CHAP. XIII. Tirone sues for pardon and obtains it. LORD Mountjoy was highly ambitious of putting an end to this war; an honor which his predecessors in the government, had in vain endeavored to attain. For this purpose he had received the submissions of many of the well-disposed Irish chiefs; and, by fire, famine, and the sword, had weakened or ruined most of those who still continued obstinate. He had reduced Tirone himself to great extremity, having taken or destroyed most of his fortresses; and (what perhaps was more mortifying to him) having broken in pieces the chair of stone, wherein, for many centuries, the O'Nials of his family had been invested with more than kingly authority. His lordship had narrowly enquired into the conduct of former chief governors; and finding that the principal causes of their ill-success in the reduction of this people, were their incessant cruelties and frequent breaches of the public faith, he abstained in some measure from the former ;* and, with respect to the latter, although he was not very punctual to his word in his private dealings, yet he found it absolutely necessary, for obtaining this great end, to observe it strictly in his promises of pardon, and in all public matters wherein the honor of the state was concerned. "He kept his word inviolably in pub * The friendly and honorable manner of his receiving, and entertaining some of the submitting chieftains of the Irish, may be seen in the following passage related by his secretary Morrisson. "The 23d of April, his lordship," says he, " kept St. George's feast at Dublin, with solemn pomp, the captains bringing up his meat, and some of the colonels attending on his person at the table; to which feast the rebels were invited whom his lordship had lately received to mercy, under her majesty's protection, till their pardons might be signed; namely, Tirlogh M'Henry, captain of the Fews, Ever M'Coll Mac Mahon, chief of Fearney, O'Hanlon, a lord of Ulster, Phelim M'Feagh, chief of the O'Byrnes, and Donell Spaniagh, chief of the Cavanaghs in Leinster. These," adds my author, "were entertained with plenty of wine, and all kindness; his lordship as suring them, that as he had been a scourge to them in rebellion, so he would now be a mediator for them to her majesty, in their state of subjects, they standing firm and constant to their obedience."-Hist. of Irel P. 99. lic affairs," says his secretary Morrisson, " without which he never could have been intrusted by the Irish; but, otherwise, in his promises he was dilatory and doubtful; so as in all events, he was not without his evasion." By these means the tranquillity of Ulster was so far restored in August 1602, that the deputy told Cecil in a letter of that date,3« That, except things fell out much contrary to what he had good reason to expect, he presumed, if the queen kept the Irish garrisons strong, and well provided for all the ensuing winter, she might before the next spring, send into Ireland proper persons, with her pleasure how much and in what manner every man should hold his land; and what laws she would have current there; and he was confident they would be obeyed. And after this winter," adds his lordship, " 1 think she may withdraw her garrisons, only leaving wards in their places; and if I be not much deceived, you shall find that these men will be the last of all Ireland that will forsake the queen's party; and I presume, after this winter, they will do the queen good service against the Spaniards, if they come." 4 On the 30th of March following, Tirone came to Melli. font, where being admitted to the lord deputy's chamber,* he kneeled at the door humbly, for a long space, making his penitent submission to her majesty. And the next day he made a most humble submission in writing, signed with his own hand; wherein, after absolutely casting himself on her majesty's mercy, without presuming to justify his disloyal proceedings, he among other things, most sorrowfully and earnestly desired, that it might please her majesty, rather in some measure to mitigate her just indignation against him, in that he • "Lord deputy Mountjoy persuaded Tirone and his confederates, to accept of a general amnesty, with a free and open exercise of the Romish religion, and the full possession of their estates, an. Dom. 1602-3."-Dr. Anderson's Royal Genealogies, p. 786. "This amnesty was confirmed the next summer by king James I.' when Tirone submitted to him in person, and was honorably received at court: And the native Irish believing king James loved them, (having in queen Elizabeth's time privately assisted them, more than Spain did publicly) never disturbed his reign, though they were much provoked,”—Id. ib. did religiously vow, that the first motives of his rebellion were neither practice, malice, nor ambition; but that he was induced first by fear of his life, which, he conceived, was sought by his enemies practice, to stand upon his guard." This submission in writing (adds Mr. Morrisson) was presented by the earl of Tirone, kneeling before the lord deputy and council, and in the presence of a great assembly, whereupon the lord deputy, in the queen's name, promised to the earl, for himself and his followers, her majesty's gracious pardon. And to himself the restoring of his dignity of the earldom of Tirone, and of his blood; and likewise new letters patent for all his lands, which, in his former letters patent had been granted to him, before his rebellion." Thus had the queen's army un der lord Mountjoy, broken and absolutely subdued all the lords and chieftains of the Irishry. Whereupon the multitude being brayed, as it were, in a mortar, says sir John Davis, with sword, famine and pestilence together, submitted them. selves to the English government, received the laws and magistrates, and most gladly embraced the king's pardon and peace in all parts of the realm, with demonstrations of joy and comfort." 5 Hist. Relations. *JAMES I. BOOK II. CHAP. I. The state of the Irish under king James I. SOME few years before queen Elizabeth's death, king' James was at the utmost pains' to gain the friendship of Ro man catholic princes, as a necessary precaution to facilitate his accession to the English throne. Lord Home, who was himself a Roman catholic, was entrusted with a secret com mission to the Pope; the archbishop of Glascow, another Roman catholic, was very active with those of his own religion. Sir James Lindsay made great progress in gaining the English papists." And as it seems to have been part of that king's policy, in order to pave the way to his succession,“ to waste the vigor of the state of England by some insensible, yet powerful means," he had his agents in Ireland fomenting Tirone's war,* (" the Scots daily carrying munition to the rebels in Ulster.") So that the queen was driven to an almost incredible expence in carrying it on,† and her enemies still encouraged by James's secret assistance and promises. 1 Robertson's Hist. of Scotland, &c. 2 Secret Correspondence between king James and Sir Robert Cecil, p. 75. * And this wicked policy had its full effect; for we find that in the year 1602," the queen had a sharp encounter with secretary Cecil, about the poverty of the state. She was made to fear all kinds of distress, that want in the subject, and excess of charges to the state, was likely to bring her to: they (Cecil's enemies) sought to make those suspected who persuaded the Írish war, and those either negligent or corrupt, who conducted it; putting a firm conceit, and not improbable, as it is set out in colors, that the Irish war, being the chiefest drain of her consumption, is fortified, and fed for other men's particulars."-Secret Correspondence, &c. p. 75. "After Tirone's return from rebellion, he told sir Thomas Philips and many others, that if his submission had not been accepted, he had contracted with the Spaniards to fortify two or three places in the north, where his allies and friends in the Scottish isles should, and might with ease, relieve and supply him."-Harris Hibernic. part i. fol. 130. "The queen's charge for Ireland," says Morrisson, " from the 1st of April 1600, to the 29th of March 1602, was two hundred and eighty-three thousand, six hundred and seventy-three pounds, nineteen shillings and four-pence halfpenny.”—Hist. of Ireland, fol. 197. "It is certain," says Mr. Osburne, "that the promise king James made to Roman catholics, was registered and amounted so high at least, as a toleration of their religion." "Of these intrigues, queen Elizabeth received obscure hints from several quarters." Her majesty in a letter to the king himself in 1599, gave him to understand," that there were many letters from Rome and elsewhere, which told the names of men, authorised by him (tho' she hoped falsely) to assure his conformity as time might serve, to establish the dangerous party, and fail his own." The catholics, in the different provinces of Ireland, were, on James's accession, so much elated with the hopes of the abovementioned toleration, and had taken up such an opinion that the king himself was a catholic, that they ran into some excesses, which have been since unfairly represented by adverse historians, as so many overt acts of treason and rebellion. For, on that mistaken notion, they exercised their religion publicly, and even seized on some churches for their own use.* The mayors 3 Osburne's works. 4 Robertson ubi supra. 5 Saunderson's king James. * There never were more glaring instances of royal hypocrisy exhibited by any prince, than frequently appeared in James I. through the whole course of his reign. His seeming favor towards, or enmity against, his Roman catholic subjects, was always regulated by some present interest in view. In the year 1616, in compliance with the request of his puritanical parliament, he thus ridiculously expresses his sentiments, with respect to the punishment he would have inflicted on popish priests: "I confess," says he, "I am loath to hang a priest only for religion sake, and saying mass : but if he refuses to take the oath of allegiance (which, let the pope and all the devils in hell say what they will, yet as you find by my book, is merely civil) those that so refuse the oath, and are polypragmatic, I leave them to the law to them I join those that break prison; for such priests as the prison will not hold, 'tis a plain sign nothing will hold them but the halter," -Speech in the Star Chamber. Yet in the year 1622, when he had a favorite point to carry (the marriage of prince Charles) at a popish court, he told his council in a public speech," that the Roman catholics of England had sustained great and intolerable surcharges, imposed on their goods, bodies and consciences, during queen Elizabeth's reign, of which they hoped to be relieved in his : that now he had maturely considered their penury and calamities, that they were in the number of his faithful subjects, and that he was resolved to relieve them.-Sir Peter Pett. Oblig, of the Oath of Supremacy, fol. 338. In king James I.'s reign, even chief justice Coke maintained publicly at the trial of Mr. Turner, that popery was one of the seven deadly sins. And |