1592-1617 used in the pulpit against the King, he refused to submit, because he said he was not responsible to the council for what he said in the church. James, however, and his counsellors, were not so feeble as to endure such arrogant pretensions; Melville was forced to fly to England, and a parliament which met in the same year, passed a series of statutes, which made the general assembly altogether dependent upon the crown. But in 1592 the government was compelled to establish the Presbyterian system, and this victory of the kirk brought on a new crisis in 1596. Black, a minister of St. Andrews, violently attacked the King and Queen in the pulpit; he was summoned to appear before the council, but like Melville, he refused to obey. The council of the church took his part, on which James ordered the members of the council to retire to their several parishes. But they refused, saying they met by the warrant of Christ, and should not obey man. In this emergency, James had recourse to his parliament, which ordained that every minister should submit to the government in all matters; that no ecclesiastical assembly should meet without his consent, and that any minister reflecting in his sermons upon the King, should be imprisoned. James prevailed upon the general assembly to assent to these enactments, and he caused an act of parliament to be passed, by which episcopacy was partially restored (1598). After his Partial accession to the English throne, he proceeded to extend restoration and secure what he thus gained. In 1606 the bishops episcopacy. were restored to a part of their revenues; they were declared perpetual moderators of the provincial synods; and in 1610, three of them repaired to England, to receive episcopal ordination from the English bishops, that they might impart it to their colleagues. Episcopacy was now completely restored: a Court of High Commission was created, on the English model; and in 1617, when James visited Scotland, he compelled the general assembly to pass an act authorising the composition of a book of common prayer, and a code of ecclesiastical law, and to adopt what were called the Five Articles of Perth, which directed, of That the Eucharist should be received kneeling; that the sacrament should be administered to the sick at their own homes; that baptism should be The Five administered at home, when necessity required; that the great festivals Articles of should be observed after the manner of the English Church; and that bishops should administer confirmation. Perth. These articles were quite sufficient to alarm a nation fanatically abhorrent of every approach to the Roman worship, and already incensed by what they deemed the corruption and degradation of their church. As soon, therefore, as James had left Scotland, CHAP. VIII. the general assembly loudly objected to the articles, and to everything they had been compelled to adopt. A service book was, however, compiled by Laud, the King's chaplain, in which all the variations from the English Prayer Book had a Roman tendency; and the parliament passed an act (1621) enforcing the articles, the new discipline, and the new liturgy. Here James stopped, for he began to be afraid of rousing the stern, uncompromising temper of his countrymen. But, in truth, he had done that already; for his unhappy innovations gave rise to the National Covenant, and tended to subvert, in the course of a few years, that throne which they were meant to uphold.† Irish expect- 14. Affairs of Ireland. In Ireland, the accession of James was hailed as the opening of a new era of civil and religious peace. As he claimed his descent from Fergus, the first King of Scots in Albion, and Fergus was sprung from the ancient accession. Kings of Erin, the aboriginal Irish were willing to pledge their obedience to him, while the Roman Catholics entertained large expectations from the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. Thus there were many advantages in favour of a final establishment of the English power upon the basis of equal laws and civilized customs; and James's reign is, therefore, the most important in the history of Ireland, and that from which the present scheme of society in that country is chiefly to be deduced. Presuming upon their opinions of James's favour towards them, the Roman Catholics in Cork, Waterford, and other places, immediately on the death of Elizabeth, restored the ancient service, in spite of Mountjoy, the lord deputy. But he soon reduced them to obedience; and when he left the island, he took with him the two great chieftains, Tyrone and O'Donnel, and their principal retainers. The King received them with marks of favour; Tyrone was confirmed in his titles and possessions, and O'Donnel was made Earl of Tyrconnel. These favours encouraged the Roman Catholics, and they sent over deputies to request the two earls to petition the King for the free exercise of their religion. The answer which James gave suddenly opened their eyes to the fallaciousness of the hopes they had entertained. Instead of receiving any remission or mitigation of their wrongs, they saw the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity reimposed upon them with increased rigour. These statutes were quite incompatible with any exercise of the Roman Catholic worship, or with the admission of any members of that church into civil trust in 1605, a proclamation was issued, ordering all * Hallam, II., 483. + Ibid; Lingard, IX., 131-138. 1605 priests to quit the realm, under penalty of death; an order was sent to the magistrates and principal citizens of Dublin, to attend the Protestant service, and those who refused were fined and imprisoned. The gentry of the Pale remonstrated against these proceedings, and they petitioned the council for freedom of religious worship. But by an unfortunate coincidence, their petition was presented to the council on the very day that the Gunpowder Plot became known to the Irish government; the chief petitioners were therefore confined in Dublin Castle, and their spokesman, Sir Patrick Barnewell, was sent to England, and imprisoned in the Tower. To allay the discontent occasioned by this act of oppression, James issued a commission of graces, by which fines for absence from church, and the administration of the oath of supremacy to all who came into the possession of lands, were suspended, the exaction of church fees from recusants was forbidden, and a pardon offered to all who would sue for it. These indulgences were intended to prepare the way for the plan which was now carried out, of introducing into Ireland English customs and laws, and abolishing those of the natives. Sheriffs were appointed throughout Ulster, and judges of assize sent round, one of them being the celebrated lawyer and poet, Sir John Davies; the Further interritorial divisions of counties and baronies were extended to the few troduction districts that still wanted them; the ancient customs of tanistry and laws and of English gavelkind were abolished, and Irish estates made descendible according customs. to the course of common law; the Irish lords surrendered their estates to the crown, and received them back by the English tenures of knight service or socage; an exact account was taken of the lands each of these chieftains possessed, that he might be invested with none but those he occupied; while his tenants, exempted from those uncertain Irish exactions* which were the sources of their servitude and misery, were obliged only to an annual quit rent, and they held their lands by a free tenure (1605). Thus, after four centuries of lawlessness and misgovernment, Ireland at last had a prospect of good and peaceful government. But there were two unhappy maxims which debased the motives and discredited the policy of the enlightened statesmen who brought about such a beneficial state of things. These were, first, that none but the true religion, i.e., the state's religion, could be supposed to exist in the eye of the law; and second, that no pretext could be too harsh or iniquitous to exclude men of a different race or erroneous faith from their possessions. These remarkable changes, and especially the alterations in the tenure of lands, which interfered with what they considered their Expulsion territorial rights, aroused the Earls of Tyrone and of Tysone. Tyrconnel to make one more attempt against the power of England. * Lingard, IX., 143, Note. + Hallam, II., 539, and Notes. CHAP. VIII For this purpose, they held secret meetings in Maynooth Castle, the ancient seat of the Earls of Kildare, near Dublin, with Richard Nugent, Baron Delvin, a man who from his earliest years had been schooled in bitter enmity to the English, having been born and bred in the Tower, where his mother had voluntarily shared the imprisonment of her husband. But these noblemen soon found that they were unable to accomplish any of their schemes; and in 1607, the two earls, with their families and retainers, suddenly set sail from Rathmulla, a small town on the west side of Lough Swilly, and in a few days landed at Quillebecque, in Normandy. From thence they proceeded to Brussels; Tyrone afterwards fixed his residence at Rome, and became a pensioner of the Pope and the King of Spain. He died in 1616, a few years after the assassination of his son at Brussels. By the attainder and outlawry of the fugitive earls, about two million acres, comprehending almost the whole of the counties of Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Tyrconnel, had escheated to the crown. On this was laid the foundation of that plantations great colony which has rendered the province of Ulster the most flourishing, the most Protestant, and the most enlightened part of Ireland. Gathering experience from the unsuccessful attempts which Elizabeth had made to colonise this province, James called to his aid the wise counsels of Bacon, and the extraordinary judgment, capacity, and prudence of Sir Arthur Chichester, the lord deputy. He caused surveys to be taken of the several counties, fixed upon proper places for building castles or founding towns, and advised that the lands should be assigned partly to English and Scotch settlers, partly to the servants of the crown in Ireland, and partly to the old Irish, all of whom were to be exempted from the oath of supremacy. The lands were to be distributed into three classes of 2,000, 1,500, and 1,000 English acres, the larger lots being reserved for the crown servants, and undertakers, adventurers of known capital from England and Scotland. Establish ment of in Ulster. Those who received 2,000 acres were bound within four years to build a castle and bawn, or strong courtyard; the second class within two years to build a stone or brick house, with a bawn; the third class a bawn only. The first were to plant on their lands, within three years, forty-eight able-bodied men, born in England or Scotland; the others to do the same in proportion to their estates. All were to reside within five years, in person, or by approved agents, and to keep sufficient store of arms; they were not to alienate the lands without the King's licence, nor to let them for less than twenty-one years; their tenants were to live in Englishbuilt houses, and not dispersed, but in villages. The natives were bound by similar conditions, and were not to observe any Irish custom whatsoever. 1614 By this transaction the escheated lands of Ulster were divided among 104 English and Scotch undertakers, 56 servitors, and 386 natives. The corporation of London received large grants in the county of Derry, upon their engagements to spend £20,000 upon the colony, and to build two towns, Londonderry and Coleraine. For the protection of the infant colony, a military force was considered necessary, and hence the sale of honours, and the institution of the rank of baronet, with which to provide funds. This great enterprise, however, was not carried out with all the justice which its promoters intended. The native Irish were not fairly dealt with by the colonists, and by those undertakers whom England continually sent forth to enrich themselves, and maintain her sovereignty. Pretexts were sought to establish the crown's title over the possessions of the Irish, and this through a law which they had but just, adopted, and of which they were entirely ignorant; juries refusing to find the crown's title were fined by the council; surrenders were extorted by menaces; many were dispossessed without any compensation, and sometimes by gross perjury, or barbarous cruelty. In the county of Longford, the Irish received only one-third of their former possessions, instead of three-fourths, which the scheme allotted to them; and even those who had proved most faithful to the government, or who had conformed to the Protestant church, were treated little better than the rest.* Hence, notwithstanding the great improvements which were effected, there was in the heart of the Irish a secret and rankling spirit of hostility to the English, which, kept alive by the penal laws against recusants, and the inquisition into defective titles, ultimately burst forth in the terrible rebellion of 1641.† In the scramble 15. Rise of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. for offices that ensued upon the death of the Earl of Northampton, the lord chamberlain (1614), the office of cup-bearer fell to George Villiers, a younger son of Sir Edward Villiers, of Brookesby, in Leicestershire. The handsomeness of his person was his sole title to favour; his manner and address, polished by a residence in France, made a great impression upon James; in a few weeks he mounted higher and higher; he was knighted without any qualification, made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and a knight of the order of the Garter; and, in a prodigiously short time, he became a baron, a viscount, an earl, a marquis, lord high admiral of England, lord warden of the Cinque Ports, master of the horse, * Lingard, IX., 153-154. + Ibid, 148-155; Hallam, II., 540-542; Moore, IV., 161-163. Clarendon, Book I. |