CHAPTER XVIII

ON THE CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND

_Ancient state of Ireland._--The antiquities of Irish history,

imperfectly recorded, and rendered more obscure by controversy, seem

hardly to belong to our present subject. But the political order or

state of society among that people at the period of Henry II.'s

invasion must be distinctly apprehended and kept in mind, before we

can pass a judgment upon, or even understand, the course of succeeding

events, and the policy of the English government in relation to that

island.

It can hardly be necessary to mention (the idle traditions of a

derivation from Spain having long been exploded) that the Irish are

descended from one of those Celtic tribes which occupied Gaul and

Britain some centuries before the Christian era. Their language

however is so far dissimilar from that spoken in Wales, though

evidently of the same root, as to render it probable that the

emigration, whether from this island or from Armorica, was in a remote

age; while its close resemblance to that of the Scottish Highlanders,

which hardly can be called another dialect, as unequivocally

demonstrates a nearer affinity of the two nations. It seems to be

generally believed, though the antiquaries are far from unanimous,

that the Irish are the parent tribe, and planted their colony in

Scotland since the commencement of our era.

About the end of the eighth century, some of those swarms of

Scandinavian descent which were poured out in such unceasing and

irresistible multitudes on France and Britain, began to settle on the

coasts of Ireland. These colonists were known by the name of Ostmen,

or men from the east, as in France they were called Normans from their

northern origin. They occupied the sea-coast from Antrim easterly

round to Limerick; and by them the principal cities of Ireland were

built. They waged war for some time against the aboriginal Irish in

the interior; but, though better acquainted with the arts of civilised

life, their inferiority in numbers caused them to fail at length in

this contention; and the practical invasions from their brethren in

Norway becoming less frequent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,

they had fallen into a state of dependence on the native princes.

The island was divided into five provincial kingdoms, Leinster,

Munster, Ulster, Connaught, and Meath; one of whose sovereigns was

chosen king of Ireland in some general meeting, probably of the

nobility or smaller chieftains, and of the prelates. But there seems

to be no clear tradition as to the character of this national

assembly, though some maintain it to have been triennially held. The

monarch of the island had tributes from the inferior kings, and a

certain supremacy, especially in the defence of the country against

invasion; but the constitution was of a federal nature, and each was

independent in ruling his people, or in making war on his neighbours.

Below the kings were the chieftains of different septs or families,

perhaps in one or two degrees of subordination, bearing a relation,

which may be loosely called feudal, to each other, and to the

Crown.[463]

These chieftainships, and perhaps even the kingdoms themselves, though

not partible, followed a very different rule of succession than that

of primogeniture. They were subject to the law of tanistry, of which

the principle is defined to be, that the demesne lands and dignity of

chieftainship descended to the eldest and most worthy of the same

blood; these epithets not being used, we may suppose, synonymously,

but in order to indicate that the preference given to seniority was to

be controlled by a due regard to desert. No better mode, it is

evident, of providing for a perpetual supply of those civil quarrels,

in which the Irish are supposed to place so much of their enjoyment,

could have been devised. Yet, as these grew sometimes a little too

frequent, it was not unusual to elect a tanist, or reversionary

successor, in the lifetime of the reigning chief, as has been the

practice of more civilised nations. An infant was never allowed to

hold the sceptre of an Irish kingdom, but was necessarily postponed to

his uncle or other kinsman of mature age; as was the case also in

England, even after the consolidation of the Anglo-Saxon

monarchy.[464]

The land-owners, who did not belong to the noble class, bore the same

name as their chieftain, and were presumed to be of the same lineage.

But they held their estates by a very different and an extraordinary

tenure, that of Irish gavel-kind. On the decease of a proprietor,

instead of an equal partition among his children, as in the gavel-kind

of English law, the chief of the sept, according to the generally

received explanation, made, or was entitled to make, a fresh division

of all the lands within his district; allotting to the heirs of the

deceased a portion of the integral territory along with the other

members of the tribe. It seems impossible to conceive that these

partitions were renewed on every death of one of the sept. But they

are asserted to have at least taken place so frequently as to produce

a continual change of possession. The policy of this custom doubtless

sprung from too jealous a solicitude as to the excessive inequality of

wealth, and from the habit of looking on the tribe as one family of

occupants, not wholly divested of its original right by the necessary

allotment of lands to particular cultivators. It bore some degree of

analogy to the institution of the year of Jubilee in the Mosaic code,

and what may be thought more immediate, was almost exactly similar to

the rule of succession which is laid down in the ancient laws of

Wales.[465]

_Rude state of society._--In the territories of each sept, judges

called Brehons, and taken out of certain families, sat with primeval

simplicity upon turfen benches in some conspicuous situation, to

determine controversies. Their usages are almost wholly unknown; for

what have been published as fragments of the Brehon law seem open to

great suspicion at least of being interpolated.[466] It is notorious

that, according to the custom of many states in the infancy of

civilisation, the Irish admitted the composition or fine for murder,

instead of capital punishment; and this was divided, as in other

countries, between the kindred of the slain and the judge.

In the twelfth century it is evident that the Irish nation had made

far less progress in the road of improvement than any other of Europe

in circumstance of climate and position so little unfavourable. They

had no arts that deserve the name, nor any commerce, their best line

of sea-coast being occupied by the Norwegians. They had no fortified

towns, nor any houses or castles of stone; the first having been

erected at Tuam a very few years before the invasion of Henry.[467]

Their conversion to Christianity indeed, and the multitude of

cathedral and conventual churches erected throughout the island, had

been the cause, and probably the sole cause, of the rise of some

cities, or villages with that name, such as Armagh, Cashel, and Trim.

But neither the chiefs nor the people loved to be confined within

their precincts, and chose rather to dwell in scattered cabins amidst

the free solitude of bogs and mountains. As we might expect, their

qualities were such as belong to man by his original nature, and which

he displays in all parts of the globe where the state of society is

inartificial: they were gay, generous, hospitable, ardent in

attachment and hate, credulous of falsehood, prone to anger and

violence, generally crafty and cruel. With these very general

attributes of a barbarous people, the Irish character was

distinguished by a peculiar vivacity of imagination, an enthusiasm

and impetuosity of passion, and a more than ordinary bias towards a

submissive and superstitious spirit in religion.

This spirit may justly be traced in a great measure to the virtues and

piety of the early preachers of the gospel in that country. Their

influence, though at this remote age, and with our imperfect

knowledge, it may hardly be distinguishable amidst the licentiousness

and ferocity of a rude people, was necessarily directed to counteract

those vices, and cannot have failed to mitigate and compensate their

evil. In the seventh and eighth centuries, while a total ignorance

seemed to overspread the face of Europe, the monasteries and schools

of Ireland preserved, in the best manner they could, such learning as

had survived the revolutions of the Roman world. But the learning of

monasteries had never much efficacy in dispelling the ignorance of the

laity; and indeed, even in them, it had decayed long before the

twelfth century. The clergy were respected and numerous, the bishops

alone amounting at one time to no less than 300;[468] and it has been

maintained by our most learned writers, that they were wholly

independent of the see of Rome till, a little before the English

invasion, one of their primates thought fit to solicit the pall from

thence on his consecration, according to the discipline long practised

in other western churches.

It will be readily perceived that the government of Ireland must have

been almost entirely aristocratical, and not very unlike that of the

feudal confederacies in France during the ninth and tenth centuries.

It was perhaps still more oppressive. The ancient condition of the

common people of Ireland, says Sir James Ware, was very little

different from slavery.[469] Unless we believe this condition to have

been greatly deteriorated under the rule of their native chieftains

after the English settlement, for which there seems no good reason, we

must give little credit to the fanciful pictures of prosperity and

happiness in that period of aboriginal independence, which the Irish,

in their discontent with later times, have been apt to draw. They had,

no doubt, like all other nations, good and wise princes, as well as

tyrants and usurpers. But we find by their annals that, out of two

hundred ancient kings, of whom some brief memorials are recorded, not

more than thirty came to a natural death;[470] while, for the later

period, the oppression of the Irish chieftains, and of those

degenerate English who trod in their steps, and emulated the vices

they should have restrained, is the one constant theme of history.

Their exactions kept the peasants in hopeless poverty, their tyranny

in perpetual fear. The chief claimed a right of taking from his

tenants provisions for his own use at discretion, or of sojourning in

their houses. This was called coshery, and is somewhat analogous to

the royal prerogative of purveyance. A still more terrible oppression

was the quartering of the lords' soldiers on the people, sometimes

mitigated by a composition, called by the Irish bonaght.[471] For the

perpetual warfare of these petty chieftains had given rise to the

employment of mercenary troops, partly natives, partly from Scotland,

known by the uncouth names of Kerns and Gallowglasses, who proved the

scourge of Ireland down to its final subjugation by Elizabeth.

This unusually backward condition of society furnished but an

inauspicious presage for the future. Yet we may be led by the analogy

of other countries to think it probable that, if Ireland had not

tempted the cupidity of her neighbours, there would have arisen in the

course of time some Egbert or Harold Harfager to consolidate the

provincial kingdoms into one hereditary monarchy; which, by the

adoption of better laws, the increase of commerce, and a frequent

intercourse with the chief courts of Europe, might have taken as

respectable a station as that of Scotland in the commonwealth of

Christendom. If the two islands had afterwards become incorporated

through intermarriage of their sovereigns, as would very likely have

taken place, it might have been on such conditions of equality as

Ireland, till lately, has never known; and certainly without that long

tragedy of crime and misfortune which her annals unfold.

_Invasion of Henry II._--The reduction of Ireland, at least in name,

under the dominion of Henry II. was not achieved by his own efforts.

He had little share in it beyond receiving the homage of Irish

princes, and granting charters to his English nobility. Strongbow,

Lacy, Fitz-Stephen, were the real conquerors, through whom alone any

portion of Irish territory was gained by arms or treaty; and, as they

began the enterprise without the king, they carried it on also for

themselves, deeming their swords a better security than his charters.

This ought to be kept in mind, as revealing the secret of the English

government over Ireland, and furnishing a justification for what has

the appearance of a negligent abandonment of its authority. The few

barons, and other adventurers, who, by dint of forces hired by

themselves, and, in some instances, by conventions with the Irish,

settled their armed colonies in the island, thought they had done

much for Henry II. in causing his name to be acknowledged, his

administration to be established in Dublin, and in holding their lands

by his grant. They claimed in their turn, according to the practice of

all nations and the principles of equity, that those who had borne the

heat of the battle, should enjoy the spoil without molestation. Hence,

the enormous grants of Henry and his successors, though so often

censured for impolicy, were probably what they could scarce avoid;

and, though not perhaps absolutely stipulated as the price of titular

sovereignty, were something very like it.[472] But what is to be

censured, and what at all hazards they were bound to refuse, was the

violation of their faith to the Irish princes, in sharing among these

insatiable barons their ancient territories; which, setting aside the

wrong of the first invasion, were protected by their homage and

submission, and sometimes by positive conventions. The whole island,

in fact, with the exception of the county of Dublin and the maritime

towns, was divided, before the end of the thirteenth century, and most

of it in the twelfth, among ten English families: Earl Strongbow, who

had some colour of hereditary title, according to our notions of law,

by his marriage with the daughter of Dermot, king of Leinster,

obtaining a grant of that province; Lacy acquiring Meath, which was

not reckoned a part of Leinster, in the same manner; the whole of

Ulster being given to De Courcy; the whole of Connaught to De Burgh;

and the rest to six others. These, it must be understood, they were to

hold in a sort of feudal suzerainty, parcelling them among their

tenants of English race, and expelling the natives, or driving them

into the worst parts of the country by an incessant warfare.

_Forms of English constitution established._--The Irish chieftains,

though compelled to show some exterior signs of submission to Henry,

never thought of renouncing their own authority or the customs of

their forefathers; nor did he pretend to interfere with the government

of their septs, content with their promise of homage and tribute,

neither of which were afterwards paid. But in those parts of Ireland

which he reckoned his own, it was his aim to establish the English

laws, to render the lesser island, as it were, a counterpart in all

its civil constitution, and mirror of the greater. The colony from

England was already not inconsiderable, and likely to increase; the

Ostmen, who inhabited the maritime towns, came very willingly, as all

settlers of Teutonic origin have done, into the English customs and

language; and upon this basis, leaving the accession of the aboriginal

people to future contingencies, he raised the edifice of the Irish

constitution. He gave charters of privilege to the chief towns, began

a division into counties, appointed sheriffs and judges of assize to

administer justice, erected supreme courts at Dublin, and perhaps

assembled parliaments.[473] His successors pursued the same course of

policy; the great charter of liberties, as soon as granted by John at

Runnymede, was sent over to Ireland; and the whole common law, with

all its forms of process, and every privilege it was deemed to convey,

became the birthright of the Anglo-Irish colonists.[474]

These had now spread over a considerable part of the island. Twelve

counties appear to have been established by John, comprehending most

of Leinster and Munster; while the two ambitious families of Courcy

and De Burgh encroached more and more on the natives in the other

provinces.[475] But the same necessity, which gratitude for the

services, or sense of the power of the great families had engendered,

for rewarding them by excessive grants of territory, led to other

concessions that rendered them almost independent of the

monarchy.[476] The franchise of a county palatine gave a right of

exclusive civil and criminal jurisdiction; so that the king's writ

should not run, nor his judges come within it, though judgment in its

courts might be reversed by writ of error in the king's bench. The

lord might enfeoff tenants to hold by knight's service of himself; he

had almost all regalian rights; the lands of those attainted for

treason escheated to him; he acted in everything rather as one of the

great feudatories of France or Germany than a subject of the English

Crown. Such had been Chester, and only Chester, in England; but in

Ireland this dangerous independence was permitted to Strongbow in

Leinster, to Lacy in Meath, and at a later time to the Butlers and

Geraldines in parts of Munster. Strongbow's vast inheritance soon

fell to five sisters, who took to their shares, with the same palatine

rights, the counties of Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Kildare, and the

district of Leix, since called the Queen's County.[477] In all these

palatinates, forming by far the greater portion of the English

territories, the king's process had its course only within the lands

belonging to the church.[478] The English aristocracy of Ireland, in

the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bears a much closer analogy

to that of France in rather an earlier period than anything which the

history of this island can show.

Pressed by the inroads of these barons, and despoiled frequently of

lands secured to them by grant or treaty, the native chiefs had

recourse to the throne for protection, and would in all likelihood

have submitted without repining to a sovereign who could have afforded

it.[479] But John and Henry III., in whose reigns the independence of

the aristocracy was almost complete, though insisting by writs and

proclamations on a due observance of the laws, could do little more

for their new subjects, who found a better chance of redress in

standing on their own defence. The powerful septs of the north enjoyed

their liberty. But those of Munster and Leinster, intermixed with the

English, and encroached upon from every side, were the victims of

constant injustice; and abandoning the open country for bog and

mountain pasture, grew more poor and barbarous in the midst of the

general advance of Europe. Many remained under the yoke of English

lords, and in a worse state than that of villenage, because still less

protected by the tribunals of justice. The Irish had originally

stipulated with Henry II. for the use of their own laws.[480] They

were consequently held beyond the pale of English justice, and

regarded as aliens at the best, sometimes as enemies, in our courts.

Thus, as by the Brehon customs murder was only punished by a fine, it

was not held felony to kill one of Irish race, unless he had conformed

to the English law.[481] Five septs, to which the royal families of

Ireland belonged, the names of O'Neal, O'Connor, O'Brien,

O'Malachlin, and MacMurrough, had the special immunity of being within

the protection of our law, and it was felony to kill one of them. I do

not know by what means they obtained this privilege; for some of these

were certainly as far from the king's obedience as any in

Ireland.[482] But besides these a vast number of charters of

denization were granted to particular persons of Irish descent from

the reign of Henry II. downwards, which gave them and their posterity

the full birthrights of English subjects; nor does there seem to have

been any difficulty in procuring these.[483] It cannot be said,

therefore, that the English government, or those who represented it in

Dublin, displayed any reluctance to emancipate the Irish from

thraldom. Whatever obstruction might be interposed to this was from

that assembly whose concurrence was necessary to every general

measure, the Anglo-Irish parliament. Thus, in 1278, we find the first

instance of an application from the community of Ireland, as it is

termed, but probably from some small number of septs dwelling among

the colony, that they might be admitted to live by the English law,

and offering 8000 marks for this favour. The letter of Edward I. to

the justiciary of Ireland on this is sufficiently characteristic both

of his wisdom and his rapaciousness. He is satisfied of the expediency

of granting the request, provided it can be done with the general

consent of the prelates and nobles of Ireland; and directs the

justiciary, if he can obtain that concurrence, to agree with the

petitioners for the highest fine he can obtain, and for a body of good

and stout soldiers.[484] But this necessary consent of the aristocracy

was withheld. Excuses were made to evade the king's desire. It was

wholly incompatible with their systematic encroachments on their

Irish neighbours to give them the safeguard of the king's writ for

their possessions. The Irish renewed their supplication more than

once, both to Edward I. and Edward III.; they found the same readiness

in the English court; they sunk at home through the same unconquerable

oligarchy.[485] It is not to be imagined that the entire Irishry

partook in this desire of renouncing their ancient customs. Besides

the prejudices of nationality, there was a strong inducement to

preserve the Brehon laws of tanistry, which suited better a warlike

tribe than the hereditary succession of England. But it was the

unequivocal duty of the legislature to avail itself of every token of

voluntary submission; which, though beginning only with the subject

septs of Leinster, would gradually incorporate the whole nation in a

common bond of co-equal privileges with their conquerors.

_Degeneracy of English settlers._--Meanwhile, these conquerors were

themselves brought under a moral captivity of the most disgraceful

nature; and, not as the rough soldier of Rome is said to have been

subdued by the art and learning of Greece, the Anglo-Norman barons,

that had wrested Ireland from the native possessors, fell into their

barbarous usages, and emulated the vices of the vanquished. This

degeneracy of the English settlers began very soon, and continued to

increase for several ages. They intermarried with the Irish; then

connected themselves with them by the national custom of fostering,

which formed an artificial relationship of the strictest nature;[486]

they spoke the Irish language; they affected the Irish dress and

manner of wearing the hair;[487] they even adopted, in some instances,

Irish surnames; they harassed their tenants with every Irish exaction

and tyranny; they administered Irish law, if any at all; they became

chieftains rather than peers; and neither regarded the king's summons

to his parliaments, nor paid any obedience to his judges.[488] Thus

the great family of De Burgh or Burke, in Connaught, fell off almost

entirely from subjection; nor was that of the Earls of Desmond, a

younger branch of the house of Geraldine or Fitzgerald, much less

independent of the Crown; though by the title it enjoyed, and the

palatine franchises granted to it by Edward III. over the counties of

Limerick and Kerry, it seemed to keep up more show of English

allegiance.

The regular constitution of Ireland was, as I have said, as nearly as

possible a counterpart of that established in this country. The

administration was vested in an English justiciary or lord deputy,

assisted by a council of judges and principal officers, mixed with

some prelates and barons, but subordinate to that of England, wherein

sat the immediate advisers of the sovereign. The courts of chancery,

king's bench, common pleas, and exchequer, were the same in both

countries; but writs of error lay from judgments given in the second

of these to the same court in England. For all momentous purposes, as

to grant a subsidy, or enact a statute, it was as necessary to summon

a parliament in the one island as in the other. An Irish parliament

originally, like an English one, was but a more numerous council, to

which the more distant as well as the neighbouring barons were

summoned, whose consent, though dispensed with in ordinary acts of

state, was both the pledge and the condition of their obedience to

legislative provisions. In 1295, the sheriff of each county and

liberty is directed to return two knights to a parliament held by

Wogan, an active and able deputy.[489] The date of the admission of

burgesses cannot be fixed with precision; but it was probably not

earlier than the reign of Edward III. They appear in 1341; and the

Earl of Desmond summoned many deputies from corporations to his rebel

convention held at Kilkenny in the next year.[490] The Commons are

mentioned as an essential part of parliament in an ordinance of 1359;

before which time, in the opinion of Lord Coke, "the conventions in

Ireland were not so much parliaments as assemblies of great men."[491]

This, as appears, is not strictly correct; but in substance they were

perhaps little else long afterwards.

The earliest statutes on record are of the year 1310; and from that

year they are lost till 1429, though we know many parliaments to have

been held in the meantime, and are acquainted by other means with

their provisions. Those of 1310 bear witness to the degeneracy of the

English lords, and to the laudable zeal of a feeble government for the

reformation of their abuses. They begin with an act to restrain great

lords from taking of prises, lodging, and sojourning with the people

of the country against their will. "It is agreed and assented," the

act proceeds, "that no such prises shall be henceforth made without

ready payment and agreement, and that none shall harbour or sojourn at

the house of any other by such malice against the consent of him which

is owner of the house to destroy his goods; and, if any shall do the

same, such prises, and such manner of destruction, shall be holden for

open robbery, and the king shall have the suit thereof, if others will

not, nor dare not sue. It is agreed also, that none shall keep idle

people nor kearn (foot-soldiers) in time of peace to live upon the

poor of the country, but that those which will have them, shall keep

them at their own charges, so that their free tenants, nor farmers,

nor other tenants, be not charged with them." The statute proceeds to

restrain great lords or others, except such as have royal franchises,

from giving protections, which they used to compel the people to

purchase; and directs that there shall be commissions of assize and

gaol delivery through all the counties of Ireland.[492]

These regulations exhibit a picture of Irish miseries. The barbarous

practices of coshering and bonaght, the latter of which was generally

known in later times by the name of coyne and livery, had been

borrowed from those native chieftains whom our modern Hibernians

sometimes hold forth as the paternal benefactors of their

country.[493] It was the crime of the Geraldines and the De Courcys to

have retrograded from the comparative humanity and justice of England,

not to have deprived the people of freedom and happiness they had

never known. These degenerate English, an epithet by which they are

always distinguished, paid no regard to the statutes of a parliament

which they had disdained to attend, and which could not render itself

feared. We find many similar laws in the fifteenth century, after the

interval which I have noticed in the printed records. And, in the

intervening period, a parliament held by Lionel Duke of Clarence,

second son of Edward III., at Kilkenny, in 1367, the most numerous

assembly that had ever met in Ireland, was prevailed upon to pass a

very severe statute against the insubordinate and degenerate

colonists. It recites that the English of the realm of Ireland were

become mere Irish in their language, names, apparel, and manner of

living, that they had rejected the English laws, and allied themselves

by intermarriage with the Irish. It prohibits, under the penalties of

high treason, or at least of forfeiture of lands, all these

approximations to the native inhabitants, as well as the connections

of fostering and gossipred. The English are restrained from permitting

the Irish to grace their lands, from presenting them to benefices, or

receiving them into religious houses, and from entertaining their

bards. On the other hand, they are forbidden to make war upon their

Irish neighbours without the authority of the state. And, to enforce

better these provisions, the king's sheriffs are empowered to enter

all franchises for the apprehension of felons or traitors.[494]

_Disorderly state of the island._--This statute, like all others

passed in Ireland, so far from pretending to bind the Irish, regarded

them not only as out of the king's allegiance, but as perpetually

hostile to his government. They were generally denominated the Irish

enemy. This doubtless was not according to the policy of Henry II.,

nor of the English government a considerable time after his reign. Nor

can it be said to be the fact, though from some confusion of times the

assertion is often made, that the island was not subject, in a general

sense, to that prince and to the three next kings of England. The

English were settled in every province; an imperfect division of

counties and administration of justice subsisted; and even the Irish

chieftains, though ruling their septs by the Brehon law, do not appear

in that period to have refused the acknowledgment of the king's

sovereignty. But compelled to defend their lands against perpetual

aggression, they justly renounced all allegiance to a government which

could not redeem the original wrong of its usurpation by the benefits

of protection. They became gradually stronger; they regained part of

their lost territories; and after the era of 1315, when Edward Bruce

invaded the kingdom with a Scots army, and, though ultimately

defeated, threw the government into a disorder from which it never

recovered, their progress was so rapid, that in the space of thirty or

forty years, the northern provinces, and even part of the southern,

were entirely lost to the Crown of England.[495]

It is unnecessary in so brief a sketch to follow the unprofitable

annals of Ireland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Amidst

the usual variations of war, the English interests were continually

losing ground. Once only Richard II. appeared with a very powerful

army, and the princes of Ireland crowded round his throne to offer

homage.[496] But, upon his leaving the kingdom, they returned of

course to their former independence and hostility. The long civil wars

of England in the next century consummated the ruin of its power over

the sister island. The Irish possessed all Ulster, and shared

Connaught with the degenerate Burkes. The sept of O'Brien held their

own district of Thomond, now the county of Clare. A considerable part

of Leinster was occupied by other independent tribes; while, in the

south, the Earls of Desmond, lords either by property or territorial

jurisdiction of the counties of Kerry and Limerick, and in some

measure of those of Cork and Waterford, united the turbulence of

English barons with the savage manners of Irish chieftains; ready to

assume either character as best suited their rapacity and ambition;

reckless of the king's laws or his commands, but not venturing, nor

upon the whole, probably wishing, to cast off the name of his

subjects. The elder branch of their house, the Earls of Kildare, and

another illustrious family, the Butlers, Earls of Ormond, were

apparently more steady in their obedience to the Crown; yet, in the

great franchises of the latter, comprising the counties of Kilkenny

and Tipperary, the king's writ had no course; nor did he exercise any

civil or military authority but by the permission of this mighty

peer.[497]

_English Law confined to the pale._--Thus, in the reign of Henry VII.,

when the English authority over Ireland had reached its lowest point,

it was, with the exception of a very few sea-ports, to all intents

confined to the four counties of the English pale, a name not older

perhaps than the preceding century; those of Dublin, Louth, Kildare,

and Meath, the latter of which at that time included West Meath. But

even in these there were extensive marches, or frontier districts, the

inhabitants of which were hardly distinguishable from the Irish, and

paid them a tribute, called black-rent; so that the real supremacy of

the English laws was not probably established beyond the two first of

these counties, from Dublin to Dundalk on the coast, and for about

thirty miles inland.[498] From this time, however, we are to date its

gradual recovery. The more steady councils and firmer prerogative of

the Tudor kings left little chance of escape from their authority

either for rebellious peers of English race, or the barbarous

chieftains of Ireland.

I must pause at this place to observe that we shall hardly find in the

foregoing sketch of Irish history, during the period of the

Plantagenet dynasty (nor am I conscious of having concealed any thing

essential), that systematic oppression and misrule which is every day

imputed to the English nation and its government. The policy of our

kings appears to have generally been wise and beneficent; but it is

duly to be remembered that those very limitations of their prerogative

which constitute liberty, must occasionally obstruct the execution of

the best purposes; and that the co-ordinate powers of parliament, so

justly our boast, may readily become the screen of private tyranny and

inveterate abuse. This incapacity of doing good as well as harm has

produced, comparatively speaking, little mischief in Great Britain;

where the aristocratical element of the constitution is neither so

predominant, nor so much in opposition to the general interest, as it

may be deemed to have been in Ireland. But it is manifestly absurd to

charge the Edwards and Henrys, or those to whom their authority was

delegated at Dublin, with the crimes they vainly endeavoured to

chastise, much more to erect either the wild barbarians of the north,

the O'Neals and O'Connors, or the degenerate houses of Burke and

Fitzgerald, into patriot assertors of their country's welfare. The

laws and liberties of England were the best inheritance to which

Ireland could attain; the sovereignty of the English crown her only

shield against native or foreign tyranny. It was her calamity that

these advantages were long withheld; but the blame can never fall upon

the government of this island.

In the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, most of the

English colony in Ireland had attached themselves to the fortunes of

the White Rose; they even espoused the two pretenders who put in

jeopardy the crown of Henry VII.; and became, of course, obnoxious to

his jealousy, though he was politic enough to forgive in appearance

their disaffection. But, as Ireland had for a considerable time rather

served the purposes of rebellious invaders than of the English

monarchy, it was necessary to make her subjection, at least so far as

the settlers of the pale were concerned, more than a word. This

produced the famous statute of Drogheda in 1495, known by the name of

Poyning's law, from the lord deputy through whose vigour and prudence

it was enacted. It contains a variety of provisions to restrain the

lawlessness of the Anglo-Irish within the pale (for to no others could

it immediately extend), and to confirm the royal sovereignty. All

private hostilities without the deputy's licence were declared

illegal; but to excite the Irish to war was made high treason. Murders

were to be prosecuted according to law, and not in the manner of the

natives, by pillaging, or exacting a fine from the sept of the slayer.

The citizens or freemen of towns were prohibited from receiving wages

or becoming retainers of lords and gentlemen; and, to prevent the

ascendency of the latter class, none who had not served

apprenticeships were to be admitted as aldermen or freemen of

corporations. The requisitions of coyne and livery, which had

subsisted in spite of the statutes of Kilkenny, were again forbidden,

and those statutes were renewed and confirmed. The principal officers

of state and the judges were to hold their patents during pleasure,

"because of the great inconveniences that had followed from their

being for term of life, to the king's grievous displeasure." A still

more important provision, in its permanent consequence, was made, by

enacting that all statutes lately made in England be deemed good and

effectual in Ireland. It has been remarked that the same had been done

by an Irish act of Edward IV. Some question might also be made,

whether the word "lately" was not intended to limit this acceptation

of English law. But in effect this enactment has made an epoch in

Irish jurisprudence; all statutes made in England prior to the

eighteenth year of Henry VII. being held equally valid in Ireland,

while none of later date have any operation, unless specially adopted

by its parliament; so that the law of the two countries has begun to

diverge from that time, and after three centuries has been in several

respects differently modified.

But even these articles of Poyning's law are less momentous than one

by which it is peculiarly known. It is enacted that no parliament

shall in future be holden in Ireland, till the king's lieutenant shall

certify to the king, under the great seal, the causes and

considerations, and all such acts as it seems to them ought to be

passed thereon, and such be affirmed by the king and his council, and

his licence to hold a parliament be obtained. Any parliament holden

contrary to this form and provision should be deemed void. Thus, by

securing the initiative power to the English council, a bridle was

placed in the mouths of every Irish parliament. It is probable also

that it was designed as a check on the lord-deputies, sometimes

powerful Irish nobles, whom it was dangerous not to employ, but still

more dangerous to trust. Whatever might be its motives, it proved in

course of time the great means of preserving the subordination of an

island, which, from the similarity of constitution, and the high

spirit of its inhabitants, was constantly panting for an independence

which her more powerful neighbour neither desired nor dared to

concede.[499]

_Royal authority revives under Henry VIII._--No subjects of the Crown

in Ireland enjoyed such influence at this time as the Earls of

Kildare; whose possessions lying chiefly within the pale, they did not

affect an ostensible independence, but generally kept in their hands

the chief authority of government, though it was the policy of the

English court, in its state of weakness, to balance them in some

measure by the rival family of Butler. But the self-confidence with

which this exaltation inspired the chief of the former house laid him

open to the vengeance of Henry VIII.; he affected, while lord-deputy,

to be surrounded by Irish lords, to assume their wild manners, and to

intermarry his daughters with their race. The counsellors of English

birth or origin dreaded this suspicious approximation to their

hereditary enemies; and Kildare, on their complaint, was compelled to

obey his sovereign's order by repairing to London. He was committed to

the Tower; on a premature report that he had suffered death, his son,

a young man to whom he had delegated the administration, took up arms

under the rash impulse of resentment; the primate was murdered by his

wild followers, but the citizens of Dublin and the reinforcements sent

from England suppressed this hasty rebellion, and its leader was sent

a prisoner to London. Five of his uncles, some of them not concerned

in the treason, perished with him on the scaffold; his father had been

more fortunate in a natural death; one sole surviving child of twelve

years old, who escaped to Flanders, became afterwards the stock from

which the great family of the Geraldines was restored.[500]

The chieftains of Ireland were justly attentive to the stern and

systematic despotism which began to characterise the English

government, displayed, as it thus was, in the destruction of an

ancient and loyal house. But their intimidation produced contrary

effects; they became more ready to profess allegiance and to put on

the exterior badges of submission; but more jealous of the Crown in

their hearts, more resolute to preserve their independence, and to

withstand any change of laws. Thus, in the latter years of Henry,

after the northern Irish had been beaten by an able deputy, Lord

Leonard Grey, and the lordship of Ireland, the title hitherto borne by

the successors of Henry II., had been raised by act of parliament to

the dignity of a kingdom,[501] the native chiefs came in and

submitted; the Earl of Desmond, almost as independent as any of the

natives, attended parliament, from which his ancestors had for some

ages claimed a dispensation; several peerages were conferred, some of

them on the old Irish families; fresh laws were about the same time

enacted to establish the English dress and language, and to keep the

colonists apart from Irish intercourse;[502] and after a disuse of two

hundred years, the authority of government was nominally recognised

throughout Munster and Connaught.[503] Yet we find that these

provinces were still in nearly the same condition as before; the

king's judges did not administer justice in them, the old Brehon

usages continued to prevail even in the territories of the new peers,

though their primogenitary succession was evidently incompatible with

Irish tanistry. A rebellion of two septs in Leinster under Edward VI.

led to a more complete reduction of their districts, called Leix and

O'Fally, which in the next reign were made shireland, by the names of

King's and Queen's County.[504] But, at the accession of Elizabeth, it

was manifest that an arduous struggle would ensue between law and

liberty; the one too nearly allied to cool-blooded oppression, the

other to ferocious barbarism.

It may be presumed, as has been already said, from the analogy of

other countries, that Ireland, if left to herself, would have settled

in time under some one line of kings, and assumed, like Scotland, much

of the feudal character, the best transitional state of a monarchy

from rudeness and anarchy to civilisation. And, if the right of female

succession had been established, it might possibly have been united to

the English Crown on a juster footing, and with far less of oppression

or bloodshed than actually took place. But it was too late to dream of

what might have been: in the middle of the sixteenth century Ireland

could have no reasonable prospect of independence; nor could that

independence have been any other than the most savage liberty, perhaps

another denomination of serviture. It was doubtless for the interest

of that people to seek the English constitution, which, at least in

theory, was entirely accorded to their country, and to press with

spontaneous homage round the throne of Elizabeth. But this was not the

interest of their ambitious chieftains, whether of Irish or English

descent, of a Slanes O'Neil, an Earl of Tyrone, an Earl of Desmond.

Their influence was irresistible among a nation ardently sensible to

the attachments of clanship, averse to innovation, and accustomed to

dread and hate a government that was chiefly known by its severities.

But the unhappy alienation of Ireland from its allegiance in part of

the queen's reign would probably not have been so complete, or at

least led to such permanent mischiefs, if the ancient national

animosities had not been exasperated by the still more invincible

prejudices of religion.

_Resistance of Irish to act of supremacy._--Henry VIII. had no sooner

prevailed on the Lords and Commons of England to renounce their

spiritual obedience to the Roman see, and to acknowledge his own

supremacy, than, as a natural consequence, he proceeded to establish

it in Ireland. In the former instance, many of his subjects, and even

his clergy, were secretly attached to the principles of the

reformation; as many others were jealous of ecclesiastical wealth, or

eager to possess it. But in Ireland the reformers had made no

progress; it had been among the effects of the pernicious separation

of the two races, that the Irish priests had little intercourse with

their bishops, who were nominated by the king, so that their synods

are commonly recited to have been holden _inter Anglicos_; the bishops

themselves were sometimes intruded by violence, more often

dispossessed by it; a total ignorance and neglect prevailed in the

church; and it is even found impossible to recover the succession of

names in some sees.[505] In a nation so ill predisposed, it was

difficult to bring about a compliance with the king's demand of

abjuring their religion; ignorant, but not indifferent, the clergy,

with Cromer the primate at their head, and most of the Lords and

Commons, in a parliament held at Dublin in 1536, resisted the act of

supremacy; which was nevertheless ultimately carried by the force of

government. Its enemies continued to withstand the new schemes of

reformation, more especially in the next reign, when they went

altogether to subvert the ancient faith. As it appeared dangerous to

summon a parliament, the English liturgy was ordered by a royal

proclamation; but Dowdall, the new primate, as stubborn an adherent of

the Romish church as his predecessor, with most of the other bishops

and clergy, refused obedience; and the reformation was never legally

established in the short reign of Edward. His eldest sister's

accession reversed of course, what had been done, and restored

tranquillity in ecclesiastical matters; for the protestants were too

few to be worth persecution, nor were even those molested who fled to

Ireland from the fires of Smithfield.

_Protestant church established by Elizabeth._--Another scene of

revolution ensued in a very few years. Elizabeth having fixed the

protestant church on a stable basis in England, sent over the Earl of

Sussex to hold an Irish parliament in 1560. The disposition of such an

assembly might be presumed hostile to the projected reformations; but,

contrary to what had occurred on this side of the channel, though the

peers were almost uniformly for the old religion, a large majority of

the bishops are said to have veered round with the times, and

supported, at least by conformity and acquiescence, the creed of the

English court. In the House of Commons, pains had been taken to secure

a majority; ten only out of twenty counties, which had at that time

been formed, received the writ of summons; and the number of

seventy-six representatives of the Anglo-Irish people was made up by

the towns, many of them under the influence of the Crown, some perhaps

containing a mixture of protestant population. The English laws of

supremacy and uniformity were enacted in nearly the same words; and

thus the common prayer was at once set up instead of the mass, but

with a singular reservation, that in those parts of the country where

the minister had no knowledge of the English language, he might read

the service in Latin. All subjects were bound to attend the public

worship of the church, and every other was interdicted.[506]

There were doubtless three arguments in favour of this compulsory

establishment of the protestant church, which must have appeared so

conclusive to Elizabeth and her council, that no one in that age could

have disputed them without incurring, among other hazards, that of

being accounted a lover of unreasonable paradoxes. The first was, that

the protestant religion being true, it was the queen's duty to take

care that her subjects should follow no other; the second, that, being

an absolute monarch, or something like it, and a very wise princess,

she had a better right to order what doctrine they should believe,

than they could have to choose for themselves; the third, that

Ireland, being as a handmaid, and a conquered country, must wait, in

all important matters, on the pleasure of the greater island, and be

accommodated to its revolutions. And, as it was natural that the queen

and her advisers should not reject maxims which all the rest of the

world entertained, merely because they were advantageous to

themselves, we need not perhaps be very acrimonious in censuring the

laws whereon the church of Ireland is founded. But it is still equally

true that they involve a principle essentially unjust, and that they

have enormously aggravated, both in the age of Elizabeth and long

afterwards, the calamities and the disaffection of Ireland. An

ecclesiastical establishment, that is, the endowment and privileges of

a particular religious society, can have no advantages (relatively at

least to the community where it exists), but its tendency to promote

in that community good order and virtue, religious knowledge and

edification. But, to accomplish this end in any satisfactory manner,

it must be their church, and not that merely of the government; it

should exist for the people, and in the people, and with the people.

This indeed is so manifest, that the government of Elizabeth never

contemplated the separation of a great majority as licensed dissidents

from the ordinances established for their instruction. It was

undoubtedly presumed, as it was in England, that the church and

commonwealth, according to Hooker's language, were to be two

denominations of the same society; and that every man in Ireland who

appertained to the one ought to embrace, and in due season would

embrace, the communion of the other. There might be ignorance, there

might be obstinacy, there might be feebleness of conscience for a

time; and perhaps some connivance would be shown to these; but that

the prejudices of a majority should ultimately prevail so as to

determine the national faith, that it should even obtain a legitimate

indulgence for its own mode of worship, was abominable before God, and

incompatible with the sovereign authority.

This sort of reasoning, half bigotry, half despotism, was nowhere so

preposterously displayed as in Ireland. The numerical majority is not

always to be ascertained with certainty; and some regard may fairly,

or rather necessarily, be had to rank, to knowledge, to concentration.

But in that island, the disciples of the reformation were in the most

inconsiderable proportion among the Anglo-Irish colony, as well as

among the natives; their church was a government without subjects, a

college of shepherds without sheep. I am persuaded that this was not

intended nor expected to be a permanent condition; but such were the

difficulties which the state of that unhappy nation presented, or such

the negligence of its rulers, that scarce any pains were taken in the

age of Elizabeth, nor indeed in subsequent ages, to win the people's

conviction or to eradicate their superstitions, except by penal

statutes and the sword. The Irish language was universally spoken

without the pale; it had even made great progress within it; the

clergy were principally of that nation; yet no translation of the

scriptures, the chief means through which the reformation had been

effected in England and Germany, nor even of the regular liturgy, was

made into that tongue; nor was it possible, perhaps, that any popular

instruction should be carried far in Elizabeth's reign, either by

public authority, or by the ministrations of the reformed clergy. Yet

neither among the Welsh nor the Scots Highlanders, though Celtic

tribes, and not much better in civility of life at that time than the

Irish, was the ancient religion long able to withstand the sedulous

preachers of reformation.

It is evident from the history of Elizabeth's reign, that the forcible

dispossession of the catholic clergy, and their consequent activity in

deluding a people too open at all times to their counsels, aggravated

the rebellious spirit of the Irish, and rendered their obedience to

the law more unattainable. But, even independently of this motive, the

Desmonds and Tyrones would have tried, as they did, the chances of

insurrection, rather than abdicate their unlicensed but ancient

chieftainship. It must be admitted that, if they were faithless in

promises of loyalty, the Crown's representatives in Ireland set no

good example; and, when they saw the spoliations of property by

violence or pretext of law, the sudden executions on alleged treasons,

the breaches of treaty, sometimes even the assassinations, by which a

despotic policy went onward in its work of subjugation, they did but

play the usual game of barbarians in opposing craft and perfidy,

rather more gross perhaps and notorious, to the same engines of a

dissembling government.[507] Yet if we can put any trust in our own

testimonies, the great families were, by mismanagement and dissension,

the curse of their vassals. Sir Henry Sidney represents to the queen,

in 1567, the wretched condition of the southern and western counties

in the vast territories of the Earls of Ormond, Desmond, and

Clanricarde.[508] "An unmeasurable tract," he says, "is now waste and

uninhabited, which of late years was well tilled and pastured." "A

more pleasant nor a more desolate land I never saw than from Youghall

to Limerick."[509] "So far hath that policy, or rather lack of policy,

in keeping dissension among them prevailed, as now, albeit all that

are alive would become honest and live in quiet, yet are there not

left alive in those two provinces the twentieth person necessary to

inhabit the same."[510] Yet this was but the first scene of calamity.

After the rebellion of the last Earl of Desmond, the counties of Cork

and Kerry, his ample patrimony, were so wasted by war and military

executions, and famine and pestilence, that, according to a

contemporary writer, who expresses the truth with hyperbolical energy,

"the land itself, which before those wars was populous, well

inhabited, and rich in all the good blessings of God, being plenteous

of corn, full of cattle, well stored with fruit and sundry other good

commodities, is now become waste and barren, yielding no fruits, the

pastures no cattle, the fields no corn, the air no birds, the seas,

though full of fish, yet to them yielding nothing. Finally, every way

the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and

beast, that whosoever did travel from the one end unto the other of

all Munster, even from Waterford to the head of Limerick, which is

about six-score miles, he should not meet any man, woman, or child,

saving in towns and cities; nor yet see any beast but the very wolves,

the foxes, and other like ravening beasts."[511] The severity of Sir

Arthur Grey, at this time deputy, was such that Elizabeth was assured

he had left little for her to reign over but ashes and carcasses; and,

though not by any means of too indulgent a nature, she was induced to

recall him.[512] His successor, Sir John Perrott, who held the

viceroyalty only from 1584 to 1587, was distinguished for a sense of

humanity and justice, together with an active zeal for the enforcement

of law. Sheriffs were now appointed for the five counties into which

Connaught had some years before been parcelled; and even for Ulster,

all of which, except Antrim and Down, had hitherto been undivided, as

well as ungoverned.[513] Yet even this apparently wholesome innovation

aggravated at first the servitude of the natives, whom the new

sheriffs were prone to oppress.[514] Perrott, the best of Irish

governors, soon fell a sacrifice to a court intrigue and the queen's

jealousy; and the remainder of her reign was occupied with almost

unceasing revolts of the Earl of Tyrone, head of the great sept of

O'Neil in Ulster, instigated by Rome and Spain, and endangering, far

more than any preceding rebellion, her sovereignty over Ireland.

The old English of the pale were little more disposed to embrace the

reformed religion, or to acknowledge the despotic principles of a

Tudor administration, than the Irish themselves; and though they did

not join in the rebellions of those they so much hated, the queen's

deputies had sometimes to encounter a more legal resistance. A new

race of colonists had begun to appear in their train, eager for

possessions, and for the rewards of the Crown, contemptuous of the

natives, whether aboriginal or of English descent, and in consequence

the objects of their aversion or jealousy.[515] Hence in a parliament

summoned by Sir Henry Sidney in 1569, the first after that which had

reluctantly established the protestant church, a strong country party,

as it may be termed, was formed in opposition to the Crown. They

complained with much justice of the management by which irregular

returns of members had been made; some from towns not incorporated,

and which had never possessed the elective right; some self-chosen

sheriffs and magistrates; some mere English strangers, returned for

places which they had never seen. The judges, on reference to their

opinion, declared the elections illegal in the two former cases: but

confirmed the non-resident burgesses, which still left a majority for

the court.

The Irish patriots, after this preliminary discussion, opposed a new

tax upon wines, and a bill for the suspension of Poyning's law.

Hooker, an Englishman, chosen for Athenry, to whose account we are

chiefly indebted for our knowledge of these proceedings, sustained the

former in that high tone of a prerogative lawyer which always best

pleased his mistress. "Her majesty," he said, "of her own royal

authority, might and may establish the same without any of your

consents, as she hath already done the like in England; saving of her

courtesy, it pleaseth her to have it pass with your own consents by

order of law, that she might thereby have the better trial and

assurance of your dutifulness and good-will towards her." This

language from a stranger, unusual among a people proud of their

birthright in the common constitution, and little accustomed even to

legitimate obedience, raised such a flame that the house was

adjourned; and it was necessary to protect the utterer of such

doctrines by a guard. The duty on wines, laid aside for the time, was

carried in a subsequent session in the same year; and several other

statutes were enacted, which, as they did not affect the pale, may

possibly have encountered no opposition. A part of Ulster, forfeited

by Slanes O'Neil, a rebel almost as formidable in the first years of

this reign as his kinsman Tyrone was near its conclusion, was vested

in the Crown; and some provisions were made for the reduction of the

whole island into shires. Connaught, in consequence, which had passed

for one county, was divided into five.[516]

In Sir Henry Sidney's second government, which began in 1576, the pale

was excited to a more strenuous resistance, by an attempt to subvert

their liberties. It had long been usual to obtain a sum of money for

the maintenance of the household and of the troops, by an assessment

settled between the council and principal inhabitants of each

district. This, it was contended by the government, was instead of the

contribution of victuals which the queen, by her prerogative of

purveyance, might claim at a fixed rate, much lower than the current

price.[517] It was maintained on the other side to be a voluntary

benevolence. Sidney now devised a plan to change it for a cess or

permanent composition for every plough-land, without regard to those

which claimed exemption from the burthen of purveyance; and imposed

this new tax by order of council, as sufficiently warrantable by the

royal prerogative. The landowners of the pale remonstrated against

such a violation of their franchises, and were met by the usual

arguments. They appealed to the text of the laws; the deputy replied

by precedents against law. "Her majesty's prerogative," he said, "is

not limited by Magna Charta, nor found in _Littleton's Tenures_, nor

written in the books of Assizes, but registered in the remembrances of

her majesty's exchequer, and remains in the rolls of records of the

Tower."[518] It was proved, according to him, by the most ancient and

credible records in the realm, that such charges had been imposed from

time to time, sometimes by the name of cess, sometimes by other names,

and more often by the governor and council, with such of the nobility

as came on summons, than by parliament. These irregularities did not

satisfy the gentry of the pale, who refused compliance with the

demand, and still alleged that it was contrary both to reason and law

to impose any charge upon them without parliament or grand council. A

deputation was sent to England in the name of all the subjects of the

English pale. Sidney was not backward in representing their behaviour

as the effect of disaffection; nor was Elizabeth likely to recede,

where both her authority and her revenue were apparently concerned.

But, after some demonstrations of resentment in committing the

delegates to the Tower, she took alarm at the clamours of their

countrymen; and, aware that the King of Spain was ready to throw

troops into Ireland, desisted with that prudence which always kept her

passion in command, accepting a voluntary composition for seven years

in the accustomed manner.[519]

James I. ascended the throne with as great advantages in Ireland as in

his other kingdoms. That island was already pacified by the submission

of Tyrone; and all was prepared for a final establishment of the

English power upon the basis of equal laws and civilised customs; a

reformation which in some respects the king was not ill fitted to

introduce. His reign is perhaps on the whole the most important in the

constitutional history of Ireland, and that from which the present

scheme of society in that country is chiefly to be deduced.

1. The laws of supremacy and uniformity, copied from those of England,

were incompatible with any exercise of the Roman catholic worship, or

with the admission of any members of that church into civil trust. It

appears indeed that they were by no means strictly executed during the

queen's reign; yet the priests were of course excluded, so far as the

English authority prevailed, from their churches and benefices; the

former were chiefly ruined; the latter fell to protestant strangers,

or to conforming ministers of native birth, dissolute and ignorant, as

careless to teach as the people were predetermined not to listen.[520]

The priests, many of them, engaged in a conspiracy with the court of

Spain against the queen and her successor, and all deeming themselves

unjustly and sacrilegiously despoiled, kept up the spirit of

disaffection, or at least of resistance to religious innovation,

throughout the kingdom.[521] The accession of James seemed a sort of

signal for casting off the yoke of heresy; in Cork, Waterford, and

other cities, the people, not without consent of the magistrates, rose

to restore the catholic worship; they seized the churches, ejected the

ministers, marched in public processions, and shut their gates against

the lord deputy. He soon reduced them to obedience; but almost the

whole nation was of the same faith, and disposed to struggle for a

public toleration. This was beyond every question their natural right,

and as certainly was it the best policy of England to have granted it;

but the king-craft and the priest-craft of the day taught other

lessons. Priests were ordered by proclamation to quit the realm; the

magistrates and chief citizens of Dublin were committed to prison for

refusing to frequent the protestant church. The gentry of the pale

remonstrated at the court of Westminster; and, though their delegates

atoned for their self-devoted courage by imprisonment, the secret

menace of expostulation seems to have produced, as usual, some effect,

in a direction to the lord deputy that he should endeavour to

conciliate the recusants by instruction. These penalties of recusancy,

from whatever cause, were very little enforced; but the catholics

murmured at the oath of supremacy, which shut them out from every

distinction: though here again the execution of the law was sometimes

mitigated, they justly thought themselves humiliated, and the

liberties of their country endangered, by standing thus at the mercy

of the Crown. And it is plain that, even within the pale, the

compulsory statutes were at least far better enforced than under the

queen; while in those provinces within which the law now first began

to have its course, the difference was still more acutely

perceived.[522]

2. _English law established throughout Ireland._--The first care of

the new administration was to perfect the reduction of Ireland into a

civilised kingdom. Sheriffs were appointed throughout Ulster; the

territorial divisions of counties and baronies were extended to the

few districts that still wanted them; the judges of assize went their

circuits everywhere; the customs of tanistry and gavelkind were

determined by the court of king's bench to be void; the Irish lords

surrendered their estates to the Crown, and received them back by the

English tenures of knight-service or socage; an exact account was

taken of the lands each of these chieftains possessed, that he might

be invested with none but those he occupied; while his tenants,

exempted from those uncertain Irish exactions, the source of their

servitude and misery, were obliged only to an annual quit-rent, and

held their own lands by a free tenure. The king's writ was obeyed, at

least in profession, throughout Ireland; after four centuries of

lawlessness and misgovernment, a golden period was anticipated by the

English courtiers; nor can we hesitate to recognise the influence of

enlightened, and sometimes of benevolent minds, in the scheme of

government now carried into effect.[523] But two unhappy maxims

debased their motives, and discredited their policy; the first, that

none but the true religion, or the state's religion, could be suffered

to exist in the eye of the law; the second, that no pretext could be

too harsh or iniquitous to exclude men of a different race or

erroneous faith from their possessions.

3. _Settlements of English in Munster, Ulster, and other parts._--The

suppression of Slanes O'Neil's revolt in 1567 seems to have suggested

the thought, or afforded the means, of perfecting the conquest of

Ireland by the same methods that had been used to commence it, an

extensive plantation of English colonists. The law of forfeiture came

in very conveniently to further this great scheme of policy. O'Neil

was attainted in the parliament of 1569; the territories which

acknowledged him as chieftain, comprising a large part of Down and

Antrim, were vested in the Crown; and a natural son of Sir Thomas

Smith, secretary of state, who is said to have projected this

settlement, was sent with a body of English to take possession of the

lands thus presumed in law to be vacant. This expedition however

failed of success; the native occupants not acquiescing in this

doctrine of our lawyers.[524] But fresh adventurers settled in

different parts of Ireland; and particularly after the Earl of

Desmond's rebellion in 1583, whose forfeiture was reckoned at 574,628

Irish acres, though it seems probable that this is more than double

the actual confiscation.[525] These lands in the counties of Cork and

Kerry, left almost desolate by the oppression of the Geraldines

themselves, and the far greater cruelty of the government in subduing

them, were parcelled out among English undertakers at low rents, but

on condition of planting eighty-six families on an estate of 12,000

acres; and in like proportion for smaller possessions. None of the

native Irish were to be admitted as tenants; but neither this nor the

other conditions were strictly observed by the undertakers, and the

colony suffered alike by their rapacity and their neglect.[526] The

oldest of the second race of English families in Ireland are found

among the descendants of these Munster colonists. We find among them

also some distinguished names, that have left no memorial in their

posterity; Sir Walter Raleigh, who here laid the foundation of his

transitory success, and one not less in glory, and hardly less in

misfortune, Edmund Spenser. In a country house once belonging to the

Desmonds, on the banks of the Mulla, near Doneraile, the three first

books of the _Faery Queen_ were written; and here too the poet awoke

to the sad realities of life, and has left us, in his _Account of the

State of Ireland_, the most full and authentic document that

illustrates its condition. This treatise abounds with judicious

observations; but we regret the disposition to recommend an extreme

severity in dealing with the native Irish, which ill becomes the

sweetness of his muse.

The two great native chieftains of the north, the Earls of Tyrone and

Tyrconnel, a few years after the king's accession, engaged, or were

charged with having engaged, in some new conspiracy, and flying from

justice, were attainted of treason. Five hundred thousand acres in

Ulster were thus forfeited to the Crown; and on this was laid the

foundation of that great colony, which has rendered that province,

from being the seat of the wildest natives, the most flourishing, the

most protestant, and the most enlightened part of Ireland. This

plantation, though projected no doubt by the king and by Lord Bacon,

was chiefly carried into effect by the lord deputy, Sir Arthur

Chichester, a man of great capacity, judgment, and prudence. He caused

surveys to be taken of the several counties, fixed upon proper places

for building castles or founding towns, and advised that the lands

should be assigned, partly to English or Scots undertakers, partly to

servitors of the Crown, as they were called, men who had possessed

civil or military offices in Ireland, partly to the old Irish, even

some of those who had been concerned in Tyrone's rebellion. These and

their tenants were exempted from the oath of supremacy imposed on the

new planters. From a sense of the error committed in the queen's time

by granting vast tracts to single persons, the lands were distributed

in three classes, of 2000, 1500, and 1000 English acres; and in every

county one-half of the assignments was to the smallest, the rest to

the other two classes. Those who received 2000 acres were bound within

four years to build a castle and bawn, or strong court-yard; the

second class within two years to build a stone or brick house with a

bawn; the third class a bawn only. The first were to plant on their

lands within three years forty-eight able men, eighteen years old or

upwards, born in England or the inland parts of Scotland; the others

to do the same in proportion to their estates. All the grantees were

to reside within five years, in person or by approved agents, and to

keep sufficient store of arms; they were not to alienate their lands

without the king's licence, nor to let them for less than twenty-one

years; their tenants were to live in houses built in the English

manner, and not dispersed, but in villages. The natives held their

lands by the same conditions, except that of building fortified

houses; but they were bound to take no Irish exactions from their

tenants, nor to suffer the practice of wandering with their cattle

from place to place. In this manner were these escheated lands of

Ulster divided among a hundred and four English and Scots undertakers,

fifty-six servitors, and two hundred and eighty-six natives. All lands

which through the late anarchy and change of religion had been lost to

the church were restored; and some further provision was made for the

beneficed clergy. Chichester, as was just, received an allotment in a

far ampler measure than the common servants of the Crown.[527]

This noble design was not altogether completed according to the

platform. The native Irish, to whom some regard was shown by these

regulations, were less equitably dealt with by the colonists, and by

those other adventurers whom England continually sent forth to enrich

themselves and maintain her sovereignty. Pretexts were sought to

establish the Crown's title over the possessions of the Irish; they

were assailed through a law which they had but just adopted, and of

which they knew nothing, by the claims of a litigious and encroaching

prerogative, against which no prescription could avail, nor any plea

of fairness and equity obtain favour in the sight of English-born

judges. Thus, in the King and Queen's counties, and in those of

Leitrim, Longford, and Westmeath, 385,000 acres were adjudged to the

Crown, and 66,000 in that of Wicklow. The greater part was indeed

regranted to the native owners on a permanent tenure; and some apology

might be found for this harsh act of power in the means it gave of

civilising those central regions, always the shelter of rebels and

robbers; yet this did not take off the sense of forcible spoliation,

which every foreign tyranny renders so intolerable. Surrenders were

extorted by menaces; juries refusing to find the Crown's title were

fined by the council; many were dispossessed without any compensation,

and sometimes by gross perjury, sometimes by barbarous cruelty. It is

said that in the county of Longford the Irish had scarcely one-third

of their former possessions assigned to them, out of three-fourths

which had been intended by the king. Those who had been most faithful,

those even who had conformed to the protestant church, were little

better treated than the rest. Hence, though in many new plantations

great signs of improvement were perceptible, though trade and tillage

increased, and towns were built, a secret rankling for those injuries

was at the heart of Ireland; and in these two leading grievances, the

penal laws against recusants, and the inquisition into defective

titles, we trace, beyond a shadow of doubt, the primary source of the

rebellion in 1641.[528]

4. _Constitution of Irish parliament._--Before the reign of James,

Ireland had been regarded either as a conquered country, or as a mere

colony of English, according to the persons or the provinces which

were in question. The whole island now took a common character, that

of a subordinate kingdom, inseparable from the English Crown, and

dependent also, at least as was taken for granted by our lawyers, on

the English legislature; but governed after the model of our

constitution, by nearly the same laws, and claiming entirely the same

liberties. It was a natural consequence, that an Irish parliament

should represent, or affect to represent, every part of the kingdom.

None of Irish blood had ever sat, either lords or commoners, till near

the end of Henry VIII.'s reign. The representation of the twelve

counties, into which Munster and part of Leinster were divided, and of

a few towns, which existed in the reign of Edward III., if not later,

was reduced by the defection of so many English families to the limits

of the four shires of the pale.[529] The old counties, when they

returned to their allegiance under Henry VIII., and those afterwards

formed by Mary and Elizabeth, increased the number of the Commons:

though in that of 1567, as has been mentioned, the writs for some of

them were arbitrarily withheld. The two queens did not neglect to

create new boroughs, in order to balance the more independent

representatives of the old Anglo-Irish families by the English

retainers of the court. Yet it is said that in seventeen counties out

of thirty-two, into which Ireland was finally parcelled, there was no

town that returned burgesses to parliament before the reign of James

I., and the whole number in the rest was but about thirty.[530] He

created at once forty new boroughs, or possibly rather more; for the

number of the Commons, in 1613, appears to have been 232.[531] It was

several times afterwards augmented, and reached its complement of 300

in 1692.[532] These grants of the elective franchise were made, not

indeed improvidently, but with very sinister intents towards the

freedom of parliament; two-thirds of an Irish House of Commons, as it

stood in the eighteenth century, being returned with the mere farce of

election by wretched tenants of the aristocracy.

The province of Connaught, with the adjoining county of Clare, was

still free from the intrusion of English colonists. The Irish had

complied, both under Elizabeth and James, with the usual conditions of

surrendering their estates to the Crown in order to receive them back

by a legal tenure. But, as these grants, by some negligence, had not

been duly enrolled in Chancery (though the proprietors had paid large

fees for that security), the council were not ashamed to suggest, or

the king to adopt, an iniquitous scheme of declaring the whole country

forfeited, in order to form another plantation as extensive as that of

Ulster. The remonstrances of those whom such a project threatened put

a present stop to it; and Charles, on ascending the throne, found it

better to hear the proposals of his Irish subjects for a composition.

After some time, it was agreed between the court and the Irish agents

in London, that the kingdom should voluntarily contribute £120,000 in

three years by equal payments, in return for certain graces, as they

were called, which the king was to bestow. These went to secure the

subject's title to his lands against the Crown after sixty years'

possession, and gave the people of Connaught leave to enrol their

grants, relieving also the settlers in Ulster or other places from the

penalties they had incurred by similar neglect. The abuses of the

council-chamber in meddling with private causes, the oppression of

the court of wards, the encroachments of military authority, and

excesses of the soldiers were restrained. A free trade with the king's

dominions or those of friendly powers was admitted. The recusants were

allowed to sue for livery of their estates in the court of wards, and

to practise in courts of law, on taking an oath of mere allegiance

instead of that of supremacy. Unlawful exactions and severities of the

clergy were prohibited. These reformations of unquestionable and

intolerable evils, as beneficial as those contained nearly at the same

moment in the Petition of Right, would have saved Ireland long ages of

calamity, if they had been as faithfully completed as they seemed to

be graciously conceded. But Charles I. emulated, on this occasion, the

most perfidious tyrants. It had been promised by an article in these

graces, that a parliament should be held to confirm them. Writs of

summons were accordingly issued by the lord deputy; but with no

consideration of that fundamental rule established by Poyning's law,

that no parliament should be held in Ireland until the king's licence

be obtained. This irregularity was of course discovered in England,

and the writs of summons declared to be void. It would have been easy

to remedy this mistake, if such it were, by proceeding in the regular

course with a royal licence. But this was withheld; no parliament was

called for a considerable time; and, when the three years had elapsed

during which the voluntary contribution had been payable, the king

threatened to straiten his graces if it were not renewed.[533]

He had now placed in the vice-royalty of Ireland that star of

exceeding brightness, but sinister influence, the willing and able

instrument of despotic power, Lord Strafford. In his eyes the country

he governed belonged to the Crown by right of conquest; neither the

original natives, nor even the descendants of the conquerors

themselves, possessing any privileges which could interfere with its

sovereignty. He found two parties extremely jealous of each other, yet

each loth to recognise an absolute prerogative, and thus in some

measure having a common cause. The protestants, not a little from

bigotry, but far more from a persuasion that they held their estates

on the tenure of a rigid religious monopoly, could not endure to hear

of a toleration of popery, which, though originally demanded, was not

even mentioned in the king's graces; and disapproved the indulgence

shown by those graces to recusants, which is said to have been

followed by an impolitic ostentation of the Romish worship.[534] They

objected to a renewal of the contribution both as the price of this

dangerous tolerance of recusancy, and as debarring the protestant

subjects of their constitutional right to grant money only in

parliament. Wentworth, however, insisted upon its payment for another

year, at the expiration of which a parliament was to be called.[535]

The king did not come without reluctance into this last measure,

hating, as he did, the very name of parliament; but the lord deputy

confided in his own energy to make it innoxious and serviceable. They

conspired together how to extort the most from Ireland, and concede

the least; Charles, in truth, showing a most selfish indifference to

anything but his own revenue, and a most dishonourable unfaithfulness

to his word.[536] The parliament met in 1634, with a strong desire of

insisting on the confirmation of the graces they had already paid for;

but Wentworth had so balanced the protestant and recusant parties,

employed so skilfully the resources of fair promises and intimidation,

that he procured six subsidies to be granted before a prorogation,

without any mutual concession from the Crown.[537] It had been agreed

that a second session should be held for confirming the graces; but in

this, as might be expected, the supplies having been provided, the

request of both houses that they might receive the stipulated reward

met with a cold reception; and ultimately the most essential articles,

those establishing a sixty years' prescription against the Crown, and

securing the titles of proprietors in Clare and Connaught, as well as

those which relieved the catholics in the court of wards from the oath

of supremacy, were laid aside. Statutes, on the other hand, were

borrowed from England, especially that of uses, which cut off the

methods they had hitherto employed for evading the law's

severity.[538]

Strafford had always determined to execute the project of the late

reign with respect to the western counties. He proceeded to hold an

inquisition in each county of Connaught, and summoned juries in order

to preserve a mockery of justice in the midst of tyranny. They were

required to find the king's title to all the lands, on such evidence

as could be found and was thought fit to be laid before them; and were

told that what would be best for their own interests would be to

return such a verdict as the king desired, what would be best for his,

to do the contrary; since he was able to establish it without their

consent, and wished only to invest them graciously with a large part

of what they now unlawfully withheld from him. These menaces had their

effect in all counties except that of Galway, where a jury stood out

obstinately against the Crown, and being in consequence, as well as

the sheriff, summoned to the castle in Dublin, were sentenced to an

enormous fine. Yet the remonstrances of the western proprietors were

so clamorous that no steps were immediately taken for carrying into

effect the designed plantation; and the great revolutions of Scotland

and England which soon ensued gave another occupation to the mind of

Lord Strafford.[539] It has never been disputed that a more uniform

administration of justice in ordinary cases, a stricter coercion of

outrage, a more extensive commerce, evidenced by the augmentation of

customs, above all the foundation of the great linen manufacture in

Ulster, distinguished the period of his government.[540] But it is

equally manifest that neither the reconcilement of parties, nor their

affection to the English Crown, could be the result of his arbitrary

domination; and that, having healed no wound he found, he left others

to break out after his removal. The despotic violence of this minister

towards private persons, and those of great eminence, is in some

instances well known by the proceedings on his impeachment, and in

others is sufficiently familiar by our historical and biographical

literature. It is indeed remarkable that we find among the objects of

his oppression and insult all that most illustrates the contemporary

annals of Ireland, the venerable learning of Usher, the pious

integrity of Bedell, the experienced wisdom of Cork, and the early

virtue of Clanricarde.

The parliament assembled by Strafford in 1640 began with loud

professions of gratitude to the king for the excellent governor he had

appointed over them; they voted subsidies to pay a large army raised

to serve against the Scots, and seemed eager to give every

manifestation of zealous loyalty.[541] But after their prorogation,

and during the summer of that year, as rapid a tendency to a great

revolution became visible as in England; the Commons, when they met

again, seemed no longer the same men; and, after the fall of their

great viceroy, they coalesced with his English enemies to consummate

his destruction. Hate smothered by fear, but inflamed by the same

cause, broke forth in a remonstrance of the Commons, presented through

a committee, not to the king, but a superior power, the long

parliament of England. The two houses united to avail themselves of

the advantageous moment, and to extort, as they very justly might,

from the necessities of Charles that confirmation of his promises

which had been refused in his prosperity. Both parties, catholic as

well as protestant, acted together in this national cause, shunning

for the present to bring forward those differences which were not the

less implacable for being thus deferred. The catalogue of temporal

grievances was long enough to produce this momentary coalition: it

might be groundless in some articles, it might be exaggerated in more,

it might in many be of ancient standing; but few can pretend to deny

that it exhibits a true picture of the misgovernment of Ireland at all

times, but especially under the Earl of Strafford. The king, in May

1641, consented to the greater part of their demands; but

unfortunately they were never granted by law.[542]

But the disordered condition of his affairs gave encouragement to

hopes far beyond what any parliamentary remonstrances could realise;

hopes long cherished when they had seemed vain to the world, but such

as courage, and bigotry, and resentment would never lay aside. The

court of Madrid had not abandoned its connection with the disaffected

Irish, especially of the priesthood; the son of Tyrone, and many

followers of that cause, served in its armies; and there seems much

reason to believe that in the beginning of 1641 the project of

insurrection was formed among the expatriated Irish, not without the

concurrence of Spain, and perhaps of Richelieu.[543] The government

had passed from the vigorous hands of Strafford into those of two

lords justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase, men by no

means equal to the critical circumstances wherein they were placed,

though possibly too severely censured by those who do not look at

their extraordinary difficulties with sufficient candour. The primary

causes of the rebellion are not to be found in their supineness or

misconduct, but in the two great sins of the English government; in

the penal laws as to religion which pressed on almost the whole

people, and in the systematic iniquity which despoiled them of their

possessions. They could not be expected to miss such an occasion of

revolt; it was an hour of revolution, when liberty was won by arms,

and ancient laws were set at nought; the very success of their worst

enemies, the covenanters in Scotland, seemed the assurance of their

own victory, as it was the reproach of their submission.[544]

_Rebellion of 1641._--The rebellion broke out, as is well known, by a

sudden massacre of the Scots and English in Ulster, designed no doubt

by a vindictive and bigoted people to extirpate those races, and, if

contemporary authorities are to be credited, falling little short of

this in its execution. Their evident exaggeration has long been

acknowledged; but possibly the scepticism of later writers has

extenuated rather too much the horrors of this massacre.[545] It was

certainly not the crime of the catholics generally; nor, perhaps, in

the other provinces of Ireland are they chargeable with more cruelty

than their opponents.[546] Whatever may have been the original

intentions of the lords of the pale, or of the Anglo-Irish professing

the old religion in general (which has been a problem in history), a

few months only elapsed before they were almost universally engaged in

the war.[547] The old distinctions of Irish and English blood were

obliterated by those of religion; and it became a desperate contention

whether the majority of the nation should be trodden to the dust by

forfeiture and persecution, or the Crown lose everything beyond a

nominal sovereignty over Ireland. The insurgents, who might once

perhaps have been content with a repeal of the penal laws, grew

naturally in their demands through success, or rather through the

inability of the English government to keep the field, and began to

claim the entire establishment of their religion; terms in themselves

not unreasonable, nor apparently disproportionate to their

circumstances, and which the king was, in his distresses, nearly ready

to concede, but such as never could have been obtained from a third

party, of whom they did not sufficiently think, the parliament and

people of England. The Commons had, at the very beginning of the

rebellion, voted that all the forfeited estates of the insurgents

should be allotted to such as should aid in reducing the island to

obedience; and thus rendered the war desperate on the part of the

Irish.[548]

_Subjugation of the Irish by Cromwell._--No great efforts were made,

however, for some years; but, after the king's person had fallen into

their hands, the victorious party set themselves in earnest to effect

the conquest of Ireland. This was achieved by Cromwell and his

powerful army after several years, with such bloodshed and rigour

that, in the opinion of Lord Clarendon, the sufferings of that nation,

from the outset of the rebellion to its close, have never been

surpassed but by those of the Jews in their destruction by Titus.

_Restoration of Charles II._--At the restoration of Charles II. there

were in Ireland two people, one either of native, or old English

blood, the other of recent settlement; one catholic, the other

protestant; one humbled by defeat, the other insolent with victory;

one regarding the soil as his ancient inheritance, the other as his

acquisition and reward. There were three religions; for the Scots of

Ulster and the army of Cromwell had never owned the episcopal church,

which for several years had fallen almost as low as that of Rome.

There were claims, not easily set aside on the score of right, to the

possession of lands, which the entire island could not satisfy. In

England, little more had been necessary than to revive a suspended

constitution: in Ireland, it was something beyond a new constitution

and code of law that was required; it was the titles and boundaries

of each man's private estate that were to be litigated and adjudged.

The episcopal church was restored with no delay, as never having been

abolished by law; and a parliament, containing no catholics and not

many vehement nonconformists, proceeded to the great work of settling

the struggles of opposite claimants, by a fresh partition of the

kingdom.[549]

_Act of Settlement._--The king had already published a declaration for

the settlement of Ireland, intended as the basis of an act of

parliament. The adventurers, or those who, on the faith of several

acts passed in England in 1642, with the assent of the late king, had

advanced money for quelling the rebellion, in consideration of lands

to be allotted to them in certain stipulated proportions, and who had,

in general, actually received them from Cromwell, were confirmed in

all the lands possessed by them on the 7th of May 1659; and all the

deficiencies were to be supplied before the next year. The army was

confirmed in the estates already allotted for their pay, with an

exception, of church lands, and some others. Those officers who had

served in the royal army against the Irish before 1649 were to be

satisfied for their pay, at least to the amount of five-eighths, out

of lands to be allotted for that purpose. Innocent papists, that is,

such as were not concerned in the rebellion, and whom Cromwell had

arbitrarily transplanted into Connaught, were to be restored to their

estates, and those who possessed them to be indemnified. Those who had

submitted to the peace of 1648, and had not been afterwards in arms,

if they had not accepted lands in Connaught, were also to be restored,

as soon as those who now possessed them should be satisfied for their

expenses. Those who had served the king abroad, and thirty-six

enumerated persons of the Irish nobility and gentry, were to be put on

the same footing as the last. The precedency of restitution, an

important point where the claims exceeded the means of satisfying

them, was to be in the order above specified.[550]

This declaration was by no means pleasing to all concerned. The loyal

officers, who had served before 1649, murmured that they had little

prospect of more than twelve shillings and sixpence in the pound,

while the republican army of Cromwell would receive the full value.

The Irish were more loud in their complaints; no one was to be held

innocent who had been in the rebel quarters before the cessation of

1643; and other qualifications were added so severe that hardly any

could expect to come within them. In the House of Commons the

majority, consisting very much of the new interests, that is, of the

adventurers and army, were in favour of adhering to the declaration.

In the House of Lords it was successfully urged that, by gratifying

the new men to the utmost, no fund would be left for indemnifying the

loyalists, or the innocent Irish. It was proposed that, if the lands

not yet disposed of should not be sufficient to satisfy all the

interests for which the king had meant to provide by his declaration,

there should be a proportional defalcation out of every class for the

benefit of the whole. These discussions were adjourned to London,

where delegates of the different parties employed every resource of

intrigue at the English court. The king's natural bias towards the

religion of the Irish had rendered him their friend; and they seemed,

at one time, likely to reverse much that had been intended against

them; but their agents grew rash with hope, assumed a tone of

superiority which ill became their condition, affected to justify

their rebellion, and finally so much disgusted their sovereign that he

ordered the act of settlement to be sent back with little alteration,

except the insertion of some more Irish nominees.[551]

The execution of this act was intrusted to English commissioners, from

whom it was reasonable to hope for an impartiality which could not be

found among the interested classes. Notwithstanding the rigorous

proofs nominally exacted, more of the Irish were pronounced innocent

than the Commons had expected; and the new possessors having the sway

of that assembly, a clamour was raised that the popish interest had

prevailed; some talked of defending their estates by arms, some even

meddled in fanatical conspiracies against the government; it was

insisted that a closer inquisition should be made, and stricter

qualifications demanded. The manifest deficiency of lands to supply

all the claimants for whom the act of settlement provided, made it

necessary to resort to a supplemental measure, called the act of

explanation. The adventurers and soldiers relinquished one-third of

the estates enjoyed by them on the 7th of May 1659. Twenty Irish

nominees were added to those who were to be restored by the king's

favour; but all those who had not already been adjudged innocent, more

than three thousand in number, were absolutely cut off from any hope

of restitution. The great majority of these no question were guilty;

yet they justly complained of this confiscation without trial.[552]

Upon the whole result, the Irish catholics having previously held

about two-thirds of the kingdom, lost more than one-half of their

possessions by forfeiture on account of their rebellion. If we can

rely at all on the calculations, made almost in the infancy of

political arithmetic by one of its most diligent investigators, they

were diminished also by much more than one-third through the

calamities of that period.[553]

It is more easy to censure the particular inequalities, or even, in

some respects, injustice of the act of settlement, than to point out

what better course was to have been adopted. The readjustment of all

private rights after so entire a destruction of their landmarks could

only be effected by the coarse process of general rules. Nor does it

appear that the catholics, considered as a great mass, could

reasonably murmur against the confiscation of half their estates,

after a civil war wherein it is evident that so large a proportion of

themselves were concerned.[554] Charles, it is true, had not been

personally resisted by the insurgents; but, as chief of England, he

stood in the place of Cromwell, and equally represented the

sovereignty of the greater island over the lesser, which under no

form of government it would concede.

The catholics, however, thought themselves oppressed by the act of

settlement; and could not forgive the Duke of Ormond for his constant

regard to the protestant interests, and the supremacy of the English

Crown. They had enough to encourage them in the king's bias towards

their religion, which he was able to manifest more openly than in

England. Under the administration of Lord Berkely in 1670, at the time

of Charles's conspiracy with the King of France to subvert religion

and liberty, they began to menace an approaching change, and to aim at

revoking, or materially weakening, the act of settlement. The most

bigoted and insolent of the popish clergy, who had lately rejected

with indignation an offer of more reasonable men to renounce the

tenets obnoxious to civil governments, were countenanced at Dublin;

but the first alarm of the new proprietors, as well as the general

apprehension of the court's designs in England, soon rendered it

necessary to desist from the projected innovations.[555] The next

reign, of course, reanimated the Irish party; a dispensing prerogative

set aside all the statutes; every civil office, the courts of justice,

and the privy council, were filled with catholics; the protestant

soldiers were disbanded; the citizens of that religion were disarmed;

the tithes were withheld from their clergy; they were suddenly reduced

to feel that bitter condition of a conquered and proscribed people,

which they had long rendered the lot of their enemies.[556] From these

enemies, exasperated by bigotry and revenge, they could have nothing

but a full and exceeding measure of retaliation to expect; nor had

they even the last hope that an English king, for the sake of his

Crown and country, must protect those who formed the strongest link

between the two islands. A man violent and ambitious, without superior

capacity, the Earl of Tyrconnel, lord lieutenant in 1687, and

commander of the army, looked only to his master's interests, in

subordination to those of his countrymen, and of his own. It is now

ascertained that, doubtful of the king's success in the struggle for

restoring popery in England, he had made secret overtures to some of

the French agents for casting off all connection with that kingdom, in

case of James's death, and, with the aid of Louis, placing the crown

of Ireland on his own head.[557]

_War of 1689, and final reduction of Ireland._--The revolution in

England was followed by a war in Ireland of three years' duration, and

a war on both sides, like that of 1641, for self-preservation. In the

parliament held by James at Dublin in 1690, the act of settlement was

repealed, and above 2000 persons attainted by name; both, it has been

said, perhaps with little truth, against the king's will, who dreaded

the impetuous nationality that was tearing away the bulwarks of his

throne.[558] But the magnanimous defence of Derry and the splendid

victory of the Boyne restored the protestant cause; though the Irish,

with the succour of French troops, maintained for two years a gallant

resistance, they could not ultimately withstand the triple superiority

of military talents, resources, and discipline. Their bravery,

however, served to obtain the articles of Limerick on the surrender of

that city; conceded by their noble-minded conqueror, against the

disposition of those who longed to plunder and persecute their fallen

enemy. By the first of these articles, "the Roman catholics of this

kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion

as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in

the reign of King Charles II.; and their majesties, as soon as their

affairs will permit them to summon a parliament in this kingdom, will

endeavour to procure the said Roman catholics such further security in

that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the

account of their said religion." The second secures to the inhabitants

of Limerick and other places then in possession of the Irish, and to

all officers and soldiers then in arms, who should return to their

majesties' obedience, and to all such as should be under their

protection in the counties of Limerick, Kerry, Clare, Galway, and

Mayo, all their estates, and all their rights, privileges, and

immunities, which they held in the reign of Charles II., free from all

forfeitures or outlawries incurred by them.[559]

This second article, but only as to the garrison of Limerick or other

persons in arms, is confirmed by statute some years afterwards.[560]

The first article seems, however, to be passed over. The forfeitures

on account of the rebellion, estimated at 1,060,792 acres, were

somewhat diminished by restitutions to the ancient possessors under

the capitulation; the greater part were lavishly distributed to

English grantees.[561] It appears from hence, that at the end of the

seventeenth century, the Irish or Anglo-Irish catholics could hardly

possess above one-sixth or one-seventh of the kingdom. They were still

formidable from their numbers and their sufferings; and the victorious

party saw no security but in a system of oppression, contained in a

series of laws during the reigns of William and Anne, which have

scarce a parallel in European history, unless it be that of the

protestants in France, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes,

who yet were but a feeble minority of the whole people. No papist was

allowed to keep a school, or to teach in any private houses, except

the children of the family.[562] Severe penalties were denounced

against such as should go themselves or send others for education

beyond seas in the Romish religion; and, on probable information given

to a magistrate, the burthen of proving the contrary was thrown on the

accused; the offence not to be tried by a jury, but by justices at

quarter sessions.[563] Intermarriages between persons of different

religion, and possessing any estate in Ireland, were forbidden; the

children, in case of either parent being protestant, might be taken

from the other, to be educated in that faith.[564] No papist could be

guardian to any child; but the court of chancery might appoint some

relation or other person to bring up the ward in the protestant

religion.[565] The eldest son, being a protestant, might turn his

father's estate in fee simple into a tenancy for life, and thus secure

his own inheritance. But if the children were all papists, the

father's lands were to be of the nature of gavel-kind, and descend

equally among them. Papists were disabled from purchasing lands,

except for terms of not more than thirty-one years, at a rent not less

than two-thirds of the full value. They were even to conform within

six months after any title should accrue by descent, devise, or

settlement, on pain of forfeiture to the next protestant heir; a

provision which seems intended to exclude them from real property

altogether, and to render the others almost supererogatory.[566] Arms,

says the poet, remain to the plundered; but the Irish legislature

knew that the plunder would be imperfect and insecure while arms

remained; no papist was permitted to retain them, and search might be

made at any time by two justices.[567] The bare celebration of

catholic rites was not subjected to any fresh penalties; but regular

priests, bishops, and others claiming jurisdiction, and all who should

come into the kingdom from foreign parts, were banished on pain of

transportation, in case of neglecting to comply, and of high treason

in case of returning from banishment. Lest these provisions should be

evaded, priests were required to be registered; they were forbidden to

leave their own parishes; and rewards were held out to informers who

should detect the violations of these statutes, to be levied on the

popish inhabitants of the country.[568] To have exterminated the

catholics by the sword, or expelled them, like the Moriscoes of Spain,

would have been little more repugnant to justice and humanity, but

incomparably more politic.

_Dependence of the Irish upon the English parliament._--It may easily

be supposed, that no political privileges would be left to those who

were thus debarred of the common rights of civil society. The Irish

parliament had never adopted the act passed in the 5th of Elizabeth,

imposing the oath of supremacy on the members of the Commons. It had

been full of catholics under the queen and her two next successors. In

the second session of 1641, after the flames of rebellion had

enveloped almost all the island, the House of Commons were induced to

exclude, by a resolution of their own, those who would not take that

oath; a step which can only be judged in connection with the general

circumstances of Ireland at that awful crisis.[569] In the parliament

of 1661, no catholic, or only one, was returned;[570] but the house

addressed the lords justices to issue a commission for administering

the oath of supremacy to all its members. A bill passed the Commons in

1663, for imposing that oath in future, which was stopped by a

prorogation; and the Duke of Ormond seems to have been adverse to

it.[571] An act of the English parliament after the revolution,

reciting that "great disquiet and many dangerous attempts have been

made to deprive their majesties and their royal predecessors of the

said realm of Ireland by the liberty which the popish recusants there

have had and taken to sit and vote in parliament," requires every

member of both houses of parliament to take the new oaths of

allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration against

transubstantiation before taking his seat.[572] This statute was

adopted and enacted by the Irish parliament in 1782, after they had

renounced the legislative supremacy of England under which it had been

enforced. The elective franchise, which had been rather singularly

spared in an act of Anne, was taken away from the Roman catholics of

Ireland in 1715; or, as some think, not absolutely till 1727.[573]

These tremendous statutes had in some measure the effect which their

framers designed. The wealthier families, against whom they were

principally levelled, conformed in many instances to the protestant

church.[574] The catholics were extinguished as a political body; and,

though any willing allegiance to the house of Hanover would have been

monstrous, and it is known that their bishops were constantly

nominated to the pope by the Stuart princes,[575] they did not

manifest at any period, or even during the rebellions of 1715 and

1745, the least movement towards a disturbance of the government. Yet

for thirty years after the accession of George I. they continued to be

insulted in public proceedings under the name of the common enemy,

sometimes oppressed by the enactment of new statutes, or the stricter

execution of the old; till in the latter years of George II. their

peaceable deportment, and the rise of a more generous spirit among the

Irish protestants, not only sheathed the fangs of the law, but

elicited expressions of esteem from the ruling powers, which they

might justly consider as the pledge of a more tolerant policy. The

mere exercise of their religion in an obscure manner had long been

permitted without molestation.[576]

Thus in Ireland there were three nations, the original natives, the

Anglo-Irish, and the new English; the two former catholic, except some

chiefly of the upper classes, who had conformed to the church; the

last wholly protestant. There were three religions, the Roman

catholic, the established or Anglican, and the presbyterian; more than

one-half of the protestants, according to the computation of those

times, belonging to the latter denomination.[577] These however in a

less degree were under the ban of the law as truly as the catholics

themselves; they were excluded from all civil and military offices by

a test act, and even their religious meetings were denounced by penal

statutes. Yet the House of Commons after the revolution always

contained a strong presbyterian body, and unable, as it seems, to

obtain an act of indemnity for those who had taken commissions in the

militia, while the rebellion of 1715 was raging in Great Britain, had

recourse to a resolution, that whoever should prosecute any dissenter

for accepting such a commission is an enemy to the king and the

protestant interest.[578] They did not even obtain a legal toleration

till 1720.[579] It seems as if the connection of the two islands, and

the whole system of constitutional laws in the lesser, subsisted only

for the sake of securing the privileges and emoluments of a small

number of ecclesiastics, frequently strangers, who rendered very

little return for their enormous monopoly. A great share, in fact, of

the temporal government under George II. was thrown successively into

the hands of two primates, Boulter and Stone; the one a worthy but

narrow-minded man, who showed his egregious ignorance of policy in

endeavouring to promote the wealth and happiness of the people, whom

he at the same time studied to depress and discourage in respect of

political freedom; the other an able, but profligate and ambitious

statesman, whose name is mingled, as an object of odium and enmity,

with the first great struggles of Irish patriotism.

The new Irish nation, or rather the protestant nation, since all

distinctions of origin have, from the time of the great rebellion,

been merged in those of religion, partook in large measure of the

spirit that was poured out on the advocates of liberty and the

revolution in the sister kingdom. Their parliament was always strongly

whig, and scarcely manageable during the later years of the queen.

They began to assimilate themselves more and more to the English

model, and to cast off by degrees the fetters that galled and degraded

them. By Poyning's celebrated law, the initiative power was reserved

to the English council. This act, at one time popular in Ireland, was

afterwards justly regarded as destructive of the rights of their

parliament, and a badge of the nation's dependence. It was attempted

by the Commons in 1641, and by the catholic confederates in the

rebellion, to procure its repeal; which Charles I. steadily refused,

till he was driven to refuse nothing. In his son's reign, it is said

that "the council framed bills altogether; a negative alone on them

and their several provisoes was left to parliament; only a general

proposition for a bill by way of address to the lord lieutenant and

council came from parliament; nor was it till after the revolution

that heads of bills were presented; these last in fact resembled acts

of parliament or bills, with only the small difference of 'We pray

that it may be enacted,' instead of 'Be it enacted.'"[580] They

assumed about the same time the examination of accounts, and of the

expenditure of public money.[581]

Meanwhile, as they gradually emancipated themselves from the

ascendancy of the Crown, they found a more formidable power to contend

with in the English parliament. It was acknowledged, by all at least

of the protestant name, that the Crown of Ireland was essentially

dependent on that of England, and subject to any changes that might

affect the succession of the latter. But the question as to the

subordination of her legislature was of a different kind. The

precedents and authorities of early ages seem not decisive; so far as

they extend, they rather countenance the opinion that English statutes

were of themselves valid in Ireland. But from the time of Henry VI. or

Edward IV. it was certainly established that they had no operation,

unless enacted by the Irish parliament. This however would not

legally prove that they might not be binding, if express words to that

effect were employed; and such was the doctrine of Lord Coke and of

other English lawyers. This came into discussion about the eventful

period of 1641. The Irish in general protested against the legislative

authority of England, as a novel theory which could not be

maintained;[582] and two treatises on the subject, one ascribed to

Lord Chancellor Bolton, or more probably to an eminent lawyer, Patrick

Darcy, for the independence of Ireland, another, in answer to it, by

Serjeant Mayart, may be read in the _Hibernica_ of Harris.[583] Very

few instances occurred before the revolution, wherein the English

parliament thought fit to include Ireland in its enactments, and none

perhaps wherein they were carried into effect. But after the

revolution several laws of great importance were passed in England to

bind the other kingdom, and acquiesced in without express opposition

by its parliament. Molyneux, however, in his celebrated _Case of

Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated_,

published in 1697, set up the claim of his country for absolute

legislative independency. The House of Commons at Westminster came to

resolutions against this book; and, with their high notions of

parliamentary sovereignty, were not likely to desist from a pretension

which, like the very similar claim to impose taxes in America, sprung

in fact from the semi-republican scheme of constitutional law

established by means of the revolution.[584] It is evident that while

the sovereignty and enacting power was supposed to reside wholly in

the king, and only the power of consent to the two houses of

parliament, it was much less natural to suppose a control of the

English legislature over other dominions of the Crown, having their

own representation for similar purposes, than after they had become,

in effect and in general sentiment, though not quite in the

statute-book, co-ordinate partakers of the supreme authority. The

Irish parliament, however, advancing as it were in a parallel line,

had naturally imbibed the same sense of its own supremacy, and made

at length an effort to assert it. A judgment from the court of

exchequer in 1719 having been reversed by the House of Lords, an

appeal was brought before the Lords in England, who affirmed the

judgment of the exchequer. The Irish Lords resolved that no appeal lay

from the court of exchequer in Ireland to the king in parliament in

Great Britain; and the barons of that court having acted in obedience

to the order of the English Lords, were taken into the custody of the

black rod. That house next addressed the king, setting forth their

reasons against admitting the appellant jurisdiction. But the Lords in

England, after requesting the king to confer some favour on the barons

of the exchequer who had been censured and illegally imprisoned for

doing their duty, ordered a bill to be brought in for better securing

the dependency of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain, which

declares "that the king's majesty, by and with the advice and consent

of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons of Great Britain, in

parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full

power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and

validity to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland; and that the

House of Lords of Ireland have not, nor of right ought to have, any

jurisdiction to judge of, reverse, or affirm any judgment, sentence,

or decree given or made in any court within the said kingdom; and that

all proceedings before the said House of Lords upon any such judgment,

sentence, or decree, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null

and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever."[585]

The English government found no better method of counteracting this

rising spirit of independence than by bestowing the chief posts in the

state and church on strangers, in order to keep up what was called the

English interest.[586] This wretched policy united the natives of

Ireland in jealousy and discontent, which the latter years of Swift

were devoted to inflame. It was impossible that the kingdom should

become, as it did under George II., more flourishing through its great

natural fertility, its extensive manufacture of linen, and its

facilities for commerce, though much restricted (the domestic alarm

from the papists also being allayed by their utter prostration),

without writhing under the indignity of its subordination; or that a

House of Commons, constructed so much on the model of the English,

could hear patiently of liberties and privileges it did not enjoy.

These aspirations for equality first, perhaps, broke out into audible

complaints in the year 1753. The country was in so thriving a state

that there was a surplus revenue after payment of all charges. The

House of Commons determined to apply this to the liquidation of a

debt. The government, though not unwilling to admit of such an

application, maintained that the whole revenue belonged to the king,

and could not be disposed of without his previous consent. In England,

where the grants of parliament are appropriated according to

estimates, such a question could hardly arise; nor would there, I

presume, be the slightest doubt as to the control of the House of

Commons over a surplus income. But in Ireland, the practice of

appropriation seems never to have prevailed, at least so

strictly;[587] and the constitutional right might perhaps not

unreasonably be disputed. After long and violent discussions, wherein

the speaker of the Commons and other eminent men bore a leading part

on the popular side, the Crown was so far victorious as to procure

some motions to be carried, which seemed to imply its authority; but

the house took care, by more special applications of the revenue, to

prevent the recurrence of an undisposed surplus.[588] From this era

the great parliamentary history of Ireland begins, and is terminated

after half a century by the union: a period fruitful of splendid

eloquence, and of ardent, though not always uncompromising,

patriotism; but which, of course, is beyond the limits prescribed to

these pages.

FOOTNOTES:

[463] Sir James Ware's _Antiquities of Ireland_; Leland's _Hist. of

Ireland_ (Introduction); Ledwich's _Dissertations_.

[464] _Id._ Auct.: also Davis's _Reports_, 29, and his "Discovery of

the true Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued till his

Majesty's happy Reign," 169. Sir John Davis, author of the

philosophical poem, Γνωθι Σεαθτον was chief-justice of Ireland under

James I. The tract just quoted is well known as a concise and luminous

exposition of the history of that country from the English invasion.

[465] Ware; Leland; Ledwich; Davis's "Discovery," _ibid._; _Reports_,

49. It is remarkable that Davis seems to have been aware of an analogy

between the custom of Ireland and Wales, and yet that he only quotes

the statute of Rutland (12 Edw. I.), which by itself does not prove

it. It is, however, proved, if I understand the passage, by one of the

_Leges Walliæ_ published by Wotton, p. 139. A gavel or partition was

made on the death of every member of a family for three generations,

after which none could be enforced. But these parceners were to be all

in the same degree; so that nephews could not compel their uncle to a

partition, but must wait till his death, when they were to be put on

an equality with their cousins; and this, I suppose, is meant by the

expression in the statute of Rutland, "quod hæreditates remaneant

partibiles inter _consimiles hæredes_."

[466] Leland seems to favour the authenticity of the supposed Brehon

laws published by Vallancey. Introduction, 29. The style is said to be

very distinguishable from the Irish of the twelfth or thirteenth

century, and the laws themselves to have no allusion to the settlement

of foreigners in Ireland, or to coined money; whence some ascribe them

to the eighth century. On the other hand, Ledwich proves that some

parts must be later than the tenth century. _Dissertations_, i. 270.

And others hold them to be not older than the thirteenth. Campbell's

_Historical Sketch of Ireland_, 41. It is also maintained that they

are very unfaithfully translated. But, when we find the Anglo-Saxon

and Norman usages, relief, aid, wardship, trial by jury (and that

unanimous), and a sort of correspondence in the ranks of society with

those of England (which all we read elsewhere of the ancient Irish

seems to contradict), it is impossible to resist the suspicion that

they are either extremely interpolated, or were compiled in a late

age, and among some of the septs who had most intercourse with the

English. We know that the degenerate colonists, such as the Earls of

Desmond, adopted the Brehon law in their territories; but this would

probably be with some admixture of that to which they had been used.

[467] "The first pile of lime and stone that ever was in Ireland was

the castle of Tuam, built in 1161 by Roderic O'Connor, the monarch."

Introduction to Cox's _History of Ireland_. I do not find that any

later writer controverts this, so far as the aboriginal Irish are

concerned; but doubtless the Norwegian Ostmen had stone churches, and

there seems little doubt that some at least of the famous round towers

so common in Ireland were erected by them. See Ledwich's

_Dissertations_, vii. 143; and the book called Grose's _Antiquities of

Ireland_, also written by Ledwich. Piles of stone without mortar are

excluded by Cox's expression. In fact, the Irish had very few stone

houses, or even regular villages and towns, before the time of James

I. Davis, 170.

[468] Ledwich, i. 395.

[469] _Antiquities of Ireland_, ii. 76.

[470] Ledwich, i. 260.

[471] Ware, ii. 74; Davis's _Discovery_, 174; Spenser's _State of

Ireland_, 390.

[472] Davis, 135.

[473] Leland, 80 _et post_; Davis, 100.

[474] 4 Inst. 349; Leland, 203; Harris's _Hibernica_, ii. 14.

[475] These counties are Dublin, Kildare, Meath (including Westmeath),

Louth, Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Tipperary, Kerry,

and Limerick. In the reign of Edward I. we find sheriffs also of

Connaught and Roscommon. Leland, i. 19. Thus, except the northern

province and some of the central districts, all Ireland was

shire-ground, and subject to the Crown in the thirteenth century,

however it might fall away in the two next. Those who write confusedly

about this subject, pretend that the authority of the king at no time

extended beyond the pale; whereas that name was not known, I believe,

till the fifteenth century. Under the great Earl of Pembroke, who died

in 1219, the whole island was perhaps nearly as much reduced under

obedience as in the reign of Elizabeth. Leland, 205.

[476] Leland, 170.

[477] Davis, 140. William Marischal, Earl of Pembroke, who married the

daughter of Earl Strongbow, left five sons and five daughters; the

first all died without issue.

[478] Davis, 147; Leland, 291.

[479] _Id._ 194, 209.

[480] Leland, 225.

[481] Davis, 100, 109. He quotes the following record from an assize

at Waterford, in the 4th of Edward II. (1311), which may be extracted,

as briefly illustrating the state of law in Ireland better than any

general positions. "Quod Robertus le Wayleys rectatus de morte

Johannis filii Ivor MacGillemory, felonicè per ipsum interfecti, etc.

Venit et bene cognovit quod prædictum Johannem interfecit; dicit tamen

quod per ejus interfectionem feloniam committere non potuit, quia

dicit, quod prædictus Johannes fuit purus Hibernicus, et non de libero

sanguine, etc. Et cum dominus dicti Johannis, cujus Hibernicus idem

Johannes fuit, die quo interfectus fuit, solutionem pro ipso Johanne

Hibernico suo sic interfecto petere voluerit, ipse Robertus paratus

erit ad respondendum de solutione prædictâ prout justitia suadebit. Et

super hoc venit quidam Johannes le Poer, et dicit pro domino rege,

quod prædictus Johannes filius Ivor Mac-Gillemory, et antecessores sui

de cognomine prædicto a tempore quo dominus Henricus filius

imperatricis, quondam dominus Hiberniæ, tritavus domini regis nunc,

fuit in Hiberniâ, legem Anglicanam in Hiberniâ usque ad hanc diem

habere, et secundum ipsam legem judicari et deduci debent." We have

here both the general rule, that the death of an Irishman was only

punishable by a composition to his lord, and the exception in behalf

of those natives who had conformed to the English law.

[482] Davis, 104; Leland, 82. It was necessary to plead in bar of an

action, that the plaintiff was Hibernicus, et non de quinque

sanguinibus.

[483] Davis, 106. "If I should collect out of the records all the

charters of this kind, I should make a volume thereof." They began as

early as the reign of Henry III. Leland, 225.

[484] Leland, 243.

[485] _Id._ 289.

[486] "There were two other customs proper and peculiar to the

Irishry, which, being the cause of many strong combinations and

factions, do tend to the utter ruin of a commonwealth. The one was

_fostering_, the other _gossipred_; both which have ever been of

greater estimation among this people than with any other nation in the

Christian world. For fostering I did never hear or read that it was in

that use or reputation in any other country, barbarous or civil, as it

hath been, and yet is, in Ireland, where they put away all their

children to fosterers; the potent and rich men selling, the meaner

sort, buying, the alterage and nursing of their children; and the

reason is, because in the opinion of this people, _fostering_ hath

always been a stronger alliance than blood; and the foster-children do

love and are beloved of their foster-fathers and their sept, more than

of their own natural parents and kindred, and do participate of their

means more frankly, and do adhere to them in all fortunes, with more

affection and constancy. The like may be said of _gossipred_ or

compaternity, which though by the canon law it be a spiritual

affinity, and a juror that was gossip to either of the parties might

in former times have been challenged, as not indifferent, by our law,

yet there was no nation under the sun that ever made so religious an

account of it as the Irish," Davis, 179.

[487] "For that now there is no diversity in array between the English

marchers and the Irish enemies, and so by colour of the English

marchers, the Irish enemies do come from day to day into the English

counties as English marchers, and do rob and kill by the highways, and

destroy the common people by lodging upon them in the nights, and also

do kill the husbands in the nights and do take their goods to the

Irish men; wherefore it is ordained and agreed, that no manner man

that will be taken for an Englishman shall have no beard above his

mouth; that is to say, that he have no hairs upon his upper lip, so

that the said lip be once at least shaven every fortnight, or of equal

growth with the nether lip. And if any man be found among the English

contrary hereunto, that then it shall be lawful to every man to take

them and their goods as Irish enemies, and to ransom them as Irish

enemies." Irish Statutes, 25 H. 6, c. 4.

[488] Davis, 152, 182; Leland, i. 256, etc.; Ware, ii. 58.

[489] Leland, 253.

[490] Cox's _Hist. of Ireland_, 117, 120.

[491] _Id._ 125, 129; Leland, 313.

[492] Irish Statutes.

[493] Davis, 174, 189; Leland, 281. Maurice Fitz-Thomas, Earl of

Desmond, was the first of the English, according to Ware, ii. 76, who

imposed the exaction of coyne and livery.

[494] Irish Statutes; Davis, 202; Cox; Leland.

[495] Leland, i. 278, 296, 324; Davis, 152, 197.

[496] Leland, 342. The native chieftains who came to Dublin are said

to have been seventy-five in number; but the insolence of the

courtiers, who ridiculed an unusual dress and appearance, disgusted

them.

[497] Davis, 193.

[498] Leland, ii. 822 _et post_; Davis, 199, 229, 236; Holingshed's

_Chronicles of Ireland_, p. 4. Finglas, a baron of the exchequer in

the reign of Henry VIII., in his _Breviate of Ireland_, from which

Davis has taken great part of his materials, says expressly, that, by

the disobedience of the Geraldines and Butlers, and their Irish

connections, "the whole land is now of Irish rule, except the little

English pale, within the counties of Dublin and Meath, and Uriel

[Louth], which pass not thirty or forty miles in compass." The English

were also expelled from Munster, except the walled towns. The king had

no profit out of Ulster, but the manor of Carlingford, nor any in

Connaught. This treatise, written about 1530, is printed in Harris's

_Hibernica_. The proofs that, in this age, the English law and

government were confined to the four shires, are abundant. It is even

mentioned in a statute, 13 H. 8, c. 2.

[499] Irish Statutes; Davis, 230; Leland, ii. 102.

[500] Leland.

[501] Irish Statutes, 33 H. 8, c. 1.

[502] _Ibid._ 28 H. 8, c. 15, 28. The latter act prohibits

intermarriage or fostering with the Irish; which had indeed been

previously restrained by other statutes. In one passed five years

afterwards, it is recited that "the king's English subjects, by reason

that they are inhabited in so little compass or circuit, and

restrained by statute to marry with the Irish nation, and therefore of

necessity must marry themselves together, so that in effect they all

for the most part must be allied together; and therefore it is

enacted, that consanguinity or affinity beyond the fourth degree shall

be no cause of challenge on a jury." 33 H. 8, c. 4. These laws were

for many years of little avail, so far at least as they were meant to

extend beyond the pale. Spenser's _State of Ireland_, p. 384 _et

post_.

[503] Leland, ii. 178, 184.

[504] Leland, ii. 189, 211; 3 & 4 P. and M. c. 1 and 2. Meath had been

divided into two shires, by separating the western part. 34 H. 8, c.

1. "Forasmuch as the shire of Methe is great and large in circuit, and

the west part thereof laid about or beset with divers of the king's

rebels." Baron Finglas says, "Half Meath has not obeyed the king's

laws these one hundred years or more." _Breviate of Ireland_, apud

Harris, p. 85.

[505] Leland, ii. 158.

[506] Leland, 224; Irish Statutes, 2 Eliz.

[507] Leland gives several instances of breach of faith in the

government. A little tract, called a "Brief Declaration of the

Government of Ireland," written by Captain Lee in 1594, and published

in _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, vol. i., censures the two last

deputies (Grey and Fitzwilliams) for their ill usage of the Irish, and

unfolds the despotic character of the English government. "The cause

they (the lords of the north) have to stand upon those terms, and to

seek for better assurance, is the harsh practices used against others,

by those who have been placed in authority to protect men for your

majesty's service, which they have greatly abused in this sort. They

have drawn unto them by protection three or four hundred of the

country people, under colour to do your majesty service, and brought

them to a place of meeting, where your garrison soldiers were

appointed to be, who have there most dishonourably put them all to the

sword; and this hath been by the consent and practice of the lord

deputy for the time being. If this be a good course to draw those

savage people to the state to do your majesty service, and not rather

to enforce them to stand on their guard, I leave to your majesty."--P.

90. He goes on to enumerate more cases of hardship and tyranny; many

being arraigned and convicted of treason on slight evidence; many

assaulted and killed by the sheriffs on commissions of rebellion;

others imprisoned and kept in irons; among others, a youth, the heir

of a great estate. He certainly praises Tyrone more than, from

subsequent events, we should think just, which may be thought to throw

some suspicion on his own loyalty; yet he seems to have been a

protestant, and in 1594 the views of Tyrone were ambiguous, so that

Captain Lee may have been deceived.

[508] _Sidney Papers_, i. 20.

[509] _Id._ 24.

[510] _Sidney Papers_, i. 29. Spenser descants on the lawless violence

of the superior Irish; and imputes, I believe with much justice, a

great part of their crimes to his own brethren, if they might claim so

proud a title, the bards: "whomsoever they find to be most licentious

of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and

desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him

they set up and glorify in their rhymes, him they praise to the

people, and to young men make an example to follow."--P. 394.

[511] Holingshed, 460.

[512] Leland, 287; Spenser's _Account of Ireland_, p. 430 (vol. viii.

of Todd's edition, 1805). Grey is the Arthegal of the _Faery Queen_,

the representative of the virtue of justice in that allegory, attended

by Talus with his iron flail, which indeed was unsparingly employed to

crush rebellion. Grey's severity was signalised in putting to death

seven hundred Spaniards who had surrendered at discretion in the fort

of Smerwick. Though this might be justified by the strict laws of war

(Philip not being a declared enemy) it was one of those extremities

which justly revolt the common feelings of mankind. The queen is said

to have been much displeased at it. Leland, 283. Spenser undertakes

the defence of his patron Grey. _State of Ireland_, p. 434.

[513] Leland, 247, 293. An act had passed (II Eliz. c. 9) for dividing

the whole island into shire-ground, appointing sheriffs, justices of

the peace, etc.; which, however, was not completed.

[514] Leland, 305. Their conduct provoked an insurrection both in

Connaught and Ulster. Spenser, who shows always a bias towards the

most rigorous policy, does injustice to Perrott." He did tread down

and disgrace all the English, and set up and countenance the Irish all

that he could."--P. 437. This has in all ages been the language, when

they have been placed on an equality, or anything approaching to an

equality, with their fellow subjects.

[515] Leland, 248.

[516] Holingshed's _Chronicles of Ireland_, 342. This part is written

by Hooker himself. Leland, 240; Irish Statutes, 11 Eliz.

[517] _Sidney Papers_, i. 153.

[518] _Id._ 179.

[519] _Sidney Papers_, 84, 117, etc., to 236; Holingshed, 389; Leland,

261. Sidney was much disappointed at the queen's want of firmness; but

it is plain by the correspondence that Walsingham also thought he had

gone too far. P. 192. The sum required seems to have been reasonable,

about £2000 a year from the five shires of the pale; and, if they had

not been stubborn, he thought all Munster also, except the Desmond

territories, would have submitted to the payment. P. 183. "I have

great cause," he writes, "to mistrust the fidelity of the greatest

number of the people of this country's birth of all degrees; they be

papists, as I may well term them, body and soul. For not only in

matter of religion they be Romish, but for government they will

change, to be under a prince of their own superstition. Since your

highness' reign the papists never showed such boldness as now they

do."--P. 184. This, however, hardly tallies with what he says

afterwards (p. 208): "I do believe, for far the greatest number of the

inhabitants of the English pale, her highness hath as true and

faithful subjects as any she hath subject to the Crown;" unless the

former passage refer chiefly to those without the pale, who in fact

were exclusively concerned in the rebellions of this reign.

[520] "The church is now so spoiled," says Sir Henry Sidney in 1576,

"as well by the ruin of the temples, as the dissipation and embezzling

of the patrimony, and most of all for want of sufficient ministers, as

so deformed and overthrown a church there is not, I am sure, in any

region where Christ is professed." _Sidney Papers_, i. 109. In the

diocese of Meath, being the best inhabited country of all the realm,

out of 224 parish churches, 105 were impropriate having only curates,

of whom but eighteen could speak English, the rest being Irish rogues,

who used to be papists; fifty-two other churches had vicars, and

fifty-two more were in better state than the rest, yet far from well.

_Id._ 112. Spenser gives a bad character of the protestant clergy. P.

412.

An act was passed (12 Eliz. c. 1) for erecting free schools in every

diocese, under English masters; the ordinary paying one-third of the

salary, and the clergy the rest. This, however, must have been nearly

impracticable. Another act (13 Eliz. c. 4) enables the Archbishop of

Armagh to grant leases of his lands out of the pale for a hundred

years without assent of the dean and chapter, to persons of English

birth, "or of the English and civil nation, born in this realm of

Ireland," at the rent of 4_d._ an acre. It recites the chapter to be

"except a very few of them, both by nation, education, and custom,

Irish, Irishly affectioned, and small hopes of their conformities or

assent into any such devices as would tend to the placing of any such

number of civil people there, to the disadvantage or bridling of the

Irish." In these northern parts, the English and protestant interests

had so little influence that the pope conferred three bishoprics,

Derry, Clogher, and Raphoe, throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Davis,

254; Leland, ii. 248. What is more remarkable is, that two of these

prelates were summoned to parliament in 1585 (_Id._ 295); the first in

which some Irish were returned among the Commons.

The reputation of the protestant church continued to be little better

in the reign of Charles I., though its revenues were much improved.

Strafford gives the clergy a very bad character in writing to Laud.

Vol. i. 187. And Burnet's _Life of Bedell_, transcribed chiefly from a

contemporary memoir, gives a detailed account of that bishop's diocese

(Kilmore), which will take off any surprise that might be felt at the

slow progress of the reformation. He had about fifteen protestant

clergy, but all English, unable to speak the tongue of the people, or

to perform any divine offices, or converse with them, "which is no

small cause of the continuance of the people in popery still."--P. 47.

The bishop observed, says his biographer, "with much regret, that the

English had all along neglected the Irish as a nation not only

conquered but undisciplinable; and that the clergy had scarce

considered them as a part of their charge; but had left them wholly

into the hands of their own priests, without taking any other care of

them but the making them pay their tithes. And indeed their priests

were a strange sort of people, that knew generally nothing but the

reading their offices, which were not so much as understood by many of

them; and they taught the people nothing but the saying their paters

and aves in Latin."--P. 114. Bedell took the pains to learn himself

the Irish language; and though he could not speak it, composed the

first grammar ever made of it; had the common prayer read every Sunday

in Irish, circulated catechisms, engaged the clergy to set up schools,

and even undertook a translation of the Old Testament, which he would

have published but for the opposition of Laud and Strafford. P. 121.

[521] Leland, 413.

[522] Leland, 414, etc. In a letter from six catholic lords of the

pale to the king in 1613, published in _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_,

i. 158, they complain of the oath of supremacy, which, they say, had

not been much imposed under the queen, but was now for the first time

enforced in the remote parts of the country; so that the most

sufficient gentry were excluded from magistracy, and meaner persons,

if conformable, put instead. It is said on the other side, that the

laws against recusants were very little enforced, from the difficulty

of getting juries to present them. _Id._ 359. Carte's _Ormond_, 33.

But this at least shows that there was some disposition to molest the

catholics on the part of the government; and it is admitted that they

were excluded from offices, and even from practising at the bar, on

account of the oath of supremacy. _Id._ 320; and compare the letter of

six catholic lords with the answer of lord deputy and council in the

same volume.

[523] Davis's _Reports_, ubi supra; "Discovery of Causes," etc., 260;

Carte's _Life of Ormond_, i. 14; Leland, 418. It had long been an

object with the English government to extinguish the Irish tenures and

laws. Some steps towards it were taken under Henry VIII.; but at that

time there was too great a repugnance among the chieftains. In

Elizabeth's instructions to the Earl of Sussex on taking the

government in 1560, it is recommended that the Irish should surrender

their estates, and receive grants in tail male, but no greater estate.

_Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, i. 1. This would have left a reversion

in the Crown, which could not have been cut off, I believe, by

suffering a recovery. But as those who held by Irish tenure had

probably no right to alienate their lands, they had little cause to

complain. An act in 1569 (12 Eliz. c. 4), reciting the greater part of

the Irish to have petitioned for leave to surrender their lands,

authorises the deputy by advice of the privy council to grant letters

patent to the Irish and degenerate English, yielding certain

reservations to the queen. Sidney mentions, in several of his letters,

that the Irish were ready to surrender their lands. Vol. i. 94, 105,

165.

The act 11 Jac. 1, c. 5, repeals divers statutes that treat the Irish

as enemies, some of which have been mentioned above. It takes all the

king's subjects under his protection to live by the same law. Some

vestiges of the old distinctions remained in the statute-book, and

were eradicated in Strafford's parliament. 10 & 11 Car. 1, c. 6.

[524] Leland, 254.

[525] See a note in Leland, ii. 302. The truth seems to be, that in

this, as in other Irish forfeitures, a large part was restored to the

tenants of the attainted parties.

[526] Leland, ii. 301.

[527] Carte's _Life of Ormond_, i. 15; Leland, 429; Farmer's

"Chronicle of Sir Arthur Chichester's government," in _Desiderata

Curiosa Hibernica_, i. 32; an important and interesting narrative;

also vol. ii. of the same collection, 37; Bacon's Works, i. 657.

[528] Leland, 437, 466; Carte's _Ormond_, 22; _Desiderata Curiosa

Hibernica_, 238, 243, 378 _et alibi_; ii. 37 _et post_. In another

treatise published in this collection, entitled "A Discourse on the

State of Ireland," 1614, an approaching rebellion is remarkably

predicted. "The next rebellion, whensoever it shall happen, doth

threaten more danger to the state than any that hath preceded; and my

reasons are these: 1. They have the same bodies they ever had; and

therein they have and had advantage over us. 2. From their infancies

they have been and are exercised in the use of arms. 3. The realm, by

reason of long peace, was never so full of youth as at this present.

4. That they are better soldiers than heretofore, their continual

employments in the wars abroad assure us; and they do conceive that

their men are better than ours. 5. That they are more politic, and

able to manage rebellion with more judgment and dexterity than their

elders, their experience and education are sufficient. 6. They will

give the first blow; which is very advantageous to them that will give

it. 7. The quarrel for the which they rebel will be under the veil of

religion and liberty, than which nothing is esteemed so precious in

the hearts of men. 8. And lastly, their union is such, as not only the

old English dispersed abroad in all parts of the realm, but the

inhabitants of the pale cities and towns, are as apt to take arms

against us, which no precedent time hath ever seen, as the ancient

Irish."--Vol. i. 432. "I think that little doubt is to be made, but

that the modern English and Scotch would in an instant be massacred in

their houses."--P. 438. This rebellion the author expected to be

brought about by a league with Spain and with aid from France.

[529] The famous parliament of Kilkenny, in 1367, is said to have been

very numerously attended. Leland, i. 319. We find indeed an act (10 H.

7, c. 23) annulling what was done in a preceding parliament, for this

reason, among others, that the writs had not been sent to all the

shires, but to four only. Yet it appears that the writs would not have

been obeyed in that age.

[530] Speech of Sir John Davis (1612), on the parliamentary

constitution of Ireland, in Appendix to Leland, vol. ii. p. 490, with

the latter's observations on it. Carte's _Ormond_, i. 18; Lord

Mountmorres's _Hist. of Irish Parliament_.

[531] In the letter of the lords of the pale to King James above

mentioned, they express their apprehension that the erecting so many

insignificant places to the rank of boroughs was with the view of

bringing on fresh penal laws in religion; "and so the general scope

and institution of parliament frustrated; they being ordained for the

assurance of the subjects not to be pressed with any new edicts or

laws, but such as should pass with their general consents and

approbations."--P. 158. The king's mode of replying to this

constitutional language was characteristic. "What is it to you whether

I make many or few boroughs? My council may consider the fitness, if I

require it. But what if I had created 40 noblemen and 400 boroughs?

The more the merrier, the fewer the better cheer." _Desid. Cur. Hib._

308.

[532] Mountmorres, i. 166. The whole number of peers in 1634 was 122,

and those present in parliament that year were 66. They had the

privilege not only of voting, but even protesting by proxy; and those

who sent none, were sometimes fined. _Id._ vol. i. 316.

[533] Carte's _Ormond_, i. 48; Leland, ii. 475 _et post_.

[534] Leland, iii. 4 _et post_. A vehement protestation of the bishops

about this time, with Usher at their head, against any connivance at

popery, is a disgrace to their memory. It is to be met with in many

books. Strafford, however, was far from any real liberality of

sentiment. His abstinence from religious persecution was intended to

be temporary, as the motives whereon it was founded. "It will be ever

far forth of my heart to conceive that a conformity in religion is not

above all other things principally to be intended. For undoubtedly

till we be brought all under one form of divine service, the Crown is

never safe on this side, etc. It were too much at once to distemper

them by bringing plantations upon them, and disturbing them in the

exercise of their religion, so long as it be without scandal; and so

indeed very inconsiderate, as I conceive, to move in this latter, till

that former be fully settled, and by that means the protestant party

become by much the stronger, which in truth I do not yet conceive it

to be." _Straff. Letters_, ii. 39. He says, however, and I believe

truly, that no man had been touched for conscience' sake since he was

deputy. _Id._ 112. Every parish, as we find by Bedell's _Life_, had

its priest and mass-house; in some places mass was said in the

churches; the Romish bishops exercised their jurisdiction, which was

fully obeyed; but "the priests were grossly ignorant and openly

scandalous, both for drunkenness and all sort of lewdness."--P. 41,

76. More than ten to one in his diocese, the county of Cavan, were

recusants.

[535] Some at the council-board having intimated a doubt of their

authority to bind the kingdom, "I was then put to my last refuge,

which was plainly to declare that there was no necessity which induced

me to take them to counsel in this business, for rather than fail in

so necessary a duty to my master, I would undertake upon the peril of

my head to make the king's army able to subsist, and to provide for

itself amongst them, without their help." _Strafford Letters_, i. 98.

[536] _Id._ i. 183; Carte, 61.

[537] The protestants, he wrote word, had a majority of eight in the

Commons. He told them, "it was very indifferent to him what resolution

the house might take; that there were two ends he had in view, and one

he would infallibly attain--either a submission of the people to his

majesty's just demands, or a just occasion of breach, and either would

content the king; the first was undeniably and evidently best for

them."--_Id._ 277, 278. In his speech to the two houses, he said, "His

majesty expects not to find you muttering, or to name it more truly,

mutinying in corners. I am commanded to carry a very watchful eye over

these private and secret conventicles, to punish the transgression

with a heavy and severe hand; therefore it behoves you to look to

it."--_Id._ 289. "Finally," he concludes, "I wish you had a right

judgment in all things; yet let me not prove a Cassandra amongst you,

to speak truth and not be believed. However, speak truth I will, were

I to become your enemy for it. Remember therefore that I tell you, you

may easily make or mar this parliament. If you proceed with respect,

without laying clogs and conditions upon the king, as wise men and

good subjects ought to do, you shall infallibly set up this parliament

eminent to posterity, as the very basis and foundation of the greatest

happiness and prosperity that ever befell this nation. But, if you

meet a great king with narrow circumscribed hearts, if you will needs

be wise and cautious above the moon [sic], remember again that I tell

you, you shall never be able to cast your mists before the eyes of a

discerning king; you shall be found out; your sons shall wish they had

been the children of more believing parents; and in a time when you

look not for it, when it will be too late for you to help, the sad

repentance of an unadvised heart shall be yours, lasting honour shall

be my master's."

These subsidies were reckoned at near £41,000 each, and were thus

apportioned: Leinster paid £13,000 (of which £1000 from the city of

Dublin), Munster £11,000, Ulster £10,000, Connaught £6,800.

Mountmorres, ii. 16.

[538] Irish Statutes, 10 Car. 1, c. 1, 2, 3, etc.; _Strafford

Letters_, i. 279, 312. The king expressly approved the denial of the

graces, though promised formerly by himself. _Id._ 345; Leland, iii.

20.

"I can now say," Strafford observes (_Id._ 344), "the king is as

absolute here as any prince in the whole world can be; and may still

be, if it be not spoiled on that side."

[539] _Strafford Letters_, i. 353, 370, 402, 442, 451, 454, 473; ii.

113, 139, 366; Leland, iii. 30, 39; Carte, 82.

[540] It is, however, true that he discouraged the woollen

manufacture, in order to keep the kingdom more dependent, and that

this was part of his motive in promoting the other. Vol. ii. 19.

[541] Leland, iii. 51. Strafford himself (ii. 397) speaks highly of

their disposition.

[542] Carte's _Ormond_, 100, 140; Leland, iii. 54 _et post_;

Mountmorres, ii. 29. A remonstrance of the Commons to Lord-Deputy

Wandesford against various grievances was presented 7th November 1640,

before Lord Strafford had been impeached. _Id._ 39. As to confirming

the graces, the delay, whether it proceeded from the king or his Irish

representatives, seems to have caused some suspicion. Lord Clanricarde

mentions the ill consequences that might result, in a letter to Lord

Bristol. Carte's _Ormond_, iii. 40.

[543] Sir Henry Vane communicated to the lords justices, by the king's

command, March 16, 1640-1, that advice had been received and confirmed

by the ministers in Spain and elsewhere, which "deserved to be

seriously considered, and an especial care and watchfulness to be had

therein: that of late there have passed from Spain (and the like may

well have been from other parts) an unspeakable number of Irish

churchmen for England and Ireland, and some good old soldiers, under

pretext of asking leave to raise men for the King of Spain; whereas,

it is observed among the Irish friars there, a whisper was, as if they

expected a rebellion in Ireland, and particularly in Connaught."

Carte's _Ormond_, iii. 30. This letter, which Carte seems to have

taken from a printed book, is authenticated in _Clarendon State

Papers_, ii. 143. I have mentioned in another part of this work (Chap.

VIII.) the provocations which might have induced the cabinet of Madrid

to foment disturbances in Charles's dominions. The lords justices are

taxed by Carte with supineness in paying no attention to this letter

(vol. i. 166); but how he knew that they paid none seems hard to say.

Another imputation has been thrown on the Irish government and on the

parliament, for objecting to permit levies to be made for the Spanish

service out of the army raised by Strafford, and disbanded in the

spring of 1641, which the king had himself proposed. Carte, i. 133;

and Leland, 82, who follows the former implicitly, as he always does.

The events indeed proved that it would have been far safer to let

those soldiers, chiefly catholics, enlist under a foreign banner; but

considering the long connection of Spain with that party, and the

apprehension always entertained that the disaffected might acquire

military experience in her service, the objection does not seem so

very unreasonable.

[544] The fullest writer on the Irish rebellion is Carte, in his _Life

of Ormond_, who had the use of a vast collection of documents

belonging to that noble family; a selection from which forms this

third volume. But he is extremely partial against all who leaned to

the parliamentary or puritan side, and especially the lords justices,

Parsons and Borlase; which renders him, to say the least, a very

favourable witness for the catholics. Leland, with much candour

towards the latter, but a good deal of the same prejudice against the

presbyterians, is little more than the echo of Carte. A more vigorous,

though less elegant historian, is Warner, whose impartiality is at

least equal to Leland's, and who may perhaps, upon the whole, be

reckoned the best modern authority. Sir John Temple's _History of

Irish Rebellion_, and Lord Clanricarde's _Letters_, with a few more of

less importance, are valuable contemporary testimonies.

The catholics themselves might better leave their cause to Carte and

Leland than excite prejudices instead of allaying them by such a

tissue of misrepresentation and disingenuousness as Curry's

_Historical Account of the Civil Wars in Ireland_.

[545] Sir John Temple reckons the number of protestants murdered, or

destroyed in some manner, from the breaking out of the rebellion in

October 1641, to the cessation in September 1643, at three hundred

thousand, an evident and enormous exaggeration; so that the first

edition being incorrectly printed, and with numerals, we might almost

suspect a cipher to have been added by mistake (p. 15, edit. Maseres).

Clarendon says forty or fifty thousand were murdered in the first

insurrection. Sir William Petty, in his _Political Anatomy of

Ireland_, from calculations too vague to deserve confidence, puts the

number massacred at thirty-seven thousand. Warner has scrutinised the

examinations of witnesses, taken before a commission appointed in

1643, and now deposited in the library of Trinity College, Dublin;

and, finding many of the depositions unsworn, and others founded on

hearsay, has thrown more doubt than any earlier writer on the extent

of the massacre. Upon the whole, he thinks twelve thousand lives of

protestants the utmost that can be allowed for the direct or indirect

effects of the rebellion, during the two first years, except losses in

war (_History of Irish Rebellion_, p. 397), and of these only

one-third by murder. It is to be remarked, however, that no distinct

accounts could be preserved in formal depositions of so promiscuous a

slaughter, and that the very exaggerations show its tremendous nature.

The Ulster colony, a numerous and brave people, were evidently unable

to make head for a considerable time against the rebels; which could

hardly have been, if they had only lost a few thousands. It is idle to

throw an air of ridicule (as is sometimes attempted) on the

depositions, because they are mingled with some fabulous

circumstances, such as the appearance of the ghosts of the murdered on

the bridge at Cavan; which by the way, is only told, in the

depositions subjoined to Temple, as the report of the place, and was

no cold-blooded fabrication, but the work of a fancy bewildered by

real horrors.

Carte, who dwells at length on every circumstance unfavourable to the

opposite party, despatches the Ulster massacre in a single short

paragraph, and coolly remarks, that there were not many murders,

"_considering the nature of such an affair_," in the first week of the

insurrection. _Life of Ormond_, i. 175-177. This is hardly

reconcilable to fair dealing. Curry endeavours to discredit even

Warner's very moderate estimate; and affects to call him in one place

(p. 184) "a writer highly prejudiced against the insurgents," which is

grossly false. He praises Carte and Nalson, the only protestants he

does praise, and bestows on the latter the name of impartial. I wonder

he does not say that no one protestant was murdered. Dr. Lingard has

lately given a short account of the Ulster rebellion (_Hist. of

England_, x. 154), omitting all mention of the massacre, and

endeavouring in a note at the end of the volume, to disprove, by mere

scraps of quotation, an event of such notoriety, that we must abandon

all faith in public fame if it were really unfounded.