French, Dutch, and Moors.
The south-west coast was the chief but by no means the only resort of the pirates. Three were captured in Ulster in 1613, and three in the following year, and executed ‘upon the strand at low-water mark, by Dublin.’ In the latter case the pirates had stolen a Chester ship lying off Dalkey and taken her to Lough Swilly, where they were apprehended by the help of one called ‘bishop O’Coffie,’ but probably a Roman Catholic vicar-general of Derry or Raphoe. In 1610 they waylaid but failed to intercept the ship which brought the Londoners’ money to the new settlement at Coleraine. Blacksod Bay and other remote harbours in Mayo were used by Jennings and his contemporaries, and long afterwards the inhabitants were reported to be ‘so much given to idleness that their only dependence is upon the depredation and spoils of pirates, brought in amongst them by reason of the convenience and goodness of their harbours; for there is their common rendezvous.’ Even Carrickfergus sometimes served as an anchorage for rovers, who robbed small vessels between Holyhead and Dublin. Dutch and French merchants suffered more than the English, and the States Government, with the King of England’s sanction, sent a special squadron to Ireland, whom the pirates seem to have dreaded much more than their own sovereign’s cruisers. The French sometimes acted against the pirates, and there were negotiations with Spain, but the Government admitted towards the close of 1612 that the evil could only be checked in the West of Ireland ‘by laying the island and sea coast waste and void of inhabitants, or by placing a garrison in every port and creek, which is impracticable.’ In the autumn of 1611 nineteen sail of pirates were sighted on the west coasts, most of whom drew towards Morocco at the approach of winter, when the Spanish galleys were not much to be feared. This was their constant practice, and in the then state of European politics they were as sure to find employment on the sea, as their congeners the ‘bravi’ were to find it on land. The pirates continued to give trouble until Strafford’s time.[97]
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Davies’s Discovery, 1613. It appears, however, from his letter to Salisbury, December 1, 1603, that Chief Baron Pelham held the first assize in Donegal without his help, and before his arrival in Ireland. The contemporary letter must prevail against the treatise written ten years later.
[83] Davies to Cecil, April 19, 1604.
[84] Davies to Salisbury, December 8, 1604 and May 4, 1606.
[85] Davies to Salisbury, May 4, 1606; Brouncker’s letter of September 12, 1606.
[86] Davies to Salisbury, May 4, 1606; Brouncker’s letter of September 12, 1606.
[87] Davies to Salisbury, written at Waterford in September 1606, and printed in Davies’s Tracts.
[88] Davies to Salisbury, November 12, 1606.
[89] Davies to Salisbury, August 7 and December 11, 1607.
[90] The King to Chichester, April 26, 1611, sent by Knox and delivered June 15; Lords of the Council to Chichester, April 30; Bishop Knox to Abbot, July 4; Report by Chichester and Archbishop Jones, October 7. O’Sullivan has a full account of Knox’s proceedings, violent in tone but not substantially disagreeing with the official correspondence. He says the Catholics were bound to place in all parish churches at their own expense ‘biblias corruptæ, mendosæque versionis in vulgarem sermonem traductas.’—Compendium, 221.
[91] Jacob, S. G., to Salisbury, October 18, 1609; Davies to same, October 19; Chichester to same, October 31; Captain Lichfield to same, December 31, Lords of the Council to Chichester, June 8, 1610; Richard Morres (‘a poor soldier to my lord’) to Salisbury, 1611, No. 353; Note of Lord Chichester’s services calendared at May 1614, No. 825; Vice-Treasurer Ridgeway’s minute, August 1615, No. 166; Lord Esmond to Dorchester, June 20, 1631. Court and Times of Charles I., ii. 135. For the Polish element in the matter see the State Papers, Ireland, calendared at September 29, 1619, August 1621, No. 773, and June 17, 1624.
[92] Chichester to Devonshire, January 2, 1606; to Salisbury, April 13, 1608.
[93] Wilmot’s letter, January 16, 1606; Chichester to the Council, July 16, 1607; Lords of Council to Chichester, March 8, 1608, and his answer, March 30; Chief Baron Winch to Chichester, April 2; Council to Chichester, April 27, 1609; Chichester to Salisbury, July 19, 1610; to Salisbury and Nottingham, September 21; Council to Chichester, July 31.
[94] Lords of Council to Chichester, March 8, 1608, and his answer, March 30; James Salmon (afterwards first Provost of Baltimore) to Thomas Crooke, June 23; Danvers to Salisbury, November 20, enclosing the letter from Bishop Lyon and others; Privy Council to Danvers, November 20; Liber Munerum Publicorum, vii. 50, where Crooke is described as ‘armiger in legibus eruditus.’
[95] Danvers to the Council, January 19, 1609; Sir R. Moryson to Salisbury, August 22; Henry Pepwell to Salisbury, August 22; Chichester to Salisbury and Nottingham, September 21, 1610; Captain Henry Skipwith (deputy vice-admiral) to Chichester, July 25, 1611; Roger Myddleton to Salisbury, August 23; Petition of Robert Bell to the King, July 1616, No. 277; Skipwith to Sir Dudley Carleton, August 24; St. John to Winwood, April 4, 1617, in Buccleuch Papers, Hist. MSS. Comm. Leamcon is now the name of a house and watch-tower opposite Long Island, but in the time of James I. it was given to the whole of the sheltered water between Castle Point and Schull Harbour.
[96] Danvers to the Privy Council, January 19, 1609, and to Salisbury, February 24; Chichester’s letters of February 5 and April 7; the Council to Chichester, April 27; Chichester to Salisbury, Northampton, and Nottingham, April 11, 1611.
[97] Chichester’s letters of January 29 and June 27, 1610, Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 206, 314; Lords of the Council to Chichester, September 9, 1611, January 31, and November 18, 1612; Lord Carew to Salisbury, September 6, 1611. The international importance of the pirates will be best understood from the early chapters of Mr. Julian Corbett’s England in the Mediterranean.
CHAPTER VII
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1613–1615
The King determines to hold a Parliament, 1611.
Since the dissolution of Perrott’s Parliament in 1586 none had been held in Ireland,