"extraordinary parts," and not, as suggested above, the favour of Buckingham, which "got him such an esteem with King James the First that he thought him a person fitly qualified to be Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Government of which place required at that time a man of more than ordinary abilities".

As Lord Deputy, Falkland comes almost midway between the two ablest rulers Ireland ever had-Sir Arthur Chichester and Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford. His fame and record may perhaps have suffered from inevitable if unconscious comparison. But he certainly acquired little glory from the performance of a thankless office. His tenure extended from 1622 to 1629, during which he was concerned almost exclusively with three questions. The ecclesiastical problem, the agrarian problem and the army problem may be said, indeed, to constitute, together with plantations, confiscations and rebellions, the history of Ireland in the seventeenth century. Lord Falkland, unlike his wife, was a strong Protestant, and urged on by a sermon of Ussher, preached on the text, "He beareth not the sword in vain," he began his rule with a proclamation for the banishment of priests. The Deputy's zeal outran the discretion of the Home Government; delicate negotiations were pending in regard to the Spanish marriage, and Falkland was bidden to tread more warily in ecclesiastical affairs in Ireland. A not less difficult problem was that of the army. A considerable standing army was regarded-probably with justice-as essential to English rule in Ireland. But no funds could be obtained from England, and none could be squeezed out of Ireland for the payment of the troops. There is no more serious menace either to social order or to discipline (as Strafford was soon to discover) than an unpaid army living at free quarters. Mr. Gardiner complains that the tone of Falkland's despatches to the Home Government was "querulous". Well it might

be, since he was bidden to make bricks without straw, and to maintain order among a hostile people with a mutinous army.

It was in order to get money for the payment of the army that recourse was had to the expedient with which Falkland's name is specially associated in Irish history. The Government resolved to make concessions on the two burning questions of the hour, that of the land and of religion. These concessions were embodied in instruments known as the Graces. By one, a new oath of allegiance, acceptable to the Catholics, was substituted for the obnoxious oath of supremacy. By another, a sixty years' possessory title was to be recognised as a bar to all claims to land on the part of the Crown. The plantations in Ulster and Wexford had filled every landowner and indeed every peasant in Ireland with alarm for the safety of his land; the recognition, therefore, of a comparatively short title was to all classes, but especially to the higher, a boon unspeakable. But for the Graces Falkland got little credit either in Ireland or in England. In Ireland they were regarded, not unjustly, as concessions wrung from the necessities of Government; in England they were not regarded at all. The Deputy became involved in an unfortunate quarrel with his Chancellor, Lord Loftus of Ely, and with other members of the Irish Council; a blow aimed at the Byrnes of Wicklow, and intended to prepare the way for a plantation in that fair county, hopelessly miscarried; the authority of the Deputy was virtually set aside, and in 1629 he was recalled.1 The government of Ireland passed, to the infinite material advantage of the dependency, into the strong hands of Went

1 A sequel to the disputes between Falkland and the Irish gentry is to be found in a case which came before the Star Chamber in 1631. Falkland there accused Lord Mountnorris, Sir Arthur Savage and others of having "joined and combined together" to lay a "grievous scandall upon the Lord Viscount Falkland and his Government and to impoyson his credit and

worth. That Falkland's rule in Ireland was conspicuously successful not even an apologist will maintain. He was lacking both in firmness and tact, and his policy was opportunist to a degree unusual even in Ireland. But he had small chance of earning distinction. Apart from the pressure of those chronic difficulties with which he made no serious and sustained effort to cope, he was ill supported from home, and was virtually deprived of the only material resource upon which English Deputies could rely.

The circumstances of his recall were rendered still further bitter to the disappointed Deputy by an incident affecting his son. It is apparently on the strength of this incident that Anthony Wood, in his irresponsible chatter, speaks of Lucius as being a "wild youth" when "carried off by his father into Ireland". The "wild youth" was then a boy of twelve, and the incident which furnishes the supposed ground for a charge of wildness occurred seven years afterwards! It is, however, characteristic of Lucius's impulsive temperament, and on that account deserves to be recalled. By the foolish partiality of his father, Lucius, though only nineteen, had been entrusted with the command of a company. On Falkland's departure Lucius was dismissed by the Lords Justices, and the command was transferred to Sir Francis Willoughby. Thereupon, Lucius, deeming it a slight to his father as well as to himself, challenged Willoughby to a duel. "I doe confesse youe a brave gentleman," he writes, "(and for myne owne sake I would not but have my adversary soe), but I knowe noe reason why, therfore, youe showld have my company, any more then why therfore you showld have my breeches, which yf every brave man

reputation with the Duke [of Buckingham], and with the King and the rest of the Nobles here and tending also to the King's dishonour". Cf." Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission," ed. Gardiner (Camden Society, 1886).