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The Presbyterians and the
Prayer Book - The Exodus to New England - Blood's Conspiracy - Mutiny at
Carrickfergus - Peace and Industry in Ulster - Ormonde's Encouragement
of the Linen Trade - Orrery's Arguments - Sir Arthur Forbes, Lord
Justice, assists the Presbyterians - Death of Charles II.
The Cromwellian settlers
in Ulster were almost all Nonconformists, and they became seriously
disturbed by the
high-handed action of the Bishops, who carried through
Parliament a second Act of Uniformity, whereby not alone
could no one officiate as a clergyman who had not been
ordained by a Bishop, but every clergyman was obliged to
profess before his congregation his full acceptance of the
Prayer Book. He was called upon to subscribe a declaration
that no subject under any pretext was justified in warring
against his King, and that the oath to the Solemn League
and Covenant was illegal and impious.
There were seventy
Presbyterian ministers in Ulster. Of
these, eight only accepted the Bishops' terms and were ordained; the
rest were deprived and imprisoned. Jeremy
Taylor declared thirty-six churches in his diocese vacant, and,
having thus emptied all the pulpits, proceeded to fill them with
creatures of his own. There were at least 100,000 Presbyterians in
Ulster, and their ministers determined to appeal
from this rigorous ruling of their consciences by petitioning
Parliament. "They complained of their present usage by
the Bishops; and asked for liberty to preach the gospel without those
impositions to which they could not agree with peace to their
consciences." This petition the Presbyterians
were not permitted to present to Parliament, and this produced such
widespread discontent that the more serious minded of the Cromwellian
settlers sold their holdings and
left the country. Thus commenced an exodus of Nonconformist Protestants
from Ireland to New England which
eventually drained Ireland of its soundest Protestant blood.
Ulster partially recovered her freedom. The Scots were too
numerous and too resolute to be overcome, and they wrung
from the Bishops a consent to connivance at their continuing
to observe their particular form of worship.
The tension caused by
these political and religious
animosities led to discontent and disruption, and finally to a
conspiracy to overthrow the Government. The leaders of the
agitation were chiefly officers in the army, headed by Colonel
Thomas Blood, whose name is familiar in connection with
his subsequent delinquencies in London. He was joined by
his brother-in-law, a Presbyterian minister, and Fellow of
Trinity College, Dublin, named Lecky, and a few others.
The conspirators first addressed themselves to the Presbyterian
ministers in Ulster, but with little or no success. They
appointed a committee to conduct the enterprise which aimed
at the surprise of Dublin Castle and the seizure of Ormonde,
but one of the members sold himself to the Government and
gave secret information of all their proceedings. On the
night of the 2ist of May, 1663, a party of the chief conspirators
assembled to carry out their project, but they were
surprised by the authorities, and a number of them, including
Lecky, were arrested. Blood, however, succeeded in getting
away. Lecky, who refused to save his life by conforming,
was executed.
The war with Holland in
1665-7 encouraged the discontented to rebel. The threat of a French
invasion was
magnified by rumour, and the army, being in arrears of pay,
exhibited symptoms of disloyalty. In May, 1666, the garrison
of Carrickfergus broke into mutiny, seized all the money in
the hands of the King's receiver, deposed the governor of the
fort, the Earl of Donegal, and took possession of the castle
and town. The soldiers acted in such a resolute manner that
they caused not a little uneasiness to the Government, who,
however, took prompt measures. Ormonde immediately sent
his son, the Earl of Arran, with four companies of guards by
sea to Carrickfergus. He at once cleared the town, driving
the mutineers into the castle, with the loss of their leader,
Corporal Dillon. The following day the Lord-Lieutenant
himself appeared before the town, whereupon the mutineers
surrendered. One hundred and ten were tried by courtmartial, and nine of
them, being found guilty, were executed,
and the companies to which they belonged disbanded.
It is pleasant to be able
to turn from an Ulster of insurrections and rebellions, an Ulster of
massacres and miseries, to
an Ulster which by skill and industry was slowly but surely
winning her way to the front rank as a worker and a producer.
The growing and spinning of flax had been encouraged by
Strafford, who set it up in opposition to the wool trade. "He
did observe", he said, "that the wool of that kingdom [of
Ireland] did increase very much, that if it should there be
wrought into cloth, it would be a very great prejudice to the
clothing trade of England, and therefore he was willing, as
much as he might lawfully and fairly, to discourage that trade;
that in the other side, he was desirous to set up the trade of
linen cloth, which would be beneficial there and not prejudice
the trade of England." The linen business had always
existed in Ulster; Strafford made rules for the management
of the manufacture which he believed would greatly add to its
value. The soil and climate of Ireland have proved to be
eminently adapted for the cultivation of flax, and despite
many and great vicissitudes the linen trade of the country has
grown steadily since first it was mentioned in the early part
of the fifteenth century, and the fact that the Presbyterians
held their ground in Ulster was largely due to the help
they derived from the rapidity of the development of this
industry.
The example of Strafford
was now followed by Ormonde,
who determined to re-establish and promote the manufacture
of linen cloth, which had languished amid the troubles and
disorders of the intervening period. An Act of Parliament
was passed in Dublin to encourage the growth of flax and the
manufacture of linen. Ormonde sent special commissioners
to the Netherlands to observe the state of the linen trade there,
and the various methods of manufacture, and to engage
skilled workmen to cross to Ulster to instruct the native
workers. Sir William Temple undertook to send to Belfast
from Brabant 500 families skilled in manufacturing linen,
and other skilled workers were brought from Rochelle and
the Isle of Re, from Jersey, and from various districts in
France. Dwellings were provided for these various workmen, and the
result of their presence in the north of
Ireland was that the manufacture of cordage, sailcloth, linen,
and diaper was brought to a remarkably high degree of
excellence.
During these years of
comparative peace in Ireland,
England, and especially London, had suffered much. The
war with Holland had opened well in 1665 and ended ignobly
two years later. The great Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, had
destroyed Sheerness, burned the shipping off Chatham, and
sailed up the Thames as far as Tilbury. In the year 1665
it will be remembered the Plague raged in London, to be
followed in twelve months by the Great Fire.
In 1666 the King (who
detested the Covenanters) and the
Earl of Clarendon resolved to uproot Presbyterianism in
Scotland, and the consequent insurrection of the Presbyterians of
Scotland aroused Orrery's zeal. He accordingly
wrote to Ormonde. "I consider Ireland", he wrote, "as
consisting of three sorts of people, the Protestants, the Scotch
Presbyters and other sectaries, and the Papists. By the best
calculation I could make, I cannot find the Protestants, including the
army, to amount to above 40,000 men fit to bear
arms. I believe the Scotch Presbyters and other sectaries
are double that number and the Papists quadruple the
number of both. But then the Protestants, to counterbalance
the greatness of the other two, have the King's authority in
their hands, together with the arms and garrisons.
"This insurrection in
Scotland will no doubt animate all
the birds of that feather in Ireland, if not some in England
too, where of late some disturbances have been about the
hearth money. So that, by what is already begun in Scotland, a greater
body than the Protestants of Ireland may be
suspected in it. The King's late Proclamation, at the humble
desire of the Parliament there, which puts the laws in force
against Priests, Jesuits, and all Popish Recusants, will no
doubt be laid hold of by the Romish clergy here to incite
their flocks to mischief, and will fortify their persuasions with
this argument: that if England, where there are twenty
Protestants for one Papist, so warmly apprehend danger from
those of their religion, what will they not apprehend for
Ireland, where there are some twenty Papists for one Protestant, by
which they may be but too successful orators, if
not vigorously and speedily prevented.
"Nor will this argument
possibly be neglected by the
French, nor arms nor ammunition omitted to be sent to them.
Besides, I observed, that in the beginning of the late rebellion,
in Scotland and Ireland, that no sooner the Presbyters there
cried up the Covenant, but the Papists here did the mass;
and some considerable persons of the latter sort did clearly
confess, that what the Scots had done was no small invitation
to their attempts.
"And if when England was
rich and quiet, the example
of Scotland could give motion to Ireland, what may not now
be rationally expected from the like example, considering that
the Ulster Scots were then as ready to join to suppress the
Irish, as some doubt they will be to help the rebels of their
own country; considering also that England is not only impoverished, but
London likewise, the magazine of money and
all things else, burned, and the King actually engaged in a
bloody expensive war at once against France, Holland, and
Denmark, and the rest of the Provinces of Europe at best but
lookers-on, considering that France is quiet within itself, and
governed by a young Prince, ambitious, absolute and wealthy,
and apt on any occasion to enlarge his dominions; and in
whose kingdom the desperatest sort of the Irish have taken
their sanctuary, and are no doubt provoking him daily to
embrace this promising juncture of time.
"Lastly, to omit many
material considerations, considering
the inability of England to help us, if they had the will; and
the want of will too signally expressed in the late acts they
have passed, almost as destructive as a rebellion or war could
prove. To which may be added our general loss of trade,
and consequently the almost impossibility of getting money
to pay those taxes which are to pay the army."
"In 1669 Lord Robartes
was for a few months Lord-Lieutenant, Ormonde having fallen from the
royal favour, and on
the 2ist of May, 1670, John Lord Berkeley, Baron of Stratton,
was sworn in as Viceroy. The following year Lord Berkeley,
finding it necessary to leave for England, entrusted the
government to the Lord Chancellor and Sir Arthur Forbes
as Lords Justices. The latter was a steady friend of the
Presbyterians, and he no sooner had the power than he not
only procured an order for the release of all those who had
been sentenced to terms of imprisonment on account of nonconformity, but
also obtained by grant from the King a
pension for Presbyterian ministers out of the forfeited lands
still in his hands. The administration of the Lords Justices
was not marked by any other occurrence of importance, and,
finding it necessary to make some concession to public
opinion before the meeting of Parliament, the English
ministers removed Lord Berkeley, who was believed to have
been appointed Lord-Lieutenant by Roman Catholic influence, and in the
beginning of August, 1672, Arthur, Earl
of Essex, was made Viceroy, a position he held for five
years. In August, 1677, Ormonde was reappointed Lord-Lieutenant by the
King, who is said to have remarked of the
Duke: "He is the fittest person to govern Ireland".
In 1679 the insurrection
of the Covenanters in the west of
Scotland aroused Ormonde's anxiety. He suspected that the
Scottish insurgents had correspondence with their brethren in
Ulster, and he therefore took hasty measures for the defence
of the northern province. The battle of Bothwell Bridge
on the 22nd of June, however, soon dissipated all his fears
regarding Ulster.
Although of Ulster it
cannot be said at this period that
"more than peace was the passing of her days", she was
nevertheless more at rest than she had ever been since the
commencement of recorded time, for even under the rule of
her native princes she had been eternally plunged in war,
and had presented a scene in which never-ending battles
were waged between Cinel Connel and Cinel Owen, savage
O'Donnells and fierce O'Neills. She had now discovered
that " peace hath her victories no less renowned than war",
and she proceeded sedulously to follow the paths which lead
to a people's welfare, and would no doubt have long continued to do so
but for the somewhat sudden death of the
King, which occurred at noon on Friday the 6th of February, 1685.
Emerson, in his list of
Representative Men, omitted
Charles II, an admirable representative of the voluptuary.
The character of Charles is too well known to need much
comment. Lord Macaulay, in his penetrating remarks on the
subject, attributes not a little of Charles's levity to the fact
that the Prince had, "while very young, been driven forth
from a palace, to a life of exile, penury, and danger", and
as a consequence his character was moulded abroad. This
may be; but whatever other influences were at work, that of
Henrietta Maria never ceased to be exercised, and it was this
influence which had the most abiding and far-reaching
results, not alone in the fact that Charles II died a professed
Roman Catholic, but that James lived an avowed member
of the same Church. Unlike Charles, James was not content
to conceal his religious feelings, and his conduct in trying
to coerce his subjects to think as he did, led as a natural
consequence to the Revolution. |
