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CHAPTER XVII
STRAFFORD’S ARMY

Plan to reduce the Scots. Lord Antrim

Antrim’s plan of invasion

Wentworth disapproves of his schemes

As soon as the troubles in Scotland began it was natural that Charles should expect help from Ireland. The first proposals came from Tyrone’s grandson, Randal MacDonnell, second Earl of Antrim, whose handsome person had recommended him to the widowed Duchess of Buckingham. Having conformed to the State Church to please her first husband, she reverted to her original faith to please her second. The marriage of his friend’s wife was displeasing to Charles, and perhaps this made her second husband the more anxious to do some signal service, or at least to have the credit of intending it. Antrim was a man of much ambition and some cunning, but his practical abilities were small, and neither Strafford, Ormonde, nor Clarendon rated him highly. He had been ‘bred in the Highland way, and wore neither hat, cap, shoes, nor stockings till seven or eight years old,’ and a Highlander he remained to the end. His extravagance at Court had involved him in debt to the enormous amount of 80,000l., and Wentworth believed that the sale of his whole estate would not fetch such a sum. Hatred of the Campbells was his strongest passion. In July 1638 he asked Wentworth to supply him with arms to be kept in a magazine in Coleraine ready to use in case of an invasion by the dreaded clan, and six months later he credited Argyle with the intention of getting a law passed ‘that to the end of the world no MacDonnell should be allowed to enjoy a foot of land in Scotland.’ Charles was doubtful how far it would be wise to entrust a magazine of arms to one of Antrim’s creed, but desired the Lord Deputy and Council to ‘favour him as much as anyone of his profession in religion.’ In February Wentworth told the King that the demand for arms had not been pressed, ‘my lord of Antrim perceiving I am not ignorant of his great want of money, his credit to be so low, as not able at this very instant to take up in Dublin poor three hundred pounds.’ Charles, however, wrote to Antrim, encouraging him to fit out an expedition against the Scottish isles by way of making a diversion in his favour. Windebank prudently sent a copy of the letter to Wentworth, who was thus prepared for a sudden visit from Antrim on March 9. The Lord Deputy’s caustic criticism had taken some effect, and the proposed 20,000 men were reduced to 5400, but the conditions of even this modified plan might have displeased a much more patient man than Wentworth. Among Antrim’s demands were the right to appoint his own officers, power to cut timber in the royal woods, a loan of 20,000l., and four of the King’s ships under his own command. Twelve field pieces, bows and arrows, muskets, carbines, pistols, swords, armour, and buff coats were all to be provided by Government, and more barrels of powder than the royal stores contained. One hundred old soldiers were to be detached to drill the new levies, and Antrim talked of bringing Irish officers over from Spain.²⁴⁶

Antrim’s plan is abandoned

A primitive commissariat

Danger of a Celtic army

Wentworth knew that the raw material of an army was plentiful in Ireland, and that 40,000 ‘bodies of men,’ to use an old phrase of Sir Henry Sidney’s – might easily be had. But to pay, feed, and train them was another matter, and no one knew better the difference between an army and a mob. Neither money, arms, material, nor drill-sergeants could be spared to such a projector as Antrim. ‘I desired,’ said Wentworth, ‘to know what provision of victual his lordship had thought of, which for so great a number of men would require a great sum of money. His lordship said he had not made any at all, in regard he conceived they should find sufficient in the enemy’s country to sustain them, only his lordship proposed to transport over with him ten thousand live cows to furnish them with milk, which he affirmed had been his grandfather’s (Tyrone’s) play.’ It was suggested that Argyle might drive off his cattle, and that Cantire and the Hebrides were barren tracts. Antrim said his men could ‘feed their horses with leaves of trees, and themselves with shamrocks.’ Wentworth doubted whether there were any trees in the Western Islands, and was at all events sure that they would not be in full foliage in the early spring, so that there would be no hurry. The end of it all was that Antrim found he could not have the whole resources of the Government at his disposal. Having no money or credit, he could do nothing of himself, though the King gave him a commission of lieutenancy over the western Highlands and islands. Wentworth saw clearly the danger of raising a force in Ireland which it would be impossible to pay. ‘What sudden outrage,’ he wrote prophetically, ‘may be apprehended from so great a number of the native Irish, children of habituated rebels, brought together without pay or victual, armed with our own weapons, ourselves left naked the whilst? What scandal of his Majesty’s service it might be in a time thus conditioned to employ a general and a whole army in a manner Roman Catholics? What affright or pretence this might give for the Scottish, who are at least fourscore thousand in those parts, to arm also, under colour of their own defence?’ With a general and soldiers alike ignorant the whole scheme would be much more likely to draw a Scotch invasion upon Ireland than to strengthen the King in Scotland. Antrim had not even decided in his own mind which island to land on – any one of eighty, he thought, would do.²⁴⁷

Plans for a diversion in Scotland

A garrison for Carlisle. Sir F. Willoughby

The idea of using the Irish army in Great Britain originated with Charles himself. In July 1638 he inquired what help he might expect in the event of an outbreak in Scotland. Wentworth answered that he had only 2000 foot and 600 horse, and that it would not be safe to send away any, especially since the Ulster Scots undoubtedly sympathised with their countrymen. He would have Charles trust his English subjects, but could only recommend the most ruthless repression for Scotland. Leith might be permanently fortified and garrisoned at the expense of the Scots ‘till they had received our common prayer-book used in our churches of England without any alteration, the bishops settled peaceably in their jurisdiction,’ and English law substituted for Scotch. For his own part he could only propose to concentrate a large part of his small army in north-east Ulster. At the King’s suggestion he raised 400 additional horse, a troop of 110 cuirassiers being given to Ormonde as the man in Ireland most able and willing to maintain them effectively. Money was sent to Holland to provide arms for the new men, and the equipment of the foot was also much improved. On October 22 Charles wrote to propose that Wentworth should provide a garrison of 500 men for Carlisle, and also some cannon if they could be spared from Ireland. The business was taken in hand at once, Sir Francis Willoughby, governor of Galway, being selected to command the expedition. The pay in Ireland was sixpence a day, in England eightpence, and Wentworth asked that they might be paid on the higher scale after crossing the channel. Charles promised, but could not perform this, though he did give some money by way of bounty, and in June 1641 the regiment was back in Ireland, and their pay heavily in arrear. Willoughby had been forty years a soldier, twenty-five in the Netherlands, and his experience at Carlisle confirmed him in the opinion that the discipline of great garrisons was best maintained by paying the men well and punishing their misdemeanours.²⁴⁸

Nucleus of the new Irish army

Each captain of foot was ordered to pick thirteen of the best unmarried men out of the ranks, and the number was thus made up. Scots were carefully weeded out, lest they should be tempted to correspond with their own countrymen. The drafts were ordered to Ulster on pretence of garrisons being required for Carrickfergus, Londonderry, and Coleraine. ‘For keeping a place,’ said Wentworth, ‘shot is of more use than pike, and without controversy muskets of more execution than calivers.’ Three hundred and fifty were therefore musketeers and the residue pikemen. Willoughby landed at Whitehaven on April 1, 1639, and was at Carlisle a few days later, where he remained until all idea of fighting the Scots had been given up. His regiment was the admiration of the whole country, and commanding officers begged eagerly ‘for the loan of some of our soldiers to come and learn their soldiers to exercise.’ No glory was to be gained in that war, but the excellence of Willoughby’s men was so evident, that Charles determined to raise a new Irish army of 8000 men, expressly ‘to reduce those in Scotland to their due obedience.’ Wentworth had conceived this idea long before, but he intended all the men to be Protestants, and of British extraction as far as possible. By the middle of 1639 he had not only his standing army of 3000 men in perfect order, but had provided 8000 spare arms with twelve field pieces and eight heavy guns.²⁴⁹

9000 men to be raised

Strafford sees the danger

Wentworth was in England from September to March 1639-40, and as the result of this visit steps were taken to levy 8000 foot and 1000 horse in Ireland. This was the germ of the policy which ruined both Charles I. and James II., and which has never succeeded with any statesman. To lean upon Irish Roman Catholic support in order to crush opposition in Protestant England was plainly the idea of Charles himself much more than of Strafford; for the latter saw the danger clearly enough, though he wilfully neglected it in pursuit of his ‘thorough’ ideal. It may be said that Strafford would have succeeded if his King had seconded him properly, but then no really able sovereign would have adopted such a scheme. Lady Carlisle has recorded that in addition to that which Charles consulted there was ‘another little junto, that is much apprehended,’ consisting of Strafford, Laud, and Hamilton only. ‘They have met twice, and the world is full of guesses for the occasion of it.’²⁵⁰

The sinews of war

Charles promises to find money, but fails to do so

The King’s order to raise the new army was issued on March 2, and Strafford hurried over to provide funds in Ireland; he seems really to have believed that love and not fear made the Irish Parliament so subservient as to vote what he asked for. The raising of the new men was taken in hand at once, and he hoped to have them all ready at Carrickfergus by the middle of May, and in Scotland by the end of June. He would keep them together and pay them for eighteen months, provided the King did his part. The conditions were that 10,000l. should be at once given to buy necessaries in Holland, and 40,000l. more at short intervals. ‘We are resolved,’ Strafford told Windebank, ‘to bring as much as possible to Ireland in specie, which will give a life even to the payment of our subsidies here, by the passing of so much ready money from hand to hand, than which I assure you nothing is so much wanting in this kingdom.’ The rents of Londonderry and Coleraine were to be remitted from the English to the Irish Exchequer. All powder was to be provided in England without payment. The King’s ships were to keep the channel clear, two thousand foot and five hundred horse were to join the Irish army in Cumberland, and Ireland was to be relieved from payment of the garrison at Carlisle. Orders were sent to London to draw the 10,000l. at once, but when Strafford, suffering agony and borne in a litter, reached Coventry in the middle of April, he was told that there was no money in the Exchequer. Strafford had done his part, but the King could give him no help, and the Irish army never crossed the channel. The mere fact that it had been raised cost them both their heads.²⁵¹

Danger of enrolling native Irish soldiers

Command given to Ormonde

Most of the men Roman Catholics

The Irish army is kept up after Newburn

No one saw possible danger more clearly than Strafford, but his political position forced him into courses which in his cooler moments he knew to be desperate. To enlist no Scots was an obvious precaution, but there were other dangers not less real though more remote. The Irish, he told the King, might do good service, for they hated the Scots and their religion; ‘yet it is not safe to train them up more than needs must in the military way, which, the present occasion past, might arm their old affections to do us more mischief, and put new and dangerous thoughts into them after they are returned home (as of necessity they must) without further employment or provision than what they had of their own before.’ Nevertheless, his first and much safer plan of a Protestant army was forgotten, and he proceeded to impress large numbers of Irish Roman Catholics. The dreaded result followed, but before that time he had perished on the scaffold, and the evil that he had done lived after him. The command of the new army was given to Ormonde, the enrolment and preliminary drill being left to St. Leger with the title of Sergeant-Major-General. The commissioners for raising the subsidies were entrusted with the levy, and officers were appointed at once. The old army consisted entirely, or almost entirely, of Protestants, and one thousand men, drafted proportionally from each company, became the nucleus of the new force. Carte would have us believe that in consequence of these veterans ‘being invested with authority or in a state of superiority over the rest of the new army, had it absolutely in their power; and it was of little or no consequence what religion the other private sentinels which composed it professed.’ This might have held good if the army had been kept together with regular pay and under a stable Government. But it was the day of disbandment that Strafford feared, and it was the disbanded soldiers who made the greatest difficulty when the struggle between King and Parliament had almost paralysed the Irish Government. The bulk of the men who were raised to put down the Scotch Covenanters were Irish Roman Catholics, and would be sure to take sides against England when occasion offered. Even the officers were to some extent open to the same objection. In the regiment raised by Colonel John Butler in Leinster Rory Maguire and Arthur Fox, both well-known in the subsequent rebellion, had companies. Theobald Taaffe was lieutenant-colonel of the regiment raised by Coote in Connaught, and Sir John Netterville had a company in that levied by Bruce in Connaught, and there were many Roman Catholics among the junior officers. The headquarters staff were all English Protestants, but their influence ceased with disbandment. There were many delays, but the whole force was at Carrickfergus by the middle of July, and a month later St. Leger was able to say that no prince in Christendom had a better or more orderly army. The rout at Newburn took place a few days later, and after the treaty of Ripon there could be no real chance of using the Irish army against the Scots. They were, however, kept together, and when the Long Parliament met in November this was not unnaturally regarded as a threatening cloud.²⁵²

The Irish army disbanded

One regiment goes to France

Those engaged for Spain are stopped

Sir B. Rudyard’s speech

Strafford was beheaded on May 12, 1641. Four days before Charles ordered Ormonde to disband the new army, adding that to prevent disturbance he had licensed certain officers to transport 8000 foot ‘for the service of any prince or state at amity with us.’ These officers were Colonels James Dillon, Theobald Taaffe, John and Garret Barry, Richard Plunket, John Butler, John Bermingham, George Porter, and Christopher Bellings. Of these the first seven at least were afterwards active confederates. Bellings alone sought to secure a regiment for the French service, and, as became one who worked for Richelieu, he lost no time, but slipped away ‘very quietly’ with a thousand picked men before the end of June, in spite of the efforts of priests and friars. Lieutenant Flower, who understood Irish, heard a priest tell the soldiers at Drogheda that they ought to stay, though they got only bread and water. Flower said the King allowed them to go, to which he answered that the King was but one man. The other colonels, having to deal with Spain, were of course late, and did not appear until Bellings had gone. Then, yielding to parliamentary pressure on both sides of the channel, Charles changed his mind in August and would only give leave to the two Barrys, Porter, and Taaffe to transport a thousand men each. In the end no shipping could be had, for the English House of Commons passed a resolution against the transportation of soldiers by merchants from any port in the King’s dominions. The Spaniards had no ships of their own, and so the men remained in Ireland. Colonel John Barry did manage to embark some 400 men, but his vessel never left the Liffey. There can be no doubt that the disbanded soldiers were more dangerous in Ireland than they would have been in Spain, but it is unnecessary to suppose that the parliamentary leaders had any wish to make mischief in this way. Rudyard probably expressed the ideas of the majority when he objected to strengthen France by recruiting her armies, or Spain in order to enable her to crush Portugal. ‘It was never fit,’ he said, ‘to suffer the Irish to be promiscuously made soldiers abroad, because it may make them abler to trouble the State when they come home. Their intelligence and practice with the princes whom they shall serve may prove dangerous to that kingdom of Ireland.’ He thought work could be found for them as harvesters in England.²⁵³

The disbandment quietly effected, May 1641

The new army of which St. Leger had been so proud had become somewhat disorderly when their pay began to be irregular. But the actual disbandment was quietly effected. Pay ceased on May 25, but the Council managed to scrape up 8000l., out of the 18,000l. due. Each soldier was persuaded to take seven shillings as a donative and three shillings on account of pay, while 50l. was assigned to each company for the officers, many of whom got nothing more until the Restoration. The men gave up their arms quietly, and dispersed, having been reminded that they were amenable to the law and not privileged in any way. There were no outrages, and sheriffs of counties were specially charged to keep the peace.²⁵⁴

French and Spanish crimps

English settlers pressed

The disbanded soldiers in Ireland constituted a grave danger, as every one could see when the rebellion had actually broken out, and which some saw at the time of disbanding. But the other danger from great bodies of Irishmen in the pay of foreign powers seemed to many greater at the time, and was certainly not small. Antrim had failed, but Lord Barrymore had succeeded in raising men for service in England, most of whom must have drifted back to Ireland after the treaty of Ripon. Barrymore complained bitterly of a ‘swarm of interloping French mountebanks who wander on their levies with titles and commissions of their own stamp and coinage, with which they are so prided up, as some of them have dared to contest for pressed men with my employed servants.’ Three hundred volunteers, collected for him by an O’Sullivan were thus enticed away, and he believed that Strafford’s enemy Sir Piers Crosbie was at the bottom of it all. Barrymore landed in Lancashire before the middle of June 1639, but with much less than the thousand men whom he was authorised to raise. He had no money to tempt recruits, and when his agents visited Kinsale the common people ran away as from an enemy. They took bribes from the better sort. These crimps even seized men actually engaged by the Government and employed in the public service, and appear to have taken a malicious pleasure in pouncing on English settlers whenever possible. Strafford observed that this was not the way to encourage English enterprise, nor to make intended plantations a success. If the King wanted Irish soldiers let him send over money to the regular officials, and they would do the work much better and cheaper than these Irish lords, ‘who always either out of too much love to their own, or out of over little knowledge of the customs of England in these cases, express some Irish manner or other, either very unseemly in itself, or pretending their own greatness, further than well consists with the modesty of subjects.’ Barrymore, however, proved a brave and loyal soldier in spite of this bad beginning.²⁵⁵

Recruiting for Spain allowed

Owen Roe O’Neill and Preston

The French service found better than the Spanish

The Spaniards were allowed to recruit in Ireland during the whole of Strafford’s reign, though he had his misgivings from the first, and though he warned Charles even before he crossed the channel for the first time. ‘It had been the safer for your Majesty to have given liberty for the raising five times as many here in England; because these could not have been debauched in their faith, where those were not free of suspicion, especially being put under command of O’Neill and O’Donnell, the sons of two infamous and arch-traitors, and so likely not only to be trained up in the discipline of war, but in the art of rebellion also. Secondly, as your Majesty’s deputy I must tell him, if the state of this kingdom were the same as in Queen Elizabeth’s time, I should more apprehend the travel and disturbance which two hundred of these men might give us here, being natives, and experienced in their own faculty as soldiers, being sent to mutiny and discipline their own countrymen against the Crown, than of as many more Spaniards, as they sent in those days to Kinsale for relief of the rebels.’ This opinion he retained to the end. He was allowed to appoint two officers, and he selected men who could be trusted to give him a true account of what went on in the Spanish Netherlands. Owen Roe O’Neill became the favourite leader of the Irish in Belgium, but Wentworth preferred Preston. Nevertheless men who were engaged for the latter’s regiment very often went over to the former. The French also got no small number of Irish recruits, though they were less favoured by the Government of Charles I. Intercepted letters in 1635 showed that Paris was ‘pestered with Irish of all sorts, from all parts,’ while whole companies raised for the Spanish Netherlands ‘suffered themselves to be debauched by the French ambassador, and now serve under the French colours.’ Irish officers deserted the Spanish for the French service to get better and more regular pay, and Secretary Coke was clear-sighted enough to see that the Irish troops of both powers would probably turn against England in the end, ‘and join together to replant themselves at home.’²⁵⁶