BOOK I. 1639 The state of the tenures created an opportunity. A commission was appointed to survey the lands, and to trace and enquire into the titles of their professing owners. In strict construction, four-fifths of Connaught was found to belong to the crown; and Wentworth meditated taking advantage of the situation to make a new plantation. The intention, scarcely concealed, following so soon on the confiscation of the six counties, flung the Irish of the old blood into a frenzy of rage. Religious indulgence might satisfy the Anglo-Norman Catholics of the old settlements. The passions of the true Irishman were for the land, and he saw the land in large slices passing away from him to the stranger. What to him was King or Parliament, Calvinism or Anglicanism? The one fact, to which all else was nothing, was coming home to his heart, that the Englishman, by force or fraud, was filching from him the inheritance of his fathers. The manner of Wentworth's proceedings was as imperious as the matter was alarming. The parties in Ireland which he respected, and of which alone, perhaps, he expected that any good could be made, were the late English settlers and the Catholics of English descent. The inquisition into titles was extended over the island. Claims were revived that were indefinitely remote. Deeds and records had perished in the Elizabethan rebellions, or had been lost or destroyed in the savage carelessness of Irish life. Yet the Viceroy insisted that the proofs must be forthcoming, or the title could not be allowed; and jurymen, who in such cases failed to find for the crown, were sent to meditate on their misdemeanours in the county gaols. II. 1640 The Irish Parliament remonstrated. The King CHAP. had promised that no claim should be revived from beyond sixty years. Wentworth considered that such a concession was impolitic and uncalled for. Ireland, in his eyes, was a conquered country, possessing no rights but such as he was inclined to allow. Before he could have carried out his policy, he would have had to deal, at all events, with a native insurrection. Never till then had spoliation so direct and unprovoked been attempted. He had not, however, altogether miscalculated. The dread of the English Puritans was even greater than the indignation at the imperious Viceroy. In the midst of his other work, Wentworth had experienced no difficulty in raising an army. Parliament voted money freely. The Catholic peasants enlisted with eagerness, being willing, at all events, to be armed and organized at the expense of the Government. The levies were intended avowedly for service in Scotland. The Scots, finding that the Irish were to be let loose on them, threatened to send a force to Ulster, and raise and arm their own people there. The rumour spread that the Calvinist fanatics were coming over to destroy the Catholics root and branch; they gathered the more eagerly to Wentworth's standard; and, in the summer of 1640, when the Scots were coming into England, eight thousand Irish infantry and a thousand horse, recruited from the most dangerous classes in Ireland, the 'cosherers' of the Act of Parliament, the marauding vagabonds to whom industry, Protestantism, and England were equally hateful and virtually synonymous, were assembled, ready for mischief, at Carrickfergus. The straits to which the King was reduced recalled Went BOOK I. 1640 William! worth prematurely to England. The failure in the North, and the attitude assumed by the Long Parliament, prevented his return. Sir John Clotworthy, an Ulster Presbyterian, whose wife had been persecuted by the High Commission, joined Pym in demanding that the Irish Viceroy should be brought to trial. He had meant there could be no doubt of it -to use his Irish army in crushing Scotch and English liberty. He was impeached, tried for treason, and executed. Sir Christopher Wandsworth, whom he had left as Deputy, suddenly dying, the charge of Ireland fell to Sir John Parsons, the Master of the Court of Wards, and Sir John Borlase, the Master of the Ordnance-Puritans both of them, but men of no local weight or influence. The Earl of Ormond commanded the army; and the army, while it held together, was the real master of the country. The English Parliament, however, furious at the use intended for these troops, and not choosing that Ireland should be at the mercy of Papists, extorted from Charles an order that they should be disbanded. In appearance there was immediate obedience. The regiments dispersed. The arms were collected and carried to Dublin. An operation which threatened to be dangerous was accomplished without difficulty and without objection. The danger that remained was of another kind. There was no longer any force at all on which the Government could rely. Three half-famished regiments were all that were left, and Ireland was without a garrison. SECTION III. We are now upon the edge of the gravest event in Irish history, the turning-point on which all later controversies between England and Ireland hinge. The facts, real or alleged, are all before us; for the excitement created was so terrible, that the most minute particulars were searched into with agonized curiosity. Forty volumes of depositions are preserved in the library of Trinity College, which tell the tale with perfect distinctness; and, as the witnesses relate one consistent story, they are dismissed by those who are offended by their testimony as imaginary beings, forgers, liars, and calumniators. The eagerness to discredit the charge is a tacit confession how tremendous is the guilt if it can be proved; the most certain facts can be made doubtful if they are stoutly and repeatedly denied; and not evidence but sympathy or inclination determines the historical beliefs of most of us. Those who choose to think that the massacre of 1641 was a dream will not change their opinion. Those who see in that massacre the explanation and the defence of the subsequent treatment of Ireland, however unwilling to revive the memory of scenes which rivalled in carnage the horrors of St. Bartholomew, are compelled to repeat the evidence once held to be unanswerable. That a rebellion should have broken out at that particular time was in itself so natural that a lookeron might have predicted it with certainty. The Irish, still passionately attached to their own CHAP. II. 1641 BOOK I. 1641 habits and their own creed, had seen the conquerors whom they had so long successfully held at bay, at last definitely established among them. Plantations of aliens were in their midst, owning the lands which had once been theirs, and growing rich and powerful. Forays out of the Pale they could defy and smile at. The Saxon bands came and went; crops might be burnt and cattle lifted; but, when the invaders were gone, the air closed behind them, and the losses could be made good by answering raids into the four counties. The colonists, on the other hand, were an ever-present affront, whom, by all laws of God and man, they were entitled, when they had them at advantage, to destroy. The English interest was growing; their own was falling. Soul and body they were alike being made slaves. The prelates of an alien and heretic church had seized their sanctuaries, daring to call themselves the representatives of their own saints, and claiming ex officio spiritual jurisdiction over them. Anglican might persecute Calvinist; the wolf might worry the wild dog: to the true Catholic, wolf and dog were alike abhorrent; Anglican and Calvinist were equally heretics, and the heretics were children of hell. England offered them material prosperity; they did not care for prosperity. England talked of order; the order of England to them was tyranny and spoliation. England might govern her own affairs in her own way. What was Ireland to her! Bogs might be drained, and forests fall, and the green Erin grow black under the plough; towns might rise, and mills, and looms, and warehouses; they were but badges of Irish servitude. The Irish thought,' said one of them, and will ever think, the English government a yoke of slavery. They |