The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

the country and seldom or never paraded. Every captain was now furnished with a paper describing the defects of his company, and he was ordered to make them right within six months on pains of severe punishment, and of being ultimately cashiered. Weekly field days were ordered, while two companies of foot and one troop of horse were to be always quartered in Dublin, but changed every month. Thus the whole army would be ready to march at any time, and would pass under the General’s eyes at least once in two years. Wentworth showed a good example by putting his own troop into a thoroughly efficient state, sixty such men and horses as had not been seen in Dublin before. He trained them himself, said a letter-writer, ‘on a large green near Dublin, clad in a black armour with a black horse and a black plume of feathers, though many there looked on him and on this action with other eyes than they did on the Lord Chichester, who had been bred a martial man.’ Clarendon observes that, ‘though not bred a soldier, he had been in armies, and besides being a very wise man had great courage and was martially inclined.’ The artillery was in as bad order as other things, and Wentworth asked for Sir John Borlase, an experienced soldier, as master of the ordnance; and this appointment was made in due course. Steps were also taken to see that landowners who were bound to furnish armed men or horses should have them actually available. The cavalry were armed for the first time with musket-bore carbines, and they were expected to fight on foot if required. Wentworth took steps to abolish the obsolete light pieces called calivers, of which the bore varied. ‘Muskets, bandileers, and rests’ were substituted, and Borlase knew how to prevent swords worth less than four shillings from being rated at ten, and the purchase at 23s. of firearms which were worth nothing at all.[184]

      Church and State. Bishop Bramhall.

      Bramhall reports to Laud. A dismal story.

      Simony and pluralism.

The Church of Ireland was in no better case than the army, and Wentworth resolved to be guided by the new Archbishop of Canterbury. John Bramhall, whom Laud had recommended to Wentworth for a stall in York Minster, was now his chaplain, and was very soon given the rich archdeaconry of Meath. He became Bishop of Derry a few months later. Bramhall’s first task was to make a general investigation into Irish church affairs, and to report on them to Laud, who had already begun to inform himself on the subject. A fortnight after Wentworth’s arrival Bramhall had collected enough information to inform the Archbishop that it was ‘hard to say whether the churches be the more ruinous and sordid, or the people irreverent.’ One parish church in Dublin was the viceroy’s stable, a second a nobleman’s residence, and a third a tennis court where the vicar acted as keeper. The vaults under Christchurch were from end to end hired to Roman Catholic publicans, and the congregation above were poisoned with tobacco smoke and with the fumes of beer and wine. The communion table in the middle of the choir was ‘made an ordinary seat for maids and apprentices.’ The deanery was held by the English Archbishop of Tuam, and the state of the cathedral was an instructive comment on the prevailing system of pluralities. Passing from the churches to the clergy, Bramhall found ‘the inferior sort of ministers below all degrees of contempt, in respect of their poverty and ignorance; the boundless heaping together of benefices by commendams and dispensations but too apparent; yea, even often by plain usurpation.’ Simoniacal contracts were common, the stipends reserved for the curates in charge being often as little as forty shillings and seldom as much as ten pounds. One bishop was reported to hold twenty-three benefices with cure. Few thought it worth while to ask for less than three vicarages at once. No one knew what livings were in the Deputy’s gift, and even some whole bishoprics were left out of the book of first fruits. Leases of church lands had been made at trifling rents, and this practice was general in spite of prohibitions by the Government. ‘It is some comfort,’ Bramhall grimly adds, ‘to see the Romish ecclesiastics cannot laugh at us, who come behind none in point of disunion and scandal.’[185]

      The Boyle tomb in St. Patrick’s.

      Lord Cork as a benefactor.

      Laud is puzzled,

      but Wentworth has no doubts.

      The monument is shifted.

The Earl of Cork held a good deal of what had once been church land. Wentworth had long been hostile to him, as appears abundantly from his letters, and his zeal for the restitution of temporalities was in this case sharpened by personal dislike. The Earl was rich and powerful, and the Deputy was impatient of any influence independent of his own. Lady Cork died in February 1630, and was buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with her father, Sir Geoffrey Fenton, and her grandfather, Lord Chancellor Weston, in a vault under the place where the high altar had formerly stood. Her husband then purchased that part of the church from Dean Culme for 30l., and proceeded to raise an immense monument of black marble in the pseudo-classical style then in fashion. The position of this monument did not strike him as odd, for his Protestantism was not of the Laudian type, and it seemed natural to him that the communion-table should stand detached in the middle of the church. He told Laud that he had been a benefactor rather than a defacer of St. Patrick’s: ‘Where there was but an earthen floor at the upper end of the chancel, which was often overflown, I raised the same three steps higher, making the stairs of hewn stone, and paving the same throughout, whereon the communion table now stands very dry and gracefully.’ Both Ussher and Bulkeley,’ wrote Laud, ‘justify that the tomb stands not in the place of the altar, and that it is a great ornament to that church, so far from being any inconvenience. … I confess I am not satisfied with what they say, yet it is hard for me that am absent to cross directly the report of two Archbishops.’ The Lord Treasurer was inclined to resent the attack on his kinsman’s tomb, and Laud warned his ally against the danger of making enemies. But Wentworth pressed the matter on Charles’s own notice, and procured from him full powers to a commission consisting of the Lord Deputy, the two archbishops, four other bishops chosen by Wentworth, and the deans and chapters of the two Dublin cathedrals. The commissioners held, very rightly no doubt, that the tomb was ill-placed, and Cork, who had more important interests at stake, was too prudent to contest the matter. By the following spring the monument had been taken down stone by stone, and Wentworth reported with vindictive glee that it was ‘put up in boxes, as if it were marchpanes and banqueting stuffs, going down to the christening of my young master in the country.’ It was re-erected on the south side of the choir, where it still stands, and the story is important only for the light it throws on Wentworth’s other dealings with Lord Cork, and with all others who opposed him.[186]

      Algerine pirates.

      Sack of Baltimore, June 19, 1630.

      Weakness of the Admiralty. Christian Turks.

The south-west coasts, both of England and Ireland, were infested with pirates from Sallee and Algiers. In June 1631 a rover of 300 tons with 24 guns and 200 men and another of 100 tons with 12 guns and 80 men lay between the Land’s End and the Irish coast. Their commander was Matthew Rice, who is called a Dutch renegade. Rice sunk two French ships and one from Dartmouth, taking the crews on board as well as everything that was worth keeping. Two days later he caught a Dungarvan fishing smack and ordered the skipper, John Hackett, to pilot them into Kinsale. Hackett said there was a fort and a man of war there, and offered to take them to Baltimore instead. The castle of the O’Driscolls still stands there, but the inhabitants at that time were English Protestants, which caused its selection as a parliamentary borough, and Hackett may not have disliked the service; but Fawlett, the Dartmouth captain, also helped the Algerines, and was not carried off by them finally. During the night of June 19, Rice having first explored the harbour in boats with muffled oars, attacked the town with the first morning light, plundered about sixty houses and took away 107 persons. The attack was so sudden that there was little fighting, and only two of the townsmen were killed. Rice had forty other prisoners of various nations. Captain Hook, who was at Kinsale with a King’s ship, which want of provisions kept generally in port, put to sea as soon as he heard the news, but the Algerines got clean away. Hackett, who was allowed to go ashore, was hanged at Cork for his share in the business, and his body exposed on the