Ireland under the Stuarts and During the Interregnum (Vol.1-3). Bagwell Richard

of Tyrconnel, 1608.

      Death of Tyrone, 1616.

Tyrone and Tyrconnel deserted Ireland in September 1607, and their return was for a long time hoped and feared. Chichester thought they might return and make trouble with very little foreign help. Tyrone himself was not quite so sanguine, but he thought he could drive all the English out of Ireland with 12,000 Spanish troops. But Philip III. remembered Kinsale too well, and even Paul V. sometimes tired of the expense of supporting the exiles, and was fain to believe, much to Parsons’ disgust, that James no longer persecuted the Catholics. Tyrconnel and others died within a year of leaving Ireland. It was said that they were poisoned, but the real cause of death was doubtless Roman fever contracted during a riotous excursion to Ostia in the hot season. The settlement of Ulster was for a time delayed by rumours of Tyrone’s return, but gradually they ceased to frighten tolerably well-informed people. A mysterious Italian proposed to poison the chief of the Irish exiles, and Wotton, though he gave him no encouragement, expressed no indignation, merely saying that his King was less given to such practices than other monarchs. Late in 1613 a Franciscan friar found his account in telling the Ulster Irish that Tyrconnel was about to return with 18,000 men from the King of Spain, and that there was a prophecy in a book at Rome that the English should rule Ireland for only two years more. Similar rumours about Tyrone were circulated in the summer of 1615, and he sometimes used to brag himself of what he would do. Except for a short visit to Naples he never left the papal territory; neither France, Spain, nor Flanders would receive him, and Cosmo II. of Florence, who wished to stand well with England, would not even allow him to come as far as Monte Pulciano. He died on July 20, 1616, and was buried near Tyrconnel in San Pietro in Montorio, but it is doubtful whether their bones still lie there.[136]

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [127] St. John to Winwood, October 23, 1614; Chichester to the King, November 25. Ormonde died on November 22 at Carrick-on-Suir. Lady Desmond died October 10, 1628, and her husband eighteen days later; he was drowned between Dublin and Holyhead. Their daughter Elizabeth, afterwards Duchess of Ormonde and Lady Dingwall in her own right, was born in 1615.

[128] Introduction to Carte’s Ormonde; Lodge’s Peerage of Ireland (Archdall), art. Mountgarret; Morrin’s Calendar of Patent Rolls, Car. I. p. 12 &c.; Fourteenth Report of Historical MSS. Commission, Appx. vii. p. 6; several notices in the last vol. of the Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, Jac. I.

[129] James’s first and chief grant was of date May 28, 1603. Hill’s MacDonnells of Antrim, State Papers, Ireland, 1603–1614, and Erck’s Patent Rolls.

[130] Gregory’s Western Highlands, chap. viii.; Burton’s History of Scotland, chap. lxiv. Avoiding the mazes of Celtic nomenclature, I have called the Scottish clansmen Macdonald, as Burton and Gregory do. The Irish branch of the same tribe I have called MacDonnell, as is usual in Ulster.

[131] The King to Chichester, October 14, 1614; St. John to Winwood, November 28; Lambert to Somerset, and to the King, February 7, 1615, the latter in Carew. Gregory’s Western Highlands, ut sup.

[132] The Friar Mullarkey’s part is detailed in State Papers, Ireland 1615, Nos. 70–72. For young Con O’Neill see Meehan’s Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, and for the Scotch element see Gregory’s Western Highlands and Hill’s Macdonnells, p. 226 sqq. See also Chichester to Winwood, November 22, 1615.

[133] The evidence of witnesses is in the Irish Cal., 1615, April to June, pp. 29–82. Chichester’s report is No. 69, Blundell’s and Jacob’s 89 and 91, Teig O’Lennar’s examination, 71. No. 144 shows that torture was used in one case, being headed ‘The voluntary confession of Cowconnaght O’Kennan upon the rack … by virtue of the Lord Deputy’s commission.’ O’Kennan, whom Lodder MacDonnell calls Maguire’s rhymer, was a priest according to O’Sullivan Bere, who wrongly asserts that there was only one witness, whom he calls ‘lusor’ and ‘aleator.’ This may have been suggested by the fact that, according to Brian Crossagh (No. 143), a carrow, or professional gambler, was mixed up in the plot. O’Sullivan also says that the jury consisted of English and Scotch heretics, who had property in Ulster, and therefore desired the death of native gentlemen.—Hist. Cath. IV., iii. 2.

[134] The King to Chichester, November 27–29, 1615; instructions to the Lords Justices, December 19; Chichester to Ellesmere, January 12, 1616; Winwood to the Lords Justices, March 1. Both Gardiner (ii. 302) and Spedding (Life of Bacon, v. 376) suggest that Chichester was superseded because he was disinclined to be hard on the Recusants, but of this there is no evidence.

[135] Chichester to Cranbourne, March 12, 1605; Proclamation against toleration, July 4; Lords of Council (including Bancroft, Ellesmere, and Salisbury) to Chichester, January 24, 1606.

[136] Chichester to Northampton, February 7, 1608 (printed in Ulster Journal of Archæology, i. 181); to Salisbury, April 15, 1609; to Winwood, June 15 and November 22, 1615; Wotton to Salisbury, July 11 and August 8, 1608; Wotton to James I., April 24 (calendared as No. 902), giving an account of the poisoning project. Examination of Shane O’Donnelly, October 22, 1613. See Mr. Dunlop’s article on Tyrone in Dict. of Nat. Biography.

      CHAPTER IX

       ST. JOHN AND FALKLAND, 1616–1625

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      St. John becomes viceroy,

      with an empty treasury,

      but tries to enforce uniformity.

Sir Oliver St. John, who had been ten years Master of the Ordnance in Ireland, owed his appointment in part to the rising influence of Villiers; but the advice of Chichester is likely to have been in his favour. His competence was not disputed, and Bacon was satisfied of his ‘great sufficiency,’ but many people thought he was hardly a man of sufficient eminence. He landed at Skerries on August 26, 1616, but his Irish troubles began before he reached Chester. The soldiers who were to accompany him ran away when they could, and a Welsh company broke into open mutiny. He was sworn in on the 30th, after a learned sermon by Ussher in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and then handed the Lord Treasurer’s white staff to Chichester, ‘who with all humility upon his knees received the same.’ The new Lord Deputy found that there were many pirates on the coast who had friends in remote harbours, and that there was not money enough to pay the soldiers. Worse than this was the case of the corporate towns, where no magistrates could be found to take the obligatory oath of supremacy or the milder oath of allegiance which was voluntary in Ireland. St. John proceeded to carry out the law. Carew, who was not a violent man, and who was well informed as to Irish affairs, reported that ‘over eighty’ of the best sort of ‘citizens’ in Dublin and elsewhere were in prison. Jurors who refused to present known and obstinate