LITMIR.BIZ

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James was puzzled by conflicting accounts, and reminded Chichester that he had followed his guidance more closely than any king had ever followed any governor. In order that he might have someone thoroughly informed to apply to he sent over a special commissioner, who was to view the plantation as far as it had got and advise generally as to how the Irish Government might be made financially self-supporting. The person chosen was the famous ex-president of Munster, now Lord Carew, who as Vice-Chamberlain of the Queen’s household would always be at hand. Special letters were at the same time sent to Clanricarde and Thomond, who were personal friends of Carew’s. The King seems to have been struck by Chichester’s often reiterated opinion that sufficient provision had not been made for the natives in the escheated counties, and he directed Chichester and Carew to find out ‘how his Majesty may without breach of justice make use of the notorious omissions and forfeitures made by the undertakers of Munster, for supply of some such portion of land as may be necessary for transplanting the natives of Ulster.’[72]

      His prophecy,

      Carew left Dublin on July 30 accompanied by Chichester, Ridgeway, Wingfield, and Lambert. For three weeks there was unceasing rain, and Carew was near being drowned in fording a flooded river. The commissioners found large numbers of Irish still upon lands from which they ought to have departed according to the theory of the plantation, and at Ballyshannon they addressed a warrant to the sheriff of each escheated county to remove them all by May 1 next. The work was, however, being imperfectly done, and Carew’s real opinions may best be gathered from a paper drawn up by him three years later. Formerly, he said, there was always a strong royalist party among the older population of Ireland, but religious feeling had brought the old English and the native Irish much nearer together. Many had learned something of war abroad, and something also of policy, and they would have the advantage of giving the first blow. They would ‘rebel under the veil of religion and liberty, than which nothing is esteemed so precious in the hearts of men,’ and even the inhabitants of the Pale would be drawn in for the first time in history. ‘For this cause, in odium tertii, the slaughters and rivers of blood shed between them is forgotten and the intrusions made by themselves or their ancestors on either part for title of land is remitted.’

      which was fulfilled.

      A settler’s precautions.

Tyrone’s return was still looked for, and if that were unlikely on account of his age, there was always the chance of a foreign invasion. If the King of Spain sent 10,000 men into Ireland ‘armed with the Pope’s indulgences and excommunications,’ all the modern English and Scotch would be instantly massacred in their houses, ‘which is not difficult to execute in a moment by reason they are dispersed, and the natives’ swords will be in their throats in every part of the realm like the Sicilian Vespers, before the cloud of mischief shall disappear.’ The reconquest would be a Herculean labour. Citadels at Waterford, Cork, and some other places, and a small standing army always ready to move were the chief precautions to be taken. Carew was a true prophet, though the crisis did not come in his lifetime. Officers from the Netherlands, indulgences and excommunications, with occasional supplies of arms and ammunition, but without the 10,000 men of Spain, were enough to maintain a ten years’ war, and the labour of ending it was indeed Herculean.[73]

      Chichester’s long experience as governor of Carrickfergus before he assumed the government, had not led him to think the Ulster Irish irreclaimable. By giving them as much land as they could manage properly, along with the example of better farmers from England and Scotland, he hoped to make them into tolerably peaceful subjects. The undertakers, however, were of course chiefly actuated by considerations of profit, and at first regarded the natives as a mere hindrance, though afterwards they learned to value their help and sometimes to be on very good terms with them. Among the first adventurers was Thomas Blenerhasset, of Horseford, in Norfolk, who was more or less joined in the enterprise with several other East Anglians. He has left us an account of how the thing struck him in 1610, and he was from the first of opinion that the main point was to guard against ‘the cruel wood-kerne, the devouring wolf, and other suspicious Irish.’ He had been with Chichester at Lifford, and learned among other things that Sir Toby Caulfield, who was not at all an unpopular man, had to drive in his cattle every night, ‘and do he and his what they can, the wolf and the wood-kerne, within caliver shot of his fort, have often times a share.’ At first he had agreed with Bacon that isolated castles could not be maintained so as to guard a settlement, but while modifying this idea somewhat, he still held that a strong town was the best guarantee for peace. He contemplated a state of things in which the burghers of Lifford, Omagh, Enniskillen, Dungannon, and Coleraine should frequently sally forth in bands of 100 at a time from each place, join their forces when necessary, and discover every hole, cave, and lurking place, ‘and no doubt it will be a pleasant hunt and much prey will fall to the followers.’ Even the wolf would be scared by these means, and ‘those good fellows in trowzes’ the wandering herdsmen would no longer listen to revolutionary counsels or shelter the lurking wood-kerne. Blenerhasset had a grant of 1,500 acres in Fermanagh on the east side of Lough Erne. When Pynnar saw the place after eight years’ work he found the undertaker’s wife and family living in a good stone house with a defensible courtyard. Over 250 acres was leased to tenants for life or years, and there were a few English cottages with the beginnings of a church. It was supposed that twenty-six men were available, ‘but I saw them not, for the undertakers and many of the tenants were absent.’

      The settlers outnumbered.

In partnership with his kinsman Sir Edward, Blenerhasset had also an adjacent property of 1,000 acres which had been originally granted to John Thurston of Suffolk, and upon this Pynnar found ‘nothing at all built and all the land inhabited with Irish,’ whose names as they stood in 1629 have been preserved. Sir Edward Blenerhasset and his son Francis had another lot upon which there were twenty-two British families and no Irish, ‘but the undertaker was in England.’ The natives upon one of these three portions were no doubt more numerous than the English on the other two, and they were always there, and there is evidence to show that even where Pynnar found none there were many ten years later.[74]

      Position of the natives.

If Chichester’s plan of providing for the Ulster Irish first and giving the surplus land to colonists had been carried out, there might have been some chance of a peaceful settlement. Without much capital or agricultural skill the natives would probably have remained poor, and the remnant of the chiefs would have certainly gone on trying to live in the old profuse way with diminished means; but there would have been many conservative forces at work, for most men would have had something to lose. As it was both gentlemen and kerne remained in considerable numbers, and never ceased to hope for a return to the old system. They felt themselves in an inferior position, but were never able to make a serious move until the difficulties of Charles I. with Scotland and with the English Parliament paralysed the central government. The Munster precedent ought to have given warning enough, but the means of defence possessed by the colonists were very inadequate, and the army was small. The natives had still a great numerical preponderance in Ulster, though they retained but a fraction of the land, and the colonists were not so well armed as to make up the difference. A muster taken after 1628 gives 13,092 as the total number of British men in the province, and of these only 7,336, or not much more than half, were in the escheated counties. Down, which was outside the plantation scheme, contained 4,045. The province possessed but 1,920 stand of firearms, muskets, calivers and snaphaunces, and there were not even swords or pikes for all. Any smith could make a pike, and swords were easily hidden, so that the colonists had but little advantage if regular troops are left out of the account. Lord Conway saw the necessity of protecting his property against the kerne, but the arms which he provided were stopped in Lancashire, and he had to appeal to the English Government for leave. Yet the Lord Deputy had already received strict orders to see that the tenants of Ulster undertakers were trained, and to take care that they were not fraudulently counted in among the soldiers of paid regiments.[75]

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