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A25428
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A letter from a person of honour in the countrey written to the Earl of Castlehaven : being observations and reflections upon His Lordships memoires concerning the wars of Ireland.
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Anglesey, Arthur Annesley, Earl of, 1614-1686.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing A3170; ESTC R613
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23,258
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78
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you incouraged to keep you as near the old Government as might be holding to the Ancient Laws of the Land This is as improbable as the other but if true is a demonstration that Irish Popish Lawyers are the worst instruments that can be tollerated in Ireland And it is notorious in Fact that these were the Men that did both contrive and put in order the Rebellion and frame their whole Constitution and without whose Council and Abilities having had their Education in the Inns of Court of England they had never come out of that Chaos of Confusion where they were at first or reduced their Affairs to a consistency but had been quickly mastered And therefore I hope this hint concerning the Lawyers will awaken his Majesty and Parliament of England and the Government in Ireland to provide against the continuance of such dangerous instruments as the Popish Lawyers have shewed themselves to be and in probability will so continue making use of their Learning and Skill for subversion of Government and good Order So that Ireland is never like to be quiet if they be tollerated Your Lordship proceeds to tell us that this Assembly without delay approved all the Council had done how could they well in gratitude do less being themselves a Creature of that Councils making and settled a Model of Government viz. That at the end of every General Assembly the supream Council should be confirmed or changed as they thought fit That it should consist of Twenty five six out of each Province three of the six still resident the 25th was your Lordship with no relation to any Province but to the Kingdom in general c. Your Lordships Relation was a mock Image of his Majesty which was also to the Kingdom in general and but that it is not now my business I could here evince that this Constitution cast the over balance of the Government clearly into the Irish hands such of the old English Extraction as joyned with them being Ciphers upon the matter as it appeared afterwards in practice so improbable was what your Lordship asserts that if a Letter came to them written in Irish it would be wondred at and hardly could one be found to read it unless you would confess that those skilled in reading the Irish Language are extinct for the meerest Irish of that Kingdom and all the Popish Clergy who if any are likliest to be skilled in it were ingaged in the Rebellion and constant promoters of it having their Colledges and Monasteries in Kilkenny and all Cities and chief Towns under the Confederate Irish Power and wholly at their Command For a close of this Paragraph your Lordship saith you were not in case to bring to Justice those that begun the Rebellion but you never saw any of them esteemed or advanced This is strange when Owen Roe Oneal Sir Phelemy Oneal Con Oneal the Mc. Donnels Mc. Thomas the Farrolls the Delyes the Mc. Cartyes Mc. Guires Mc. Mahans Fitzpatricks Mc. Gennis's and generally those of the meer Irish septs and Families were chiefly trusted whose names it were too tedious to repeat but I have Authentick Lists of them but indeed I do believe the Confederates even of English Extraction had as little will as power to question those that begun the Rebellion and to this day they are so far from any inclination to condemn it that all their Writings run in Justification of it and I never yet met with any that cordially seemed to repent it or perswade others to it except only Peter Walsh whom your Lordship calls your Ghostly Father Caron and some few Remonstrants with them who condemning the Doctrines of Rebellion King killing and Deposing c. do obliquely censure this Rebellion and some of them positively call the beginners and continuers thereof to repentance The rest of your Lordships Memoires is more History than Justification as well whilst you continued to serve under the Confederate Catholicks which was till the Peace of 1646 proclaimed as after till you left Ireland wherein your Lordships part being mixed of Gallentry and Generosity in some instances as well as Severity and fierce Prosecution of the English in others I will not be a critical observer thereof or lead any to envy your Lordship the just esteem of whatever you did honourably though in an ill cause But since your Lordship lays some weight of merit upon the Cessation and two Peaces of 1646 and 1648 and expresseth no unfavourable Opinion of that which goes by the name of Glamorgan's Peace and think much that the Irish their Estates were given away by the Acts of Settlement I shall only make some general Remarks upon those particulars and the whole state of that Rebellion and so put an end to your Lordships trouble and my own And first I must observe upon the whole matter that the Irish did the English more hurt and advantage themselves more by the Cessation and two first Peaces than ever they did or could do by open force after the first Massacre Upon this grounds the Lords Justices and Council were from the beginning averse to them and for me to shew the Design and Intrigue of the Cessation and Peaces which I can do by unquestionable Memorials and Records will make a great part of a Volumn and cannot well come within the bounds of a Letter but when I have said all I think fit to your Lordship upon occasion of your Letter your Lordship who as you were an Enemy as keen as generous having been by your place and interest privy to all the Cabals and secret Councils against the English and Protestants being deeply ingaged in the Roman Catholick Confederacy and any other Attempts against them in what shape or form soever they appeared will I hope if you find any thing written by me questionable or doubtful in your opinion favour me with your severest Reflections thereupon for as I design nothing but exact truth wherever it light so if by inadvertency or want of full information I should erre or come short in the least your Lordship shall find me ready to retract or supply but never to persist in it Your Lordship knows as well as any man that the Earl of Ormoud made afterwards Marquess and Duke with the same Title was the first of that Family of the Botelers that was Educated in the Protestant Religion his Mother the Lady Thurles Brothers Sisters and all his Relations continuing Roman Catholicks and in the Irish Quarters and those able to bear Arms as the Lord Muskery after Earl of Clancarty and Collonel Fitzpatrick his Brother in Law his Brother Collonel Richard Butler of Vilcash and Collonel George Mathewes and other his Relations as the Lords Mountgarret Dunboyne and divers other Lords and others of his Name and Family were Generals or Commanders of lower Quality in the Rebels Army so that his Lordship was upon the matter single in any Duty and Allegiance to the Crown all his Lordships Friends Kindred and Dependants
taking the contrary part and his Lordship escaping soon after the Rebellion to Dublin only with the Kings Troop which he Commanded and some Servants that attended him The Earl of Leicester Lord Lieutenant as he was upon his Journey for Ireland was discharged that Imployment to make way for the Marquess of Ormond to succeed him who had an unlimitted Commission sent him sole to examine the pretended Grievances of the Irish and for making a Cessation with the Rebels which he did and was after made Lord Lieutenant and concluded the two first Peaces before-mentioned I have heard Sir Philip Percival a very worthy Person and of a fair Estate being asked why he would by his Certificates of Defect of Stores give countenance and furtherance to a Cessation which he knew could only advantage the Rebels and be ruinous to the English Answer The Stores were really wasted upon unprofitable fruitless Marches and then his Certificates being required he durst not as an Officer refuse them though he was aware of the use would be made of them To shew your Lordship how the Cessation operated laying aside at present the question of the warrantableness on necessity thereof and that the two first Peaces were against Law and several Acts of Parliament in both Kingdoms and upon that and other accounts the validity thereof I must take another opportunity when I may discourse things more fully with your Lordship I can now only briefly tell your Lordship that all the Proceedings of the Rebels in Arms and all their Demands were Treason That the English and Protestants had the Laws on their side which the Irish by combination and force did break and designed wholly to subvert That the Irish tollerated no Protestants in their Quarters though that Religion were the only legal Establishment but seized and forfeited all their Estates whilst the Protestants afforded the measure and benefit of the Laws to the Irish and Papists even to those who had been in Rebellion whensoever they came in or submitted It is not then to be wondred at that the chief and most of the English Nobility in Ireland and the generality of English Scotch and Irish Protestants of all qualities and degrees sooner or later opposed both the Cessation and Peaces as destructive to them and derogatory to the Crown in which number we find the Earls of Kildare Thomond Cork Barrimore Drogheda Donnagall Claubrasill Mount Alexander c. The Viscounts of Valentia Conoway Ranelagh Kinnelmeky Shannon c. Barons or Lords Elsmond Juchequin Blaney Broghill c. But it were endless to name all and of no use to your Lordship who know this as well as I. By this it appears how ungratefully the Irish did requite the Marquess of Ormond for his unwillingness that the whole Irish Nation should ruin themselves by their persisting in Rebellion And now whether it was their vain confidence to carry the day or what else occasioned it they lost the opportunity of deliverance which the Marquess of Ormond being related to so many of them by Blood and Alliance had compassionately designed for them though with great hardship and damage to the English And whatever grounds the Marquess of Ormond had for the Cessation and Peaces by which he could have got nothing but would have incurred manifest loss which it chiefly concerns himself to vouch that in the eye of the World he may stand clear as a true English Man and faithful Subject It is apparent that now by the Forfeiture and Punishment of the Irish his Lordship and Family are the greatest gainers of the Kingdom and have added to their Inheritances vast scopes of Land and a Revenue three times greater than what his Paternal Estate was before the Rebellion and most of his increase is out of their Estates who adheared to the Peaces or served under his Majesties Ensigns abroad which shews that whatsoever of Compassion or Natural Affection or otherwise might incline him to make those Peaces he is in Judgment and Conscience against them and so hath since appeared and hath advantage by their laying aside The like may be said of the Duke of York the Earl of Arlington Lord Lanesborough and others who have great Estates of the Irish freely given them upon the same foundation So that 't is to be hoped whether the Bills already come over to confirm the forfeited Rebels Estates to English and Protestants will do the work or no That his Grace or whosoever shall succeed him in the Lieutenancy will in time transmit such Bills as shall do that work effectually and unite and strengthen his Majesties Protestant Subjects to oppose and break the further Designs of that Rebellious Generation which they will never keep free from so long as they acknowledge and obey a Forreign Head I shall make no reflection at this time upon the Peace called Glamorgan's Peace but what your Lordship gives occasion for by mentioning it viz. That it was the most destructive of all to the English and Protestants but suited best with the Confederate Design of establishing the Romish Idolatry which your Lordship in your Oath of Association engaged as deep in as any excepting the first foundation laid in Blood a fit basis for a Faction only supported by Fraud and Cruelty One passage in your Lordships Memoires I cannot but take notice of for your Honour as an English Man That when the Marques of Ormond in his extremity between the Nuncio party and the Parliament of England asked your Lordship with which of his Enemies he should treat You answered That you were confident he had resolved that before there being no question in the case when it was no question with your Lordship I wonder how it came to be one with his Lordship but the success of your Council was happy and founded upon solid grounds of Reason Your Lordship sees I can but glance at particulars in this Letter and being by so noble a Pens ingaging in justification of a Quarrel which casts reflection upon all that took contrary part to the Irish of which number I was one contrary to my first intention upon the matter necessitated in vindication of as just a cause as ever was managed under the Sun to hasten out the last part of the general History of Ireland first Wherein I shall so impartially make relation beyond all possibility of contradiction that I doubt not your Lordship will reflect with remorse upon what you have done and written wherein I differ from you and the World will know exactly the truth of that sad story I shall in the mean time only as in an abstract ser these things before you and upon the whole matter in answer to your Lordships specious justification and for your present mortification let you know that by Judgment of the King and his Privy Councils and Parliaments in both Kingdoms You are involved in the guilt of Treason and under forfeiture of all you have and as a friend yet advise you to get his