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

Willoughby, who was an excellent soldier. Young Cary admitted this, but added ‘I know no reason why therefore you should have my company any more than why therefore you should have my breeches,’ and so challenged him to fight. Willoughby said he had specified that he had rather not have this particular company or that of Sir Charles Coote. The duel did not take place, but Cary spent ten days in the Fleet, whence he was released on his father petitioning the King.[168]

      Cork and Loftus Lords Justices, 1629–1633.

Lord Danby, who as Sir Henry Danvers had been President of Munster, was named for the viceroyalty, but at his age he was unwilling to undertake such an arduous task. Lord Chancellor Loftus and Lord Cork were then appointed Lords Justices, the army being placed in Wilmot’s hands. The Lords Justices were on very bad terms, but Secretary Lake urged them to make friends, and a solemn reconciliation took place in Lord Wilmot’s presence, ‘which I beseech God,’ Cork wrote, ‘his lordship observe as religiously as I resolve to do, if new provocations enforce me not to alter my resolutions.’ Wilmot was sanguine enough to think that they would not quarrel again. Their instructions were to suppress all Popish religious houses and all foreign jurisdictions, and to persuade the army and people to attend divine service. Trinity College, Dublin, was to receive every encouragement and care was to be taken in the exercise of ecclesiastical patronage and to rescue benefices from lay hands. The King’s intention to call a Parliament was reiterated and a large discretion was left to the Lords Justices, but judicial appointments, nominations to the Privy Council, and commissions in the army were reserved to the Crown.[169]

      Raid on religious houses in Dublin,

      and Cork.

So little effect had Falkland’s last proclamation against the regular orders, that Wilmot reported the establishment of seventeen additional houses within four months after its publication. ‘The Archbishop of Dublin,’ Lord Cork notes in his diary, ‘and the mayor of Dublin, by the direction of us the Lords Justices, ransacked the house of friars in Cook Street.’ Thomas Fleming, a Franciscan, was titular archbishop of Dublin, and his order had been much strengthened by his appointment. On St. Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas, 1629, Archbishop Bulkeley, accompanied by the mayor and a file of musketeers, visited the Franciscan church during high mass, cleared the building, and arrested some of the friars, who were promptly rescued by a mob 3,000 strong. Showers of stones were thrown, and Bulkeley was glad to take refuge in a house. The Lords Justices appeared with their guard, but there were not soldiers enough available to act with effect, and Wilmot reported that there was not one pound of powder in the Castle. The friary was razed to the ground in the presence of the Recusant aldermen. A month later the English Privy Council approved strongly of what had been done, and ordered the demolition of the convents, which should be turned into ‘houses of correction, and to set the people on work or to other public uses, for the advancement of justice, good arts, or trades.’ The regulars had increased in every considerable town, and at Cork Sir William St. Leger by the Lords Justices’ order seized four houses; but all the inmates had warning, and escaped. There was room for forty Franciscans and twenty Dominicans, the Jesuits and Augustinians also being suitably accommodated. The Jesuit church and college in Back Lane, Dublin, were, however, annexed to Trinity College, and the former was for some time used as a lecture-room.[170]

      Weakness of the Government, 1630.

The attitude of the Lords Justices to each other was little better than an armed neutrality, and not much could be expected from a Government so constituted. At the beginning of 1631 even Wilmot thought there would be an open rupture, and the Lords Justices had differences as long as they were in office; but they agreed so far as to reduce the army, and something like a proper relation between income and expenditure was thus arrived at. In May 1630 about 200 notables met the Council, and with the exception of Lord Gormanston they all demanded a Parliament, which was fixed for November, but which never met. Cork said he had known Ireland for forty-three years and had never known it so quiet, but he thought it impossible for any public man really to understand the country because the priests kept governors and governed permanently estranged. Spanish attempts on Ireland had always failed, and he did not fear them, but there was a constant source of danger in a population of hardy young men with nothing to do. The English settlers were indeed numerous, but comfortable farmers with wives and children would not easily be induced to come out and fight; and the Irish understood this perfectly. Even in Dublin and Meath large armed bands had broken into houses by night and taken what they wanted. The Government were just strong enough to hang or disperse such banditti, but the last of the voluntary subsidy would be paid at the end of 1632, and at the beginning of that year Wentworth had been appointed Deputy.[171]

      St. Patrick’s Purgatory demolished.

      The Queen desires its restoration.

      Wentworth’s opinion.

The Ulster settlement had not put an end to St. Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg, in Donegal, in the territory of Termon-Magrath, which the wicked old Archbishop of Cashel had held by patent and transmitted to his son. The Lords Justices found no difficulty in agreeing on this subject, and they bound James Magrath in a penalty of £1,000 ‘to pull down and utterly demolish that monster of fame called St. Patrick’s Purgatory, with St. Patrick’s bed, and all the vaults, cells, and all other houses and buildings, and to have all the other superstitious stones and materials cast into the lough, and that he should suffer the superstitious chapel in the island to be pulled down to the ground, and no boat to be there, nor pilgrimage used or frequented during James Magrath’s life willingly or wittingly.’ The work seems to have been thoroughly done, to the great grief of some people; and Henrietta Maria, with her own hand and in her own tongue, begged Wentworth to restore a place to which the people of the country had always been so devoted. It was, she said, the greatest favour that he could do her, and the liberty granted should be used very modestly. This letter was sent by Lord Antrim, who had probably suggested it, and he was commissioned to press the matter on the viceroy. Without granting the Queen’s request, Wentworth was able to say truly that the thing was done before his time, but that it would be hard to undo it; and he advised her to wait till a more suitable opportunity. In the meantime he was most anxious to serve her Majesty without the intervention of Antrim or any one else. The Purgatory was ‘in the midst of the great Scottish plantations,’ and the Scots were only too anxious for an excuse to find fault with the King’s Government. Pilgrimages to Lough Derg were resumed in course of time, and it was estimated that as many as 13,000 devotees went there annually in the early part of the nineteenth century.[172]

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [158] For the wretched state of the army see State Papers, Ireland, passim, particularly the letters of Sir Richard Aldworth, October 17, 1626, and February 16, 1626.

[159] Court and Times, of Charles I., July 11, 1628, i. 377. The King to Falkland, August 4 and 16, 1628.

[160] Falkland to the Privy Council, May 3, 1623; Commissioners for Irish causes to same, July (No. 1058 in Cal.); Falkland to Buckingham, printed in Miss Hickson’s Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, i. 45. The latter is undated, but must be earlier than Middlesex’s fall in May 1624.

[161] The evidence taken by Falkland is calendared at January 20, 1629.