THE IRISH AND THE TUDORS.--HENRY VIII.
By losing the only bond of unity--the power vested in the Ard-
Righ--which held the various parts of the island together,
Ireland lost all power of exercising any combined action. The
nations were as numerous as the clans, and the interests as
diverse as the families. They possessed, it is true, the same
religion, and in the observance of its precepts and practices
they often found a remedy for their social evils; but religion,
not encountering any opposition from any quarter, with the
exception of the minor differences existing between the native
clergy and the English dignitaries, was generally considered as
out of the question in their wranglings and contentions. We
shall see how the blows struck at it by the English monarchs
welded into one that people, were the cause of that union now so
remarkable among them, and really constituted the only bond that
ever linked them together.
Before dwelling on these considerations, let us glance a moment
at the state of the country prior to the attempt of introducing
Protestantism there.
The English Pale was reduced at this period to one half of five
counties in Leinster and Meath; and even within those boundaries
the 0'Kavanaghs, O'Byrnes, O'Moores and others, retained their
customs, their brehon laws, their language and traditions, often
making raids into the very neighborhood of the capital, and
parading their gallowglasses and kerns within twenty miles of
Dublin.
The nobility and the people were in precisely the same state
which they had known for centuries. The few Englishmen who had
long ago settled in the country had become identified with the
natives, had adopted their manners, language, and laws, so
offensive at first to the supercilious Anglo-Normans.
But a revolution was impending, owing chiefly to the change
lately introduced into the religion of England, by Henry Tudor.
It is important to study the first attempt of the kind in
Ireland; not only because it became the occasion of establishing
for a lengthy period a real unanimity among the people--giving
birth to the nation as it were--but also for the right
understanding of the word "rebellion," which had been so freely
used before toward the natives, and which was now about to
receive a new interpretation.
The English had once deceived the Irish, exacting their
submission
in the twelfth century by foisting upon them the word homage:
they would deceive Europe by a constant use, or rather misuse,
of the words "rebel" and "rebellion." By the enactment of new
laws they pronounce the simple attachment to the old religion of
the country a denial of sovereign right, and consequently an act
of overt treason; and the Irish shall be butchered mercilessly
for the sake of the religion of Christ without winning the name,
though they do the crown, of martyrdom; for Europe is to be so
effectually deceived, that even the Church will hesitate to
proclaim those religious heroes, saints of God.
But the great fact of the birth of a nation, in the midst of
those throes of anguish, will lessen their atrocity in the mind
of the reader, and explain to some extent the wonderful designs
of Providence.
From an English state paper, published by M. Haverty, we learn
that, in 1515, a few years before the revolt of Luther, the
island was divided into more than sixty separate states, or
"regions," "some as big as a shire, some more, some less."
Had it not been for this division and the constant feuds it
engendered, in the north between the O'Neills and O'Donnells, in
the south between the Geraldines (Desmonds and Kildares) and the
Butlers (Ormonds), the authority of the English king would have
been easily shaken off. The policy so constantly adopted by
England in after-times--a policy well expressed by the Latin
adage, Divide et impera--preserved the English power in Ireland,
and finally brought the island into outward subjection at least,
to Great Britain--a subjection which the Irish conscience and
the Irish voice and Irish arms yet did not cease to protest
against and deny. But the nation was divided, and it required
some great and general calamity to unite them together and make
of them one people.
That, even spite of those divisions, they were at the time on
the point of driving the English out of the island, we need no
better proofs than the words of the English themselves. The
Archbishop of Dublin, John Allen, the creature of Wolsey, who
was employed by the crafty cardinal to begin the work of the
spoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earl
of Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the Dublin
Council, to England, to report that "the English laws, manners,
and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow compass
of twenty miles;" and that, unless the laws were duly enforced,
"the little place," as the Pale was called, "would be reduced to
the same condition as the remainder of the kingdom;" that is to
say, the Pale itself, which had been brought to such
insignificant limits, would belong exclusively to the Irish.
It was while affairs were at this pass that the revolt of
"silken Thomas" excited the wrath of Henry VIII., and brought
about the destruction of almost the whole Kildare family.
It was about this time, also, that Wolsey fell, and Cromwell,
having replaced him as Chancellor of England, with Cranmer as
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reformation began in England with
the divorce of the king, who shortly after assumed supremacy in
spirituals as a prerogative of the crown, and made Parliament --
in those days himself--supreme law-giver in Church and state.
Cromwell, known in history as the creature and friend of Cranmer,
like his protector a secret pervert to the Protestant doctrines
of Germany, and the first arch-plotter for the destruction of
Catholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the English
power in Ireland by forcing on that country the supremacy of the
king in religious matters, knowing well that such a step would
drive the Irish into resistance, but believing that he could
easily subdue them and make the island English.
Having been appointed, not only Chancellor of England, but also
king's vicar-general in temporals and spirituals, Cromwell
inquired of his English agents in Ireland the best means of
attaining his object--the subjection of the country. Their
report is preserved among the state papers, and some of their
suggestions deserve our attentive consideration. If Henry VIII.
had consented to follow their advice, he would have himself
inaugurated the bloody policy so well carried out long after by
another Cromwell, the celebrated "Protector."
The report sets forth that the most efficient mode of proceeding
was to exterminate the people; but Henry thought it sufficient
to gain the nobility over--the people being beneath his notice.
The agents of the vicar-general were right in their atrocious
proposal. They knew the Irish nation well, and that the only way
to separate Ireland from the See of Peter was to make the
country a desert.
Their means of bringing about the destruction of the people was
starvation. The corn was to be destroyed systematically, and the
cattle killed or driven away. Their operations, it is true, were
limited to the borders of the Pale. The gentle Spenser, at a
later period, proposed to extend them to all Munster, and it was
a special glory reserved for the "Protector" to carry out this
policy through almost the whole of the island.
"The very living of the Irishry," says the report, "doth clearly
consist in two things: take away the same from them, and they
are passed for ever to recover, or yet to annoy any subject
Ireland. Take first from them their corn, and as much as cannot
be husbanded, and had into the hands of such as shall dwell and
inhabit in their lands, to burn and destroy the same, so as the
Irishry shall not live thereupon; and then to have their cattle
and beasts, which shall be most hardest to come by, and yet,
with guides and policy, they may be oft had and taken."
The report goes on to point out, most elaborately and
ingeniously, every artifice and plan for carrying this policy
into effect. But here we have, condensed, as it were, in a
nutshell, and coolly and carefully set forth, the system which
was adopted later on, and almost crowned with a fiendish success.
But the moment for the execution of this barbarous scheme had
not yet come, and we find no positive results following
immediately.
This project, complete as it was, was far from being the only
one proposed at that time for "rooting out the Irish" from
Ireland. Mr. Prendergast, in his "Introduction to the
Cromwellian Settlement," says:
"The Irish were never deceived as to the purport of the English,
and, though the Pale had not been extended for two hundred and
forty years, their firm persuasion in the reign of Henry VIII.
was, that the original design was not abandoned. 'Irishmen are
of opinion among themselves,' said Justice Cusack to the king,
'that Englishmen will one day banish them from their lands
forever.'"
In fact, project after project was then proposed for clearing
Ireland of Irish to the Shannon. Some went so far as already to
contemplate their utter extirpation; but "there was no precedent
for it found in the chronicles of the conquest. Add to this the
difficulty of finding people to reinhabit it if suddenly
unpeopled.
"The chiefs and gentlemen of the Irish only were to be driven
from their properties," according to some of those projects,
"and they only were to be driven into exile, while their lands
should be given to Englishmen."
"The king, however, seems to have been satisfied with
confiscating the estates of the Earl of Kildare and of his
family. Fierce and bloody though he was, there was something
lion-like in his nature; notwithstanding all those promptings,
he left to the Irish and old English their possessions, and
seemed even anxious to secure them, but failed to do so for want
of time."
We think Mr. Prendergast's judgment of Henry VIII. too favorable.
Generosity did not prompt him to spare the people and the
nobles, with the exception of the Kildares. We believe that he
never contemplated the extirpation of the people, because such a
political element could not enter into his mind. As for the
nobles, he wished to gain them over, because of the long wars he
foresaw necessary to bring about their utter extinction or exile.
He adopted, accordingly, a plan of his own, holding firm to his
design of having his new title of "Head of the Church"
acknowledged in Ireland as well as in England.
Cromwell commenced his work by two measures which had met with
perfect success in the latter country, but which were destined
to fire the sister isle from end to end, and make "the people,"
in course of time, really one. These measures were acts of
Parliament: 1. Establishing 'the king's spiritual supremacy; 2.
Suppressing, at once, all the monasteries existing in the
country, and giving their property to the nobles who were
willing to apostatize.
The necessity of convening Parliament resulted from the failure
of the first attempt, already made, to establish the king's
supremacy. Browne, the successor of Allen in the See of Dublin,
a rank Lutheran at heart, had been commissioned by the king and
by Cranmer, his consecrator, to establish the new doctrine at
once. His want of success, is thoroughly explained in a letter
to Cromwell, which is still preserved, and which remains one of
the proudest monuments of the steadfastness of the Irish in
their religion.
He complains that not only the clergy, but the "common people,"
were "more zealous in their blindness than the saints and
martyrs in truth, in the beginning of the Gospel," and "such was
their hostility against him that his life was in danger."
And all this in Dublin, in the heart of the Pale, where the
chief antagonist of the new doctrine, "the leader of the people"
against this first attempt at schism, was Cromer, the Archbishop
of Armagh, an Englishman himself! So that those prelates of
England, who, with the exception of the noble Fisher, had all
yielded without a murmur of opposition to the will of Henry,
could find no followers, not even of their own nation, in
Ireland, so much had their faith been strengthened by contact
with that of "the common people."
A Parliament was needed, therefore, and that one which was to be
the instrument of introducing the great English measure, met for
the first time in Dublin, on the 1st of May, 1536; but, being
prorogued, it met again in 1537, and did not complete its work
until once more summoned in 1541, when the old Irish element was
for the first and last time introduced at its sitting, in order,
if possible, to consecrate the new doctrine by having it
solemnly accepted by the old race.
This Parliament, which was first convened in Dublin, McGeoghegan
says, "adjourned to Kilkenny, thence to Cashel, after ward to
Limerick, and lastly to Dublin again." The chief cause of these
interruptions was the difficulty of bringing an Irish Parliament,
even when composed of Englishmen, as was the case up to 1541,
to pass the decrees of supremacy, denial of Roman authority, etc.,
which had been so readily accepted in England.
The Irish Parliaments, as far back as we can see, were composed
not only of lords, spiritual and temporal, and of deputies of
the Commons, but each diocese possessed also the right to send
there three ecclesiastical proctors, who, by reason of their
office, owned neither benefice nor fief, and were therefore at
liberty to vote, fearless of attainder and confiscation, in
accordance with their conscience and their sense of right.
This feature of the Irish assemblies, even when no
representative of the native race sat in them, was a fatal
obstacle to the success of the scheme devised by Browne and
executed by Cromwell. Accordingly, we are not astonished to find
that, by an act of despotism not uncommon during the reign of
Henry VIII., the proctors were excluded from Parliament, which
thus became an obedient tool in the hands of the government.
Not only, therefore, were several state measures carried in
accordance with the wish of the king, but the great object
proposed by the meeting of this assembly was finally obtained;
and, lowing the lead of the English Parliament, Henry VIII. and
his successors were confirmed in the title of "Supreme Head of
the Church in Ireland," with power of reforming and correcting
errors in religion. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and the
Pope's authority declared a usurpation.
Henry, however, foreseeing that all these favorite measures of
his policy, being carried by English votes in a purely English
assembly, though on Irish soil, would meet with universal
opposition from all the native lords, conceived the idea of
summoning the great Irish chieftains to a new meeting of
Parliament, from which he expected that a moral revolution would
be effected in the island. Sir Anthony St. Leger, created deputy
in August, 1540, was thought a likely man to be intrusted with
so delicate a mission. He conducted it with political prudence,
that is to say, with a judicious mixture of kindness and fraud,
which succeeded beyond all expectations.
In order to prepare the way for hoodwinking the Irish chieftains,
favors of every kind were showered upon them, to wit, titles
and estates, chiefly those of suppressed monasteries; and St.
Leger, by an alternate use of force and diplomacy, at length
effected that the Irish should consent to accept titles. Con
O'Neill, the head of the house of Tyrone, went to England,
accompanied by O'Kervellan, Bishop of Ologher, and was admitted
to an audience by the king. Henry adopted toward those proud
Irishmen a policy utterly different from that he had used with
the English lords. These latter were merely threatened with his
displeasure, and with the feudal penalties he knew so well how
to inflict; the others were received at court as favorites and
dear friends; a royal courtesy, kind expressions, a smiling face-
-such were the arms he employed against the "barbarous Irish."
Tyrone, O'Donnell, and others, were not proof against his
cunning. The first renounced his title of prince and the
glorious name of O'Neill, to receive in return that of Earl of
Tyrone. Manus O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnel. Both
received back the lands which they had offered to the king, and
their example was followed by a great number of inferior lords.
Among them, two Magenisses were dubbed knights; Murrough O'Brien,
of North Munster, was made Earl of Thomond and Baron of
Inchiquin; De Burgo, or McWilliams, was created Earl of
Clanricard, and a host of others submitted in like manner, and
received the new titles which henceforth became conspicuous in
Irish history.
This was the beginning of the gradual suppression of the clans.
Many of these nobles, unfortunately, not content with receiving
back, at the hands of the king, the lands which had come into
their possession from a long line of ancestors, and which really
belonged not to them personally, but to the clans whose heads
they were, greedily snatched at the estates of religious orders,
whose suppression was the first consequence of the schism in
Ireland, which will soon occupy our attention.
The Irish chieftains had already seen Wolsey, a cardinal in full
communion with Rome, suppress forty monasteries in the island.
They might therefore imagine that the confiscation of a still
greater number on the part of the king was a thing not
altogether incompatible with the religion of the monarch, and
that the fact of their sharing in the plunder was not entirely
opposed to their titles of Catholics and subjects of Rome. Such
is human conscience when blinded by self-interest.
The king thought that he had gained over the nobility,--which
was all he wished- -and the last session of the previous
Parliament of 1536 and the following years might now be held in
order to consecrate the unholy work.
"On the 12th of June, 1541," says Mr. Haverty, "a Parliament was
held in Dublin, at which the novel sight was witnessed of Irish
chieftains sitting for the first time with English lords.
O'Brien appeared there by his procurators and attorneys, and
Kavanagh, O'More, O'Reilly, McWilliams, and others, took their
seats in person, the addresses of the Speaker and of the Lord-
Chancellor being interpreted to them in Irish by the Earl of
Ormond. An act was unanimously passed, conferring on Henry VIII.
and his successors the title of King of Ireland, instead of that
of Lord of Ireland, which the English kings, since
the days of John, had hitherto borne. This act was hailed with
great rejoicings in Dublin, and on the following Sunday, the
lords and gentlemen of Parliament went in procession to St.
Patrick's Cathedral, where solemn high mass was sung by
Archbishop Browne, after which the law was proclaimed and a Te
Deum chanted."
It is worthy of remark that in the session of 1541, at which
alone the Irish chieftains appeared, not a word was said of the
supremacy of the king in spirituals. Sir James Ware, who gives
the various decrees with more detail than usual, makes no
mention of this pet measure of the king and of the Lutheran
Archbishop Browne, but it was only part and parcel of the
Parliament of 1536, prorogued successively to Kilkenny, Cashel,
Limerick, and finally again to Dublin. At its first sitting the
law of supremacy was passed and proclaimed as law of Ireland.
Nothing was said of it in the various sessions that followed,
including that of 1541; and yet the Irish chieftains were
supposed to have sanctioned it, inasmach as it was a measure
previously passed in the same Parliament: and the suppression of
various abbeys and monasteries having been openly decreed in the
final session, as a result of the king's supremacy--Rome not
having been consulted, of course--all the signers of the last
decree were supposed to have thereby sanctioned and adopted the
previous ones. Thus O'Neill, O'Reilly, O'More, and the rest,
without being aware of the fact, became schismatics, though many
of them, perhaps all, did not see the connection between the
various sessions of that long Parliament. Certainly, if, on
leaving the Dublin Cathedral, where they had heard the
archbishop's mass and assisted at that solemn Te Deum, they had
been told that that act was intended to consecrate the surrender
of the religion of their ancestors, and the commencement of a
frightful revolution, which would end in the destruction of
their national existence, almost of their very race, they would
have incredulously laughed to scorn the unwelcome prophet.
But even if, as we may well believe, those Irish lords had
really been the victims of deception, and had not, as a body,
been corrupted by the sacrilegious gift of suppressed
monasteries, the people, their clansmen, prompted by the vivid
impressions and unerring instincts of religious faith and
patriotic nationality, which were ever living in their breasts,
resented the weakness of their chieftains as a national
defection and a real apostasy, and took immediate steps to bring
the lords to their senses, and to prevent the spread of English
corruption.
All who had received titles from Henry, and surrendered to him
the deeds of their lands, as if those lands belonged to them
personally, and not to the clans collectively, all those,
particularly, who had enriched themselves by the plunder of
religious houses, and who had taken any part in the destruction
of the religious orders so dear to the Irish heart, were soon
made to feel the indignation which those events had excited
among the native clansmen, north and south. And those of the
chieftains who had really been deceived, and had preserved in
their hearts all through a strong love for their religion and
country, were recalled to a sense of their error, and brought
back to a sense of their duty by the unmistakable voice of the
"people."
While the nobles were still in England, feted by Henry in his
royal palace of Greenwich, renouncing their Irish names to
become English earls and barons, the Ulster chief, protesting
that he would never again take the name of O'Neill, but content
himself with the title of Earl of Tyrone; while O'Brien was
being created Earl of Thomond; McWilliams, Earl of Clanricard;
O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell; Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyann; and
Fitzpatrick, Baron of Ossory; the clans at home, hearing in due
time of those real treasons, were concerting plans for making
their lords repent of their weakness or treachery, and for
administering to them due punishment on their return.
O'Neill, "the first of his race who had accepted an English
title," on landing in Ireland, learned that, his people had
deposed him, and elected in his stead his son John the Proud,
better known as Shane O'Neill; O'Donnell, on his arrival, met
most, of his clan, headed by his son, up in arms against him;
the new Earl of Clanricard had already been deposed by his
people and another McWilliams, with a Gaelic name, elected in
his place; and so with the rest.
But, unfortunately, the Government of England was strong enough
to support its favorite chieftains, and it found some Irish
tools ready at hand to form the nucleus of an Irish party in
their favor. Thus, unanimity no longer marked the decisions of
the clans; two parties were formed in each of them, the one
national, comprising the great bulk of the people, the real,
true people; the other English, composed of a few apostate
Irishmen, backed by the power of England. Thus, henceforth we
hear of the O'Reilly, and the king's O'Reilly, etc.
Henry VIII. seemed, therefore, with the help of his minister, St.
Leger, to have succeeded in breaking up the clans, after the
Irish national government had been broken up long before.
Confusion of titles, property, and traditions became worse
confounded. How could the shanachies, bards, and brehons, any
longer agree in their pedigrees, songs, and legal decisions?
England had thus early adopted in Ireland the stern and
coldhearted policy which, centuries later, she used to destroy
the native and Mohammedan dynasties in Hindostan. It was not yet
divide et impera on a large scale, but the division was pushed
as far as lay in the power England, to the very last elements of
the social system.
From this time forward, then, we must not be surprised to find
England welcoming to her bosom unworthy sons of Ireland, whom
she wished to make her tools. There was always, either in Dublin
or London, a sufficient supply of materials out of which crown's
chiefs might be manufactured; the government made it part of its
policy to hold in its hands and train to its purposes certain
members of each of the ruling families--of the O'Neills,
O'Reillys, O'Donnells, O'Connors, and others.
It was no longer, therefore, the rooting out and exterminating
policy which prevailed, but one as fatal in its results, which
would have utterly destroyed Irish national feeling, to set up
in its place, not only English manners, language, and customs,
but also English schism, heresy, philosophical speculations --as
the Four Masters have it --finally, materialism and nihilism.
But, in real sober fact, the scheme proved almost an utter
failure, owing to the far-seeing good sense of the people. The
national spirit revived among the upper classes, both native and
of English descent--owing to the decided stand taken by the
inferior clansmen.
The Desmonds and Kildares, in the south, the O'Donnells,
Maguires, and others, in the north, soon showed themselves
animated by a new spirit of ardent Catholicism; created, in fact,
a new nation, quite apart from, or rather embracing, clanship,
well-nigh destroyed the English power, kept Elizabeth, during
the whole of her reign, in constant agitation and fear, and
would have succeeded in recovering their independence, and
securing freedom of worship, had not their good-nature been
imposed upon by the hypocrisy and faithlessness of the Stuarts,
to whom they always looked for freedom in the practice of their
religion, without ever obtaining it.
Thus did the people, the Irish race, thwart the policy of Henry,
who sought to gain over the nobility. Their stubborn resistance
to the vastly-increased and constantly-increasing English power,
grew at last to such proportions, and became so discouraging to
their oppressors, that the old policy of utter extermination was
resumed by Cromwell and the Orange party of the following age.
The refusal of the people, that is to say, of the bulk of the
nation, to submit to the policy of their chieftains, and the
determination to repudiate that policy by deposing its
supporters and choosing others in their stead, was most happy in
its effect on their whole future history.
The leaders, by accepting the new titles bestowed on them by the
English kings, by taking their seats in Parliament, and
concurring in the various measures there passed, subjected
themselves to a foreign rule, surrendered to this rule the tribe-
lands, which it was not in their power to surrender of
themselves, gave up, in fact, their nationality, and became
English subjects. The action of the clansmen reversed all the
fatal consequences resulting from those acts. They remained a
nation distinct from the English, whose laws they had never
either admitted or accepted. And, as the clan spirit declined,
under the policy of England, it only made way for a new and a
greater spirit--religious feeling, the bond of a common religion
assaulted--which, henceforth, lay at the bottom of the whole
struggle--which, for the first time in their history, blended
into one whole the broken clans, gave them a unity and a
consistency never known till then, and thus the real nation was
born.
They might boast, therefore, not only of not having lost their
autonomy, but of being more firmly than ever knit together; they
could conclude treaties of alliance with foreign powers, without
committing treason, and they soon began to use that power; they
could even declare war against England, and it was not rebellion.
The successors of Henry VIII. acted constantly as though the
Irish nation had really subjected itself to English kings and
English rule, as though the acceptance of a few titles by a few
chieftains (who were deposed by their people as soon as the fact
was known) signified an acknowledgment on the part of the Irish
people of their absorption by the English feudal system; they
appeared "horrified" when they saw the successors of those
chieftains reject those titles and resume their own names; and
they called the Irish "rebels" and "traitors" for going to war
with England--a country they had never acknowledged as their
ruler--and introducing into their country Spanish, Italian, and
French troops as allies.
The explanation of the whole mystery consisted in the simple
fact that the people, the nation, had steadily refused to
sanction the act of their leaders; and all the pretensions of
English kings, statesmen, and lawyers, were valueless. Those
Irishmen who subsequently entered into the various Geraldine and
Ulster confederacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid,
were neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independent
state, possessing their international rights as citizens of any
independent country. This we have seen in a previous chapter,
and Sir John Davies has been obliged to confess its truth,
admitting the difference between a tributary and a subject
nation.
A glance shows us the importance of the almost unanimous outcry
of the clansmen of Tyrone, Tyrconnell, and of other parts of
Ireland. Owing to the patriotic feeling of these, nothing
remained for the English but to punish the Irish people for
their resolve of holding to their religion, and to declare a
religious war against them, though they called them all the time
rebels and traitors. This is the view an impartial historian
should take of those mighty events.
But, it is well to look more closely at this new element, which
then showed itself for the first time in Irish national life,
the people, irrespective of clanship; the people, as influencing
the leaders, and thus becoming a living--nay, a ruling power in
the state. And, lest any of our readers should not be convinced
that such really was the case, we mention here a fact, which
will come more prominently before us in the next chapter, that,
at the end of Elizabeth's reign, the efforts of all her large
armies and her tortuous policy for changing the religion of the
country, resulted in the grand total of sixty converts to
Protestantism from the noble class, not one of the clansmen
turning apostate!
Bridget of Kildare would not have been surprised at this, to
judge by what we have previously heard from her.
In order to find the explanation of this wonderful fact, we must
compare the Irish people with other nationalities, and we may
then easily distinguish its peculiar features, so persistent, so
enduring, we may say, indestructible. We shall find that what
this people was three hundred years ago, it is to this day, with
a greater unity of feeling, devotedness to principle, and higher
aims than any people of modern times.
In antiquity, the people, in the Christian sense of the word,
never appeared in the field of history. In the despotic
countries of Asia and Africa, there was and could be no question
of such a thing; it was an inert mass used at will by the despot.
The Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mere
oligarchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slaves
for mercantile or warlike purposes. In the republics of Greece
and Italy, the aristocracy ruled, and when, after centuries of
bloody struggles and revolutions, the subjects of Rome were
finally granted the rights of citizenship, the despotism of the
empire suddenly appeared, crushing both plebs and patricians.
Whenever in those ancient governments we find the lower classes
unable longer to bear the heavy yoke imposed upon them,
revolting against a despotism which had grown insupportable, and
claiming their natural rights, it was merely a surging of waves
raised to mountain-height by the fury of a sudden storm, but
soon allayed and subdued beneath the inflexible will of stern
rulers. The people was a mere mob, whose violence, when
successful, fatally carried destruction with it; and, though it
is seemingly full of a terrible power which nothing can resist,
its power lasts but for a very short time. Could it only outlast
the destruction of all superior rulers, it would end by
destroying itself.
If we would meet with the people, such as we conceive it to be
in accordance with our Christian ideas, we must come down to
that period of time which followed close upon the organization
of Christendom, namely, to the much-abused middle ages.
Feudalism, it is true, withstood its expansion for a long time,
kept alive the remnants of slavery which it had found in Europe
at its birth, or at best invented serfdom as a somewhat milder
substitute for the former degradation of man. But feudalism
itself was not strong enough to prevent the natural consequences
of the vigorous Christianity which at that time prevailed; and
kings, dukes, and feudal bishops, were compelled to grant
charters which insured the freedom of the subject. Then the
people appeared, in the cities first, afterward in the country,
where, however, the peasants had still to drag on for a weary
time the chains of secular serfdom.
Thus the people lived in Spain, where they fought valiantly
under their lords for centuries against the Crescent, so that in
some provinces all classes were ennobled, and not a single
plebeian was to be found, which simply means that the whole mass
of the citizens formed the people. Thus the people had an early
existence in Italy, where every city almost became a centre of
freedom and activity, notwithstanding strife and continual feuds.
Thus the people had its life in France, where the learned men
of Catholic universities determined with precision the limits of
kingly power, and where the outburst of the Crusades brought all
classes together to fight for Christ, forming but one body
engaged alike throughout in a holy cause. Thus, finally, the
people had its life even in Germany and England, where real
liberty, though of later birth, afterward remained more deeply
rooted in social life.
In all those countries, it was called populus Christianus; it
had its associations, its guilds, its Christian customs, its
privileges, its rights. Its existence was acknowledged by law,
and it possessed everywhere either Christian codes, or at least
local customs for its safeguards. It gradually grew into a great
power, and took the name of the "Third Estate," ranking directly
after the clergy, and nobility. Its members knew and respected
the gradations of the social hierarchy as then existing. The
monarchs in most countries, in France chiefly, sided with it
whenever the nobles sought to oppress it, and its deputies were
heard in the Parliaments of the various nations of Christendom.
How many millions of human beings lived happily during several
centuries under these great institutions of mediaeval times! And
if the members of the people at that time could seldom rise
above their order, except through the Church, this unfortunate
inability often prevented dangerous and subversive ambitions,
and was thus really the source and cause of, happiness to all.
Governments at that period lasted for thousands of years; men
could rely on the stability of things, and great enterprises
could be undertaken and carried to a successful termination.
But throughout all Europe, with the single exception of Ireland,
the people had to contend against the feudal power; and it was
only very gradually, and step by step, that it could creep up to
its rights. In Ireland, as we have seen, feudalism had failed to
strike root; so that the clansmen who represented there what the
people did elsewhere, never having been subject to slavery or
serfdom, possessed all the liberties which the ordinary class of
men can claim. They had always borne their share in the affairs
of their own territory, at least by the willing help they
afforded to their leaders, during the Danish wars chiefly, and
afterward throughout the four hundred years of struggle with the
Anglo-Normans. The people were the real conquerors under the
lead of their chieftains, and the perpetual enjoyment of their
beloved customs was the privilege of the least among them as
much as of the proudest of their nobles. They themselves were
well aware of this, and to their own efforts no less than to the
heads of the clans they attributed the advantages which they had
gained.
Thus, when the conduct of their chieftain was not in accordance
with what the clansmen considered the right, they were ready to
express their disapproval of his actions by deposing him, and
placing their allegiance at the service of the man of their
choice.
But though this course of action is true of the whole period of
their history, more especially from the date of their becoming
Christian up to the time when the blows of religious persecution
welded them into one people, yet they were divided and often at
war among themselves. But no sooner did the work of perversion
make itself felt among them, than we behold the clansmen
exhibiting a unity of feeling on many points which never marked
them before. So that thenceforth the separated clans gradually
began to merge into Irishmen.
This unity of feeling showed itself, above all, in the deep love
for their religion, which at once became universal and all-
pervading. This love had undoubtedly existed before, as it could
scarcely have originated and swollen to such proportions all at
once; but as the stroke of the hammer reveals the spark, so the
force of opposition enkindled the flame and caused it to burst
forth into view. At the first blow it showed itself throughout
the island, and thus the people became once and forever united.
This unity of feeling was displayed likewise in an ardent love
for their country in contradistinction to the special locality
of the tribe. Thus arose a true fraternal union with all their
countrymen of whatever county or city. The old antagonism
between family and family only appeared at fitful and unguarded
intervals; but in general each one grasped the hand of another
only as a Catholic and an Irishman.
This is clearly attributable to their religion. Catholicity
knows no place; its very name is opposed to restrictions of this
character. Could it carry out its purpose, which is that of its
Divine founder, it would make one of all nations; and, to a
certain extent, it has achieved this task. Differences of
character, which are deeply impressed in the nature of various
branches of the human family, are indeed never totally
obliterated by it; but such differences disappear when kneeling
at the same altar and receiving the same sacraments. The
Catholic religion is the only one which is, has ever been, and
must ever claim to be, universal; the religions of antiquity
were purely local.
Since the coming of our Lord, no heresy, no schism has ever
pretended to the reality of a catholic existence, and, if the
word is self-applied by certain sects, the world laughs at it as
a meaningless thing. The Catholic Church alone has truly claimed
and possessed such a character.
But if of all men it makes one family with respect to spiritual
matters, what unanimity of feeling must it not create in a
single nation truly imbued with its spirit, which is attacked
for its sake? Until the reign of Henry VIII., the Irish, in
their struggle with England, could summon no religious thought
to their aid, since England was Catholic also, and the Norman
nobles established among them followed the same calendar,
possessed the same churches, the same creed, the same sacraments.
But as soon as the English power was stamped with heresy, the
opposition to that power assumed a religious aspect, and no
longer restricted itself to the clans immediately attacked, but
spread throughout the whole nation.
To bring the case down to some particular point, in order to
render our meaning more clear, a priest or monk, who was hunted
down, was no longer sure of refuge in his own district, and
among men of his own sept merely, but he was equally welcomed in
the castle of the chieftain or the hut of the peasant through
the length and breadth of the land. Any Irishman, subject to
fine, imprisonment, or torture, for the sake of his religion,
did not find sympathy restricted to his own circle of friends or
acquaintances, but, even if tried and prosecuted in a corner of
the island, far away from his own home, he could count upon the
sympathy of as many friends as there were Irish Catholics to
witness his sufferings. This state of things was certainly
unknown before.
Religion, when deep, is the strongest feeling of the human heart,
and endows the nation steeped in it with an unconquerable
strength. To judge of the intensity of religious feeling in the
Irish, it should be remembered that it was the only legacy left
them after every thing else had been taken away, and, though it
was the special object of attack, they were to be stripped one
by one of their old customs, their own chieftains, their houses
of study and of prayer, their religious and secular teachers,
nay, of the chance even of educating their children, of the
right to possess not merely their own soil, but even to
cultivate a few acres of it, nay, of their very language itself,
in a word, of all that makes a country dear to man. For ages
were they destined to remain outcasts and strangers on the soil
which was their own; abject and ignorant paupers, without the
faintest possibility of rising in the social scale.
One thing only did they keep in their hearts, their faith,
though stripped of all the exterior circumstances which adorn it,
and reduced to its simplest elements. But at least it was their
religion, to deprive them of which, all the wealth, resources,
armies, laws of a powerful nation, were to be strained to the
utmost during long ages. How, then, could they fail to love and
cherish it, to cling fast to it, as to an inestimable treasure,
the only real one indeed they could possess on earth, where all
else passes away?
Here, then, always presupposing the paramount influence of the
grace of God, lay the secret of that indestructible strength and
unwearied energy manifested by Irishmen, from the middle of the
sixteenth century down, and we are enabled thus to appreciate
the value of that unity which persecution alone fastened upon
them.
To the love of religion, which was the origin of that unity,
love of country was soon added, and by love of country we here
understand the love of the whole island, not merely of the
particular sept to which the individual belonged, or of the
particular spot in which he happened to be born. Such had been
the divisions among the people and the chieftains hitherto, that
England could attack one sept without fearing the revolt of the
others, nay, was often assisted by an adverse clan. And so
thoroughly had the Anglo-Normans adopted the native manners,
that the Kildares were frequently at war with the Desmonds,
though both belonged to the same Geraldine family; and the
Ormonds kept up a constant feud with both the Geraldine branches.
When Henry VIII. almost destroyed the Kildares, we do not find
that the Desmonds felt their loss at first; perhaps they even
rejoiced at it.
It was the same with the natives, particularly with the 0'Neills
and the O'Donnells, in the north. The whole island and its
general interests seemed the concern of no one, so taken up were
they by the affairs of their own particular locality. And this
state of feeling had existed from the beginning, even among holy
men. The songs of Columba, of Cormac McCullinan, even of the
Fenian heroes of old, all celebrated the victories of one sept
over another, or the beauties of some one spot in the island, in
preference to all others.
Nay, so prevalent was this clannish spirit, even at the
beginning of the religious troubles, that Henry VIII., and
Elizabeth after him, gained their successes by directing their
attacks against particular places, so certain were they that the
other districts would not come to the rescue.
The feeling of nationality, of what we call patriotism, wrestled
along time in the throes of birth, before coming forth, and it
was only during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign that those
confederacies were formed, which included the whole country and
called in even foreign aid.
But this feeling began to appear as soon as religion was
attacked; and therefore do we call this epoch the true birth of
a people.
And as it is with the people chiefly that we are concerned, it
is to our purpose to remark here that they gradually lost sight
of their petty quarrels and local prejudices in losing their
chieftains; they began to look for leaders among themselves, and,
understanding at last that the whole island was threatened by
the invading policy of England, they were to fight for the whole,
and not for any special district.
Then, for the first time, did Ireland become a reality to them,
an existing personality, a desolate queen weeping over the fate
of her children, calling, with the voice of a stricken mother,
those who survived to her aid, and worthy, by her beauty and
misfortunes, of their most heroic and disinterested efforts.
Religious feeling, then, first made the Irish a nation, and gave
them that unity of thought which they now exhibit everywhere,
even in the remotest quarters of the globe, wherever they may
choose their place of exile. And if there still exists among
them something of that former predilection for the place where
they first saw the light, the other parts of Erin are at least
included in their deep love, and they would shed their blood for
their country, irrespective of prejudice of place.
Thus have they come at last to love each other as men of no
other nation ever did. In order to understand this thoroughly,
we must remember that for ages they, as a people, have been
oppressed and held in bondage by a stern and powerful nation.
They had to defend themselves in turn against the most open and
the most insidious attacks. Bereft in many cases of all the
means of defence, they had nothing left them, save their
religion, and the support they could afford each other.
If, by any stretch of imagination, we could place ourselves in
their position, understand their language when they met each
other in their huts, in their morasses and bogs, in their
mountain fastnesses and desolate moors, could we only enter into
their feelings and see the working of their minds, we might
catch a faint conception of the affection which they must have
felt for brothers waging the deadly fight against the same
enemies, and contending in a seemingly endless and hopeless
struggle against the same terrible odds. Union, affection,
devotedness, are words too weak to serve here.
For this reason, also, do we find the Irish people stamped with
peculiarities which we find in no others. In antiquity, as we
have said, the people could never rise to any thing greater than
a mob; in modern times such has also often been the case. With
the Irish it is not, and could not be so. Their aim has always
been too lofty, their struggle of too long duration, their
morality too genuine and too pure. For their aim has constantly
been to rescue their country; their struggle has lasted nearly
three hundred years; their morality has ever been directed by
the sweetest religion. Extreme cases of oppression such as
theirs may have occasionally given rise to violent outbreaks
inevitable in human despair; but, on the whole, it may to their
honor be fearlessly said, that they have preserved, almost
throughout, a due regard for social hierarchy and all kinds of
rights. Many of them have died of hunger, rather than touch the
property of a rich and hostile neighbor. Where else can we find
such an example?
This union of the people, which was thus brought about by
religious persecution, included not only the natives of the old
race, but the Anglo-Irish themselves, who were brought by
degrees to a unanimity of feeling which they had never known
before, although they had previously adopted Irish manners - a
unanimity which the Lutheran Archbishop Browne had foreseen and
openly denounced beforehand. This was the man who had
unwittingly borne testimony to the Irish that "the common people
of this isle are more zealous in their blindness than the saints
and martyrs were in the truth at the beginning of the Gospel;"
the same George Browne, of Dublin, had also been the first to
perceive that the religious question was beginning, even under
Henry VIII., to unite the native Irish and the descendants of
Strongbow's followers, until that time bitterly opposed to each
other.
In a letter, dated "Dublin, May, 1538," to the Lord Privy Seal,
he said: "It is observed that, ever since his Highness's
ancestors had this nation in possession, the old natives have
been craving foreign powers to assist and raise them; and now
both English race and Irish begin to oppose your lordship's
orders" (about supremacy), "and do lay aside their national old
quarrels, which, I fear, if any thing will cause a foreigner to
invade this nation, that will."
This man, who was altogether worldly and without faith,
displayed in this a keen political foresight far above that of
the ordinary counsellors of England's king. He openly announced
what actually came to pass only toward the middle of Elizabeth's
reign, and what the horrors of the Cromwellian wars were to
complete - the thorough fusion of Irish and Anglo-Norman
Catholics, both transplanted to Connaught, perishing under the
sword of the soldier, the rope of the hangman, or dying of
starvation in the recesses of their mountains - united forever
in the bonds of martyrdom.
The "birth of the Irish people" was to be insured by another
measure of the English Government - the suppression of religious
houses. We must, in conclusion, turn to this.
In the annals of the Four Masters, under the year 1537, we read:
"A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effect of
pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of
a variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so that
the people of England went into opposition to the Pope and to
Rome.
"At the same time, they followed a variety of opinions; and,
adopting the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish
people, they gave the title of Head of the Church of God, during
his reign, to the king. They ruined the orders who were
permitted to hold worldly possessions, namely, monks, canons
regular, nuns, and Brethren of the Cross, etc . . . . They broke
into the monasteries, they sold their roofs and bells; so that
there was not a monastery from Arran of the Saints to the Iccian
Sea that was not broken and scattered, except only a few in
Ireland."
And, under 1540, they say: "The English, in every place
throughout Ireland, where they established their power,
persecuted and banished the nine religious orders, and
particularly they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, and
beheaded the guardian and a number of friars."
We may add that, at the restoration of the old faith under Queen
Mary, nothing had to be restored in Ireland save the monasteries.
These establishments had, almost without exception, been
ruthlessly destroyed.
In our previous considerations, we have spoken of no other
religious houses in Ireland, save those of the old Columbian
order of monks, as it was called, which was a growth of the
country, and bore so many marks of Irish peculiarities. This
continued until, communications with Rome becoming more frequent,
the various orders established in the West were successively
introduced into Ireland. Our purpose is not to write a history
of monasticism, and therefore we do not intend entering into
details on this point, interesting though they are. But we may
add that, gradually, the old monasteries - from the Norman
invasion chiefly - as well as the new ones which were
established, were placed under the rule of the various
congregations, acknowledged by the Holy See. It seems that the
monasteries founded by St. Columba himself afterward submitted
to the rule of St. Benedict, the others, for the most part,
embracing that of the canons regular of St. Augustine; but the
precise epoch of these changes is not known. It is certain,
however, that the Benedictines, Cistercians, and Bernardines,
were introduced into the country at a very early date, together
with the four mendicant orders of Franciscans, Dominicans,
Carmelites, and Augustinians.
The pretext for their destruction was, of course, the same in
England as in all the other countries of Europe - their need of
reformation; but it does not appear that even this pretence was
put forward in the case of the Irish monasteries. The fact was,
the breath of suspicion could not rest upon those stainless
establishments in the Isle of Saints. In the idea of the natives,
their very names had ever been synonymous with holiness and all
Christian virtues, and so they continued to enjoy the most
unbounded popularity. The fact of the English Government
selecting them as a special point of attack is in itself
sufficient to vindicate their character from any aspersion. Two
measures were deemed necessary and sufficient for the purpose of
detaching Ireland from its allegiance to the Holy See, and of
introducing schism, if not heresy, into the country. One, and
certainly the most efficacious of these, was thought to be the
destruction of convents for both sexes. This, we affirm, is
ample apology for their inmates.
But this general reflection is not enough for our purpose, which
is, to delineate and bring out the true character of the nation.
It is, therefore, fitting to give an idea of the extent to which
the monastic influence prevailed, and of the nature of the
people who cherished, loved, and accepted it at all times.
It may be said that the Christian Church, as established in the
island by St. Patrick, rested mainly for its support on the
religious orders. In many cases the abbots of monasteries were
superior to bishops, and, as a general rule, the hierarchy of
the Church was, as it were, subordinate to monastic
establishments.1 (1 Vide Montalembert's "Monks of the West:
Bollandists, Oct.," tome xii., p. 888.) At the time we speak of,
indeed, such was no longer the case; but the previously-existing
state of reciprocal subordination between abbots and bishops
during several centuries, in Ireland,, had left deep traces in
the nature of the institutions and of the people itself. It may
be said that in the mind of an Irishman the existence of
Christianity almost presupposed a numerous array of convents and
religious houses. And this idea of theirs can scarcely be called
a wrong one, nor did they exaggerate the value of religious
orders, since their estimate of them was no higher than that of
Christ himself and his Church.
If with justice it was said that the French monarchy was
established by bishops, with equal justice may it be said that
the Irish people had been educated, nay, created by monks. The
monks had taken the place left vacant by the Druids, and thus
they became for the Christian what the others had been for the
pagan Irish. For a long period the Irish monks formed a very
considerable portion of the population. In their body were
concentrated the gifts of science, art, holiness, even miracles
without number, unless we are to suppose that the hagiography of
the island was intrusted to the care of idiots incapable of
ascertaining current facts. The vast literature of the island,
greater indeed than that of any other Christian country at the
time, was either the product of monastic intellect and learning,
or at least had been translated and preserved by monks. The
gifted Eugene O'Curry could fill numbers of the pages of his
great work with the bare titles of the books which are known to
have issued from the Irish monasteries, of which but a few
fragments remain; and no sensible man who has read his book can
affect to despise establishments which could produce so many
proofs of fancy, intellect, and erudition. The scattered
fragments of that rich literature, which had escaped the fury of
the Scandinavian, the ignorance and rapacity of the early Anglo-
Norman, the blind fanaticism of the Puritan, could still in the
seventeenth century furnish materials enough for the immense
compilations of the Four Masters, Ward, Wadding, Lynch, and
Colgan.
What we have here stated is the simple, unvarnished truth; yet
it is but yesterday that the subject has really begun to be
studied.
But what is chiefly worthy our attention is, that the
monasteries were not only the seats of learning and literature
in Ireland, but they constituted and comprised in themselves
every thing of value which the nation possessed. As they were
found everywhere, there was not room for much else in the
department they filled in the island. Take them away, and the
country is a blank. So well were the crafty counsellors of Henry
VIII. and Elizabeth satisfied of this, that they insisted on the
destruction of the monasteries, and turned all their efforts to
carry their purpose into effect.
Feudalism had failed in its endeavor to cover the country with
castles; the native royalty and inferior chieftainship being
engaged in constant bickerings with each other and with the
common foe, had been unable to enrich the country with monuments
of art and wealthy palaces; the Church alone had accomplished
whatever had been effected in this way, and in the Church the
monks rather than the bishops had for a long time exercised the
preponderating influence. Hence, it may be truly said that
Ireland was essentially a monastic country, more so than any
other nation of Christendom.
This fact explains how it happened that the monastic
institutions could not be destroyed. The convent-walls might be
battered down, the more valuable edifices might be converted
into dwellings for the new Protestant aristocracy, their
property might go to enrich upstarts, and feed the rapacity of
greedy conquerors, but the institution itself could not perish.
It is true that in all Catholic countries this seems also to be
the case; but wide is the difference with regard to Ireland. In
all places religious establishments have frequently been the
object of anti-Christian fury and rage. They have often been
destroyed, and seem to have utterly disappeared, when the world
has been surprised by their speedy resurrection. The fact is,
the Church needs them, and the practice of evangelical counsels
must forever be in a state of active operation upon earth, since
the grace of God always inspires with it a number of select
souls. God is the source; consequently the stream must flow,
since the life-spring is eternal and ever-running.
But in other countries besides the one under our consideration
religious houses and institutions have sometimes been
effectually rooted out, at least for a time. When the French
Constituent Assembly, by one of its destructive decrees, closed
those establishments all over France, such of them as by their
laxity deserved to die, ceased at once to exist, and poured
forth their inmates to swell the ranks of a corrupt society, and
add religious degradation to the immoral filth of the world.
Those religious houses, within whose walls the spirit of God had
not ceased to dwell, were indeed closed and emptied; but their
inmates endeavored to live their lives of religion in some
unknown and obscure spot, until the madness of the Convention,
and the Reign of Terror which soon followed, rendered the
continuation of the holy exercises of any community absolutely
impossible. But mark this well: the holy aims of the monks and
nuns found no response in the nation, and, finding themselves
almost entirely rejected by a faithless people, with no resting-
place in the whole extent of the country, a sudden and total
interruption of religious ascetic life in the once most Catholic
nation of Europe was the result.
The same may soon come to pass in our days in Italy and Spain,
until better times return to those now distracted countries, and
the extremities of evil bring them back to something of their
primitive faith.
Not so in Ireland: the communities could continue to exist even
when turned out-of-doors, because the nation wanted them, and
could afford them asylum and peace in the worst periods of
persecution. And this great fact of the mutual love between
monks, priests, and people, contributed also in no small degree
to that union among all, which henceforth became the
characteristic feature of a people hitherto split up into
hostile clans. Nothing probably tended so much toward effecting
the birth of the nation as the deep attachment existing between
the Irish and their religious orders. The latter had always
preached peace and often reconciled enemies, and brought furious
men to the practice of Christian charity and forbearance.
We have seen instances of this when the clans were all powerful
and the chieftains thought of nothing but of "preyings," as they
called them, compelling their enemies to give "hostages" and
devastating the territories of hostile clans. Then the voice of
the monk came to be heard in the midst of contending passions,
and real miracles were often performed by them in changing into
lambs men who resembled roaring lions or devouring wolves; but
their action became much more efficacious when nothing was left
to the people save their religion and the "friars." These, it is
true, could no longer reside within the walls of their convents,
but on that very account their life became more truly one with
that of the people.
Sometimes they found refuge in the large, hospitable dwellings
of the native nobility, where, during the latter part of the
reign of Henry VIII. and the whole of that of Elizabeth, the
almost independent power of the chieftains could still afford
them succor. Sometimes also the humbler dwelling of the farmer
or the peasant offered them a sure asylum, wherein they could
practise their ministry in almost perfect freedom, owing to the
sure and inviolable secrecy of the inmates and neighbors. For a
great distance around, the Catholics knew of their abode, were
often visited by them, even without mach danger of the fact
becoming known to spies and informers. And this brings naturally
before us a new feature of the Irish character.
Their nature, which was so expansive and passionate on all other
subjects, so that to keep a secret was an impossible feat to
them, wore another character when danger to their religion or
its ministers required of them to set a seal on their lips. For
years frequently, large numbers of priests and religious could
not only exist, but move and work among them, without their
place of abode becoming known to the swarms of enemies who
surrounded them. The nation was trained to prudence and
discretion by centuries of oppression and tyranny. Many facts of
this nature are known and recorded in the dark annals of those
times; but how many more will be known never!
Thus, in the year 1588, during the worst part of Elizabeth's
reign, "John O'Malloy, Cornelius Dogherty, and Walfried Ferral,
of the order of St. Francis, fell finally victims to the malice
of the heretics. They had spent eight years in administering the
consolations of religion throughout the mountainous districts of
Leinster. Many families of Carlow, Wicklow, and Wexford, had
been compelled to take a refuge in the mountains from the fury
of the English troops. The good Franciscans shared in all their
perils, travelling about from place to place, by night; they
visited the sick, consoled the dying, and offered up the sacred
mysteries for all. Oftentimes the hard rock was their only bed;
but they willingly embraced nakedness, and hunger, and cold, to
console their afflicted brethren." - (Moran's Archbishops of
Dublin.)
In these few words, we have a picture of the mountain monastery.
During those eight years, how many Irish were consoled and
comforted by those few laborers, who, driven from their holy
home, had chosen to live in the wilderness, and practise their
rule among the wandering people of three large counties,
receiving in return the substance, the love, and loving secrecy
of their flock! We have only to figure to ourselves this scene,
or similar, repeated in every corner of the land, and we may
then easily understand how the Irish people were brought to the
unanimous resolve of standing by each other, and how, from the
state of complete division which formerly prevailed, the
elements of a compact, solid, and indestructible body, began to
form.
We attribute this "birth of a nation" to Henry VIII., because
the change which he tried to introduce into the religion of the
island constituted the occasion and origin of it; and, although
his reign never witnessed that perfect union of the people which
came later on, nevertheless, it is true that then it surely
began, and its origin was the attempt to establish his spiritual
supremacy in Ireland.
This feeling of union and strength in love went on growing, and
showed itself more and more, wring the two centuries which
followed, when so many scenes similar to the one described were
enacted in the remotest parts of the island. God, in his mercy,
provided it with many high mountains, difficult of access, whose
paths were known only to the natives. In these fastnesses, the
holy men, who had been driven from their dwellings and their
churches, could rest in peace and attend to the duties of their
office. They could even recruit their shattered forces, admit
novices, and train them up; and thus their rule continued to be
observed, and their existence as a body protracted, long after
their enemies imagined that they had perished utterly. As soon
as quiet was restored, when persecution abated, and breathing-
time was given them, so that they could show themselves, with
some safety, more openly, they visited their old abodes, often
found some portions of the ruins which admitted of repair, and
dwelt again in security where their predecessors had dwelt for
centuries.
The peasant's hut would also often afford them shelter; some
solitary farm-house on the borders of a lake, or near a deep
morass, took the name of their monastery; some cranogue in the
lake, or dry spot in the thick of the morass, which they could
reach by paths known to themselves only, was their asylum in
times of extraordinary danger. In ordinary times, the farm-house,
to which they had given the name of their lost monastery, was
their convent. It was thus the brothers O'Cleary, and their
companions, lived for years, editing the work of the "Four
Masters," until, at length, they succeeded in publishing their
extraordinary "Annals." The manuscripts which, in spite of the
raging persecution, and the "penal laws," they traversed the
whole island to collect, were preserved, with a reverend care,
in a poor Irish hut. Literary treasures which have since
unfortunately perished, but which they saved for a time from the
reach of the enemy, and which they perpetuated by having them
printed, filled the poor presses and the old furniture of their
asylum, and, owing purely to the friendly help of those who had
given them shelter, they were enabled to enrich the world with
their marvellous compilation.
From the mountain and the hut, on the river-side, the monks were
sometimes allowed to move to their former dwellings, at the risk,
nevertheless, of their liberty and lives. What their ancestors
had done during the Scandinavian invasions, when the monasteries
were so often destroyed and rebuilt, that did the monks of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries likewise in many parts of
the island.
Thus, Father Mooney, a Franciscan, relates that his monastery -
that of Multifarnham - having been totally destroyed by Sir
Francis Shean, and many monks having been killed, he, with a few
others, after long and extraordinary adventures, came back to
the spot, then abandoned by the enemy, and "before the feast of
the Nativity of our Lord, we built up a little house on the site
of the monastery, and there we dwelt who were left after the
flight . . . . . Afterward, Father Nehemias Gregan, the father
guardian, began to build a church, and to repair the monastery,
and for this purpose caused much wood to be cut in the territory
of Deabhna McLochlain; and when they had roofed a chapel and
some other buildings, there came the soldiers of another Sir
Francis Ringtia, and they burned down the monastery again, and
carried off some of the brethren captive to Dublin."
This convent of Multifarnham was raised a third time; and, in
fact, remained in possession of the Franciscans throughout the
persecution, so that to this day the old church has been restored
by them, and the modern house, which now forms their convent,
is built on the site of the old monastery.
Such for a long time was the case with many other religious
establishments; for the same Father Mooney, writing as late as
1624, says: "When Queen Elizabeth strove to make all Ireland
fall away from the Catholic faith, and a law was passed
proscribing all the members of the religious orders, and giving
their monasteries and possessions to the treasury, while all the
others took to flight, or at least quitted their houses, and,
for safety's sake, lived privately and singly among their
friends, and receiving no novices, the order of St. Francis
alone ever remained, as it were, unshaken. For, though they were
violently driven out of some convents to the great towns, and
the convents were profanely turned into dwellings for seculars,
and some of the fathers suffered violence, and even death; yet,
in the country and other remote places, they ever remained in
the convents, celebrating the divine office according to the
custom of religious, their preachers preaching to the people and
performing their other functions, training up novices and
preserving the conventual buildings, holding it sinful to lay
aside, or even hide, their religious habit, though for an hour,
through any human fear. And, every three years, they held their
regular provincial chapters in the woods of the neighborhood,
and observed the rule as it is kept in provinces that are in
peace."
Thus, when the Cromwellian persecution began, the religious
orders were again flourishing in Ireland. They had obtained from
the Stuarts some relaxation in the execution of the laws, and,
as all at the time were fighting for Charles I. against the
Parliamentarians, it was only natural that the authorities did
not carry out the barbarous laws to their full extent in the
island.
It is no matter of great surprise, therefore, that, in 1641,
more than one hundred years after the decree of Henry VIII., the
Franciscan order still possessed sixty-two flourishing houses in
Ireland, each with a numerous community, besides ten convents of
nuns of the order of St. Clare. The acts of the General Chapter
of the Dominicans, held in Rome in 1656, referring to the same
persecution of Cromwell, state that, when it began, there were
forty-three convents of the order, containing about six hundred
inmates, of whom only one-fourth survived the calamity. The
Jesuits were eighty in number, in 1641, of whom only seventeen
remained when the storm had passed away. From a petition
presented to the Sacred Congregation, in 1654, we learn that all
the Capuchins had been banished, except a few who remained on
the island, where they lived as "shepherds," "herdsmen," or
"tillers of the soil."
All the decrees of the Parliaments of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth
had not succeeded, in the space of a century, in destroying
monasticism; the Cromwellian war alone seemed to have done so,
as it left the entire nation almost at the last gasp, on the
verge of annihilation. Nevertheless, a few years saw the orders
again revive and prepare to start their holy work anew. Henry
VIII. then, and his vicar, Cromwell, deceived themselves in
thinking that they had put an end to monasticism in the land
which had been the cradle of so many families of religious. They
succeeded only in intensifying the determination of Irishmen not
to allow their nationality to be absorbed in that of England. If
any thing was calculated to nourish and keep alive that
sentiment in their hearts, it was their daily communing with the
holy men who shared their distress, their mountain-retreats,
their poverty in the bogs, their wretchedness in the woods and
glens. If monasticism had created and nurtured the nation on its
first becoming Christian, it gave to the people a second birth
holier than the first, because consecrated by martyrdom.
Henceforth, divided clans and antagonistic septs were to be
unknown among them: only Catholic Irishmen were to remain ranked
around the successors of "the saints" of old, all determined to
be what they were, or die. But as laws, edicts, and measures of
fanatic frenzy cannot destroy a nation, the new people was
destined to survive for better and brighter days.
We have anticipated the course of events somewhat, in order to
pass in review the chief facts connected with the designs of the
English Government upon the religious orders. These few words
will suffice to give the reader an idea of the new character
which such events impressed upon the Irish nation. Every day saw
it more compact; every day the resolve to fight to the death for
God's cause, grew stronger; the old occasions of division grew
less and less, and that unanimity, which suffering for a noble
cause naturally gives rise to in the human heart, showed itself
more and more. A nation, in truth, was being born in the throes
of a wide-spread and long-continued calamity; but long ages were
in store in times to come to reward it for the misfortunes of
the past.
It is a remarkable thing that, when England, through fear of
civil war, was compelled to grant Catholic emancipation in 1829,
when Irish agitators succeeded in wrenching it from the enemy,
and obtaining it, not only for themselves, but likewise for
their English Catholic brethren, the British statesmen, who
finally consented to such a tardy measure of justice, steadily
refused, nevertheless, to extend the boon to the religious
orders. These remained under the ban, and so they remain still.
The "penal laws" were never repealed for them, and, even to this
day, they are, according to law, strictly prohibited from
"receiving novices" under all the barbarous penalties formerly
enacted and never abrogated.
But the nation has constantly considered this exception as not
to be taken into account. The religious orders now existing are
under the protection of the people, and England has never dared
to use even a threat against the open violation of these "laws."
Dr. Madden, in his interesting work on "Penal Laws," gives
prominence to this fact by warmly taking up the old theme of
thorough-going Irish Catholicity, by asserting, with force, that
"religious orders are necessary to the Church," and that to deny
their right to exist, even though it be only on paper in the
statute-book, is none the less an outrage against so thoroughly
Catholic a nation as the Irish.
The only fact which appears to clash with our reflections is the
one well ascertained and mentioned by us, that some native Irish
lords occupied certain monasteries and took their share in the
sacrilegious plunder. But a few chieftains cannot be said to
constitute the nation, and doubtless many of those who yielded
to the temptation, listened later to the reproving voice of
their conscience, as in the following case, given by Miles
O'Reilly, in his "Irish Martyrs:"
"Gelasius O'Cullenan, born of a noble family in Connaught . . .
joined the Cistercian order. Having competed his studies in
Paris, the monastery of Boyle was destined as the field of his
labors. On his arrival in Ireland, he found that the monastery,
with its property, had been seized on by one of the neighboring
gentry, who was sheltered in his usurpation by the edict of
Elizabeth. The abbot . . . went boldly to the usurping nobleman,
admonishing him of the guilt he had incurred; and the
malediction of Heaven, which he would assuredly draw down upon
his family. Moved by his exhortations, the nobleman restored to
him the full possession of the monastery and lands; and, some
time after, contemplating the holy life of its inmates, . . . he,
too, renounced the world and joined the religious institute."