The system applied by Chichester to hoodwink the Crown and defraud the subject went undetected for years. It consisted in availing of spent King’s Letters, and issuing Patents upon them afresh—in many cases to an extent enormously beyond the powers originally contemplated. In this way the Ulster fisheries were annexed; and equally lawless appropriations were made in nearly every county. Where fishings were concerned, the Deputy’s maw was insatiable. Until the Stuart era, Hugh O’Neill and Sir Randal MacDonnell largely controlled the Bann; O’Donnell and O’Doherty Lough Foyle; and Maguire Lough Erne. The Lagan had been included by Sir Arthur in his Patents of 1603-4; when his scriveners conferred on him a life-estate in Lough Neagh and the Bann, with the title of Admiral. Upon taking Hamilton into partnership he treated his own Patents for both the Lagan and Lough Neagh as worthless, and prepared fresh dispositions.

His old comrade, Captain Thomas Phillips, was commander of the fort at Toome (where the Bann issues from Lough Neagh), and had been allowed to become tenant of the fishery at Coleraine belonging to Sir Randal MacDonnell (afterwards Earl of Antrim). Sir Randal was brother-in-law of Hugh O’Neill, and had supported him in the war against Elizabeth. Chichester nourished an implacable hatred of MacDonnell and his clan, because in 1597 they defeated his brother, Sir John Chichester, and beheaded him. During O’Neill’s revolt he tried to get Sir James MacDonnell, Randal’s brother, poisoned; and used to write of Randal to Cecil as “MacSorley,” in order to recall the feud of his father, Sorley Bwee, with the Queen. The MacDonnells, as Lords of the Isles, were Scottish as well as Irish chieftains, and of old blood. King James was hardly six weeks on the united Thrones when he confirmed Sir Randal’s estate of 333,000 acres in County Antrim. This area MacDonnell occupied by ancient conquest; but the legal recognition of his ownership was hateful to Chichester, who planned to make the rival Scottish favourite the instrument of his revenge.

Hamilton, being a stranger, needed a backer in the North, and one having local knowledge. For this service Captain Phillips was well fitted, and his price had to be paid. At the outset the Deputy provided for it by stripping the Crown of stray escheats from the monks. Then, on the 20th July, 1605, he issued to Hamilton, under the Thomas Irelande Letter, a Patent for the Abbey of Coleraine, with the monastery fishing in the Bann. Along with this went much other spoil, lay and ecclesiastical, such as the Manor of Moygare, in Meath, with several rectories, tithes and manors in Kildare, Queen’s County, Down, and Antrim. The rent reserved to the Crown for this was only £54 1s. 1d., and Cecil was advised that Hamilton, on the 23rd September, 1605, had transferred to Captain Phillips the Abbey of Coleraine with the fishery. So splendid a gift was no small handsel from one who was himself entitled to receive only “the value of £100 a year.” It was intended as a “retainer” to Phillips to blood him for an intended attack on Sir Randal.

Though the tap of the “Half-Moon” had poured much wealth into Hamilton’s maw it left his thirst unslaked, and the exhausted warrant to John Wakeman, which had lain fallow for over a year, was next prepared for action. To employ it, the co-operation of Sir Richard Cooke, the Secretary of State, was needed, as, by a “power of attorney” from Wakeman in 1604, Cooke was entrusted to “sue out” grants under it on Devonshire’s behalf. Chichester feared to make use of Cooke. He wished for a more pliable nominee, who would consent to deceive the Lord Lieutenant as well as the King. Whether Wakeman agreed to this, or whether his name was abused, is uncertain; but an altered “power of attorney,” dated the 21st October, 1605, was put forth, purporting to have been executed by Wakeman, in which Mr. James Ware, Auditor for “martial causes,” figures instead of Cooke. No honest reason for such a change (inside a year) can be imagined; and by this means the Auditor, whose office was intended to check corruption, was enlisted for the corrupt obtainment of grants. Before availing of Ware’s help, the Deputy issued to Hamilton, on the 5th November, 1605, a Patent for Sir Con O’Neill’s estate—two thirds of which was afterwards reconveyed to Montgomery and its true owner. In this (as part of the process of mystification) was included a grant of “the whole fishing of the River Lagan,” which Chichester had snatched for himself in his Patents of 1603-4. He gave it to Hamilton only by way of conferring valid title to it on a stranger, intending subsequently to secure a transfer to himself. Thus one branch of the 1603-4 illegality was vested with seemly raiment.

At this time the Gunpowder Plot shook England, and emboldened in guile the officials entrusted with the administration of Ireland. Trumpeting a tale of Popish treason, the action of Guy Fawkes and his gang deafened the ears of the King to the complaints of Irish Catholics. Whatever lingering tenderness James might have retained for them the Plot whiffed away. The severe measures which it excused gave Chichester a larger command of power; and he used it to advance his grasping policy. Having the Auditor-General in his pocket, he soon prepared a dazzling stroke. The self-styled “Admiral,” who purported to have received in 1604 a life-estate in the fisheries of Lough Neagh and the Bann, gave them to Hamilton by Patent in derogation of his own rights, on the 14th February, 1606. Using the Thomas Irelande Letter as his authority, he presented “the Scot” with these coveted waters in fee simple, and included in the grant gigantic stretches of territory in Antrim, Down, Carlow, and Roscommon, as well as a couple of abbeys and the advowsons of half-a-dozen rectories. All was done in alleged compliance with a warrant entitling its possessor to £100 a year. A haul so comprehensive seldom weighted a single Patent. To-day it would be worth a million of money. No Inquisition warranted this, and there was nothing to show that the property belonged to the Crown, but by Parsons’ dexterity the Inquisition at Antrim of the 12th July, 1605, was made to serve as a shaky foundation for what was done, although the Commission authorising the inquiry confined it to the estate of Con O’Neill and to “concealed” lands to provide for Thomas Irelande’s £100. The Inquisition was then carefully tucked away, and lay in concealment nearly eighty years, while the Commission is defaced in a style unusual amongst the records of the period.

The inclusion in Hamilton’s Patent of Lough Neagh and the Bann exposes the hollowness of their pretenced donation for the Deputy’s life in 1604. Had Chichester’s Patent been a reality, why should he abandon them to Hamilton two years later without even paying the existence of his life-estate the compliment of a “recital” in the Inquisition over which his creature Parsons presided? It was the counterpart of his device as to the River Lagan which he at the same time made over to Hamilton with a like understanding as to its being reconveyed to himself with, as he hoped, a less infirm title.

The mystery of this multiplied munificence is soon told, for Chichester forthwith took a conveyance of the entire property from Hamilton without a blush. The assignment to him was not enrolled or published, and was kept a close secret. The system of privily transferring property had not yet been made illegal in Ireland, although in England, by the Statute of Uses, Henry VIII. forbade “covinous” or furtive parchments. Not until Strafford’s Viceroyalty, when Chichester’s malpractices stood partly revealed, was the wholesome English law applied to Ireland in 1634.

Having swallowed Lough Neagh and the Bann, with other huge expanses, the Deputy showed that he and his confederate were not men to make two bites of a cherry. The tidal fishing of the Bann remained ungrabbed; and to capture it the Auditor-General proved invaluable. This reach of the river stood “in charge” as Crown property in the books of the Exchequer; and was leased to Sir William Godolphin at £10 a year. As Wakeman’s attorney Ware immediately “sued out” a grant of the tidal fishery. The transfer was graciously sanctioned by the Deputy; and next day Ware made it over to Hamilton (3rd March, 1606).

The tidal Bann was officially described by Sir John Davies as Crown estate, and especially valuable. Yet the Auditor-General treated it as a trifle which an exhausted King’s Letter might smuggle to a stranger, with himself as conduit-pipe. By these expedients, Lough Neagh and the Bann (tidal and non-tidal) were made away with—so far as parchment and sealing-wax could do it. Ware was rewarded for his accommodating ways by sundry emoluments and perquisites, and was also graced with a knighthood.

His “power of attorney” was next availed of to generate a fresh litter of Patents as monstrous as those previously begotten on the spent Letter to Thomas Irelande. Ware knew, when Wakeman’s warrant was abused for the third time, that its efficacy was dead. He had been Auditor-General since the 6th September, 1603, and was empowered when appointed “to search the records in the Auditor’s office”; so he cannot have been ignorant of the bloated grants passed under it in 1604. He must also have felt, when Sir Richard Cooke was set aside within a year and himself substituted as a recipient, that the change portended a baleful purpose.