1616. by means of his majority. Yet he found it prudent, in this heat of parties, to drop a bill for the banishment of the whole catholic clergy, and other penal bills against the catholics, which had been prepared and were intended to have been brought forward. Extension of plantations. James's passion for plantations induced him to extend them to other parts of the kingdom. He appointed a commission of enquiry to scrutinize the titles and determine the rights of all the lands in Leinster and the adjoining districts. Such rapid progress did these commissioners of defective titles make in their mission, that in a short time James deemed himself entitled to make a distribution of 385,000 acres in those counties. These were apportioned to English settlers and to some few of the natives, under regulations nearly similar to those, by which he had settled the colony in Ulster. In executing this scheme, little regard was had to the plainest dictates of justice. Old obsolete claims were received even as far back as the reign of Henry II.: and advantage was taken of the most trivial flaws and minute informalities. In Connaught, immense estates were declared forfeited to the crown, because the recent grants made to the proprietors upon their surrenders of them to James had been neglected to be inrolled by the clerks in chancery, although the new grantees had paid above 3000 1. into their hands for the inrolments, and these clerks alone could make them. Perjury, fraud, and the most infamous acts of deceit were successfully practised by rapacious adventurers and informers: and Leland*, who gives an accurate detail of these 1616. enormities, refers to authentic proofs of the most iniquitous practices of hardened cruelty, of vile perjury, and scandalous subornation employed to despoil the fair and unoffending proprietor of his inheritance. Thus was every man's possession precarious and doubtful; and to complete the measure of abuse, the juries, who refused to find a title in the crown, were censured and fined in the castlechamber. vous effects policy. The remainder of James's reign was an uninter- Mischie rupted scene of vexatious oppression of the recu- of James's sants, grievous extortions of the soldiery and their officers upon the people, the execution of martial law in time of peace, the abusive exactions of the clergy and ecclesiastical courts, the unconstitutional interference of the privy council and castlechamber in causes, which ought to have been determined by common law, the invasion of property in the different plantations, and extreme rigour in executing the penal laws. Such were the means, by which James estranged the affections of his Irish subjects from the English government, reduced them to want and misery, and consequently predisposed them to rise against their oppressors, * 2 Lel. p. 470. + Who, as Leland observes, were privy counsellors, and men of great property and influence, too powerful to be complained of for any grievance occasioned by their soldiers,and too deeply engaged in one common interest to call each other to account. P. 471. 1625. whenever the opportunity should present itself of doing it with effect. A woeful legacy to his unfortunate successor! James died in the 59th year of his age, on the 27th of March, 1625, after having been King of Ireland about 22 years. CHAPTER VI. The Reign of Charles 1. reign with to the Irish. THE reign of Charles the First is the part of Irish 1625. history, which has been the most misrepresented by Charles becotemporary and modern historians*. The quick sensi- gins his bility of the national character was strongly marked insincerity in the excess of their joy at his accession. They looked up with confidence to the young monarch, at least for a toleration of their religion: and at the beginning of his reign they practised it with more publicity, than they had in that of his father. This mildness of go * Of all the English writers upon the civil wars of Ireland, Dr. Warner is the most to be relied on. He says, "that they are all so inaccurate, partial, and uninformed, that whoever contents himself with the accounts, that he meets with in any of our Histories of England (not one excepted), may be said to know little of And referring particularly to Mr. Hume's gross infidelity in representing the conduct of Charles I. towards his Irish subjects, he says (p. 359), "To such miserable shifts are able men reduced, when they write to please a party, or to support a character without regard to truth! It is but very little that Mr. Hume hath said, on this critical part of King Charles's reign; but unless he could have said something much more to the purpose than he hath said, he had better have taken the way Lord Clarendon took, and have said nothing at all." The whole of Mr.Hume's representation of the state of Ireland under this Monarch is an impassioned essay of fanciful composition, without even an attempt at historical narrative of the leading features of Charles's reign over Ireland. 1625. vernment, new to the Irish, was but of short dura- * Dr. Warner, in his introduction observes, that the conduct of Charles towards his Irish subjects, will instruct princes to consult the interest and inclination of their subjects, and not to govern by illegal and despotic power. It will instruct the ministers of princes, that their own passions, faction, and ill-humour, will produce as much mischief to the public peace and security of their master, as the most open villainy It will instruct the people not to suffer and assist the folly, the frowardness, the pride and ambition of particular persons to govern the public understanding. + Usher, at the head of the prevailing party of the clergy, subscribed a declaration, which is to be seen in the App. No. XVIII. to my Hist. Rev. It was read before the state in Christ Church, |