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

Radcliffe

In one of his first letters from Ireland Wentworth says he trusted nobody on that side of the channel but Christopher Wandesford and George Radcliffe, who were his cousins and had made themselves useful in Yorkshire. Both had begun in opposition, and had followed their leader when he espoused the cause of prerogative. Wandesford became Master of the Rolls, and was the last holder of that office in Ireland who sat as a judge until quite modern times. It became a sinecure in the hands of Sir John Temple, who succeeded him, was held by the Duke of Leinster in 1789, and on his resignation was granted in co-partnership to the Earls of Glandore and Carysfort. Radcliffe, who was attorney-general of the northern presidency, was compensated for the loss of his English practice by a grant of £500 a year, and became the Lord Deputy’s secretary. He preceded him to Ireland and prepared his way there. The rest of the Irish officials Wentworth treated as mere clerks. After a year and a half’s experience on the spot he considered nothing ‘more prejudicial to the good success of these affairs than their being understood aforehand by them here. So prejudicial I hold it indeed, that on my faith there is not a minister on this side who knows anything I either write or intend, excepting the Master of the Rolls and Sir George Radcliffe, for whose assistance in this government and comfort to myself amidst this generation I am not able sufficiently to pour forth my humble acknowledgments to his Majesty. Sure I were the most solitary man without them that ever served a king in such a place.’[175 - Wentworth to Coke, August 3, 1633; to Lord Treasurer Weston, January 31, 1633-4, Strafford Letters; The King to Radcliffe, November 13, 1632 in State Papers, Ireland, and to the Lord Deputy, ib. May 17, 1633.]

Radcliffe and Mainwaring

Radcliffe retained the Lord Deputy’s full confidence to the end. He was his chief adviser always, and his representative when away from Ireland; but it was found necessary after a time to appoint another secretary through whose hands most of the official correspondence passed. The person chosen was Philip Mainwaring, of a Cheshire family, but on pretty intimate terms with Wentworth, with whom he may have become acquainted from having sat in Parliament for Boroughbridge. He is well-known from Vandyke’s picture, where he looks up in astonishment or dismay at the angry face of the master who is dictating a despatch to him. Cottington for some reason thought Mainwaring a dangerous man to appoint, and while recommending him at Wentworth’s request, declared that the latter would burn his fingers; but he became chief secretary in the summer of 1634, and remained in office until the outbreak of the civil war. Laud had a good opinion of him.[176 - Philip Mainwaring to Wentworth, October 29, 1630; Laud to Wentworth, March 11 and October 20, 1634; the King to Wentworth, June 16, 1634, in Strafford Letters.]

Sir George Wentworth, Lord Dillon and Adam Loftus

In matters of state Wentworth seems to have given his full confidence only to Wandesford and Radcliffe, but he got a good deal of help from his brother George, who married Frances Rushe of Castle Jordan in Westmeath. Amongst the natives of Ireland he chiefly trusted Robert, Lord Dillon, whose son James married his sister Elizabeth, and Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham, the Archbishop’s grandson and cousin to the Chancellor, who supported his policy from the beginning.

Delay about Wentworth’s appointment, by which the King hopes to make money

Wilmot’s warning

If we are to believe the letter-writer Howell, who had dealings with Wentworth in the summer of 1629, the latter was then already talked of for the Irish viceroyalty. In the autumn of 1631 Weston more than once urged him to come to Court ‘for some important occasions’ not specified. Some of his friends thought there was a plan to ruin him by imposing the thankless Irish service, but he himself went no further than to hint that there were probably powerful people who would be glad to set him ‘a little further off from treading on anything themselves desire.’ The appointment did not take place until the beginning of 1632, but the King’s intention had then been for some time known, and Wentworth may have occupied himself with Irish affairs long before the public announcement. Lord Wilmot, who was commander-in-chief as well as president of Connaught, wrote from Dublin to Cottington that the appointment was expected and freely discussed in Ireland. Wilmot thought his own long service might possibly have made him Lord Deputy, but things being as they were he was ready to give his best support to the man who had been preferred before him. He saw clearly that money would be a main object with Charles, and gave emphatic warning that it would not be safe to economise by reducing the army, consisting as it did of 2,000 foot and 400 horse distributed in companies of 50. ‘Such as they are,’ he said, ‘they give countenance unto justice itself, and are the only comfort that the poor English undertakers live by, and at this hour the King’s revenues are not timely brought in but by force of soldiers … out of long experience I have seen these people are ready to take the bit in their teeth upon all advantages, as any people living, although they pay for it, as many times they have done before, with all they are worth.’ A little, he declared, might be done in Ireland even with a small army, but if he had the means to make a great display of force the King might do what he liked. Wilmot wished to leave Ireland, where there was little to look forward to, and he was soon to find that thirty years’ laborious service was no valid title to royal favour.[177 - Howell’s Letters, July 1, 1629. Viscount Wilmot to Cottington, January 10, 1631-32; Weston to Wentworth, October 11, 1631; Wentworth to Sir E. Stanhope, October 25 – all in Strafford Letters. The letter from Laud placed by Knowler at July 30, 1631, certainly belongs to 1632, when Wentworth was meditating his passage to Ireland (Laud’s Works, vi. 300).]

Conditions of the appointment

Advice of Parsons

The Lords Justices give offence

Death of Sir John Eliot

When announcing the appointment of a new Deputy to the Lords Justices of Ireland, the King asked for a detailed account of the revenue and of the state of the army. He required them ‘not to pass any pardons, offices, lands, or church livings, nor to confer the honour of knighthood upon any, or to dispose of any company of horse or foot there in the interim.’ While waiting for the Deputy, they were to confine themselves to the administration of civil justice and the maintenance of military discipline. Wentworth wrote himself a few days later asking for information as to the state of Ireland. Sir William Parsons, with whom as well as with the Lords Justices he was quite unacquainted, wisely advised him to do nothing until he crossed the channel and could see for himself. In the meantime he made arrangements with the King by which power was concentrated in his hands. To secure secrecy and promptness it was agreed that he should correspond on financial matters direct with the Lord Treasurer, and on general business direct with Secretary Coke, instead of with the Privy Council or any committee of it. The whole patronage, civil and ecclesiastical, was made to depend on the Lord Deputy, while grants of places in reversion were annulled for the past and forbidden for the future. No new office was to be created without the Deputy’s advice, and it was promised that no Irish complaint should be entertained in England unless it had been made to him first. By direct orders from the King the Lords Justices were directed to pay no arrears or other debts, but to confine their expenses of government strictly to the current cost of the establishment. They nevertheless sanctioned payment of a large sum to Sir Francis Cook. Wentworth was highly indignant, but Cottington wrote that Mountnorris as Vice-Treasurer would probably refuse to pay the money out of an almost empty Exchequer. ‘Your old dear friend Sir John Eliot,’ he added, ‘is very like to die.’ He did die six weeks later in the unwholesome prison where he lay, as a consequence of adhering to the cause which the new Lord Deputy had deserted. Yet Wentworth seems to have been surprised at the abuse which his rather late found loyalty brought upon himself. He had bound himself hand and foot to the service of the magnanimous prince who had ordered that Sir John Eliot should be buried in the Tower, in the church of that parish where he died.[178 - The King to the Lords Justices, January 12, April 14, 1632; the Lord Deputy’s Propositions, February 22; Wentworth to the Lords Justices, January 18, October 15; Sir W. Parsons to Wentworth, February 4; Lord Cottington to Wentworth, October 18; Wentworth to Weston, October 21 – all in Strafford Letters.]

Deficiency of the revenue

Fines for not going to church

First difference with Lord Mountnorris

The Lords Justices reprimanded

Wentworth was well inclined to take the advice given by Parsons, but there was one department of Irish affairs which would not wait, and that was the revenue. The Lords Justices announced that they would have to begin the financial year on April 1, 1632, with less than £14,000 still to be raised out of the £120,000 promised in 1628. This was not enough to pay the army till December, and they realised that it was impossible to decrease that force. They could suggest no better means of making the ends meet than by ruthlessly exacting the fines of one shilling a Sunday from the Irish Roman Catholics who refused to go to church. A worse kind of tax could scarcely be devised, but it was legal, and Wentworth had made no scruple of levying it in Yorkshire. He sent over a Roman Catholic agent to Ireland, who obtained a promise of £20,000 from his co-religionists on condition of escaping the Sunday dues for another year. This provided money for immediate necessities, but he had no idea of letting the Protestants escape. He told Cottington that it was safer to displease the minority than the majority, and grounded his action upon this. It is not surprising that he made enemies of the Protestants in the long run, and that he did not make friends of the Roman Catholics. Nor was he particularly anxious to conciliate the men with whom he would have to work in Ireland. Lord Mountnorris lingered at Chester on account of his wife’s health, and Wentworth ordered him to go over at once and attend to his financial business. The letter is civil enough in form, but contains the scarcely-veiled threat that Mountnorris would be the sufferer if he were untrue to him or suspicious of him in any way. Considering that he himself evidently distrusted the Vice-Treasurer it was hardly wise to bid him send over £2,000 of the new Deputy’s salary at once, ‘for,’ he said, ‘I have entered fondly enough on a purchase in Yorkshire of £14,000, and the want of that would very foully disappoint me.’ To the Lords Justices Wentworth was still more outspoken. They had disobeyed orders by keeping secret the King’s letter of instructions which they had been ordered to publish, by ordering the payment of Sir Francis Cook’s arrear, and by failing to send over a detailed statement of the Irish revenue. Wentworth said plainly that he would not allow such presumption in them as to ‘evacuate his master’s directions, nor contain himself in silence, seeing them before his face so slighted, or at least laid aside very little regarded.’[179 - Wentworth to Cottington, October 1, 1632; to Lord Mountnorris, August 19; to the Lords Justices, October 15, Strafford Letters.]

Wentworth’s journey delayed by pirates

Radcliffe goes before with Lady Wentworth

Audacity of the pirates, who plunder the Lord Deputy’s baggage

Wentworth intended to be in Ireland by Christmas 1632, but he did not go till more than six months later. One good reason for the delay was that the narrow seas were infested by pirates, though this did not prevent him from sending over his lately married third wife in January 1633. George Radcliffe escorted her and she lay hidden in the Castle for several months, which was considered most mysterious, and her identity was not disclosed until after her husband’s arrival. The Irish Government feared further attacks by the Algerines upon Baltimore or some other defenceless place; but it was not only Algerines who threatened the coasts and plundered the shipping, and the Lords Justices declared that the Irish revenue could hardly bear the expense of two pinnaces called the 5th and 9th Whelps, which were assigned to them as a protecting force. One or more rovers frequented the Welsh coast, preying on the trade from Ireland, and carrying off men from the Isle of Man where there was no means of resistance. Another cruised about Youghal, while the Pickpocket of Dover lay off Dublin. Trade was at a stand, and the Irish customs made unproductive. ‘The fear of being thought to linger unprofitably’ in England induced Wentworth to send over most of his household goods in May 1633, and the plate escaped, but the Pickpocket took £500 worth of his linen. The same pirate drove a Dutch ship on shore close to Dublin, took out the cargo, and burnt her to the water’s edge, the flames being visible from the Castle. ‘The loss and misery,’ said Wentworth, ‘is not so great as the scorn that such a picking villain should dare to do these violences in the face of that state, and to pass away without control.’ A notable pirate named Nutt had the impudence to send Wentworth word that he was ready to convoy him over. A powerful ship under an excellent seaman, Captain Richard Plumleigh, was provided after much delay, but she did not get out of the Medway till June, and it was July before Wentworth heard that the passage to Dublin was safe. He then hastened over, and lost no time in showing that King Stork had succeeded to King Log. Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury a few days later.[180 - The Lords Justices to Wentworth, February 26, 1631-2; Wentworth to Lord Carlisle, May 20; to Weston, June 9; to Coke, August 3; Edward Christian to Wentworth, October 4, all in Strafford Letters. Captain Plumleigh to Nicholas, July 29, 1633, in State Papers, Ireland. Court and Times, ii. 189.]

Essex in Ireland

Wentworth lands, and is welcomed by Lord Cork

Visits of ceremony

A few days before the Lord Deputy’s arrival Essex, accompanied by Lord Cromwell, landed some miles from Dublin, and was met by the Lords Justices and Lord Primate with all persons of quality about town. The streets were so crowded with spectators that the coaches could hardly pass, and an old Irish woman called out ‘Blessed be the time that I live to see a son of thy father there.’ When Wentworth appeared on July 23 the water was very rough, and he was probably not inclined to eat the dinner which Lord Howth had prepared for him. At all events he declined to land near the head, and came ashore close to Dublin, nearly opposite to where the Custom House now stands. He was unexpected, and not a gun was fired, but Lord Justice Cork was quickly on the spot with his coach, and the news spread fast. The Lord Deputy, with Lord Castlehaven, Sir John Borlase, Sir Francis Cook, and others started to walk, but Cork invited them all into his coach, and by the time they reached the Castle there was such a crowd that the drawbridge had to be raised behind them. Afterwards, Cork records in his diary, ‘I having the precedency, the Lord Deputy brought me to my coach.’ Next day was given to receiving visits, which were for the most part scrupulously returned, that of Essex the first, precedency as an Earl being granted him until the viceroy was sworn. Essex soon departed to his estate at Carrickmacross, but was back in London early in the following year, whence he wrote a letter of four lines thanking the Lord Deputy for his ‘noble usage.’ Wentworth replied very civilly in a letter of eight lines, but there appears to have been nothing like intimacy between the two. ‘I visited both the Justices,’ Wentworth wrote, ‘at their own houses, which, albeit not formerly done by other Deputies, yet I conceived it was a duty I owed, being then but a private person, as also to show an example to others what would always become them to the supreme governor.’[181 - Earl of Cork’s Diary, 23-25 July, 1633, in Lismore Papers, 1st series, ‘a most cursed man to all Ireland and to me in particular.’ Wentworth’s friendly visit on the 24th is noted. Newsletter from Walsingham Gresley for Lord Bristol’s information in Additional MSS. 29, 587, f. 17. Wentworth to Coke, August 3, 1633; to Essex, April 13, 1634, in answer to his letter of February 18, Strafford Letters. Shirley’s Hist. of Monaghan, 265.]

Wentworth receives the sword, July 25, 1633

The Lord Chancellor’s speech

Wentworth’s speech

Wentworth makes obeisance to the King’s picture

At two o’clock on the third day Wentworth received the sword in the Council-chamber. The ceremony had generally been performed in Christchurch, but some said the Archbishop of Dublin would not let the Primate deliver his prepared sermon, or perhaps the Lord Deputy wished to avoid publicity. After a short discussion with some of the Council ‘in his ear whispering like,’ he decided to go in procession through the rooms of the Castle instead of slipping in quietly by the gallery, as he originally proposed. When the Council were seated the Lord Deputy remained standing, while Wandesford, as Master of the Rolls, read the commission; then Lord Mountnorris, as acting secretary (having it in reversion after Sir Dudley Norton, who may well be ‘jubilayed’) read the King’s letter ordering the Lords Justices to deliver the sword, and explaining the reasons for the new governor’s late arrival. When he had been sworn, Lord Chancellor Loftus spoke of the state in which he and his colleague left the government. No fresh debt, he said, had been contracted during their time of office, everything was quiet, and they were ready to advise their successor as to many desirable reforms. ‘I for my part,’ says Cork in his diary, ‘did most willingly surrender the sword, the rather in regard the kingdom was yielded up in general peace and plenty.’ Wentworth then took the chair, and with the sword in his hand made ‘a very good speech.’ He said he would be no upholder of factions, but would most esteem those who did most for the King’s service. He had heard that there was some discontent about two men having been drafted from each company in order to raise a troop for himself. He did not want one, he said, but the creation of a permanent guard for the viceroy had caused his delay in England. The men should be restored at the first vacancy, and he thought it very unfit that a departing Deputy should retain his company. ‘Herein he touched the Lord of Falkland, who retained his.’ Grandison had done the same, with continuous leave of absence. On the return journey the sword was carried by the Earl of Castlehaven, a knight having been thought good enough to bear it before the Lords Justices, who now brought up the rear. When he came before the cloth of estate, in the presence chamber, Wentworth halted and made ‘two humble courtesies to the King’s and Queen’s picture which hang on each side, and fixing his eyes with much seriousness showed a kind of devotion.’ He knighted his brother George, his cousin Danby, who was the husband of Wandesford’s daughter, and a very young Mr. Remington, ‘not of age, who hopes to save his wardship thereby, his father being very old and sickly.’ On reaching the privy chamber, where Lady Wentworth stood with Lady Tyrconnel and others, he introduced the late Lords Justices to his wife, presenting her to be saluted with a kiss from each of them … who until that instant had no title or place given her here but that of Mistress Rhodes.’[182 - Lismore Papers, 1st series, iii. 203; Gresley’s newsletter, ut sup.; Captain Plumleigh to Nicholas, July 29, 1633, in State Papers, Ireland; Radcliffe’s statement in Strafford Letters, ii. 430. Wentworth had been privately married in the previous October to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Godfrey Rhodes, only one year after his second wife’s death. The shortness of the time may have been a reason for concealment, and once in Dublin it was evidently desirable that she should not become the centre of intrigue in her husband’s absence.]

Wentworth’s opinion of his Council

A Parliament proposed to provide money

Speech of Wentworth, who finds Parsons ‘dry.’

First appearance of Ormonde

‘I find them in this place’ – so runs Wentworth’s first published letter from Dublin – ‘a company of men the most intent upon their own hands that ever I met with, and so as those speed, they consider other things at a very great distance.’ Three weeks later he found the officials very sharp about their own interests, but ‘with no edge at all for the public,’ and all in league to keep the Deputy as much in the dark as possible. He determined from the first to trust no one but his friend Wandesford, who had just been made Master of the Rolls, and his secretary Radcliffe, who had been in Ireland since January, and who was made a Privy Councillor within a few weeks of his chief’s arrival. To these was afterwards added Sir Philip Mainwaring, who owed his appointment to Wentworth and Laud jointly. On the day week after taking the reins of office Wentworth summoned the Council to consider how money might be raised for the payment of the army. The members of the Board were slow to begin the discussion, but Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham at last proposed to continue the voluntary contribution for another year, and thus to provide the necessary funds until the end of 1634. At the same time he suggested a Parliament, not only for supply but for the settlement of disputed titles. Then there was another silence, and at last Wentworth called upon Parsons to give his opinion. The result was an expression of doubt as to the power of the Council to bind others, and a hint that the army might be provided for out of the King’s ordinary revenue, which Wentworth found ‘reduced to fee-farms’ and therefore quite unelastic. ‘I was then,’ he said, ‘put to my last refuge, which was plainly to declare that there was no necessity which induced me to take them to counsel in this business, for rather than fail in so necessary a duty to my master, I would undertake upon the peril of my head to make the King’s army able to subsist, and to provide for itself amongst them without their help.’ He had been but a week in Ireland, and was already talking about risking his head, which tends to show that Pym had really uttered the threat attributed to him, and that his old ally remembered it. The Chancellor, Cork, and Mountnorris thereupon agreed to the proposal of Loftus, and all, especially Cork, were eager for a Parliament. Wentworth, who had championed the Petition of Right, had so completely given himself to prerogative that he seems hardly to have realised that men might be very willing to pay a parliamentary tax, while shrinking from arbitrary exactions and from troops at free quarters. ‘As for Sir William Parsons,’ he said, ‘first and last I found him the driest of all the company.’ It was not Parsons, however, but Loftus, Cork, and Mountnorris who were destined to feel the weight of his hand, although they now received his thanks. The young Earl of Ormonde came next morning to the Lord Deputy, and for himself, his friends, and his tenants agreed to what had been done.[183 - Wentworth to Weston and Coke, August 3, 1633, in Strafford Letters, and to Carlisle, August 27, in vol. viii. of the Camden Miscellany, p. 5.]

Miserable state of the army

Case of Lorenzo Cary

Wentworth restores discipline

An amateur general

Improvement in arms

Having thus provided money, Wentworth lost no time in looking closely into the state of the army upon which his government rested. There were but 2,000 foot and 400 horse, but Wilmot had solemnly warned the English Government that no revenue could be collected and no English settler subsist without their help. A larger force would do wonders if money could be found, but it was impossible to make any reduction. Discipline was very slack, officers having been in the habit of taking their duties lightly, and even of going to London without leave and staying there for an indefinite time. Before leaving England Wentworth procured a letter from the King checking such irregularities, and giving the Deputy power to cashier obstinate offenders. But Charles’s own conduct was not calculated to support his viceroy’s authority. It was the undoubted privilege of a Deputy to dispose of military commissions on the Irish establishment, and Wentworth had promised before he left England to give the first vacancy to Mr. Henry Percy, Lady Carlisle’s brother. He had told the King of this promise, and Charles had made no objection. Nevertheless when Lord Falkland, whom Wentworth believed to be his enemy and detractor, died in September from the effects of an accident the King gave his company, which he had left in very bad order, to his second son Lorenzo, who was little more than a boy, though he had seen service abroad. Wentworth struggled hard, but was obliged to submit. Charles had the excuse of yielding to the prayer of a dying man, and he may have thought that Falkland had not been very well treated. His elder son had lost his place and suffered imprisonment, and he actually held a patent for transmitting this command to the younger. Knowing that he kept his commission in spite of the Lord Deputy, Cary took little pains to please him, while Wentworth never ceased to resent his presence in the Irish army, and tried to get him transferred. He took care that neither Cary nor any one else should have a sinecure, where there was so much work to be done. The men were undrilled, their arms and armour defective, their horses of the worst kind. The captains left everything to their subalterns, while both officers and men were scattered about the country and seldom or never paraded. Every captain was now furnished with a paper describing the defects of his company, and he was ordered to make them right within six months on pains of severe punishment, and of being ultimately cashiered. Weekly field days were ordered, while two companies of foot and one troop of horse were to be always quartered in Dublin, but changed every month. Thus the whole army would be ready to march at any time, and would pass under the General’s eyes at least once in two years. Wentworth showed a good example by putting his own troop into a thoroughly efficient state, sixty such men and horses as had not been seen in Dublin before. He trained them himself, said a letter-writer, ‘on a large green near Dublin, clad in a black armour with a black horse and a black plume of feathers, though many there looked on him and on this action with other eyes than they did on the Lord Chichester, who had been bred a martial man.’ Clarendon observes that, ‘though not bred a soldier, he had been in armies, and besides being a very wise man had great courage and was martially inclined.’ The artillery was in as bad order as other things, and Wentworth asked for Sir John Borlase, an experienced soldier, as master of the ordnance; and this appointment was made in due course. Steps were also taken to see that landowners who were bound to furnish armed men or horses should have them actually available. The cavalry were armed for the first time with musket-bore carbines, and they were expected to fight on foot if required. Wentworth took steps to abolish the obsolete light pieces called calivers, of which the bore varied. ‘Muskets, bandileers, and rests’ were substituted, and Borlase knew how to prevent swords worth less than four shillings from being rated at ten, and the purchase at 23s. of firearms which were worth nothing at all.[184 - Wilmot to Cottington, January 10, 1631-2; the King to Wentworth, May 27, 1633; Wentworth to Coke, January 31, 1633-4. As to the King’s excuse for appointing Cary, see Lord Carlisle to Wentworth, February 10, 1633-4, Strafford Letters. Third Report of Hist. MSS. Comm. 283, August 4, 1634. Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion, vol. i. p. 184 in Macray’s edition.]

Church and State. Bishop Bramhall

Bramhall reports to Laud. A dismal story

Simony and pluralism

The Church of Ireland was in no better case than the army, and Wentworth resolved to be guided by the new Archbishop of Canterbury. John Bramhall, whom Laud had recommended to Wentworth for a stall in York Minster, was now his chaplain, and was very soon given the rich archdeaconry of Meath. He became Bishop of Derry a few months later. Bramhall’s first task was to make a general investigation into Irish church affairs, and to report on them to Laud, who had already begun to inform himself on the subject. A fortnight after Wentworth’s arrival Bramhall had collected enough information to inform the Archbishop that it was ‘hard to say whether the churches be the more ruinous and sordid, or the people irreverent.’ One parish church in Dublin was the viceroy’s stable, a second a nobleman’s residence, and a third a tennis court where the vicar acted as keeper. The vaults under Christchurch were from end to end hired to Roman Catholic publicans, and the congregation above were poisoned with tobacco smoke and with the fumes of beer and wine. The communion table in the middle of the choir was ‘made an ordinary seat for maids and apprentices.’ The deanery was held by the English Archbishop of Tuam, and the state of the cathedral was an instructive comment on the prevailing system of pluralities. Passing from the churches to the clergy, Bramhall found ‘the inferior sort of ministers below all degrees of contempt, in respect of their poverty and ignorance; the boundless heaping together of benefices by commendams and dispensations but too apparent; yea, even often by plain usurpation.’ Simoniacal contracts were common, the stipends reserved for the curates in charge being often as little as forty shillings and seldom as much as ten pounds. One bishop was reported to hold twenty-three benefices with cure. Few thought it worth while to ask for less than three vicarages at once. No one knew what livings were in the Deputy’s gift, and even some whole bishoprics were left out of the book of first fruits. Leases of church lands had been made at trifling rents, and this practice was general in spite of prohibitions by the Government. ‘It is some comfort,’ Bramhall grimly adds, ‘to see the Romish ecclesiastics cannot laugh at us, who come behind none in point of disunion and scandal.’[185 - Laud to Wentworth, July 30, 1631, in Strafford Letters; Bramhall to Laud, August 10, 1633, in the Oxford ed. of Bramhall’s Works, i. lxxix.]

The Boyle tomb in St. Patrick’s

Lord Cork as a benefactor

Laud is puzzled, but Wentworth has no doubts