In his study of the 1585–6 Parliament, Victor Treadwell has shown that opposition to cess brought about a ‘principled political opposition’ divided along confessional lines.14 The course pursued by Chichester – manipulating city politics, enforcing religious conformity and removing economic privileges – ensured consolidation of grievances, creating a distinct opposition interest group. On 20 November 1610 the lord deputy called the leading lords, knights and gentlemen to Dublin and announced his intention to call a parliament the following year. By 4 December the city council of Dublin had set up a subcommittee to ‘consider what is meet to be provided in Parliament for the good of the city’.15 Its four Catholic aldermen, four Protestant aldermen and Protestant mayor would find common ground on a number of points, but the confessional divide must have caused some dissension in the council. Correspondence in the lead-up to the elections shows the fractured nature of society in Ireland. On 14 April 1613 Chichester wrote that the ‘contrary faction are now in consultation daily, with their Lawyers Jesuits and Seminary Priests’ working out how to ‘make their party Strong and to give impediments unto the designs in hand ... suspecting some hard Laws to be conceived and carried against them by the greater Number of Voices’ on the government side.16 The Catholic elite in Dublin had close experience of the ‘designs’ of Chichester’s government, to oppose which they needed a majority of voices in the Commons.
The government employed various tactics in the two years prior to Parliament to ensure they had ‘the greater Number of Voices’. During Sir George Carew’s visit to Ireland in 1611 he drafted a report on the ‘Motives of importance for holding a parliament in Ireland’ in which he bluntly spelled out ways to ensure a Protestant majority in the Commons.17 Bríd McGrath divides these measures into three categories: controlling the selection of mayors and sheriffs (who acted as returning officers), arranging for the return of specific government supporters and the creation of new boroughs.18 In his report, Carew compiled a list of every county, town and borough and the likely returns for each. For the city of Dublin he expected the return of two Protestants, the recorder (Sir Richard Bolton) and an unnamed alderman. As the offices of sheriff, recorder and mayor all had to subscribe to the oath of supremacy, Carew doubtless thought they would use their influence in the elections.
A look at the abstracts of bills intended for the Parliament confirms the fears of Catholics at that time, as they contained measures to repeal the 1500 statute exempting freemen from poundage and banishing priests. Another bill ‘authorising Commissioners to give the oath of Allegiance unto all the subjects of Ireland’ had the potential to become a penal measure to restrict Catholics’ access to political office.19 Six Catholic lords from the Pale petitioned the king in November 1612 about their fears, which broadly represented the feelings of Catholic elites at the time. They protested against the lack of consultation on bills for the coming Parliament and expressed their fear that a majority Protestant assembly would pass ‘extreme penal laws’ against them. They also condemned ‘the deposing of so many magistrates in the cities and boroughs of this kingdom, for not swearing the oath of supremacy in spiritual and ecclesiastical causes’.20 This defence of the rights of cities and boroughs shows a unity of purpose among Catholics prior to Parliament, forging links that would be used in later conflicts between the Catholic ‘party’ and the Dublin government.
With a gulf emerging between government supporters and a ‘contrary faction’, the securing of a majority of voices in Parliament became crucial. The field of electoral politics in this period was far from an exact science, however, as there was no definitive set of rules or precedents to follow. Both Irish and English returning officers followed local practice, which differed from county to county, town to town and borough to borough. Returning officers followed the precedent prevailing in the area, yet also had to be mindful of the influence of a powerful local lord or member of the elite who could be expected to exert his influence to secure the return of members for Parliament. The influence of the elite had a considerable impact on the choice of those returned, as the principle of a majority of voices securing an election did not necessarily apply. For instance, in two election disputes – Worcestershire in 1605 and Yorkshire in 1625 – the ‘quality’ of the voters for each candidate was examined rather than which side carried the majority.21 At Helston the majority was deemed to be whichever side the mayor was on.22 Majority rule predicated that each voice counted equally, yet this principle violated the social norms by which people lived at the time by according equal power to a gent and a shirtless man.23 In studying English procedure, Mark Kishlansky notes the rarity of contests before 1640, arguing that when they did emerge ‘contests grew from conflict within the elite’.24 In Ireland this could be more appropriately be termed ‘conflicts between the elites’ because the elections in 1569 and 1585 witnessed what Treadwell terms a ‘country party’ emerging to challenge candidates put forward by the Dublin government.25
Under these difficult circumstances the sheriffs of Dublin held the election on 20 April 1613 in the tholsel court. It passed off without incident, as the sheriffs made indentures for two Catholic aldermen, Francis Taylor and Thomas Allen, with no details of whether there had been any rival candidates or a poll. Upon hearing the result, the Protestant mayor, Sir James Carroll, declared the returns to be unlawful because the election had been held while he was out of the city, at the county election at Kilmainham. Whether or not the mayor of Dublin had authority in this regard is a question worth investigating, with a variety of explanations emerging from the records. A petition delivered to the king from Catholic agents in May 1613 shows they regarded the sheriffs as the rightful returning officers.26 The solicitor-general of Ireland, Sir Robert Jacob, reported that the sheriffs had usurped the mayor’s right to hold the election, adding oddly that the sheriffs attempted to hold an election on 19 April, for which the mayor reproved them.27 William Farmer wrote that the mayor and sheriffs received the warrant for the election,28 whereas the commissioners’ report of November 1613 recorded that the sheriffs received the warrant on 1 April and next day granted this authority to the mayor.29 The issue raises questions over the perceived authority of the mayor in the eyes of the aldermen. Sir James Carroll had been elected as an alderman only weeks before he rose to the mayoralty in place of his father, Alderman Thomas Carroll, who would not take the oath of supremacy.30 The position of mayor traditionally fell to the most senior alderman yet to serve, a custom severely disrupted by the policies of Chichester’s government. Sir James Carroll’s willingness to conform, and his close alliance to the lord deputy, had brought him wealth, recognition and power, yet this may have alienated him from the Catholic aldermen.31 The sheriffs John Francton and Edmond Cullon were both Protestants, but their acceptance of the results of the first election showed that they had closer ties to the Catholic-dominated city council than to their Protestant mayor.
In his description of the election, Jacob called Francis Taylor and Thomas Allen ‘two of the most Spanish and seditious Schismatics in all the city’. He ascribed their return in part to the ‘Counsel of [William] Talbott & [Sir Patrick] Barnewall the Lawyers’, and saw this election as part of a desire among Catholics to choose ‘men long since agreed upon & appointed by the priests for those places, which indeed are for the most part the very firebrands of sedition, the most open and apparent enemies to the state, and the principal opposers against the present government’.32 Yet Francis Taylor remained a loyal citizen and possessed the ideal attributes for a representative of the city: he had not been prosecuted for recusancy, had been treasurer and attorney-general of the city and had served as mayor. His absence from mandates proceedings may owe much to the conformity of his son, James Taylor, who served as sheriff in 1605–6. Thomas Allen was sheriff in 1608–9 and had close ties to leading Dublin families, a well-connected man probably chosen for his religious conviction.33
Having voided the returns of 20 April, Mayor Carroll called for a fre
sh election to be held at the tholsel court at four o’clock on the morning of 21 April. Elections at the time were normally held between eight and nine in the morning, though some held in 1613 deviated slightly from this prescription.34 The calling of snap elections, delaying tactics and the movement of venue were all means used by returning officers to favour their preferred candidates. The Catholic members of the city council may have pressed the sheriffs into holding the election in the mayor’s absence to secure their candidates. The unusual time did not deter the aldermen and free citizens, who attended the tholsel court in numbers. Considering that the majority of free citizens likely to attend were Catholic, who would once again find in favour of their candidates, the mayor invited all the male inhabitants of the city to the tholsel court to take part in the election. It can be assumed that Mayor Carroll invited men that he knew would represent his political and religious convictions. Inviting un-free men into the tholsel court to take part in the election caused outrage among the sheriffs and aldermen, who ‘commanded all those that were not freemen to depart’.35 The Catholic agents’ petition of May 1613 to the king described the presence of ‘diverse men that were not free of the city with [their] serving men’.36 By contrast, Farmer’s commentary on the dispute described the division as one between ‘English’ (meaning English Protestant) and ‘Irish’ (meaning Irish Catholic), neglecting to mention the debate over free and un-free members of the city. In presenting the dispute as solely religious in nature, Farmer misrepresented its origins.37
Mayor Carroll made use here of the uncertainly of electoral politics, as the franchise of Dublin was not clearly defined. The aldermen and sheriffs felt that only those who were freemen of the city could choose candidates for Parliament, whereas the mayor defended his right to extend this privilege to all inhabitants. The freemen believed the mayor, by opening up the franchise, had violated their privileges. In taking the civic oath, they had accepted a trade-off between a freeman’s onerous tasks and his right to certain exemptions and self-governance.38 The freemen in the tholsel court reacted angrily to this supposed infringement of their ancient liberties. Farmer reported that ‘those of the recusant faction would not suffer any Englishman or any other to speak but such as they knew to be recusants’, and ‘being the greatest number, quickly thrust all the English men with violence out of the doors’.39
Jacob reported that the sheriffs and aldermen debated with the mayor over the presence of un-free men within the tholsel and threatened to remove them from the election. They then ‘required the mayor to either be silent and suffer them to proceed as they would, or else presently to depart’. Upon his refusal to do so ‘the whole house of the conspirators fell in an uproar, some of the Aldermen shaking their fists at the mayor reviling and threatening him ... crying pull out those Protestants by the ears’. In this mêlée a cry went out to ‘ring the Tholsel bell, and gather the young men and apprentices together, that they may pluck them out by the ears’.40 It was said that a former sheriff, Nicholas Stevens, ‘would have rung the alarum with the tholsel bell if he could have found the key’.41 The ringing of bells in the early modern period had different connotations depending on context, yet ringing the tholsel bell at four in the morning surely signified a call to arms. During the Nine Years’ War the city council organised the defence of the city walls, with an ‘alarum or sudden cry’ being the call for each ward to arm itself and repair to its assigned post.42 Jacob reported that the ringing of the tholsel bell was ‘never done but of purpose to draw the people in Arms, when there [was] any sudden commotion or Insurrection in the City’.43
This ‘great tumult and mutiny’ lasted ‘for the space of a quarter of an Hour’ whereupon, having failed to ring the tholsel bell, the crowd ‘made such a loud confused Noise, that drove great numbers of people about the House, ready to put in execution whatsoever should be directed unto them by those of their faction’.44 Attention focused on the mayor: some ‘offered to lay hand upon the Kings sword that was before the mayor but the mayor in this hurly burly took the sword in his own hand and went to the Lord Deputy to complain’.45 The sword represented the mayor’s authority, both martial and civic, as bestowed on him by the lord deputy. Attempting to wrest the sword from the mayor was a symbolic challenge to his authority, but also a physical threat to his means of defence. Though largely decorative, the king’s sword had been used by Mayor Thomas Barbie in 1531 to quell a riot between soldiers and apprentices.46
Were the events of 21 April 1613 a ‘riotous assembly’? Those writing at the time variously described them as a ‘tumult’,47 a ‘tumultuous outrage’,48 a ‘great tumult and mutiny’49 or a ‘tumultuous and rebellious disorder’.50 The term ‘riot’ has long carried direct legal connotations, of course. In Ireland’s first Riot Act, that of 1787, an action could be punished as riot only if twelve or more people refused to disperse within an hour of the reading of a passage from the Riot Act by a magistrate, or a crown or other local official.51 For the purposes of this study, a handbook written for Irish justices of the peace in 1638 is an ideal guide to answer this query. The author, Sir Richard Bolton, was a principal actor in the tumult, served as recorder for the city council and was returned as one of the city’s two representatives in Parliament the following month. Using handbooks written by English legal experts for English justices of the peace and based on his own knowledge of the Irish legal system, Bolton provided definitions and procedures to be followed by commissioners of the peace. In defining a riot, Bolton stressed the need for the existence of prior intent for an act to be considered unlawful, whereas if ‘diverse [people], being lawfully assembled, shall quarrel or fall out upon the sudden without any former intent, this is no riot, but a sudden Affray’.52 The citizens at the tholsel court met lawfully, without intent to commit unlawful acts, so in Bolton’s terms the outbreak ought to have been defined as a ‘sudden affray’, rather than a riot.
Although this affray spilled over into violence against the un-free members of the crowd, the level of force employed was low and the assaults were symbolic gestures rather than causing physical harm or destruction of property. In removing the un-free from the assembly place, the crowd was defending its privilege as freemen to meet and return its own candidates to Parliament, physically excluding those with no stake in the running of the city council. In calling for the ringing of the tholsel bell, the citizens sought to draw attention to the violation of their ancient privileges, intending to rally the city to their cause. Finally, the attempted confiscation of the mayoral sword represented a desire to remove the regalia of power bestowed on the mayor by the lord deputy. The fact that the mayor ‘gave forth of the House, and then went to the lord deputy to advertise him of this tumultuous and rebellious disorder’ further shows the loss of authority of the mayor, who fled his tholsel court to seek protection from his patron, Lord Deputy Chichester.53
In the aftermath of this disorder, Chichester ‘sent for the Ringleaders of this unlawfull assembly, & openly explaining the matter, bound over the sheriffs to answer their misdemeanors in the Star chamber’, owing to their ‘choosing the burgesses before the mayor came home’. Afterwards ‘6 or 7’ aldermen were committed to the castle and ‘12 or 14 others were afterwards committed to other prisons’. For his attempt to ring the tholsel bell Nicholas Stevens received exemplary punishment, being committed to the castle with the aldermen and ‘threatened to be executed by Martial Law as a Traitor’. The petition of the Catholic agents criticises the harsh treatment of Stevens ‘who was continually kept in fetters & at length warning was sent to him to provide himself for death’. According to Jacob, the accused ‘were delivered of their imprisonment within 5 or 6 days after, and are now as Jolly as ever they were’.54
Six days after the failed second election at the tholsel court, a third and final election was held at Hoggen Green to the east of the city, outside the city walls. It is likely that the prisoners were kept six days rather than five so that the election could be held while the leadin
g aldermen were in prison. Moving the election from the tholsel building clearly showed that the lord deputy distrusted the city council’s ability to hold an election; an outdoor site, away from the cramped tholsel court, presumably ensured a more settled election contest with less chance for disorder. The Catholic ‘party’ present ‘ceased not still to uphold and maintain their former election of Alderman Taylor, and Alderman Allen’, whereas the Protestant ‘party’ chose Richard Bolton and Richard Barry. Each freeman called out their preferred candidates in a process called the ‘voice’. Uncertain which party held the majority, the mayor ‘willed them to sever themselves’ in a process known as the ‘view’. The Catholic petitioners later complained that the mayor failed to use the ‘poll’ as a final means of deciding the election, even though, in their eyes, ‘the far greater number appeared to be for Taylor and Allen’.55 A commissioners’ report of November 1613 found that the mayor ordered the two sides to divide and upon seeing the two separated found for Bolton and Barry, without needing to conduct a poll. The report found that the two sheriffs and thirteen others believed Bolton and Barry carried the majority, while fifteen others, among them aldermen, deposed that in their opinion Taylor and Allen held a majority.56 The position of the two sheriffs in this final election is interesting, as they found for Bolton and Barry. Both had received a ‘heavy check’ following their return of Taylor and Allen in the first election, and had sided with the aldermen in the call to remove the un-free members from the tholsel court.57 Neither Jacob nor Farmer cited Richard Barry by name in their accounts, possibly owing to his relatively low status among the aldermen. Sir Richard Bolton, however, had represented the city in the customs negotiations and held the role of recorder, a position that had produced an MP for the city in the four previous parliaments.58
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