Anois agus arís
By Peter Berresford EllisColums
When you believe something is flawed, as in a piece of legislation or
set of rules, the colloquial expression in English is that you can drive
a coach and horses through it.
The phrase was conjured by an Irish lawyer and statesman who, examining
the Restoration Act of Settlement (1662), which more or less confirmed
the devastation of the Cromwellian colonisation, asserted: “I will
drive a coach and six horses through the Act of Settlement.”
The lawyer in question was Stephen Rice (1637-1715) from the Dingle peninsula
in Co. Kerry, whose family were descended from 12th Century Welsh settlers
named Rhys. A Catholic, Rice was allowed to study law following the introduction
of slightly more liberal attitudes in the 1670s and was called to the
Irish Bar.
A contemporary, William King, later Archbishop of Dublin, dismissed the
young Rice as “a rook and a gamester”. In other words, a wastrel
and young man about town. But Rice began to secure a reputation as an
astute lawyer.
When James II came to the throne in 1685, Catholics were given the opportunity
to receive promotion. In 1686 Rice was appointed as a Baron of the Exchequer.
Lord Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, protested.
But in January, 1687, Richard Talbot Earl of Tyrconnell, replaced Clarendon.
Rice was elevated to the Irish Privy Council. He was then promoted Chief
Baron and knighted.
Tyrconnell appointed Rice, in his role as a judge, to secure the replacement
of those parts of the Act of Settlement and other legislation, such as
borough charters, that deprived Catholics of civil rights and their former
estates and so restore Catholics to having a role in Irish municipal and
political affairs. This was when Rice made his famous pronouncement about
the Act.
Later that year, with Tom Sheridan, Tyrconnell’s secretary, and
Richard Nagle, the Irish attorney general, Rice went to England to meet
James II and urge the changes to the colonial laws governing Ireland.
James sympathised but did nothing. He was too concerned at reaction in
England if he was seen as making concessions to Ireland.
In February, 1688, Rice with Sheridan, Nagle and Tom Nugent, Chief Justice,
went to London to take drafts of legislation that could be introduced
in the Irish Parliament to re-shape the land settlement, the Cromwellian
confiscation confirmed by Charles II.
A London mob greeted them, reportedly carrying potatoes impaled on sticks
and shouting: “Make way for the Irish ambassadors”.
James II, still nervous of his position in England, refused to approve
the proposed legislation.
Rice pressed ahead and in James II’s Dublin Parliament of 1689,
the Act of Settlement was repealed. All religions were made equal under
law and each religious sect was ordered to support their own clergy. The
iniquitous taxes to support only the Anglican churches were abolished.
Rice was a leading activist in moves to establish Ireland as a fully independent
kingdom sharing only a Crown, James II, with England. But James had fled
England and was replaced by William and Mary. Rice was sent to France
to discuss Irish affairs with James and accompany him to Kinsale in March,
1689.
He also accompanied James back to France after the military disaster at
the Boyne but was back in Ireland in January, 1691, to witness the final
phase of the Williamite Conquest. Charged with High Treason, Rice argued
that he was protected under the terms of the Treaty of Limerick.
Deprived of public office but initially allowed to keep his estate, Rice
in the next few years became almost a lone voice, speaking out for Catholic
rights as the new colonial parliament of William began to overturn laws
which made all religions equal and enacting legislation that became notorious
as the Penal Laws, depriving Catholics and all Dissenters (particularly
Presbyterians) of all civil rights.
Rice’s last protest to the Irish House of Common in February, 1704,
was against the bill that was to become the infamous 1704 Act of Preventing
the Further Growth of Popery.
He had married Mary Fitzgerald of Ballylaghan, Co. Limerick, and his eldest
son, Edward, converted to Protestantism to secure the family estates against
confiscation under the Penal Laws. Edward died in 1720 and secretly reconverted
on his deathbed.
Stephen Rice died on February 16, 1715, in Dublin and was interred in
St. James Church, Dublin, which was then favoured by the city’s
Catholics.
In 1726 a curious volume was published by Robert Dickson of Dame Street,
Dublin, a work on litigation strategy supposed to have been written by
Rice. But it is of questionable authenticity.
Today, Stephen Rice is hardly remembered. The radical traditional did
survive among his descendants, the Spring-Rice family of Kerry and Limerick.
Mary Spring-Rice (1880-1924) ran guns for the Volunteers in 1914.
During the War of Independence she nursed wounded Volunteers and when
she died she was given a funeral by republicans at the family church in
Loghill, Co. Limerick.
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