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

Some notable pirates

Another noted pirate was John Jennings, who came boldly into the Shannon towards the end of 1609, his ship laden with spoil and with a richly freighted Dutch prize which he had taken after losing sixty men in action against a French man of war. Danvers tried to stamp out the pirates by preventing the land carriage of corn, but he harassed honest men without much hurting the thieves. He believed that the pirates could always land 300 men at any point they thought fit, for it was impossible to have a man of war everywhere, and the King’s ships could not keep the seas for more than three months without refitting, the sailors being but too ready to go home on the least excuse. There were several other piratical vessels at hand, the crews of which quarrelled with Jennings about the division of the Dutchmen’s goods. Under these circumstances, and perhaps remembering Coward’s case, Jennings applied to Lord Thomond for a pardon, and offered to give up the ship, but the latter had learned by experience, and preferred to surprise the pirate with the help of his discontented comrades. They were all ready to betray each other. Chichester was inclined to think that Jennings really intended to reform, and at all events he had not plundered the King’s subjects. Some diamonds came into the hands of the Government, but the valuable ‘small ends’ (perhaps of tobacco) had been ‘carried away in the shipmen’s great breeches.’ Both Thomond and Chichester were inclined to mercy, but the English Council remembered its ill-success in Coward’s case, and Jennings was duly hanged.[96 - Danvers to the Privy Council, January 19, 1609, and to Salisbury, February 24; Chichester’s letters of February 5 and April 7; the Council to Chichester, April 27; Chichester to Salisbury, Northampton, and Nottingham, April 11, 1611.]

No part of the coast safe

French, Dutch, and Moors

The south-west coast was the chief but by no means the only resort of the pirates. Three were captured in Ulster in 1613, and three in the following year, and executed ‘upon the strand at low-water mark, by Dublin.’ In the latter case the pirates had stolen a Chester ship lying off Dalkey and taken her to Lough Swilly, where they were apprehended by the help of one called ‘bishop O’Coffie,’ but probably a Roman Catholic vicar-general of Derry or Raphoe. In 1610 they waylaid but failed to intercept the ship which brought the Londoners’ money to the new settlement at Coleraine. Blacksod Bay and other remote harbours in Mayo were used by Jennings and his contemporaries, and long afterwards the inhabitants were reported to be ‘so much given to idleness that their only dependence is upon the depredation and spoils of pirates, brought in amongst them by reason of the convenience and goodness of their harbours; for there is their common rendezvous.’ Even Carrickfergus sometimes served as an anchorage for rovers, who robbed small vessels between Holyhead and Dublin. Dutch and French merchants suffered more than the English, and the States Government, with the King of England’s sanction, sent a special squadron to Ireland, whom the pirates seem to have dreaded much more than their own sovereign’s cruisers. The French sometimes acted against the pirates, and there were negotiations with Spain, but the Government admitted towards the close of 1612 that the evil could only be checked in the West of Ireland ‘by laying the island and sea coast waste and void of inhabitants, or by placing a garrison in every port and creek, which is impracticable.’ In the autumn of 1611 nineteen sail of pirates were sighted on the west coasts, most of whom drew towards Morocco at the approach of winter, when the Spanish galleys were not much to be feared. This was their constant practice, and in the then state of European politics they were as sure to find employment on the sea, as their congeners the ‘bravi’ were to find it on land. The pirates continued to give trouble until Strafford’s time.[97 - Chichester’s letters of January 29 and June 27, 1610, Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 206, 314; Lords of the Council to Chichester, September 9, 1611, January 31, and November 18, 1612; Lord Carew to Salisbury, September 6, 1611. The international importance of the pirates will be best understood from the early chapters of Mr. Julian Corbett’s England in the Mediterranean.]

CHAPTER VII

THE PARLIAMENT OF 1613-1615

The King determines to hold a Parliament, 1611

Since the dissolution of Perrott’s Parliament in 1586 none had been held in Ireland, but James made up his mind to have one. Lord Carew was instructed to obtain information as to how it had best be done, legal sanction for the Ulster settlement and for the general establishment of English law being mentioned as principal objects. There were but four bishops and four temporal peers alive who had served on the last occasion, and no perfect list of Perrott’s House of Commons existed in Ireland. The law and practice of Parliament were almost forgotten, and William Bradley, Davies’ agent in Ulster, was appointed clerk of the proposed Lower House, and sent over to confer with the officials in England, where he unearthed a journal of Perrott’s Parliament. Having received instruction in parliamentary forms, he brought back a commission which enabled Chichester to decide all questions of precedence. Robes and a cloth of estate for the Lord Deputy were sent over by the same messenger.[98 - Instructions for Carew, June 24, 1611, in Carew Papers; Chichester to Salisbury, February 17, 1611; Lords of Council to Chichester, March 7, 1613; King to same, March 21; Lords of Council to same, October 9, 1612.]

New constituencies are created

The counties

The boroughs

Ulster

Munster

Leinster

Connaught

Character of the new boroughs

University representation

A Protestant majority secured

In order to carry out the royal policy in Ireland it was evidently necessary to secure a Protestant majority, and this could hardly be done without creating new constituencies. The power of the King to make boroughs was not seriously disputed, and it was exercised in England as late as 1673. Thirty-three shires, counting the Cross of Tipperary, returned two members each, and it was hoped that half of these might be depended on. The cities and boroughs which received writs for Perrott’s Parliament were thirty-six in number, but of these Carrickfergus and Downpatrick made no returns. Cavan, Derry, Gowran, and Athlone had since become corporations, and were presumably entitled to their writs in the ordinary way. James created thirty-nine new boroughs expressly for parliamentary purposes, of which no less than nineteen were in Ulster, where the late forfeitures had made the Government strong: Belfast, Coleraine, Newry, Bangor, Newtownards, Armagh, Charlemont, Dungannon, Agher, Strabane, Clogher, Derry, Lifford, Ballyshannon, Donegal, Limavady, Enniskillen, Monaghan, Belturbet. The Munster cities and towns were almost desperate, one member each from Youghal, Dungarvan, and Dingle being the most that could be expected, and nine new boroughs were created: Lismore, Tallow, Mallow, Baltimore, Bandon, Clonakilty, Ennis, Tralee, and Askeaton. In Leinster the new creations were Athy, Carlow, Newcastle (Dublin), Ballinakill, Fethard (Wexford), Enniscorthy, Kilbeggan, and Wicklow. In Connaught the new boroughs were Tuam (‘the Archbishop’s chief seat, which will send Protestants’), Sligo, Roscommon, Boyle, Castlebar, and Carrick-on-Shannon. Care was taken to select places which might at least be expected to grow into good-sized towns. A few of them were, and have remained, mere villages, but most of them are reasonably large country towns, while Belfast, Londonderry, Coleraine and Sligo have become much more. The University of Dublin returned two members for the first time; and there could be no doubt that the Government would be able to command a majority. In the House of Lords reliance was placed upon the bishops; but some of the temporal peers were Protestants, and there was little danger of accidents happening there. The Roman Catholic lords and principal gentlemen of the Pale saw that they would be in a minority, and suggested in a letter to the King that the Parliament should be held in England.[99 - List of Perrott’s Parliament in Tracts Relating to Ireland, ii. 139; List of the Parliament of 1613 in Liber mun. pub. Hiberniæ, vii. 50; Remembrances touching the Parliament, No. 93 in vol. v. of Carew Papers; as to Connaught and Munster, ib., Nos. 92, 87; Calculations as to the votes of the nobility, ib. 86; Brief Relation of the Passages in Parliament (part in Carew’s hand), ib. 149. Counties and boroughs sending burgesses to Parliament in State Papers, Ireland, April 1, 1613. A letter written in 1612 by David Kearney, Archbishop of Cashel, and others, to the Irish seminaries in Spain, says, ‘What keeps everyone in a state of intense suspense is the fear of the approaching Parliament, in which the heretics intend to vomit out all their poison and infect with it the purity of our holy religion, and it is expected that things will take place in it such as have not been seen since the schism of Henry VIII. began.’ —Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 122.]

The oath of supremacy not exacted

When it was decided to call a Parliament, Carew advised that every member of the House of Commons should take the oath of supremacy, ‘as they do in England,’ or be disqualified. ‘But if that shall seem too sharp to be offered, yet a rumour that it is required will be a means to increase the number of Protestant burgesses and knights, and deter the most spirited Recusants from being of the house.’ The rumour was spread about accordingly, though the sharp offer was not actually made, and Davies thought it would have the desired effect. Ireland, he said, was rich in saints, but had never produced a martyr, and the Recusants, rather than suffer a repulse by refusing the oath, would ‘make return of such as will take it, and yet not easily yield to make sharp and severe laws against them.’ But the King decided to rely on the new boroughs and not to have the oath administered, there being no law in Ireland by which the members could be compelled to take it. It was at first intended that the Parliament should meet in November 1612, but things could not be got ready so soon, and it was postponed first to February and then to May in the following year.[100 - Carew’s Remembrances to be thought of touching the Parliament in Carew Papers, 1611, No. 93; Davies to Salisbury, October 14, 1611, State Papers, Ireland; The King to Chichester, June 2 and September 26, 1612, in Cal. of State Papers, Ireland; Brief Relation, etc., in Carew Papers, 1613, No. 149.]

Strong Roman Catholic opposition

Demand for toleration

The peers summoned

Opposition on the part of the Recusants was soon found to be much more determined than Davies had anticipated. As early as October 1612 Sir Patrick Barnewall had written against it, and in the following month lords Slane, Killeen, Trimleston, Dunsany, and Louth addressed a letter to the King in which they complained of not being previously consulted as to the measures to be laid before Parliament, and claimed to be the Irish Council within the meaning of Poynings Act. This position was, no doubt, unsustainable; but their other arguments were of more weight. They protested against boroughs being made out of wretched villages, by the votes of whose mock representatives ‘extreme penal laws should be imposed on the King’s subjects.’ Ecclesiastical disabilities had been very sparingly and mildly pressed by Queen Elizabeth, but now the fittest men were excluded from official positions even in the remotest parts of the country. There were already plenty of Irish rebels on the Continent, and it was undesirable to add to the number of those who ‘displayed in all countries, kingdoms, and estates, and inculcated into the ears of foreign kings and princes the foulness (as they will term it) of such practices.’ It was by ‘withdrawing such laws as may tend to the forcing of your subjects’ conscience’ that the King might settle their minds and establish their fidelity. This letter had no immediate effect; the manufacture of boroughs was proceeded with, and Chichester was made a peer, an honour, said James, which had only been deferred so that the meeting of Parliament might give it greater lustre. The King directed him to call up by writ as peers certain persons distinguished by their nobility of birth and by their estates in Ireland – namely, the Earl of Abercorn, Henry Lord O’Brien, the Earl of Thomond’s eldest son, who was a sound Protestant, Lord Ochiltree and Lord Burghley; but there was a majority without these, and they were not to come unless their private affairs admitted. As a matter of fact, they do not seem to have attended. All the old nobility, being of full age, received their writs of summons, except Lord Castle Connell, whose title was actually under litigation. Lord Barry’s claim was allowed, as it had never been disputed in fact, though he had an elder brother who was a deaf mute.[101 - Letter of Lords Gormanston, Slane, Killeen, Trimleston, Dunsany, and Louth to the King, November 25, 1612, printed in Leland, ii. 443; the King to Chichester, March 4 and 31, 1613, in Cal. of State Papers, Ireland.]

Renewed Roman Catholic complaints

Chichester’s answer

On the eve of the opening of Parliament eleven recusant lords addressed a petition to the Lord Deputy in which they repeated the complaints of the former letter. They further objected to peers of England or Scotland being called by writ. A better-founded grievance was the partiality shown by sheriffs and returning officers. They also protested against the slur cast on their loyalty by the presence of troops, and against the Castle as a place of meeting, especially as it was over the powder magazine. The audacious allusion to the Gunpowder Plot gave Chichester a fine opportunity of retort. The powder, he said, had been removed to a safe place; ‘but let it be remembered of what religion they were of that placed the powder in England and gave allowance to that damnable plot, and thought the act meritorious, if it had taken effect, and would have canonised the actors.’ As to the boroughs, he could only stand upon the King’s prerogative, the best choice possible having been made; but disputed elections were for the House of Commons and not for him. As for the soldiers, they were but one hundred foot, brought into Dublin to protect the Government and Parliament against the tumultuous outrages of the ruder part of the citizens who lately drove their mayor from the tholsel and forbade him to repair to the Lord Deputy for succour.[102 - Petition of May 18, 1613, with Chichester’s answer in Carew Papers. The signatories are Lords Gormanston, Fermoy, Mountgarrett, Buttevant, Delvin, Slane, Trimleston, Louth, Dunboyne, and Cahir. The names of Lords Killeen and Dunsany, who signed the first letter, are absent, but the former was active later.]

Parliament meets

Contest for the Speakership

Violent proceedings in the Commons

Sir John Davies is elected

Parliament met in the Castle on May 18. The discontented lords and gentlemen had brought armed retinues with them, and the Government thought that no open building would be safe. As the Recusant lords refused to attend, nothing could happen in the Upper House; but in the Commons there was an immediate trial of strength over the election of Speaker. Sir John Davies had been returned for Fermanagh, and the Protestant party at once accepted him as the Government candidate; while the Opposition were for Sir John Everard, member for Tipperary. Everard was a lawyer of high character who had been second Justice of the King’s Bench and had resigned early in 1607 rather than take the oath of supremacy. Thomas Ridgeway, the Vice-Treasurer, who sat for Tyrone, proposed Davies as the fittest person and as recommended by the King himself, and the majority assented by acclamation; but Sir James Gough, member for Waterford county, proposed Everard, and was seconded by Sir Christopher Nugent, who represented Westmeath. Gough objected to all the new boroughs and to all members who were not resident in the places which returned them; and William Talbot, member for Kildare, who had been removed from the recordership of Dublin for refusing the oath of supremacy, moved that the House should be purged from unlawful members before a Speaker was chosen. Sir Oliver St. John, Master of the Ordnance, who had been returned for Roscommon, thereupon remarked that he had sat in several English Parliaments, and that a Speaker must be chosen before election committees could be appointed. The practice in England was for the ‘Ayes’ to go out and for the ‘Noes’ to remain within. ‘All you,’ he said, ‘that would have Sir John Davies to be Speaker come with me out of the House.’ The Opposition, who stayed inside, refused to name tellers, and Sir Walter Butler, his colleague in the representation of Tipperary, placed Everard in the chair, where he was held down by Sir Daniel O’Brien of Clare and Sir William Burke of Galway. Ridgeway and Wingfield then offered to tell for both sides, but the Opposition gathered together ‘in a plumpe’ so that they could not be counted. As the majority returned the tellers called the numbers out loud, and 127 were found to be for Davies, which was a clear majority in a possible 232. St. John called upon Everard to leave the chair, but he sat still; whereupon the tellers placed Davies in his lap, and afterwards ejected him with some show of force. It was pretended that great violence was used, but an eye-witness declared that there was none – ‘not so much as his hat was removed on their Speaker’s head.’ The defeated party then walked out, and Talbot said, ‘Those within are no House; and Sir John Everard is our Speaker, and therefore we will not join with you, but we will complain to my Lord Deputy and the King, and the King shall hear of this.’ The outer door having been locked during the division, Burke and Nugent re-entered to demand the keys. Davies invited them to take their seats; and when the door was opened, Everard and all his party left the Castle, declaring that they would return no more.[103 - Narratives in Carew Papers, 1613, Nos. 146, 147, 149, the last paper being a detailed account signed by forty-one Protestant members. Dr. Ryves to Dr. Dunn, May 29, in Cal. of State Papers, Ireland. St. John had been active in the English Parliament of 1593, and was M.P. for Portsmouth 1604-1607.]

Continued opposition of the Recusant Lords, and Commons, who refuse to attend the House

Speeches of Sir John Davies

The Tudors held Parliaments for special objects

King James I. to hold a real Parliament in Ireland

Davies praises Chichester

And flatters James

On the following day the Roman Catholic lords wrote to the King reiterating their arguments, avoiding the name of Parliament, which they called an intended action, and repeating the thinly veiled threats of their former letter. The Opposition in the House of Commons wrote in somewhat the same strain to the English Council, maintaining that Everard was the real Speaker, and that he had been forcibly put out. During the next two days they sent three petitions to the Lord Deputy. In the first they begged to be excused attendance for fear of their lives, and asked to see the official documents relating to the late elections. In the second they declared themselves ready to attend if they might be assured that their lives were safe, and that they should have an opportunity of questioning improper returns. Chichester granted this, and said he would be ready in the House of Lords to receive their Speaker. The Lower House met at nine on the morning of the 21st, but the Opposition refused to attend, and demanded the exclusion of the members to whose return they objected. Having exhausted all methods of persuasion, Chichester came down to the Lords, and the House of Commons were summoned to attend. Davies had in the meantime briefly returned thanks for his election, modestly depreciating his own fitness but enlarging upon the wisdom of those who had chosen a spokesman to represent them; ‘for the tower of Babel may be an example to all assemblies that where there is a confusion of tongues, great works can never go well forward.’ After the Lord Deputy had approved him as Speaker, Davies made a much longer speech, in which he traced the history of Parliaments in Ireland, showing how partial their nature and effects had hitherto been. During the later Middle Ages Ireland outside the Pale had not been within the scope of the Constitution, and since Henry VII. the few Parliaments summoned had been upon special occasions. Henry VIII. had held two, one for attainting the Geraldines and for abolishing the Pope’s title, the other for turning the lordship into a kingdom and for suppressing the abbeys. The object of Mary’s Parliament was to settle Leix and Offaly in the Crown, thus introducing the policy which Elizabeth had followed up. The establishment of the reformed Church, the declaration of the Crown’s title to Ulster, and the forfeitures which followed the attainder of Desmond and Baltinglas had occupied the great Queen’s three Parliaments. Now, under James, a representation of the whole kingdom was attempted for the first time, and general legislation would be taken in hand. As to the new boroughs, Davies argued that, as Mary had created two and Elizabeth seventeen counties, the right to make boroughs could hardly be denied to King James. He had made about forty, and the proportion of boroughs to counties was still less than it had been before Mary’s creations. As to the peers, there were now none who did not fully acknowledge the King; and no see was without a bishop appointed by him. Davies concluded his speech with some well-deserved praise of Chichester and with much bare-faced flattery of James. He had sung the virtues of Elizabeth in courtly verse; for he knew her weak point, in spite of which she was one of the greatest and wisest sovereigns that the world has seen. That might be excused, but a man of the Attorney-General’s attainments ought to have been above describing James as ‘the greatest and best king that now reigneth upon the face of the earth … whose worthiness exceeds all degrees of comparison.’[104 - Narratives ut sup. Davies’s first speech is given in Grosart’s edition of his Prose Works, ii. 218 (Private Circulation, 1876); the other in Davies’s Tracts, 1787, from a copy in the British Museum, formerly in Clarendon’s possession, compared with one in the Commons Journal, printed by Leland as an appendix. Both speeches are printed in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica. Davies was well versed in English history and legal antiquities, but he confounds the ‘Parlement’ of Paris with the States General.]

Patience of Chichester

The Opposition send delegates to the King, and the Deputy follows suit

Frequent prorogations follow

If Chichester had chosen to take advantage of the refusal of the Opposition to attend in either House, he might have made any laws he pleased. As it was, he showed the greatest patience. The Lord Chancellor, with the bishops and four temporal peers, came to the Upper House, but no one else appeared; and eleven Recusants sent their reasons in writing for staying away. Two days later the seceders were summoned by proclamation in order to pass a Bill for the recognition of the King’s title. The Recusants acknowledged this in writing, but refused to appear, though the Lord Deputy promised that no other business should be taken in hand, and contented themselves with sending delegates to represent their grievances to the King. A general levy of money to defray expenses was made all over Ireland, ‘whereunto the Popish subjects did willingly condescend’; but when this came to James’s ears, he ordered it to be forbidden by proclamation. The deputation, to whose departure Chichester made no objection, consisted of Lords Gormanston and Dunboyne, with Sir Christopher Plunkett, Sir James Gough, William Talbot, and Edward FitzHarris, the defeated candidate for the county of Limerick. The Government sent out Lord Thomond, Chief Justice Denham, and Sir Oliver St. John to explain the situation in London; and they carried over all the declarations and petitions of the Recusants. Parliament was adjourned until the King should be in a position to make up his mind, and afterwards, by special royal order prorogued to November 3. There were six successive prorogations, and the Irish Houses did not assemble again until October 1614, during which time the addled Parliament had met and separated in England. This may have been partly the consequence of Bacon’s advice, who saw the inconvenience of having two Parliaments going on at once. The mere fact that things were unsettled in Ireland might, he thought, be a good reason for expecting a liberal supply in England.[105 - Petitions and declarations by the Recusants in Parliament calendared in State Papers, Ireland, May 17-27, 1613; Lord Deputy and Council to the King, ib. No. 685; the King to Chichester, ib. July 8.]

Royal Commission for grievances

Towards the end of August, when the King returned from his progress, he issued a commission to Chichester himself, to Sir Humphry Winch, late Chief Baron in Ireland and now a Judge of the Common Pleas; Sir Charles Cornwallis, lately Ambassador in Spain; Sir Roger Wilbraham, who had been Solicitor-General in Ireland; and George Calvert, clerk of the Council. Two sets of instructions were given to them: by the first they were to inquire into all matters concerning the Irish elections and the proceedings in Parliament; by the second to report upon all general and notorious grievances, of which a few were specially mentioned. The English commissioners reached Dublin on September 11, and immediately proceeded to inquire into parliamentary matters, at the same time giving notice far and wide that they had come to inquire into grievances generally. For a month there were no complaints, and it was not until the return of some of the recusant petitioners from London that any progress could be made in that direction. James had been very careful to tell Chichester that he did not distrust or blame him, but attributed the attacks on him to the priests and Jesuits. His great object was to teach the Irish to seek redress by an orderly petition to their Sovereign rather than ‘after the old fashion of that country, to run upon every occasion to the bog and wood, and seek their remedy that way.’ This inquiry would only strengthen the Deputy’s government. If the malcontents could be induced to get to work in Parliament by taking unopposed business first, probably the rest would follow in good time.[106 - The instructions to the Commissioners are in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, omitting the first two which are now supplied by Irish Cal., 1613, No. 781. Bacon to the King, January 1614, in Spedding, v. 2; The King to Chichester, September 1613, Cal. No. 759.]

Proceedings of the Commissioners

Disputed elections

Fermanagh