FROM THE INVASION OF THE BRUCES TO THE YEAR 1346.
[Sidenote: The Irish never united. The O'Connors are almost destroyed by
the De Burgos.]
The Irish invited Bruce, but they made no regular or general effort in
his favour. Their total incapacity for anything like national
organisation had forbidden the idea of a native sovereign, and perhaps
the majority of them thought one Norman baron no better than another. The
year 1316, in which Bruce landed, witnessed the almost total destruction
of the O'Connors, the tribe which had last held the chief kingship. Their
relationship with the De Burgos, Berminghams, and other Anglo-Normans may
be traced in great detail in the annalists. Felim O'Connor, whom the
Connaught historiographers call undisputed heir presumptive to the
sovereignty of Erin, formed one of those great confederacies which occur
so frequently in Irish history, and which so seldom had any results. The
O'Kellys, MacDermods, O'Maddens, O'Dowds, O'Haras, O'Kearneys,
O'Farrells, MacMahons, and many others were represented; and the
Anglo-Normans, who also mustered in great force, were commanded by the
Red Earl's brother, Sir William de Burgo, and by Richard Bermingham,
fourth baron of Athenry, at the gate of which town the decisive struggle
took place. The Irish were defeated with the loss of something like
10,000 men. Felim O'Connor fell, and his tribe never recovered its
position in Connaught. In late times we have O'Connor Don and O'Connor
Roe in Roscommon, O'Connor Sligo, O'Connor Kerry near the mouth of the
Shannon, and O'Connor Faly in what is now the King's County, but the De
Burgos became supreme in Connaught.
[Sidenote: The Irish recover ground under Edward II. and his successors.]
In other parts of Ireland the Celts were more successful. In 1317 or 1318
the O'Carrolls gained a victory over Sir Edmund Butler, but Clyn places
his loss at about two hundred only. More important was the battle of
Disert O'Dea, in which Richard de Clare was defeated and slain. This
fight destroyed the pretensions of the De Clares, and the O'Briens
remained supreme in Thomond as long as such supremacies lasted anywhere.
In Leinster, too, the Irish became more and more troublesome, and Clyn
unwillingly records successes of the O'Nolans and O'Tooles over the Poers
and other settlers. The dissensions of the colonists were yet more fatal
than the prowess of the natives. Eva's descendants were for ever fighting
among themselves, and it was the Red Earl's jealousy of Sir Edmund Butler
which prevented a united effort from being made against Bruce. 'After
having violently expelled us,' wrote the Irish to John XXII., 'from our
spacious habitations and patrimonial inheritances, they have compelled us
to repair, in the hope of saving our lives, to mountains and woods, to
bogs and barren wastes, and to the caves of the rocks, where, like the
beasts, we have long been fain to dwell.' The close of Edward II.'s reign
saw them everywhere ready to descend from their hills, and to emerge from
their woods. For nearly two hundred years the history of Ireland is in
the main a history of Celtic gains at the expense of Anglo-Normans and
Englishmen; if, indeed, anarchy can rightly be accounted gain to any race
or community of men.
[Sidenote: The last Earl of Ulster is murdered, 1333. The De Burgos and
other Anglo-Normans assume Irish names and habits.]
In 1326 the Red Earl of Ulster retired into the monastery of Athassel,
where he died soon afterwards. His great power descended to his grandson
William, who was murdered at or near Carrickfergus in 1333 by the
Mandevilles and other Ulster colonists. By his wife, Maud Plantagenet,
great-grand-daughter of Henry III., he left one child, Elizabeth, who was
only a few months old at the date of his murder. Twenty years afterwards
she married Lionel Duke of Clarence, and became ancestress of the Tudors
and Stuarts. The Earldom of Ulster thus ultimately merged in the Crown.
But the Irish De Burgos refused to acknowledge a baby, who, as a royal
ward, would be brought up independently of them; and they preferred to
follow the sons of Sir William, the Red Earl's brother. William the
elder assumed the title of MacWilliam Uachtar, or the Upper, took all
Galway for his portion, and became ancestor of the Clanricarde family.
His brother, Sir Edmund, as MacWilliam Iochtar, or the Lower, took Mayo,
and founded the family which bears that title. They threw off their
allegiance to England, and became more Irish than the Irish. They
reappear in the sixteenth century under the modern name of Burke. About
the same time several other Anglo-Normans assumed Irish names. The
Stauntons became MacAveelys; the Berminghams MacFeoris; the D'Exeters,
MacJordans; the Barretts, MacAndrews, MacThomins, MacRoberts, and
MacPaddins; the Nangles, MacCostelloes; the Mayo Prendergasts,
MacMaurices. The De Burgos themselves had many subordinate branches, each
with its peculiar Irish name, as MacDavid, MacPhilbin, MacShoneen,
MacGibbon, MacWalter, and MacRaymond. Nor was the practice confined to
Connaught. Some of the Leinster Fitzgeralds became MacThomases and
MacBarons; and some of the same house in Munster were transfigured into
MacGibbons, MacThomaisins, and MacEdmonds. Many other Anglo-Normans or
English families were more or less completely transformed in the same
way. It is only necessary to mention that the Wesleys or Wellesleys, who
gave England its greatest captain, were sometimes called MacFabrenes; and
that the Bissetts of Antrim, whose connections in Scotland gave the
Tudors such trouble, may still be traced as Makeons. In the district near
Dublin, which got the name of the English Pale, some Irish residents took
English names, and the practice was encouraged by a statute of Edward IV.
There is probably no country in Europe where the population is so
thoroughly mixed as it is in Ireland.
[Sidenote: Edward III. creates three great earldoms: Kildare, Desmond,
and Ormonde.]
As the Earls of Ulster disappear, other families attain prominence, and
the earlier Tudor history is mainly occupied with the struggles of three
earldoms, created in the first half of the fourteenth century. The name
Geraldine, to which Giraldus Cambrensis gave a more extended
signification, was in later times confined to the descendants of Maurice
Fitzgerald, one of Nesta's many sons. One branch was firmly settled in
Kildare before the death of Henry II., and in the reign of Edward I. the
head of it was John Fitz-Thomas, whose dissensions with William de Vesci,
Lord of Kildare, ended in an appeal to the King, and a challenge to the
trial by combat. Fitz-Thomas was the challenger, and on his adversary
failing to appear, he received a royal grant of De Vesci's lands. In 1316
Edward II. created him Earl of Kildare, and the Duke of Leinster is
descended from him. During most of the fifteenth century, and for the
first third of the sixteenth, this was on the whole the most powerful
family in Ireland. The Earls of Kildare commanded the whole strength of
that county, and its proximity to Dublin often enabled them to control
the government. Meath was too much divided for its proprietors to act as
a counterpoise, and the strength of the rival house of Ormonde lay at a
distance from the capital, and was exposed to attacks from another branch
of the Geraldines, whose chief was created Earl of Desmond in 1329. The
Desmonds first rose at the expense of the MacCarthies in Kerry. A
marriage with the heiress of Fitz-Anthony brought them the western half
of the county Waterford and other large estates. This lady's son married
the heiress of the Cogans, and her great property in Cork was added to
the rest. The Desmonds never became quite so completely Hibernicised as
the De Burgos; but they attained something very like independence, and
more than once proved too strong for the government. The third great
earldom was founded in the person of Edmund Butler, who was created Earl
of Carrick in 1315; the better known title of Ormonde being conferred on
his son James in 1328. The founder of the family was Theobald
Fitz-Walter, who accompanied Henry II. to Ireland, and was by him made
hereditary butler with a grant of the prisage of wines. The name of
office was adopted by his descendants, who derived great advantage from
the grant. Ormonde is properly the northern part of Tipperary, but the
earls became palatine lords of nearly all the county, and owners of vast
estates in Kilkenny and Wexford. Their principal castles were Kilkenny,
Gowran, Carrick-on-Suir, and Arklow. The possession of the latter place
gave them ready access to England, and through all turns of weal and woe
they ever remained faithful to the Crown. If regard be had to the length
of time that it retained eminence, or to the average ability of its
chiefs, or to its comparative civilisation in rude times, the House of
Ormonde must be accounted the most distinguished of the Anglo-Norman
families of Ireland.
[Sidenote: Towns in Ireland: Dublin and Drogheda.]
The native Irish had no regular towns. The Anglo-Normans took possession
of those founded by the Ostmen, which were all on the coast, and founded
many others, of which only three or four, and those not the most
important, were at a distance from navigable rivers. Athassel in
Tipperary is sometimes called a town, but it never became a municipality,
and can have been little more than an aggregation of poor houses about
the great monastery, and there may have been other similar cases. Dublin
obtained its first charter from Henry II. in 1171 or 1172, and Drogheda
from Henry III. in 1229.
'Dublin and Drogheda,' says the historian of the Irish capital, 'were
neither distinctly English nor Irish. Their citizens, as tax-contributing
and acknowledged subjects of England, relied on her for protection
against oppressive Anglo-Norman nobles and hostile natives. The
Irish--unless Anglicised--had no legal part in these communities, but
continuous mutual intercourse was sustained by the advantages derived
from traffic.' 'In our documents,' adds the same writer, 'Scandinavians
or Ostmans but rarely appear, although in 1215 the latter people were of
sufficient importance to have been associated with the English of Dublin
by King John as parties to an inquiry held there by his justiciary. The
proportion of the various national elements cannot be absolutely
determined by the forms of names;' for many names originated in personal
peculiarities, many were translated from one language to another, and
many Irishmen became denizens, and adopted an English patronymic. The
'Irish town' which exists outside the old bounds of Dublin, Limerick,
Kilkenny, Clonmel, and other places, doubtless perpetuates the memory of
a time when the natives congregated in the neighbourhood of civic
communities to which they did not belong.[35]
[Sidenote: Other towns: Limerick, Waterford, and Cork the chief.]
What has been said of Dublin and Drogheda applies to the other cities and
towns of Ireland. Limerick received its first charter from John in 1197,
Waterford from the same prince in 1206, and Cork from Henry III. in 1242.
These were the chief centres of trade and of English law in the south of
Ireland. The less important municipalities owed their origin generally to
some great noble, the Crown afterwards adopting them and granting fresh
privileges. Kilkenny received a charter from the Earl Marshal between
1202 and 1218. New Ross, well situated at the junction of the Nore and
Barrow, belonged to the same great man, and excited the jealousy of
Waterford at least as early as 1215. Clonmel was included in a grant made
by Henry II. to Otho de Grandison. It passed into the hands of the De
Burgos, who probably incorporated it, and who received a royal grant to
hold a fair there in 1225. Fethard, Callan, Gowran, and other inland
towns were of less consequence, but were still distinctly English in
origin and character. Youghal and Kinsale were also corporate towns. The
latter received a charter from Edward III. in 1333, and the former, which
had been long identified with the Desmond family, seems not to have been
regularly incorporated till 1462. The Kinsale charter recites that the
town was surrounded by Irish enemies and English rebels, and that the
burgesses were worn out in repelling the same. The mediæval kings
commonly granted the customs and tolls of loyal towns to be expended by
the inhabitants in repairing their walls.
[Sidenote: Galway.]
Galway has a history of its own. The O'Connors had a fortified post there
before the Anglo-Norman invasion, and it soon attracted the attention of
the invaders. In 1232 it was for the first time taken by Richard de
Burgo, who lost it once, but recovered it and made it the capital of his
province. The building of the walls was begun about the beginning of the
reign of Edward I., and murage charters were granted probably by that
king, and certainly by Edward III. and Richard II. A charter of
incorporation was granted in 1396, but the names of certain chief
magistrates, provosts, portreeves, and sovereigns, are preserved from
1274 to 1485, when the first mayor took office. Fourteen English
families, afterwards known as the tribes of Galway, engrossed civic
power, and from 1485 to 1654 every mayor, with a single doubtful
exception, was chosen from among them. When the De Burgos turned Irish
and renounced their allegiance, the loyal citizens soon learned to treat
them as enemies, and in 1518 the corporation resolved that no inhabitant
should receive into his house 'at Christmas, Easter, nor no feast else,
any of the Burkes, MacWilliams, the Kellys, nor no sept else, without
licence of the mayor and council, on pain to forfeit 5_l._ that neither O
nor Mac shall strut nor swagger through the streets of Galway.' Their
great enemies were the O'Flaherties of Iar-Connaught, and it is said the
prayer 'from the ferocious O'Flaherties, good Lord, deliver us,' was once
inscribed over the west gate of the town. Athenry, which was built by the
Bermingham family, was long and closely connected with Galway. It
received a murage charter in 1312.[36]
[Sidenote: Anglo-Norman families of importance.]
Besides the three great earldoms, there were several Anglo-Norman
families who continued to have considerable importance in Tudor times.
Robert le Poer, or De Poher, received a grant from Henry II., which made
his descendants, now generally called Power, supreme in the eastern half
of the county Waterford. In the middle ages they were often at war with
the citizens of Waterford. Their chief seat was Curraghmore, and they are
represented, through a lady, by the Marquis of Waterford. The western
half of the same county, which came by marriage to the Desmonds, fell to
the descendants of the seventh earl's second son, known as the
Fitzgeralds, of Decies, and seated at Dromana. The Fitzmaurices,
descended from Raymond le Gros, occupied that part of north Kerry which
is still called Clanmaurice. They became Barons of Lixnaw, and are
represented by the Marquis of Lansdowne. The family of the White Knight
was descended from Gilbert, eldest son of John More Fitzgerald by his
second wife, Honora O'Connor; his half brother by Margery Fitz-Anthony
being the first Earl of Desmond. The White Knights were called Macgibbon
and Fitzgibbon, and their memory is preserved by the barony of
Clangibbon, in the county of Cork. From John, the second of Honora
O'Connor's sons, is descended the Knight of the Valley, or of Glin on the
Shannon. Maurice, the third brother, was the first Knight of Kerry.
Another branch of the Fitzgeralds, known as hereditary seneschals of
Imokilly, were settled in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at Castle
Martyr. The Barrys, descendants of Nesta as well as the Geraldines, were
settled in that part of the county of Cork called Barrymore; and the
Roches were established soon after the first invasion about
Castletown-Roche, and Fermoy. Of the families who obtained portions of De
Lacy's great territory, the most important were the Nugents, Barons of
Delvin, and the Flemings, Barons of Slane on the Boyne. The Plunkets, who
are supposed to be of Danish origin, were in the middle ages settled
chiefly in Meath; and there they are still. They became Barons of
Killeen, Dunsany, and Louth. The Prestons, Viscounts of Gormanston, and
the Barnewalls, Barons of Trimleston, may also be noticed; but all the
families of the Pale were overshadowed by the House of Kildare.
[Sidenote: The colony steadily declines under Edward III.]
So far as the English colony in Ireland is concerned, the long reign of
Edward III. must be regarded as a period of decay. The murder of the last
Earl of Ulster in 1333, and the consequent secession of the De Burghs,
hastened the destruction of a fabric which had always hung loosely
together. The sons of Hugh Boy O'Neill, who was killed in 1283,
established themselves firmly in Eastern Ulster, and undid nearly all the
work of De Courcey and his successors. They gave to Antrim the name of
Clan-Hugh-Boy, or Clandeboye, as it is now written. Only the Savages
maintained themselves in Ardes; and the MacQuillins, a family of Welsh
origin, between the Bush and the Bann, in the district afterwards called
the Route. The three royal fortresses which bridled Connaught, Athlone,
Roscommon, and Randon, all fell into the hands of the Irish. In Leinster
also the natives rapidly gained ground. Lysaght O'More formed a
confederacy of nearly all the midland tribes, and expelled the settlers
from the district between the Barrow and the Shannon. His career was
short, but his work was lasting. 'In 1342,' says Clyn, 'he was killed
when drunk by his own servant. He was a rich and powerful man, and
honoured among his own people. He expelled nearly all the English from
his lands, and burned eight of their castles in one evening. He destroyed
Roger Mortimer's noble fortress of Dunamase, and usurped the lordship of
his own country. He was a servant, he became a lord; he was a subject, he
became a prince.' Bunratty Castle in Clare was dismantled by the O'Briens
and Macnamaras, and a branch of the former established themselves in
Tipperary. Of William Carragh O'Brien, of Aherlow, one of the chiefs of
this sept, Clyn gives a very unflattering account. 'He was,' he declares,
'a bad and perverse man who lived ill and died ill, passing all his time
in waylayings, thefts, spoils, and murders.'
[Sidenote: Dissension rife among the colonists.]
The constant quarrels of the colonists, and the corruption of their
officials, laid them open to the attacks of the natives, and the state of
Ireland attracted so much attention that the Parliament held at
Westminster in 1331 advised the King to cross the Channel himself. Edward
III. never had much time to attend to Ireland, but he seems to have been
aware that he had duties in the matter. In 1338 he decreed that none but
Englishmen born should fill legal offices; but this did not mend matters,
and the administration of justice continued to be as corrupt as ever. The
new comers married in Ireland, and were as ready to job for their
children as if they had been descended from the first colonists. In 1341
the King ordered that Englishmen with estates in England should be
preferred, but the supply of such men was necessarily limited. The main
cause of the corruption prevalent was no doubt the poverty of the Crown.
Officials were ill paid, or not paid at all, and they supported
themselves by embezzling funds or by selling justice. An unjust proposal
to increase the revenue by resuming royal grants naturally aggravated
every evil, and the English by blood were arrayed against the English by
birth. Sir John Morris, the deputy who was ordered to carry out the new
policy, summoned a Parliament to meet at Dublin in October, 1341. But
Maurice Fitz-Thomas, first Earl of Desmond, persuaded a large section of
the nobility to ignore the writs, to attend a rival assembly at Kilkenny,
and to draw up a remonstrance addressed to the King. The malcontents
wished to be informed how a governor without military skill could rule a
land where war never ceased, how an official could become quickly rich,
and how it came about that the King was never the richer for Ireland?
Edward abandoned the intention of resuming the grants, but subsequent
events show that he did not really forgive Desmond.
[Sidenote: D'Ufford's futile attempts to recover the Earldom of Ulster.]
Ralph d'Ufford had married Maud Plantagenet, widow of the murdered Earl
of Ulster, and in 1344 he was sent over as Viceroy with very large
powers. One of his objects was to resume possession of Ulster for the
benefit of his step-daughter, the royal ward; but he totally failed in
obtaining rent out of the lands, or in ousting those who had seized them.
After chastising the Irish in the neighbourhood of Dublin, d'Ufford
resolved to invade Ulster with a regular army. The MacArtanes attacked
him at the Moyrie Pass, and he narrowly escaped annihilation. Having cut
his way through with the help of the settlers in Louth and Monaghan, he
made his way into the northern province, but no permanent results
followed. Desmond and others having refused to attend his Parliament, the
Viceroy went to Kerry, took Castle Island, and hanged its principal
defenders. He imprisoned the Earl of Kildare and seized his estates, and
then took action upon a bond executed in 1333, by which twenty-six of the
chief men of the colony became bound for Desmond's good behaviour. Many
of the sureties had aided the Viceroy, but he, nevertheless, seized their
lands. The Earl of Ormonde and two more were the only exceptions. The
ruin caused by this policy was out of all proportion to the good, and in
the history of the English in Ireland no one has a worse name than Sir
Ralph d'Ufford, except perhaps his high-born wife, whose resentments were
supposed to guide him. His hand was as heavy against the Church as
against the temporal nobles. The annalist Pembridge, who was a
contemporary, declares that he brought bad weather to Ireland, and that
it lasted all his time. 'On Palm Sunday,' says the same writer, 'which
was on April 9, 1346, Ralph d'Ufford died, whose death was very much
lamented by his wife and family; but the loyal subjects of Ireland
rejoiced at it, and both the clergy and laity for joy celebrated a solemn
feast at Easter. Upon his death the floods ceased, and the air again grew
wholesome, and the common people thanked God for it.'
FOOTNOTES:
[35] The quotations are from Gilbert's _Historic and Municipal Documents
of Ireland_, pp. xxviii. and xxx.
[36] Hardiman's _History of Galway_ contains as much as most readers will
care to know about that town. The following distich makes it possible to
remember the tribes:--
Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, Darcy, Lynch,
Joyce, Kirwan, Martin, Morris, Skerrett, French.
To which Ffont or Faunt must be added.