Chapter I: Part 1

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ABSENTEEISM.

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ABSENTEEISM.

BY

LADY MORGAN.

“Les absens ont toujours tort.”

“You heare of a case as it were in a dreame, and feell not the smart
that vexeth us.”--_Speech of the Earl of Kildare to Cardinal Wolsey._

LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1825.

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LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

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TO

CHARLES BROWNLOW, ESQ.
M. P.

Dear Sir,

Your recent speech on the Catholic question, has been hailed as an event favourable to the best interests of Ireland by all who in sympathising with her sufferings, have sought for, and ascertained their master cause.

All Irishmen are brave! it is scarce a national boast to say so! for the courage of nerve and sinew is, after all, a quality of pretty general distribution, “from Indus to the Pole.” Man is every where a pugnacious animal; and _les heros de circonstance_--prompt to fight “for any God or King”--are always to be had for hire, be the _cavalier pagante_ who he may. But there is a quality of courage, which has been found rare in all ages and in all regions, the peculiar endowment of high, free, and above all, of _honest minds_. This is the courage that sets at nought

“The world’s dread sneer,
Which scarce the stern philosopher can scorn,”

which boldly opposes a startling truth to a received opinion, which frankly recants the cherished error of early associations, and avows the change operated by arduous inquiry and clear conviction, at the expense of all worldly interests, and the sacrifice of all private feelings. Such, Sir, is the courage which you have displayed upon a subject of vital importance to Ireland. As an Irishwoman, I beg to offer my mite of gratitude for the benefit conferred upon our common country--convinced that whenever the spirit of those sentiments which you have avowed shall govern the councils of the nation, Absenteeism will cease to be a national malady.

I have the honor to be,

With every sentiment of respect,

Your obedient Servant,

SYDNEY MORGAN.

London, June 4th, 1825.

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PREFACE.

The following pages were originally published in the New Monthly Magazine. The continued demand for the numbers in which they appeared, has induced the proprietor to reprint the article, and it is now offered to the public in a substantive form.

Notwithstanding the intense interest which is felt throughout all England concerning Ireland and Irish affairs, notwithstanding the frequent debates in parliament, and more frequent pamphlets and volumes published on points of Irish politics and œconomy, the prevailing ignorance on these subjects still operates powerfully in maintaining prejudices the most unfounded and the most fatal, and in retarding those measures of wisdom and of justice without which Ireland can never be happy, or the British Empire secure.

It is this ignorance more especially which enables the party opposed to the settlement of Ireland to occupy public attention with minor grievances, behind which the danger and malice of their system are concealed from a nation too generous to tolerate open and avowed oppression. No sooner is the question of Catholic Emancipation proposed in the senate, with some chance of obtaining a favourable consideration, than one or other of these convenient abuses is thrust forward to distract attention and to puzzle the will. The absentees, the deficiency of employment, the potatoe diet, the want of poor laws, or the want of education, are, from time to time put forth as the paramount evil, the gushing fountain of every misfortune of Ireland; while the main subject of complaint, the Catholic disability, is studiously represented as affecting only a few briefless barristers, or ambitious landlords. The advantage which is thus obtained in pre-occupying the public mind, and in affording additional ground for a superstructure of sophisms is immense.

The British nation has so many and such vast interests to pursue, its relations with every country in the world are so many and so complicated, that the most instructed of its subjects can find but little time and attention to bestow on any one of them, however important. The public in general is therefore compelled to repose confidence in those who affect a knowledge of each particular subject; and to take for granted the propositions they advance. When the men who should be the guides of public opinion are false to their trust, and instead of presenting truths in a clear and perspicuous form, studiously bury them beneath a mass of plausibilities, or entangle them in a net-work of sophistry, the task of unweaving their web, and detecting their fallacies, must be again and again undertaken, before a credulous and a pre-occupied people can be made aware of the deception, and enabled to judge of the question at issue by its intrinsic merits.

On this account, it cannot but be deemed most unfortunate that the friends of Ireland unwittingly complicated the recent discussion on the Catholic Question, by the two bills with which they clogged their main proposition. It was not sufficient that the public should be dinned and stupified with the mass of untelligible and absurd theology with which that very plain question of policy and common morality is too unfortunately loaded; but it must also be mystified with high sounding phrases of “disfranchisement,” “oppression of the poor,” and other similar phantoms. To lead the British public to imagine that the disqualification of the forty shilling freeholders would affect the influence either of the catholic or protestant party in Ireland, was, to say the best of it, a strange mistake: but on the other side, to attempt making men believe that the franchise is a benefit to its holder, or that the existing representative system of Ireland, with or without the forty shilling freeholders, has any the remotest practical utility as an instrument of liberty or of self-taxation, is a gross and absolute deception. All the discussion which was raised on this most silly of disputes (and the enemies of emancipation were not slow to profit by the advantage) was _de lana caprina_, and so much diversion of the public mind from the main point at issue; serving only to inflame enemies, and to divide friends. Though no one will dispute that both the riders were appended to the Catholic Bill in deference to the opponents of that measure, and with an honest intention to conciliate and to compromise, yet in the event, the introduction of extraneous matter has proved eminently unfavourable to the cause, and will, it is to be hoped, never again be attempted.

The futility of the arguments derived from a putting forth of secondary causes of evil in Irish politics, as directed against the entertainment of the Catholic Question, is the greater, in as much as all the various subjects which are advanced as matters of complaint, derive immediately from this one source. Deficient capital, deficient knowledge, deficient civilization, are all the necessary consequences of bad government,--of that bad government for whose sake Catholic has been set against Protestant, and the Irish people divided, in order to prevent the assertion of their political rights. In England people are governed in their opinions on the Catholic Question exclusively by their hopes and fears; and none but the clergy have a corrupt interest in withholding justice from any religious sect. But in Ireland power and place, the licence to oppress, and the facility of living on the public purse, are closely entwined with the permanence of a system, which, while it tramples the Catholic in the dust, degrades and impoverishes the whole population, for the exclusive benefit of a few powerful families. It is bad government, and the destraction and turbulence which bad government has engendered, that drives industry and capital from the country, and forces the peasantry to abandon all pretence to luxuries and refinements, whether moral or physical. It is bad government that banishes meat from the cotter’s table, and instruction from his mind. It is bad government that puts a pike in his hand, and hardens his heart against all the charities of life; it is bad government that makes property insecure, and life precarious; it is bad government, therefore, that induces the aristocracy to fly to happier regions, to abandon their duties to their country and to themselves, and to seek for tranquillity and safety even at the expense of half their fortunes; and it is, above all, bad government which renders the absence of a limited aristocracy an evil of magnitude, either morally, politically, or economically.

The geographical position of Ireland, and its political dependence, (the necessary consequence of that position,) must always occasion more absenteeism than usually occurs in other nations. The robbery and spoilation of the native proprietors to endow the pampered favourites of a foreign court, which took place in the preceding centuries, afford another cause for this evil; but by far the greatest number of absentees are banished by the direct operation of the penal code, or by its indirect influence in limiting the pursuit of fortune at home. Ireland has no field for enterprise and industry, it has no market for merchandize. It has no scope for honest ambition, no promise of pleasure, no resting place for repose; and yet it is expected that those who have the means of quitting the land will inhabit it out of respect for a principle, or regard for an abstraction!

Absenteeism considered in itself is an unnatural ill. There is usually so much of ease, of happiness, and of personal consequence in living at home surrounded by friends, relations, and a respectful tenantry,--there is usually so much mortification and disgust in the condition of a stranger and a foreigner, that nothing but political causes can drive the great proprietors of a country to permanently abandon their estates. Yet so natural is it for men to complain of the evil which strikes the most powerfully on the senses,--so convenient is it for those, who are determined in the denial of justice, to make absenteeism the _causa causans_ of calamities which they want the humanity to relieve, that all classes of persons, the Protestant and the Catholic, the mere Irish and the lord of the pale, the oppressor and the oppressed, the Irish corporator and the English minister have joined in a common cry against absentees. It is not therefore very surprising that the mere John Bull, wrapped in his own affairs, and buried in his counting-house, should believe what every one repeats, and should shut his eyes against the real causes of that turbulence and that discontent which, though they have given him so much trouble and uneasiness, are yet too far removed from his gaze to allow of the formation of an independent judgment. It is not very wonderful that he should credit the assertion so hardily made, that Catholic Emancipation is not the one thing needful to Ireland, the essential preliminary, without which, no practical relief can be afforded to the economical distresses of the country.

In taking up the subject of absenteeism, the peculiar bent of Lady Morgan’s mind, and the character of her habitual pursuits, have inevitably given a picturesque turn to her ideas, and induced her to view the matter less as an economist than as a poet and a woman. But the great truth has not escaped her, that absenteeism is less a cause than an effect: and while in the romance of her imagination she has delineated what Ireland might be under the fostering protection of an enlightened and liberal aristocracy, she has not forgotten that under existing circumstances it must remain for ever the blighted victim of an oppressive and ignorant _bureaucratie_.

T. C. MORGAN.

London, June 3, 1825.

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ABSENTEEISM.

“Les absens ont toujours tort.”

_La Rochefaucault._

The phrase “Absentee,” says Dr. Johnson, is one “used _with regard to Irishmen_ living out of their country;” and as its origin is Irish, so its use and application are strictly confined to the history of that unfortunate people. The inference to be drawn from this fact is plain: that there is something in the circumstances of the Irish, peculiar to themselves,--something which forces upon them a line of conduct contrary to the ordinary instincts of humanity, and compels them to fly from that land which all other nations regard with more or less of favour and affection,--from that land which youth quits with regret, and to which age clings with passion, when all other passions fade,--the land of their nativity.

In every history of Irish grievances, this cabalistical term “absentee” appears in the front of the array, and, like the terrible “_Il Bondocani_” of the Calif of Bagdat, strikes down all before it,--the apology for every abuse, the obstacle to every plan of amelioration, the bugbear of the timid, the stalking-horse of the designing.

“Absenteeism,” observes the Secretary for the Home Department, “is an operative cause of tumult, but it is without a remedy;” and thus dismissing all ministerial responsibility with a laconic aphorism, he launches an integral portion of the empire committed to his management, to revolve for ever in the turbulent whirlpool of a vicious circle of cause and effect. Tumult expels the rich landholders, the absence of the rich landholders perpetuates tumult: this is a law of nature, which admits of “no remedy;” and the executive have nothing to do but to procure the passing of penal statutes according to the necessities of the moment, and to find the means of extorting four millions a year from English industry, to pay the expense of Irish misrule.

In political philosophy there are no evils without a remedy, save those which arise out of the common condition of humanity;--and the minister who confesses a political evil which he cannot remove, should remove himself: for he is himself the greatest evil with which the people have to contend. Sully, who administered the affairs of France under the most adverse circumstances, when it was still harassed with civil contentions and torn with religious factions, saw no political impossibilities, though many political difficulties, with which he courageously and successfully grappled: but, alas! the Secretary for the Home Department is not Sully.

To what physiological peculiarity of constitution this irremediable tendency to wander, inherited from their progenitors by the restless sons of the great Milesius, is to be attributed, the learned Secretary has not informed us; and it is certain that Spurzheim, on his visit to the Irish capital, discovered no migratory inequality upon the surface of the Irish cranium, to account for the disposition. But in whatever particular of temperament or exuberance of cerebral developement the cause of this “effect defective” lies latent, it is matter of historic fact, that though the ancient Irish were restless enough at home, (“never,” says Campion, “wanting drift to drive a tumult,”) yet this activity, which induced them “to pick a quarrel, fall in love, or any other diverting accident of that kind,” never found vent in absenteeism. Where, indeed, could Irishmen go to better their condition, when all in Ireland, who were not saints, were kings; and many were both, while none were martyrs.[1] “_Il est certain negoce_,” says the French proverb, “_où l’on perd beaucoup en quittant boutique_;” and this proverb, at all times applicable to Irish absentees, was particularly so in that golden age, so often referred to by antiquaries, when Ireland, “lying aloof in the Western Ocean, was a nest of kingdoms,” when superb and wealthy monasteries and royal palaces occupied every foot of the territory, and when swallows built their nests in old men’s beards for want of worse habitations. In those true church and state times of Ireland’s prosperity, of which the Orangeman’s Utopia is but a type, it is little wonderful that the people gave into no wanderings, but those “_du cœur et de l’esprit_;” and that a pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s purgatory, a royal progress of some Toparck of the South to a Dynast in the North, or a morning visit from King Mac Turtell to his close neighbour King Gillemohalmoghe,[2] (which occasionally ended in the broken heads of both parties,) should include the recorded absenteeism of two thousand years.

It was reserved, however, for one of these royal heroes first to commit the patricidal crime: and the first Irish absentee of note, though a great king, was but a _mauvais sujet_, having pillaged his people, wasted his revenue, ran away with his neighbour’s wife, and sold his country for a mess of pottage. It is almost unnecessary to add that this royal founder of absenteeism is condemned to the contempt of posterity by the title of Dermot Mac Murrogh O’Kavenagh, King of Leinster; and that the result of his absenteeship was the successful invasion of Ireland by Henry II. the crusading grants of Pope Adrian IV. and, above all, the fearful forfeitures followed by rebellion on one part, and on the other by an effort at extermination, which have multiplied from age to age those possessors and deserters of the soil, who have drawn over “the profits raised out of Ireland, and refunded nothing.”[3]

It appears very probable that one of the motives by which the lords of Ireland (as the English kings were long styled) were actuated in giving such large tracts of land to great English proprietors, was to get rid of the troublesome and rebellious Barons, by tempting them to reside in that “most beautiful and sweet country as any is under heaven,” where so much was given up to their power and pillage, and where the services demanded in return, “the raising of forts and castles and fencing themselves with garrisons, as captains, keepers, and constables,” might forward the royal interests by protecting its power against the inroads of the natives. “For, except Leinster,” says Campion, “all other parts retayned still their ancient kind of government, and were always ready to start at every corner, _ag and rag_, to expell the English.” But the framers of Magna Charta, the guardians of all that was then known of liberty in England, were not by the bribe of principalities to be kept from the great scene of action; and some of the most considerable, having accepted, or seized upon the fairest portions of the land, made them over to sons-in-law or other kinsmen; and having thus, by the scratch of their rude pen,[4] conveyed to others the fee simple of an Irish province, hastened back to England to dispute the power of the barbarous despots, who reigned by their sufferance, or were deposed by their caprice.

In process of time, the mischief of this species of transfer was not only felt as an additional grievance by the Irish, but as an annoyance by the English sovereign.[5] The injury done to their power by the absence of those whom they had deputed to watch over it, at a time when that power was held by a precarious tenure, was deemed so great, that a law against absentees was passed so early as the time of Richard II. The divisions of the houses of York and Lancaster, however, abrogated all laws; “at which time,” says Spenser, “all English lords and gentlemen which had great possessions in Ireland, repaired over hither into England, some to succour their friends here, and to strengthen their partie, others for to defend their lands and possessions here against such as hovered after the same, upon hope of the alteration of the kingdom, and success of that side which they favoured and affected.”[6] The result of this absenteeism of the great landholders of Ireland was natural and inevitable. “The Irish, whom before they had banished into the mountains, where they lived only upon white meates,[7] as it is recorded, seeing now their lands so dispeopled and weakened, came down into all the plains adjoining, and thence expelling those few English that remayned, re-possessed them again.” But these re-possessions were only temporary. New conquests and new forfeitures ensued. New possessors, unaffected to the soil, and disdainful of its children, afforded fresh causes of absenteeism, which, in whatever way it operated, was injurious to the country; till at length the forfeiture of Leix and Offaly (the King and Queen’s Counties) under Edward VI. threw the whole of those spacious and fertile districts into the hands of new proprietors; who having established themselves by “fire and sword,” transferred the ownership “to _foreigners by connexion, and resided themselves in England_.”

But if the first barbarous English legislators for Ireland (and when has the epithet been inapplicable?) were, at an early period of their unfixed power, sensible of the injury which the state and the country suffered from absenteeism--if the Plantagenets took cognizance of the evil, and endeavoured to provide against it by statute, the Tudors (those sanguinary but sagacious despots) considered the absence of the Irish from their homes and country as a state engine; and wielded it with a policy which always advanced their own interests, and confirmed their power over that unhappy land. Sometimes they allured the Irish nobility to their splendid court for the purpose of dazzling their imagination, and corrupting their patriotism. Sometimes, on shallow pretexts, they cited them as accused or criminals, to awe them by their array of power, or to intimidate them by their display of cruelty. Yet, frequently forced to feel that the prosperity of the country and the English interests were both best served by the permanent residence of the gentry of the pale, they did not the less frame laws which made it penal for the proprietors of the soil to spend its profits elsewhere than at home.[8] The love which the Irish had borne to the house of York, had rendered it a point of courteous policy to appoint the second sons of the king to the Lieutenancy of Ireland, with a deputy for the execution of the high office: and Henry VIII. as Duke of York, while yet a boy, and during the life-time of his elder brother, began his career of power under this character, conjointly with his deputy, Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, “a mighty made man,” says his chronicler, “full of honour and courage.” (1501) This grand conservator of the peace, however, had the old Irish fashion of being occasionally disposed to break it; and his fierce feuds with the Butlers, Earls of Ormond, (“nothing inferior to Kildare in stomache, and in reach of policy farre beyond him,”) were the causes “of much ruffle and unquietness to the realm.” These served his enemies for a pretext to draw down upon him the displeasure of the English government, and finally induced Henry VII. to summon the old deputy over to the English court, and to seek to break down that haughty and turbulent spirit in a region rarely favourable to powerful energies and independence of mind. A bon-mot saved the earl from the danger which awaited him, and limited his absenteeism to a few months residence in the court of Henry, from which he returned to Ireland more powerful than he left it.

Gerald Fitzgerald, son of the aforesaid earl, “a gentleman valiant and well spoken,” succeeded his father in all his dignities; but though appointed lord deputy of Ireland, his influence, power, and spirit, soon awakened the jealousy of Henry VIII. Being “overtaken with vehement suspicion of sundry treasons, it was deemed politic to draw him away from Ireland; and, by secret _heavers_ and enviers of his fortunes, nourishers of the old grudge, the king was urged to call upon him to attend the English court.” The illustrious but involuntary absentee, was, on his first arrival in England, treated with a severity vainly intended to intimidate a spirit which was afterwards to be subdued by other and more seducing means. Among many frivolous charges, “_he was opposed with divers interrogatories touching the Earl of Desmond, his cousin, a notorious traytor_.” His trial, however, was but a mockery, and as the object was to sink the popular chief of a nation into a pliant courtier, to bind him more firmly to the English interests, and to weaken his feelings of patriotism, the union of the turbulent Gerald was proposed with the Lady Elizabeth Grey, the king’s own kinswoman and daughter of the Duke of Suffolk. This marriage, celebrated with royal splendour, with all the festivities of a boisterous but splendid court, was deemed a preliminary step to permanent subjection, and to frequent and long visits to the English court.

Scarcely, however, had Kildare returned home, and resumed the deputyship of Ireland, when the domestic tumults of the great lords of the pale involved him in new accusations on the part of the crown, “intimations of new treasons passing to and fro, with complaynts and replyes;” and as Cardinal Wolsey “_did hate the Kildare bloud_,” and had resolved on breaking down their power, the earl was again called from his stronghold in Ireland, and accused of having “wilfully winked at the Earl of Desmond (whose large possessions were his crimes in the eye of the minister), and with having curried acquaintance and friendship with mere Irish.” While lying under the imputation of a crime, always heinous in the Irish,--natural affection to the land and its suffering children,--the brave Kildare (like an eagle taken from its eirie in the mountain-cliffs of its native region, and chained to the earth in a golden cage) was suffered to loiter away his existence, in listless indolence and life-wearing anxiety, in the purlieus of a court that resembled the seraglio of an Asiatic satrap, alternately favoured and persecuted, as the caprice of the sovereign or the aversion of the minister ruled the hour. It was at this period, when his mind was borne down by his humiliating position, that he was prevailed on to consent to his daughter the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s permanent residence at court; and it was by this concession that the loveliest of all Irish absentees, “_the more than celestial Geraldine_,” has become an object of interest and admiration to posterity, as the poetical idol of the gallant and unfortunate Surrey.[9]

Although educated at the rural palace of Hunsdon with her kinswomen the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and though afterwards maid of honour to the Queen, it is probable that this lady was rather an hostage than a guest, and was detained more by force than by inclination:--as the sequel of her story goes to prove. “All this while,” says Campion, “abode the Earl of Kildare at the court, and with much ado found shifte to be called before the Lords to answer solemnly.” When, at last, every excuse for delay was exhausted, and every hope of subduing his invincible spirit faded, he was “called before the lords to answer solemnly,” who “sat upon him diversly affectioned; and especially the Cardinal Lord Chancellor (Wolsey) who disliked his cause, comforted his accusers, and enforced the articles objected.”

The whole scene of this mock trial is so graphic, and the speeches of the Cardinal and of the Irish Lord Deputy so curious and descriptive of the state and manners of the time, that the introduction may be pardoned of an episode which goes to prove, by a striking instance, that Irish absenteeism under any form, voluntarily or involuntary, graced by royal favour, or marked by ministerial persecution, is derogatory to the dignity, and injurious to the interests of the Irish nobility. The Earl of Kildare, alone, unfriended, without the aid of counsel to plead, or witness to depose in his behalf, appeared in the midst of the Lords, every one of whom was the slave of the King or the parasite of the minister,--“for what,” (says Walpole, one of their own caste,)--“what twelve tradesmen could be found more servile than every court of peers during the whole of this reign?”--Wolsey was the first to speak, and he began with these words:--“I wot well, my Lord, that I am not the meetest man at this board to charge you with these treasons, because it hath pleased some of your pew-fellows to report that I am a professed enemie to all nobilitie, and namely to the Geraldines: but seeing every curst boy can say as much when he is controled, and seeing these points are so weightie that they should not be dissembled of us, and so apparent that they cannot be denyed of you, I must have leave, notwithstanding your state slaunder, to be the mouth of these honorable persons at this time, and to trumpe your reasons in your way, howsoever you take me. First, you remember how the lewde Earle your kinsman, who passeth not whom he serve, might he change his master, sent his confederates with letters of credence to Frauncis the French king, and, having but cold comfort there, to Charles the Emperour, proffering the helpe of Mounster and Connaght towards the conquest of Ireland, if either of them would helpe to win it from our King. How many letters? what precepts? what messages? what threats have been sent you to apprehend him? and yet not done! why so? forsooth, I could not catch him: nay, nay, Earle, forsooth you would not nightly watch him. If he be justly suspected, why are you partiall in so great a cause? if not, why are you fearfull to have him tryed? Yea sir, it will be sworn and deposed to your face, that for feare of meeting him, you have winked, wilfully shunned his sight, altered your course, warned his friends, stopped both eyes and eares against his detectors, and, when soever you tooke upon you to hunt him out, then was he sure before hand to bee out of your walke: surely this juggling and false play little became either an honest man, called to such honour, or a nobleman put in such trust. Had you lost but a cow or a garron of your owne, two hundred Kyrneghes would have come at your whistle, to rescue the prey from the uttermost edge of Ulster: all the Irish in Ireland must have given you the way. But in pursuing so weightie a matter as this, mercifull God! how nice, how dangerous, how wayward have you bin! One while he is from home, sometimes fled, sometimes in the borders where you dare not venture: I wist, my Lord, there be shrewd Bugges in the borders for the Earl of Kildare to feare. The Earle, nay the King of Kildare, for, when you are disposed, you reigne more like than rule the land:--where you are malicious, the truest subjects stand for Irish enemies: where you are pleased the Irish enemie stands for a dutifull subject: hearts and hands, lives and lands, are all at your courtesie: who fawneth not thereon, hee cannot rest within your smell, and your smell is so ranke that you tracke them out at pleasure.”

Whilst the Cardinal was speaking, the Earle chafed and changed colour, and sundry proffers made to answer every sentence as it came; at last he broke out, and interrupted them thus. “My Lord Chancellour, I beseech you pardon me; I am short-witted, and you, I perceive, intend a long tale. If you proceede in this order, halfe my purgation will be lost for lacke of carryage: I have no schoole tricks, nor art of memory; excepte you heare me while I remember your words, your second processe will hammer out the former.” The Lords associate, who for the most part tenderly loved him, and knew the Cardinal’s manner of termes so lothsome, as wherewith they were tyred many years agoe, humbly besought his Grace to charge him directly with particulars and to dwell in some one matter till it were examined through. That granted, “It is good reason (quoth the Earle) that your Grace beare the mouth of this chamber. But, my Lord, those mouthes that put this tale into your mouth, are very wide mouths, such indeed as have gaped long for my wreck, and now at length, for want of better stuff, are fain to fill their mouths with smoak. What my cousin Desmond hath compassed, as I know not, so I beshrew his naked heart for holding out so long. If hee can bee taken by my agents that presently wayte for him, then have my adversaryes betrayed their malice, and this heape of haynous wordes shall resemble a man of strawe, that seemeth at a blush to carry some proportion, but when it is felt and poysed, discovereth a vanity, serving only to fraye crowes; and I trust your honours will see the proofe hereof and mine innocencie testified in this behalfe by the thing itselfe within these few dayes. But goe to, suppose hee never bee had, what is Kildare to blame for it, more than my good brother of Ossory? notwithstanding his high promises, having also the king’s power, he is glad to take egges for his money, and bring him in at leysure. Cannot the Earle of Desmond shift, but I must bee of counsell? cannot hee bee hid, except I winke? If hee bee close, am I his mate? If hee bee friended, am I a traitour? This is a doughty kinde of accusation, which they urge against mee, wherein they are stabled and myred at my first denyall. You would not see him, say they; who made them so familiar with mine eye sight? or when was the Earle within my _Equinas_? or who stood by when I let him slip? or where are the tokens of my willfull hood-winking? Oh, but you sent him word to beware of you: who was the messenger? where are the letters? convince my negative. See how loosely this idle reason hangeth: Desmond is not taken, well, we are in fault: why? because you are. Who proves it? nobody. What conjectures? so it seemeth. To whom? to your enemies. Who told it them? What other grounds? none. Will they sweare it? they will sweare it. My Lords, then belike they know it: if they know it, either they have my hand to show, or can bring forth the messenger, or were present at a conference, or privy to Desmond, or somebody betrayed it to them, or themselves were my carryers or vice-gerents therein. Which of these parts will they choose? I know them too well to reckon myself convict by their bare wordes, or headlesse hearsayes, or frantick oathes: my letters were soone read, were any such writing extant; my servaunts and friends are ready to bee sifted. Of my cousin Desmond they may lye lewdly, since no man can heere will tell the contrary. Touching my selfe, I never noted in them either so much wit, or so much faith, that I could have gaged upon their silence the life of a good hound, much lesse mine owne. I doubt not, may it please your honours to oppose them, how they came to knowledge of these matters which they are so ready to depose, but you shall finde their tongues chayned to another man’s trencher, and as it were knights of the post, suborned to say, sweare, and stare the uttermost they can, as those that passe not what they say, nor with what face they say it, so they say no truths. But of another thing, it grieveth me that your good grace, whom I take to be wise and sharpe, and who of your own blessed disposition wish me well, should be so farre gone in crediting those corrupt informers, that abuse the ignorance of their state and country to my perill. Little know you, my lord, how necessary it is, not onely for the governour, but also for every nobleman in Ireland, to hamper his vincible neighbours at discretion, wherein, if they wayted for processe of law, and had not these lives and lands you speake of within their reach, they might pass to loose their own lives and lands without law. You heare of a case, as it were in a dreame, and feell not the smart that vexeth us. In England there is not a meane subject that dare extend this hand to fillip a peere of the realme;--in Ireland, except the lord have cunning to his strength, and strength to save his owne, and sufficient authoritie to racke thieves and varletts when they stirre, hee shall finde them swarme so fast that it will bee too late to call for justice. If you will have our service take effect, you must not tye us always to the judicial proceedings, wherewith your realme, thank-bee God, is inured. As touching my kingdome, my Lord, I would you and I had exchanged kingdomes but for one moneth, I would trust to gather up more crummes in that space, than twice the revenues of my poore earledome;--but you are well and warme, and so hold you, and upbraide not me with such an odious storme. I sleepe on a dablin, when you lye soft in your bed of downe; I serve under the cope of heaven, when you are served under a canopy; I drinke water out of a skull, when you drinke out of golden cuppes; my courser is trained to the field, when your jennet is taught to amble; when you are begraced, and belorded, and crowched and kneeled unto, then I finde small grace with our Irish borderers, except I cut them off by the knees.” At these girds the councell would have smiled if they durst; but each man bitt his lippe, and held his countenance. The Cardinall perceived that Kildare was no cake, and rose in a fume from the councell-table, committed the Earle, and deferred the matter till more direct probations came out of Ireland.--It is unnecessary to add, that these “_probations_” were readily procured. “For of this treason,” continues the quaint chronicler, “he (Kildare) was found guilty, and imprisoned in the Tower a long time. The gentleman betook himself to God and the King, was heartily loved of the lieutenant, pittied in all the court, and standing in so hard case, altered little his accustomed hue, comforted other noblemen prisoners with him dissembling his own sorrow.

“One night, when the lieutenant and he, for disport, were playing at _slide-groat_, suddenly commeth from the Cardinall a mandat to execute Kildare on the _morrow_. The Earl marking the Lieutenant’s deep sigh on reading the bill, ‘By Sant Bride,’ quoth he, ‘there is some mad game in that scralle, but, fall how it will, this throw is for a huddle.’ When the worst was told him: ‘Now I pray thee,’ quoth he, ‘doe no more but learn assuredly from the King’s owne mouthe whether his Grace be witting thereto or not.’ Sore doubted the Lieutenant to displease the Cardinall; yet of very pure devotion to his friend, he posteth to the King at midnight, and said his errand (for all houres of the day or night, the lieutenant hath accesse to the prince upon occasions.) King Henry, controwling the sawcyness of the priest--those were his tearmes--gave him his signet in token of countermand; which, when the Cardinall had seene, he began to breake into unseasonable words with the lieutenant, which he was loath to heare, and so he left him fretting. Thus broke up the storme for a time, and the next yeare Wolsey was cast out of favour; and within few yeares Sir William Skevington was sent over deputy, who brought with him the Earle pardoned, and rid from all his troubles.”

But this “riddance” was only of short duration. New causes of complaint, and new reasons, were soon found or invented for once more drawing the Earl from the strong hold of his interest and power--his native country: and he was again “commanded by sharp letters to repair to England.” His arrival there was followed by a report of his execution,[10] which soon reached his family in Ireland. His son, whom he had left Lord Justice in his place, the gallant but impetuous Lord Thomas, on hearing of this supposed act of treachery against his father, threw down the sword of office, and flew into open rebellion, followed by his five uncles the Lords Fitzgerald. The insurrection was soon quelled; and the unfortunate Geraldines having surrendered, set out for England on the parole of the Lord Marshal Dorset, where, shortly after their arrival, they were all executed in one day. The death of the old Earl himself in the Tower, where he is said to have died “for thought and paine,” ends the tragic story of the enforced absenteeism of the Geraldines.[11]

This murder of the Lady Geraldine’s uncles, father, brother, and that of her unfortunate and highly endowed lover, (“who,” says Lodge, “reflected splendour even on the name of Howard,” and who was put to death by Henry VIII. for quartering the arms of Edward the Confessor,) must have rendered the English Court a dreary residence to her. Still, however, she remained there, most probably under the influence of the same major force which first drew her from her domestic home. But while Henry thus continued to retain the most beautiful woman of Ireland near his person, he began to see, as it appears, the policy of keeping the men at home; and he passed his famous bill against “_absencie_,” the preamble of which is curious, as portraying the evils against which it was framed--at least that portion of the evils by which the English government, for a long series of years, was alone touched. Like a good many more modern acts, be it remarked _en passant_, it commences by the formal averment of a self-evident falsehood: “That, for as much as it was notorious and manifest, that this land of Ireland being heretofore inhabited and _in obedience_ to the said king’s most noble progenitors, who in those days in the righte of the Crown of England had great possessions, rentes, and profits, within the same land,” &c. It then goes on to state “the ruine, rebellion, and decay,” which ensued by the absence of the great landholders: who, “after abiding within the said land, nobly and valiantly defended the same against all the king’s enemies, and also _kept the same in such tranquillity and good order_, as the King of England had due obedience of the inhabitance there, the laws obeyed, and the revenues and regalitie were duely answered;” but that afterwards “they and their heires absented themselves out of the said land of Ireland, _denjorning_ within the realm of England, not pondering, ne regarding the preservation thereof,--the townes, castels, and garrisons appertaining to them fell in ruin and decay, and the English inhabitants therein, in default of defence and _justice_, and by compulsion of those of the Irish, were exiled, whereby the king’s said progenitors lost as well their said dominion and subjection there, as also their revenues and profites; and their said enemies by redopting or retaining the said lands, dominions, and possessions, were elevated into great pride,” &c. &c.

Hitherto, with a few exceptions, _absencie_, as touching a residence in England, had been confined to the great Irish lords of the pale, who, although of English descent, and bearing Norman names, had in the course of successive generations run through all those shades of naturalization, which left them in manners, habits, and affections, but little distinguishable from the aboriginal Irishman, who proudly traced his origin to the Lady Scota, the daughter or grand-daughter of King Pharaoh.[12]

But it was reserved for the reign of the Virgin Queen to drive the genuine nobility of Ireland from their native land at any loss or risk into distant regions[13] and unknown countries, or to allure them to her own formal and fantastic court, by a show of feminine sympathy; which, though in direct contradiction to her whole policy and conduct, was well calculated to win the unwary, and to soothe the unfortunate.[14]

The Queen, in her quality both of woman and sovereign, was fond of making speeches; and she probably found it prettier to be pathetic than just, as she certainly found it easier to chide than to call in the pack of bloodhounds she had let loose upon the devoted country of her delegated sway. While the Fitzwilliams, the Binghams, the Drurys, the Bagnals, and others of her Irish ministers, were carrying destruction through the land by “fire, sword, and pestilence,”[15] the fair and royal rhetorician was exclaiming in her closet against their conduct, by classical allusions to parallel facts, which showed at once her learning and her sympathy. “I fear,” she said, apostrophizing her ministers in Ireland, “that the same reproach will be made to me as was formerly made by Bato to Tiberius. It is you who are to blame for these things, who have committed your flocks not to shepherds but to wolves.” The Irish, “who love learning to a fault,” says Spenser, (and women too, God forgive them,) were bewitched by similar declarations of pity, breathed in the language of the learned from the lips of the royal and the fair. The O’Rourkes, the O’Neils, the O’Connors, forgot the wiles and the treachery of which their fathers had been the dupes or the victims; and each in his turn expiated his credulity in its fatal results.[16]

The English were accustomed to the presence of the Geraldines, the Butlers, the De Courceys, De Burgos, and other great Anglo-Irish lords of the pale, who, though by “gossipry and alliance” they occasionally fell into Irish habits, and sported a glib or a mantle at home, were still sure to resume the English costume when at the English court. But the true aboriginal Irish gentlemen, the brave O’s and Macs, who, driven to their woods and morasses with no other weapon of defence than their skein, their hatchet, or their pike, had for centuries resisted the well-armed force of England,--they were creatures of almost fabulous interest and existence; and the “anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” were not more monstrous to English apprehensions than the “flying Irish,” whose wings were supposed to grow beneath their heads. To the higher castes, however, they were known by the reputation of their prowess and their comeliness; and were noted by some of the poets of the day, alike for their invincible spirits and their lofty stature.[17] This romantic interest thrown round a race at once so brave and so unfortunate, so wild, and yet so gallant in their bearing, might not have been without its effect in influencing the policy of the coquettish queen, and drawing to her court those (as yet unseen) Thanists, the known admirers of her sex and contemners of her power.

The restlessness of suffering, the enterprise of romantic valour, the partiality of the House of Tudor to the O’Neil’s, and other inducements which Elizabeth herself held out, determined the famous Shane O’Neil (by the prescriptive right of ages Thanist of his powerful sept, and by the patent of Henry VIII. to his father, Earl of Tyrone) to visit the court of England in the most perilous moment of his life. The sudden appearance of the representative of the ancient kings of Ulster in the ante-chambers of Whitehall excited a sensation in which the “lion-ported queen” is said to have deeply and obviously participated. He burst upon the guarded presence of her, whose acts against his religion and his rights “resembled the bloody mandates of a Turkish divan rather than the mild ordinance of a Christian queen,” in all the fearless hardihood of one who “bore a charmed life,” fresh from the lines of revolt, with the excitement of the fierce contest between the oppressor and the oppressed fluttering at his bold heart and fevering his manly brow. He is described as entering the presence-chamber at the head of a rude but imposing train, composed of his guard of honour, the Irish gallowglasses, who,--armed with battle-axes, their heads bare, their long hair flowing in locks on their broad shoulders, their yellow surplices with open sleeves trailing to the earth and surmounted by a military harness--formed a strange contrast to the groupings and _tournure_ of the ribboned and tagged chivalry through which they passed. Even the “Londoners,” says Spenser, “marvelled at this strange sight.”

O’Neil had come to plead his own cause at one of the court historians, “received him with an affectation of tenderness; and after he had resided some time at court, the flattery of his address, which appeared artless and unstudied, and the speciousness of his allegations, so wrought upon her, that, at his departure, she dismissed him with favour and presents.”

This absenteeism of O’Neil, though favourable to his pride, and flattering to his vanity while abroad, was injurious to his interests at home. His base-born brother, Matthew, availing himself of his absence, had usurped his rights, and assumed the chieftainship of his sept. The question was debated (as if it were debateable) by the Irish government, who, in defiance of all law, “ruled the point in favour of the bastard; practising (says Parnell[18]) a policy that has governed them (the English) to the latest times in India, where it has been the custom to raise to the throne, in violation of the customary mode of succession, a person who depended for his station on their power, who was strictly a dependent, and _who might be set aside whenever a favourable opportunity occurred_.” The _Sic jubeo_ of the Virgin Queen was, of course, decisive. The bastard was declared the lawful heir; and the consequence was a rebellion on the part of Shane. In this rebellion the chieftain was unfortunate, and the whole possessions, both of Shane and Matthew, were confiscated. “In order,” says Parnell, “to divert Shane, the territory was reputed Matthew’s; and in order to get rid of Matthew’s claim, the territory was confiscated as Shane’s.”[19] Meanwhile, however, the Queen had won golden opinions in Ireland for her reception of the most popular of Irish chiefs. The gates of absenteeism were now thrown most seducingly open. The track was already beaten down which led from the desolated banks of the Shannon to the pavilioned shores of the Thames. Men, whose national failing was a sanguine credulity not untouched with personal vanity, whose infirmity of temperament was a reckless impetuosity, and whose weariness of suffering caught at every change as a relief, now first began to find new hopes for their country and themselves springing up in the “primrose path of dalliance” which conducted them to the British court, and placed them in personal contact with a woman and a queen--with one who, unlike her savage delegates in Ireland, received them “with tenderness, and dismissed them with favour.” The baubles given by a royal hand, and displayed at Shane’s Castle, were pledges to the followers of O’Neil that the heart of the Queen was of another policy from the counsels of her ministers. This characteristic credulity is not even yet abated by experience. A flattering reception of the Roman Catholic bishops, and a ribbon bestowed on a Roman Catholic peer, led the sanguine Irish to draw a similar conclusion respecting the politics of George IV. A mandate, therefore got up in the form of a slight accusation, but considered by the accused as an invitation, brought the O’Rourke chief or prince of Brefny promptly and inconsiderately to the feet of the fair sovereign who had issued it.

This gallant Irishman, as renowned for his personal beauty as for his turbulence, had long been a favourite theme of complaint in the despatches of the Irish deputies. Even his personal influence, and the splendid endowments out of which it arose, were brought as damning proofs against him. These also may have induced the Queen to judge for herself; for the handsome absentee was received like O’Neil with a show of tenderness, though not, alas! like him, “dismissed with favour.” While history has briefly thrown off the facts of his summons, to court his detention, and his unexpected execution, tradition has woven his story in the many-coloured web of her own romantic loom; and though the catastrophe of the tale, which still circulates in the neighbourhood of his ruined castle, attests the ignorance or the love of the marvellous of those who invented and circulated it; still there is a dovetailing of the old Irish _Shanaos_ with historic record, which shows that _si cela n’étoit pas vrai, c’étoit bien vraisemblable_.