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Table of Contents

A Parliament to be held.

Want of money.

The King reluctant to call a Parliament.

Hopes of Wentworth,

who proposes to hold the balance between parties.

Wentworth was determined that his government, and especially his army, should not depend upon benefactions extorted from the fears of the Protestants and bought by dispensations or promises from the Recusants. The officials of his Council were in favour of a Parliament, which they might expect to manage, and which he, on the other hand, felt confident in his ability to rule. People in Ireland had an idea that it was safer to keep the revenue short, because a surplus would be sent to England, whereas a deficit would have to be supplied from thence. This short-sighted policy seemed wise to English settlers as well as to the natives, for they had all good reason to distrust the King. The result had been that the business of government was ill done, and that the Crown owed 80,000l. The ordinary revenue, when there was no parliamentary subsidy or voluntary assessment, fell 20,000l. short of the expenses. The Lord Deputy’s brother George was sent to England on a special mission in February, and came back next month with the King’s leave to hold a Parliament. Charles had cause to dread these assemblies, but Wentworth pointed out that Poynings’ law made them safe in Ireland. The order of business and the introduction of Bills being controlled by the English Government, an enterprising viceroy might be trusted to manage the rest. Wentworth’s plan was to have two sessions, one for supply, the other for redress of grievances. He believed that the landowners would willingly agree to a money vote in order to relieve themselves from the ever-present dread of having the existing contributions established like quit-rents on their estates. And all in Ireland realised that they could expect no redress of grievances without having first provided for the support of the Government and army. Charles accepted the proposed arrangement, but advised that it should be kept secret until the time came. The next matter of importance was the composition of the House of Commons. Wentworth resolved that the Protestant and Roman Catholic parties should be nearly balanced. The Protestant party might be slightly the larger, but its subservience was to be secured by procuring the election of many placemen. Wentworth hoped to get three subsidies of 30,000l. each payable in three years. This would yield 30,000l. over and above current expenses, and with that much ready money he hoped to compound for the whole debt, public creditors having been reduced to a proper state of humility. A little more money might be hoped for after the second session, and with this it might be possible to buy up some of the pensions and rent-charges with which the Irish Exchequer was burdened.[189]

Wentworth’s speech to his Council, April, 1634.

Everything belongs to Cæsar.

Opinions in England.

Charles on the parliamentary hydra.

Having been allowed to hold a Parliament and to do it in his own way, Wentworth at once set to work to make it a success. He summoned his Council, who thought supply should be accompanied by some assurance from the King that grievances would be remedied. They also wished to limit the levies to the actual expenses, having a well-founded fear that surplus money would be squandered in England, and not applied to the liquidation of the Irish debt. Wentworth at once told them that the King called a Parliament because he preferred standing on the ancient ways, that he had absolute right and power to collect all the revenue he required without the consent of anybody, and that their business as councillors was to trust their sovereign without asking questions. ‘I told them plainly,’ he said, ‘I feared they began at the wrong end, thus consulting what might please the people in a Parliament, when it would better become a Privy Councillor to consider what might please the King, and induce him to call one.’ He would not take less than three subsidies of 30,000l. each, but would get as much more as possible without conditions, and they were not to propose any. The State could not be too well provided. ‘What,’ he asked prophetically, ‘if the natives should rebel? There was no great wisdom to be over-confident in them, being of a contrary religion and so great in number.’ And he concluded by asking them to take warning by the troubles which the Commons’ distrust of their King had brought upon the late Parliaments in England. When this was read at the English Council Cottington could not refrain from the obvious comment ‘et quorum pars magna fui.’ Wentworth owed his own political position to his exertions in favour of the Petition of Right, and now he said that everything the subject had was, and ought to be, at the disposition of the Crown. That Laud should have joked with his friend on this subject and that the latter should have taken it as a joke, is not the least extraordinary thing in Wentworth’s career. ‘As for that hydra,’ said Charles of the House of Commons, ‘take good heed; for you know that here I have found it as well cunning as malicious. Your grounds are well laid and I have great trust in your care and judgment; yet my opinion is, that it will not be the worse for my service, though their obstinacy make you break them’.[190]

Wentworth and the Irish nobility,

whom he treats with contempt.

Wentworth’s speech to his Council, which less earnest people in England thought a superfluous display of strength, reduced that body to complete subjection. He would allow no discussions anywhere about the King’s policy, and he treated the Roman Catholic nobility in the same way as the Protestant Council. The Lord Chancellor ventured to suggest that the Lords of the Pale should be consulted according to precedent, but he was ‘silenced by a direct and round answer.’ Three or four days later Lord Fingall came to the Castle and asked for information on the part of his friends and neighbours, ‘who had been accustomed to be consulted before those meetings.’ Wentworth, who seems to have disliked the man as well as his communication, told him that his Majesty would ‘reject with scorn and disdain’ any advice their lordships could give. Their business was only to hear the King’s will in open Parliament, to make such remarks there as might be fitting for obedient subjects, and to be content with such answers as his Majesty thought fit to give. ‘A little out of countenance’ from the storm of viceregal eloquence, Lord Fingall unluckily remarked that he only wished to draw attention to precedents, and that Falkland had consulted the lords. Wentworth said that was no rule for him, and advised his visitor ‘not to busy his thoughts with matters of that nature, but to leave all to the royal wisdom.’[191]

How a Government majority was secured

Clerical influence.

As long as there was a Parliament in Ireland the Government generally found means to secure a majority. Wentworth had to depend chiefly on the boroughs, for many counties were not amenable to pressure. Lord Cork has recorded that when he was in his coach one day with Lord Esmond and Lord Digby a pursuivant brought him six letters from the Lord Deputy directing the return of certain members for places he controlled. Sir George Wentworth, the viceroy’s brother, was to sit for Bandon, his secretaries Mainwaring and Little for Lismore, a second Mainwaring for Dingle, and other less prominent Englishmen for Askeaton and Tallow. Wentworth and William and Philip Mainwaring were elected accordingly, while Little procured a seat at Cashel. Every important man whom the Lord Deputy could influence found his way into the House of Commons. Sir William Parsons sat for the county and Sir George Radcliffe for the city of Armagh, Charles Price for Belfast, and Sir Adam Loftus for Newborough in Wexford. Sir Beverley Newcomen, a distinguished naval officer, represented Tralee, and Wandesford the borough of Kildare. Sir Charles Coote, Sir William Cole, Sir Robert King, and many others who were well known a few years later, also had seats. It was on the Protestants that the Crown depended in the long run, but they had not a large majority. ‘The priests and Jesuits,’ Wentworth wrote, ‘are very busy in the election of knights and burgesses, call the people to their masses, and there charge them on pain of excommunication to give their voices to no Protestant.’ A sheriff in Dublin who seemed inclined to yield to these influences was fined 700l. and declared incapable of serving, and his successor promptly returned Sergeant Catelin and a Protestant alderman.[192]

Parliamentary precedents.

The primacy secured to Armagh.

Political value of etiquette.

The opening ceremonies.

Wentworth and Ormonde.

In matters of form and ceremony Wentworth was willing to be guided by precedents. He found all the officials very ignorant about parliamentary order, as Falkland’s blunder had already shown, and he sent to England for full instructions. Questions of precedence being left by special commission entirely in his hands, the primacy of Armagh over Dublin was settled by an order in Council, and in the established Church this point was never again disputed, a decision which was undoubtedly right; but Archbishop Talbot afterwards attributed it to the slavish fears of Wentworth’s Council, to his leaning in favour of Ussher, and to the prevalent ignorance of Latin in high places. He admitted that Bishop Leslie of Raphoe was learned, but then was he not a suffragan of Armagh? Wentworth decided such questions when they came in his way, but they had little interest for him—‘this matter of place I have ever judged a womanly thing.’ If it had turned out that he could not determine between the rival claims of peers and prelates, they would, he thought be ‘fit to keep the House itself busied about,’ and prevent them from talking politics. It was arranged that six or seven lords on whom the Lord Deputy could rely should hold four or five proxies each, so that he was in no danger of being outvoted, for the bishops were safe enough. It was not until 1661 that the number of proxies which could be held by any one peer was reduced to two. The committee for privileges in Wentworth’s House of Lords proposed that every peer having Irish honours but no Irish estate should be obliged to purchase land in proportion to his rank, but this was never carried into effect. When the day of meeting came, Wentworth accompanied the Peers to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in great state. His Parliament opened, Wentworth wrote, ‘with the greatest civility and splendour Ireland ever saw, where appeared a very gallant nobility far above that I expected … my Lord Primate made a very excellent and learned sermon.’ The afternoon was spent in formalities and the taking of oaths. One incident at the beginning of the business session is worth recording on account of the great celebrity of the person principally concerned. Orders had been given to admit no one armed into either House, and when the young Earl of Ormonde, who had carried the sword of state at the opening ceremony, presented himself, Black Rod peremptorily demanded his weapon. ‘In your guts,’ was the contemptuous answer. Ormonde sat armed during the day, and when summoned before the Council, produced his writ of summons which ordered him to attend ‘girt with a sword.’ Wentworth had met his match for the first time, and he held a private consultation with his two chief advisers as to what was to be done with this formidable young man. Wandesford was for crushing him, but Radcliffe advised conciliation, and Ormonde became a Privy Councillor at the early age of twenty-four.[193]

The case of Lord Slane.

Among the sixty-six lords present at the beginning of this session was William Lord Slane, who was allowed to sit and vote pending the possible reappearance of his elder brother Thomas, who had been tried by a jury in England for murder committed in Ireland, had become a friar, and had not been heard of for fourteen years. This precedent was afterwards relied on in Lord Maguire’s case as establishing the principle that an Irish peer was a commoner in England.[194]

Wentworth’s speech.

Private consultations forbidden.

The Recusants threatened.

Election of Speaker.

On the second day Wentworth made a speech to both Houses, in what he calls his mildest manner; but it was not very mild. He told them that there was a debt of 100,000l. and an annual deficit of 20,000l. What they had to do was simply to clear off the debt and to provide a permanent equilibrium between receipts and expenditure, so that the necessary maintenance of the army might no longer trouble his Majesty’s princely thoughts. That would be the King’s session. Later on they would have a session of their own, where the King would grant all the favours he thought proper, and where they were to accept his gifts with confidence and gratitude, and without asking for more. ‘Take heed,’ he said, ‘of private meetings and consults in your chambers, by design and privity aforehand to contrive, how to discourse and carry the public affairs when you come into the Houses. For besides that they are themselves unlawful, and punishable in a grievous measure, I never knew them in all my experience to do any good to the public or to any particular man; I have often known them do much harm.’ With a Deputy who knew his own mind, a session strictly limited by the King’s orders to three weeks, and no opportunity for private consultation, the House of Commons was almost powerless. Wentworth’s instinct and the experience of 1613 told him that the chief danger would come from the Roman Catholics, whom he had taken care should form nearly one half of the Lower House. He told them that if adequate supplies were withheld there would be no way of paying the army but ‘by levying the twelvepence a Sunday upon the Recusants.’ The King wished to make no distinction between English and Irish, but if it came to a fight the predominant partner would take care not to be beaten. The first trial of strength was about the choice of a Speaker. The official candidate was Sergeant Catelin, recorder of Dublin and member for the city, against whom there were many mutterings; but the House was told that the King had a veto upon every election, and that it would be steadily exercised until the right man was chosen. Wentworth’s nominee became Speaker without a contest, and expressed himself to his patron’s satisfaction. He was knighted at the end of the Parliament, and received 1,600l. for his services. A copy of what purported to be the Viceroy’s speech was shown by Cottington before its delivery; but this was probably a hoax, for Wentworth declared that it had not been written down beforehand. Cottington had Wentworth’s own account of his harangue to the Irish Council, and the speech to Parliament was little more than a repetition of it.[195]

Attempt to purge the Commons.

Supply is demanded at once,

and six subsidies are voted.

The session is talked out.

The two Houses at variance.

The demand for a prescriptive title to land.

On the fourth day of the Session the House of Commons met for business and the Roman Catholics at once demanded that the House should be purged, that is that all members should be expelled who did not inhabit the districts represented by them. This would have been fatal to the Protestant party, which comprised many official persons living in Dublin, and it had been decided in 1613 that residence was not essential. On the other hand Sir Thomas Bramston, who as sovereign of Belfast had returned himself, was declared not duly elected and ordered to refund 16l. which he had received as wages. These payments were fixed as in 1613, at 18s. 4d. a day for counties, 10s. for cities, and 6s. 8d. for boroughs. A committee for privileges was appointed and the Protestants carried the nomination of it by a majority of eight. Seeing that power lay with the party who were certain in the long run to support the Government, Wentworth summoned his Council the same day and Chief Baron Bolton proposed to go on with supply the next morning. He was supported, of course, by Wandesford, Mainwaring, and Radcliffe; but Wilmot, Parsons and St. Leger, the president of Munster, were inclined for a later day. Wentworth then spoke in favour of the bolder and prompter course. The committee, he said, could not possibly increase the Protestant majority, and might have the contrary effect. The Roman Catholics would be anxious to secure the rewards of loyalty by voting for what they could not prevent. His real fear, though he did not say this openly, was lest time should be given for the formation of parties. Wilmot, whom he suspected of intriguing with members of the House of Commons, said he retained his opinion in favour of delay, but that it was useless for any one to speak after the Lord Deputy. The Chancellor then declared himself on the side of power, saying that he should have been for prompt action even if Wentworth had taken the opposite view. After a lecture from the Viceroy on their duty to the King, the Council broke up, and next morning Wandesford proposed a resolution to give six subsidies ‘to be levied in a parliamentary way in four years,’ two in the first and second years, and one each in the third and fourth. Some of the Recusant party, finding themselves in a temporary majority, at once moved to postpone the vote until the House had been purged, and carried it by twenty-eight. But this was recognised as being what is nowadays called a snap division, and when the original motion was nevertheless put both parties feared to lose their credit with the Government. The Roman Catholics, having made their protest, supported Wandesford’s motion, which passed unanimously, and all was over before noon. The rest of this session, said the Lord Deputy compendiously, ‘we have entertained and spun them out in discourses, but kept them nevertheless from concluding anything. No other laws passed but the two Acts of subsidies, and that other short law for confirming all such compositions as are or shall be made upon the commission of defective titles.’ The Government was strengthened by a difference of opinion between the two Houses, which prevented a joint petition in favour of the graces. The Commons claimed the right to sit covered at a conference; this was denied them, no conference took place, and the petition forwarded was in the name of the Lower House only. Wentworth took no trouble to reconcile the two chambers, having learnt in England that a strict understanding between them was not favourable to the Crown. The Lords were, however, quite as anxious for the graces as the elected chamber, and especially for that which promised that sixty years possession should be a good title against the Crown. Indeed, Lord Fingall and Lord Ranelagh were more perseveringly outspoken than any member of the House of Commons. The first, as the head of an ancient family with a very chequered history, who had been treated with scant civility by Wentworth, and the latter, as the son of Archbishop Jones, had doubtless many reasons to fear an inquisition into their titles.[196]

Wentworth is refused an earldom.

Conscious of having done great service Wentworth asked the King for an earldom, taking precautions that no one should know he had done so. His suit was refused in a rather disagreeable letter, and much indignation has been expressed by many writers, but it is questionable whether this refusal should be added to the load of blame which Charles I. must bear. Wentworth was only forty-one, he had opposed the court until his thirty-sixth year, and he had already received a viscounty and two of the greatest places in the gift of the Crown. Burghley never became an earl. Both Cranfield and Weston had to serve much longer for the coveted honour, and neither of them had ever been in opposition. In later times not only earls but marquesses and dukes have been multiplied exceedingly, and it seems a small favour that Charles refused to a great man. Thousands of people now know something about Strafford who have scarcely heard of Cottington or Windebank, but this was not so at the time. Indeed the fact that his work was chiefly done in the North and in Ireland made him less prominent in the eyes of his contemporaries than inferior men who were always about the Court.[197]

Debate on the graces

Petition of the Commons.

The King’s promise as to titles.

Free Trade demanded.

The Lords had discussed the graces, and had ventured to suggest what laws should be passed to carry out the remedial policy foreshadowed by them. The debates had no conclusion, but Wentworth protested even against talk as an infringement of Poynings’ Act. According to him they had no business to do anything more than offer humble prayers to the Lord Deputy; and that was the course adopted by the Commons. The petition begins by reciting that titles in Ireland were generally uncertain, many documents having been lost or stolen during rude and disturbed times, and others being defective through the ignorance of those who drew or engrossed them; ‘whereof divers indigent persons, with eagle eyes piercing thereinto commonly took advantage to the utter overthrow of many noble and deserving persons, that for the valuable consideration of service unto the Crown, or money, or both, honourably and fairly acquired their estates, which is the principal cause of the slow improving planting and building in this land.’ While this uncertainty existed no one had the courage to make improvements, and everyone longed for the English law of James I., which made sixty years possession a good title even against the Crown. This grace, the Commons said, had been ‘particularly promised by his Majesty, approved by both the Councils of State of England and Ireland, and published in all the Irish counties at the assizes, and was most expected of all the other graces.’ They also protested, though in very guarded language, against the common law being overridden by the Council and the Star Chamber. Next to the security of real property the most important matter was the encouragement of trade and manufactures, for want of which Ireland swarmed with ‘vagabonds and beggars, sound of limb and strong of body.’ Free trade was what they really asked for, which was for the benefit of both King and people. On the faith of the graces which they believed would give them prosperity, the subjects of Ireland had already given 310,000l. and now they had voted six subsidies more, which was far in excess of what had been done in past ages. They acknowledged Wentworth’s ‘strong propension’ to advancing the good of the country, and exhorted him to increase his reputation by persuading his Majesty to redeem past promises and thus to ‘conserve a right intelligence between the best of Kings and his most faithful and dutiful subjects of Ireland.’[198]

The King’s promises are not kept.

The King can do no wrong.

Prorogation August 2.

Second session, Nov. 4.

The Commons are unmanageable.

Sir Piers Crosbie.

Wentworth’s answer was what might have been expected. Official extortion he was ready to repress, and all administrative reforms he would further to the utmost, but rather by way of concession from the King than by law. Orders in Council were to be preferred to Acts of Parliament, unless the latter were likely to bring profit to the Exchequer. Nothing was to be done to limit the royal power in any way. The much-desired sixty years’ title was not to be established by law, for it would involve the loss of fees and fines under the commission for confirmation of defective titles, it would interfere with the King’s profit upon tenures, and it would almost entirely prevent the colonisation schemes from which Wentworth expected so much. These ideas were readily adopted at Court, and the word of a King was once more shown to be of none effect. Wentworth dreaded the imputation of refusing to redress grievances after the price of reform had been paid, but hardly seems to have realised that he was doing that very thing. He had the courage of his opinions, and he knew his ‘great master’ as he is fond of calling Charles. ‘In these particulars,’ he said, ‘wherein the request of the petition shall be yielded to by your Majesty, we desire to reserve entirely to yourself the beauty of the act, and the acknowledgment thereof; so in the other particulars, wherein there is reason to deny them their requests, we your servants will assume the same to ourselves.’ The Chancellor, Lord Cork, and Sir William Parsons lent the weight of their signatures to Wentworth’s memorandum, but the name of Mountnorris is wanting. Rumours that the graces would be withheld were soon in circulation, and on November 4, after a three months’ recess, Parliament met again in very bad humour. There had been some delay in transmitting final instructions from England, and it was not till the 27th that Wentworth announced the denial of the most important graces. In the House of Commons the Roman Catholics, through the negligence or secret sympathy of some Protestants, found themselves in a majority upon that day, and at once broke into open revolt. They rejected every Bill presented to them, though some were evidently useful and harmless, and business was at a standstill. ‘Had it continued two days in that state,’ said Wentworth, ‘I had certainly adjourned the House, advertised over, and craven his Majesty’s judgment.’ For a moment the lead of the Opposition was assumed by Sir Piers Crosbie, member for the Queen’s County, a Protestant and a Privy Councillor, and here Wentworth saw his opportunity. He summoned the Council, and easily persuaded them to suspend Crosbie, and he afterwards had instructions from England to expel him altogether. He then went to the House of Lords. ‘I told them,’ he said, ‘what a shame it was for the Protestant party, that were in number the greater, to suffer their religion to be insensibly supplanted, his Majesty in some degree disregarded, the good ordinances transmitted for their future peace and good government to be thus disdainfully trodden under foot by a company of wilful, insolent people, envious both to their religion and to their peace, and all this for want of a few days’ diligent attendance upon the service of the public.’

Wentworth rallies the Protestant majority.

Expulsion of Geoffrey Baron.

He urged each peer to exert his influence with friends in the House of Commons; this was done, and a working majority was again secured. Among the wilful insolent people was Geoffrey Baron, member for Clonmel, ‘a young man, a kind of petty chapman’s son, who by peddling left him some 200l. a year,’ who opposed everything and who recklessly misstated facts. Wentworth determined to make an example of him, and the motion for his expulsion was carried by sixteen. After this things went smoothly, and all the Government Bills were passed into law.[199]

Sir Vincent Gookin’s case.

An impeachment threatened.

Judicial functions of Parliament.

Gookin on the English settlers.

Soon after the beginning of the second session both Houses were much excited by a letter of Sir Vincent Gookin, an enterprising English settler who had much property in the county of Cork. It was addressed to the Lord Deputy, though never delivered to him, and it is doubtful whether it was printed or not. In any case it was freely circulated in Munster, and a copy of it read out in the House of Commons. It was, says Wentworth, ‘a most bitter invective against the whole nation, natives, old English, new English, Papist, Protestant, captains, soldiers and all … it was evident they would have hanged him if they could. The libel indeed is wondrous foul and scandalous.’ An impeachment was threatened, and the two Houses had a conference, where Lord Mountnorris pointed out that the House of Commons had no power to administer an oath, but that the Lords would examine their witnesses and give sentence even in the delinquent’s absence. The judges were consulted, and declared that his land could not be seized as security for his appearance. Mountnorris said nothing about the Deputy and Council, and Wentworth, to prevent the assumption of judicial authority by Parliament, had already sent a pursuivant to arrest Gookin, who made haste to get out of Ireland, where his life was hardly safe. Wentworth in person informed Parliament that the principle of Poynings’ Act extended to judicial as well as to legislative functions, and that moreover the case was already in his hands. He observed that the King had no reason to be pleased with the exercise of parliamentary jurisdiction in England, and having always an eye to revenue, he added that Sir Vincent, who was a very rich man, was well able to bear a fine great in proportion to his offence. Early in the following year Gookin was brought back from England and imprisoned in the Castle, and Wentworth received the thanks of Parliament with a request that he would continue the prosecution, which the English Government left in his hands. It does not appear whether this was done, but Gookin, who paid 1,000l. a year to labourers and fishermen in the neighbourhood of Bandon, and who had thirty years’ experience of Ireland, came into frequent collision with Lord Cork, which was likely to make Wentworth lenient. Gookin was a strong Protestant, who hated the Irish and their priests, and was quite willing to be hated by them in return, but he thought the English Irish even worse. It might have been different if the settlers could have been kept to themselves, but as it was the English influence had a constant tendency to grow weaker. ‘As soon as any Englishman cometh over and settleth himself in this country and hath gotten any estate, he findeth himself environed with the Irish, and hath no safety both for himself and posterity but by some way to stick themselves by marriage and gossiping or the like.’ Gookin died some four years later, and his son, who played a considerable part during the Commonwealth, took a somewhat different view of the country.[200]

Wentworth’s regard for privilege of Parliament.

Submissiveness of the Commons.

A parliamentary bravo.

Another incident occurred during this same session which is important only as an illustration of Wentworth’s high-handed methods. Sir John Dongan having made a speech unpleasing to the official party in the House of Commons, Captain Charles Price remarked in a loud tone that he did not know what he was doing. An altercation followed which Dongan evidently tried to avoid, for he said he meant no harm. Price then called him saucy, and Sir John very naturally gave him the lie. All this happened inside the bar of the House of Commons, yet the Council took the case up. Dongan was imprisoned in the Castle, forced to give a written apology, fined, and ordered to be brought by the constable of the Castle to the bar of the House and to repeat his submission there upon his knees. This was carried out to the letter a few days later, and entered in the journals, without comment. A committee of six was appointed to wait on the Lord Deputy and beg him to remit the penalty for offending the King, the offence to Parliament and to the Lord Deputy having been already purged. Price was employed by Wentworth as an agent at Court, for which purpose he had very long leave from his military duties. We may judge from a letter of Lord Keeper Coventry what sort of man he was. ‘Your servant, Captain Price, is now with us, and I assure you is not silent in anything that concerns your honour, and in truth serves you with his tongue and protests he will not fail to do it with his sword. I hope your lordship hath no need of the latter in Ireland, and your friends here are well pleased to hear how he lays about him with the former, and therefore it is hoped you will yet spare him from his garrison till he have done here what is meet to be done.’[201]

Assessment of the subsidies.

Wentworth wishes to keep his Parliament together,

but the King insists on a dissolution.

Parliament dissolved, April 18, 1635.

No subsidy had hitherto yielded more than about 30,000l., but there had been many exemptions and many cases of fraud whereby the great transferred their share of the burden to the poor. Wentworth succeeded in raising each subsidy to rather more than 40,000l. from the Commons, with over 6,000l. from the nobility, and 3,000l. from the clergy. The two last sums were to be levied by the Government, but the House of Commons, fearing lest the Deputy should be tempted to take even more than had been agreed upon, themselves assessed the amount which their constituents were to pay in each county. Leinster was set down for 13,000l., Ulster for 10,000l., Munster for 11,200l., and Connaught for 6,800l. The highest rated county was Cork, which with the city paid nearly 4,000l. Dublin city and county were assessed at 1,000l. apiece. The House of Commons also inquired into arrears due by the Crown, and these they found amounted to about 130,000l. They recommended that certain sums due to the Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishop of Meath, and the Dean of Christchurch should be paid at once in full. The next to be satisfied were ladies, the attainder of whose husbands or fathers had enriched the Crown; Lady Desmond and her daughters, Lady Mary O’Dogherty, and Lady Mary O’Reilly being mentioned by name. Arrears of pay due to civil or military officers were to be satisfied in proportion to the actual benefit derived from their services, sinecurists being left in the lurch, and all useless places recommended to be abolished. When the work of the Parliament was done, Wentworth wished to prorogue it. ‘This House,’ he said, ‘is very well composed; so as the Protestants are the major part, clearly and thoroughly with the King, which would be difficult to compass again, if you were now to call another.’ He thought that the existence of this obedient majority would serve to overawe the Roman Catholics, who alone were dangerous, and who would be deterred from opposing schemes of colonisation by the knowledge that the English recusancy laws might be passed over their heads at any moment. But Charles was of opinion that Parliaments ‘are of the nature of cats, they ever grow curst with age,’ and directed Wentworth to dissolve as soon as the necessary business was done. Coke had intercepted a large budget of letters between the Irish Recusants and their French friends, and he had no doubt that as soon as there was danger either from Spain or France ‘all would join together to replant themselves at home.’ Wentworth thought a Parliament well in hand would be a useful instrument to have ready, but he was not allowed to keep it. The royal consent was given to a number of Acts, and the subsidy arrangements being complete, the two Houses had little to do except to squabble about matters of etiquette, and were dissolved without settling them. ‘We have now,’ Wentworth wrote, ‘under the conduct of our prudent and excellent master, concluded this Parliament, with an universal contentment, as I take it.’ He thought it had done more than all former Parliaments put together, both for King, Church and subject, and that Charles was ‘more absolute master by his wisdom,’ than his predecessors had ever been by the sword.[202]

Meeting of Convocation, 1613–1615.

The Hundred and Four Articles.

Character of the Irish Articles.

‘Proctors in the Convocation House’ are officially mentioned in Henry VIII.’s time, but the first regular Convocation of the Irish Church was held in connection with the Parliament of 1613. It was summoned by the King’s writ, and met in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on May 24 in that year. It consisted of the bishops and of representatives from the four provincial synods. Lord Chancellor Jones as Archbishop of Dublin presided in the Upper, and Randolph Barlow, after wards Archbishop of Tuam, in the Lower House; both were Cambridge men. The principal business of this assembly was to pass the Articles, one hundred and four in number, which are generally attributed to James Ussher, then professor of divinity in Dublin. Ussher’s Puritanism was more pronounced in his earlier days than afterwards, and James was less hostile to that school than he later became. These Articles, which superseded those of 1566, received the royal assent, though they practically incorporated those promulgated at Lambeth in 1595. They were more Calvinistic and more polemical than the thirty-nine received by the Church of England upon which Burnet, in the interest of peace and comprehension, expended his latitudinarian casuistry. It may suffice to note that of the Irish Articles the twelfth declares that ‘God hath predestinated some unto life and reprobated some unto death: of both which there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished’; and the eightieth that the Pope is ‘that man of sin foretold in the Holy Scriptures whom the Lord shall consume, &c.’ In 1615 this Convocation granted one subsidy to the King.[203]

The Thirty-nine Articles are adopted, 1634,

but without repealing the others.

How Wentworth treated Convocation.

Non-subscribers to be excommunicated.

Convocation met at the same time as Parliament, Ussher presiding in the Upper and Henry Leslie Dean, and afterwards Bishop, of Down in the Lower House. Wentworth’s ‘thorough’ extended to Church as well as to State, and his great object was to have the Thirty-nine Articles established. Ussher and others were attached to the Irish Articles of 1615, and the Lord Deputy thought it prudent to leave them unrepealed while superseding them in practice, a course in which Laud acquiesced. ‘I was,’ says Bramhall, now Bishop of Derry, ‘the only man employed from him to the Convocation, and from the Convocation to him.’ Wentworth had, however, private discussions with Ussher, and of these Bramhall may have known nothing. The ‘dovelike simplicity’ of the Primate, to use Bramhall’s phrase, was easily borne down by the imperious viceroy, and the House of Bishops adopted the English Articles readily enough, as well as the canon which directed their use. The Lower House appointed a Committee, over which George Andrews, Dean of Limerick, presided, whose draft report excited Wentworth’s wrath, for it provided among other things that the Articles of 1615 should be received on pain of excommunication. The Lord Deputy sent for Andrews and called him Ananias, impounded his papers, and forbade him to report anything to the House. He then wrote to the prolocutor Leslie, enclosing a form of canon drawn up by himself, after rejecting one composed by Ussher, and ordered him to put it to the House ‘without admitting any debate or other discourse.’ The Articles of the Church of England were not to be disputed, and the names of those who voted aye and no were to be sent to him. This drastic procedure succeeded, and there was but one dissentient. As a formal concession to the independence of the Irish Church, the canons agreed upon were not quite identical with those of England, but the first, which established the Thirty-nine Articles, effected all that Wentworth wanted. It provided that ‘if any hereafter shall affirm that any of those Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, let him be excommunicated, and not absolved before he make a public revocation of his error.’ Ussher and Bramhall are agreed that the Articles of 1615 were not abrogated, but the latter informs us that any bishop ‘would have been called to an account’ who had required subscription to them after the English Articles were authorised under the Great Seal of Ireland.[204]

Wentworth and the Queen of Bohemia.

Unpopularity of Laud.

The veteran diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe was so much struck by Wentworth’s success that he advised the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia to make him her friend. ‘He is severe abroad and in business, and sweet in private conversation, retired in his friendships but very firm, a terrible judge, and a strong enemy; a servant violently zealous in his master’s ends, and not negligent of his own; one that will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will greater when it may serve him; affecting glory by a seeming contempt; one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, but entreprenant; but will either be the greatest man in England or much less than he is; lastly one that may—and his nature lies fit for it, for he is ambitious to do what others will not—do your Majesty very great service if you can make him.’ Laud had been misrepresented, and he also might be very useful. Elizabeth took Roe’s advice, and afterwards corresponded pretty often with the Lord Deputy, whom she had never seen. Her great object was to get some provision made for the poor ministers who were driven out of the Palatinate. ‘As for Laud,’ she said, ‘I am glad you commend him so much, for there are but a few who do it.’[205]