Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775/Ireland under Charles II.

by Philip Wilson

IRELAND

UNDER CHARLES II

By PHILIP WILSON

Ireland under Charles II

1660—1685

The five and twenty years which followed the Restoration form, if not a very interesting or eventful, a very important epoch in the history of Ireland. When, after nearly twelve years of exile, Charles the Second ascended the throne of his father, he found the object at which English statesmen had for more than a century been aiming thoroughly and finally attained.^[1] In the three richest and most populous provinces of Ireland Protestant colonists were in possession of the lands which had been torn from the Catholic Celts. The work which had been diligently and systematically pursued by three successive sovereigns, had been completed with characteristic wisdom, energy, and cruelty by the great Protector. "The Cromwellian Settlement," says the ablest and most impartial of our modern historians, "is the foundation of that deep and lasting division between the proprietary and the tenants which is the chief cause of the political and social evils of Ireland"^[2] and that settlement the restored monarch made haste in its most essential features to confirm.

In order justly to appreciate the merits of this transaction we must be careful to bear in mind the previous relations between Charles Stuart and his Irish subjects. The proprietors whom Cromwell had so recently despoiled consisted of two classes,—of men who had taken arms in the winter of 1641 against the government of Charles the First, and of men whose only crime had been the loyalty with which they had maintained the cause of that unfortunate prince.^[3] The latter, at least, could scarcely be regarded as very criminal by Charles and his advisers: and it might plausibly be urged that the former, even had no express stipulation existed in their favour, had more than redeemed, by their resistance to the usurping Government, the crime or the error into which they had been driven. But this was not all. By a treaty concluded only a few days before his death, Charles the First had granted a full pardon to all his Irish subjects,^[4] and this treaty his successor "had by his letters approved and given repeated promises of confirming it."^[5]

It was natural, therefore, that the dispossessed proprietors, who had suffered so cruelly during the preceding decade, should have expected that the restoration of their sovereign would be promptly followed by their own. Their hopes were doomed to a speedy disappointment. The Lord Chief Justice of Ireland urged the claims of the adventurers with an ardour scarcely suited to the dignity of his office^[6]: Sir Nicholas Plunket, an Irish lawyer of eminence, pleaded the cause of his countrymen: after six months of wrangling, bribery and vacillation the Government dictated a compromise in the interest of the Cromwellians.

The declaration which the King published in November, 1660,^[7] confirmed to the adventurers all lands granted to them under the Act of 1642^[8] in return for money advanced to carry on the Irish war. It confirmed to the soldiers of the Cromwellian army—regicides and persons who had resisted the Restoration alone excepted—all lands allotted to them instead of pay. Protestant Royalists were to be at once restored to their inheritance; ecclesiastical property was to revert to the Anglican priesthood; and the adventurers and soldiers removed to make room for these two classes were to be indemnified—presumably at the expense of the Papists. Protestant officers, who had served against the Irish in the early years of the war, but who, having continued faithful to the royal cause, had received no lands from the Protector, were also to be provided for; and the municipal corporations, about a hundred in number, were set aside for their benefit. These arrangements disposed of four-fifths of the island; and the claims of the Irish had yet to be considered. "Innocent Papists," the declaration continued, were to be restored to their estates, compensation being promised to the actual occupants; but a test of innocence was framed, in which, as Carte tells us, "the qualifications were made so strict that scarce any of their nation could propose to gain a sentence in his favour. For no man was to be restored as an innocent Papist who, at or before the cessation on September 15, 1643, was of the rebels' party, or enjoyed his estate, real or personal, in the rebels' quarters, or who had entered into the Roman Catholic confederacy before the peace of 1646. Whoever had at any time adhered to the Nuncio's or clergy's party, or Papal power, in opposition to the King's authority, or, having been excommunicated for adhering to his Majesty's authority, had afterwards owned his offence in so doing and been thereupon relaxed from his excommunication: whoever derived the title to his estate from any that died guilty of the aforesaid crimes, or pleaded the articles of the peace for his estate, or, living in the English quarters, held a correspondence with the rebels: whoever before the peace in 1646, or that in 1648, sat in any of the Confederate Roman Catholic assemblies or councils, or acted upon any commissions or powers derived from them: whoever employed agents to treat with any foreign Papal power for bringing into Ireland foreign forces, or acted in such negociations, or had harassed the country as tories before the Marquis of Clanrickard left the Government: whoever came under any of these denominations was not to be deemed an innocent Papist."^[9] In case, however, any Papist should succeed in establishing his innocence, one very important reservation was made. The corporate towns, to which I have already alluded, returned by far the greater portion of the House of Commons; they were at,the same time military strongholds of the most formidable kind; and these strongholds the Cromwellians were fully resolved to retain.^[10] It was, therefore, decided that no Papist, however clear his innocence, however great his services, should be restored to property within the precincts of any such town, but should receive an equivalent in the open country.^[11] Lastly, those Roman Catholics who had taken part in the rebellion, but who had adhered to the peace of 1048 and served under his Majesty abroad, were to be restored to their estates; not, however, until all other claims had been satisfied. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, who had accepted lands in Clare or Connaught, were held to have forfeited all claim to restitution.

Such were the arrangements for the settlement of Ireland foreshadowed by the declaration of November, 1660. There was, however, one insuperable obstacle to their fulfilment. "If the adventurers and soldiers," wrote Ormond, "must be satisfied to the extent of what they suppose intended to them by the declaration, and if all that accepted and constantly adhered to the peace of 1648 be restored, as the same declaration seems also to intend, there must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old will not serve to satisfy these engagements. It remains, then to determine which party must suffer in default of means to satisfy all."^[12]

To Charles and to his principal advisers, to the English Parliament and to the Anglo-Irish oligarchy, it seemed only right and natural that "the loss should fall on the Irish."^[13] All other parties, however divided among themselves, were, in the words of Clarendon, "united and agreed in one unhappy extreme, that is their implacable malice to the Irish, in so much as they concurred in their desire that they might gain nothing by the King's return."^[14] The King himself, Carte tells us, "was for an English interest to be established in Ireland." He "considered the settlement of Ireland as an affair rather of policy than justice." For a while he had been "favourable to the Irish, and expressed himself as if he intended the peace of 1648 should be made good to them"; but when he had used this language "he was misled to think there were lands enough to reprise such of the adventurers and soldiers as were to be dispossessed." He was now "sensible of that mistake." "It appeared that one interest or the other must suffer"; and Charles, not altogether unnaturally "thought it most for the good of the kingdom, advantage of the Crown, and security of his Government," to conciliate the stronger and wealthier party at the expense of the poorer and weaker. "A contrary conduct," the same writer very justly observes, "would have been matter of discontent to the Parliament of England."^[15]

The constitution of the Irish Parliament and of the Irish Executive materially facilitated this design. Lord Broghill and Sir Charles Coote, created for their recent services Earls of Orrery and Mountrath, "men that had signally behaved themselves against the Irish during the whole rebellion,"^[16] were appointed in conjunction with Lord Chancellor Eustace, an eminent lawyer, whom advanced age and feeble health had unfitted for more than a nominal share in the administration,^[17] to govern the country as Lords Justices; and under their government a parliament was elected, which professed to represent the Irish people, but which represented in reality only the Protestant caste. The corporations, by which a large majority of the members were returned, were wholly composed of Cromwellians, while the enormous confiscations of landed property had rendered the preponderance of the same party in the counties scarcely less absolute. It is not, therefore, surprising that, although no law as yet excluded Roman Catholics from the House of Commons, only one Roman Catholic was returned. In the Upper House the Protestant majority was almost equally great.^[18]

In the following year James Butler, formerly Marquis and now Duke of Ormond, revisited as Viceroy the country in whose history he had already played so great a part. The Duke was descended from an illustrious Roman Catholic family; he had commanded a Roman Catholic army against the men who were now his colleagues; and, although he had been educated by the Court of Wards as a Protestant, the sincerity of his Protestantism was not altogether above suspicion.^[19] From him, therefore, his Catholic countrymen might hope, if not for generosity, at least for justice. | Unfortunately, his conduct during the campaign of 1649 had given offence to the ultra-national party; he had been pursued with some just and some unjust reproaches; and, while he was thus alienated from the native Irish, the colonial Parliament proceeded to purchase his support by a large bribe.^[20] The expedient was successful, and Ormond "signally espoused the interest of the English Protestants."^[21]

The Act which was now passed,^[22] though based in outline on the declaration already mentioned, was in many respects less favourable to the Catholic party. The preamble contains an example of historical fiction which is, perhaps, unparalleled in the state papers of any other country. After a description of the rising of 1641, more creditable to the imagination than to the veracity of the legislators, it proceeded to declare "that Almighty God had given his Majesty by and through his English Protestant subjects,"—with regard to whose own proceedings the legislature was discreetly silent,—"absolute victory and conquest over the Irish Popish rebels and enemies"; that, "compelled by necessity" "during his Majesty's absence beyond the sea," "certain of his subjects" had undertaken the government and deprived the said rebels and enemies of their estates; and that these same exemplary persons had subsequently invited his Majesty to come home, and had restored Ireland to his authority.

The body of the Act was worthy of this exordium. With a few exceptions the adventurers and soldiers were suffered to retain their estates. The engagements of 1648 were definitely and finally repudiated; but Irishmen who had had no hand in the rebellion were allowed to hope for restitution. As, however, "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 first principle of criminal justice was reversed, and the accused were called upon to prove their innocence. From the tribunal which they were required to convince, they could expect no favour and but little justice. "The Act by which the Commissioners were to judge," an English historian tells us, "had been framed and passed without the advice or concurrence of one Irishman or Roman Catholic. The rules by which they were to proceed were expressed in that Act, and the Commissioners chosen were Englishmen, Protestants, men of good reputation for parts and integrity, without any relation to Ireland or Irishmen."^[23] These men, who can hardly be supposed to have been altogether free from the prejudices then common among their countrymen, "were trusted with an arbitrary power, because it was foreseen that juries were not like to be entire."^[24] It was evident that the Cromwellians at least would have little reason to complain.

Between five and six thousand Irishmen claimed restitution.^[25] The court sat for six months and heard some six hundred claims. It is creditable to the Commissioners that they so far overcame a natural partiality for their countrymen that, in spite of a great deal of very hard -swearing, "in which," as Clarendon significantly observes, "the English were not behindhand with the Irish";^[26] seven-eighths of the claimants were restored.^[27] The colonists complained that the fund for reprisals would be inadequate; and a conspiracy, associated with the name of Colonel Thomas Blood, was formed to seize Dublin Castle and murder the Viceroy.^[28] The plot was detected and a few of the more prominent conspirators executed; but the Government was now thoroughly alarmed, and judged it prudent to make some further concessions to the Protestant party. A Bill was introduced, and carried with little opposition, "explaining" the previous Act in the Protestant interest.^[29] The Cromwellians surrendered one-third of their estates to create a fund for reprisals; twenty persons, whose claims could scarcely be overlooked, were restored at once by special favour; but the Court of Claims was dissolved, and all petitioners who had not yet been heard—about 5,000 persons— were definitely and irrevocably excluded from the lands of their ancestors.^[30]

"The Acts of Settlement and Explanation," says a modern historian, "have been called the Great Charter of the Irish Protestants. They were the Domesday Book of their disinherited opponents."^[31] The extent of the confiscation has been very variously estimated; but, even if we accept the lowest estimate, it is probably without a parallel in the annals of the civilised world. Father Walsh, an Irish Franciscan, calculated that the landed property of the Catholics amounted, at the outbreak of the civil war, to nineteen-twentieths of the whole island. Colonel Lawrence, a Cromwellian soldier, reckoned it at ten-elevenths. It is probable that both these estimates were considerably in excess of the truth. Sir William Petty, who believed that in 1641 the Irish owned two-thirds of the good and all the unprofitable lands, perhaps erred on the other side. After the passing of the Act of Explanation they can scarcely have possessed more than one-fourth of the whole.^[32]

The compromise which was thus effected proved satisfactory to neither of the contending interests. An Irish writer complains, not assuredly without reason, that by "an act of accumulative injustice the worst of traitors and the vilest of republican rebels were most prodigally rewarded; loyal subjects condemned unheard and stript of their very birthright; a vast multitude of poor widows and orphans sent a-begging; public faith notoriously violated; and, to sum up the whole matter in a few words, justice perverted in all its branches and degrees."^[33] The indignation of the colonists was less excusable, but it was not a whit less bitter. The Protestants of Ireland, Archbishop King tells us, restored the monarchy, and "the King, in recompense for so signal a service, gave them back a part of what they had given him.'^[34] Petty probably expressed the general feeling of the adventurers when he declared that "of all that claimed innocency seven in eight obtained it"; that "the restored persons by innocence and proviso have more than what was their own, anno 10641, by at least one-fifth"; that "they have gotten by forged feofments of what was more than their own at least one-third"; and that "of those adjudged innocents not one in twenty were really so."^[35] "The Catholics of Ireland," says a less prejudiced writer, "in the great rebellion lost their estates for fighting in defence of their King; the schismatics, who cut off the father's head, forced the son to fly for his life, and overturned the whole ancient frame of government, religious and civil, obtained grants of those very estates which the Catholics lost in defence of the ancient constitution, many of which estates are at this day possessed by the posterity of those schismatics; and thus they gained by their rebellion what the Catholics lost by their loyalty."^[36]

From the agrarian quarrel between the two races who then dwelt in Ireland, we pass by a natural transition to consider the relative positions of their respective churches. If we may accept the estimate of the foremost statistician of that age, the total population of Ireland in the reign of Charles the Second amounted to about 1,100,000.^[37] At least 800,000 of these, descended, some of them from the aboriginal Celts, some of them from the earliest English colonists, professed the Roman Catholic religion and were contemptuously classed together as "Irishry." The remaining 300,000 were Protestant colonists, for the most part recently settled in the country. According to Petty, these colonists, who were known under the generic name of "Englishry," were composed, in almost equal numbers, of Scotch Presbyterians, of English Dissenters, and of members of the Established Church. The difference of creed served to mark the dividing line between the hostile factions; but it had not originated, and it may be questioned if it had even increased, their mutual animosity.^[38]

At the period of which I am speaking the larger of these two bodies were, by the letter of the law at least, subject, on the ground of their religion, to elaborate and stringent penalties. The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, passed in the second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, remained upon the statute book, and would, had they been strictly executed, have amounted to a total prohibition of the Roman Catholic rites. The first of these Acts declared the Queen's Highness to be "the only supreme governor of this realm and other her Highness's dominions, as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal; and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm"; and enacted that all persons convicted of maintaining a contrary opinion in speech or writing, should be liable for the first offence to forfeit "all their goods and chattels, as well real as personal"; for the second to incur the penalties of præmunire, as provided by the English Act of 1393; and for the third "to suffer pains of death, and other penalties, forfeitures and losses, as in cases of high treason."^[39] The provisions of the Act of Uniformity were still more flagrantly oppressive. By this Act every clergyman celebrating any religious service other than that legally established, every layman assisting at such service or contributing to the support of such clergyman, and every person, lay or clerical, reflecting on the liturgy of the Established Church, was rendered liable to penalties which amounted, on a third conviction, to confiscation of property and perpetual imprisonment.^[40] A further clause of the same Act provided that all persons should be present at the Anglican worship on Sundays and Holy Days, and should be punished in case of absence by a fine.

These laws, however, had never been very rigidly enforced, and they had long been wholly obsolete. The actual condition of the Catholics during this reign was altogether different from what we should imagine, if we were to judge solely by the statute book. At no time since the Reformation had they suffered so little serious persecution. The evidence which we possess upon this subject comes from the most opposite quarters, and it is curiously consistent. "The Papists," Archbishop King tells us, "lived happily. There was free liberty of conscience by connivance, though not by the law."^[41] "The chief pique which the Popish clergy have at the Protestants," says Sir William Petty, "is that they have the Church livings and jurisdictions; for the exercise of their functions they [the Catholics] have most freely."^[42] These are not the most trustworthy of witnesses; but we have other and far more reliable testimony. At a synod of the Catholic clergy held during the first Viceroyalty of Ormond, in June, 1666, Father Walsh reminded his brethren—and, had his words been false, they could scarcely have passed unchallenged—of the "ceasing of persecution, release of prisoners, general connivance at the exercise of our religion through all provinces and parts of Ireland, even within the walls of corporate towns and garrisons," which characterised the government. of Charles the Second.^[43] According to a letter subscribed by eighteen Catholic clergymen and published by the same writer, "immediately [upon the Restoration] the persecution in this kingdom ceased by his Majesty's express commands."^[44] Four years later, Lord Berkeley of Stratton being then Lord Lieutenant, Archbishop Plunket wrote to Rome in a similar spirit. "The Viceroy of this kingdom," says the Archbishop, "shows himself favourable to the Catholics, not only in consequence of his natural mildness of disposition, but still more on account of his being acquainted with the benign intentions of his Majesty."^[45] In another letter, dated two days later, the same prelate again refers in terms of the warmest gratitude to the tolerant policy of the Government. "We experience in this kingdom, Holy Father, the benign influence of the King of England in favour of the Catholics, so that all enjoy great liberty and ease. Ecclesiastics may be publicly known, and are permitted to exercise their functions without any impediment. Our Viceroy is a man of great moderation and equity."^[46] In the same year Archbishop Talbot celebrated Mass with great pomp in Dublin with the full approbation of the Government.^[47] Three years later we find the same prelate presiding without interference over an ecclesiastical assembly in the same city.^[48] In May, 1672, when the recall of Lord Berkeley was first mooted, Plunket wrote to the Internunzio lamenting the proposed change, but added, "his successor, the Earl of Essex, is represented as a moderate and prudent man."^[49] In September, 1673, Essex having been then more than a year in office, the Primate again describes him as "a wise and prudent man, who does not willingly give annoyance to those who live in peace."^[50] In 1677 and the following years, during the second Viceroyalty of Ormond, the same excellent prelate repeatedly speaks of his administration as "peaceful and mild."^[51] Finally, we have the evidence of Sarsfield and the officers who were associated with him in framing the Articles of Limerick. The first article of that celebrated treaty provides that "The Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles the Second"^[52]; a conclusive proof that the condition of Irish Roman Catholics in that reign was, in the opinion of the most illustrious members of their body, far from intolerable.

But, if the lot of the Irish Catholics was far better than it had once been, or than it was again in a short time destined to be; if they were no longer hunted lke wolves, as in the days of the Protectorate; if they were not yet exposed to the more cold-blooded and systematic tyranny of the penal code, they had already become what they were long doomed to remain, a subject and virtually disfranchised caste. The colonists, numbering little more than a fourth part of the population, possessed, according to the calculation of Sir William Petty, three-fourths of the lands, five-sixths of the housing, and nine-tenths of the housing within corporate towns.^[53] No law as yet excluded Catholics from the House of Commons, but to the single parliament elected during this reign only one Catholic was returned.^[54] The corporations, whose political importance it would scarcely be possible to exaggerate, had, before the Great Rebellion, been largely Catholic^[55]; Cromwell had made them exclusively Protestant; and a special provision had been introduced into the Act of Settlement to perpetuate this arrangement.^[56] The Lord Lieutenant and Council had, it is true, power to remodel these bodies at discretion,^[57] but this power does not appear to have been exercised until the time of Tyrconnel. The tests which excluded Catholics from positions of authority and influence were less stringent than in England^[58]; but the Privy Council, which a law of Henry the Seventh had virtually erected into an additional branch of the legislature,^[59] the courts of justice, and the executive Government in all its branches were throughout this reign exclusively Protestant^[60]; and it was only during the brief viceroyalty of Lord Berkeley that Catholics were admitted, to the intense disgust of the English Parliament, to the commission of the peace.^[61]

The civil power was thus entirely in the hands of the Protestant caste. Their monopoly of the military power was not less absolute. A standing army of some 6,000 men, to which Roman Catholics were very seldom if ever admitted, and a Protestant militia of about four times that number, served to protect the Government and the Cromwellian landowners against the hostility of the aboriginal population.^[62]

The great majority of the Irish people were thus excluded from all direct share in the government of their country. Their Church was at the same time still further weakened by internal schism. While the negociations which eventually resulted in the Act of Settlement were as yet incomplete, Father Peter Walsh, an Irish Franciscan, who had been conspicuous among the opponents of the Nuncio, and who had more recently distinguished himself in a controversy with the Lord Justice Orrery,^[63] had drawn up a declaration of loyalty known as the "Loyal Remonstrance," intended to remove the popular distrust of Roman Catholicism by proving the compatibility of fidelity to a temporal sovereign with a recognition of the spiritual supremacy of the Vatican. In this document the right of the Pope to depose heretical and excommunicated princes and other obnoxious tenets, popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to form an essential part of the Roman Catholic creed, were distinctly and explicitly abjured. The Remonstrance was at first favourably received, and many eminent Catholics, both lay and clerical, gave it the support of their names^[64]; but some expressions, which appeared to reflect upon the dignity of the Holy See, gave offence to the ecclesiastical authorities, and, after a bitter controversy of three years, the Irish Bishops pronounced against it.^[65] A second formula, identical in substance with the former, but somewhat more guarded in its language, was then drawn up by the Primate, accepted by the clergy, and, on a frivolous pretext, rejected by the Government.^[66]

With the theological orthodoxy of the Bishops' decision we are not now concerned; the political results of the dispute need alone detain us here. It is impossible to doubt that Walsh was actuated by a sincere desire for the welfare of his countrymen; but he was the dupe of men more cunning and less honest than himself. Peter Talbot, in a work which is certainly the fullest, and probably the ablest, statement of the case against the Remonstrance, expressly ascribes the subsequent misfortunes of the Catholics to the dissensions to which that ill-fated document gave birth. "The ministry," says the Archbishop, "for reasons best known to themselves, were willing to let you preach and press a formulary which they foresaw would divide the Catholics among themselves, discredit their religion, and give the Government the color and advantage of excluding from their estates many meriting gentlemen for not professing that allegiance which learned men of their own religion maintained to be absolutely necessary in a faithful subject."^[67] Talbot may, perhaps, be dismissed as an interested witness, but we have other evidence which cannot thus be set aside. Some years afterwards Ormond was accused, very unjustly, it must be admitted, of an excessive partiality for his Catholic countrymen; and his action in allowing their clergy to assemble for the discussion of the Remonstrance was especially singled out for hostile criticism. His defence shall be given in his own words. "My aim in permitting that meeting was to work a division among the Romish clergy."^[68] A confidential letter from Orrery to Ormond, written while the controversy was at its height, corroborates this scandalous admission.^[69]

On the question of the land and on the question of the Church the English Government and the Anglo-Irish colonists had cordially cooperated in opposition to the native Irish. There now rose into prominence another class of questions on which their harmony was somewhat rudely interrupted. In the seventeenth century, the English, like all other European nations, were firmly imbued with a belief in the economic theory known as mercantilism, and were not more anxious to despoil the Catholic Irish for the benefit of the English colony than to plunder that very colony for their own. It is not, however, until the reign of Charles the Second that we find a deliberate attempt on the part of the English legislature to repress the commercial prosperity of Ireland. During the four centuries which elapsed between the first Norman invasion and the death of Elizabeth, the unsettled condition of the country and the perpetual conflicts between the Government and the native chieftains had effectually prevented the growth of any formidable industry; and, although Strafford, anticipating the commercial policy of a later age, had subsequently exerted himself to suppress the woollen manufacture, his exertions had not taken legislative form.^[70] The Navigation Act of 1660 had drawn no distinction between English and Irish vessels; but by an amended act passed three years later, Ireland was excluded from all trade with the colonies, and, by an act of 1670, this exclusion was confirmed."^[71] The blow thus struck at Irish prosperity was a serious one; it was almost immediately followed by another more serious still. The excellence of Irish pasture had long been famous, and, within a few years after the subjugation of their enemies, the Cromwellians had begun to drive a thriving trade in cattle. During the years which immediately followed the Restoration English rents fell heavily; and this fall was very generally, but very erroneously, attributed to the Irish trade. It was the general opinion of English statesmen that "in a point evidently for the benefit and advantage of England, Ireland ought not to be put into the scale, because it would be some inconvenience there,"^[72] an opinion which was long accepted in England as axiomatic. A Bill was accordingly introduced and passed with almost indecent rapidity, absolutely prohibiting the importation into England of Irish cattle, meat, butter and cheese.^[73] The House of Lords would have been content to describe the traffic as a "detriment"; the Commons stickled for the harsher word, "nuisance"; Lord Ashley wished that it should be made a felony and subjected to the penalties of præmunire; the Chancellor suggested, whether in jest or earnest does not seem quite certain, that it should be styled "adultery." The Duke of Buckingham, in a tone too characteristic of Irish debates, informed the opponents of the Bill that they must have "either Irish estates or Irish understandings."^[74] By an Act of 1680 the prohibition was rendered still more stringent.^[75]

It is to this legislation that we must attribute one of the earliest suggestions of a measure which, more than a century afterwards, was actually accomplished. Sir William Petty, an eminent economist and statistician, who had enriched himself by very questionable means during the recent troubles,^[76] saw with indignation a policy directed against the prosperity of the country in which his lot was cast. Under the Protectorate the Irish Parliament had been abolished, and the English settlers had sent representatives to Westminster. Free trade was a natural feature of this policy; and to this policy Petty now proposed to revert. For five hundred. years Ireland had been connected with England, and, during that period, so little had the larger country profited by the connection that many Englishmen wished "that Ireland were sunk under water," while others sought to provoke a fresh rebellion in order to find a pretext for a policy of extermination.^[77] Sir William would himself have been content with a less drastic remedy. It was, he urged, a monstrous absurdity "that men born in England, who have lands granted to them by the King for service done in Ireland to the Crown of England, when they have occasion to reside or negociate in England, should, by their countrymen, kindred and friends there, be debarred to bring with them out of Ireland food whereupon to live; nor suffered to carry money out of Ireland, nor to bring such commodities as they fetch from America directly home, but round about by England, with extreme hazard and loss, and be forced to trade only with strangers and become unacquainted with their own country; especially when England gaineth more than it loseth by a free commerce, as exporting hither three times as much as it receiveth from hence: insomuch as 95£ in England is worth about 100% of the like money in Ireland in the freest time of trade."^[78] "If it be just," he says in another passage, "that men of English birth and estates, living in Ireland, should be represented in the legislative power; and that the Irish should not be judged by those who they pretend do usurp their estates; it then seems just and convenient that both kingdoms should be united and governed by one legislative power."^[79] But Petty did not stop here. Wiser far than most of those who in more recent times have advocated a similar measure, he instinctively perceived that a union of the legislatures would be useless or mischievous unless it were accompanied by a union of the nations. With this end in view he framed an elaborate and comprehensive scheme, designed at once to quiet the apprehensions of the Protestant colonists and to redress the grievances of the native Irish. The Englishry, he maintained, "had at least a gambler's right to their estates"; the existing land settlement must be preserved inviolate, and, in the interest of the connection, English immigration into Ireland must be steadily encouraged.

At the same time he acknowledged in the clearest manner the claim of the dispossessed Catholics to compensation. Such compensation ought, in his opinion, to be given in England, where the Catholics were too few to be dangerous, and where the presence of a class of Irish landowners would form an additional link between the two countries. He proposed at the same time that religious tests should be abolished; that the revenues of the Established Church should be reduced; and that the money thus raised should be devoted to the support of the Roman Catholic priesthood.^[80]

Such a scheme, had it been adopted, might have profoundly modified the whole subsequent course of Irish history. But it was not to be. The colonists would not part with their autonomy, nor the mother-country with her commerce; and the Cromwellians were as little disposed to surrender their exclusive privileges as were the Catholics to acquiesce in the loss of their estates. Another bloody rebellion, another savage conquest, a long period of religious persecution, of commercial oppression, of corrupt and demoralising government, had yet to elapse before even a small part of the reforms which had suggested themselves to the imagination of the philosopher could be effected by the practical statesman.

For seven years Ormond governed Ireland with prudence, with humanity, and, if the great crime of the Act of Settlement can be condoned, with some approach to justice. Firmly attached by interest and by principle to the English connection and to the Protestant faith, he steadily upheld the new distribution of property and the political supremacy of the Anglican Church; but he never showed the smallest inclination towards those more rigorous measures against the Catholics which the majority of the colonists were disposed to demand; and he exerted himself with a zeal and energy beyond all praise to repair the ravages of the Cromwellian wars and to promote the material prosperity of the country.^[81] His position, however, was one of extreme difficulty; for, while his mild and tolerant policy alienated the more violent Protestants from his government, an active party among the dispossessed proprietors continued to agitate for the repeal or modification of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, and intrigued, as an indispensable preliminary to that measure, to procure the recall of the Lord Lieutenant. Of this party Peter Talbot, afterwards titular Archbishop of Dublin, and his brother Richard, described by Carte^[82] as "a man of good parts and great vivacity," were the acknowledged chiefs. The great part which the younger brother afterwards played in the history of his country, and the cloud of calumny which has obscured his memory must be my justification for a somewhat lengthy notice of his career and character. Descended from one of the most illustrious houses of the Anglo-Norman Pale, Talbot, like many others of his order, had combined an unshaken fidelity to the English monarchy with an unswerving devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. Ormond himself could have borne witness to the steady loyalty with which he had supported the royal cause alike against the party of the Nuncio and against the party of the Protector. He had formed part of the royalist garrison which had defended Drogheda against Cromwell; he had escaped almost alone from the hideous butchery which followed the storm, and the scene which he had then witnessed goes far to account for those of his later actions which it is most difficult to defend. Having fled to the continent, he attached himself to the fortunes of the Duke of York, and gained over that prince an influence which was persistently exerted on behalf of his unfortunate countrymen. He now laboured to procure the revision of the obnoxious statutes; and this conduct was the more honourable to him because, having himself acquired a considerable property under the recent settlement, he had much to lose and little to gain by an agrarian revolution.^[83]

The events which brought about the impeachment of Lord Clarendon and the formation of the "Cabal" ministry belong not to Irish but to English history. But the strong ties of political sympathy and personal friendship which united Ormond to the fallen Chancellor, and the growing influence of the Duke of York and of his favourite Talbot, rendered a change in the government of Ireland the inevitable complement of those events. Lord Robartes, a nobleman of whom we know little but his name, succeeded Ormond in the Viceroyalty, and, after a brief and uneventful administration, was in turn succeeded by Lord Berkeley of Stratton.^[84]

The instructions with which this nobleman entered upon his office scarcely confirm the theory, widely believed at the time and frequently repeated afterwards,^[85] that he was appointed at the instance of the Court of France in order to effect a revolution in the Roman Catholic interest. Lord Berkeley was ordered to promote, to the utmost of his ability, the interests of the Established Church; to reform her abuses, which, in truth, were sufficiently scandalous; to support the party of the remonstrants; and to execute the laws against the Roman Catholic hierarchy.^[86] It is probable, however, that these instructions were framed for the purpose of deceiving those members of the English administration who were not in the full confidence of the Court. It is certain that they were completely disregarded. The Catholic prelates performed their functions with less reserve than at any previous period. After an interval of many years Catholics were again admitted to the commission of the peace; and an attempt was made, to the rage and consternation of the Cromwellians, to introduce some Catholics into the Corporation of Dublin.^[87] Nor was this all. The persistent attempts of the Talbots and their party to procure a modification of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation proved so far successful that a commission of enquiry was appointed, which aroused to the highest pitch the fears of the actual and the hopes of the former owners.^[88] The commission, however, came to nothing. A strong and by no means unfounded suspicion that the King had been secretly reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church, and that an agrarian revolution in Ireland was designed as a prelude to an attack upon the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the sister kingdom, produced a furious outburst of anti-Catholic fanaticism in England. Charles bent before the storm. He recalled Lord Berkeley and entrusted the government of Ireland to the Earl of Essex, a nobleman who was understood to enjoy the confidence and to share the prejudices of the ultra-Protestant party.^[89]

But the opposition was not yet content. In the session of 1673 the House of Commons voted an address to the King, requiring him, in the most peremptory terms, to maintain the Act of Settlement, to dissolve the commission of enquiry, to dismiss all Papists from positions of public trust, and to appoint none for the future; to banish all Popish prelates, to suppress all Popish schools, to annul all pardons granted to Papists for acts committed during the civil war, to permit no Papists to inhabit the kingdom "unless duly licensed," and to instruct the Lord Lieutenant to take measures for "the encouragement of the English planters and Protestant interest, and the suppression of the insolencies and disorders of the Irish Papists." The "pretended Archbishop of Dublin, for his notorious disloyalty to your Majesty, and disobedience and contempt of your laws," and his brother Richard, "who hath notoriously assumed to himself the title of agent of the Roman Catholics of Ireland," were particularly singled out for the vengeance of the Parliament.^[90] Resistance was impossible. Charles pledged himself to maintain the Act of Settlement; the commission of enquiry was dissolved; and the Catholics were once more excluded from the magistracy and from the corporations. These concessions seem to have satisfied the Protestant party; and the more violent measures which the Commons had demanded were not insisted on. It should be added that Lord Essex, although sent to Ireland to maintain the Protestant interest, showed no inclination to severity.^[91]

Meanwhile no efforts were spared to exasperate English opinion against the Catholics. Sir John Temple's History of the Irish Rebellion, a work in which every calumny against the Irish which panic could devise or malice could exaggerate, is stated in its wildest and most atrocious form, a work, too, of which its author now professed himself ashamed, was re-published and extensively circulated.^[92] The position of the Lord Lieutenant was in the highest degree painful and humiliating. Exposed to the bitter attacks of the Talbots and of Sir Ellis Leighton, who had been Secretary under the government of Lord Berkeley, Essex was even more embarrassed by the indiscreet zeal of his friends than by the avowed hostility of his enemies.^[93] In truth a nobleman of upright intentions and very moderate talents was of all mankind the least fitted to govern a country "so rent and torn," to use his own words, that he could only compare it to "a deer among a pack of hounds, where every one pulls and tears what he can for himself."^[94] Disgusted with the corruption and the faction with which he was powerless to contend, harassed by rumours of intended insurrection which he had the wisdom to disbelieve but lacked the firmness to disregard, he speedily wearied of a position which he had never desired, and, as early as 1675, begged to be relieved of duties which he felt himself incompetent to fulfil.^[95] That his request was not immediately complied with must be attributed to the extreme difficulty which the Government found in providing him with a successor. The critical condition into which Ireland was rapidly drifting, and the violence of the opposition in England, rendered imperative the choice of a nobleman who should be neither suspected of Popish tendencies nor likely to become a tool in the hands of Lord Shaftesbury and his party. Such a nobleman it was by no means easy to find. A rumour that the selection had been entrusted to Richard Talbot, and that the office had been offered by him to the highest bidder, though widely current at the time, is too ludicrously extravagant to deserve attention.^[96]

At length, in August, 1677, a choice of all others the least expected was made. Ormond, who for many years had been totally estranged from the Court, owed his restoration to office to the favour of the same prince who, at an earlier period, had been most active in procuring his recall. The motives for this singular alliance can only be conjectured; but there is one explanation so plausible that, although unsupported by positive evidence, it has been very generally and, in my opinion, very rightly accepted. Monmouth, at this time the idol of the populace and a notorious competitor for the succession, had been selected by paternal partiality for a position in which, more than in any other, his slender parts and headstrong passions must have proved dangerous to the State. Justly alarmed at the prospect of an appointment which would have immensely strengthened the hands of his rival, the Duke of York forgot his former animosity to urge the claims of a man whose attachment to the Protestant interest was not more conspicuous than his devotion to the cause of hereditary right.^[97] His efforts were successful, and Ormond, for the third time, assumed the government of Ireland.

The first months of his administration were a time of moderate and equitable government, disturbed by no circumstances of a striking or noteworthy character; but the panic, which the inventions or Oates had excited in England, was soon felt beyond the channel; and, before the end of 1678, Ormond found himself compelled, very reluctantly as it would seem, to adopt a harsher and less tolerant policy. A series of proclamations were issued in the autumn of that year, ordering the Papists to surrender their arms, banishing their clergy, and prohibiting them from meeting in numbers which the Protestant magistrates should be disposed to consider unreasonable.^[98] Nor was this all. An attempt to extend the Test Act and the English penal laws to Ireland was indeed defeated, as a similar attempt had been defeated fifteen years before, by the wisdom and firmness of the Viceroy^[99]; but, although the Duke succeeded in preventing fresh legislation, he was not always able to preserve individuals who had incurred the hostility of the now dominant party.

To that party the titular Archbishop of Dublin, a prelate whose factious and turbulent conduct had given offence to more moderate members of his own communion,^[100] was of all men the most obnoxious. The earliest informations had spoken only of a conspiracy in England; but, had such a conspiracy existed, it could scarcely have failed to find supporters in a country where the Catholics were a numerous, and, in spite of their recent misfortunes, a still powerful body. Dr. Talbot was accordingly singled out by the informers; nor could Ormond, surrounded as he was by fanatics and alarmists, venture to disregard an accusation which in private he did not even affect to believe.^[101] The absurdity of the charge was the more obvious because the Archbishop was at this time confined at the house of his brother by an illness which must have deprived him of the power, even if he had possessed the inclination, to embarrass the Government. To arrest him in the condition in which he then was would have been an act scarcely distinguishable from murder; and the security of Colonel Talbot was accordingly accepted for his appearance. But the zeal of the exclusionist party soon rose superior to considerations of humanity, and the Archbishop was seized and carried to Dublin Castle, where his death, which took place about two years later, was no doubt hastened by the rigours of his confinement.

Meanwhile informations continued to pour in. Lord Mountgarret, Colonel Richard Talbot, and a Colonel Peppard were now represented as the accomplices of the Archbishop. The first was an old man, long since bed-ridden, in whose guilt it was impossible to believe. Colonel Richard Talbot was arrested, but, as no evidence was produced against him, was soon suffered to depart beyond seas. Upon Colonel Peppard no punishment was inflicted, and that for the most cogent reason; for, on a minute investigation, no such person was found to exist.^[102]

One other more illustrious victim was reserved for a more ignominious fate. Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, a man whose saintly virtues and untainted loyalty have been recognised even by writers the most hostile to his race and creed,^[103] was arrested, in December, 1679, on a charge of conspiring to procure a French invasion and a massacre of the Protestant population. Some priests, whom, for the looseness of their lives, Piunket had suspended from their sacerdotal functions, "brutal and profligate men," as Burnet calls them, "hearing that England was at that time disposed to hearken to good swearers, thought themselves well qualified for the employment."^[104] The Archbishop was accused in the following year in Dublin; but, such was the high character of the prisoner and the palpable absurdity of the evidence, that the grand jury, although exclusively composed of Protestants, threw out the bill. The witnesses then re-edited their story, and Plunket was conveyed to London, where his accusers could be sure of a more sympathetic jury. In July, 1681, after a trial which was not the least infamous among the State trials of that reign, he was executed at Tyburn. He "suffered very decently," says a Protestant historian, "expressing himself in many particulars as became a bishop."^[105] The annals of English justice contain the record of no fouler crime.

And now the tide of popular passion, which had long run furiously against the Court, began to turn; and the King and his brother, with their hands strengthened by the crimes and follies of their enemies, to look to a renewal of the policy which, since the recall of Lord Berkeley, they had been compelled to suspend. In the autumn of 1684 it was determined once more to change the government of Ireland, and Lord Rochester was fixed upon as Ormond's successor; but the death of Charles at the beginning of the following year prevented this arrangement from being carried into effect; a new reign opened, and in a few months the conditions of Irish politics were profoundly changed.^[106]

Notes

1. Burke (Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe) declares "the true genius and policy of the English Government there before the Revolution, as well as during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth," to have been directed to "the total extirpation of the interest of the natives in their own soil": and, after showing how this policy "kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641," adds: "By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native Irish, and, in a great measure, too, of the first races of English, was completely accomplished."'
2. Lecky, I., p. 106.
3. Scobell's Acts of the Long Parliament. Act for the Settling of Ireland (1653).
4. The "Articles of Peace," 1648 [o.s.], are given in full in Gilbert's History of the Confederation and War in Ireland, Vol. VII., Appendix xxiii, Art. 4 reverses all attainders, outlawries, etc., since August the 7th, 1641. Art, 18 grants "an Act of Oblivion to extend to all his Majesty's subjects of this kingdom."
5. Carte, II., 241. Charles II. wrote to Ormond, March 20th, 1649, declaring his determination "to confirm and ratify fully and entirely all the articles of the treaty with our Roman Catholic subjects of the kingdom of Ireland." Carte Papers, xxiv. 107, quoted by Gilbert, VII., vii. See also his letter of March 9th, Ibid.
6. "Had his advice been pursued, it was thought few of the Irish would have got their estates." Secret Consults.
7. 14 & 15 Charles II., c. 2. This declaration, which is prodigiously long, is given in full in the Irish Statutes, and, in an abridged form, by Carte, II., 216, etc.
8. 17 & 18 Charles I., c. 33.
9. Carte, II., 220.
10. "While the corporations are purely English I do not much fear what the country can do: but that these shall still be prosecuted chastely in the Protestants I think absolutely necessary for many reasons. Two I shall only mention: the first is that they dare not rebel if all the towns be against them; or, if they should rebel and have none of these, they will soon feel the punishment of their sin. The second is that, while the corporations are Protestant, the House of Commons will still be such." Orrery to Ormond, 26th February, 1662.
11. "A clause was inserted in the Act that no Irish Papist, in what manner soever he justified his innocency, should enjoy any house within a corporation. This the Irish vehemently exclaimed against." Secret Consults.
12. Carte, II., 240.
13. Carte, II., 242.
14. Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, § 123.
15. Carte, II., 236, 241, 242.
16. Secret Consults.
17. Clarendon, Continuation, sect. 229. "He [Eustace] was now old, and made so little show of any parts extraordinary that, but for the testimony that was given of him, it might have been doubted whether he ever had any."'
18. "There sat this day in the House of Lords but one Papist peer. … The Papists and Anabaptists stood in several places to be chosen, yet but one of each sort was actually chosen." Orrery to Ormond, May 8th, 1661.
19. "There are four lords whose names are Butler that are rebels. I pray God the fifth, who, I fear, is too courteous and favourable to his countrymen, may never affect their religion, or covertly countenance, or other ways violate the trust reposed in him." Letter of an English offcial in 1641, quoted in Gilbert's History of the Confederation and War in Ireland, I., p. xxxi.
20. Carte, II., 246. Essex's Letters, pp. 216, 217. The feeling with which the old Irish party regarded Ormond's conduct during the war and after the Restoration may be gathered from an able, but very violent tract, called The Unkind Deserter of Loyal Men and True Friends, by Nicholas French, titular Bishop of Ferns. I give the following extracts: "Ormond hath always been a great bramble scratching and tormenting the Catholics" (p. 15). "He is still a high fig-tree, bearing great leaves of vanity, but no fruit; sucking up the fat and sap of the earth, and thereby starving all the plants round about him" (p. 17). "We digged about him too long, and spent our dung in vain: Ormond will yield no fruit" (p. 18).
21. Secret Consults.
22. 14 & 15 Charles II., c. 2.
23. Carte, II., 311. The Commissioners, he says elsewhere (II., 220) were "most of them engaged by their interest in the party of the adventurers and soldiers."
24. Clarendon, Continuation, § 258.
25. Leland says 4,000. But Sir Heneage Finch in an elaborate defence of the Act of Explanation, drawn up in 1670 (Carte, Appendix, 91) said that the Irish estimated the claimants at 8,000: and, while maintaining that this number was exaggerated, admitted that there were 5,000 whose claims had not been heard.
26. Continuation, § 223.
27. Petty, Political Anatomy, ch. 1.
28. Carte, II., 261-270. Remarks on the Life and Death of the famed Mr. Blood (Somers Tracts).
29. "So much of this Act did so manifestly incline to favour the Irish as justly created complaints by the English, which seemingly to redress, a new Act was prepared, entitled the Act of Explanation." Secret Consults.
30. 17 & 18 Charles II., c. 2.
31. Goldwin Smith, Irish History and Character, pp. 116, 117.
32. "The Roman Catholics of Ireland were the lawful proprietors, and had been lately the possessors, of nineteen parts in twenty of the lands of that kingdom." Walsh, Reply to a Person of Quality, p. 145. "The Irish were far the greater number of proprietors of land possessing ten acres for one: whereas now, of the 10,868,949 acres returned by the last survey of Ireland, the Irish Papists are possessed but of 2,041,108 acres, which is
33. Reilly, Ireland's Case Briefly Stated, p. 118. Sir Richard Nagle (Coventry Letter), Bishop French (Iniquity Displayed), and Bishop Malony (Letter to Bishop Tyrrel, King, Appendix), all use very similar language.
34. State of the Protestants, II., 4, *1.
35. Political Anatomy, chap. 1.
36. Swift, Reasons for Repealing the Sacramental Test.
37. Petty, Political Anatomy, ch. 1.
38. James the Second told Clarendon "that the great contention here was more between English and Irish than between Catholic and Protestant: which (adds Clarendon) certainly was a true notion." Clarendon to Rochester, March 14th, 1686. "Never a Catholic or other English will ever think or make a step, nor suffer the King to make a step for your Restoration; nor is there any Englishman, Catholic or other, of what quality or degree soever, that will stick to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England, and would as willingly see all Ireland over inhabited by English, of whatsoever religion, as by the Irish." Letter of Bishop Malony (King, Appendix). "Les Irlandois reconnoissent aussy que les Anglois qui sont auprès du roi, mesme les Catholiques, sont leurs plus grands ennemis." Avaux to Louis XIV., 4th April, 1689.
39. 2 Eliz., cap. 1.
40. 2 Eliz., cap. 2, "If any person shall offend the third time [he] shall for his third offence forfeit to our Sovereign Lady the Queen all his goods and chattels, and shall suffer imprisonment during his life."
41. State of the Protestants, III., 1, *1, 2.
42. Political Anatomy, chap. 7.
43. History of the Irish Remonstrance, p. 654.
44. Ibid., p. 608,
45. Archbishop Plunket to the Cardinal Protector, 18th June, 1670. [Moran's Life of Plunket, pp. 51, 52.
46. To the Pope, 20th June, 1670. [Ibid., p. 52.]
47. Secret Consults. This writer tells an absurd story, which is repeated by Oldmixon and Leland, of Sir Ellis Leighton, then Chief Secretary, having on this occasion lent some silver vessels to the Archbishop, at the same time expressing a hope that Mass would shortly be celebrated in the cathedral. This legend appears to me wholly incredible. If it were true and the fact was generally known it would certainly have been frequently mentioned in the numerous Protestant pamphlets published after the Revolution. But if, as seems to be implied, the whole transaction was secret, it is difficult to understand whence this writer, who can scarcely have been in the confidence of the Government, derived his information.
48. Plunket to the Internunzio, September 26th, 1673. [Moran, p. 88.] On this occasion, however, Talbot seems to have gone further than the Government approved. His conduct, according to Plunket, "gave great umbrage to the Earl of Essex."
49. Moran, pp. 53; 54.
50. Ibid., p. 88,
51. Ibid., p.55,
52. The articles are printed in a contemporary Diary of the Siege of Limerick. They have been re-printed by Leland, Curry, Gilbert, and numerous other writers.
53. Political Anatomy, chap. 5.
54. See supra, note 18.
55. "In most of the corporations of Ireland the freemen were generally Papists in the year 1641." Memorandum drawn up in 1675 by Lord Essex. [Letters, p. 149.]
56. 14 & 15 Charles II., c. 2.
57. According to the Secret Consults, Lord Berkeley made an abortive attempt "to regulate the corporations, which, by an Act of the late Parliament, there was power for the Lord Lieutenant and Council to do," but was compelled to abandon it owing to opposition in England.
58. By the Irish Act of Supremacy, 2 Eliz., c. 1, the provisions of which were identical with those of the English Act, 1 Eliz., c. 1, every official was required to take the oath of supremacy if it were tendered to him: but the Government, though empowered, was not obliged to tender it. In England this dispensatory power was abolished by a later Act, 5 Eliz., c. 1; but this did not extend to Ireland. Compare Macaulay, chap. 6, and King, II., 9, *1.
59. 10 Henry VII., cap. 4,
60. In the next reign, on the. appointment of two Catholic judges, Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant, wrote to Rochester (20th April, 1686): "This is the first time that any man ever sat as a judge without taking the oath of supremacy since it was first enacted; nor was it ever dispensed with yet to any Privy Councillor, save to the late Marquis of Clanrickard."'
61. The English House of Commons petitioned (9th March, 1673), "that no Papists be either continued or hereafter admitted to be judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, coroners or mayors, sovereigns or portreeves in that kingdom." Votes and Addresses of the House of Commons concerning Popery.
62. Petty, chap. 7. King (III, 2, *1) estimates the army at 7,000. According to Carte (II., 480): "There was no soldier ever admitted into the army till he had taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy." But the exclusion does not appear to have been absolute, for the same writer elsewhere tells us that Richard Talbot obtained a commission by the special favour of the Duke of York, and that "none, or very few, Roman Catholics besides himself were trusted in any military service." (II., 234.)
63. Walsh had published a Letter desiring a just and merciful regard for the Roman Catholics of Ireland. Lord Orrery replied in Irish Colours Displayed, to which Walsh rejoined in Irish Colours Folded.
64. Walsh, History of the Remonstrance, p. 9. It was signed by "sixty-nine of the clergy, secular and regular, five earls, six viscounts, two barons, twenty-four colonels and baronets, and sixty esquires."
65. Ibid. An interesting account of the ecclesiastical assembly in which this decision was arrived at may be found in Spicilegium Ossoriense, vol. I., pp. 440-446,
66. The revised Remonstrance is printed by Walsh, together with Ormond's objections to it. These appear to me captious and disingenious.
67. Friar Disciplined, p. 92.
68. Letter to Lord Arran. [Carte, Appendix III.]
69. "That schism which you have been sowing among the Popish clergy." Orrery's Letters. [Undated, but apparently written in 1666.]
70. "There was little or no manufacture amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a clothing trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could. … It might be feared they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were well able to do." Wentworth to Wandesford, July 25th, 1636.
71. 12 Ch. II., c. 7; 15 Ch. II., c. 7; 22 & 23 Ch. II., c. 26. The debates in the English House of Commons in 1778, in which year the most important legislative restrictions upon Irish trade were removed, throw much light upon the origin and operation of these laws. See especially the speeches of Lord North.
72. Clarendon, Continuation, § 959.
73. 18 Ch. II., c. 2. An earlier act (15 Ch. II., c. 7) had prohibited the importation of fat cattle from Ireland between July and December.
74. Carte II., 321, 329, 337; Clarendon, Continuation, § 955-960; English Commons' Journals. For the dispute over the word "nuisance," see Pepys's Diary. There are some excellent remarks on the Bill in Roger Coke's Detection of the Court of England.
75. 32 Ch. II., c. 2.
76. Carte (II., 393) says that Petty "bragged he had got witnesses who would have sworn through a three-inch board." He was accused before a Committee of the House of Commons and acquitted (Commons' Journals, II., 613, 653); but as the House was composed almost exclusively of "adventurers," whose interests were closely identified with his own, the acquittal does not carry much weight.
77. Political Arithmetic, chap. 4; Fitzmaurice's Life of Petty, p. 148.
78. Political Anatomy, chap. 15.
79. Ibid.
80. Fitzmaurice's Life of Petty, pp. 272, 273; et alibi, on the authority of several unpublished tracts of Petty. These tracts, of which the Speculum Hiberniæ is the most important, are in the Nelligan MS. in the British Museum. Though neither printed nor published, they were circulated among some of the leading statesmen of the day. But Petty himself seems to have felt that his proposals were too bold to be openly avowed. The suggestions in his published works are much less startling.
81. Carte, II., 340, et alibi,
82. Ibid., II., 234.
83. I say advisedly "revision," not "repeal." To the latter measure, Talbot seems to have been consistently opposed (Lesley's Answer to King, and Macariæ Excidium). The petition presented by him in 1670 suggests only a pecuniary compensation to gentlemen who had had no opportunity of establishing their innocence before the Court of Claims (King, Appendix). The English view of Tyrconell's character is almost wholly derived from the brilliant, but, in my judgment, essentially misleading portrait of Macaulay. This portrait is mainly based on the letters of Clarendon, who regarded the influence of Tyrconnell with a not unnatural jealousy, and on King's State of the Protestants, and other equally one-sided and untrustworthy narratives. A more candid and temperate estimate may be found in the excellent article contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography by Mr. Bagwell. Among contemporary writers, the author of A Light to the Blind, who belonged, like Tyrconnell himself, to the party of the Pale, is exceedingly, perhaps excessively, eulogistic; while Colonel O'Kelly (Macariæ Excidium), representing the views of the old Irish party, accuses Tyrconnell of partiality to England and hostility to the native Irish. This accusation will surprise and amuse those who have formed their estimate of the Irish leader from English sources. Avaux (Correspondence) and Hamilton (Mémoires de Grammont) are very favourable; Berwick (Mémoires) did not think much of Tyrconnell's military capacity, but speaks highly of his prudence, integrity, and moderation.
84. Carte, II., 378, 411.
85. Secret Consults; Oldmixon's Memoirs of Ireland, p. 8; Carte, II., 413.
86. Cox, Hibernia Anglicana. The last article runs: "Several Popish clergy, since the return of the Duke of Ormond hither, have exercised their jurisdictions, to the great grief of the remonstrants; if so, execute the laws against the titular archbishops, bishops, and vicar-generals, that have threatened or excommunicated the re monstrants; and that you protect such remonstrants as have not withdrawn their subscriptions." There are several other articles relating to the administration of justice, the discipline of the army, and the reform of the fiscal system.
87. Secret Consults.
88. Carte, II., 425-429. Sir Heneage Finch's elaborate defence of the Act of Explanation (Ib. App. 91), to which I have already referred, was ' drawn up about this time.
89. "He was a violent enemy to Popery.... In his government of Ireland he exceeded all that had gone before him; and is still considered as a pattern to all that come after him." Burnet, p. 265. The author of the Secret Consults calls him "a person whose great integrity and prudence in the steady piloting of this ship of the State is not easie to describe."
90. Votes and Addresses of the House of Commons concerning Popery and other grievances.
91. I have, already quoted the striking testimony of Archbishop Plunket on this subject.
92. "Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls here, author of that book, was last year sent to by several stationers of London to have his consent to the printing thereof; but he assures me that he utterly denied it, and whoever printed it did it without his knowledge." Essex to Coventry, January, 1674. Evidence of the scandalous mendacity of this writer may be found in Carte, Warner, Brooke's Trial of the Roman Catholics, Castlehaven's Memoirs, Curry, and Lecky. Hallam judges Temple more favourably than any other writer of equal weight, but supposes him to have multiplied the number of persons murdered by the rebels by ten "by mistake."
93. Essex's Letters, passim.
94. Ibid., p. 334.
95. Ibid. Several of the stories, the extravagance of which is sufficiently evident, will be found in the Secret Consults,
96. Secret Consults.
97. Carte, II., 466.
98. The substance of these proclamations is given by Cox, Hibernia Anglicana. See also An Account of the Public Affairs in Ireland since the Discovery of the late Plot.
99. Carte, II., 495. For the earlier attempt see Mountmorres, History of the Irish Parliament from 1634 to 1666, I., 158; Irish Commons Journals.
100. See the repeated complaints in Plunket's Letters. Moran's Life of Plunket.]
101. Carte gives several letters of Ormond throwing ridicule on the plot, and containing some very just strictures on the character of the informers. See especially his letter to Lord Arran, November 17, 1681.
102. I have in the main followed Carte's account of these transactions. The numerous contemporary pamphlets relating to the plot both in England and Ireland are interesting, as showing the rumours current at the time, but are wholly untrustworthy as regards matters of fact.
103. "A most venerable and religious man," Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, I., 220. "A wise and sober man," Burnett, 331.
104. Burnet, 1. c.
105. Ibid. See the report of Plunket's trial in the State Trials, and his last speech in Reilly's Ireland's Case Briefly Stated.
106. See Charles's letter to Ormond, Oct. 19th, 1684, in Carte's Appendix.