Prince Lionel Viceroy for Edward III—The Statute of Kilkenny
EDWARD III, that valiant, vigorous, and ambitious “English” king—he was
almost a pure-blooded Frenchman and about the last Norman monarch who
occupied the throne of England that did not speak with fluency the
language of the people he governed—was so occupied with his unjust wars
against France that he gave but small heed to Irish affairs and never
visited the island at all. But he sent over his third son, Prince
Lionel, ancestor of the royal house of York and Clarence, as viceroy.
Lionel had with him a well-equipped army of native-born English, but he
treated his Anglo-Irish allies so contemptuously that many fell away
from him and joined the ranks of the Old Irish. His English army,
unaccustomed to the Irish climate and mode of warfare, made but a poor
figure in the field, and was everywhere beaten by the dauntless Irish
clansmen. At last he was compelled to lower his imperious tone to the
Anglo-Irish and these foolishly helped him out of his scrape. It is said
that a more than doubtful campaign in the present county of Clare
procured for him, from his flatterers, the title of Duke of Clarence—a
title, by the way, which brought more or less misfortune to every
English prince who has borne it, except William IV, from his day to our
own.
Lionel was particularly jealous of the friendship which seemed to exist
between old Anglo-Irish and the old Celtic-Irish, and his small mind
conceived a method of putting an end to it. He summoned a parliament to
meet at Kilkenny, and there it was enacted, among other things, “that
all intermarriages, fosterings, gossipred, and buying or selling with
the (Irish) enemy shall be accounted treason; that English names,
fashions, and manners (most of these having disappeared) shall be
resumed under penalty of confiscation of the delinquent’s lands; that
March laws (Norman) and Brehon laws (Irish) are illegal, and that there
shall be no laws but English laws; that the Irish shall not pasture
their cattle on English lands; that the English shall not entertain
Irish rhymers, minstrels, or newsmen, and, moreover, that no ‘mere
Irishman’ shall be admitted to any ecclesiastical benefice or religious
house (England was then all Catholic) situated within the English
district.”
Other provisions of the Statute of Kilkenny, as this precious “law” is
called in Irish history, forbade the wearing of long hair, mustaches,
and cloaks, after the manner of the Irish, and the use of the Gaelic
speech was also forbidden, under heavy penalties. With their usual
subserviency to English demands, the Anglo-Irish barons of the Pale—the
portion of Ireland held by the English settlers, as already
explained—passed this barbarous enactment without opposition, although
they themselves were the chief “offenders” against it, in the eyes of
the tyrannical viceroy.
To the honor of the Anglo-Normans and Celtic-Irish be it remembered, the
base statute became almost immediately inoperative, and the Norman lords
and Irish ladies, and the Irish princes and the Norman ladies,
intermarried more numerously than before—an example generally followed
by their dependants. The gallant house of Fitzgerald, or Geraldine, as
usual, set the example of disregard.
“These Geraldines! These Geraldines! Not long her air they breathed—
Not long they fed on venison in Irish water seethed—
Not often had their children been by Irish mothers nursed,
When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst!
The English monarch strove in vain, by law and force and bribe,
To win from Irish thoughts and ways this ‘more than Irish’ tribe;
For still they clung to fosterage—to Brehon, cloak, and bard—
No king dare say to Geraldine: ‘Your Irish wife discard!’”
The immediate effect of the Statute of Kilkenny was to temporarily unite
most of the Irish clans against the common enemy. They fell fiercely
upon the Pale and again shut up the Normans in their fortresses. Prince
Lionel returned to England grieved and humiliated. His viceroyalty had
been a signal failure.
Throughout the viceroyalty of Clarence and his successor, William de
Windsor, the desultory war between the Old Irish and the Anglo-Normans
made many districts, in all the provinces, red with slaughter. The power
of the De Burgos declined in Connaught after the death of the warlike
Red Earl, who was the scourge of the O’Conors, and the latter family
brought his descendants, who had assumed the name of MacWilliam, under
their sway. The fierce tribes of Wicklow, Wexford, and Carlow harried
the Pale, and were frequently joined by the O’Mores of Leix, and the
Fitzpatricks of Ossory. In Ulster, Niel O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone,
attacked and defeated the English armies and garrisons with so much
success that he cleared Ulster of all foreigners, and won the title of
Niel the Great. The Earl of Desmond met with a severe defeat at the
hands of O’Brien, Prince of Thomond, who assailed him near the abbey of
Adare in Limerick, and routed his army with terrible carnage. Desmond
himself was mortally wounded and died upon the field. The Earl of
Kildare, Desmond’s kinsman, attempted to avenge his rout, but met with
scant success, because the Irish had, by this time, grown used to the
Norman method of warfare, and, in many cases, improved upon the tactics
of their oppressors.
Edward III, just before his death in 1376, attempted to get the
settlements of the Pale to send representatives to London to consult
about the affairs of Ireland, but they demurred, saying that it was not
their custom to deliberate outside of their own country. However, they
sent delegates to explain matters to the king, who did not further
insist on convening a Pale Parliament in the English capital. It is
strange that so able a monarch as Edward was, even in his declining
years, never thought of visiting Ireland. Of course, most of his reign
was taken up with the wars in France, in which he proved so signally
victorious, and he had but little time for other occupations. In truth,
Edward III, although nominally English, was, in reality, a Frenchman in
thought and speech, and his dearest dream was to rule over the country
of his Plantagenet ancestors, with England as a kind of tributary
province. Of course, the English people would never have acquiesced in
this arrangement, for, however willing to impose their yoke on other
peoples, they are unalterably opposed to having any foreign yoke imposed
upon themselves.
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