Confiscation of Connaught

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foreman of the jury which was to decide on his own title but in every instance where the title was given in favor of the owner he was imprisoned, the property confiscated to the Crown and the jurors heavily fined and also imprisoned. Strafford wrote':

"Before my coming from Dublin I had given order, that the gentlemen of the best estates and understandings should be returned, which was done accordingly, as you will find by their names. My reason was, that being a leading case for the whole Province, it would set a great value in their estimation upon the goodness of the King's title, being found by persons of their qualities, and as much concerned in their own particulars as any other. Again, finding the evidence so strong, as unless they went against it, they must pass for the King, I resolved to have persons of such means as might answer the King a round fine in the Castlechamber in case they should prevaricate, who, in all seeming, even out of that reason, would be more fearful to tread shamefully and impudently aside from the truth, than such as had less or nothing to lose."

The vein of quiet humor exhibited in this statement of the situation is very Irish but somewhat out of place in an Englishman. The following quotation shows that Strafford, while not an honest man, had at least some knowledge of the weakness of human nature. He wrote':

"Your Majesty was graciously pleased upon my humble advice to bestow four shillings in the pound upon your lord chief justice and lord chief baron in this Kingdom, forth of the first yearly rent raised upon the commission of defective titles, which, upon observation I find to be the best given that ever was; For now they do intend it with care and diligence such as were it their own private. And most certain the gaining to themselves every four shillings once paid shall better your revenue for ever after at least five pounds."

'State Papers and Despatches of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, collected by Rev. Wm. Knowler, Dublin, 1739, vol. ii., p. 339.

2 Vol. ii., p. 41.

With the incentive of the bribe of four shillings in the pound the Lord Chief Justice and his colleague did what was expected of them in finding every title defective.

The majority of writers do not hold Charles fully responsible for the rebellion of 1641 and its consequences. While it is quite probable that he had not the mental capacity for originating or developing the plan of making a "plantation" of Connaught, he certainly acquiesced in every suggestion made by his Deputy, Strafford, where it could be shown that he was to receive benefit. His excessive avarice, his egotism and his lack of appreciation of any moral obligation to carry out the most solemn pledge made him a credulous dupe. Yet, he was crafty and could appreciate fully the advantages of any move which would be likely to prove of pecuniary profit to himself. While Wentworth, as his Deputy, and others connected with the Irish Government may, toward the end, have slighted his authority and intrigued with the Puritan party in England, yet Charles as the instigator should be held none the less responsible for the results. If he were proved innocent of every other charge, the odium would still remain that he certainly entered fully into the plan of others to exterminate the entire Catholic population of Ireland that the Crown might thus inherit their lands.

From the writings of Leland, Clarendon, Warner and Carte it is clearly shown that there existed a determined purpose to exterminate the Irish Catholics. And yet the English people will accept with pious horror the fabled or perverted account of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day in France and do so with the conviction that it was authorized by the Catholic Church, while they will remain indifferent to the truth of the suffering and persecution of the Catholics in Ireland during centuries.

Leland states':

"The favourite object, both of the Irish governours and the English parliament, was the utter extermination of all the Catholic 1 Leland, vol. iii., p. 166.

The " Rebellion" of 1641

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inhabitants in Ireland. Their estates were already marked out, and allotted to their conquerours; so that they and their posterity were consigned to inevitable ruin."

A statement made by Clarendon is1:

"The parliament party, who had heaped so many reproaches and calumnies upon the King, for his clemency to the Irish, had grounded their own authority and strength upon such foundations as were inconsistent with any toleration of the Roman Catholic religion; and even with any humanity to the Irish nation, and more especially to those of the old native extraction, the whole race whereof they had upon the matter sworn to Extirpate, Etc."

Warner writes":

"It is evident from their (the lords justices) last letter to the lieutenant, that they hoped for an Extirpation, not of the mere Irish only, but of all the old English families that were Roman Catholics."

Carte states':

"But if it be more needful to dispose of places out of hand, and that it may stand with his Majesty's pleasure to fill some of them with Irish that are Protestants, and that have not been for the Extirpation of the Papist natives, it will much satisfy both, and cannot be excepted against."

Carte also states':

"Indeed there is too much reason to think, that as the lords justices really wished the rebellion to spread, and more gentlemen of estates to be involved in it, that the forfeitures might be greater, and a general plantation to be carried on by a new set of English

1 Edward, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland, etc., Oxford, 1843, vol. i., p. 115.

A History of the Rebellion and Civil War of Ireland, by Ferdinando Warner, London, 1768, p. 176.

3

3 Life of James, Duke of Ormond, etc., vol. vi., p. 7.

4 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 145; see also p. 90.

Protestants, all over the Kingdom, to the ruin and expulsion of all the old English and natives that were Roman Catholics; so to promote what they wished, they gave out speeches upon occasions, insinuating such a design, and that in a short time there would not be a Roman Catholic left in the Kingdom. It is no small confirmation of this notion that the Earl of Ormond, in his letters of January 27th, and February 25th, 1641, to Sir W. St. Leger, imputes the general revolt of the nation, then far advanced, to the publishing of such a design; etc. I do not find that

the copies of these letters are preserved; but the original of Sir W. St. Leger's in answer to them sufficiently shows it to be his lordship's opinion; for, after acknowledging the receipt of those two letters, he wrote these words:-' The undue promulgation of that severe determination to Extirpate the Irish and Papacy out of this Kingdom your lordship rightly apprehands to be too unreasonably published,' &c."

IN OTHER WORDS, THE SOURCE OF REGRET WAS ONLY DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE purpose OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT BECAME GENERALLY KNOWN TOO SOON, AND IN TIME FOR THE IRISH PEOPLE, BY UNITING, TO MAKE SOME EFFORT IN SELF-DEFENCE.

The more prominent Irish chiefs, with the Catholic Lords of the Pale and the Bishops throughout Ireland, met together at Kilkenny to decide upon some plan of defence for their mutual protection. They then formed what was termed the "Confederation of Kilkenny," issued the Remonstrance of the Catholics of Ireland, delivered to his Majesty's Commissioners, at Trym, 17th of March, 1642,' and inaugurated what has been claimed to be one of the boldest efforts for civil and religious liberty known in the history of Ireland.

1See Appendix, note 4 in abstract, and Plowden, vol. i., Appendix, p. 81, and other authorities for this document in full, giving the condition of the Catholics in Ireland at this period. It is a remarkable and valuable State paper in which the Irish Committee, with a full appreciation of the grievous wrongs inflicted upon the country, cite them in detail and in a most temperate

manner.

CHAPTER IV

GENERAL CONFISCATION PLANNED BEFORE THE WARCLARENDON'S STATEMENT AND OTHERS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE CIVIL WAR-ENGLISH METHOD OF ACQUIRING TITLE TO THE LANDS SUFFERING OF THE PEOPLE NEVER EQUALLED APPEAL OF THE

CATHOLICS TO CHARLES I. TOO LATE

IT is known that extensive preparation for a general confiscation had been planned in England two months before the uprising in Ireland had been general. The organization was completed about four months after the worthy (!) Owen O'Conally had testified to the existence of a plot formed by the people of Ireland "to destroy all the English inhabiting there," a statement which the most credulous did not believe to be true. Yet on O'Conally's testimony, as the fabrication was termed, the so-called historians of the day based a vindication for the extreme measures resorted to by the English company of "Adventurers" formed in London for "the work of reducing the Kingdom of Ireland," who were to be indemnified "on the forfeiture of the whole Island, except what belonged to the Protestants.

1

The following is taken from the Preface, p. 6, of Mathew Carey's Vindicia Hibernica, etc. : 'The Rev. Mr. Lingard, a Roman Catholic historian, has, through the most culpable neglect, lent the sanction of his name to one of the most stupid and bare-faced impostures, that ever disgraced history; That is the clumsy fabrications of O'Conally, of the pretended conspiracy of the Irish in 1641, to murder all the Protestants that would not join with them; a fabrication, the basis on which rested the whole train of frauds and perjuries, and forgeries, by which two-thirds, if not three-fourths, of all the profitable lands of Ireland were confiscated, and thousands and tens of thousands of the Irish