The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ Cork as a benefactor.

      Laud is puzzled,

      but Wentworth has no doubts.

      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]

      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]

      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]

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [173] Welwood’s Memoirs of the most Material Transactions, etc., being short and well written, may have had a good deal to say to forming public opinion. There are a great many editions, and Lord Chatham praised the book. Wentworth to Conway, January 20, 1625–6 in State Papers, Domestic. Wentworth’s letter to Sir Robert Askwith, December 7, 1620, is in Camden Miscellany, vol. ix. Other electioneering letters are in the Strafford Letters, СКАЧАТЬ