Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

1661. Ormond from having suffered by these rebellions, insurrections, or civil wars in Ireland, that we read in a letter from the Earl of Anglesey to the Earl of Castlehaven, published in the latter's memoirs during Ormond's own life (A. D. 1681); "that his grace (he was then raised to the dignity of a duke) † and his family, by the forfeiture and punishment of the Irish, were the greatest gainers of the kingdom, and had

for the cause of his own ruin, and wished it might not occasion that of many others, and at last the king." See this attested, 2 Car, Rev, 106.

This authority is the stronger by how much the intimacy and friendship of Lord Anglesey were the greater for Ormond; and we are informed by Leland, after Carte, that when the Duke of Buckingham was endeavouring to supplant Ormond in the king's favour, and had made overtures to the Earl of Anglesey for that purpose, the earl rejected these overtures with indignation, and gave Ormond notice of the designs formed against him. 3. Lel. p. 453. In candor, however, we refer the reader to what Ormond himself offers in his justification in a letter to his majesty, with his reasons for quitting the government of Ireland, in the Appendix to my Historical Review, No. XL.

† An anonymous writer, in 1674, in a pamphlet called the Unkind Deserter, asserted, that "Ormond's estate before the war cleared but 7000 1. per ann. it was so heavilycharged with annuities and leases, but that it was worth 40,0001. per annum, and that it was at that time (1674) close upon 80,0001. per annum. Now the first part of his new great revenues is the king's grant of all those lands of his own estates, which were leased or mortgaged; the rest were grants of other men's estates and other gifts of his majesty. His gifts and grants are thought to amount to 630,000 1." p. 161-2. All these gifts were confirmed by parliament. The printer of this pamphlet was imprisoned at the suit of Ormond, but no answer to it was ever attempted. Carte generally confirms this statement.

added to their inheritance vast scopes of land, and a revenue three times greater than what his paternal estate had been before the rebellion, and that most of his increase was out of their estates, who adhered to the peaces of 1646 and 1648, orserved under his majesty's ensigns abroad *.”

1662.

able com

of Crom

From the representation of Lord Clare, it appears to Unaccounthave been a duty, barely short of legislative enactment, mendation to throw up the adulatory incense of national grati- well. tude to the shrine of Oliver Cromwell, for having vanquished, oppressed, and persecuted nearly to annihilation, the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Ireland. The act of state which is intituled, His Majesty's gracious declaration for the settlement of his kingdom of Ireland, and satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers, and others his subjects there, is published amongst the Irish printed statutes †, and is, perhaps, the most laboured piece of insidious and perplexed sophism that ever issued in form of an act of state. Like all policy grounded on treachery and

* Whence Castlehaven justly concluded, "that bis Grace could not have been very sincere in making either of these peaces with the Irish; but that whatever moved him thereto, whether compassion, natural affection, or any thing else, he was in judgment and conscience against them; and so has he since appeared, and hath advantage by their lying aside." Cas. Mem. ubi supra.

+ For which vid. vol. II. Irish Statutes, p. 245. It consists of thirty-six very long sections, and bears date the 30th of November, 1660, just six months and one day from the restoration, 29th of May.

‡ Without canvassing its merits, suffice it to observe, that it

1662. falsehood, it satisfied none, and offended most. Scarce

Orinond's influence upon

Charles II.

ly is it credible, that the whole property of Ireland at this time depended upon the intrigues of hungry courtiers, interested bigots, and mercenary turncoats, who played into each other's hands, for the undisguised purposes of rewarding treason, defeating merit, and imposing upon base credulity and ingratitude. The spirit of Ormond, Orrery, and their tools, sanctioned by Clarendon, breathes through the whole of this scramble by act of parliament.

The system which had been imagined and fabricated by or under the directions of Ormond, could not fail to create great discontent amongst the cathelics. Ormond commanded unchecked sway over the mind of Charles: he was made Lord Lieutenant

was the production of Ormond, Orrery, Montrath, Lord Chancellor Eustace, Sir Audley Mervin, Sir John Clotworthy, and others, who, even Clarendon observes, had been always notorious for the disservice they had done the King. The preamble to the first Act of Settlement recites, that " God had given to his Majesty, by and through his English and protestant subjects, absolute victory and conquest over the Irish and popish rebels and enemies, so as that their lives, liberties, and estates, were then wholly at his Majesty's disposition by the laws of that kingdom;" and then with matchless effrontery it continues to recite, that "in his majesty's absence several of his subjects, by whom as instruments the said rebels were subdued, did enquire into the contrivers of the rebellion, and did dispossess such of his Majesty's subjects as they found engaged in such rebellion." Whereas the persons here called rebels fought under Ormond and Clanricarde, the king's lieutenants, against Cromwell, Ireton, Axte!, Hewetson, Jones, Broghill, Coote, and others, sworn enemies of Charles Stuart, royalty, episcopacy, and

the constution.

for the purpose of carrying through the acts of settle 1662. ment, and the Irish parliament voted him a gratuity of 30,0001. for his good services in this regard. His son, lord Ossory, was called by writ to the House of Peers. Under this lieutenancy of Ormond, the Court of Wards was abolished, and in its lieu was established the hateful and oppressive tax upon hearths.

Although the first commissioners to execute these Unjust principle of the acts of settlement were removed on account of their commission rank corruption, and had been replaced by men of · generally fair characters, though named by the influence of Ormond and his adherents, yet the rigorous and unjust conditions of innocence and nocency were still kept up. A person, without having taken up arms, was to be judged nocent for having resided in a district occupied by the insurgents; but the most crying badge of nocency was the forced engagement to Cromwell, which his generals imposed under immediate menace of death: an engagement voluntarily taken by those very generals, who were rewarded for having taken it by the confiscation of the estates of those whom they forced to follow their example.

the com

short. Its

The time limited for holding the Court of Claims Time of was a twelvemonth. It sat six months; during which mission too six hundred only of four thousand claims were heard, enlargewhen the commission ended *. And Ormondt pre- posed hy

* Car. Orm, vol. II. 297.

+ Ormond, who probably was conscious of the king's disposi tion and secret wishes to favour the catholics, did all he could to

ment op.

Ormond.

1662. vented its enlargement, which was urgently pressed by Sir Richard Rainsford, one of the commissioners, a person of great probity and humanity. In so much

raise divisions amongst them, by dividing the clergy upon a punctilious form of oath, by which it was then in contemplation to allow the catholics to express their allegiance to their sovereign. The declaration of the great body of the clergy, which Ormond rejected, may be seen in my Historical Review, App. No. XLI. Not contented with the indignant rejection of the clergy's remonstrance, he ordered them to disperse, and soon after banished them out of the nation; and so rigorously was this effected, that when Örmond quitted the government there were only three catholic bishops remaining in the kingdom; two of them were bed-ridden, and the third kept himself concealed. If the public conduct of great men may be traced to their private feelings and passions, it will here be proper to inform the reader, that Walsh (the historian) who was an apostate Franciscan friar, then under the interdict or excommunication of his own bishop, was the particular favourite, creature, and pensioner of Ormond: that Walsh was the most violent opposer of Talbot, the titular archbishop of Dublin, and the rest of the petitioning and remonstrant clergy. Talbot was the brother of colonel Richard Talbot, (afterwards earl of Tyrconnel) who had been sent to the Tower in London, for having challenged Ormond for duplicity of conduct in relation to the Irish catholics; an agent for whom the colonel was. Ormond, in complaining to the king, asked his Majesty, if it were his pleasure, that at that time of day he should put off his doublet fo fight duels with Dick Talbot. This conduct of Ormond towards Talbot did not much raise the duke in the estimation or affection of his countrymen. And the king, who, by dying in the catholic communion, has proved to posterity, that he was long before favourably disposed towards his catholic subjects, could not much relish the severity of Ormond towards them. It is impossible to dissemble the duplicity and fatal pliancy of Charles in every serious duty of the monarch, the christian, and the man. He prostituted political justice to the intrigues of his courtiers and his own love of ease; he postponed

« AnteriorContinuar »