The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ the Council to consider how money might be raised for the payment of the army. The members of the Board were slow to begin the discussion, but Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham at last proposed to continue the voluntary contribution for another year, and thus to provide the necessary funds until the end of 1634. At the same time he suggested a Parliament, not only for supply but for the settlement of disputed titles. Then there was another silence, and at last Wentworth called upon Parsons to give his opinion. The result was an expression of doubt as to the power of the Council to bind others, and a hint that the army might be provided for out of the King’s ordinary revenue, which Wentworth found ‘reduced to fee-farms’ and therefore quite unelastic. ‘I was then,’ he said, ‘put to my last refuge, which was plainly to declare that there was no necessity which induced me to take them to counsel in this business, for rather than fail in so necessary a duty to my master, I would undertake upon the peril of my head to make the King’s army able to subsist, and to provide for itself amongst them without their help.’ He had been but a week in Ireland, and was already talking about risking his head, which tends to show that Pym had really uttered the threat attributed to him, and that his old ally remembered it. The Chancellor, Cork, and Mountnorris thereupon agreed to the proposal of Loftus, and all, especially Cork, were eager for a Parliament. Wentworth, who had championed the Petition of Right, had so completely given himself to prerogative that he seems hardly to have realised that men might be very willing to pay a parliamentary tax, while shrinking from arbitrary exactions and from troops at free quarters. ‘As for Sir William Parsons,’ he said, ‘first and last I found him the driest of all the company.’ It was not Parsons, however, but Loftus, Cork, and Mountnorris who were destined to feel the weight of his hand, although they now received his thanks. The young Earl of Ormonde came next morning to the Lord Deputy, and for himself, his friends, and his tenants agreed to what had been done.[183]

      Miserable state of the army.

      Case of Lorenzo Cary.

      Wentworth restores discipline.

      An amateur general.

      Improvement in arms.

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

      Church and State. Bishop Bramhall.

      Bramhall reports to Laud. A dismal story.

      Simony and pluralism.

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

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