Clarendon, who hated the Scots and did not love Strafford, says ‘he had an enemy more terrible than all the others and like to be more fatal, the whole Scotch nation, provoked by the declaration he had procured of Ireland and some high carriage and expressions of his against them in that kingdom.’ The Ulster colony had been injured by the Londonderry forfeiture, and he had done what he could to discourage further immigration, but it was not until the summer of 1638 that the attitude of the Scotch settlers began to give him serious uneasiness. Antrim, who was at Court and in communication both with Hamilton and Laud, believed or professed to believe that Lorne, who became Earl of Argyll soon after, intended to attack his estates, and suggested that the King should provide him with plenty of arms ‘to be kept in a store-house in Coleraine, because it would be too far for me and my tenants to send to Knockfergus, if there were any sudden invasion.’ Lorne knew what was going on at Court, and announced in Scotland that Antrim intended to invade him. It appears from his late letters that Strafford thought Lorne not unlikely to come, but he knew well that his Council would advise nothing that might strengthen Tyrone’s grandson. And in case the troubles of Scotland were to extend to Ulster, he thought it very likely that the settlers there would borrow the arms to help their countrymen. ‘They are,’ he added ‘shrewd children, not much won by courtship, especially from a Roman Catholic.’ He had but 2,000 foot and 600 horse, none of which could be spared for Scotland, but it might be possible to raise double that force of English and Irish. The latter disliked the Scots and their religion, but might be a source of danger in other ways. In the meantime he told Northumberland, the best part of the Irish army might be drawn down into Ulster, close upon Scotland, ‘as well to amuse those upon that side as to contain their countrymen among us in due obedience.’[209]

That Strafford was generally hated by the Scotch is, indeed, abundantly proved by the record of his trial, when their commissioners denounced him as ‘the firebrand that still smoked’ after the cold shower-bath of the Ripon treaty. The quarrel was of much older date, originating with Wentworth’s espousal of the Laudian policy and his steady repression of everything that savoured of Presbyterianism, but it was not until after the promulgation of the Scottish Covenant at the beginning of March 1638 that the question became a national one. He kept himself well informed, and read all public documents, but it was not until the end of July that he first gave his opinion to Northumberland, and then in strict confidence. Armed collision with the Scots should be avoided as long as possible unless they crossed the border, which did not yet seem likely. Berwick and Carlisle should be made thoroughly defensible, and as President of the North he could prepare an armed force, particularly in Yorkshire. He thought Leith, which he had formerly visited, might easily be seized in the spring, and maintained with the help of the fleet and a garrison of 8,000 or 10,000 men. ‘I should hope,’ he added, ‘his Majesty might instantly give his law to Edinburgh, and not long after to the whole kingdom, which though it should all succeed, yet at the charge of that kingdom would I uphold my garrison at Leith, till they had received our Common Prayer Book, used in our churches of England without any alteration, the bishops settled peaceably in their jurisdiction; nay perchance till I had conformed that kingdom in all, as well for the temporal as ecclesiastical affairs, wholly to the government and laws of England; and Scotland governed by the King and Council of England in a great part, at least as we are here.’ Later on he drew attention to the importance of securing Dumbarton, but in both cases the Covenanters forestalled him. Then as now a brisk trade existed between Ulster and Scotland, and the colonists naturally demanded terms as favourable as were granted to the mother country, with which they were in thorough sympathy. The first lay Covenanter who felt the weight of Wentworth’s hand seems to have been Robert Adair, Laird of Kilhill in Galloway, who had an estate of 400l. or 500l. a year at Ballymena, where he was a Justice of the Peace. Adair, who was the Bishop of Killala’s nephew, had taken an active part against Charles and Laud in Scotland, and made no secret of having signed the Covenant. Henry Leslie, Bishop of Down, who was himself a Scotchman, reported the case to Wentworth, who advised him to ‘inquire out the names of all others that have danced after the same pipe, as also of all such as profess themselves Covenanters, and send them hither to me; in the rest of your proceedings, your lordship shall not be so much as once touched upon, or heard of.’ Adair retired to Scotland, and lived securely at Kilhill, but he was declared a traitor in Ireland, and his estate forfeited. In November 1641, when Strafford was dead and the Ulster rebellion begun, Charles, at the unanimous request of the Scottish Parliament, reversed the sentence passed upon Adair for having ‘adjoined himself to his own native country,’ and he recovered his Irish property.[210]

Before the end of 1638 the Scotch Covenanters were thoroughly aware that Wentworth was their most important enemy. He sent a clever young officer to Edinburgh to report upon the doings there, ‘and this gentleman,’ he wrote, ‘tells me that the whole nation universally hates me most extremely, and threaten some personal mischief unto me.’ Ensign Willoughby pretended to Rothes that he was a Dutchman, and the Earl answered that Holland was well governed and that Scotland also could do very well without a king. Next day Alexander Leslie was present and said Ireland would certainly be invaded if the King came to blows with his Scottish subjects—a threat which Leslie himself carried out, but not while Strafford lived. Wentworth proposed, and Charles agreed with alacrity, if, indeed, he did not himself make the first suggestion, that the Covenant should be met by a new and very stringent oath binding the Scots of Ulster not only to obey the King, but not even to protest against any command of his, and to renounce all covenants or associations not ordered by him. This is still remembered in Ulster as the Black Oath, and it is evidently inconsistent with all modern ideas of liberty. The manner of imposing it matched the matter, and we know the details from the evidence of an unwilling witness who proved in after life that he was as strong a royalist as even Scotland has produced. Charles himself proposed that means should be taken to procure a petition repudiating the Covenant and in favour of the new oath, and his plan was strictly carried out. Wentworth summoned such of the leading Northern Scots as he thought could be trusted to meet him in Dublin on April 27. Lord Montgomery, who was the chief of them, caught cold on the journey and desired to be excused; but the Lord Deputy, whether he believed in the cold or not, would not be so put off, and adjourned the meeting to his lordship’s lodgings. The two Leslies, Bishops of Raphoe and of Down, took the lead, and the former drew up a petition which some of the laymen thought hasty. In the words of the oath Wentworth would allow no alteration, saying that it had been well considered; but in the petition offering the subscribers’ services to the King he admitted the qualification ‘in equal manner and measure with other his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects of this kingdom.’ For the rest, the petitioners declared their belief that the Covenant had been imposed upon great numbers of their nation by the tyranny of the dominant faction. The fiery bishop who drafted the petition thought it much too mild, and the oath itself so mean as not to be worth taking. To one speaker, who thought a little more deliberation would be advisable, the Lord Deputy answered: ‘Sir James Montgomery, you may go home and petition or not petition if you will, but if you do not, or who doth not, shall do worse.’ The petitioners were then summoned to the Council Board, and the Lord Deputy himself administered the oath to them two or three at a time.[211]

The petition was signed by Lords Montgomery and Clandeboye, by the two Leslies, and by James Spottiswood, Bishop of Clogher, who was brother to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and had himself declined the Scottish primacy several years before. Of the thirty-six commoners whose signatures follow the majority were clergymen, and at least two of them became bishops after the Restoration. It is quite evident from what followed that they represented only a very small part of the Scottish population of Ulster. The petition and oath were proclaimed by the Lord Deputy and Council, including Ussher and Bulkeley. The oath was made obligatory on all persons of the Scottish nation of the age of sixteen years and upwards, who inhabit and have any estate whatsoever in any houses, lands, tenements or hereditaments within this kingdom of Ireland,’ and local commissions were issued for the enforcement of the order. If there is any ambiguity in the words quoted it is clear that servants as well as owners of property were in practice held liable. Three peers, Clandeboye, Montgomery, and Chichester, sat as commissioners at Bangor in Down, and the former, who was acting against the grain, reported progress to Wentworth. The Lord Deputy believed there would be general and ready obedience to this, as to his past orders in Ireland; but Clandeboye reported that great numbers fled at his approach, and especially servants, that their masters are doubtful to find sufficient to reap their corn.’ He believed that the chief obstructor was ‘Mr. John Bole, the preacher of Killileagh, the old blind man that was once with your lordship,’ but he abstained from arresting any clergyman, ‘especially a preacher,’ without direct orders from the viceroy. These orders were given at once, and the old blind minister was sent up to Dublin in charge of a pursuivant. He had already been forced to take the oath on his knees with a crowd of others, but not before time had been given to preach a sermon in which the Presbyterians were not obscurely compared to Daniel, and Wentworth to the ministers of Darius. Under such circumstances the parable would be remembered, and the backsliding easily forgiven. George Rawdon was so busy ‘swearing all the Scotch men and women’ in Down that he could not go to Dublin for law business, and Mr. Spencer, another magistrate in his neighbourhood, ‘despised the employment exceedingly.’ Numbers took the oath unwillingly, but numbers also took to the woods and mountains, leaving their corn uncut, their cattle untended, and their houses unprotected, and a great many fled to Scotland, where Bramhall was short-sighted enough to think they could do but little harm. He had himself prepared the ground by first depriving and expelling the Ulster ministers, whom Archbishop Spottiswood called ‘the common incendiaries of rebellion, preaching what and where they please.’ Among the refugees was one English gentleman, Fulk Ellis of Carrickfergus, who commanded over a hundred of them at Newburn. The expenses of this contingent were paid by subscription, ‘having no parish in Scotland to provide for them.... One, Margaret James, the wife of William Scott, a maltman, who had fled out of Ireland, and were but in a mean condition, gave seven twenty-two shilling sterling pieces, and one eleven pound piece. When the day after I inquired at her how she came to give so much she answered, “I was gathering and had laid up this to be part of a portion to a young daughter I had, and as the Lord hath lately been pleased to take my daughter to Himself, I thought I would give Him her portion also.”’ Wentworth, who thought there were at least 100,000 Scots in the North, concentrated all the troops in Ulster and Leinster at Carrickfergus, which was enough to prevent anything like an insurrection. He insisted that the oath should be taken by all Scots without exception, except those who professed themselves Roman Catholics. Is it wonderful that the Scotch thirsted for his blood, or that he was believed, however untruly, to favour the religion of Rome?[212]

‘We are,’ said Baillie, ‘content with our advantage that my Lord Deputy permits to go out under his patronage that desperate doctrine of absolute submission to princes; that notwithstanding all our laws, yet our whole estate may no more oppose the prince’s deed, if he should play all the pranks of Nero, than the poorest slave at Constantinople may resist the tyranny of the Great Turk.’ In Down and Antrim the Scots formed a great majority of the colony, and Scotland was near. In Tyrone and Londonderry the English element prevailed, and the more scattered Presbyterians had the worse time. There were some who would not yield, and either could not or would not fly.’ Many were imprisoned in Dublin, like ‘worthy Mrs. Pont,’ whose husband had to leave the country, and who was shut up for nearly three years. The case which attracted the greatest attention was that of Henry Stewart, a native of Scotland, holding property in Ulster, who with his wife Margaret, his daughters Katherine and Agnes, and a servant named James Gray were brought before the Castle-chamber for refusing the oath. Attorney-General Osbaldeston told the prisoners they were guilty of high treason, but that the King would mercifully accept fines. He laid down in the boldest way that kings derived no authority from the people, but directly from above, and that everything done against their authority is done against God. Stewart was willing to take the first part of the oath, promising allegiance and obedience, but would not swear to ecclesiastical conformity or abjure all other oaths. Wentworth told him that the whole form hung together, and that no mercy would be shown unless he took all the oath unreservedly. Ussher practically agreed with Stewart, but Wentworth overruled him and held with Bramhall that the non-abjuration of all oaths, bonds, and covenants was palpable high treason. Mr. and Mrs. Stewart and their eldest daughter were fined 3,000l. apiece, the younger daughter and Gray 2,000l., making 13,000l. in all, and they were also condemned to imprisonment for life. They were told that if the King thought it proper to release them, they would have first to take the oath and to give security for their allegiance during life. The prisoners were pardoned by the King, but not until Strafford had been some time in the Tower, and the money penalties were also remitted. Whitelock stated at Strafford’s trial ‘that Stewart was fain to sell his estate to pay his fine.’ He had to support his family in prison for fifteen months, and seems to have been half-ruined; but he secured the favour of the Scotch Parliament, who recommended his case in London, and in 1646 the House of Commons voted him 1,500l. and Gray 400l. out of the estate of Sir George Radcliffe, then sequestered. The Irish Attorney-General had married Radcliffe’s niece a few days after Stewart’s trial, which adds point to the story. Gray, who had nothing of his own, and was maintained in gaol by his master, took an amusing and profitable revenge. He was employed in the spring of 1641 to promote a petition against episcopacy, and was said to have received 300l. for his services. Signatures were easily got, but Bramhall said they were all of ignorant and obscure persons, ‘not one that I know but Patrick Derry of the Newry, not one Englishman.’ After Strafford’s death Ormonde and others who had taken part in Stewart’s trial admitted that they had been mistaken and were excused, but the Lords Justices Borlase and Parsons offered some arguments in their predecessor’s favour. They allowed that the case was one for the law-courts and not for the Castle-chamber; but this error was not Strafford’s, who followed a long established practice. The heaviness of the fine was meant to strike terror into others, and not to ruin the individuals charged, and they were even inclined to think that the sentence was just. It is nevertheless evident that the invention and enforcement of the Black Oath by prerogative only was unadulterated despotism. The Roman Catholics of Ireland had much to complain of, but they were not called upon to take oaths which had no parliamentary sanction.[213]

When Strafford was impeached, two witnesses swore that at the time of Stewart’s trial he had openly threatened to root out stock and branch all Scots who would not conform, and had called them rebels and traitors. This no doubt was said hastily and in anger, but he afterwards expressed the same sentiments when he had had time, plenty of time, to think. Writing to Radcliffe from York more than a year later he proposed ‘to banish all the under Scots in Ulster by proclamation,’ grounded upon a request from his subservient Irish Parliament. By ‘under Scots’ he meant all who had not given hostage to fortune by acquiring considerable estates in land. There were 40,000 able-bodied Scots ready to welcome Argyle if he landed in Ireland, and that chief was cunning enough to tempt ‘the mere Irish, the ancient dependents of the O’Neills in that province,’ to strike a blow for lands and liberty. A vote of this kind in the Irish Parliament would help the King much, for it would infallibly create ‘a perpetual distrust and hatred’ between England and Scotland, and would add to his Majesty’s reputation in foreign parts. The banishment might be called conditional upon the continuance of hostilities. As to the owners of ‘considerable estates,’ they were but few, and the loss to them of all their tenants and servants was nothing to the general peace which would follow the expulsion of the ‘under Scots, who are so numerous and so ready for insurrection,’ and who were already armed. Even those who had taken the Black Oath were to be treated as prospective rebels. Shipping was to be provided at once, and the exiles landed in some bays or lochs where the Campbell galleys could not reach them. Radcliffe, who was in Dublin, kept this letter to himself, for he saw that the plan was impossible, and he knew that the House of Commons there was already getting out of hand. Strafford believed that something equivalent to a state of siege existed, and that he was therefore justified in the most extreme measures. History may make excuses, but to the Long Parliament he was the man who had encouraged them to oppose the King, who had then gone over to the side of prerogative, receiving titles and power as the price of desertion, and who was ready to dragoon better men into submission. To honest Scotch Covenanters he was of course the arch-enemy, and those who espoused their cause from selfish motives knew that his interests were not theirs.[214]

CHAPTER XIV
WENTWORTH’S PLANS OF FORFEITURE AND SETTLEMENT

It was natural, considering the history of the country, that very few titles to Irish land should be absolutely without flaw. This uncertainty affected all business transactions, and nothing was so much longed for as a possessory title of sixty years, such as James had granted by statute in England. But the opportunity of increasing revenue was too good to be lost, and Charles, just before Wentworth’s arrival, issued to him and others a commission for defective titles which gave almost unlimited power to compound with the owners of property, and to give them fresh titles in consideration of such payments as the Commissioners might think fair. Valid grants from the Crown were not to be disturbed, and lands appropriated to certain public uses were also excepted. Everything else was at the mercy of the Commission, but a title once granted was to be confirmed by the next Parliament. An Act did pass in 1634 confirming such grants as had been already made, and prospectively ratifying those still to come. But Wentworth contemplated new settlements like that of Ulster, and the Commission gave him enormous power. He advised the King to give four shillings in the pound to the Chief Justice and Chief Baron out of all increase of revenue for the first twelve months, and so secure five pounds a year for ever; and this he found to be ‘the best advice that ever was, for now they do intend it with a care and diligence such, as if it were their own private.’ A commission to the henwife has been commonly found to increase the number of eggs, but the idea is scarcely applicable to a Chief Justice. Wentworth was not corrupt himself, and he condemned corruption in others, but in his zeal for the Crown he advised Charles to do a far worse thing than any that had brought down Bacon from his high estate.[215]

Among the twenty-six Acts passed in the second session of Wentworth’s obedient Parliament there were several relating to the tenure and alienation of land. Secret leases for long terms and other fraudulent conveyances were so common that titles to property were much obscured. Feudal burdens were shirked, and private injustice was often done. The general drift of Wentworth’s legislation was to secure the public registration of deeds and wills, and to make the actual possession of land presumptive proof of its ownership. This reform, he wrote, ‘will without question gain the Crown six wardships for one, besides an opportunity to breed the best houses up in religion as they fall, which in reason of state is of infinite consequence, as we see experimentally in my Lord of Ormonde, who, if he had been left to the education of his own parents, had been as mere Irish and Papist as the best of them, whereas now he is a very good Protestant, and consequently will make not only a faithful, but a very affectionate servant to the Crown of England.’ The gain through the Court of Wards he afterwards reported to be £4,000 a year. The gain to his great scheme of plantation was obvious. Here again there was much immediate profit to the Crown and more in prospect by the establishment of an English and Protestant population. ‘All the Protestants,’ he said, ‘are for plantations, all the others against them.’ If juries drawn from the Recusant majority could be got to find the King’s title to their lands, so much the better. If not, there was a Protestant majority in the House of Commons and the lands requisite for colonisation might be ‘passed to the King by immediate Act of Parliament.’ One of the districts selected was the north part of Tipperary called Ormond, where the Earl had grants which would have been fatal to Wentworth’s scheme, but that he at once declared himself willing to co-operate. In Thomond or Clare Lord Inchiquin prudently followed Ormonde’s example, but in neither case was time given to Wentworth for the establishment of his projected colony. The sept of the O’Brennans had long been in practical possession of Edough, the northern part of Kilkenny, which includes Castlecomer. The King’s title was found in the usual way, and the territory was granted to Wandesford, who bought out certain other claimants and who even made some attempts to compensate the O’Brennans. Many English tenants were established, and Wandesford’s representatives, after having been ousted during the rebellion, held their own under the Commonwealth and after the Restoration. Wentworth claimed the whole of Connaught for the Crown. The general idea was that one-fourth of the land should be given to settlers, and that the old owners should receive a valid title for the remainder. Leitrim had been lately planted, and the other four counties were now claimed. Galway was thought the most likely to resist, and was left to the last, lest its example should corrupt the others.[216]

The Commissioners for the new plantation were the Lord Deputy himself, Lord Dillon, acting-president of Connaught, Lord Ranelagh, Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Wentworth’s friend Wandesford, his secretaries Mainwaring and Radcliffe, and Sir Adam Loftus of Rathfarnham, who always supported him. The Commissioners arrived at Boyle on July 9, 1635, and went to work without delay. Before leaving Dublin Wentworth had directed the sheriff to enpanel a jury ‘of the best estates and understandings’ in the county of Roscommon. ‘My reason,’ he said, ‘was that this being a leading case for the whole province, it would set a great value in their estimation upon the goodness of the King’s title, being found by persons of their qualities, and as much concerned in their own particulars as any other. Again, finding the evidence so strong, as unless they went against it, they must pass for the King, I resolved to have persons of such means as might answer the King a round fine in the Castle-chamber in case they should prevaricate, who in all seeming even out of that reason would be more fearful to tread shamelessly and impudently aside from the truth, than such as had less, or nothing to lose.’ The threatened landowners asked for an adjournment, but Wentworth said the chancery proceedings begun twenty days before were notice enough. Counsel having been heard on both sides, Wentworth told the jury that the King’s great object was to make them a civil people, that a plantation was the readiest means to that end, and that his Majesty would not only take from them nothing that was theirs, but would also give them something that was his. In other words they were to be allowed to retain three-fourths of what they, and everyone else, supposed to be their own property. No legally valid grant should be questioned, ‘but God knows,’ he told Coke, ‘very few or none of their patents are good.’ The evidence, Wentworth told the jury, was clear, and if they acknowledged it frankly they should have easy terms. But the King would have his way anyhow, and perhaps it would be best for him that they should deny his title, for in that case he would get all he wanted by a process in the Exchequer, and they could then expect no mercy. With this threat hanging over them, the Roscommon gentlemen thought it prudent to submit, and found the King’s title to the whole county.[217]

Sligo, on the 20th, and Mayo on the 31st, followed the example of Roscommon, but at Portumna in Galway the Commissioners met with a very different reception. The county, and especially the eastern part of it, was much under the influence of the Earl of Clanricarde; it contained hardly any Protestant freeholders, and the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy was very great. Clanricarde was in England with his son, but his nephew Lord Clanmorris attended to lead the opposition. Another nephew was on the jury, and so was John Donnellan, the Earl’s agent or steward. The jury with two exceptions found against the King’s title, and it was observed that those who voted after Donnellan did so with much greater decision than those who voted before him. Richard Burke, Clanricarde’s nephew, was fined 500l. for endeavouring to influence a brother juror by pulling his sleeve while he was speaking with the Commissioners. Wentworth was very angry, and resolved to carry out his plan notwithstanding, but with the difference that half the land in Galway was to be confiscated, instead of a quarter as in the other three counties. The disobedient shire should be ‘fully lined and planted with English,’ and bridles in the meantime with sufficient garrisons. ‘And for those counsellors at law,’ the Commissioners reported, ‘who so laboured against the King’s title, we conceive it is fit that such of them as we shall find reason to proceed withal, be put to take the oath of supremacy, which if they refuse, that then they be silenced, and not admitted to practise as now they do; it being unfit that they should take benefit by his Majesty’s graces, that take the boldness after such a manner to oppose his service.’ Wentworth had taken much credit to himself at Boyle for allowing counsel to appear before the Commissioners, and this was how he understood freedom of speech. The sheriff was fined 1,000l. and bound over to appear in the Castle-chamber on a charge of packing the jury, who were also bound over to be dealt with there. A proclamation was issued to give the county generally an opportunity of disavowing the jury, and this was so far successful that a verdict was obtained for the King at Galway in April 1637. Charles thoroughly approved of the fines, the imprisonments and the proclamations, and in particular held it ‘just and reasonable’ that the Galway landowners should lose half their property instead of a mere one-fourth.[218]

The Earl of Clanricarde had distinguished himself by his courage and fidelity at Kinsale, and had enjoyed the especial favour of Queen Elizabeth. He had afterwards married Walsingham’s daughter, the widow of Sidney and Essex. His services thus entitled him to consideration, and his connections secured him friends at Court. In 1616 James I., after a full inquiry by two secretaries of state, had made him governor of the county and town of Galway in such a manner as to make him independent of the president of Connaught. This patent expired with James, but it was amply renewed by his successor for the life of the Earl and his eldest son. These facts were perfectly well known to Wentworth, but he advised the King to break his word and revoke the patent on the purely technical ground that a judicial office could not be granted in reversion. Clanricarde died within the year, and it was reported by Wentworth’s enemies that hard usage had broken his heart. ‘They might as well,’ said the Lord Deputy, ‘have imputed unto me for a crime his being threescore and ten years old.’ There was more reason for imputing to him the death in prison of Martin Darcy, the unfortunate sheriff of Galway. ‘My arrows,’ he said on this point, ‘are cruel that wound so mortally; but I should be more sorry by much the King should lose his fine.’ The King did not revoke the patent for the government of Galway, and the young Earl of Clanricarde, who was to play so important a part in the civil war, seems from the first to have enjoyed much influence at Court. The Galway jurors were tried in the Castle-chamber in May 1636, and sentenced to pay £4,000 each as a fine, to be imprisoned until payment, and to acknowledge their fault at the assizes upon their knees and in open court. The fine was afterwards reduced at Clanricarde’s request, and the difficulties with Scotland began before any real progress could be made with the new settlement.[219]

Wentworth maintained the King’s title to Connaught on purely legal grounds, not seeming to realise that mere legality was an inadequate foundation for what was virtually wholesale forfeiture. Some modern writers who admire or excuse his policy have stated that he set up a title which would satisfy lawyers; but no one had a greater contempt for the letter of the law when it stood in his way, and it is the substantial justice of his action that is really in question. The Elizabethan lawyers knew perfectly well that the feudal ownership of Connaught was vested in Edward IV. and his successors, but they did not, therefore, consider that the land was at the Queen’s mercy. The chiefs and landowners of the province had been acknowledged over and over again, and had always yielded something to the Crown by way of cess. Sidney and Perrott reduced this uncertain impost to a small but fixed rent, and by so doing confirmed the tenure of those who paid it. It is very true that the exact terms of the contract had seldom been fulfilled by the Irish, and that most of them had been engaged in rebellious actions after the composition. That might have been a reason for forfeiting their land at the time, and demands for arrears of rent might have been made much later; but this is a very different thing from confiscation after a generation of peace. Nor was this all: on July 21, 1615, James I. had written to Chichester directing that the Connaught landowners should have patents granted them, in consideration of the composition made by Queen Elizabeth, and reserving the same rent in future. To this Wentworth answered that the recitals in the letter as to the fulfilment of the composition covenants were grounded on false information; that ‘the inhabitants were intruders and had no such estates as could either be surrendered or confirmed.’ The patents actually issued were therefore void, as having been obtained under false pretences, and for some technical flaws also. The monstrous result is that the whole population of Connaught were squatters, and had no rights whatever. It is no wonder that the Irish Parliament had clamoured for a sixty years’ possessory title against the Crown.[220]

Whatever other objects he may have had in view, profit to the Exchequer was always sought by Wentworth. In the case of the Londoners’ plantation the mere money consideration was greater, and the political advantage much less, than in the case of the Connaught proprietors. Sir Thomas Phillips had almost ruined himself in his contest with the great corporation, who had certainly done much, but who could easily be shown not to have done all that they promised. Londonderry and Coleraine had been secured against attack, but the number of houses was less than at first agreed upon, and in the country it was found much easier to take rent from the native occupiers than to bring over the full number of English settlers. Commercial corporations who become possessed of political power are always tempted to pay too much regard to present profit, and the Irish Society of London acted to some extent as the East India Company did in later times. In the Bann alone more than sixty tons of salmon were sometimes taken in one day, and this was much more lucrative than the slow process of settling English farmers upon the land. It was also much more convenient to convert the vast woods into ready money than to preserve them for local use, and their destruction was rapid. In 1803 the county of Londonderry, which had once contained the great forest of Glenconkein, was officially reported to be ‘perhaps the worst wooded in the King’s dominions.’ Wentworth saw his opportunity, and determined to exact his pound of flesh from the Londoners in Ulster, since they were unwilling to pay arbitrary taxes at home. A side blow might be dealt to Presbyterianism at the same time. Proceedings in the Star Chamber against the Corporation of London had resulted in the summer of 1631 in a Royal Commission to collect evidence in Ireland, and special attention was ordered to be given to the representations of Phillips. The cause dragged on for three years, and early in 1634 Wentworth wrote to Coke to advise that in any case the grant of the customs of Londonderry and Coleraine, for which the grantees paid no rent, should be resumed by the Crown, as unfit to be held by any subject, and especially by a body which owed the King 1,800l. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘my humble suit, that at least you take that feather from them again, as not fit to be worn in the round cap of a citizen of London.’[221]