The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “What do you mean—transplant?” his mother had asked.

  “The Catholics. They mean to send all the Catholics to the west— into Connacht. The rest of Ireland is to be given to the Protestants.”

  Later, Donatus had learned that his father, and thousands like him, had thought for a time that they might be executed. Several hundred executions were carried out, including the killing of numerous priests. Many others fled. But fortunately, the executions had been curtailed. Once the godly men of England had gained their victory, it had soon appeared, it was not the death of the Irish rebels that they sought. It was their land.

  Soldiers, adventurers, friends of Cromwell, governments officials, men like Pincher, godly men all—it was land that they had come for, and land they must be given. “It’ll take two-thirds of Ireland to satisfy them all,” Orlando had remarked. But that didn’t worry the English. “The more land we take,” they pointed out, “the more Protestant Ireland will be.”

  The procedure decided upon had been simple. Many of the greatest rebels had fled. Most of them were Catholic, of course; though some, like the great Ormond, had been Royalist Protestants. Their land was taken at once. But after these came the hundreds of lesser men, including many of the Fingal landowners, whose part in the rebellion had been slight. What should be done with them? A handful of gentlemen, including some Catholics who had turned informer or aided the English cause, were left with their land as a reward. But for the rest, a novel solution was found. “If they’re Protestant, let’s fine them,” the government men suggested. “If they’re Catholic, kick them out.” But rather than completely ruin them, Cromwell’s administrators decided that, depending on their degree of guilt, they might be given a half or a third of the value of their estates in the poor land of Connacht, in the west. To leave his land in Fingal, where his family had been for centuries, to go to the wilds of Connacht? It seemed to Orlando to be a monstrous idea. But one of the new men in Dublin Castle had put it to him very simply. “You have a choice, Master Walsh. You can go to hell, or Connacht.”

  It had taken some time even so. The scale of the operation was huge, and they couldn’t move everyone at once. Continuing his services to Dublin as before, Orlando had managed to remain on his Fingal estate for another year and more.

  It was in 1653 that old Doctor Pincher had arrived. There had been an outbreak of plague in the city, and he came with orders that he was to be accommodated on the estate until he wished to return. Donatus had been rather fascinated by the thin, black figure who looked at him so coldly, occupied the best bedroom, and expected to be waited on, hand and foot. His father told him that the scholar preacher was over eighty years old. But the old man’s visit had also been educational.

  Doctor Pincher had been there ten days when his nephew Captain Budge came to visit. He stayed only one night. Usually, the old man ate alone in his room, but on that occasion they had all supped together, and Donatus had observed the big, flat-faced officer with interest. Captain Budge was an important man, with an estate of his own. For when Brian O’Byrne had wisely fled for his life from Ireland, Rathconan had been given to Budge. So when his father had politely questioned Budge about the coming transplantations, Donatus had listened carefully. Did the policy not seem a little harsh, Orlando had gently enquired.

  “No, Sir. Necessity,” Budge had answered. “The Irish natives, of course, are averse to all civility. Incapable of self-government. Mere beasts.”

  Living on the estate in Fingal, Donatus had never heard the Irish described in this manner. The servants, the tenants, and men in the fields, the fishermen by the shore, the oystermen at Malahide, the craftsmen at Swords—the gentle, hospitable Irish folk he had grown up with were not so dissimilar, he had supposed, to country folk in other lands. But Budge had not finished.

  “They must be kept down. They killed three hundred thousand innocent Protestants, remember.”

  “That’s quite untrue, you know,” Orlando had answered mildly, and he had glanced at Doctor Pincher. But the preacher only put a piece of bread in his mouth and chewed upon it. He still had most of his teeth.

  “It is true,” Barnaby said. “It was in a book.”

  “Books can lie,” Orlando remarked.

  “Papist books can. This was a Protestant book.” Barnaby nodded to himself. “And it was the papist gentry who led them into revolt before,” he pointed out, “so we’ll make sure it never happens again. Every Irish chief, all the priests, every man with knowledge of arms, every Catholic gentleman of repute, they will all be removed, out of this land. Then the Irish dogs will have Protestant masters who will keep them docile. That is the purpose of the transplantation.”

  “So I must go to Connacht?”

  “Most assuredly,” said Barnaby.

  It was the first time that Donatus had really understood the mind of the English settlers who were now to rule the land.

  The following spring, the Walsh family had been transplanted. Taking four carts piled high with their furniture and possessions, their jewelry, and coins of gold and silver sewn into their clothes, Donatus and his parents had set out on the long road westwards. Daniel, though unable to understand why they were leaving, had naturally been with them, too. They were accompanied by only three family retainers; the rest of the servants, the tenants, the cottagers, and labourers had all remained on the estate in Fingal. In this, the Walshes were repeating the pattern found everywhere else. The great mass of the native Irish stayed exactly where they were, to till the land for their new Protestant masters, while their hereditary landlords went to Connacht.

  “We are in good company, at least,” his father had remarked wryly. By the time they left, so many neighbours and friends had already gone the same way. Some had Irish names: Conran or Kennedy, Brady or Kelly. But often as not, the transplanted families bore Old English names: Cusack and Cruise, Dillon and Fagan, Barry, Walsh, Plunkett, Fitz this or Fitz that.

  Most of the land around Dublin had been taken over by the government directly, to be let out on leases. It did not come as a great surprise to learn, upon their way, that Doctor Pincher had secured a lease on their own estate—at a rent of only half of what Orlando had been forced to pay to stay there himself.

  There was only one problem that his father, by holding on to his land as long as he could, had not foreseen.

  It had never been clear what size of land grant would be allowed to Orlando Walsh. After numerous enquiries at Dublin Castle, he had realised that even the Dublin men did not know. “It’s all being arranged at Athlone,” they had told him. “You’ll have to wait till you get there.” It was not until they had been travelling slowly westwards for five days that they reached Athlone. The court administering the land grants to the transplanted gentry was in a large house in the main street. On arrival, they found an inn; and the next morning Orlando had gone to the land offices, taking Donatus with him. The man in charge, a small, bald-headed fellow with a businesslike air, gazed at Orlando with genuine regret.

  “It’s a pity you didn’t come a few months earlier,” he sighed. “Then you might have done better.”

  “You have instructions concerning me?”

  “Not really. We are to find something for everyone, if we can. But it’s all at our discretion.” He shook his head. “Cromwell, you know, has a general idea of what he wants, and he knows what he hates; but he is not an administrator. He issues instructions; but details . . .” He spread his hands to indicate that there were none. “The transplanting to Connacht has been . . .” Again, he indicated with his hands that the process had been chaotic.

  “I’m only here to clean up,” he went on. “The men who allocated the land are mostly gone, now. Nothing to keep them. They’ve made their fortunes, you see.” He gave Orlando a meaningful stare. “There’s a little place down in Clare,” he said. “It’s only about thirty acres. Not what you’ve been used to at all. But you could subsist there I think. It’s the best of what’s left.”

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nbsp; A few inquiries had corroborated the truth of what the fellow had told him. The transplanting had not only been a shambles; it had been a scandal. Men who were supposed to receive nothing, but who came early, with handsome bribes for the officials running the court, had secured large tracts of land. Others, due hundreds of acres, had been lucky to receive fifty. Chaos and official bribery were to be expected when any conqueror reallocated the resources of a country—how could it ever be otherwise? But the transplanting to Connacht had been an unedifying sight.

  So had begun the seven long years in County Clare. Their little farmstead had a small dwelling, which Donatus and his father had slowly rebuilt. The land at least had given them subsistence. Their neighbours had been kindly. The Walshes worked hard, and they had survived. But the first two years in the cramped and leaking cottage had been especially hard. They had sent two of their retainers back to Fingal, since they could scarcely keep them and there was nothing for them to do. Though she had tried to put a brave face on it, Mary Walsh had been depressed. But the person who had suffered most had been poor Daniel. If his understanding was limited, he had seemed to sense the unhappiness of Mary more strongly than the others. He clung to her, almost fretfully sometimes; and this too was hard for her to bear. After a year, he had grown sick, and died. Orlando had warned Donatus, long before, “The simpletons, you know, seldom live to twenty,” and so he knew he must not grieve too much. But a cloud of sadness had hung over the family for many months after they had buried Daniel.

  One thing Donatus did count as a blessing however was that, because of this exile, he came to know his father better than he might otherwise have done. He knew the humiliation his father felt at their poor conditions; and he admired the fact that he never showed it. Together they worked their little piece of land—kept pigs, a few cows, grew cereal crops. And Orlando also took his education upon himself—as a result of which, by the time he was twenty, Donatus already knew most of what the University of Salamanca had to offer, together with a general knowledge of Irish legal practice. Perhaps, by keeping constant company with an older man, he acquired an outlook somewhat middle-aged for a boy of his years. But this was hardly a time for the enjoyment of childhood things; and it gave him great joy to know that he stood, in all things, side by side with his father.

  Every year, they had made a pilgrimage to Fingal. As transplanted men, it was illegal for them to travel; but they went discreetly, and they were never caught. Those were times of reunions. The tenants on the estate would welcome them and hide them in their cottages. One of them would even give Orlando part of the rent. “I tell that old devil Pincher that I can’t afford to pay him the full amount. Damned Protestant. He doesn’t know one way or the other,” he would say with glee. Their cousin Doyle would also come out from Dublin to meet them. Before leaving, Orlando had left a hundred pounds in his safekeeping; fortunately, he seldom had to draw down much of this. And Doyle would give them the latest news from Dublin. Often this concerned the latest goings-on amongst the Dublin churches.

  If there was one aspect of Cromwell’s rule that afforded the Catholics—and the Old English Protestants like Doyle—some light relief in the darkness, it was his ordering of the churches. Of course, papist priests were to be killed; the high Anglican church of King Charles, with its bishops and ceremonies, was firmly abolished. But beyond this, like most army men, Cromwell believed that the congregations should be free to choose their own, godly preachers. The results, even in Christ Church itself, had sometimes been startling. Baptists, Quakers, sectarians of various kinds, and above all, Independents, each with his own, particular vision, had all appeared in Dublin. Some of their services were sombre; others ranted; a few had even induced hysteria. Doyle, with his cynical mind, would take a quiet pleasure in attending these services and reporting their excesses to Orlando. “You see, my dear son,” he would remark to Donatus, “how right our priests are when they tell us: the trouble with these Protestants is that they are completely confused.”

  It was their third return to Fingal when they’d learned that old Doctor Pincher had died. His nephew Captain Budge had taken over the lease. But the circumstances of his death had been somewhat remarkable. It was their tenant, when he gave them their rent, who told them. “Just before the end, he was delirious. Screaming he was—about a man attacking him with a sword. And when they came to dress his body, what did they find but a scar? Right the way across his back, from his shoulders down to his ribs. So there must have been some reason for his words. Then in comes Captain Budge, and they tell him about it. And he looks thoughtful for a while. Then: ‘It was in the rebellion of ’41,’ he says. ‘It was the Catholics that attacked my dear uncle. He was lucky not to be martyred.’ Do you suppose it was true?”

  “I never heard it before,” said Orlando.

  Before Donatus and his father left Fingal, their routine was always the same. Together they would go to the holy well at Portmarnock to pray together there. “I do it,” Orlando used to remind him, “just as my father did before me.” And while they were there, he would also say: “I am sorry, Donatus, that you should see your father brought so low. But we must never lose faith. It was God’s Grace that, after so many years waiting, gave you to us. And in time, after we are tested, He will restore us again, as He sees fit.”

  And so, in the end, it had come to pass. God had restored them.

  Their deliverance had come from England. For while Cromwell had been successful in crushing Ireland under colonial rule, England itself had been another matter. For all his military might, Cromwell had never been able to find a satisfactory government to replace the monarchy he had destroyed. Rule by Parliament, a Protectorate in which he was king himself in all but name, military rule by generals—all had been tried, none had worked. And when, after a decade, the exhausted tyrant had died, his son hadn’t even wanted to fill his shoes. In 1660, the English Parliament and the late king’s son had come to an understanding. King Charles II was restored to the English throne—on certain conditions.

  One of these was that the Protestant settlers in Ireland should keep their land. But there had been some minor exceptions. And when Ormond had been returned to Ireland as the new king’s Lord Lieutenant, he had graciously remembered the unlucky Walsh family. His word had been enough to assure the royal officials that Orlando had committed no crime; and somewhat grudgingly, Barnaby Budge had been persuaded that he should give up his uncle’s lease. Unlike many of their friends, the Walshes had returned to Fingal. It was proof, indeed, of God’s Grace towards them.

  By God’s continuing Grace, he had lived here ever since. He had seen both his parents live to old age. He had known the joy of having a family of his own, and recently married both his daughters to good men. Five years ago, his wife had died, and he had supposed that this part of his life was over. But rather to his surprise, he had found happiness again. Even more wonderful, this last December, his new wife had given him his first son. In a mood of great celebration, they had named the baby Fortunatus.

  And now, in a series of events that could never have been foreseen, the continuing faith of the Walshes, and countless families like them, had been granted a new hope. King Charles II of England, a man who loved building, the sciences, and his many mistresses, had suddenly died four years ago, and been succeeded by his brother James. And James II was a Catholic. He had arrived in Ireland ten days ago, and was coming to Dublin to hold a Catholic Parliament. The situation was by no means without danger. Nobody knew what was going to happen next. Perhaps the Catholics of Ireland would be tested again. But this much was certain, Donatus would be in Dublin that Sunday to welcome the new king, come what may.

  When he got back to the house and found the letter from his cousin Maurice, he read it with curiosity. But also with a smile. Maurice Smith was a good man of business. He had done well enough during his time in France. And when the more easygoing rule of Charles II finally encouraged him to return with his family to Dublin, he had managed, d
espite being a Catholic, to prosper there. Yet there was something of the romantic in his cousin too. He’d be swept away by sudden enthusiasms.

  The purchase of his estate was a case in point. When Brian O’Byrne, along with most of the other Irish gentry, had been forced to flee from Cromwell, and the Rathconan estate had been granted to Barnaby Budge, it had been a sad thing, to be sure. Budge had taken over, and though the people up in the Wicklow Mountains hated him, there wasn’t much they could do. Budge had lived in the old fortified house, called himself a gentleman, and obtained other property and leases whenever he could. He’d kept Rathconan through the restoration of Charles II, and lived there until he died a dozen years ago. But when his elder son had come into the place, he’d had trouble. His father and his younger brother Joshua were made of sterner stuff, but Mr. Benjamin Budge was a peaceable fellow, and it wasn’t long before he’d been troubled by Tories.

  It always amused Donatus that the two political camps in the English Parliament should be known by such curious names. The party that believed Parliament should control the King, and that was generally more Protestant, were known as the Whigs, which was a term of gentle scorn. A member of the King’s party, on the other hand, was known as a Tory—which meant an Irish brigand.

  And it was certainly Irish brigands—local men, mostly, who loved the freedom of the Wicklow Mountains and hated the Puritan settlers there—who had made the life of poor Mr. Benjamin Budge so miserable. By the latter part of the reign of Charles II, that genial monarch had eased the restrictions, so that a Catholic could once again buy land. So when Maurice Smith had made him a fair offer for the estate, Benjamin Budge had taken the money and been glad to be rid of the place. He resided in Dublin, at present, and seemed to have no desire to purchase another estate.

  But why had his cousin Maurice been so anxious to go up into the mountains like that? Donatus had often wondered. He knew that Maurice had always had a liking for Brian O’Byrne, and felt an affinity for his mountain estate. Certainly, since living up there, he’d always claimed to be very happy; and since he was a Catholic, with some vague connections to the place, the local people seemed to have tolerated him well enough. But he’d put all his fortune into Rathconan, and Donatus doubted that he was getting much of a return. It was just like Maurice, after years of saving, to do such a thing.