[412] It was resolved, nem. con., Feb. 26th, 1729, That it is an indignity to, and a breach of the privilege of, this house, for any person to presume to give, in written or printed newspapers, any account or minutes of the debates, or other proceedings of this house or of any committee thereof; and that upon discovery of the authors, etc., this house will proceed against the offenders with the utmost severity. Parl. Hist. viii. 683. There are former resolutions to the same effect. The speaker having himself brought the subject under consideration some years afterwards, in 1738, the resolution was repeated in nearly the same words, but after a debate wherein, though no one undertook to defend the practice, the danger of impairing the liberty of the press was more insisted upon than would formerly have been usual; and Sir Robert Walpole took credit to himself, justly enough, for respecting it more than his predecessors. Id. x. 800; Coxe's Walpole, i. 572. Edward Cave, the well-known editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, and the publisher of another magazine, was brought to the bar, April 30th, 1747, for publishing the house's debates; when the former denied that he retained any person in pay to make the speeches, and after expressing his contrition was discharged on payment of fees. Id. xiv. 57.

[413] Malthus, Principles of Political Economy (1820), p. 279.

[414] Macpherson (or Anderson), Hist. of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate of Strength of Great Britain; Sinclair's Hist. of Revenue, cum multis aliis.

[415] Tindal, apud Parl. Hist. xiv. 66. I have read the same in other books, but know not at present where to search for the passages. Hogarth's pictures of the election are evidence to the corruption in his time, so also are some of Smollett's novels. Addison, Swift, and Pope would not have neglected to lash this vice if it had been glaring in their age; which shows that the change took place about the time I have mentioned.

[416] 9 Anne, c. 5. A bill for this purpose had passed the Commons in 1696; the city of London and several other places petitioning against it. Journals, Nov. 21, etc. The house refused to let some of these petitions be read; I suppose on the ground that they related to a matter of general policy. These towns, however, had a very fair pretext for alleging that they were interested; and in fact a rider was added to the bill, that any merchant might serve for a place where he should be himself a voter, on making oath that he was worth £5000. Id. Dec. 19.

[417] 33 G. II. c. 20.

[418] Chalmers's Caledonia, vol. i. passim.

[419] Id. 500 et post; Dalrymple's Annals of Scotland, 28, 30, etc.

[420] Chalmers, 741; Wight's Law of Election in Scotland, 28.

[421] Id. 25; Dalrymple's Annals, i. 139, 235, 283; ii. 55, 116; Chalmers, 743. Wight thinks they might perhaps only have had a voice in the imposition of taxes.

[422] Dalrymple, ii. 241; Wight, 26.

[423] Statutes of Scotland, 1427; Pinkerton's History of Scotland, i. 120; Wight, 30.

[424] Dalrymple, ii. 261; Stuart on Public Law of Scotland, 344; Robertson's History of Scotland, i. 84.

[425] Wight, 62, 65.

[426] Id. 69.

[427] Pinkerton, i. 373.

[428] Id. 360.

[429] Id. 372.

[430] Pinkerton, ii. 53.

[431] In a statute of James II. (1440) "the three estates conclude that it is speedful that our sovereign lord the king ride throughout the realm incontinent as shall be seen to the council where any rebellion, slaughter, burning, robbery, outrage, or theft has happened," etc. Statutes of Scotland, ii. 32. Pinkerton (i. 192), leaving out the words in italics, has argued on false premises. "In this singular decree we find the legislative body regarding the king in the modern light of a chief magistrate, bound equally with the meanest subject to obedience to the laws," etc. It is evident that the estates spoke in this instance as counsellors, not as legislators. This is merely an oversight of a very well-informed historian, who is by no means in the trammels of any political theory.

A remarkable expression, however, is found in a statute of the same king, in 1450; which enacts that any man rising in war against the king, or receiving such as have committed treason, or holding houses against the king, or assaulting castles or places where the king's power shall happen to be, without the consent of the three estates, shall be punished as a traitor. Pinkerton i. 213. I am inclined to think that the legislators had in view the possible recurrence of what had very lately happened, that an ambitious cabal might get the king's person into their power. The peculiar circumstances of Scotland are to be taken into account when we consider these statutes, which are not to be looked at as mere insulated texts.

[432] Pinkerton, i. 234.

[433] Statutes of Scotland, ii. 177.

[434] Pinkerton, ii. 266.

[435] Pinkerton, ii. 400; Laing, iii. 32.

[436] Kaims's Law Tracts; Pinkerton, i. 158 et alibi; Stuart on Public Law of Scotland.

[437] Kaims's Law Tracts; Pinkerton's Hist. of Scotland, i. 117, 237, 388, ii. 313; Robertson, i. 43; Stuart on Law of Scotland.

[438] Robertson, i. 149; M'Crie's Life of Knox, p. 15. At least one half of the wealth of Scotland was in the hands of the clergy, chiefly of a few individuals. Ibid.

[439] I have read a good deal on this celebrated controversy; but, where so much is disputed, it is not easy to form an opinion on every point. But, upon the whole, I think there are only two hypotheses that can be advanced with any colour of reason. The first is, that the murder of Darnley was projected by Bothwell, Maitland, and some others, without the queen's express knowledge, but with a reliance on her passion for the former, which would lead her both to shelter him from punishment, and to raise him to her bed; and that, in both respects, this expectation was fully realised by a criminal connivance at the escape of one whom she must believe to have been concerned in her husband's death, and by a still more infamous marriage with him. This, it appears to me, is a conclusion that may be drawn by reasoning on admitted facts, according to the common rules of presumptive evidence. The second supposition is, that she had given a previous consent to the assassination. This is rendered probable by several circumstances, and especially by the famous letters and sonnets, the genuineness of which has been so warmly disputed. I must confess that they seem to me authentic, and that Mr. Laing's dissertation on the murder of Darnley has rendered Mary's innocence, even as to participation in that crime, an untenable proposition. No one of any weight, I believe, has asserted it since his time except Dr. Lingard, who manages the evidence with his usual adroitness, but by admitting the general authenticity of the letters, qualified by a mere conjecture of interpolations, has given up what his predecessors deemed the very key of the citadel.

I shall dismiss a subject so foreign to my purpose, with remarking a fallacy which affects almost the whole argument of Mary's most strenuous advocates. They seem to fancy that, if the Earls of Murray and Morton, and Secretary Maitland of Lethington, can be proved to have been concerned in Darnley's murder, the queen herself is at once absolved. But it is generally agreed that Maitland was one of those who conspired with Bothwell for this purpose; and Morton, if he were not absolutely consenting, was by his own acknowledgment at his execution apprised of the conspiracy. With respect to Murray indeed there is not a shadow of evidence, nor had he any probable motive to second Bothwell's schemes; but, even if his participation were presumed, it would not alter in the slightest degree the proofs as to the queen.

[440] Spottiswood's Church History, 152; M'Crie's Life of Knox, ii. 6; Life of Melville, i. 143; Robertson's History of Scotland; Cook's History of the Reformation in Scotland. These three modern writers leave, apparently, little to require as to this important period of history; the first with an intenseness of sympathy that enhances our interest, though it may not always command our approbation; the two last with a cooler and more philosophical impartiality.

[441] M'Crie's Life of Knox, ii. 197 et alibi; Cook, iii. 308. According to Robertson, i. 291, the whole revenue of the protestant church, at least in Mary's reign, was about 24,000 pounds Scots, which seems almost incredible.

[442] M'Crie's Life of Melville, i. 287, 296. It is impossible to think without respect of this most powerful writer, before whom there are few living controversialists that would not tremble; but his presbyterian Hildebrandism is a little remarkable in this age.

[443] M'Crie's Life of Melville; Robertson; Spottiswood.

[444] Spottiswood; Robertson; M'Crie.

[445] M'Crie's Life of Melville, ii. 378; Laing's History of Scotland, iii. 20, 35, 42, 62.

[446] Laing, 74, 89.

[447] Wight, 69 et post.

[448] Statutes of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 8; Pinkerton, i. 115; Laing, iii. 117.

[449] Laing, ibid.

[450] Arnot's Criminal Trials, p. 122.

[451] The Gowrie conspiracy is well known to be one of the most difficult problems in history. Arnot has given a very good account of it (p. 20), and shown its truth, which could not reasonably be questioned, whatever motive we may assign for it. He has laid stress on Logan's letters, which appear to have been unaccountably slighted by some writers. I have long had a suspicion, founded on these letters, that the Earl of Bothwell, a daring man of desperate fortunes, was in some manner concerned in the plot, of which the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were the instruments.

[452] Arnot's Criminal Trials, p. 70.

[453] Arnot, pp. 67, 329; State Trials, ii. 884. The prisoner was told that he was not charged for saying mass, nor for seducing the people to popery, nor for anything that concerned his conscience; but for declining the king's authority, and maintaining treasonable opinions, as the statutes libelled on made it treason not to answer the king or his council in any matter which should be demanded.

It was one of the most monstrous iniquities of a monstrous jurisprudence, the Scots criminal law, to debar a prisoner from any defence inconsistent with the indictment; that is, he might deny a fact, but was not permitted to assert that, being true, it did not warrant the conclusion of guilt. Arnot, 354.

[454] Laing, iv. 20; Kirkton, p. 141. "Whoso shall compare," he says, "this set of bishops with the old bishops established in the year 1612, shall find that these were but a sort of pigmies compared with our new bishops."

[455] Laing, iv. 32. Kirkton says 300. P. 149. These were what were called the young ministers, those who had entered the church since 1649. They might have kept their cures by acknowledging the authority of bishops.

[456] Laing, iv. 116.

[457] Life of James II., i. 710.

[458] Cloud of Witnesses, passim; De Foe's Hist. of Church of Scotland; Kirkton; Laing; Scott's notes in Minstrelsy of Scottish Border, etc., etc.

[459] The practice observed in summoning or dissolving the great national assembly of the church of Scotland, which, according to the presbyterian theory, can only be done by its own authority, is rather amusing. "The moderator dissolves the assembly in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church; and, by the same authority, appoints another to meet on a certain day of the ensuing year. The lord high commissioner then dissolves the assembly in the name of the king, and appoints another to meet on the same day." Arnot's Hist. of Edinburgh, p. 269. I am inclined to suspect, but with no very certain recollection of what I have been told, that Arnot has misplaced the order in which this is done, and that the lord commissioner is the first to speak. In the course of debate, however, no regard is paid to him, all speeches being addressed to the moderator.

[460] The king's instructions by no means warrant the execution, especially with all its circumstances of cruelty, but they contain one unfortunate sentence: "If Maclean [sic], of Glencoe, and that tribe can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the public justice to extirpate that seat of thieves." This was written, it is to be remembered, while they were exposed to the penalties of the law for the rebellion. But the massacre would never have been perpetrated, if Lord Breadalbane and the master of Stair, two of the worst men in Scotland, had not used the foulest arts to effect it. It is an apparent great reproach to the government of William, that they escaped with impunity; but political necessity bears down justice and honour. Laing, iv. 246; Carstares' State Papers.

[461] Those who took the oaths were allowed to continue in their churches without compliance with the presbyterian discipline, and many more who not only refused the oaths but prayed openly for James and his family. Carstares, p. 40. But in 1693 an act for settling the peace and quiet of the church ordains, that no person be admitted or continued to be a minister or preacher unless he have taken the oath of allegiance, and subscribed the assurance that he held the king to be de facto et de jure, and also the confession of faith; and that he owns and acknowledges presbyterian church-government to be the only government of this church, and that he will submit thereto and concur therewith, and will never endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or subversion thereof. Id. 715; Laing, iv. 255.

This act seems not to have been strictly insisted upon; and the episcopal clergy, though their advocates did not forget to raise a cry of persecution, which was believed in England, are said to have been treated with singular favour. De Foe challenges them to show any one minister that ever was deposed for not acknowledging the church, if at the same time he offered to acknowledge the government and take the oaths; and says they have been often challenged on this head. Hist. of Church of Scotland, p. 319. In fact, a statute was passed in 1695, which confirmed all ministers who would qualify themselves by taking the oaths: and no less than 116 (according to Laing, iv. 259) did so continue; nay, De Foe reckons 165 at the time of the union. P. 320.

The rigid presbyterians inveighed against any toleration, as much as they did against the king's authority over their own church. But the government paid little attention to their bigotry; besides the above-mentioned episcopal clergymen, those who seceded from the church, though universally jacobites, and most dangerously so, were indulged with meeting-houses in all towns; and by an act of the queen (10 Anne, c. 7) obtained a full toleration, on condition of praying for the royal family, with which they never complied. It was thought necessary to put them under some fresh restrictions in 1748, their zeal for the Pretender being notorious and universal, by an act 21 Geo. II., c. 34; which has very properly been repealed after the motive for it had wholly ceased, and even at first was hardly reconcilable with the general principles of religious liberty; though it ill becomes those to censure it who vindicate the penal laws of Elizabeth against popery.

[462] Archbishop Tenison said, in the debates on the union, he thought the narrow notions of all churches had been their ruin, and that he believed the church of Scotland to be as true a protestant church as the church of England, though he could not say it was as perfect. Carstares, 759. This sort of language was encouraging; but the exclusive doctrine, or jus divinum, was sure to retain many advocates, and has always done so. Fortunately for Great Britain, it has not had the slightest effect on the laity in modern times.

[463] Sir James Ware's Antiquities of Ireland; Leland's Hist. of Ireland (Introduction); Ledwich's Dissertations.

[464] Id. Auct.: also Davis's Reports, 29, and his "Discovery of the true Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued till his Majesty's happy Reign," 169. Sir John Davis, author of the philosophical poem, Γνωθι Σεαθτον was chief-justice of Ireland under James I. The tract just quoted is well known as a concise and luminous exposition of the history of that country from the English invasion.

[465] Ware; Leland; Ledwich; Davis's "Discovery," ibid.; Reports, 49. It is remarkable that Davis seems to have been aware of an analogy between the custom of Ireland and Wales, and yet that he only quotes the statute of Rutland (12 Edw. I.), which by itself does not prove it. It is, however, proved, if I understand the passage, by one of the Leges Walliæ published by Wotton, p. 139. A gavel or partition was made on the death of every member of a family for three generations, after which none could be enforced. But these parceners were to be all in the same degree; so that nephews could not compel their uncle to a partition, but must wait till his death, when they were to be put on an equality with their cousins; and this, I suppose, is meant by the expression in the statute of Rutland, "quod hæreditates remaneant partibiles inter consimiles hæredes."

[466] Leland seems to favour the authenticity of the supposed Brehon laws published by Vallancey. Introduction, 29. The style is said to be very distinguishable from the Irish of the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the laws themselves to have no allusion to the settlement of foreigners in Ireland, or to coined money; whence some ascribe them to the eighth century. On the other hand, Ledwich proves that some parts must be later than the tenth century. Dissertations, i. 270. And others hold them to be not older than the thirteenth. Campbell's Historical Sketch of Ireland, 41. It is also maintained that they are very unfaithfully translated. But, when we find the Anglo-Saxon and Norman usages, relief, aid, wardship, trial by jury (and that unanimous), and a sort of correspondence in the ranks of society with those of England (which all we read elsewhere of the ancient Irish seems to contradict), it is impossible to resist the suspicion that they are either extremely interpolated, or were compiled in a late age, and among some of the septs who had most intercourse with the English. We know that the degenerate colonists, such as the Earls of Desmond, adopted the Brehon law in their territories; but this would probably be with some admixture of that to which they had been used.

[467] "The first pile of lime and stone that ever was in Ireland was the castle of Tuam, built in 1161 by Roderic O'Connor, the monarch." Introduction to Cox's History of Ireland. I do not find that any later writer controverts this, so far as the aboriginal Irish are concerned; but doubtless the Norwegian Ostmen had stone churches, and there seems little doubt that some at least of the famous round towers so common in Ireland were erected by them. See Ledwich's Dissertations, vii. 143; and the book called Grose's Antiquities of Ireland, also written by Ledwich. Piles of stone without mortar are excluded by Cox's expression. In fact, the Irish had very few stone houses, or even regular villages and towns, before the time of James I. Davis, 170.

[468] Ledwich, i. 395.

[469] Antiquities of Ireland, ii. 76.

[470] Ledwich, i. 260.

[471] Ware, ii. 74; Davis's Discovery, 174; Spenser's State of Ireland, 390.

[472] Davis, 135.

[473] Leland, 80 et post; Davis, 100.

[474] 4 Inst. 349; Leland, 203; Harris's Hibernica, ii. 14.

[475] These counties are Dublin, Kildare, Meath (including Westmeath), Louth, Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Tipperary, Kerry, and Limerick. In the reign of Edward I. we find sheriffs also of Connaught and Roscommon. Leland, i. 19. Thus, except the northern province and some of the central districts, all Ireland was shire-ground, and subject to the Crown in the thirteenth century, however it might fall away in the two next. Those who write confusedly about this subject, pretend that the authority of the king at no time extended beyond the pale; whereas that name was not known, I believe, till the fifteenth century. Under the great Earl of Pembroke, who died in 1219, the whole island was perhaps nearly as much reduced under obedience as in the reign of Elizabeth. Leland, 205.

[476] Leland, 170.

[477] Davis, 140. William Marischal, Earl of Pembroke, who married the daughter of Earl Strongbow, left five sons and five daughters; the first all died without issue.

[478] Davis, 147; Leland, 291.

[479] Id. 194, 209.

[480] Leland, 225.

[481] Davis, 100, 109. He quotes the following record from an assize at Waterford, in the 4th of Edward II. (1311), which may be extracted, as briefly illustrating the state of law in Ireland better than any general positions. "Quod Robertus le Wayleys rectatus de morte Johannis filii Ivor MacGillemory, felonicè per ipsum interfecti, etc. Venit et bene cognovit quod prædictum Johannem interfecit; dicit tamen quod per ejus interfectionem feloniam committere non potuit, quia dicit, quod prædictus Johannes fuit purus Hibernicus, et non de libero sanguine, etc. Et cum dominus dicti Johannis, cujus Hibernicus idem Johannes fuit, die quo interfectus fuit, solutionem pro ipso Johanne Hibernico suo sic interfecto petere voluerit, ipse Robertus paratus erit ad respondendum de solutione prædictâ prout justitia suadebit. Et super hoc venit quidam Johannes le Poer, et dicit pro domino rege, quod prædictus Johannes filius Ivor Mac-Gillemory, et antecessores sui de cognomine prædicto a tempore quo dominus Henricus filius imperatricis, quondam dominus Hiberniæ, tritavus domini regis nunc, fuit in Hiberniâ, legem Anglicanam in Hiberniâ usque ad hanc diem habere, et secundum ipsam legem judicari et deduci debent." We have here both the general rule, that the death of an Irishman was only punishable by a composition to his lord, and the exception in behalf of those natives who had conformed to the English law.

[482] Davis, 104; Leland, 82. It was necessary to plead in bar of an action, that the plaintiff was Hibernicus, et non de quinque sanguinibus.

[483] Davis, 106. "If I should collect out of the records all the charters of this kind, I should make a volume thereof." They began as early as the reign of Henry III. Leland, 225.

[484] Leland, 243.

[485] Id. 289.

[486] "There were two other customs proper and peculiar to the Irishry, which, being the cause of many strong combinations and factions, do tend to the utter ruin of a commonwealth. The one was fostering, the other gossipred; both which have ever been of greater estimation among this people than with any other nation in the Christian world. For fostering I did never hear or read that it was in that use or reputation in any other country, barbarous or civil, as it hath been, and yet is, in Ireland, where they put away all their children to fosterers; the potent and rich men selling, the meaner sort, buying, the alterage and nursing of their children; and the reason is, because in the opinion of this people, fostering hath always been a stronger alliance than blood; and the foster-children do love and are beloved of their foster-fathers and their sept, more than of their own natural parents and kindred, and do participate of their means more frankly, and do adhere to them in all fortunes, with more affection and constancy. The like may be said of gossipred or compaternity, which though by the canon law it be a spiritual affinity, and a juror that was gossip to either of the parties might in former times have been challenged, as not indifferent, by our law, yet there was no nation under the sun that ever made so religious an account of it as the Irish," Davis, 179.

[487] "For that now there is no diversity in array between the English marchers and the Irish enemies, and so by colour of the English marchers, the Irish enemies do come from day to day into the English counties as English marchers, and do rob and kill by the highways, and destroy the common people by lodging upon them in the nights, and also do kill the husbands in the nights and do take their goods to the Irish men; wherefore it is ordained and agreed, that no manner man that will be taken for an Englishman shall have no beard above his mouth; that is to say, that he have no hairs upon his upper lip, so that the said lip be once at least shaven every fortnight, or of equal growth with the nether lip. And if any man be found among the English contrary hereunto, that then it shall be lawful to every man to take them and their goods as Irish enemies, and to ransom them as Irish enemies." Irish Statutes, 25 H. 6, c. 4.

[488] Davis, 152, 182; Leland, i. 256, etc.; Ware, ii. 58.

[489] Leland, 253.

[490] Cox's Hist. of Ireland, 117, 120.

[491] Id. 125, 129; Leland, 313.

[492] Irish Statutes.

[493] Davis, 174, 189; Leland, 281. Maurice Fitz-Thomas, Earl of Desmond, was the first of the English, according to Ware, ii. 76, who imposed the exaction of coyne and livery.

[494] Irish Statutes; Davis, 202; Cox; Leland.

[495] Leland, i. 278, 296, 324; Davis, 152, 197.

[496] Leland, 342. The native chieftains who came to Dublin are said to have been seventy-five in number; but the insolence of the courtiers, who ridiculed an unusual dress and appearance, disgusted them.

[497] Davis, 193.

[498] Leland, ii. 822 et post; Davis, 199, 229, 236; Holingshed's Chronicles of Ireland, p. 4. Finglas, a baron of the exchequer in the reign of Henry VIII., in his Breviate of Ireland, from which Davis has taken great part of his materials, says expressly, that, by the disobedience of the Geraldines and Butlers, and their Irish connections, "the whole land is now of Irish rule, except the little English pale, within the counties of Dublin and Meath, and Uriel [Louth], which pass not thirty or forty miles in compass." The English were also expelled from Munster, except the walled towns. The king had no profit out of Ulster, but the manor of Carlingford, nor any in Connaught. This treatise, written about 1530, is printed in Harris's Hibernica. The proofs that, in this age, the English law and government were confined to the four shires, are abundant. It is even mentioned in a statute, 13 H. 8, c. 2.

[499] Irish Statutes; Davis, 230; Leland, ii. 102.

[500] Leland.

[501] Irish Statutes, 33 H. 8, c. 1.

[502] Ibid. 28 H. 8, c. 15, 28. The latter act prohibits intermarriage or fostering with the Irish; which had indeed been previously restrained by other statutes. In one passed five years afterwards, it is recited that "the king's English subjects, by reason that they are inhabited in so little compass or circuit, and restrained by statute to marry with the Irish nation, and therefore of necessity must marry themselves together, so that in effect they all for the most part must be allied together; and therefore it is enacted, that consanguinity or affinity beyond the fourth degree shall be no cause of challenge on a jury." 33 H. 8, c. 4. These laws were for many years of little avail, so far at least as they were meant to extend beyond the pale. Spenser's State of Ireland, p. 384 et post.

[503] Leland, ii. 178, 184.

[504] Leland, ii. 189, 211; 3 & 4 P. and M. c. 1 and 2. Meath had been divided into two shires, by separating the western part. 34 H. 8, c. 1. "Forasmuch as the shire of Methe is great and large in circuit, and the west part thereof laid about or beset with divers of the king's rebels." Baron Finglas says, "Half Meath has not obeyed the king's laws these one hundred years or more." Breviate of Ireland, apud Harris, p. 85.

[505] Leland, ii. 158.

[506] Leland, 224; Irish Statutes, 2 Eliz.

[507] Leland gives several instances of breach of faith in the government. A little tract, called a "Brief Declaration of the Government of Ireland," written by Captain Lee in 1594, and published in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, vol. i., censures the two last deputies (Grey and Fitzwilliams) for their ill usage of the Irish, and unfolds the despotic character of the English government. "The cause they (the lords of the north) have to stand upon those terms, and to seek for better assurance, is the harsh practices used against others, by those who have been placed in authority to protect men for your majesty's service, which they have greatly abused in this sort. They have drawn unto them by protection three or four hundred of the country people, under colour to do your majesty service, and brought them to a place of meeting, where your garrison soldiers were appointed to be, who have there most dishonourably put them all to the sword; and this hath been by the consent and practice of the lord deputy for the time being. If this be a good course to draw those savage people to the state to do your majesty service, and not rather to enforce them to stand on their guard, I leave to your majesty."—P. 90. He goes on to enumerate more cases of hardship and tyranny; many being arraigned and convicted of treason on slight evidence; many assaulted and killed by the sheriffs on commissions of rebellion; others imprisoned and kept in irons; among others, a youth, the heir of a great estate. He certainly praises Tyrone more than, from subsequent events, we should think just, which may be thought to throw some suspicion on his own loyalty; yet he seems to have been a protestant, and in 1594 the views of Tyrone were ambiguous, so that Captain Lee may have been deceived.

[508] Sidney Papers, i. 20.

[509] Id. 24.

[510] Sidney Papers, i. 29. Spenser descants on the lawless violence of the superior Irish; and imputes, I believe with much justice, a great part of their crimes to his own brethren, if they might claim so proud a title, the bards: "whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhymes, him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow."—P. 394.

[511] Holingshed, 460.

[512] Leland, 287; Spenser's Account of Ireland, p. 430 (vol. viii. of Todd's edition, 1805). Grey is the Arthegal of the Faery Queen, the representative of the virtue of justice in that allegory, attended by Talus with his iron flail, which indeed was unsparingly employed to crush rebellion. Grey's severity was signalised in putting to death seven hundred Spaniards who had surrendered at discretion in the fort of Smerwick. Though this might be justified by the strict laws of war (Philip not being a declared enemy) it was one of those extremities which justly revolt the common feelings of mankind. The queen is said to have been much displeased at it. Leland, 283. Spenser undertakes the defence of his patron Grey. State of Ireland, p. 434.

[513] Leland, 247, 293. An act had passed (II Eliz. c. 9) for dividing the whole island into shire-ground, appointing sheriffs, justices of the peace, etc.; which, however, was not completed.

[514] Leland, 305. Their conduct provoked an insurrection both in Connaught and Ulster. Spenser, who shows always a bias towards the most rigorous policy, does injustice to Perrott." He did tread down and disgrace all the English, and set up and countenance the Irish all that he could."—P. 437. This has in all ages been the language, when they have been placed on an equality, or anything approaching to an equality, with their fellow subjects.

[515] Leland, 248.

[516] Holingshed's Chronicles of Ireland, 342. This part is written by Hooker himself. Leland, 240; Irish Statutes, 11 Eliz.

[517] Sidney Papers, i. 153.

[518] Id. 179.

[519] Sidney Papers, 84, 117, etc., to 236; Holingshed, 389; Leland, 261. Sidney was much disappointed at the queen's want of firmness; but it is plain by the correspondence that Walsingham also thought he had gone too far. P. 192. The sum required seems to have been reasonable, about £2000 a year from the five shires of the pale; and, if they had not been stubborn, he thought all Munster also, except the Desmond territories, would have submitted to the payment. P. 183. "I have great cause," he writes, "to mistrust the fidelity of the greatest number of the people of this country's birth of all degrees; they be papists, as I may well term them, body and soul. For not only in matter of religion they be Romish, but for government they will change, to be under a prince of their own superstition. Since your highness' reign the papists never showed such boldness as now they do."—P. 184. This, however, hardly tallies with what he says afterwards (p. 208): "I do believe, for far the greatest number of the inhabitants of the English pale, her highness hath as true and faithful subjects as any she hath subject to the Crown;" unless the former passage refer chiefly to those without the pale, who in fact were exclusively concerned in the rebellions of this reign.

[520] "The church is now so spoiled," says Sir Henry Sidney in 1576, "as well by the ruin of the temples, as the dissipation and embezzling of the patrimony, and most of all for want of sufficient ministers, as so deformed and overthrown a church there is not, I am sure, in any region where Christ is professed." Sidney Papers, i. 109. In the diocese of Meath, being the best inhabited country of all the realm, out of 224 parish churches, 105 were impropriate having only curates, of whom but eighteen could speak English, the rest being Irish rogues, who used to be papists; fifty-two other churches had vicars, and fifty-two more were in better state than the rest, yet far from well. Id. 112. Spenser gives a bad character of the protestant clergy. P. 412.

An act was passed (12 Eliz. c. 1) for erecting free schools in every diocese, under English masters; the ordinary paying one-third of the salary, and the clergy the rest. This, however, must have been nearly impracticable. Another act (13 Eliz. c. 4) enables the Archbishop of Armagh to grant leases of his lands out of the pale for a hundred years without assent of the dean and chapter, to persons of English birth, "or of the English and civil nation, born in this realm of Ireland," at the rent of 4d. an acre. It recites the chapter to be "except a very few of them, both by nation, education, and custom, Irish, Irishly affectioned, and small hopes of their conformities or assent into any such devices as would tend to the placing of any such number of civil people there, to the disadvantage or bridling of the Irish." In these northern parts, the English and protestant interests had so little influence that the pope conferred three bishoprics, Derry, Clogher, and Raphoe, throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Davis, 254; Leland, ii. 248. What is more remarkable is, that two of these prelates were summoned to parliament in 1585 (Id. 295); the first in which some Irish were returned among the Commons.

The reputation of the protestant church continued to be little better in the reign of Charles I., though its revenues were much improved. Strafford gives the clergy a very bad character in writing to Laud. Vol. i. 187. And Burnet's Life of Bedell, transcribed chiefly from a contemporary memoir, gives a detailed account of that bishop's diocese (Kilmore), which will take off any surprise that might be felt at the slow progress of the reformation. He had about fifteen protestant clergy, but all English, unable to speak the tongue of the people, or to perform any divine offices, or converse with them, "which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in popery still."—P. 47. The bishop observed, says his biographer, "with much regret, that the English had all along neglected the Irish as a nation not only conquered but undisciplinable; and that the clergy had scarce considered them as a part of their charge; but had left them wholly into the hands of their own priests, without taking any other care of them but the making them pay their tithes. And indeed their priests were a strange sort of people, that knew generally nothing but the reading their offices, which were not so much as understood by many of them; and they taught the people nothing but the saying their paters and aves in Latin."—P. 114. Bedell took the pains to learn himself the Irish language; and though he could not speak it, composed the first grammar ever made of it; had the common prayer read every Sunday in Irish, circulated catechisms, engaged the clergy to set up schools, and even undertook a translation of the Old Testament, which he would have published but for the opposition of Laud and Strafford. P. 121.

[521] Leland, 413.

[522] Leland, 414, etc. In a letter from six catholic lords of the pale to the king in 1613, published in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 158, they complain of the oath of supremacy, which, they say, had not been much imposed under the queen, but was now for the first time enforced in the remote parts of the country; so that the most sufficient gentry were excluded from magistracy, and meaner persons, if conformable, put instead. It is said on the other side, that the laws against recusants were very little enforced, from the difficulty of getting juries to present them. Id. 359. Carte's Ormond, 33. But this at least shows that there was some disposition to molest the catholics on the part of the government; and it is admitted that they were excluded from offices, and even from practising at the bar, on account of the oath of supremacy. Id. 320; and compare the letter of six catholic lords with the answer of lord deputy and council in the same volume.

[523] Davis's Reports, ubi supra; "Discovery of Causes," etc., 260; Carte's Life of Ormond, i. 14; Leland, 418. It had long been an object with the English government to extinguish the Irish tenures and laws. Some steps towards it were taken under Henry VIII.; but at that time there was too great a repugnance among the chieftains. In Elizabeth's instructions to the Earl of Sussex on taking the government in 1560, it is recommended that the Irish should surrender their estates, and receive grants in tail male, but no greater estate. Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 1. This would have left a reversion in the Crown, which could not have been cut off, I believe, by suffering a recovery. But as those who held by Irish tenure had probably no right to alienate their lands, they had little cause to complain. An act in 1569 (12 Eliz. c. 4), reciting the greater part of the Irish to have petitioned for leave to surrender their lands, authorises the deputy by advice of the privy council to grant letters patent to the Irish and degenerate English, yielding certain reservations to the queen. Sidney mentions, in several of his letters, that the Irish were ready to surrender their lands. Vol. i. 94, 105, 165.

The act 11 Jac. 1, c. 5, repeals divers statutes that treat the Irish as enemies, some of which have been mentioned above. It takes all the king's subjects under his protection to live by the same law. Some vestiges of the old distinctions remained in the statute-book, and were eradicated in Strafford's parliament. 10 & 11 Car. 1, c. 6.

[524] Leland, 254.

[525] See a note in Leland, ii. 302. The truth seems to be, that in this, as in other Irish forfeitures, a large part was restored to the tenants of the attainted parties.

[526] Leland, ii. 301.

[527] Carte's Life of Ormond, i. 15; Leland, 429; Farmer's "Chronicle of Sir Arthur Chichester's government," in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 32; an important and interesting narrative; also vol. ii. of the same collection, 37; Bacon's Works, i. 657.

[528] Leland, 437, 466; Carte's Ormond, 22; Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, 238, 243, 378 et alibi; ii. 37 et post. In another treatise published in this collection, entitled "A Discourse on the State of Ireland," 1614, an approaching rebellion is remarkably predicted. "The next rebellion, whensoever it shall happen, doth threaten more danger to the state than any that hath preceded; and my reasons are these: 1. They have the same bodies they ever had; and therein they have and had advantage over us. 2. From their infancies they have been and are exercised in the use of arms. 3. The realm, by reason of long peace, was never so full of youth as at this present. 4. That they are better soldiers than heretofore, their continual employments in the wars abroad assure us; and they do conceive that their men are better than ours. 5. That they are more politic, and able to manage rebellion with more judgment and dexterity than their elders, their experience and education are sufficient. 6. They will give the first blow; which is very advantageous to them that will give it. 7. The quarrel for the which they rebel will be under the veil of religion and liberty, than which nothing is esteemed so precious in the hearts of men. 8. And lastly, their union is such, as not only the old English dispersed abroad in all parts of the realm, but the inhabitants of the pale cities and towns, are as apt to take arms against us, which no precedent time hath ever seen, as the ancient Irish."—Vol. i. 432. "I think that little doubt is to be made, but that the modern English and Scotch would in an instant be massacred in their houses."—P. 438. This rebellion the author expected to be brought about by a league with Spain and with aid from France.

[529] The famous parliament of Kilkenny, in 1367, is said to have been very numerously attended. Leland, i. 319. We find indeed an act (10 H. 7, c. 23) annulling what was done in a preceding parliament, for this reason, among others, that the writs had not been sent to all the shires, but to four only. Yet it appears that the writs would not have been obeyed in that age.

[530] Speech of Sir John Davis (1612), on the parliamentary constitution of Ireland, in Appendix to Leland, vol. ii. p. 490, with the latter's observations on it. Carte's Ormond, i. 18; Lord Mountmorres's Hist. of Irish Parliament.

[531] In the letter of the lords of the pale to King James above mentioned, they express their apprehension that the erecting so many insignificant places to the rank of boroughs was with the view of bringing on fresh penal laws in religion; "and so the general scope and institution of parliament frustrated; they being ordained for the assurance of the subjects not to be pressed with any new edicts or laws, but such as should pass with their general consents and approbations."—P. 158. The king's mode of replying to this constitutional language was characteristic. "What is it to you whether I make many or few boroughs? My council may consider the fitness, if I require it. But what if I had created 40 noblemen and 400 boroughs? The more the merrier, the fewer the better cheer." Desid. Cur. Hib. 308.

[532] Mountmorres, i. 166. The whole number of peers in 1634 was 122, and those present in parliament that year were 66. They had the privilege not only of voting, but even protesting by proxy; and those who sent none, were sometimes fined. Id. vol. i. 316.

[533] Carte's Ormond, i. 48; Leland, ii. 475 et post.

[534] Leland, iii. 4 et post. A vehement protestation of the bishops about this time, with Usher at their head, against any connivance at popery, is a disgrace to their memory. It is to be met with in many books. Strafford, however, was far from any real liberality of sentiment. His abstinence from religious persecution was intended to be temporary, as the motives whereon it was founded. "It will be ever far forth of my heart to conceive that a conformity in religion is not above all other things principally to be intended. For undoubtedly till we be brought all under one form of divine service, the Crown is never safe on this side, etc. It were too much at once to distemper them by bringing plantations upon them, and disturbing them in the exercise of their religion, so long as it be without scandal; and so indeed very inconsiderate, as I conceive, to move in this latter, till that former be fully settled, and by that means the protestant party become by much the stronger, which in truth I do not yet conceive it to be." Straff. Letters, ii. 39. He says, however, and I believe truly, that no man had been touched for conscience' sake since he was deputy. Id. 112. Every parish, as we find by Bedell's Life, had its priest and mass-house; in some places mass was said in the churches; the Romish bishops exercised their jurisdiction, which was fully obeyed; but "the priests were grossly ignorant and openly scandalous, both for drunkenness and all sort of lewdness."—P. 41, 76. More than ten to one in his diocese, the county of Cavan, were recusants.

[535] Some at the council-board having intimated a doubt of their authority to bind the kingdom, "I was then 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." Strafford Letters, i. 98.

[536] Id. i. 183; Carte, 61.

[537] The protestants, he wrote word, had a majority of eight in the Commons. He told them, "it was very indifferent to him what resolution the house might take; that there were two ends he had in view, and one he would infallibly attain—either a submission of the people to his majesty's just demands, or a just occasion of breach, and either would content the king; the first was undeniably and evidently best for them."—Id. 277, 278. In his speech to the two houses, he said, "His majesty expects not to find you muttering, or to name it more truly, mutinying in corners. I am commanded to carry a very watchful eye over these private and secret conventicles, to punish the transgression with a heavy and severe hand; therefore it behoves you to look to it."—Id. 289. "Finally," he concludes, "I wish you had a right judgment in all things; yet let me not prove a Cassandra amongst you, to speak truth and not be believed. However, speak truth I will, were I to become your enemy for it. Remember therefore that I tell you, you may easily make or mar this parliament. If you proceed with respect, without laying clogs and conditions upon the king, as wise men and good subjects ought to do, you shall infallibly set up this parliament eminent to posterity, as the very basis and foundation of the greatest happiness and prosperity that ever befell this nation. But, if you meet a great king with narrow circumscribed hearts, if you will needs be wise and cautious above the moon [sic], remember again that I tell you, you shall never be able to cast your mists before the eyes of a discerning king; you shall be found out; your sons shall wish they had been the children of more believing parents; and in a time when you look not for it, when it will be too late for you to help, the sad repentance of an unadvised heart shall be yours, lasting honour shall be my master's."

These subsidies were reckoned at near £41,000 each, and were thus apportioned: Leinster paid £13,000 (of which £1000 from the city of Dublin), Munster £11,000, Ulster £10,000, Connaught £6,800. Mountmorres, ii. 16.

[538] Irish Statutes, 10 Car. 1, c. 1, 2, 3, etc.; Strafford Letters, i. 279, 312. The king expressly approved the denial of the graces, though promised formerly by himself. Id. 345; Leland, iii. 20.

"I can now say," Strafford observes (Id. 344), "the king is as absolute here as any prince in the whole world can be; and may still be, if it be not spoiled on that side."

[539] Strafford Letters, i. 353, 370, 402, 442, 451, 454, 473; ii. 113, 139, 366; Leland, iii. 30, 39; Carte, 82.

[540] It is, however, true that he discouraged the woollen manufacture, in order to keep the kingdom more dependent, and that this was part of his motive in promoting the other. Vol. ii. 19.

[541] Leland, iii. 51. Strafford himself (ii. 397) speaks highly of their disposition.

[542] Carte's Ormond, 100, 140; Leland, iii. 54 et post; Mountmorres, ii. 29. A remonstrance of the Commons to Lord-Deputy Wandesford against various grievances was presented 7th November 1640, before Lord Strafford had been impeached. Id. 39. As to confirming the graces, the delay, whether it proceeded from the king or his Irish representatives, seems to have caused some suspicion. Lord Clanricarde mentions the ill consequences that might result, in a letter to Lord Bristol. Carte's Ormond, iii. 40.

[543] Sir Henry Vane communicated to the lords justices, by the king's command, March 16, 1640-1, that advice had been received and confirmed by the ministers in Spain and elsewhere, which "deserved to be seriously considered, and an especial care and watchfulness to be had therein: that of late there have passed from Spain (and the like may well have been from other parts) an unspeakable number of Irish churchmen for England and Ireland, and some good old soldiers, under pretext of asking leave to raise men for the King of Spain; whereas, it is observed among the Irish friars there, a whisper was, as if they expected a rebellion in Ireland, and particularly in Connaught." Carte's Ormond, iii. 30. This letter, which Carte seems to have taken from a printed book, is authenticated in Clarendon State Papers, ii. 143. I have mentioned in another part of this work (Chap. VIII.) the provocations which might have induced the cabinet of Madrid to foment disturbances in Charles's dominions. The lords justices are taxed by Carte with supineness in paying no attention to this letter (vol. i. 166); but how he knew that they paid none seems hard to say.

Another imputation has been thrown on the Irish government and on the parliament, for objecting to permit levies to be made for the Spanish service out of the army raised by Strafford, and disbanded in the spring of 1641, which the king had himself proposed. Carte, i. 133; and Leland, 82, who follows the former implicitly, as he always does. The events indeed proved that it would have been far safer to let those soldiers, chiefly catholics, enlist under a foreign banner; but considering the long connection of Spain with that party, and the apprehension always entertained that the disaffected might acquire military experience in her service, the objection does not seem so very unreasonable.

[544] The fullest writer on the Irish rebellion is Carte, in his Life of Ormond, who had the use of a vast collection of documents belonging to that noble family; a selection from which forms this third volume. But he is extremely partial against all who leaned to the parliamentary or puritan side, and especially the lords justices, Parsons and Borlase; which renders him, to say the least, a very favourable witness for the catholics. Leland, with much candour towards the latter, but a good deal of the same prejudice against the presbyterians, is little more than the echo of Carte. A more vigorous, though less elegant historian, is Warner, whose impartiality is at least equal to Leland's, and who may perhaps, upon the whole, be reckoned the best modern authority. Sir John Temple's History of Irish Rebellion, and Lord Clanricarde's Letters, with a few more of less importance, are valuable contemporary testimonies.