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Two projected changes in Ulster had,
in 1607, determined Hugh O'Neill that nothing was left for him but flight
from his native land. The first was the intention, often discussed but
hitherto abandoned, to place a President over Ulster. Long ago Sussex
had made the wise suggestion that O'Neill himself should be made President,
and thus made responsible for the quiet and good government of the country
on the Queen's behalf, but this plan was rejected, and for many years
no step was taken. When, during Sir George Carey's[1] short term of office
as Deputy, the dreaded sheriffs appeared in the North as a preliminary
to the appointment of Chichester (then governor of Carrickfergus) as President,
Tyrone openly refused obedience to any save to her Majesty and her Deputy,
and the scheme fell through; though the military districts into which
the country was divided up did not differ from it in principle. "Rather
than live under the like yoke and considering the misery he saw endured
by others under the like government," he exclaimed, "he would
sooner pass all to himself than abide it."
[1] He was appointed on the departure of Mountjoy, June 2, 1604.
The second immediate cause of O'Neill's flight was the oft-mooted plantation
of Ulster with Scotch and English settlers. The idea of plantations had
been much in the air. The settlements of English in Virginia overseas,
the writings of Bacon, the experiments of Sir Thomas Smith and Essex in
the North, and of the Munster planters in the South, had turned men's
minds toward the project during Elizabeth's reign; but the attempts hitherto
made in Ireland had not proved very encouraging. Essex's plantation was
a failure, and in the South of Ireland many of the estates had reverted
to representatives of the original owners. The settlers either did not
come or were driven out by the old proprietors, who made continual onslaughts
upon them; or they were frightened away by the disturbances in the province.
But the idea was not dead, and when James I came to the throne he looked
to a new plantation in Ulster as a means of rewarding his Scottish adherents
and of increasing his own revenues. On the one hand, his counsellors were
representing the plantation as a work of God, put by extraordinary fortune
into his hands to carry out; on the other, the officers and soldiers who
had fought in the wars of Ulster were pressing for the lands that had
been promised as their reward. The departure of the Earls afforded the
opportunity for which all were impatiently waiting, and no time was lost
in taking the work in hand.[2]
[2] See Bacon's treatise, Considerations touching the Plantation in Ireland
in Spedding, Bacon's Life and Letters, iv, pp. 116-126.
Ever since the days of de Courcy parts of the North had been settled by
Anglo-Norman families, and Lecale, the present Co. Down, was studded with
castles and castellated towers dating from their occupation. The old planters--the
Savages, Russells, FitzSimons, Awdleys, Jordans, and Bensons--remained
on their lands, in close proximity to the family of Magennis and the O'Neills
of Clannaboy. Sir Arthur Magennis was the most Anglicized; he had become
so 'civil' that he gave up bonaght, paid rent to the Queen, and wore English
clothes every festival-day; he could still, in 1586, put sixty horse and
eighty foot into the field. Clannaboy was owned by Sir Con MacNeill Oge,
a warlike chieftain, who so annoyed the citizens of Carrickfergus by his
raids and depredations that they offered to pay Sorley Boy MacDonnell
£20 in wine, silk, and saffron to defend them from him. He was kept
quiet in the castle at Dublin, where he was sent as prisoner, and most
of North Clannaboy had been given to Sir Bryan MacPhelim.
The Scots had a strong hold in Antrim, and the Queen's reinstatement
of the MacConnells or MacDonnells on the old Byset estates had established
their claim to the Glynnes or Glens of Antrim. Parts of Clannaboy were
held by the Clan-Donell, while the MacGills, Macaulays, and Clan-Alister
occupied the coasts on the north-east. The Route, claimed by the MacQuillans,
contained the ruins of forts and monasteries built by the Normans, but
they had been driven into a corner near the Bann. In the main, the province
east of the Bann remained Irish until the plantation, with a large admixture
of Scots, though certain portions, such as the Newry and the Mourne district,
had been handed over to Sir Nicholas Bagenal and other Englishmen. The
only English fort east of the Bann was Carrickfergus (then usually called
Knockfergus); they held also Carlingford Lough. West of the Bann the country
was in 1586 purely Irish. Except the forts of Dungannon and Charlemont
west of Lough Neagh, with a portion of land round them, and the distant
and isolated forts of Culmore and Derry on Lough Foyle and of Ballyshannon
on Donegal Bay, no part of the vast stretch of country lying between Lough
Neagh and the Atlantic, including the present counties of Londonderry,
Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Donegal, was in the possession of the English.[3]
[3]"Description and Present State of Ulster in 1586," in Carew,
Cal., ii, No. 623, p. 435, and Cal. S. P. I., James I, Introd., viii-xiv.
(1608-10)
There is no doubt that the departure of Tyrone and Tyrconnel gave the
Government the opportunity for which it had been waiting.Chichester, who
had become Lord Deputy in 1605, writes joyfully to the King that "all
will now be his Majesty's," and follows this up with the proposal
of driving out all the inhabitants of Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and Fermanagh
with their goods and cattle to inhabit waste lands across the Bann, the
Blackwater, and Lough Erne, which he holds to be "an honest and laudable
act, void of iniquity and cruelty." It is difficult to realize what
sort of act would have seemed wrong or cruel to Chichester. Nor is it
clear why flight from their country should involve forfeiture of the Earls'
lands. But the vast confiscation had been long contemplated, and Tyrone
was hardly reported out of the country when Sir Thomas Phillips, an old
'servitor ' who had seen service both on the Continent and in Ireland,
and who had been rewarded with an early grant of land east of the Bann,
put in a claim for "a good share of Tyrone's land" near Coleraine
to plant with English. He became one of the most active and successful
of the planters. The King, who shortly before had received Tyrone with
honour, now approved of the forfeiture of his estates, adding the instruction
that Scottish planters were to be admitted with the English; that he preferred
English who had been 'servitors,' i.e., who had served with the armies
of the Crown in Ireland, rather than new men from England; that plots
of land were not to be too large or bestowed on needy persons; and that
the Irish of good note and desert were to have plots and were to be treated
with respect and favour--excellent suggestions, some of which were grounded
on experience gained through the failure of the Munster plantation, with
its vast, ill-defined grants.
The lands for disposal included not only the districts under the direct
sway of the two exiled Earls, but the large portions of Fermanagh vacated
by Cuconnacht Maguire, who accompanied the Earls in their flight, the
property of O'Kane (O'Cahain), and the property of Inishowen west of Lough
Foyle. This belonged to the brave but unfortunate Sir Cahir O'Doherty,
whose lands were forfeited after his brief revolt arising out of an altercation
between him and the deputy-governor of Derry, one Pawlett, whose arrogance
and inexperience wholly unfitted him for the post. Sir Cahir was slain
in a skirmish in July 1608, just as the first commissioners were setting
out for the North, one of the matters with which they were charged being
to determine whether he had died in actual rebellion, thus securing his
attainder and the immediate resumption of his lands by the Crown. Chichester
himself was an early applicant for Sir Cahir O'Doherty's property, with
its valuable fishings on the island of Inch, on which he had long set
his mind. It is difficult to acquit him of having purposely delayed to
read the letter written by the King just before Sir Cahir's outbreak into
revolt, ordering the restoration of his estates, some part of which had
been granted away to Sir Ralph Bingley. Chichester's own application for
the property was received in London, and the rights passed to him, before
this important letter was opened, and by this ruse Chichester secured
to himself, in addition to the lands he got from 'defective titles,' a
revenue of £10,000, and Inishowen, besides an extensive tract of
land about the present city of Belfast. There had been a castle on this
spot since Norman days; but the modern city dates from Chichester's occupation.
The castle and lands were granted to him in 1612, when he brought over
immigrants from Devon to people the district; in 1613 it received its
charter of incorporation with the right to send two members to Parliament.[4]
It was O'Doherty's country that brought him his large income; otherwise
he purchased his estates and "never asked for advancement, though
he grumbled like a right Western man."
[4] G. Benn, History of the Town of Belfast, pp. 12-13.
O'Kane's country of Cianachta stretched from the eastern side of Lough
Foyle along the coast to the Bann, and inland across the great forests
of Glenconkeine and Killitragh, which yielded as fine timber as could
be found in any part of the British dominions. On this valuable property
cattle were raised in large numbers, and from old days a trade had been
carried on in the skins of red deer, sheep, squirrels, martens, and rabbits,
which were shipped to Brabant, then the centre of trade for the North
of Europe.[5] The fisheries both on the Bann and along the coast were
of great excellence, and attracted the industrious Dutch fishermen and
the Spaniards, Philip II having made a treaty with O'Kane for fishing
on his coast. The quantities of herrings taken after Michaelmas "brought
yearly above seven or eight score sail of his Majesty's subjects and strangers
for lading, besides an infinite number of boats for fishing and killing."[6]
Such was the report of the agents of the London Companies sent over to
inspect the country in 1609. There were, besides pearl-fisheries in Lough
Foyle, multitudes of wild fowl of all kinds, and materials for house and
ship building in plenty. All over the North corn, rye, peas, and beans
were grown; the report says that they were raised in such quantities that
they could not only supply their own neighbourhood, "but also furnish
the city of London yearly with manifold provision, for their fleets especially."
Hemp and flax grew there more freely than elsewhere, and the linen yarn
spun was finer and more plentiful than in the rest of the kingdom. The
O'Kanes had been a powerful clan, and it was the duty of the chief of
the house to cast the gold sandal over the head of the O'Neill on his
election at Tullahogue; his three castles and richly endowed monasteries
testified to the wealth as well as to the piety of the family.
[5] Guicciardini, Desc. de Paesi Bassi, 15.
[6] Cal. S. P. I. (1609), No. 372, p. 209.
Among those whose lands were now declared forfeited were several who had
been found on the English side during the recent rebellions, and it was
no doubt of these chiefs that the King was thinking when he gave directions
that Irish of good note and desert were to be treated with respect and
favour. But, in the scramble for land that followed, the claims of these
men were forgotten, or they had to be content with plots which must have
seemed small indeed beside their former rich possessions. Young Maolmora
O'Reilly, whose father was slain at the battle of the Yellow Ford, fighting
on the English side, received only a small portion of his own lands in
County Cavan, though his mother was a niece of the Duke of Ormonde; and
Conor Roe Maguire, who had taken the Government side and had been given
three baronies of the Maguire lands in Fermanagh, also had to be content
with a fragment of the estate shortly before bestowed upon him. Such men
became, in fact, merely undertakers, like any other applicants, and took
such portions as they received under the same conditions. A like fate
befell the septs of the MacSweeneys, or MacSwynes, on Lough Swilly, and
the O'Boyles and O'Gallaghers, both Donegal clans. The MacSwynes had been
so warlike a race that it was commonly said that the chief with whom they
sided was certain to carry off victory, though all Ireland were ranged
against him. Sidney found the clan "grown to such credit and force
that, though they were no lords of lands themselves, they would make the
greatest lords of the province both fear them and be glad of their friendship."
[7] Maolmora of the Club, or Staff, claimed to be descended from "Swaine,
King of Norway," and he kept up the ferocious habits suitable to
this ancestry. He and his men were freebooters with a strong dash of the
pirate. For a refractory tribesman to be brained by the club of his chief
was in his eyes an honour; the lesser criminals were hung out over the
parapets of the castle in "gads" by their fellow-clansmen.[8]
Others of the race believed themselves to be descended from Suibhne (Sweeney)
Menn, monarch of Ireland 622-635. They were linked in kinship with the
O'Neills, but in the sixteenth century they usually fought on the side
of the O'Donnells, and they fell with their ruin. The blind bard Tadhg
O'Higgin describes with much warmth the hospitalities of Maolmora MacSweeney's
house, the great concourse of poets gathered round him, who stood up and
pledged him in ale quaffed "from golden goblets and beakers of horn"
till they retired to rest a while before dawn.[9]
[7] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 36, pp. 39-40 (February 27, 1576).
[8] C. P. Meehan, Fate and Fortunes of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel
(1868), Appendix, pp. 501-504.
[9] S. H. O'Grady, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum
, pp. 420-424; E. Knott, Bardic Poems of Tadhg Dall O Huiginn, ii, 120.
The MacSweeneys were looked to as holding the balance of power in the
North between the two predominant clans, but the quarrels between different
branches of their own house, the MacSweeney Fanad and MacSweeney Doe (i.e.,
na dtuadh, "of the axes"), occupied too much of their attention
to allow of any such clear policy, and they fought on all sides indiscriminately--as
often against their own kin as against outsiders. Though Sidney believed
they possessed no lands, these septs claimed to be freeholders by letters
patent; and Chichester says that any settlers sent to replace them must
be very powerful to suppress them; "to displant them is very difficult."
In the end they too were admitted to some portions as undertakers, under
similar terms with the strangers. Among others who claimed indisputable
rights in the land were merchants of the Pale to whom Tyrconnel had, in
the time of his distress, mortgaged "great scopes of land for small
sums of money," and the widows and mothers of the great chiefs, among
whom were the Ineen Dubh MacDonnell, mother of Hugh Roe, the widows of
Maguire and O'Boyle, and the mother of O'Reilly. Davies found it convenient,
on various grounds, to find all these titles "void or voidable in
English law" so that the pretenders "are left entirely to his
Majesty's grace and bounty."[10] There was little chance that justice
would be done to these claimants. By Irish law women did not inherit;
by English law the merchant conveyances became void because they had received
them from O'Donnell. If, in any case their legal rights seemed clear,
it was always possible to point to the sweeping act of confiscation passed
on the downfall of Shane O'Neill (11th Elizabeth), "the dead case,"
as the Attorney-General Davies called it, as a cause through which they
had been forfeited. With so many loopholes for legal casuistry to exercise
its gifts upon, it would be difficult for any desirable property to escape
forfeiture, or for any rights to be upheld. In the final distribution,
however, their jointures were continued to these ladies of rank for their
lives, with reversion to the Irish or to the Crown, though several of
them were removed from their own homes and settled in other districts.[11]
Some of them appear to have sunk into great poverty, for they were without
protection, and most of them were aged. Their position and power were
gone, and their Irish tenants, even more than the undertakers, seem to
have taken advantage of their loneliness and their defenceless position.
[10] Letter to Salisbury, September 12, 1609.
[11] For a list of these distressed ladies and nobles see George Hill,
Plantation of Ulster, p. 131, note 20.
There are letters from Sir Donal O'Kane about his wife and from Sir Niall
Garbh O'Donnell about his sister, which show the straits into which these
women were driven. Both letters were written from the Tower of London
in 1613, where O'Donnell and O'Kane were incarcerated. The Council in
London writes to Chichester that "after long attendance here"
the ladies are returning to Ireland, and they have asked for some means
to carry them over, since their tenants, to whom under the Irish system
they have granted out cattle, have refused to make any repayment or to
supply them with any means. Lists of the tenants' names and the number
of cows placed with them are enclosed. These lists are of great interest,
for they show that the old Irish method of loaning out cattle to the tenants
was still in common use at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In
the later days of the plantation it is a frequent source of complaint
that those tenants who still held by this old system of 'commins' from
the reduced chiefs, who were now unable to enforce their rights, took
advantage of their freedom to decline to pay their dues. They drove the
cattle they had received from these Irish lords into 'creaghts' or lonely
places, and would neither give them up nor pay for them in kind, as they
had been accustomed to do. Their masters, who had plots of land allotted
to them by the Government, but no cattle to place on them, were left without
any means of subsistence, and often had to take to the wild life of the
wood-kerne and robber, as so many of the swordsmen had done, simply from
helplessness to enforce their authority over their own tenants. They were
far worse off than the tenants themselves. In the case of the two ladies
belonging to the captives in the Tower, Chichester appears to have exerted
himself to recover their dues, for the letters preserved are written to
thank him for his intervention on their behalf.[12] Nevertheless, when,
some time afterward, the Duchess of Buckingham, being in the neighbourhood
of Limavady, visited Sir Donal's widow, her husband having died in the
Tower in 1628, she found her "sitting on her bent hams before a fire
of branches, wrapped in a blanket, in a half-ruined edifice of which the
windows were stuffed with straw." If the men found it hard to exact
their dues under the new conditions, it is little wonder that a lonely
widow, without friends, should have fallen into utter poverty.
[12] Cal S. P. I. (1613), Nos. 726-731, pp. 390-392. Niall Garbh's letter
says: "It is not unknown to your Lordships that the Irish gentry
did ever make their followers' purses their only exchequer." (p.
235).
Another lady, wife of Sir Cormac MacBaron O'Neill, was in hardly better
condition. During a tour in the North, Sir Humphrey Winche, Chief Justice,
"little Winch of Lincoln's Inn," as Chamberlayn calls him, was
forced owing to ill-health to halt a night at her house. Her husband,
too, was prisoner in the Tower. "His lady gave them house-room, but
had neither bread, drink, meat, nor linen to welcome them, yet kindly
helped them to two or three muttons from her tenants." Sir Cormac
had proposed, on the flight of his half-brother Tyrone, that he should
be made custodian of his lands, apparently for the purpose of preserving
the rents in case of Tyrone's return, but the Government distrusted his
intentions and placed him in custody. Another of the same family, Sir
Art MacBaron O'Neill, elder half-brother to Tyrone, was removed from his
own estate in Armagh, in the district called after him Oneilan, to a proportion
of two thousand acres in Orier. In the wars in which his family were involved
he had taken the English side. He and his wife were now very aged, and
he begged that the new grant should be made out in the joint names of
himself and his wife, so that if she survived him she might not be left
in poverty, a request that was readily granted, as it induced the old
couple to remove at once.[13] How such people managed to live, cut off
from all their old associations, without any dwelling ready to receive
them or retainers to work for them, it is difficult to imagine. Even to
the Commissioners in London the whole problem seemed to require "the
greatest and most serious consideration." When it came to the point
it was indeed found incapable of realization. The old inhabitants were
first reprieved, because it was found that the new settlers did not come
over by any means so promptly as was expected; and when they began slowly
to filter into the country, often without the workmen they had stipulated
to bring with them, they found that they would die of starvation if the
country-people left and drove away their cattle. They needed them for
building and for service, and they found that they were willing to pay
high rents in order to be left in their old districts. A mutual sense
of need induced a mutual sense of protection; being on the spot, they
saved the cost of bringing over English and Scottish labourers. They were
contented and at home, while the newcomers felt entirely at a loss in
the new conditions. In consequence, numbers of them never removed, but
settled down, after the great upheaval, as tenants to the new settlers.
Their descendants remain to this day all over the country.
[13] George Hill, op. cit., p. 218; Cal. S. P. I, Dec. 9, 1610, No. 925,
p. 529
It fell to Sir Arthur Chichester to carry out the proposals for the Plantation
of Ulster. He brought to his Irish administration the ability, avarice,
and ruthlessness which were combined in so many of the leading figures
of the age. His recipe for the ills of Ireland was one common in his day:
"famine to consume them; English manners to reform them." "I
wish the rebels and their countries in all parts of Ireland were like
these; they starve miserably and eat dogs, mares, and garrons where they
can get them. When they are down, it must be good laws, severe punishments,
abolishing their ceremonies and customs in religion, etc., that must bridle
them."[14] Elsewhere he writes: "I have often said and written
that it is famine that must consume them; our swords and other endeavours
work not that speedy effect which is expected." Chichester had as
his right-hand man the Solicitor-General for Ireland, Sir John Davies,
who accompanied him when, as Deputy, to which post he was raised in 1605,
he made those tours of the northern province which determined the course
of action to be followed in regard to the plantation. Davies was a man
of active, inquiring mind, and to him we owe. a considered study of The
True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, a masterly sketch
of English dealings in the country up to his own time.[15] His ready pen
and aptitude of description were employed in reports and letters describing
his own and the Deputy's tours in various parts of the country. He was
a voluminous poet of a didactic kind, vain of his classical attainments,
and shrewd in his judgments. But he did not hesitate to fit the law to
his proceedings if he thought the King, of whom he was a most loyal sycophant,
could be served thereby; and his legal judgments varied as circumstances
required to serve the purposes in view. He was more deeply engaged in
making the most of present opportunities than influenced by abstract ideas
of right or justice.
[14] Letter of March 14, 1602; Cal. S. P. I, Eliz., p. 334.
[15] Some of his deductions have to be discounted owing to the fact that
he makes no distinction between the disaffected and loyal Irish.
In the original plan of the settlement, before the flight of the Earls,
the chief aim in view seems to have been the sweeping away of tanistry
with a regrant of lands to tenants holding directly from the Crown. The
native titles of MacMahon, Maguire, and O'Reilly were to be extinguished
and a repartition of the counties of Monaghan, Cavan, and Fermanagh made.
We may give Chichester the credit of believing that he honestly conceived
that his scheme of settling the surviving peasants upon the land as freeholders,
when the awful famine had done its work, would be the beginning of a new
prosperity for the North. He determined to set them free from the authority
and exactions of their chiefs and to give them lands of their own, to
be held for a fixed rent directly from the Crown. A tour was undertaken
by Davies before the flight of the Earls, probably in 1606, to inquire
into the present conditions on which the chief lords and inferior gentry
and inhabitants of these counties held their lands under the native system,
but he finds himself uncertain whether the smaller holders were tenants-at-will
or not; a certain number of such as were fit to serve on juries were,
however, created freeholders, and of these in Monaghan alone there were
found to be over two hundred.[16] The condition of the Church is described
as deplorable, the churches lying in ruins and their lands waste, many
of the new Protestant parsons and vicars "poor, ragged, ignorant
creatures, whom ten parishes united would not maintain in decency,"
and the Bishop of Kilmore with the best parsonage in the kingdom holding
neither service nor sermon in either of his dioceses, "but diligent
in visiting his barbarous clergy to make benefit out of their insufficiency,
according to the proverb that an Irish priest is better than a milch cow."[17]
[16] Letter touching the state of Monaghan, etc., Works, iii, 123. This
letter is sometimes erroneously dated 1607; its date is probably 1606.
[17] Ibid., p. 158-159.
But these preliminary steps, which have some show of justice and equity,
were but the first warnings of the gigantic confiscations of Tyrone, Derry,
and Donegal which followed on the flight. We have seen that during his
visit to the North Davies was unable to determine whether the inhabitants
were freeholders or tenants-at-will. In Fermanagh "the greatest part
of the inhabitants did claim to be freeholders, who, surviving the late
rebellion, had never been attainted, but, having received his Majesty's
pardon stood upright in the law, so that we could not clearly entitle
the Crown to their lands." Thus the project of plantation was hampered
by the quietude of the inhabitants, whom there seemed no excuse to evict
from their holdings. But reflection opened to Davies's mind a way out
of the difficulty. Later in the year, while travelling in Munster, he
writes to Salisbury that he has to make to him "an overture of a
matter of good advantage which I confess I understood not before my last
journey into Ulster." He then makes the iniquitous suggestion that
by the Act of the nth Elizabeth, on the conclusion of the wars with Shane
O'Neill, all lands were vested in the Crown, and consequently O'Kane's
country and all the old freeholders' possessions in Tyrone "are actually
and really in his Majesty's hands and the tenants are for the most part
intruders upon his Majesty's possession."[18] Davies proposes to
include them all in the sweeping Act of confiscation, which was to transfer
their properties to English or Scottish settlers.
[18] Works, iii, 201-22; Cal. S. P. I., Nov. 12, 1606.
In 1608-09 took place commissions ordered by James I for the purpose of
(a) a survey of the escheated lands, (b) assizes for the trial of men
detained in gaol since the last rebellions, and (c) to find that O'Doherty
had died in actual rebellion, which would make his lands forfeit to the
Crown. All three went on together, the second being simplified by the
refusal of the jurors to convict and by the previous clearance from the
gaols of large numbers of persons who had been committed, on account of
the difficulty of guarding them. Chichester and Davies were accompanied
by Sir Thomas Ridgeway, Treasurer, and "they took time by the forelock,"
Davies having undertaken before Michaelmas "to present a perfect
survey of six several counties which the King has now in demesne and actual
possession in this province; which is a greater extent of land than any
prince of Europe has to dispose of." Chichester's intimate acquaintance
with the province supplied the necessary notes and instructions, and Davies
sent in from time to time reports of their progress, which supply much
valuable information as to the state of the North at that time. The appearance
of the stately cavalcade among the wild mountains to the west of the Carntogher
range filled the inhabitants with astonishment. "They wondered as
much to see the King's Deputy as the ghosts in Virgil wondered to see
Aeneas alive in hell." They wondered still more when they were called
together to be told, in long legal discourses, that his Majesty "may
and ought to dispose of these lands, as he is about to do, in law, in
conscience, and in honour." The owners retained a lawyer of the Pale
to plead their rights and to claim the benefit of the proclamation made
only five years before, whereby the persons, lands, and goods of all his
Majesty's subjects were taken into his royal protection; but against the
arguments set forth by the Attorney-General such pleas were powerless.
The arguments were, indeed, only excuses to give a show of justice to
a fixed resolve. The total of the escheated lands amounted to nearly 3,798,000
acres, of which about 55,000 acres were reserved for Irish of different
ranks. An attempt was made to avoid the loose grants which had proved
a failure in Munster by parcelling the lands out in quantities of 2000,
1500, and 1000 acres with a proportionate quantity of wood; though one
applicant, old Lord Audley, made an application for 100,000 acres in Tyrone,
"the fairest and goodliest country in Ireland universal," as
Sir T. Cusack had called it in 1553, which was more than the estimated
total quantity to be divided in that county. "He is an ancient nobleman
ready to undertake much," is Chichester's cynical remark on this
offer; but like many others made by the undertakers it was soon to be
shown that his proposals far exceeded his power to pay or to plant.
The applicants for lands were of three kinds: English and Scottish undertakers;
servitors, or officials and soldiers who had served in Ireland; and Irish.
The King favoured the Scots, of whom Chichester had the worst opinion,
counting them "worse than Irishmen"; but applications from the
Lowlands came pouring in from needy Scots, who thought to build up new
fortunes in the sister-isle. It was decided that towns were to be built
in Derry and Coleraine on the choice lands with excellent fishing in sea
and river already appropriated to their own use by Chichester, Phillips,
and Sir Randal MacDonnell, who most unwillingly exchanged them for larger
grants elsewhere. A formidable difficulty was the great extent of the
lands claimed by the Church. Though Davies had correctly shown that the
'termon,' or Church and monastic lands, were not the private property
of the bishop, any more than the tribe lands were the property of the
chief, but were held from time immemorial for the Church by lay administrators,
the redoubtable Bishop Montgomery of Derry claimed all the Church lands
as his own property, and the newcomers had to fight him step by step.
He wrestled so well that out of 6343 acres he secured three-fourths for
his personal use, and invited over several other members of his family.
The Dean claimed 373 acres, but the commission had to insist on provision
being made for the poor incumbents, the bishops moving a petition for
compensation for the loss. Chichester, in reference to the bishops, speaks
of the "insatiable humours of craving men." These church lands
became a chief refuge for the Irish people who had always lived on them
and who were preferred to strangers; so that, though by their covenants
the bishops were bound to plant one-third with British, in practice these
lands remained largely Irish districts. The total of Church properties
in Ulster amounted to over 68,000 acres.
Meanwhile, in London, large properties had been put up for sale and,
largely through the King's personal influence, the problems of a special
"London Company" plantation in Ulster were discussed, and a
party of three gentlemen representing the City Companies went over to
prospect. Their report, intended to tempt buyers, was so encouraging that
the lands were taken up at once on the London market. They found good
lands, very fair woods, and rivers. The natural resources included skins
of animals, salmon, eels, yarn, pipe-staves, tallow, and hides, besides
"ore from which a smith can make iron before one's face and turn
that in less than one hour into steel." A lottery was held in London,
and the City Companies formed themselves into twelve groups, which were
to divide out the allotted lands between them. Thus came into existence,
on January 28, 1609-10, what became known as "The Irish Society,"
for the management of the Irish estates incorporated by charter in 1613;
and the ancient city of Derry took the name of Londonderry, by which it
has been known ever since.[19] The lands were to be held by the three
classes to whom they were granted by different tenures; English and Scottish
undertakers must plant with English and lowland Scots only; their grants
were of 2000 and 1500 acres respectively, holding by knight's service
in capite, or of 1,000 acres, holding by the same service, but of Dublin
Castle and not of the King, like the larger holders. They were to be free
from rent for two years, but were bound to build a castle, a house of
brick or stone, or a court or bawn according to their rank, and to see
that their followers also built themselves houses. The second body of
planters were the servitors, army officers and officials who might plant
either with British or Irish, and who held in fee-farm; they also must
build and settle within two years. The third body were the old inhabitants,
who were to be freeholders and were to build a strong court or bawn. Timber
was given free, and for five years all planters could import, duty free,
all personal necessaries, and for seven years they might transport their
own produce free of custom. The terms to the Irish inhabitants, though
hedged about with stipulations against alienating property once it was
taken up, were far from unjust. They were, considering the ideas of the
day, even generous. It would really seem to have been Chichester's design
to settle a contented peasantry on the soil. Serfdom was abolished, and
though the Irish must reside on the plains, under the eye of the servitors,
to keep a watch on their movements, this resulted in practice in planting
them on some of the best lands. The Ulster plantation was probably the
only attempt made in that day of plantations to provide for the original
inhabitants at all; having wiped out the chiefs, the peasants were thought
to be harmless. Davies is probably right in saying that, among a series
of plantations of which he knew, none other had taken the poorer classes
into consideration.[20] Whatever might be the after difficulties arising
from the mixture of races in the North, there is no doubt that the retention
of the old inhabitants was one main cause of the final success of the
plantation.
[19] The original maps showing the distribution of lands between the
Companies are among the Carew Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library. The
grants are very irregular in shape and proportion. See also copies in
Gilbert, Facsimiles of National Manuscripts.
[20] Davies to Salisbury, on "The Plantation of Ulster," 1610.
But the immediate prospect of moving the Irish in possession from their
old homes, and parcelling them out into new districts among the servitors,
few of whom had as yet appeared in the North, was one before which even
Chichester quailed as the time drew near, and it is no wonder that several
members of the party who were to have accompanied him to carry out this
business suddenly bethought them of their age and impotence of body, of
the foulness of the ways and the ill-lodging they would find in Ulster,
when they were called upon to start. Chichester had just received this
report from Sir Toby Caulfeild: "Touching the natives, it will shortly
be many of their cases to be wood-kerne out of necessity, no other means
being left them to keep a being in this world...They hope that the summer
being spent, so great cruelty will not be offered as to remove them from
their houses upon the edge of the winter and in the very season when they
are to supply themselves in making their harvest." [21] Large numbers
did indeed become outlaws, especially the swordsmen and larger holders,
who would not consent to hold their lands under the newcomers; they took
to the woods and they and their sons became ready material for the rebellion
of revenge of 1641. Others went with Colonel Stewart, who was enrolling
bands of mercenaries to take part in the wars of Sweden; but of the thousand
who volunteered, or were sent away, the larger number were driven back
by storms into English harbours, and made their escape. Besides the few
greater chiefs who received grants of land for life in different parts
of the country, there remained of the peasant population large numbers
who preferred to stay in their old districts and pay good rents to the
new landlords or to settle on the Church lands as tenants, the commissioners
finding that the words 'transplanting' or 'removing' were "as welcome
as the sentence of death." The undertakers were slow in coming over,
and this gave the Irish a reprieve, as it was perceived by the authorities
that there would be no sowing for the next harvest if they were ordered
off their lands. When the new owners did begin to dribble in, many of
them were quite unable from want of capital, or the difficulty of persuading
workmen to come over, to fulfil the conditions of the plantation. Few
of them were men adapted to the work of building up a new country, "much
defect being observed, even by the Irish themselves, in their proceedings."
[21] Sir Tobias Caulfeild to Chichester, June, 1610.
A large number of them had taken up lands purely as a speculation, to
sell again if they were allowed to do so; others, like the City Companies,
sent over agents ill provided with money to pay workmen, or without men
to build the stipulated houses and bawns. There was little to induce labourers
to volunteer, for though the Government had fixed the conditions and rents
for the planters they made no terms for the working immigrants, and the
large undertakers took full advantage of this oversight.[22] Numbers who
came soon became disheartened and took the first opportunity to go home
again; the more determined who struggled on found themselves dependent,
in a large number of cases, on the help and experience of the Irish who
were living on the lands when they arrived. Their markets supplied provisions,
and their cattle provided milk; their labour was needed not only for the
next harvest, but for carrying out the preliminary work of the plantation
as builders and labourers. In order to remain, they were ready to pay
higher rents than the English and Scots, who, like their masters, had
come over in the hope of making their fortunes, and were often equally
impecunious. Thus, as time passed on, mutual necessity brought about mutual
accommodation; and one report after another complains of the retention
of the inhabitants on their old holdings long after the time arranged
for in the Plantation leases.[23] In fact the plans proposed in London
could not be carried out, and at the beginning of the reign of Charles
I the Ulster landlords generally were found to have systematically violated
the law enjoining the removal of the inhabitants, and a later Act was
required in 1626, which stipulated that only a fourth part of the undertaker's
properties should be let to Irish, and that they should be gathered into
villages and not allowed as heretofore to live scattered over the estates;
but in 1629 it was found that this order had been likewise ignored, for
the people remained in their old districts, though they were called upon
to build better dwellings and as far as was possible to adhere to such
rules as those of wearing English dress, learning English, and sending
their children to school. Those who took to 'creaghting,' or wandering
about with their cattle, disappeared into the woods and mountains, and
multiplied in a reckless and improvident fashion, having nothing to hold
them in restraint; they held their own markets and they supplied the 'wood-kerne'
with food and often with shelter.
[22] This point is well brought out in George Sigerson, History of Land
Tenures and Land Classes in Ireland (1871).
[23] George Hill, Plantation of Ulster, pp. 408, 420-421, 447-448 (note
2).
>
Pynnar's survey in 1618-19 shows that numbers still remained on the estates.
The condition of the plantation hardly looked promising. A Presbyterian
minister writing in 1645 or later describes the first-comers as "in
general, the scum of both nations (Scottish and English);...all void of
godliness, who seemed rather to flee from God in this enterprise than
to follow their own mercy; made up of different names, nations, dialects,
temper, breeding": not the sort of people under whom a plantation
could prosper.[24] Reporting to Salisbury about the close of 1610, Chichester
writes: "The undertakers from England are, for the most part, plain
country gentlemen, who may promise much, but give small assurance or hope
of performing what appertains to a work of such moment...The Scottishmen
come with greater port and better accompanied and attended, but it may
be with less money in their purses; for some of the principal of them...were
forthwith in hand with the natives to supply their wants; and in recompense
thereof promise to get licence from his Majesty that these may remain
upon their lands as tenants unto them, which is so pleasing to that people,
that they will strain themselves to the uttermost to gratify them, for
they are content to become tenants to any man rather than to be removed
from the place of their birth and education, hoping [as he conceives]
at one time or other, to find an opportunity to cut their landlords' throats;
for they hate the Scotch deadly, and out of their malice towards them
they begin to affect the English better than they were accustomed...He
[Chichester] will do his best to prevent their revolt, but greatly doubts
it, for they are infinitely discontented." [25]
[24] Quoted George Hill, op. cit., p. 447.
[25] Cal. S. P. I. (1610), No. 915, pp. 525-527.
The Scots came in greater numbers than the English, as the King had desired.
They offered to take up 75,000 acres, but later their demands rose to
137,000 acres. A revenue officer who visited the London Companies' estates
in 1637 found the English but weak and few in number, "there being
not forty houses in Londonderry of English of any note, who for the most
part barely live," The Scots he finds are twenty to one of the English;
having privy trade in the town and country they thrive and grow rich.
The Irish for the most part beg, "the reward of their idleness."[26]
There is no doubt that, of the two races, the Scots made the best planters.
Not only were they nearer geographically to headquarters, and able to
bring across their tenants and send back their produce with greater facility
than the Londoners, but the conditions were similar to those in their
own country, and they were more hardy, persevering, and inured to discomfort.
The Londoners came reluctantly; they felt no interest in the work of plantation,
and only looked on the enterprise from the purely commercial point of
view. They were more ready to collect their rents than to expend money
on improvements, and were dissatisfied if they did not receive an immediate
return for their outlay, forgetting Chichester's maxim that they must
needs "abide some storms before coming to a profitable harvest."
Sir Thomas Phillips, himself an experienced and energetic planter who
had done much to prepare his lands at Coleraine before he was obliged
to hand them over to the City Companies, sent in a severe report, which
amply confirms the results of Pynnar's survey made between December 1618
and March 1619. In many cases the English had merely sent over agents
and took no personal interest in the plantation. Others, on the other
hand, were doing well; houses and schools were springing up, roads were
being made, and villages of the tenants were in process of construction,
the Merchant Taylors' settlement being particularly commended in this
respect.
[26] Quoted J. W. Kernohan, The County of Londonderry in Three Centuries,
p. 33.
An interesting account of the conditions in Ulster in the early days of
the plantation is given by one of the planters, Thomas Blennerhassett,
in an address to Prince Henry. The picture he draws is sombre: "Despoiled
she [Ulster] presents herself, as it were, in a ragged sad sabled robe,
ragged, indeed, [for] there remaineth nothing but ruins and desolation,
with very little show of any humanity. Of herself she aboundeth with the
very best blessings of God; amongst the other provinces belonging to Great
Britain's Imperial crown, not much inferior to any." Again, he says
that "only the Majesty of her naked personage remains to Ulster,
which even in that plight is such that whosoever shall seek and search
all Europe's best bowers, shall not find many that may make with her comparison."
His object in addressing the Prince is, he says, "in order that the
never-satisfied desires of the few should not quite disgrace and utterly
overthrow the good, exceeding good purposes of many." He speaks of
the 60,000 acres of escheated lands in the North of Ireland, and of the
difficulty of getting English to come over, while all the time the Irish
"do increase ten to one more than the English, nay, I might say twenty
to one." He appeals to men of all ranks to come over to this free
land where all sorts of attractions await them, and the dangers are "nothing
so much as amongst good fellows it is to be beastly drunk at home."
Yet he admits that there are dangers as well from the cruel wood-kerne
and other suspicious Irish as from the devouring wolf, and that even at
Sir Toby Caulfeild's fort of Charlemont "of many others the best,
well furnished with men and munitions," his people, even now "in
this fair time of quiet," are obliged every night to lay up all his
cattle in ward, "for, do what they can, the wolf and the wood-kerne
have oft-times a share; nay, Sir John King and Sir Henry Harington, dwelling
within half a mile of Dublin, do also the like." [27]
[27] A Direction for the Plantation of Ulster (1610).
There gradually grew up a loose system of contract between proprietors
and their cottiers which became known as the "Ulster Custom,"
which protected the rent-payer from those impositions that were so common
in other parts of Ireland. Though it was not legalized until the passing
of Gladstone's Land Bill of 1870, it was generally observed, and it made
the condition of the peasant of the North much less grievous than it was
in many parts of the country. It will be necessary to speak of this unwritten
agreement at a later date. In 1632 the plantation of Derry was nearly
brought to an end by Charles I, chiefly through the machinations of the
Protestant Bishop of Derry, Bramhall, who represented that the original
articles had not been carried out, and of Phillips, who urged that the
London Charter should be revoked. In 1637 Charles, hungry for fresh sources
of income, actually cancelled the Charter and seized the properties into
his own hands, installing Bramhall as receiver. The enormous sum of £70,000
was extorted from the owners, and in spite of the efforts of the City
of London the judgment remained uncancelled at the time of the outbreak
of the 1641 rebellion and was not reversed until the Restoration.
The Ulster settlers, too, were constantly harassed on religious grounds
The Presbyterians suffered severely during Wentworth's government. He
and his close friend Laud worked together to enforce on the Irish Episcopalians
a rigid High Church system of theology to which the country was averse;
and it was their endeavour to oblige Catholic and Presbyterian alike to
attend the Episcopal Church or to use in their service the forms laid
down in the Book of Common Prayer. In Ireland this Church had been seeking
a middle way to meet on friendly terms both the Puritan settlers from
the City Companies about Derry and Coleraine and the Presbyterian Scottish
of Antrim and Down. Trinity College, Dublin, under such men as Ussher
and Bedell, who, however widely they differed in character and temperament,
were at one in the almost Puritan simplicity of their religious views,
was educating men whose creed had little in common with the high clerical
pretensions of Laud and Wentworth. Ussher, a man of profound learning,
who bequeathed his large library to the college over which he presided
as Vice-Chancellor, and who afterward became successively Bishop of Meath
and Primate of Ireland, was the author of a form of confession which aimed
at retaining the Puritan body within the Church. Its pronounced Calvinistic
views, and its recognition of the validity of ordination by presbyters,
approximated it to the teaching of both the Presbyterians and Puritans.
Old Bishop Knox of Raphoe assisted at the ordination of Presbyterian ministers
along with presbyters, and the Primate approved the omission of such parts
of the Prayer Book services as were objected to by the Presbyterians.
All met and prayed in common. When the Presbyterian Mr. Blair came from
Glasgow to Co. Down, having become weary, as Regent of the college, "of
so long trafficking with Aristotle," he found a true friend in Ussher,
who supported him against the menaces of Wentworth and the deposition
of his bishops.[28] Blair and Livingston, the latter a noted Puritan,
having visited Ussher at his house at Tredath (Drogheda) to protest against
his use of the Book of Common Prayer in his family devotions, came away
with the conviction that the Primate was not only a learned but a godly
man, "though a bishop."
[28] J. S. Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, i, 135-6.
One Protestant bishop was beloved by the people. This was the saintly
Bishop Bedell, a fellow of Oxford and past Provost of Trinity College,
thrown by fate, some years before the outbreak of the rebellion, into
the lonely and neglected diocese of Kilmore (Co. Cavan). Unlike Ussher,
who was so violent a controversialist that on one occasion, after a fiery
attack on Romanism from the pulpit of St. Patrick's, he was officially
advised to go down and attend to the business of his diocese in Meath,
Bedell was the friend of 'Puritan' and 'Papist' alike. He found the cathedral
and his own house level with the ground and the parish churches all ruined,
unroofed, and unrepaired. His clergy were poor and trying to eke out a
living by holding two or more vicarages apiece, while the Catholic clergy
were in great strength, and in the full exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
It was one main purpose of Bedell's life to introduce the use of the Irish
language into the services and preaching of the clergy of the Episcopal
Church, and he declined to appoint any ministers who were not well-versed
in the Irish tongue and of exemplary life. "On examining him, I found
him a very raw divine and unable to read Irish, and therefore excused
myself for not admitting him," he wrote of a clergyman who had come
to him with a recommendation from Parsons. The applicant must have been
astonished to find the despised tongue of the country demanded as a qualification
for a Protestant living. Bedell himself learned the language in middle
life, while he was Provost of Trinity College, as an example to the students
whom he urged to join Irish classes. So thoroughly did he master it, that
he drew up an Irish catechism and forms of prayer for his diocese, and
carried out, mainly with his own hand, a translation of the Bible which
was long the only complete translation in Irish existing. He printed it
at his own expense in 1649.
On the quiet and conciliatory work of such men, Episcopalians and Presbyterians
alike, scattered sparsely about the north, the Erastian doctrines and
practices of Laud and Wentworth had fallen like a blow. They sent down
men of quite a different type, who were instructed to enforce conformity
on the northern churches or to close them and silence their ministers.
A number of the leading preachers were deposed, and finding themselves
prohibited from carrying on their ministry a body of a hundred and forty
Presbyterians, clerical and lay, determined to leave Ireland and seek
liberty of opinion and worship in America. On September 9, 1636, they
loosed from Lough Foyle and after a tempestuous passage reached the coasts
of Newfoundland. But the storms were so furious that they were unable
to land, and they had finally to return home, a disappointed and tempest-tossed
crew. They found their people flying in great numbers to Scotland to escape
the fines and punishments inflicted upon them in Ulster, and the coasts
of Ayr and Wigtown became peopled with refugees, whom most of the returned
emigrants speedily joined. They found the Presbyterians of Scotland in
an equal state of excitement against the introduction of the canons and
liturgy which the English Church was endeavouring to force upon them,
as upon Ulster. The National Covenant in support of their religious rights
was being eagerly renewed, and in the spring of 1638 it was subscribed
to by thousands of persons of all ranks throughout the kingdom. Wentworth
was not to be warned. He met the fresh appeals for liberty of worship
with the Black Oath and the Black Band, The former, to be taken on their
knees, and imposed on every man and woman of the Scottish inhabitants
of Ulster above sixteen years of age, bound them hand and foot to whatever
Charles, who seems to have himself devised the terms, might impose upon
them. They might not even "protest against any of his royal commands,
but submit in all due obedience thereto," and they bound themselves
not to enter into any covenant or swear any oath except by his consent.
The Black Oath was directed against the extension of the Covenant to
Ireland, and in effect would have cut the Irish Presbyterians off from
their Scottish brethren. The Black Band was a body of 8000 foot and 1000
horse which Wentworth quartered on the North to carry out his decrees.
But among the Presbyterians of Ulster Wentworth met a spirit as unflinching
as his own. Thousands refused to sign and fled the country. Those who
remained were brought before the Council Chamber, bound with chains, and
flung into prison, where many of them remained without redress for years,
or they were fined exorbitant sums. The carrying in of the harvest could
not be completed for lack of labourers, and the woods were full of refugees
flying from their persecutors. It seemed as though the Northern plantation
was doomed to extinction by the severities of the party in power, and
the Remonstrance addressed to Parliament on its reassembling in October
1640 speaks of the plantation of Londonderry as almost destroyed the inhabitants
reduced to great poverty, and many of them forced to forsake the country.
By a rare combination, both Presbyterian and Papist signed this document,
each having equally suffered under the harshness of Wentworth's administration,
and a joint committee of Puritans and Catholics repaired privately to
London to lay it before Parliament. It was the first instance of a petition
from Ireland presented directly to the Parliament of England, and it was
followed by others. It arrived at the moment when Strafford was impeached
for high treason, and weighed heavily against him at his trial.
The effect of these persecutions of the Presbyterians was that the Scottish
Presbyterian and Irish Catholic tenants were brought together by a sense
of common wrongs. Few of the Scottish ministers suffered in the rebellion
of 1641. The first and worst sufferers were the clergy of the Established
Church and their families. Yet so much improved was the general feeling
in Ulster that an observer just before the outbreak believed that "the
ancient animosities and hatred which the Irish had ever been observed
to bear towards the English nation had now been buried in a firm conglutination
of their affections and national obligations passed between them."
They intermarried freely, and the Irish were noticed to be fast adopting
English customs and ways of life and learning to use the English language.[29]
[29] A History of the Beginnings of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (pamphlet);
George Sigerson, Land Tenures and Land Classes of Ireland (1871).
END OF CHAPTER II
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