, and his name did not
appear.1
The dose was too nauseous to be swallowed without
reluctance and wry faces. Townshend was especially
indignant. ' The King/ he said, ' was astonished to
receive such advice. He had asked for the opinions
of reasonable persons, and he was answered that the
patent must be withdrawn, and that money would
then be silently voted to hush up the quarrel. The
King never asked, or accepted, money from Parliament
without specifying the purpose for which it was need¬
ed. He could not bring himself to make a private
bargain. He had never meant to force the copper on
his people : he would never allow it to be forced on
them, and an assurance so distinctly given ought to be
sufficient.' 2
1 'Carteret to Newcastle, December 16.'
2 ' Townshend to Carteret, December 29.' HSS. Record Office.
CH. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 605
Townshend's letter was read before tbe Irisb
Council. They were not satisfied. The country had
made up its mind that the accursed thing should have
no entrance there under any pretext whatsoever.
Midleton resigned the seals, and the war seemed
about to recommence; when Archbishop Boulter, then
newly settled in the Primacy, interposed with judicious
explanations, satisfied Walpole of the real danger of
allowing the dispute to continue, and induced him to
capitulate on the offered terms.
' All parties,' the Archbishop wrote, ' without dis¬
tinction of party, country, or religion, are against the
halfpence. Their agreement in this has had a very
unhappy influence on the state of affairs here, bringing
together Papists, Jacobites, and Whigs ; so that 'tis
questioned whether, if there were occasion, justices
of the peace could be found that would with any strict¬
ness search and disarm Papists. The apprehension of
the loss they will sustain in their estates if these half¬
pence are introduced has cooled the zeal of numbers
that were before warmly affected. It appears also,
and may more appear, that the uneasiness is a protec¬
tion to any sedition, uttered or published, that has
anything about the halfpence intermixed with it. No
witnesses against such delinquents would be safe from
popular fury. Papists and Jacobites have been very
industrious in this affair to bad ends. Poolish people
have taken advantage of it to talk of independency.
Men of sense, however, abhor any such notion. They
take the safety of their lives and properties to lie in the
6o6 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
connexion with England. I trust the folly of some
and the wickedness of others will never provoke an
English ministry to take angry steps to distress a
nation where the title of every Protestant to his estate
is inseparable from that of his majesty to the Crown.
Their affection will revive when the present heat is
over; nor can this nation be hurt sensibly without
great damage to England. . . . But the uneasiness will
remain till the patent is absolutely sunk. ... I have
asked them whether they would not admit ten thou¬
sand pounds worth or twenty thousand >pounds worth
of the copper. They say they will admit none. They
are all determined, and you cannot venture to let Par¬
liament sit till these heats are laid. I have told them
that Wood must have been a great sufferer already,
and must suffer more if his patent is revoked; that
there is no doubt of its legality, or proof that he broke
the terms of it. All here, however, are positive that
his agents uttered a baser coin than those current at
the Mint. He will not resign without compensation,
and sedition may provoke his majesty to sustain him.
We ought, therefore, to propose some amends to Mr.
Wood to induce him to resign. Sensible people answer
that they dare not propose anything for fear of being
fallen upon in Parliament. But if the Ministry
7 ^ will compute what they think it reasonable to
allow Mr. Wood; and if, after he has resigned his
patent, an order is sent from his majesty to pay some
one in trust for Mr. Wood, without mentioning his
name, such a sum for such a term of years as they shall
C.H. I.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 607
judge equivalent, they will be able to provide that pay¬
ment in Parliament/ 1
The Primate had expressed fully what Lord Carteret
had been able only to hint at. After taking time to
consider, the Government consented to terms, which,
though unwelcome, were less severe than they might
have expected. ' The method, your Grace proposes/
Newcastle replied to Boulter, f seems reasonable, and
may be a handle for something to be done when we
come to a resolution/ Before the autumn session
commenced the resolution had been arrived at, and the
Viceroy was able to meet Parliament with an assurance
that the patent had been cancelled. The private
arrangement was carried out by which Mr. Wood was
indemnified for his losses and for his mortification, and
both Houses made gracious acknowledgments in the
answer to the address. In the Commons there was no
difference of opinion. With apparent heartiness they
thanked the King for his great goodness and conde¬
scension. In the Upper House the Archbishops of
Dublin and Tuam, Lord Midleton, and other Peers
moved, and carried on a division, that to the words
' goodness and condescension' should be added ' great
wisdom.' The sarcasm, a last arrow probably from the
quiver of the Dean of St. Patrick's, would have turned
the compliment into an insult. The Dean was held
to have cleared his account with Walpole sufficiently
without impertinence to the King.2 Before the amended
1 ' The Primate to the Duke I (abridged).' MSS. Record Office,
of Newcastle, January 19, 1725 [ 2 "Walpole had interposed in the
6oS
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. IV.
answer was presented the Primate again interposed.
Archbishop King and Lord Midleton struggled hard
for the c great wisdom/ but calmer counsels prevailed.
The words were lost on the second division by a
majority of twenty-one to twelve, and the scandal of
the Duchess of Kendal's halfpence was at an end.1
English House of Commons to
prevent Swift from being made a
bishop, and had implied that he
did not believe him to be a Christian.
1 ' The Primate to the Duke of
Newcastle, September 21 and 23.'
MSS. Record Office.
6og
SECTION IY.
In the midst of the heat and dust of the Wood hurricane,
at a moment when the Duke of Grafton reported
1723
himself unable to stem a torrent which was swoll¬
en by the fusion of all the factions in Ireland; when
the sacramental test could not be repealed, because the
Catholics had so many friends in the House of Com¬
mons, and the dislike of Dissenters was stronger than
the dread of Popery, the heads of a bill, if we are to
believe the standard Irish historian, were introduced,
carried, presented by the Speaker to the Lord Lieu¬
tenant in the name of the entire representative assembly,
and by the Lord Lieutenant earnestly recommended to
the Home Government, of so extraordinary a nature
that, were the story true in the form in which it has
come down to us, the attempt by an Englishman to
understand the workings of Irish factions might well
be abandoned as hopeless.
' In the year 1723/ says Plowden, 'the heads of a
bill were prepared for the strengthening the Protest¬
ants with all the invective acrimony {sic) which in¬
furiated fanaticism could devise. One blushes for the
humanity of an Irish House of Commons, which, in
satiating its lust for persecution, adopted unanimously
a clause for castrating every Catholic clergyman that
should be found in the realm. The bill, thus surcharged
with this Gothic barbarism, was presented on the 15th
IREL. I. R R
610 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
of November to the Lord Lieutenant by the Commons
at the Castle, and they most earnestly requested his
Grace to recommend the same in the most effectual manner
to his majesty,1 humbly hoping from his majesty's
goodness, and his Grace's zeal for his service and the
Protestant interest, that the same might be obtained
to pass into a law. It was transmitted to England,
and for the honour of humanity there suppressed with
becoming indignation.'2
A statement, so positively made, has passed into
the region of acknowledged certainties. It has been
beaten into the metal of the historical thoroughfare,
and being unquestioned has been moralized over by
repentant liberal politicians as illustrating the bane¬
ful fruits of Protestant ascendancy. The Catholics,
unlike the Dissenters, had a legally recognized exist¬
ence. Such of their clergy as were registered, and
had abjured the Pretender, had as much right to offi¬
ciate in their chapels as the Lord Lieutenant's chap¬
lain in the chapel in Dublin Castle. The registered
Priests were described by Swift as Whigs, and sup¬
porters of the Hanoverian Government; and even
against those who properly fell within their provisions,
the existing penal laws were rarely or never put in
force. Yet it has been believed without difficulty, and
without enquiry, that suddenly, and without special
provocation of any kind, a House of Commons more
than usually well inclined to the Catholics, turned
1 The italics are Plowden's.
2 Historical View of the State of Ireland, vol. i. p. 221.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 611
thus furiously upon all classes of their clergy, legal or
illegal, and expected that England would reverse her
policy and agree to a measure for the violent and
immediate extinction of the Catholic religion in Ire¬
land. It was observed in the Commons' Journals,
that a bill of some kind on the subject was pre¬
sented to the Viceroy, in the year which Plowden
mentions, that it was sent to England, and that it was
not returned. The traditionary account of its char¬
acter was accepted as needing no investigation. The
indignation of England was said to have been aroused,
for it was the policy of the Irish Catholics to flatter
England, as their defender against the domestic Pro¬
testant tyrants. Yet, if indignation was felt, it was
unexpressed, for the Duke of Grafton was unaware of
its existence. He did not even understand that the
bill was rejected. He understood merely that it was
postponed, and so little conscious was he that the
heads contained anything unusual, that he enquired
the reason why it had been laid aside, that he might
explain what would be otherwise unintelligible.1
In widely credited historical fictions there is usually
some chrysalis of fact which tradition has developed.
In the present instance the imaginative part can be
separated from the real with satisfactory complete¬
ness. Corresponding to the two classes of priests,
1 ' By the last accounts from
England I find the Popery Bill is
postponed, which the gentlemen of
this country having had very much
at heart, I should be glad to leam
the reasons which induced you to
lay it aside, that I may explain, for
the juncture is critical.'—' Duke of
Grafton to Lord Carteret, January
22, 1724.' MSS. Record Office.
R R 2
612 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
the registered and the unregistered, there were, in
the last century as in the present, two kinds of Irish
Catholic policy. There were the quiet and moderate
Catholics, who had had enough of rebellion and con¬
spiracy ; who wished only to live at peace on the rem¬
nant of their fortunes, and were contentedly loyal to a
government which left them practically unmolested.
There were the factions who fed continually on the
recollection of their wrongs, 'and lived in constant
hope of aid from the Catholic powers, to root out the
Protestants, and shake off the yoke of Great Britain.'1
Of this party, the regular clergy, the Jesuits, the
priests, who were trained in Spain, France, and Flan¬
ders, were the head and soul. In close correspond¬
ence with the Continent, receiving their directions
from Rome or Flanders, or the mock court of the
Pretender, they were the persistent enemies of the
English settlement, the recruiting sergeants who
gathered the thousands of eager Irish youths that
were enlisted annually for the Catholic armies, the
impassioned feeders of the dreams which were nour¬
ished in the national heart for the recovery of Ireland
for the Irish race, the return of the Stuarts, and the
expulsion of the detested Saxon. These were the
originators of all the political troubles which continued
to distract Ireland. The registered priests were, for
the most part, orderly and well-disposed.
In Kerry, where the cause needed thorough-going
men, they were put out of their cures as too soft
1 'Address of Convocation, 1713.' MSS. Record Office
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 613
and malleable, and their places taken by others of
stronger national type,1 who were the encouragers of
the hougher and the ravisher, the smuggler and the
Rapparee; whose business was to render futile the
efforts of the English settlers to introduce order and
enforce the law.2
1 The unregistered priests were
not universally of the disloyal sort.
A curious picture of one of them
is given by Mr. Dennis, of Kinsale,
in a letter to Secretary Dawson. It
was in 1714 when, in the alarm
about the Pretender, special orders
were sent to the magistrates to
enforce the laws.
Mr. Dennis writes
'Kinsale, June II.
' Sir,—Pursuant to the Lord
Lieutenant's Council order, I
seized and committed a priest, one
father Noe Mulshinoge, who never
was registered. He is a very old,
decrepit man, and for four years
past had scarce been able to stir
with the gout. He's a drunken
fellow, and was very serviceable to
Protestants in King James's time,
and constantly kept with, and to
his power supported, them. He
has behaved himself very civilly
here since the trouble, and banished
one Bishop Lyne, and several other
of their clergy, who came here to
reclaim him, and had they stayed
it would have been in vain. He
always went by the name of King
William's priest, and, were it not
for the sway that he bears over
the Papists, I believe he'd be of
another religion. I sent him twice
to Cork gaol, and the judges sent
him back like a bad penny. He
has tendered bail, who are very
responsible Protestants, that he in
his time heartily served, which
I've refused to take. Let me know
whether I may take security for
him. If he must be sent to Cork
I must get a horse thither, for he's
not able to go a mile.'—MSS.
Dublin Castle.
2 The activity of the unregis¬
tered priests in enlisting recruits
for the Pretender appears in count¬
less letters preserved in the Dublin
Records. A series of depositions
on the same subject are printed in
the Journals of the Irish House of
Commons for 1733. John Hen¬
nessey, late parish priest of Done-
raile, said ' that in August or Sep¬
tember, 1729, he was in company
with Connor Keefe, Popish Bishop
of Limerick, Francis Lloyd, Bishop
of Killaloe, and Doctor Stone, a
Franciscan friar of Dublin, at the
house of Teigue Macarty, Popish
Bishop of Cork. On that occasion
Keefe and Lloyd delivered a letter
to Macarty, from Christopher
Butler, titular Archbishop of
Cashel, intimating the arrival of a
letter from the Papal Nuncio at
Brussels, to the effect, ' that the
614
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
If English, authority was to be maintained, it was
fair and reasonable to distinguish between the regis¬
tered and unregistered priests. To prohibit the
teaching of rebellion and anarchy was not to interfere
with religion; and if the chapels were to remain open,
and if the laws intended to prevent the succession of
the Catholic clergy were to be left in abeyance, the
Pope had complied with the re¬
quests of the bishops and arch¬
bishops of Ireland, and that his
Holiness had sent him an indul¬
gence for ten years to raise a sum
of money to restore King James to
his right.'
Hennessey desposed that he soon
after obtained a copy of the bull.
' Every communicant,' in virtue
of that document, ' duly confessing
and receiving on the patron days
of every parish and every Sunday
from May to September, having
repeated the Lord's Prayer five
times, the Apostles' Creed once,
and paying two pence each time,
was to receive a plenary indulg¬
ence, with intent that God would
speedily place King James on the
throne of England.'
In the course of conversation
Hennessey and his bishop had a
dispute, 'as to the lawfulness or
unlawfulness of running goods and
robbing King George of his duties.'
The bishop 'held it no sin,' and
permitted the priest to teach to
that effect, saying, ' as King George
had no right to the crown of these
realms, he had no right to the
duties.'
Hennessey was one of the priests
who wished to fraternize with
Protestants, and was consequently
obnoxious. The chapel congrega¬
tion at Doneraile complained of
him to the Bishop, as 'no better
than a Protestant' himself. ' If
Lucifer came out of hell,' they
said, 'he could not carry more
pride. His chief study ivhen he
can get any pence, which he
seldom can, is to hasten to the
Protestants of Doneraile, and drink
it in brandy and punch. We pray
you, without delay, recall from us
that wicked unfortunate Protestant
priest John Hennessey, for the
gentry and community does not care
to hear his mass ; and Mr. Morgan,
lately complaining to my Lord
Doneraile of his wicked courses,
his answer was to complain to his
superior.'
A Catholic parishioner appeal¬
ing to a Protestant nobleman
against his priest, and being re¬
ferred by him to the Catholic
bishop, whom, according to law, it
was that nobleman's business to
prosecute and transport, is suffi¬
cient evidence of the laxity with
which the penal statutes were prac¬
tically enforced.
CH. T.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 6i$
Government had a right to take care that indulgence
was not made a cloak for treason. That the Catholic
bishops who took their inspiration from Borne, pre¬
ferred the sort who would make themselves most
politically useful, was a reason for using a tighter rein
with them.1
From the day the penal laws were passed, the
Government had been in growing embarrassment.
They had hoped that the terrors of the threatened
penalties would prove sufficient; and even observers
as keen-eyed as Swift expected, that when the existing
generation of priests had died off, Popery would come
to a natural end. Had the laws been enforced in
Ireland as strictly as in England, the desired effect
might have been produced. But the machinery of
1 Warnings as to the character
of these priests were continually
reaching the Castle. In 1744, when
the rebellion was known to he
imminent, a certain W. D., who
feared to give his name lest he
should he murdered, wrote from
Limerick to the Duke of Devon¬
shire. ' There is one Peter Nayler,
a parish priest and vicar-general
of the diocese of Kilmacduagh, in
county Galway, who, when he
hears confessions, obliges his peni¬
tents to give him a certain sum of
money in order to remit it to a
foreign prince for his support, and
tells them they are obliged in con¬
science to do it; and likewise he
says, he can absolve them from
any oaths of loyalty to the present
King, and by this reason he may
withdraw the subjects from the
King and cause a rebellion. In
county Clare likewise, one Mr.
Michel O'Brien, vicar-general of
Kilfenore, does the same. One Pat
Dogherty, parish priest near Ennis,
does the same, and five others.
They stir up their penitents, and
give them such hearts that they
are willing to do anything rather
than disoblige their pastors ; and,
my lord, unless you prevent this
business the whole kingdom is in
danger. All these gentlemen, both
priests and friars, now living in
this kingdom of Ireland, ought to
swear allegiance publicly to the
King.'—' W. D. to the Duke of
Devonshire, January 30, 1744.'
MSS. Dublin Castle.
6i6
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
the constitution required the support of general
opinion. In England popular sentiment was on the
side of the law. In Ireland it was antagonistic. The
police had no existence ; and the Government, finding
that they could not carry out the laws without vio¬
lence, preferred, for the most part, to earn an idle
popularity by affecting to hold them in suspense. On
the eve of rebellion, as in 1714, they attempted fret¬
ful, irritating, and wholly ineffectual measures of
temporary repression.1 In the year preceding, when
St. John and Harley desired to encourage the Jacob¬
ites, magistrates who made themselves officious were
frowned upon. Nunneries and priories sprung up under
the eyes of the officials, and interference of all kinds
was steadily discountenanced.2 Galway, one of the
most important ports in Ireland, a place of so much
consequence that exceptional laws had been passed to
keep it in Protestant hands, was allowed nevertheless
to become so exclusively Catholic, that there were no
1 The magistrates at such times
were utterly powerless. Mr. Crof-
ton, of co. Leytrim, writes in 1714
to Secretary Budgell, that he had
issued orders for arrests to he made.
'Yet I do not find,' he says,
' that any of the priests are taken.
1 know, indeed, it is very difficult
—the much greater part of the
country being Papists—to take any
of the priests, or other ecclesiastical
persons. The few Protestants in it
are afraid of meddling with them,
and I freely own it is my humble
opinion, it will hardly ever be done
here by that method.' — MSS.
Dublin Castle.
3 ' In the close of the late reign
great discouragement was given by
the then men in power to such as
were active in suppressing friaries,
and putting the laws against Popery
in execution. Great numbers of
friars have within these very few
years come into the kingdom, and
settled themselves in this country.'
—' Representatives of the Grand
Jury of Galway, 1715-* HSS.
Dublin.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 617
longer sufficient Protestant freeholders in tlie town to
form a jury. The corporation, though they took the
oaths, and, on entering their offices, went through
a pretence of conformity, were Papists to a man.
Priests, friars, and bishops landed openly there, re¬
mained without concealment under the protection of
the mayor, and dispersed about the country at their
leisure.1
On the accession of the House of Hanover, the an¬
ticipation was of an immediate rebellion; and, had
the Pretender prospered better in Scotland, it would
have been doubtless realized. Ormond was expected
at Waterford, at the head of the Irish brigade. Itine¬
rant fanatics wandered about, denouncing the Reform¬
ation, calling Luther and Calvin emissaries of Satan,
inviting the Irish to draw their swords for country
and religion, and either conquer or earn a place in
Pai'adise.2 The Dublin mob kept the Pretender's
birthday annually with the national ceremonies of
a procession and a faction fight. Before the new
dynasty was fixed in its seat, some real though short¬
lived exertions were actually made to crush disloyalty,
and especially to stop the inflowing torrent of priests
from the continental seminaries. There were a few
arrests; there were a few, but not so many, trans¬
portations. Gradually the fever died away. The diffi¬
culties wex-e constant. Magistrates would not risk
unpopularity. Juries refused to convict. The peasants
1 Irish Statutes, 4 George I. cap. 15.
2 ' Depositions relating to a Itiot in Ulster.' HSS. Dublin Castle.
6iS THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [inc. iv.
declined to give evidence. Tlie necessity for severity,
on the other hand, seemed to disappear. The Catho¬
lic Powers recognized George the First. Eng-
1723 0 o , 0
land, the great protector of French and Flemish
Protestants, felt obliged to show equal respect to the
intercession of her Catholic allies in favour of Irish
Papists. As her fears subsided, she discovered, in
the Duke of Newcastle's language, ( that it was not for
the public service, even of the Protestant interest, that
anything should be done that might alarm the Roman
Catholic Powers with whom the King was in alliance.'
Secure at home, in the common strength of the
Protestant spii-it in England, George the First's min¬
isters could consider these questions at their leisure.
In Ireland, where the Protestants were few and scat¬
tered, the recollections of the 23rd of October were
still uneffaced. To them a landing of Ormond or the
Pretender implied, or might imply, confiscation and
massacre. On them would fall the personal effects of
a rising, the elements of which they knew to be seeth¬
ing in their midst. Between the Protestant gentry
and the loyal Catholic clergy there was a steady
increase of good feeling. ' The laws,' wrote an ardent
Protestant in 1717, 'are too severe already.'1 An idea
was finding general favour that every parish should be
allowed a priest, regularly licensed by the Government;
a plain oath of allegiance to which no conscientious
objection could be made, being the only condition.
Arrangements were contemplated for the continuance
1 ' Anonymous Common Place Book, 17x7.' MSS. Record Office.
ch. :.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 619
of the succession, and salaries were spoken of for them
to relieve the pressure on the people. The Regulars,
meanwhile, whom the more intelligent Catholics them¬
selves 'regardedas a nuisance/ might then be 'totally
extirpated' and the laws be really and effectively
executed to keep out the disaffected and disloyal
seminarists.1 In proportion to the disposition to recon¬
ciliation with one section of the Catholic clergy, there
was a corresponding determination to clear the coun¬
try if possible of the others, and to permit no bishops
and vicars-general, who absolved subjects from their
allegiance, and taught the people that the King had
no right to his customs' duties. The true remedy, as
they by this time knew, lay elsewhere than in penal laws
—lay in an effective Church, enclosing in itself all Irish
Protestants—lay in an education system co-extensive
with the country, in a resident gentry conscious of their
duties, and in the development of Irish industry.
These things, however, required time. Of the best of
them they were robbed by hard fortunes and English
tyranny. Until the licensing system was fairly on foot
they knew perfectly well that severe laws could seldom
be enforced; but they thought that some deterring
effect might be produced if the scarecrow were made a
little more frightful.
The Duke of Bolton in opening Parliament in 1719
had urged very strongly the desirableness of
more union among the Protestants in the pre- ^ 9
1 'Letters to tlie King: by Charles Hogg, December 10, 172-5.'
HSS. Record Office.
620 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
sence of the increasing strength of the Papists, and of
their notorious inclination to the Pretender. The ani¬
mosity of Churchmen against what they called dissent,
forbidding an approach to the Presbyterians, the House
of Commons determined to weaken their enemies by an
addition to the penal laws against the more mischiev¬
ous of the clergy. The number of prelates, friars, and
unregistered priests was daily growing larger. Prose¬
cutions, which in nine cases out of ten broke down for
want of evidence, yet if they succeeded, were almost
as useless. The transported priest either went back
to his seminary, and another came over in his place,
or he returned himself to a part of the country where
he was unknown. The law was thus defied with the
confidence of certain impunity. These foreign priests
' were the fomenters of all rebellions and disturbances.''
' Unless a more effectual remedy could be found to
prevent their coming into the kingdom,' Ireland, it was
felt, f would never be quiet or well affected to the
Crown.'1 A committee of the House of Commons
therefore drew the heads of a bill which they consi¬
dered would keep such persons at a safe distance, and
among other clauses it contained a proposal that every
unregistered priest or friar found remaining in the
kingdom after May I, 1720, might be branded with a
hot iron in the cheek, as a mark by which he could be
immediately identified.
Before it was transmitted to England, the bill was
1 ' The Lords of the Irish Council to the Lords Justices of Great
Britain, August 22, 1719.' MSS. Record Office.
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 621
reviewed by the Lord Lieutenant and the Privy Coun¬
cil. The Council, among whom was the Chancellor,
Lord Midleton, and two Bishops, while most anxious
for its success, considered that the penalty of branding
was both too mild in itself and also that it would fail
of its effect. The hot iron had been tried already for
the Rapparees : ' the Rapparees had made it a com¬
mon practice to brand innocent persons with the same
mark, to destroy the distinction it was intended for.'1
These five or six noble Lords, therefore, did certainly
recommend as a substitute for the iron a penalty which
was reported, rightly or wrongly, to have been used in
Sweden with effect against the Jesuits. They did
propose, not that all the Catholic clergy in Ireland, as
Plowden says, but that unregistered priests and friars
coming in from abroad should be liable to castration.2
It was thought perhaps by those half-dozen gentlemen,
that the horrors of such a punishment would keep the
persons against whom it was threatened from landing
on the Irish shores. An impression possibly prevailed,
that a mutilation which would have disqualified a man
from receiving priests' orders would subsequently
invalidate them. Whatever the motive, the Council
1 ' The Duke of Bolton to
Secretary Craggs, August 25, 1719.'
MSS. Record Office.
2 Not certainly as implying a
charge of immorality. Amidst
the multitude of accusations which
I have seen brought against the
Irish priests of the last century I
have never, save in a single instance,
encountered a charge of unchastity.
Rather the exceptional and signal
purity of Irish Catholic women of
the lower class, unparalleled pro¬
bably in the civilized world, and
not characteristic of the race which
in the sixteenth century was no
less distinguished for licentious¬
ness, must be attributed wholly
and entirely to the influence of the
Catholic clergy.
622
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bic. IV.
did certainly, though with diffidence and hesitation,
introduce this change into the proposed bill of the
Parliament. The Duke of Bolton accompanied it with
a letter, in which he confessed an expectation that it
would not be accepted.1 The Council themselves
wrote, that ' they would gladly have found some other
punishment which in their opinion would have remedied
the evil.' They left the English Lords Justices either
to replace the branding clause, or substitute some other
penalty. They insisted only on ' the absolute neces¬
sity of making the law against unregistered priests and
friars more severe than it was at present.'2
There was no occasion, as Irish writers have sug¬
gested, for the interposition of Cardinal Fleury. The
Irish Secretary himself wrote that the clause was of no
consequence if the substance of the bill was allowed
to pass.3 Lord Stanhope at once struck it out as
'ridiculous.' Shorn of the grotesque appendage, it
went back to Ireland, where it passed the House of
Commons, but it was thrown out by the Lords on
other section, which was held to bear too hardly on
the estates of Catholic landowners.1 The story that
1 ' The Duke of Bolton to Secre¬
tary Craggs, August 25.' MSS.
Record Office.
2 ' The Lords of the Council to
the Lords Justices, August 22,
1719.' MSS. Dublin Castle.
3 ' Mr. Webster to Secretary
Delafaye, September 22.' MSS.
Record Office.
4 ' The Committee of the House
of Lords have rejected the clause
in the Popery Bill relating to re¬
versionary leases. Thus all the
rest is involved in the same fate.
The clause was thought unjust, as
giving a subsequent determination
of the meaning of a former law,
which did not plainly appear by
the letter of it, since the retro¬
spect was to reach such reversion¬
ary leases as had been made on a
supposition that the former law
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 623
both Houses of the Irish Parliament desired that every
priest in Ireland should be brutally mutilated is thus
reduced to more modest dimensions. The House of
Commons drew the heads of an act by which a class of
Catholic clergy, whom they were legitimately anxious
to keep out of the country, should be treated like
vagrants and deserters. The unfortunate ingenuity of
a handful of Lords and Bishops made an alteration
which was contemptuously flung aside; and the bill,
after the work had been undone, was lost after all in
the Irish Upper House, as unjustly severe.
It will be answered that Plowden's narrative refers
not to the viceroyalty of the Duke of Bolton in 1719,
but to that of the Duke of Grafton in 1723.
It is true that an attempt to revive the lost bill
was made four years later, not with, but without, the
sensational proposition; and it was made at the invita¬
tion of England herself, and for a special reason, in
one of those bursts of alarm and anger which have
periodically provoked English statesmen into acts of
spasmodic severity. Bishop Atterbury, after seven
years of restless efforts to bring about an invasion of
Ireland by a Spanish force under the Duke of Ormond,
had, in 1722, laid a plot to seize the Tower and the
Bank, and to proclaim the Pretender in London.
General Dillon, an Irish Catholic in the French service,
was to land in England with some thousands of the
had left them such a liberty. . .
It is a great misfortune.' —' The
Duke of Bolton to Secretary Craggs,
October 31, 1719.' MSS. Kecord
Office.
624 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
Irish brigade. Ormond was, if possible, to carry out
at the same moment his design on his own country.
The plot was discovered. Irish priests were found as
usual to have been the most active instruments in
carrying on the correspondence. The English Govern¬
ment awoke to the necessity of cooling down these
feverish spirits ; and the Duke of Grafton, in opening
the Irish Parliament in 1723, dwelt in his speech on
the perils to religion and liberty which had been so
nearly escaped ; and he expressed a hope that duty,
patriotism, and the just detestation of such wicked and
unnatural contrivances would animate both Houses to
give the world an evidence of their loyalty. The King's
only object for Ireland, he said, was to make it a happy
Protestant country. The Parliament, he trusted,
would give its serious attention to provide laws for
strengthening the Protestant interest, and prosecuting
more effectually those already in being against the
Catholic priests, whose numbers were notoriously in¬
creased.1
The responsibility of the initiation was thus as¬
sumed by Walpole's cabinet. The Irish Commons,
so exhorted, passed a series of resolutions against
the connivance of magistrates, false conversions, and
pretended conformity, by which the penal laws were
systematically evaded. They then took up again the
lost bill of 1719. Lord Fitzwilliam and other gentle¬
men, whose properties were affected by it, and whose
1 'Speech of the Lord Lieutenant, August 29, 1723.' Commons*
Journals.
CH. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 625
interest had thrown it out, were heard in objection at
the bar of the House. After long discussion the heads
were agreed upon and were presented by the Speaker
to the Viceroy, as Plowden says, with a special request
that he would recommend them to the consideration of
the Government. The Duke replied that he had so
much at heart a matter which he had himself advised,
that the Commons might depend on his respecting their
wishes. The Council, warned by experience, attempted
no second alterations. The nature of the penalties was
left apparently for England to decide, for the Council
this time insisted merely on the need of ' some effectual'
means' to stop the influx of priests; and requested
Walpole, Townshend, and Stanhope to determine what
those means should be.1
The ' Wood' hurricane was at this moment unfor¬
tunately at its height, and absorbed by its violence
every other consideration. Embarrassed by the ^ 4
larger pi-oblem, the English Government had no lei¬
sure to consider the difficult question of dealing with
the unregistered priests. The bill was laid aside, not
rejected, but merely postponed, and before another
session the alarm had subsided. But that there
was no collision between the two countries, and no
divergence of opinion; and that the Irish Catholics
have no reason on this occasion to thank Walpole for
1 The words referring to the
penalty are merely ' That some
more effectual remedy to prevent
tliese great evils is, in our opinion,
IREL. I.
absolutely necessary.'—'Sketch ol
Heads of Popery Bill, Council
Chamber, Dublin, December, 1723.'
MSS, Record Office.
s s
625 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
standing between them and tlieir Protestant oppress¬
ors, may be concluded with certainty from the Duke of
Grafton's words at the prorogation. He insisted, as
strongly as at the opening, on the need of a vigorous
execution of the laws already existing, to the neglect
of which the increase of priests was due. Por himself
he promised to contribute his part by giving directions
that, for the future, such persons only should be put
in the commission of the peace as had distinguished
themselves by steady adherence to the Protestaut
interest.1
1 Commons' Journals, Feb. 12, 1724.
627
SECTION Y.
So ended the last attempt to punish, by penal laws, the
unregistered Catholic clergy as such. 'Weari¬
ness of the struggle and the mildness of the ^ ^
Government determined that the conversion of the
nation should be left to time, unless the priests should
be mad enough to give fresh provocation/1 ' The
Irish people,' it was thought (and the words are a
remarkable tribute to the value of authority in Ireland,
however imperfectly it was exerted), ' the Irish people
were more docile and less obstinate than either the
Scotch or Welsh, and, had the same pains been taken
to convert them which were used in Wales and Scot¬
land, Ireland would have long since become Protestant/2
The object of intelligent people thenceforward was to
find a means of reconciling the loyal priests and the
Government, and subsidizing a power which had proved
too strong to be violently overthrown.3
Many bills, or attempted bills, directed at the cur¬
tailment of Catholic influence, bills to prevent inter¬
marriages between Catholics and Protestants, bills to
annul clandestine marriages accompanied with violence
1 Reflexions for the Gentlemen of
Ireland. Dublin, 1738.
2 Ibid.
3 ' Possibly it might be a good
plan to abolish the payments of
dues, offerings, and fees, from the
poor Papists to the priests, and
settle salaries for them. Their in¬
terests would then be closely tied
to those of the State, and they
might be managed like cannons,
whose mouths are still pointed as
they please who fill their bellies.'
Ibid.
628 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [hk. IV.
and rape, bills to prevent tbe intrusion of false converts
jnto public employments or seats in the House of
Commons, bills to check the practising of Catholic
solicitors, can be traced for another generation in the
records of the Irish Parliament. But the real feeling
of the Protestant gentry on this momentous subject
was from the present period rapidly changing. A
signal evidence of the alteration remains in a sermon
preached before the House of Commons, which received
the thanks of the House, and was printed by order, at
the very time when, if tradition spoke truly, both
Peers and Commons were endeavouring to force a
measure upon the country which would have placed the
Protestants of Ireland 011 a level of barbarity with
Spanish inquisitors. The preacher was Doctor Synge,
Chancellor of St. Patrick's, afterwards Bishop of
Clonfert. The occasion was the 23rd of October, the
anniversary of the Irish St. Bartholomew day. The
year was 1725. The text was the 23rd of the 14th of
St. Luke, ' Compel them to come in :' the subject, the
legitimacy of compulsion, as applied to conscience.
f Ireland and England,' the preacher said, f are in
that peculiar position that many of those who have
enjoyed the protection of the Government are only
watching their opportunity to overthow it. The con¬
spiracies against Queen Elizabeth, the Gunpowder
Plot, the dreadful massacres of this day, are so many
evidences of what is plain from history. For this
reason the wisdom of the legislature has thought it
necessary to frame several laws to weaken the power
CII. I.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 629
and interest of the Catholics of Ireland, and because
the laws do not answer the end proposed, others more
severe may come hereafter to be tried.
' Self-preservation is the first law of life, but laws
of this kind are liable to one objection, which in the
opinion of many persons is fatal; that the cause of
division being a difference of religion, no laws can be
formed on such a subject without invading the natural
liberties of conscience. Since the design of the legis¬
lature in appointing the anniversary thanksgiving on
this day is to perpetuate the memory of a barbarous
and cruel conspiracy, and the dreadful effects on the
Protestants of Ireland produced even by a partial
execution of it, it will not be amiss to consider this
objection, and enquire what influence it should be
allowed to have.
' The principles of the Church of Rome on this
subject are confessed. That Church regards heresy
as a crime which it has a right to punish with death.
Some Protestants have held the same opinion. Hobbes
has maintained that the civil power may define the
national religion. Men may think what they please,
but, in the expression of their thoughts, they must
conform to the law. For myself I conclude that, if
we consider men's opinions and practices in religion
with respect only to the Christian law, neither the
governors of the Church, nor the civil magistrates,
have a right to use force to restrain or punish them.
Heresy may, or may not, be a crime in itself, but the
civil magistrate may punish only those forms of crime
630 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
which are visibly injurious, such as theft, adultery,
or murder; and all persons whose social principles
have no tendency to hurt the public are entitled to
toleration. Repression in such cases leads only to
faction and sedition. The religion is not to blame,
but the persecution employed against it; and the
remedy is not to increase the severities, but entirely
remove them. There are, however, some false prin¬
ciples in religion which the civil magistrate is com
pelled to notice. The general opinion is, that religions
are not to be tolerated which seem destructive to
society, and on this principle Irish legislation has pro¬
ceeded. It is a position which I cannot accept, and
for this reason. I distinguish between inward prin¬
ciples and outward actions. All are agreed that the
plea of conscience will not cover crime. If conscience
erring invincibly prompts a man to do a wicked action,
it may perhaps excuse him in the sight of God; but
as man cannot distinguish between the pretence and
the reality, those who are guilty of treason must suffer
as traitors. The question is, however, whether when
men have adopted principles into their religion which
formerly have influenced others, and may probably
influence them again, to engage in designs destructive
of the public good, the magistrates ought not to refuse
to persons of that erroneous religion liberty to worship
God according to their consciences.
f In favour of toleration it is said broadly, that the
refusal is unlawful, and does more harm than good.
The magistrate has nothing to do with opinion. To
en. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 631
prevent men from meeting for religious purposes is
practically impossible, and therefore the less it is tried
the better. You have to consider whether a limited
toleration under the civil magistrate is not on the
whole a more likely means to prevent the evil conse¬
quences of bad principles than a total denial of it.
' The magistrate1 is bound to provide for the public
security: but he has remedies of another kind, which
will be effectual to his end. He may make laws to
limit the property of the professors of a false religion,
to divide it into several hands, and to hinder them
from making new acquisitions which in kind or degree
may be dangerous. Though men's religion be their
own concern exclusively, their property, so long as
they continue members of society, is and must be
subject to the supreme powers. It may be taken from
them either in whole or in part, and the right of
acquiring more be abridged when public good requires.
The richest merchandize may be destroyed when there
is danger of infection. Houses may be demolished to
check a conflagration.. Agrarian and sumptuary laws
limit men's rights of enlarging their possessions. Yet
laws of this kind were never accounted unjust. The
magistrate too may provide means of instruction,
lie may establish schools under public inspection, and
so provide for the natural disappearance of the evil
in another generation. If these means fail, he has a
further remedy, which though violent is, in cases of
1 This is particularly to be attended to, for it indicates the
direction in which intelligent Irish opinion was running.
632
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. iv.
extremity, undoubtedly lawful. He may oblige such
persons to leave the country, and remove out of a
society which they will not allow to remain in peace.
If it be objected that men will dissemble under such
conditions, rather than leave their homes, the answer
is that these means may be adopted only as a last
resort when nothing else will serve.'
Having laid down these general principles, Doctor
Synge concluded by applying them.
' The Catholics,' he said, f do in fact hold doctrines
pernicious and dangerous to the public peace. They
maintain it to be not only lawful but right to extir¬
pate heretics, and they must therefore inevitably and
at all times be enemies to a Protestant government.
They hold the detestable maxim, Nulla fide? servanda
cum hereticis. They insist that the Pope has power
to excommunicate and depose heretical princes, and
absolve subjects from their allegiance, and at this
moment they regard another, and not his majesty, to
be lawful king of England. Against persons holding
these opinions we have a right to protect ourselves.
The best remedy would be to convert them, not out¬
wardly, which does more harm than good, but inwardly
and really. We should see to the encouragement of
true religion, and the education of children. Further,
we must distinguish between Catholics who at heart
adhere to these dangerous principles, and Catholics
who, though continuing in that communion, are ready
to disclaim and renounce them. All who will make
these concessions, we are bound to tolerate. We shall
ch. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 633
then hear no more of tyranny over consciences ; and
those who afterwards incur the penalties of the law
must, themselves being judges, be owned to suffer not
as persons professing the Romish religion, but as
persons who refuse to give the Government a fair and
reasonable security for their being loyal and peaceable
subjects/1
The House of Commons, in thanking the Chancellor
of St. Patrick's for his sermon, accepted his principles
as their own. The House of Lords, on the 3rd of the
ensuing December, passed a resolution, ' that the most
probable way to restrain Popish priests and regulars
from coming into the kingdom, would be to allow a
competent number of secular priests to exercise their
functions under such regulations as might be for the
security of the civil state.' Dr. Synge, referring to
this vote of the Peers, in a reply to an attack
made upon him by a Protestant fanatic, argued that
if a sufficient supply of priests was permitted by the
law, the temptation to encourage others would be
removed; such of them as were recognized would
combine to keep out the rest : and the question for
the Government to consider was, whether it was more
prudent, more convenient, more for the interests of
religion and the commonwealth, to have five hundred
secular priests educated in countries and universities
where the violent views of the Jesuits were not
1 ' Sermon preached before the
House of Commons at St. Andrew's
Church, Dublin, October 23, 1725.
By Doctor Edward Synge;' for
which Dr. Synge received the
thanks of the House. Published
by order. Abridged.
634 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
received, making, on their admission, a complete re¬
nunciation of the extravagant claims of the Papacy, aud
taking the oaths of allegiance and abjuration; or to
have two thousand, for the most part regulars, lurking
in holes and corners, educated where the most extrava¬
gant; doctrines were most in request, never renouncing
them, and giving the State no security for their good
behaviour.1
If the scheme thus sketched was never carried into
effect, the fault was less in the Irish legislature than
in the inherent difficulties of the subject. The estab¬
lishment, for to this it must have amounted, of the
Catholic Church in Ireland, would have probably
involved the expatriation of the Irish Catholic epis¬
copate. The five hundred priests would have been
ordained abroad, and admitted only as they were wanted
to supply vacancies. If those objections could have
been overcome, the consent would still have been
required of the English Parliament, and would prob¬
ably have been asked for in vain. An end, however,
which was not to be obtained directly, was procured
less satisfactorily, by continued connivance. The
hierarchy was left undisturbed, and an understanding
gradually grew up, that the bishops should give prac¬
tical assistance to a Government which was on the
whole so lenient. The educated Irish Catholics began
from this time to forget their disloyalty. Among the
State papers preserved in Dublin is an examination of
a bishop in the year 1745, whose name is disguised
1 Reply to Mr. Radcliff, by Dr. Synge.
cir. i.] EFFORTS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 635
behind initials, and those probably incorrect. lie was
questioned as to an intention of insurrection. He was
able to assure the Government that there was none.
He had himself, in his diocese, discouraged e externes/
as the foreign priests were called; he had kept the
Jesuits at arm's length, and suppressed convents and
friaries more effectively than the county magistrates
could have done all combined. Conspiracy, he said,
there could be none of which he could be left in ignor¬
ance. And, ' if he knew of any practices,' he promised
to give notice to the authorities at the Castle.1
1 ' Examination of N. S., 1745.'
Dublin, MSS. The bishop, who¬
ever he was, gives cnrious particu¬
lars as to the condition and organ¬
ization of the Irish priesthood.
At that time there were twenty-
four bishops and archbishops. The
Pope appointed them, sometimes
at the postulation of the priests
of the diocese. N. S. had been a
parish priest for twenty-six years
before he was made a bishop. He
had his orders in Spain ; ordination
in Ireland being, he said, unusual.
The friars were governed by their
own provincials, who, if necessary,
could inflict corporal punishment
on them. He himself, though a
bishop, retained his parish, and
had two curates to help him. They
must have all been very poor, and
made the burden of their main¬
tenance as light as possible.
' In his parish,' he said, ' some
gave him five shillings and five
pence, some one shilling and a
penny, some sixpence halfpenny.
In some parishes the priests got
only corn and bread, and other
little things. Collections were
made on Sundays. In his parish
he got half the collections and the
friars of a religious house the
other. He had thirty-two priests
under him. They gave him a
guinea each at the distribution of
the oils. His income from his
parish was forty pounds a year, of
which he gave a third to his co¬
adjutors. The collections at his
chapel door were about sixteen
shillings a year. His parish was
the best in the diocese. Common
parishes were worth thirty or thirty-
five pounds a-year—no more.
636
CHAPTER II.
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
SECTION I.
THERE are four systems under which a dependent
people may be beld together under the
^ ^ forms of a coherent society.
They may be governed wisely and firmly under a
rule impartially just, by the laws, so far as intellect can
discern them, appointed by the Maker of the world.
They may be governed, without justice, by superior
force, which considers nothing but its own will.
They may be left to govern themselves according
to such ideas as to the majority of them seem good,
authority claiming nothing but political allegiance,
and maintaining a police to repress the grosser form
of crimes.
And, lastly, they may be ' managed' by adroit
handling, the internal factions being played off one
against the other; while the central authority prevents
violent collisions, maintains a general equipoise, and
dissolves dangerous combinations by f corruption' and
influence.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
637
The first of these methods, which succeeds always
and in all countries, is the most rarely tried, because
it implies virtues which are rare at all times, and
especially rare in men in power—self-denial, patience,
wisdom, courage, the subordination of the rulers them¬
selves to the rules which they impose on others. The
English, under the high impulse of Puritanism, at¬
tempted it once in Ireland, but for the few years only,
during which they endured for themselves the moral
restraint of deep and noble convictions. When they
ceased to govern themselves nobly, they were no
longer able to govern Ireland nobly ; and after a short¬
lived experiment gave up the effort.
The second method, coercion without justice, be¬
came the rule in Ireland at the Revolution. This too,
if carried out, might have been successful in keeping
the Irish in subjection. Being a people incapable of
self-restraint, the Celtic peoples are and always have
been pre-eminently amenable to an authority which
dares to assert itself. But coercion implied force;
force, or forces—a large and disciplined army; and
England, free herself, imagined that she could coerce
Ireland under the forms of her own constitution, and
refused to supply materials of despotism which might
be dangerous to herself.
Coercion failed for want of strength. Self-govern¬
ment of a real kind, self-government, accompanied by
the enfranchisement of the Catholics and Dissenters,
it was dangerous to try. No one indeed as yet thought
of trying it in a country where nine-tenths of the land
65S THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [r,K. iv.
had been taken violently from tlie old proprietoi's,
whose crime had been to challenge for Ireland her
right to her own laws and her own creed.
There remained, therefore, the last expedient, the
easiest and also the worst: the policy, if so base a
system may be honoured by such a name, which had
been tried already by the Plantagenet and Tudor
sovereigns, and had produced a condition of society
in which order and morality were words without
meaning, and out of which, in the vision of the saint,
human souls were seen descending into hell as thick
as hail-showers. This method, set upon its feet once
more, became again the rule, till misgovernment
produced its inevitable fruits—agrarian conspiracies,
mock patriotism, rebellion, and the still weltering
chaos of discontent and disloyalty.
The attempt to prevent, by unexecuted threats,
the continuance of the priesthood and the Catholic
hierarchy having decisively failed, the next object of
English statesmen was to disarm their hostility and
detach them from the cause of the Pretender. The
change of view was natural and not indefensible.
Catholicism in Europe was losing its political char¬
acter. New principles of combination, with new
objects, were forming themselves between the leading
powers, and a Catholic crusade against Protestantism
was ceasing to be possible. The adherence of the Irish
to the Papacy was no longer necessainly dangerous.
England might be at war with France, and yet France,
if care was taken to keep the priests in good humour,
CII. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
<539
need no longer as a matter of course find an ally in
Irish disaffection. The same influences might be
made available to neutralize domestic discontent. To
promote the prosperity of Ireland was not a matter
which presented itself as a duty to an English adminis¬
tration, whatever its political complexion otherwise.
The poorer the country could be kept, the less likeli¬
hood there was of its being troublesome. The only
anxiety was to preserve outward quiet, to secure the
voting of the supplies, and to suppress Parliamentary
mutinies which might threaten the commercial mono¬
polies. The agitation which England had most to fear
was among the Protestants, whose manufactures had
been ruined, and whose energies there was a deter¬
mination to repress. The Catholic population formed
a counterpoise which it was convenient to keep in good
humour, while to protect them from persecution was
an easy compliment to Catholic allies on the Continent.
In effect, therefore, under the first two Georges, Eng¬
lish statesmen said to the Irish priesthood, ' We will
defend you from the penal laws if you in turn will
discountenance the agitation from Ormond and the
Pretender. If you will be loyal to England, we will
take care to shield you from Protestant ascendancy.'
The simplest method would have been to modify the
laws; and the Irish Parliament itself would have gladly
consented to some arrangement by which the priest¬
hood could have had a recognized existence. But no
hint can be traced among the English State papers of
any such desire. The state of English opinion might
640 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. IV.
perhaps have made an alteration of the penal
statutes impossible; perhaps their continued main¬
tenance was essential to the continuance of Catholic
gratitude.
This ambiguous handling,, however, though conve¬
nient to Walpole and Newcastle, was less satisfactory
to the Pr-otestants of Ireland. They had been planted
as a gaiTison in a hostile country. They had been
set to rule on principles which, unless acted upon
with sufficient consistency to destroy the creed at
which they were aimed, were an enduring and yet
useless insult; and they saw the professors of that
creed recovering strength and numbers, and re-acquir¬
ing wealth and consistency. They were in possession
of the estates of the native proprietors, who had lost
them in defence of their religion; and the toleration
of that religion was a quasi-confession that the con¬
fiscation had been an unrighteous act. Their position
was the more cruel because viceroy after viceroy, in
the speeches from the throne, continued to urge
Parliament to enforce the penal laws, while in private
those same viceroys were obliged to forbid them to be
enforced. Carteret, in 1725, reminded the Lords and
Commons, that as all Protestants in Ireland had but
one common interest, so they had often too fatally
experienced that they had one common enemy. In
1727 Carteret again urged the execution of the law
to prevent the coming in of priests from abroad. In
1726, in the interval between those two speeches, he
was instructed by Newcastle, ' that nothing must be
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
641
done to alarm the Catholic powers with whom Eng¬
land was in alliance/1 The Duke of Dorset, in 1731,
recommended the Legislature ' to consider what
further laws were needed to prevent the growth of
Popery and secure them from danger from the number
of Papists in the kingdom/ Yet when the heads of
a bill were sent over for a purpose, it was set aside as
unusual; and at that very moment, and before and
after, in defiance of repeated promises and two Irish
Acts of Parliament, the English Government was daily
receiving and granting petitions to the representatives
of dispossessed families for a reversal of their attain¬
ders, which gave them a right to recover their lands.
In 1740 as many as eighty suits were pending in the
Irish Courts against Protestant landowners in the
county of Cork alone, who had purchased their estates
under the security of a Parliamentary title, and of an
Act specially declaring that no attainders should be
reversed without Parliament's consent.2 The pur¬
chasers were half-ruined in defending themselves even
when they gained their suits. Families who had been
in undisturbed possession for fifty or sixty years found
themselves turned adrift and penniless. Indeed, as
the Irish Bar was constructed, they had scarcely
better hope of justice than under Tyrconnell himself;
for the practice of the courts was almost exclusively
in the hands of converts who were Protestants but in
2 Commons' Journals, Ireland,
Feb. 8, 1740.
1 'Newcastle to Carteret, Feb¬
ruary 24. 1726.' 1TSS. Record
Office.
Ill EL. I. T T
642 TIIE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
name, of men who had been Catholics in London,
took the sacrament once on their way to Dublin, and
were admitted to plead on the strength of it, but
were essentially Catholics always, and devoted their
whole services to the party to which at heart they
belonged.1
Since Romanism was to continue, it became neces¬
sary to define more sharply the terms on which it was
to exist, and to take measures to secure the lives and
fortunes of the colonists from being sacrificed to Eng¬
lish compromises, or the Catholic birds of prey in the
Four Courts. Catholics who consented to abjure the
Pretender had been hitherto admitted to the franchise.
The rate of increase in the Protestant population was
in itself smaller than among the Catholics, from their
more prudent habits, and was further checked by the
emigration. The disproportion of numbers threatened
to throw into Catholic hands the control of half the
constituencies in the southern provinces, and the privi¬
lege of voting was taken from them.2
The Government, in pursuance of their views of
conciliation, since they could not by law appoint
Catholics to the commission of the peace, selected from
among the Protestants those gentlemen who would be
most agreeable to the Catholics : recent converts whose
faith was from the lips outwards; men whose wives
were Catholic, whose children were bred in the creed
1 ' Archbishop Boulter to New- 2 I George II. cap. ix. Irish
castle, March 7, 1728.' MSS. Eft- Statutes.
cord Office.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
643
of tlieir mothers. A committee of the House of
Commons stated, that while this practice continued
the peace of the country could not be preserved. Con¬
ciliation so followed gave the administration of the
laws to ruffians whom the laws rather should have been
a whip to scourge.1
1 The difficulty of finding com¬
petent magistrates was one of the
most pernicious results of absentee¬
ism. Had the great landowners
remained at their posts the Govern¬
ment would have had 110 excuse
for passing them over, or putting
power into the hands of such a
person as is described in the fol¬
lowing story:—In the year 1729
Mr. Hubert Burke, a professing
Protestant, was a magistrate at
Loughrea, and in that capacity en¬
tertained the collector of the re¬
venue when he came to gather the
hearth-money. Mr. Bagwell, such
was the collector's name, was lying
one winter's night in bed at Burke's
house when Burke's eldest son
came drunk into the room with a
fiddler and a servant, and held a
candle to the collector's nose.
Springing out of bed Bagwell
snatched a stick out of young
Burke's hands, bade him leave the
room, and after a scuffle drove him
out and locked the door.
In the morning young Burke
sent Bagwell a challenge. Bagwell
replied that he was in Loughrea on
the service of the Government. He
had neither time nor inclination for
such fool's play as duelling, and sent
the messenger about his business,
Upon this the family chose to
consider that they had been grossly
insulted. Ancient habits and man¬
ners lingered in Galway. The old
gentleman informed his son, that
'if he did not bring him gentleman's
or kerne's or churl's satisfaction'
out of a man who had struck a
Burke, he would never own him
more.
The youth promised obedience.
In the evening he collected a party
of ruffians in the yard, sent in word
to the collector that some one
wanted to speak with him, and
when he appeared set upon him
with a loaded whip, broke his
skull, and left him for dead.
A commissioner of the revenue
in the neighbourhood, hearing of
Mr. Bagwell's treatment, applied
for a company of soldiers from
Portumna barracks to take young
Burke prisoner, and bring him to
Dublin for trial. A civil warrant,
he said, would be useless, for the
offender's fattier, being a magistrate,
could procure any number of villa ins
to prevent it from being executed.
Were 'a Burke tried at the Gal¬
way assizes he had so many rela¬
tions and namesakes that no verdict
could be procured against him.'
Moreover, without soldiers, neither
II 2
644
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IV.
The heads of a bill were prepared, providing that no
convert should be admitted to office under the Crown
if his family were brought up as Catholics, nor till
seven years after his conversion. England attempted
resistance, but was eventually obliged to comply. The
condition of the bar offering a strong temptation to
the heirs of pardoned families to sue for recovery of
their estates, the heads of a similar bill affecting bar¬
risters and solicitors were sent over in 1727,
1727
backed with the earnest recommendation of
Archbishop Boulter. The bill had been drawn by his
advice so as not to touch Papists, but only persons
calling themselves Protestants; f foreign ministers
therefore/ he said, ' could not, with decency, object/ 1
Foreign ministers did not, in the present instance,
constitute the difficulty. England was deliberately
undoing the efforts of past legislation in favour of the
Catholics for its own immediate convenience. The
Solicitors and Barristers Bill was refused. It was
again sent over in 1731, and again rejected. The Irish
Parliament, however, was determined. In 1734, on
the third trial, England gave way ; and it became the
he nor his accomplices could be
taken at all, or, if taken, be conveyed
to the county gaol.—' Information
of Samuel Bagwell taken before
John Carr, Chief Commissioner of
the Revenue.' MSS. Dublin, 1729.
Bagwell recovered from his
broken head, but retained a bitter
recollection of his adventure. In
1743 he writes from Tipperary, ' I
have a large walk in this country,
some parts of it being wild and
well stocked with the vermin
called Papists, who, I fear, will de¬
stroy me when I am amongst them
upon my collection.' — ' Samuel
Bagwell to Secretary Poulton,
March 14, 1743.' MSS. Dublin.
1 ' The Primate to the Duke of
Newcastle, March 7, 1728.' MSS,
Record Office.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
645
law of Ireland that no one should practise as a solicitor
who had not been a Protestant from his 14th year, or
unless he had been five years articled to some clerk in
chancery in England or Ireland.1
1 7 George II. cap. 5.
646
SECTION II.
Another Act, of still greater consequence, experienced
a yet more significant opposition. The Irish
^ Catholics, after the revolution, had been dis¬
armed. With the semi-feudal habits which survived in
Ireland far into the last century, it was the custom of
Irish gentlemen to ride abroad armed and attended
by large numbers of servants with sword and pistols.
In the absence of police, and amidst the still widely
prevailing lawlessness, each householder was obliged to
undertake the defence of his own home and family.
An armoury and a supply of muskets and pikes formed
part of the ordinary furniture of a country house. If
no restrictions had been placed upon the Catholics,
their numbers would have enabled them to extemporize
a force which might rekindle the civil war. As a pledge
for the security of the public peace, the right to pos¬
sess arms in these large quantities was limited to those
who were in fact its guardians, and Catholics were
restricted to their fowling-pieces.
Galled by a distinction which was a badge of dis¬
trust and inferiority, and encouraged by the obvious
determination of the English Government to paralyze
the penal laws as far as Ireland would allow them, the
Catholic gentry, at the beginning of the reign of
George II., openly resumed their swords, and were
believed to have collected stores of arms, like the
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
647
Protestants, in their houses. The magistrates had a
power by law to issue search wari-ants; but if they
used such a power, they were likely to be murdered,
or burnt in their beds. If they escaped Irish ven¬
geance, they fell under the displeasure of the English
Government. The memories of 1641 and of 1690 were
still too recent for the Protestants to feel anything but
dismay, if those who, in the speeches from the throne
were still called their enemies, were allowed quietly to
resume the means of destroying them. They were as
a garrison set to hold a conquered country. Placed in
a position which experience had shewn to be supremely
perilous, they had undertaken the service in return for
the lands of which the inhabitants had been deprived,
and they knew themselves to be the objects of the
enduring hatred of the dispossessed proprietors. The
means originally intended to complete the conquest had
been abandoned. The policy pursued towards Irish
industry had thinned their numbers, destroyed their
employments, taken from them the only means by
which Ireland could have been reconciled to their rule;
and, because they dared to complain, the persons whom
they were set in their places to control, who regarded
the Protestant settlers as aliens and robbers, were
being allowed quietly to recover the means of recom¬
mencing a struggle which at best would be bloody and
dangerous.1
In the summer of 1730, a Catholic gentleman was
1 'The Primate to tlie Duke of Newcastle, December 4, 1731.'
MSS. Record Office.
648 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
indicted at Galway for carrying arms in tlie streets.
His religion was avowed; the fact was not dispnted.
The defence was that the Disarming Act applied
only to persons who were alive at the time that it-
was passed, and on this ground he was acquitted.1
The Dublin Catholics at once put on their swords,
at once carried pistols in their holsters; and, when
they rode into the country, had their half-score or
score of armed servants behind them. Two years
later, as if deliberately to assert the re-establishment
of their right, Lord Gormanston and one of the Barn-
wells, both Catholics, appeared with swords at the
assizes at Trim.
They were both popular men, and against them
individually there was no ill-feeling; but the grand
jury, ' men of fortune, and several of them members
of Parliament/ feeling that acquiescence would be a
public sanction to the Galway interpretation of the
law, met the challenge as boldly as it was made.
Gormanston and Barnwell were indicted under the old
Disarming Act, and the question was referred to the
Dublin judges for decision. The Viceroy, then the
Duke of Dorset, was absent in England. An attempt
made by the Irish Parliament to pass an explanatory
act had been defeated in England by the action of a
Catholic agency there. The Catholics had been heard
to boast that they could ensure the failure of all future
attempts to take their weapons from them.2
1 ' Jn fact,' says Boulter, ' it ] for that opinion.'
was drawn so ill as to leave room , 2 'Boulter to Newcastle, Decern-
CH. II.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 649
The Lords Justices, the Primate, the Chancellor,
and the Speaker of the House of Commons wrote to
entreat the Viceroy that the law might be left to take
its course, and that the opportunity might not be lost
of enforcing respect to authority. Lord Gormanston's
behaviour 'was considered by the grand jury as a
defiance of the law in the face of the country/ ' The
prosecution,' they said, in evident fear that they would
be blamed, ' was not an act of the Government:' all
that they had done had been ' to decline to interpose in
ber4, 1731.' MSS. Kecord Office.'
An investigation in the Irish House
of Commons in 1733 revealed the
means by which money was raised
to defeat all bills in England which
the Irish Catholics disapproved.
They affected to believe that the
attempt to disarm them implied an
intention ' to extirpate their re¬
ligion, and that it was not to be
saved except by money.' Collec¬
tions were made at the chapel
doors all over Ireland. Dublin was
the focus of the agitation, where
the Catholics had confessedly least
cause to complain. In the country
there was inexplicable languor. ' I
am sorry,' writes one of the Dublin
committee to an agent in the
south, ' that with all your ex¬
ertions you can raise so little in the
city and suburbs of so considerable
a place as Cork, in the face of the
terrible apprehensions most of us
have. ... We don't like pressing
the clergy who are so poor, but the
clergy should work on their flocks,
and not leave the burden upon us
who live at Dublin, who have
much more just reason to be ex¬
cused upon this occasion than those
who live remote from the Govern¬
ment, and are always soonest op¬
pressed. I am sorry to find the
gentlemen in most parts of the
country do not show so great a re¬
gard to religion or liberty. We
should have but little hope of put¬
ting out those bills here if we
should have the misfortune of their
returning from England without
amendments. Our greatest efforts
must be to stop them on that side.
We want money, therefore, at
once.'—'Wolf to Nagle, Decem¬
ber 25, 1733.' Commons' Journals,
December 19, 1733.
Walpole's Cabinet, it appears,
took bribes as well as gave them
The necessity of providing money
to stop bills, which were either just
or unjust—which, if just, ought to
have been returned — if unjust,
to have been rejected on their
demerits, adds the last touch to
this detestable picture.
650 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
the common course of justice.' ' They flattered them¬
selves that it could not be taken amiss by any foreign
court when truly informed of the circumstances, and
of the great lenity generally shown to Catholics in
Ireland.' The two offenders' might not be convicted '
after all; and, if they were convicted, the Government
might pardon them if it was thought expedient.1
The trial was, perhaps, hurried over in anticipation
of the expected answer from England. Gormanston
and his companion were found guilty, apologized, and
received a pardon, at the unanimous petition of the
grand jury.
But the assertion of the law was deprived of its
force by the imbecility of the Viceroy and his masters.
The Disarming Act had not been rejected in order
that, by the judges' construction, the existing statutes
should be declared still to be in force. The Lords
Justices were reprimanded for allowing the prosecu¬
tion to be pressed; and Dorset confessed, in the terms
of his reproof, that the administration of law in Ireland
was dependent on the pleasure of the foreign Catholic
Powers.
' I submit it to your Excellencies,' the Viceroy
wrote, f how this matter may be looked upon abroad,
when a law made to prevent such disturbances from
Papists as may affect the public peace and welfare of
these kingdoms shall appear to have been executed
with rigour at a time when all things are quiet and
peaceable, and no danger could arise to the public
1 'The Lords Justices to the Duke of Dorset.' IISS. Dublin, 1733.
ch. ii.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 651
tranquillity from the indiscretion of these gentlemen
who presumed to wear swords without a licence.'1
The grand jury and the Lords Justices had desired
only to intimate to the Catholics that the law was
I739
still binding upon them. They were made to
understand that, whether it was binding or extinct, the
Irish Catholics were not to be interfered with except in
time of war, or when there was present imminence of
rebellion. They were to be left undisturbed to prepare
at their leisure for action when a foreign quarrel
should give them an opportunity. The Irish Protest¬
ant gentlemen, on whose heads the tempest would
fall, were unable to regard the proposal with the same
equanimity. The treachery of England towards them
compelled them to persevere in a course which tended
more and more to embitter their relations with the
people. They continued to insist on a Disarming Act
as indispensable for Ireland's safety, and England
continued to resist; until, in 1739, her ministers
found themselves on the edge of a rupture with
Spain. When danger brought them to their senses,
they remembered that the Protestants formed after
all the sole part of the population of Ireland on whose
loyalty they could rely in time of trial, and wavered
back to a policy of coercion, which was doubly
galling because it had been so long suspended.
Encouraged by England's attitude towards them
the Irish Catholics had begun naturally to hope for a
1 'The Duke of Dorset to the Lords Justices, July 7, 1733.' HSS.
Dublin Castle.
652 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
complete repeal of each, and all of their disabilities.
In 1739 they presented an address to George the
Second, thanking him for the toleration which they
enjoyed, and professing the most ardent loyalty.
' They had a just abhorrence,' they said, f for their
forefathers' primitive actions.' They detested ' the
thought of rebellion to aid a foreign power against his
majesty's interests.' ' They had acquired fortunes by
trade, which they desired to invest in land, and found
themselves prevented by the severity of the law.'
' They were oppressed by idle and wicked vagrants
informing against their titles, leases, and tenements;'
and they had thought, they said, of emigrating to some
country where 4 they might reap the benefits of their
labours,' ' and leave some stake in lands to their pos¬
terity which would secure them to be faithful subjects
of the princes under whom they lived.' But they
preferred, if it might be permitted, to remain loyal
subjects of the English Crown. 1 Money,' they said,
' laid out in improving a long lease ' would be a secur¬
ity for their good behaviour; and more dependence
could be placed on them when they had given a guar¬
antee for their good conduct, than ' as long as they
had their effects in their pockets.' 1
The time was coming when the lesson of the
Reformation would have been really learnt, when
Catholic gentlemen would have discovered that, with¬
out abandoning their faith, they could be in truth and
1 'Address of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, September 26, 1739.'
MSS. Record Office.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
653
sincerity good subjects of a Protestant Government;
that tbe Pope had neither in theory nor fact a right to
meddle with their temporal allegiance. When religion
was no longer made use of as a cloke or a palliation for
political conspiracy, demands for the relaxation of the
penal laws could be presented boldly, and could not be
refused. But the experience of centuries was not to
be set aside and obliterated by the good behaviour of
one generation ; and the revival of the old pretensions
to control the policy of the Irish Government, which
has been the fruit of completed toleration, raises a
doubt whether concession was not after all premature.
The suspicion attaching to the representatives of a
creed which has dyed its garments in blood so deep as
Romanism has done will only finally disappear when
the heads of a Church which sanctioned the atrocities
of the Inquisition has with equal solemnity condemned
them. Earnest Catholics, at present, seem rather bent
on justifying the fetters in which it was found neces¬
sary to chain them; they still refuse the acknowledg¬
ments which are due to the conscience of Europe ; and,
rather than make frank confession of their fathers' sins,
they take refuge in dishonest evasions, or in audacious
denials of the established truths of history.
The Catholics who addressed themselves to George
the Second were in a more wholesome frame of
mind. The cowardice of modern Protestants,
who disavow and condemn a policy which merits no
blame and needs no apology, had not yet taught them
how much they might dare with impunity. They couid
654 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. TV.
admit without disguise or shame their forefathers'
guilt. They affected to believe, and, being humbled
into good sense, perhaps they really felt that they had
been treated with leniency. The day of emancipation
was coming, coming as the gift in part of that very
Irish Parliament which they now dreaded as their
oppressor. But it had not come yet; nor was it by
rapes and abductions, by houghing cattle, by perjured
conversions, by juggling lawsuits, or by purchased
advocacy in the back corners of the English Cabinet,
that they would hasten its arrival. "War was declared
by England against Spain a month after the present¬
ation of the petition. It was discovered that, while
these gentlemen, on behalf of part of the Catholic com¬
munity, were affecting so profound a loyalty, the flights
of the Px-etender's Wild Geese from the Keiry rivers
were never moi*e numei-ous. Letters intei-cepted from
Irish residents in Spain shadowed out an intended
invasion. Count Dillon was reported to be himself in
Munster organizing an insurrection; and hot patriots
declared ' nothing to be more certain than that a
bloody war would break out all over Ireland in six
months.'1 The Duke of Devonshwe, who succeeded
Dorset in the viceroyalty, recognized and admitted a
peculiar insolence in the Catholic attitude; and the
necessity of listening to the demand for the Disarming
Act became apparent at last even at St. James's.
The Cabinet gave way, but so gave way as in yield-
1 ' Bernard "Ward to Lis father <it Carrigham, Ross. Prom Madrid,
August 29, 1739.' MSS. Kecord Office.
CH. ii.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 655
mg to secure themselves from Catholic resentment.
Though legislation on the subject was confessed to be
necessary, the Duke of Devonshire was not permitted
to recommend it from the throne. He was instructed
to leave the initiative to the Irish Parliament, to take
no part, and to avoid all appearance of taking part,
' that an answer might be the more easily given to
foreign Princes who would interfere.'1
The Parliament accepted a responsibility which
ought not to have been thus exclusively thrown upon
it. Instead of the concessions which the petition of
the Catholics demanded, the heads of a Disarming Bill
were at once introduced. They were heard in Council
in objection; their arguments were answered; and the
Viceroy transmitted the bill to England with a story
which showed conclusively that the time was not ripe
for trusting the Irish nation with larger liberties. A
colony of Quakers in Kildare had celebrated the Fifth
of November with the usual bonfire. Their chapel and
an adjoining house were immediately burnt by a mob.
A company of soldiers was sent to arrest the ring¬
leaders in the outrage. The entire Catholic population
rose in fury, swearing that all the Quakers and all the
county of Kildare should not hang them ; and a large
military force alone saved Naas gaol from sharing the
fate of the chapel.2
Humours were flying that a Spanish camp had been
1 'The Duke of Devonshire to November 8, 1739.' MSS. Record
the Duke of Newcastle, October Office.
12, 1739." 'The Duke of New- 2 'Devonshire to Newcastle,
castle to the Duke of Devonshire, January 12, 1740.' Ibid.
656 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
formed in Gallicia. French officers were discovered
enlisting recruits at Limerick ; English regiments
were being tampered with; and deserters had gone off
with the Wild Geese.1 The Government, too happy
that the Irish Parliament had been bolder than them¬
selves, returned the Bill, which was immediately passed.
The depleted arsenals were again fully supplied.
Authority once more dared to assert itself. Disaffec¬
tion cowered again into its hiding-place with instant
submissiveness; and to this one effort of resolution,
after so long and so mischievous a struggle, Ireland
owed the unbroken quiet in the rebellion of 1745, of
which, by some absurd irony, the indulgent rule of
Lord Chesterfield has gained the exclusive credit.
1 'Devonshire to Newcastle, March 18, 1740.'
657
SECTION III.
For tlie half century intervening between the Duke of
Grafton's government and the revolt of the American
colonies, Ireland was without a history. The fruits of
misgovernment were steadily growing. Each year the
seeds of future disorder were sown over a wider area.
Each year the Celts grew stronger, the English Pro¬
testants more helpless to stem the evils which the wise
among them too plainly perceived. Viceroy succeeded
Viceroy, resided for a quarter or half a year while the
Parliament was sitting, and left the administration to
Lords Justices, who, powerless for good, came gradu¬
ally to value authority for the opportunities of patron¬
age. England governed Ireland for what she deemed
her own interest, making her calculation on the gross
balance of her trade ledgers; and leaving her moral
obligations to accumulate, as if right and wrong had
been blotted out of the statute-book of the universe.
Ireland's great men—for great men were born in Ire¬
land as elsewhere—drifted away out of a scene where no
road was open to honourable aspiration. Her politicians
were persons who, for the most part, had no prospects
elsewhere ; her second best, for her best had made their
homes in England. For fifty years there were no men
in the Irish Parliament deserving to be called eminent.
The periodic agitations were without defined purpose,
and were the expressions merely of pain from chronic
IKEL. i. v v
658
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. IV.
sores, wliicli, day by day, grew more inflamed. Three-
fifths of the rents were carried to London or Bath, or
the Continent, where the so-called gentry of Ireland
forgot their duties, and concealed their nationality.
Her aristocracy left their estates to agents, and if their
bankers' balance was satisfactory, asked no questions
as to how their dues were levied. Her men of talent,
who should have given her a national art and a national
literature, her distinguished lawyers and physicians,
and men of science, passed to the country which offered
fairer rewards to eminence, and social intercourse in
which it was possible to feel at home. Ireland herself,
cursed with a separate legislature, and with a nation¬
ality which revived under oppression, was drained of
every element which could have given her firmness and
consistency, and was left to flounder from calamity to
calamity.1 Bank, genius, wealth, intellectual cultiva¬
tion, all, or almost all, that could have given vigour to
her legislation, and tone to her society, forsook her.
Her code of laws were an institute of anarchy, so
1 A condition apparently inevit¬
able in all dependent countries in
times when the first duty of man
lies in the making and enjoying his
own fortune. Rome prolonged her
empire by recruiting from the
provinces her bar, her senate, and
her armies. Spain, Gaul, Africa,
the East were all emasculated that
Rome might be strong. Similarly
at the present day men of business
accumulate fortunes in Australia
to spend them in London. Poli¬
ticians win distinction in colonial J
legislatures as a step to greatness in
the Imperial Parliament. Colonies
which aspire to preserve their
wealth and talents for themselves,
will inevitably seek independence,
unless they are identified with the
mother country, and share with
it to the full its glories and its
privileges. There is no wholesome
alternative between entire assimi¬
lation, and a separation so complete
as to create a pride in a distinct
nationality.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
659
administered as to turn authority into a jest, and so
contrived as to make law a synonym of iniquity.
The more honour is due to the few families who,
great in character or in rank, remained at their stations
—families in whom traditions of the past century were
not yet wholly extinct, who recognized that they owned
Irish soil for some better purpose than to squeeze
materials of luxury out of the tillers of it. Yet even
these were driven gradually into disaffection, as they
saw their efforts to save their country blighted or cast
aside.
With extreme difficulty they at last obtained their
Tillage Bill, though shorn of the bounties which
would have given it vitality. It was reduced to
an injunction that out of every hundred acres of land in
cultivation five must be under the plough; and, still
more unfortunately, no means were provided to enforce
even this obligation, the neglect of which brought the
rising of the Whiteboys.1
Working on the foundation of the Charter Schools,
they carried measures which needed only to have been
executed to have swept poverty out of Ireland. In
1715, they passed an Act empowering the ministers and
churchwardens in every parish to apprentice children
1 The Protestant absentee land¬
lords treated their duties generally
with a cynical completeness of con¬
tempt. The report of I729 on the
causes of the Protestant emigra¬
tion from Ulster says, ' that their
agents habitually let the lands by
auction to the highest bidder ; they
turned Protestant tenants out of
their holdings, without compensa¬
tion for improvements, and let the
farms to Catholics on short leases,
and at rack rents.'—' Keport on the
Causes of the Emigration, June 6,
1729.' MSS. Kecord Office.
u u 2
66o
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. IV.
wlio were found begging to substantial Protestant house¬
keepers or tradesmen.1 The parishes were bound by
the common law to support foundling and orphan chil¬
dren. It was found that to evade the cost the overseers
thrust helpless little creatures under six years of age
from parish to parish, and while the authorities were
disputing over the charge of their maintenance, the
objects of their cruelty often perished. Workhouses
were established in consequence in Dublin, and after¬
wards in most other large towns, where the governors
were required to take charge of such children, to edu¬
cate them on the Charter School principles, and after¬
wards to bind them out.2
In 1729 the administration of justice in Ireland
came under the notice of Parliament: the Mayor and
Corporation of Dublin were found to be drawing a
handsome revenue out of extortions practised upon
prisoners. Out of thirteen aldermen, seven only acted
as magistrates; and each of the seven had a gang ot
constables specially depending on him. Their clerks
were provided with blank warrants, in which they
entered what names they pleased, and by arresting
innocent persons and extorting fees for the cost of
1 ' "Whereas there are in every
part of this kingdom numbers of
helpless children who are forced to
beg, and, if care be not taken of
their education, will become not
only unprofitable, but dangerous to
their country ; whereas it is hoped
that many may be entertained in
comfortable service, and others
bred up in useful callings if well-
disposed persons could have a fair
prospect of receiving a return
by the labour of poor children
suitable to the charge of training
them ;' the Act provides for the
application of the general appren¬
tice system, as it was in use in
England.—2 George I. cap. 17.
2 3 George II. cap. 3. 9 George
II. cap. 5.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
661
detention, and afterwards
turned poorly paid offices
incomes for master and for
1 Here is a specimen out of
many cases which came before the
House of Commons :—
'John Bryan having lost some
plate, and hearing from two con¬
stables of Alderman Bolton that
one Margaret McCabe had stolen
it, the alderman's clerk issued a
warrant for her and her daughter,
a child of eleven. They were ar¬
rested and taken, the child to Bride¬
well, and the mother to the Black
Dog, the debtors' prison, where those
who could pay for it were allowed
what was called better treatment :
the child as a favour was allowed
to join her there. They were
brought the next day before the
alderman, when nothing being
proved against them they were re¬
leased, hut not until the mother had
paid the following bill:—
To the alderman's clerk
to remove her daugh¬
ter from Bridewell to
the Black Dog. . £o 2 8|
Fees and expenses for
herself and daugh¬
ter there . . .0110
To Alderman Bolton
next day on being
discharged . . o 10 10
To his clerk at the same
time . . . 14 2
For liquors drunk at the
clerk's house at her
expense . . .030
£2 1 8}
for the favour of release,
into a source of abundant
man.1
The prisons were dens of infamy
and extortion. The sheriff mar¬
shal, whose salary as keeper of
Newgate was ten pounds a year,
was found to make his place worth
on an average nearly 1200/.
Newgate meant a dungeon,
starvation, and irons. The sheriff
marshal was allowed a separate
gaol of his own called the Black
Dog, the management of which he
deputed to his sub-sheriff at 201, a
year. At both prisons he made a
trade of ' vending liquors.' Each
prisoner consigned, though but for
a night, to the Black Dog was
taxed two shillings for a treat, and,
if he refused, was beaten and
stripped. The charge for a bed
was a shilling a night. Each room
was a mere closet; and in many of
these closets were five beds. In each
bed three, four, or five persons were
set to sleep if the place was crowd¬
ed, and two shillings were extorted
from each. The sheriff marshal's
wife collected the rents. When a
prisoner's money was gone he was
passed down into a dungeon, lighted
from a common sewer, 12 feet
square and 8 feet high, called the
Nunnery, where the strolling wo¬
men were lodged. The place so
stunk from the sewers, that the
House of Commons' committee
could only remain long enough to
measure the dimensions. Four¬
teen and sometimes twenty women
were placed there of a night. If
662
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. XV.
Newgate was a Crown prison. The master of it
was a Crown officer. It could scarcely be pleaded that
a proper administration of the gaol could be dangerous
to English trade ; and, in the absence of difficulties on
the score of trade, the Castle authorities might have
been reasonably expected to see that these places were
decently managed. The House of Commons had the
merit of dragging to light the deadly evidence of
shameful and insolent neglect, and, so far as lay in
them, purged out and reformed the foul abuses which
were found rampant there. Felons, after this, were
regularly and rapidly transported, sold to planters in
the colonies, and paid in their persons for the cost of
sending them out.
Other more ordinary work, too, was not forgotten.
Roads were made, which were the admiration
of Arthur Young; canals were cut; bogs were
drained; a new Parliament house was built, with both
thrift and skill, for a fourth of the sum for which the
same building could be erected to-day.1 New streets
and squares sprung up in Dublin, which, if without
1732
they attempted to come out for air
and light they were beaten hack.
Newgate, when the committee
visited it, was found choking with
prisoners. "Wretched objects were
lying naked on the ground, some
dying, some dead of cold and hun¬
ger. Some had been four days
without food of any kind. The
committee enquired what allow¬
ance of bread was made to the
Crown prisoners, and found that the
custom of allowing Iread had been
for some time discontinued. The
stench among the naked starving
felons was so intolerable that the
committee fled after a stay of half
a minute. — Commons' Journals,
October 15, 1729, vol. viii. Appen¬
dix.
1 The entire cost scarcely ex¬
ceeded 34,000/. See the Commons'
Journals.
cir. ii.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
663
beauty, show in their stability, within and without,
that the art of doing' good work had been learnt, and
not as yet cast aside. Glimpses show themselves at
times, in the transactions of Parliament, of high
spiritual aims. As late as 1771, the Commons made
an attack upon drunkenness, and passed heads of a
bill to suspend the whiskey distilling which, as they
said, was demoralizing the country. Lord Townshend,
then Viceroy, informed the English ministry that the
House had the bill exceedingly at heart,1 that it was
generally popular, and would give content and satisfac¬
tion throughout the kingdom; and a measure which
had no other object than to encourage sobriety would
have actually passed into law had not England, in the
capacity of guardian of human freedom, interfered.
The dawning science of political economy had dis¬
covered that Governments are unconcerned with
morality. Besides the interference with the natural
liberty of the subject, it was found that, to pass the
Bill, would involve a loss to the excise.
One other creditable measure has to be mentioned,
which was not extorted from England or English
jealousy, but from the bigotry of the bench of bishops
of both countries. The learned prelates, who denied
the validity of Presbyterian marriages, and prosecuted
kirk elders for concubinage, were so impressed with
the solemnity of a sacrament performed by a compe¬
tently ordained priest, that a ceremony by which a
1 ' Lord Townshend to the F.arl of Kochfort, March 27, 1771.'
MSS. Record Office.
664 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
Protestant girl had been tied by force to any villain
who had carried her off and ravished her, they persisted
in regarding as an indissoluble bond. Until all such
unions were declared null and void, no effort to check
the practice was of the least avail. At length, in
1732, the Irish bishops were brought to yield, and the
heads of a satisfactory bill were sent over for approba¬
tion to London.1 Objections were anticipated from
' their brethren in England;' and the expectation was
too justly fulfilled. The bill was set aside, ' as of an
extraordinary nature/ 2 and the ravishing continued
merrily without interruption. In 1735, after some
outrage more flagrant than usual, there was a partial
concession. When the sufferer was a lady of fortune,
the English bench consented that, after a tedious and
expensive suit in the ecclesiastical courts, a marriage
might be set aside.3 The distinction between rich and
poor was felt to be odious. The House of Commons
insisted, in 1743, that all such marriages should
be, ipso facto, void. The bishops resisted with
the most determined obstinacy ; they were willing to
1 ' I believe you know it is a
common practice in Ireland for a
tall, strong Papist to hurry away a
pretty girl with a good fortune into
the mountains, and there commit
acts of horror and violation, and
that the poor undone maid is glad
at any rate to be made an honest
woman. This is readily performed
by the holy men who are at' hand
to assist their lay friends on such
occasions. These outrages, besides
many other evils arising from forced
and clandestine marriages, have
engaged the bench of Irish bishops
to come into this law. How it will
be relished by their brethren in
England you will have an oppor¬
tunity to observe.'—' ~W. Cary to
Secretary Delafaye, January 2,
1732.' MSS. Record Office.
2 ' List of Irish bills rejected,
February, 1732.' Ibid.
3 9 George II. cap. 11.
OH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
665
declare a separation by tlieir own spiritual authority;
they protested against ' disannulling a marriage.' The
Commons declared that the principle had been con¬
ceded in the Act already passed, and that farmers'
daughters had as good a right to protection as heir¬
esses.1 The bishops shut their ears. The struggle
was protracted for two years, and it was not till 1745,
under the viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield, that their
preposterous and grotesque resistance could be at last
overcome. In a bill then drawn by the Commons,
every marriage performed by a Popish priest between
Protestant and Protestant, or between Protestant and
Papist, was unreservedly declared to be null. The
heads which contained these sweeping clauses were
carried in the Commons without a dissentient voice.
They were presented to Chesterfield by the Speaker,
attended by the entire House. The Speaker repre¬
sented that, by these marriages, more than by any
other cause, Protestant settlements were broken up,
family ties dissolved, and the worst specimens of the
Catholic clergy supported and encouraged. Chester¬
field himself endorsed the opinions of the Lower
House.2
1 ' The Duke of Devonshire to
the Duke of Newcastle, December
25-' 1743-
2 ' Heads of a Bill, with Vice¬
roy's and Council's Letter.' MSS.
Dublin, 1745. 19 George II. cap.
13, Irish Statutes.
666
SECTION IV.
In the country as well as in Dublin there were Protest¬
ant gentlemen who, so far as their strength ex¬
tended, were making amends for the imbecility
of the Government. Those who have read Arthur
Young's Tour in Ireland, have accompanied him to
the houses of great Peers and Commoners, where
stately manners, high motives, and refined intelligence
were as conspicuous as in the noblest families of Eng¬
land ; where the privileges of a ruling class produced
the virtues of a true aristocracy, in contrast to the
vices which degraded the baser members of the same
order. Gross as was the degeneracy of the majority,
a chosen few were still spending their fortunes in
improving agriculture, in reclaiming mountain and
morass, in building schools and churches, conscious
of the duties which they owed to the people, and
earning their gratitude and affectionate devotion by
the unselfish fidelity with which those duties were
discharged. Scattered thinly over the four provinces,
the salt of the country, they continued, generation
after generation, in brave and honourable execution of
a work which brought its own reward with it: they
sate enthroned in the imagination of the peasantry as
their natural rulers; the Banshees wailed for them
when they died; the ' good people' took them under
their protection, as they in turn were the protectors of
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
667
the poor. Out of these families have risen many of the
most brilliant officers of the English army, the most
illustrious ornaments of the English House of Com¬
mons. In their own country, occasionally, we are
brought face to face with one or other of them when
selected in time of trouble for some special work of
difficulty or danger: we are enabled to see the metal
of which they were composed, and to admire the use
which the Government thought fit to make of them.
Galway, lying on the Atlantic, with its open har¬
bour, was the most vulnerable point of the island.
Through Galway the priests had free egress and
ingress. Galway was the second, if not the greatest,
depot of the smuggling trade. The Articles of Galway
had left the Catholics in unbroken strength there. The
Houghers had thinned the Protestant settlers. When¬
ever an invasion was contemplated, Galway was the spot
where a foreign contingent was most sure of finding a
favourable reception. (The Protestant interest of
Connaught,' said an Act of' Parliament in 1717, de¬
pended on the loyalty of that single town, yet no care
had been taken to strengthen the Protestant element
there. As Galway was in 1717, so it continued,
governed by a corporation of Catholics, who had per¬
jured themselves as a qualification for office. The
penal laws, neglected everywhere, were in Galway
openly defied. The handful of troops in the castle
were left to themselves, undisciplined and disorganized.
Nunneries and friaries were multiplied. Smugglers
loaded and unloaded at the quay. If, for decency's
668 ■ THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [Bit. iv.
sake, on the appearance of a commissioner of the
revenue, it was necessary to put on an appearance of
energy, due notice to the offenders beforehand secured
the futility of the search warrant. Although the
country remained undisturbed in the rebellion of i745j
yet in the extreme west the Disarming Act had been
enforced imperfectly. It had been long notorious that
in Gal way, as in Kerry, recruits and money had been
regularly levied for the Pretender. Prudence required
that the town should not be left entirely in the hands
of the Pretender's friends, and, in 1747, an officer,
who had served at Culloden, Colonel Stratford Eyre,
son of Mr. Eyre, who had been governor of Galway in
1715) was senf hy the Government to command there.
Colonel Eyre, who had been born and educated in the
country, understood the ways of it. He found himself
set to defend a town of which the walls had not been
repaired for a quarter of a century; the castle in ruins ;
the very name of military authority forgotten. By law
no Catholics ought to have been in Galway at all.
There were thirty Catholics there to one Protestant,
and the Protestant was becoming Protestant but in
name. There were 180 ecclesiastics, Jesuits, friars,
and seculars. Robert Martin, owner of half Conne-
mara, resided within the liberties, and was making a
fortune by smuggling there. He was described by
Eyre as ' able to bring to the town of Galway in
twenty-four hours 800 villains as desperate and as
absolutely at his devotion as Cameron of Lochiel.'1 .
1 ' Col. Eyre to Secretary Wayte, November 20, 1747.' MSS. Dublin.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
669
The Mayor and Corporation, the fee-simple of whose
united property did not amount to 1000I., received the
tolls and customs duties. By their charter they were
bound in return to maintain the fortifications. Being
what they were, they preferred to divide the town
revenue amongst themselves. The mayor, an O'Hara,
was the son of Lord Tyrawley's footman ; the sheriff
was a beggar; of the aldermen one was a poor shoe¬
maker, the other a broken dragoon. In conformity
with the usual Castle policy, Colonel Eyre was directed
to act in harmony with the civil authorities; on taking
possession of his office he furnished the Secretary with
a specimen of the manner in which the funds were
appropriated by them.1
From the Corporation there was no help to be
looked for; Colonel Eyre, being made responsible for
the town, had no leisure to wait till he could bring the
Mayor aud Aldermen to a sense of their duty. He
re-established discipline in the garrison with a strong
1 Last Saturday, the 20th of
February, the Corporation of Gal-
way gave their favourite, Mr. Fitz-
patrick, for his services in sup¬
porting the rights of the corpora¬
tion .... ^900 o
To Mr. O'Hara for do. . 120 o
To Mr. Blake for his ex- '
penses in taking out a
mandamus . . 45 10
To Mr. Cooke for defend¬
ing the Corporation
against the mandamus 91 o
To Mr. Miles for prosecu¬
ting Donienick Lynch
for calling him a Pa¬
pist .... ^27 o
To Mr. Ellis for money
he paid ten years ago
on a contested election 27 o
Given to the farmers of
the markets in the
year 1744 on account
of losses that year . 72 o
To Alderman Ch. Gerry
for his services as
chamberlain . . 192 o
MSS. Dublin Castle, February 27,
1747.
670
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IV.
hand ; he himself stopped the gaps in the walls where
they had fallen down; and, taking the reins with a
firm hand, he gave orders for the gates to be closed, as
was usual in garrison towns, at sunset.
The Corporation had not laid open Galway to all
comers, that a soldier from the army of the hated Duke
of Cumberland should come thus amongst them, inter¬
fering with their pleasant habits, and making himself
their master. They sent in a complaint, largely signed,
against the innovation of the locked gates. The streets
of Galway, they said, must be free at all hours of day
and night, without sentinels, or inconvenient persons,
to restrain the citizens in their goings and comings.
Colonel Eyre, who was at no loss to understand
their meaning, sent for them, and told them distinctly
he could not comply. He was sent to Galway, he said,
to restore discipline, and he meant to do it. Galway
was a garrison town, and the rules of garrison towns
should be enforced. Ho one would be really incon¬
venienced by the closing of the gates at sunset, except
those who were breaking the law, either smugglers, or
nuns and friars who had no right to be in Ireland, or
else devotees who haunted their chapels. He declared
distinctly that he did not mean to look through his
fingers. He intended to do his own duty, and he
intended also that they should do theirs.1
1 Colonel Eyre's words have
something of a Cromwellian ring
about them.
'And now, gentlemen,' he con¬
tinued, ' since you are here in your
corporate capacity, I must recom¬
mend you to disperse those restless
Popish ecclesiastics. Let me not
meet them in every corner of the
streets when I walk as I have
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
671
Here, evidently, was a man with, the spirit in him
of a true ruler ; a man beyond all others fit to govern
a people like the Irish; beyond all others certain, if
not interfered with, to command their affection and
obedience. Such a man England ought specially to
have valued ; but England's stomach had grown feeble.
She had lost her nerve, and was frightened at shadows.
Though Eyre spoke boldly his mind misgave him ; he
wrote to Secretary "Wayte to entreat that the Castle
would stand by him. He even determined to see the
Viceroy himself, and was going to Dublin for the pur¬
pose. Being threatened with assassination,1 and a
day fixed for his death, he stayed in Galway unhappily
done. No sham searches, Mr.
Sheriff, as to my knowledge you
lately made. Your birds were
flown, hut they left you cakes and
wine to entertain yourselves withal.
I shall send you, Mr. Mayor, a list
of some insolent unregistered priests,
who absolutely refused me to quarter
my soldiers, and to my surprise you
have billeted none oh them. These
and James Fitzgerald, who is also
an unregistered priest, and had the
insolence to solicit votes for his
brother upon a prospect of a va¬
cancy in Parliament, I expect you'll
please to tender the oaths to, and
proceed against on the Galway and
Limerick Act. Let us unite to¬
gether in keeping those turbulent
disqualified townsmen in a due
subjection. Lastly, gentlemen, I
put you in mind of the condition
on which tolls and customs are
granted to you. Repair the breaches'
in these walls and pave your streets.'
—'Speech at Galway, 1747, en¬
closed to Secretary "Wayte.' NSS.
Dublin.
1 ' Sir, as I had not the pleasure
of seeing you since you came to
your government of Galway, I hope
soon to see you in the Elysian
fields, as I am just going off the
stage." And I am sure, if you don't
leave that town, you'll lose your
life before the 10th of next month.
'Tis all your own fault, for you
could not bear the employment
which you got, not for your bravery,
but for the slaughter you com¬
mitted on poor people after Cullo-
den fight. You'll be served as
Lord Lovat's agent was. God be
merciful to your soul.'—'Anony¬
mous letter enclosed by Eyre to
Secretary "Wayte, December II,
1747. Ibid.
672
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[bk. IV.
till the date was passed; and the delay was fatal.
The Mayor was beforehand with him. His Excellency,
convinced of the moral excellence and innocent inten¬
tions of the Galway Corporation, overruled Eyre's
orders, forbade him to interfere, by inconvenient
restrictions, with the pursuits of the inhabitants ; bade
him understand, in short, that although if mischief
came he might pay with his head for it, nevertheless,
it was the pleasure of the Castle that nothing should
be done which could give umbrage to the Catholics of
Ireland.
The consequences were immediate and character¬
istic. The governor was at the mercy of the towns¬
men, and might now be insulted with impunity. A
follower of Robert Martin, a Connemara boy, named
Brennan, marched ostentatiously past the sentinel at
the bridge, carrying a gun and pistol. The man being
notoriously a Catholic, the sentinel took them from
him; and Eyre politely returned them to Martin with
a message, that if he was sending arms into the town,
he had better for the future send them by persons
qualified to carry such things. Martin refused to
receive back his property : Eyre, finding his courtesier
rejected, declared that he would enforce the law, and
confiscate both gun and pistol. The assizes were
coming on, and Martin1 had the impertinence to serve
1 Robert Martin, Esq.,
Pr.
Stratford Eyre, Esq.
Dt. By the Lords Jus¬
tices of assize for
the Connaught
circuit.
The defendant is hereby re¬
quired personally to appear before
us at 8 o'clock in Galway on the
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
673
a summons on the governor to appear before the
judges, and answer to a charge of larceny.
What else could have been expected ? Enclosing
this singular document to the secretary, Eyre ventured
to insist that it was the immediate consequence of his
own treatment. If the law was to be thus openly
insulted, he said, Government would become impossible,
and neither the Popery Act, nor any other act, could
be enforced in any paid; of Ireland. Eor himself, f he
could not stand his ground unless the restraint was
taken off which the Lord Lieutenant has been pleased
to lay on him.'
The eyes of the authorities remained unopened.
Eyre continued governor of Galway, but was confined
practically to his military duties ; 1 and with so plain
an indication that they might do what they pleased
without danger of interference, the Galway townsmen
made haste to extinguish the small remains that were
left of the Protestant colony. The Governor was obliged
to look on passively while a Protestant grammar school,
6th of April next, to answer the
prosecutor's bill for 5I. sterling,
being the value of one gun and one
pistol, being prosecutor's property,
which defendant took and con¬
verted to his own use. Dated
March 3°> T748. Signed by order,
E. Butler, ) istrars<
L. Meai's, )
Dublin MSS.
1 A party of Frenchmen came
to Galway on an unknown errand,
and lay for some time concealed in
a convent. They had landed witli-
IBEIi. I.
out passports or credentials. Eyre
sent for them to come to him. Tliey
refused, and he arrested them. The
mayor immediately took them out
of his hands, and ' in the presence
of the prisoners threatened to com¬
mit him if he interfered further.'
—1 Eyre to Secretary Waytc, Au¬
gust 19, 1755.' MSS. Dublin. This,
too, was passed over by a Govern¬
ment which desired to believe all
to be well, and would therefore
notice nothing that was amisss
XX
674
THE EHGLISH IN IE ELAND
[bic. iv.
which lie remembered as a boy flourishing and well
attended, came to an end for want of pupils, and a
gorgeous mass-bouse rose where the school had stood.
Protestant families, which had been hitherto staunch,
forsook a cause which had lost confidence in itself, and
conformed to Popery. Eyre forwarded to the Secre¬
tary a letter which had reached him unsigned, but for
the truth of every word of which he said that he could
vouch himself, explaining how in a short time the
Protestant interest of Galway, once thought of such
importance as to be the subject of a special Act of
Parliament, was passing into nothing.1
1 ' Sir, I hope you will pardon
the trouble I give you when you
understand the subject I mean it
on. Nor do I know a more proper
person, not only from the station
her majesty has been pleased to
place you in, but from the known
adherence you and your family have
to the Protestant interest and prin¬
ciples, to which I might speak the
fulness of my mind.
' It cannot be strange to you, who
from your minority have known
this place, how unhappily the
p>oor few Protestants are situated,
and dependent on the multitude of
their Popish neighbours. And to
make our case more miserable, those
attempts that have been made to
add a little strength to our declin¬
ing numbers have (as an abandoned
people not worth common pity)
met with discouragement. Our
neighbours, flushed with success
and exulting in the destruction of a
hopeful Protestant seminary which
promised to be raised among us, are,
to our shame be it spoken, erecting
a large church in or near the centre
of our town, to be illustrated with
altar-pieces, music, organs, paint¬
ings, &c. What are we to expect
as the consequence ? Our youths and
weak-minded are tempted by the
glare and gildings of these struc¬
tures, and the crafty insinuations of
ecclesiastics with which the place
abounds ; our public worship is neg¬
lected, our churches decay, and in
their room the others flourish and
are supported. From the fulness
of my soul I acquaint you with this.
I grieve to see the decline of the
few poor Protestants that are here,
or rather fear an entire extirmin-
ation of them.' MSS. Dublin.
675
SECTION V.
The Disarming Act partially neutralized tlie feebleness
of the administration; but while wrong wTas
established in the place of right, and while
England was managing Ireland, not for Ireland's good,
but for her own imagined interest, no Disarming Act
or other superficial remedy could stay the progress of
social disease.
The Irish Parliament had struggled long against
the advancing tide; but, in the Irish Parliament itself,
fatal influences were at work, and a new and poisonous
element was beginning to show itself. The decay of
religion left the gentry without the restraints which
had held their fathers within bounds. The sense of
injustice brought with it deserved resentment; but it
was a resentment which, avoiding the wholesome roads
marked out for it by Swift and Berkeley, took the form
of rhetorical declamation. The modern Irish patriot
now appeared on the scene; the adventurer, whose
trade was agitation, who, careless of Ireland's welfare,
made his own way to wealth and distinction by consti¬
tuting himself the champion of her wrongs.
From the beginning of Anglo-Irish history there
can be traced, in the leading spirits of the island, a
particular notion of the meaning of the word liberty.
True liberty means the being governed by just laws,
laws which are in harmony with the will of the Maker
676 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
and Master of the world. It is the worst curse of
injustice that it leads men to look for redress, not to
better government, but to none, and to regard their
own consent as the measure of the restraint to which
they may rightly be submitted. Liberty, the Irish
said, and even Swift lent his authority to the definition,
liberty consisted in the being ruled by laws which men
made for themselves, tyranny in being ruled by laws
made for them by others. If this be true, the minority
in every constitutional State lives under a tyranny, for
it lives under laws against which it has formally pro¬
tested. The better the government of a disorderly
and licentious people, the greater the wrong that is
done to them, because such government most contra¬
dicts their own natural tendencies. Yet it is this idea
which runs through Irish political discontent, and so
long as the consent of the governed is recognized as
essential to the legitimacy of authority, so long and so
far Ireland will possess a grievance, which only com¬
plete separation will remove.
The consent of man was not asked when he was
born into the world; his consent will not be asked
when his time comes to die. As little has his consent
to do with the laws which, while he lives, he is bound
to obey. Let a nation be justly governed, and if it is
wise it will not quarrel with the destiny which has
provided for it the greatest of earthly blessings.
English misrule in Ireland reached a point at last at
which its grasp relaxed, and weakness compelled a
surrender of a power which had been so scandalously
ch. ii.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 677
misused: not, however, through any rising virtue on
the part of the oppressed Irish, or through any divine
aspiration after freedom and self-government, but
because wrong had borne its necessary fruit in the
feebleness of the oppressor.
As late as Chesterfield's viceroyalty, though legiti¬
mate discontent had been often expressed in
the House of Commons, there had been little 749
systematic opposition to the English connexion. In
1703, both Houses passionately desired an act of union,
and the storm raised by the halfpence died away when
the victory had been won. So long as a combination
with the Catholics against English rule was undreamt
of, an Irish Protestant patriot was conscious at bottom
that he could not maintain himself without England's
help. So long as his Protestantism lasted as a real
principle, he endured the injuries of his country as
a lighter evil than compromise with his old enemy.
As the century waned away, community of injury
created a sympathy of resentment. The steady in¬
crease of Irish misery formed a contrast every year
more marked with the growing splendour of England ;
and if material progress was thenceforward to be the
chief aim of humanity, there was no conceivable reason
why Ireland, Protestant or Catholic, should be denied
a share in it.
In 1747, Lord Harrington having taken the place
of Chesterfield, Charles Lucas, a Presbyterian apo¬
thecary, commenced the publication of the Citizen's
Journal in Dublin. The debates in Parliament
678 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
were private. It met only in alternate years, and
such fragments of speeches alone went abroad as
could be carried away by memoiy. Here, for the first
time, the people had an opportunity of seeing their
wrongs expressed for them in a clear and permanent
form. The paper came out weekly. It contained free
criticism on the behaviour of the rich to the poor, the
corruption of the courts of justice and the landlords'
tyranny. Cases were published of tradesmen being
horsewhipped who had dared to ask to have their bills
paid. If the tradesman complained, he found the
sheriff was the offender's bottle companion; if he
went to the judge, he was silenced by higher interest.
Similarly townships were shown to have been depopu¬
lated by the agents of absentees; constables to have
been knocked down in the streets and to have had to
bear it, ' for the poor were the great men's slaves.'
So far there was no treason. Lucas might have
published his journal every day in the year, and in
each issue he might have varied his indictment against
the state of Irish Society. But from the social wrongs
he passed to the national, and denounced, not with
the vigour of Swift, but with a noisy eloquence, effect¬
ive because resting upon truth, the iniquity which had
robbed Ireland of her manufactures.
The first number of the paper was dedicated to the
King. Lucas appeared at the Castle at a levee, intend¬
ing, and having allowed his intention to be known—
intending to ask Lord Harrington if he had transmitted
the dedication to the Court. Harrington sent an
CH. a.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 679
officer to desire him to leave the reception-room. He
obeyed, and published in the next issue an account of
his treatment. He touched the familiar string which
never failed to vibrate—the right of Ireland to make
her own laws, and he created such a ferment that, Sir
James Sommerville dying, and a vacancy being thus
created in the representation of Dublin, Lucas offered
himself to the suffrage of the citizens with every chance
of success.
Harrington sent copies of the journal to England,
to inform the ministers of the storm that was gather¬
ing.1 The Dublin guilds were preparing to present
Lucas, as they had presented Swift, with the freedom
of their respective corporations.2 The f incendiary,' so
the Viceroy described him, f had gained so many
converts, that it was absolutely necessary to put a stop
to his proceedings.' Before the writ for the city
election could be issued, at the opening of the autumn
session for 1749, Lord Harrington denounced him
from the throne. The Commons, as yet uninfected
with 1 sedition,' passed a vote that he was an enemy of
his country. The mayor and aldermen, whom he had
attacked in the interest of the townsmen, declared
their abhorrence of him and his paper. A warrant was
issued for his apprehension and committal to Newgate ;
and Lucas, bending before the tempest, left the country
and took refuge in the Isle of Man.
1 They are to he seen in the Re¬
cord Office, characteristically uncut.
3ISS. Ireland, 1749.
2 ' Lord Harrington to the Duke
of Bedford, October 12. 1749.'
3ISS. Ireland.
6So THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
Only, however, for a brief exile. As they grew
desperate of other remedies, Irishmen of all ranks
began to believe that it would never be well with them
till they had the management of their own affairs.
Lucas came back soon after, and, in spite of mayor and
Castle influence, was returned for Dublin. To mis¬
govern with a high hand was ceasing to be possible;
and, as they refused to see and undo the wrong which
they had inflicted, the policy of English Cabinets
thenceforward was to corrupt where they could no
longer defy. Ireland was nowto be managed—managed
with the abuse of patronage, and, still worse, with the
abuse of the Pension List. The landowners who had
pocket boroughs were bribed with peerages, and
promotions for their children. Popular and needy
adventurers sold their country for pensions provided
out of the hereditary revenues. The Irish establish¬
ment, no more available for royal mistresses and court
favourites, was the instrument of the deliberate de¬
moralization of the political intelligence of the nation.
The trade of agitation became, from this time, the
surest road to advancement in the service of the State.
To oppose the Government, to become troublesome in
Parliament, to create a party in the country by denun¬
ciation of the hereditary oppressor, and having become
dangerous, to betray the wretches who trusted in them,
to sell their services for title or promotion, or, grosser
still, for bribes or sinecures, for which the means
were supplied by the taxes, was the recognized occu¬
pation of aspirants to fame and fortune. Their detest-
CII. IX.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
6Si
able calling- was pursued by themselves with an effron¬
tery which disdained concealment, and was rewarded
by the Government, not always without expressions of
disgust, but as, on the whole, the readiest means of
keeping quiet a troublesome dependency.
In the absence of the Viceroys the administration
was in the hands of the Lords Justices, and, with the
administration, the disposition also of patronage and
of the public money. There were usually three of
these great officers, of whom the Primate was one, the
Speaker of the House of Commons another, and the
third either the Chancellor, or some influential noble¬
man. So long as Boulter lived, corruption was rare
or unknown.1 He was upright, honourable, and
straightforward, and to the utmost of his ability, which
was really considerable, he laboured for the true good
of Ireland. He died in 1742. Iloadley succeeded
him, but held the Primacy for five years only, and there
was then appointed to the first place in the Church of
Ireland a prelate of whoso virtues (for some virtues it
is to be supposed that he possessed) history has pre¬
served no record. George Stone, the son of a banker,
the grandson of a gaoler at "Winchester, for reasons
known to himself or his father, selected the Church as
his profession. Made Dean of Derry almost as early
as he could hold preferment, he was advanced rapidly
through the sees of Ferns and Leighlin, Kildare and
1 Boulter was an eminently sin¬
cere man, totally free from cant
of all kinds. There is scarcely a
single sentiment in his most con¬
fidential letters, at the publication
of which lie need have blushed.
6S2 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
Derry, to the archbishopric, which he obtained while
still in the vigour of his life. If the qualities which he
most exhibited in his high office were those to which
he owed his rise, he was lifted forward thus rapidly
for his fashionable manners, the profound absence of
moral scruple or conscience, and a singular dexterity
in handling the political elements of a corrupt and cor¬
rupting time. This man was, for many years, the vir¬
tual dictator of Ireland. From his handsome person
he was called the ' Beauty of Holiness.' Innocent of
profligacy in its ordinary forms, he was credited, per¬
haps unjustly, with abominable vices; but, as foul
smells adhere most strongly to unwholesome bodies,
the odour, not of sanctity, which enveloped Stone is
an evidence that he was an unhealthy representative of
the successors of St. Patrick.
The Duke of Dorset, who had once already governed
as Yiceroy, from 1731 to 1736, returned for another
five years in 1751- Growing old, and being perhaps
constitutionally indolent, he made his son, Lord George
Sackville, Irish secretary; and Lord George and the
Primate ruled Ireland with the help of the Pension
List.1 The financial administration had been an excep¬
tion to the general neglect. The debts contracted in
putting the kingdom in a state of defence in 1715 had
been largely reduced, and were now under half a
million. The revenue exceeded the expenditure. The
1 A favourite toast at patriot the sword and the Bible ; and may
public dinners in Dublin was, 'May the importation of Ganymedes be
all secretary bashaws and lordly discouraged in Ireland !' Plowden.
high priests be kept to their tackle,
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
6S3
House desired that the surplus should be applied to
clearing off the little that remained. The Crown chal¬
lenged a right to dispose of it without giving account
to Parliament; and Stone and Sackville, by free use of
these funds among the political leaders, were able for
a time to keep the curtain drawn. In the four years
of their supremacy they came many times to issue with
a powerful Parliamentary minority. Suits continued
to be revived by the representatives of forfeited families,
whose outlawries, notwithstanding all that had passed,
the English Government persisted in taking off. Sir
Thomas Prendergast, after fifty-three years' possession
of an estate, which had been given to his father by
King William, found his right challenged by the
O'Shaughnessies. The O'Shaughnessies were supported
by subscriptions among the Catholics. Prendergast,
threatened with ruinous legal expenses, appealed to
the House of Commons; and the Commons, in the
teeth of Government influences, decided by a close
division, after a violent debate, that f they would pro¬
ceed against all persons who assisted the O'Shaugh¬
nessies in carrying on their suit, as acting in defiance
and contempt of Parliament.'1 Arthur Neville, the
Surveyor-General, a favourite of the Duke of Dorset,
and a member of the Lower House, was censured for
misappropriation of moneys, and expelled from the
Legislature. An enquiry into the Pension List would
have followed; but Boyle, the Speaker, who had been
the chief promoter of the agitation, had gained the
1 Commons' Journals, December 11, 1755-
684 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [BK. IV.
object for which he cared, in compelling the Govern¬
ment to make terms with him. Dorset was recalled as
a constitutional concession, and the Primate was dis¬
missed for a time from the Privy Council; but the
essential mischiefs continued unabated. The country
was plundered further to corrupt those who threatened
to expose the corruptions. Boyle was made Earl of
Shannon, while lavish pensions rewarded and dis¬
persed his followers.
The game, however, once entered on could not be
again abandoned. Honest members were indignant at
being so defeated, and were the more resolute to perse¬
vere. Dishonest members found the temptation irre¬
sistible to follow so lucrative a trade as agitation was
seen to be.
Lord Partington succeeded Dorset in the vice-
royalty, but succeeded to an uneasy inheritance. The
Commons, at the opening of the next session, expressed
their regret that they should have been supposed to
desire to encroach on the Eoyal prerogative. They
trusted his majesty would believe that they were seek¬
ing only the welfare of their country, and at once
the House resolved itself into a committee to consider
the heads of a bill to secure the freedom of Parliament,
by vacating the seat of any member of the House of
Commons who accepted pension or office from the
Crown.
The same means were again used which had before
been successful. A corrupt majority was secured, and
a vote obtained that the committee should suspend its
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
685
proceedings.1 The Commons still demanded an ac¬
count of the pensions granted in the year preceding,
and a list was made out and laid before them, which
professed to be complete, amounting to less than
10,0001. -2 but either the list was falsely drawn, or the
most considerable grants were concealed behind some
cloak of technicalities. In the next year a resolu¬
tion was introduced, 'that the pensions and salaries
placed on the civil establishment of Ireland since
the 23rd of March, 1/55, amounted to the annual
sum of 28,103L ;3 amidst reproaches, recriminations,
dishonesty, and general discontent, Lord Hartington
left Ireland to form an administration with Pitt, and
the Duke of Bedford was named to succeed him.
1 Commons' Journals, Marcli ij,
1756.
2 Ibid. May 5, 1756.
3 MSS. Record Office, Ireland
1757-
686
SECTION YI,
For a moment, and seemingly "by accident, Ireland,
at this crisis, attracted the attention of the
1757
future Lord Chatham. Ignorant as Pitt evi¬
dently was of the condition to which the country was
reduced, and strikingly significant as that ignorance
was of the neglect with which Irish affairs were treated,
the interposition of the last great English minister,
brief though it was, shines out amidst the general chi¬
canery and cowardice, as if he belonged to another
order of beings. Had the intellect which was to raise
England to the first place among the European powers,
found leisure to attend more carefully to the poor
island, vdiich had been, was, and was to be, England's
disgrace and weakness, it was not yet too late to
recover the lost ground. It was not too late to restore
a nobler spirit into the degraded and degrading ad¬
ministration. The fashion of dissolutions had ceased.
The same House, which had been elected at the acces¬
sion of George the Second, was still sitting after thirty
years, renewing its life by elections as seats were
vacated by death, and retaining the same disposition
and the same traditions. The session of 1757 opened
with a renewal of the assault on the Pension List.
Resuming the lost bill, but proceeding in another
manner, the Patriot party introduced a series of
resolutions, that the granting of pensions to persons
ch. ix.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 687
not residing in Ireland—the absentee aristocracy who
controlled so many borough seats—was a national
wrong; that the increase of civil pensions, for many
years past, was a grievance which demanded redress;
that the granting pensions for a long term of years
was an alienation of the revenues of Ireland, an im¬
provident disposition of the revenue, and an injury
to the Crown and public. As drunkards themselves
petition for a removal of the temptation which destroys
them, the members who were themselves the recipients
of those dishonouring gratuities, were compelled, by
shame and the stream of opinion, to vote with the rest.
The resolutions were passed unanimously, and the
Viceroy was requested to name a day on which he
would receive them, at the hands of the Speaker
attended by the entire House.
The Duke of Bedford, a well-meaning but proud
and stupid man, accustomed to think of Ireland as a
dependency, which had no rights beyond the regis¬
tering of England's pleasure, was astonished and
indignant. He summoned the Council. The resolu¬
tions, he said, were derogatory to theKing's prerogative,
indecent in expression, and so improper that, were he
to promise to transmit them to England without express¬
ing his disapproval, he would make himself participem
criminis. He should, therefore, invite the House to
reconsider its action. The Council answered, that the
Duke might do as he pleased; the House, however,
would not give way; and would resent such a message
as an encroachment on its privileges. The Duke took,
6SS THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
therefore, what he called a gentler method. He allowed
the Speaker to present the resolutions, which were
brought to him, with the solemnities adopted only on
the most solemn occasions. 'But the matter which
they contained,' he said, ' was of so high a nature that
he could not suddenly determine whether it would be
proper for him to transmit them or not.'1
His ' moderation' ' had not the effect which he ex¬
pected.' The House refused to enter his answer in
the Journals. He appealed to the Speaker, whom he
hoped to find as malleable as his predecessor's.2 He
received only c a hard and dry answer that, in a point of
this sort, he had no influence; '3 and a vote was carried
to suspend the supplies till the resolutions were sent over.
The lamentation which Bedford poured out to Pitt
was a ludicrous confession of the nature of the influence
on which the Castle had allowed itself to depend.
' Bevenue officers,' he said, ' officers in the army,
even—which is more extraordinary—pensioners who
have enjoyed his majesty's bounty, were so disgusted
at the like marks of favour which the King has been
pleased to bestow on others within these two years
past, that they voted to obstruct his majesty's and the
public service, till they should have assurance of a
satisfactory answer to their injurious demands.'4 He
1 'Bedford to Pitt, November
17.' MSS. Record Office, 1757-
2 John Ponsonby, second son of
the first Earl of Bessborough, who
had succeeded Boyle, created Earl
of Shannon.
3 Ponsonby was found less hard,
as will be seen, at a late period.
4 ' One person I am ashamed
to name,' the Duke goes on, ' as he
received hut the day before through
very ill-judged intercession in his
OH, II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
689
begged to be recalled, or, if not recalled, to be armed
with powers to withdraw the pensions, and to cancel
the appointments of the ungrateful recipients of the
wages of corruption. By no other means could f faction
be overawed/ and respect recovered to the Government.
He recommended a dissolution. No period was affixed
by law to the duration of the Irish Parliament. The
present House of Commons had been elected on the
King's accession, and had every year grown more
unmanageable.1
Surprised, probably, for the first time, into serious
attention to the condition of Ireland, Pitt at once
directed that the resolutions should be sent over.
' The worst heat,' he observed, had been provoked by
the refusal to lay the grievances of the country before
the Crown; the irritation would be allayed, and there
would be leisure to consider what else it might be
necessary to do if the Duke could be more conciliatory
He desired Bedford's (own sentiments,' ' the amplest
light,' ' a clear and full view,' as a means towards ' some
prudent determination.' 3
Had Pitt been on the spot, he might have done
something considerable. Cromwell himself had not a
keener loathing for dishonest manoeuvres; and, by
aiming at the real evils, he would have rallied the
behalf, a singular mark of his
majesty's favour, Colonel Cunning¬
ham. He voted for postponing
the Money Bill. I thought giving
him his rank would confirm him
to his majesty's service, and would
also have tied the Lord Private,
whose creature he is.'—'Bedford
to Pitt, November 17,1757.' MSS.
Kecord Office.
1 ' Bedford to Pitt, November
17, 1757.' Ibid.
2 'Pitt to Bedford, November,
1757.' Ibid.
IllEL. I. Y Y
690 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
honest part of the House of Commons, and destroyed
faction by removing its excuse. Bedford, trained in
official routine, without original insight, and nourished
npon constitutional commonplaces, was consciously
helpless in an element so new to him. As soon as the
embarrassment had reached its height, he was assailed
by the leaders of the various factions, who, on their
own terms, offered to extricate him. Three-quarters
of the House of Commons were virtually nominees of
the Peers. They were divided into three parties, of
whom the Earl of Kildare, the Primate, and the Speaker
were respectively the chiefs. Kildare and Ponsonby
were personal enemies, and each was eager to secure
some advantage at the other's expense. The Primate,
who resented his removal from the Council, was will¬
ing to forgive, if restored to a share of patronage and
power. He had friends in the English Cabinet who
furnished him with copies of Pitt's most secret de¬
spatches, and thus negotiated for himself at special
advantage. The Duke could not bring himself to the
humiliation of listening at once to either of these com¬
petitors. The point of the resolutions being conceded,
supplies were voted. Parliament separated for the
Christmas recess, and the Viceroy was able to compose
himself to send Pitt the information which was desired.
The problem, as it presented itself to Bedford, was not
how to govern Ireland wisely and well, but rather
' how to preserve it in the proper subserviency which
it owed to the mother-country'—an object in itself
legitimate and essential, yet impossible to be obtained
ch. xi.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 691
till the mother-country recognized the conditions under
which she had rights over Ireland at all.
' Faction and party/ the Duke said, fhave spread
through all orders of men. There are not twenty in
the House of Commons, including the servants of the
Crown, on whom I can depend, or who are not more
attached to some particular interest than the service
of the Crown. Two parties have taken in hand to
distress the Government, or force themselves into it;
while the other party, which alone can check them
will not risk its popularity unless I consent to throw
all power into the hands of its leaders. One of the
two parties is the Primate's, which, by unnatural con¬
junction with that of the Speaker, in opposition to the
administration of the late Lord-Lieutenant, is equal, if
not superior, in numbers to the Earl of Kil-
dare's. I might have looked for help from the
latter ; but many of them are so infatuated with a
vain popularity, and as vain a notion of securing their
elections at a future Parliament, that I cannot depend
on their assistance in opposing questions that may be
proposed by their most bitter enemies. This is true;
and the remedy is, that when I go to England I leave
the sword in the hands of a deputy in whom I can con¬
fide—one who, by birth and attachment, shall be free
from all Irish connexions. You cannot make a regency
out of the heads of these factions, who would be equal
in power, and equally solicitous of obtaining favour for
those of their connexions. Fhould two join against
the third, what mischief might we not look for ? I
y y 2
°92 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. IV.
adhere to my system. This kingdom ought not to be
governed by parties. How long it has been so,- and
the ill effects arising from it, all the world knows too
well. Any point touching on the English prerogatives
is eagerly caught at. They talk of taxes on absentees
or pensioners, &c. It may be necessary to dissolve
them ; or prorogation may bring 'them to a better
mind. Strong measures, however, lie visibly ahead/1
Strong measures—but what or how ? No one knew
better than Pitt that the sword, unless so tempered as
to heal the wounds which it inflicts, exasperates the
symptoms which it is employed to cure.
f The Duke/ he replied, ' might have been more
particular in explaining why parties in Ireland could
not combine in measures for Ireland's good.' The plan
of leaving the power to Lords Justices ' free from Irish
connexions,' ' might deserve consideration in a sub¬
sidiary, conciliable, and healing disposition of spirits.'
fIn a temper of national resentment and growing
exasperation,' it might only increase the mischief.
Dissolution or prorogation he thought ' wholly unad-
visable and dangerous.'2
That Bedford should go to England, and see Pitt
in private, was made necessary by a betrayal of
their correspondence on both sides of the water. The
Viceroy's letters were the property of the political
leaders within a few hours of their being written. Each
1 'Bedford to Pitt (abridged), January 4, 1758. MSS. Record
Office.
2 ' Pitt to Bedford, February 2, 1758.' Ibid.
r-H. ii.] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 693
of them knew his embarrassments. Each feared to be
left at the mercy of his rivals, and all alike to have the
spoils of office stolen from them, by the appointment
as deputy of some impartial Englishman.
The money having been voted for the usual two
years, the concluding weeks of the session of 1758
were smoothed by mutual compromises. The struggle
was suspended till Parliament should again meet, while
the Viceroy worked in private to make a temporary
arrangement during his absence. The first plan was
to combine all parties, and leave three lords justices.
The Primate offered to serve with Kildare and Pon-
sonby. But Kildare declined. ' The hate of parties
to each other in public affairs/ wrote Bedford, 'for in
private I see less of it than in most other countries/ is
' so great, that I cannot conciliate them ; and to leave
the sword to either would be fatal.'1 Kildare, however,
was not the only powerful nobleman in Ireland. The
Primate and Ponsonby were willing to work together.
Lord Shannon, having won his earldom and his pen¬
sion, was not unwilling to earn future favours. In a
letter, 'most secret and particular,' the Duke informed
Pitt that he had at last formed a combination which
would answer during a short absence. The Primate
promised to be faithful in future, if his late conduct
was not remembered against him. The Viceroy under¬
took, in return, that he should have his share in public
patronage.2 The sore question of the Pension List was
1 ' Bedford to Pitt, February 9.' MSS. Record Office.
s 'Bedford to Pitt, February 10, 1758.' Ibid.
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
allowed to lie over for tlie present, and Bedford sailed
1 in the yacht3 for England, at the beginning of May.
The curtain rises again in the autumn of 1759*
matter had occurred meanwhile which, if in
Ireland it created no astonishment, was regarded
in England with indignant surprise. The Irish Chan¬
cellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Antony Malone, and Mr.
Clements, one of the Tellers, both members of the
Privy Council, established a private bank in Dublin, fell
into difficulties, and created a confusion in the public
accounts. That they had traded with the public money
they loudly denied ; and their delinquency, if it had
extended so far, was condoned by the Irish Parliament.1
By their own confession, however, vast sums of money,
public or private, or both together, had passed through
their hands. They had paid off the mortgages on
their estates, and had largely added to them. They
failed to meet their engagements, and were forced to
suspend payment; and though their debts were
ultimately cleared, and Irish sentiment dealt with
them leniently, the opinion in London was severely
unfavourable.
By this time to private scandal and Parliamentary
faction there was added a public danger. The French
war was at its height, and it was expected that a blow
was to be aimed at England through the vulnerable
side. A squadron of five ships, under M. Thurot,
sailed from Dunkirk ip. October, to cruise in the Irish
seas, while a powerful fleet collected at Brest—which,
1 33 George II. cap. 4.
cii.
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
695
rumour said, was to land an army in Munster, in the
middle of the winter. The relations between France
and Ireland were manifold and intimate. The smug¬
gling commerce was enormous; the Irish brigade
corresponded regularly with their families at home.
Officers had passed to and fro in disguise; and the air
was full, as usual, of rumours of insurrection. Fifty
thousand Catholics were reported ready to rise in arms
to meet their deliverers, and their disposition to rebel
was believed in Paris to be a practical fact.
Many anxious conversations on the state of Ireland
had passed meanwhile between Pitt and Bedford.
The Duke had told Pitt, that, ' after eight months'
experience, he considered Ireland as a country where
laws had lost all energy, magistracy all authority, and
even Parliament itself all reverence; and that nothing
but military force could restrain the subject within
due obedience.' 1
Pitt's replies are unrecorded. Obviously, however,
from his subsequent language, it was to the Protest¬
ants and to Protestantism that he looked for recuper¬
ative force there, not to any relaxation of Catholic
disabilities; that he regarded the discontent of Pro¬
testants in the midst of a hostile population as too
strange a phenomenon to be accounted for by mere
factiousness. For the moment the war was all-absorb¬
ing. Early in the autumn Bedford returned to Dublin.
The French were daily looked for. The army was
1 ' Bedford to Pitt, reminding him of a conversation in the spring,
December 25, 1759.'
696
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv.
concentrated at Clonmel, ready to turn in whatever
direction the enemy might appear. Limeiuck was the
point of danger. If the landing was at Limerick, the
city, it was thought, could not be saved. There was
110 force available but the regular troops. In 1715,
every able-bodied Protestant had pressed into the
militia, and the whole country was an armed camp.
In 1759, the city of London alone raised a larger force
than the whole of Ireland. The lords and gentlemen
had been profuse in professions and promises; ' but
the inefficacy of their zeal, their supineness after so
strong and frequent warnings of dangers, could not
but/ to Pitt's troubled mind, ' administer just ground
of wonder and alarm.'1
The spirit of the seventeenth century was dead.
Protestantism had spent its force, or survived only
among the Presbyterians, whose bitterness over their
prolonged disabilities was stronger than their loyalty.
Public spirit, pride in the glorious empire of which
they were permitted to be a part, had no longer an
existence in the minds of the Irish colonists; or, if
they recognized that they possessed a country, it was
' to thank God that they had a country to sell.'
English courage arrested the invasion. The French
fleet, after sailing from Brest, was met by Hawke at
Belleisle, and smashed in pieces. Thurot and his
squadron descended on Carrickfergus, took the castle,
plundered the town, and threatened Belfast. Had
1 'Pitt to Bedford, November 2, 1759.' MSS. Record Office.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
697
Belfast been attacked it could not bave been saved,
'not so muck as a single firelock/ so Pitt wrote
indignantly, ' having been put into the hands of any
Protestant in that part of Ireland since the commence¬
ment of the war;'1 and Belfast was the only town in
Ireland, except Dublin, of which the pillage would
have been worth the risk of the adventure. Happily,
before Thurot had time to learn with what ease he
might make the capture, the English were upon him.
Three frigates lay in harbour at Kinsale, the ' EEolus/
the 'Pallas,' and the 'Brilliant,' Captain Elliott, in the
' .kEolus,' commanding. Thurot's five ships had been
reduced to three also, of almost equal force with
Elliott's. Already, before the attack on Carrickfergus,
they had been heard of on the coast, and the English
squadron was on its way to look for them.
Thurot was found still at anchor in Carrickfergus
Bay. The wind was blowing hard off shore.
The English could not close; and, under cover ^
of night, Thurot slipped out into the channel. But
Elliott was after him with daylight, and came up with
him on the morning of the 28th February, between
the Mull of Gralloway and the Isle of Man. After a
sharp engagement of an hour and a half, in which the
French admiral was killed, the three ships struck, and
were towed as prizes into Bamsay harbour, and the
French descent on Ireland was at an end.2
1 'Pitt to Bedford, March 13, 1760.' MSS. Record Office.
2 ' Captain Elliott to the Duke of Bedford, February 24, and 29,
1760.' Ibid.
6gS THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv,
The Dublin populace, meanwhile, had taken the
opportunity of displaying the change of temper which
had come over them since 1703, when Ireland, almost
on her knees, had petitioned for incorporation in the
empire. Provoked, perhaps, by a knowledge of Bed¬
ford's words to Pitt, that Heland could only be con¬
trolled by military force, a rumour had gone abroad
that the Parliament was about to be suppressed; that
the country was to be governed as a province from
London, and the taxes to be voted at St. Stephen's.
Every day, after the opening of the Autumn ses-
sion of 1759, a disorderly crowd hung about the
doors of the Parliament House. Unpopular members
were hooted at and hustled, and the city authorities
had been required, with very little effect, to keep order.
There was an adjournment for a few days in November.
On the day of the reassembling,1 a mob of several
thousand persons, armed with swords and bludgeons,
collected in College Green, broke into the House of
Lords, and placed an old woman with a pipe in her
mouth on the throne, as an indication of their respect
for the Viceroy. They then took possession of the
doors and approaches, and every member, Peer or
Commoner, as he came up, was made to swear to be
true to Ireland before he was allowed to enter. The
Chancellor, Lord Bowes, an Englishman, refused the
oath, and was turned back. The disturbance lasted
through the whole morning. The Mayor came down,
but looked on complacently, and refused to interfere.
1 December 3.
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
699
111 the afternoon Bedford sent for him and the Sheriffs,
bade them swear in special constables instantly, and
quell the riot. The Mayor, from ' ill-judged popu¬
larity/ said he did not know on whom he could
depend. Bedford offered him the support of the
troops. The Mayor replied that, as there was no Riot
Act in Ireland, he could not sanction the use of the
troops. He had urged the people to disperse, and
he hoped they would obey. He would not order
them to be shot ' in an affair about the privileges of
Parliament/
The city was thus left at the mercy of armed
ruffians. Fifty soldiers were marched into the streets,
as a demonstration; but, as no one would give them
orders to act, they were only laughed at. At last,
the Duke took the responsibility on himself. A party
of cavalry were sent out, with directions in writing,
to disperse the crowd, using as little violence as pos¬
sible, but still to disperse them. The rioters retreated
into the side streets, and defended themselves with
stones; but finding this time that authority meant
to assert itself, and that they were ridden down and
sabi-ed, they stood their ground till sixteen of them
had been killed, and then disappeared into their dens.
In the riot itself, though no such scenes had been
witnessed in Dublin for forty years, there was
nothing calculated to create serious apprehen¬
sion. It was the conduct of the civil authorities which
gave it exceptional importance ; which led Pitt, when
he heard of what had happened, to reflect seriously,
700
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.
[BK. IV.
perhaps for the first time, on the Irish problem; and
gave occasion for a curious and extremely valuable
interchange of letters with the Duke of Bedford. The
disturbance originated in a part of Dublin called f the
Earl of Meath's Liberty,' inhabited almost exclusively
by Protestant artisans, among whom some excitement
had been created two years before by a visit from
John Wesley. Methodism, since Wesley's preaching,
had more or less agitated the lower classes of the
Dublin Protestants; and, as a new form of dissent,
had given special annoyance to the official mind of the
Viceroy.
Interpreting the feelings of the Dublin populace by
his own, and especially indignant at the indifference
with which the banking transactions of the Irish
Chancellor of the Exchequer had been passed over,
Mr. Pitt considered the uproar to have been probably
a demonstration against Mr. Malone and Mr. Clements.
Bedford still persisted in throwing a shield over the
delinquents, and, with the contempt of an English
aristocrat for the opinions of a mob, set it down to the
dissolution of authority and the republican tenets of
the new sect, which he stigmatized with the name
of Swaddlers. He shrunk from ordering an enquiry
into the Mayor's conduct, and was disposed to transfer
the entire responsibility to the Parliament.1
1 ' The place in which the riot
rose, the Earl of Meath's Liberty, is
chiefly inhabited by weavers, many
of whom are Protestants, and of
those called the " New Light Pres¬
byterians, or Swaddlers." Their
tenets, both here and, I am sorry
to say, in the North of Ireland, are
totally Republican, and averse to
English Government, and therefore
ch. ii ] PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. 701
Through the mists and clouds of Irish misgovern-
ment, Pitt's answer shines out like an exceptional
flash of sunlight. Though he had no leisure to master
the intricacies of the past administrative blundering,
his powerful sense grasped instinctively the only prin¬
ciples on which order and good government could be
restored. In the persevering efforts to screen a real
enormity, he saw how deep was the root of the disease,
and in the Duke's poor efforts to throw the blame on
the Dissenters, an evidence of the miserable infatua¬
tion which had' so long paralyzed the influence of
Protestantism. When Wesley visited Ireland in 1747*
the peasantry had flocked about him as eagerly as the
miners of Wales and Cornwall, and had been only
driven from him by terror of their priests. Of all
forms of the Protestant religion, Methodism and Cal¬
vinism were best fitted to make converts among the
warm impassioned Celts. The Irish Government, with
insane ingenuity, at once made itself the protector of
moral dishonesty, and selected for special enmity
England's most effective allies.
'You remind me,' so Pitt replied (and the letter
should have been engraved on the walls of the vice¬
regal cabinet, for successive governors of Ireland to
read their duty there)—'You remind me that you told
me last spring, that you considered Ireland, after eight
months' experience, as a country where law had lost
they are at least, equally with the 1759.' MSS. Record Officer Ire.
Catholics, to be guarded against.'— land.
'Bedford to Pitt, December 25,
702
THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [ek. IV.
energy, magistracy all authority, and that nothing but
military force could restrain the subject within due
obedience.
' I must remind you in turn, that the great danger
stated by your Grace, to be apprehended for Ireland,
turned principally, if not solely, on the excessive
superiority in numbers of Papists over Protestants.
fFor the Lord Mayor and magistrates of Dublin,
I can only observe that, in the late atrocious riot, those
magistrates may more properly be said to have totally
lost all sense of fidelity and duty, than that law and
magistracy have lost energy and authority—a timely
execution whereof so prudently and so expressly recom¬
mended by your Grace, duly supported in the execution
by the military force, could not possibly have failed
to prevent the consummation of so opprobrious an
indignity to Government, as well as to have seized and
brought to exemplary punishment the ringleaders in
such a daring attempt.
' I am hereupon to acquaint your Grace, that this
wilful and shameful inexertion of magistracy continues
to be considered here as being highly proper to be
taken up and enquired into by the executive power,
the exoneration whereof from itself by recommending
the same to the inquisition of the House of Commons
in Ireland, might tend to a further relaxation of the
authority of the King's government by due course of
law.
' In case, on such enquiry being had, there shall
appear full and sufficient grounds in law to prosecute
CH. II.]
PROGRESS OF ANARCHY.
7°3
criminally and convict tlie said magistrates, it is Iris
majesty's pleasure that your Grace, after taking the
advice of his servants learned in the law, should order
proper legal proceedings to be commenced against
them.
' With regard to the causes of the late outrage, I
cannot but remark that, considering the riot to have
taken its rise in the Earl of Meath's Liberty, chiefly
inhabited by Protestant weavers, there is still more
pregnant ground to apprehend that the money trans¬
actions of Mr. Malone and Mr. Clements have pro¬
bably been one fatal ingredient amongst others,
observed by your Grace, towards distempering and
revolting the minds of a manufacturing multitude,
who (though nothing can extenuate the guilt of such
an insurrection) may perhaps have felt in their trade
the consequences of such a scandalous and iniquitous
business, which continues here to be viewed in the
same light, and to stand the object of public animad¬
version.
' It is with great concern I observe, your Grace
thinks there is cause to consider any one class of
Presbyterians in Ireland as averse to English govern¬
ment, and therefore at least, equally with Papists, to
be guarded against. I am not very particularly ac¬
quainted with the distinctive tenets of the sect among
them mentioned by your Grace, but it highly imports
Government to reflect—however blameworthy the too
rigid adherence of Presbyterians to some things m.-iy
justly be thought in comparison to the excellences of
704 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. [bk. iv,
tlie CliurcTi of England—that nevertheless the Presby¬
terian Dissenters in general must ever deserve to be
considered, in opposition to the Church of Rome, as
a very valuable branch of the Reformation ; and that,
with regard to their civil principles, that respectable
body have in all times showed themselves, both in
England and Ireland, firm and zealous supporters of
the glorious revolution under King William, and of
the present happy Establishment/ 1
1 ' Pitt to Bedford, January 5, 1760.' MSS. Record Office.
end of the first volume.
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