from his shoemaker, and twopence from his tailor, to enable him to pay his travelling expenses !* These hardships of the Lord Deputies have one beneficial effect. They make their excellencies angry, and in their anger their excellencies blab out how the Irish money is wasted. As early as November 20th, 1603, Carey tells Cecil that his Majesty is giving the money away so bountifully that, if a change does not take place, he, Sir George, will have very little trouble in collecting the revenue. On October 2nd, 1605, Chichester informs Salisbury that the "multitude of pensioners, patentees, and other extraordinary entertainments" is eating up his Majesty's money; and he adds grimly, that, if he gets authority to do so, he will not be long in putting a stop to the plunder. But he did not get the authority; and he himself on maturer consideration had to admit that the number of the pensioners was too great to make it politically safe to disturb them. He only asked that the number be not increased; but he asked in vain. On the 29th October, 1605, he writes to Cecil, with a disgust which he does not try to disguise, that " every passage that comes brings new letters from his Majesty for pensions or other gifts." It is, however, reserved for the King himself to supply us with the crowning revelation. On the 24th April, 1606, his Majesty writes to Sir Arthur Chichester. He gives the Lord Deputy various directions for lessening the royal expenses. Among other things, there is an ill custom in Ireland that he for the future prohibits. Henceforward when a pensioner dies, let his pension be given to some other deserving servitor. But the "ill custom" is now brought to an end. And what was the "ill custom"? "Pensioners, when they grow old, dispose of their pensions to younger persons, whereby seldom any became void!" Was there ever a man to deny that the Muse of History is, when one comes to know her, the funniest muse of all! The fierce fancy of Swift found nothing in Liliput equal to that fact immortalized by the pen of King James; but no one who understood Gulliver can, even when laughing at the fun on the surface, help seeing and weeping as he sees, the fierce grim truth which the surface reveals. And no one who reads the royal words we have quoted can, even while laughing over the venerable pensioners, help seeing and weeping as he sees, the unhappy land that paid the pensions, and that paid along with them, as everlasting curses on them and their possessors, her blood and tears. And if the money was given away lavishly, still more * Sir Jeffrey Fenton to the Earl of Salisbury, p. 536. lavishly were the lands given away. Upon this subject it is unnecessary to speak at any great length. It is notorious that James I. disposed of the lands of the Irish without a semblance or pretence to a semblance of shame. And if it were not notorious, it would be made so by this Calendar. The King's conduct in this matter was, the Calendar tells us, such as to scandalize even his Irish executive. Davys says the land is disposed of by his Majesty as prodigally and carelessly as if it were barren as Greenland, whereas, says Sir John, it is as fertile as Essex.* Carey has conscientious scruples about remaining in Ireland; for, while he is there, his whole time is consumed in ministering to the King's mania for bestowing estates.† Chichester complains that as his Majesty gets older, he gets more bountiful in bestowing his lands; and that his Majesty does these things with such a majestic carelessness, that he sometimes, forgetting his former favours, bestows the same property on two different persons.‡ The King was certainly extremely generous. He gives a Mr. John Wakeman, "in regard of a sum of money to be paid by the King's order to an ancient servitor in Scotland," land to the clear yearly value of £100, without rent, duty, or service of any kind, except some titular acknowledgment such as a rose.§ With one stroke of his pen he bestows on his cousin," the Earl of Ormond, the monasteries of Jeripoint and Kilcoole and Leix, and the friaries of Callan, Carrick, Thurles, and Tullaghphelim, and the temporal lands to them all belonging. Of course, however much they might object to the King's prodigality in disbursing what they supposed to belong to themselves, the King's officers could not avoid occasionally following the royal example. Chichester gives a whole townland in freehold for ever, at 12d. per annum rent, to Mr. Denis O'Mullan, "for spying and guiding in the late rebellion;" a specimen of the kind of service by which the ancestors of many Irish landlords won the power of mounting on horseback and riding home. But famine, pestilence, the cessing of soldiers, the rapacity of the chiefs, the corruption of the coinage, the wholesale bestowal of lands and money on rogues and spies and panders, do not exhaust the list of items which stand in Ireland's With all these there was abso account against James I. *Mr. Davys, Solicitor General of Ireland, to Cecil, p. 112. Chichester to Salisbury, p. 295. The King to the Earl of Devonshire, p. 104. Sir G. Carey to any of his Majesty's Council, p. 210. lute insecurity of property and life. In the first year of the King's reign, orders were given to disband and discharge 4,000 soldiers at Michaelmas. Sir George Carey, writing on the subject in the September of that year, looks forward to Michaelmas with considerable alarm. He prays the King to find some foreign employment for the 4,000 warriors, and, at all events, the moment they are discharged, to take them out of Ireland. "For," says Sir George, "here will they live upon spoil and to do mischiefs; labour will they never and rob will they still."* But James I. did not want soldiers; and, for any of his Majesty's subjects who happened to be robbers, there was no place so suitable as Ireland. The 4,000 were discharged and remained in the land of their adoption. Between them and the undischarged soldiers and the provostmarshals-of whom by and by-an Irishman found it a rather a nice thing to keep his life. He found it a much nicer thing to keep his lands. Here is something on the subject from Sir John Davys:-"It were too long to recite the particular mischiefs; but touching the escheator, he hath a deputy in almost every county. These deputies make a suggestion that they are able to find many titles for the King in their several counties; and thereupon, desire to have a general commission to inquire of all wards, marriages, escheats, concealments, and forfeitures, and the like. If this commission were well executed or returned, these were good servitors. But what do they? They retire themselves into some corner of the counties, and in some obscure village execute their commission; and there having a simple or suborned jury, find one man's land concealed, another man's lease forfeited for non-payment of rent, another man's land holden by the King, and no livery sued, and the like; this being done, they never return their commission, but send for the parties and compound with them, and so defraud the King and make a book and spoil upon the country; so that it may be conjectured by what means one that was lately an escheator clerk is now owner of as much land here as few of the lords of Ireland may compare with him."+ Of course the reader sees that if the escheator's deputies were rogues the Irish who compounded with them were not much better than fools. They ought to have kept their money and let their land go. Pay as they would the land was sure to go sooner or later. This, after a little observation, was clearly perceived by Tyrone and Tyrconnel; and, acting upon that knowledge, if upon no other, the chiefs were wise in abandon * Carey to Cecil, p. 78. Sir John Davys to Cecil, from Castle Reban, p. 144. ing, of their own will, what they were sure to have to abandon after a little by the will of some rogue with a turn for swearing. Their property, and the property of every Irishman in Ireland, was quite at the mercy of the escheator's clerk. But perhaps the principal peril to life and property lay in that quarter whence they might reasonably expect protection-the law and its administration. We have already seen that against the injustices of Sir George Carey the people asked no relief, because they saw no utility in asking. Sir John Davys bears repeated testimony to their freedom from crime, to their love of justice, to their docility when justice speaks; but Sir John hints that up to his time justice had not troubled them with her speech very often. "If justice be well and roundly executed here for two or three years," he writes to Cecil, "the kingdom will grow rich and happy, and, in good faith, I think, loyal."* Six weeks afterwards, Sir George Carey beseeches the Secretary that certain law officers be sent over, so that the people may begin to taste of justice." It was nearly time to make a beginning. But when the people had tasted, it is pretty probable they did not violently like the flavour. As late as the middle of April, 1606, Chichester has to confess to Cecil that the Irish people regard the Irish executive with hate and abhorrence. And even the best members of the Irish executive appear to have little merited kindlier feelings. During the Lent vacation of 1606, Sir John Davys and the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas made the tour of Munster as justices of assize; and on the 4th of the following May Sir John gives Cecil a charming account of his tour. Munster, he says, had its own judicial fixed stars-one of the stars was called Brounker, of whom anon-and Sir John and his colleague were only occasional auxiliary planets. The planets in the course of their orbit came to Waterford. Sir John naively tells us what manner of legal light they diffused there. We were obliged, he says, "sometimes to threaten them (the jurors) with the Star Chamber, in order to get a verdict for the King." After reading that statement, we begin to suspect that Sir John's idea of justice, "well and roundly executed," was somewhat peculiar. Some remarks made at a later period by Sir Henry Brounker, Lord President of Munster, tend to strengthen the suspicion. Sir Henry is recounting his wonderful exploits in the way of persecuting the Catholics. He has deposed mayors, * Sir J. Davys to Cecil, p. 155. + Sir George Carey to Cecil, p. 163. Sir Arthur Chichester to the Earl of Salisbury, p. 451. Observations made by Sir John Davys, Attorney of Ireland, after a journey made by him in Munster, p. 465. forced lawyers to go to church, hunted priests, hanged many "fat ones" lately, and done numberless other things that prove him to be a man of very strong character. In fact, he says, winding up, "the judges are weary of my company, seeing I disappoint their harvest." The judges (one of whom was Davys) must certainly have been disgusted to find their sport so effectively spoiled. But then their lordships should remember that Sir Henry was practising on his own preserves. Illustrative of the abstract principles of justice which guided the Irish lawyers of James I., the Calendar supplies us with several samples of the manner in which these principles were applied. We can refer only to two. One of these we have glanced at already. For the reader's sake we are glad that its chronicler is Sir John Davys; he shall speak of it in his own graceful way. The quotation is rather lengthy; but the sole unpleasantness about it is the burthen of its transcription, and that falls on ourselves. Sir John is continuing his narrative of the planetary tour in Munster referred to above; the story has got as far as Limerick. He then goes on to say : We began the session of the county of Limerick a day or two before my Lord President's arrival there. Among other malefactors, one Downing, who had been a lieutenant in the late wars, and dwelt not far from Limerick, was indicted for murder, on the procurement of my Lord of Thomond; and the case stood thus :-Downing having obtained a commission from my Lord President of Munster to execute by martial law vagabonds and masterless men,* and such as had borne arms in the late war, it happened that an idiot fool belonging to my Lord of Thomond, with another of the same quality, that followed Sir John M'Nemara, a Knight of Thomond, came straggling into the village where Downing dwelt; he, meeting with them on a Sunday morning, took them and immediately hanged them both. My Lord of Thomond assuring himself that Downing knew the idiot, and knew he belonged to him (for he was a notorious fool known to all the country), and that therefore he did execute the poor creature maliciously, caused an indictment of wilful murder to be exhibited against him before my Lord President came to the town; upon this my Lord President conceived some unkindness, because, having received his authority from him, and the fact being done within his province, he expected that my Lord of Thomond should first have acquainted him with the matter before he had proceeded in this manner. Notwithstanding, the bill was found, and we proceeded to trial, but with this protestation-that we would not call the authority in question, but allow it him as a justification in law; but we would examine whether he had exceeded his authority maliciously or no, pronouncing this withal, that if he knew him to be a natural idiot, or knew him to belong to That is to say, Downing was a provost-marshal. There were as many of these in Ireland as the executive desired. Chichester, however, wished to be systematic. February 26, 1606, he advises one for each shire. They are to be selected from among the discharged captains. |