Two Chapters of Irish History. I. The Irish Parliament of James II. II. The alleged violation of the Treaty of Limerick

Front matter

I. THE IRISH PARLIAMENT OF JAMES II II. THE ALLEGED VIOLATION OF THE TREATY OF LIMERICK BY T. DUNBAR INGRAM, LL.D. AUTHOR OF 1 A HISTORY OF THE LEGISLATIVE UNION OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND ' " Irish policy is Irish history, and I have no faith in any statesman who attempts to remedy the evils of Ireland who is either ignorant of the past or who will not take lessons from it." — Beaconsfield. ILonrjon MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1888 AU rights reserved CONTENTS

Chapter I The Irish Parliament Of James II Page

Section I. Ireland from 1641 to the Accession of James II . . . .1 „ II. The Preparation for the Parliament . 29 „ III. The Parliament of 1689 . 59

Chapter II The Alleged Violation Of The Treaty Of Limerick

Section I. The Second Siege and Treaty of Limerick 93 „ II. The Charge of Intolerance against the Irish Protestant Parliament . . 124 ».

Appendix

1. Two Columns of Names from the List of Persons Attainted by the Irish Parliament . . 141 2. Treaty of Limerick, as Ratified by their Majesties' Letters Patent under the Great Seal of England

CHAPTER I THE IRISH PARLIAMENT OF JAMES SECTION

I IRELAND FROM 1641 TO THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II The forty years which immediately preceded the breaking out of the Rebellion of 1641 were the most peaceful and prosperous which Ireland had seen for centuries. The industrial progress of the island during this period was remarkable. For the first time in her history Ireland paid her way. The soil was greatly improved by applying to it modes of husbandry with which the native inhabitants had hitherto been unacquainted. New and profitable employments were introduced, manufactures were established. The linen manufacture in particular had made such an advance as to establish among our historians the mistaken idea that itwas first introduced by Lord Stratford.1 The value of lands and their rents had increased. In 1640 the customs amounted to almost four times the sum which was received from them at the commencement of the century.

Shipping had increased a 1 Long before Strafford was born linen cloth was manufactured in and exported from Ireland. To buy linen cloth, except in open fair, was punishable by the 33 Henry VIII, c. 2. By the 11 Eliz. c. 10 it was forbidden to export linen yarns without paying the enormous duty of twelvepence a pound. By the 13 Eliz. c. 1 it was provided that none but merchants inhabiting staple or corporate towns should export cloth made of linen yarn. The Rev. Charles O'Conor says, " The antiquity of linen cloth in Ireland is lost in the night of the remotest ages of our history." — Historical Address, pt. ii. p. 255. B hundredfold, commerce had extended, and the export trade was in * the most satisfactory condition. Sir John Davis, writing in 1613, tells us in his quaint and figurative language that the strings of the Irish harp were all in tune and made a good harmony in the commonwealth : " So as we may well conceive a hope that Ireland . . . will from henceforth prove a land of peace and concord."1 But the strings of the Irish harp were not fated to be long in tune, or to give forth harmonious sounds.

The growing prosperity of Ireland was shattered in a moment. Encouraged by the Scotch invasion of England, and by the successes which his revolted subjects had obtained over Charles I, the Irish wantonly threw away the blessings offered them by Providence. The rebellion broke out on the 22d of October 1641. At first it was purely anti-English. The northern rebels declared that "they would not leave an Englishman in the country ; that they would have no English king, but one of their own nation, and Sir Phelim O'Neal should be their king ; that neither the King nor Queen of England should govern Ireland any longer ; that if they had His Majesty in their power they would flay him alive ; that they would give a great sum of money to have his head," etc.2 But Roger Moore persuaded the rebels to refrain from open threats against the English, and to rest the whole merits of their case upon the subject of religion.

The race-feeling of the northern Irish against the English was so strong that it even extended to and was directed against the Roman Catholics of the Pale because they were of English descent. Whilst Ambrose Bedell, son 1 For evidence as to the prosperous condition of Ireland before 1641 see Leland, iii. 41 ; Clarendon's Irish Rebellion, pp. 6-9 ; O'Conor's Historical Address, pt. ii. p. 255; Carte's Ormond, i. 87, folio ed. ; Sir George Radcliffe's Essay towards a Life of Lord Strafford. Richard Belling, in his History of the Irish Confederation, gives very strong testimony to the same effect. Carte's Ormond, i. 178. of the well-known Bishop Bedell, was prisoner among the rebels, he often heard the Ulster Irish threatening those of the Pale and using such expressions to them as these, " You churls with the great breeches, do you think that, if we were rid of the other English, we would spare you ?

No ! for we would cut all your throats, for you are of one race with them, though we make use of you for the present."1 When the rebellion broke out, more than two-thirds of the landed property of Ireland was in the hands of the Roman Catholics, who were Celts either by blood or by traditions.2 This one fact, of which there is not the slightest doubt, reveals to us the striking difference between the way the Normans acted in England and that in which the English acted in Ireland ; and brings out the startling contrast between the conduct of the Saxon after the conquest and that of the Irish native after the English invasion. In England, after the battle of Hastings, there was not a single estate, certainly not one that was desirable in a Norman's eye, which was not transferred to one of the invaders.

Yet the despoiled Saxon, after a few generations, forgot his wrongs and coalesced with his conqueror to form with him a national unity. In Ireland, notwithstanding some cases of encroach ment, the Celt over the greater portion of the country was left in possession of his land. But the Irish native has ever sullenly refused to unite loyally with the Englishman and to share his labours and progress. To him time has brought no amnesty of complaints, no limitation of offences, and no healing on its wings. The reason of the difference in the conduct of the Saxon and the Celtic communities is not far to seek. Long before the Norman conquest the steady pressure of force had consolidated 1 Deposition of Ambrose Bedell, Hickson's Ireland in the Seven teenth Century, i. 218. 2 Sir William Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland.

Colonel Laurence says the Roman Catholics before the rebellion owned ten acres to one possessed by the English. — The Interest of Ireland, pt. ii. c. 2. the Saxon principalities into a kingdom, and the idea of a single sovereign and central power had taken a firm hold on the English mind. But nothing like this had happened in Ireland, where a crowd of chiefs exercised perpetual wars against one another. The tribal or clannish spirit, which is wholly antagonistic to the conception of a State or to union under a strong central authority, survived in the Irish Celt.1 It was this spirit which disabled him in the past from raising himself to the idea of a united nation : it is the same spirit which at the present time disqualifies him from conceiving that of an Empire. So deeply is this notion of a limited separate interest apart from the general interests of the common weal, engrained in the Irish mind, that it has been introduced into our parliamentary system by the representatives of Celtic Ireland.

These representatives, unable to grasp the conception of serving for the whole realm, have cast aside the sacred duty of voting freely and independently according to their conscience. They have bound themselves by a covenant to sit, act, and vote, not as the interests of the Empire demand, but according as a majority of themselves shall dictate.2 The failure of Great Britain to conciliate the Irish Celt is but a temporary one. For it is not for want of the incorpor ating genius that she has not succeeded in this case. The British race has proved, and is daily proving, its capacity for absorbing and assimilating alien and foreign nationalities. The Scotch, Welsh, and Cornish Celts are hardly distinguish- 1 A keen observer remarked the disintegrating effects of the tribal system in Gaul. In Gallia, says Cæsar, non solum in omnibus pagis partibusque, sed pene etiam in singulis domibus factiones sunt. 2 This covenant runs as follows : " I pledge myself that in the event of my election to Parliament I will sit, act, and vote with the Irish parliamentary party ; and if at a meeting of the party, convened upon due notice specially to consider the question, it be determined by a resolution supported by a majority of the entire parliamentary party, that I have not fulfilled the above pledge, I hereby undertake forthwith to resign my seat." able from the rest of our nation.

Danes and Normans have for centuries sunk into the general body of the people. The French Huguenots and the Flemish artisans have long for gotten the land and the tongue of their fathers. The Hindoo, the Mussulman, the Sikh, and the Buddhist are pressing eagerly into the family of the imperial mother. Of the three hundred millions of British subjects, more than a third of the human race, three and a half millions only — Irish Celts — stand apart sullen and discontented. The Irish branch of the great Celtic family alone remains unreconciled. It is the only one among the Celtic communities which has given up its own tongue and adopted that of the invader, together with his manners, customs, arts, and literature, and has at the same time refused to consider itself a child of the same household with the stranger.

Yet there is nothing in the Celtic nature which presents a perennial bar to complete incorporation. Not to speak of the cases of Scotland, of Wales, and of Cornwall, the Celts of Gaul borrowed the language and civilisation of Rome, and became in time as Roman as the Romans themselves. The rebellion of 1641 lasted more than eleven years, for it was not until the 27th of September 1653 that the Parlia ment was enabled to declare it at an end. It would be impossible within a limited space to give even a sketch of the boundless confusion and universal misery of these disastrous years. Europe has never witnessed, even in the Thirty Years' war, such a scene of discord and anarchy as prevailed in this small island during this period. It is wearisome to read, it would be useless, if possible, to relate the innumerable compli cations, transformations, entrances and exits, which took place.1 There were always five parties in the field, sometimes 1 Thus Owen Roe O'Neill was (1) opposed to Munro and the Ormondists ; (2) to the Confederates, while he supported the Nuncio and the papal party ; (3) he joined the parliamentary party and relieved Londonderry, which Coote held for that party ; Owen receiv ing £2000 in money, some ammunition, and 2000 cows ; (4) he CHAP. I six, — the Northern Irish, the Royalists under Ormond, the Confederates of Kilkenny, the parliamentary party, the Nuncio's party, and Munro's Presbyterians.

Though we can but glance at the actors and events of the rebellion, we are only too well acquainted with its fatal results. The historian r informs us that " the desolation of the island was complete. One third of the people had perished or been driven into exile. Famine and plague had finished the work of the sword. The fields lay uncultivated ; and the miserable remnants of the flying population were driven to live on carrion and human corpses. The wolves so increased in numbers, even around the city of Dublin itself, that the counties were taxed for their extermination, and rewards wrere paid of five pounds for the head of a full-grown wolf, and two pounds for that of a cub." 2 When the English Government at the close of the re bellion had obtained possession of the country, and subdued the factions which had so long preyed on the vitals of Ire land, the parliamentary scheme for the settlement of Ireland was carried into effect.

The plan had been drawn up in August 1652, before the complete pacification of the country, and is to be found among the Acts of that year.3 This plan finally agreed to unite with Ormond, and was on his march to join him when he died at Cloughouter, 6th November 1649. The career of Ebher MacMahon, Bishop of Clogher, was as variable as that of Owen O'Neill. 1 Walpole. 2 Ludlow says that at the end of the war " a proclamation was published forbidding the killing of lambs and calves for the year next ensuing, that the country might recover a stock again, which had been so exhausted by the wars that many of the natives who had com mitted all manner of waste upon the possessions of the English were driven to such extremities that they starved with hunger ; and I have been informed by persons deserving credit that the same calamity fell upon them even in the first year of the rebellion through the depreda tions of the Irish ; and that they roasted men and eat them to supply their necessities." — Memoirs, i. 338. 3 " Settling of Ireland," c. 1 3, 1652.

Scobell's Acts and Ordinances, p. 197. will ever be regarded with different eyes by two classes of readers. One class, fixing its attention on the sufferings of individuals and the vicissitudes of families, will deplore the misfortunes of ancient and respectable houses, and exclaim against the scheme and its projectors. The other class will merge their compassion for individuals in their indignation at the misery of the great body of the people brought to destruction by the sins and wickedness of their natural leaders. The general scope of the settlement was to punish the Irish aristocracy and gentry who had misgoverned their country, arrested the growing prosperity of Ireland, and plunged the land into a scene of bloodshed and anarchy compared with which the French Revolution was a peaceful reform.

The object of the settlement was to bring home and limit the punishment to the castle and mansion, while it held out security and protection to the cottage and the hovel. The settlement has been misrepresented, but it remains in black and white, and ought to be examined and consulted by all who wish to have clear and distinct ideas respecting it. The first thing which strikes a reader of it is its leniency.1 It was not a plan for the transplantation of a whole com munity, but for the removal of the leaders of that community, who had neglected the laws upon which societies are based, 1 Here are all the provisions of the Settlement with the exception of two, which relate to estates tail and individuals under articles of surrender : — " 1. 'All husbandmen, ploughmen, labourers, artificers and others of the inferior sort ' are received into protection.

They and all per sons ' having no real estate nor personal estate to the value of ten pounds ' [a sum equivalent to £50 now] are pardoned for any act or thing done during the rebellion. "2. All who before the 10th of November 1642 contrived or promoted the rebellion, murders, and massacres, excepted from pardon. " 3. Jesuits and priests who had contrived or promoted the rebellion, or any of the murders and massacres, excepted. " 4. A hundred and six Anglo-Irish and Irish persons excepted by name. TWO CHAPTERS OF IRISH HISTORY CHAP. 1 8 who had turned their country into a hell upon earth for twelve long years, and who had caused the death of more than half a million of their fellow citizens. The follies and crimes of the Irish aristocracy and gentry were infinitely greater than those which the French aristocracy and gentry expiated a hundred and fifty years later by a universal con fiscation and their own decimation.

The Irish had established a government in opposition to that of England ; they had convened a general assembly of their nation regularly formed into Lords and Commons ; raised armies and appointed generals ; erected courts of justice ; drawn up a new oath of allegiance ; despatched envoys to invite foreign powers, the Pope, Emperor, and King of France, to lend their assist ance; and finally they had hawked the crown of Ireland about Europe, and offered it to any Catholic prince who would take it under his protection. Yet the punishment which overtook the Irish aristocracy was infinitely less severe than that which befell the nobility and gentry of France. " 5. Principals and accessories to the murder of private persons, not officers either in the English or Irish armies, excepted. " 6. Twenty -eight days, after publication of a future notice, allowed to persons in arms to submit, otherwise excepted.

" 7. Persons who had borne high commands, as generals, colonels, governors of forts, marshals of provinces, etc., to be banished during pleasure of Parliament and to forfeit two-thirds of their estates ; lands to the value of the remaining third to be assigned to their wives and children in such parts of Ireland as the Parliament should determine. " 8. Power to parliamentary commissioners or commander-in-chief to declare pardon for their lives to all other persons who had been in arms ; such persons, however, to forfeit two-thirds of their estates, lands to the value of the remaining third to be assigned them in such parts of Ireland as the Parliament should determine. " 9. All Roman Catholic proprietors who had resided in Ireland from the commencement of the rebellion to the 1st of March 1650, and had not manifested their constant good affection to the Common wealth, to forfeit one-third of their lands ; lands to the value of the other two-thirds to be assigned them in such places as the Parliament should think fit.

All others who had not manifested 'their good affection' to forfeit one-fifth." Not a head of the whole Irish body fell upon the scaffold except for private murder,1 and when the convulsion had been brought to a close, a decent competence in land was allowed its members for the support of themselves and their families. After the rebellion the landed property which remained in the hands of the Roman Catholics amounted to about one hundred thousand Irish acres of profitable lands in the other parts of Ireland, and seven hundred thousand acres of the same kind in Connaught and Clare.2 This proportion continued down through the interregnum till the restoration of Charles II in 1660.3 When in 1655, at the end of the rebellion, the English settlers obtained possession of the lands which were distributed to them under the Parliamentary Settlement, the desolation of the country was complete.

Ireland was a wilderness, over which the storms of war, of pestilence, and of famine had raged without intermission for twelve years. But the adventurers and soldiers set to work with a will, aided by the peasants, who remained in their homes as tenants or servants to the new proprietors. Industry, as usual, was followed by its natural results, and Ireland soon began to put on a new face. Even Clarendon, the author of the absurd story that the English Parliament intended the extermination of the Irish, admits that the country flourished to an unexampled extent under this arrangement. Two pictures of the state of Ireland, one of its condition before 1 Sir Phelim O'Neill was not only tried for treason, but for being accessory to six murders. — Hickson's Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, i. 157. 2 State of the Papist and Protestant properties in Ireland in 1641, 1653, and 1662.

In the Thorpe collection. 3 Sir William Petty estimated the surface of Ireland in this way — 10,500,000 Irish acres = 16,800,000 English acres, of which 3,000,000 were bogs, unprofitable land, etc., leaving 7,500,000 = 12,000,000 Eng lish measurement of good land. Ireland actually contains 20,815,460 English acres ; so that Petty underestimated the contents of the country by a little more than four millions of English acres. TWO CHAPTERS OF IRISH HISTORY CHAP. I the Parliamentary Settlement, and the other subsequent to it, will give us an idea of the misery to which the Irish aristocracy and the priesthood had reduced the island, and of the prosperity which sprang up with the order aud industry introduced by the settlers. Colonel Richard Laurence, a par liamentary officer, and afterwards a member of the Council of Trade in the reign of Charles II, is the author of the first : — "About the years 1652 and 1653 the plague and famine had swept away whole countries, that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man, beast, or bird, they being either all dead or had quit those desolate places, that our soldiers would tell stories of the place where they saw a smoke, it was so rare to see either smoke by day or fire or candle by night ; and when we did meet with two or three poor cabins, none but very aged men with women and children, and those with the prophet might have complained, We have become as a bottle in the smoke, our skin is as black as an oven because of the terrible famine.

I have seen those miserable creatures plucking stinking carrion out of a ditch black and rotten, and have been credibly informed they have digged corps out of the grave to eat. But the most tragical story I ever heard was from an officer commanding a party of horse hunting for tories in a dark night, [who] discovered a light which they supposed to be a fire, which the tories usually made in those waste countries to dress their provisions and warm themselves ; but drawing near they found it a ruined cabin, and besetting it round some did alight and peep in at the window, where they saw a great fire of wood and a company of miserable old women and children sitting round it, and betwixt them and the fire a dead corpse lay broiling, which as the fire roasted they cut off collops and eat."1 Clarendon presents us with the subsequent picture : — " And which is more wonderful, all this [the Parliamentary Settlement] was done and settled within little more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many build ings raised for beauty as well as use, orderly and regular planta tions of trees, and raising fences and enclosures throughout the kingdom, purchases made by one from the other at very valuable 1 The Interest of Ireland in its Trade and Wealth, ii. 86.

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT OF JAMES II SEC. I 11 rates, and jointures made upon marriages, and all other con veyances and settlements executed as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles."1 At the commencement of the reign of Charles II in 1660 the three provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster were, with the exception of the remnant which had been left to the Roman Catholics who had shown a constant good affection to the commonwealth, in the possession of the adventurers and soldiers. The contents of these provinces amounted to sixteen millions of English acres. The restoration upset com pletely the settlement which had been effected by the Parlia ment. Whatever legal title the adventurers might have to their lands, inasmuch as their claims rested on Acts2 of Parliament which had been assented to by Charles I before the war, the soldiers knew that the courts of justice would not recognise their rights which were based on parliamentary ordinances only.

But the adventurers and soldiers were well aware that their cause was one and the same. They there fore united, and after careful consideration they politicly determined to submit their interests to the king. Charles issued his declaration for the settlement of Ireland and for the satisfaction of the several interests on the 30th of November 1660. The Act of Settlement professed to be founded on this declaration, and to have for its object the execution and carrying out of the same. For this purpose, by one sweeping clause, it vested in the king three-fourths of the whole land of Ireland. There can be little doubt that Charles was unfavourably disposed to the Cromwellian occu pants, the large majority of whom were nonconformists, and who were regarded by him as Republicans. But the king was prudent enough to see that he could not act against 1 Works of Lord Clarendon, 2 vol. edition, ii. 1028. 2 17 Chas. I, cc. 34, 35, 36, 37.

TWO CHAPTERS OF IRISH HISTORY CHAP. I the wishes of the English Parliament, which would not con sent to hand back Ireland to the authors of its late evils. The Act of Settlement did not give satisfaction, and its comple ment, the Act of Explanation, was passed in 1655. This latter Act was essentially a compromise between the several contending parties, and ought to have been regarded as final by them all.1 For to render such an arrangement possible, the adventurers and soldiers, at the request of the forfeited Roman Catholic proprietors, voluntarily gave up a third of their lands. The Act was understood by the Protestant owners to be a final settlement. But the Irish claimants never intended to abide by a compromise which they them selves had proposed. They accepted what the Act gave them, and waited for an opportunity of recovering all.

An occasion arrived which to their blind greed appeared to be a propitious one. They grasped at all, and in the attempt they effected the ruin of their country and of themselves. The result of these two Acts was, as Sir William Petty informs us, that the Roman Catholics obtained possession of about a third of the profitable land of Ireland, viz. 2,280,000 Irish acres or 3,648,000 English acres. If we remember that coarse land was excluded from this computation, and that Petty underestimated the superficial contents of Ireland by four millions of English acres, the Roman Catholic proprietors must have had in their hands at the accession of James II between five and six millions of English acres. The prosperity which set in with the parliamentary or 1 " The Roman Catholics at last, to end all disputes, proposed that if for the satisfaction of their interests the adventurers and soldiers would part with one-third of the lands respectively enjoyed by them on 7th May 1659 in consideration of their adventures and service, they were ready to agree to it.

This proposal was in fine accepted. . . . Thus was the settlement of Ireland at last effected by the common consent of the agents of all the several interests concerned." — Carte's Ormond, ii. 303. See also the report of the English Attorney- General, Sir Heneage Finch, dated 1st February 1671. — Carte, Append. THE IRISH PARLIAMENT OF JAMES II SEC. I 13 Cromwellian Settlement continued during the whole reign of Charles II. We have several glowing accounts of the con dition of Ireland during this reign, and at the accession of James, drawn by contemporaries and eye-witnesses. But three only shall be referred to here, those of Chief- Justice Keating, Archbishop King, and a gentleman wdio took refuge in England from the troubles of 1688. That of the Chief-Justice I shall quote hereafter, when describing the subsequent desolation.

The agreement between all these descriptions, though by different hands, is very striking. Archbishop King tells us that at King James's " coming to the crown, Ireland was in a most flourishing condition. Lands were everywhere improved, and rents advanced to near double what they had been a few years before. The kingdom abounded with money ; trade flourished, even to the envy of our neighbours; cities, especially Dublin, increased exceedingly ; gentlemen's seats were built or building every where ; and parks, enclosures, and other ornaments were carefully promoted, insomuch that many places of the kingdom equalled the improvements of England. . . . And the king's revenue increased proportionably to the kingdom's advance in wealth, and was every day growing. It amounted to more than three hundred thousand pounds per annum — a sum sufficient to defray all the expenses of the crown, and to return yearly a considerable sum into England, to which this nation had formerly been a constant expense."

The account1 given by the refugee is equally positive. " By the favour of heaven upon the extraordinary fertility of the land, Ireland was under very auspicious circumstances. The Church flourished, trade increased, the cities and towns were every year enlarged with new additions, the country enriched and beautified with houses and plantations ; the farms were loaden with stock, and ready and quick markets 1 Apology for tlie Protestants of Ireland, 1689. there were to vent them. The laws had a free and uninterrupted course, and a standing army was so far from being a terror that they were the comfort and security of the people. In a word, peace, wealth, and plenty were become universal and epidemical, and all things conspired to a generous emula tion with our mother and neighbour, England."