hung out in the face of the English Government, and every effort made to change their conviction only tightened its hold upon them. As long as Chichester remained at the head of affairs, the Government was not likely to proceed to extremi ties. Proclamations were issued for the banishment of priests, orders were given to deprive of their offices the magistrates who refused to take the oath of supremacy, and the shilling fine was still held threateningly over the heads of those who refused to attend the Protestant churches; but the Deputy's tact kept him from carrying these threats into execution, excepting in a few scattered instances.1 Such a condition of things was pregnant with future disaster. Enough was done to provoke opposition, and not enough to disarm it. It may indeed be conceded that it would be difficult enough for the Government to give up its long-cherished convictions, and to surrender a share in the administration of affairs to men who were regarded as traitors by the very fact of their refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and who were using all their influence to prevent the poorer classes from accepting that religion which, in official eyes, was synonymous with loyalty. But, however difficult it may have been to recognise the fact, it is certain that Ireland could never be wisely governed until it was recognised that no force would ever be sufficient to compel Irishmen to adopt the religion of England. A Parlia 2 But if the Government was blind in refusing to look the question of Irish Catholicism fairly in the face, there is something absolutely astonishing in the infatuation with which James allowed himself to hope that unless he posed. paid some attention to the complaints of the Catholics, it would be possible to gather together in a Parliament the representatives of hostile races and creeds, without provok ment pro 1 In his letter to Salisbury of Nov. 1, 1611, Chichester says that the Pope has more hearts than the King. The only right way to act is to bring the nobility, lawyers, and the chief men of the corporations to church. But, he adds, this would cause a rebellion.--Irish Cal. iv. 310. 2 See, for instance, the Report of the Bishop of Ferns in Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, 371. 1611 IRISH DIFFICULTIES. 285 ing an immediate collision. If, indeed, he had allowed the declaration of his intention to call a Parliament to be preceded by an announcement of his willingness to consent to a repeal of the disqualifications to which the Catholics were subject, he might have been welcomed as a mediator between the two bodies into which the inhabitants of Ireland were now unhappily divided. Without some such step as this he was merely opening a battle-field for contending factions. Neither James nor Chichester had any such thought in their minds. The new constituencies. They wished to procure a Parliamentary confirmation of the Ulster settlement and to open for Ireland an era of legislation. The members of the Irish Government, indeed, were not slow to perceive that, if they wished to have a majority they must make it for themselves. Unless they could fill the benches of the House of Commons with new colonists and Government officials, any measures which they were likely to propose would only be thrown in their faces by a hostile majority. They were not without good excuse for attempting to change the character of the House. The old constituencies represented only those parts of Ireland which had been reached by the English civilisation of the Middle Ages, and it was at all events necessary to extend the right of voting over the unrepresented districts. In assigning members to every county they could hardly go wrong. Of the 66 county members who would be thus elected, it was calculated that 33 would be found voting with the Government. On the other hand, it was certain that the majority of the members returned for the old boroughs would be sturdy recusants, and the only hope of out-voting them lay in an extensive creation of new constituencies. It was accordingly proposed, in the autumn of 1611, that 36 new boroughs should receive charters empowering them to send no less than 72 members to Parliament, and as in these cases the right of election was confined to the exclusively Protestant corporations, there could no longer be any doubt on which side the majority would be. In the House of Lords no difficulty was expected. It was true that, of the 21 lay Peers who were of age, 16 were recusants; but the 19 bishops were quite enough to turn the scale the other way. Feeling of the Catholics. There was one thing which both James and Chichester had forgotten. Valuable as a Parliamentary majority is when it is the exponent of the feelings and opinions of a nation, men are not likely to pay much regard to its decisions when it represents nothing more than the unreasoning will of a set of Government nominees. The Irish Catholics saw at once that, in such a Parliament, their cause was hopeless. The tribunal by which they were to be judged was packed against them. It would be in the power of adversaries who would probably refuse even to listen to their case, and who would certainly not give themselves the trouble to understand it, to give the force of law to the most oppressive measures. Nor had they any prospect of being able to convert, at any future time, the hostile majority into a minority. While the Government was what it was, it would be able to maintain the requisite number of votes on its side as long as there was a hamlet in the north of Ireland which could be dignified by the name of a borough. They wish to know what Bills As soon, therefore, as it was known, in the autumn of 1611, that a Parliament was to be summoned, and that new corporations were to be erected, the Catholics were, by no means unreasonably, anxious to know what Bills were are in prepa- to be laid before the Houses when they met. Acration. cording to the provisions of Poyning's Act, these Bills were to be sent over to England in order to be submitted to the Council for approbation, before the Irish Parliament was allowed to express an opinion upon them. At least in the course of a few months, therefore, Chichester might have been able to accede to their request; but he was unwilling to admit them into his counsels, and preferred to leave them to imagine the worst. At last they obtained information, in some surreptitious way, that, amongst other unobjectionable proposals, there was one which affected them deeply. The English Council had been asked to give its sanction to a Bill by which 1 Calculations of the division of votes, Oct. 1611, Irish Cal. iv 307. 1612 1612. The pro posed Bill against COMPLAINTS OF THE CATHOLICS. 287 every Catholic priest was to be banished from Ireland, under a penalty of being adjudged guilty of treason if he refused to leave the country, or afterwards returned to it. Nor was this all any layman receiving a Jesuits and priest into his house, or affording him any kind of support, was for the first offence to pay a heavy fine, for the second to undergo the penalties of a præmunire involving imprisonment and confiscation of property, and if he was found guilty of a third offence was to suffer death as a traitor.1 priests. Such provisions as these were new to Ireland. Even if this were all, it would be enough to place every Catholic layman at the mercy of the Government; and it was obvious that the same arrangements which would render it possible to pass such a measure might be counted upon, with equal certainty, to give the force of law to any still more iniquitous scheme which it might please the King and his ministers to propose. Accordingly, on November 23, 1612, a petition was forwarded to the King by six of the Lords of the Pale.2 They complained that the Deputy had not acquainted them with his proposed measures, and expressed their apprehension lest unfair advantage should be taken of the new Nov. 22. The petition of the Lords of the Pale. The Bill is printed in a Latin translation by O'Sullivan (Hist. Cath. Lib. 240). I believe it to be genuine, not only because it explains the proceedings of the Catholic Lords, but because, excepting that it sets the fine at 400/., it agrees with the notes of the proposed Bills in Cott. MSS. Tit. B, x. 289: An Act that Jesuits and seminary priests shall be adjudged traitors if they shall be found within that kingdom after a certain day to be preferred, and that their receivers and relievers shall for the first offence forfeit 100/., for the second be in case of præmunire, and for the third in case of treason.' This is probably the Act which was actually sent over which is described in another copy of heads as ‘An Act against Jesuits, seminary priests, and other disobedient persons,' &c. (Feb. 23, 1612, Irish Cal. iv. 439). Another Act. (Cott. MSS. Tit. B, x. 295), begins, All the statutes of religion made in England (especially concerning Jesuits, seminary priests, and recusants) to be enacted here;' but this was never adopted by the Irish Government. The list of proposed Bills in O'Sullivan (240) are mere notes of business, having, for the most part, nothing to do with Parliament at all. 6 Leland, ii. 443. corporations to give the force of law to extreme measures. Most of these corporations, they said, were erected in places which were mere hamlets. It would be far better to wait till commerce had, in the course of time, turned them into towns, and in the meanwhile to be satisfied with the representation which the county members would give to the newly-settled districts. If the King would call a Parliament in which Ireland was fairly represented, and would give his consent to the repeal of the penal laws already in existence, he would win the hearts of his subjects for ever. Feb. 24. Chichester raised to the Peerage. To this letter no answer was vouchsafed. On February 24, 1613, Chichester, who had already received a grant of O'Dogherty's lands in Innishowen as a mark of his sovereign's favour, was raised to the Irish Peerage by the title of Lord Chichester of Belfast. Before the end of April the number of the new boroughs was swollen to 39, returning, together with the University of Dublin, 80 members to Parliament. The session was appointed to open on May 18. May 11. Barnwall sent for. May 17. Protest of the Catholic Lords. 2 Apparently as a matter of precaution, directions were given by the English Privy Council to send over Sir Patrick Barnwall, who had spoken strongly in opposition to the new boroughs. On the 17th, the day before the meeting of Parliament, ten of the Catholic lords laid before Chichester a protest against the creation of the new boroughs, and after complaining of irregularities in the elections, objected to the choice of the Castle as the place in which the Parliament was to be held, on the ground that there was gunpowder enough in its vaults to blow up the whole assembly. Chichester replied that the new boroughs had had been created by the King's undoubted prerogative, that all questions relating to elections were subject to the determination of the House, and that the gunpowder in the Castle had been removed. Not being satisfied with his argumentative triumph, the Lord Deputy proceeded to ask 'of what religion 1 Irish Cal. iv. 643. |