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Non-Parliamentary
Proceedings - The Deputy vainly endeavours to appease
the Recusants - The Recalcitrant Roman Catholics repair to London - The
Deputation is received by the King - Monarchical Methods of Debate - Talbot
sent to the Tower - Luttrell hurried to the Fleet - James lectures the Roman
Catholics - The King surprises Sir James Gough.
The Roman Catholic lords
evidently did not intend that
matters should end with the vigorous protest made before
their departure from the House of Commons assembled in
Dublin Castle; for the week following was devoted by them
to conveying in writing to the King a repetition of their
previous protests, and they even had the hardihood to
threaten James, whose pusillanimity was well known to be
on a par with his prudence, that they would offer an armed
resistance to any severe measures against them; which threat,
taken in conjunction with their violence and the popular
clamour in their favour, gave cause for the gravest apprehensions,
especially when it was recognized that the whole
military strength of the Irish Government at the time
amounted to no more than 1700 foot and 200 horse.
Not content with writing
to the King, the Opposition in
the House of Commons addressed the English Council,
insisting on their claims, and maintaining that Everard was
the Speaker, not Davies, and stating, what was not the fact,
that he had been forcibly ejected. They then proceeded to
deluge the Lord Deputy with petitions, sending no fewer
than three in two days. In these they declared their willingness to
attend, if they did not thereby jeopardize their lives,
and requesting that they might have opportunities to question
improper returns. Chichester readily granted their request,
and said, as a member of the Upper House, he was prepared
to receive their Speaker.
The Commons met again on
the morning of the 21st, but
the recusants refused to attend, and demanded the exclusion
of the members to whose return they objected. In this emergency, and
having exhausted all methods of persuasion,
Chichester acted with great prudence and moderation. He
issued a proclamation commanding the seceders to return to their posts,
while privately he used remonstrance and entreaty with the chiefs of the
party, urging them to unite with the other members of each house in
furthering the business of the nation, at least so far as to pass an Act
of recognition of the King's title; and the Lord Deputy even promised
the recalcitrant members that no other Bill should for the present be
brought forward. He proposed various measures of conciliation, and offered to let the decision of the questions in
dispute be referred to an impartial committee. But all his
efforts were in vain, and he found the Opposition obstinate
and impervious alike to persuasion or threats. He then, as
a last resource, prorogued the Parliament, in order to gain
time for the furtherance of other conciliatory measures, in the
hope of appeasing the clamours which had been raised by
the situation, and found that when a general levy of money to
defray expenses was made all over the country, "the popish
subjects did willingly condescend" thereunto.
In their address to the
King the recusant lords said:
"We cannot but, out of the consideration of our bounden
duty, make known unto your Highness the general discontentment which
these strange, unlooked-for, and never-heard-of courses generally have
bred, whereof, if the rebellious discontented of this nation abroad, do
take advantage,
and procure the evil affected at home (which are numbers, by
reason of these already settled and intended plantations), in
any hostile fashion to set disorders afoot, and labour some
underhand relief from any prince or state abroad, who, per-
adventure, might be inveigled and drawn to commiserate
their pretended oppressions and distresses, however we are
assured the prowess and power of your Majesty will in the
end bring the authors thereof to ruin and confusion, yet will
things be brought into greater combustion, to the effusion of
much blood, exhausting of masses of treasure, the exposing
of us and others, your Highness's well-affected subjects, to
the hazard of poverty, whereof the memory is yet very lively
and fresh among us, and finally to the laying open the whole
commonwealth to the inundation of all miseries and calamities
which garboiles, civil wars, and dissensions do breed and
draw with them in a rent and torn estate."
This address the Roman
Catholic lords now determined
to follow up by sending delegates to represent their grievances to the
King. To this Chichester made no objection,
taking, however, at the same time, the precaution to have the
views of the Government also laid before James, and to that
end he sent Lord Thomond, Chief Justice Denham, and Sir
Oliver St. John to explain the situation. The members of
the deputation representing the Opposition included Lords
Gormanston and Dunboyne, Sir James Gough, Sir Christopher Plunkett, William Talbot, and Edward FitzHarris,
the defeated candidate for the county of Limerick. These six
persons were augmented in numbers on James's saying he
would willingly see more representatives; accordingly six
peers and fourteen commoners arrived in July, among them
being Everard, whose Speakership had been nipped in the
bud; Sir Patrick Barnwell, who apparently approached
London undeterred by the terrors of the Tower; and Thomas
Luttrell, who sat for County Dublin, and, having behaved on
several occasions like a bellicose bantam cock, was gravely
described in official papers as " turbulent and seditious".
Talbot's turbulence,
however, like that of Luttrell, was
quelled after twelve months in the Tower, to which the former
was sent at an early stage in the proceedings because he
could not see his way to condemn with sufficient emphasis
the opinions of the Jesuit Suarez as to the deposition and
murder of kings. Possibly Talbot anticipated De Quincey
on "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts", and held
that "the habit of murder leads to Sabbath-breaking and
procrastination". Whether he held these views or not, he
took some pains to explain to James personally that he did
not believe in regicide, but he thought that kings might be
deposed for the benefit of the country they misgoverned.
James, to convince Talbot of his errors, sent him to the
Tower with extracts from the works of Suarez and Parsons
upon which to meditate, while the King himself went on
progress to the west, and Luttrell loathed life for three months
in the Fleet prison, which in those days must have been a
horrible hole in which to be incarcerated, especially during
the summer; and thus he was incapacitated from being
present with the other members of the deputation who "did
use daily to frequent their secret conventicles and private
meetings, to consult and devise how to frame plaintive
articles against the Lord Deputy".
Sir Patrick Barnwell,
having had personal experience
of both Fleet and Tower, would by no means have agreed
with the poet who declared that "Stone walls do not a prison
make, nor iron bars a cage". Sir Patrick knew full well
the folly of such poetic expression, and he therefore had
no hesitation whatever when called upon to declare that he
considered the doctrines of Suarez and Parsons "most pro-
fane, impious, wicked, and detestable . . . that His Majesty
or any other sovereign prince, if he were excommunicated by
the Pope, might be massacred or done away with by his
subjects or any other". With regard to James himself, he
declared in no dubious language that "notwithstanding any
excommunication or any other act which is or may be pronounced or done
by the Pope against him", all His Highness's subjects should be prepared to pour forth their life's
blood to defend him and his kingdoms.
The King ultimately
dismissed the deputation after he
had given them a severe rating in his own peculiar style,
taunting them with being " a body without a head, a headless
body; you would be afraid to meet such a body in the streets;
a body without a head to speak!" and he asked: "What is
it to you whether I make many or few boroughs? My
council may consider the fitness if I require it; but if I make
forty noblemen and four hundred boroughs the more the
merrier, the fewer the better cheer." "In the matter of Parliament", he
said in conclusion, "you have carried yourselves
tumultuarily and undutifully; and your proceedings have
been rude, disorderly, and inexcusable, and worthy of severe
punishment; which by reason of your submission, I do
forbear, but not remit, till I see your dutiful carnage in this
Parliament, where, by your obedience to the Deputy and
State, and your future good behaviour, you may redeem your
by-past miscarriage, and then you may deserve, not only
pardon, but favour and cherishing. . . . Nothing faulty is
to be found in the government; unless you would have the
kingdom of Ireland like the kingdom of Heaven. ... The
Pope is your father in spiritualibus and I in temporalibus
only, and so you have your bodies turned one way and your
souls drawn another way; you that send your children to the
seminaries of treason. Strive henceforth", he admonished
the astonished deputation, "to become good subjects, that
you may have cor unum et viam unam, and then I shall
respect you all alike. But your Irish priests teach you such
grounds of doctrine as you cannot follow them with a safe
conscience, but you must cast off your loyalty to the King."
After having been
admitted to several audiences, the members of the deputation drew up and
presented to the King nineteen general articles of grievance in the
government of Ireland, and demanded that impartial commissioners should
be appointed to make an enquiry into their truth. The King yielded to
their request, and towards the end of August he issued a commission to
Chichester, Sir Humphrey Winch, late Chief Baron in Ireland and now a
Judge of Common Pleas; Sir Charles Cornwallis, lately an Ambassador in
Spain; Sir Roger Wilbraham, who had been Solicitor- General in Ireland;
and George Calvert, Clerk of the Council. The Commissioners were to
enquire into all matters concerning the Irish elections and the proceedings in Parliament, and
to report upon all general and notorious grievances, some of
which were mentioned. One of the concessions made as a
result of this commission was that the members for boroughs
incorporated after the writs were issued had no right to sit.
Religion being in the
air, the first thing the Commissioners
found was, that "a multitude of Popish schoolmasters, priests,
friars, Jesuits, seminaries of the adverse Church, authorised by
the Pope and his subordinates for every diocese, ecclesiastical
dignity, and living of note", were being supported and
countenanced. The Commissioners also found that billeted
soldiers did exact money from the people, "whereby breach
of the peace and affrays are occasioned ". They also found
that "there are . . . very few Protestants that are free-holders of quality fit to be sheriffs, and that will take the oath
of supremacy as by the laws they ought to do, and by the
Lord Deputy's order no sheriff is admitted till he enter into
sufficient bond for answering his accounts".
References have already
been made to the Ulster custom
of "ploughing by the tail". There were many reasons for
its abandonment. In the first place, the method of attaching
a small light plough to the tails of ponies driven abreast was
needlessly cruel ; in the second, such a mode of agriculture
was ineffective and obsolete. This method of ploughing had
been prohibited by Order in Council in 1606, the penalty
being the forfeiture of one animal for the first offence, two for
the second, and three for the third. There was, of course, no
penalty if traces were used. The excellence of its breed of
horses has for centuries been a source of pride in Ireland, and
it is therefore astonishing to find the tenacity with which the
inhabitants of agricultural districts in Ulster clung to a custom
that "besides the cruelty used to the beasts", is also one
whereby "the breed of horses is much impaired in this
kingdom to the great prejudice thereof". The Commissioners found that
the forbidding of this practice was considered a great grievance.
The Report of the
Commissioners having been perused
and approved of by the King, he sent Sir Richard Boyle to
Ireland with a proclamation, in which the King announced
that he had in person debated with the members of the Deputation sent by
the recusants (his methods of debating with
Talbot we have noted), and that he had found the Lord
Deputy "full of respect to our honour, zeal to justice, and
sufficiency in the execution of the great charge committed
unto him ".
In the meantime some
members of the Deputation, in
taking leave of the King, were treated to a speech the heads
of which one of the party present on the occasion, Sir James
Gough, noted. In his peroration James, addressing his
audience, which included Lords Gormanston and Roche,
Patrick Hussy, member for Meath and titular Baron of Gal-
trim, and Gough, said: "As for your religion, howbeit that
the religion I profess be the religion I will make the established
religion among you, and that the exercise of the
religion which you use (which is no religion, indeed, but a
superstition) might be left off; yet will I not ensue or extort
any man's conscience, and do grant that all my subjects there
(which likewise upon your return thither I require you to
make known) do acknowledge and believe that it is not lawful
to offer violence unto my person, or to deprive me of my
crown, or to take from me my kingdoms, or that you harbour
or receive any priest or seminary that would allow such a
doctrine. I do likewise require that none of your youth be
bred at Douai. Kings have long ears, and be assured that I
will be inquisitive of your behaviour therein." Having thus
given ample evidence that one King at least had "long ears"
James dismissed Gough and his companions.
Gough delightedly
repeated the King's speech to a fellow-
passenger to Ireland Sir Francis Kingsmill, and on landing
not alone published the message of the King to his people,
but actually delivered it at Dublin Castle in the presence of
the Lord Deputy, delivering "the most true and great King's
words", "in the action and tone of an orator". Chichester,
scarcely able to believe his ears, commanded the orator's
presence in private audience, where the beamingly confident
Gough repeated his message and maintained that such were
the tpsissima verba of the modern Solomon. Chichester, per-
plexed and unconvinced, detained the bewildered understudy
of the British Solomon under restraint in the Castle, there
to await the King's pleasure.
The King, far from being
pleased when the matter reached
his ears, admitted that he had used the language imputed to
him, but denied that he had given Sir James Gough liberty
to circulate it. He directed that Gough should be detained
until he made submission, which Gough forthwith did, and,
being released, left the Castle, no doubt a sadder and a wiser
man, possibly muttering sotto voce as he took his departure,
"put not your trust in" the perorations of "princes"! |
