army, and there either persuade them fully that his majesty had reason on his side, or die in the pursuit of his commands so justly laid upon me." The people smiled at the humiliation of their taskmasters; the lords trembled and submitted to the deputy; they passed from the impotent tone of dictation, to the cringing sycophancy of the slave, and complied with any measure recommended by the avarice or ambition of Wentworth. The house of lords were not quite so passive to the proud and domineering spirit of Wentworth. The Earl of Ormond resisted the insolent attempt made by an Englishman to prostrate the ancient nobility of Ireland; he refused to strike to the indelible indignity of being stripped of his sword at the door of the house of lords; he repelled the humiliating experiment with a spirit worthy of his high and exalted family, and forced Wentworth to yield to the insulted honour of an Irish nobleman. Wentworth soothed the hand he could not degrade; he took Ormond to his councils, who, at the age of twenty-four, was the confidential favourite of the deputy. Parliament proceeded to the enactment of a number of laws, which were well calculated to promote the tranquillity of the kingdom. Among those, was one for abolishing all distinctions between the original natives and other subjects; another for adopting the most valuable of the English statutes, passed since the reign of Henry VII. As a perfect conformity to the established church, was the leading feature of Wentworth's policy; he ju diciously adopted such measures as were calculated to promote its success; he built churches, and provided them with ministers, throughout the kingdom; he was particularly attentive to the education and instruction of the clergy of the established church. His next object was the complete assimilation of the churches of England and Ireland, by establishing the English articles and canons in this latter kingdom, as the rule of doctrine and discipline. The Irish articles of religion, as compiled by Usher, were doomed to give way to those of the church of England. So great was the ascendancy of Wentworth in the convocation, that only one of its members had the spirit to resist the innovation he recommended. The deputy then proceeded to the appointment of an high commission court, formed on the model of England, with the view of being instrumental to the acquisition of more revenues to the government. Whenever he saw the opportunity of promoting the interests of Charles, he seized it with ardour; and, to promote that interest, would not stop at the sacrifice of the industry as well as the blood of the Irish. To Lord Wentworth is Ireland indebted for the destruction of her woolen manufacture; which, as Mr Leland says, " promised to increase, and might in time essentially affect the staple commodity of England." Ireland furnished wool in great quantities, and its people could afford to vend their cloth in foreign markets on more moderate terms than the English trader. Such a prospect alarmed the loyal zeal of Wentworth, who did not long hesitate to impose such discouragements on the woolen manufacture, as amounted almost to a complete annihilation. Wentworth, though anxious to discourage every species of industry in Ireland, which might, by possibility, clash with the interests of England, was not inattentive to the cultivation of a manufacture, which, without injury to England, might be of solid and essential service to Ireland. Wentworth himself states, in one of his letters, that he expended thirty thousand pounds in the favourite project of the establishment of the linen manufacture. He brought the flax-seed and the manufacturers from Holland, and made such regulations as laid the strong and immoveable foundation of that prosperity which has distinguished this great source of wealth and comfort to Ireland. Wentworth, in 1635, proceeded to the most summary mode of replenishing the coffers of his royal master, by the wholesale robbery of his Irish subjects: he was aware of the advantages obtained by his two predecessors in the adoption of a similar scheme, One of them, Sir Arthur Chichester, had lands bestowed upon him, which, in the year 1633, were of no less than ten thousand pounds yearly value, and the other obtained ten thousand pounds in one gift. Hoping, therefore, for the like or greater retribu. tion, his lordship exerted himself in that business with uncommon assiduity and vigour. He procu. red inquisitions, upon feigned titles to estates, against many hundred years' possession. He proceeded to the western and north western counties with his commission, and the mock inquiry into the validity of the royal title was immediately intituted. So violent a procedure roused the almost extinguished spirit of the people; and the county Galway resisted the king's title, and boldly combated the sophistry of fraud and robbery. The lawyers, who, Mr Leland says, were catholics, fearlessly exposed the infamy of the proceeding, and the unprincipled violation of the property of the subject. The jury stood between the people and the despotism of Wentworth, and so incurred the vengeance of that haughty lord, that he laid a fine of one thousand pounds upon the sheriff, brought the jurors before the castle chamber, and fined them each in the sum of four thousand pounds, sentenced them to imprisonment until it should be paid, and to acknowledge their offence in court, upon their knees: a sad and humiliating instance of the prostrate spirit of Ireland, and a lesson of most important instruction to the Irish nobility and gentry, never to lend themselves to measures which are calculated to weaken their best and most efficient support, the Irish population. The Irish lords unthinkingly co-operated with Wentworth in his struggles to break the spirit of the people; and the lat ter enjoyed their full measure of vengeance, in seeing those same nobles of the land trampled on in their turn. They thus disarmed the only hand which could have best defended them against the insolence of power. The administration of Wentworth was so peculiarly obnoxious, that his warmest friends in England remonstrated with the imprudence of his zeal: his enemies, who were numerous, triumphed in the folly of his violence, and carefully noted down the unparalleled excesses of his government. So confident was Wentworth of the favour of his royal master, that he went to London to confute the complaints of his enemies. Charles was deaf to the cries of the persecuted and insulted people of Ireland, and warmly embraced the hand which had been so often the instrument of their sufferings. Wentworth boldly set forth his services in the presence of the king and council, and insisted upon the necessity of those measures of vigour for which his enemies had reproached him. Charles gratefully acknowledged the services which Wentworth had rendered him, and called on him to persevere in the pious and profitable work of plundering and insulting his Irish subjects. It is peculiarly mortifying to read, that the very acts for which Wentworth should have lost his head, were those on the successful execution of which this despotic monarch had the hardihood to praise him. The banishment of entire families from the habitations of their fathers is considered a judicious and fruitful measure of finance; for instance, the establishment of the king's title to the ample possession of the O'Byrnes in Wicklow, produced the large sum of fifteen thousand pounds, and the persecution of the most exalted individuals in the country was often suspended by the interposition of a bribe, or the voluntary humiliation of the victim. The catholics of Ireland, though subject to the same capricious exercise of power as the protest |