The Viceroys of Ireland Part 5

Unfortunately for Tyrconnel, he cast in his lot with the Duke of York, and twenty-five years pa.s.sed before his patron was in a position to give him his earldom. Talbot, who was a product of the battlefield, was not likely to s.h.i.+ne in the court of Charles II. He played a part in it for a time, and he was the hero of several love affairs, but he had not the courtly graces of a Buckingham or a Rochester. Women were afraid of provoking him, for he brooked no rivalry, and the man who in one week fought five duels in London and wounded his opponent every time was no fit companion for ladies whose fame depended upon the number of conquests they made, but they admired his courage and success. In his only really serious love affair Tyrconnel was rejected, and the lady {111} married Sir George Hamilton. Richard Talbot also found consolation, but some years later, when his wife had died, he married Lady Hamilton, a widow with six children.

Charles was speaking more than the truth when he declared that no one would ever a.s.sa.s.sinate him to make James king, and Talbot, leading an aimless life in London, a beggared gambler, distrusted by the old aristocracy and feared by the new, sought vainly for adequate employment for nearly ten years. Then in 1669 Charles appointed him Commander-in-Chief in Ireland on the earnest and persistent solicitation of the Duke of York. London society was not displeased to get rid of the bully so easily, for in their estimation Ireland was still a place of exile, especially so in view of the comfortable statesmans.h.i.+p practised by Charles and his satellites in the palace of Whitehall. Talbot went to Ireland eagerly, knowing that the qualities which had won for him contempt in London would idealize him in Ireland.

With the aid of the Duke of York, and also helped by the indolence of Charles, he knew that he could make his office of Commander-in-Chief at least equal to, if not more powerful than, the viceroyalty. Ormonde had been superseded by Lord Robarts, and Talbot detested the duke, whose religion made him unpopular with the Duke of York and his friends.

[Sidenote: 'Lying d.i.c.k Talbot']

On the accession of James II., Richard Talbot--Macaulay's 'Lying d.i.c.k Talbot'--was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and his powers as Commander-in-Chief increased. It was the king's ambition {112} to make himself independent of Parliament by means of the army, and he hoped that Tyrconnel would bring the army in Ireland to such a state of efficiency that would render it an important a.s.set in the struggle between the king and his subjects. To a man of Talbot's temperament unlimited power was a spur to unlimited ambition, and successive viceroys found themselves in a humiliating position. The noted duellist and bully--the man at whom half London sneered and whom the other half feared--was set in authority over some of the best blood in the kingdom, and although they complained bitterly to the king, there was no redress.

[Sidenote: The state of the country]

The nomination of Tyrconnel to the vice-royalty was, therefore, the only way out of James's difficulties in Ireland. Nearly every cla.s.s in the country welcomed the appointment. The new viceroy proceeded to strengthen his own position rather than that of the king's. He had been instructed to pack the state and the bench with Catholics, but Tyrconnel, with thoughts of the future, selected creatures of his own, and in a short time he was master of the country. The bench, the corporations, the Justices of the Peace, were all subservient to him.

He made and unmade laws, and the spectacle of a bully ruling a country might have made the world laugh had it not been so tragic. The disarmed Protestants were left to the mercy of the criminal cla.s.ses and the legalized highway robbers; consequently many of the most prosperous and law-abiding families were compelled to leave their lands and homes {113} and emigrate to England. Justice was a travesty; householders in Dublin had to keep watch all night to guard their property because the fear of punishment for crime no longer existed. The viceroy and his wife reigned in Dublin Castle, where sectarianism influenced every single act.

Lady Tyrconnel, who had been in her youth one of the most fascinating of the group of ingenuous beauties gathered about the court of Charles II., was in her middle age ugly, spiteful, and fanatical. Her husband was rough and coa.r.s.e; she was feline and fanciful, but she adapted herself to the ways of his policy, and the Catholic religion found in her a devout adherent. She was not popular in Ireland, however. The mother of six children, she was fond of recalling the glories of her Whitehall past. Secretly she disliked James, and even at times broke out into petulant diatribes against her husband's patron; but all the time she aped the youth of her early years, and tried to hide the plain present by means of paint.

There was no room for the finer arts of life in Tyrconnel. He was now acting the statesman, and the result was very soon evident. Ormonde, despite his defects and dislike for the ultra-patriots, had succeeded in improving the condition of Ireland, and his successors had been willing to continue his social policy if they could not improve upon it. The Earl of Tyrconnel, however, was not the man to imitate others, no matter how praiseworthy such imitation might be, and in less than a couple of years he 'reduced Ireland {114} from a place of briskest trade and best-paid rents in Christendom to utter ruin and desolation.'

Dublin had progressed amazingly under Ormonde, and it seemed as if the capital city would rise to a place amongst the most important cities of the world, when Tyrconnel came to set it back a hundred years. England had never done anything for Dublin or any other town in Ireland, and the progress of the capital had been made in the face of the bitterest opposition and the most relentless persecution. London, Bristol, and the other ports of England were jealous of Dublin, and they were able to get edicts pa.s.sed interfering with the s.h.i.+pping and the trade of the country, in order that they might not lose in compet.i.tion. Dublin, however, rose superior to edicts and statutes, and by the end of the seventeenth century it was not a mean city. Even in London it was realized with something approaching wonder that Dublin was not to be despised. For five hundred years it had been the headquarters of the English colony, but it was in Tyrconnel's day entirely Irish. The English families had been merged in the Irish, and the result was a population anxious for peace and freedom from the persecutions entailed by religious squabbles and political struggles.

The Earl of Tyrconnel was too patriotic, however, to let the country rest. His crude mind was full of ambitious schemes, and from England James fed him with ambitious food. Between them they were to make England, Ireland, and Scotland wholly Catholic, and in the remote event of England failing the king, Ireland was to be {115} made a French protectorate, so that the supremacy of the Catholic religion might remain undisputed.

Suddenly James appealed for help, and Tyrconnel sent him 3,000 men; but they could not keep the king's throne, and on March 12, 1689, James landed at Kinsale from France, a king without a throne, a Catholic without a conscience, and a fanatic without a scruple. His visit to Ireland had an ominous precedent in the case of Richard II., and it had a similar result. It was obvious that the English monarch relied entirely upon his viceroy to save his throne. Ireland was even then renowned for its simple-hearted allegiance to the old faith, and James was under the impression that fanaticism can beat generals.h.i.+p and numbers.

[Sidenote: King James in Dublin]

Tyrconnel, ever optimistic when fighting was imminent, met James at Cork, and headed the triumphant procession into Dublin on March 24, 1689. The king was rapturously welcomed from Cork to Dublin as the friend of Ireland and of its religion, and Lady Tyrconnel organized a fete at the Castle, in which she endeavoured to remind the nervous and dejected king of the former glories of the Stuart dynasty when the family seemed all-powerful and secure. James, however, unwisely and needlessly irritated her by a display of indifference, and at a dance he exasperated her by leading out a less-known but more beautiful member of Irish society. The viceroy's wife was d.u.c.h.ess of Tyrconnel by now, for the Lord-Lieutenant had been created a duke on the {116} arrival of the king; but it is as Earl of Tyrconnel that he is known.

James had not the power to create peerages in 1689.

There is no need to enter minutely into any of the details of the Jacobean war in Ireland. It was a religious and a political contest, but the presence of James and the mult.i.tude of his counsellors were the chief causes of the Catholic defeat. In the Parliament James summoned at Dublin there was a member named Patrick Sarsfield, afterwards given the worthless and illegal t.i.tle of Earl of Lucan, who was destined to play a leading part in the fortunes of James, and who might have won success for his royal master had his qualities been recognized in high quarters. Tyrconnel, however, always ready to sacrifice the good of his country for the good of himself, kept Sarsfield under, and James, who had been given proof of Sarsfield's devotion, distrusted his ability. At a time when everybody had deserted James, Patrick Sarsfield stood by him, and in the very first encounter with the army of William he proved his courage. The viceroy was now old and crippled by gout, but he insisted upon holding the princ.i.p.al place in James's Council, and when it was announced that William was coming to Ireland, it was he who insisted upon James fighting for his crown, although that monarch was secretly preparing for his return to France. James created defeat for himself, and his motley collection of adventurers made that defeat certain. No real attempt was made to bring a disciplined army into the field against the King of England, and {117} only the bravery and genius of the troops made the Battle of the Boyne a battle at all.

[Sidenote: The Battle of the Boyne]

This decisive conflict was fought on Tuesday, July 1, 1690, and the stars in their courses fought for William. James was in the way of his own Generals, and in the many critical moments of the battle there were schisms in the Council. But it was James who contributed most to the defeat of his army, and well might Patrick Sarsfield exclaim bitterly: 'Change kings, and we will fight you over again.'

The ex-king was almost the first fugitive from the field, and he rode without cessation until he reached Dublin Castle, weary, travel-stained, but just the same sneering, disappointed incompetent, who had sacrificed many humble lives n.o.bler than his own. When Lady Tyrconnel, fl.u.s.tered and alarmed, came down to greet him, James caustically informed her that the Irish ran well.

'Your Majesty seems to have won the race,' was Lady Tyrconnel's witty rejoinder; and the king remained silent.

From Dublin James, thanks to his forethought, was able to cross to France immediately, and he scandalized Paris by declaring that the Irish were cowards to a man, who had run away at the first shot from the enemy. The result of this libel was that the members of the Irish colony in Paris were mobbed in the streets, and long afterwards, when physical ill-treatment ceased, the name of an Irishman stood for cowardice in the best Parisian circles.

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The ex-king left Tyrconnel, Lauzun, Boisseleau, and Sarsfield to fight his battle against William, and after the disastrous Boyne they retired on Limerick. William followed hastily, and presently his 28,000 men were besieging the city, which was garrisoned by not more than 15,000 troops. The hero of the siege was Sarsfield, and it is to his story that this belongs. Tyrconnel was anxious to get out of the country, and when Sarsfield had driven the English army from the walls of Limerick the viceroy followed King James into exile, the Duke of Berwick being styled 'viceroy.' A Council of Twelve a.s.sisted the duke, while Tyrconnel, having, with his wife, gone to France with all their available resources, interviewed James, and induced him to send him back to Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant. Furthermore, James was persuaded to give Tyrconnel a grant of 8,000. In such a state of war there could be no real viceroy, and Tyrconnel was compelled to pa.s.s his time between pleasures and fears. Chroniclers recount stories of the festivities given by him in his own honour during a stay at Galway. He was too old for anything else. Meanwhile the rival generals in the field proved easy victims for William's commanders. The Earl of Marlborough came to Ireland to supplement his small experience of warfare, and, of course, he performed creditably, for the Jacobean troops were badly clothed, fed, and armed. Sarsfield alone seemed worth his position, and his efforts were negatived by the incompetence of his colleagues.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Limerick]

On August 14, 1691, Tyrconnel died, sixty-one {119} years of age, but worn out and feeble. He was buried by night and in such haste that his burial-place quickly became a mystery. He died just before the end of the Jacobean struggle in Ireland, for a few days afterwards the Treaty of Limerick was signed, and Sarsfield left the country to fight as a soldier of fortune, and to die an honourable death on a foreign battlefield. In the contest between James's Irish army and that of William the latter had all the luck and the former all the traitors.

It was, therefore, a matter for astonishment that the Jacobean troops should have gained any victories at all. Certain it is that the English commanders never gained reputations so cheaply. When Marlborough returned to London he was feted as a victor by the king; but all he did was to overcome by means of sheer force small and irregular bodies of troops indifferently armed and often badly led.

Marlborough did not learn anything of the art of generals.h.i.+p by his month's visit to Ireland. Patrick Sarsfield was the only man who proved his worth as a leader and his courage as a soldier. We know that he fought for a good cause but an unworthy man, and that the cause was something better than the restoration of James to the throne of England.

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CHAPTER VIII

The Orange Government in Ireland was in the hands of two Lords Justices named Coningsby and Porter, but as soon as the Treaty of Limerick ended the hopes of the Jacobeans William decided to send one of his followers as viceroy. There were many claimants on the king's grat.i.tude, but Henry Sidney, fourth son of Robert, second Earl of Leicester, one of Charles I.'s viceroys, had been well rewarded by the Dutchman for his treachery towards James. Sidney had been present at the Battle of the Boyne, being now a viscount, and when there was plenty of Irish land and money to be distributed Viscount Sidney received 50,000 acres and an allowance of 2,000 a year. During the reign of Charles II. Sidney had taken a prominent part in court life, and his beauty was such that he was regarded as 'the greatest terror to husbands' of his day.

James, Duke of York, and his d.u.c.h.ess, formerly Anne Hyde, took young Sidney into their confidence, and gave him a court appointment. He retorted by endeavouring to ruin the d.u.c.h.ess's reputation, and when they dismissed him he continued his plottings. He was successful in so far that he caused a temporary separation between James {121} and his wife; but at the accession of Charles's brother he was taken back into favour. Sidney, however, was determined to act the part of the traitor, and he quickly betrayed his cause to William. Besides this fondness for plotting Sidney found time to earn the reputation of one of the most immoral men, even in Charles's reign. He regarded every woman of beauty as fit prey for his pa.s.sion, and even when he was nearly seventy his intrigues were the talk of London.

[Sidenote: Protestant Party dissatisfied]

This was the man William sent to represent him in Ireland, and when Viscount Sidney arrived in Dublin in 1692 he was fifty-one years of age, unmarried, and still very handsome. But he was not a statesman or a soldier, and his position alone made him great. He was not equal to the task of carrying out the changes created by the Treaty of Limerick--a treaty hotly repudiated by the Protestant party in Ireland, who, now that William's cause had triumphed, naturally looked for a return of their supremacy and the subjection of the majority. Sidney's conciliatory att.i.tude towards the Catholics brought down upon him the wrath of the Protestant clergy and aristocracy; Parliament met, and denounced his indulgences to members of the rival faith, and, although Sidney dissolved it, the effect on the king was considerable. He dare not remove the viceroy, and yet Sidney was dangerous so long as he remained in Ireland. A way out of the difficulty was found by the 'promotion' of the viceroy to the post of 'Master-General of the Ordnance,' and in {122} 1694--the year after he vacated office--he was created Earl of Romney.

Sidney never married, but he did not altogether escape the responsibilities of parentage. He complained very often of the worry many women gave him by pestering him with demands for the provision of their children. During his brief viceroyalty one of his numerous victims had the courage to beard him in Dublin Castle, and demand that he should contribute towards the maintenance of the three children she had borne him. Sidney dare not send the woman away empty-handed, and he gave her 500; but the majority of his victims never received anything, for he was as mean as he was vicious. Had it not been that by accident he could claim to have given William and Mary the Crown of England, Sidney would never have risen to any position at all. He became prominent by sheer chance.

[Sidenote: Lord Capel of Tewkesbury]

It was expected that care would be taken to make the new viceroy acceptable to the Protestant party; but there was a delay, and William allowed the Government to be conducted by three Commissioners, the most powerful being Sir Henry Capel, Lord Capel of Tewkesbury. Capel was a fanatical Protestant and a bitter opponent of Roman Catholicism in all shapes and forms. His fellow-commissioners were less ferocious, but Capel managed to gain his way in most things, and he was viceroy in reality, though not in name. Meanwhile the English party in Dublin used every atom of influence to secure the elevation of Capel to the viceroyalty, and in 1695 they succeeded. {123} The cause of Protestantism seemed safe now, but Capel did not live long, and on May 14, 1696, he died in Dublin Castle. Capel is remembered mainly because he gave Jonathan Swift his first preferment--the benefice of Kilroot, worth about 100 a year. This was in 1695.

Commissioners in the persons of Lords Justices conducted the affairs of State without the supervision of a viceroy. One of these was the Earl of Berkeley, whose dealings with Dean Swift, when that eccentric cleric was seeking a high appointment, have become historic. Berkeley was one of the Lords Justices, and he had it in his power to bestow preferment, but Swift was unable or unwilling to pay his price, and one day in a rage he cried to Berkeley and his secretary: 'G.o.d confound you for a couple of scoundrels!' On December 12, 1700, William appointed his wife's uncle, Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, a n.o.bleman who had accepted this office sixteen years before from Charles, and had not troubled to journey to Ireland. His second appointment did not arouse any enthusiasm either in the man or in the country he was called upon to govern, and it was not until the following September that he landed in Ireland. As a relative of the queen's--his sister, Anne Hyde, was her mother--the Earl of Rochester carried greater authority than many of his predecessors; but he was no statesman, and at sixty years of age he was not inclined to try experiments. William thought he was indolent and contemptuous of his duties, and in 1702 he {124} informed him that he had been relieved of his office. Immediately, however, further news came from London continuing Rochester in his office. This was the result of the intervention by Queen Mary; but Rochester resigned on February 4, 1703, rather than be subjected any longer to the machinations of the Marlborough party at the court.

Lord Rochester returned to London in a pa.s.sion scarcely cooled by the length of the journey; but he was mollified somewhat by the fact that his successor, the Duke of Ormonde, was his son-in-law. He had no objection to his daughter reigning at Dublin Castle.

[Sidenote: The second Duke of Ormonde]

The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Ormonde were received with an enthusiasm in Dublin that was reminiscent of the personal supremacy of the viceroy's grandfather, known as the 'Great Duke.' The new viceroy had been carefully educated for his position. A son of the celebrated Lord Ossory, he had been from his birth in 1665 educated with a view to future eminence in the service of the State. The boy's grandfather sent him to France in 1675 to acquire the French language and the polite arts of the centre of good manners and tone. When he was seventeen he was married to Anne Hyde, a daughter of Laurence Hyde, and a cousin to the d.u.c.h.ess of York. She died early the following year, and when, in 1686, he married a daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, he was a Lord of the Bedchamber to James II., and one of the most influential of the younger n.o.bility. The year of the Revolution witnessed Ormonde's succession to the t.i.tle and estates, and {125} he became one of the most powerful pillars of the Protestant faith in the country. The ancient Universities were in grave doubt as to the king's intention, and Oxford, therefore, in order to secure the aid of such a powerful n.o.bleman in the cause of the Protestant faith, elected him Chancellor. He had been a student at Christ Church, and the honour was, therefore, a fit one.

James went to work cautiously to win over the young duke to his new policy. He gave him the Garter, and hinted at even greater honours in store for one who by his birth became ent.i.tled to nearly everything that life had to offer. The question of religion, however, caused a breach between James and the duke, and William's invasion of England brought Ormonde to his side.

Ormonde's adhesion undoubtedly had the effect of bringing over to the new monarch a great many persons in Ireland who had acted previously like sheep without a shepherd. All that the dethroned king could do was to declare Ormonde's estates forfeited and his person guilty of high treason. But the acts of a fallen king are merely futilities, and the Duke of Ormonde was able to witness the triumph at Boyne and know that William's success meant his own. The duke's princ.i.p.al task in the war was to secure Dublin for the king, and he accomplished this without much difficulty, thanks to the weakness and mistake of his opponents rather than to his own skill. Later he entertained William at his ancestral home, Kilkenny Castle, in celebration of the royal successes.

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The accession of Queen Anne, second daughter of James II., did not affect Ormonde's high position in the State. He had stood by the bedside of William, and he was one of those who settled the difficult question of the succession. Queen Anne must have guessed that Ormonde at heart wished for the success of the Jacobean cause, and it was during her reign that he was successively Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Captain-General of the Forces in England.

In 1703 Ormonde entered upon his first term of office as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and, of course, the Protestant party welcomed him joyfully. Parliament met, and subserviently voted him a subsidy, conscious of favours to come. But the viceroy did not fulfil their hopes. Ormonde was not the man to stoop to persecution and fraud, and, being only a layman, he could not see that religion covered a mult.i.tude of sins. His Parliament grew unruly, and from asking for favours began to demand them. This was too much for the grandson of the great duke, and so he dissolved the a.s.sembly, as his powers ent.i.tled him to do, and continued to rule, preferring, no doubt, the private criticisms of Jonathan Swift, who was in his favour, rather than submit to the arrogance of a minority as unscrupulous as it was intolerant.

Swift was at this time beginning to make himself known in those high circles which soon began to fear him. Ormonde liked the somewhat eccentric clergyman, while the d.u.c.h.ess and her daughters were delighted with his witty conversation {127} and his powers of repartee. Swift, however, was restlessly ambitious, and he was continually journeying to London, returning each time more disappointed and more ambitious.

[Sidenote: Court intrigues]

It was one of the most peculiar periods in the history of England. The daughter of James II. was on the throne, and it was the generally accepted national policy that she should be the last of her family and race to wear the crown. There were a dozen parties in the State, and the poor queen had to suffer herself to be buffeted by the numerous leaders, who plotted without principle, and were religious without having any religion. Marlborough, G.o.dolphin, Somers, and half a dozen others buzzed round the queen. Ladies of high estate joined in the numerous intrigues, and every party had its literary hacks and hangers-on who wrote to order, and hoped to fatten on the carca.s.s of the State when their particular masters had triumphed. It was the Golden Age of the wirepullers.

Ormonde's position in Dublin was at once safe and tantalizing. The government was entirely in his hands, and he could do what he liked; but the knowledge that the plotters in London might precipitate a revolution or ruin the country made Ormonde--an ambitious man himself--long to be free to take his own part in the underground fight.

The triumph of his opponents in 1707 naturally relieved him of his office, and it was not until the end of 1710 that his party returned, and the queen reappointed him.

Meanwhile Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, {128} and Thomas, Earl of Wharton, ran their brief careers in the viceregal court. Ormonde's second term lasted a little over two years, but his recall also brought with it the higher post of Captain-General of the Forces and the sweet satisfaction of seeing the Marlborough party in disfavour. No doubt, if it had been possible, Ormonde would have used his great position to insure the Jacobean succession, but he knew that public opinion was unanimous in its detestation of the Stuarts, and that Jacobinism was merely a harmless political theory to be debated by students and ignored by statesmen. Bowing to the inevitable, Ormonde signed the proclamation announcing the death of Anne and the accession of George I. But he could not conceal his dislike of the Hanoverian monarch, and he made his house at Richmond a meeting-place for those who desired the return of the Stuarts.

The remainder of his life is a record of disappointment. There was no chance of his cause succeeding, and without even a blow he fled from England and spent the last thirty years of his life in exile, visiting England but once, and experiencing the humiliating poverty of the harmless plotter, the recipient of pity when he expected hero-wors.h.i.+p, and, worse than that, regarded generally as a hopeless crank. His estates were declared forfeited and vested in the Crown; but in 1721 the exile's brother, Lord Arran, was allowed by Parliament to purchase them. Thirty years after his flight Ormonde died, the year of his death--1745--marking the last attempt of the {129} Jacobites to regain the throne of England. He outlived his glory, and those who met him during the last few years of his life could see nothing but a querulous old man who boasted of exploits forgotten if not altogether discredited; but he had been great once, and so merited their pity, and pity is all the fallen greatness earns in obscurity.