THE IRISH FREE CLANS AND ANGLO-NORMAN FEUDALISM.
The Danes were subdued, and the Irish at liberty to go on
weaving the threads of their history--though, in consequence of
the local wars, they had lost the concentrating power of the Ard-
Righ--when treachery in their own ranks opened up the way for a
far more serious attack from another branch of the great
Scandinavian family--the Anglo-Norman.
The manners of the people had been left unchanged; the clan
system had not been altered in the least; it had stood the test
of previous revolutions; now it was to be confronted by a new
system which had just conquered Europe, and spread itself round
about the apparently doomed island. Of all places it had taken
deep root in England, where it was destined to survive its
destruction elsewhere in the convulsions of our modern history.
That system, then in full vigor, was feudalism.
In order rightly to understand and form a correct judgment on
the question, and its mighty issues, we must state briefly what
the chief characteristics of feudalism were in those countries
where it flourished.
The feudal system proceeded on the principle that landed
property was all derived from the king, as the captain of a
conquering army; that it had been distributed by him among his
followers on certain conditions, and that it was liable to be
forfeited if those conditions were not fulfilled.
The feudal system, moreover, politically considered, supposed
the principle that all civil and political rights were derived
from the possession of land; that those who possessed no land
could possess neither civil nor political rights--were, in fact,
not men, but villeins.
Consequently, it reduced nations to a small number of landowners,
enjoying all the privileges of citizenship; the masses,
deprived of all rights, having no share in the government, no
opportunity of rising in the social scale, were forever
condemned to villeinage or serfdom.
Feudalism, in our opinion, came first from Scandinavia. The
majority of writers derive it from Germany. The question of its
origin is too extensive to be included within our present limits,
and indeed is unnecessary, as we deal principally with the fact
and not with its history.
When the sea-rover had conquered the boat of an enemy, or
destroyed a village, he distributed the spoils among his crew.
Every thing was handed over to his followers in the form of a
gift, and in return these latter were bound to serve him with
the greatest ardor and devotedness. In course of time the idea
of settling down on some territory which they had devastated and
depopulated, presented itself to the minds of the rovers. The
sea-kong did by the land what he had been accustomed to do by
the plunder: he parcelled it out among his faithful followers--
fideles--giving to each his share of the territory. This was
called feoh by the Anglo-Saxons, who were the first to carry out
the system on British soil, as Dr. Lingard shows. Thus the word
fief was coined, which in due time took its place in all the
languages of Europe.
The giver was considered the absolute owner of whatever he gave,
as is the commander of a vessel at sea. It was a beneficium
conferred by him, to which certain indispensable conditions were
attached. Military duty was the first, but not the only one of
these. Writers on feudalism mention a great number, the
nonfulfilment of which incurred what was called forfeiture.
In countries where the pirates succeeded in establishing
themselves, all the native population was either destroyed by
them, as Dudo tells us was the case in Normandy, or, as more
frequently happened, the sword being unable to carry destruction
so far, the inhabitants who survived were reduced to serfdom,
and compelled to till the soil for the conquerors; they were
thenceforth called villeins or ascripti glebae. It is clear that
such only as possessed land could claim civil and political
rights in the new states thus called into existence. Hence the
owning of land under feudal tenure was the great and only
essential characteristic of mediaeval feudalism.
This system, which was first introduced into Britain by the
Anglo-Saxons, was brought to a fixed and permanent state by the
Normans--followers of William the Conqueror; and, when the time
came for treachery to summon the Norman knights to Irish soil,
the devoted island found herself face to face with an iron
system which at that period crushed and weighed down all Europe.
The Normans had now been settled in England for a hundred years;
all the castles in the country were occupied by Norman lords;
all bishopries filled by Norman bishops; all monasteries ruled
by Norman abbots. At the head of the state stood the king, at
that time Henry II. Here, more than in any other country in
Europe, was the king the key-stone to the feudal masonry. Not an
inch of ground in England was owned save under his authority, as
enjoying the supremum dominium. All the land had been granted by
his predecessors as fiefs, with the right of reversion to the
crown by forfeiture in case of the violation of feudal
obligations. Here was no allodial property, no censitive
hereditary domain, as in the rest of, otherwise, feudal Europe.
All English lawyers were unanimous in the doctrine that the king
alone was the true master of the territory; that tenure under
him carried with it all the conditions of feudal tenure, and
that any deed or grant proceeding from his authority ought to be
so understood.
The south-western portion of Wales was occupied by Norman lords,
Flemings for the most part. Two of these, Robert Fitzstephens
and Maurice Fitzgerald, sailed to the aid of the Irish King of
Leinster. They were the first to land, arriving a full year
before Strongbow.
Strongbow came at last. The conditions agreed on beforehand
between himself and the Leinster king were fulfilled. He was
married to the daughter of Dermod McMurrough, chief of Leinster,
acknowledged Righ Dahma, that is, successor to the crown, while
the Irish, accustomed for ages to admire valor and bow
submissively to the law of conquest, admitted the claim. The
English adventurer they looked upon as one of themselves by
marriage. Election in such a case was unnecessary, or rather,
understood, and Strongbow took the place which was his in their
eyes by right of his wife, of head under McMurrough of all the
clans of Leinster.
When, a little later, came Henry II. to be acknowledged by
Strongbow as his suzerain, and to receive the homage of the
presumptive heir of Leinster, submission to him was, in the
eyes of the Irish, merely a consequence of their own clan system.
They understood the homage rendered to him in a very different
sense from that attached to it by feudal nations; and had they
had an inkling of the real intentions of the new comers, not one
of them would have consented to live under and bow the neck to
such a yoke.
In fact, on the small territory where those great events were
enacted, two worlds, utterly different from each other, stood
face to face. Cambrensis tells us that the English were struck
with wonder at what they saw. The imperialism of Rome had never
touched Ireland. The Danes, opposed so strenuously from the
outset, and finally overcome, had never been able to introduce
there their restrictive measures of oppression. The English
found the natives in exactly the same state as that in which
Julius Caesar found the Gauls twelve hundred years before,
except as to religion--the race governed patriarchally by
chieftains allied to their subordinates by blood relationship;
no unity in the government, no common flag, no private and
hereditary property, nothing to bind the tribes together except
religion. It was not a nation properly, but rather an
agglomeration of small nations often at war each with each, yet
all strongly attached to Erin-- a mere name, including,
nevertherless, the dear idea of country --the chieftains
elective, bold, enterprising; the subordinates free, attached to
the chief as to a common father, throwing themselves with ardor
into all his quarrels, ready to die for him at any moment.
Around chief and clansmen circled a large number of brehons,
shanachies, poets, bards, and harpers--poetry, music, and war
strangely blended together. The religion of Christ spread over
all a halo of purity and holiness; large monasteries filled with
pious monks, and convents of devout and pure virgins abounded;
bishops and priests in the churches chanting psalms, each
accompanying himself with a many-stringed harp, gave forth sweet
harmony, unheard at the time in any other part of the world.
A most important feature to be considered is their understanding
of property. Hereditary right of land with respect to
individuals, and the transmission of property of any kind by
right of primogeniture, were unknown among them. If a specified
amount of territory was assigned to the chieftain, a smaller
portion to the bishop, the shanachy, head poet, and other civil
officers each in his degree, such property was attached to the
office and not to the man who filled it, but passed to his
elected successor and not to his own children; while the great
bulk of the territory belonged to the clan in common. No one
possessed the right to alienate a single rood of it, and, if at
times a portion was granted to exiles, to strangers, to a
contiguous clan, the whole tribe was consulted on the subject.
Over the common land large herds of cattle roamed--the property
of individuals who could own nothing, except of a movable nature,
beyond their small wooden houses.
This state of things had existed, according to their annals, for
several thousand years. Their ancestors had lived happily under
such social conditions, which they wished to abide in and hand
down to their posterity.
Foreign trade was distasteful to them; in fact, they had no
inclination for commerce. Lucre they despised, scarcely knowing
the use of money, which had been lately introduced among them.
Yet, being refined in their tastes, fond of ornament, of wine at
their feasts, loving to adorn the persons of their wives and
daughters with silk and gems, they had allowed the Danes to
dwell in their seaports, to trade in those commodities, and to
import for their use what the land did not produce.
Those seaport towns had been fortified by the Northmen on their
first victories when they took possession of them. Throughout
the rest of the island, a fortress or a large town was not to be
seen. The people, being all agriculturists or graziers, loved to
dwell in the country; their houses were built of wattle and clay,
yet comfortable and orderly.
The mansions of the chieftains were neither large architectural
piles, nor frowning fortresses. They bore the name of raths when
used for dwellings; of duns when constructed with a view to
resisting an attack. In both cases, they were, in part under
ground, in part above; the whole circular in form, built
sometimes of large stones, oftener of walls of sodded clay.
Instead of covering their limbs with coats of mail, like the
warriors of mediaeval Europe, they wore woollen garments even in
war, and for ornaments chains or plates of precious metal. The
Norman invaders, clad in heavy mail, were surprised, therefore,
to find themselves face to face with men in their estimation
unprotected and naked. More astonished were they still at the
natural boldness and readiness of the Irish in speaking before
their chieftains and princes, not understanding that all were of
the same blood and cognizant of the fact.
Still less could they understand the freedom and familiarity
existing between the Irish nobility and the poorest of their
kinsmen, so different from the haughty bearing of an aristocracy
of foreign extraction to the serfs and villeins of a people they
had conquered.
The two nations now confronting each other had, therefore,
nothing in common, unless, perhaps, an excessive pertinacity of
purpose. The new comers belonged to a stern, unyielding,
systematic stock, which was destined to give to Europe that
great character so superior in our times to that of southern or
eastern nations. The natives possessed that strong attachment to
their time-honored customs, so peculiar to patriarchal tribes,
in whose nature traditions and social habits are so strongly
intermingled, that they are ineradicable save by the utter
extirpation of the people.
And now the characteristics of both races were to be brought out
in strong contrast by the great question of property in the soil,
which was at the bottom of the struggle between clanship and
feudalism. The Irish, as we have seen, knew nothing of
individual property in land, nor of tenure, nor of rent, much
less of forfeiture. They were often called upon by their
chieftains to contribute to their support in ways not seldom
oppressive enough, but the contributions were always in kind.
A new and very different system was to be attempted, to which
the Irish at first appeared to consent, because they did not
understand it, attaching, as they did, their own ideas to words,
which, in the mouths of the invaders, had a very different
meaning.
With the Irish "to do homage" meant to acknowledge the
superiority of another, either on account of his lawful
authority or his success in war; and the consequences of this
act were, either the fulfilment of the enactments contained in
the "Book of Rights," or submission to temporary conditions
guaranteed by hostages. But that the person doing homage became
by that act the liegeman of the suzerain for life and
hereditarily in his posterity, subject to be deprived of all
privileges of citizenship, as well as to the possibility of
seeing all his lands forfeited, besides many minor penalties
enjoined by the feudal code which often resolved itself into
mere might--such a meaning of the word homage could by no
possibility enter the mind of an Irishman at that period.
Hence, when, after the atrocities committed by the first
invaders, who respected neither treaties nor the dictates of
humanity, not even the sanctuary and the sacredness of religious
houses, Henry II. came with an army, large and powerful for that
time, the Irish people and their chieftains, hoping that he
would put an end to the crying tyranny of the Fitzstephens,
Fitzgeralds, De Lacys, and others, went to meet him and
acknowledge his authority as head chieftain of Leinster through
Strongbow, and, perhaps, as the monarch who should restore peace
and happiness to the whole island. McCarthy, king of Desmond,
was the first Irish prince to pay homage to Henry.
While the king was spending the Christmas festivities in Dublin,
many other chieftains arrived; among them O'Carrol of Oriel and
O'Rourke of Breffny. Roderic O'Connor of Connaught, till then
acknowledged by many as monarch of Ireland, thought at first of
fighting, but, as was his custom, he ended by a treaty, wherein,
it is said, he acknowledged Henry as his suzerain, and thus
placed Ireland at his feet. Ulster alone had not seen the
invaders; but, as its inhabitants did not protest with arms in
their hands, the Normans pretended that from that moment they
were the rightful owners of the island.
Without a moment's delay they began to feudalize the country by
dividing the land and building castles. These two operations,
which we now turn to, opened the eyes of the Irish to the
deception which had been practised upon them, and were the real
origin of the momentous struggle which is still being waged
today.
Sir John Davies, the English attorney-general of James I., has
stated the whole case in a sentence: "All Ireland was by Henry
II. cantonized among ten of the English nation; and, though they
had not gained possession of one-third of the kingdom, yet in
title they were owners and lords of all, so as nothing was left
to be granted to the natives."
McCarthy, king of Desmond, had been the first to acknowledge the
authority of Henry II., yet McCarthy's lands were among the
first, if not the first, bestowed by Henry on his minions. The
grant may be seen in Ware, and it is worthy of perusal as a
sample of the many grants which followed it, whereby Henry
attempted a total revolution in the tenure of land. The charter
giving Meath to De Lacy was the only one which by a clause
seemed to preserve the old customs of the country as to
territory; and yet it was in Meath that the greatest atrocities
were committed.
Yet one difficulty presented itself to the invaders: their
rights were only on paper, whereas the Irish were still in
possession of the greatest part of the island, and once the real
purpose of the Normans showed itself, they were no longer
disposed to submit to Henry or to any of his appointed lords.
The territory had to be wrested from them by force of arms.
The English claimed the whole island as their own. They were, in
fact, masters only of the portion occupied by their troops; the
remainder was, therefore, to be conquered. And if in Desmond,
where the whole strength of the English first fell, they
possessed only a little more than one-fourth of the soil, what
was the case in the rest of the island, the most of which had
not yet seen them?
Long years of war would evidently be required to subdue it, and
the systematic mind of the conquerors immediately set about
devising the best means for the attainment of their purpose. The
lessons gathered from their continental experience suggested
these means immediately; they saw that by covering the country
with feudal castles they could in the end conquer the most
stubborn nation. A thorough revolution was intended. The two
systems were so entirely antagonistic to each other that the
success of the Norman project involved a change of land tenure,
laws, customs, dress--every thing. Even the music of the bards
was to be silenced, the poetry of the files to be abolished, the
pedigrees of families to be discontinued, the very games of the
people to be interrupted and forbidden. A vast number of castles
was necessary. The project was a fearful one, cruel, barbarous,
worthy of pagan antiquity. It was undertaken with a kind of
ferocious alacrity, and in a short time it appeared near
realization. But in the long run it failed, and four hundred
years later, under the eighth Henry, it was as far from
completion as the day on which the second Henry left the island
in 1171.
To show the importance which the invaders attached to their
system, and the ardor with which they set about putting it in
practice, we have only to extract a few passages from the old
annals of the islands; they are wonderfully expressive in their
simplicity:
"A.D. 1176. The English were driven from Limerick by Donnall
O'Brian. An English castle was in process of erection at Kells."-
-(Four Masters.)
"A.D. 1178. The English built and fortified a castle at Kenlis,
the key of those parts of Meath, against the incursions of the
Ulster men."--(Ware's Antiquities.)
"A.D. 1180. Hugh De Lacy planted several colonies in Meath, and
fortified the country with many castles, for the defence and
security of the English."--(Ibid.)
Such enumerations might be prolonged indefinitely; we conclude
with the following entry taken from the Four Masters:
"A.D. 1186. Hugh De Lacy, the profaner and destroyer of many
churches, Lord of the English of Meath (the Irish cannot call
him their lord), Breffni, and Oirghialla, he who had conquered
the greater part of Ireland for the English, and of whose
English castles all Meath, from the Shannon to the sea, was full,
after having finished the castle of Der Magh, set out
accompanied by three Englishmen to visit it . . . . One of the
men of Tebtha, a youth named O'Miadhaigh, approached him, and
with an axe severed his head from his body."
So wide-reaching and comprehensive was the plan of the invaders
from the beginning that they felt confident of holding
possession of Ireland forever; and to effect this they must
certainly have intended to destroy or drive out the native race,
or at best to make slaves of as many of them as they chose to
keep. Thus they had prophecies manufactured for the purpose, and
Cambrensis, in his second book, chapter xxxiii., says
confidently: "Prophecies promise a full victory to the English
people. . . . and that the island of Hibernia shall be subjected
and fortified with castles--literally incastellated,
incastellatam--throughout from sea to sea."
Meanwhile, together with the building of castles, the partition
of the territory was being carried out. The ten great lords,
among whom, according to Sir John Davies, Henry II. had
cantonized Ireland, saw the necessity of giving a part of their
large estates to their followers that so they might occupy the
whole. McGeohegan compiles from Ware the best view of this very
interesting and comparatively unexplored subject. Curious
details are found there, showing that, with the exception of
Ulster, not only the geography, but even the most minute
topography of the country, had been well studied by those feudal
chieftains. Their characteristic love for system runs all
through these transactions.
But the Irish had now seen enough. The whole country was in a
blaze. That kind of guerilla war peculiar to the Celtic clans
began. The newly built castles were attacked and often captured
and destroyed. Strongbow was shut up and besieged in Water- ford,
which fell into the hands of the Danes. The latter sided
everywhere with the Irish. Limerick changed hands several times,
until Donnall O'Brian, who was left in possession, set fire to
it rather than see it fall again into the hands of the invaders.
In Meath, where the numerous castles of De Lacy were situated, a
war to the knife was being waged. O'Melachlin first tried
persuasion, but in conference with De Lacy he dared inveigh
loudly against the King of England, and, as his words must have
expressed the feelings of the great majority of the people, we
give them:
"Notwithstanding his promise of supporting me in the possession
of my wealth and dignities, he has sent robbers to invade my
patrimony. Avaricious and sparing of his own possessions, he is
lavish of those of others, and thus enriches libertines and
profligates who have consumed the patrimony of their fathers in
debauchery."
This manly protest was answered by the stroke of a dagger from
the hand of Raymond Legros, and, after being beheaded,
0'Melachlin was buried feet upward as a rebel.
The monarch himself, Roderic O'Connor, finally appeared on the
scene, beat the English at Thurles, and, marching into Meath,
laid the country waste.
Henry at last saw the necessity of adopting a milder policy, and
O'Connor dispatching to England Catholicus O'Duffy, Archbishop
of Tuam, Lawrence O'Toole, of Dublin, and Concors, Abbot of St.
Brendan, the Treaty of Windsor was concluded, which was really a
compromise, and yet remained the true law of the land for four
hundred years. It may be seen in Rymer's "Foedera."
Sir John Davies justly remarks that by the treaty "the Irish
lords only promised to become tributaries to King Henry II.; and
such as pay only tribute, though they are placed by Bodin in the
first degree of subjection, yet are not properly subjects, but
sovereigns; for though they be less and inferior to the princes
to whom they pay tribute, yet they hold all other points of
sovereignty.
"And, therefore, though King Henry had the title of Sovereign
Lord over the Irish, yet did he not put those things in
execution, which are the true marks of sovereignty.
"For to give laws unto a people, to institute magistrates and
officers over them, to punish or pardon malefactors, to have the
sole authority of making war or peace, are the true marks of
sovereignty, which King Henry II. had not in Ireland, but the
Irish lords did still retain all those prerogatives to
themselves. For they governed their people by the Brehon law;
they appointed their own magistrates and officers; . . . . they
made war and peace one with another, without control; and this
they did not only during the reign of Henry II., but afterward
in all times, even until the reign of Queen Elizabeth."
By an article of the treaty the Irish were allowed to live in
the Pale if they chose; and even there they could enjoy their
customs in peace, as far as the letter of the law went. Many
acts of Irish parliaments, it is true, were passed for the
purpose of depriving them of that right, but without success.
Edmund Spenser, himself living in the Pale in the reign of
Elizabeth, speaks as an eye-witness of "having seen their meeton
their ancient accustomed hills, where they debated and settled
matters according to the Brehon laws, between family and family,
township and township, assembling in large numbers, and going,
according to their custom, all armed."
Stanihurst also, a contemporary of Spenser, had witnessed the
breaking up of those meetings, and seen "the crowds in long
lines, coming down the hills in the wake of each chieftain, he
the proudest that could bring the largest company home to his
evening supper."
Here would be the proper place to speak of the Brehon law, which
remained thus in antagonism to feudal customs for several
centuries. Up to recently, however, only vague notions could be
given of that code. But at this moment antiquarians are revising
and studying it preparatory to publishing the "Senchus Mor" in
which the Irish law is contained. It is known that it existed
previous to the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and that
the laws of tanistry and of gavelkind, the customs of gossipred
and of fostering, were of pagan origin. Patrick revised the code
and corrected what could not coincide with the Christian
religion. He also introduced into the island many principles of
the Roman civil and canon law, which, without destroying the
peculiarities natural to the Irish character, invested their
code with a more modern and Christian aspect.
Edmund Campian, who afterward died a martyr under Elizabeth,
says, in his "Account of Ireland," written in May, 1571: "They
(the Irish) speak Latin like a vulgar language, learned in their
common schools of leechcraft and law, whereat they begin
children, and hold on sixteen or twenty years, conning by rote
the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Civil Institutes, and a
few other parings of these two faculties. I have seen them where
they kept school, ten in some one chamber, grovelling upon
couches of straw, their books at their noses, themselves lying
prostrate, and so to chant out their lessons by piecemeal, being
the most part lusty fellows of twenty-five years and upward."
It was then after studies of from sixteen to twenty years that
the Brehon judge--the great one of a whole sept, or the inferior
one of a single noble family--sat at certain appointed times, in
the open air, on a hill generally, having for his seat clods of
earth, to decide on the various subjects of difference among
neighbors.
Sir James Ware remarks that they were not acquainted with the
laws of England. He might have better said, they preferred their
own, as not coming from cold and pagan Scandinavia, but from the
warm south, the greatest of human law-givers, the jurisconsults
of Old Rome, and the holy expounders of the laws of Christian
Rome.
What were those laws of England of which Ware speaks? There is
no question here of the common law which came into use in times
posterior to Henry II., and which the English derived chiefly
from the Christian civil and canon law; but of those feudal
enactments, which the Anglo-Normans endeavored to introduce into
Ireland, for the purpose of supplanting the old law and customs
of the natives.
There was, first, the law of territory, if we may so call it, by
which the supreme ruler became really owner of the integral soil,
which he distributed among his great vassals, to be
redistributed by them among inferior vassals.
There was the law of primogeniture, which even to this day
obtains in England, and has brought about in that country since
the days of William the Conqueror, and in Ireland since the
English "plantations" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
the state of things now so well known to Europe.
There was also the long list of feudal conditions to be observed,
by the fulfilment of which the great barons and their followers
held their lands. For their tenure was liable to homage and
fealty, as understood in the feudal sense, to wardships and
impediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to what
English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats,
and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times more
strictly observed in England than in any other feudal country,
and by its enactments so many noble families have, in the course
of ages, been reduced to beggary, and their chiefs often brought
to the block. English history is filled with such cases.
The law of wardship, by which no minor, heir, or heiress could
have other guardian than the suzerain, and could not marry
without his consent, was at all times a great source of wealth
to the royal exchequer, and a correspondingly heavy tribute laid
on the vassal. So profitable did the English kings find this law,
that they speedily introduced it into Church affairs, every
bishop's see or monastery being considered, at the death of the
incumbent, as a minor, a ward, to be taken care of by the
sovereign, who enjoyed the revenues without bothering himself
particularly with the charges.
There were, finally, the hunting laws, which forbade any man to
hunt or hawk even on his own estate.
Such were the laws of England, which Sir James Ware complains
the Irish did not know.
In signing the treaty of Windsor, the English king had
apparently recognized in the person of Roderic O'Connor, and in
the Irish through him, the chief rights of sovereignty over the
whole island, except Leinster and, perhaps, Meath. But, at the
same time, a passage or two in the treaty concealed a meaning
certainly unperceived by the Irish, but fraught with mischief
and misfortune to their country.
First, Roderic O'Connor acknowledged himself and his successors
as liegemen of the kings of England; in a second place, the
privileges conceded to the Irish were to continue only so long
as they remained faithful to their oath of allegiance. We see
here the same confusion of ideas, which we remarked on the
meaning given to the word homage by either party. The natives of
the island understood to be liegemen and under oath in a sense
conformable to their usual ideas of subordination; the English
invested those words with the feudal meaning.
All the calamities of the four following centuries, and,
consequently, all the horrors of the times subsequent to the
Protestant Reformation, were to be the penalty of that
misunderstanding.
Let us picture to ourselves two races of men so different as the
Milesian Celts on the one side, and the Scandinavian Norman
French on the other, having concluded such a treaty as that of
Windsor, each side resolved to push its own interpretation to
the bitter end.
The English are in possession of a territory clearly enough
defined, but they are ever on the alert to seize any opportunity
of a real or pretended violation of it, in order to extend their
limits and subjugate the whole island. Yet they are bound to
allow the Brehon Irish to live in their midst, governed by their
own customs and laws. Moreover, they acknowledge that the former
great Irish lords of the very country which they occupy are not
mere Irish, but of noble blood; for, from the beginning, the
English recognized five families of the country, known as the
"five bloods," as pure and noble, in theory at least.
The Irish without the Pale are acknowledged as perfectly
independent, completely beyond English control, with their own
magistrates and laws, even that of war; subject only to tribute.
But, at the same time, this independence is rendered absolutely
insecure by the imposition of conditions, whose meaning is well
known and perfectly understood in all the countries conquered by
the Scandinavians, but utterly beyond the comprehension of the
Irish.
The consequence is clear: war began with the conclusion of the
treaty--a war which raged for four centuries, until a new and
more powerful incentive to slaughter and desolation showed
itself in the Reformation, ushered in by Henry VIII.
First came a general rebellion. This is the word used by
Ware, when John, a boy of twelve years of age, was dispatched by
his father Henry, with the title of Lord of Ireland, to receive
the submission of various Irish lords at Waterford, where he
landed. "The young English gentlemen," says Cambrensis, who was
a witness of the scene, "used the Irish chieftains with scorn,
because," as he says, "their demeanor was rude and barbarous."
The Irish naturally resented this treatment from a lad, as they
would have resented it from his father; and they retired in
wrath to take up arms and raise the whole land to "rebellion."
This solemn protest was not without effect in Europe. At the
beginning of the reign of Richard I., Clement III., on
appointing, by the king's request, William de Longchamps,
Bishop of Ely, as his legate in England, Wales, and Ireland,
took good care to limit the authority of this prelate to those
parts of Ireland which lay under the jurisdiction of the Earl
of Moreton-- that is, of John, brother to Richard. He had power
to exercise his jurisdiction "in Anglia,, Wallia, et illis
Hiberniae partibus in quibus Joannes Moretonii Comes potestatem
habet et dominium."--(Matth. Paris.) It would seem, then, that
Clement III. knew nothing of the bull of Adrian IV.
The war, as we said, was incessant. England finally so despaired
of conquering the country, that some lords of the court of Henry
VI. caused him to write letters to some of his "Irish enemies,"
urging the latter to effect the conquest of the island in the
king's name. This was assuredly a last resource, which history
has never recorded of any other nation warring on a rival. But
even in this England failed. Those lords--the "Irish enemies" of
King Henry VI.--sent his letters to the Duke of York, then Lord-
Lieutenant, "and published to the world the shame of England."--
(Sir John Davies.)
The result was that, at the end of the reign of Henry VI., the
Irish, in the words of the same author, "became victorious over
all, without blood or sweat; only that little canton of land,
called the English Pale, containing four small shires;
maintained yet a bordering war with the Irish, and retained the
form of English government."
Feudalism was thus reduced in Ireland to the small territory
lying between the Boyne and the Liffey, subject to the constant
annoyance of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, and O'Cavanaghs. And this
state of affairs continued until the period of the so-called
Reformation in England.
Ireland proved itself then the only spot in Western Europe where
feudal laws and feudal customs could take no root. Through all
other nations of the Continent those laws spread by degrees,
from the countries invaded by the Northmen, into the most
distant parts, modified and mitigated in some instances by the
innate power of resistance left by former institutions. In this
small island alone, where clanship still held its own, feudalism
proved a complete failure. We merely record a fact, suggestive,
indeed, of thought, which proves, if no more, at least that the
Celtic nature is far more persevering and steady of purpose than
is generally supposed.
But a more interesting spectacle still awaits us--that of the
English themselves morally overcome and won over by the example
of their antagonists, renouncing their feudal usages, and
adopting manners which they had at first deemed rude and
barbarous.
The treaty of Windsor, which was subsequently confirmed by many
diplomatic enactments, obliged King Henry III. of England to
address O'Brien of Thomond in the following words: "Rex regi
Thomond salutem." The same English monarch was compelled to give
O'Neill of Ulster the title of Rex, after having used,
inadvertently perhaps, that of Regulus.--(Sir John Davies.) Both
O'Brien and O'Neill lived in the midst of a thickly populated
Irish district, with a few great English lords shut up in their
castles on the borders of the respective territory of the clans.
The Norman lords in many parts of the country lived right in the
midst of an Irish population, with its Brehon judges, shanachies,
harpers, and other officers, attached to their customs of
gossipred, fostering, tanistry, gavelkind, and other usages,
which the parliaments of Drogheda, Kilkenny, Dublin, Trim, and
other places, were soon to declare lewd and barbarous. The
question of the moment was: Which of the two systems, clanship
or feudalism, brought thus into close contact and antagonism,
was to prevail?
Ere long it began to appear that the aversion first felt by the
English lords at such strange customs was not entirely
invincible, and many of them even went so far as to choose wives
from among the native families. In fact, there lay a great
example before their eyes from the outset, in the marriage of
Strongbow with Eva, the daughter of McMurrough. Intermarriage
soon became the prevailing custom; so that the posterity of the
first invaders was, after all, to have Celtic blood in its veins.
Hence, a distinction arose between the English by blood and the
English by birth. The first had, indeed, an English name; but
they were born in the island, and soon came to be known as
degenerate English.--That degeneracy was merely the moral effect
of constant intercourse with the natives of their neighborhood. -
-The others were continually shifting, being always composed of
the latest new-comers from England.
It is something well worthy of remark that a residence of a
short duration sufficed to blend in unison two natures so
opposed as the Irish and the English. The latter, not content
with wedding Irish wives, sent their own children to be fostered
by their Irish friends; and the children naturally came from the
nursery more Irish than their fathers. They objected no longer
to becoming gossips for each other at christenings, to adopt the
dress of their foster-parents, whose language was in many cases
the only one which they brought from their foster-home.
Thus Ireland, even in districts which had been thoroughly
devastated by the first invaders, became the old Ireland again;
and the song of the bard and the melody of the harper were heard
in the English castle as well as in the Irish rath.1 (1 The
process of gaining over an Englishman to Irish manners is
admirably described in the "Moderate Cavalier," under Cromwell,
quoted by Mr. J. P. Prendergast in his second edition of the
"Cromwellian Settlement," p. 263. If this process were common
with the Protestant officers of Cromwell, how much more so with
Catholic Anglo-Normans!)
The nationalization of their kin, which received a powerful
impetus from the fact that the English who lived without the
Pale escaped feudal exactions and penalties from the
impossibility of enforcing the feudal laws on Irish territory,
alarmed the Anglo-Normans by birth, in whose hand rested the
engine of the government; and, looking around for a remedy, they
could discover nothing better than acts of Parliament.
We have not been able to ascertain the precise epoch in which
the first Irish Parliament was convened; indeed, to this day, it
seems a debated question. The general belief, however, ascribes
it to King John. The first mention of it by Ware is under the
year 1333, as late as Edward III., more than one hundred and
fifty years after the Conquest. But the need of stringent rules
to keep the Irish at bay, and prevent the English from
"degenerating," became so urgent that, in 1367, the famous
Parliament met at Kilkenny, and enacted the bill known as the
"Statutes of Kilkenny," in which the matter was fully elaborated,
and a new order of things set on foot in Ireland.
The Irish could recognize no other Parliament than their ancient
Feis; and, these having been discontinued for several centuries,
they showed their appreciation of the new English institution in
the manner described by Ware under the year 1413: "On the 11th
of the calends of February, the morrow after St. Matthias day, a
Parliament began at Dublin, and continued for the space of
fifteen days; in which time the Irish burned all that stood in
their way, as their usual custom was in times of other
Parliaments."
The reader who is acquainted with the enactments which go by the
name of the "Statutes of Kilkenny" will scarcely wonder at this
mode of proceeding.
Neither at that period, nor later on save once under Henry VIII.,
was the Irish race represented in those assemblies. In the
reign of Edward III. no Irish native nor old English resident
assisted at the Parliament of Kilkenny, but only Englishmen
newly arrived; for all its acts were directed against the Irish
and the degenerate English--against the latter particularly. How
the members composing these Parliaments were elected at that
time we do not know; but they were not summoned from more than
twelve counties, which number, first established by King John,
gradually dwindled, until, in the reign of Henry VII., it was
reduced to four, so that the Irish Parliament came to be
composed of a few men, and those few representatives of purely
English interests.
A true history of the times would demand an examination of the
various enactments made by these so-called Irish Parliaments, as
setting forth more distinctly than any thing else could do the
points at variance between the two nations. Our space, however,
and indeed our purpose, forbids this. In order to put the reader
in possession of at least an idea of the difficulties on either
side, we add a few extracts from the very famous "Statutes of
Kilkenny."
The preamble sets forth "that already the English in Ireland
were mere Irish in their language, names, apparel, and their
manner of living, and had rejected the English laws and
submitted to the Irish, with whom they had many marriages and
alliances, which tended to the utter ruin and destruction of the
commonwealth." And then the Statutes go on to enact --we cull
from various chapters: "The English cannot any more make peace
or war with the Irish without special warrant; it is made penal
to the English to permit the Irish to send their cattle to graze
upon their land; the Irish could not be presented by the English
to any ecclesiastical benefice; they--the Irish--could not be
received into any monasteries or religious houses; the English
could not entertain any of their bards, or poets, or shanachies,
" etc.
This extraordinary legislation proves beyond any amount of facts
to what degree the posterity of the first Norman invaders of
Ireland had adopted Irish customs, and made themselves one with
the natives.
The Irish, therefore, had, in this instance, morally conquered
their enemies, and feudalism was defeated. Another example was
given of the invariable invasions of the island. The enemy,
however successful at the beginning, was compelled finally to
give way to the force of resistance in this people; and the time-
honored customs of an ancient race survived all attempts at
violent foreign innovations. The posterity of those proud nobles,
who, with Giraldus Cambrensis, had found nothing but what was
contemptible in this nation, so strange to their eyes, who
looked upon them as an easy victim to be despoiled of their land,
and that land to be occupied by them, that posterity adopted,
within, comparatively speaking, a few years, the life and
manners of the mere Irish in their entirety. Feudalism they
renounced for the clan. Each of the great English families that
first landed in the island had formed a new sept, and the clans
of the Geraldines, De Courcys, and others, were admitted into
full copartnership with the old Milesian septs. This the two
great families of the Burkes in Connaught called their chiefs
McWilllams Either and McWilliams Oughter. The Berminghams bad
become McYoris; the Dixons, McJordans; the Mangles, McCostellos.
Other old English families were called McHubbard, McDavid, etc.;
one of the Geraldine septs was known as McMorice, another as
McGibbon; the chief of Dunboyne's house became McPheris.
Meanwhile, "it was manifest," says Sir John Davies, "that those
who had the government of Ireland under the crown of England
intended to make a perpetual separation and enmity between the
English settled in Ireland and the Irish, in the expectation
that the English should in the end root out the Irish."
There is no doubt that, if these laws of Kilkenny could have
been enforced and carried out, as they were meant to be, the
effect hoped for by these legislators might have been the
natural result. Yet even much later on, at a period, too, when
the English power was considerably increased, under Henry VIII.,
a very curious discussion of this possibility, which took place
at the time, did not by any means promise an easy realization.
The following passage of the "State Papers," under the great
Tudor, contains a rather sensible view of the subject, and is
not so sanguine of the success of the hopes cherished by the
attorney-general of James I.:
"The lande is very large--by estimation as large as Englande--so
that, to enhabit the whole with new inhabiters, the number would
be so great that there is no prince christened that commodiously
might spare so many subjects to depart out of his regions. . . .
But to enterprise the whole extirpation and totall destruction
of all the Irishmen of the lande, it would be a marvellous and
sumptuous charge and great difficulty, considering both the lack
of enhabitors, and the great hardness and misery these Irishmen
can endure, both of hunger, colde, and thirst, and evill lodging,
more than the inhabitants of any other lande."
There were, therefore, evidently difficulties in the way; yet it
is certain that the question of the total extirpation of the
Irish has been entertained for centuries by a class of English
statesmen, and confidently looked for by the English nation. Sir
John Davies, as we see, attributes no other object to the
Statutes of Kilkenny.
But could those statutes be enforced? were they ever enforced?
The same writer pretends that they were for "several years;" but
the sequel proves that they were not. The reason which he
assigns for their execution--that for a certain time after that
Parliament there was peace in the island--leads us to believe
the contrary; for if, as he himself justly remarks before, the
intention of the legislators was to create a perpetual
separation and enmity between the two races, the promulgation
and strict execution of those statutes would have immediately
enkindled a war which could have ended only with the total
extirpation of one race or the other.
And the further fact that it was thought necessary to reenact
those odious laws frequently in subsequent Irish Parliaments
proves that they were not carried into execution, since new
legislation on the subject was demanded.
It is true that events, transmitted to us either through the
Irish annals or the English chronicles, show that several
attempts were made to enforce those acts of Kilkenny, chiefly
against the Fitz-Thomases or Geraldines of Desmond, who
pretended, even after their enactment, to be as independent of
them as before, and refused to attend the Parliament when
convoked, claiming the strange privilege "that the Earls of
Desmond should never come to any Parliament or Grand Council, or
within any walled town, but at their will or pleasure." And the
Desmonds continued in their persistent opposition to the English
laws until the reign of Elizabeth.
But it was against Churchmen chiefly that they were carried out
in full; for we occasionally meet in the annals of the country
with instances where some English prelate in Ireland had been
prosecuted for having conferred orders on mere Irishmen, and
that some Norman abbots had been deposed for having received
mere Irishmen as monks into their monasteries.
With the exception of a few cases of this kind, no proof can be
furnished that any material change was brought about in the
relations of the old English settlers with their Irish neighbors.
In fact, matters progressed so favorably in this friendly
direction, that at length the descendants of Strongbow and his
followers became, as is well known, "Hibernis Hiberniores," and
the judges sent from England could hold their circuit only in
the four counties between the Liffey and the Boyne; and the name
given to the majority of the old English families was "English
rebels," while the natives were called "Irish enemies."
Sir John Davies himself is forced to admit it: "When the civil
government grew so weak and so loose that the English lords
would not suffer the English laws to be executed within their
territories and seigniories, but in place thereof both they and
their people embraced the Irish customs, then the state of
things, like a game at Irish, was so turned about, that the
English, who hoped to make a perfect conquest of the Irish, were
by them perfectly and absolutely conquered, because Victi
victoribus leges dedere."
The truth could not be expressed in more explicit terms. Yet all
has not been said. The same persevering character, making
headway against apparently insurmountable obstacles, shows
itself conspicuously in the Irish, in the preservation of their
land, which, after all, was the great object of contention
between the two races.
The first Anglo-Norman invaders, including Henry II himself, had
no other object in view than gradually to occupy the whole
territory, subject it to the feudal laws, give to Englishmen the
position of feudal lords, and reduce the Irish to that of
villeins, if they could not succeed in rooting them out.
A few years later, by the Treaty of Windsor, the king seemed to
confine his pretensions to Leinster, and perhaps Meath, and
expressly allowed the natives to keep their lands in the other
districts of the island. Yet none of his former grants, by which
"he had cantonned the whole island between ten Englishmen," were
recalled; the continued as part of and means to shape the policy
of the invaders, and subsequent Parliaments always supposed the
validity of those former grants made to Strongbow and his
followers.
It is true that those posterior Acts of Parliament did not
merely rely for their strength on the first documents, but on
the pretence that the Irish chieftains and people outside of
Leinster and Meath had justly forfeited their estates by not
fulfilling the conditions virtually contained in the Windsor
Treaty, in which they had professed homage and submission to the
English king. It is clear that, lawfully or unlawfully, the
Anglo-Normans were determined to gain possession, sooner or
later, of the whole island.
To secure their end, they declared that the natives would not be
subject to the English laws, but retain their Brehon laws, which
in their eyes were no laws at all, and which the Parliament of
Kilkenny had declared to be "lewd customs." Henceforth, then,
the natives were out of the pale of the law, could not claim its
protection, but became subject to the crown of England, without
political, civil, or even human rights.
They were soon, by reason of the constant border wars all around
the Pale, declared "alien and enemies." And these expressions
became, in the eyes of the English lawyers, identical with the
Irish race and the Irish nature; so that at all times, peace or
war, even when the Irish fought in the English ranks, aiding the
Plantagenets in their furious contests with the Scotch or the
French, they were still "Irish enemies;" "aliens" unworthy human
rights, villeins in whose veins no noble blood could flow, with
the exception of five families.
All the rest were not only ignoble, but not even men; nothing
but mere Irish, whom any one might kill, even though serving
under the English crown, at a risk of being fined five marks, to
be paid to the treasury of the King of England, for having
deprived his majesty of a serviceable tool.
This (to modern eyes) astounding social state demands a closer
examination in order to see if, at least, it had the merit of
finally procuring for the English the possession of the land
they coveted.
We find first that Henry II., John, and Henry III., would seem
on several occasions to have extended the laws of England all
over the island. But all English legists will tell us that those
laws were only for the inhabitants of English blood. The mere
Irish were always reputed aliens, or, rather, enemies to the
crown, so that it was, " by actual fact, often adjudged no
felony to kill a mere Irish in time of peace," as Sir John
Davies expressly points out.
Five families alone were excepted from the general category and
acknowledged to be of noble blood--the O'Neills of Ulster, the
O'Melachlins of Meath, the O'Connors of Connaught, the O'Briens
of Munster, and the McMurroughs of Leinster.
Those five families, numerous certainly, but forming only as
many septs, were, or appeared to be, acknowledged as having a
right to their lands, and as able to bring or defend actions at
law. We say, appeared to be, because they found themselves on so
many occasions ranked as mere Irish, that individuals of those
septs, induced by sheer necessity, were often driven, in spite
of an almost invincible repugnance, to apply for and accept
special charters of naturalization from the English kings. Thus
in the reign of Edward IV., O'Neill, on the occasion of his
marriage with a daughter of the house of Kildare, was made an
English citizen by special act of Parliament.
In reality then, even the most illustrious members of the "five
bloods" were scarcely considered as enjoying the full rights of
the lowest English vassals, although their ancestors had been
acknowledged kings by former Anglo-Norman monarchs in public
documents: "Rex Henricus regi O'Neill," etc.
But if there was some shadow of doubt with regard to the
political and social rights of those great families, such doubt
did not exist for the remainder of the Irish race. They were
absolutely without rights. Depriving them of their lands,
pillaging their houses, devastating their farms, outraging their
wives and daughters, killing them, could not subject the guilty
to any civil or criminal action at law. In fact, as we have
shown, such acts were in accordance with the spirit, even with
the letter of the law, so that the criminal, as we should
consider him, had but to plead that the man whom he had robbed
or killed was a mere Irishman, and the proceedings were
immediately stopped, if this all-important fact were proved; and
in case of homicide the murderer escaped by the payment of the
fine of five marks to the treasury.
To modern, even to English ears, all this may sound incredible.
Many striking examples of the truth of it might be produced.
They are to be found in all works which treat of the subject.
Sir John Davies, that great Irish hater, evidently takes a
genuine delight in depicting several such instances with all
their aggravating details, scarcely expecting that every word he
wrote would serve to brand forever with shame Anglo-Norman
England.
Under such legislation it was clear that life on the borders of
the Pale was not only insecure, but that the soil would remain
in the grasp of the strongest. Any Anglo-Norman only required
the power in order to take possession of the land of his
neighbor.
But it is not in man's nature to submit to such galling thraldom
as this, without at least an attempt at retaliation. Least of
all was it the nature of such a people to submit to such
measures--a nation, the most ancient in Europe, dating their
ownership of the soil as far back as man's memory could go,
civilized before Scandinavia became a nest of pirates,
Christianized from the fifth century, and the spreader of
literature, civilization, and the holy faith of Christ through
England, Scotland, Germany, France, and Northern Italy.
If we have dwelt a little, and only a little, upon the intensity
of the contest waged for four hundred years previous to the
added atrocities introduced by the Reformation, we have done so
advisedly, since it has become a fashion of late to throw a
gloss over the past, to ignore it, to let the dead bury their
dead--all which would be very well, could it be done, and could
writers forget to stamp the Irish as unsociable, barbarous, and
bloodthirsty, because with arms in their hands, and a fire
ardent and sacred in their souls, they strove again and again to
reconquer the territory which had been won from them by fraud,
and because they thought it fair to kill in open fight the men
who avowed that they could kill them even in peace at a penalty
of five marks.
The contest, therefore, never ceased; how could it ? But, in
that endless conflict between the two races, the loss of
territory leaned rather to the English side. If, with the help
of their castles, better discipline, and arms, the English at
first gained on the natives and extended their possessions
beyond the Pale, a reaction soon set in--the Irish had their day
of revenge, and entered again into possession of the land of
which they had been robbed. In order to repair their losses, the
Anglo-Normans had recourse to acts of Parliament, which could
bind not only the English of the Pale, but also those of other
districts, who, enjoying the privileges of English law, were
likewise bound by its provisions.
In order rightly to understand the need and purposes of those
enactments, we must return a moment to the days of the conquest.
The case of Strongbow will illustrate many others. He married
Eva, the daughter of McMurrough, and thus allied himself to the
best families of Leinster. On the death of his father-in-law, he
received the whole kingdom as his inheritance. The greater part
of his dominions, which he either would not or could not govern
himself, he was compelled to distribute, in the usual style,
among his followers. He distributed large estates as _fiefs_
among those who had followed his fortunes, but he could not
forget his Irish relatives, to whom he had become strongly
attached. He secured, therefore, to many Irish families the
territory which was formerly theirs, and many of his English
adherents, who, like himself, had married daughters of the soil,
did the same in their more limited territories. This explains
fully why Irish families remained in Leinster after the
settlement of the Anglo-Normans there, who established their
Pale in it, as also why they continued to possess their lands in
the midst of the English as they had formerly done in the midst
of the Danes.
The same thing took place in the kingdom of Cork, on the borders
of Connaught, and around the seaports of Ulster, wherever the
English had established themselves and erected castles and
fortifications.
But, over and above the Irish families, which, by their alliance
by marriage and fosterage with the English, retained their lands
and gradually increased them, many others, natives of the soil,
reentered into possession of their former territory by the
withdrawal of the Anglo-Norman holders of fiefs. Constant border
wars, the necessary consequence of the English policy, could not
but discourage in course of time many Englishmen, who, owning
large possessions also in England and Wales, preferred to return
to their own country rather than remain with their wives and
children in a constant state of alarm, compelled to reside
within their castles, in dread of an attack at any moment from
their Irish neighbors.
Moreover, the vast majority of the Irish, who did not enjoy the
benefit of these special privileges, who, deprived of their
lands at the first invasion, had remained really _outlaws_, and
never entered into matrimonial or social alliance with their
enemies, these men could not consent to starve and perish on
their own soil, in the island which they loved and from which
they could not--had they so chosen--escape by emigration. One
resource remained to them, and they grasped at it. They had
their own mountain fastnesses and bogs to fly to, and from those
recesses they could harass the invader, and inch by inch win
back their lawful inheritance.
They were often even encouraged in their attacks and
depredations by the English of the Pale and out of it, who,
unwilling longer to submit to the grinding feudal laws and
exactions, could prevent the English judges, sheriffs,
escheators, and other king's officers from executing the law
against them, and thus they held out in their mountains, bogs,
and rocky crags, in the midst of the invaders of their soil.
A necessity arose then, on the part of the English rulers, of
adopting measures calculated to prevent a further acquisition of
territory by the Irish, if not to extend the English settlements.
They saw no other remedy than acts of Parliament, which they
thought would at least prevent the subjects of English blood
from assisting the Irish to reenter into possession, as was then
being done on so extensive a scale.
To effect this they revived the former statutes by which the
Irish were placed without the protection of the law, were
declared aliens and enemies, and were consequently denied the
right of bringing actions in any of the English courts for
trespasses on their lands, or for violence done to their persons.
They soon advanced a step beyond this. The Irish were forbidden
to purchase land, though the English were at liberty to occupy
by force the landed property of the Irish, whenever they were
strong enough to do so. An Irishman could acquire neither by
gift nor purchase a rood of land which was the property of an
Englishman. Thus, in every charter afterward granted to the few
Irishmen who applied for them, it was expressly stated that they
could purchase land for themselves and their heirs, which,
without this special provision, they could not do; while for an
Englishman to dispose of his landed property by will, gift, or
sale to an Irishman, was equivalent to forfeiting his estate to
the crown. The officers of the exchequer were directed by those
acts of Parliament to hold inquisitions for the purpose of
obtaining returns of such deeds of conveyance, in order to
enrich the king's treasury by confiscations and forfeitures; and
the statute-rolls, preserved to this day in Dublin and London,
show that such prosecutions often took place, with the
invariable result of forfeiture.
The decision of the courts was always in favor of the crown,
even in cases where the deed of conveyance or will was of no
benefit to the person in whose favor it was drawn, but simply a
trust for a third person of English race. And the great number
of cases in which the inquisitions were set aside, as appears
from the Parliament-rolls, for the finding having been malicious
and untrue--the parties complained of not being Irish but
English-- prove what we allege, namely, that an Irishman could
not take land by conveyance from an Englishman.
Yet, as Mr. Prendergast justly says: "Notwithstanding these
prohibitions and laws of the Irish Parliament, the Irish grew
and increased upon the English, and the Celtic customs
overspread the feudal, until at length the administration of the
feudal law was confined to little more than the few counties
lying within the line of the Liffey and the Boyne."
Let us now glance, in conclusion, at the result of more than
four centuries of feudal oppression.
Ireland rejected feudalism from the beginning, and this at a
time when Europe had been compelled to adopt it, more or less,
throughout.
The distinction between lords and villeins, so marked in all
other countries, remained at the end as it was at the beginning
of the contest, a thing unknown in the island. Even in the Pale,
the presence of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, O'Kavanaghs, and other
septs, protested against and openly denied, from moor and glen
and mountain fastness, that outrage on humanity, which bestows
on the few every thing meant for all. The Brehon law was in full
force all over the island, and if the Irish allowed the English
judges to ride on their circuits within the four counties, it
was on the full understanding that they would administer their
justice only to English subjects, and levy their feudal dues,
and pronounce their forfeitures and confiscations on such only
as acknowledged the king's right on the premises. The laws
enacted in the pretended Irish Parliament were only for such as
called themselves English by birth; for even the English by
blood, whose ancestors had long resided on the island,
frequently refused to submit to the laws of Parliament, where
they would not sit themselves, although possessing the right to
do so.
In vain was the threat of compulsion held up again and again
before the eyes of the great lords of Desmond, Thomond, and
Connaught. If they chose, they went; if they chose not, they
remained at home; and obeyed or disobeyed at will the laws
themselves, according as they were able or unable to set them at
defiance.
The castles which had been built all over the country by the
first invaders, as a means of awing into subjection the
surrounding districts, were at the beginning of the fifteenth
century no longer feudal castles. They had either been
destroyed and levelled to the ground by the Irish, or they were
occupied by Irish chieftains; or, stranger still, if their
holders were English lords, they were of those who had been won
over to Irish manners. In their halls all the old customs of
Erin were preserved. One saw therein groups of shanachies, and
harpers, and Brehon lawyers, all conversing with their chieftain
in the primitive language of the country. Hence were they called
degenerate by the "foreigners" living in Dublin Castle. The
mansions of the Desmonds, of the Burgos, of the Ormonds, were
the headquarters of their respective clans, not the inaccessible
fortresses of steel-clad warriors, who alone were possessed of
social and civil rights. If the master of the household held
sometimes the title of earl, or count, or baron, he was careful
never to use it before his retainers, whom he called his
clansmen. When he went to Dublin or to London, he donned it with
the dress of a knight or a great feudal lord; on his return home
he threw it aside, resumed the cloak of the country, and was
Irish again.
The subject of feudal titles in Ireland has not been
sufficiently studied and elucidated. A clearer light thrown on
this question would, we have no doubt, show more conclusively
than long discussions with what stubbornness the Irish refused
to submit to the reality of feudalism, even when consenting to
admit its presence and phraseology. It is a fact not
sufficiently dwelt upon, that the few Irishmen, who subsequently
consented to receive English titles from the king, were regarded
by their countrymen with greater abhorrence than the English
themselves, though in most cases the titles were empty ones,
which affected nothing in their mode of life. Yet were they
looked upon as apostates to their nation, and after the
Reformation such a step was often the first to apostasy of
religion, the deepest stain on an Irish name.
Feudalism had also its mode of taxation which failed with the
rest in Ireland.
In feudal countries the lord imposed no tax on his villeins;
these were mere chattels, ascripti gleboe, who tilled the land
for their masters, and, as good serfs, could own nothing but the
few utensils of their miserable hovels. They were just allowed
what sufficed to support their own life and that of their
families, and consequently they could bear no additional tax.
But, in the complicated state of society brought about by
feudalism, the inferior lord was taxed by his superior, a system
that ran down the whole feudal scale, and it would take a lawyer
to explain aids, talliages, wardships, fines for alienation,
seizins, rents, escheats, and finally forfeiture, the heaviest
and most common of all in England.
The Irish fought valiantly against the imposition of those
burdens, and aided the English settled among them to repudiate
them all in course of time.
It must be said, however, that they did not succeed in
preventing their own taxes, according to the Book of Rights,
from becoming heavier under the ingenuity of the English who
were established among them and admitted to all the rights of
clanship. We see by documents which have been better studied of
late, that the great Anglo-Irish lords had succeeded in
increasing the burdens in the shape of exactions, which were
never complained of by the Irish.
On this subject Dr. O'Donovan, in the preface to his edition of
the "Book of Rights," is worthy of perusal.
But it is chiefly in the very essence of feudalism that the
failure of the Anglo-Normans was most signal. Feudalism really
consisted in the status given to the land, the possession of
which determined and gave all rights, so that, according to it,
man was made for the land rather than the land for man. He was
placed on the land with the beasts of the field as far as
tillage and production went, until the system should round to
perfection and finally bring to the surface the new principles
of social economy, according to which the greater the number of
cattle and the fewer the number of men, the more prosperous and
happy might the country be said to be.
The Irish staked their existence against those principles, and
won. So complete was their victory that the feudal barons who
first came among them finally yielded to clanship, became the
chiefs of new clans, and opened their territories to all who
chose to send their horses and kine to graze in the chief's
domains. In vain did Irish Parliaments issue writs of forfeiture
against the English lords who acted thus, for between the law
and its execution the clans intervened, and no sheriff or judge
could step beyond the bounds of the four counties of the Pale to
enforce those acts.
It is told of one of the Irish chieftains that on receiving
intimation from a high English official of a sheriff's visit on
the next breach of some new law or ordinance, for the safety of
which sheriff he would be held responsible, he replied: "You
will do well to let me know at the same time what will be the
amount of his _eric_, in case of his murder, that I may
beforehand assess it on the clan."
This story may tend better than any thing else to give a clear
reason for the failure of feudalism in Ireland.