Without resigning his presidency of the northern council, Wentworth was transplanted in 1633 to a still more extensive sphere, as lord-deputy of Ireland. This was the great scene on which he played his part; it was here that he found abundant scope for his commanding energy and imperious passions. The Richelieu of that island, he made it wealthier in the midst of exactions, and, one might almost say, happier in the midst of oppressions. He curbed subordinate tyranny; but his own left a sting behind it that soon spread a deadly poison over Ireland. But of his merits and his injustice towards that nation I shall find a better occasion to speak. Two well-known instances of his despotic conduct in respect to single persons may just be mentioned; the deprivation and imprisonment of the lord chancellor Loftus for not obeying an order of the privy council to make such a settlement as they prescribed on his son's marriage--a stretch of interference with private concerns which was aggravated by the suspected familiarity of the lord-deputy with the lady who was to reap advantage from it;[82] and, secondly, the sentence of death passed by a council of war on Lord Mountnorris, in Strafford's presence, and evidently at his instigation, on account of some very slight expressions which he had used in private society. Though it was never the deputy's intention to execute this judgment of his slaves, but to humiliate and trample upon Mountnorris, the violence and indecency of his conduct in it, his long persecution of the unfortunate prisoner after the sentence, and his glorying in the act at all times, and even on his own trial, are irrefragable proofs of such vindictive bitterness as ought, if there were nothing else, to prevent any good man from honouring his memory.[83] _Correspondence between Laud and Strafford._--The haughty and impetuous primate found a congenial spirit in the lord-deputy. They unbosom to each other, in their private letters, their ardent thirst to promote the king's service by measures of more energy than they were permitted to exercise. Do we think the administration of Charles during the interval of parliaments rash and violent? They tell us it was over-cautious and slow. Do we revolt from the severities of the star-chamber? To Laud and Strafford they seemed the feebleness of excessive lenity. Do we cast on the Crown lawyers the reproach of having betrayed their country's liberties? We may find that, with their utmost servility, they fell far behind the expectations of the court, and their scruples were reckoned the chief shackles on the half-emancipated prerogative.