The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga

by Edward Rutherfurd

  If Pincher was committing himself to a mighty battle, he had also, like a good general, made careful preparations. Firstly, his timing was excellent. For months now, the Church of Ireland’s senior men had been aware of the growing hopes of the Catholic community for some help from the king; and in recent months, while men like Orlando Walsh were drawing up proposals, concern in these Protestant circles had turned to alarm. Something had to be done—they all agreed.

  Next, Pincher had chosen his battleground carefully. He was not mounting an invasion into unknown territory. The bridgehead had already been established when, during the month of April, no less a person than the uncompromising Protestant Bishop of Derry had come down to Dublin and preached a scathing sermon on the sinfulness of tolerating Catholicism. “To tolerate Catholics,” he had firmly announced, “is to dishonour God.” The sermon had been much admired, but had not been followed up with anything practical. Pincher had also made sure that his troops were all prepared and his allies in place. For a month now, he had been quietly talking to friends in Trinity and the sympathetic administrators in Dublin Castle. The Lord Deputy himself was away that week, but many of his officials would be attending the service, and the congregation would be judiciously packed with supporters. Word had also been leaked to men like Doyle that something dramatic was going to happen in Christ Church that morning, for to achieve the effect he wanted, Pincher needed a large audience.

  As he came in sight of the cathedral precincts, he was pleased to see that a number of the Catholic aldermen—the very fellows who would normally be drinking at the inn until the sermon was over— were also gathering there out of curiosity. By the end of the service, some of those men would be his mortal enemies. So much the better. That was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be the one they hated. That would make him the leader.

  The Protestant army was waiting to be led. If his sister in England still had doubts about him, if perhaps he had even once or twice had doubts about himself, his actions today would put those doubts to rest forever. This, it must be, was the predestined role for which the Lord had kept him in waiting. He was chosen not only to be one of the Elect, but to lead them.

  Yet when, a little later, Pincher took his seat in the cathedral, even he was astonished by the success of his preparations. The church was packed. It was one of the largest congregations he had ever seen—from loyal souls like Tidy’s wife and his Trinity friends, and the Church of Ireland regulars like Doyle, to such frankly Catholic merchants as Walter Smith and his wife. Dublin Castle, as he’d hoped, was well represented, too. The plan had worked. They had all come to hear him.

  The morning service at Christ Church was an impressive affair. The choir was excellent. As well as the modern organ, which had been installed a decade ago, the precentor and organist also employed other musicians to enrich the sound. Today there were viols, sackbuts, and cornets. Pincher could not entirely approve of these extra embellishments, which he thought too rich and pompous for a Protestant service; but in other respects the arrangements at Christ Church were to be commended. The communion table was plain and simple and stood modestly in the centre of the choir. There were few candles, little ornament. And above all, there could be no doubt about where the true focus of the whole proceedings lay: not in the choir, not upon the altar, not even in the prayers, important though these were. The focus of a Protestant service was the pulpit. Catholics might go to church to see flickering candles and the sacred host, miracle and mystery; but Presbyterians came to hear the preacher preach.

  And a preaching they should have. When the appointed time came, Pincher rose from his seat and ascended the stairs to the pulpit. His face was pale, his Geneva gown all black as ink. During an expectant silence, he surveyed the multitude. Having done so, he opened his arms wide, like an avenging angel, then, lowering them, he clasped the edge of the pulpit in front of him and, leaning out into space towards the congregation as though he were now a bird of prey straining forward from its perch, he cried out in a terrible voice:

  “I come not to send peace, but a sword.”

  The word of the Lord. The tenth chapter of Matthew. The Saviour’s most fearful words. The congregation gave a collective shudder.

  A sermon in the Stuart age was an impressive thing—a mighty structure, constructed like a building. First came the foundation, the biblical text. Then, like so many columns and arches, transepts and chapels, came related texts, learned allusions, and subsidiary themes—for the congregation liked their preachers to be learned— stated and repeated, amplified, piled one on top of the other, and all set forth with the muscular magnificence of Protestant prose. And thereby was raised up a rhetorical temple so huge, complex, and echoing that by the end it might almost be wondered whether the authors of the sacred texts themselves could have imagined the mighty structure of which their humble words were now a part.

  Why, Pincher asked his hearers, why was it that Our Saviour came not to send peace? Because such a thing was impossible: by the very fact that He was good and holy—here followed several learned allusions—it was impossible that He should do so. Were not all things possible to God? All except one, for He had established it so, and that was that He should sin. But we know sin. He looked sternly at the congregation. They knew sin. Mankind had known sin from the first, since the Serpent—here followed several allusions to the Prince of Darkness—since the Serpent had beguiled Eve and she had tempted Adam. “Since Man’s first disobedience and the fruit of the forbidden tree brought death into the world,” he cried, “we have no peace.” Peace will come only at the end of the world, when the devil at last is vanquished by Our Saviour. Sin shall be destroyed. There is no other way to deal with the devil but by striking him down.

  “I come not to send peace, but a sword.”

  Man had fallen, he continued, Paradise was lost. Like Adam, we wander the world, where the devil has set snares and temptations for us—forbidden trees—at every turn. Eat of their fruits, and we shall be snatched away to everlasting hellfire, with no further hope of salvation. Adam was warned by God not to eat of the tree, but that benefit has been removed from us now that we have fallen, and often as not, the devil has made the forbidden trees to be fair-seeming. “The serpent is sapient and subtle,” he informed them. “He speaks sweetly and softly.” He makes use of Eve, the eternal temptress. She shows us fruit, fair without, yet corrupt within. How, therefore, shall we know the temptress and the fruit for what they are? He would tell them, he declared. A tree is known by its fruits: that was how they could know. And now he paused and looked around them all.

  “There is a tree in the world,” he cried out loudly, “whose fruits we know.” Superstition, idol worship, blasphemy, hypocrisy: of what tree was he speaking? What else could it be? What yielded these fruits, if not the Church of Rome?

  “The Church of Rome,” he shouted, “the painted whore, with her incense and images, her liturgies and lurries. Beware, I say, of the papist Eve, the harlot and the Jezebel. Turn your face from her. Strike her down!

  “I come not to send peace, but a sword.”

  The congregation had given a little gasp at this. The sentiments were familiar enough, but to hear such a virulent attack, in the presence of so many Catholic gentlemen of Dublin, was more than a sermon. It was a declaration of war. Pincher was in full flood, however, and was moving inexorably to his next topic.

  The sword, he reminded them, was a weapon that made clear divisions. Good was divided from evil, and the distinction was absolute. Let them beware, he cried, let them not believe that any man can serve two masters. Those who compromise with evil—he gave his audience a terrible look—partake of evil, and are divided clearly by the sword from the good. They shall be damned. Damned utterly, damned eternally. There were some—he let his eyes travel round them all accusingly—sinners here present who were willing to compromise, and who counted the devil amongst their friends. What did he mean? he asked rhetorically. Had he examples in mind? And now came the m
oment he had prepared for. Yes, he had.

  The list of sinners was long. Apart from his supporters, there was scarcely a person in the congregation who was without blame. There were those who tolerated the presence of Jesuits living openly near the cathedral itself; those who winked at the keeping of papist priests in chapels, private houses, and even city churches. Church land was being let or sublet to Catholics who kept their priests upon the proceeds. Recusants were escaping fines. The entire way of life that had made the religious division in Ireland bearable was mercilessly exposed, and condemned. “Our Lord has promised that the meek shall inherit the earth,” he thundered, “but in Ireland, instead, it is inherited by traitors.”

  The congregation understood all too well. A shocked silence seemed to roll through the sea of faces like a wave. But Pincher had prepared for this also. For now, from twenty or thirty Protestant lips came an echoing “Amen.”

  “Repent!” he cried back in answer. For what, he demanded, would be the fate of the city of Dublin if they failed to enforce the Protestant faith? Had not the Lord foretold the fate of the cities which heard the word but repented not? He had indeed, in the Gospel of Matthew. “Woe unto thee,” Pincher called out in a loud voice, “it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the Day of Judgement than for thee.”

  “Amen,” called back his chorus.

  “I come not to send peace, but a sword.”

  “And yet . . .” The doctor paused, and to the congregation’s surprise, gazed at them benevolently. “The way is hard.” What if, perhaps, a Catholic is our neighbour, a man to whose company we have grown accustomed, to whom we are bound by daily courtesy, even affection? What must we do then? We may preach the true faith. There can be no harm in that. We may reason with our neighbour, urge him to repent and to forswear his foolish ways. We may pray for him. We should pray for him. But if after all this, if still in his obstinacy he continues in his sin, then no matter what the ties, we must sever them, we must turn from them lest we be contaminated ourselves; we must divide them utterly from the body politic and even strike them down. For what did Our Lord say?

  If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

  “Take thy sword, then, Christian pilgrim,” cried Pincher in ringing tones, “and cut off that which doth offend thee.”

  “Amen,” intoned the chorus.

  The congregation was now in a state of some perturbation. Most were sitting in shocked silence. Others were beginning to murmur, some with approval, others not. The sense amongst the latter—that the business was going too far and that it was time to end—was palpable.

  But if they thought he was done, he was not done.

  For now, dropping his voice as a prelude to the climax, Pincher leaned towards them almost confidentially. We must not suppose, he reminded them, that the devil was ever passive. He was scheming all the time, not only to save his evil empire from destruction but to regain the upper hand. Even now—Pincher’s voice began to rise—the servants of the whore of Rome were plotting to undermine the Protestant cause, to reinstate the Bishop of Rome, who was the Antichrist, amongst the godly in Ireland. These servants of the whore would try to seduce the king himself, to change the godly laws of the land; and if they were allowed to succeed, it would be Protestants, soon, who were trampled down. Trampled and cut down by the Catholic Irish hordes—Irish hordes who, he pointed out, would be led by the very men whom the congregation now called friends and neighbours. Would his hearers permit such a thing to happen?

  “Will you,” he cried, “make yourselves part of that droiling carcass of conformity and comfort, that takes its ease and sleeps while the devil is at his work and the godly are destroyed? Or will you, like soldiers of Christ, arise, put on armour, and buckle thy sword?” For if they did not, he warned, let them be in no doubt as to the consequences. They risked eternal hellfire. God was watching, he cried, his voice rising higher. The Lord was testing them. Would they be seduced, cheated of their birthright and their everlasting souls by the Catholic whore who, even now, would seduce the king to do what he ought not? Or would they take up the cross, and the sword Christ had given them, and strike down the Catholic whore? “Strike!” he shouted. “Strike down the whore!”

  “Amen,” came the chorus.

  “Strike down the Jezebel, the harlot.”

  “Amen. Amen.”

  “I come not to send peace,” his voice resounded a final time around the cathedral, “but a sword.”

  “Amen. Amen. Amen.”

  And furling the black wings of his gown around him, Doctor Simeon Pincher stalked like a raven down from the pulpit.

  At the end of the service, he did not join the crowd that gathered in the precincts. Too proud, or too wise for that, he departed privately by another door and strode quickly down Dame Street and out to his lodgings.

  Behind him he left a scene of some confusion. The Puritan elements who had provided the chorus were exultant. The sermon, they all agreed, easily surpassed the Bishop of Derry’s diatribe in the spring. And Pincher was a local man. Now that they had such a spokesman, they said, it would go hard with the Papists.

  The Catholics, naturally, were horrified. Two questions in particular were asked. Did Pincher speak only for himself and his friends—or were there others, more powerful, behind him? And was this a signal that the king, instead of helping the Catholics, had changed his mind and was about to turn on them?

  But a large party, some Catholic, some Church of Ireland men, had a different view. They did not share Pincher’s contempt for compromise, and were disturbed at this attempt to worsen a political situation that was already tense. Walter Smith, in particular, was deeply distressed, and was quite surprised therefore, on meeting Doyle outside, to find that the Church of Ireland merchant, who certainly believed in compromise, was taking things so calmly.

  “What is to be done?” Smith asked anxiously.

  “Done?” Doyle looked at him quizzically. “There is nothing to be done. Pincher has just destroyed himself.”

  “How so? There are many in Dublin Castle, and in London, who would agree with every word he says.”

  “No doubt. But he’s destroyed all the same.” Doyle smiled grimly. “You did not listen carefully enough,” he continued quietly. “His sermon was fearful, certainly. But he also made one fatal mistake.”

  In the chilly month of January in the year 1628, a delegation sailed from Dublin on a journey to London. It consisted of eight members of the Old English community and three Protestant settlers. Orlando Walsh was not a member of the delegation, although his name had been considered; but his cousin Doyle was.

  The purpose of the delegation was to negotiate an agreement with the English Privy Council. During the summer and autumn, the proposals which Orlando had discussed with his family in the spring had been further worked upon by many hands and finally refined into twenty-six “Matters of Grace and Bounty to Ireland” to be presented to the king; and it was these “Graces,” as they were called, which the delegation carried with them.

  The situation they left behind them in Dublin had not changed greatly from the way things were after Pincher’s sermon. The doctor strode about Dublin now like a man who has been marked by destiny. To many of the Protestant faction, he was a hero; to most Catholics, he had become a figure of hate. For men like Walsh and Doyle, he was contemptible: a man of learning who had turned into a rabble-rouser; the poorer Catholic folk watched him pass with murder in their eyes. All this the doctor relished. He had never experienced fame before.

  But most gratifying to Pincher was the sense that his life was now justified. It is a fine thing for a man to know that he is right; but it was finer still to know that he had stood up for what was right, and that all Dublin, all Ireland, knew it. Even his sister knew it, for he had written her a full accou
nt of the business the very day after the sermon. And if she had not yet sent word of her approval, he was in imminent expectation of a letter from that quarter.

  Meanwhile, no further action had been taken by the authorities at Dublin Castle. Everyone awaited the outcome of the negotiations in London.

  A new English Parliament had been called, and the king and his advisors were fully occupied trying to wrestle grants of taxes from its unwilling members. Doyle was able to learn much about the character of the English. It was easy enough to encounter some of the gentlemen who had gathered from all over the country for the Parliament. Some of these were solid country landowners and professional men like his cousin Walsh. They were Protestants, though few of them struck him as deeply religious. But they all seemed to have a great fear of the Catholic powers, who they believed would like to bring the Inquisition to England. Nearly all of them also quite honestly believed that the native Irish were little better than wild animals. Doyle thought their fears of Catholics unnecessary and their views of the Irish laughable. Their political concerns were another matter. They were furious that the king’s irresponsible favourite, Buckingham, was plunging the country into senseless wars; and feared that King Charles, with his open contempt for Parliament and his illegal methods of raising money, was deliberately trying to undermine their English Liberties. On these matters, the Dublin merchant decided, he’d have felt the same as they did.

  But among some of the other Parliament men, and still more in the city tradesmen, Doyle encountered a tone that was far more strident. Puritans and Presbyterians, these men dressed soberly and looked at the world with stern disapproval. They reminded him of Doctor Pincher, only more so. Once, when he chanced to say that he had been across the river to see a play, a Puritan merchant asked him in all seriousness if he did not fear for his immortal soul. “The theatres are for the idle and the corrupt,” the London man explained. “They should all be closed.” Doyle explained that the play had been instructive in its way. “It was by Shakespeare. Would you close his plays down, even?” he had asked. “His especially,” the man replied. With these men, Doyle could find no common ground at all.