Читать книгу Studies in Irish History, 1603-1649 - Various - Страница 5

They found there was a general combination against electing Protestants; the reason being, the natives believed laws would be propounded concerning religion and for banishment of priests. They found that the Roman Catholic knights of the shire and burgesses levied contributions to pay for sending their agents for their appeal to England. And the moneys obtained by the priests seem to have been dues of the most ordinary kind. In fact, the dragging in of the priests and Jesuits, first suggested in James’s commands to the Commission, proved to be a perfect mare’s nest. They found that two burgesses were returned from Clogher, which had never sent members before, and had no charter to do so. The Commission then went on to describe the disorderly scene at the meeting of Parliament. It appeared that several of the new corporations had no right to return members, their charters bearing date after the Commission for the holding of the Parliament, and some after the summons to the Parliament.

After that, they go into the general grievances of the country. Juries will not present recusants. “The small number, less sufficiency, and little residence of the ministers. The want and defect of churches, either wholly ruined, or so out of repair as to be unfit for the service of God.” Remedy, to enforce the laws of conformity, and to do away with idle and scandalous ministers. The soldiers extort; officers take money not to cess; the provost-marshal’s men extort. The people are afraid to make complaint for fear of worse impositions. The extortion of clerks and multiplying of new offices. The clearing out of Wexford for a new plantation; some old freeholders restored to their land or portion, but with some of the English party holding it in trust for them; while 390 freeholders, and 14,500 other people “may be removed at the will of the patentees, notwithstanding few are yet removed.” For this plantation a jury was appointed and found “ignoramus” to the King’s title. They were bound over to appear again, and then eleven agreed to find for the title; but five, who refused, were committed to prison, and censured in the Castle Chamber. After that come figures about the Wexford Plantation and the rent reserved, which was £5 per 1,000 acres for the English, and £6 6s. 8d. for the natives.

Here ends the Commissioners’ finding. It was worded with caution, but we can see they felt that the condition of Ireland was one of gross misgovernment. In fact, it would be impossible to feel anything else, if the subject were dealt with from the point of view of legality. Notice that no fault or crime was urged against the native population except those violations of the law which come from their adhesion to their own views in politics and religion. On the other hand, every constitutional law was being broken by the misgovernors of the land. How James could assert there were only illegalities in the cases of two members of Parliament, it is difficult to say. Even if the King’s County case was doubtful, the Kildare case, the Cavan case, and the Clogher case, would clearly make six. Some of these findings, as about the military impositions, and the Wexford peasantry being tenants at will, must have been bitter reading for Sir John Davies, who had written so strongly against that sort of thing, and who, though rapacious and heartless, may be fairly described, in the writer’s humble opinion, as the father of the Ulster custom.

The Commission, as far as it touched Parliamentary matters, dealt only with the House of Commons. The constitution of the House of Lords was as bad. On the eve of the meeting of the Parliament, on 31st March, 1613, a King’s letter was issued to call to the Upper House by writ, Lord Abercorn, Lord Henry Brian, son of the Earl of Thomond, Lord Audley, Lord Ochiltree, and Lord Burleigh. The letter also said if the right of Lord Barry, Viscount Buttevant was questioned because he had an elder brother who is deaf and dumb, the question was to be silenced by the king’s commandment, because of his dutiful behaviour, and because he had enjoyed the title for many years without contradiction. A letter in the Carew Papers shows that Lord Henry Brian or O’Brien was summoned because he was a Protestant, where we also read that Lord Athenrie, who was too poor to attend, was to be induced to give his proxy to some Protestant lord.^[51]

A good many of the intended mushroom boroughs came to nothing. Virginia was meant to be a borough, but was never incorporated. Charlestown and Jamestown were intended to be the county towns respectively of the counties of Roscommon and Leitrim, but the ill-omened names have disappeared from our maps, though the village of Jamestown became a pocket borough, returning two members till the Union.^[52]

It may be necessary to mention that the colonization of Down and Antrim are quite separate matters. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the MacDonnells, Lords of the Isles, came to Antrim, and in 1584 a thousand Scottish highlanders, called “Redshanks,” of the septs of the Cambiles, MacDonnells and Magalanes, led by Surleboy, a Scottish chieftain, invaded Ulster. And early in James’s reign some English from Devon were brought over by Chichester and settled in Carrickfergus and Malone, near Belfast. These formed the Planters of Antrim; and Down was colonized through the interference of a laird named Montgomery. Con O’Neill had got into trouble with the Government, and his wife (a lady of great abilities, and a sister of Brian MacArt and half-sister of Owen Roe MacArt) appealed to Montgomery to help him to secure his pardon. Montgomery did secure it; but with the result that the patent for his share of Con’s land specified that the lands should be planted by British undertakers, and that no grants of fee-farms should be given to any of Irish extraction.^[53] Then James Hamilton came in and got a share, Con, Hamilton and Montgomery having one-third each. In 1606 O’Neill had to part with his property, giving it up to Montgomery. The latter founded Newtown (or Newtownards), Donaghadee, Comber and Grey-Abbey; and Hamilton founded Bangor, Holywood, Killileagh, and Ballywalter. So these wily Scotchmen got practically the whole of the County Down; and the Scotch settlers who came over in hundreds filled up the land. The barony of Iveagh, which contained so much highlands, was held by the Magenises. They seem to have been astute enough. Though often law-breakers, they did not transgress politically, and when the barony was specially settled in 1617 they got most of the land in Iveagh, and they had only to pay twice as much as the English.^[54] Here is a brief contemporary description of the head of the family. “Sir Hugh McEnys was the civilest of all the Irishry of those parts. He was brought by Sir Nicholas Bagnall from the Bonaghe of the O’Neyles to contribute to the Queen. In this place only amongst the Irish of Ulster is the rude custom of tanistship put away. Maginis is able to make 60 horsemen and 80 footmen. Every festival day he wears English garments.”

Besides the Ulster counties, in this reign there were also plantations of King’s County and Longford at a rent to the Crown of 2½d. per acre for pasture land, and ½d per acre for bog and wood, Wexford at rent 1¼d. per acre, Upper Ossory (Queen’s County) at 3d. per acre. Westmeath and Cork. There were also grants in Meath and Louth; but, though large, they hardly professed to be the basis of a plantation.

Many continental immigrants became naturalized in Ireland in this reign; they hailed mostly from Antwerp and Brabant.^[55]

Now what has the introduction of the North Britons done for Ireland? It has added complications to the religious problems of the country, by adding a third element. To all who study the history of Ireland, it tends to increase the sense of injustice and wrong, to see how the North and its industries have always been pampered for the three centuries intervening. It has not tended to the consolidation of the Empire, for every Ulster so-called “Loyalist” is a Home Ruler of a type of his own, for he approaches all Imperial problems from a local point of view. In the troublous times when political convulsions come in Belfast, as in 1886 and 1892, the most hated class of men is found to be the body that is representative of law and order, the Royal Irish Constabulary. Ulster is loyal as long as she gets her own way. Her good temper is very like what Sir Antony Absolute says of himself, “You know I am compliance itself—when I am not thwarted; no one more easily led—when I have my own way.” Her vices are worse than the traditional vices of the rest of the land. In morality the South and West of Ireland people are superior; while in temperance, it may at least be said they are not inferior. The virtues of Ulster are economy and industry and determination. They have an unreasoning decision, a blind enthusiasm, in political and religious matters that carries them along in a way that will never be copied by the more thoughtful and more depressed Southern. Ulster has shown the rest of Ireland that, however attractive the land may be, it is well to have trades and industries that do not depend, or only depend partly on the land. The crowning merit of James’s work in Ulster is that there is one part of the country where landlord and tenant, squire and labourer, think very much alike in religion and politics, so that a good understanding should be looked for between the various parties. Had he left Tyrone and Tyrconnell and O’Dogherty with their vassals, the same result would have been arrived at, without all the unconstitutional things I have referred to. Unconstitutional! We have seen the beginning of the Stuart rule; we know how it ended.

And in the struggles that intervened, Ulster was invariably against the Crown. To the English and Scotch squatters, and the Irish Society, were given arable and pasture lands, fishings, courts leet and baron, ferries, bishoprics and livings, mountain-lands and bogs, courts of pie-powder, exemptions, titles, licences to beg, recusants’ fines, wardships and marriages of minors, charters of the staple, customs on tobacco-pipes, and monopolies of all kinds, and in a few score years the grandchildren of these favoured persons made themselves famous by their bitter opposition to James’s grandson. Thus the whirligig of time brings its revenges.