In May 1640, an exhausted Franciscan archbishop of Dublin, Thomas Fleming, reported to Rome that the diocese continued much as before ‘with the exception of the controversy with Mr. Paul Harris, which is now happily terminated.’Footnote 1 His relief was palpable. Since 1626, Harris, a cantankerous English secular priest resident in Dublin, led a vitriolic campaign against the regular clergy and Fleming in particular. His grievance was that the archbishop allegedly favoured the Franciscan community over the numerically inferior diocesan clergy. Harris was not alone. Over the course of the dispute he enlisted the support of several equally pugnacious secular priests. Inevitably, criticism was promptly directed against all the religious orders. Its impact was significant. Hostilities between the two clerical factions dominated the ecclesiastical agenda for over a decade. These ranged from public insults to physical assault, the most renowned case being the vicar general of Leighlin, Matthew Roche, who beat an abbot with a bat.Footnote 2
Such conflicts were by no means unprecedented. In 1622 at Drogheda the Franciscans and Dominicans briefly became embroiled in a skirmish with Jesuit newcomers, who had the support of the vicar general of Armagh, Balthazar Delahoyd.Footnote 3 Furthermore, parallels were drawn between the Irish problem and the divisions in England when the beleaguered bishop of Chalcedon, Richard Smith, took refuge in the French embassy in London in 1629 following a failed attempt to impose episcopal authority. Discontent was also brewing between the seculars and regulars in Holland.Footnote 4 Thus many within the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland were deeply concerned that the contretemps between Fleming and Harris had the potential to spiral out of control: were it to get out of hand the whole affair could thwart the early momentum that had been built up since the restoration of the hierarchy in 1618.
While scholars have been aware of the mutual animosity between the secular and regular clergy, its treatment has been patchy. For a long time P.F. Moran’s analysis, with its characteristic nineteenth-century Irish Catholic slant, was the standard account. Despite its blemishes, it remains a useful reference work.Footnote 5 This may explain why the dispute subsequently received relatively little attention: it was either ignored or was passed off as a side note in the broader storyline.Footnote 6 There are, nevertheless, some rare exceptions. Thomas Flynn’s commentary is informative even though it primarily focuses on the Dominican perspective.Footnote 7 Thomas O’Connor’s account is by far the most exhaustive and meticulous, however. His examination of the ‘Dublin broils’ illustrates the extent to which such troubles weighed upon the Irish Counter-Reformation in both a national and international context.Footnote 8 Yet what is so conspicuously lacking in these commentaries is an adequate appreciation of the State’s involvement, especially the administration of Lord Deputy Sir Thomas Wentworth, whose role has been either downplayed or overlooked.Footnote 9 The intervention of his predecessors was admittedly both haphazard and ineffective. Wentworth, in contrast, became a pivotal figure in orchestrating the feud. By mid-September 1633, nearly eight weeks after his arrival in Ireland, he procured a document entitled ‘The State of the Difference between the Seculars & Regulars’. It contained two detailed lists of the Catholic clergy in the Dublin diocese, accompanied by seven propositions recommending ways to aggravate the conflict.Footnote 10 This is remarkable not only because it reveals the speed with which Wentworth was briefed on Irish affairs, but equally because it demonstrates his readiness to meddle in the Catholic Church’s internal problems. Between 1633 and 1636 he made a concerted effort to support Harris’s attack on Fleming and the Franciscans, not out of sympathy for the secular priest but rather to seize a heaven-sent opportunity to exploit such divisions. Over the course of the heated exchanges he provided Harris with government protection, assisted him with the publication of anti-regular works, encouraged him to take legal action against his opponents, and guaranteed a favourable outcome by way of an incentive to bring perceived injustices to court. In fact their collaboration proved so effective that senior Catholic ecclesiastics anxiously wrote to Rome about their inability to intervene for fear of incurring the lord deputy’s wrath.
Wentworth’s plan to inflict maximum damage with minimal effort signalled a new direction for government policy against the Catholic Church. Since the turn of the century, Dublin Castle had failed miserably in curbing the progress of the Counter-Reformation. Repeated attempts to banish Jesuits and priests from the kingdom in 1604, 1605, 1624 and 1629 had no impact. The confiscation of mass houses proved equally ineffective because of the sporadic nature in which the policy was enforced. The State was no less successful in trying to convert the laity to Protestantism. In the wake of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605, the government issued ‘mandates’ which ordered prominent Catholics to attend church services or face significant fines. Yet this was short lived on account of intervention from London who feared another potential rebellion in Ireland. As a consequence, the Irish administration had to resort to the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity of 1560 whereby recusants incurred a fine of 12d for absenting from church.
It was in light of the State’s successive failures that Wentworth recognised the need for a radical overhaul. Instead of pursuing the coercive approach he suspended it and, in a further surprise to his Irish Protestant colleagues, turned his attention to reconstructing the poverty stricken established church. In spring 1634, for example, he ordered that Protestant bishops desist from questioning any Catholic suspected of engaging in clandestine baptisms and marriages.Footnote 11 Other concessions soon followed, to the frustration of many within the government. At his trial in 1641 one of the charges laid against Wentworth was that ‘he restored divers fryeries and mass-houses...to the pretended owners thereof, who have been since imployed the same to the exercise of the popish religion’.Footnote 12 As the lord deputy explained to King Charles in 1635, such measures were a necessary prerequisite before enforcing conformity, but the policy would take time – ‘a work rather to be effected by judgment and degrees, than by giddy zeal and haste’.Footnote 13 Until the Church of Ireland was in a stronger position, the government tacitly offered temporary respite to Catholics provided they did not exceed Wentworth’s view of toleration. Of course, the policy was always subject to change and, as the Harris affair demonstrates, when the opportunity to weaken Catholicism through internal division presented itself the lord deputy gleefully took it with both hands. Without doubt Harris’s confrontational nature – a man with ‘both wit and spirit’ as Wentworth described him – was integral to the troubles.Footnote 14 But the decisive factor was undoubtedly the lord deputy’s ability to manipulate developments. He strategically positioned himself so as to dictate the course of the hostilities and, more importantly, prolong the conflict.
Victims of their own success? Catholic renewal and discontent
Between 1618 and 1630 Rome had made no fewer than nineteen episcopal appointments in Ireland.Footnote 15 The remarkable success was due to a number of factors: a hopeless government policy, a receptive laity, and a well-organised Catholic mission. The results were striking. In 1630 the Protestant bishop of Kilmore, William Bedell, lamented that the vast majority in his see were recusants. Moreover, attempts to convert them were not only hampered by the resident Catholic bishop, but also the superior number of priests, whom he estimated to be double their Protestant counterparts.Footnote 16 These concerns were echoed by Justice Hugh Cressy within weeks of Wentworth’s advent in 1633: ‘I find, that this country, which doth contain the most ancient English plantators…by the pernicious confluence of priests…are now, in a sort, become principally Romish and Popish’.Footnote 17 Both the religious orders and diocesan priests clearly made a significant impact but it was arguably the adjustments to the structure of Irish Catholicism that were of greater consequence. The new changes inevitably aroused hostility. The older mendicant orders, namely the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians, not only resented the interference of recently installed bishops, they also feared the threat posed by newer religious orders like the Jesuits, Capuchins and Discalced Carmelites. The disputes that engulfed the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland for over a decade therefore boiled down to two key factors: ecclesiastical authority and the increased competition for money.
In truth, the matter of hierarchical jurisdiction was always going to be difficult to resolve. The orders of friars had mainly been independent of bishops and parish clergy in pre-Reformation times. Their canonical rights spared them from episcopal authority and, crucially, provided them with extensive faculties for preaching and hearing confessions.Footnote 18 Nevertheless, their refusal to co-operate when the diocesan structures were re-established in 1618 created a tense atmosphere. For the regulars there were deep reservations about self-interested bishops and it re-opened old wounds dating back to the fourteenth century when the anti-mendicant archbishop of Armagh, Richard FitzRalph, clashed with the religious orders.Footnote 19 The anxieties were articulated by the Franciscan Thomas Strong (alias Strange) who claimed: ‘these lords bishops bring their mission to nought, saying that it is not necessary, seeing that there are parish priests, the said parish priests being for the most part ignorant persons.’Footnote 20 The secular clergy, on the other hand, expressed misgivings about untrustworthy regulars and feared that their opposition undermined the necessary reforms to reinvigorate the Catholic mission. Writing to Bishop Richard Smith in 1628 about the hostilities of the regular clergy in England, David Rothe, bishop of Ossory, asserted that ‘it is a thing to be lamented if the reverence and authority of Bishops which ought to be supreme should come to be despised from that very quarter whence it ought to be more supported and strengthened’. Such resistance, Rothe argued, was unacceptable ‘lest the authority of Bishops be trampled on by the feet of the arrogant’.Footnote 21 It was not just the numerically strong Franciscans and Dominicans that were of concern. There were worries that the new orders would undermine some of the core structures of the Church which Rothe and his colleagues endeavoured to implement. Precisely how Tridentine reforms, particularly the role of bishop, priest and friar fitted into unique Irish circumstances, was a question that was never resolved to any great effect.Footnote 22
No less problematic was the issue of money. Given the illegal status of their church, bishops, priests and friars all depended on the generosity of the Catholic laity. One of the key battlegrounds centred on funerals and the offerings that came with them.Footnote 23 Under the decrees of Trent, the parish priest was to receive a fee if the burial was outside the parish but, as Patrick Corish notes, there was no canon law to cover the exceptional conditions in Ireland.Footnote 24 In 1630 a memorandum concerning the statements of Rothe and Thomas Dease, bishop of Meath, was circulated, asserting that ‘the religious in Ireland have no claim on or right to their monasteries’.Footnote 25 As a consequence the parish priest was allowed to preside at a funeral, even in the cemetery of a former monastery. Stripped of their ancient property and with the main source of their income now increasingly under threat, the religious orders were understandably exasperated. The pent up frustration often manifested itself at funerals, where the competition for the laity’s charity intensified. In 1630 the nominated archbishop of Tuam, Malachy O’Queely, wrote about ‘a little difference’ between him and the Franciscans at Limerick concerning the burial of an unidentified nobleman. He explained the latter grew ’so passionate’ when the (anti-regular) archbishop of Cashel ruled against them and promised to ‘informe against me for maintayning mine owne and the right of their brethren in their own chapter onely’.Footnote 26 Similarly, the Augustinian bishop of Waterford, Patrick Comerford, informed Rome that disputes between the Friars Minor and the secular clergy in Waterford over precedence and the right to preside at funeral services ‘cause much scandal’.Footnote 27 In fact, sources of income became so serious that disputes between secular and regular clergy often arose regarding the right to preside over baptisms as well.Footnote 28
There were clearly numerous stresses and strains that weighed heavily on Catholic clergy, some of which were entrenched within their separate cultures and identities, others of which were complicated by the legalities of the new reforms. While the issue of ecclesiastical authority often dominated the list of grievances expressed by both sides in letters directed to Rome, the competition for parishioners was the driving force behind a bitter conflict that Wentworth was only too wiling to exploit.
From tension to conflict: the Dublin dispute in context
The document informing Wentworth about the differences among the Catholic clergy in September 1633 identified three main points. The first contended that Fleming ‘endevoured by all meanes to subtract their livelihood from the [secular] Clergy’; the second stated he suspended and expelled Fathers Harris, Patrick Cahil and Peter Caddell from the diocese despite no allegations of wrongdoing or legal proceedings against them; the final point claimed the archbishop was guilty of exercising foreign jurisdiction by excommunicating Harris and for ‘bringing another priest before the civil magistrate for detaining his books’.Footnote 29 In truth, the contention reached its peak between 1631 and 1632 and Fleming’s difficulties were seemingly easing by the time Wentworth arrived. Those turbulent few years are nevertheless important to briefly highlight in order to gauge the heightened atmosphere when the lord deputy assumed his office.
Dissention exploded in the diocese at a funeral in Christmas 1626 when the guardian of the Franciscans in Dublin, Thomas Strong, publicly challenged the rights of the parish priest, Luke Rochford, to deliver the customary panegyric. What ensued was an uncompromising pamphlet war between Strong and Harris in 1627.Footnote 30 The disparaging publications forced Fleming to intervene. Hoping to bring the matter to a swift conclusion, the archbishop elected to condemn Harris and excuse Strong from censure. The decision backfired: accusations of favouritism surfaced within the ranks of the secular clergy while the religious orders rallied in support of Fleming.Footnote 31 Relations deteriorated further in 1628 following the death of the parish priest of St. Michael’s, Thomas Coyle. Since the archbishop was in the country on visitation it was left to his vicar-general, James Talbot, to appoint a successor.Footnote 32 Under pressure, Talbot rashly nominated Patrick Cahil, whose close friendship with Rochford and Harris was common knowledge. This was viewed as a major victory for the secular clerics. Although Talbot insisted that the post was subject to Fleming’s approval, Cahil’s faction interpreted the decision as permanent. Therefore, when Fleming refused to endorse Cahil and displaced him in favour of his preferred candidate, Patrick Brangan, it exposed the archbishop to a barrage of harassment.Footnote 33 Fleming was adamant that this was the right decision. He wrote to Luke Wadding O.F.M, Guardian of St Isidore’s College in Rome:
Thomas Coyle, a parish priest which did not a little trouble during his life all the religious of this towne…being dead, all were in hope of a calm; yet… my vicar general, with the advise of some factious persons, placed in his stead one Patrick Cahil, far more dangerous and factious then the former, to the great grief of all the regulars.Footnote 34
The discontent failed to subside. Cahil refused to acknowledge Brangan’s appointment and procured a bull that recognised him as the rightful priest of the parish. His defiance clearly took a toll on Fleming’s credibility. Undermined and clearly frustrated, the archbishop suspended Cahil and ordered him to return to his native diocese of Meath.
Fleming’s bungling and Cahil’s obstinacy brought Harris back into the fold. In 1630 Cahil decided to bring his protestations to Rome whereupon he brought a list of eleven propositions that were allegedly held and taught by the regular clergy. Drafted by Harris, Cahil submitted them to the Faculty of Theology at Paris for examination.Footnote 35 In doing so, he dramatically raised the stakes. Certainly, Fleming had a right to be wary of his presence. He confided to Wadding, ‘the turbulent priest Cahil is at Paris… He is the cause of all the troubles in Ireland with the English priest Harris… It is he that brought all complaints of Father Strong and that brought the propositions.’Footnote 36 The propositions held little weight and were primarily drawn up in retaliation for the hardships the seculars encountered under their metropolitan.Footnote 37 Yet Cahil’s achievement was not only that he managed to get the faculty to condemn the list but also that he obtained permission to publish them with the Parisian censure in January 1631.Footnote 38 This inevitably triggered a wave of resentment and outrage. The Vatican was flooded with protestations of innocence and complaints against Cahil’s behaviour.Footnote 39 Fleming repeatedly urged that his adversary be severely rebuked: ‘I hope they at your entreaty and my request will make him an example by some public punishment for all refractories and disobedient subjects; other ways there will be no governing here, where for fear superiors dare not punish delinquents according their deserts.’Footnote 40 Fleming followed through with his own advice in Dublin. He suspended Harris and another antagonistic priest, Peter Caddell, who upon hearing about the decree ‘protested he would not obey the Archbishop no more than the Great Turk’.Footnote 41
Hostilities exacerbated further with the outbreak of a print war between the two sides. It started from an anonymously translated but controversial source. In 1630, on the back of the Sorbonne’s condemnation, a presumably Irish author with the initials ‘P.S.P’ translated the anti-mendicant work by Bishop Jean Pierre Camus of Belley entitled A Discours hapned betwene an hermite called Nicephorus & a yong lover called Tristan. The preface, addressed to ‘the Catholikes of Ireland’, stressed the ‘honour & respect [to] all Religious men… as long as they containe themselves within the limits of their Rules, & that they do not prefer the honour of their order, as many seeme to doe’.Footnote 42 This was promptly followed by the publication Examen Juridicum in 1631. The author was the guardian of the Irish Franciscans at Louvain, Francis Matthews, who concealed his identity under the pseudonym ‘Edmundus Ursulanus’.Footnote 43 He dismissed the Cahil propositions and took aim at the secular clergy as well as the bishops, especially Patrick Comerford of Waterford and Thomas Walsh of Cashel. This drew sharp criticism from David Rothe, John Roche and William Tirry, respective bishops of Ossory, Ferns and Cork, who demanded that the book be put on the Index.Footnote 44 Comerford expressed his displeasure by informing Wadding ‘I am ashamed and grieved that our countrymen begin to imitate apishly the falshood of heretics, which for want of reasons do stuff up their books with lies.’Footnote 45
Within months, Harris and Caddell re-entered the fray. Addressing their grievances to bishops of the province, they published a list of charges against Fleming. The most notable allegations were that he favoured the regular orders and that he allowed incompetent clergy to remain in office, identifying Fleming’s ‘pet’ Patrick Brangan and his assistant James Quinn ‘whereof the one is most unlearned, the other [a] lunatic’. They also condemned the archbishop’s advisor, John Preston, who was deemed ‘a most seditious and a turbulent fellow, to the ruin of the clergy, and disturbance of the Christian common-wealth’.Footnote 46 Harris did not stop there either. Shortly afterwards he attacked Fleming’s censure in his work entitled: The excommunication published by the L. archbishop of Dublin Thomas Flemming aliàs Barnwell friar of the Order of S. Francis, against the inhabitants of the diocesse of Dublin.Footnote 47 A second edition was printed twelve months later in 1633. Indeed by summer of that year his criticism extended to the regulars in a vindictive account Arktomastix (‘A scourge for the bear’) that specifically took aim at Matthew’s claims about diocesan clergy.Footnote 48 Harris’s relentless attacks clearly dominated the controversy but, more importantly, it underlined the dogged polarities embedded within the Catholic Church. In a letter to his nephew, Fleming lamented: ‘he abuses me, calling me to my face neither good Catholic nor good subject, and that as I threaten them with Rome, he threatens me with the State here’.Footnote 49 Yet for all the turmoil Harris and his colleagues had created, they had achieved nothing, except for further dividing the Church and, worse still, risking the disillusionment of the Catholic laity.
Statement of intent: Wentworth’s invasive policy
Dublin Castle’s track record in the conflict had been sporadic and largely unsuccessful. Lord Deputy Falkland established a working relationship with Harris by early 1628 and regularly obtained information from him with a view to using it to the government’s advantage.Footnote 50 As a consequence, the Irish Privy Council pushed Whitehall to agree to a proclamation banishing the priests and friars ‘as there is now a great faction between the Regulars and Seculars an occasion for taking it [the decision] has arisen which may not recur.’Footnote 51 However, much to his frustration, Falkland was forced to pursue a general policy of toleration during England’s war with Spain and France. After his recall in 1629, his successors, Lords Justices Boyle and Loftus, showed little interest in maintaining an open dialogue with Harris or his associates. They occasionally targeted the religious orders, most notably the Franciscans in Dublin in 1629, and the Dominicans in Limerick two years later.Footnote 52 In the case of Dublin, a botched attempt to apprehend the two celebrants of the Mass when storming a Franciscan chapel at Cook Street provoked a riot.Footnote 53 Nevertheless, it did lead to the arrest of several Catholic aldermen and the temporary closure of the city’s mass houses belonging to the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Capuchins and Jesuits, as well as the convent belonging to the Poor Clares.Footnote 54 This served the dual purpose of fuelling the ongoing tensions with minimal effort, and making political assertions of power. Many within Catholic circles were left in no doubt that the Franciscans were to blame for attracting unwelcome attention. An eye-witness account by the Capuchin, Nicholas Archbold, noted that Father Thomas Babe, Superior of the Franciscans, ‘made some little speech unto the people’ and when news of this reached Dublin Castle ‘they holding it for an affront & contempt caused the first eruption to be made upon the Franciscans residence.’Footnote 55 Bishop John Roche of Ferns, moreover, claimed that ‘the Jesuits weare not so forward as the friars in opening their schools or oratories; and you know they judge it prudence to suffer others try ye foord before them.’Footnote 56 Dublin Castle was more than happy for the religious dispute to rumble on, particularly as it put the heat on the Franciscans who were the largest order. Yet the reality was neither Boyle nor Loftus had the capacity to manipulate the situation in the way that Wentworth so ably demonstrated during his tenure.
In many respects it was a stroke of luck that Harris was still expressing his discontent when Wentworth took office. The priest stood as a lone figure by 1633: Cahil had reconciled with Fleming, Rochford’s enthusiasm had notably waned, and even Caddell became less active in the campaign against Fleming. Still, it says everything about Wentworth’s mindset and attention to detail that he immediately looked to intervene in the dispute before it fizzled out. Harris was still a powerful and disruptive force that could play to his tune but it required a considerable degree of skill for his plan to be executed with precision. Writing to Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury in August 1633, Wentworth reported ‘considering the infinite swarms of friars that are here… I thought it fit rather to keep their differences on foot then to labour unity amongst them.’Footnote 57 Investigating the legalities of Harris’s excommunication on the grounds that Fleming exercised foreign jurisdiction provided the lord deputy with the perfect occasion to pursue an invasive religious policy. Proceeding in this way was not without its own complications, however. Wentworth’s main objective in his early deputyship was to secure a new subsidy when parliament convened in 1634, but this required the co-operation of the Catholic Old English community.Footnote 58 Many were patrons of the religious orders and there was always the danger for Wentworth that they could be influenced by the friars and obstruct his plans if he over stepped the mark. He was conscious of the need to tread very carefully until the revenues of the Crown were settled, but vowed ‘to make good use’ of Harris and Caddell when the assembly prorogued.Footnote 59 By declaring that the punishment bestowed on the two priests was contrary to their rights and, therefore, impinged on the rights of the king, Wentworth forestalled suspicions of religious discrimination among the Catholic Old English. To reinforce his intentions he also played on the State’s long held concerns about Old English allegiance to the Crown: ‘if they [the laity] were not still distempered by the infusion of these friars and Jesuits’, he argued, ‘I am of belief, they would be as good and loyal to their King, as any other subjects.’Footnote 60 In other words, Wentworth’s course of action made it increasingly difficult for them to intercede without raising doubts of their loyalty.Footnote 61
Creating a smokescreen was essential if Wentworth was to meddle with the internal affairs of the Catholic Church and retain favour with the Old English at the same time. Risky though it was, interfering in the dispute presented a genuine opportunity to redress the religious imbalance between the regular and secular clergy. Despite insisting that his involvement was merely ‘entrenching only upon the civil power not touching any question of religion’, he still needed a strong platform to combat the regular clergy.Footnote 62 His response was quick and devastatingly effective. After only four weeks he accumulated sufficient information to converse with Laud about the conflict and by mid-September he obtained a detailed list of the secular and regulars resident in the diocese of Dublin.Footnote 63 Even before this came into his possession, Wentworth had already convened a meeting with Fleming and compelled him to retract the suspension bestowed on Harris and Caddell. There was no compromise made. Were the archbishop to disregard the orders, he was threatened with a summons to the Court of Castle Chamber ‘where he would find these things fall very heavy upon him.’Footnote 64 With no options available to him, Fleming adhered to Wentworth’s request. At the end of October 1633, the Lord Deputy gleefully announced that the excommunication was being retracted, despite caution from Laud not to be too cavalier in his proceedings lest ‘the Archbishop and they join together, and then your interest prove the less in both’.Footnote 65
Withdrawing the censure had serious consequences. It was not simply a check on Fleming’s authority. It also enabled Wentworth to re-ignite the hostilities that were in danger of petering out. Indeed, by supporting the numerically inferior seculars he ultimately hoped to persuade them to draft a petition when parliament was in session for banishing the regular clergy out of the kingdom, ‘setting forth their scandalous life and mighty charge they are unto this people’.Footnote 66 That was the medium term objective, however. In the interim period, Wentworth needed to ensure that the rumblings persisted. The answer to his problems was Harris.
An unlikely alliance: Wentworth and Harris
Given that Wentworth had a keen interest in religious controversy, not to mention studying the subject at Cambridge, it was perhaps inevitable that their contrasting ambitions would converge at the same junction.Footnote 67 By collaborating with the temperamental secular priest, he realised that he could manipulate the tensions to great effect. Harris, meanwhile, was safe in the knowledge that he received protection from Dublin Castle and could manufacture a host of scathing attacks without fear of prosecution. He was virtually untouchable. Not even the efforts of Rome could do anything to prevent his tirade against Fleming and the regulars. Harris published Fratres sobrii estote. 1 Pet. 5.8. Or, An Admonition to the Fryars of this Kingdome in 1634 with the support of the government’s printing press. It asserted that the Franciscans resisted any kind of reform and endorsed superstition and heresy.Footnote 68 That was not the end of his scornful publications either. The following year The Exile Exiled was printed which was less cutting but equally negative in content.Footnote 69 Of the two texts that he wrote, the second was by far the most controversial. It was published after Fleming received authorisation from Rome to suspend Harris and expel him from the diocese (hence the title), which the bishop of Meath, Thomas Dease, was asked to perform. But Dease refused to carry out his orders due to the fact that Wentworth left strict instructions for Harris to remain within the confines of Dublin city.Footnote 70 In a letter to Rome, John Roche wrote in exasperation:
I am not surprised that the Bishop of Meath should hesitate to execute that commission, for he forsees that it would give rise to still greater noise and confusion on account of the favour which Harris enjoys with the Royal Ministers, the more so as the Viceroy has given orders to the same Harris not to depart from the city on any account. For my part, I think it would be better to leave this crotchety man alone.Footnote 71
The agitation caused by Harris was plainly affecting the Roman clergy. Orders that his ‘cavillations’ were to be met with silence in the hope that his works would disappear ‘into oblivion’ were partially successful in that there was no printed response.Footnote 72 However, attempts to prohibit his books were challenging as the government facilitated their circulation and thus made them remarkably easy to obtain: Falkland and the Protestant archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, were just two noted individuals who had copies.Footnote 73 Indeed, such were the frustrations with the impact of Harris’s works that rumours reached Whitehall of an assassination attempt being arranged.Footnote 74 Wentworth revelled in these developments, not just the discontent it was creating but also the fact that The Exile Exiled appealed to the civil authorities and passed over the ecclesiastical superiors much to the embarrassment of the Catholic Church.
Orders that Harris was to stay in Dublin under the government’s protection were not just intended to encourage the production of more derogatory texts. His frequent use of the courts against his religious adversaries had equal potential for causing mischief. In September 1633 Wentworth was alerted to the action recently taken by Harris in the consistory court at St Patrick’s Cathedral for defamation of character against Father Edmund Doyle.Footnote 75 Accompanying this information was a list of recommendations ‘to see that the said cause be not ended without a public hearing and censure’.Footnote 76 This was blindingly obvious to Wentworth, having been briefed on the contretemps involving Fleming, Harris and Caddell the previous month. That Doyle was a supporter of the archbishop’s decision to restrain Harris for his malicious outbursts only added extra spice to the growing hostilities. Although Patrick Brangan informed Wadding that Doyle successfully avenged his opponent by providing irrefutable evidence against the claims, there is no record of the outcome.Footnote 77 Nonetheless, what can be confirmed is that Wentworth closely monitored the contention with keen interest. Indeed with the retraction of Fleming’s excommunication effectively completed by Christmas, Wentworth endeavoured to protract the disputes by fuelling the tensions between Harris and Doyle once more. In January 1634, Gerald Keating of Castlewarning in County Kildare was interrogated before Wentworth on account of obtaining information from a Franciscan friar, Christopher Flatsbury.Footnote 78 Under oath, Keating confessed to receiving from him a written declaration by Brangan concerning an award made by two priests between Harris and Doyle.Footnote 79 The attestation revealed ‘that some were present when witnesses testified before the Lord Chief Justice that Fa[ther] Doyle dissented from the order, and refused to stand to the arbitrament of the said arbitrators before their award was published.’Footnote 80 The document was clearly intended to be circulated among the religious orders to highlight the biased disposition of the courts towards Harris. Yet Wentworth sought to use the examination as a means to encourage the impertinent priest to exercise his enmity towards Doyle in the form of a second cause. The lord deputy had already reversed the consistory court’s judgement and forced Doyle to write a letter of apology to Harris in February 1634.Footnote 81 No doubt enticed by the prospect of another positive verdict, Harris once again proceeded against his adversary under the accusation of illegally possessing his property.
Bringing priests before the courts obviously served the interests of both the administration and Harris. For the latter, being persuaded to proceed against his opponents in the courts was a further slight to his ecclesiastical authorities. Similarly, enticing the secular and regular clergy to bring their respective grievances to the religious and civil courts enabled Wentworth to prolong the controversies beyond their natural courses. Adjudicating the fate of priests had two crucial advantages. Firstly, it meant that the civil court took priority over the church court, thus reinforcing the supremacy of the governmental institutions. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the future direction of the internal divisions of the Catholic Church was edging out of the hands of Rome. The lord deputy believed that he held the whip hand. As a result, he was able to shape the course of the conflict at his own discretion. This was a major concern among the more senior ecclesiastics. Bishop Roche, in particular, feared the consequences of the increasing role the courts were playing:
The worst feature of the matter is, that they [the priests] now bring their litigations before the Viceroy, and make the most bitter accusations against each other before him. I think that before long they will repent of having had recourse to his tribunal, for the Viceroy is a stern man… as soon as the Parliament, which has now met the second time, will have closed its Sessions, we will see an exercise of authority which will not be pleasing to everyone.Footnote 82
Pessimistic though it was, Roche was entirely justified in predicting a further deterioration in relations between the secular and regular clergy. Wentworth, on the other hand, was spurred on by the success of his makeshift alliance with Harris. In November 1635, the Lord Deputy reaped the rewards of their partnership once more when the latter took legal action against the archbishop’s favourite, Patrick Brangan. While the belligerent rebel could bring neither Dease nor Fleming before the Castle Chamber because of their failure to carry out his excommunication, Brangan’s recent conduct gave Harris legitimate grounds for a hearing at court. In translating, and subsequently publishing, Cardinal Barberini’s letter to remove Harris, Brangan exposed himself to the charge of exercising foreign jurisdiction in Ireland.Footnote 83 ‘For Father Harris, I shall hold him up sure enough’, Wentworth affirmed ‘so well as we are like to have very canonical bawdry publicly heard…which, I trust, will occasion our lecturer once more, to tell Rome she is a whore, a scarlet whore, a strumpet, an errant strumpet’.Footnote 84 The combination of the lord deputy’s arrogance and his growing interference in ecclesiastical matters definitely unnerved those within the ranks of the Catholic Church. Wentworth was making a point. The clergy knew it too. On Rome’s commands to excommunicate Harris the court pronounced that it ‘was sufficient to cause all men of the Romish religion to forbear his company, the said sentence of exile being a merely temporal punishment’, adding that, ‘it was in this case used being also a new found device never before heard of or practised in any of his Majesty’s dominions when Popery was at its highest.’Footnote 85 Their anxieties were compounded further upon news of the severity of Brangan’s sentence: a fine of £3,000 and imprisonment for life.
It should be of little surprise that both Doyle and Brangan were targeted by Harris. In the list of the clergy in the diocese of Dublin, which was drawn up with the help of a secular, the two priests were depicted as ‘creatures’ of the regular clergy. The hostility Harris directed at the regulars and their supporters did not just widen the divisions within the Catholic Church: the implications were far greater. His behaviour compelled impetuous friars into a response. It was effectively an ambush since such actions were interpreted by the government as contravening the laws of the state. The Franciscan John Preston, for example, found himself under the spotlight of the High Commission in 1636. On the 11 February, a warrant was issued for his arrest owing to his alleged authorship of the book, ‘Keeper of the Bear’. The court claimed that the book promoted the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome and that the viceroy was preparing a persecution of Roman Catholics. It also asserted that Preston attacked the link between the Crown and religion. The ‘infamous libel cast out against me’, Wentworth informed Coke, was remarkably close to the truth. The lord deputy revealed the book:
vents part of that discontent they carry secretly in their bosoms, the language is very venomous, but the effect is that in private causes I am indifferent just, but that if the King or Church be concerned there is no right to be expected from me; that I bring in new laws and proceed in the plantations with an intent to overthrow the old law and in time the old religion; that I am a Count Julian, a Nero, an Herod, and what not, but in the conclusion gives me advise to amend for that there are in this Kingdom both Feltons and Ravaillacs.Footnote 86
No doubt Wentworth was eager to suppress the book and the friar for fear of stirring up the increasingly restless clergy. Nevertheless, by seeking the approval of certain regular clergy, in addition to the aforementioned allegations, Preston was in contempt of Praemunire. The decision to imprison him, therefore, was merely a formality.Footnote 87 But it is important to stress that while the undoing of the Franciscan was exercising foreign jurisdiction, it was chiefly the past activities of Harris and Cahill which forced Preston to breach the law. Of the indictments listed against the friar the most noticeable was clause seven which alluded to his attack on Harris.Footnote 88 Hence, it was patently obvious that Dublin Castle’s partnership with the latter was paying dividends well before Preston was arrested in early 1636. Even the papal agent in England, George Conn, in a letter to Cardinal Barberini noted with despair the damage Harris’ relationship with Wentworth had caused.Footnote 89
Limits to Wentworth’s success
Harris was certainly a crucial ingredient in the lord deputy’s plans to subvert the fragile structures of the Catholic Church. The timing of the conflict was no doubt fortuitous but it should not undervalue Wentworth’s active contribution. His invasive policy clearly made an impact. Moreover, he was prepared to follow up on any collateral damage from the Harris affair. The Franciscan friar, Christopher Flatsbury, found himself under the microscope after Gerald Keating’s confession in the case between Doyle and Harris. Flatsbury’s alleged defence of the Dominican friar, Arthur MacGeoghan, who had been executed for treason in London, induced Wentworth to send over details of the Franciscan’s comments to the attorney at Whitehall. Keating heard that Queen Henrietta Maria ‘in some passion’ was against giving MacGeoghan a reprieve following his sentence because she believed ‘it was such a rascal that killed her father’. Upon hearing this, Flatsbury was said to have replied that he thought the Dominican was wrongfully accused, ‘and that in some cases the killing [of] the King of France might be tolerable or lawful’.Footnote 90 These claims were well wide of the mark. MacGeoghan was, in fact, believed to have said in Spain that the only reason he would return to England would be to kill the king of England.Footnote 91 Even so, Wentworth used this opportunity in the hope of hauling Flatsbury into the Court of Castle Chamber, ‘whereof the punishment being arbitrary it may be set as high as the offence may deserve.’Footnote 92
Harassing the religious orders was part of the lord deputy’s long-term objective to eventually bring the whole kingdom into uniformity with England. Even discounting the Harris affair, Wentworth sought to pry into their affairs as much as he could, a point that is seldom debated. The cross-examination of the Carmelite friar, Stephen (alias Paul) Browne, in the Castle Chamber is a case in point.Footnote 93 Browne was summoned to explain his conduct during the riot at Cook Street in December 1629, when the administration attempted to suppress religious houses.Footnote 94 Having initially escaped punishment from the authorities, the friar was hauled a second time before Wentworth and the Council. On this occasion he was charged with suspicion of partaking in an exorcism of a twelve-year-old girl. In the course of the proceedings the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Richard Bolton, accused Browne of luring Protestants away from their religion and allegiance to the king. The Council, unsurprisingly, supported Bolton. Thus, on 11 February 1635, Browne was censured, fined £3,000 and ordered to be pilloried ‘as an impostor and sorcerer’ in a square in Dublin.Footnote 95 To compound matters further, the friar was subsequently imprisoned for failing to pay the excessive fine. The severity of the punishment is an indication of how much political capital Wentworth and his colleagues expected to derive from the case, both in Ireland and at Whitehall. Writing to Secretary Coke, Wentworth proclaimed how the sentence caused ‘a kind of panic terror affrighting them [the religious orders] as if certainly there were a present change of religion intended in so much as the Jesuits have already shut up their oratory… for fear of a sudden persecution [and] a Benedictine friar hath done the like on the other side’ of Dublin.Footnote 96 Furthermore, from Wentworth’s perspective, Browne’s conviction was a very public demonstration of authority by which he sought to make examples of offenders. Whereas he was compelled to compromise with the Catholic gentry on political issues, Wentworth refused to countenance the unrestrained openness with which the religious orders conducted themselves. Consequently, Browne’s condemnation constituted a stern warning to the numerous friars in the kingdom who continued to defy the government.
Despite his endeavours to limit the progress of the Counter-Reformation, Wentworth was repeatedly hampered by interference from Queen Henrietta Maria. Thanks to her intercession, Browne had his fine abated and was released from prison after just two years. Nor was he the only friar to receive a royal pardon. Preston had spent barely a month in jail when the Queen discovered that he was captive in Dublin Castle.Footnote 97 Likewise, the Capuchins were reassured of protection from governmental aggression having relayed their concerns about the growing hostile environment. In April 1634 the queen besought Wentworth that the ‘poor harmless religious men… may live in security, and without molestation so long as they shall keep themselves within their duties, giving no public scandal nor offence.’Footnote 98 He was clearly irked by the queen’s comments that her demands ‘cannot be thought [to be] very unreasonable’. Quite the reverse, it affected him on a number of levels. To begin with, any ‘duties’ performed by friars contravened the laws of the state. Secondly, facilitating such a request exposed him to attack from enemies at court. Finally, but no less significantly, such demands threatened to undermine Wentworth’s highly effective and opportunistic tactics against the religious orders. It was for this reason as much as anything else that Henrietta Maria felt obliged to intervene.Footnote 99 Resenting her meddling in his affairs, the lord deputy responded either by attempting to ignore her in the hope that she would not follow up the matter, or by dragging his feet. It was a big gamble. His bluff was called the following month after receiving a second letter from the queen’s secretary, Sir Robert Ayton, who asked for an update on developments.Footnote 100 Wentworth was forced to concede. The queen was informed that the Capuchin superior was reassured ‘that he should freely come to me at all times and upon all occasions should partake of those duties I acknowledge to owe to your Majesty’s gratious recommendations of them unto me.’Footnote 101 It was no secret that she was distrustful of the lord deputy. His pro-Spanish policy meant that he was always given a cool reception from her at court.Footnote 102 Nonetheless, once it became evident that Wentworth was targeting the religious orders, their spiky relationship deteriorated further. That Henrietta Maria was driven repeatedly to intercede on behalf of the regular clergy is, paradoxically, the measure of just how effective his religious policy was in the early years of his deputyship.
Conclusion
Wentworth’s attempts to counter the growing influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland merit attention for a number of reasons. Firstly, the lord deputy’s exploitation of Harris and manipulation of the court system was a masterful demonstration of crafty management and political ingenuity. The bitter rivalry which Harris and his colleagues excited could in reality last only as long as their opponents were prepared to take the bait. By late 1632 many of the key players were showing signs of weariness. Even Harris was looking an increasingly forlorn figure. Had it not been for the arrival of Wentworth in the summer of 1633, and his determination to meddle in the internal divisions of the Catholic Church, the feud would most likely have ended sooner than it did. The anxieties expressed by a number of high profile figures within the Catholic hierarchy clearly indicate that the lord deputy’s intervention was both unwelcome and deeply resented. It speaks volumes about Wentworth’s resolve that he sought to become embroiled in the divisions when previously no Irish governor had dared to trespass. If anything, the methods he employed perfectly encapsulate his trademark policy of ‘thorough’: ruthless, efficient and devastatingly effective.
Secondly, one of the striking features about Wentworth’s treatment of the Catholic clergy was its consistency with his wider religious policy that also targeted members of the Church of Ireland. As Harris publicly attacked the religious orders, the lord deputy undertook the gargantuan task of improving the state of the established church. This not only included upgrading the physical condition of churches and redressing clerical standards, it also required considerable effort in recovering impropriations from eminent laymen.Footnote 103 The most noteworthy victim was Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork. Indeed there are interesting parallels between the complaints of Cork and the religious orders. Like many of the friars brought before the courts, the earl faced the wrath of Wentworth after the latter bullied a vicar from Munster to take an action in the Castle Chamber.Footnote 104 Moreover, Cork and the regulars were not alone in expressing their grievance at the manner in which the lord deputy sought to use prerogative powers and control the court system to impose his will. Once Harris had served his purpose, attention turned to non-conforming Protestants. Not long after the Court of High Commission was established in 1636, the earl of Nithsdale, Robert Maxwell, revealingly asserted that ‘the Catholickes are much afrayd of it, but as I am inform[e]d from england it is rather intended against the puritans, it will not be long befor[e] wee hear more certantie of it’.Footnote 105
Third, and finally, the specific emphasis Wentworth placed on the courts was instrumental in achieving his desired outcome. By the same token, the verdicts gave him a degree of legal protection against his enemies. Wentworth was well aware that previous lord deputies, notably Viscount Falkland, suffered at the hands of scheming factions within the Dublin administration.Footnote 106 Furthermore, the Harris affair highlighted how susceptible his policies were to interference from Whitehall. Repeated attempts by Henrietta Maria to protect members of the religious orders who got caught in the firing line showed that even the best laid plan could be undone. The fact that the final judgement emanated from the courts, however, provided Wentworth with a strong defence when his enemies eventually came calling in 1641.
