THE IRISH REBELLION.
[Sidenote: The vision of the Holy Brigitta.]
"The Pander[277] sheweth, in the first chapter of his book, called
_Salus Populi_, that the holy woman, Brigitta, used to inquire of her
good angel many questions of secrets divine; and among all other she
inquired, 'Of what Christian land was most souls damned?' The angel
shewed her a land in the west part of the world. She inquired the cause
why? The angel said, for there is most continual war, root of hate and
envy, and of vices contrary to charity; and without charity the souls
cannot be saved. And the angel did shew to her the lapse of the souls of
Christian folk of that land, how they fell down into hell, as thick as
any hail showers. And pity thereof moved the Pander to conceive his said
book, as in the said chapter plainly doth appear; for after his opinion,
this [Ireland] is the land that the angel understood; for there is no
land in this world of so continual war within itself; ne of so great
shedding of Christian blood; ne of so great robbing, spoiling, preying,
and burning; ne of so great wrongful extortion continually, as Ireland.
Wherefore it cannot be denied by very estimation of man but that the
angel did understand the land of Ireland."[278]
Nine hundred years had passed away since the vision of the Holy
Brigitta, and four hundred since the custody of the unfortunate country
had been undertaken by the most orderly nation in the world; yet, at the
close of all those centuries, "it could not be denied by very estimation
of man" that poor Irish souls were still descending, thick as hail
showers, into the general abyss of worthlessness. The Pander's satire
upon the English enterprise was a heavy one.
[Sidenote: Rapid success of the first invasion of Ireland.]
[Sidenote: The character of the country.]
[Sidenote: The settlement of it under the Norman leaders.]
When the wave of the Norman invasion first rolled across St. George's
Channel, the success was as easy and appeared as complete as William's
conquest of the Saxons. There was no unity of purpose among the Irish
chieftains, no national spirit which could support a sustained
resistance. The country was open and undefended,[279] and after a few
feeble struggles the contest ceased. Ireland is a basin, the centre a
fertile undulating plain, the edges a fringe of mountains that form an
almost unbroken coast line. Into these highlands the Irish tribes were
driven, where they were allowed to retain a partial independence, under
condition of paying tribute; the Norman immigrants dividing among
themselves the inheritance of the dispossessed inhabitants.[280]
Strongbow and his companions became the feudal sovereigns of the island,
holding their estates under the English crown. The common law of England
was introduced; the king's writ passed current from the Giant's Causeway
to Cape Clear;[281] and if the leading Norman families had remained on
the estates which they had conquered, or if those who did remain had
retained the character which they brought with them, the entire country
would, in all likelihood, have settled down obediently, and at length
willingly, under a rule which it would have been without power to
resist.
[Sidenote: Two causes of the decline of their authority.]
[Sidenote: Absenteeism.]
An expectation so natural was defeated by two causes, alike unforeseen
and perplexing. The Northern nations, when they overran the Roman
Empire, were in search of homes; and they subdued only to colonize. The
feudal system bound the noble to the lands which he possessed; and a
theory of ownership of estates, as consisting merely in the receipt of
rents from other occupants, was alike unheard of in fact, and repugnant
to the principles of feudal society. To Ireland belongs, among its other
misfortunes, the credit of having first given birth to absentees. The
descendants of the first invaders preferred to regard their inheritance,
not as a theatre of duty on which they were to reside, but as a
possession which they might farm for their individual advantage. They
managed their properties by agents, as sources of revenue, leasing them
even among the Irish themselves; and the tenantry, deprived of the
supporting presence of their lords, and governed only in a merely
mercenary spirit, transferred back their allegiance to the exiled chiefs
of the old race.[282] This was one grave cause of the English failure,
but serious as it was, it would not have sufficed alone to explain the
full extent of the evil. Some most powerful families rooted themselves
in the soil, and never forsook it; the Geraldines, of Munster and
Kildare; the Butlers, of Kilkenny; the De Burghs, the Birminghams, the
De Courcies, and many others. If these had been united among themselves,
or had retained their allegiance to England, their influence could not
have been long opposed successfully. Their several principalities would
have formed separate centres of civilization; and the strong system of
order would have absorbed and superseded the most obstinate resistance
which could have been offered by the scattered anarchy of the Celts.
[Sidenote: The assimilation of the Norman Irish to the native Celts.]
[Sidenote: Efforts of the government to repress the growing evil.]
[Sidenote: Fresh colonists from England follow in the same course.]
Unfortunately, the materials of good were converted into the worst
instruments of evil. If an objection had been raised to the colonization
of America, or to the conquest of India, on the ground that the
character of Englishmen would be too weak to contend successfully
against that of the races with whom they would be brought into contact,
and that they would relapse into barbarism, such an alarm would have
seemed too preposterous to be entertained; yet, prior to experience, it
would have been equally reasonable to expect that the modern Englishman
would adopt the habits of the Hindoo or the Mohican, as that the fiery
knights of Normandy would have stooped to imitate a race whom they
despised as slaves; that they would have flung away their very knightly
names to assume a barbarous equivalent;[283] and would so utterly have
cast aside the commanding features of their Northern extraction, that
their children's children could be distinguished neither in soul nor
body, neither in look, in dress, in language, nor in disposition, from
the Celts whom they had subdued. Such, however, was the extraordinary
fact. The Irish who had been conquered in the field revenged their
defeat on the minds and hearts of their conquerors; and in yielding,
yielded only to fling over their new masters the subtle spell of the
Celtic disposition. In vain the government attempted to stem the evil.
Statute was passed after statute forbidding the "Englishry" of Ireland
to use the Irish language, or intermarry with Irish families, or copy
Irish habits.[284] Penalties were multiplied on penalties; fines,
forfeitures, and at last death itself, were threatened for such
offences. But all in vain. The stealthy evil crept on irresistibly.[285]
Fresh colonists were sent over to restore the system, but only for
themselves or their children to be swept into the stream; and from the
century which succeeded the Conquest till the reign of the eighth
Henry, the strange phenomenon repeated itself, generation after
generation, baffling the wisdom of statesmen, and paralysing every
effort at a remedy.
[Sidenote: Despair of English statesmen.]
[Sidenote: The herbs did never grow which could cure the evils of
Ireland.]
[Sidenote: Causes of the corruption.]
Here was a difficulty which no skill could contend against, and which
was increased by the exertions which were made to oppose it. The healthy
elements which were introduced to leaven the old became themselves
infected, and swelled the mass of evil; and the clearest observers were
those who were most disposed to despair. Popery has been the scapegoat
which, for the last three centuries, has borne the reproach of Ireland;
but before popery had ceased to be the faith of the world, the problem
had long presented itself in all its hopelessness. "Some say" (this is
the language of 1515), "and for the most part every man, that to find
the antidotum for this disease is impossible--for what remedy can be had
now more than hath been had unto this time? And there was never remedy
found in this two hundred year that could prosper; and no medicine can
be had now for this infirmity but such as hath been had afore this time.
And folk were as wise that time as they be now; and since they could
never find remedy, how should remedy be found by us? And the Pander
maketh answer and saith, that it is no marvel that our fathers that were
of more wit and wisdom than we, could not find remedy in the premises,
_for the herbs did never grow_. And also he saith that the wealth and
prosperity of every land is the commonwealth of the same, and not the
private wealth; and all the English noble folk of this land passeth
always their private weal; and in regard thereof setteth little or
nought by the common weal; insomuch as there is no common folk in all
this world so little set by, so greatly despised, so feeble, so poor,
so greatly trodden under foot, as the king's poor common folk be of
Ireland."[286] There was no true care for the common weal--that was the
especial peculiarity by which the higher classes in Ireland were
unfortunately distinguished. In England, the last consideration of a
noble-minded man was his personal advantage; Ireland was a theatre for a
universal scramble of selfishness, and the invaders caught the national
contagion, and became, as the phrase went, _ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores_.
[Sidenote: The outward circumstances of the chiefs.]
[Sidenote: Inability of the English princes to maintain a standing
army.]
[Sidenote: Spasmodic character of their administration.]
The explanation of this disastrous phenomenon lay partly in the
circumstances in which they were placed, partly in the inherent
tendencies of human nature itself. The Norman nobles entered Ireland as
independent adventurers, who, each for himself, carved out his fortune
with his sword; and, unsupported as they were from home, or supported
only at precarious intervals, divided from one another by large tracts
of country, and surrounded by Irish dependents, it was doubtless more
convenient for them to govern by humouring the habits and traditions to
which their vassals would most readily submit. The English government,
occupied with Scotland and France, had no leisure to maintain a powerful
central authority; and a central disciplinarian rule enforced by the
sword was contrary to the genius of the age. Under the feudal system,
the kings governed only by the consent and with the support of the
nobility; and the maintenance at Dublin of a standing military force
would have been regarded with extreme suspicion in England, as well as
in Ireland. Hence the affairs of both countries were, for the most
part, administered under the same forms, forms which were as ill suited
to the waywardness of the Celt, as they met exactly the stronger nature
of the Saxon. At intervals, when the government was exasperated by
unusual outrages, some prince of the blood was sent across as viceroy;
and half a century of acquiescence in disorder would be followed by a
spasmodic severity, which irritated without subduing, and forfeited
affection, while it failed to terrify. At all other times, Ireland was
governed by the Norman Irish, and these, as the years went on, were
tempted by their convenience to strengthen themselves by Irish
alliances, to identify their interests with those of the native chiefs,
in order to conciliate their support; to prefer the position of wild and
independent sovereigns, resting on the attachment of a people whose
affections they had gained by learning to resemble them, to that of
military lords over a hostile population, the representatives of a
distant authority, on which they could not rely.
[Sidenote: Peculiar feature of the Irish temper.]
[Sidenote: It possesses the counterfeit of every virtue.]
[Sidenote: Their peculiar charm.]
[Sidenote: The foster-nurses and the minstrels.]
This is a partial account of the Irish difficulty. We must look deeper,
however, for the full interpretation of it; and outward circumstances
never alone suffice to explain a moral transformation. The Roman
military colonists remained Roman alike on the Rhine and on the
Euphrates. The Turkish conquerors caught no infection from Greece, or
from the provinces on the Danube. The Celts in England were absorbed by
the Saxon invaders; and the Mogul and the Anglo-Indian alike have shown
no tendency to assimilate with the Hindoo. When a marked type of human
character yields before another, the change is owing to some element of
power in that other, which coming in contact with elements weaker than
itself, subdues and absorbs them. The Irish spirit, which exercised so
fatal a fascination, was enabled to triumph over the Norman in virtue of
representing certain perennial tendencies of humanity, which are latent
in all mankind, and which opportunity may at any moment develope. It was
not a national spirit--the clans were never united, except by some
common hatred; and the normal relation of the chiefs towards each other
was a relation of chronic war and hostility. It was rather an impatience
of control, a deliberate preference for disorder, a determination in
each individual man to go his own way, whether it was a good way or a
bad, and a reckless hatred of industry. The result was the inevitable
one--oppression, misery, and wrong. But in detail faults and graces were
so interwoven, that the offensiveness of the evil was disguised by the
charm of the good; and even the Irish vices were the counterfeit of
virtues, contrived so cunningly that it was hard to distinguish their
true texture. The fidelity of the clansmen to their leaders was
faultlessly beautiful; extravagance appeared like generosity, and
improvidence like unselfishness; anarchy disguised itself under the name
of liberty; and war and plunder were decorated by poetry as the
honourable occupation of heroic natures. Such were the Irish with whom
the Norman conquerors found themselves in contact; and over them all was
thrown a peculiar imaginative grace, a careless atmosphere of humour,
sometimes gay, sometimes melancholy, always attractive, which at once
disarmed the hand which was raised to strike or punish them. These
spirits were dangerous neighbours. Men who first entered the country at
mature age might be fortified by experience against their influence, but
on the young they must have exerted a charm of fatal potency. The
foster-nurse first chanted the spell over the cradle in wild passionate
melodies.[287] It was breathed in the ears of the growing boy by the
minstrels who haunted the halls,[288] and the lawless attractions of
disorder proved too strong for the manhood which was trained among so
perilous associations.
[Sidenote: A military despotism the only government which could have
succeeded.]
[Sidenote: The English statesmen see the necessity, but cannot act upon
it.]
[Sidenote: The island all but completely Irish in the 16th century.]
For such a country, therefore, but one form of government could
succeed--an efficient military despotism. The people could be
wholesomely controlled only by an English deputy, sustained by an
English army, and armed with arbitrary power, till the inveterate
turbulence of their tempers had died away under repression, and they had
learnt in their improved condition the value of order and rule. This was
the opinion of all statesmen who possessed any real knowledge of
Ireland, from Lord Talbot under Henry VI. to the latest viceroy who
attempted a milder method and found it fail. "If the king were as wise
as Solomon the Sage," said the report of 1515, "he shall never subdue
the wild Irish to his obedience without dread of the sword and of the
might and strength of his power. As long as they may resist and save
their lives, they will not obey the king."[289] Unfortunately, although
English statesmen were able to see the course which ought to be
followed, it had been too inconvenient to pursue that course. They had
put off the evil day, preferring to close their eyes against the
mischief instead of grappling with it resolutely; and thus, at the
opening of the sixteenth century, when the hitherto neglected barbarians
were about to become a sword in the pope's hands to fight the battle
against the Reformation, the "king's Irish enemies" had recovered all
but absolute possession of the island, and nothing remained of
Strongbow's conquests save the shadow of a titular sovereignty, and a
country strengthened in hostility by the means which had been used to
subdue it.
[Sidenote: Division of the country.]
[Sidenote: The English pale.]
The events on which we are about to enter require for their
understanding a sketch of the position of the various chiefs, as they
were at this time scattered over the island. The English pale,
originally comprising "the four shires," as they were called, of Dublin,
Kildare, Meath, and Uriel, or Louth, had been shorn down to half its old
dimensions. The line extended from Dundalk to Ardee; from Ardee by
Castletown to Kells; thence through Athboy and Trim to the Castle of
Maynooth; from Maynooth it crossed to Claine upon the Liffey, and then
followed up the line of the river to Ballimore Eustace, from which place
it skirted back at the rear of the Wicklow and Dublin mountains to the
forts at Dalkey, seven miles south of Dublin.[290] This narrow strip
alone, some fifty miles long and twenty broad, was in any sense English.
Beyond the borders the common law of England was of no authority; the
king's writ was but a strip of parchment; and the country was parcelled
among a multitude of independent chiefs, who acknowledged no sovereignty
but that of strength, who levied tribute on the inhabitants of the pale
as a reward for a nominal protection of their rights, and as a
compensation for abstaining from the plunder of their farms.[291] Their
swords were their sceptres; their codes of right, the Brehon
traditions,--a convenient system, which was called law, but which in
practice was a happy contrivance for the composition of felonies.[292]
[Sidenote: Ireland beyond the pale absolutely governed by the Irish
chiefs. Their distribution.]
These chiefs, with their dependent clans, were distributed over the four
provinces in the following order. The Geraldines, the most powerful of
the remaining Normans, were divided into two branches. The Geraldines of
the south, under the Earls of Desmond, held Limerick, Cork, and Kerry;
the Geraldines of Leinster lay along the frontiers of the English pale;
and the heads of the house, the Earls of Kildare, were the feudal
superiors of the greater portion of the English counties. To the
Butlers, Earls of Ormond and Ossory, belonged Kilkenny, Carlow, and
Tipperary. The De Burghs, or Bourkes, as they called themselves, were
scattered over Galway, Roscommon, and the south of Sligo, occupying the
broad plains which lie between the Shannon and the mountains of
Connemara and Mayo. This was the relative position into which these
clans had settled at the Conquest, and it had been maintained with
little variation.
[Sidenote: Recovery of the indigenous Irish.]
The north, which had fallen to the Lacies and the De Courcies, had been
wholly recovered by the Irish. The Lacies had become extinct. The De
Courcies, once Earls of Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were
reduced to the petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the
Desmonds. The Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which
they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely than ever,
the Irish habits and traditions. Old men, who were alive in 1533,
remembered a time when the Norman families attempted to live in
something of an English manner,[293] and when there were towns in the
middle of Ireland with decent municipal institutions. The wars of the
Roses had destroyed the remnants of English influence by calling away a
number of leading nobles, such especially as were least infected by the
Irish character; and the native chiefs had reoccupied the lands of their
ancestors, unresisted, if not welcomed as allies. The O'Neils and
O'Donnells had spread down over Ulster to the frontiers of the pale. The
O'Connors and O'Carrolls had recrossed the Shannon, and pushed forwards
into Kildare; the O'Connor Don was established in a castle near
Portarlington, said to be one of the strongest in Ireland; and the
O'Carrolls had seized Leap, an ancient Danish fortress, surrounded by
bog and forest, a few miles from Parsonstown. O'Brien of Inchiquin,
Prince--as he styled himself--of Thomond, no longer contented with his
principality of Clare, had thrown a bridge across the Shannon five miles
above Limerick, and was thus enabled to enter Munster at his pleasure
and spread his authority towards the south; while the M'Carties and
O'Sullivans, in Cork and Kerry, were only not dangerous to the Earls of
Desmond, because the Desmonds were more Irish than themselves, and were
accepted as their natural chiefs.
[Sidenote: The Earls of Ormond only continue to hold them in check.]
[Sidenote: The desire of the Ormonds to maintain the English rule
greater than their power.]
In Tipperary and Kilkenny only the Celtic reaction was held in check.
The Earls of Ormond, although they were obliged themselves to live as
Irish chieftains, and to govern by the Irish law, yet partly from an
inherent nobility of nature, partly through family alliances and a more
sustained intercourse with their English kindred, partly perhaps from
the inveterate feud of their house with the Geraldines of Kildare,
remained true to their allegiance, and maintained the English authority
so far as their power extended. That power, unfortunately, was
incommensurate with their good will, and their situation prevented them
from rendering the assistance to the crown which they desired. Wexford,
Wicklow, and the mountains of Dublin, were occupied by the Highland
tribes of O'Bryne and O'Toole, who, in their wild glens and dangerous
gorges, defied attempts to conquer them, and who were able, at all
times, issuing down out of the passes of the hills, to cut off
communication with the pale. Thus the Butlers had no means of reaching
Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the home of their
hereditary rivals and foes.
[Sidenote: Sixty chief lords in Ireland, who made war and peace for
themselves, and obeyed only the sword.]
[Sidenote: In each of these sixty districts divers petty captains, who
claimed a like independence.]
This is a general account of the situation of the various parties in
Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century. I have spoken only of
the leading families; and I have spoken of them as if they possessed
some feudal supremacy,--yet even this slight thread of order was in many
cases without real consistency, and was recognised only when fear, or
passion, or interest, prompted. "There be sixty counties, called
regions, in Ireland," says the report of 1515, "inhabited with the
king's Irish enemies, some regions as big as a shire, some more, some
less, where reigneth more than sixty chief captains, whereof some
calleth themselves kings, some king's peers in their language, some
princes, some dukes, that liveth only by the sword, and obeyeth to no
other temporal person save only to himself that is strong. And every of
the said captains maketh war and peace for himself, and holdeth by the
sword, and hath imperial jurisdiction, and obeyeth no other person,
English or Irish, except only to such persons as may subdue him by the
sword.... Also, in every of the said regions, there be divers petty
captains, and every of them maketh war and peace for himself, without
licence of his chief captain.... And there be more than thirty of the
English noble folk that followeth this same Irish order, and keepeth the
same rule."[294] Every man, in short, who could raise himself to that
dishonourable position, was captain of a troop of banditti, and counted
it his chief honour to live upon the plunder of his neighbour.
[Sidenote: Why anarchy did not work its own cure.]
[Sidenote: Extreme misery of the people.]
This condition of things might have been expected to work its own cure.
The earth will not support human life uncultivated, and men will not
labour without some reasonable hope that they will enjoy the fruit of
their labour. Anarchy, therefore, is usually shortlived, and perishes of
inanition. Unruly persons must either comply with the terms on which
alone they are permitted to subsist, and consent to submit to some kind
of order, or they must die. The Irish, however, were enabled to escape
from this most wholesome provision by the recklessness of the people,
who preferred any extremity of suffering to the endurance of the least
restraint, and by the tyranny under which the labouring poor were
oppressed. In England, the same hands were trained to hold the sword and
to hold the plough. The labourers and the artisans in peace were the
soldiers in war. In Ireland, labour was treated as disgraceful; the
chiefs picked out the strongest and fiercest of their subjects, and
trained them only to fight; the labourers were driven to the field as
beasts of burden, and compelled to work on the chance that the harvest
might be secured. By this precarious means, with the addition of the
wild cattle which roamed in thousands among the woods and bogs,
sufficient sustenance was extracted from the soil to support a scanty
population, the majority of whom were supposed to be the most wretched
specimens of human nature which could be found upon the globe. "What
common folk in all this world," the report says, "is so poor, so feeble,
so evil beseen in town and field, so bestial, so greatly oppressed and
trodden under foot, fares so evil, with so great misery, and with so
wretched life, as the common folk of Ireland? What pity is here, what
ruth is to report, there is no tongue that can tell, ne person that can
write. It passeth far the orators and muses all to shew the order of the
nobles, and how cruel they entreateth the poor common people. What
danger it is to the king against God to suffer his land, whereof he
bears the charge and the cure temporal, to be in the said misorder so
long without remedy. It were more honour to surrender his claim thereto,
and to make no longer prosecution thereof, than to suffer his poor
subjects always to be so oppressed, and all the nobles of the land to be
at war within themselves, always shedding of Christian blood without
remedy. The herd must render account for his fold; and the king for
his."[295]
[Sidenote: Irish and English estimate of the same phenomenon.]
The English writer did not exaggerate the picture, for his description
is too abundantly confirmed in every page of the Celtic Annalists, with
only but a single difference. To the Englishman the perpetual
disturbance appeared a dishonour and disgrace; to the Celt it was the
normal and natural employment of human beings, in the pursuit of which
lay the only glory and the only manly pleasure.
A population of such a character presented in itself a difficulty
sufficiently formidable; and this difficulty was increased by the
character of the family on whom the circumstances of their position
most obliged the English government to rely. There were two methods of
maintaining the show of English sovereignty. Either an English deputy
might reside in Dublin, supported by a standing army; or it was
necessary to place confidence in one or other of the great Irish
noblemen, and to govern through him. Either method had its
disadvantages. The expense of the first was enormous, for the pay of the
common soldier was sixpence or eightpence a-day--an equivalent of six or
eight shillings; and as the arrival of an English deputy was the signal
for a union throughout Ireland of all septs and clans against a common
enemy, his presence was worse than useless, unless he could maintain a
body of efficient troops numerous enough to cope with the coalition. At
the same time the cost, great as it would have been, must have fallen
wholly on the crown, for the parliaments would make no grants of money
for the support of a mercenary army, except on extraordinary
emergencies.
On the other hand, to choose an Irish deputy was to acquiesce in
disorder, and to lend a kind of official sanction to it. It was
inexpensive, however, and therefore convenient; and evils which were not
actually felt in perpetual demands for money, and in uncomfortable
reports, could for a time be forgotten or ignored. In this direction lay
all the temptations. The condition of the country was only made known to
the English government through the deputy, who could represent it in
such colours as he pleased; and the government could persuade themselves
that evils no longer complained of had ceased to exist.
[Sidenote: The government of Ireland conducted by Irish noblemen.]
[Sidenote: Coyne and livery extorted by the deputies.]
[Sidenote: The people unprotected even within the pale.]
This latter method, therefore, found most favour in London. Irish
noblemen were glad to accept the office of deputy, and to discharge it
at a low salary or none; but it was in order to abuse their authority
for their personal advantage. They indemnified themselves for their
exertions to keep order, which was not kept, by the extortion which they
practised in the name of the government which they represented; and thus
deservedly made the English rule more than ever detested. Instead of
receiving payment, they were allowed while deputies what was called
"coyne and livery"; that is to say, they were allowed to levy military
service, and to quarter their followers on the farmers and poor
gentlemen of the pale; or else to raise fines in composition, under
pretence that they were engaged in the service of the crown. The entire
cost of this system was estimated at the enormous sum of a hundred
pounds a day.[296] The exactions might have been tolerated if the people
had been repaid by protection; but forced as they were to pay black
mail at the same time to the Irish borderers, the double burdens had the
effect of driving every energetic settler out of the pale, and his place
was filled by some poor Irishman whom use had made acquainted with
misery.[297]
[Sidenote: The Geraldines of Kildare, from their position, the natural
deputies.]
[Sidenote: The policy of the Geraldines to make the government
impossible except to themselves.]
Nor was extortion the only advantage which the Irish deputies obtained
from their office. They prosecuted their private feuds with the revenues
of the state. They connived at the crimes of any chieftain who would
join their faction. Every conceivable abuse in the administration of the
government attended the possession of power by the Geraldines of
Kildare, and yet by the Geraldines it was almost inevitable that the
power should be held. The choice lay between the Kildares and the
Ormonds. No other nobleman could pretend to compete with these two. The
Earls of Desmond only could take rank as their equals; and the lordships
of Desmond were at the opposite extremity of the island. The services of
the Earls of Ormond were almost equally unavailable. When an Earl of
Ormond was residing at Dublin as deputy, he was separated from his clan
by fifty miles of dangerous road. The policy of the Geraldines was to
secure the government for themselves by making it impossible for any
other person to govern; and the appointment of their rival was a signal
for the revolt of the entire clan, both in Leinster and Munster. The
Butlers were too weak to resist this combination; and inasmuch as they
were themselves always loyal when a Geraldine was in power, and the
Geraldines were disloyal when a Butler was in power, the desire to hush
up the difficulty, and to secure a show of quiet, led to the consistent
preference of the more convenient chief.
There were qualities also in the Kildare family which gave them peculiar
influence, not in Ireland only, but at the English court. Living like
wild Irish in their castle at Maynooth, they appeared in London with the
address of polished courtiers. When the complaints against them became
too serious to neglect, they were summoned to give account of their
conduct. They had only to present themselves before the council, and it
was at once impossible to believe that the frank, humorous, high-minded
gentlemen at the bar could be the monsters who were charged with so
fearful crimes. Their ever-ready wit and fluent words, their show of
bluntness and pretence of simplicity, disarmed anger and dispersed
calumny; and they returned on all such occasions to Ireland more trusted
than ever, to laugh at the folly which they had duped.
[Sidenote: The eighth Earl of Kildare in rebellion against Henry VII.]
[Sidenote: He appears before the council,]
[Sidenote: Who decide that since Ireland cannot govern him, he must
govern Ireland.]
The farce had already continued through two generations at the opening
of the Reformation. Gerald, the eighth earl, was twice in rebellion
against Henry VII. He crowned Lambert Simnel with his own hand; when
Lambert Simnel fell, he took up Perkin Warbeck; and under pretence of
supporting a competitor for the crown, carried fire and sword through
Ireland. At length, when England was quiet, Sir Edward Poynings was sent
to Dublin to put down this new King-maker. He took the earl prisoner,
with some difficulty, and despatched him to London, where he appeared at
the council-board, hot-handed from murder and treason. The king told him
that heavy accusations would be laid to his charge, and that he had
better choose some counsel to plead his cause. The earl looked at him
with a smile of simplicity. "I will choose the ablest in England," he
said; "your Highness I take for my counsel against these false
knaves."[298] The accusations were proceeded with. Among other
enormities, Kildare had burnt the cathedral at Cashel, and the
archbishop was present as witness and prosecutor. The earl confessed his
offence: "but by Jasus," he added, "I would not have done it if I had
not been told that my lord archbishop was inside."[299] The insolent
wit, and the danger of punishing so popular a nobleman, passed the reply
as sufficient. The council laughed. "All Ireland cannot govern this
earl," said one. "Then let this earl govern all Ireland," was the prompt
answer of Henry VII.[300] He was sent over a convicted traitor,--he
returned a knight of the Garter, lord deputy, and the representative of
the crown. Rebellion was a successful policy, and a lesson which
corresponded so closely to the Irish temper was not forgotten.
[Sidenote: Rebellion prospers with the Geraldines]
"What, thou fool," said Sir Gerald Shaneson to a younger son of this
nobleman, thirty years later, when he found him slow to join the
rebellion against Henry VIII. "What, thou fool, thou shalt be the more
esteemed for it. For what hadst thou, if thy father had not done so?
What was he until he crowned a king here, took Garth, the king's
captain, prisoner, hanged his son, resisted Poynings and all deputies;
killed them of Dublin upon Oxmantown Green; would suffer no man to rule
here for the king but himself! Then the king regarded him, and made him
deputy, and married thy mother to him;[301] or else thou shouldst never
have had a foot of land, where now thou mayest dispend four hundred
marks by the year."[302]
These scornful words express too truly the position of the Earl of
Kildare, which, however, he found it convenient to disguise under a
decent exterior. The borders of the pale were partially extended; the
O'Tooles were driven further into the Wicklow mountains, and an outlying
castle was built to overawe them at Powerscourt. Some shadow of a
revenue was occasionally raised; and by this show of service, and
because change would involve the crown in expense, he was allowed to go
his own way. He held his ground till the close of his life, and dying,
he left behind him a son trained on his father's model, and who followed
with the utmost faithfulness in his father's steps.
[Sidenote: Gerald, ninth earl, becomes deputy, 1513.]
[Sidenote: Is deposed in 1520, and the Earl of Surrey takes his place.]
Gerald, son of Gerald, ninth earl, became deputy, almost it seemed by
right of inheritance, in 1513; and things were allowed to continue in
their old course for another five years; when at length Henry VIII.
awoke to the disgrace which the condition of the country reflected upon
him. The report of 1515 was the first step gained; the Earl of Ormond
contributed to the effect produced by the report, with representations
of the conduct of the deputy, who had been fortifying his own castle
with government stores; and the result was a resolution to undertake
measures of real vigour. In 1520, the Earl of Kildare was deprived of
his office, and sent for to England. His place was taken by the Earl of
Surrey, who of all living Englishmen combined in the highest degree the
necessary qualities of soldier and statesman. It seemed as if the old
weak forbearance was to last no longer, and as if Ireland was now
finally to learn the needful lesson of obedience.
[Sidenote: The report had said that the Irish could never be reformed
except by force.]
But the first efforts to cure an inveterate evil rarely succeed; and
Henry VIII., like every other statesman who has undertaken to reform
Ireland, was to purchase experience by failure. The report had declared
emphatically that the Irish chiefs would never submit so long as they
might resist, and escape with their lives; that conciliation would be
only interpreted as weakness; and that the tyrannical lords and
gentlemen must be coerced into equity by the sword freely used.
[Sidenote: The king will not believe it.]
The king, however, was young and sanguine; he was unable to accept so
hard a conclusion; he could not believe that any body of human beings
were so hopelessly inaccessible to the ordinary means of influence as
the Irish gentlemen were represented to be. He would first try
persuasion, and have recourse to extremity only if persuasion failed.
[Sidenote: Lord Surrey is to lecture the chiefs on the principles of
government.]
His directions to the Earl of Surrey, therefore, were that at the
earliest opportunity he should call an assembly of so many of the Irish
chiefs as he could induce to come to him, and to discourse to them upon
the elementary principles of social order and government.
[Sidenote: He is to teach them that realms without justice be but
tyrannies.]
[Sidenote: He is not, however, to threaten,]
[Sidenote: But he is to persuade,]
[Sidenote: And they may obey their own laws if they prefer it, if those
laws be good and reasonable, so only that they obey some law, and do not
live at will.]
"We think it expedient," he wrote, "that when ye shall call the lords
and other captains of that our land before you, as of good congruence ye
must needs do; ye, after and amongst other overtures by your wisdom then
to be made, shall declare unto them the great decay, ruin, and
desolation of that commodious and fertile land, for lack of politic
governance and good justice; which can never be brought in order unless
the unbridled sensualities of insolent folk be brought under the rule of
the laws. For realms without justice be but tyrannies and robberies,
more consonant to beastly appetites than to the laudable life of
reasonable creatures. And whereas wilfulness doth reign by strength
without law or justice, there is no distinction of propriety in
dominion; ne yet any man may say this is mine, but by strength the
weaker is subdued and oppressed, which is contrary to all laws, both of
God and man.... Howbeit, our mind is, not that ye shall impress on them
any opinion by fearful words, that we intend to expel them from their
lands and dominions lawfully possessed; ne yet that we be minded to
constrain them precisely to obey our laws, ministered by our justices
there; but under good manner to show unto them that of necessity it is
requisite that every reasonable creature be governed by a law. And
therefore, if they shall allege that our laws there used be too extreme
and rigorous; and that it should be very hard for them to observe the
same; then ye may further ensearch of them under what manners, and by
what laws, they will be ordered and governed, to the intent that if
their laws be good and reasonable, they may be approved; and the rigour
of our laws, if they shall think them too hard, be mitigated and brought
to such moderation as they may conveniently live under the same. By
which means ye shall finally induce them of necessity to conform their
order of living to the observance of some reasonable law, and not to
live at will as they have used heretofore."[303]
[Sidenote: Surrey greeted with instant rebellion,]
[Sidenote: instigated by Kildare.]
[Sidenote: Advice of Surrey to do all or nothing.]
So wrote Henry in 1520, being then twenty-eight years old, in his
inexperience of human nature, and especially of the Irish form of it. No
words could be truer, wiser, or more generous; but those only listen
effectively to words of wisdom and generosity, who themselves possess
something of the same qualities; and the Irish would not have required
that such an address should be made to them if they had been capable of
profiting by it. If Surrey was sanguine of any good result, he was soon
undeceived. He had no sooner landed than the whole country was in arms
against him,--O'Neile, O'Carroll, O'Connor, O'Brien, Desmond, broke into
simultaneous rebellion, acting, as was proved by intercepted
letters,[304] under instructions which Kildare had sent from England.
Surrey saw at a glance the justice of the language of the report. He
informed Wolsey briefly of the state of the country, and advised that
unless the king was prepared for extreme measures, he should not waste
money in partial efforts.[305] Writing subsequently to Henry himself, he
said that the work to be done was a repetition of the conquest of Wales
by Edward I, and it would prove at least, as tedious and as expensive.
Nevertheless, if the king could make up his mind to desire it, there was
no insuperable difficulty. He would undertake the work himself with six
thousand men. The difficulty would be then, however, but half overcome,
for the habits of the people were incurable. Strong castles must be
built up and down the island, like those at Conway and Carnarvon; and a
large immigration would be necessary of English colonists.[306] Either
as much as this should be done, the earl thought, or nothing. Half
measures only made bad into worse; and a policy of repression, if not
consistently maintained, was unjust and pernicious. It encouraged the
better affected of the inhabitants to show their good will to the
government; and when the Irish were again in power, these persons were
marked for vengeance.
[Sidenote: The king persists in a middle way; and Surrey at length
desires his recal.]
Practical experience was thus laid against Henry's philosophy; and it
would have been well if the king could have discerned clearly on which
side the truth was likely to lie. For the misfortune of Ireland, this
was not the case. It was inconvenient at the moment to undertake a
costly conquest. Surrey was maintained with a short retinue, and from
want of power could only enter upon a few partial expeditions. He
inflicted a heavy defeat upon O'Neile; he stormed a castle of
O'Connor's; and showed, with the small means at his disposal, what he
might have done with far less support than he had required. He went
where he pleased through the country. But his course was "as the way of
a ship through the sea, or as the way of a bird through the air." The
elements yielded without resistance, and closed in behind him; and,
after eighteen months of manful exertion, feeling the uselessness of
further enterprises conducted on so small a scale, to the sorrow and
alarm of the Irish council, he desired and obtained his recal.[307]
[Sidenote: Kildare finds favour.]
[Sidenote: Kildare returns to Ireland. Lord Ormond deputy.]
[Sidenote: The Geraldines rebel,]
Meanwhile, in England, the Earl of Kildare had made good use of his
opportunities. In spite of his detected letters, he had won his way into
favour. He accompanied Henry to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, where he
distinguished himself by his brilliant bearing; and instead of punishing
him as a traitor, the king allowed him to marry Lady Elizabeth Grey,
daughter of the Marquis of Dorset, and nearly related to the blood
royal. He was permitted to return to Ireland; not, however, immediately
as deputy. An intermediate effort was made to govern through Lord
Ormond, whose intentions were excellent, but unfortunately the Irish
refused to submit to him. The Earl of Desmond remained in rebellion, and
invaded Kilkenny from the south; and two years followed of universal
insurrection, pillage, and murder. Kildare accused Ormond to the English
council as responsible;[308] Ormond retorted with similar charges
against Kildare; and commissioners were sent over to "investigate," with
instructions, if they saw reason, to replace Kildare in his old office.
[Sidenote: And Kildare is restored.]
[Sidenote: Desmond makes a league with Francis I.,]
[Sidenote: Kildare secretly conniving at it, and preparing for a general
insurrection.]
[Sidenote: The state of Ireland becomes at last dangerous.]
The permission was sufficient; in 1524 he was again deputy; and no
deliberate purpose of misrule could have led to results more fatal. The
earl, made bold by impunity, at once prepared for a revolt from the
English crown. Hitherto he had been contented to make himself essential
to the maintenance of the English sovereignty; he now launched out into
bolder measures, and encouraged by Henry's weakness, resolved to dare
the worst extremity. On the breaking out of the French war of 1523-24,
his kinsman, the Earl of Desmond, opened a negotiation with Francis I.
for the landing of a French army in Munster.[309] Kildare, while
professing that he was endeavouring to take Desmond prisoner, was
holding secret interviews with him to concert plans for a united
move,[310] and was strengthening himself at the same time with alliances
among the native chiefs. One of his daughters became the wife of the
O'Connor; another married O'Carroll, of Leap Castle; and a third the
Baron of Slane;[311] and to leave no doubt of his intentions, he
transferred the cannon and military stores from Dublin Castle to his own
fortress at Maynooth. Lord Ormond sent information to England of these
proceedings, but he could gain no hearing. For three years the
Geraldines were allowed to continue their preparations undisturbed; and
perhaps they might have matured their plans at leisure, so odious had
become the mention of Ireland to the English statesmen, had not the
king's divorce, by embroiling him with the pope and emperor, made the
danger serious.
[Sidenote: Desmond applies to the emperor.]
[Sidenote: Kildare again in London, and committed to the Tower.]
[Sidenote: O'Connor invades the pale, and takes the vice-deputy
prisoner.]
The alliance of England and France had disconcerted the first scheme. No
sooner was this new opportunity opened than, with Kildare's consent,
Desmond applied to Charles V. with similar overtures.[312] This danger
was too serious to be neglected; and in 1527, Kildare was a second time
summoned to London. He went, so confident was he of the weakness of the
government, and again he was found to have calculated justly. He was
arraigned before the council, overwhelmed with invectives by
Wolsey,[313] and sent to the Tower. But he escaped by his old art. No
sooner was he committed, than Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, who had
accompanied him to England, hurried back across the Channel to the
castle of her brother-in-law, O'Connor.[314] The robber chief instantly
rose and attacked the pale. The Marchers opened their lines to give his
banditti free passage into the interior;[315] and he seized and carried
off prisoner the Baron of Delvin, who had been made vice-deputy on
Kildare's departure. Desmond meanwhile held Ormond in check at Kilkenny,
and prevented him from sending assistance to Dublin; and the Irish
council were at once prostrate and helpless.
[Sidenote: The Duke of Richmond viceroy.]
[Sidenote: Skeffington made deputy to govern with the help of Kildare.]
Henry VIII., on receipt of this intelligence, instead of sending Kildare
to the block and equipping an army, condescended to write a letter of
remonstrance to O'Connor. "A letter from the king!" said the insolent
chieftain when it was brought to him, "what king! If I may live one
year, I trust to see Ireland in that case that there shall be no more
mention here of the King of England than of the King of Spain,"[316]
Still, however, it was thought inconvenient to venture extremities.
Henry allowed himself to make use of Kildare's assistance to soothe the
immediate storm.[317] An old desire of the Irish had been that some
prince of the blood should govern them;[318] he nominated therefore, his
natural son, the Duke of Richmond as viceroy; and having no adequate
force in Ireland to resist an insurrection, and no immediate means of
despatching any such force, he was once more obliged to pardon and
restore the traitorous Geraldine; appointing, at the same time, Sir
William Skeffington, a moderately able man, though too old for duty, as
the Duke of Richmond's deputy, and directing him to govern with the
advice and cooeperation of the Earl of Kildare.
[Sidenote: John Allen appointed Archbishop of Dublin.]
To this disastrous weakness there was but one counterpoise--that the
English party in the council of Ireland was strengthened by the
appointment of John Allen to the archbishopric of Dublin and the office
of chancellor. Allen was one of the many men of talent who owed their
elevation to Wolsey. He was now sent over to keep watch on Kildare, and
to supply the government with accurate information which might be relied
upon as a ground for action. Till this time (and the fact is one which
ought to be borne in mind), the government had been forced to depend for
their knowledge of the state of the country either on the
representations of the deputy, or the private accusations of his
personal enemies; both of them exceedingly untrustworthy sources.
Henceforward there runs a clear stream of light through the fog and
night of confusion, furnished either by the archbishop or by Allen,
Master of the Rolls, who was most likely his kinsman.
[Sidenote: Kildare a third time deputy.]
[Sidenote: Saturnalia of madness.]
[Sidenote: Despatch of the two Allens.]
[Sidenote: Till great men suffered there would be no peace in Ireland.]
The policy of conciliation, if conduct so feeble deserves to be called a
policy at all, had now reached its limit; and it amounted to confessed
imbecility. Twice deposed from power on clear evidence of high treason,
Lord Kildare was once more restored. It cost him but a little time to
deliver himself of the presence of Skeffington; and in 1532 he was again
sole deputy. All which the Earl of Surrey had foretold came to pass.
Archbishop Allen was deprived of the chancellorship, and the Archbishop
of Armagh, a creature of the Geraldines, was substituted in his place.
Those noblemen and gentlemen who had lent themselves to the interests of
the English in the earl's absence were persecuted, imprisoned, or
murdered. They had ventured to be loyal from a belief in the assurances
which had been made to them; but the government was far off and Kildare
was near; and such of them as he condescended to spare "were now driven
in self-defence, maugre their wills, to follow with the rest."[319] The
wind which filled the sails of the ship in which Kildare returned, blew
into flames the fires of insurrection; and in a very Saturnalia of Irish
madness the whole people, with no object that could be discovered but
for very delight in disorder itself, began to tear themselves to pieces.
Lord Thomas Butler was murdered by the Geraldines; Kildare himself was
shot through the body in a skirmish; Powerscourt was burnt by the
O'Tooles; and Dublin Castle was sacked in a sudden foray by O'Brien Oge.
O'Neile was out in the north; Desmond in the south; and the English pale
was overrun by brigands.[320] Ireland had found its way into its ideal
condition--that condition towards which its instincts perpetually
tended, and which at length it had undisputedly reached. The Allens
furnished the king with a very plain report of the effect of his
leniency. They dwelt boldly on the mistakes which had been made.
Reechoing the words of the Report of 1515, they declared that the only
hope for the country was to govern by English deputies; and that to
grudge the cost seemed "consonant to the nature of him that rather than
he will depart with fourpence he will jeopard to lose twenty
shillings--which fourpence, disbursed in time, might have saved the
other."[321] They spoke well of the common Irish. "If well governed,"
they said, "the Irish would be found as civil, politic, and active, as
any other nation. But what subjects under any prince in the world," they
asked, "would love or defend the rights of that prince who,
notwithstanding their true hearts and obedience, would afterwards put
them under the governance of such as would persecute and destroy them?"
Faith must be kept with those to whom promises had been made, and the
habit of rewarding treason with concessions must be brought to an end.
"Till great men suffer for their offences," they added, significantly,
"your subjects within the English pale shall never live in quietness,
nor stand sure of their goods and lives. Therefore, let your deputy have
in commandment to do justice upon great thieves and malefactors, and to
spare your pardons."[322]
These were but words, and such words had been already spoken too often
to deaf ears; but the circumstances of the time were each day growing
more perilous, and necessity, the true mother of statesmanship, was
doing its work at last.
[Sidenote: Henry awakes at last.]
The winter months passed away, bringing only an increase of
wretchedness. At length opened the eventful year of 1534, and Henry
learnt that excommunication was hanging over him--that a struggle for
life or death had commenced--and that the imperial armies were preparing
to strike in the quarrel. From that time onward the King of England
became a new man. Hitherto he had hesitated, temporized, delayed--not
with Ireland only, but with the manifold labours which were thrust upon
him. At last he was awake. And, indeed, it was high time. With a
religious war apparently on the eve of explosion, he could ill tolerate
a hotbed of sedition at his door; and Irish sedition was about to
receive into itself a new element, which was to make it trebly
dangerous.
[Sidenote: The religious element is introduced into Irish sedition.]
Until that moment the disorders in Ireland had arisen out of a natural
preference for anarchy. Every man's hand was against his neighbour, and
the clans made war on each other only for revenge and plunder and the
wild delight of the game. These private quarrels were now to be merged
in a single cause--a cause which was to lend a fresh stimulus to their
hatred of England, and was at once to create and consecrate a national
Irish spirit.
[Sidenote: The pope finds in the Irish a ready-made army.]
The Irish were eminently Catholic; not in the high sense of the
word,--for "the noble folk" could "oppress and spoil the prelates of the
Church of Christ of their possessions and liberties" without particular
scruple,[323]--but the country was covered with churches and monasteries
in a proportion to the population far beyond what would have been found
in any other country in Europe; and there are forms of superstition
which can walk hand in hand with any depth of crime, when that
superstition is provided with a talisman which will wash away the stains
of guilt. The love of fighting was inherent, at the same time, in the
Celtic nature. And such a people, when invited to indulge their humour
in the cause or the church, were an army of insurrection ready made to
the hands of the popes, the value of which their Holinesses were not
slow to learn, as they have not been quick to forget.[324]
Henry was aware of the correspondence of Desmond with the emperor. He,
perhaps, also expected that the fiction might be retorted upon him (as
it actually was) which had been invented to justify the first conquest
of the island. If Ireland was a fief of the pope, the same power which
had made a present of it to Henry II. might as justly take it away from
Henry VIII.; and the peril of his position roused him at length to an
effort. It was an effort still clogged by fatality, and less than the
emergency required: but it was a beginning, and it was something.
[Sidenote: February. Kildare a third time called to England.]
[Sidenote: Kildare is sent to the Tower.]
[Sidenote: Lord Thomas Fitzgerald vice-deputy.]
In February, 1534, a month before Clement pronounced his sentence, the
Earl of Kildare was required, for the third and last time, to appear and
answer for his offences; and a third time he ventured to obey. But
England had become a changed world in the four years which had passed
since his last presence there, and the brazen face and fluent lips were
to serve him no more. On his arrival in London he was sent to the Tower,
and discovered that he had overstepped his limits at last.[325] He was
now shrewd enough to see that, if a revolt was contemplated, no time was
to be lost. He must play his last card, or his influence was gone for
ever. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, his eldest son, who in his boyhood had
resided in England,[326] had been left as vice-deputy in his father's
absence. The earl before his departure had taken precautions to place
the fortresses of the pale, with the arms and ammunition belonging to
the government, in the hands of dependents whom he could absolutely
trust. No sooner was his arrest known than, in compliance with secret
instructions which had been left with them, or were sent from England,
his friends determined upon rebellion.[327]
[Sidenote: June. The emperor sends an agent to the Earl of Desmond.]
The opportunity was well chosen. The government of Ireland was in
disorder. Skeffington was designed for Kildare's successor, but he was
not yet appointed; nor was he to cross the Channel till he had collected
a strong body of troops, which was necessarily a work of time. The
conditional excommunication of the king was then freshly published; and
counsels, there is reason to think, were guiding the Irish movement,
which had originated in a less distempered brain than that of an Irish
chieftain. Rumours were flying in the southern counties in the middle of
June that a Spanish invasion might be immediately looked for, and the
emperor's chaplain was with the Earl of Desmond. His mission, it was
said, was to prepare the way for an imperial army; and Desmond himself
was fortifying Dungarvan, the port at which an invading force could most
conveniently land.[328] There is, therefore, a strong probability that
Charles V., who had undertaken to execute the papal sentence in the
course of the summer, was looking for the most vulnerable point at which
to strike; and, not venturing to invade England, was encouraging an
Irish rebellion, with a view to following up his success if the
commencement proved auspicious.[329]
[Sidenote: Lord Thomas Fitzgerald proclaims Henry accursed, and calls on
the country to rise.]
[Sidenote: June 11. He appears before the council in St. Mary's abbey,
and declares formal war.]
Simultaneously with the arrival of these unwelcome news, the English
government were informed by letters from Dublin, that Lord Thomas
Fitzgerald had thrown off his allegiance, and had committed infinite
murders, burnings, and robbings in the English pale; making "his avaunt
and boast that he was of the pope's sect and band, and that him he would
serve, against the king and all his partakers; that the King of England
was accursed, and as many as took his part."[330] The signal for the
explosion was given with a theatrical bravado suited to the novel
dignity of the cause. Never before had an Irish massacre been graced by
a papal sanction, and it was necessary to mark the occasion by unusual
form. The young lord, Silken Thomas, as he was called, was twenty-one
years old, an accomplished Irish cavalier. He was vice-deputy, or so he
considered himself: and unwilling to tarnish the honour of his loyal
house by any action which could be interpreted into treachery, he
commenced with a formal surrender of his office, and a declaration of
war. On the eleventh of June the council were sitting in St. Mary's
abbey, when a galloping of horses was heard, and Lord Thomas, at the
head of a hundred and forty of the young Geraldines, dashed up to the
gate, and springing off his horse, strode into the assembly. The council
rose, but he ordered them to sit still, and taking the sword of state in
his hand, he spoke in Irish to the following effect:--
"However injuriously we be handled, and forced to defend ourselves in
arms, when neither our service, nor our good meaning towards our
prince's crown availeth, yet say not hereafter, but in this open
hostility which we profess here, and proclaim, we have showed ourselves
no villains nor churls, but warriors and gentlemen. This sword of state
is yours, and not mine; I received it with an oath and have used it to
your benefit. I should offend mine honour if I turned the same to your
annoyance. Now I have need of mine own sword which I dare trust. As for
this common sword, it flattereth me with a golden scabbard; but it hath
in it a pestilent edge, and whetteth itself in hope of a destruction.
Save yourselves from us, as from open enemies. I am none of Henry's
deputy; I am his foe; I have more mind to conquer than to govern, to
meet him in the field than to serve him in office. If all the hearts of
England and Ireland that have cause thereto would join in this quarrel,
as I trust they will, then should he be a byword, as I trust he shall,
for his heresy, lechery, and tyranny; wherein the age to come may score
him among the ancient princes of most abominable and hateful
memory."[331] "With that," says Campion, "he rendered up his sword,
adding to his shameful oration many other slanderous and foul terms."
Cromer, Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Armagh, a creature of Kildare,
"more like his parish priest or chaplain, than king's chancellor,"[332]
who had been prepared beforehand, rose, and affected remonstrance; but,
speaking in English, his words were not understood by the crowd. A bard
in the Geraldine train cut short his speech with an Irish battle chant;
and the wild troop rushed, shouting, out of the abbey, and galloped from
the town.
[Sidenote: Pillage and massacre.]
[Sidenote: The people of the pale join the rebels.]
[Sidenote: He summons Dublin.]
[Sidenote: Archbishop Cromer implores Sir John White, the English
commander, to surrender.]
In these mock heroics there need not have been anything worse than
folly; but Irish heroism, like Irish religion, was unfortunately
limited to words and feelings. The generous defiance in the cause of the
Catholic faith was followed by pillage and murder, the usual
accompaniments of Irish insurrection, as a sort of initial holocaust to
propitiate success. The open country was at the mercy of the rebels.
Fitzgerald, joined by O'Connor, proceeded to swear-in all such of the
inhabitants of the pale as would unite against England; promising
protection if they would consent, but inflicting fire and sword wherever
he met refusal. The unfortunate people, warned by experience that no
service was worse requited in Ireland than loyalty, had no spirit to
resist. The few who were obnoxious were killed; the remainder submitted;
and the growing corn was destroyed, and the farms were burnt, up to the
gates of Dublin, that when the English army arrived, they might find
neither food to maintain, nor houses to shelter them.[333] The first
object of Fitzgerald, however, was to seize Dublin itself, where a
portion of the citizens were in his favour. In the last week in July he
appeared with his followers under the walls; a small force which had
attempted to resist was defeated and driven in; and, under a threat of
burning the city, if he was refused, he demanded the surrender of town
and castle. The danger was immediate. The provident treachery of
Kildare, in stripping the castle of its stores and cannon, had made
defence all but impossible. Ormond was far off, and weeks must pass
before relief could arrive from England. Sir John White, an English
gentleman, with a handful of men-at-arms, had military command of the
city; and the Archbishop of Armagh implored him to have pity on the
citizens, and not to expose them to the consequences of a storm.[334]
White was too stout a soldier to listen to such timid counsels; yet his
position was one of extreme difficulty; his little garrison was too weak
to defend the lines of the town, without the assistance of the citizens,
and the citizens were divided and dispirited. He resolved at, length to
surrender the city, and defend the castle to the last. Fitzgerald
threatened that he would hold the townsmen responsible for the
submission of the troops; but, savage as the English commander knew him
to be, he calculated, with justice, that he would not ruin his
popularity by cutting the throats of an unresisting crowd.
[Sidenote: White surrenders the city, and withdraws into the castle.]
[Sidenote: Siege of the castle, July 27.]
[Sidenote: Archbishop Allen endeavours to escape into England.]
[Sidenote: The ship is run ashore at Clontarf.]
[Sidenote: The archbishop is taken to the village of Artayne,]
[Sidenote: And murdered.]
Hastily gathering together sufficient stores to enable him to hold out
for a few weeks, and such arms and ammunition as could be collected in
the emergency, White withdrew into the fortress, taking with him the
Master of the Rolls, the Chief Baron, and such other of the council as
desired to be his companions. The inhabitants of Dublin were then
empowered to make terms with the rebels. The gates were opened on
Fitzgerald's promise to respect life and property, the city was
occupied, and siege was immediately laid to the castle. This was on the
27th of July. The morning which followed was marked by one of those
atrocities which have so often unfortunately distinguished Irish
rebellions. Archbishop Allen, to whose exertions the exposure of
Kildare's proceedings had been principally due, either fearing the
possible consequences to himself if the castle was taken, as the Irish
writers say,[335] or more probably to hasten in person the arrival of
the deputy and his troops, instead of remaining with White, volunteered
to cross to England; and before the gates were opened, he went on board
a vessel and dropped down the river. He had placed himself unknowingly
in the hands of traitors, for the ship was commanded by a
Geraldine,[336] and in the night which followed was run aground at
Clontarf, close to the mouth of the Liffey. The country was in
possession of the insurgents, the crew were accomplices, and the
stranded vessel, on the retreat of the tide, was soon surrounded. The
archbishop was partly persuaded, partly compelled to go on shore, and
was taken by two dependents of the Earl of Kildare to a farm house in
the village of Artayne. Here he was permitted to retire to bed; but if
he slept, it was for an early and a cruel wakening. The news of his
capture was carried to Fitzgerald, who was then in the city, but a few
miles distant, and the young lord, with three of his uncles, was on the
spot by daybreak. They entered the house and ordered Allen to be brought
before them. The archbishop was dragged from his bed; and in his shirt
as he was, bare-legged and bare-headed, he dropt upon his knees, and
begged for mercy. As well might the sheep have asked mercy of the
famished wolf. He had but time to bequeath his soul to heaven, and his
skull was cloven as he knelt; and, to make clean work, his chaplains,
his servants, all of English blood who were with him, were slaughtered
over his body.[337] Such was the pious offering to God and holy church
on which the sun looked down as it rose that fair summer's morning over
Dublin Bay; and such were the men whose cause the Mores and the Fishers,
the saintly monks of the Charterhouse and the holy martyrs of the
Catholic faith, believed to be the cause of the Almighty Father of the
world.
[Sidenote: Fitzgerald writes to the pope and the emperor to announce his
exploit.]
[Sidenote: Blockade of Dublin Bay.]
[Sidenote: The Prior of Kilmainham crosses with the news from
Waterford.]
The morning's work was still but half completed. To massacre a heretic
archbishop was a meritorious, or at least a venial act; but it was
desirable that an opinion in favour of it should be pronounced by
authority; or that the guilt, if guilt there was, should be washed off
without delay. The Archdeacon of Kells,[338] therefore, was despatched
to the pope and to the emperor, to press the latter to send assistance
on this happy success, and to bring back absolution from his
Holiness,[339] if the murder required it. The next object was to prevent
news from reaching England before the castle should be taken. The river
was watched, the timely assistance of an English pirate enabled
Fitzgerald to blockade the bay; and Dublin was effectively sealed. But
the report of the murder spread rapidly through Ireland. In three days
it was known at Waterford; and the Prior of Kilmainham,[340] who had
taken refuge there, crossed into Wales on the instant, intending to ride
post to London.[341] He was delayed at St. David's by an attack of
paralysis; but he sent forward a companion who had left Ireland with
him; and the death of the archbishop was made known to Henry in the
second week in August.
[Sidenote: August. Skeffington is unprepared.]
[Sidenote: Ormond invades Kildare.]
[Sidenote: Fitzgerald is forced to retire from Dublin.]
[Sidenote: He attacks Ormond.]
[Sidenote: The citizens of Dublin return to their allegiance.]
[Sidenote: Fitzgerald attempts to gain Ormond.]
If Skeffington could set out on the instant, the castle might be saved,
and Dublin recovered. Couriers were despatched to urge him to make
haste; and others were sent to Ireland to communicate with Ormond, and,
if possible, with the party in the castle. But Skeffington, who was too
old for his work, had loitered over his preparations, and was not ready;
and the delay would have been fatal, except for the Earl of Ormond, the
loyalty of whose noble house at that crisis alone saved the English
authority in Ireland. On the arrival of Henry's courier, he collected
his people and invaded Kildare. The country was unenclosed--not a fence
nor a hedge broke the broad surface of moor and meadow, save where at
intervals a few small patches were enclosed for corn crops. Infinite
herds of cattle grazed at will over the expanse of pasture, and these
cattle were the chief dependence of the people. Ormond, by the
suddenness of his inroad, and the absence of the owners, was enabled to
sweep clear the whole tract which was occupied by the Geraldines; and
Fitzgerald was forced to retire from Dublin to defend or recover his
property. He left a detachment in the city, to prevent the troops in the
castle from obtaining supplies,[342] and then hurried off to revenge the
foray. Entering Carlow, he took a castle on the Slaney, and murdered the
garrison. Thence he turned towards Kilkenny, and was bearing down upon
Ormond with a strength which it would have been hard for the Butlers to
resist, when he learnt that the citizens of Dublin, encouraged by the
news that an English army was actually coming, had repented of their
patriotism, and, to earn their pardon from Henry, had closed their
gates, and had seized and imprisoned the party who were left before the
castle. The prize for which he had played so deeply was slipping from
his hands at the moment when it was all but won. He was forced to return
in haste; but before he left Kilkenny, he made an effort to induce
Ormond to join him. He promised, that, if the earl would assist him in
driving out the English, he would "take him as his father," that he
would make a present to his son, Lord James, of half the inheritance of
the Kildares, and that they two should together rule Ireland.[343]
[Sidenote: Ormond's reply.]
[Sidenote: Fitzgerald's treachery.]
[Sidenote: Dublin is again besieged.]
[Sidenote: September.]
[Sidenote: Skeffington does not arrive.]
[Sidenote: October 4.]
[Sidenote: Ormond again saves Dublin.]
[Sidenote: Siege of Dublin raised, October 14.]