The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

succeeded in raising each subsidy to rather more than 40,000l. from the Commons, with over 6,000l. from the nobility, and 3,000l. from the clergy. The two last sums were to be levied by the Government, but the House of Commons, fearing lest the Deputy should be tempted to take even more than had been agreed upon, themselves assessed the amount which their constituents were to pay in each county. Leinster was set down for 13,000l., Ulster for 10,000l., Munster for 11,200l., and Connaught for 6,800l. The highest rated county was Cork, which with the city paid nearly 4,000l. Dublin city and county were assessed at 1,000l. apiece. The House of Commons also inquired into arrears due by the Crown, and these they found amounted to about 130,000l. They recommended that certain sums due to the Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishop of Meath, and the Dean of Christchurch should be paid at once in full. The next to be satisfied were ladies, the attainder of whose husbands or fathers had enriched the Crown; Lady Desmond and her daughters, Lady Mary O’Dogherty, and Lady Mary O’Reilly being mentioned by name. Arrears of pay due to civil or military officers were to be satisfied in proportion to the actual benefit derived from their services, sinecurists being left in the lurch, and all useless places recommended to be abolished. When the work of the Parliament was done, Wentworth wished to prorogue it. ‘This House,’ he said, ‘is very well composed; so as the Protestants are the major part, clearly and thoroughly with the King, which would be difficult to compass again, if you were now to call another.’ He thought that the existence of this obedient majority would serve to overawe the Roman Catholics, who alone were dangerous, and who would be deterred from opposing schemes of colonisation by the knowledge that the English recusancy laws might be passed over their heads at any moment. But Charles was of opinion that Parliaments ‘are of the nature of cats, they ever grow curst with age,’ and directed Wentworth to dissolve as soon as the necessary business was done. Coke had intercepted a large budget of letters between the Irish Recusants and their French friends, and he had no doubt that as soon as there was danger either from Spain or France ‘all would join together to replant themselves at home.’ Wentworth thought a Parliament well in hand would be a useful instrument to have ready, but he was not allowed to keep it. The royal consent was given to a number of Acts, and the subsidy arrangements being complete, the two Houses had little to do except to squabble about matters of etiquette, and were dissolved without settling them. ‘We have now,’ Wentworth wrote, ‘under the conduct of our prudent and excellent master, concluded this Parliament, with an universal contentment, as I take it.’ He thought it had done more than all former Parliaments put together, both for King, Church and subject, and that Charles was ‘more absolute master by his wisdom,’ than his predecessors had ever been by the sword.[202]

      Meeting of Convocation, 1613–1615.

      The Hundred and Four Articles.

      Character of the Irish Articles.

‘Proctors in the Convocation House’ are officially mentioned in Henry VIII.’s time, but the first regular Convocation of the Irish Church was held in connection with the Parliament of 1613. It was summoned by the King’s writ, and met in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on May 24 in that year. It consisted of the bishops and of representatives from the four provincial synods. Lord Chancellor Jones as Archbishop of Dublin presided in the Upper, and Randolph Barlow, after wards Archbishop of Tuam, in the Lower House; both were Cambridge men. The principal business of this assembly was to pass the Articles, one hundred and four in number, which are generally attributed to James Ussher, then professor of divinity in Dublin. Ussher’s Puritanism was more pronounced in his earlier days than afterwards, and James was less hostile to that school than he later became. These Articles, which superseded those of 1566, received the royal assent, though they practically incorporated those promulgated at Lambeth in 1595. They were more Calvinistic and more polemical than the thirty-nine received by the Church of England upon which Burnet, in the interest of peace and comprehension, expended his latitudinarian casuistry. It may suffice to note that of the Irish Articles the twelfth declares that ‘God hath predestinated some unto life and reprobated some unto death: of both which there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished’; and the eightieth that the Pope is ‘that man of sin foretold in the Holy Scriptures whom the Lord shall consume, &c.’ In 1615 this Convocation granted one subsidy to the King.[203]

      The Thirty-nine Articles are adopted, 1634,

      but without repealing the others.

      How Wentworth treated Convocation.

      Non-subscribers to be excommunicated.

Convocation met at the same time as Parliament, Ussher presiding in the Upper and Henry Leslie Dean, and afterwards Bishop, of Down in the Lower House. Wentworth’s ‘thorough’ extended to Church as well as to State, and his great object was to have the Thirty-nine Articles established. Ussher and others were attached to the Irish Articles of 1615, and the Lord Deputy thought it prudent to leave them unrepealed while superseding them in practice, a course in which Laud acquiesced. ‘I was,’ says Bramhall, now Bishop of Derry, ‘the only man employed from him to the Convocation, and from the Convocation to him.’ Wentworth had, however, private discussions with Ussher, and of these Bramhall may have known nothing. The ‘dovelike simplicity’ of the Primate, to use Bramhall’s phrase, was easily borne down by the imperious viceroy, and the House of Bishops adopted the English Articles readily enough, as well as the canon which directed their use. The Lower House appointed a Committee, over which George Andrews, Dean of Limerick, presided, whose draft report excited Wentworth’s wrath, for it provided among other things that the Articles of 1615 should be received on pain of excommunication. The Lord Deputy sent for Andrews and called him Ananias, impounded his papers, and forbade him to report anything to the House. He then wrote to the prolocutor Leslie, enclosing a form of canon drawn up by himself, after rejecting one composed by Ussher, and ordered him to put it to the House ‘without admitting any debate or other discourse.’ The Articles of the Church of England were not to be disputed, and the names of those who voted aye and no were to be sent to him. This drastic procedure succeeded, and there was but one dissentient. As a formal concession to the independence of the Irish Church, the canons agreed upon were not quite identical with those of England, but the first, which established the Thirty-nine Articles, effected all that Wentworth wanted. It provided that ‘if any hereafter shall affirm that any of those Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, let him be excommunicated, and not absolved before he make a public revocation of his error.’ Ussher and Bramhall are agreed that the Articles of 1615 were not abrogated, but the latter informs us that any bishop ‘would have been called to an account’ who had required subscription to them after the English Articles were authorised under the Great Seal of Ireland.[204]

      Wentworth and the Queen of Bohemia.

      Unpopularity of Laud.

The veteran diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe was so much struck by Wentworth’s success that he advised the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia to make him her friend. ‘He is severe abroad and in business, and sweet in private conversation, retired in his friendships but very firm, a terrible judge, and a strong enemy; a servant violently zealous in his master’s ends, and not negligent of his own; one that will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will greater when it may serve him; affecting glory by a seeming contempt; one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, but entreprenant; but will either be the greatest man in England or much less than he is; lastly one that may—and his nature lies fit for it, for he is ambitious to do what others will not—do your Majesty very great service if you can make him.’ Laud had been misrepresented, and he also might be very useful. Elizabeth took Roe’s advice, and afterwards corresponded pretty often with the Lord Deputy, whom she had never seen. Her great object was to get some provision made for the poor ministers who were driven out of the Palatinate. ‘As for Laud,’ she said, ‘I am glad you commend him so much, for there are but a few who do it.’[205]