The reign of James the First had been, if we except one petty and insignificant outbreak in Ulster, a period of tranquillity for Ireland; and, at the accession of his son, the prospects of the country might have seemed to a superficial observer more promising than they had yet been. But, in fact, the ostensibly pacific and constitutional measures of James had produced results more disastrous, and aroused animosities more enduring than even the exterminating policy of his predecessor. Henry Carey, Lord Falkland, who three years earlier had succeeded Grandison as Lord Deputy, was at this time confronted with two problems which have since taxed to the uttermost the abilities of many wiser and more resolute men than he. During the preceding reign the laws which prohibited the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion had been fitfully and spasmodically enforced. Minorities have often been dragooned into conformity; but it is not easy by such means to change the religion of an entire nation; and the dread of a rebellion in Ireland, no less than the necessity of maintaining friendly relations with foreign Catholic powers, repeatedly led the English Government to place a curb upon the frantic zeal of the ascendancy party at Dublin. The latter consideration had recently derived additional force from the marriage of Charles, then Prince of Wales, to a Catholic princess; and, on the accession of the young king, the co-religionists of his consort began, not unnaturally, to hope for something more than the precarious and extra-legal toleration which was all that they had hitherto enjoyed. On the other hand, the fact that the king was disposed to treat the Catholics with leniency was in itself enough to inflame the hostility of the Puritan party, which comprised the majority of the English middle class and had already obtained the ascendancy in at least the Lower House of Parliament. To satisfy the wishes of the Irish without raising a storm in England was a task beyond the abilities of either Falkland or his master.

A still more serious source of discontent was to be found in the general sense of insecurity which pervaded the Irish gentry. During the last years of James’s reign, the precedent which had been set in Ulster had been followed on a smaller scale in Leitrim, Longford, Wexford, and King’s County. All those counties, or parts of them, had, at some time since the Norman invasion, been occupied by English colonists, who had afterwards been driven out by the original inhabitants. During many generations the latter had remained in undisturbed possession; but few of them had taken the trouble to obtain title-deeds which would be valid by English law—a science of whose mysteries they were profoundly ignorant. If in a few instances such documents had once existed, they had generally been lost or destroyed during the long period of anarchy and civil war. It was now decided that these gentlemen, being unable to produce satisfactory title-deeds, were intruders upon the estates of the Anglo-Norman adventurers who had despoiled their ancestors some centuries before; and, when the heirs of the latter were not forthcoming, the lands, in default of any other claimant, were adjudged to have lapsed to the Crown.^[56]

The alarm and indignation to which these proceedings naturally gave rise were especially great in the western province. During the last three reigns a series of confiscations had been carried out in Leinster, Munster and Ulster, but the Connaught landowners had hitherto escaped spoliation, and they had very lately obtained for their estates a security which, it might have been thought, would have proved a barrier against the rapacity of the most unscrupulous government. In 1585 Sir John Perrott, then Lord Deputy, had effected an arrangement, known as the “Composition of Connaught,” by which the gentlemen of that province were secured in the possession of their estates; but, owing probably to the troubles which not long afterwards broke out in Ulster, the formalities necessary in order to give validity to this transaction were never carried out. In the thirteenth year of his reign, however, James consented, in consideration of a bribe of £3,000, to issue a commission remedying this defect. The Irish gentry loyally performed their part of the agreement; but, owing to some negligence, or, more probably, some trickery on the part of the officials of the Court of Chancery, the patents were incorrectly enrolled, and were afterwards pronounced by interested and unscrupulous lawyers to be null and void. Shortly before the death of James it began to be rumoured that the Government intended to avail themselves of this technical irregularity in order to establish a Plantation in Connaught on the model of the Plantation of Ulster. The rumour, as might have been expected, excited the most painful apprehensions in Ireland; but no actual steps had been taken towards the Plantation when the king died.^[57]

Charles was not altogether indisposed to treat his Irish subjects with fairness; but his strongest desire, then as always, was to secure a revenue which would render him independent of the English Parliament. The Irish Catholics, on their side, were willing enough to contribute to the relief of the king’s necessities, if by so doing they might obtain toleration for their religion and security for their estates. The first act of the young sovereign was admirably calculated to attract the popular goodwill. By a statute of the second year of Elizabeth, all mayors, sheriffs, and other municipal officers were required to take the Oath of Supremacy; but, owing to the scarcity of Protestants, the law, except in Ulster, had generally been a dead letter. In 1618, however, Sir Oliver St. John had procured the forfeiture of the charter of Waterford—a city which had persistently elected recusant magistrates.^[58] As an earnest of the royal favour this charter was now restored, and, to the scandal of zealous Protestants, a Roman Catholic mayor was once more installed in office.^[59]

A few days later, Falkland, acting under instructions received from England, convened an assembly of the Irish nobility and gentry to consider the measures to be taken to relieve the financial embarrassments of the Government, and to hear the concessions which the king was willing to make in return for their assistance.^[60] But an unexpected obstacle intervened. Justly conceiving that the proposed concessions would put an end to the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by their sect, the Protestant prelates, with Archbishop Usher at their head, drew up and published a “Judgment concerning toleration in religion,” which may be commended to the attention of those pious persons who are accustomed to declaim against the bigotry of the Vatican.

“The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous; their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their Church, in respect of both, apostatical. To give them, therefore, a toleration, or to consent that they may freely exercise their religion and profess their faith and doctrine is a grievous sin, and that in two respects. For,

“First. It is to make ourselves accessory, not only to their superstitious idolatries and heresies, and, in a word, to all the abominations of Popery, but also, which is a consequent of the former, to the perdition of the seduced people which perish in the deluge of the Catholic apostacy. Secondly. To grant them a toleration in respect of any money to be given, or contribution to be made by them, is to set religion to sale, and with it the souls of the people whom Christ our Saviour hath redeemed with His Most Precious Blood. And as it is a great sin, so it is also a matter of most dangerous consequence, the consideration whereof we commit to the wise and judicious, beseeching the God of truth to make them who are in authority zealous of God’s glory, and of the advancement of true religion: zealous, resolute and courageous against all Popery, superstition, and idolatry. Amen.”^[61]

A little later Downham, Bishop of Derry, preaching before the Lord Deputy, denounced toleration in still more unmeasured terms. These outbursts of episcopal intolerance aroused the sympathy of the English House of Commons, who passed a resolution: “That the Popish religion is publicly professed in every part of Ireland, and that monasteries and nunneries are there newly erected and replenished with votaries of both sexes, which will be of evil consequence unless seasonably repressed.”^[62]

The opposition of the Protestant bishops in Ireland and of their English sympathisers retarded for a considerable time the progress of the negotiations between the Government and the recusants; but in the spring of 1628 the agents of the latter had a personal interview with Charles at Whitehall, when an agreement was arrived at which, it was hoped, would prove satisfactory to all parties. In one important particular the concessions which were now promised were less liberal than those which in the preceding year the Catholics had been led to expect. Charles had then been willing to consent to the repeal of the Act which imposed a fine of one shilling on persons absent from the Protestant parish churches on Sundays. Out of deference, probably, to the protest of the episcopate, this concession was now withdrawn. But, in spite of this omission, “the Graces,” as they were called, were well calculated to redress the most serious grievances of the Irish. A new oath of a purely civil character was substituted for the Oath of Supremacy, and recusants were thus enabled to sue their liveries and to practise at the bar without fear of molestation. An undisturbed occupancy of sixty years was to afford a prescriptive title against all older claims of the Crown. The deficiencies in the titles of the Connaught landowners were to be supplied by an Act of the Parliament which, it was expected, would be shortly summoned. Other grievances of a more general kind, which affected Protestants no less than Catholics, were also remedied. In return for these concessions the Irish agents undertook to raise a “voluntary contribution” of £120,000, to be paid in quarterly instalments ranging over three years.^[63]

It was arranged that the Irish Parliament should meet in November. The writs were issued, and some, at least, of the elections had actually taken place, when the English Council discovered that by summoning a Parliament without having first transmitted to England a statement of the Bills which it would have to consider, the Lord Deputy had been guilty of a technical violation of Poynings’ Act. The writs were accordingly cancelled, and the holding of the Parliament indefinitely postponed.^[64] In spite of this disappointment the Irish, who had not yet fathomed the duplicity of their sovereign, paid the first instalments of the contribution with punctuality and were rewarded with a less rigorous execution of the penal statutes.

Falkland did not long retain office after this humiliating rebuff. The embarrassments which Charles anticipated from the promise of concessions which he was already anxious to evade made him eager to entrust the government of Ireland to stronger and more resolute hands, and a popular pretext was soon found for the recall of the obnoxious Deputy. During the reign of James, Falkland, urged on by Sir William Parsons, afterwards the notorious Lord Justice, had attempted to despoil a sept named O’Byrne by the kind of legal jugglery which was then fashionable, but had met with unexpected opposition from the English Government, which was beginning to entertain doubts of the merits of the Plantation system. A few years later he discovered, or professed to have discovered, a formidable conspiracy in which the O’Byrnes were involved. Phelim O’Byrne, the head of the sept, and his six sons were arrested, tried by a jury composed partly of their hereditary enemies, and partly of persons who coveted their estates, convicted and imprisoned, and their lands divided among English adventurers. In this transaction Falkland had received the support of a majority of the council with Lord Cork at their head, but had been opposed by a minority, among whom the Chancellor, Lord Loftus of Ely, and Sir Francis Annesley, afterwards Lord Mountnorris, were the most conspicuous. Neither Loftus nor Mountnorris were men of unblemished character, and their opposition to the Lord Deputy was probably due at least as much to personal jealousy as to any disinterested sympathy with his victims; but to whatever motives it is to be ascribed, there can be no doubt that their conduct was in this instance fully justified. In the autumn of 1628 these gentlemen induced Charles to institute an inquiry into the means by which the evidence against the O’Byrnes had been obtained. Falkland protested, but his protests were disregarded. It soon transpired that his Excellency had had good reason to desire concealment. The original accusers of the O’Byrnes turned out to have been criminals under sentence of death who had been released on undertaking to swear as the Lord Deputy desired. More respectable witnesses deposed that they had been compelled by torture to corroborate the evidence thus obtained. In consequence of this inquiry the O’Byrnes were released, but their lands were not restored to them.^[65]

This exposure effectually destroyed what little reputation Falkland had left. In January, 1629, it was decided to recall him; but it was not until the following August that he surrendered the sword, having a few months previously issued a proclamation declaring that “the late intermission of legal proceedings against Popish pretended or titulary archbishops, bishops, abbots, deans, vicars-general, Jesuits, friars and others of that sort, that derive their pretended authority and orders from the see of Rome, hath bred such an extraordinary intolerance and presumption in them as that they have dared here of late not only to assemble themselves in public places to celebrate their superstitious services in all parts of this kingdom, but also have erected houses and buildings called public oratories, colleges, mass-houses, and convents of friars, monks and nuns in the eye and open view of the State, and, by colour of teaching and keeping schools in their pretended monasteries and colleges, do train up the youth of this kingdom in their superstitious religion, to the great degradation and contempt of his Majesty’s regal power and authority”; and commanding them in his Majesty’s name thenceforth to “forbear to preach, teach, or celebrate their service in any church, chapel, or other public oratory or place, or to teach any school in any place or places whatsoever within this kingdom.”^[66]

After the dismissal of Falkland the administration of Irish affairs was entrusted to Lord Chancellor Loftus and to the Earl of Cork as Lords Justices. Adam Loftus, grandson and namesake of the first Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, brought to his high office an inherited instinct for peculation, which he transmitted in undiminished splendour to his descendants.^[67] His colleague was in every respect a more remarkable man. Born at Canterbury in 1566 Richard Boyle came to Ireland at an early age with twenty-seven pounds in his pocket; obtained, by means of letters of introduction which were afterwards discovered to have been forged, one of those subordinate posts in the government of which the direct emoluments were small, but which afforded boundless opportunities for illegitimate gain; and, in the confiscations which followed the Desmond war, acquired one of the largest estates in Munster. Like most of the Munster planters he was for a while ruined by Tyrone’s rebellion, but more fortunate than many better men, eventually regained more than he had lost. In 1598 he was examined before the English Privy Council on a charge of holding treasonable correspondence with Spain; but, though his defence can scarcely be regarded as convincing, he succeeded, with his customary good fortune, not merely in outwitting his accusers but in recommending himself to the favour of his sovereign. During the reign of James, Boyle throve rapidly, and not only rose to some of the highest places in the State but built up a colossal fortune, which his family motto ascribed to the providence of God, but which, in the general estimation of his contemporaries, might be traced to a very different source. His uniform severity towards the Catholics has won for him from a certain school of historians the praise of exemplary piety; but an impartial student of his political career will probably pronounce him an unscrupulous adventurer, whose zeal against Popery sprang in large measure from a desire to enrich himself at the expense of the Papists.^[68]

The Lord Chancellor was not less fanatical than his colleague; but, in spite of the identity of their political opinions, the personal feud between the two Lords Justices was so bitter that the king was obliged to send a special agent from England to compose it.^[69] The reconciliation thus effected was superficial, but the two noblemen cordially co-operated in repressive measures against the recusants. An incident which took place not long afterwards throws a curious light on the temper of the governing faction and the precarious position of the Catholics. In the autumn of 1629, according to a contemporary Protestant writer, “the Romish Catholics began to rant it in Ireland, and to exercise their fancies called religion so publicly as if they had gained a toleration. For, whilst the Lords Justices were at church in Dublin on St. Stephen’s day, they were celebrating Mass, which the Lords Justices taking notice of, they sent the Archbishop of Dublin, the mayor, sheriffs and recorder of the town to apprehend them, which they did, taking away the crucifixes, chalices and paraments of the altar, the soldiers hewing down the image of St. Francis. The priests and friars were delivered into the hands of the pursuivants, at whom the people threw stones and rescued them. The Lords Justices, informed of this, sent a guard and delivered them, and clapt eight Popish aldermen by the heels for not attending their mayor. Upon the account of this presumption fifteen houses, by direction from the Lords of the Council here, were seized to the King’s use, and the friars and priests so persecuted as two hanged themselves in their own defence.”^[70] The persecution, which had begun in the capital, was rapidly extended throughout the country. During the next three years numerous monasteries and convents were dissolved. In the summer of 1630, a university which the Catholics, who were excluded from Trinity College by the Oath of Supremacy, had recently erected for their own use, was suppressed, and its revenues transferred to its Protestant rival. Two years later a shrine of St. Patrick in Lough Derg, which was much frequented by pilgrims, and was regarded by the people with a veneration no less national than religious, was, by order of the Lords Justices, dug up and destroyed.^[71]

These oppressive proceedings were, no doubt, acceptable to the English Council; but in other respects the administration of the Lords Justices could not be considered satisfactory. A Parliament was again promised, and again postponed. By the beginning of 1632 the revenue showed a deficit, the pay of the troops was in arrear, the coast was exposed to the attacks of Moorish pirates, and the public buildings—arsenals, churches, even Dublin Castle itself—were everywhere in decay. The voluntary contribution would soon be at an end, and it was unlikely that the Catholics, who had begun to suspect the king’s sincerity in the matter of the Graces, would consent to renew it. Their lordships could think of no means of meeting expenses except the enforcement of the shilling fines.^[72]

Such was the condition of affairs when Thomas Wentworth assumed the government of Ireland. His appointment bears date January, 1632, but it was not until the middle of the succeeding year that he proceeded to Dublin.^[73] Before leaving England he had contrived with characteristic dexterity to relieve the financial embarrassments of the Government. Cork and Loftus had, as we have seen, been anxious to exact the recusancy fines. Wentworth took care that their wishes should be generally known. He then despatched an agent, himself a Catholic, to negociate secretly with his co-religionists. This gentleman informed the leading recusants that the Lord Deputy was averse to persecution, but that, if no other means could be devised for the relief of the king’s necessities, he would be compelled to act upon the Lords Justices’ advice. Alarmed at this intimation and eager to conciliate one who might prove either a dangerous enemy or a most valuable friend, the Catholics agreed to levy an additional “voluntary contribution” of £20,000. The Protestants, who were wholly dependent on the Government, did not venture to resist.^[74]

The sum thus obtained was sufficient for his immediate requirements; but, in order that the finances might be placed on a satisfactory basis, it was necessary that the Irish Parliament, which had not met for nearly twenty years, should be again summoned. The step was certain to be popular, and Wentworth was eager to take it; but it was difficult to convince Charles, whose experience of Parliamentary government in England had not been happy, of its wisdom. The Lord Deputy, who prided himself, not without reason, upon his powers of parliamentary management, explained with great frankness the course which he intended to adopt. As soon as the Houses met they were to be informed that business would be extended over two sessions; the first of which was to be devoted to the relief of the king’s necessities, and the second to “the enacting of all such profitable and wholesome laws as a moderate and good people may expect from a wise and gracious king.” With the hope of a ratification of the Graces thus dangled before them, the Commons might be relied upon to grant supplies for the next three years; and when the money had been voted the Government could fulfil as much or as little of their engagements as they found convenient. His Majesty had no reason to be afraid of any dangerous exhibition of Parliamentary independence. Apart from the restrictions imposed by Poynings’ Act, which made the Irish Parliament a mere instrument for registering the decrees of the English Privy Council, that body was so constituted as to be wholly at the mercy of the Castle. In the Upper House the bishops and the English adventurers who had been ennobled during the preceding reign gave the Government a permanent majority over the old national aristocracy. The management of the Lower House would be more difficult; but Wentworth undertook to secure a majority by tampering with the elections as Chichester had done. In one respect his task differed from Chichester’s. In 1613 the entire body of the Protestants had been on the side of the Government, and the Lord Deputy had been able to make sure of a majority by multiplying boroughs wherever the colonists predominated. Since that date the breach between the court party and the Puritans had grown wider, and a large proportion of the new settlers were now scarcely less hostile to the administration than the Catholics. Wentworth had accordingly determined so to manage the elections “as that neither the recusants nor yet the Protestants shall appear considerably more one than the other, holding them as much as may be upon an equal balance”; and at the same time to procure the return from some of the smaller and more corrupt constituencies of “captains and officers, who, having immediate dependence upon the Crown, may sway the business betwixt the two parties which way they please.”^[75] With many misgivings Charles consented to the experiment. “As to that hydra,” he wrote, “take good heed, for you know I have here found it cunning as well as malicious.” “I fear,” he added, with an obvious recollection of his unlucky promises, “they have some ground to demand more than is fit for me to give.”^[76]

In July, 1634, the Parliament met and the Lord Deputy’s forecast was justified. The Catholic and Protestant parties were almost equal; the officers turned the scale in favour of the latter. The result had not been arrived at without some difficulty. The priests, who apprehended fresh penalties against their religion, had exerted themselves on behalf of the Catholic candidates. Wentworth put his foot down upon a policy which threatened to divide the country into a Catholic and a Protestant party, a thing, he wrote, “to be avoided as much as may be, unless our numbers were the greater.” The sheriff of Dublin “carried himself mutinously,” or, in plain English, refused to foist the Lord Deputy’s nominees upon an unwilling constituency. The over-scrupulous official was dragged before the Castle Chamber, fined, and deprived of his office; a successor of more accommodating principles was found, and his Excellency’s protÉgÉs declared duly elected.^[77]

On the 15th the Lord Deputy addressed the Houses, warning them with characteristic arrogance against imitating the factious conduct of the late English Parliament. On the 16th his secretary, Wandesford, moved for a grant of six subsidies, which were immediately voted. On the 2nd of August the Houses petitioned for the introduction of the promised Bills, and were informed that they would be considered in the following session. On the 21st Parliament was prorogued.^[78]

It met again in November. During the recess Wentworth had submitted to his master his opinion of the course which it was expedient to adopt with reference to the Graces. Some were to be granted immediately, some others postponed; the two most important—that which established a prescriptive right against the claims of the Crown, and that which supplied the defects in the Connaught titles—were to be firmly and finally refused. If his Majesty was unwilling to incur the odium of so flagrant a breach of faith, the Lord Deputy was ready to take upon himself the responsibility of having intervened between the people and the royal favour.^[79] To this magnanimous proposal Charles assented with characteristic alacrity.^[80] On November 27th Wentworth announced the withdrawal of the expected concessions. The announcement provoked an outburst of indignation, which was the more formidable because, “by the negligence of the Protestant party,” the Government were for the moment in a minority. The Catholics, assisted by some discontented Protestants, notably by Sir Piers Crosby, a distinguished soldier and a member of the Privy Council, “rejected hand over head all that was offered them by his Majesty and the State. The Bill against bigamy they would not should be engrossed; the law for correction houses they absolutely cast out; the law against fraudulent conveyances and to secure purchasers against the practised cozenage of the natives here they would have none of; a law for the bailments tasted not with them; the burgesses that served for the new boroughs, being most of them Protestants, they questioned, as not having rights to sit there. The statutes of uses and wills we durst not adventure a reading unto, for fear some blemish might be put upon them by these men, that in all these things never gave or answered reason, but plainly let us see their wills were set together to refuse all, but to refute nothing.”

Wentworth acted with characteristic promptitude. Crosby was deprived of his place at the Privy Council, the absent members were ordered to resume their attendance, and a ministerial majority was again secured. Within little more than a fortnight the Bills which the Lord Deputy desired had been carried, and the Parliament was once more prorogued.

In the following year two other short sessions were held, and many wise and useful laws enacted with the general concurrence of all parties. The Lord Deputy was anxious that the Parliament should be continued. The House of Commons, he wrote, was “very well composed”; there was a Protestant majority “clearly and fully for the King,” and the recusants could be coerced into voting as the Government dictated by an intimation that the majority would otherwise be used “to pass upon them all the laws of England concerning religion.” If there was a dissolution it might not be possible again to manage the elections so successfully.^[81] Charles, however, in whose heart his English experience still rankled, was of opinion that, supplies once voted, the sooner a Parliament was sent about its business the better. “Parliaments,” he wrote, “are of the nature of cats, they ever grow curst with age, so that, if you will have good of them, put them off handsomely when they come to any age, for young ones are ever most tractable.”^[82] The Lord Deputy was obliged to submit, and the Parliament was dissolved.

As soon as the revenue had been placed on a satisfactory basis Wentworth began to turn his attention to the two great measures for which his Irish administration is chiefly famous—the Plantation of Connaught and the reform of the English Church in Ireland. It was to the latter subject that his attention was first directed. It was certainly high time that something should be done. It is difficult to say which stood in more urgent need of improvement—the material condition of the churches or the morals of the clergy. In a letter to Laud, Wentworth graphically sums up the situation: “An unlearned clergy, which have not so much as the outward form of churchmen to cover themselves with, nor their persons anyway reverenced or protected; the churches unbuilt; the parsonage and vicarage houses utterly ruined; the people untaught through the non-residency of the clergy, occasioned by the unlimited shameful numbers of spiritual promotions with cure of souls, which they hold by commendams; the rites and ceremonies of the Church run over without all decency of habit, order, or gravity, in the course of their service; the possessions of the Church to a great proportion in lay hands; the bishops aliening their very principal houses and demesnes to their children, to strangers, farming out their jurisdiction to mean and unworthy persons; the Popish titulars exercising the whilst a foreign jurisdiction much greater than theirs; the schools, which might be a means to season the youth in virtue and religion, either ill-provided, ill-governed for the most part, or, which is worse, applied sometimes underhand to the maintenance of Popish school-masters: lands given to these charitable uses, and that in a bountiful proportion, especially by King James of ever-blessed memory, dissipated, leased forth for little or nothing, concealed, contrary to all conscience and the excellent purposes of the founder: the college here, which should be the seminary of arts and civility in the elder sort, extremely out of order, partly by means of their statutes, which must be amended, and partly under the government of a weak provost: all the monies raised for charitable uses converted to private benefices: many patronages unjustly and by practice gotten from the Crown.”^[83]

There is abundant evidence that this disgraceful picture was not in the least over-coloured. Bedell, writing to Laud four years previously, informed his correspondent that the parish churches were “all in a manner ruined and unroofed and unrepaired,” and that his diocese contained only “seven or eight ministers of good sufficiency, and which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in Popery still, English: which have not the tongue of the people, nor can perform any divine offices, or converse with them: and which hold, many of them, two, three, four or more vicarages apiece: even the clerkships themselves are in like manner conferred upon the English: and sometimes two or three or more upon one man, and ordinarily bought and sold, or let to farm.”^[84] Even in 1638, in spite of the vigorous efforts of the Lord Deputy, Leslie, Bishop of Down, found the clergy generally negligent and disorderly, and the churches “kept no better than hog-styes.”^[85]

But even these were not in Wentworth’s eyes the most serious of the abuses with which he had to deal. A Protestant Church established and maintained by the civil power in the midst of an intensely Catholic people inclined by an inevitable law towards an extreme and fanatical form of Protestantism. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Irish articles, which had been drawn up by Usher, then professor of divinity in Trinity College, Dublin, and adopted by Convocation in 1615, should have been decidedly more puritanical in tone than the Thirty-nine Articles of the English Church.^[86] “I doubt much,” wrote Bramhall, “whether the clergy be very orthodox.”^[87] At the same time, a great number of benefices continued to be held by those whom the Lord Deputy and the English Primate regarded as schismatics. On the one hand the Catholic priesthood not only continued to exercise their functions in contempt of penalties which it was practically impossible to enforce, but remained in many places in possession of the churches.^[88] On the other hand, the Scotch settlers “brought with them,” in the words of an Anglican historian, “such a stock of Puritanism, such a contempt of bishops, such a neglect of the public liturgy and other divine offices of the Church, that there was nothing less to be found amongst them than the government and forms of worship established in the Church of England.”^[89] Ministers hostile to the doctrines and discipline of the Establishment had been frequently introduced into livings after an irregular ordination by the influence of lay patrons and the connivance of puritanical bishops, and threatened to give at least as much trouble to the ecclesiastical authorities as the Catholics.^[90] Attacked by Roman Catholics on the one hand and by Presbyterians on the other, the English Church in Ireland was still more cruelly despoiled by the rapacious oligarchy who yielded her a nominal allegiance. In the words of Bramhall’s biographer, there was not one diocese in the province of Cashel that had not “the marks of the sacrilegious paw upon it.”^[91] The ecclesiastical courts, whose duty it was to remedy these evils were in the hands of unprincipled officials, who did little save plunder Catholics and Protestants with complete impartiality. “Among all the impediments to the work of God amongst us,” Bedell wrote to Laud, “there is not any greater than the abuse of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”^[92] Bedell himself waged an unsparing war upon abuses of all sorts; but he got little support from his brethren. Archbishop Usher sympathised, but was too timid to swim against the stream.^[93] The majority of the bishops thought of nothing but their pockets.^[94]

To this scandalous state of things Wentworth was fully determined to put an end. His efforts to abolish pluralities and absenteeism, to repair the churches, and to restore to the clergy the tithes which had been dishonestly appropriated by laymen deserve high praise. But he had another and less creditable object in view. He wished to drive both the Puritan settlers and the native Catholics into the pale of the Established Church, and at the same time to force that Church itself into closer conformity to the English model. But if, in common with most, if not all, of his contemporaries, he had scant reverence for the rights of conscience, he was at least wise enough to see that the internal reform of the Establishment must precede the attempt to enforce conformity. It was idle, he told Laud, to inflict penalties for recusancy “where as yet there is scarcely a church to receive or an able minister to teach the people.”^[95]

At a very early period of his administration Wentworth’s zeal for ecclesiastical reform involved him in the first of those personal disputes with powerful and corrupt officials which contributed far more than his oppressive treatment of the native Irish to discredit his administration in England. Lord Cork, who never allowed his Protestant enthusiasm to interfere with strict attention to his pecuniary interests, had contrived to appropriate property belonging to the diocese of Lismore of the annual value of £1,600. He was summoned before the Castle Chamber, and not merely compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten gains, but sentenced to a heavy fine. Laud, with whom Wentworth kept up a constant correspondence on the affairs of the Church, expressed his satisfaction in very unepiscopal language.^[96]

A second quarrel between Cork and Wentworth arose, like the former, out of the ecclesiastical policy of the Lord Deputy. The earl had erected a stately tomb of black marble, containing the remains of his wife, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on the spot where the high altar had once stood, where, as Laud thought, it ought still to stand. To an English High Churchman such a proceeding seemed a wanton sacrilege. Urged on by the archbishop, and probably only too pleased at the opportunity of inflicting a fresh annoyance on his enemy, Wentworth caused the unsightly monument to be removed to a less sacred place.^[97] In both these cases the Lord Deputy’s action was in full accordance with the general principles of his policy; but the pertinacity with which Cork had opposed his measures in the Council had probably some share in exciting him to severity against that too acquisitive peer.

St. Patrick’s was not the only church with whose internal arrangements the Lord Deputy felt called upon to interfere. He laboured, not always successfully, to introduce into the public offices of the Church a decency and a solemnity which had been too seldom seen, and at the same time to force upon the clergy practices which would now be called ritualistic. He was no fanatic; but he knew that uneducated men are more readily influenced by ceremonies which appeal to their imagination than by dogmas which they do not understand; and he probably thought that the difficulty of inducing the Catholics to conform to the established religion would be lessened if its form of worship did not perceptibly differ from that to which they had been previously accustomed.

But it is by his dealings with the Convocation of 1634 that Wentworth’s ecclesiastical policy must be chiefly judged. In England it had been the custom from very early times for a Convocation of the clergy to be summoned simultaneously with Parliament. In Ireland for many centuries there had been no such custom. The division between the English and Irish clergy before the Reformation, the prevalence of recusancy among the priesthood since that epoch may perhaps account for this omission. In 1560, it is true, Sussex had received instructions from Elizabeth “signifying her pleasure for a general meeting of the clergy of Ireland and the establishment of the Protestant religion through the several dioceses of that kingdom.”^[98] But it was not until the reign of James the First, when the reformed Church had been, nominally at least, extended through all parts of the island, that the first formal Convocation of the Irish clergy was held.^[99] The ecclesiastical assembly which was then convened was modelled upon the Convocation of Canterbury, with this difference, that, whereas the latter body represented only the clergy of a single province, the Irish Convocation contained delegates from all parts of the kingdom. It was by this body that the Irish Articles, to which allusion has already been made, had been adopted; and Wentworth now resolved to make use of the same machinery to procure their reform. In accordance with the precedent which had been set twenty years earlier, Convocation was again summoned simultaneously with Parliament. Before it assembled Wentworth informed Archbishop Usher, the compiler of the older formula, of the course which he intended to adopt. Out of respect for the character and station of the Archbishop, the Lord Deputy would not insist on the formal abrogation of the Irish Articles. He proposed instead that they should be tacitly but effectively superseded by the adoption of the Articles of the Church of England—a course for which the expediency of bringing the two Churches into closer harmony afforded a decent pretext. To this suggestion, Usher, who was not remarkable for moral courage, gave a reluctant assent.^[100] In November their reverences assembled, and were informed that it was the Lord Deputy’s pleasure that they should adopt not only the Articles, but the Canons of the English Church. The upper house, under the presidency of Usher, instantly complied. The representatives of the inferior clergy were less submissive. Instead of adopting the entire body of English Canons, as the Lord Deputy had desired, they referred them to a committee, who divided the Canons into two parts, expressing their approval of some, and setting others aside for further consideration. Into the first Canon, which required subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, they inserted a clause declaring that these were not intended to supersede the Articles already in use. It was some time before Wentworth, whose attention was wholly engrossed by the management of the House of Commons, found leisure to enquire into their proceedings.^[101] When he was informed of the attitude which they had adopted his anger knew no bounds. How he dealt with the refractory clergy shall be related in his own words:—

“I instantly sent for Dean Andrews, that reverend clerk, who sat forsooth in the chair at this committee, requiring him to bring along the book of canons so noted in the margin, together with the draught he was to present that afternoon to the House. This he obeyed; but when I came to open the book and run over the deliberandums in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam; that I was ashamed and scandalised with it above measure. I therefore said he should leave the book and draught with me; and I did command him, upon his allegiance, that he should report nothing to the House from that committee till he heard again from me.

“Being thus nettled, I gave present directions for a meeting, and warned the Primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe and Derry, together with Dean Leslie, the prolocutor, and all those who had been of the committee, to be with me the next morning.

“Then I publicly told them how unlike Churchmen, who owed canonical obedience to their superiors, they had proceeded in their committee; how unheard a part it was for a few petty clerks to presume to make Articles of Faith without the privity or consent of State or bishop; what a spirit of Brownism and contradiction I observed in their deliberandums, as if, indeed, they purposed at once to take away all government and order forth of the Church, and to leave every man to choose his own high place where liked him best. But these heady and arrogant courses they must know I was not to endure; nor, if they were disposed to be frantic in this dead and cold season of the year, would I suffer them either to be mad in the Convocation or in their pulpits.”

Terrified out of their wits by the language of the overbearing Deputy, the clergy made a hasty and ignominious submission, and accepted the English Articles without further discussion. To punish Dean Andrews, whom he regarded as mainly responsible for the opposition, Wentworth promoted him to the See of Ferns, the emoluments of which were considerably less than those which he had enjoyed as Dean of Limerick.^[102]

At the same time the University of Dublin, which from the date of its foundation had been a hotbed of Puritanism, was made to feel the reforming vigour of the Lord Deputy. The “weak provost” already referred to—Robert Usher, a relative of the Primate—was, like Andrews, politely kicked upstairs; and his successor, Chappell, a man after Laud’s own heart, proceeded to remodel the college in accordance with the highest standard of Anglican orthodoxy.^[103]

One other innovation of a more serious character was made. Immediately after the dissolution—for the step was too unpopular to be taken while Parliament was sitting—Wentworth proceeded on his own authority to erect a court of high commission in Dublin similar to that already existing in England, “conceiving the use of it might be very great to countenance the despised state of the clergy, to support ecclesiastical courts and officers, to provide for the maintenance of the clergy and for their residence, either by themselves or able curates, to bring the people here to a conformity in religion, and, in the way of all these, to raise perhaps a good revenue to the Crown.”^[104]

Parliament and Convocation being both dissolved, Wentworth was at leisure to devote his energies to the great business of his administration—the establishment of an English colony in Connaught. It would be difficult to say which was the more scandalous, the pretext which the Lord Deputy put forward for this measure or the steps by which he attempted to carry it into effect. More than four hundred years earlier Henry the Third, with that princely generosity with which sovereigns have so often disposed of the property of their subjects, had granted the entire province to Richard de Burgh, with the exception of five cantreds about Athlone, which were reserved to the Crown. De Burgh had succeeded in making good his claim to a great part of the province, corresponding to the modern counties of Galway and Mayo; the rest continued in the possession of the aboriginal inhabitants. By the death of the last Earl of Ulster about a century afterwards the title to these lands passed to his daughter Elizabeth, then an infant; but the actual possession remained with his collateral heirs, the MacWilliams, ancestors of the Earls of Clanricarde and Mayo. By the marriage of Elizabeth de Burgh to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the title to the Connaught estates of her ancestors had descended lineally to Edward the Fourth; and the actual occupants, whether of native or Anglo-Norman descent, were pronounced by the Lord Deputy to be intruders on the possessions of the Crown. Neither the prescriptive right derived from an undisturbed occupation of centuries, nor the recent promises of James and Charles, were suffered to constitute a barrier against this monstrous claim. The Articles concluded with Perrott were pronounced invalid on the plea that that statesman had exceeded his instructions; the patents granted by James on the ground of the technical flaw already noticed.^[105]

Shortly after the dissolution a Royal Commission was issued “for inquiry into defective titles;” and in July the Lord Deputy set out for Connaught to superintend the work of robbery in person. The concurrence of the judges had already been ensured by promising their lordships a commission of four shillings in the pound upon the profits of the plantation; “which, upon observation,” Wentworth afterwards declared, “I find to be the best given that ever was. For now they do intend it with a care and diligence such as if it were their own private. And most certain, the gaining to themselves every four shillings once paid shall better your revenue ever after at least five pounds.”^[106] Great pains were taken to seek out jurors who “might give furtherance in finding a title for the King.” The sheriffs were instructed to select “gentlemen of the best estates and understanding,” whose verdict in favour of the royal title would carry the more weight, since they would be “as much concerned in their own particulars as any other;” while on the other hand they would be able to “answer the King a good round sum in the Castle Chamber if they should prevaricate.”

The Commission was first opened in Roscommon, where Wentworth addressed a jury, composed as he had directed, in a highly characteristic speech. His Majesty, he said, desired only to make them “a civil and rich people;” and a plantation was necessary in order to accomplish this benevolent purpose. He did not intend “to take from them anything that was justly theirs, but in truth to bestow amongst them a good part of that which was his own.” He “came not to sue them to find for him as needing any power of theirs to vindicate his own right, for without them, where his right is so plain, he could not in justice have been denied possession upon an information of intrusion. The Court in an ordinary way of Exchequer must have granted it on the first motion of the Attorney-General.” To the King, therefore, their decision was a matter of indifference: with a verdict, or without it, he intended to take their property; “the path to his right lay elsewhere, open and fair before him.” But, as regarded their own interests, “as one that must ever wish prosperity to their nation, I desired them, first, to descend into their own consciences and take them to counsel, and there they should find the evidence for the Crown clear and conclusive. Next, to beware how they appeared resolved or obstinate against so manifest a truth, or how they let slip forth of their hands the means to weave themselves into the royal thoughts and care of his Majesty, through a cheerful and ready acknowledgment of his right and a due and full submission thereunto. So, then, if they would be inclined to truth and do best for themselves, they would undoubtedly find the title for the King. If they were passionately resolved to go over all bounds to their own will, and, without respects at all to their own good, to do that which were simply best for his Majesty, then I should advise them roughly and pertinaciously to deny to find any title at all. And there I left them to chant together, as they call it, over the evidence.”^[107]

Owing partly to this adroit mixture of chicanery and menace, partly, as it would seem, to private negotiations between the Lord Deputy and individual jurymen,^[108] a verdict acknowledging the royal title was returned. The juries of Sligo and Mayo were equally complacent; but in Galway, as Wentworth had anticipated, and indeed desired, considerable opposition was made. The county was the headquarters of the De Burghs; and the Earl of Clanricarde and his dependents were understood to be very hostile to the proposed plantation. “But whether it be so or not,” Wentworth wrote to Charles: “I could wish their county would stand out, for I am well assured it shall turn to your Majesty’s advantage if they do. For certain it is a county which lies out at a corner by itself, and all the inhabitants wholly natives and Papists, hardly an Englishman among them, whom they keep out with all the industry in the world; and therefore it would be a great security if they were thoroughly lined with English indeed.” His wishes were gratified. Although the royal title was made out in such manner as appeared “most just, honourable, and unquestionable to all equal-minded men,” the jury “obstinately and perversely refused” to find for the Crown. For this obstinacy, Wentworth offered three explanations. First, “there is scarce a Protestant freeholder to be found to serve his Majesty on this or any other occasion in this country, being in a manner altogether compounded of Papists.” Secondly, “the counsellors at law, being all of them recusants, showed themselves over-busy even to faction, in this service against the King.” Lastly, the Earl of Clanricarde had exerted the influence derived from his “great estate” and “far-spread kindred” to frustrate the plantation. In support of this last assertion, Wentworth appealed to the following facts. First, John Donnellan, the Earl’s steward, had received messengers with letters from the Earl out of England; “and, whereas we were certainly informed that divers gentlemen were resolved to have acknowledged the King’s title, upon these men’s arrival they altered their resolutions, and since stand in opposition thereunto.” Secondly, Lord Clanmorris, a nephew of the Earl, “appeared openly before us to countenance the opposition of the country.” Thirdly, Richard Burke, of Derrymacoghlan, another nephew of the Earl and a member of the jury, had pulled a fellow juror by the sleeve, “labouring to divert the said juror from declaring that his conscience led him to find for his Majesty.” Fourthly, “the Earl’s principal servant and steward, John Donnellan, being one of the jury, we saw plainly that he guided the rest which way he pleased.” Fifthly and lastly, “most of the jurors are of the Earl’s kindred or near alliance, or his dependents.”

Wentworth was not the man to be deterred by an adverse verdict. He had warned the jury that, if they refused to find the verdict which he desired, it would be the worse for them, and he now showed that this had been no idle menace. D’Arcy, the Sheriff, whom the Lord Deputy held responsible for what he regarded as a gross miscarriage of justice, was imprisoned and fined £1,000 “for returning an insufficient and, as we conceived, a packed jury.” The jurors themselves were summoned before the Castle Chamber and fined £4,000 each. A proclamation was next issued, by which the other landowners of the county were recommended to disassociate themselves from the recalcitrant jurors, and save a portion of their estates by acknowledging the royal title. The Court of Exchequer, by Wentworth’s direction, issued an order “to seize for his Majesty the lands of the jurors, and of all that should not lay hold on his Majesty’s grace offered them by the proclamation.” With Clanricarde himself the Lord Deputy insisted that no terms would be made. The Earl and his son were at this time in London; and there Wentworth advised that they should be detained until the work of spoliation had been carried out. Wentworth further advised that the fortifications of Galway should be repaired, and that that city and Athenry should be strongly garrisoned while the plantations were proceeding.^[109] Charles signified his concurrence.^[110]

And now comes the mysterious part of the business. The Commission sat in 1635; the Lord Deputy continued to hold office until the spring of 1641; yet the plantation was never carried out. No satisfactory explanation has yet been offered for this omission. It is certain that, so long as Wentworth lived, the scheme was never definitely abandoned.^[111] In all probability the task was found to be more difficult than had been anticipated. The settlement of Ulster had been a simple matter in comparison. In the northern province Mountjoy had prepared the way for the planters by exterminating the best part of the original inhabitants; and the flight of the earls had left the scanty remnant destitute of their natural leaders. In Connaught, which had been comparatively peaceful during the Elizabethan wars, there was a numerous and warlike population, not yet cowed by famine and massacre, to be reckoned with; and their leader, Lord Clanricarde, a great English noble as well as a great Irish chieftain, could exert more influence at the Court of England than any “mere Irishman” could have done. These considerations may have induced Wentworth to proceed slowly and with caution. During 1636 and the two following years the province continued to be strongly garrisoned, and a few English settlers seem to have been introduced; but they were very few, and Connaught was still almost wholly in Catholic hands when the troubles that broke out in Scotland compelled the Lord Deputy to turn his attention elsewhere.^[112]

During the next three years Wentworth devoted himself to securing for his master a revenue independent of Parliamentary control. With this object, inquisitions into defective titles were held not only in Connaught, but in every part of the island. No fresh plantations were made; but any landlord in whose title the smallest technical flaw could be discovered was compelled to pay heavily for a fresh patent. These exactions pressed hard upon natives and colonists alike. The former had generally inherited their lands according to some Irish custom not recognised by English lawyers; while many of the latter had neglected to fulfil the onerous and intricate conditions imposed upon them by the Articles of the plantations. The O’Byrnes of Wicklow, who had already been so harshly treated, were compelled to pay £15,000 before they recovered their estates.^[113] The London companies were prosecuted in the Star Chamber on a charge of mismanaging their Ulster property, and condemned to forfeiture and a fine of £70,000.^[114]

At the same time the Lord Deputy exerted himself with characteristic energy to develop the material resources of the country. The extraordinary advances which Irish commerce made under his government have been acknowledged by historians the most hostile to his memory.^[115] In one respect, it is true, his commercial policy deserves severe blame. He found in Ireland, on his arrival, the beginnings of a flourishing woollen manufacture; and this manufacture, out of deference to the jealous fears of English traders, he promptly proceeded to destroy. The injury thus inflicted was more than compensated by the enormous development of the linen trade; a development which must be ascribed in large measure to the judicious and munificent patronage of Wentworth. He imported great quantities of flax from Holland at his own expense; introduced skilled workmen from France and the Low Countries; and did so much for the improvement of this industry that, although it had existed in Ireland at least as early as the fifteenth century, he is still spoken of in popular tradition as its founder.^[116]

In spite, however, of the increasing prosperity of the country, the Lord Deputy continued to be an object of aversion to every section of the community. His unpopularity was due in almost equal measure to the merits and to the faults of his administration. The more violent Protestants were indignant at the introduction of the English Articles, as well as at Wentworth’s persistent refusal to exact the recusancy fines. The Catholics were kept in constant alarm by the inquiries into defective titles, and by the penal laws, which, though their execution was temporarily suspended, the Lord Deputy, as they were probably aware, was fully resolved to enforce, as soon as he should feel able to do so with impunity.^[117] At the same time a crowd of rapacious officials, who had enriched themselves under the government of his incompetent predecessor, were exasperated by his vigorous attempts to repress jobbery and extortion. For this at least must be acknowledged to Wentworth’s honour, that, if he was a tyrant, he suffered no tyranny but his own.

The hostility of these men proved far more injurious to the Lord Deputy than the indignation of the native gentry. Of his quarrel with Lord Cork I have already spoken. His treatment of two other officials was made the subject of still harsher criticism. At the beginning of his administration Wentworth had been opposed by a majority of the Irish Council, but supported by a minority led by Lord Chancellor Loftus and Lord Mountnorris, both conspicuous for their hostility to his predecessor.^[118] Within a very few years he had made both these men his bitter enemies. Mountnorris, when Wentworth took office, was Vice-Treasurer, and was believed by Lord Cork, then Treasurer, to have been guilty of gross mismanagement, if not of actual malversation.^[119] Wentworth was not as a rule disposed to pay much attention to Cork’s statements; but misappropriation of public moneys was the last thing which he felt inclined to tolerate; and he instituted an inquiry which resulted in the conviction of Mountnorris, not, indeed, of personal corruption, but of scandalous negligence in tolerating the corruption of his subordinates.^[120] Although Mountnorris was not at once deprived of his office he evidently considered himself aggrieved, and thenceforth intrigued persistently against the Lord Deputy. In the spring of 1635 the quarrel came to a head. A younger brother of Mountnorris, an officer in Wentworth’s own regiment, was guilty of some trivial breach of military discipline. He was rebuked by Wentworth, and answered with an impertinent gesture. The Lord Deputy, whose naturally choleric temper was at this time aggravated by an attack of gout, struck him lightly with his cane, telling him that, if the offence was repeated, “he would lay him over the pate.” A few days later, at a levÉe at Dublin Castle, a gentleman-in-waiting, who was also related to Mountnorris, contrived to overturn a stool on the Lord Deputy’s gouty foot. At a dinner party given not long afterwards by the Lord Chancellor, the occurrence was discussed, and Mountnorris hazarded an opinion that it had not been entirely accidental. “Perhaps,” said he, “it was done in revenge of that public affront that the Lord Deputy had done me formerly. But,” he added, “he has a brother who would not take such a revenge.”^[121]

What Mountnorris may have meant it is impossible to say. In all probability he meant nothing, for the words were uttered after dinner, and he was not a man of abstemious habits. Be that as it may, he had soon reason to rue his imprudence. His words were repeated to the Lord Deputy, probably by Adam Loftus the younger, who was anxious to succeed him as Vice-Treasurer. Wentworth, who had previously been in communication with the king on the subject of Mountnorris’s financial irregularities, now wrote to request his Majesty’s permission to bring the Vice-Treasurer before a court-martial on the monstrous charge of inciting to a mutiny in the army. The permission was granted in July,^[122] but it was not until six months later that the trial was held. The delay may have been due to the affairs of Connaught, which left the Lord Deputy little leisure to prosecute a personal quarrel; but it is also possible that Wentworth did not intend to proceed further in the matter unless fresh provocation was given. In the autumn, unfortunately for himself, Mountnorris engaged in an intrigue which kindled afresh the smouldering anger of the Lord Deputy. He proposed to the king an iniquitous scheme of taxation, which would, if it had been adopted, have increased his Majesty’s revenue from £8,000 to £20,000.^[123] Wentworth, eager as he undoubtedly was “to raise a good revenue for the Crown,” was wise enough to understand that there is a point beyond which taxation cannot advantageously be pushed. He also knew his master quite well enough to feel sure that the permanent interest of the country would have little weight with him against the prospect of an immediate pecuniary gain. He resolved to crush Mountnorris without delay.

On December 12th, the unfortunate officer was summoned to a council of war at Dublin Castle. On his arrival he found several other persons present, but no one could inform him of the purpose for which their attendance was required. Wentworth presently arrived and told the company that it would be their duty to hold a court-martial on Lord Mountnorris, whose language at the Lord Chancellor’s dinner-party constituted a breach of two of the articles of war by which the army was governed. By the 41st article it was ordered that no man should “give any disgraceful words or commit any act to the disgrace of any person in the army or garrison, or any part thereof, upon pain of imprisonment, public disarming, and banishment from the army”; by the 13th that “no man should offer any violence, or contemptuously disobey his commander, or do any act or speak any words which are like to breed any mutiny in the army or garrison, or impeach the obeying of the general or principal officer’s directions, upon pain of death.” The words, “a brother who would not take such a revenge” were intended, according to the Lord Deputy’s interpretation, as an instigation to young Annesley to revenge himself in some more violent fashion than by the mere dropping of a footstool.

Mountnorris was stunned by this unexpected blow. He could neither deny the words imputed to him, nor offer any plausible explanation of them. The court, after a short deliberation, returned a verdict of guilty; and Mountnorris was sentenced “to be shot to death or to lose his head at the pleasure of the General.” Wentworth, who had been present at the proceedings but had taken no part in them, then addressed the prisoner and told him that he need be under no apprehensions so far as the capital sentence was concerned. “I had rather,” he said, “lose my hand than you should lose your head.” Mountnorris was kept for a short time in prison, deprived of his office of Vice-Treasurer, and dismissed from the army.^[124]

These oppressive proceedings added yet another to the numerous enemies of Wentworth. Lord Cork, who had been compelled to disgorge the plundered revenues of the Church, and Lord Wilmot, who had been disgraced for embezzling the property of the Crown,^[125] were already intriguing to procure his recall. With greater justice the De Burghs complained of his severity to the Galway jury. The Earl of Clanricarde was lately dead; and, though he was certainly an old man, his end was generally believed to have been hastened by vexation at the tyranny of the Lord Deputy.^[126] D’Arcy, the sheriff of Galway, had also died not long after his committal to prison; and his death too was laid at Wentworth’s door.^[127] By the beginning of the following year the outcry against him had become so loud that he found it advisable to proceed in person to London to justify himself before the king. He pointed with a not unjust pride to the undoubted reforms which he had effected in the government of Ireland. He had found the country on the verge of bankruptcy; he had established a large and rapidly-increasing revenue, and that without resorting to the dangerous and unpopular expedient of exacting the recusancy fines. He had transformed the Irish army from a disorderly rabble into a disciplined and efficient force; had suppressed piracy; and had developed the material resources of the island. He had set his foot upon the jobbery of the Dublin officials, and had done something, if not much, to improve the scandalous condition of the Established Church. His most arbitrary acts had been committed in his master’s interests, and were therefore such as that master was only too ready to condone. Charles signified his approval in the most gracious terms. After a few months’ absence Wentworth returned to Ireland with his enemies silenced and his position apparently impregnable.^[128]

Rather more than a year after the Mountnorris court-martial Wentworth became involved in a dispute with another official which brought upon him an even fiercer storm of obloquy. In his conflict with Cork he had had the support of Mountnorris and Loftus; he had afterwards had the support of Loftus in his conflict with Mountnorris. The Chancellor himself was destined to be the next victim. In 1621, on the occasion of his son’s marriage to the daughter of Sir Francis Raishe, his lordship had entered into an agreement to settle £300 a year on the bride, and £1,200 in land on her children. Fifteen years afterwards he attempted to evade his obligations, alleging some technical irregularity in the marriage contract. On the petition of Sir John Giffard, the legal representative of the lady’s family, the affair was referred to the Privy Council. Loftus protested that the claim of the Privy Council to interfere was unconstitutional, and that the plaintiff ought to have filed a bill against him in his own court. He would then have been judge as well as defendant—an arrangement which promised obvious advantages to a litigant with a lax conscience and a bad case.^[129] But it is dangerous, the old proverb tells us, to prosecute Beelzebub in the court of Hell; and Giffard was no doubt of opinion that it would be equally imprudent to proceed against the Lord Chancellor in the Court of Chancery. The Privy Council decided against Loftus, who renewed his protests—protests which came with a singularly bad grace from one who had repeatedly sat upon the same tribunal upon occasions when there had been much less cogent reasons for a departure from the orthodox method of procedure. He was thereupon deprived of the seals and imprisoned for contempt; but subsequently released on acknowledging the jurisdiction of the court. It does not appear that he had any defence on the merits; but the exalted position of the delinquent and an abominable, but apparently groundless rumour that his daughter-in-law had been Wentworth’s mistress, induced the enemies of the Lord Deputy to give the affair as much prominence as possible.^[130]