Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/83

1617.] collecting in the Spanish ports, and to conduct them to Ireland. The news of their real resort abated his fears. He demanded their delivery from France, and then from the Netherlands, whither they betook themselves, describing them as traitors, and men of mean birth, who had been merely ennobled for purposes of state, he accused them of an intention to excite a rebellion, and returning to Ireland with foreign confederates, to put to death all Irishmen of English descent. The court of Brussels declined to give up men exiled only on account of their religion, and admitted them into the Spanish army of Brabant. Tyrone himself proceeded to Rome, where the king of Spain allowed him a pension of six hundred crowns per month, and the pope one hundred.

Active search was made in Ireland for the accomplices of the fugitives; many were arrested in Ulster; some were sent over for trial to England. Lord Delvin, with the eldest son of Tyrone, and Sir Christopher St. Lawrence, were secured and lodged in Dublin Castle. Delvin was tried and condemned as a traitor, but he escaped on the morning fixed for his execution; and no trace of him could be found till he suddenly appeared at the English court, and throwing himself on his knees before the king, presented such a list of real wrongs inflicted on himself and his father, as compelled James to pardon him, and to make him amends by creating him earl of Westmeath; a clemency, as it proved, well bestowed, and which might have taught the king a more successful way to secure obedience and loyalty from his subjects, than those which he unhappily pursued.

Another Irish chief, O'Dogherty of Innishowen, having received a mortal insult from Paulet, the governor of Derry, suprised him at table, and by the aid of his followers succeeded in killing him and five others. The avengers succeeded in capturing alive part, the governor of the fortress of Culmore, and leading him to the gates of the castle, called on the governor's wife to surrender the place, or see her husband murdered on the spot. Conjugal affection prevailed, and O'Dogherty found himself in possession of the stronghold. Possessed by this means of arms and ammunition, O'Dogherty marched with a strong force to Derry, and received the submission of the castle and town. The hopes of the exiles were wonderfully raised by so unexpected an event. They despatched messengers instructing O'Dogherty to hold the place, if possible, till their arrival with foreign aid; but after two unsuccessful attacks, the place was evacuated on the approach of Wingfield, the marshal of the camp, and O'Dogherty fled to the mountains. There, in the month of June, 1608, he was accidentally discovered and shot.

The rebellion of these great chiefs, by throwing into the hands of the crown an immense territory, suggested to James the planting of a new English colony. Undeterred by the failure of Elizabeth's plantation of Ulster, he proceeded to divide the confiscated region, which included nearly the whole of the northern counties of Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Tyrconnel, amounting to two millions of acres, into four great divisions. Two of these were again divided into lots of one thousand acres each, a third into lots of fifteen hundred acres, and the fourth into lots of two thousand acres. The two thousand acre lots were appropriated to a class of men called "undertakers and servitors," adventurers of capital from England and Scotland, with the civil and military officers of the crown. The lesser lots went amongst these and the natives of the province; but the natives were only to receive their lots in the plains and open country, not in the hills and fastnesses, where they might become formidable to government. The possessors were bound to pay a mark a year for every sixty acres, and the lesser ones besides to take the oath of supremacy, and engage to admit no recusant as tenant.

By these means some hundred thousand acres were planted; but whole districts in the hills were never divided at all, whilst many of the undertakers managed to get immensely more land than they had any right to. It was at this time that the scheme of creating baronets was proposed to James by Sir Anthony Shirley, as a means of raising money for the support of the army in Ulster. James caught eagerly at the idea, coined upwards of one hunched thousand pounds out of it, but neither sent any of the money to Ireland, nor gave a handsome gratuity to Shirley for the suggestion, as he promised.

After these measures, James ventured to call a parliament in Ireland, in 1613, the first for seven-and-twenty years. He wanted money, and he wanted also to enact new laws. But the catholics were naturally apprehensive of these intended laws, for the whole of James's policy went to crush their religion out of the majority of the inhabitants, and impose on them his own model church. So little had this shallow Solomon profited by the lessons of history, that he expected to convert a whole nation by the sword and confiscation. But Ireland had by all former English monarchs down to Elizabeth, been taught to regard the pope as the lord paramount of the island; it was a doctrine that secured the obedience of the people under all their oppressions. But since Elizabeth had separated from the catholic church, and stood excommunicated by the pontiff, this maxim, so convenient before, was become extremely inconvenient. To the political causes of discontent was now added the far more irritating one of violated religious faith, and has continued so till our time.

Under these circumstances the lord-deputy summoned the parliament, and soon found that though he had a majority of more than twenty protestants, the spirit of the catholics was such that he did not dare to proceed. Since the former parliament no less than seventeen new counties and forty new boroughs had been created, and these had been filled by men devoted to the measures of the crown; the boroughs, the catholics complained, had been put into the hands of attorneys' clerks and servants, and they expected nothing on the projected new plantations but evil affected persons, ready to insult and injure the old inhabitants. They objected to many of the returns; they complained that obsolete statutes had been revived for the purposes of oppression and spoliation; that all the catholics of noble birth were excluded from offices and posts of honour; that they were expelled from the magistracy; forbidden to educate their children abroad; that catholic barristers were not permitted to practise; catholic citizens excluded from all influence in the corporations; and the whole community