God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [101]
It is to their credit that the early Stuart kings did not necessarily share these views, or give in to them, and in the late 1620s the crown, anxious to secure financial support from Ireland, adopted a conciliatory attitude towards Gaelic and Old English opinion. Both groups were concerned about the policy of plantation, seeking secure title for their lands, and some freedom to follow their religion under the crown. The Old English, previously regarded as the natural agents of the crown, sought to defend their political and social status from the newcomers. A miscellany of concessions, known collectively as the Graces, was negotiated in the later 1620s in return for the promise of money intended to make the Irish government self-sufficient, and able to withstand a Spanish attack without drawing on English money. Prominent among them was a recognition of title to lands which had been held for more than sixty years: a safeguard against expropriation and plantation. This echoed concessions granted elsewhere under the Stuart crown, and offered considerable reassurance to Irish landholders. The Graces also offered to relieve Catholics from some of the civil disabilities under which they lived – being barred from office and practising the law, for example.13
There were influential sources of opposition to the Graces, however. Both the Church of Ireland and the Dublin administration opposed them, or at least the most significant of them. Under James Ussher the Church of Ireland had taken a distinctly Calvinist direction, in advance of the Church of England. In fact worship was governed by Irish articles drawn up by Ussher, rather than by the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, and although they did not directly conflict, they differed in emphasis in the direction of a more thoroughgoing Calvinism. The Church of Ireland, a hot Calvinist church amongst a majority Catholic population, was hostile to Catholicism in principle and a natural ally of those hostile to the interests of Catholics. New English settlers were often convinced Calvinists and many of them, particularly of course the Scottish settlers in Ulster, were not particularly sympathetic to the Laudian church. They had a material interest in the protection of the interests of existing planters, and of their church, and religious, political and strategic interests in the further promotion of plantation. The Dublin administration, not unnaturally, tended to regard the Church of Ireland and the New English as its most important allies. As a result concessions by the crown to Gaelic or Old English interests were not likely to be welcome to the church, New English settlers or the Dublin administration.14
On the promise of grants of taxation the crown had negotiated the Graces in spite of these complexities, but they were never finally conferred. In 1628 peace with Spain and France reduced the need for money, and the Graces were a casualty of the changed political environment. Hopes rose again in 1634 when Thomas Wentworth, now Lord Deputy in Ireland, called a parliament. He hoped to put Irish government on a secure financial footing – to make it pay for itself – and this led him to seek means of conciliating Gaelic and Old English interests. In return for financial support granted in the first session of the parliament Wentworth had held out the promise of a revival of the Graces, and an end to the imposition of recusancy fines on those who failed to attend the national church. Justified as a spur to conversion and therefore a godly measure, they had also proved an attractive financial expedient in the past. As it turned out, however, the parliament granted the money without, in the second session, giving the promised concessions. Indeed, it was clear that Wentworth favoured further plantation, for financial reasons and the other standard arguments: the promotion of civility and Protestantism, and therefore