The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

proved by the record of his trial, when their commissioners denounced him as ‘the firebrand that still smoked’ after the cold shower-bath of the Ripon treaty. The quarrel was of much older date, originating with Wentworth’s espousal of the Laudian policy and his steady repression of everything that savoured of Presbyterianism, but it was not until after the promulgation of the Scottish Covenant at the beginning of March 1638 that the question became a national one. He kept himself well informed, and read all public documents, but it was not until the end of July that he first gave his opinion to Northumberland, and then in strict confidence. Armed collision with the Scots should be avoided as long as possible unless they crossed the border, which did not yet seem likely. Berwick and Carlisle should be made thoroughly defensible, and as President of the North he could prepare an armed force, particularly in Yorkshire. He thought Leith, which he had formerly visited, might easily be seized in the spring, and maintained with the help of the fleet and a garrison of 8,000 or 10,000 men. ‘I should hope,’ he added, ‘his Majesty might instantly give his law to Edinburgh, and not long after to the whole kingdom, which though it should all succeed, yet at the charge of that kingdom would I uphold my garrison at Leith, till they had received our Common Prayer Book, used in our churches of England without any alteration, the bishops settled peaceably in their jurisdiction; nay perchance till I had conformed that kingdom in all, as well for the temporal as ecclesiastical affairs, wholly to the government and laws of England; and Scotland governed by the King and Council of England in a great part, at least as we are here.’ Later on he drew attention to the importance of securing Dumbarton, but in both cases the Covenanters forestalled him. Then as now a brisk trade existed between Ulster and Scotland, and the colonists naturally demanded terms as favourable as were granted to the mother country, with which they were in thorough sympathy. The first lay Covenanter who felt the weight of Wentworth’s hand seems to have been Robert Adair, Laird of Kilhill in Galloway, who had an estate of 400l. or 500l. a year at Ballymena, where he was a Justice of the Peace. Adair, who was the Bishop of Killala’s nephew, had taken an active part against Charles and Laud in Scotland, and made no secret of having signed the Covenant. Henry Leslie, Bishop of Down, who was himself a Scotchman, reported the case to Wentworth, who advised him to ‘inquire out the names of all others that have danced after the same pipe, as also of all such as profess themselves Covenanters, and send them hither to me; in the rest of your proceedings, your lordship shall not be so much as once touched upon, or heard of.’ Adair retired to Scotland, and lived securely at Kilhill, but he was declared a traitor in Ireland, and his estate forfeited. In November 1641, when Strafford was dead and the Ulster rebellion begun, Charles, at the unanimous request of the Scottish Parliament, reversed the sentence passed upon Adair for having ‘adjoined himself to his own native country,’ and he recovered his Irish property.[210]

      The Black Oath, 1639.

      The King procures a petition against the Covenant.

      Wentworth’s threats.

Before the end of 1638 the Scotch Covenanters were thoroughly aware that Wentworth was their most important enemy. He sent a clever young officer to Edinburgh to report upon the doings there, ‘and this gentleman,’ he wrote, ‘tells me that the whole nation universally hates me most extremely, and threaten some personal mischief unto me.’ Ensign Willoughby pretended to Rothes that he was a Dutchman, and the Earl answered that Holland was well governed and that Scotland also could do very well without a king. Next day Alexander Leslie was present and said Ireland would certainly be invaded if the King came to blows with his Scottish subjects—a threat which Leslie himself carried out, but not while Strafford lived. Wentworth proposed, and Charles agreed with alacrity, if, indeed, he did not himself make the first suggestion, that the Covenant should be met by a new and very stringent oath binding the Scots of Ulster not only to obey the King, but not even to protest against any command of his, and to renounce all covenants or associations not ordered by him. This is still remembered in Ulster as the Black Oath, and it is evidently inconsistent with all modern ideas of liberty. The manner of imposing it matched the matter, and we know the details from the evidence of an unwilling witness who proved in after life that he was as strong a royalist as even Scotland has produced. Charles himself proposed that means should be taken to procure a petition repudiating the Covenant and in favour of the new oath, and his plan was strictly carried out. Wentworth summoned such of the leading Northern Scots as he thought could be trusted to meet him in Dublin on April 27. Lord Montgomery, who was the chief of them, caught cold on the journey and desired to be excused; but the Lord Deputy, whether he believed in the cold or not, would not be so put off, and adjourned the meeting to his lordship’s lodgings. The two Leslies, Bishops of Raphoe and of Down, took the lead, and the former drew up a petition which some of the laymen thought hasty. In the words of the oath Wentworth would allow no alteration, saying that it had been well considered; but in the petition offering the subscribers’ services to the King he admitted the qualification ‘in equal manner and measure with other his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects of this kingdom.’ For the rest, the petitioners declared their belief that the Covenant had been imposed upon great numbers of their nation by the tyranny of the dominant faction. The fiery bishop who drafted the petition thought it much too mild, and the oath itself so mean as not to be worth taking. To one speaker, who thought a little more deliberation would be advisable, the Lord Deputy answered: ‘Sir James Montgomery, you may go home and petition or not petition if you will, but if you do not, or who doth not, shall do worse.’ The petitioners were then summoned to the Council Board, and the Lord Deputy himself administered the oath to them two or three at a time.[211]

      Severe measures in Ulster.

      General objection to the Black Oath.

      Many Presbyterians flee to the mountains, or to Scotland.

      The only exemptions from taking the oath

The petition was signed by Lords Montgomery and Clandeboye, by the two Leslies, and by James Spottiswood, Bishop of Clogher, who was brother to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and had himself declined the Scottish primacy several years before. Of the thirty-six commoners whose signatures follow the majority were clergymen, and at least two of them became bishops after the Restoration. It is quite evident from what followed that they represented only a very small part of the Scottish population of Ulster. The petition and oath were proclaimed by the Lord Deputy and Council, including Ussher and Bulkeley. The oath was made obligatory on all persons of the Scottish nation of the age of sixteen years and upwards, who inhabit and have any estate whatsoever in any houses, lands, tenements or hereditaments within this kingdom of Ireland,’ and local commissions were issued for the enforcement of the order. If there is any ambiguity in the words quoted it is clear that servants as well as owners of property were in practice held liable. Three peers, Clandeboye, Montgomery, and Chichester, sat as commissioners at Bangor in Down, and the former, who was acting against the grain, reported progress to Wentworth. The Lord Deputy believed there would be general and ready obedience to this, as to his past orders in Ireland; but Clandeboye reported that great numbers fled at his approach, and especially servants, that their masters are doubtful to find sufficient to reap their corn.’ He believed that the chief obstructor was ‘Mr. John Bole, the preacher of Killileagh, the old blind man that was once with your lordship,’ but he abstained from arresting any clergyman, ‘especially a preacher,’ without direct orders from the viceroy. These orders were given at once, and the old blind minister was sent up to Dublin in charge of a pursuivant. He had already been forced to take the oath on his knees with a crowd of others, but not before time had been given to preach a sermon in which the Presbyterians were not obscurely compared to Daniel, and Wentworth to the ministers of Darius. Under such circumstances the parable would be remembered, and the backsliding easily forgiven. George Rawdon was so busy ‘swearing all the Scotch men and women’ in Down that he could not go to Dublin for law business, and Mr. Spencer, another magistrate in his neighbourhood, ‘despised the employment exceedingly.’ Numbers took the oath unwillingly, but numbers also took to the woods and mountains, leaving their corn uncut, their cattle untended, and their houses unprotected, and a great many fled to Scotland, where Bramhall was short-sighted enough to think they could do but little harm. He had himself