The harrying of the O’Byrnes under Chichester was largely carried out through Sir William Parsons, his Surveyor-General—a seasoned and hardy pillager. Parsons was a Commissioner at Limavady in 1609, when the inquisition which “found” the Bann for Sir Arthur to forestall the Londoners was concocted. In 1621 St. John nominated him to take “office” for the fabrication of the “Carrickfergus” Patent which abstracted the non-tidal Bann from the Corporation. He was the chief author of the Antrim inquisition of 12th July, 1605, which “found” that the King owned the “pool” of Lough Neagh “towards Claneboy.”

For twenty years Parsons’ leisure had been devoted to trying to rob Felim O’Byrne, who stood by the Crown in trying times, despite the slogans of O’Neill and others to “rise out.” O’Byrne’s father (fighting Feagh MacHugh) had been made prisoner, and his head spiked over the Tower of Dublin Castle. His mother (Rose O’Toole) was convicted of treason and sentenced to be burnt on the 27th May, 1595.

Queen Elizabeth, however, in 1598 ordered Felim Patents of his estate as a reward for good service, and issued a “general pardon” to him and his helpers on the 3rd March, 1603. James I. on 16th September, 1603, in his “instructions for Ireland,” commanded that O’Byrne’s “country” be given to Felim according to such limitations as the Lord Lieutenant should prescribe. Nevertheless Sir Richard Graham, one of the Commanders at the victory of Kinsale, obstructed the issue of any Patent, and got two “offices” taken by Parsons as Surveyor-General on the 14th March, 1604, to try to oust Felim altogether. These inquisitions—strive as they might—went in favour of O’Byrne, and on 26th March, 1606, he received a Patent. His territory was set down (by the usual trick of diminishing coveted land) at twelve thousand acres, exclusive of bog, wood, and mountain. It included the districts of Ranelagh and Cosha in Co. Wicklow, and the owner’s proved loyalty was certified by Devonshire. A fortnight after the date of Felim’s Patent, Devonshire died, but for some years O’Byrne was left in peace. Then came the Ulster Plantation and the dispersal of its Chiefs. When the North was crushed Chichester, in spite of Royal Letters and “offices,” authorised Graham to seize part of Cosha for himself.

Knowing to what this must lead, O’Byrne petitioned the English Privy Council for justice. An Inquiry was ordered, and Graham thereat contended (in the teeth of English policy) that the clan-lands belonged to the kerns as freeholders, and not to the Chief. The Commissioners scouted this doctrine and reported in Felim’s favour. To hold otherwise would have knocked on the head the Tudor system of vesting the tribal territories in the Chiefs and then voiding their Patents so that escheats might be easily obtained. Sir Richard Graham, smarting under defeat, and doubtless primed by Chichester (although he had now ceased to be Deputy), sent his son to London to bribe Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, to influence his Majesty to disregard the Commissioners’ report.

The Earl (afterwards Duke) of Richmond, another favourite, was procured to crave fair play for O’Byrne. The strife at the Council table between the courtiers grew so high that the King allowed them each to name two Commissioners to re-try the case. This was unjust to Felim, who had already proved his right twice. Still he had to take such mercy as he could buy. Mr. Hadsor and Sir Francis Annesley were on this Commission, and Hadsor spoke Gaelic.

When the third hearing was opened, Parsons came forward to confirm Graham’s story that the clan-lands were those of freeholders and were not O’Byrne’s. He produced a book written out by himself to prove it, but O’Byrne demolished the invention by giving in evidence the “inquisitions” previously taken under Parsons’ hand. These certified the Chief’s ownership, and proved that the “book” was trumped up. Unabashed, Parsons and Graham fell back on the shift practised by Sir John Davies in 1607 at the trial of O’Cahan v. O’Neill. They reshuffled the cards and argued that the lands belonged to neither disputant, but had escheated to the Crown on the death in rebellion of Feagh MacHugh.

In England no escheat without trial and no post-mortem attainder could take place unless Statute authorised it in a special case. There an attainder after death was not tolerated, even against Jack Cade (an Irishman), but Anglo-Irish lawyers disregarded everything that tempered a violent prerogative. Therefore, although both King James and Queen Elizabeth had granted the estate to Felim, and Graham’s pretensions were exploded, the Commissioners adjourned the Inquiry.

It was probably in connection with a previous investigation that the “Egmont MSS.” record, under date 20th November, 1612, that Sir Richard and Thomas Graham were fined and imprisoned for disturbing a Commission which sat at Imaal, Co. Wicklow, to inquire into concealed lands of the Crown. They beat the witnesses, calling them “a company of garron-stealers and thieves,” threatened Peter Delahyde, one of his Majesty’s counsel, and drew swords on a gentleman who rebuked them. Years were now wasted over the dispute, and in 1616 St. John succeeded Chichester. Parsons asked the new Deputy to appoint himself and other choice spirits to inquire on behalf of the Crown into the alleged escheat. St. John, as became a pupil of Chichester, cheerily agreed, and on the 4th July, 1616, Parsons made a “return” declaring that O’Byrne’s lands were the inheritance of Feagh MacHugh killed in rebellion.

This naked statement was true, but not the whole truth. Its half-truth was equivalent to a finding that the property had escheated to the Crown in spite of the Royal Letters of Elizabeth and James recognising Felim. Zeal for the Crown was the pretext for Parsons’ inquisition; but once an escheat was declared the King’s interest sank out of sight and Graham was empowered to seize O’Byrne’s estate for himself. Once more the Chief appealed to England. There justice was slow, far off, and dear; but he got it; and on the 4th November, 1616, Felim obtained a King’s Letter requiring St. John to regrant him the lands. This command was flagrantly disobeyed. Piety was the badge of all plunderers, and Graham had promised to endow two churches in Cosha to spread the Lutheran gospel. Such love for religion, pure and undefiled, moved St. John on the 24th February, 1617, to give him a Patent for Cosha.

Again Felim resorted to London, and again a fresh Commission was issued to do him right. The new Commissioners, on the 17th December, 1617, confirmed O’Byrne’s title, but with dogged tenacity Graham got St. John to appoint judges to re-hear the dispute. The struggle seemed unending, and although evidence was taken afresh by the judges they dared not announce a conclusion either way. On the 23rd January, 1618, St. John transmitted their notes to London and asked for directions. Delay and expense provoked a compromise, and Felim by a new order was restored to three-fourths of his lands, but Graham’s piety in purveying a brace of churches for Cosha was rewarded by one-fourth. To leave O’Byrne insecure, no fresh Patent was issued to him; and soon afterwards Lord Falkland became Deputy.

Parsons was now promoted head of the Court of Wards and Receiver-General, but he remained as of yore a-swoop for prey. The plot against the O’Byrnes was revived. Felim, being the only Chief left in Erin, was treated as a blot on the landscape, and in 1622 Falkland reported him to the Privy Council as an ill-disposed person. He owned too big a property to be allowed to remain in his mountains undisturbed. The reply to the Deputy from England, however, discouraged attack. The “Spanish marriage” was at that moment being negotiated by Buckingham, and Falkland learnt that, if the heir to the throne were to wed a Catholic, a fresh persecution of his bride’s co-religionists might appear untimely. When the match with Spain was broken off in 1623 he took a freer hand.

On the 27th August, 1624, he authorised Parsons to hold a Commission to examine O’Byrne’s title, as if it were a new problem troubling the sages of the law. The Surveyor-General held “office,” and returned a finding that Felim’s estate had been forfeited by his father’s rebellion and death—ignoring both grants and pardons from King James and Queen Elizabeth. Falkland, ablaze for law and order, wrote to the Privy Council on the 25th March, 1625, asking them to consider “how vain a thing it is to suppose to content Felim and his sons by indulgently suspending the taking of the lands in his country.” The English authorities gave this presentation of the equities no countenance, and King James, in one of the last dispatches before his death (March, 1625), begged Falkland “to maintain inviolable the credit of his great office.”

Yet Charles I. was not a year on the Throne when the Deputy engaged himself in a still more cruel plot to uproot the O’Byrnes.

On the 13th March, 1626, he ordered the eldest and youngest of Felim’s sons, Brian and Turlough, whom he described as “the most civilly bred of all his sons,” to be arrested as “dangerous conspirators.” They were kept prisoners in Dublin Castle for five months; and all the enginery of the State was employed to suborn witnesses against them. Neighbours were seized and subjected to torture. One Archer “was put naked on a burning gridiron and burnt with gunpowder under his buttocks and flanks, and at last suffered the strapado till he was forced to accuse the brothers.” Two poor wretches named Kavanagh yielded on the rack and consented to swear falsely; but, when their agonies ceased, they retracted. For this they were sentenced to death, and were offered “pardon” if they would repeat the “evidence” in court. Their constancy remained unshaken, and both were hanged. This shortage of perjurers led to a crisis. “True bills” on which Brian and Turlough could be arraigned had to be “found” by a Grand Jury. Being Wicklowmen, the brothers were ordered for trial to another venue. Carlow was as illegal as any, but the Grand Jurors there twice declined to find “true bills.” Twice were they brought up in batches to the Star Chamber in Dublin and fined, but twice they refused to yield. They would not “find” for any fining. Perhaps they recalled the reward meted out to the foreman of the Lifford Grand Jury, Sir Cahir O’Doherty, for declaring Hugh O’Neill an “outlaw” twenty years earlier. Thanks to their obstinacy, the brothers were set free, and Brian O’Byrne sailed in triumph for England. There he was received at Court, and on the 29th August, 1627, he secured two fresh Letters from Charles I. recognising the family title.

Thus the warrants of three British Sovereigns—Elizabeth, James, and Charles—affirmed their rights. Still Falkland entertained no idea of being hindered by royal stumbling-blocks. The only effect of Brian’s success on his mind was to resolve him to a fiercer vendetta. This time he proceeded on a grand scale, and on the 2nd November, 1627, ordered Felim with his five sons (including Brian and Turlough) to be committed to prison in Dublin Castle. There they were loaded with irons, denied food for a long period, and were deprived of visits.

The crime of which they were accused was that they had relieved a banished man named Kavanagh who returned home before his seven years of deportation had run out. This was true, but the man was unknown to them. Kavanagh had never been convicted, nor was he outlawed, and hospitality was merely given to a passing stranger. This was no offence, although it might be docketed in the twentieth century as “hostile association.”

Falkland, having now the whole family in his clutches, prepared the finishing stroke. On the 5th July, 1628, he represented to Charles I. how “absolutely inconvenient” it would be to allow the O’Byrnes to hold “the territory of Ranelagh.” They were already bereft of Cosha, and on 22nd July, 1628, he began taking depositions against them, in secret signed with his own hand—with Sir William Graham (son to Richard) as Gaelic interpreter. A week later, without waiting for any reply or authority from his Majesty, or procuring their attainder, the Deputy proceeded to distribute the remainder of O’Byrne’s estate piecemeal amongst his confederates.

Seven Patents for Ranelagh (unsupported by any King’s Letter) were issued by Falkland to his subordinates in August, 1628. The recipients were Sir William Parsons, Sir William Graham (the translator), Lord Docwra, Lord Esmond, Sir Roger Jones (the “rascal’s” son, afterwards Lord Ranelagh), Sir Thomas Stockdale, and Lord Chancellor Loftus. The last-named, although an enemy of the Deputy, had as Lord Chancellor to be given a morsel, to keep his mouth shut, and consent to apply the Great Seal to the parchments of the other six.

That the Patents were without Royal sanction is clinched by the answer the King gave on the 4th September, 1628, to Falkland’s dispatch of the 5th July. Therein Charles I. tells him, after the Patents had been issued: “It is our pleasure that you shall set down your further opinions precisely what is the best course to be taken for the settling of those lands,” and he promised then to “declare his resolution touching the same.” A month previously the Patents had been distributed amongst the Seven Champions of Law and Order. Having stolen the property of the O’Byrnes, Falkland next proceeded to concert measures to do away with the family altogether.

In August, 1628 (the month in which the Patents were sealed) the Chief and his sons were arraigned at Wicklow. Warned by the Carlow fiasco, Parsons saw to it that the Grand Jurors should be men having no qualification to serve. He mustered a faction of stalwarts in Wicklow Courthouse as a counterfeit Grand Jury, who readily found “True Bills” against the prisoners. Their guilt, however, had still to be proved before a Petit Jury; so the trial was put off, and everyone likely to be a witness for them was seized under martial law and put on the rack, or hanged.

These oppressions, tortures, and captivities shocked the country, and the wail of the Clansmen arose on the westering winds. Its echo was heard even in England. Wherefore, Sir Francis Annesley (Lord Mountnorris), who had acted as one of the Commissioners in the dispute raised by Sir Richard Graham, as to Felim’s title, flamed up against Falkland. Annesley had assented to the Patent-outrage at Carrickfergus in 1621 in behoof of Chichester, but the Wicklow tragedy was too black for him. Largely by his influence a Royal Warrant of unusual peremptoriness was dispatched to Dublin on the 3rd October, 1628. It ordered the suspension of all proceedings against the O’Byrnes, and commanded the Deputy not to reply, lest he should make correspondence an excuse for delay. It appointed a Commission consisting of the Protestant Primate—Ussher; the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin—Bulkeley; Lord Chancellor Loftus; the Chief Justice (Sir George Shurley), and Sir Arthur Savage, Vice-Treasurer, to inquire into the case. Felim, however, was first declared by the Privy Council to be “not only unblamable, but to have been of extraordinary obedience.” The Duke of Buckingham’s assassination in the previous August had laid a powerful opponent low.

The Commissioners sat in Dublin for a fortnight in November and December, 1628, and took the depositions of 37 witnesses. They probed no point of title and confined themselves to the criminal charge; but in the result the O’Byrnes were fully exonerated, and were restored to liberty after a close confinement of 14 months. This blow at oppression resounded through the land; but it came too late to undo the Patents of August, 1628. The plunder of Felim, after a struggle lasting a quarter of a century, had been consummated. He died within a year of his release. His wife, heartbroken by the action of Parsons’ Grand Jury, which she supposed meant destruction for her sons as well as her husband, perished within two days of its finding. By order of Falkland her body was dug up and carried away three weeks after its burial in Wicklow Churchyard. The local vicar, Fox, attended to the exhumation, and the remains were removed to Rathdrum. There they were again disturbed, but after identification “the State” allowed the earth to be closed over the corpse. This indignity has never been explained or denied.

Falkland, in a letter to the Privy Council (8th December, 1628) tried to excuse his courses against the family, but his dispatch makes sorry reading. It consists of abuse of the Royal Commissioners (except the Primate and Chief Justice), and of attacks on the reputation of Felim. The father of the gallant who fell at Newbury attempts no reply to any of the evidence taken by the Commission as to the arrests and cruelties. That remains unanswered to this day.

In April, 1629, Falkland was recalled by the unanimous voice of the Privy Council. He wrote to Charles I. on the 13th April, 1629:—“I hear that the question of Felim is to be made the ground of my recall owing to the machinations of the Chancellor and Commissioners. It is a disgrace to your Royal Justice that I should be recalled before being heard in my defence.” The King did not reply. In July, 1629, the Lord Chancellor (Loftus) and Lord Cork were ordered to “take up the Sword” and act in his place.

Falkland remained in Dublin for several months, and the spirit which beset him burns fiercely through his final dispatches. He threatened Sir Francis Annesley with the Star Chamber for his “undutiful contempt” in saving Felim. He sued Sir Arthur Savage for alleged debt; and his warning to the English Secretary of State gleams with a comic touch:—“I pray you think of the results that will follow if Patents (which Gondomar[1] did term the common faith) be overridden. Your fortune rests on the sanctity of such Patents.”

He returned to England not hopelessly disgraced, for he was appointed to the Privy Council; and the King allowed him to name a Committee of that body in November, 1629, to investigate his conduct. If the Committee reached any conclusions or took any evidence they have been withheld from the world. On the 12th November, 1629, he boastfully wrote to Primate Ussher that at Court there was “not one wry look in any creature towards me.”

Falkland’s daughter married Sir Terence O’Dempsey, who was also implicated in the conspiracy to strip the O’Byrnes. In 1631 the ex-Deputy’s retirement was soothed by O’Dempsey’s being translated into “Lord Glenmalire.”

The King having ridded Ireland of Falkland, thought Deputies a trifle out of fashion. So Lord Cork and Chancellor Loftus were allowed to govern the country for nearly four years as “Justices.” In that interval their own Patents, at least, were safe from scrutiny. Lord Cork sometimes scattered gems of wisdom through his correspondence as lustrous as Falkland’s. In 1631 he sighed:—“This place is not a comfortable one unless a man consoles himself by making a private fortune—as has been the custom of my predecessors.”

Under Strafford, in 1639, a Statute was passed whereby the “Birns Country” with “Ranelagh, Cosha, Shillela and Vartry” were declared the King’s. This was done, apparently, for the purpose of enabling valid Patents to be issued. By this arrangement some of the O’Byrnes must have recovered patches of their estate, as they paid the Crown £17,000 for “remedy of Defective Title.” Ere the century ended Cromwellian and Williamite confiscations made this investment a barren one for the family.