“Our dear Arthur Bassett of Dublin” was not of Dublin, but of Umberley, in the County of Devon. He was brought over to serve as jackal for his uncle, and the Patent suddenly made out for him was simply a link forged in the chain of confiscation. It granted Bassett all the enormous territories captured by Chichester through Hamilton on the 14th February, 1606, with Sir Randal MacDonnell’s “fourth” of the Bann thrown in. No King’s Letter authorised it, and the Patent was issued without the knowledge of his Majesty or any of his Council. Nevertheless, it emerged duly sealed from the Irish Chancery; and its formal validity could not be denied. Here the cunning hand of Davies was again at work, and the processes of law were twisted by him to purposes which no one else had dreamt of. The minting machine, the dies, the cranks, the pulleys, and every handy engine for counterfeiting stood ready; but it was the brain of Davies which turned them to account. How came he weaponed for this work?

Two years earlier a “Royal Commission for the Remedy of Defective Titles” had been established by James I. on the Deputy’s advice. It was set up as a local convenience, to enable Patents to be issued in Dublin to owners whose grants had been held defective, without the necessity of suing out King’s Letters from London. On payment of a fine by approved applicants, the Royal Commissioners, who comprised all the leading members of the Executive (17 in number), headed by the Deputy and the judges, were empowered to make amended grants. Their integrity and good faith were relied on by the King to exercise the regal privilege entrusted to them without any check or supervision.

This delegation of royal authority Chichester perverted to his own purposes. His nephew owned no property in Ireland, and had no title to be “remedied.” Yet to this landless upstart a parchment was presented, as if he were some ancient and blameless Patentee in whose deeds a flaw had been detected. His Majesty never heard of “our dear Arthur Bassett,” who was “of Dublin” only because he had been fetched there to abet a crime. He was for the moment Provost Marshal for Munster, it being the Deputy’s habit to quarter as many of his relatives as possible on the taxpayers; but there was no other link to connect him with Irish soil. The property stolen through Hamilton was all conveyed to him by this means, and with it was included the “fourth” of the tidal Bann which MacDonnell was given by James I. on his accession five years before.

This pilferage must be reckoned as one of Chichester’s most dexterous fetches. In skill it outdid even the budding of the life-estate in Lough Neagh on the thirteen-and-fourpenny “command” at Carrickfergus. Still, its success was influentially contributed to by others. The trick required the collusion of the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, the Chancellor-Archbishop of Dublin, the Chief Justice, the Chief Baron, the Master of the Rolls, the principal Secretary of State, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Every high official was needed as an accomplice; and not one of them flinched. These were the men who embodied the civilising influences which replaced the less facile justice of the “lewd” Brehon Code.

Latent merit also lurked in the Patent, as an instrument of chicane. It vested great estates in an outsider, who could assign them to the Deputy with a title free from apparent taint. It overlaid with veneer the frauds connected with John Wakeman, John King, Thomas Irelande, Auditor Ware, and James Hamilton. It wafted an air of kingly approval over a barefaced theft. It stripped Sir Randal quite noiselessly, and handed his fishery to a stranger alleged to be “dear” to his Majesty. In form it was a royal grant, which, though obtained by the prostitution of the Commission, was redolent of legality.

When these shifts, re-shifts, and makeshifts to secure a semblance of lawful origin for Chichester’s booty were accomplished, the grant was garnished with the Great Seal of Ireland. Within six months of that solemn rite Bassett transferred everything back to his loving uncle. The conveyance from him, of course, was kept a secret, like Hamilton’s assignment, and was never enrolled. A knighthood was Bassett’s reward, and the Deputy prescribed in his will that he should be buried in the same tomb with himself at Carrickfergus. There each worthy now lies awaiting the judgment of the Resurrection.

Contrasted with Chichester’s refusal to remedy, by the same machinery, the pretended blot in the Patent of Hugh O’Neill, the parchment issued to Bassett attracts lasting interest. O’Neill’s grant was the outcome of a National treaty which ended a nine years’ war. Bassett’s was a swindle carried out against the King and his subjects. Criminality permeated it even to minor details. The fine due to the Crown on its being issued was left unpaid, in spite of a recital that £20 had been lodged in the Exchequer, and in this way the King was both pettily and grossly cheated.

While this Patent was a-making, Sir Randal renewed his appeal to the King. He was, however, unexpectedly thwarted at Court, and for the first time tasted defeat. Umbraged and disconsolate, he was sent home from London, but immediately recommenced his efforts, and not altogether without success. The discouraged chief, who had never even heard of Bassett, wrote to Cecil on the 19th August, 1608:—

“When I took leave of your lordship at the Court at Greenwich, you were pleased that my fourth part of the fishing of the Bann, being in controversy between Mr. Hamilton and myself, should remain, as it was the former year, in sequestration; and that neither of us should reap any benefit of the rent of the same, until the controversy was decided by law.”

He went on to complain that the sequestrator, Captain Phillips, “pays the yearly rent of the fishing privately unto whom Mr. James Hamilton will appoint there; and thereby thinks to deprive me of my rights to the fishing, to my great loss.” He, therefore, besought Cecil to let him have the fishery again, and that meanwhile the Bishop of Derry should be appointed sequestrator.

This protest led to an Order of the Privy Council on the 31st October, 1608, setting Phillips aside. It runs:—“As Mr. Hamilton has prayed that Sir Thomas Ridgeway be appointed sequestrator, and Sir Randal MacDonnell has demanded that the Bishop of Derry be appointed, the Lords of the Council suggest that they be appointed joint-sequestrators; and, if they are not content with this arrangement, the Deputy shall appoint some indifferent person as sequestrator.” Chichester’s reply is not preserved. The State Papers are at times mournfully vacant as to his correspondence. Cecil, whose “Cabinet,” as the Earl of Northampton complained, “had been made the treasury of the State’s whole evidences and intelligence,” lacked at his death many precious papers. The “saint” and the sinner understood one another.

Whatever answer Chichester sent, or rejoinder Sir Randal made, it dawned on the Privy Council by the end of 1608 that the Bann had been alienated by the Deputy. The King took the news bitterly. After the Flight of the Earls he contemplated a grant of the river to the London Corporation; and his anger was kindled against the devastators of Ulster’s spoil. In January, 1609, Cecil was ordered to demand explanations. He had commanded Sir Arthur in June, 1608, “not to dispose of an acre” without authority from England. James I. assumed that the grants fathered on Hamilton had been made in disobedience to this injunction; but Chichester stoutly replied that they were gifts for the benefit of the Earl of Devonshire under the Wakeman Letter. A discreet silence was preserved as to the fact that he had transferred to himself the non-tidal Bann and Lough Neagh along with MacDonnell’s “fourth” under bogus patents.

Little as the Lords of the Council guessed the extent of his profligacy, they grew suspicious. In April, 1609, Sir Randal obtained an order that the Deputy should “direct trial of the controversy with all convenient speed,” and “that his Majesty may be no further importuned in the matter.” This command Chichester pigeonholed, and his victim was left remoter than ever from justice.

New influences, however, were setting in which affected every claimant to property in Ulster. The King, finding the North swept of its Chiefs, and knowing naught of the practices of the Deputy, determined to root Scottish and English settlers in the seats of the stubborn septs. A Plantation would solve the Irish difficulty. Chichester differed from his Majesty as to the future of the Province, and saw in its desolation a means of personal aggrandisement. James hoped to strengthen his garrison by planting the battle-wasted area with British Protestants. The Deputy felt that disarmed natives would be easier to deal with than cross-Channel adventurers protected by royal favour. The King’s policy, besides, exposed him to the risk that his crimes might be laid bare. He could show no title, save what Bassett’s Patent afforded, to his most important acquisitions. Excluding that document, the only parchment he held for Lough Neagh and the Bann, or the countless acres seized therewith, was a secret assignment from Hamilton. This had, for its sole foundation, grants as shaky as Bassett’s, springing from his own wrongdoing.

James I., ignorant of all this hocus-pocus, busied himself throughout the year 1609 with the question of bestowing County Derry, the Bann, and Lough Foyle, on the London Corporation. In January, 1610, a treaty with the City was signed on behalf of his Majesty, and the Ulster Plantation was begun. The play of forces in the struggle between MacDonnell and Chichester now took new forms, and the final bout in their long duel was postponed.