At the outset of the Earl of Devonshire’s wooings, his Deputy in Dublin was one Cary, Treasurer at War. Cary, in comparison with his confederates, was a mere pedlar in villainy. As Treasurer at War he drew forged Bills of Exchange and passed off false moneys dexterously enough; but as Deputy he showed himself unskilled in the mystery of annexing broad acres by sealed sheepskins. Cary was ill-regarded by Chichester, who from his eyrie in Carrickfergus sped into England sly narratives of his misdeeds. Filled with remorse for his colleague’s sins, Sir Arthur humbly insinuated his own merits. Devonshire and Cecil were on the side of the cunning penman, and submitted his reports to the King. An inquiry into his charges was held, and although Cary’s audited accounts were found in order he was recalled. Then Chichester with great show of reluctance allowed himself to be installed in the vacant place.

On being invested with the “Sword of State” he displayed a rapacity in keeping with his increased power, but the more he robbed the Crown the more redolent of loyalty and piety grew his dispatches. He had written of Cary words which quickly waxed applicable to himself:—“The Deputy made such a hand of enriching himself in this land, as the like was never done by any other that supplied the place.” He marked down the pardoned Ulster Chieftains as his especial prey. Upon their possessions he had long cast envious eyes, and with cold watchfulness he set himself to weave a web around them.

Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, after three months at Court, had, on the 11th September, 1603, secured from James I. an order for the “restoration in blood” by Act of Parliament of himself and his brothers, and the re-grant of their lands by Patent. The King wished a Parliament to be summoned so that the Irish Princes and people should universally enjoy (for the first time) the protection of English Law. Two documents published in the year of his accession attest in this particular the statesmanship of the Stuart. Yet no Parliament was called, nor did any Patent issue in favour of the Chiefs from the Dublin fount of grants whose parchments alone a crafty Executive treated as binding. In the words of a Spanish Don, O’Neill and his comrades were “a very simple sort of men.” They had Latin pat, but little skill in lawcraft. Their warlike prowess won European renown, but they were easily outmatched in legal tourney. Despite Royal pardon, Royal parchments, and Royal promises, the Earls O’Neill and O’Donnell and their titles were blotted out within less than five years of the Treaty of Peace by the relentless Devonian.

Shortly after Chichester became Deputy (February, 1605) there appeared before him a Scottish suitor bearing “King’s Letters” entitling him to unexpected bounties. Their magnitude astonished the “Admiral of Lough Neagh.” At first he gibed at the stranger and thwarted his projects. Then he trounced him in letters of alarm to Cecil. The nature of the replies he received, however, was not encouraging. For Sir Arthur had to do with a Royal favourite—James Hamilton—reputed to be a mighty hunter of holes in other men’s grants. The son of a clergyman at Ayr, Hamilton during Elizabeth’s reign, served the Scottish Crown as a spy both in Ireland and England. His career is a romance of the Fee-Simple, and he ended his days as a Peer of the Realm, owning, as Lord Claneboy, an estate in Ulster and elsewhere as extensive as the greediest of the freebooters. In his youth Hamilton was a Scholar of Dublin University, which was then newly founded by Queen Elizabeth on lands seized from St. Mary’s Abbey. Afterwards he kept a Latin School near Dublin Castle with James Fullerton, and the pair acted as intelligencers for the Scottish Crown.

When the Tudor Dynasty was drawing to an end he hired himself to quest for the King of Scots on perilous errands to and fro between the Three Kingdoms. Finally he took pay from both Crowns, and after Elizabeth’s death the favour of James was his rich endowment. A subtle devisor of pretexts to bring about a lapse in the Patents of others, he often succeeded in persuading the King that the forfeits should fall to “discoverers” like himself. Such rewards cost his Majesty little, and the Ayrshireman’s influence and wealth grew apace.

Upon the Stuart Accession, Hamilton was entrusted with the task of pleading at Court the claim of the heirs of Sir Thomas Smith (Elizabeth’s Latin Secretary) to the lands of Claneboy. The Queen’s Charter of 1571 offered a large slice of East Ulster to Smith and his bastard son to encourage a warlike expedition against the eastern branch of the O’Neills. In pushing the raid, Smith’s son was killed, and this brought the adventure and the Charter to an end. When Ireland was subdued in 1603 the Smith family petitioned (in view of their sacrifices thirty years earlier) that the lapsed Charter should be revived in their favour, and Hamilton was hired to press their suit on the King. His retainer proved unprosperous: the Smiths got nothing, but their advocate managed to acquire the bulk of the property for himself. At this result cries of “treachery” arose from the disappointed Smiths, yet no one wasted a thought on the fate of the real owners, the O’Neills of Claneboy.

From Tudor times this branch of the O’Neills had been loyal to the Crown, but were afterwards found to be rather in the way. Holding choice spots of strength, they saw their possessions raided by those whom they had served. After James I. came to the throne, Chichester seized whatever part of their lands he chose to think fell within Sir Ralph Lane’s “custodium.” He had, as already mentioned, imprisoned Sir Con O’Neill; and the rage he felt when that chief escaped from his clutches was intensified on Hamilton’s arrival with the news of his pardon and King’s Letters for a Patent of his property. The O’Neills had dwelt a thousand years in Claneboy; but the Deputy was indignant that a rival should forestall him in spoliation, and avail of his own procedure to work it out.

Sir Con’s downfall came about because, being minded to import wine into the harbour at Carrickfergus, the garrison there looted it on the way to his cellars, and his servant killed one of the soldiers in a hasty affray in 1602. The chief and his retainers had been in the pay and service of Queen Elizabeth since 1600, yet this scuffle Chichester dubbed “treason.” Instead of punishing the thieves he attacked the owner of the wine, and Sir Con’s life and lands were put in jeopardy. He was arrested, thrust into a cell in Carrickfergus Castle, and tried as a rebel by “office of inquest” before the Provost-Marshal. There had been no Provost-Marshal at Carrickfergus in Elizabeth’s reign; and, in order to do service on Sir Con, Chichester got leave, on the 30th August, 1603, to appoint one. He and the Ulster Earls were then in London, and before Con could be executed he escaped from the Castle. A Scotch laird, Sir Hugh Montgomery, helped him to fly, and had him ferried across the narrow strait between Carrickfergus and Scotland. The Laird was brother to the new Court Chaplain under James I., the Rev. George Montgomery. To London he took Sir Con to see the reverend favourite and secure a Stuart pardon. O’Neill promised him a large fee, no less than half his estate, as the price of “forgiveness.”

When they arrived at Court the suppliants encountered the ex-spy, Sir James Fullerton, brimful of craft and watchful of chances. He was the old comrade of Hamilton, and contrived a turn for him out of Sir Con’s distress. His influence was such that the King only granted the “pardon” on condition that the chief’s bargain with Montgomery should be recast and a third of his estate given to Hamilton. O’Neill was kept dangling about the Court for over a year before this composition was arrived at. Thus the chief was shorn of two-thirds of his lands instead of half, as the price of “mercy.” To temper the loss to Montgomery the King promised to throw in as many abbeys and monasteries as would make it good, but Sir Con had to submit to the condition that the new Patent should be made out in Hamilton’s name and accept his promise to assign a third to himself and Montgomery. Such was Fullerton’s fealty to his brother-spy. At his death Fullerton was honoured with a grave in Westminster Abbey.

By such help James Hamilton won a lodgment in Ulster. He at once hastened to Dublin, and presented two King’s Letters to the Deputy. One of them, dated the 16th April, 1605, entitled him to the entire of Sir Con’s property, while another of the 6th December, 1604, gave him land (unspecified) to the value of £100 a year. These warrants startled Chichester, who had expected to make his own of the whole of O’Neill’s possessions. In his eyes they revealed a woeful situation, for they conferred on an outsider “of his Majesty’s gift the countries and territories of Upper Clandeboye and the Great Ardes.” This manner of looting O’Neill fell out with his plans—a stranger had struck sickle in the corn he had sown.

Hamilton’s second grant of £100 a year was framed on the elastic “Wakeman” model, and surpassed it in the romance of its origin. In his impoverished Elizabethan days the spy used when he came to London put up at the “Half-Moon” Tavern in Bow Lane. It was a house of call for Scotchmen; and the landlord, Thomas Irelande, hailed from “the North Countrie.” At that date the Scotch were by Statute the “ancient enemies” of the English; but Hamilton, while acting as a scout for the Scots, was also in the pay of England. When James I. reached the throne he cannot have suspected this, and his Letter of the 6th December, 1604, with other gifts, attests his gratitude.

Suitors for King’s Letters who wished to baffle inquiry or avert jealousy often put forward some “John Doe” or “Richard Roe” as a feigned beneficiary (as the Earl of Devonshire did) to mask grants intended for themselves. Hamilton preferred that the name of his innkeeper should appear in the royal Letter instead of his own. He had, on the 6th November, 1603, and 18th May, 1604, been given a valuable monopoly for the export of linen yarn from Ireland, and may have thought it would be easier or more speedy to obtain further grants if he remained in disguise rather than appear as the original beneficiary. Whatever his motive, he showed himself as skilful as higher personages in employing the machinery for juggling with Patents. The name of the Innkeeper, Thomas Irelande, chosen for insertion as the nominal Patentee, corresponded with that of another “Thomas Ireland,” an escheator of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, who might be looked on as the grantee by those who did not burrow too deeply below the surface.

Figments were recited about Thomas Irelande in the King’s Letter which rival those palmed off on James I. by the Lord Lieutenant in the case of John Wakeman. Its text made his Majesty certify that the tapster of the “Half-Moon” had paid into the Exchequer £1,678 6s. 8d., but whether before or after he came to the throne of England was not stated; and that, as a recompense, Thomas Irelande was to receive an estate worth £100 a year “out of such castles, manors, etc., as came to the Crown by forfeiture, attainder, etc.” The Privy Council had just ordered the Irish Executive not to part with any such “castles.”

In the year 1604 the sum of £1,678 6s. 8d. would represent nearly £20,000 in to-day’s values. This a humble innkeeper is supposed to have presented to the Exchequer without security or interest—an unexplained and un-Scottish caprice. To have had such command of money, Thomas Irelande must have amassed a fortune out of the tavern “where Scotsmen lie”; although in Elizabeth’s reign no large muster of Scots from whom it could derive custom repaired to London. A Census of Foreigners in 1567 shows that there were only 40 resident Scotchmen in the metropolis, as compared with 472 Frenchmen and 2,030 Dutch. So the Bow Lane philanthropist must have been as lucky under the Tudors as he was lavish under the Stuarts.

His Majesty was in the habit of borrowing money wherever he could lay hands on it. He took loans from Hugh O’Neill and never repaid them. He also laid himself under obligation to wealthy London citizens; but these were personal debts; and the landlord of the “Half-Moon” is not alleged to have made the King a private loan, but to have lodged cash in the public Exchequer. His place of abode is not mentioned in the King’s Letter, where his innkeepership is disguised by misdescribing him as a “merchant.”

The oddest part of the transaction has now to be recorded. Having poured his largesse into the royal coffers, the tapster’s openhandedness sought a fresh outlet. With boundless disregard for bawbees, Thomas Irelande made over to Hamilton the grant of £100 a year which had cost him £1,678 6s. 8d. This was expressed to be done “for divers good considerations”—that being the common form for a voluntary conveyance. In other words, he gave a valuable property away for nothing. Few London hotel-keepers now endow their guests in that way. These goodly giants of the prime are alas extinct.

Hamilton, armed with his landlord’s conveyance and the grant of Sir Con O’Neill’s estate (in trust as to two-thirds), pressed the Deputy for Patents to validate them. Legally his demand was irresistible; but Chichester’s righthand men, led by Sir William Parsons (the Surveyor-General), shared his reluctance to “passing” a grant so extensive. They, like their master, felt wounded that an intruder should try to carry off booty larger than any seized by the Lord Lieutenant or the other Elizabethan warriors.

What was to be done? A blank refusal to honour the King’s warrant was impossible, so they temporised and parleyed with Hamilton. Meanwhile, the Deputy, smarting at the loss of the hoped-for escheat from Sir Con (whom he would gladly have hanged), poured out his soul in protest to Cecil. He wrote on the 19th June, 1605:—

“The King’s grants daily increase. There is come hither one Mr. James Hamilton with two Letters from the King: one containing a gift of £100 land in fee-farm, in the name of Thomas Irelande; the other for passing to him the Great Ardes or Upper Claneboy—by virtue of which words, if he have his desires, he will have more lands than the greatest lords in this kingdom, and all is given in free and common soccage, whereby his Majesty’s tenures are lost and everywhere abridged. If copies of these letters be called for the grants will be found to be extraordinary.

“When I was in England, it pleased the King, by your means, to bestow on me the Castle of Belfast and other lands adjoining. I have passed it twice, and as yet I understand by this gentleman—who, it seems, has sought all the records—there are some questions may be made thereon, by reason of some grants made long since to Sir Thomas Smith. For albeit that deed be of no force, yet, not being so found void in the ‘office,’ as the records of those deeds were not in this Kingdom, I am subject to some danger. I pray, therefore, that one Letter more may be granted to me for re-passing the same.” While awaiting Cecil’s reply, Chichester, on the 26th June, 1605, appointed a Commission of his most trusted officials and cronies to hold Inquisitions preliminary to any grant being made, so that by a rigid enforcement of the Patent laws (hitherto ignored), Hamilton should not get a rood of land or a rill of water to which he was not strictly entitled. The scope of the Commission was severely limited to the text of the King’s Letters which Hamilton presented, and the persons appointed to execute it were:—

Of these, the three last, with Parsons, alone acted, and they sat to hold Inquisitions at Ardwhin, Co. Down (recte Ardquin), on the 5th July, 1605, and in the town of Antrim on the 12th July, 1605. They were commissioned to ascertain what lands Sir Con O’Neill and his father, Brian Fertagh, were possessed of in Upper Claneboy and the Great Ardes, with the rents and “cuttings” to which they were subject. Their other duty was to discover what property in the Counties of Antrim and Down should have come to the Crown by attainder or forfeiture, so that the £100 a year granted to Thomas Irelande might be provided thereout. The verdict then found took shape in a return, which was put to such an illegitimate use that it was not enrolled for 79 years, lest its terms should leak out.

For by the time the Commissioners had completed their labours and returned to Dublin, Cecil silenced the murmurings of the Deputy, and counselled him to come to an understanding with Hamilton. The “one Letter more” never was signed, for the policy recommended from London made it unnecessary. Cecil having, in 1599, promoted Chichester to the Irish command, acted as his protector ever after. He used lovingly dub him “poor Arthur,” but “poor Arthur’s” appeal against Hamilton made too large a draft on his power. Instead of procuring a fresh King’s Letter he evidently warned him to make terms with the royal favourite, for within a month the Deputy treated “the Scot” as a bosom friend. The Antrim Inquisition was then availed of, with the aid of the ductile Parsons, as the groundwork of an enormous grant to Hamilton, who arranged to hand over a large slice of the plunder to the Deputy. This dispensed Cecil from having to beseech James I. for another “Letter” for Chichester, and from that forth a working partnership was established between the Deputy and Hamilton. This alliance in ill-doing linked them for life. Backed by Davies, and with the help of the Lord Chancellor (Jones, Archbishop of Dublin—called that “rascal Jones” by Dean Swift), they organised a conspiracy to cheat the State unmatched in Anglo-Irish annals.