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Protestantism in Ulster - An
Incipient Plot - The Fighting MacDonalds and others - The Dream of Rory
Oge O'Cahan - His Rude Awakening - Chichester retires after eleven
years' rule - The Execution of Bishop O'Devany - The Case of the
Recusants - Trouble in Ulster.
When Con O'Neill,
distinguished as Bacagh, or The
Lame, was created Earl of Tyrone by Henry VIII, his secretary,
O'Kervellan, who had been appointed by the Pope to
the bishopric of Clogher, resigned his bulls and renounced
the authority of Rome; whereupon he was forthwith con-
firmed in his See by the King. Thus the submission of
Ulster was accompanied by the introduction of Protestantism.
In addition to the sudden
introduction of the Protestant
confession of faith with regard to which the new settlers
in Ulster in later days acted upon the declared principle
that, since the native Irish were bigoted papists, it was necessary
first to lead them to the opposite extreme, in order to
bring them ultimately right and to the penalties to which
the recusant portion of the population was exposed, other
causes of discontent now arose, especially in the rivalry
between the older inhabitants of the province and their
supplanters, a sentiment which apparently nothing could
appease.
Even the transplantation
of the Irish themselves from one
locality to another only increased the feeling of discontent;
for the older families, who traced their descent from the
chiefs of the sept who had held the same land from time
immemorial, swayed by all the ancient prejudices of their
race, looked with contempt upon the new Irish settlers
around them, and treated them in a manner which excited
new jealousies and enmities. This was long continued in
connection with the extensive plantations in Ulster, where
this rivalry of races and families showed itself continually,
and culminated occasionally in plots and conspiracies.
One of these plots,
discovered in the year 1615, is said to
have had for its aim the seizure of the forts in Ulster and the
extirpation of the English settlers. It led only to the conviction and
execution of the chief conspirators; but only a
few years later these rivalries were made palpable in one of
the most sanguinary tragedies that ever stained the annals
of Ireland, and this notwithstanding the fact that Ulster had
been declared to be "cleared from the thorns and briars of
rebellion".
The chief cause of this
brief and hopeless rising illustrates
the truth of the poetic dictum that "Satan finds some mischief still for
idle hands to do". That the hands and brains
of the devisers of this singularly weak plot were idle was
primarily the fault of the Government, who had not provided
them with land on which they could find employment; in
other words, Chichester's warning had been ignored, and his
words had come true landless men unprovided for in the
settlement proved a source of danger.
The fighting MacDonalds
found they were aggrieved,
and they nursed their grievance until, having smouldered
for a time, it burst into flame. We have seen how good
fortune attended the steps of Sir Randall MacSorley MacDonald of Dunluce,
and how he was granted large territories,
amounting in all to nearly two-thirds of the county of Antrim.
This, no doubt, was calculated to greatly please Sir Randall,
but the King's generosity by no means pleased Sir Randall's
relatives, who considered that he had been treated too
generously, while they themselves had been neglected.
Among the grumblers on this score were Alexander MacDonald and his
brother Sorley, nephews of Sir Randall, and
a cousin named Ludar, who rejoiced in the distinction of a
bar sinister.
Malcontents readily find
a following, for there is no sentiment more deeply rooted in the human
heart than that of
discontent, and it is therefore not surprising that the Mac-
Donalds were speedily joined, on one pretext or another,
by a selection of O'Dohertys, O'Neills, O'Donnells, and
O'Cahans, all desirous to live or die "for the cause" the
cause being the acquisition of such lands as by force of arms
they could acquire for themselves; but, this being too palpable
and selfish a proposition, they easily persuaded each other,
if not themselves, that their concerted action was in the
sacred cause of religion. By making this declaration the
conspirators enlisted the sympathy and active aid of the
Church. "Though thou shouldst die in this service", said
a friar named Edmund Mullarkey to Cormac Maguire, when
urging him to join this Band of Hope, "thy soul shall be
sure to go to Heaven; and as many men as shall be killed
in this service all their souls shall go to Heaven. All those
who were killed in O'Dogherty's war are in Heaven."
Among the conspirators
was Brian Crossagh O'Neill, an
illegitimate son of Sir Cormac MacBaron (Tyrone's brother);
Art Oge O'Neill, and Rory O'Cahan. One of the chief
objects of the band was to get possession of an illegitimate
son of Tyrone, who was in the custody of Sir Toby Caulfeild; but in this
they were balked, for the lad was sent out
of their reach to Eton, and appears to have been transferred
to the Tower in 1622, when all records of him cease.
Rory Oge O'Cahan was the
eldest son of Sir Donnell,
and no doubt hated Sir Thomas Phillips, who had apprehended his father,
and now lived in the O'Cahan castle at
Limavady. Phillips was officially described as "a brave
soldier all his life", and he kept the castle in good repair,
with moat, drawbridge, and two tiers of cannon. It must
have galled Rory to see Phillips's "two-storied residence,
slated, with garden, orchard, and dovecote" on the land
which from time immemorial belonged to the O'-Cahans.
There is little doubt that he hated Sir Thomas, and that one
of his chief objects in thus starting an insurrection was to
be revenged on Phillips and regain his ancestral home.
But Rory, alas! like too
many of his fellow-countrymen,
was frequently inebriated with more than the exuberance of
his own verbosity, to adapt a phrase which the genius of
Disraeli has made classic; and in consequence he divulged
when tipsy the fact that the first object of attack should be
Coleraine, as he had a friend who could " command the
guard to betray the town, as by letting them in, and that
then, being in, they would burn the town and only take
Mr. Beresford and Mr. Rowley prisoners, and to burn and
kill all the rest, and to take the spoil of the town, and so if
they were able to put all Derry to death by fire and sword".
With imagination aflame, Rory saw visions in which Lifford
was reduced to ashes, Sir Richard Hansard alone being
saved, as the one righteous person in a wicked town; victory
followed victory, and the forts of Mountjoy, Carrickfergus,
and Massereene, "and all other English settlements", fell
to rise no more. Rory the victorious dictated terms to the
hated English, holding the while as hostages for the restoration
of his father and Sir Nial Garv and Sir Cormac MacBaron
much inferior specimens of the human race in the shape of
Mr. Beresford, Mr. Rowley, and Sir Richard Hansard.
Argosies of portly sail came laden with men and money from sunny Spain
and from the far-off Hebrides, the former filled with golden doubloons,
and the latter with armed men thirsting for the blood of the British. Such was his dream. He
awoke to find the Informer a power in the land, and the
prosaic awakening resulted in the execution, amongst others,
of Brian Crossagh O'Neill, a priest named Laughlin O'Laverty,
Friar Mullarkey, and Rory Oge O'Cahan, whose last thought
no doubt was: "As many men as shall be killed in this
service all their souls shall go to Heaven". Alexander MacDonald, it is
interesting to note, was acquitted.
Chichester, who had been
Lord Deputy for over eleven
years, at the suggestion of James now retired from the Vice-royalty (1615), the King giving him the choice of returning
to his governorship of Carrickfergus or of repairing to Court,
at the same time thanking him for his many and great ser-
vices, and giving as his reason for the suggested retirement
that His Majesty did not wish to overtax the strength of good
subjects, or avail himself of their loyalty to the detriment of
their health. At the same time the Lord Treasurership of
Ireland becoming vacant through the death of the Earl of
Ormonde, the King gracefully conferred it upon Baron
Chichester of Belfast as a special mark of favour for the
manner in which he had conducted himself in his high office
as Viceroy.
On Chichester's
retirement the Government was placed
in the hands of the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop Jones, and
the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir John Denham,
Chichester himself repairing to England, where it is not
unlikely he was from time to time consulted by the King.
He has been blamed for the rigour of his rule, and especially
for the hostility he displayed to the Roman Catholics. His
hanging of Cornelius O'Devany, the aged Bishop of Down
and Connor, in 1611, was an atrocious act, and cannot be
palliated on any ground whatsoever. The venerable prelate,
who was about eighty years of age, was originally a Franciscan friar. He
was condemned to death on the nominal
charge of having been with Tyrone in Ulster; and at the
same time a priest named Patrick O'Loughrane was tried and
condemned for having sailed in the same ship with Tyrone
and Tirconnell when the Earls took to flight. The severity
of the sentence was out of all proportion to the crime, if
crime it were. The prisoners were first to be hanged, then
cut down alive, their bowels cast into a fire, and their bodies
quartered. When the hangman, who was Irish by birth,
heard that the Bishop was condemned, he fled from Dublin
(where the execution took place) ; and, as no other Irishman
would undertake the repulsive task, it was found necessary to
pardon and release an English murderer, in order that the
sentence might be carried out. The Four Masters relate that
the venerable prelate, fearing that the harrowing spectacle of
his torments might cause the priest to waver, requested the
executioner to put O'Loughrane to death first; but the priest
assured him that "he need not be in dread on his account,
that he would follow him without fear", adding that it was
"not meet a bishop should be without a priest to attend him,
for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven for his soul".
O'Sullivan Beare says the Catholics collected the blood of
the victims, whom they justly regarded as martyrs, and the
day following the execution they contrived to procure the
mangled remains and to inter them in a becoming manner.
Such acts as these were
not likely to help the cause of the
Reformation, but Chichester hated the Roman Catholics, and
desired above all things to "cut off by martial law seminaries,
Jesuits, and such hedge priests as have neither goods nor
living, and do daily flock hither". He was, no doubt, largely
responsible for the famous proclamation in which James
ordered the entire population of Ireland to attend church on
Sundays and holidays, "according to the tenor and intent of
the laws and statutes, upon the pains and penalties contained
therein, which he will have from henceforth duly put in
execution", and for the orders issued to all "Jesuits, seminary
priests, or other priests whatsoever made and ordained by any
authority derived or pretended to be derived from the See of
Rome" to leave the country or conform.
The fine inflicted on
recusants for non-attendance in
church was not only galling to them, but was more oppressive from a
pecuniary point of view than at first appears to
be the case; for while the sum levied each time was only one
shilling according to law, it was increased to ten times that
amount by the fees always exacted for clerks and officers; and
the application of the money so realized to works of charity,
as the Act required, was shamefully evaded, it being argued
that the poor, being recusants themselves, were not fit to
receive the money, but "ought to pay the like penalty them-
selves".
It must be remembered,
however, that Chichester lived in a day when toleration was unknown,
when the cruelty of creeds was at its height, and when the hatred of
each other which springs from the love of the Deity was the most marked
feature of public as well as of private life. In short, Chichester,
taken for all and all, was one of the ablest and strongest Viceroys that
ever ruled in Ireland, and, had his advice been taken, Ulster might have
been spared the upheaval of later years, and much bloodshed been averted.
In the meantime,
irregularities and abuses were gradually
multiplying among the settlers in Ulster. Some of the undertakers,
notwithstanding they were acting contrary to the conditions of their
patents, alienated their allotments by private
contract; and thus others, by purchase, obtained possession
of more lands than the planters were allowed by the King's
limitations, which were calculated to prevent the enormous
accumulation of property and power that had been held by
the Irish chiefs. In the distribution of the lands the King's
directions were frequently ignored, so far as they related to
provision for the original proprietors, and in consequence the
natives were deprived entirely of those territories which it was
intended to reserve for them. Thus exposed to the avarice
and rapine of " foreign" adventurers, the natives, instead of
being conciliated, were hardened in their hatred of English
rule a hate which, increasing with the years, culminated
later in rebellion. |
