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

The monument is shifted

The Earl of Cork held a good deal of what had once been church land. Wentworth had long been hostile to him, as appears abundantly from his letters, and his zeal for the restitution of temporalities was in this case sharpened by personal dislike. The Earl was rich and powerful, and the Deputy was impatient of any influence independent of his own. Lady Cork died in February 1630, and was buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with her father, Sir Geoffrey Fenton, and her grandfather, Lord Chancellor Weston, in a vault under the place where the high altar had formerly stood. Her husband then purchased that part of the church from Dean Culme for 30l., and proceeded to raise an immense monument of black marble in the pseudo-classical style then in fashion. The position of this monument did not strike him as odd, for his Protestantism was not of the Laudian type, and it seemed natural to him that the communion-table should stand detached in the middle of the church. He told Laud that he had been a benefactor rather than a defacer of St. Patrick’s: ‘Where there was but an earthen floor at the upper end of the chancel, which was often overflown, I raised the same three steps higher, making the stairs of hewn stone, and paving the same throughout, whereon the communion table now stands very dry and gracefully.’ Both Ussher and Bulkeley,’ wrote Laud, ‘justify that the tomb stands not in the place of the altar, and that it is a great ornament to that church, so far from being any inconvenience… I confess I am not satisfied with what they say, yet it is hard for me that am absent to cross directly the report of two Archbishops.’ The Lord Treasurer was inclined to resent the attack on his kinsman’s tomb, and Laud warned his ally against the danger of making enemies. But Wentworth pressed the matter on Charles’s own notice, and procured from him full powers to a commission consisting of the Lord Deputy, the two archbishops, four other bishops chosen by Wentworth, and the deans and chapters of the two Dublin cathedrals. The commissioners held, very rightly no doubt, that the tomb was ill-placed, and Cork, who had more important interests at stake, was too prudent to contest the matter. By the following spring the monument had been taken down stone by stone, and Wentworth reported with vindictive glee that it was ‘put up in boxes, as if it were marchpanes and banqueting stuffs, going down to the christening of my young master in the country.’ It was re-erected on the south side of the choir, where it still stands, and the story is important only for the light it throws on Wentworth’s other dealings with Lord Cork, and with all others who opposed him.[186 - Mason’s Hist. of St. Patrick’s; Budgell’s Memoirs of the Boyles; Laud to Wentworth, November 15, 1633, March 11, 1633-4; Wentworth to Laud, August 23, 1634, March 10, 1634-5, in Strafford Letters. The King’s letter is in Lismore Papers, 2nd series, iii. 194. Elrington’s Life of Ussher, p. 159.]

Algerine pirates

Sack of Baltimore, June 19, 1630

Weakness of the Admiralty. Christian Turks

The south-west coasts, both of England and Ireland, were infested with pirates from Sallee and Algiers. In June 1631 a rover of 300 tons with 24 guns and 200 men and another of 100 tons with 12 guns and 80 men lay between the Land’s End and the Irish coast. Their commander was Matthew Rice, who is called a Dutch renegade. Rice sunk two French ships and one from Dartmouth, taking the crews on board as well as everything that was worth keeping. Two days later he caught a Dungarvan fishing smack and ordered the skipper, John Hackett, to pilot them into Kinsale. Hackett said there was a fort and a man of war there, and offered to take them to Baltimore instead. The castle of the O’Driscolls still stands there, but the inhabitants at that time were English Protestants, which caused its selection as a parliamentary borough, and Hackett may not have disliked the service; but Fawlett, the Dartmouth captain, also helped the Algerines, and was not carried off by them finally. During the night of June 19, Rice having first explored the harbour in boats with muffled oars, attacked the town with the first morning light, plundered about sixty houses and took away 107 persons. The attack was so sudden that there was little fighting, and only two of the townsmen were killed. Rice had forty other prisoners of various nations. Captain Hook, who was at Kinsale with a King’s ship, which want of provisions kept generally in port, put to sea as soon as he heard the news, but the Algerines got clean away. Hackett, who was allowed to go ashore, was hanged at Cork for his share in the business, and his body exposed on the headland at the mouth of Baltimore harbour; but the little settlement never recovered its prosperity. The Sallee rovers long continued to infest the south-west coast, for the Crown was weak and the jealousy of the Admiralty officials prevented the maritime population from protecting themselves. The French, whom Wentworth called ‘most Christian Turks,’ allowed English prisoners to be led in chains across France and shipped from Marseilles to Algiers. Five years after the Baltimore disaster these pirates entered Cork harbour, and carried off prisoners in open day. Lord Conway, who was serving in the fleet a few months later, wrote to Wentworth: ‘When I come home, I will make a proposition to go with some ships to Sallee, the place whence the pirates come into Ireland; and I do firmly believe they may be brought to render all their prisoners, and never to trouble us more: the like peradventure might be done by Algier, but our King cannot do it alone.’ A successful expedition went to Sallee a year later under Captain Rainsborough, and some captives from Ireland were surrendered, after which the rovers ceased to be troublesome.[187 - The documents concerning Baltimore are printed in Caulfield’s Council Book of Kinsale, xxxiii. Smith’s Hist. of Cork. Cal. of State Papers, Ireland, 1631, No. 1973. Conway to Wentworth, July 14, 1636, in Strafford Letters. Court and Times, ii. 253, 259, 265. The Baltimore of 1630 did not occupy the same ground as the modern fishing village, but ran inland from O’Driscoll’s castle. Thomas Davis wrote a fine ballad on the sack of Baltimore:High upon a gallows tree, a yelling wretch is seen,’Tis Hackett of Dungarvan – he, who steered the Algerine!He fell amid a sullen shout, with scarce a passing prayer,For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there.]

Pirates of many nations

The whole Irish coast infested by them

Wentworth frees the Irish seas, 1637

After the defence of the Irish seas was entrusted to Plumleigh and James, the Algerines found the Welsh or Cornish coasts safer for their purpose. But English pirates were not wanting, and Edward Christian, governor of the Isle of Man under Lord Derby, seems to have had an understanding with some of them. Wentworth’s chief trouble was with privateers who issued from St. Sebastian with Spanish letters of marque or commissions against the Dutch, but who did not confine their depredations to them. Men were murdered in the Isle of Man, a French ship was boarded at sea, and honest traders of all nations were afraid to stir. There was always one squadron on the Irish coast, another returning, and another refitting. Dutch ships were seized in the Shannon, in the Liffey, and in Belfast Lough; a breach of the law of nations which the captains excused to their own crews by pretending a licence from the King of England to ‘pull the Hollanders by the ears out of every port.’ Wentworth, on the other hand, maintained that the whole of St. George’s Channel ‘being encompassed on every side with his Majesty’s dominions, hath ever been held the chief of his harbours.’ Nicolalde, the resident Spanish agent in London, not only gave commissions to buccaneers of English birth, but interceded for them when they became obnoxious to their own government. Wentworth had a bad opinion of Nicolalde, but he humoured him, and made proposals for trade between Ireland and Spain. The English Admiralty were induced to grant the Lord Deputy a vice-admiral’s commission for Munster, while Plumleigh and James continued to scour the narrow seas. Thus by a mixture of force and diplomacy, piracy was put down for the time, and on August 15, 1637, Wentworth was able to announce to Coke that there was ‘not so much as the rumour of Turk, St. Sebastian’s men, or Dunkirker – the merchant inward and outwards secured and assured in his trade.’[188 - Strafford Letters, passim, from 1633 to 1637; see particularly Plumleigh’s letter of October 11, 1633.]

CHAPTER XII

THE PARLIAMENT OF 1634

A Parliament to be held

Want of money

The King reluctant to call a Parliament

Hopes of Wentworth, who proposes to hold the balance between parties

Wentworth was determined that his government, and especially his army, should not depend upon benefactions extorted from the fears of the Protestants and bought by dispensations or promises from the Recusants. The officials of his Council were in favour of a Parliament, which they might expect to manage, and which he, on the other hand, felt confident in his ability to rule. People in Ireland had an idea that it was safer to keep the revenue short, because a surplus would be sent to England, whereas a deficit would have to be supplied from thence. This short-sighted policy seemed wise to English settlers as well as to the natives, for they had all good reason to distrust the King. The result had been that the business of government was ill done, and that the Crown owed 80,000l. The ordinary revenue, when there was no parliamentary subsidy or voluntary assessment, fell 20,000l. short of the expenses. The Lord Deputy’s brother George was sent to England on a special mission in February, and came back next month with the King’s leave to hold a Parliament. Charles had cause to dread these assemblies, but Wentworth pointed out that Poynings’ law made them safe in Ireland. The order of business and the introduction of Bills being controlled by the English Government, an enterprising viceroy might be trusted to manage the rest. Wentworth’s plan was to have two sessions, one for supply, the other for redress of grievances. He believed that the landowners would willingly agree to a money vote in order to relieve themselves from the ever-present dread of having the existing contributions established like quit-rents on their estates. And all in Ireland realised that they could expect no redress of grievances without having first provided for the support of the Government and army. Charles accepted the proposed arrangement, but advised that it should be kept secret until the time came. The next matter of importance was the composition of the House of Commons. Wentworth resolved that the Protestant and Roman Catholic parties should be nearly balanced. The Protestant party might be slightly the larger, but its subservience was to be secured by procuring the election of many placemen. Wentworth hoped to get three subsidies of 30,000l. each payable in three years. This would yield 30,000l. over and above current expenses, and with that much ready money he hoped to compound for the whole debt, public creditors having been reduced to a proper state of humility. A little more money might be hoped for after the second session, and with this it might be possible to buy up some of the pensions and rent-charges with which the Irish Exchequer was burdened.[189 - Wentworth to Charles I., January 22, 1633-34, enclosing his opinion concerning a Parliament, with the King’s answers dated April 12; Wentworth to the Lord Marshal (Arundel), March 22, 1633-34 – all in Strafford Letters.]

Wentworth’s speech to his Council, April, 1634

Everything belongs to Cæsar

Opinions in England

Charles on the parliamentary hydra

Having been allowed to hold a Parliament and to do it in his own way, Wentworth at once set to work to make it a success. He summoned his Council, who thought supply should be accompanied by some assurance from the King that grievances would be remedied. They also wished to limit the levies to the actual expenses, having a well-founded fear that surplus money would be squandered in England, and not applied to the liquidation of the Irish debt. Wentworth at once told them that the King called a Parliament because he preferred standing on the ancient ways, that he had absolute right and power to collect all the revenue he required without the consent of anybody, and that their business as councillors was to trust their sovereign without asking questions. ‘I told them plainly,’ he said, ‘I feared they began at the wrong end, thus consulting what might please the people in a Parliament, when it would better become a Privy Councillor to consider what might please the King, and induce him to call one.’ He would not take less than three subsidies of 30,000l. each, but would get as much more as possible without conditions, and they were not to propose any. The State could not be too well provided. ‘What,’ he asked prophetically, ‘if the natives should rebel? There was no great wisdom to be over-confident in them, being of a contrary religion and so great in number.’ And he concluded by asking them to take warning by the troubles which the Commons’ distrust of their King had brought upon the late Parliaments in England. When this was read at the English Council Cottington could not refrain from the obvious comment ‘et quorum pars magna fui.’ Wentworth owed his own political position to his exertions in favour of the Petition of Right, and now he said that everything the subject had was, and ought to be, at the disposition of the Crown. That Laud should have joked with his friend on this subject and that the latter should have taken it as a joke, is not the least extraordinary thing in Wentworth’s career. ‘As for that hydra,’ said Charles of the House of Commons, ‘take good heed; for you know that here I have found it as well cunning as malicious. Your grounds are well laid and I have great trust in your care and judgment; yet my opinion is, that it will not be the worse for my service, though their obstinacy make you break them’.[190 - The King to Wentworth, April 17, 1634; Wentworth to Coke, April 29 and May 13; Laud to Wentworth, May 14, all in Strafford Letters.]

Wentworth and the Irish nobility, whom he treats with contempt

Wentworth’s speech to his Council, which less earnest people in England thought a superfluous display of strength, reduced that body to complete subjection. He would allow no discussions anywhere about the King’s policy, and he treated the Roman Catholic nobility in the same way as the Protestant Council. The Lord Chancellor ventured to suggest that the Lords of the Pale should be consulted according to precedent, but he was ‘silenced by a direct and round answer.’ Three or four days later Lord Fingall came to the Castle and asked for information on the part of his friends and neighbours, ‘who had been accustomed to be consulted before those meetings.’ Wentworth, who seems to have disliked the man as well as his communication, told him that his Majesty would ‘reject with scorn and disdain’ any advice their lordships could give. Their business was only to hear the King’s will in open Parliament, to make such remarks there as might be fitting for obedient subjects, and to be content with such answers as his Majesty thought fit to give. ‘A little out of countenance’ from the storm of viceregal eloquence, Lord Fingall unluckily remarked that he only wished to draw attention to precedents, and that Falkland had consulted the lords. Wentworth said that was no rule for him, and advised his visitor ‘not to busy his thoughts with matters of that nature, but to leave all to the royal wisdom.’[191 - Wentworth to Coke, May 13, 1634, Strafford Letters.]

How a Government majority was secured Clerical influence

As long as there was a Parliament in Ireland the Government generally found means to secure a majority. Wentworth had to depend chiefly on the boroughs, for many counties were not amenable to pressure. Lord Cork has recorded that when he was in his coach one day with Lord Esmond and Lord Digby a pursuivant brought him six letters from the Lord Deputy directing the return of certain members for places he controlled. Sir George Wentworth, the viceroy’s brother, was to sit for Bandon, his secretaries Mainwaring and Little for Lismore, a second Mainwaring for Dingle, and other less prominent Englishmen for Askeaton and Tallow. Wentworth and William and Philip Mainwaring were elected accordingly, while Little procured a seat at Cashel. Every important man whom the Lord Deputy could influence found his way into the House of Commons. Sir William Parsons sat for the county and Sir George Radcliffe for the city of Armagh, Charles Price for Belfast, and Sir Adam Loftus for Newborough in Wexford. Sir Beverley Newcomen, a distinguished naval officer, represented Tralee, and Wandesford the borough of Kildare. Sir Charles Coote, Sir William Cole, Sir Robert King, and many others who were well known a few years later, also had seats. It was on the Protestants that the Crown depended in the long run, but they had not a large majority. ‘The priests and Jesuits,’ Wentworth wrote, ‘are very busy in the election of knights and burgesses, call the people to their masses, and there charge them on pain of excommunication to give their voices to no Protestant.’ A sheriff in Dublin who seemed inclined to yield to these influences was fined 700l. and declared incapable of serving, and his successor promptly returned Sergeant Catelin and a Protestant alderman.[192 - Earl of Cork’s Diary at May 30, 1634, in vol. iv. of Lismore Papers, 1st series. Wentworth to Coke, June 24, Strafford Letters.]

Parliamentary precedents

The primacy secured to Armagh

Political value of etiquette

The opening ceremonies

Wentworth and Ormonde

In matters of form and ceremony Wentworth was willing to be guided by precedents. He found all the officials very ignorant about parliamentary order, as Falkland’s blunder had already shown, and he sent to England for full instructions. Questions of precedence being left by special commission entirely in his hands, the primacy of Armagh over Dublin was settled by an order in Council, and in the established Church this point was never again disputed, a decision which was undoubtedly right; but Archbishop Talbot afterwards attributed it to the slavish fears of Wentworth’s Council, to his leaning in favour of Ussher, and to the prevalent ignorance of Latin in high places. He admitted that Bishop Leslie of Raphoe was learned, but then was he not a suffragan of Armagh? Wentworth decided such questions when they came in his way, but they had little interest for him – ’this matter of place I have ever judged a womanly thing.’ If it had turned out that he could not determine between the rival claims of peers and prelates, they would, he thought be ‘fit to keep the House itself busied about,’ and prevent them from talking politics. It was arranged that six or seven lords on whom the Lord Deputy could rely should hold four or five proxies each, so that he was in no danger of being outvoted, for the bishops were safe enough. It was not until 1661 that the number of proxies which could be held by any one peer was reduced to two. The committee for privileges in Wentworth’s House of Lords proposed that every peer having Irish honours but no Irish estate should be obliged to purchase land in proportion to his rank, but this was never carried into effect. When the day of meeting came, Wentworth accompanied the Peers to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in great state. His Parliament opened, Wentworth wrote, ‘with the greatest civility and splendour Ireland ever saw, where appeared a very gallant nobility far above that I expected … my Lord Primate made a very excellent and learned sermon.’ The afternoon was spent in formalities and the taking of oaths. One incident at the beginning of the business session is worth recording on account of the great celebrity of the person principally concerned. Orders had been given to admit no one armed into either House, and when the young Earl of Ormonde, who had carried the sword of state at the opening ceremony, presented himself, Black Rod peremptorily demanded his weapon. ‘In your guts,’ was the contemptuous answer. Ormonde sat armed during the day, and when summoned before the Council, produced his writ of summons which ordered him to attend ‘girt with a sword.’ Wentworth had met his match for the first time, and he held a private consultation with his two chief advisers as to what was to be done with this formidable young man. Wandesford was for crushing him, but Radcliffe advised conciliation, and Ormonde became a Privy Councillor at the early age of twenty-four.[193 - The primacy of Armagh was practically settled on this occasion, but the Roman Catholics still agitated the question for some time. The controversy is exhausted in Archbishop Hugh MacMahon’s Jus Primatiale Armachanum, published in 1728. Carte’s Ormonde, i. 64. Wentworth to Coke, May 13, June 24, August 18, 1634. The order of proceeding, with the roll of the Lords, is given in the Strafford Letters after the last date, and in the journals.]

The case of Lord Slane

Among the sixty-six lords present at the beginning of this session was William Lord Slane, who was allowed to sit and vote pending the possible reappearance of his elder brother Thomas, who had been tried by a jury in England for murder committed in Ireland, had become a friar, and had not been heard of for fourteen years. This precedent was afterwards relied on in Lord Maguire’s case as establishing the principle that an Irish peer was a commoner in England.[194 - Irish Lords Journals. July 14 and 15, 1634.]

Wentworth’s speech

Private consultations forbidden

The Recusants threatened

Election of Speaker

On the second day Wentworth made a speech to both Houses, in what he calls his mildest manner; but it was not very mild. He told them that there was a debt of 100,000l. and an annual deficit of 20,000l. What they had to do was simply to clear off the debt and to provide a permanent equilibrium between receipts and expenditure, so that the necessary maintenance of the army might no longer trouble his Majesty’s princely thoughts. That would be the King’s session. Later on they would have a session of their own, where the King would grant all the favours he thought proper, and where they were to accept his gifts with confidence and gratitude, and without asking for more. ‘Take heed,’ he said, ‘of private meetings and consults in your chambers, by design and privity aforehand to contrive, how to discourse and carry the public affairs when you come into the Houses. For besides that they are themselves unlawful, and punishable in a grievous measure, I never knew them in all my experience to do any good to the public or to any particular man; I have often known them do much harm.’ With a Deputy who knew his own mind, a session strictly limited by the King’s orders to three weeks, and no opportunity for private consultation, the House of Commons was almost powerless. Wentworth’s instinct and the experience of 1613 told him that the chief danger would come from the Roman Catholics, whom he had taken care should form nearly one half of the Lower House. He told them that if adequate supplies were withheld there would be no way of paying the army but ‘by levying the twelvepence a Sunday upon the Recusants.’ The King wished to make no distinction between English and Irish, but if it came to a fight the predominant partner would take care not to be beaten. The first trial of strength was about the choice of a Speaker. The official candidate was Sergeant Catelin, recorder of Dublin and member for the city, against whom there were many mutterings; but the House was told that the King had a veto upon every election, and that it would be steadily exercised until the right man was chosen. Wentworth’s nominee became Speaker without a contest, and expressed himself to his patron’s satisfaction. He was knighted at the end of the Parliament, and received 1,600l. for his services. A copy of what purported to be the Viceroy’s speech was shown by Cottington before its delivery; but this was probably a hoax, for Wentworth declared that it had not been written down beforehand. Cottington had Wentworth’s own account of his harangue to the Irish Council, and the speech to Parliament was little more than a repetition of it.[195 - Wentworth to Coke, August 18, 1634. The Lord Deputy’s speech in Strafford Letters, i. 286, is not entered in the Journals of Parliament. Wentworth to Cottington, ib. August 22; to Laud, ib. August 23, State Papers, Ireland, February 23, 1641.]

Attempt to purge the Commons

Supply is demanded at once, and six subsidies are voted

The session is talked out

The two Houses at variance

The demand for a prescriptive title to land

On the fourth day of the Session the House of Commons met for business and the Roman Catholics at once demanded that the House should be purged, that is that all members should be expelled who did not inhabit the districts represented by them. This would have been fatal to the Protestant party, which comprised many official persons living in Dublin, and it had been decided in 1613 that residence was not essential. On the other hand Sir Thomas Bramston, who as sovereign of Belfast had returned himself, was declared not duly elected and ordered to refund 16l. which he had received as wages. These payments were fixed as in 1613, at 18s. 4d. a day for counties, 10s. for cities, and 6s. 8d. for boroughs. A committee for privileges was appointed and the Protestants carried the nomination of it by a majority of eight. Seeing that power lay with the party who were certain in the long run to support the Government, Wentworth summoned his Council the same day and Chief Baron Bolton proposed to go on with supply the next morning. He was supported, of course, by Wandesford, Mainwaring, and Radcliffe; but Wilmot, Parsons and St. Leger, the president of Munster, were inclined for a later day. Wentworth then spoke in favour of the bolder and prompter course. The committee, he said, could not possibly increase the Protestant majority, and might have the contrary effect. The Roman Catholics would be anxious to secure the rewards of loyalty by voting for what they could not prevent. His real fear, though he did not say this openly, was lest time should be given for the formation of parties. Wilmot, whom he suspected of intriguing with members of the House of Commons, said he retained his opinion in favour of delay, but that it was useless for any one to speak after the Lord Deputy. The Chancellor then declared himself on the side of power, saying that he should have been for prompt action even if Wentworth had taken the opposite view. After a lecture from the Viceroy on their duty to the King, the Council broke up, and next morning Wandesford proposed a resolution to give six subsidies ‘to be levied in a parliamentary way in four years,’ two in the first and second years, and one each in the third and fourth. Some of the Recusant party, finding themselves in a temporary majority, at once moved to postpone the vote until the House had been purged, and carried it by twenty-eight. But this was recognised as being what is nowadays called a snap division, and when the original motion was nevertheless put both parties feared to lose their credit with the Government. The Roman Catholics, having made their protest, supported Wandesford’s motion, which passed unanimously, and all was over before noon. The rest of this session, said the Lord Deputy compendiously, ‘we have entertained and spun them out in discourses, but kept them nevertheless from concluding anything. No other laws passed but the two Acts of subsidies, and that other short law for confirming all such compositions as are or shall be made upon the commission of defective titles.’ The Government was strengthened by a difference of opinion between the two Houses, which prevented a joint petition in favour of the graces. The Commons claimed the right to sit covered at a conference; this was denied them, no conference took place, and the petition forwarded was in the name of the Lower House only. Wentworth took no trouble to reconcile the two chambers, having learnt in England that a strict understanding between them was not favourable to the Crown. The Lords were, however, quite as anxious for the graces as the elected chamber, and especially for that which promised that sixty years possession should be a good title against the Crown. Indeed, Lord Fingall and Lord Ranelagh were more perseveringly outspoken than any member of the House of Commons. The first, as the head of an ancient family with a very chequered history, who had been treated with scant civility by Wentworth, and the latter, as the son of Archbishop Jones, had doubtless many reasons to fear an inquisition into their titles.[196 - Wentworth to Coke, August 18, 1634. Irish Statutes, 1 °Car. I., session 2. Parliament was prorogued on August 2, on account of the harvest and circuits. The Subsidy Bill was read a third time and sent to the Lords on July 26, Irish Commons Journals.]

Wentworth is refused an earldom

Conscious of having done great service Wentworth asked the King for an earldom, taking precautions that no one should know he had done so. His suit was refused in a rather disagreeable letter, and much indignation has been expressed by many writers, but it is questionable whether this refusal should be added to the load of blame which Charles I. must bear. Wentworth was only forty-one, he had opposed the court until his thirty-sixth year, and he had already received a viscounty and two of the greatest places in the gift of the Crown. Burghley never became an earl. Both Cranfield and Weston had to serve much longer for the coveted honour, and neither of them had ever been in opposition. In later times not only earls but marquesses and dukes have been multiplied exceedingly, and it seems a small favour that Charles refused to a great man. Thousands of people now know something about Strafford who have scarcely heard of Cottington or Windebank, but this was not so at the time. Indeed the fact that his work was chiefly done in the North and in Ireland made him less prominent in the eyes of his contemporaries than inferior men who were always about the Court.[197 - Wentworth’s letter to the King is dated September 20, and the answer October 23, Strafford Letters.]

Debate on the graces

Petition of the Commons

The King’s promise as to titles