by Des Ekin
However, some say there was a third motive: to facilitate pirates and fence their stolen property.
The accusation was made at the time. Crooke hotly denied it and he was ultimately cleared by the highest authorities in the land.
Many influential people testified to his integrity, including Lord Deputy Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Bishop of Cork. In his own defence, Crooke pointed out that he had raised Baltimore’s customs duties from zero to £200 a year – hardly the work of a successful contrabander.
On the other hand, there is strong evidence that he enjoyed an unhealthily close relationship with English and Dutch pirates. In his book A Nation Of Pirates, historian Clive Senior quotes contemporary Admiralty sources as saying that Crooke and Salmon bought cloth from pirate ships, supplied them with food, and entertained them at home. In order to provide the pirates with fresh beef, the local butcher was said to have slaughtered two hundred cows in Crooke’s backyard.
Other sources tell similar stories. The State Papers tell how, in 1608, pirates landed near Baltimore and burned a dwelling house:
‘Hereupon Crooke and other Englishmen went soon after aboard the pirate [ship] to demand restitution. For conferring therefore with these pirates (now traitors) Crooke and the rest were accused of treason.’
In a controversy over the release of a notorious pirate named Captain Coward, the Privy Council stated that Thomas Crooke:
‘… has been the chief maintainer and abettor of Coward and other notorious pirates.’
Summoned to England to answer a charge of treason, Crooke enlisted some heavy-hitting character witnesses.
‘[T]his is the first time [I] heard of any such charge against him,’ Lord Deputy Chichester told London.
The Bishop of Cork claimed Crooke’s many enemies had instigated the accusations. He testified to Crooke’s achievement at Baltimore and added: ‘This has made him violently opposed and accused by divers persons who would weaken him in his good work …’
He said he trusted that the accusations against Crooke had ‘no grounds but the malice of his adversaries’.
Far from collaborating with outlaws, Crooke had been ‘continually employed against pirates’ and was actually hated by the corsairs.
The Bishop pleaded: ‘[H]asten his return, lest his absence be the ruin of his good work…which is the thing his adversaries aim at.’
With that, the atmosphere in London began to thaw. In September the Lords issued a thunderous warning to anyone who collaborated with ‘the notorious pirates that lately visited Baltimore’. But they said Crooke ‘appears guiltless’ and would be released to continue his work.
It was an agonising seven weeks before Crooke was finally acquitted. ‘Report the return of Thomas Crooke of Baltimore,’ wrote the Privy Council, ‘who is declared free of all imputations. Desire that he may be aided.’
While this may seem like a clear and unambiguous acquittal, some modern writers have seen it as exactly the opposite. They believe Crooke was guilty and that his crimes were overlooked because his work at Baltimore was vital to the national interest.
Yet it’s hard to believe that his high-profile supporters would have been so enthusiastic about testifying in his favour if they had really believed him guilty. Munster President Lord Danvers, for instance – he had been personally humiliated by the pirates, whom he described bitterly as ‘caterpillars’ and ‘weeds’. Would he really have supported a man who worked hand in glove with his greatest enemies?
And the authorities in London, whose letters constantly spit with fury over the activities of the pirates – were they really likely to turn a blind eye to such blatant treachery? After all, the Baltimore plantation was important, but Crooke personally was not indispensable.
We may never learn the full story, but from a strictly legal point of view, Crooke’s name had been cleared. He was now free to concentrate on his greatest challenge: the battle for control of Baltimore.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Endgame: The Battle For Control Of Baltimore
The manor, castle, town, lands, tenements and heraditaments of Dún na Sead in Carbery … with all and singular the houses, buildings, harbours, creeks, stones, wrecks of the sea, fishings, woods, underwoods, fiscarries, mountains, orchards, meadows, advowsons, mills, seats of Millnes, curtelages, toffs, perquisites …
—an unexpectedly poetic extract from the crucial deed deciding Baltimore’s future
THE Three Knights – Fineen O’Driscoll, Walter Coppinger and Thomas Crooke – are the players. Baltimore is the prize.
THOMAS CROOKE LEASES BALTIMORE
The battle began as early as August 1600, when Sir Fineen signed some obscure deed leasing his lands to Thomas Crooke. But the crisis of war intervened. When Fineen gave his castles to the Spanish invaders and later surrendered them to the English, he may have voided this initial agreement.
After the war, Dún na Séad became an English garrison and most of the native Irish moved out of town. The abandonment was so complete that, a few years later, visitors were told that there were ‘few Irish’ in Baltimore.
When peace returned, the humiliated Fineen was able to remain in his own castle only by paying £500 for ‘conditional letting’ of the building. These demeaning terms were dictated on behalf of the English Privy Council by a planter named Sir Henry Becher.
In 1605, Crooke moved to clarify his position. He surrendered all his rights in Fineen’s lands to the Crown, and had them re-granted to him by King James.
However, he hadn’t reckoned on the problem of Sir Fineen’s disgruntled relatives, the Carragh O’Driscolls. Their current head, Donagh Carragh, had good reason to complain. Sir Fineen had broken his promise to share the rents with the Carraghs. Donagh’s father had taken the dispute to arbitration, and won a complex settlement giving his branch of the family ownership of Baltimore after Sir Fineen’s death.
But, unforeseeably, the ageing Sir Fineen had outlived his younger kinsman and the dispute had passed on to a third generation of Carraghs, as represented by Donagh. He took the case before another panel of arbitrators.
The panel decided the estate should be split: Donagh Carragh was to get the main islands and Dún na Long. Sir Fineen was to get all the rest, including Baltimore and Dún na Séad.
This ruling left nobody satisfied, because in the early 1600s we find Sir Fineen and Donagh Carragh each cheerfully entering into agreements as though he owns the lot. Each was being dishonest with the other, and in the end, each destroyed the other.
Significantly, one man sat on both arbitration panels – Sir Walter Coppinger.
THE COPPINGER-CARRAGH PACT
In 1608, Coppinger negotiated a deal with the pretender Donagh Carragh. It was a meeting of two con-men, and it’s likely that each believed he was fleecing the other. Donagh Carragh knew his claim under Gaelic law was largely academic, and welcomed a chance to screw some money out of his hopeless situation. Coppinger, on the other hand, wanted Baltimore so badly that he was prepared to play sucker to Donagh Carragh in order to get some sort of legal leverage on the territory.
We can imagine the two men walking along the ramparts of Dún na Long, pointing across the strait to the glittering prize of Baltimore, the ‘fort of the jewels’. Donagh Carragh in his traditional saffron mantle, Coppinger in his modern tunic and stovepipe hat – they would have watched the construction of the English-style homes and agreed that this must be stopped. They eventually shook hands on a curious deal:
Donagh [Carragh] O’Driscoll … in consideration of £300, grants to Walter Coppinger … all that manor, castle, town, lands, tenements and heriditaments of Dun na Sead …
In exchange for £300 (£37,000 today) Donagh Carragh was mortgaging something he claimed but didn’t actually own: the castle and town of Baltimore.
Unless that money was repaid – and it never would be – Walter Coppinger could argue that Baltimore belonged to him.
COPPINGER DEMANDS BALTIMORE
; Coppinger was on familiar ground now, in the courts. He prepared a formidable case to prove that the true clan chieftain was Donagh Carragh. Any deal Sir Fineen had signed with Crooke was null and void. Now, could the settlers vacate his property?
To back up this rather flimsy case, Coppinger needed every dubious weapon in his legal armoury. According to the settlers, he used ‘… feigned surmises and corrupt oaths … forgeries, champerties, maintainers and other like corrupt and unlawful practices …’
We already know that Coppinger had a habit of forging documents. A surmise is a false charge. A champerty or maintainer occurs when a lawyer stokes up a case in return for a share of the profits. In other words, the settlers knew that Donagh Carragh was a mere puppet. The real force behind this legal action, and the real beneficiary, was Walter Coppinger.
THEY CUT A DEAL
After a complex and fruitless legal inquiry between 1608 and 1609, the three parties decided to reach a compromise. Effectively, it meant that the English settlers would lease Baltimore afresh for twenty-one years, after which the property would revert to Coppinger.
The year 1610 saw a flurry of legal activity. First, Crooke had to relinquish his previous agreements. He ‘alienated’ [transferred] his local lands back to the O’Driscolls, thereby cancelling out Fineen’s original deal of 1600.
Then, on June 20, 1610, the crucial deal was signed. All three interested parties agreed to a twenty-one-year lease to the settlers, as represented by Thomas Bennett:
‘Thomas Crooke and Sir Fineen O’Driscoll, Knt, and Walter Coppinger, Esq, by deed indented, dated the 20th June, 1610, demised to Thomas Bennett, his executors and assigns, all that castle, town and harbour of Baltimore … to hold the same to the said Thomas Bennett, his executors and assigns, from the feast day of St Philip and Jacob then last past for a ter m of 21 years …’
To demise simply means to transfer for a limited period – in this case twenty-one years, after which the property would revert to Coppinger ‘for ever’, with Sir Fineen’s blessing.
The deal, which involved a payment of just over £185 by Coppinger, also gave Crooke possession of Dun na Sead castle.
This was the vital document, and it was merely underlined by two other subsidiary agreements signed in 1611 and 1612 – the first obtaining the consent of Fineen’s wife, and the second making provision for the death of Thomas Bennett in the interim.
The deal meant the settlers could go ahead and develop Baltimore, knowing that they could enjoy at least twenty-one years of security. They paid a substantial sum for this privilege. A figure of £2000 (around a quarter-million pounds today) has been mentioned in early histories and seems credible.
Carragh had got his £300. And Coppinger had a solid long term investment – he would eventually get full control of Baltimore.
The only losers seemed to be the O’Driscoll clan, who had just signed away their ancient homeland forever.
Or so it seemed.
Perhaps they had other ideas.
THE PLANTERS DIG IN
Secure at last, the settlers set to build their new colony. Stout homes were thrown up, gardens created, hedges planted, fields tilled and sown.
To be an ‘improving tenant’ was the ideal for the era. The records clearly show that – whatever the dubious ethics of some of their leaders – the ordinary settlers were prepared to work extremely hard at making a better life for themselves.
A contemporary document gives some idea of the task facing a typical family:
‘Breaking the rocks and stoning [i.e., removing stones from] the land five times all over to make it arable land, and so divide it into fields of eight, ten, fifteen and twenty acres per field; also in draining the bogs and making gutters underground … Ditching and hedging the land, besides sanding …’
These settlers were willing to put in this backbreaking labour because they’d been assured that they would be ‘estated’, or given their own homes. As historian Charles Smith explained in 1750:
‘He [Crooke] divided the town into several tenements, with lots for gardens; and gave to each inhabitant convenient land for building and grazing, estating them in leases for his own time; and to encourage them to build and plant, he procured a patent for the town, to him and his heirs forever, and promised to make over to each of the tenants an estate in fee farm of the proportion he held; but death prevented his undertaking.’
Baltimore went from strength to strength. Sixty new houses were constructed in neat rows. Added together, the amount spent on building work and land enclosures was estimated at between £1,600 and £2,000 (that is, up to a quarter-million today).
In September 1612, Baltimore was made into a self-governing Borough with its own ‘Sovereign’, Thomas Crooke.
In fact, the outlook seemed bright for the new-look Fort Of The Jewels … until Walter Coppinger began to cut rough.
COPPINGER’S RIOTS
Despite the twenty-one-year lease he’d signed, Coppinger soon made it clear that he wanted Baltimore right away – and he wanted the new settlers out.
To achieve this aim, he used the same tactics that any modern slum landlord might use against unwanted tenants. He made life difficult for them. He hit them with individual lawsuits and saw to it that there would be sudden outbreaks of violence.
It was a long, violent war of attrition that began in 1608 (coinciding with Coppinger’s interest in Baltimore) and lasted for more than two decades. A petition lodged by the settlers in April 1618 shows that the harassment – which at times escalated to full-scale riots – was part of a well-organised protest campaign involving several politically active religious dissidents:
‘[D]ivers Irish recusants have combined themselves to oppose the plantation, amongst whom one Walter Coppinger, of Cloghan, gent., was and is the principal,’ says the petition. ‘[T]hey have for these ten years past sought by manifold unlawful means to banish all the English people out of those parts, and by their continual corrupt and violent courses have undone many …’
Coppinger was brought before the Star Chamber and censured for ‘procuring multitudes of indictments of treasons, felonies, riots and other crimes’.
But the harassment had continued and the settlers claimed they would be driven out ‘unless their Lordships shall afford them relief in their accustomed justice and wisdom.’
THE KING BROUGHT INTO PLAY
A few years later, Thomas Crooke took his plea directly to King James I: ‘[I have] worked twenty years in making the town of Baltimore and [have] raised the customs there from nothing to £200,’ he wrote to the monarch. ‘[I have] hired seamen to serve King James against traitors and pirates.
‘Sir Walter Coppinger … and his adherents, being Papists, have for many years endeavoured … to supplant and expatriate [me]; and to return these places to superstition and barbarism.’
Characteristically, James responded by postponing the issue.
‘We desire, seeing our court of Castle Chamber was lately divided on the question, to have it tried before us and our Privy Council in our court of Star Chamber. All cases between petitioner [Crooke] and Sir Walter, and between Sir Walter and his tenants, to be stayed meanwhile.’
In the real world, it seems that the settlers got no joy from either of these petitions. The message from London was unspoken but clear: the settlers were on their own.
THE O’DRISCOLLS IN EXILE
Sir Fineen was now an old man in his seventies and no longer stood ‘tall as the mast of his galleys’. His financial situation was so dire that he was forced to borrow nearly £1,700 from Coppinger. Fineen would later vow ‘confidently’ that this was a mortgage with part of his land as security. Coppinger asserted, equally confidently, that it was a straight sale of this land.
Meanwhile, under the Spanish sun, the exiled O’Driscolls were patiently waiting.
Conor O’Driscoll, Fineen’s eldest son and heir, had fought courageously in the last rebellion and held out to the very last. Together with his son
Conor Og and his brother Donal, he had founded an O’Driscoll dynasty in exile who were determined to return and seize control of their birthright.
They would have kept in close touch with events at home – perhaps it was even they who were behind the war of attrition against the Baltimore settlers. But this was just a minor holding action. One day they would get their revenge. One day, the hated English settlers would be driven into the sea.
BALTIMORE ACHIEVES PROSPERITY
Against all the odds, the English plantation at Baltimore thrived and prospered. Babies were born. Sons matured to help their fathers at their boats, and daughters grew up to help their mothers at the fish palace. A new generation was preparing to take over.
Meanwhile, vast shoals of pilchards were practically hurling themselves into their nets. ‘Ireland yields a great deal [of cod, herring and pilchards], the best in Europe,’ enthused one survey in 1620.
It was reckoned that 30,000 tons of dried fish could be produced each year at £20 a ton (over £2,500 today). Ships loaded with salted fish sailed regularly from Baltimore to Bridgewater and Bristol. Everyone was prospering from Baltimore – except Walter Coppinger.
COPPINGER BACKS FINEEN
Coppinger changed tack completely. He took a legal action seeking to re-establish that Sir Fineen O’Driscoll was the true owner of Baltimore.