Stones of Aran (39 page)

While Clanricarde was wrestling with the supply problem the Cromwellians were overwhelming the country, and by the time some help from Lorraine began to reach Aran and that other
island-fortress
off the Connemara coast, Inishbofin, it was too late. The Irish commander, General Preston, was driven back into Galway and besieged there by Sir Charles Coote. Limerick surrendered in October 1651, but Galway held out through the winter despite Preston's flight by sea to France. Two vessels bringing corn into the starving, over-crowded city at this time were pursued by Parliamentary frigates; one was taken and the other driven onto the rocks off Aran and its cargo lost. Galway surrendered to Coote in April 1652, on terms that included the surrender of Aran.

Famine, plague and massacre followed. Aran perhaps escaped the worst of it, but Galway fell into desolation, and much of the countryside was almost depopulated. Fearing the intervention of Spain on behalf of Charles II, the Cromwellian forces emptied the town of its Catholic inhabitants, and began to improve and
rebuild
the fort at Aircín, quarrying the churches of the nearby monastery for the purpose. Inishbofin still held out, under a Colonel Synnot who had landed there with aid from Lorraine in the previous year. In December of 1652 the Commonwealth's Commissioners in Ireland had a reverse to report to the Council of State, for which they were hard put to it to find excuses:

Feeling that the Lord had manifested some displeasure against them in allowing a vanquished and dispersed enemy to prevail in this way, the commissioners recommended that December the 30th be observed by fast, humiliation and prayers. They also took more practical steps. Three or four ships were ordered round the coast from Kinsale to carry an invasion force, bringing provisions as none were to be had in Galway. In January thirteen hundred foot-soldiers and a battering-piece were shipped to Aran, while a further body of six hundred marched out along the coast to be shipped from Connemara if necessary. Aircín capitulated within a few days. The articles of surrender were concluded between Commissary-General Reynolds of the Commonwealth force, and Colonel Oliver Synnot, commander of the fort:

1. It is concluded that and agreed, that all the officers and soldiers both belonging to sea and land, shall have quarters, as also all others, the clergymen, and all other persons within the fort.
   
2. That they shall have six weeks for their transportation into Spain, or any other place in amity with the state of England; and that hostages be given by colonel Synnot for the punctual performance of these articles.
   
3. That colonel Synnot shall deliver up the fort, with all
   necessaries
   of war, by three o'clock this instant, 15th January, 1653, before which time all officers and soldiers belonging to the said fort shall march, with drums beating, to the church near Ardkyn, and there lay down their arms.
   
4. That colonel Synnot and the captains, eight in number, shall have liberty to carry their swords; the other officers and soldiers to lay down their arms; that commissary
   Reynolds shall nominate four officers of the fort
   hostages
   .
   
5. That colonel Synnot, with the rest of the officers and
   soldiers
   and all other persons in the fort, shall, upon
   delivering
   their arms and delivering their hostages, be protected from the violence of the soldiers, and with the first
   conveniency
   be sent to the county of Galway; there to remain in quarters for six weeks, in which time they are to be transported, as aforesaid: Provided that no person whatsoever, belonging to the fort of Ardkyn, and found guilty of
   murder
   , be included or comprised in these articles, or have any benefit thereby.
   

Thus ended the fort's days of high drama, to the beating of drums. Although its defences were now to be completed (to the ruination of the monasteries at hand), and although it was armed and manned by fifty or a hundred soldiers during the lifetime of the Commonwealth and for a while after the restoration of Charles II, its future was to be one of petty intrigues, neglect and eventual abandonment, to be itself a quarry for the building of cottages.

The Commonwealth's grand scheme for Ireland was to dispossess the Catholic landowners east of the Shannon and replace them by Protestants. Those Catholics who had not been involved in the “rebellion” were to be given equivalent areas of land beyond the Shannon, in Connacht and Clare, though a strip of territory (called “the Line”) along the coast was to be preserved for Protestants here too, for reasons of security. (Later on, in 1655, as some of the Line had not been taken up, this rule was relaxed, but it was still illegal for “popish recusants” to live within a mile of certain garrisons,
including 
Aircín and Inishbofin.) Sir Robert Lynch had of course been active with the Confederate forces, so he was deemed a “
forfeiting
traitor” and his lands confiscated. Cromwell's expedition had been financed by loans adventured on security of lands it would conquer, and now Ireland was being parcelled out among the financial “Adventurers,” and among the soldiers, in lieu of pay. Aran and other territories around the cities of Galway and Athlone, and in Sligo, Tipperary and Antrim, were assigned to a London alderman, Erasmus Smith, who had done well for himself as an army contractor and had purchased a vast number of land debentures from both Adventurers and soldiers. However, under the Cromwellian scheme of things a Protestant should not have been in possession of lands in Connacht, so Smith wisely assigned these lands to a trust for the setting up of grammar schools. His intention was to educate the children of his tenants “in the feare of God and good literature,” it being his opinion that

His schools would prepare such of the tenants' children as were fit for Trinity College in Dublin, and the poor were to be educated free. Of course as most of his tenants were Catholics not many could take up this magnanimous offer of the man who had
financed
the slaughter of their co-religionists. However, Erasmus Smith's Free School was the principal educational foundation in Galway for over a century, at least for the Protestant ascendancy.

In that year of Smiths benevolent Deed it was decreed that
Aran and Inishbofin would be holding-camps for fifty or more of the Catholic clergy whom the Cromwellians had been rounding up. The governor of Aircín, a Major John Allen, was allowed
sixpence
a head for their keep, including twopence per day for their food, on which rations they nearly starved, until rescued some time after the collapse of the Commonwealth and the recall of Charles II in 1660.

The Restoration aroused high hopes among the dispossessed Catholics, but although Charles smiled on Catholicism he was too dependent on the government that had brought him back from exile to be able to alter the Cromwellian settlements to any large extent. Erasmus Smith continued to own Aran, at least for a while, and Major Allen took up cattle-farming on land rented from him. In May 1662 a new governor of the fort arrived, a Robert Deey, mayor of Dublin; the King had settled a foot
company
in the new Standing Army on him, “as a reward for his loyal assistance in our restoration.” It seems that the Cromwellian
soldiery
of Aran and Inishbofin were absorbed into his command without recriminations.

This Restoration period of the fort's history is copiously
documented
and it is possible to follow developments—very
humdrum
, after what had gone before—almost month by month. In August Deey's company was allowed three months' advance of pay for the purchase of winter provisions. In March of the following year Deey reported that the advance had all been spent on beef, butter and oatmeal, the islands being so remote as to be supplied with difficulty. As the inhabitants had already trusted the soldiers beyond their means, he requested the allowance of an extra month's pay for them from time to time, and this too was agreed. Deey was replaced in September by a Captain Bayly, who owed his promotion to the King's recommendation and the Ormondes' patronage in recognition of the fact that “he has been under
sequestration
for his loyalty and actings for the King for these seven years past to the ruin of himself, his wife and children.”

Bayly certainly made up for lost time in Aran. His stream of
requests 
for more guns, powder and shot, more soldiers and
advances
of pay for them, a frigate and a boat to bring in turf, captains for these boats, muskets, swords, drums and drumsticks, give an impression of great energy in military matters, but he was determined to become the tenant of the islands too, using the confused state of property legislation of the times to oust John Allen. The confiscated lands in four counties including Galway had been set aside as security for the claims of officers who had served the King loyally in the years before 1649 and had not been paid for it. (Charles' lavish promises to both Catholics and Protestants had led the Earl of Ormonde, now Lord Lieutenant, to observe: “There must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old will not serve to satisfy these engagements!”) Now Bayly claimed Aran on these grounds, and when Allen
refused
to pay his rent to him, distrained his cattle. Allen, so far as he understood, was the tenant of Erasmus Smith. However,
Ormonde
's
younger son, Richard Butler, had been recently created a peer, taking the title “Earl of Arran” since his grandfather was the Ormonde who had had estates there sixty years earlier, and he now wished to acquire the land to go with the title. He came to a settlement with the trustees of the '49 soldiers as they were called, in this same year of 1663, and so Allen decided to pay the rent to him rather than to Erasmus Smith. But while he was away in Dublin doing this, Bayly's second-in-command, Sergeant John Browne, climbed into Allen's house with drawn sword, swearing to kill the first person he met, and turned his pregnant wife and her children out of doors, and set soldiers to guard it. (Could this fell sergeant be the drummer, John Browne, who unwillingly
assisted
at the sack of Tromra twenty years earlier, promoted perhaps for having betrayed Edmund O'Flaherty to the Cromwellian
soldiers
?) Then, when a hearing convened at Loughrea to settle the conflicting claims decided that the islands still were Erasmus Smith's, and the deputy sheriff of Galway came out with Allen to put the ruling into effect, Sergeant Browne met them with a file of musketeers and kept the official a prisoner for three days, and
Allen had the annoyance of seeing his own corn being brought into the fort by Bayly's soldiers. Allen applied to Ormonde for
relief
(the above details are taken from his petition), and at Ormonde's command Bayly gave his version of events; that the court's judgement in favour of Erasmus Smith had been unfairly procured and had in fact since been reversed; that he himself had always acted as the Earl of Arran's loyal tenant and never as a claimant in his own rights; that in fact he had only become tenant the better to serve the Earl's interests; that Allen's wife had seldom been acquainted with such civility as she met with when desired to leave her home and move into the fort—and so on,
interminably
and implausibly. However, the two Earls backed Bayly again as they had done in the past, and Allen disappears from the history of Aran.

Bayly, though, continues to figure as Arran's supporter, if not his parasite, in the Ormonde correspondence. In April 1681 he is in London on business and resolved to return to Ireland the next week; in September he is still in London and asking leave to stay till Christmas, “by which time he will have dispatched his affairs; if not, he will be undone.” In October he orders a cast of hawks from Aran to be delivered to the Earl; and then asks him to obtain permission from Ormonde to sell his company, being too busy to attend to it. Ormonde grants the permission, and in November Arran writes to tell him that Bayly has sold the company to one Amyas Bushe, who has never borne arms before; nevertheless Arran is pleased because it means that Bayly will be able to pay him the £200 of rent he owes. Two years later Bayly asks Arran to find a place for his son, and the lad is made an ensign. After another five years Bayly writes to Ormonde reminding him that it is now thirty years since he was first introduced to him in Brussels by Lord Clanricarde, and that he has served him for many years in Ireland, and would the Earl please let him have credit for £10 to keep him at Windsor, where he hopes to get something? His wife's and children's bread is at stake as at present he has no other way to
live…and so Bayly too fades out of Aran's history into reduced circumstances.

And that really concludes the history of the fort at Aircín, for according to Hardiman when a company was sent to Aran in 1691 after the victory of King William in the Jacobite war, a barracks was built for them. Certainly in 1710 the fort was in disrepair and Aran was only garrisoned in summer. The owner of the islands then was Sir Stephen Fox, a former Paymaster of the Forces and a Commissioner of the Treasury, who had purchased them from the Earl of Arran. He petitioned Queen Anne in that year for bedding and other necessaries for lodging a company in Aran and for
repairing
the fort, which he said had been neglected in time of peace. The soldiers stationed there had been withdrawn each
winter
, and their bedding had always been spoiled or embezzled by the time they returned in the spring. French privateers had been infesting the coast and plundering his tenants, to whom he had had to grant abatements of rent. However, it seems that nothing was done to help him, and in 1713 he sold out to his tenants, the Fitzpatricks of Galway, and to a representative of the Digbys, who were to be Aran's masters for many of its saddest years thereafter. The age of the barracks, of rack-renting and absentee landlords was coming, and the old fort with its strategic grip on the
aircín
lapsed into anachronism.