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

Punishment of sheriffs and jurors

Galway submits and the King approves of all

Sligo, on the 20th, and Mayo on the 31st, followed the example of Roscommon, but at Portumna in Galway the Commissioners met with a very different reception. The county, and especially the eastern part of it, was much under the influence of the Earl of Clanricarde; it contained hardly any Protestant freeholders, and the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy was very great. Clanricarde was in England with his son, but his nephew Lord Clanmorris attended to lead the opposition. Another nephew was on the jury, and so was John Donnellan, the Earl’s agent or steward. The jury with two exceptions found against the King’s title, and it was observed that those who voted after Donnellan did so with much greater decision than those who voted before him. Richard Burke, Clanricarde’s nephew, was fined 500l. for endeavouring to influence a brother juror by pulling his sleeve while he was speaking with the Commissioners. Wentworth was very angry, and resolved to carry out his plan notwithstanding, but with the difference that half the land in Galway was to be confiscated, instead of a quarter as in the other three counties. The disobedient shire should be ‘fully lined and planted with English,’ and bridles in the meantime with sufficient garrisons. ‘And for those counsellors at law,’ the Commissioners reported, ‘who so laboured against the King’s title, we conceive it is fit that such of them as we shall find reason to proceed withal, be put to take the oath of supremacy, which if they refuse, that then they be silenced, and not admitted to practise as now they do; it being unfit that they should take benefit by his Majesty’s graces, that take the boldness after such a manner to oppose his service.’ Wentworth had taken much credit to himself at Boyle for allowing counsel to appear before the Commissioners, and this was how he understood freedom of speech. The sheriff was fined 1,000l. and bound over to appear in the Castle-chamber on a charge of packing the jury, who were also bound over to be dealt with there. A proclamation was issued to give the county generally an opportunity of disavowing the jury, and this was so far successful that a verdict was obtained for the King at Galway in April 1637. Charles thoroughly approved of the fines, the imprisonments and the proclamations, and in particular held it ‘just and reasonable’ that the Galway landowners should lose half their property instead of a mere one-fourth.[218 - Lord Deputy and Commissioners to Coke, August 25, 1635, and Coke’s answer, September 30, Strafford Letters. Hardiman’s Hist. of Galway, p. 105.]

Death of Richard Earl of Clanricarde, for which Wentworth is blamed

Ulick, Earl of Clanricarde, Governor of Galway

The Earl of Clanricarde had distinguished himself by his courage and fidelity at Kinsale, and had enjoyed the especial favour of Queen Elizabeth. He had afterwards married Walsingham’s daughter, the widow of Sidney and Essex. His services thus entitled him to consideration, and his connections secured him friends at Court. In 1616 James I., after a full inquiry by two secretaries of state, had made him governor of the county and town of Galway in such a manner as to make him independent of the president of Connaught. This patent expired with James, but it was amply renewed by his successor for the life of the Earl and his eldest son. These facts were perfectly well known to Wentworth, but he advised the King to break his word and revoke the patent on the purely technical ground that a judicial office could not be granted in reversion. Clanricarde died within the year, and it was reported by Wentworth’s enemies that hard usage had broken his heart. ‘They might as well,’ said the Lord Deputy, ‘have imputed unto me for a crime his being threescore and ten years old.’ There was more reason for imputing to him the death in prison of Martin Darcy, the unfortunate sheriff of Galway. ‘My arrows,’ he said on this point, ‘are cruel that wound so mortally; but I should be more sorry by much the King should lose his fine.’ The King did not revoke the patent for the government of Galway, and the young Earl of Clanricarde, who was to play so important a part in the civil war, seems from the first to have enjoyed much influence at Court. The Galway jurors were tried in the Castle-chamber in May 1636, and sentenced to pay £4,000 each as a fine, to be imprisoned until payment, and to acknowledge their fault at the assizes upon their knees and in open court. The fine was afterwards reduced at Clanricarde’s request, and the difficulties with Scotland began before any real progress could be made with the new settlement.[219 - Wentworth to the King, December 5, 1635. Carte’s Ormonde i. 82. Clarendon says that Essex, who already disliked Wentworth, ‘openly professed revenge against him for his treatment of Clanricarde, History of Rebellion, ii. 101.]

Nature of Wentworth’s policy

There was a substantial breach of faith

Wentworth maintained the King’s title to Connaught on purely legal grounds, not seeming to realise that mere legality was an inadequate foundation for what was virtually wholesale forfeiture. Some modern writers who admire or excuse his policy have stated that he set up a title which would satisfy lawyers; but no one had a greater contempt for the letter of the law when it stood in his way, and it is the substantial justice of his action that is really in question. The Elizabethan lawyers knew perfectly well that the feudal ownership of Connaught was vested in Edward IV. and his successors, but they did not, therefore, consider that the land was at the Queen’s mercy. The chiefs and landowners of the province had been acknowledged over and over again, and had always yielded something to the Crown by way of cess. Sidney and Perrott reduced this uncertain impost to a small but fixed rent, and by so doing confirmed the tenure of those who paid it. It is very true that the exact terms of the contract had seldom been fulfilled by the Irish, and that most of them had been engaged in rebellious actions after the composition. That might have been a reason for forfeiting their land at the time, and demands for arrears of rent might have been made much later; but this is a very different thing from confiscation after a generation of peace. Nor was this all: on July 21, 1615, James I. had written to Chichester directing that the Connaught landowners should have patents granted them, in consideration of the composition made by Queen Elizabeth, and reserving the same rent in future. To this Wentworth answered that the recitals in the letter as to the fulfilment of the composition covenants were grounded on false information; that ‘the inhabitants were intruders and had no such estates as could either be surrendered or confirmed.’ The patents actually issued were therefore void, as having been obtained under false pretences, and for some technical flaws also. The monstrous result is that the whole population of Connaught were squatters, and had no rights whatever. It is no wonder that the Irish Parliament had clamoured for a sixty years’ possessory title against the Crown.[220 - Abstract of the King’s title to Connaught, 1635, Strafford Letters, i. 454. King James’s letter of July 21, 1622, is in Carew. See Hardiman’s Hist. of Galway, 104.]

The Londoners’ plantation

Destruction of the forests

Whatever other objects he may have had in view, profit to the Exchequer was always sought by Wentworth. In the case of the Londoners’ plantation the mere money consideration was greater, and the political advantage much less, than in the case of the Connaught proprietors. Sir Thomas Phillips had almost ruined himself in his contest with the great corporation, who had certainly done much, but who could easily be shown not to have done all that they promised. Londonderry and Coleraine had been secured against attack, but the number of houses was less than at first agreed upon, and in the country it was found much easier to take rent from the native occupiers than to bring over the full number of English settlers. Commercial corporations who become possessed of political power are always tempted to pay too much regard to present profit, and the Irish Society of London acted to some extent as the East India Company did in later times. In the Bann alone more than sixty tons of salmon were sometimes taken in one day, and this was much more lucrative than the slow process of settling English farmers upon the land. It was also much more convenient to convert the vast woods into ready money than to preserve them for local use, and their destruction was rapid. In 1803 the county of Londonderry, which had once contained the great forest of Glenconkein, was officially reported to be ‘perhaps the worst wooded in the King’s dominions.’ Wentworth saw his opportunity, and determined to exact his pound of flesh from the Londoners in Ulster, since they were unwilling to pay arbitrary taxes at home. A side blow might be dealt to Presbyterianism at the same time. Proceedings in the Star Chamber against the Corporation of London had resulted in the summer of 1631 in a Royal Commission to collect evidence in Ireland, and special attention was ordered to be given to the representations of Phillips. The cause dragged on for three years, and early in 1634 Wentworth wrote to Coke to advise that in any case the grant of the customs of Londonderry and Coleraine, for which the grantees paid no rent, should be resumed by the Crown, as unfit to be held by any subject, and especially by a body which owed the King 1,800l. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘my humble suit, that at least you take that feather from them again, as not fit to be worn in the round cap of a citizen of London.’[221 - Coke to Wentworth, October 24, 1633; Wentworth to Coke, January 31, 1633-4. J. C. Beresford’s Concise View of the Irish Society, pp. 51-56.]

A fine of 30,000l. refused, and one of 70,000l. imposed

Wentworth wished to confiscate the London plantation

The Londoners offered to compromise their case by paying a fine of 30,000l., but this was refused. After a hearing which lasted seventeen days, judgment was given in the Star Chamber at the end of February 1635, when a fine of 70,000l. was imposed and the charter declared forfeited. The actual sum levied seems to have been 12,000l., which was handed over to the Queen. ‘The King,’ said Wentworth’s correspondent Garrard, ‘now hath good store of land in Ireland.’ ‘The Londoners,’ said another gossip, the letter-writer Howell, ‘have not been so forward in collecting the ship-money, since they have been taught to sing heigh-down derry, and many of them will not pay till after imprisonment, that it may stand upon record they were forced to it. The assessments have been wonderfully unequal and unproportionable, which is very ill taken, it being conceived they did it on purpose to raise clamour through the city.’ In the following May an order was given in the Star Chamber to levy the fine in London, and to sequester the estates in Ireland. Bramhall, who had a dispute of his own about some of the lands, was appointed chief receiver, and the appointment was not likely to be a sinecure in his hands. Wentworth declared himself ready to carry out the forfeiture in the most drastic way. ‘Would your Majesty,’ he wrote, ‘be pleased to reserve it entire to yourself, it might prove a fit part of an appanage for our young master the Duke of York. It may be made a seigniory not altogether unworthy his Highness; and for so good purpose I should labour night and day, and think all I could do little.’ James’s experiences in connection with Londonderry were fated to be of a much less agreeable kind. The hostility of the Londoners had much to say to both Charles and Wentworth losing their heads.[222 - Garrard to Wentworth, March 1, 1634-5; Howell to same, March 5; Coke to same, May 25, 1635; Wentworth to the King, April 7, Strafford Letters. Carte’s Ormonde, i. 83. Among the Cowper MSS., November 8, 1633, is a letter from the King ordering 5,000l. to Phillips out of the 70,000l.]

CHAPTER XV

CASES OF MOUNTNORRIS, LOFTUS, AND OTHERS

Laud’s warning to Wentworth

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

Case of Lord Wilmot

Wilmot had used his position as president of Connaught to build at Athlone, giving fee-farm grants of Crown land to the settlers. It does not seem to have been alleged that he took fines for his own use; but the main facts were not denied, and he thought it prudent to obtain a pardon. He resented Wentworth’s appointment as Deputy, and being himself of a choleric disposition he soon came into collision with him. The pardon was not held to cover the whole case, which was brought up again by Wentworth. Wilmot made an ample submission and tried to soften the Viceroy’s animosity, while indignantly denying any corruption on his own part. There can be no doubt that he exceeded his authority, and the tenants at Athlone seem to have been willing to increase their rents to the Crown; but the case dragged on, and was perhaps unsettled when Wentworth’s government came to an end. No doubt the law was against Wilmot, but considering the pardon and the fact that he had made improvements, his treatment might be described as persecution by those who disliked Wentworth.[223 - The pardon, November 7, 1625, is in Morrin’s Patent Rolls; Wilmot’s submission, October 3, 1635, in Strafford Letters, i. 477, and his letter to Wentworth, ib. ii. 41; Laud to Wentworth, ib. i. 479; Wilmot to Windebank May 28, 1636, Cal. of State Papers, Ireland.]

Case of Lord Mountnorris

Wentworth wishes to get rid of Mountnorris

Mountnorris accused of malversation

The Vice-Treasurer, Lord Mountnorris, was married to a near relation of Wentworth’s second and best-beloved wife. This had not saved him from a rebuke for staying away from his work in August 1632; but for some years afterwards things seem to have gone pretty smoothly. Mountnorris supported the Lord Deputy effectively on his first arrival in Ireland, and at his suggestion received the King’s thanks. But he was one of those who refuse nothing and resign nothing profitable, and he declined to surrender a reversionary patent in order to make room for an office-seeker favoured by Wentworth and by Secretary Coke. In May 1634 the Lord Deputy made his first serious complaint of the Vice-Treasurer for exacting sixpence in the pound as a fee out of all payments made to the officers of the Admiralty. The English Privy Council directed Mountnorris to forego these fees until the King’s further pleasure should be known; but the law of the case was probably doubtful, and he ventured to disobey. He supported the Deputy in other matters, and at the conference between the two Irish Houses of Parliament, ‘out of such scraps as he had gotten from the Parliaments of England, very gallantly and magisterially told the House of Commons that they had no power to administer an oath.’ Wentworth nevertheless became very anxious to get rid of him and to give his place to Sir Adam Loftus, who could be always trusted to obey orders. In April 1635 he told Coke that he considered ‘Lord Mountnorris to be an officer of no great nor quick endeavour to his Majesty’s service, a person held by us all that hear him to be most impertinent and troublesome in the debate of all business. And, indeed, so weary are we of him that I daresay there is not one of us willing to join with him in any private counsel. My Lord Chief Baron complains of him extremely in the Exchequer, that he disorders the proceedings of the whole court through his wilfulness and ignorance.’ He was a loose liver, fond of high play, winning often from young men and even lending money at interest for them to stake again. Payments from the Exchequer were said to be delayed until a bribe had been given to his brother-in-law, and one case was proved; but Mountnorris denied all knowledge of the matter, and made the recipient give back the money. Yet he continued to employ the culprit, and so gave good cause for suspicion. Mountnorris was evidently very unpopular, and doubtless with good reason; but he was not unwilling to resign his office for a consideration, and left the matter in Wentworth’s hands. The latter was long unwilling to undertake the negotiation from his knowledge of the other’s uncertain temper, and this caused so much delay that Mountnorris ultimately withdrew his offer, and the final rupture seems to have taken place at about this point.[224 - Strafford Letters, i. 73, 99, 107, 250, 259, 306, 349, 403. Mountnorris held his office during pleasure.]

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

Mountnorris had a relation of his own name who was a subaltern in the Lord Deputy’s troop of horse. He was checked by Wentworth at a review for some irregularity, and replied by an insolent gesture or grimace. Wentworth laid his cane against the young man’s shoulders, but without striking him, and threatened to ‘lay him over the pate’ if he offended so again. Annesley doubtless deserved punishment, but it was scarcely a Lord Deputy’s business to chastise offenders with his own hand. On April 18, 1635, Annesley, who was a gentleman-usher at the Castle, dropped a stool upon Wentworth’s gouty foot, and this became the subject of conversation at a dinner at the Lord Chancellor’s some three or four days later. Mountnorris said: ‘Perhaps it was done in revenge of that public affront which my Lord Deputy had done him formerly; but he has a brother that would not take such a revenge.’ Something of the kind was said, but the exact words must be very doubtful, for it is not pretended that any one took them down at the time, and they were not sworn to until nearly eight months later. In any case Wentworth should have remembered his own dictum that every word must not rise up in judgment against a man. Annesley had a brother in Mountnorris’s company of foot, and it was suggested that this was a hint to him from his superior officer ‘to have taken up resolutions of dangerous consequence.’ It seems much more probable that Mountnorris was praising his own subaltern at the expense of the Lord Deputy’s gentleman-usher. Late on the evening of December 11 he was warned by a pursuivant to attend a council of war at eight o’clock next morning. Shortly after the appointed hour Wentworth came in, said he had called the court to do himself right and reparation against Lord Mountnorris, read the alleged words from a paper which had been subscribed by Lord Moore and by the Chancellor’s eldest son, Sir Robert Loftus, and called upon the Vice-Treasurer to confess or deny them. The accused asked for counsel and to have the charge in writing, but he was told that councils of war allowed neither. To aggravate the case, Wentworth read the King’s letter of July 31 in which he had ordered the sixpenny fees to be stopped. Mountnorris said the letter was obtained ‘by misinformation.’ Wentworth said it was not his habit to misrepresent anyone, ‘and rebuked me,’ says Mountnorris, ‘with worse language than was fit to be used to a meaner man and not a peer.’ Moore and Loftus swore to the truth of what they had signed, and Wentworth then ordered Moore to take his seat as a judge in a case where he had already given evidence for the prosecution. The Lord Deputy took no actual part in the sentence, but he was present during the whole proceedings, and all men dreaded his frown. According to the account forwarded by Wentworth at the time, Mountnorris submitted to the court, ‘protesting that what interpretation soever his words might have put upon them, he intended no prejudice or hurt to the person of us the Deputy.’ Mountnorris himself, in his evidence given in 1641, says he offered to swear that he had not uttered the words, and to bring witnesses to prove that the part referring to the public affront was spoken by others. Among the witnesses whom he says he asked to have produced were the Lord Chancellor and Sir Adam Loftus’s son. He was ordered to withdraw, and after less than half an hour was called in again to hear his sentence of death, to which the court had unanimously agreed. ‘My Lord Deputy,’ he says, ‘took occasion to make a speech, and told me invectively enough there remained no more now, if he pleased, but to cause the provost-marshal to do execution; but withal added that for matter of life, he would supplicate his Majesty. And I think he said he would rather lose his hand than I should lose my head; which I took to be the highest scorn, to compare his the Lord Deputy’s hand with my head.’ The expression about his hand and his victim’s head occurs in Wentworth’s own letters. It was reported in London that Mountnorris had been actually shot, the parts of his body where bullets took effect being specified.[225 - Wentworth to Coke, December 14, 1635, enclosing the sentence of the court-martial, in Strafford’s letters; this is preferable, so far as it goes, to the account in Rushworth’s Trial of Strafford, where the abstract contains inaccuracies. Lord Chancellor Loftus had no son Adam, Sir Adam was his cousin. The Annesley whom Wentworth had rebuked and who dropped the stool, and the Annesley who was Mountnorris’s lieutenant were brothers, but neither was the Vice-Treasurer’s brother, as is so often stated. Garrard to Wentworth, January 8, 1635-6.]

Mountnorris not a soldier

Martial law in time of peace

The King receives 6000l. for Mountnorris’s place

Mountnorris had a company, as was then customary with great men in Ireland, but he was not really a soldier, and knew nothing of military discipline. The words charged against him were spoken, if spoken at all, in private society, and it is not easy to see how they could possibly affect the discipline of the army. Yet Wentworth and his slavish council found that they constituted a breach of two articles of war. That which involved the death sentence was the thirteenth: ‘No man shall offer any violence, or contemptuously disobey his commander, or do any act or speak any words which are likely to breed any mutiny in the army or garrison, or impeach the obeying of the general or principal officer’s directions, upon pain of death.’ This article is perhaps not too severe for its purpose, especially in time of war, but does any lawyer, does any soldier, does any man of common intelligence suppose that it was intended to be applied or could properly be applied to conversation at a dinner-party? And Mountnorris swore that he had never seen the articles at the time of his condemnation under them, and did not see them until June 1636. It does not appear that they had been acted on in time of peace. Besides all this, the court-martial was held without any notice; no time was given to summon witnesses; Wentworth himself, the prosecutor, presided in person, while the accused, who was not allowed counsel, was turned out of court, and one of the witnesses for the prosecution sat in judgment. At Court many wondered ‘that a peer of the kingdom, a Privy Councillor, a treasurer at war, though a captain, should be tried in a marshal’s court for words spoken six months before, no enemy in the field, nor the Lord Deputy in any danger of his life by these words.’ Wentworth’s energetic and talkative emissary, Captain Price, ‘laid about with his tongue’ as to this and other matters, but it was the King that really silenced the voice of criticism. It was his nature to approve harsh measures, and in this case he actually made 6000l. by the transaction. Wentworth advised Sir Adam Loftus to spend money freely to secure the succession; from which we may infer that he intended it to be lucrative in the hands of a friend. Loftus promised the money to Cottington, who promptly ‘gave it to him that really could do the business, which was the King himself.’ Probably only part of the money was for Cottington, and he was to give the rest to other officials, but he got the credit of surrendering the whole sum. Before it was actually received Charles assigned it in part payment of 22,000l. which he was spending on the purchase of an estate in Scotland. We may assume that the King was ‘roundly satisfied’ without delay, for Loftus was made Vice-Treasurer at the beginning of April. The fact that the money went to provide an endowment for the Scotch archbishoprics does not greatly improve matters. Clarendon says that Mountnorris was notoriously unloved, otherwise his treatment would have been thought ‘the most extravagant piece of sovereignty that in a time of peace had been ever executed by any subject.’[226 - Lord Keeper Coventry to Wentworth, December 24, 1635; James Howell to Wentworth, January 1; Garrard to Wentworth, January 8 and 25, 1635-6; Cottington to Wentworth, January 27; Coke to Wentworth, January 31, Strafford Letters; Wentworth to Price, February 14 in State Papers, Ireland. See also Gardiner’s Hist. of England, chap. 81. For further details about the 6,000l. see Laud to Wentworth, February 4, 1635-6, in Laud’s Works, vii. 240. Howell says Mountnorris’s discomfiture was popular at Court, but Garrard thought differently. Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion, ii. 101.]

Mountnorris under restraint for several months, 1635-37

Deprived of his office

Wentworth’s motives

Lord Mountnorris, said Wentworth, ‘was prisoner in the Castle some two days, but upon his physician’s certificate that the badness of his lodging might prejudice his health, I sent him upon good bond restrained only to his own house, where he is like to remain till I receive his Majesty’s further pleasure concerning him.’ Mountnorris makes the first confinement last six days, but the discrepancy is not of much importance. Chief Justice Shirley gave his bond for 2000l., and Mountnorris remained under restraint in his own house from the middle of December 1635 until the second week of April following. In February Lady Mountnorris petitioned for her husband’s release on the ground that his life was in danger, and reminded the Lord Deputy that he and his prisoner were connected by marriage; but Wentworth seems to have taken no notice of the lady’s letter; and Clarendon endorsed his copy as written by her to Wentworth ‘when her husband was under the sentence of death by martial law, and he was so hard-hearted that he gave her no relief.’ Lady Mountnorris went to London to try the King’s mercy, and Wentworth made this a reason for shutting his victim up again in the Castle. After three weeks he was again released by the doctors, in whose hands he remained for some time. In the meanwhile he had been superseded, and the Vice-Treasurership conferred on Loftus. Mountnorris was frequently brought before the Council on charges of malversation, but it does not appear that any actual sentence was given against him, and he refused to sue out his pardon in consequence. He signed a submission to the King, but the Deputy’s pride was not satisfied, and he was again imprisoned during the whole of February 1637. In July Lady Mountnorris obtained the King’s leave for her husband’s return to England, but this was not acted on for some months, and perhaps Charles did not intend it to be taken too literally. Writing from London to Wandesford, Wentworth directed that he should not be allowed to leave Ireland, claiming that the case should be decided in Dublin and by himself. It was not till the autumn of 1637 that Mountnorris got out of Ireland, ‘wondrously humbled as much as Chaucer’s friar’; and in a letter to his friend Conway Wentworth admitted his real motives. ‘I told him I never wished ill to his estate nor person further than to remove him thence where he was as well a trouble as an offence unto me.’ He had, in short, turned out an opponent and given his place to an adherent, and that seemed to him a sufficient explanation.[227 - Rushworth’s Trial of Strafford, Court and Times, ii. 271, Wentworth to Coke, January 3, 1635-6; to Wandesford, July 25, 1636; to Conway, January 6, 1637-8. Cal. of Clarendon Papers, February 13, 1635-6, July 18, 1636. Conway to Wentworth, October 23, 1637.]

The story told by Mountnorris himself, 1640

Mountnorris’s petition was presented to the House of Commons, November 7, 1640, along with the sentence of the Castle Chamber, pronounced December 12, 1635. He says Strafford ‘conceived a causeless distaste against him, and thereupon endeavoured the revenge of some supposed personal neglect’ by ruining him. Being already secretary of the Irish Council, King James gave him a patent of 200l. with other emoluments in reversion after Sir Dudley Norton’s death or retirement. But Strafford falsely accused him of incivility to his brother Sir George, obtained a surrender from Norton, and, ‘contrary to all right and justice, procured the said offices and fees to be conferred upon Sir Philip Mainwaring,’ and maintained him in possession by his despotic authority. King Charles had made him Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General, and seven years later Treasurer at wars. He refused when Strafford required him to make a ‘dishonourable sale of the said offices,’ at which he was so enraged that he trumped up the prosecution and ‘in a time of public peace and serenity within that realm, December 12, 1635, did call a council of war and did accuse your petitioner of some words supposed to be spoken by your petitioner many months before tending in his lordship’s strained construction to the disturbance of government, and without allowing your petitioner liberty of clearing his innocence in a legal manner or so much as an hour’s time to make his just defence, proceeded to sentence at the same time, and although the said supposed words were no ways criminal sentenced a peer to death.’ He respited the execution for the further advancing of his ‘own ends,’ but used it to dispose of Mountnorris’s foot-company and kept him a prisoner in the Castle from December 12, 1635, until April 16, 1637. During that time all his effects and papers were ‘strictly searched by some of his greatest adversaries by his lordship’s direction.’ Twenty days of close confinement threatening his life obliged him to submit and accept a pardon. After this Strafford took advantage of his imprisonment to issue a commission of his own choice to inquire into his office, and made misrepresentations to the King, who made Sir Adam Loftus, ‘one of his accusers,’ Receiver-General and Treasurer at wars. Information was laid against him in the Castle Chamber during his imprisonment and sickness as to his supposed misdemeanour. He was conscious of no guilt, but finding he would be tried by the same ‘inquisitors,’ all prejudiced, he was reduced ‘to the miserable choice’ either to go on suffering even worse or to make a submission as Strafford wished, ‘whereupon your petitioner was enforced in ignominious manner to make submission, hoping thereby to purchase his liberty and go into England according to his Majesty’s directions,’ but he was kept in prison all the same. No one ever maintained that Star Chamber or Council, had any jurisdiction to try questions of title between man and man, yet he had been deprived on a ‘paper petition’ of a manor in Ireland after eighteen years’ quiet possession, and turned out by Strafford’s own warrant, and he was deprived of his legal remedy in other cases.[228 - A true copy of the sentence of war pronounced against Sir Francis Annesley, Knight and Baron Mountnorris, etc., together with his Lordship’s petition, etc. London; printed for J. B., 1641.]

The witnesses to the words about revenge were Lord Moore and Sir Robert Loftus, who were present, but were not the original reporters of the expression.

It is particularly stated that the sentence was unanimous, and that there was a breach of the 41st and 13th articles of war – sentence for the first, imprisonment, public disarming, and banishment from the Army, and for ever disabled to bear arms; and for the 13th death.

The articles of war were printed and published on March 13, 1633, and are the same as those used by Falkland, Wilmot, and others.

Case of Lord Chancellor Loftus

The Chancellor is suspended, and placed under arrest, April, 1638

Wentworth had probably distrusted Mountnorris from the first. The Lord Chancellor, on the contrary, had frequently earned his praise, and as late as the summer of 1636 a special grant of 3000l. was made to him on his recommendation. A few months afterwards the two men were engaged in an acrimonious correspondence about the appointment of a lawyer to do temporary duty on circuit. The explanation of this charge is to be found in certain legal proceedings which had taken place in the meantime. In the year 1621 the Chancellor’s eldest son, Robert, had married Eleanor, daughter of Sir Francis Rushe, whose sister long afterwards became the wife of Wentworth’s brother, Sir George. It was alleged that the Chancellor had promised to settle Monasterevan and 1500l. a year in land upon the young couple, and that the bride had paid over her dowry of 1750l. on this consideration. It was now sought after all these years to enforce specific performance of the Chancellor’s verbal promise. The proceedings were taken by Eleanor’s half-brother, Sir John Gifford, as her next friend, her husband refusing to be a party, though he had a solicitor to watch the case. It is not clear that ordinary courts of law had no jurisdiction in the case, but it was assumed to be matter of equity, and a King’s letter was obtained remitting it to the Council on the ground that the Lord Chancellor was chief equity judge and that he could not adjudicate in his own cause. Sir William Colley swore in a hesitating and inconsistent way at the trial in 1638 to what the Chancellor had said in 1621, who upon this ground was ordered to settle all the lands to the value of 1200l. a year upon Sir Robert Loftus and his heirs general, to the exclusion of the second son, Edward, who was to have an annual rent-charge of 200l. The King professed himself anxious for the maintenance of the peerage, but the judgment, had it been finally confirmed, would have had the contrary effect, for Sir Robert’s only son died shortly afterwards, and the property would have gone to his sister, whose uncle, as heir male, would have had the title with nothing to support it. This judgment was given on February 1, 1638, but the Chancellor was in no hurry to obey, having already appealed to the King himself, and on April 20 he was suspended by the Lord Deputy and Council, and ordered to give up the Great Seal next day. The seal not being so produced, Loftus was thereupon committed, and remained under restraint for sixteen months. It was afterwards pretended that this extreme severity to an octogenarian public servant was caused by evidence of judicial misconduct in another case, but Wentworth did not say so at the time. Loftus may have been guilty of some irregularities, but nothing like corruption was proved against him, and it is probable that little would have been heard of these grave misdemeanours if his daughter-in-law had not been Wentworth’s friend and if her sister had not lately been married to his brother. In one letter he calls the Chancellor’s wife ‘a fury,’ and in another he speaks of ‘that unclean-mouthed daughter of his, the Lord Moore’s wife.’[229 - A good view of the Loftus case may be obtained from Arthur Earl of Essex’s report in the Drogheda Papers in the Ninth Report of the Hist. MSS. Comm., Appx. ii., and in the House of Lords Papers in the 4th and 5th Reports. See also Strafford Letters, ii. 160-164, 257, and Rawdon Papers, pp. 26, 54, and the Barrett-Lennard Papers in the third vol. of the Report of the Royal Hist. Commission on ‘various collections,’ 1904.]

Severe treatment of Loftus

The King supports Wentworth

Loftus submits, but appeals to the Long Parliament

More than ten years before Loftus had obtained a royal licence to go to England whenever he thought fit, and to put the Great Seal into commission. He did not now rely upon this, but asked for special leave, and Charles granted it at once. The King’s letter probably arrived before the suspension of the Chancellor, who sent over his second son Edward. The latter had been made a party to the suit against his father, and Wentworth considered that this aggravated his contempt, though Edward does not seem to have held any office. When the Chancellor was first summoned before the Council he was not required to kneel ‘considering his age and the eminency of his place,’ but a resolution was passed that neither he nor anyone else should be so excused in future. On the second occasion he said he would rather die than kneel, and on the following day maintained that no such compliance had been required from one of his rank and quality for a hundred years, and that ‘the Great Seal ought not to creep on knees and elbows to any subordinate person in the world.’ He refused to give up the seal or to bring it with him; having received it from the King he would surrender it only to an order under the royal hand. After this he was committed to the Castle until the King’s pleasure should be known. In his petition to Charles for release he stated that he was ‘very aged and the prison very close and pestered with many prisoners.’ But Wentworth and his subservient Council, fortified by a petition of Sir John Gifford, magnified the Chancellor’s refusal to kneel into a great offence, and urged the King not to allow him over to England until he had fully submitted to their decree as to Monasterevan and the rest. The despatch was sent over by Sir George Radcliffe, so that no means was neglected to prejudice Charles against the old Chancellor. The leave was suspended accordingly, and in a later letter the King even blamed the ‘over-much forbearance and patience’ of the Deputy and Council, and ordered that the prisoner should not be allowed to go without acknowledging his fault and suing for pardon. After about eleven months’ confinement the King ordered that the Chancellor should be kept a close prisoner, whereupon Lady Loftus was forced to leave her husband, ‘though the small sustenance whereby he liveth is ministered by her hands.’ His chaplains were also refused access to him. Afterwards just as much relaxation was allowed as to prevent the prisoner actually dying, and he was under restraint in his own house for a short time. A threat of further close confinement in the Castle at last broke his spirit, and he made over his property to trustees who were all Wentworth’s close allies – Wandesford, Sir Adam Loftus, Lord Dillon, and his secretary, Sir Philip Mainwaring. The Chancellor had already made a submission to the Lord Deputy in terms sufficiently humble. Lady Moore made great exertions, and in June 1639 she was seen on her knees before Charles at Berwick ‘very earnestly soliciting for her father’s coming over.’ His appeal to the King was fruitless, for Wentworth was in London before him and at the height of his power. In November 1639 the decree of the Irish Council was confirmed, and Sir Richard Bolton was appointed Chancellor a few days later. Less than twelve months after the decision of the appeal the Long Parliament was sitting, and Wentworth was in the custody of Black Rod. Sir Robert Loftus and his wife both died before the Chancellor, who lived long enough to see all the decrees against him reversed by the English House of Lords, but the litigation arising out of the case extended far into the reign of Charles II. During the civil war the Irish estates were not of much use to anyone.[230 - Besides the authorities quoted above there is the affidavit of Henry Parry, sworn November 16, 1652, wherein it is stated that Loftus’ chaplain was not allowed to see him with a view to administering the sacrament in his extreme illness. Parry thinks his treatment by Strafford cost him 24,000l., and that he lost 80,000l. more by the rebellion. – Cal. of State Papers, Ireland, 1647-1660, p. 576.]

Judgement of contemporaries on this case

Clarendon

Warwick