When Lord Falkland left Ireland, the question of the validity of the Wakeman grants was re-opened under the rule of the Lords Justices.

In 1630 a “case” was submitted to Sir Robert Oglethorpe, one of the Barons of the Exchequer, who in 1623 had denounced their origin. Oglethorpe retired in 1624 from his position in Dublin as judge (probably owing to his uncomfortable uprightness in Patent matters); and resumed his practice at the Bar in London. The “case” he received was incomplete, and its framer is unknown, but though omitting much, it is startling enough. It sets out that five Patents had been issued on foot of Wakeman’s Letter for £100, “in value surmounting £4,000 per annum,” including one for the fishery of the Bann. It foreshadowed that further grants were in contemplation, and asked the ex-Judge for his opinion as a lawyer if the King could have all of them declared void by legal process?

Oglethorpe’s reply shows that he and the other Exchequer Barons ruled against the Wakeman Patents in 1623, and that this decision “was certified to the Lord Deputy (Falkland) upon referment from his late Majesty.” He again branded them with “fraud” and “deceit,” and advised that this taint would “extend to many Letters Patent in Ireland”; for, quoth he, “this is a great and general case.”

When this “opinion” was delivered Lord Cork, prince of Patent-mongers, wielded the Sword of State with Chancellor Loftus, and of course no action was taken. In 1632 Charles I. made up his mind to replace both Lords Justices; and in the following year there arrived in Dublin a Viceroy less dishonest than Ireland had known for some time. This was Wentworth, Lord Strafford. Whatever his faults, the new Lord Lieutenant hunted down those who had preyed on the country since Elizabeth’s reign, and in the eight years he served as Viceroy he earned the hatred of every confiscator. Those whose avarice he checked or penalised, including Patentees like the Earl of Cork and Sir John Clotworthy, were Strafford’s chief enemies. When he perished on the scaffold, their self-interested testimony spoke his doom. Many of his processes were, of course, expedients to provide revenue for the King in order to dispense with the summoning of Parliament. Others were well-grounded investigations to recover property of which the Crown had been cozened.

Strafford had to deal, not only with lawless Patents, but with Patents which, if lawful, conveyed, in acreage and value, lands largely in excess of what the King had authorised. He was not three months in Dublin before he obtained an insight into the ways of his predecessors. On the 23rd October, 1633, he reported that, “in all the Plantations, the Crown had sustained shameful injury, by passing in truth ten times the quantities of lands expressed in their Patents, and reserving throughout base tenures in soccage.” As to those who “held the Sword” before him, he remarked:—

“The late Lord Chichester had lands to the value of £10,000 in one gift; and Lord Falkland £10,000 in money at once.” His Chaplain (afterwards Bishop) Bramhall, wrote to Archbishop Laud five years later:—“I think I should soon be able to show that the Crown has been defrauded of many appropriations, for here it hath been usual ... upon a Letter for £20 to pass £30 or £40 ... to pass that for nothing, in time of peace, which was found to have been worth little or nothing in time of war; and to take up appropriations as gentlemen do waifs in England.” These comments reveal only a surface acquaintance with the misdeeds practised against the Crown by its trusted servants.

In the year after Strafford’s arrival he provided a remedy for some of the evils which corroded justice by causing Acts to be passed extending the “Statute of Uses” to Ireland, and clothing the Commissioners for Defective Titles with far-reaching powers. The first Act made secret conveyances impossible; and the second authorised the Commissioners to issue Patents which should stand good against the Crown, even if wrongfully obtained or corruptly enlarged, provided fines were paid. The Government was in debt; and, in order to raise cash, many grants, new and old, were assailed. Fines were then exacted as the price of indefeasible Patents.

In 1635, when the Star Chamber at Westminster declared the Charter of the London Corporation forfeit, Strafford’s eye detected an unforeseen consequence. The Londoners, being compelled to surrender the Bann and the rest of their Irish estates, were left burdened with a rent of £100 a year to the Chichesters for Lough Neagh under the lease of 1622. Deprived of the river, Lough Neagh became useless to them; and they probably petitioned the Crown for relief. Strafford then caused the Chichester Patents to be scrutinised, and the misdeeds of his predecessor came to light. Yet he dealt not ungently with the dead peer’s heirs. Instead of re-seizing the whole of their ill-gotten possessions, he confined himself to demanding a surrender of Lough Neagh. At the outset the Chichesters resisted, but the stream of authority against the validity of their grants soon swelled to a torrent. Strafford knew that constant protests under two reigns had been lodged against them.

Their base origin in 1603-4, Sir James Balfour’s inquiry of 1618, Allen’s repugnant findings at Derry and Carrickfergus in 1621, the ruling of the Exchequer Barons in 1623, the “discovery” of Sir William Power in 1628, and the order of Charles I. on Colonel Forbes’s petition in the same year, covered them with discredit. In 1630 the “opinion” of ex-Baron Oglethorpe openly alleged “fraud”; and Strafford, backed by these accumulated condemnations, took action.

He first caused an inquisition to be held at Wicklow in 1636, to impeach one of the Wakeman grants. The result was that lands confiscated from the O’Tooles, which had been patented to Hamilton, were declared re-vested in the Crown. Grants springing from Thomas Irelande’s Letter (on which the title to Lough Neagh rested) evoked no greater respect. After the death of Lord Chichester, his heir did not even rely on the Patents of the fishery. For in 1625 Edward Lord Chichester (the second in succession) besought Charles I. to appoint his son Arthur (afterwords Lord Donegall) “Admiral and Commander of Lough Neagh” at a salary of £30 6s. 8d., and to give him a “licence” to fish in the Lough and the Bann. What owner would petition the Crown for a “licence” to enjoy his own fishery?

Such a request amounted to an admission that the Patents of Lough Neagh to Hamilton in 1606, to Bassett in 1608, and to Lord Chichester in 1621 were waste paper, and that the hope of the family lay in reviving the “life-estate” annexed to the quasi-military “command” created by the Patent of 1604. It was at least possible for them to argue that some germ of legality attached to that Patent, yet Charles I. never granted the request.

Strafford was unaware of any claim by the family to the Bann; but was resolute to enforce the surrender of Lough Neagh. The fact that since 1622 the Londoners had paid £100 per annum for it to the Chichesters, and would have continued to do so if the Star Chamber had not deprived them of the Bann, had to be taken into account. He made up for the loss by offering an attractive compensation. He proposed to allow Edward Lord Chichester to take out a fresh Patent for all his uncle’s acquisitions minus Lough Neagh—and this under the new Act would be valid for all time against the Crown. The family would thereby be forever quieted in the enjoyment of rich territories which had been stolen from the natives thirty years earlier. Negotiations on this basis were conducted through the Commissioners for Defective Titles, and lasted some years.

The records of that body were housed near Dublin Castle, and perished by fire in 1711; but from the “memorials” enrolled in Chancery the main story can be traced.

A King’s Letter of the 24th September, 1638, was obtained by the Commissioners to authorise them to accept the surrender. No mention was made of the Bann, for no one regarded it as Chichester’s. The King’s Letter cast doubt even on his right to Lough Neagh, and sarcastically narrates that his Majesty had been informed that the fishing and soil thereof were “granted away” by Letters Patent to the late Lord Chichester, but were found “so commodious for upholding the fishing of the Bann that the London Corporation were necessitated to farm the same at £100 a year—which fishing of the Bann is now come to our hands.” Short work was thus made of the 1621 Patent and of Allen’s “finding” at Carrickfergus. The Letter further recited that Viscount Chichester had compounded for a surrender of Lough Neagh in consideration of £40 a year; and that this sum could be deducted from the rent payable to the Crown under a new Patent. The Chichesters were to have liberty to take salmon for domestic use, and to retain the eel-weirs at Toome, subject to royal regulations.

On the 7th December, 1638, the Commissioners made an “Order of Composition” embodying these terms, but the family evidently contended that the allowance of £40 a year was not a fair set-off for the £100 paid by the Londoners. Brisk haggling followed, and at length Strafford agreed to an amended “Order of Composition,” dated the 19th September, 1639. This raised the £40 annual allowance to £60, but all privileges of fishing were withdrawn. The Chichesters agreed. This amendment brought their rent under the proposed new Patent to within £2 16s. 6d. of that previously paid, and the fine was fixed at £467 17s. 6d.

An indefeasible Patent was now to be granted them, and with this bargain they and Strafford were satisfied. The arrangement dealt a deathstroke at the oft-challenged title of the Devonians to the great Ulster fishery. It submerged the Patent of 1604 with those of 1606, 1608, and 1621 in a common condemnation.

When the terms of the surrender came to be drawn up in 1639, although the King’s Letter mentioned Lough Neagh only, Strafford required that the Bann should be also renounced, and this was agreed to. Before he finally left Ireland the new Patent was not ready. It was sealed in September, 1640, by his Deputy, Wandesforde, after his departure. Everything was accepted by the Chichesters without a murmur. Neither on Strafford’s impeachment at Westminster in 1641 nor when the Planters in the Dublin Parliament impeached his chaplain, Bramhall, did they join in hounding him down.

Edward Lord Chichester then sat in the Irish House of Lords, and his son, Sir Arthur, in the Irish Lower House; but they never took the side of Strafford’s enemies, although both assemblies were worked upon by Sir John Clotworthy and the Earl of Cork to purvey testimony against him. This fact bears vitally on future events in view of allegations made in 1661 by Sir Arthur (then Lord Donegall) to befool Charles II. into making him a regrant of Lough Neagh and the Bann. Sir John Clotworthy, who was Pym’s instrument in promoting Strafford’s impeachment, sat with Sir Arthur in Dublin as member for Antrim; and, if the Chichesters had a grievance against the Lord Lieutenant, Clotworthy would not fail to refer to it in his evidence, even if the family kept silence. The report of Strafford’s trial proves that, while Clotworthy, Lord Cork, and others loudly testified against him, no complaint of injustice on Chichester’s behalf was made. This attitude amounted to a confession that the fisheries which had been wrongly come by were rightly taken away.

Still, amidst the uncertainties of the times, the family were ready to seize upon any chance that presented itself to win them back. Departing from an otherwise universal practice, they left the new Patent unenrolled, although the Crown at once enrolled the surrender. Their omission was the more striking because the Patent was the only unimpeachable evidence of title to their estates which they possessed. Neglect could not be imputed as the reason for it. Their calculation evidently was that, by keeping the terms of the Patent secret, they might by some turn of fortune be enabled to recapture the fisheries without the world knowing that they had been forced to yield them up.

Nor was this a far-fetched expectation in those days, as, even if the surrender became public, everyone knew that a surrender was not an unusual prelude to a regrant. No one, therefore, could affirm, as long as the Patent could not be inspected, that they had no claim to Lough Neagh or the Bann. Non-enrolment hid its scope from inquirers, and was part of a design to attempt the recovery of the coveted waters whenever occasion offered. Strafford’s execution, and the untimely death of Wandesforde, who perished in grief at the Lord Lieutenant’s fate, helped their plans. Then sudden as a lightning flash to sear the meshes of their webs broke the Ulster Rebellion of October, 1641.

Sir Arthur Chichester was at that time Governor of Carrickfergus, and his garrison there furnished the soldiers who massacred his Catholic tenants (with their women and children) by night in Island Magee. Whether this bloody business preceded the insurrection of 1641 and provoked it, or was a reprisal following thereon, is a moot point between the partisans of the Planters and those of the expelled natives. The first attempt at its “history” by Chichester’s muse laid the blame on Scottish regiments. It was soon proved that no Scotch soldiers landed in Ulster till after January, 1642, the date assigned for the crime by the Settlers. “January” was too hurriedly chosen by the apologists for slaughter, and this, perhaps, because the Governor of Carrickfergus would have been able to show that he was then somewhere else.

When the time of the arrival of the Scotch regiments was established it was too late to change “January” to another month. Sir Arthur himself remained mute. He offered no defence or explanation for the crime, nor announced that any of the garrison were punished, or even admonished. As to whether he was a man capable of perverting dates or inspiring falsehoods his conduct in other fields of enterprise may assist to a conclusion. One test of his character in this respect is supplied by the documents and statements he put forward to regain the fisheries when kingly power was re-established. If he made a false case concerning the title to real estate he may well have devised excuses to escape the blame of blood-guiltiness for the killing of his serfs.

Whenever massacre benefited the Planters enough murderers always survived to inspire pamphleteers and historians with their version of the “facts.” Native imitators generally ended their activities on the gallows, and their epitaphs are framed by their executioners. In tracing such incidents of conquest—from Gaul to Mexico—it is inevitable that the earliest and best opportunities for penmanship and “impression” should be always enjoyed by the triumphant faction.

That the rebellion of 1641 entailed sufferings on many Planters as severe as those endured by the natives whom they had driven out a generation earlier is beyond question. As the movement spread, the clansmen of the O’Neills, O’Dohertys, O’Cahans, O’Donnells, and Maguires retook their patrimonies, and again ate fish on Fridays without paying toll to strangers. The South then took fire, and England, having her own rebellion on hand, lost control over the greater part of Ireland for a dozen years.

Not until 1653, when Cromwell, in command of the English rebels, bloodily ended the struggle, was the country subdued. Then the clearances of the Ulster Plantation were extended to Leinster and Munster. “Commonwealth” ordinances proclaimed a new “settlement.” James I. aimed at planting a province. The Ironsides applotted a kingdom. One of the Statutes of the Long Parliament assured the Irish, in an amiable preamble, that “it was not intended to extirpate their nation as a whole.” Thanks to this moderation, only three of the four provinces were parcelled out among the soldiers, and the bracing crags and bogs of Connacht were left largely to the Catholics. Still Oliver’s Plantation, though thorough, did not meet with complete success. It withered with the despotism that begot it.

During his sway a strange chapter was added to the story of the Northern waters.