Owen Roe O'Neill

Preface

Y some strange fate Owen Roe

O'Neill, the most illustrious

man of action that Ireland

has produced, still remains

almost unknown to his

countrymen and to the

world. His name indeed has been brought home

to the Irish people by the genius of Davis, but no

one has endeavoured to give to this nominis umbra

substance and form. The history of this great

man is indeed to be found only in the crude

materials of contemporary documents, for writers

of his own and later times, while mentioning his

name with admiration and praise, have left the

records of his life almost untouched. Clarendon

nn ^ vi

PREFACE.

who had every reason for political hostility, still bears testimony to the purity of his character and his unblemished honour. But no historian has yet recounted his singular military achievements, nor attempted to show how his great soldiership was combined with clearness and breadth of political vision, deep intuition of men, and genius for conciliation of liberty and law. It is unfit that this heroic memory should perish from the mind of Ireland.

The purpose of this sketch is to show how the figure of O'Neill stands out against the darkness and disaster of his age. In doing this within a limited space it was unavoidable that many conditions and movements of the time should be but lightly touched upon ; and it has been impossible, for instance, to trace the motives which guided the crooked conduct of the men of the Pale or the vacillations of ecclesiastical policy. This short volume must, therefore, be looked upon as a mere introduction to a more full study of these still obscure times.

For the present my only intention has been to bring back to Irishmen the remembrance of a great man, who, by the completeness of his endowment in intellect and virtue, by his commanding mind, character, and will, is lifted into the highest rank of heroes.

J. F. Taylor.

Contents

CHAP.

I. A CENTURY OF SUBJECTION

II. THE LEADER AT HOME ...

II

Captains and colonels rapidly procured commissions for raising regiments, and at stated times the Irish harbours were filled with ships bearing brave men away for ever from their native land. The drain grew greater as confiscations increased ; and although rulers came and went, policy glided on in satisfactory continuity, names only changing as Mountjoy, Chichester, St. John, and Falkland succeeded one another.

In Ulster the rich valleys were occupied by the Scotch planters, and the houseless and landless clansmen, huddled on the mountain tops in their poor, rude, wicker cots called "creaghts," or "keraghts," followed the herds of cattle which were now their sole wealth. These wandering outcasts sent many soldiers to the wars ; but they still remained at home in numbers uncomfortably large for the planters. Mysterious mid-night drilling went on. Clouds of priests and friars passed to and fro between Ireland and the Continent. Rumours of Tyrone's return were heard everywhere. " He would come ; he was coming ; he had come." To those who asked if a rising were lawful in the eye of the Church, priests dexterously distinguished between rebellion and a war of restoration, " Tyrone might have become a rebel," they said \ " but O'Neill cannot.'' The saying stamps the character of the new rising. It was to be no revolt against the ancient over-

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lordship of the English king. It was a rising for the old tribal kingdom of the clan against the new claims of sovereignty, the assertion of which for a hundred years had brought such desolation on the whole land.

But there were others who took wider views. Some among the leaders of the people thought the time had come for a national movement for liberty. Old barriers were broken down, and the tie of common creed began to unite races and tribes long torn asunder by hatred, jealousy, and prejudice. The " Ancient Irish " of Ulster, Connaught and Wicklow, were for once united in interest with their old hereditary enemies, the English of the Pale. Priests and bishops encouraged this new spirit and fanned the flame of national consciousness and unity. Outlaws themselves, they came from abroad in rude crazy barks, on dark nights when seas were breaking and winds were in uproar, so that they might escape the foeman and the spy. Then lurking in caves and mountain fastnesses, they gathered their flocks around them and told them what popes and emperors were doing, and how in God's good time Erin should again be free. Captains and colonels came too, rousing the men at home to be ready when the men abroad should return. England, it was thought, should be swept into the vortex of European troubles and then the blow for Irish liberty should be struck. But

A CBNTITRY OP SUBJECTION. 1 3

England kept aloof from European complications, and Hugh, the great earl, went down to his grave in 1616 without having once caught one gleam of hope during his nine weary years of exile. With his death all purpose seemed to die out in Ireland. The stillness of the tomb settled over the whole land, and English statesmen boasted that the Irish sphinx had yielded up her secret, and that resolute and salutary restraint soon overcame all unruliness in the strange wayward island. For twenty-five years that hymn of victory went up. The ashes of assassinated Ireland at last reposed in their final resting place ; and England's great mission in the world should no longer be impeded by the importunate outlaw at her door.

What healing measures came during these twenty five years? What thought was taken of Ireland What policy was adopted ? New confiscations took place in Wicklow and in Connaught, and heavier blows than ever fell upon unhappy Ulster ; while the machinery of Church and State worked out the degradation of the people, steeping them in ignorance, poverty, and terror. Forgery and fraud were as efficacious as ever; and the highest in the land stooped, as in the attempted spoliation of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, to subornation of perjury and to perjury itself. One of the most skilful and persevering of these

OWEN ROB o'nBILL.

legal swindlers was the insatiable Boyle, queerly called "The Great Earl of Cork." With gospel precepts on his lips this plunderer waded to wealth through the blood of his victims, and therewithal he much increased his store and piously rejoiced in the abundance which the Lord had given unto him. His counsels were ever at the disposal of active confiscators, and he now and then rebuked the " remissness " of the officials in DubUn for not putting such practices " into more frequent operation. To men like him, Ireland's seeming death-sleep of twenty-five years was a time of ease and entertainment. The dark background of homeless wanderers and widows and orphans weeping, churches rifled and schools destroyed, only threw into more brilliant relief the mansions, the wealth and the retinue of every successful criminal grown great upon the wages of his crimes. The trembling people looked on in terror, and only prayed that worse might not come, for worse was threatened.

In 1632 Spenser's View of the State of Ireland y^zls published, and its publication struck terror into the hearts of the defenceless Irish. The book had been written forty years earlier ; but its maxims were quite in tune with the time of its issue to the world. The "gentle" poet had a policy of clear and logical ;Simplicity ; the clearing out and extermination of the

A CENTURY OF SUBJECTION.

native Irish. In the temper of 1632 such a book was as it were a message from hell, working on the passions of evil men. Another book, written by a Mr. Blennerhassett, was published about the same time. The writer was an English settler, and he had taken much thought about Ulster and the troubles there. He advised a system of kerne-hunting as the best remedy. Spirited English sportsmen would enjoy the novelty, and soon the " wolfe and the wood-keme " would be cut down by the spears of hardy huntsmen. The kerne" were "poor wandering creatures in creaghts," he explained, and he was confident that they could readily be extirpated.

Spenser and Blennerhassett, the two evangelists of robbery and murder, found ready disciples. In that very year new clearances took place in Ulster. The new owners had found that Irish tenants were less troublesome than Scotch or English. They paid more rent, and they were far less sturdy in the assertion of rights. Gradually a great part of the confiscated lands went back into their possession. Intermarriages between the planters and the natives became frequent and notable ; and it looked as if the old weird attractiveness of the Celt was once again to charm the enemy into a friend and lover. This serious peril was properly appreciated by an ever-watchful government. New laws breathing the i6

OWEN ROB o'nEILL.

spirit of the Statute of Kilkenny were passed, and all tenancies to Irishmen in the planted lands were declared void in 1632. Ulster was once more crowded with poor "wandering creatures in the creaghts," and the cruel policy lit the old fire in the most temperate and cautious breasts. Wise men dreaded a return to the methods of the Desmond war with its rapine, massacre, and devastation. Waterford, the eye of Ireland, was deeply stirred by the closing up of its schools, which had by salutary connivance been allowed to go on in a simple and obscure way, doing most excellent work in the mental training of the south, till Ulster Puritans again called out for the forcible closing of such schools, "more like universities than schools," they complained, where Papists were still surreptitiously taught. Lured by some slight concessions the Catholics of the Pale had hoped to found a university in Dublin which would relieve them from the perils of seeking education abroad ; for they had tried in vain to bring about an agreement with Oxford or Trinity College, to which many Catholics had resorted until the gates were closed in their faces. In Eack-lane the beginnings of a home of learning were quietly formed ; but the poor embryonic university was trampled under foot, its teachers were imprisoned, and its rooms and teaching apparatus were handed over to Trinity College. These were the blessed fruits

A CENTURY OP SUBJECTION.

of that long peace, the unsettling of which by " Papist rebels," has moved the indignation of supercilious critics. Threats of worse things to come drove the outcast Cathohcs into agues of terror, and they waited like poor dumb animals for the scourge and the goad. But men pass through terror unto courage. The quarry at bay forgets fear, and fights for dear life. Its wrath is the black tragedy of history.

CHAPTER 11.

THE LEADER AT HOME.

ONSTITUTIONAL

methods of seeking relief from disabilities began to be adopted in Ireland soon after the accession of the Stuarts. The opening years of James's reign were occupied with the task of settling and solidifying the structure of government for the whole island. Sheriffs were appointed by the viceroys ; judges went circuit ; and the new shireland of Ulster and Connaught was reduced to the political condition of the Pale. The deep line of division between the Pale itself and the rest of Ireland showed signs of entirely fading away, and from the total subjugation of the island there arose the consciousness of common Nationality. New forces too began to make themselves felt.

THE LEADER AT HOME.

Commerce with its wealth and enterprise gave life and energy to the cities of the South, three of which — Waterford, Cork, and Kilkenny — had at the accession of James closed their gates against the Royal heralds, refusing recognition of the new king until due guarantees of freedom should first be given, and although Lord Mountjoy had forced them into submission, these cities were still the homes and centres of National aspiration. The " New English," as the Tudor colonists were called, had in some cases thrown in their lot with the Ancient Irish ; " but the time was too short since their coming to blot out the distinguishing features of creed and race by which they were marked off from the natives and the amalgamated Norman-Irish. The new plantation in Ulster, largely Scotch, introduced another distinct element more separated by feeling and character from the old Irish than any of the previous settlers had been. " The Planters " were Puritans of the Geneva school, whose hatred of Popery was intense, earnest and consuming, and who, camped as it were on the confiscated lands, trusted only to their own weapons and their own bravery to hold at bay the houseless outcasts on the hills. Instead of three peoples in Ireland, as in Henry's time, there were at the outset of James's reign no less than five.

But the tie of common religious beUef began to

OWEN ROE o'nEILL.

draw races and classes together, and the sentiment of faith overleaped all ethnic and geographical boundaries. The blending of races followed ; and in three provinces Celt, Norman, Saxon, and Dane began to be merged in the common race of Irishmen. In these three provinces there was a strong desire for peace and quiet. Old hatreds had died out, and in very weariness everyone sighed for rest. Ulster was, and continued to be, the storm centre, and in the early days of James's reign an insurrectionary movement would probably have been confined to the newly planted province with possibly some commotion here and there, but with nothing like a combined national uprising. The other provinces trusted to the justice of their demands, and hoped that the chains rivetted by the Tudors would be at once removed by the friendUer dynasty which had come to the throne. They approached the king with humble and respectful petitions, but they found that their prayers were answered by insulting allusions to plots and conspiracies in England with which the Irish Catholics had no more to do than the Waldenses. The bishops of the State Churcli in Ireland who at James's accession showed the moderation born of pusillanimity and fear, now once more raised their " frowning foreheads " and began a new era of persecution. They had the power, and they exercised it ruthlessly, of issuing writs

THE LEADER AT HOME.

of excommunication which placed the victims outside the full protection of the law, and they were empowered by " writs of assistance " to call in the arm of the State to execute ecclesiastical decrees. These persecutions welded the three Southern provinces into one, and a nation in embryo was visible to keen contemporary observers. But Ulster was still raw and red after the wounds of the wars and the deeper wounds of the plantation.

In such a condition of things the first Parliament for all Ireland was called in 1613. Had this been a properly-constituted parliament the grievances of the times would have been gradually redressed, notwithstanding the opposition of the State bishops who held sway in the House of Lords, or the stringent hold on Parliamentary conduct secured to the Crown by Poynings' Law. But this first Parliament of all Ireland was a mere mockery. The Catholic Irish by any known test of due representation were entitled to at least two-thirds of the seats. Sir John Davies, however, packed the House with ^'clerks, captains, and serving men,'' and so secured his own election to the Speakership over his honourable rival, Sir John Everard. Men turned away in despair from Parliament soon after, and left to the irresponsible junto of State officials in Dublin the unhampered management of affairs. And so long as England

OWEN HOB O'NEILL.

kept clear of the whirl of European politics these unbridled rulers lorded it over Ireland. But when by Buckingham's folly England and Spain were thrown into hostility in the last year of James's reign Ireland became an object of great solicitude to the Government of England, and it was thought necessary to put on foot a standing army for its protection or retention. For this purpose money was needed, and although even in England the salutary principle that " redress should precede supply " was still inoperative it must always happen that redress is more easily obtained from a king asking for assistance than from one who needs no such help. Many proposals were made, but James's death put an end to the negotiations. The difficulty was only postponed, however, and although Charles was much more thrifty than his father, the necessities of State compelled him to increase the Irish army fourfold, so that with all his economy the cost of the Irish administration advanced rapidly, and the ordinary revenue was inadequate to meet the State demands. The system of taxation in the English Pale was the system applied to all Ireland. It was a single tax, and that was a tax on land ; so much per ploughland was assessed as it had been in England up to the time of Edward III. Such a tax was too meagre and too slow to meet the wants of the Crown ; and in order to raise the required sum a voluntary

THE LEADER AT HOME.

assessment by Parliament could alone be relied on to satisfy the pressing demands upon the Treasury.

In 1628, therefore, a great opportunity arose once more for a permanent settlement of Ireland. Lord Falkland was Viceroy, and he was overflowing with professions of sympathy and friendship to the Catholics, who on their part were ebullient with loyalty, and only too ready and eager to respond with assessments and contributions to any appeal from the Crown. In such a temper both sides seemed to approach the consideration of public affairs ; and for the first time it looked as if a great career were open to an able and instructed Irish constitutional leader. Such a leader was soon seen and recognised.

Roger Moore, or Rory O'Moore, of Ballyna in the County Kildare, was a scion of the princely house of Leix Offaly which had been overturned in the reign of Philip and Mary, whose names in Philipstown and Maryboro' commemorate the confiscation. In all accounts of the time we see him as a deep and thoughtful man of singular fascination and charm, to which a stately form and handsome face naturally contributed. He was a " travelled " man ; had seen cities and men, courts and camps, senates and universities. A convinced Catholic himself, he was tolerant in a time of intolerance, and looked for National advancement, not in the lifting up of one ascendancy on the ruins of

OWEN ROB O'nEILL.

another, but in the purging of the State and statute book from all partiality and injustice. Guided by him and his father-in-law, Irish landowners and merchants entrusted agents in Parliament to make terms on their behalf, and he, with other Irish gentlemen of all creeds, fixed the basis of settlement early in 1628. In that session of 1628 arrangements were come to which, had they been faithfully observed by the Government, would have put Ireland in the wake of civilised and ordered life and not driven her back to the elemental weapons of nature. The Irish claims for redress were embodied in a Hst of "Graces" which his Majesty, *'out of his own exuberant mercy," was to grant as a token of royal recognition of his subjects loyalty. The main articles were : —

(i.) The confirmation of titles to estates, notwithstanding mere formal flaws ;

(2.) Restriction of Monopolies ; and Trade with England to be free ;

(3.) Billeting of soldiers to be restrained, and no one to be punished by martial law in time of peace ;

(4.) The unconstitutional Court of Castle Chamber not to hear private suits nor to tamper with witnesses ;

(5.) That surplice fees, tithes, and other exactions by the Protestant clergy be regulated by law and that " writs of assistance " be discontinued ; and that Church lands should be liable to public burdens ;

(6.) That wholesale reprieves of convicted criminals be prohibited, and the royal prerogative be entrusted to impartial ministers only ;

(7.) That the exorbitant fees of sheriffs, officers of courts, and clerks of markets, be moderated ; and

(8.) That the grievous oppressions of his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects be mercifully considered.

It would have been well if the Irish Parliament had declined to vote supplies to his Majesty until these most pressing demands had been first passed into law. But there were three several parties into which the constitutional reformers were divided, the Leinster nobles, the Irish of the other provinces, and the Puritans of Ulster. To the moderate " loyalists " of Leinster it seemed unnatural that doubt or misgiving should be cast upon his Majesty^s gracious promises, and the representatives of the other provinces naturally hesitated before they put in peril what might have become a great measure of public redress. Lord Falkland solemnly promised full satisfaction of all the demands made by the agents ; and relying on that promise the parliament on the istday of April, 1628, voted three annual subsidies to his Majesty's use. Parliament was thereupon no longer necessary ; nor would it be until the need of a further subsidy should arise. The Houses were accordingly dissolved, not one of the Graces having been carried into effect, and the Parlia-

AWKN BOB o'nEHIu ment had to content itself with a vague promise that the administration should be carried on in the spirit of the popular demands.

The Catholics had not long to wait before they saw the full value of these promises. Proclamations were issued on April ist, 1629, against the exercise of any rite, ceremony, or observance of Catholic worship, on the alleged plea that, encouraged by the hopes of toleration the emboldened Papists had dared to quit their hiding places, and their priests had dared openly to celebrate Mass. When on the arrest of a priest in Dublin a great tumult took place, and an angry multitude rescued the prisoner, a cry went up from all sides that it was high time to apply strong measures to the unruly rabble, and their " Mass-Priests." All schools and Mass-houses " were then closed, and no longer, even under decent and modest cover," could Catholics acquire the rudiments of learning, or kneel in common worship before even the rudest of altars. But the Graces had not altogether fallen to the ground. The Puritans of Ulster had been relieved of many burdensome obligations by the intervention of viceregal influence, and they rewarded their Catholic allies by being the loudest in clamouring for more chains and lashes for the insolent Papists. But their time of trouble was near at hand, and they had soon again to turn to their despised fellow-countrymen for assistance

THE LEADER AT HOME.

and sympathy. It was no longer with petty and contemptible tyrants that Ireland had to deal ; for all the scattered rays of despotism were brought to a focus, and the baleful star of Strafford rose in malignant majesty and overcast the whole land.

Thomas Wentworth, " the great apostate," was the arch-enemy of Puritanism, which he looked upon as the religious counterpart of what he called "Tom Loodle's commonwealth," or government by the multitude; and when, as Earl of Strafford, he came to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in 1633, Puritans and Catholics alike were brought under a more grinding tyranny than ever. His rule, however, was not without beneficent reforms. He established order within and without; remodelled the army, and regulated its relations to the people ; guarded the coasts from the Barbary pirates ; and abated the extortionate demands of State officials who had been long grinding the faces of the poor. He boasted that what he promised he always fulfilled, and in a sense he did fulfil the promise he made on his entry into Dublin to govern in the spirit of the Graces ; for when the servile and manipulated parliament of 1634-5 voted supplies for an indefinite time and so made Strafford absolute, he so far abated the evils complained of that he put an end to all irresponsible tyranny but his own. During his five years of unhindered despotism Strafford was harsh and over*

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bearing ; but there are no bitter memories of his rule in Ireland. He was the most impartial of tyrants, and his lust of power impelled him rather to strike down great criminals like Boyle of Cork, and Loftus of Ely, than the weak and defenceless victims on whom these men had trampled. Smitten by the ambition of becoming a great minister rivaling if not surpassing Richelieu, all constitutional checks and hindrances were naught to him; and the feeling of power was strongest upon him when sitting in Castle Chamber, he dispensed capricious justice, or when he gathered round him the officers of the new Irish army which to awe possible rivals he had raised and organised during the last years of his Viceroyalty. With undisputed power and with a mighty army he hoped to make the throne of Charles as absolute as that of Louis. His ecclesiastical policy was that of Laud, and he brought the State Church in Ireland into almost complete conformity with that of England, and thu^ necessarily put himself into conflict with the Puritans. In fact Strafford's administration so pressed on Catholics and Puritans alike that the common sufferings of both combined them in political and parliamentary alliance once more. In Ireland constitutional activity was imposbible during the five years of absolutism ; but a great era of true parliamentary development was soon to open, and the Irish Parliament too

THE LEADER AT HOME.

was about to grow into the full consciousness of its dignity and trust.

Charles's throne was threatened in 1639. Whether fomented by Richelieu or stirred by the sense of wrong, the discontented Scots had bound themselves into a Solemn League sworn to cure the wrongs of Scotland; and they made for themselves a provisional government, which they promised to obey until their grievances were redressed. The news of this great event flew over Ireland, stirring varied emotions and hopes. The Scots in Ulster, loudly summoned by their brethren, made no sign and showed no willingness to take part in the designs of their countrymen at home. But they were wild with exultation. Strafford on his part hurried up the Irish army, nine thousand strong, to Carrickfergus, despatched cruisers to Cantire, and made ready for a descent on western Scotland. Strafford's army was for its numbers one of the finest in Europe. It was composed of young active men of splendid physique, who had been drilled by old seasoned veterans, and were now themselves panting for battle. They were mostly Catholics too, and had been drawn largely from the ranks of the evicted clansmen of Ulster. Stationed at Carrickfergus, they cut off all communication between the Covenanters on both sides of the channel, and their presence was resented keenly by the Ulster Puritans. In calling the troops

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to the north Strafford made ready for a bold and resolute policy. With the Irish army he meant to take Argyle and the Covenanters in the flank, while the McDonnells of Ireland were to stir their kinsmen in the Highlands to a great uprising in the king's favour. Had Charles taken this bold course, or had he taken the equally bold and courageous course of conceding frankly what his Scotch subjects demanded, the tide of events might have rolled in his favour; but by untruthfulness and dissimulation he cast away the opportunity for war without having secured the prospects of peace. England was tired and weary of Stuart rule, and as the new democratic movement in Church and State swelled more and more in volume, the Scotch Covenanters found strong and determined allies among the leaders of the English democracy. Charles in his alarm endeavoured by shifts and artifices to evade the points at issue between himself and his Scotch subjects. But he was dealing with keensighted men who knew him well and who were not deceived by his blandishments and hollow promises ; and when he was driven to arms by the resolute stand made by the Covenanters under Henderson's leadership, the king had no choice but to summon parliament.

In Ireland, too, after five years' interval, a new parliament was summoned. The Irish House of Commons presented during the years 1640 and 1641

THE LEADER AT HOME.

a Stubborn front to the Executive, claiming for itself the direction of most pubHc departments, the sole control over taxation and expenditure, and the regulation of trade ; it reproved officials, and, flying higher, it brought the Lord Chancellor and other great ministers to the bar of the House of Lords under the revived process of impeachment. Roger O'Moore and Captain Audley Mervin were the two leaders of the Catholic and Puritan parties respectively, and all hopes of separating them were soon abandoned, as they were found in close and firm alliance against the party of the Castle. Agents from the Irish Parliament were despatched to London to present to the king and to the English House of Commons a Great Remonstrance, in which Strafford's high-handed acts of tyranny were enumerated and particularised. This remonstrance was almost certainly the work of Roger O' Moore, and it was admirably calculated to draw Catholic and Puritan together. The evils complained of were general evils touching all alike, so that a mixed committee composed of Catholics and Puritans adopted it, and won a ready passage for it in the House of Commons. North and South seemed now united in ParHamentary opposition, and the work of O'Moore seemed at last to promise a rich harvest. An impartial hearing by king and Parliament in London would have brought his labours to full fruition.