scheme to increase to the utmost the King's revenue and to neglect no source from which it might be replenished. With this object Wentworth developed with great and commendable energy the material resources of the country, and, though he discouraged the woollen trade in the interests of English manufacturers, he was the real founder of the linen manufacture. With this object the London companies to whom the County of Londonderry had been granted were prosecuted before the Star Chamber for not having strictly fulfilled the terms of their charter, and were condemned to the payment of no less than 70,000l. With this object Wentworth induced the King to maintain his ancient claims, and he resolved, at once and on a large scale, to prosecute the plantation of Connaught. The means employed were hardly less infamous than the design. Inquisitions were made in every county in Connaught. In order to preserve the show of justice, juries were summoned, and were peremptorily ordered to bring in verdicts vesting all titles in the King. Every means was taken to insure compliance. Men such as might give furtherance in finding a title for the King' were carefully selected, and a grant of 4s. in the pound was given to the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chief Baron out of the first yearly rent raised upon the commissions of defective titles, 'which money,' the Deputy somewhat cynically adds, ‘I find to be the best that was ever given. For now they do intend it with a care and diligence such as it were their own private; and most certainly the gaining to themselves every 4s. once paid, shall better your revenue ever after at least 51.' The sheriffs and the Judges were the creatures of the Government, and Wentworth was present to overcome all opposition. The juries were assured that the project was for the advantage of the King and of the country, that if they presumed to give unfavourable verdicts those verdicts would be set aside,

and that they might answer the King a round fine in the Castle Chamber in case they should prevaricate.' In county after county terrified juries brought in the verdict that was required. In Galway alone the jury refused to do so, and the enraged Deputy at once imposed a fine of 1,000l. on the sheriff who had summoned them, and bound the recalcitrant jurors to appear in the Castle Chamber, where they were each sentenced to pay the enormous fine of 4,000l. and to lie in prison till it was paid.1

The titles of Connaught now lay at the feet of the Deputy, but at the last moment the scheme of plantation was deferred. It was plain that it would produce a rebellion in Ireland; and as the conflict between the King and the English Parliament was now rapidly moving to its crisis, it was thought advisable to postpone the change till a quieter time. From this date, however, the great insurrection had become inevitable. The policy of Wentworth was fully approved by his sovereign; he was made Earl of Strafford, and he soon after passed to England to encounter a dark and a terrible fate; but he left behind him in Ireland rage, and anguish, and despair. It had become clear beyond all doubt to the native population that the old scheme of 'rooting them out' from the soil was the settled policy of the Government; that the land which remained to them was marked as a prey by hungry adventurers, by the refuse of the population of England and Scotland, by men who cared no more for their rights or happiness than they did for the rights and happiness of the worms which were severed by their spades. It had become clear to them that no loyalty, no submission, no concession on the part of the

Strafford's Letters, i. 310352, 442, 443, 451, 454; ii. 41. Carte's Ormond, i. 80, 84. Leland, Hist. of Ireland, iii. 30-37. VOL. I.

Hallam's Const. Hist. iii. 385390. Rushworth's Trial of the Earl of Strafford

D

people, and no promises or engagements on the part of the Government, would be of any avail to avert the doom which, withdrawn for a time but ever imminent, now hung in perpetual menace over the native race.

There was but one thing which they valued more than their land, and that also was in peril. By the legislation of Elizabeth the Act of Uniformity was established in Ireland; all religious worship except the Anglican was made illegal; all persons who were absent from church without sufficient excuse were liable for each Sunday to a fine of 1s., and all ecclesiastics and other officials were bound under severe penalties to take the Oath of Supremacy. It is clear, however, that this legislation neither was nor could have been enforced. The churches over a great part of the island were in ruins. Protestant ministers were very few. The overwhelming majority of the population within the old Pale, and nearly the whole population beyond its borders, remained attached to the Catholic faith. Law was everywhere very feeble, and the Government was actuated much more by secular than by theological motives. In the towns and the more civilised districts, the churches and their revenues were taken from the Catholics, and in a very few cases the fines stipulated by law were imposed; but even the disqualification for civil offices was by no means generally enforced. In the troubles of this reign five Irish Catholic bishops perished either by execution or by the violence of soldiers, and the Catholic primate died a prisoner in the Tower of London; but in most, if not all, of these cases, political motives were probably at the root of the severity.

1 Unfortunately this subject has fallen almost entirely into the hands of theologians, and it is obscured by a vast amount of falsehood or exaggeration. The reader may find the Catholic story

The Mass, when it was driven

in its extreme form in Brennan's Ecclesiastical Hist. of Ireland, while everything that can be said to minimise the persecution has been said by Killen, the able Presbyterian historian.

from the churches, appears to have been celebrated without molestation in private houses; and it is probable that in a large part of the island the change in the legal religion was hardly perceived.

6

But on the accession of James I., religious antagonism on both sides became more apparent. Foreign ecclesiastics were fanning the devotion of the people, and their hopes on the accession of the new sovereign speedily rose. In Cork, Waterford, Cashel, Clonmel, and Limerick, the townspeople, with the support or connivance of the magistrates, violently took possession of the churches, ejected the reformed ministers, celebrated the Mass, and erected crosses. It was found necessary to march troops into Munster. At Cork there was some slight opposition; a few lives were lost, and a few executions followed. To the remonstrance of the Deputy, the Cork authorities answered that they only exercised now publicly what they had ever before been suffered to exercise privately ; and as their public prayers gave testimony to their faithful hearts to the King, so they were tied to be no less careful to manifest their duties to God, in which they would never be dissembling temporisers.' The disturbed districts, however, speedily submitted, and were quieted by an Act of indemnity and oblivion published by proclamation; but a petition was soon after presented to the King by the recusants of the Pale asking for open toleration; and it was followed by a royal proclamation announcing that no freedom of worship would be conceded, and ordering all Popish priests to leave the kingdom. Some of the magistrates and other leading inhabitants of Dublin were fined and imprisoned for not attending the Protestant service. The latter part of the sentence was entirely illegal, and the old English families of the Pale drew up a bold remonstrance against it. The Government replied by throwing their delegates into prison. The Act of Supremacy was also more widely

and more severely enforced, but the Government soon relapsed into that modified tolerance which was almost essential in a country where probably ninety-nine out of every hundred inhabitants were attached to the proscribed religion. The strengthening of the Protestant interest in Ireland was, however, one great object of the Plantation of Ulster.1

The Government of Charles I. pursued a somewhat similar policy, but there were many new signs of an alarming animosity. It is open to anyone to maintain that the Irish Catholics would never have been content with any position short of ascendency; but whatever plausibility this theory may derive from the experience of other countries, there is no real evidence to support it in Irish history. The object of the Catholic population was merely to obtain security and open recognition for their religion, but it was plain that their zeal was steadily increasing. For some time after the Reformation Catholics in Ireland as in England had shown little scruple in attending, when required, the Anglican service; but their preachers now denounced such compliance as a deadly sin, and a Bull of Urban VIII. exhorted the people to suffer death, rather than take the Oath of Supremacy. In a country where almost the whole proprietary of the country, both of English and Irish descent, remained attached to Catholicism, the practical administration of affairs was necessarily in favour of that religion. The Catholics were still a great political power. They were numerous among the Members of Parliament and the magistrates, in the corporations, and at the bar, though they were constantly liable to be called on to take the Oath of Supremacy, and were subject to a good deal of irritating and capricious tyranny.2 They formed

'Leland, ii. 411-423.

2 Carte's Ormond, i. 43, 44. Strafford's Letters, i. 454.