of the expense from his private resources, and invited over to Ireland Flemish and French weavers to instruct the people in improved methods.

Wentworth and the Churches.-In Church government, as in civil, Wentworth's main object was order and what he regarded as due subordination to authority. The Catholics he did not greatly persecute, though, in order to extort money, he threatened on several occasions to enforce against them the strict letter of the recusancy laws. His chief objection to the "Graces" was probably that, had they been passed, they would have seriously interfered with this welcome source of supply. He appears, on the whole, to have disliked the Catholics, who acknowledged at least a spiritual superior, even if a foreign one, less than he disliked the Protestant Dissenters, whom he considered as rebels against all authority.

The Established Church the Deputy regarded as a State Department, to be strictly controlled by the Government, but at the same time to be maintained in such a position of dignity and honour as would command the respect of the people. Anything likely to conflict with this aim, such as absenteeism or neglect of their duties on the part of the clergy; the alienation of episcopal lands; carelessness regarding the conduct of church ceremonies or the condition of the churches themselves, met with severe rebuke, and at times sharp punishment, at his hands. Like his friend Laud, then Archbishop of Canterbury, he desired general uniformity. In order to attain it, he summoned a meeting of Convocation, and directed it to supersede the "Confession of Faith," passed in 1615, and to substitute the English Articles of 1562 (see Chap. IV). When the bishops and clergy hesitated to comply with this order, he called certain of them before him, and so violently rated and threatened them that in terror they submitted, as did the whole body of Convocation subsequently, so that the desired Articles were passed (1634).

In order to maintain what he conceived to be proper discipline amongst the clergy, he erected, on his own authority, and therefore illegally, a Court of High Commission to deal with ecclesiastical offences.

The Connacht Plantation Scheme.-In spite of all Wentworth's efforts, the Irish revenue was far from yielding the sums which he desired, and he began to consider other methods for obtaining from the country money for the royal Treasury.

A new Plantation appeared to him about the most feasible expedient to which he could resort, and Connacht the most suitable part of Ireland for such a Plantation.

The compact made by Sir John Perrott with the chief Connacht land-owners in 1585 has already been mentioned (Book IV, Chap. XIII). Most of the land-owners had agreed to the conditions, and the rent had

been paid, though doubtless not very regularly. Unfortunately, whether by accident or design, the legal formalities had not all been complied with. In 1616, this point was raised, and James I undertook, in return for a gift" of £3,000 from the Connacht gentry concerned, to have the omission supplied. He received the money, but again there was a mistake; the Court of Chancery did not enrol the grants. In 1620, and again in 1625, mention is made casually of a project for planting Connacht, but nothing was done till Wentworth's day.

Only by going back several centuries could a pretext for the intended spoliation be found. In the thirteenth century, Henry III had granted about three-fourths of the province of Connacht to Richard De Burgo. The lands were then ruled by native chiefs and no more than a portion of them ever came under the actual control of either De Burgo or his successor, Walter, Earl of Ulster. In 1333, William, the third Earl, was murdered, and left as his sole heir an infant daughter, Elizabeth, who afterwards married Lionel of Clarence, third son of Edward III. Their descendants succeeded to the English throne (1461), and the Connacht lands were therefore regarded as merged in the Crown possessions. In point of fact, however, Elizabeth De Burgo had never actually held any of these territories, for, after her father's death, they had been seized by junior De Burgos and others. Neither during her lifetime nor afterwards was any attempt made to recover the Connacht lands of the De Burgos, though occasional allusions are made in State papers, and once in an Act of Parliament (1523), to the Crown claim. The claim, as has been explained, could only extend to a part of the province, and the 1585 " Composition" and James I's agreement in 1616 to confirm it, would seem to show that the English monarchs themselves had ceased to regard it as valid. In addition to this, the "Grace" promised by Charles I, that a continuous occupation of land for 60 years might be cited as barring any Crown claim, should, in honour at least, have been considered as disposing of this one, resurrected after a slumber of over three centuries.

None of these considerations had any weight with Wentworth. He resolved to brush them aside, and to procure the confiscation, nominally at least, of all the lands of the entire province of Connacht. His Majesty could afterwards restore to the ejected proprietors whatever proportion of their estates he thought fit. In order to ensure a proper zeal on the part of the Judges who were to try the cases, he arranged with them, in advance, that they should receive four shillings in each pound of the profits derived in the first year from the projected Plantation. He himself made a journey through the Connacht counties, to see that juries suitable for his purpose had been returned in each.

In Roscommon, where the Commission opened its proceedings, he harangued the jurors at some length. His Majesty's title to the land was plain, he told them, and he did not require them to find for him, since without their finding he could take the lands. If they found against him, it would really be best for him; for he, so the Deputy implied, would then seize and retain all the estates, whereas otherwise he intended to give back probably the greater part. Cowed by this language, and by private threats, the Roscommon jury decided in the way that Wentworth desired, and those of Mayo and Sligo followed their example.

In Galway, however, things turned out otherwise. The influence of the Burkes, who were extensive landowners, was there very strong. Several dependants of the Earl of Clanrickard, the head of the southern branch of the family, were on the jury. All but two jurors" obstinately and perversely " refused to find for the King. Swift punishment followed their audacity. D'Arcy the sheriff was fined £1,000 and thrown into prison, where he died. The jurors were fined the same amount and also imprisoned. Terrified at these measures, the Clare jury meekly submitted to Wentworth's demands. All was now (1636) ready for the Plantation, but the Plantation did not take place. It is difficult to explain this, especially as Wentworth held office for four years more. It may be that he decided, on reflection, that the lands of Connacht, poor and unfertile and inhabited by a numerous and warlike population, were scarcely worth the expenditure of blood and of money which it would cost to acquire them, and also were little likely, when acquired, to attract English farmers to settle on them.

The Closing Years of Strafford's Administration: The New Army.In 1639, Wentworth was created Earl of Strafford, and exchanged the title of Lord Deputy for the more honourable one of Lord Lieutenant. In Ireland he was not particularly unpopular with the masses of the population; nor was there any reason why he should be. His repression of the disorders amongst the soldiers and his protection of trade had been positive benefits, while his acts of injustice and tyranny had not affected them. By the members of the Privy Council, however, and the higher officials generally, he was detested. With several of them he had had special quarrels, while all resented his arrogance and his outbursts of ill-temper. In many cases of dispute he had certainly been in the right; as when he put an end to the Earl of Cork's robbery of Church property, and revealed the embezzlements of Lord Wilmot. But this did not excuse him in the eyes of the delinquents and their friends. It was these men who finally contributed to his ruin. Like many others, he suffered as much for some of his good deeds as for any of his bad ones.

In 1640, Strafford summoned a Parliament, which showed itself as

subservient as he could desire, and voted large subsidies to the King. To the sums thus collected Strafford added £20,000 of his own. Most

of this money he applied to the uses of the new army which he had got together. Charles was exceedingly anxious to obtain the help of the Irish troops, as the situation in England was growing ever more menacing. They now numbered 8,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, and were admirably drilled and equipped.

Most of the soldiers recently recruited were Catholics, and the fact that they had "armed the Irish Papists" added immensely to the unpopularity of both Strafford and his Royal Master in England. In the spring of 1640 the troops were ready to start.

At this juncture (April, 1640) Strafford was summoned to London, and, in his absence, all the arrangements made in connection with the new army went to pieces. Means for transporting the soldiers to England could not be found; there was no money to pay or feed them, so they took again to the old practice of plundering the civil population. Finally, it was decided to dissolve them. Many enlisted in Continental armies, but numbers stayed at home, and in the Irish civil wars proved most useful to the Confederates, by furnishing a trained nucleus for their regiments, and by helping to drill the new recruits.

The Fall of Strafford is an episode in English History, and, except in so far as the Irish officials aided to bring it about, does not much concern us here. The English House of Commons decided to proceed against him, and soon after his arrival in London he was lodged in the Tower. His enemies in Ireland rejoiced exceedingly, and when, in June, the Parliament met for another Session, it at once drew up articles to help the case against him at his coming trial. These articles included illegal taxation, the refusal of the "Graces," the establishment of the Court of High Commission, the intimidation of the Connacht juries and many other matters.

The English Commons cared little for Irish grievances, but any stone was good enough to throw at their enemy, and they availed themselves willingly of this one. They passed a Bill of Attainder against Strafford through the two Houses. The King, who had shortly before given the Earl his royal word that he would not permit him to be injured in "life, honour or fortune," was mean and cowardly enough to consent to the Bill. Strafford was executed on Tower Hill on May 12th, 1641.

CHAPTER VII

THE INSURRECTION OF 1641

AFTER the fall of Strafford the Irish Government was administered by two Lord Justices, Parsons and Borlase. Both were supposed to be Puritanical in their sympathies, and soon they made themselves most unpopular. Both opposed the concessions to the Catholics, which Charles, anxious for the support of the latter, seemed now willing to grant.

Unrest in Ireland: An Insurrection Planned.-The whole country was in a state of dangerous unrest. Numbers of disbanded soldiers wandered about, without employment or means of support. The Connacht landowners knew not when the decrees which the late Viceroy had obtained against them might be put in force. Those of the other provinces felt that, when such remote Crown claims had been admitted, no Irish proprietor anywhere was secure of his estate. The generation which remembered the Ulster Plantation was yet by no means extinct; plenty of old men and women remained to tell to their grandchildren the tales of their sufferings in those evil days; to kindle in their minds the desire of vengeance, and the hope of wresting the fields which their ancestors had tilled from the hands of the stranger. Over in England the anti-Catholic feeling was growing. Seven priests had been executed in London, merely for saying Mass. In Parliament there were frequent complaints of the lenity shown to Irish Papists. To the Irish the example of the Scotch Presbyterians, who had frustrated, by a successful rebellion, Charles' attempt to force them into conformity with the English Church, was a direct encouragement to attempt something similar, for which moreover the growing troubles in England itself appeared to afford an excellent opportunity.

Gradually the project of revolt took shape. In Ireland, its chief promoters were Rory O'More, one of the O'Mores of Leix; Sir Phelim O'Neill, a member of a junior branch of the O'Neills; Lord Maguire; Col. Hugh Óg Mac Mahon; Col. Plunkett; Sir Con Magennis, and

a few others of less note.

None of these appear to have been men of much ability, though