On September 22, 1626, Charles I, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland agrees to offer twenty-six concessions — later expanded to fifty-one articles— to Irish Catholics and landlords in return for £120,000 sterling in subsidies to help fund his army. These concessions become known as “The Graces.”
After the Anglo-Spanish War (1625–1630), Charles needs to maintain troops in Ireland to defend against a possible Spanish invasion. Many Irish Catholics, who had been marginalized under the English Reformation, hope the new Catholic-leaning king will relax anti-Catholic laws. Wealthy Catholic and some Protestant Irish nobles form a committee to petition for reform.
In 1628, at Whitehall, Charles and an Irish delegation (including figures like Luke Plunket, Sir William Talbot, and Sir Lucas Dillon) negotiate fifty-one articles of “Matters of Grace and Bounty.” Key provisions included:
The subsidies are to be paid in three yearly installments. The Graces are intended to secure loyalty from Irish Catholics and landlords by restoring their legal and public rights, while also funding Charles’s military needs.
Although the Graces are proclaimed and the first payment made, Lord Deputy of IrelandThomas Wentworth (appointed 1632) and later Lord Falkland (1629–1633) refuse to summon the Irish Parliament to ratify them. This means the concessions are never formally confirmed, leaving Catholics hopeful but without legal security. The unratified Graces contribute to later unrest, including the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
In summary, the September 22, 1626, agreement is a pivotal moment in Irish–English relations, offering significant religious and property concessions in exchange for military funding — but its failure to secure parliamentary ratification leaves its benefits unenforced.
Following the trial and execution of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, in May 1641, Ireland is in a state of turmoil. There is growing tension between Catholics and Protestants (particularly those of a Puritan tendency) with the former generally sympathetic to King Charles while the latter supports the English Parliament and the ScottishCovenanters in the dispute that shortly leads to the outbreak of the English Civil War. This forms part of the wider War of the Three Kingdoms.
On October 23, a major uprising breaks out in Ulster organised by leading members of the Gaelic aristocracy. The rebels attack Protestant plantation settlements as well as native Irish Protestants and take garrison towns held by the Irish Army. Irish government authorities in Dublin struggle to contain the insurgency with the limited number of troops they have at their disposal. A last-minute warning saves Dublin Castle from a surprise attack, although O’Neill is clearly unaware of the failure of the Dublin plot when he issues his proclamation.
After seizing several key strategic points in Ulster over the previous twenty-four hours, O’Neill makes his proclamation in Dungannon, a town that has symbolic importance as the traditional capital of the O’Neill dynasty.
In support of his actions, O’Neill claims to have a document from King Charles commissioning him. The Commission is supposedly signed under the Great Seal of Scotland. By declaring their loyalty to the Crown and defence of the Catholic religion, O’Neill and his followers adopt a political stance which is taken up by the subsequent Irish Confederation which governs rebel-controlled territory in the name of the King from 1642 until 1649. The Proclamation encourages many Catholics to believe they can lawfully join the rising with the King’s blessing, while Protestants are left demoralised.
O’Neill’s second and more trenchant proclamation is made “from our camp at Newry” on November 4, 1641 alongside Rory Maguire. He also publishes the actual royal commission that gives authority for his earlier proclamation. It is subtly different, in that it empowers him to arrest and seize property from all of Charles’s English Protestant subjects living in Ireland, but exempts his Irish and Scottish subjects.
Until the late nineteenth century historians generally accept that the commission is genuine, or at the very least Charles had secretly encouraged the Irish Catholics to launch a rising. Since then, for a variety of reasons, it has been considered to be a forgery produced by O’Neill and his associates without the knowledge of the King. They may well have acquired a copy of the Great Seal of Scotland when they captured the garrison town of Charlemont on October 23.
The historian David Stevenson notes that it would be unlikely that the commission would have been addressed to O’Neill. Had it been genuine it would almost certainly have been issued to more senior Irish Royalists such as the James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, or the leading Catholic noble of Ulster, Randal MacDonnell, 1st Marquess of Antrim. It is also unlikely to have been issued at Edinburgh as O’Neill claimed. However, King Charles was in Edinburgh on October 1, dealing with Scottish political matters.
Forgery or not, King Charles publicly proclaims all the Irish rebels as traitors on January 1, 1642.
That the Commission is genuine is widely accepted in England and Scotland by the King’s opponents and even some of his own supporters. It seems to tie in with earlier rumours of an army plot which had suggested that Charles might bring over the New Irish Army, made up largely of Ulster Catholics, to impose his will on England and Scotland. Anger at the King’s alleged links with the insurgents grow – particularly as horror stories of atrocities committed, such as the Portadown Massacre, begin to filter across the Irish Sea. Tensions arising from news of the Irish rebellion is a factor in the English push to Civil War in early 1642.
The Scottish authorities dispatch an Army which quickly retakes much of Ulster from the insurgents. Once the English Civil War breaks out in October 1642, Charles’ emissaries begin negotiations with the Irish rebels for their support, which seems to present further evidence to his opponents of his links with the Catholic Ulster leaders. Many of these later dealings are exposed when Charles private letters are captured during the Battle of Naseby (1645) and published as King’s Cabinet Opened.
When O’Neill is captured in 1653 following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he is put on trial for his life. The authorities offer to spare him if he will repeat his earlier claims that Charles had ordered the Catholics to rise in 1641. O’Neill now refuses to implicate the King, who had been executed four years earlier, and is put to death himself. Nonetheless, the English Republicans continue to use O’Neill’s earlier claims of the King’s involvement to justify their decision to commit regicide.
Ware is born on November 16, 1594, in Castle Street, Dublin, eldest surviving son among ten children of Sir James Ware, auditor general, and his wife Mary Bryden, sister of Sir Ambrose Briden of Maidstone, Kent, England, whose house provides Ware’s base in England. His father, a Yorkshireman, comes to Ireland in the train of Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir William FitzWilliam in 1588 and builds up a substantial landed estate. He enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his father is the college auditor, as a fellow commoner in 1605 and is presented a silver standing bowl in 1609. His association with the college continues, as he particularly remembers the philosophy lectures of Anthony Martin, who becomes a fellow in 1611. He takes his MA on January 8, 1628, but by then he has already launched on his future course. His father procures him the reversion of his office in 1613, and by 1620 he already owns the Annals of Ulster and is taking notes from the Black Book of Christ Church. In 1621, he marries Elizabeth Newman, daughter of Jacob Newman, one of the six clerks in chancery. Newman becomes clerk of the rolls in 1629, which apparently facilitates Ware’s assiduous research in the Irish public records.
From Ware’s numerous surviving notebooks, it is possible to follow his scholarly tracks over the rest of his life. He is particularly concerned to trace the succession of the Irish bishops. The first fruits appear in print in 1626, Archiepiscoporum Cassiliensium et Tuamensium . . . adjicitur historia coenobiorum Cisterciensium Hiberniae, followed in 1628 by De presulibus Lageniae . . ., the whole to be rounded off in 1665 with De presulibus Hiberniae. . . . However, he has wide interests in Irish history and in 1633 edits Edmund Spenser‘s A View of the Present State of Irelande and the Irish histories of Edmund Campion, Meredith Hanmer, and Henry of Marlborough. The first Irish biographical dictionary follows in 1639, De scriptoribus Hiberniae. Both publications are dedicated to the viceroy, Thomas Wentworth. In public life he is a supporter, first of Wentworth, later of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, rather than a leader, and always a stout royalist. He is knighted in 1630 and following his father’s death in 1632 he succeeds as auditor general. He is elected member of parliament for Dublin University in 1634, 1640, and 1661, but is not admitted to the Privy Council of Ireland until 1640.
Shortly after the outbreak of rebellion in October 1641, Ware is in England, and in London at the time of the passing of the Adventurers’ Act 1640, presumably on the council’s business. During Ormond’s prolonged negotiations with the confederates, he is sent to advise the king at Oxford in November 1645. While there he works in the Bodleian Library and is incorporated into the university as a Doctor of Civil Law. On his way back to Ireland in January 1646, he is captured at sea by a parliament ship and held prisoner in the Tower of London until October 1646.
When Ormond is arranging the surrender of Dublin to the parliament in the summer of 1647, Ware is sent to London as one of the hostages for his performance of the terms. Back in Dublin he has been replaced as auditor general but is able to carry on his work on the public records. In 1648 he publishes the catalogue of his manuscript library. As a leading royalist he is unwelcome to those governing the city for the parliament and is sent into exile in France on April 7, 1649, with his eldest son, also James, who already holds the reversion of the auditor generalship and eventually succeeds his father. He is allowed to live in London from October 1650, and from 1653, when hostilities end in Ireland, he is allowed brief visits there, perhaps taking up residence again in 1658.
Ware’s years in London are spent in the library of Archbishop of ArmaghJames Ussher, then in Lincoln’s Inn, and in the Royal, Cotton, Carew, and Dodsworth libraries. He publishes his De Hibernia et antiquitatibus ejus disquisitiones in 1654, lamenting the inaccessibility of his notes, then in Dublin. The second edition, published in 1658, also includes the annals of Henry VII. His Opuscula Sancto Patricio . . . adscripta . . . appears in 1656. In it he remarks that his knowledge of the Irish language is not expert enough for an edition of the ‘Lorica’. According to Roderick O’Flaherty, Ware can read and understand but not speak Irish. For the older language he employs Irish scholars, Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh being the last and most learned. The 1660 Stuart Restoration sees him back as auditor general and one of the commissioners for the Irish land settlement. He publishes annals of Henry VIII in 1662, and in 1664 annals for 1485–1558.
Ware dies in his house in Castle Street on December 1, 1666, and is buried in the family vault in St. Werburgh’s Church, Dublin. He has numerous friends among the scholars of the day, including Irish Franciscans, across the sectarian divide. While clergy lists are still partly dependent on his work, his notebooks and manuscripts remain of first importance for the study of medieval Ireland. Of his ten children, two boys and two girls survive him. His wife dies on June 9, 1651. The engraving by George Vertue prefixed to Harris’ edition of Ware’s Works is claimed to be based on a portrait in the possession of the family.
(From: “Ware, Sir James” by William O’Sullivan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Butlers’s attempts to conclude a peace are blocked by a Catholic faction that advocates complete independence for Ireland. The situation deteriorates further, and in July 1647, he departs from Ireland, leaving the Protestant cause in the hands of the parliamentarians, who had defeated King Charles I in the First English Civil War (1642–46).
Returning to Ireland in September 1648, Butler concludes a peace with the confederacy in January 1649. He then rallies Protestant royalists and Catholic confederates in support of Charles II, son and successor of Charles I. For several months most of Ireland is under his control. But the parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell lands at Dublin in August 1649 and swiftly conquers the country for Parliament. Butler flees to France and becomes one of Charles II’s closest advisers at his court-in-exile in Paris.
When Charles II returns to England in the Restoration of 1660, Butler, who had urged constitutional rather than military rule, is made commissioner for the treasury and the navy. Appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1662, he makes vigorous attempts to encourage Irish commerce and industry. Nevertheless, his enemies at court persuade Charles to dismiss him in 1669. He is restored to royal favour in 1677 and is again appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Although he is created a duke in the English peerage in 1682, he is recalled from Ireland in 1684 as a result of new intrigues at Charles’s court and because of the determination of James, Duke of York, to strengthen his supporters in Ireland.
Butler dies on July 21, 1688, at the Kingston Lacy estate, Dorset. He is buried in Westminster Abbey on August 4, 1688. His eldest son, Thomas, 6th Earl of Ossory, predeceases him, but Ossory’s eldest son James succeeds as 2nd Duke of Ormonde (1665–1745).
(Pictured: “James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond,” oil on canvas by William Wissing, National Portrait Gallery)
Wentworth is born in London on April 13, 1593, the eldest surviving son of Sir William Wentworth, a Yorkshire landowner. Educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and at the Inner Temple, he is knighted by James I in 1611. His marriage to Lady Margaret Clifford, daughter of the impoverished Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland, establishes a link with an ancient and noble family still influential in the north.
Wentworth represents Yorkshire in the parliaments of 1614 and 1621 and Pontefract in 1624. His wife dies childless in 1622, and in February 1625 he marries Arabella Holles, daughter of John Holles, 1st Earl of Clare, a peer out of favour at court who brings Wentworth into touch with the critics of the King’s expensive and inefficient policy of war against Spain and, from 1627, against France. Along with other critics of the court he is prevented from sitting in the Parliament of 1626, and later in the year he refuses to subscribe to the forced loan imposed to pay for the war and is for some time under arrest. Despite his record of opposition to the King’s policy, he is approached by the crown — anxious to strengthen its position in the north — with the offer of a barony in 1628. He is appointed lord president of the Council of the North and in 1629 is given a seat on the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
Wentworth’s return to the service of the court, coming so soon after his vehement opposition to it in Parliament, startles even some of his closest friends. His conduct is no doubt partly inspired by personal ambition, though he has logical reasons for his change of front since in the summer of 1628 the King gradually abandons his war policy.
On the Privy Council Wentworth seems to advocate the paternalist government that distinguishes the early years of the King’s personal rule. As President of the Council of the North he quells all defiance of his authority and makes many enemies by his insistence on the honour due to him as the King’s representative, but his administration is on the whole just and efficient. In 1631 he is deeply distressed by the death of his much-loved wife, though he provokes scandalous rumours not long afterward by secretly marrying Elizabeth Rodes, the young daughter of a neighbouring squire, in October 1632.
The King meanwhile has appointed Wentworth Lord Deputy of Ireland. Taking up his office in the summer of 1633, he immediately sets himself to consolidate the royal authority, break the power of the dominant clique of “new English” landowners, extend English settlement, improve methods of agriculture, increase the productivity of the land, and stimulate industry and trade. His ultimate goal is to assimilate Irish law and customs to the English system and to make a prosperous Protestant Ireland into a source of revenue to the English crown.
Wentworth continues his effective and firm-handed administration of Ireland until 1639, when he is recalled to England by King Charles I. The King needs advice and support in handling a Scottish revolt precipitated by an ill-conceived attempt to enforce episcopacy on the Scots. He is created Earl of Strafford in 1640 and is expected to resolve the crisis. But his policy of making war on Scotland proves disastrous for both him and the King. The English Parliament, called especially to vote money for the war, prove recalcitrant, and Strafford, in command of the English army, fails to prevent the Scots from overrunning the northern counties. The King, unable to pay his own troops or to buy off the Scots, is compelled by joint English and Scottish action to call a new Parliament in November 1640.
Wentworth is the chief target of attack from both nations. He is advised to leave the country, but the King relies on his help and assures him that he should not suffer in life or fortune. Detained by illness, he reaches Westminster on November 10 with the intention of impeaching the King’s opponents in Parliament for treasonable correspondence with the Scots. The leader of the House of Commons, John Pym, acts first by impeaching Wentworth before he can take his seat in the House of Lords.
Wentworth’s trial begins in March 1641. The basic accusation is that of subverting the laws and is supported by a charge that he had offered to bring over the Irish army to subdue the King’s opponents in England. More detailed charges rest on his administration in Ireland and the north. He conducts his defense with great skill, and it looks at one point as though he might be acquitted. Pym therefore introduces a bill of attainder. The Commons passes it by a large majority. The Lords, intimidated by popular rioting, pass it as well, but by a much smaller majority.
While an angry mob surges around Whitehall, Wentworth writes to the King releasing him from his promise of protection, and Charles, afraid for the safety of the Queen, gives his consent to the bill. He is executed before a crowd estimated, probably with some exaggeration, at 300,000 on May 12, 1641 (as this number is roughly the population of London at the time, the crowd is likely to have been a good deal smaller). In his last speech he once more professes his faith in “the joint and individual prosperity of the king and his people,” for which, in his view, he has always worked.
Wentworth remains an enigmatic figure in English history: ambitious, greedy for power and wealth, ruthless, and sometimes dishonest, but with a vision of benevolent authoritarian government and efficient administration to which he often gave persuasive expression. He made innumerable enemies, but his few close friends were deeply attached to him. In the last weeks of his life his dignity, eloquence, and loyalty to the King made a deep impression even on some of his enemies.
Butlers’s attempts to conclude a peace are blocked by a Catholic faction that advocates complete independence for Ireland. The situation deteriorates further, and, in July 1647, he departs from Ireland, leaving the Protestant cause in the hands of the parliamentarians, who had defeated King Charles I in the first English Civil War (1642–1646).
Returning to Ireland in September 1648, Butler concludes a peace with the confederacy in January 1649. He then rallies Protestant royalists and Catholic confederates in support of Charles II, son and successor of Charles I. For several months most of Ireland is under his control. But the parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell lands at Dublin in August 1649 and swiftly conquers the country for Parliament. Butler flees to France and becomes one of Charles II’s closest advisers at his court-in-exile in Paris.
When Charles II returns to England in the Restoration of 1660, Butler, who had urged constitutional rather than military rule, is made commissioner for the treasury and the navy. Appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1662, he makes vigorous attempts to encourage Irish commerce and industry. Nevertheless, his enemies at court persuade Charles to dismiss him in 1669. He is restored to royal favour in 1677 and is again appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Although he is created a duke in the English peerage in 1682, he is recalled from Ireland in 1684 as a result of new intrigues at Charles’s court and because of the determination of James, Duke of York, to strengthen his supporters in Ireland.
Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, English-born politician who serves as Lord Treasurer of the Kingdom of Ireland and is also known as the Great Earl of Cork, dies on September 15, 1643 in Youghal, County Cork. He is an important figure in the continuing English colonisation of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries, as he acquires large tracts of land in plantations in Munster in southern Ireland.
Boyle goes to Ireland in 1588. He becomes deputy Escheator under Ireland’s Escheator General John Crofton and uses his office to enrich himself, only to lose his property in the Munster rebellion in 1598. Returning to England, he is imprisoned on charges of embezzlement arising from his activities in Ireland. He is acquitted by a royal court, however, and in 1600 Elizabeth I of England appoints him clerk of the council of Munster.
Two years later, Boyle purchases Sir Walter Raleigh’s estates in the Irish counties of Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary. By employing settlers imported from England, he develops his lands and founds ironworks and other industries. The enormous wealth he accumulates brings him honours and political influence. Created Earl of Cork in 1620, he is appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1629 and Lord High Treasurer in 1631. Nevertheless, soon after Sir Thomas Wentworth (afterward Earl of Strafford) goes to Ireland as lord deputy in 1633, Boyle is fined heavily for possessing defective titles to some of his estates. Thereafter his political influence declines.
Boyle dies at Youghal on September 15, 1643, having been chased off his lands in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. His sons, however, recover the family estates after the suppression of the rebellion.
Boyle’s first wife, Joan Apsley, the daughter and co-heiress of William Apsley of Limerick, whom he marries on November 6, 1595, dies at Mallow, County Cork on December 14, 1599 during childbirth. By his second wife, Catherine Fenton, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, he has eight daughters and seven sons, including the renowned chemist Robert Boyle and the statesman-dramatist Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery.
