صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

wards that through the whole of 1604, and the greater part of 1605, it scattered the Council of State, interrupted the course of public business, and at one time looked as if it meant to settle the Irish question for ever. On December 28th, 1603, just two months after it had made its first appearance, Sir George Carey is sorry to write that "the plague increaseth in the city, and is much dispersed in the country." In the same letter Sir George says that they are in great distress for want of victuals. There were at the time 5,000 soldiers in Leinster, 2,000 foot and 3,000 horse, and Sir George assures us that for three months there has been nothing to maintain these 5,000 men and 3,000 horses. We cannot, however, believe, even on the word of a Lord Deputy, that for three months they lived upon nothing. And we begin to have an idea that, with a famine in the land, and 5,000 soldiers quartered upon them, the people of Leinster were not likely to suffer from fulness of bread. Sir George goes on to tell us that the case of Leinster is not exceptional. "The kingdom," he says "is in famine and great scarcity, and victuals are not to be had here, but must be supplied from England." Chichester, writing shortly afterwards, compares Ireland to Pharaoh's lean kine; not only is it a skeleton itself, but it eats up the flesh and fatness of England.* About the same time Sir John Davys informed Cecil that even the priests have to live in "a sluttish beggary"; and he expresses his decided conviction that the priests, if they had means, would run away from that miserable country, "for," says Sir John, "they get nothing but bacon and oatmeal, the people are so poor." Nor do matters improve as our Calendar proceeds. On July 13th, 1604, Sir Theobald Dillon writes to Cecil that there is no news worth troubling him with except the great scarcity of food, and that the plague is very hot; that great quietness is enjoyed, and will be enjoyed, adds Sir Theobald, "until the race of thieves is able to live." In September of the same year the English Lord Chancellor, Ellesmere, writing to Sir John Davys, prays God to stay His hand from further afflicting that wasted kingdom of Ireland. "They have," he goes on, "already felt the scourge of war and oppression, and now are under the grievous scourge of famine and pestilence." On August 8th, 1605, the country is, according to Chichester,

King, infected all corners of the kingdom to such a degree that there was a suspension of all public business." And yet frequently in our Calendar we have the Irish plague represented as the God-sent punishment of Irish disloyalty. Sir Arthur Chichester to Cecil, p. 149.

+ Sir John Davys to Cecil, p. 162.

Lord Chancellor Ellesmere to Sir John Davys, p. 195.

"waste and full of misery"; and on the last day of September of the same year, the same Chichester has to announce, after travelling through the whole of Ulster, that no composition or tax can be levied in that province in consequence of its "exceeding great waste and desolations." And so does it continue throughout the whole sickening story. On January 16th, 1606, Sir Charles Wilmott writes that the Irish are just as stubborn and self-willed as ever, except that they are reduced to quiet by the most extreme poverty, and by their "utter weakness of body"; and on the 27th of July following, Sentleger sends a mewed goss-hawk to Cecil; intimates that "this poor kingdom" is quiet; but expresses his belief that it is quiet simply because it is hard for people dying of starvation to be anything else.

There is one little incident recorded in connection with the poverty of the people, which has appeared to us to be peculiarly moving. After a spice of his wonted irresoluteness and even after a refusal, the King gave his Irish subjects permission to serve in the foreign wars. Immediately, there ran from Ireland, as from a doomed land, not only the men that were fit for soldiers, but large numbers of those whose sex or age excluded them from military service. Many of these latter, for want of means to complete their journey, were obliged to abide awhile in London. But, such was their miserable appearance, so plain upon them the marks of persecution and pestilence and famine, that the King and Council, fearing perhaps that London might be kind and inquisitive, gave instant orders that the starving people should be shipped at once, not to the land of exile which they sought, but back to Ireland, where their nakedness could give no scandal, and their wayside deaths could evoke no revenge. A good deal has been written of the murderous way in which the poor are sometimes bandied about from parish to parish, till at last in pure pity Death takes them to his own. But not even in parochial annals is there anything so piteous as the story we have just told. A nation flying from starvation, driven back to starve! A nation flying from pestilence, driven back to die! God's command to feed the hungry forbidden fulfilment! Irishmen brought down so low as not to be worthy of being even beggars! With this evidence before us we no longer wonder at the other ghastly tales told of that terrible time. Even such fearful cannibalism as that of mothers eating their children, and children devouring their dead mothers, however it might shock, would not surprise us in the Ireland of 1605. Before hunger kills man it kills his humanity.

Nor was the famine caused, as it might be thought to be caused by a failure of the crops. Several times both Davys and Chichester assure their correspondents, not only that the Irish soil is naturally fertile, but that, wherever they have seen specimens of the crops, they are unquestionably excellent. The fact is, there were hardly any crops sown. This must be admitted to be, in some measure, a consequence of the fearful war through which Ireland had just passed, and, in some measure, a consequence of the pestilence that followed the war. The rebellion of Hugh O'Neill which at one time gave such splendid promise, but which ended so disastrously at Kinsale, had taken the peasantry from their employment and deprived the farmers of the means of continuing to cultivate their lands. The men who could work were either dead or hiding. The men who had land had no money. Even Tyrone, whom the Government seems to have been desirous to oblige, and who, strangely enough, could and did lend the Government considerable sums of money, was never so poor, and was utterly unable, the Calendar tells us, to cultivate the one-twentieth part of his lands. We are not therefore surprised to find the Council of Dublin, when asked by the Council of London to put a stop to Irish emigration, replying that they promised to do their best; that they have no great hope of entirely succeeding; that the people are desperately bent on getting to the "regions abroad"; and yet that one of the greatest wants of Ireland was the want of men to "manure the ground." The men had mostly manured the ground already. But it was with their dead bodies.

Apart, however, from the want of labourers, we are not left without knowledge of very sufficient causes which made the famine a physical necessity. Throughout this Calendar each one of the officials of the Irish Government expresses his unalterable conviction that there is no efficient way of ruling Ireland except the way of stripes and starvation. Even Sir John Davys, whom we do not believe to have been as bad a man as Father Meehan tries to make him, appears, at least in his later letters, to be of the same opinion. Chichester's first principle is that the Irish will submit to English rule just as long as they are physically incapable of giving it opposition, and therefore they must by all means be kept on low diet.

To what would he on quail and pheasant swell
Who even on tripe and carrion could rebel!

When poor Oliver Twist fought in defence of his dead mother's name, a course in which he had not James I. for an example, the starved little creature was quickly overpowered

by those brave big people, Mr. Noah Claypole, Miss Charlotte, and Mrs. Sowerberry. But Oliver was not submissive. Mr. Bumble was sent for. "Ain't you a trembling while I speak?" said Mr. Bumble. "No!" said Oliver, stoutly. Mr. Bumble stood aghast. Mrs. Sowerberry suggested that Oliver must be mad. "It's not madness, ma'am," replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of deep meditation; "it's not madness, ma'am, it's meat." Sir Arthur Chichester was only the Bumble of a bigger parish. His general policy was so to impoverish the country, and so to weaken the people as that the Irish would have died out before they had an opportunity for another rebellion. A similar policy, but with much more of manly caudour about it, had been pursued by Carey and Mountjoy. That was the policy, too, sanctified by the approval of the Protestant clergy. For instance, at p. 58 there will be found a letter to the King from the reverend fathers in God, the bishops of Dublin and Meath. In this letter their lordships, among many other remarkable bits of information which they offer his Majesty, treat him to these two; that it was the intention of the Catholic party, if they had succeeded in the late rebellion, to put all his Majesty's loyal subjects to the sword; and that peace and posterity are two things which the Irish nation, of all others, cannot endure. We can guess the object in making such charges.

Father Meehan tells us, on the authority of an eye-witness, that the troops of Mountjoy, when off duty, were accustomed to uproot the growing crops with their swords, and to set fire for amusement to the haggards and barns.* We do not read in the Calendar any statement precisely identical. But we read many statements extremely like that of F. Meehan's; and these go far to account for Irish starvation under James I. The soldiers are throughout described by their own commanders as murdering and robbing without mercy or remorse. One of the very first things we read is a spicy letter (p. 6) from Captain Thomas Boyd to Sir Charles Wilmott. The gallant captain reports to his chief that he has blocked up the castle of the O'Sullivans, at Ballingarry; that the inmates, mostly women and children, are not less than a hundred; that he has taken care not to leave them even water to live on; and that "not one creature that comes shall live except for intelligence." Now, up and down the country, in

"Fate and Fortunes of Tyrone and Tyrconnel," pp. 14, 15. See also the note in page 17, where Fynes Morrison says that " Mountjoy spent five days in the neighbourhood (of Tullaghoge), 1602, and after spoiling the corn of the whole country, smashed the chair whereon the O'Neills were wont to be created."

all the provinces, and in most of the towns, were scattered bands of soldiers, filled with the same zeal as Captain Thomas Boyd. These we would not expect to be very nice in their notions of honesty. Their chiefs tell us how they acted. On November 23rd, 1603, Chichester writes to Cecil that the army is forced to range upon the country for want of victuals in the King's store. He does not blame the soldiers, but he cannot conceal that some stress must be laid upon them to reduce them to discipline and order. "Their carriage as it is now is," he says, "brings to the grief and discontent of the poor inhabitants."* But three days before the letter of Chichester was written, Sir George Carey had furnished Cecil' with more precise information.† He tells the Secretary plainly that, until the soldiers are brought to order, there is no hope of raising the tax from the people. The soldiers devour all. Even the Commissioners, he says, are guilty of wholesale robbery. They take up cattle at 15s. the head, a pork at 4s., and a mutton at 2s.; which Sir George pronounces to be so unjust, that neither he nor the Lord Lieutenant had ever ventured to do it. That last remark of the Deputy's is a fine proof of his modesty. He and Mountjoy did not indeed take up a "mutton" for 2s.; they took it for nothing, and we shall see hereafter that, however little the Commissioners paid for what they seized on, they were only a few months before their age, and were really only anticipating the law.

But the fullest and, as a matter of course, the most felicitous account of the conduct of the soldiery, comes to us from the pen of Sir John Davys. Sir John is writing to Cecil, February 20th, 1604; he has been describing the abuses in the Irish Church, in the Irish Law Courts, and, generally, in the Irish executive. He winds up the first part of his letter in this way :- "But the loss and misery of the subject grows in so many ways that he hears many of them say that hitherto the peace hath been more heavy and grievous to them than the wars, for, besides the famine and pestilence, they suffer the 'cesse' (as they call it) of the soldiers, which they think the worst plague of all; for the soldier will not be satisfied with such food as the country farmer hath in his house, but will kill his pig, his lamb, his calf, and so destroy (spem gregis) the hope that he hath to restore his flock again, or otherwise. doth extort old sterling money from him to save what he hath from havoc and spoils." In " Old Mortality," Scott does his

Sir Arthur Chichester to Cecil, p. 108.

+ Carey to Cecil, p. 108.

« السابقةمتابعة »