laymen; and that the sacerdotal authors of all evil were the protectors of Protestants, and a curb to the excesses of an exasperated people.

Contiguous to the account of Lord Wentworth's second suppression of the fine, we meet with some curious remarks on his religion and that of Laud. "In his eyes, it [the "office of religion"] is nothing but a form, and a form, too, of very inferior importance to many worldly matters. He is perfectly honest in his simplicity, and the result is altogether consistent. Recognizing, as he does, the real consequence and weight of other things, it is quite impossible that a mind so clear as his should place the small above the great" (vol. ii. p. 5). And again, "What a contrast to Laud! Both men are equally sincere in their belief of the reality of the thing. They differ only as regards their comprehension of its magnitude. To Laud it is proportionately great and important. It is the same kind of thing, made of the same material, and of the same shape, to him as to Wentworth; only it is the largest thing in his life, and consequently all else is minute beside it" (p. 6). This certainly seems to us a strange way of speaking of "religion" as compared to worldly matters, public or private. The small," which clear minds will never place "above the great": "the largest thing in his life." Catholics, at least, are taught that that on which eternity depends dwarfs into nothingness all the anxieties and interests of this life. Yet we believe that the writer has gauged Wentworth's mind correctly. He was a stanch Anglican, and yet religion ranked with him below politics, far below the King. It is true that the King was the head of his Church. All that can be said in justification of Wentworth's sentiments, and of the remarks of his biographer, is that both feel how very human a thing a Protestant sect is; how little religion has to do with it; and that having so much less of decision and certainty about it than even most worldly affairs, it must naturally fall below them in interest. A little farther on in the book we do indeed find an intimation of the existence of "enlightened systems of theology," though what they are is not revealed; we are only informed that unity of religion will not take place till "countless ages on ages have rolled away in futurity.' The ever-multiplying involutions of sects outside the Catholic Church certainly have not made much progress in that direction yet.

One peculiarity of Lord Wentworth's character, a peculiarity which we might perhaps expect to find in a man of his calibre, with whom religion was a secondary if not a tertiary matter, is that he sometimes appears so like a man of prin

ciple, as in his dealing with those who had served him well, and with the subordinates who helped him to restore order in Ireland; while shortly after he would display a want of principle almost as great as that of Charles himself, as in his proceedings towards courts of justice, imprisoning jurors when they found against him, and advising the King to reward the judges for having given him Connaught. It was strange how the faults of his career seemed to be visited on him at its close in the arbitrariness of those who condemned him, and the venality of the judges who approved the sentence.

Wentworth had, as we have before observed, a decided antipathy towards the Irish Catholics, nourished, as in so many other men both of his day and our own, by falsified ideas unworthy of a clever and original mind, but which neither learning nor experience could eradicate. He would have as few Catholics as possible in the Irish army, though to incorporate them into the State, and place them on a par with the King's other subjects, would have been the surest way to make them "well-affected." The old mistake of keeping the Irish apart as "enemies," or at least "suspect," had been proved often enough. But although one of Wentworth's favourite studies was history, he probably read it by the light of preconceived ideas. At least he seems to have had strange notions as to the recent history of Ireland. Some curious remarks of his about the Irish exiles in a letter to the King are to be found at pp. 58-59 of vol. ii. of his "Life." "There is a nation of the Irish that wander abroad," he writes, "most of them criminous, that forth of an unjust and habitual hatred to the English government delight to have it believed and themselves pitied as persecuted forth of their country, and ravished of their means for their religion only, stirring or inciting all they can to blood and rebellion, and keeping themselves in countenance by taking on themselves to be Grand Seigniors, and boasting and entitling themselves to great dignities and territories whose names were scarcely heard of by their indigent parents." These words do not strike us as exactly appropriate to "Oneill and Odoneill," and their cousins in the service of the King of Spain. It is not impossible that there may have been officers in the Irish regiments, or hangers-on at the Spanish court, who gave themselves out to be more than they were, as people in foreign countries sometimes will do; but the high birth and good quality of the principal Irishmen abroad were so well known, not only to the court which took them into its service, but to the English government, that its spies and agents took note of their minutest actions, duly reporting

that John, Earl of Tyrone, kept a gold crown by his bedside, and that Colonel Eugenio O'Neill had met some suspicious persons on an excursion to Lille.

Still, as Lord-Deputies of Ireland went, it must be admitted that Wentworth was not a bad Lord-Deputy. When we think of the Fitzwilliams, the Chichesters, and the Carys, Wentworth appears magnanimous among them. He never used the torture; he never broke into Catholic churches, arrested the priests, and fined the congregations; he never kidnapped the children of the Celtic nobility. The great iniquities of his reign were the Defective Titles Commission and the Court of Wards; but the first touched several proprietors whose claim to their lands was no older than James I.'s Plantation. As to the prohibition of the wool trade, we believe with Miss Cooper that it sprang from no spite towards Ireland, but merely from a mistaken view of equity towards the two countries; and that if England had endeavoured to set up a linen trade in emulation of the Irish he would have endeavoured to oppose its development. Of course his great object was the King's benefit; but he took a wide view of it, and would not sacrifice the welfare of Ireland, with prospects of future great harvests, to the King's immediate greed. From this very circumstance, and from his mysterious allusions to the insatiability of the "Lady Mora," it is evident that he was not entirely blind to the King's defects. Yet from his attempts to make Charles "the most absolute king in Christendom" it would seem as though he thought him faultless. He was as easily pleased with a kind word of approbation from Charles as a child with "a plum, a cherry, or a fig"; and generally such words were all the reward that he received. And even they were often denied him.

Of these two, King and Deputy, Wentworth had the nobler nature. He was a faithful friend, and Charles most faithless. He was tyrannical when opposed; but Charles went a step farther, and when he "found the people generous and yielding it was his invariable rule to press and wring them to the utmost."

Wentworth's feelings towards Ireland are well summed up in these his own words to Laud: "I shall not neglect to preserve myself in good opinion with this people, in regard I become thereby better able to do, my master's service. Longer than it works to that purpose I am very indifferent what they shall say or think concerning me. . . . Howbeit I cannot dissemble so far as not to profess I wish extreme much prosperity to them also, and should lay it up in my opinion as

a mighty honour and happiness to become in some degree an instrument of it, and thereupon preserve that intention second in my thoughts and care after the powers and profits of the Crown. Much I protest before my own private fortune."

There is a self-contradiction in these words, but Wentworth's aims were contradictory; and he possessed one decided advantage over Charles, he was sincere, and his words may be taken as a fair index of his thoughts. Charles governed England and Scotland worse than Wentworth governed Ireland; yet Wentworth supported all his foolish measures, not because he could have originated them himself, but because the King had originated them. The Scottish war, which engrossed so much of Wentworth's thoughts, was one of the most absurd manifestations of even Charles's spirit, given as he was to absurdity and crookedness. For one heresy to persecute another is one of the extremest follies which can be seen even in this foolish world. Why should Charles insist on the Scots following his private judgment instead of their own? Of course, he was instigated by Laud to the aggression, and the Scots were instigated to resist by their own equally worthy ministers. They did resist with a vengeance; though we fear the old woman who called reading the "Morning Service" "saying Mass in her lug," knew but little more of Catholicism than modern historians do.

The meanness of Charles in this affair of the Scots was hardly surpassed by his previous and subsequent behaviour to the Irish Catholics. Finding it impossible to force his liturgy on the people of his own ancient kingdom, he announced that he gave up the point, and meanwhile applied himself to acquiring means of gaining that point by force. And in matters of this kind it was that Wentworth's devotion to the King became so baleful. Though the action Charles had taken, and was preparing to take again, towards the Presbyterians was contrary to Wentworth's own policy and decided convictions, he yet bent his every energy towards enforcing the decrees of the "absolute King." He thought that Charles ought to be able to manage the Scots as he himself had managed the Irish; he forgot that whatever else he might have done, he had always avoided persecution.

Moreover, all sorts of difficulties cropped up. Puritan disaffection was everywhere. The bulk of the English nation, sympathizing with the Scots, could hardly be driven into serving against them; in Ulster, the children of those Scottish planters whom James I. had settled on Irish lands, had become a source of terror. Wentworth was afraid of recruiting too many Irish for the Scottish war, lest, returning, they VOL. XXVII.—NO. LIV. [New Series.]

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should use their knowledge of arms to another purpose. Still, the army in Ireland, from which Wentworth endeavoured to exclude real Irishmen as much as possible,* consisted of by far the best troops his Majesty possessed; indeed, the only troops worthy of the name. That Wentworth designed to make Ireland a "seminary of soldiers," we have his own words to prove; but we cannot agree with Miss Cooper that his letter to Coke on the subject places his design to coerce England with these troops beyond a doubt.

Considering it is necessary (he writes) that his Majesty breed up and have a seminary of soldiers, in some part or other of his dominions, a truth which, perchance, the present time shows but over plainly to every eye, without doubt it cannot be settled in any other part where the ordinary use of it could have produced greater effects for the honour and perfecting the great and needful services of the Crown on this side, with so little change, with more safety, removed or transported with greater conveniency, to answer the several occasions of the three kingdoms. . . . . . And truly this is no small matter; for I dare be bold to say, if this work had been attended and followed since the war broke up, as it ought to have been, the Crown might have taken hence, at this, worthy and able officers of our own, to have led an army of twenty thousand men, in any part of Christendom, under the conduct and direction of a gallant and brave chief chosen there and appointed to that purpose by his Majesty.

The most suspicious words in this letter are those in which he speaks of the army being "transported with greater conveniency to answer the several occasions of the three kingdoms"; but even they admit of two interpretations. Strafford might only have meant that they would have been serviceable to England in a foreign war, or in such a war as was now pending with Scotland; and we think he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

As to the extraordinary design of bringing Spanish troops over, first to conquer the Scots and then to govern the English Parliament, the name of its author has not been preserved to posterity as a curiosity, although the King was willing to adopt it, and it seems would have done so had the Cardinal Infant been ready to accommodate him.

Lord Wentworth's army, though perfectly equipped and disciplined, was small; but he considered that he could spare 500 men. who would furnish a kind of stamina to the King's riff-raff. He was a born general, and had he conducted this Scottish war it would probably have proved less of a failure;

Yet there were so many Catholic Irishmen in them, that these troops as a body, entered the service of the Confederation of Kilkenny in 1642.