XXIX.

by the poverty, thus occafioned, and the confequent CHAP. infecurity of the kingdom from the non-payment of the army. Reasoning was altogether vain. To fome gentlemen of Ireland, who appear. ed for their country, a copy of the bill was denied. It paffed the house of commons by a small majority, but the parliament was prorogued before it received the fanction of the lords. It was refumed however with ftill more violence in the next feffion, and debated among the peers with a fcandalous indecorum. In the preamble to the bill the commons had declared the importation a nuifance; instead of which the words detriment and mischief were proposed in the upper house to be inferted as an amendment. Afhley, who afterwards became earl of Shaftesbury, with affected moderation recommended the terms felony or premunire; to which the chancellor, lord Clarendon, replied that the importation might as reasonably be pronounced adultery. At the moment when the English parliament was committing an outrage on reafon as well as equity, the duke of Buckingham exclaimed that "none could oppose the bill but fuch as had Irish estates or Irish understandings." Receiving a challenge for this national infult from the gallant lord Offory, Buckingham, instead of fighting, complained to the houfe; and Offory was for a fhort time committed to the tower. As the king had involved himself in war with the Dutch and with France, and could obtain no supply without the paffing of the bill, he found himself obliged to give it his fanction, though

VOL. II.

E

he

CHAP. he had expreffed his utmoft abhorrence of it, and XXIX. had paffionately declared that it should never receive

his affent.

Difcontents.

Deprived of her ufual commerce with England: difabled from trading with foreign countries by the want of fhipping and by the war; exposed to the attempts of enemies open and concealed; and in danger of infurrections from the diftreffes of its people, Ireland was reduced to a lamentable fituation. Ormond in this time of peril proceeded with vigilance and caution, detecting confpiracies, and taking the proper meafures for fecurity without farther provocation to the difcontented. The danger of diforders in an unpaid army had appeared in a mutiny of the garrifon at Carrickfergus, who had feized the town and castle with a defperate defiance of authority. The garrifon, after fome resistance, surrendered to Ormond, who had marched against them on the land fide, while his fon, the earl of Arran, had conducted an armament to attack them from the fea. Of a hundred and ten, tried by a court martial, nine were executed, and the companies disbanded to which they had belonged. A fupply of fifteen thousand pounds from the English treafury, together with provifions, accepted in Ireland, in place of money, in the payment of taxes, enabled the lord lieutenant to give fome content to the army, and to establish a militia, particularly in Munfter, where a formidable invafion from France was apprehended. Notwithstanding the ungenerous treatment of Ireland by the English parliament, thirty thousand beeves, the only riches then afforded by the country, were chearfully fubfcribed, at

巍

the

XXIX.

the motion of Ormond, by the Irish nobility and CHAP. gentry, for the relief of the fufferers by a tremendous conflagration in London, which had destroyed four hundred streets and thirteen thousand houses. This act of difinterested benevolence was malignantly interpreted in England as a fcheme to defeat the act cf prohibition.

Commer

1607.

To alleviate the diftrefics of Ireland, the king, by cial affairs. an act of ftate, with the reluctant confent of his privy council, allowed a free trade from this kingdom to all foreign countries, whether in peace or war with England. He alfo permitted the Irish to prohibit the importation of manufactures from Scotland, whose parliament, following the example of the English, had excluded from their markets the cattle and corn of Ireland. By this act of state the exportation of wool to foreign countries was allowed, though by law it was exportable only to England; but Ormond, who suspected a snare, consented not to the exportation of this article, either by proclamation, or particular licence, which the chief governor was empowered to grant. Urged by neceffity however, the Irish entered into clandeftine commerce, conveying their wool by ftealth to foreign markets. To manufacture the productions of their country at home they were earnestly encouraged by Ormond. On a memorial of Sir Peter Pett, a manufactory of Norwich Stuffs was erected at Clonmel; and for the fupply of workmen, Grant, a man remarkable for his obfervations on the bills of mortality, was employed to procure the removal of five hundred Walloon protestant families from Canterbury to Ireland. A manufactory of friezes was established

E 2

CHAP. eftablished at Carrick-on-Suir; and colonel Richard XXIX. Lawrence, an ingenious projector, was encouraged to promote the combing and weaving of wool. But the most fuccefsful efforts of the chief governor were directed to the revival of the linen manufacture, which Wentworth had fo laudably taken pains to establish. Men of skill were fent to the Netherlands to make obfervations and contracts with artifts. Befide workmen procured from France, Sir William Temple was engaged to fend five hundred families from Brabant. At Chapel-Izod, near Dublin, were commodious tenements prepared for the artificers, where cordage, failcloth, ticken, plain linen, and diaper were manufactured with approbation.

A junto of five courtiers in England, termed the Cabal, a word compofed of the initial letters of their names, had refolved on the removal of Ormond from his government, as he could not be fuppofed capable of becoming an inftrument in the fchemes then in contemplation. His trial of the mutineers at Carrickfergus by martial law, in what his enemies called a time of peace, and his quartering of foldiers on the subjects, contrary, as they unfairly alleged, to an old Irish ftatute, were, with other charges ftill more frivolous, formed into twelve articles of impeachment, and vainly displayed in triumph by the duke of Buckingham, a member of the cabal. Though the king expreffed fome difpleasure at this attempt, he declined to fignify to Ormond his approbation of his conduct in the quartering of foldiers, leaving him in future to the hazard of any erroneous procedure; yet the chief governor, with

an

Intrigues against Ormond.

1068.

an undaunted attention to the fecurity of the king- CHAP XXIX, dom, continued to iffue and enforce his warrants for the accommodation of the foldiery. Among the numbers who, on this occafion, courted the prevailing intereft, with apparently too little regard to principle, was the earl of Orrery, prefident of Mun. fter, to guard againft whofe infinuations at court Ormond repaired in perfon to the king, leaving the temporary adminiftration in the hands of lord Offory. After feveral repeated affurances from his Majefty of his continued favour, he was at length made acquainted in form that lord Robarts, lord privy-feal, was appointed lord lieutenant in his place.

Though the principal bufinefs of lord Robarts was to fcrutinize the conduct of Ormond, he was unable to discover, and too candid to fabricate, any folid objections to his adminiftration, Recalled, as unfit for the deep defigns of the cabal, Robarts was fucceeded by John lord Berkley of Stratton, a creature of Buckingham, and attended by another creature of the fame, Sir Ellis Leighton, fecretary, who was to act as a fpy on the chief governor, and to retain him in a steady adherence to the purposes of the miniftry. These purposes, dark and atrocious, 1670 were to establish the Romish religion throughout the British dominions, as lefs repugnant than the proteftant to defpotic monarchy, and, by the affiftance of the French king, to abolish all rights and privileges of the people, that no restraint might remain to the royal prerogative. In England a cautious and flow procedure was neceffary to the accomplish

ment

Change of politics 1669.