The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ by his wisdom,’ than his predecessors had ever been by the sword.[202]

      Meeting of Convocation, 1613–1615.

      The Hundred and Four Articles.

      Character of the Irish Articles.

‘Proctors in the Convocation House’ are officially mentioned in Henry VIII.’s time, but the first regular Convocation of the Irish Church was held in connection with the Parliament of 1613. It was summoned by the King’s writ, and met in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on May 24 in that year. It consisted of the bishops and of representatives from the four provincial synods. Lord Chancellor Jones as Archbishop of Dublin presided in the Upper, and Randolph Barlow, after wards Archbishop of Tuam, in the Lower House; both were Cambridge men. The principal business of this assembly was to pass the Articles, one hundred and four in number, which are generally attributed to James Ussher, then professor of divinity in Dublin. Ussher’s Puritanism was more pronounced in his earlier days than afterwards, and James was less hostile to that school than he later became. These Articles, which superseded those of 1566, received the royal assent, though they practically incorporated those promulgated at Lambeth in 1595. They were more Calvinistic and more polemical than the thirty-nine received by the Church of England upon which Burnet, in the interest of peace and comprehension, expended his latitudinarian casuistry. It may suffice to note that of the Irish Articles the twelfth declares that ‘God hath predestinated some unto life and reprobated some unto death: of both which there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished’; and the eightieth that the Pope is ‘that man of sin foretold in the Holy Scriptures whom the Lord shall consume, &c.’ In 1615 this Convocation granted one subsidy to the King.[203]

      The Thirty-nine Articles are adopted, 1634,

      but without repealing the others.

      How Wentworth treated Convocation.

      Non-subscribers to be excommunicated.

Convocation met at the same time as Parliament, Ussher presiding in the Upper and Henry Leslie Dean, and afterwards Bishop, of Down in the Lower House. Wentworth’s ‘thorough’ extended to Church as well as to State, and his great object was to have the Thirty-nine Articles established. Ussher and others were attached to the Irish Articles of 1615, and the Lord Deputy thought it prudent to leave them unrepealed while superseding them in practice, a course in which Laud acquiesced. ‘I was,’ says Bramhall, now Bishop of Derry, ‘the only man employed from him to the Convocation, and from the Convocation to him.’ Wentworth had, however, private discussions with Ussher, and of these Bramhall may have known nothing. The ‘dovelike simplicity’ of the Primate, to use Bramhall’s phrase, was easily borne down by the imperious viceroy, and the House of Bishops adopted the English Articles readily enough, as well as the canon which directed their use. The Lower House appointed a Committee, over which George Andrews, Dean of Limerick, presided, whose draft report excited Wentworth’s wrath, for it provided among other things that the Articles of 1615 should be received on pain of excommunication. The Lord Deputy sent for Andrews and called him Ananias, impounded his papers, and forbade him to report anything to the House. He then wrote to the prolocutor Leslie, enclosing a form of canon drawn up by himself, after rejecting one composed by Ussher, and ordered him to put it to the House ‘without admitting any debate or other discourse.’ The Articles of the Church of England were not to be disputed, and the names of those who voted aye and no were to be sent to him. This drastic procedure succeeded, and there was but one dissentient. As a formal concession to the independence of the Irish Church, the canons agreed upon were not quite identical with those of England, but the first, which established the Thirty-nine Articles, effected all that Wentworth wanted. It provided that ‘if any hereafter shall affirm that any of those Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, let him be excommunicated, and not absolved before he make a public revocation of his error.’ Ussher and Bramhall are agreed that the Articles of 1615 were not abrogated, but the latter informs us that any bishop ‘would have been called to an account’ who had required subscription to them after the English Articles were authorised under the Great Seal of Ireland.[204]

      Wentworth and the Queen of Bohemia.

      Unpopularity of Laud.

The veteran diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe was so much struck by Wentworth’s success that he advised the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia to make him her friend. ‘He is severe abroad and in business, and sweet in private conversation, retired in his friendships but very firm, a terrible judge, and a strong enemy; a servant violently zealous in his master’s ends, and not negligent of his own; one that will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will greater when it may serve him; affecting glory by a seeming contempt; one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, but entreprenant; but will either be the greatest man in England or much less than he is; lastly one that may—and his nature lies fit for it, for he is ambitious to do what others will not—do your Majesty very great service if you can make him.’ Laud had been misrepresented, and he also might be very useful. Elizabeth took Roe’s advice, and afterwards corresponded pretty often with the Lord Deputy, whom she had never seen. Her great object was to get some provision made for the poor ministers who were driven out of the Palatinate. ‘As for Laud,’ she said, ‘I am glad you commend him so much, for there are but a few who do it.’[205]

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [189] Wentworth to Charles I., January 22, 1633–34, enclosing his opinion concerning a Parliament, with the King’s answers dated April 12; Wentworth to the Lord Marshal (Arundel), March 22, 1633–34—all in Strafford Letters.

[190] The King to Wentworth, April 17, 1634; Wentworth to Coke, April 29 and May 13; Laud to Wentworth, May 14, all in Strafford Letters.

[191] Wentworth to Coke, May 13, 1634, Strafford Letters.

[192] Earl of Cork’s Diary at May 30, 1634, in vol. iv. of Lismore Papers, 1st series. Wentworth to Coke, June 24, Strafford Letters.

[193] The primacy of Armagh was practically settled on this occasion, but the Roman Catholics still agitated the question for some time. The controversy is exhausted in Archbishop Hugh MacMahon’s Jus Primatiale Armachanum, published in 1728. Carte’s Ormonde, i. 64. Wentworth to Coke, May 13, June 24, August 18, 1634. The order of proceeding, with the roll of the Lords, is given in the Strafford Letters after the last date, and in the journals.

[194] Irish Lords Journals. July 14 and 15, 1634.

[195] Wentworth to Coke, August 18, 1634. The Lord Deputy’s speech in Strafford Letters, i. 286, is not entered in the Journals of Parliament. Wentworth to Cottington, ib. August 22; to Laud, ib. August 23, State СКАЧАТЬ