The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ benefited by the settlement.

      The King is convinced by the complainants,

      but soon changes his mind.

      The King approves of the plantation.

The tendency of James I. to give decisions upon one-sided evidence, and to veer round when he heard the other side, is well illustrated by his dealings with the Wexford settlement. The case for the Irish inhabitants, as matters stood at the end of 1611, may be taken as sufficiently stated in the petition presented by Henry Walsh on their behalf. Walsh seems to have been a lawyer, but he was in possession of 220 acres as a freeholder, which were reduced to 130 by the plan of settlement. He stated that he and his fellows had surrendered upon the faith of a regrant in common socage ‘reduced from gavelkind and other uncertain tenures’ in consideration of paying a head rent of 90l. to the Castle of Ferns and of 60l. into the Exchequer. The regrants were delayed, but on the King’s title being set up he was induced to grant patents to several undertakers, 1,500 acres apiece being assigned to Sir Laurence Esmond, ‘servitor, and a native of Wexford,’ and Sir Edward Fisher, also a servitor. It afterwards appeared that 19,900 acres were disposed of in this way, 500 to Nicholas Kenny the escheator, 1,000 to William Parsons the surveyor and future Lord Justice, 600 to Conway Brady, the Queen’s footman, 1,000 to Francis Blundell, afterwards Vice-Treasurer, 1,000 to Sir Robert Jacob the Solicitor-General, and so forth. Some of these were put into possession by the sheriff even before the issue of their patents, military force being employed. Walsh said a hundred thousand people were affected by these transactions, which was no doubt a great exaggeration, but he could state with some truth that the interests of Sir Richard Masterson and other old English settlers were threatened by the assertion of a title ‘dormant and not heard of time out of mind.’ The Commissioners for Irish causes in London so far supported the petition that they advised the revocation of all patents granted since the surrender of the native landowners, and that no advantage should be taken of them except to exact a moderate increase of the Crown rent. The King thereupon ordered Chichester to revoke the patents to Fisher and Esmond, to raise the rent from 45l. to 50l., and not to allow Henry Walsh to be molested. The petitioners, said the King, had been denied the benefit of the Commission of defective titles, and ‘advantage taken of their surrender to their own disherison.’ Chichester objected that the Commissioners for Irish causes had been misled by false statements, and that he would suspend all action until he had fresh orders. Whereupon the King, who had been having some talk with Sir John Davies, declared that Walsh’s petition was ‘full of false and cautelous surmises,’ and ordered him to be summoned before the Irish Council and punished in an exemplary manner if he failed to prove his statements. Chichester was directed to go on with the plantation, assured of his Majesty’s continued approbation, and encouraged to make the work his own by visiting the district in person.[144]

      The critics to be punished.

The preparations for holding a Parliament may have hindered Chichester’s activity, but the King’s vacillations would have caused delay in any case. At the end of 1612 James revoked all former letters on the subject except that of May 7, 1611, by which the Lord Deputy had been authorised to receive the surrender of the natives and to make ‘regrants to such of them as he should think fit such quantities of land and at such rent and upon such conditions as he should think fit.’ There might then be made such an intermixture of English settlers as would civilise the country and ‘annoy the mountain neighbours if they should thereafter stir.’ Henry Walsh and Thomas Hoare, who had held public indignation meetings and ‘endeavoured seditiously to stir up the inhabitants’ against the King’s title and against his good work of plantation, were ordered to be duly punished for their ‘inordinate and contemptuous behaviour.’[145]

      Nullum Tempus occurrit Regi.

      Bishop Rothe’s view of the plantation.

      He foretells future trouble.

It is a well-known maxim of our law that the Crown cannot lose its rights through lapse of time. In modern practice this doctrine has been somewhat modified by statute and by the decisions of judges; but in the time of James I. it was accepted literally, and no lawyer or official seems to have thought that there was anything extraordinary in setting up a title for the King which had not been heard of for generations. Those who suffered by the transaction pleaded that Art MacMurrough had no right to the country in the feudal sense, and could not therefore surrender it; and even if the effect of Lord Lovel’s attainder were admitted, there had been no attempt to act upon it for 120 years. The official correspondence has hitherto been followed here, but it is fair to append the criticism of a thoroughly competent observer who lived not far off and who understood the subject. The learned David Rothe, who was a very honest and by no means extreme man, appealed like Bacon to foreign countries and the next age, and published the story of the Wexford settlement in Latin. He showed how little chance rude and illiterate peasants had against lawyers, and he foresaw the consequences of driving them to desperation. ‘The Viceroy,’ he wrote, ‘ought to have looked closer before he suggested an imperfect and shaky title to the King, as a solid foundation for his new right, and before he drove from their well established and ancient possession harmless poor natives encumbered with many children and with no powerful friends. They have no wealth but flocks and herds, they know no trade but agriculture or pasture, they are unlearned men without human help or protection. Yet though unarmed they are so active in mind and body that it is dangerous to drive them from their ancestral seats, to forbid them fire and water; thus driving the desperate to revenge and even the more moderate to think of taking arms. They have been deprived of weapons, but are in a temper to fight with nails and heels and to tear their oppressors with their teeth. Necessity gives the greatest strength and courage, nor is there any sharper spur than that of despair. Since these Leinster men, and others like them, see themselves excluded from all hopes of restitution or compensation, and are so constituted that they would rather starve upon husks at home than fare sumptuously elsewhere, they will fight for their altars and hearths, and rather seek a bloody death near the sepulchres of their fathers than be buried as exiles in unknown earth or inhospitable sand.’[146]

      Outlaws about the plantations.

      In the autumn of 1619 St. John reported that 300 outlaws had been killed, most of them doubtless in the hills between Tyrone and Londonderry, but many also near the Wexford plantation, where small bands of ten to twenty escaped detection and punishment for a long time. Their own countrymen and neighbours proved the most efficient tools of the Government, and a grandson of Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne, whom St. John addressed as his loving friend, took money for this service. Means were found to satisfy a very few more native claimants, raising the number to 150, which was considered too many, since the really suitable cases had long been dealt with. Some of the Kavanaghs who boasted themselves the descendants of kings, but whom St. John was never tired of describing as bastards and rebels, ‘with a crew of wicked rogues gathered out of the bordering parts, entered into the plantation, surprised Sir James Carrol’s and Mr. Marwood’s houses, murdered their servants, burned their towns, and committed many outrages in those parts in all likelihood upon a conspiracy among themselves to disturb the settlement of those countries. For which outrage most of the malefactors have since been slain or executed by law.’ In London a tenant of Blundell’s, who was perhaps crazy and certainly drunken, asked him for a drink, after taking which he proposed to go to Ireland and help to burn his landlord’s house. Petitioners continued to bring their complaints both to London and Dublin, and in the summer of 1622 Mr. Hadsor, who knew Irish, looked into the matter and begged them to return to their own countries on the understanding that well-founded grievances should be reported to the King.

      The undertakers settle down on the land.

By the time of Hadsor’s survey things had gone too far to be altered, and СКАЧАТЬ