Chapter XVIII: On the Constitution of Ireland (3)

_Dependence of the Irish upon the English parliament._--It may easily be supposed, that no political privileges would be left to those who were thus debarred of the common rights of civil society. The Irish parliament had never adopted the act passed in the 5th of Elizabeth, imposing the oath of supremacy on the members of the Commons. It had been full of catholics under the queen and her two next successors. In the second session of 1641, after the flames of rebellion had enveloped almost all the island, the House of Commons were induced to exclude, by a resolution of their own, those who would not take that oath; a step which can only be judged in connection with the general circumstances of Ireland at that awful crisis.[569] In the parliament of 1661, no catholic, or only one, was returned;[570] but the house addressed the lords justices to issue a commission for administering the oath of supremacy to all its members. A bill passed the Commons in 1663, for imposing that oath in future, which was stopped by a prorogation; and the Duke of Ormond seems to have been adverse to it.[571] An act of the English parliament after the revolution, reciting that "great disquiet and many dangerous attempts have been made to deprive their majesties and their royal predecessors of the said realm of Ireland by the liberty which the popish recusants there have had and taken to sit and vote in parliament," requires every member of both houses of parliament to take the new oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration against transubstantiation before taking his seat.[572] This statute was adopted and enacted by the Irish parliament in 1782, after they had renounced the legislative supremacy of England under which it had been enforced. The elective franchise, which had been rather singularly spared in an act of Anne, was taken away from the Roman catholics of Ireland in 1715; or, as some think, not absolutely till 1727.[573]

These tremendous statutes had in some measure the effect which their framers designed. The wealthier families, against whom they were principally levelled, conformed in many instances to the protestant church.[574] The catholics were extinguished as a political body; and, though any willing allegiance to the house of Hanover would have been monstrous, and it is known that their bishops were constantly nominated to the pope by the Stuart princes,[575] they did not manifest at any period, or even during the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, the least movement towards a disturbance of the government. Yet for thirty years after the accession of George I. they continued to be insulted in public proceedings under the name of the common enemy, sometimes oppressed by the enactment of new statutes, or the stricter execution of the old; till in the latter years of George II. their peaceable deportment, and the rise of a more generous spirit among the Irish protestants, not only sheathed the fangs of the law, but elicited expressions of esteem from the ruling powers, which they might justly consider as the pledge of a more tolerant policy. The mere exercise of their religion in an obscure manner had long been permitted without molestation.[576]

Thus in Ireland there were three nations, the original natives, the Anglo-Irish, and the new English; the two former catholic, except some chiefly of the upper classes, who had conformed to the church; the last wholly protestant. There were three religions, the Roman catholic, the established or Anglican, and the presbyterian; more than one-half of the protestants, according to the computation of those times, belonging to the latter denomination.[577] These however in a less degree were under the ban of the law as truly as the catholics themselves; they were excluded from all civil and military offices by a test act, and even their religious meetings were denounced by penal statutes. Yet the House of Commons after the revolution always contained a strong presbyterian body, and unable, as it seems, to obtain an act of indemnity for those who had taken commissions in the militia, while the rebellion of 1715 was raging in Great Britain, had recourse to a resolution, that whoever should prosecute any dissenter for accepting such a commission is an enemy to the king and the protestant interest.[578] They did not even obtain a legal toleration till 1720.[579] It seems as if the connection of the two islands, and the whole system of constitutional laws in the lesser, subsisted only for the sake of securing the privileges and emoluments of a small number of ecclesiastics, frequently strangers, who rendered very little return for their enormous monopoly. A great share, in fact, of the temporal government under George II. was thrown successively into the hands of two primates, Boulter and Stone; the one a worthy but narrow-minded man, who showed his egregious ignorance of policy in endeavouring to promote the wealth and happiness of the people, whom he at the same time studied to depress and discourage in respect of political freedom; the other an able, but profligate and ambitious statesman, whose name is mingled, as an object of odium and enmity, with the first great struggles of Irish patriotism.

The new Irish nation, or rather the protestant nation, since all distinctions of origin have, from the time of the great rebellion, been merged in those of religion, partook in large measure of the spirit that was poured out on the advocates of liberty and the revolution in the sister kingdom. Their parliament was always strongly whig, and scarcely manageable during the later years of the queen. They began to assimilate themselves more and more to the English model, and to cast off by degrees the fetters that galled and degraded them. By Poyning's celebrated law, the initiative power was reserved to the English council. This act, at one time popular in Ireland, was afterwards justly regarded as destructive of the rights of their parliament, and a badge of the nation's dependence. It was attempted by the Commons in 1641, and by the catholic confederates in the rebellion, to procure its repeal; which Charles I. steadily refused, till he was driven to refuse nothing. In his son's reign, it is said that "the council framed bills altogether; a negative alone on them and their several provisoes was left to parliament; only a general proposition for a bill by way of address to the lord lieutenant and council came from parliament; nor was it till after the revolution that heads of bills were presented; these last in fact resembled acts of parliament or bills, with only the small difference of 'We pray that it may be enacted,' instead of 'Be it enacted.'"[580] They assumed about the same time the examination of accounts, and of the expenditure of public money.[581]

Meanwhile, as they gradually emancipated themselves from the ascendancy of the Crown, they found a more formidable power to contend with in the English parliament. It was acknowledged, by all at least of the protestant name, that the Crown of Ireland was essentially dependent on that of England, and subject to any changes that might affect the succession of the latter. But the question as to the subordination of her legislature was of a different kind. The precedents and authorities of early ages seem not decisive; so far as they extend, they rather countenance the opinion that English statutes were of themselves valid in Ireland. But from the time of Henry VI. or Edward IV. it was certainly established that they had no operation, unless enacted by the Irish parliament. This however would not legally prove that they might not be binding, if express words to that effect were employed; and such was the doctrine of Lord Coke and of other English lawyers. This came into discussion about the eventful period of 1641. The Irish in general protested against the legislative authority of England, as a novel theory which could not be maintained;[582] and two treatises on the subject, one ascribed to Lord Chancellor Bolton, or more probably to an eminent lawyer, Patrick Darcy, for the independence of Ireland, another, in answer to it, by Serjeant Mayart, may be read in the _Hibernica_ of Harris.[583] Very few instances occurred before the revolution, wherein the English parliament thought fit to include Ireland in its enactments, and none perhaps wherein they were carried into effect. But after the revolution several laws of great importance were passed in England to bind the other kingdom, and acquiesced in without express opposition by its parliament. Molyneux, however, in his celebrated _Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated_, published in 1697, set up the claim of his country for absolute legislative independency. The House of Commons at Westminster came to resolutions against this book; and, with their high notions of parliamentary sovereignty, were not likely to desist from a pretension which, like the very similar claim to impose taxes in America, sprung in fact from the semi-republican scheme of constitutional law established by means of the revolution.[584] It is evident that while the sovereignty and enacting power was supposed to reside wholly in the king, and only the power of consent to the two houses of parliament, it was much less natural to suppose a control of the English legislature over other dominions of the Crown, having their own representation for similar purposes, than after they had become, in effect and in general sentiment, though not quite in the statute-book, co-ordinate partakers of the supreme authority. The Irish parliament, however, advancing as it were in a parallel line, had naturally imbibed the same sense of its own supremacy, and made at length an effort to assert it. A judgment from the court of exchequer in 1719 having been reversed by the House of Lords, an appeal was brought before the Lords in England, who affirmed the judgment of the exchequer. The Irish Lords resolved that no appeal lay from the court of exchequer in Ireland to the king in parliament in Great Britain; and the barons of that court having acted in obedience to the order of the English Lords, were taken into the custody of the black rod. That house next addressed the king, setting forth their reasons against admitting the appellant jurisdiction. But the Lords in England, after requesting the king to confer some favour on the barons of the exchequer who had been censured and illegally imprisoned for doing their duty, ordered a bill to be brought in for better securing the dependency of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain, which declares "that the king's majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland; and that the House of Lords of Ireland have not, nor of right ought to have, any jurisdiction to judge of, reverse, or affirm any judgment, sentence, or decree given or made in any court within the said kingdom; and that all proceedings before the said House of Lords upon any such judgment, sentence, or decree, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever."[585]

The English government found no better method of counteracting this rising spirit of independence than by bestowing the chief posts in the state and church on strangers, in order to keep up what was called the English interest.[586] This wretched policy united the natives of Ireland in jealousy and discontent, which the latter years of Swift were devoted to inflame. It was impossible that the kingdom should become, as it did under George II., more flourishing through its great natural fertility, its extensive manufacture of linen, and its facilities for commerce, though much restricted (the domestic alarm from the papists also being allayed by their utter prostration), without writhing under the indignity of its subordination; or that a House of Commons, constructed so much on the model of the English, could hear patiently of liberties and privileges it did not enjoy. These aspirations for equality first, perhaps, broke out into audible complaints in the year 1753. The country was in so thriving a state that there was a surplus revenue after payment of all charges. The House of Commons determined to apply this to the liquidation of a debt. The government, though not unwilling to admit of such an application, maintained that the whole revenue belonged to the king, and could not be disposed of without his previous consent. In England, where the grants of parliament are appropriated according to estimates, such a question could hardly arise; nor would there, I presume, be the slightest doubt as to the control of the House of Commons over a surplus income. But in Ireland, the practice of appropriation seems never to have prevailed, at least so strictly;[587] and the constitutional right might perhaps not unreasonably be disputed. After long and violent discussions, wherein the speaker of the Commons and other eminent men bore a leading part on the popular side, the Crown was so far victorious as to procure some motions to be carried, which seemed to imply its authority; but the house took care, by more special applications of the revenue, to prevent the recurrence of an undisposed surplus.[588] From this era the great parliamentary history of Ireland begins, and is terminated after half a century by the union: a period fruitful of splendid eloquence, and of ardent, though not always uncompromising, patriotism; but which, of course, is beyond the limits prescribed to these pages.

FOOTNOTES:

[463] Sir James Ware's _Antiquities of Ireland_; Leland's _Hist. of Ireland_ (Introduction); Ledwich's _Dissertations_.

[464] _Id._ Auct.: also Davis's _Reports_, 29, and his "Discovery of the true Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued till his Majesty's happy Reign," 169. Sir John Davis, author of the philosophical poem, Γνωθι Σεαθτον was chief-justice of Ireland under James I. The tract just quoted is well known as a concise and luminous exposition of the history of that country from the English invasion.

[465] Ware; Leland; Ledwich; Davis's "Discovery," _ibid._; _Reports_, 49. It is remarkable that Davis seems to have been aware of an analogy between the custom of Ireland and Wales, and yet that he only quotes the statute of Rutland (12 Edw. I.), which by itself does not prove it. It is, however, proved, if I understand the passage, by one of the _Leges Walliæ_ published by Wotton, p. 139. A gavel or partition was made on the death of every member of a family for three generations, after which none could be enforced. But these parceners were to be all in the same degree; so that nephews could not compel their uncle to a partition, but must wait till his death, when they were to be put on an equality with their cousins; and this, I suppose, is meant by the expression in the statute of Rutland, "quod hæreditates remaneant partibiles inter _consimiles hæredes_."

[466] Leland seems to favour the authenticity of the supposed Brehon laws published by Vallancey. Introduction, 29. The style is said to be very distinguishable from the Irish of the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the laws themselves to have no allusion to the settlement of foreigners in Ireland, or to coined money; whence some ascribe them to the eighth century. On the other hand, Ledwich proves that some parts must be later than the tenth century. _Dissertations_, i. 270. And others hold them to be not older than the thirteenth. Campbell's _Historical Sketch of Ireland_, 41. It is also maintained that they are very unfaithfully translated. But, when we find the Anglo-Saxon and Norman usages, relief, aid, wardship, trial by jury (and that unanimous), and a sort of correspondence in the ranks of society with those of England (which all we read elsewhere of the ancient Irish seems to contradict), it is impossible to resist the suspicion that they are either extremely interpolated, or were compiled in a late age, and among some of the septs who had most intercourse with the English. We know that the degenerate colonists, such as the Earls of Desmond, adopted the Brehon law in their territories; but this would probably be with some admixture of that to which they had been used.

[467] "The first pile of lime and stone that ever was in Ireland was the castle of Tuam, built in 1161 by Roderic O'Connor, the monarch." Introduction to Cox's _History of Ireland_. I do not find that any later writer controverts this, so far as the aboriginal Irish are concerned; but doubtless the Norwegian Ostmen had stone churches, and there seems little doubt that some at least of the famous round towers so common in Ireland were erected by them. See Ledwich's _Dissertations_, vii. 143; and the book called Grose's _Antiquities of Ireland_, also written by Ledwich. Piles of stone without mortar are excluded by Cox's expression. In fact, the Irish had very few stone houses, or even regular villages and towns, before the time of James I. Davis, 170.

[468] Ledwich, i. 395.

[469] _Antiquities of Ireland_, ii. 76.

[470] Ledwich, i. 260.

[471] Ware, ii. 74; Davis's _Discovery_, 174; Spenser's _State of Ireland_, 390.

[472] Davis, 135.

[473] Leland, 80 _et post_; Davis, 100.

[474] 4 Inst. 349; Leland, 203; Harris's _Hibernica_, ii. 14.

[475] These counties are Dublin, Kildare, Meath (including Westmeath), Louth, Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Tipperary, Kerry, and Limerick. In the reign of Edward I. we find sheriffs also of Connaught and Roscommon. Leland, i. 19. Thus, except the northern province and some of the central districts, all Ireland was shire-ground, and subject to the Crown in the thirteenth century, however it might fall away in the two next. Those who write confusedly about this subject, pretend that the authority of the king at no time extended beyond the pale; whereas that name was not known, I believe, till the fifteenth century. Under the great Earl of Pembroke, who died in 1219, the whole island was perhaps nearly as much reduced under obedience as in the reign of Elizabeth. Leland, 205.

[476] Leland, 170.

[477] Davis, 140. William Marischal, Earl of Pembroke, who married the daughter of Earl Strongbow, left five sons and five daughters; the first all died without issue.

[478] Davis, 147; Leland, 291.

[479] _Id._ 194, 209.

[480] Leland, 225.

[481] Davis, 100, 109. He quotes the following record from an assize at Waterford, in the 4th of Edward II. (1311), which may be extracted, as briefly illustrating the state of law in Ireland better than any general positions. "Quod Robertus le Wayleys rectatus de morte Johannis filii Ivor MacGillemory, felonicè per ipsum interfecti, etc. Venit et bene cognovit quod prædictum Johannem interfecit; dicit tamen quod per ejus interfectionem feloniam committere non potuit, quia dicit, quod prædictus Johannes fuit purus Hibernicus, et non de libero sanguine, etc. Et cum dominus dicti Johannis, cujus Hibernicus idem Johannes fuit, die quo interfectus fuit, solutionem pro ipso Johanne Hibernico suo sic interfecto petere voluerit, ipse Robertus paratus erit ad respondendum de solutione prædictâ prout justitia suadebit. Et super hoc venit quidam Johannes le Poer, et dicit pro domino rege, quod prædictus Johannes filius Ivor Mac-Gillemory, et antecessores sui de cognomine prædicto a tempore quo dominus Henricus filius imperatricis, quondam dominus Hiberniæ, tritavus domini regis nunc, fuit in Hiberniâ, legem Anglicanam in Hiberniâ usque ad hanc diem habere, et secundum ipsam legem judicari et deduci debent." We have here both the general rule, that the death of an Irishman was only punishable by a composition to his lord, and the exception in behalf of those natives who had conformed to the English law.

[482] Davis, 104; Leland, 82. It was necessary to plead in bar of an action, that the plaintiff was Hibernicus, et non de quinque sanguinibus.

[483] Davis, 106. "If I should collect out of the records all the charters of this kind, I should make a volume thereof." They began as early as the reign of Henry III. Leland, 225.

[484] Leland, 243.

[485] _Id._ 289.

[486] "There were two other customs proper and peculiar to the Irishry, which, being the cause of many strong combinations and factions, do tend to the utter ruin of a commonwealth. The one was _fostering_, the other _gossipred_; both which have ever been of greater estimation among this people than with any other nation in the Christian world. For fostering I did never hear or read that it was in that use or reputation in any other country, barbarous or civil, as it hath been, and yet is, in Ireland, where they put away all their children to fosterers; the potent and rich men selling, the meaner sort, buying, the alterage and nursing of their children; and the reason is, because in the opinion of this people, _fostering_ hath always been a stronger alliance than blood; and the foster-children do love and are beloved of their foster-fathers and their sept, more than of their own natural parents and kindred, and do participate of their means more frankly, and do adhere to them in all fortunes, with more affection and constancy. The like may be said of _gossipred_ or compaternity, which though by the canon law it be a spiritual affinity, and a juror that was gossip to either of the parties might in former times have been challenged, as not indifferent, by our law, yet there was no nation under the sun that ever made so religious an account of it as the Irish," Davis, 179.

[487] "For that now there is no diversity in array between the English marchers and the Irish enemies, and so by colour of the English marchers, the Irish enemies do come from day to day into the English counties as English marchers, and do rob and kill by the highways, and destroy the common people by lodging upon them in the nights, and also do kill the husbands in the nights and do take their goods to the Irish men; wherefore it is ordained and agreed, that no manner man that will be taken for an Englishman shall have no beard above his mouth; that is to say, that he have no hairs upon his upper lip, so that the said lip be once at least shaven every fortnight, or of equal growth with the nether lip. And if any man be found among the English contrary hereunto, that then it shall be lawful to every man to take them and their goods as Irish enemies, and to ransom them as Irish enemies." Irish Statutes, 25 H. 6, c. 4.

[488] Davis, 152, 182; Leland, i. 256, etc.; Ware, ii. 58.

[489] Leland, 253.

[490] Cox's _Hist. of Ireland_, 117, 120.

[491] _Id._ 125, 129; Leland, 313.

[492] Irish Statutes.

[493] Davis, 174, 189; Leland, 281. Maurice Fitz-Thomas, Earl of Desmond, was the first of the English, according to Ware, ii. 76, who imposed the exaction of coyne and livery.

[494] Irish Statutes; Davis, 202; Cox; Leland.

[495] Leland, i. 278, 296, 324; Davis, 152, 197.

[496] Leland, 342. The native chieftains who came to Dublin are said to have been seventy-five in number; but the insolence of the courtiers, who ridiculed an unusual dress and appearance, disgusted them.

[497] Davis, 193.

[498] Leland, ii. 822 _et post_; Davis, 199, 229, 236; Holingshed's _Chronicles of Ireland_, p. 4. Finglas, a baron of the exchequer in the reign of Henry VIII., in his _Breviate of Ireland_, from which Davis has taken great part of his materials, says expressly, that, by the disobedience of the Geraldines and Butlers, and their Irish connections, "the whole land is now of Irish rule, except the little English pale, within the counties of Dublin and Meath, and Uriel [Louth], which pass not thirty or forty miles in compass." The English were also expelled from Munster, except the walled towns. The king had no profit out of Ulster, but the manor of Carlingford, nor any in Connaught. This treatise, written about 1530, is printed in Harris's _Hibernica_. The proofs that, in this age, the English law and government were confined to the four shires, are abundant. It is even mentioned in a statute, 13 H. 8, c. 2.

[499] Irish Statutes; Davis, 230; Leland, ii. 102.

[500] Leland.

[501] Irish Statutes, 33 H. 8, c. 1.

[502] _Ibid._ 28 H. 8, c. 15, 28. The latter act prohibits intermarriage or fostering with the Irish; which had indeed been previously restrained by other statutes. In one passed five years afterwards, it is recited that "the king's English subjects, by reason that they are inhabited in so little compass or circuit, and restrained by statute to marry with the Irish nation, and therefore of necessity must marry themselves together, so that in effect they all for the most part must be allied together; and therefore it is enacted, that consanguinity or affinity beyond the fourth degree shall be no cause of challenge on a jury." 33 H. 8, c. 4. These laws were for many years of little avail, so far at least as they were meant to extend beyond the pale. Spenser's _State of Ireland_, p. 384 _et post_.

[503] Leland, ii. 178, 184.

[504] Leland, ii. 189, 211; 3 & 4 P. and M. c. 1 and 2. Meath had been divided into two shires, by separating the western part. 34 H. 8, c. 1. "Forasmuch as the shire of Methe is great and large in circuit, and the west part thereof laid about or beset with divers of the king's rebels." Baron Finglas says, "Half Meath has not obeyed the king's laws these one hundred years or more." _Breviate of Ireland_, apud Harris, p. 85.

[505] Leland, ii. 158.

[506] Leland, 224; Irish Statutes, 2 Eliz.

[507] Leland gives several instances of breach of faith in the government. A little tract, called a "Brief Declaration of the Government of Ireland," written by Captain Lee in 1594, and published in _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, vol. i., censures the two last deputies (Grey and Fitzwilliams) for their ill usage of the Irish, and unfolds the despotic character of the English government. "The cause they (the lords of the north) have to stand upon those terms, and to seek for better assurance, is the harsh practices used against others, by those who have been placed in authority to protect men for your majesty's service, which they have greatly abused in this sort. They have drawn unto them by protection three or four hundred of the country people, under colour to do your majesty service, and brought them to a place of meeting, where your garrison soldiers were appointed to be, who have there most dishonourably put them all to the sword; and this hath been by the consent and practice of the lord deputy for the time being. If this be a good course to draw those savage people to the state to do your majesty service, and not rather to enforce them to stand on their guard, I leave to your majesty."--P. 90. He goes on to enumerate more cases of hardship and tyranny; many being arraigned and convicted of treason on slight evidence; many assaulted and killed by the sheriffs on commissions of rebellion; others imprisoned and kept in irons; among others, a youth, the heir of a great estate. He certainly praises Tyrone more than, from subsequent events, we should think just, which may be thought to throw some suspicion on his own loyalty; yet he seems to have been a protestant, and in 1594 the views of Tyrone were ambiguous, so that Captain Lee may have been deceived.

[508] _Sidney Papers_, i. 20.

[509] _Id._ 24.

[510] _Sidney Papers_, i. 29. Spenser descants on the lawless violence of the superior Irish; and imputes, I believe with much justice, a great part of their crimes to his own brethren, if they might claim so proud a title, the bards: "whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhymes, him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow."--P. 394.

[511] Holingshed, 460.

[512] Leland, 287; Spenser's _Account of Ireland_, p. 430 (vol. viii. of Todd's edition, 1805). Grey is the Arthegal of the _Faery Queen_, the representative of the virtue of justice in that allegory, attended by Talus with his iron flail, which indeed was unsparingly employed to crush rebellion. Grey's severity was signalised in putting to death seven hundred Spaniards who had surrendered at discretion in the fort of Smerwick. Though this might be justified by the strict laws of war (Philip not being a declared enemy) it was one of those extremities which justly revolt the common feelings of mankind. The queen is said to have been much displeased at it. Leland, 283. Spenser undertakes the defence of his patron Grey. _State of Ireland_, p. 434.

[513] Leland, 247, 293. An act had passed (II Eliz. c. 9) for dividing the whole island into shire-ground, appointing sheriffs, justices of the peace, etc.; which, however, was not completed.

[514] Leland, 305. Their conduct provoked an insurrection both in Connaught and Ulster. Spenser, who shows always a bias towards the most rigorous policy, does injustice to Perrott." He did tread down and disgrace all the English, and set up and countenance the Irish all that he could."--P. 437. This has in all ages been the language, when they have been placed on an equality, or anything approaching to an equality, with their fellow subjects.

[515] Leland, 248.

[516] Holingshed's _Chronicles of Ireland_, 342. This part is written by Hooker himself. Leland, 240; Irish Statutes, 11 Eliz.

[517] _Sidney Papers_, i. 153.

[518] _Id._ 179.

[519] _Sidney Papers_, 84, 117, etc., to 236; Holingshed, 389; Leland, 261. Sidney was much disappointed at the queen's want of firmness; but it is plain by the correspondence that Walsingham also thought he had gone too far. P. 192. The sum required seems to have been reasonable, about £2000 a year from the five shires of the pale; and, if they had not been stubborn, he thought all Munster also, except the Desmond territories, would have submitted to the payment. P. 183. "I have great cause," he writes, "to mistrust the fidelity of the greatest number of the people of this country's birth of all degrees; they be papists, as I may well term them, body and soul. For not only in matter of religion they be Romish, but for government they will change, to be under a prince of their own superstition. Since your highness' reign the papists never showed such boldness as now they do."--P. 184. This, however, hardly tallies with what he says afterwards (p. 208): "I do believe, for far the greatest number of the inhabitants of the English pale, her highness hath as true and faithful subjects as any she hath subject to the Crown;" unless the former passage refer chiefly to those without the pale, who in fact were exclusively concerned in the rebellions of this reign.

[520] "The church is now so spoiled," says Sir Henry Sidney in 1576, "as well by the ruin of the temples, as the dissipation and embezzling of the patrimony, and most of all for want of sufficient ministers, as so deformed and overthrown a church there is not, I am sure, in any region where Christ is professed." _Sidney Papers_, i. 109. In the diocese of Meath, being the best inhabited country of all the realm, out of 224 parish churches, 105 were impropriate having only curates, of whom but eighteen could speak English, the rest being Irish rogues, who used to be papists; fifty-two other churches had vicars, and fifty-two more were in better state than the rest, yet far from well. _Id._ 112. Spenser gives a bad character of the protestant clergy. P. 412.

An act was passed (12 Eliz. c. 1) for erecting free schools in every diocese, under English masters; the ordinary paying one-third of the salary, and the clergy the rest. This, however, must have been nearly impracticable. Another act (13 Eliz. c. 4) enables the Archbishop of Armagh to grant leases of his lands out of the pale for a hundred years without assent of the dean and chapter, to persons of English birth, "or of the English and civil nation, born in this realm of Ireland," at the rent of 4_d._ an acre. It recites the chapter to be "except a very few of them, both by nation, education, and custom, Irish, Irishly affectioned, and small hopes of their conformities or assent into any such devices as would tend to the placing of any such number of civil people there, to the disadvantage or bridling of the Irish." In these northern parts, the English and protestant interests had so little influence that the pope conferred three bishoprics, Derry, Clogher, and Raphoe, throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Davis, 254; Leland, ii. 248. What is more remarkable is, that two of these prelates were summoned to parliament in 1585 (_Id._ 295); the first in which some Irish were returned among the Commons.

The reputation of the protestant church continued to be little better in the reign of Charles I., though its revenues were much improved. Strafford gives the clergy a very bad character in writing to Laud. Vol. i. 187. And Burnet's _Life of Bedell_, transcribed chiefly from a contemporary memoir, gives a detailed account of that bishop's diocese (Kilmore), which will take off any surprise that might be felt at the slow progress of the reformation. He had about fifteen protestant clergy, but all English, unable to speak the tongue of the people, or to perform any divine offices, or converse with them, "which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in popery still."--P. 47. The bishop observed, says his biographer, "with much regret, that the English had all along neglected the Irish as a nation not only conquered but undisciplinable; and that the clergy had scarce considered them as a part of their charge; but had left them wholly into the hands of their own priests, without taking any other care of them but the making them pay their tithes. And indeed their priests were a strange sort of people, that knew generally nothing but the reading their offices, which were not so much as understood by many of them; and they taught the people nothing but the saying their paters and aves in Latin."--P. 114. Bedell took the pains to learn himself the Irish language; and though he could not speak it, composed the first grammar ever made of it; had the common prayer read every Sunday in Irish, circulated catechisms, engaged the clergy to set up schools, and even undertook a translation of the Old Testament, which he would have published but for the opposition of Laud and Strafford. P. 121.

[521] Leland, 413.

[522] Leland, 414, etc. In a letter from six catholic lords of the pale to the king in 1613, published in _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, i. 158, they complain of the oath of supremacy, which, they say, had not been much imposed under the queen, but was now for the first time enforced in the remote parts of the country; so that the most sufficient gentry were excluded from magistracy, and meaner persons, if conformable, put instead. It is said on the other side, that the laws against recusants were very little enforced, from the difficulty of getting juries to present them. _Id._ 359. Carte's _Ormond_, 33. But this at least shows that there was some disposition to molest the catholics on the part of the government; and it is admitted that they were excluded from offices, and even from practising at the bar, on account of the oath of supremacy. _Id._ 320; and compare the letter of six catholic lords with the answer of lord deputy and council in the same volume.

[523] Davis's _Reports_, ubi supra; "Discovery of Causes," etc., 260; Carte's _Life of Ormond_, i. 14; Leland, 418. It had long been an object with the English government to extinguish the Irish tenures and laws. Some steps towards it were taken under Henry VIII.; but at that time there was too great a repugnance among the chieftains. In Elizabeth's instructions to the Earl of Sussex on taking the government in 1560, it is recommended that the Irish should surrender their estates, and receive grants in tail male, but no greater estate. _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, i. 1. This would have left a reversion in the Crown, which could not have been cut off, I believe, by suffering a recovery. But as those who held by Irish tenure had probably no right to alienate their lands, they had little cause to complain. An act in 1569 (12 Eliz. c. 4), reciting the greater part of the Irish to have petitioned for leave to surrender their lands, authorises the deputy by advice of the privy council to grant letters patent to the Irish and degenerate English, yielding certain reservations to the queen. Sidney mentions, in several of his letters, that the Irish were ready to surrender their lands. Vol. i. 94, 105, 165.

The act 11 Jac. 1, c. 5, repeals divers statutes that treat the Irish as enemies, some of which have been mentioned above. It takes all the king's subjects under his protection to live by the same law. Some vestiges of the old distinctions remained in the statute-book, and were eradicated in Strafford's parliament. 10 & 11 Car. 1, c. 6.

[524] Leland, 254.

[525] See a note in Leland, ii. 302. The truth seems to be, that in this, as in other Irish forfeitures, a large part was restored to the tenants of the attainted parties.

[526] Leland, ii. 301.

[527] Carte's _Life of Ormond_, i. 15; Leland, 429; Farmer's "Chronicle of Sir Arthur Chichester's government," in _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, i. 32; an important and interesting narrative; also vol. ii. of the same collection, 37; Bacon's Works, i. 657.

[528] Leland, 437, 466; Carte's _Ormond_, 22; _Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica_, 238, 243, 378 _et alibi_; ii. 37 _et post_. In another treatise published in this collection, entitled "A Discourse on the State of Ireland," 1614, an approaching rebellion is remarkably predicted. "The next rebellion, whensoever it shall happen, doth threaten more danger to the state than any that hath preceded; and my reasons are these: 1. They have the same bodies they ever had; and therein they have and had advantage over us. 2. From their infancies they have been and are exercised in the use of arms. 3. The realm, by reason of long peace, was never so full of youth as at this present. 4. That they are better soldiers than heretofore, their continual employments in the wars abroad assure us; and they do conceive that their men are better than ours. 5. That they are more politic, and able to manage rebellion with more judgment and dexterity than their elders, their experience and education are sufficient. 6. They will give the first blow; which is very advantageous to them that will give it. 7. The quarrel for the which they rebel will be under the veil of religion and liberty, than which nothing is esteemed so precious in the hearts of men. 8. And lastly, their union is such, as not only the old English dispersed abroad in all parts of the realm, but the inhabitants of the pale cities and towns, are as apt to take arms against us, which no precedent time hath ever seen, as the ancient Irish."--Vol. i. 432. "I think that little doubt is to be made, but that the modern English and Scotch would in an instant be massacred in their houses."--P. 438. This rebellion the author expected to be brought about by a league with Spain and with aid from France.

[529] The famous parliament of Kilkenny, in 1367, is said to have been very numerously attended. Leland, i. 319. We find indeed an act (10 H. 7, c. 23) annulling what was done in a preceding parliament, for this reason, among others, that the writs had not been sent to all the shires, but to four only. Yet it appears that the writs would not have been obeyed in that age.

[530] Speech of Sir John Davis (1612), on the parliamentary constitution of Ireland, in Appendix to Leland, vol. ii. p. 490, with the latter's observations on it. Carte's _Ormond_, i. 18; Lord Mountmorres's _Hist. of Irish Parliament_.

[531] In the letter of the lords of the pale to King James above mentioned, they express their apprehension that the erecting so many insignificant places to the rank of boroughs was with the view of bringing on fresh penal laws in religion; "and so the general scope and institution of parliament frustrated; they being ordained for the assurance of the subjects not to be pressed with any new edicts or laws, but such as should pass with their general consents and approbations."--P. 158. The king's mode of replying to this constitutional language was characteristic. "What is it to you whether I make many or few boroughs? My council may consider the fitness, if I require it. But what if I had created 40 noblemen and 400 boroughs? The more the merrier, the fewer the better cheer." _Desid. Cur. Hib._ 308.

[532] Mountmorres, i. 166. The whole number of peers in 1634 was 122, and those present in parliament that year were 66. They had the privilege not only of voting, but even protesting by proxy; and those who sent none, were sometimes fined. _Id._ vol. i. 316.

[533] Carte's _Ormond_, i. 48; Leland, ii. 475 _et post_.

[534] Leland, iii. 4 _et post_. A vehement protestation of the bishops about this time, with Usher at their head, against any connivance at popery, is a disgrace to their memory. It is to be met with in many books. Strafford, however, was far from any real liberality of sentiment. His abstinence from religious persecution was intended to be temporary, as the motives whereon it was founded. "It will be ever far forth of my heart to conceive that a conformity in religion is not above all other things principally to be intended. For undoubtedly till we be brought all under one form of divine service, the Crown is never safe on this side, etc. It were too much at once to distemper them by bringing plantations upon them, and disturbing them in the exercise of their religion, so long as it be without scandal; and so indeed very inconsiderate, as I conceive, to move in this latter, till that former be fully settled, and by that means the protestant party become by much the stronger, which in truth I do not yet conceive it to be." _Straff. Letters_, ii. 39. He says, however, and I believe truly, that no man had been touched for conscience' sake since he was deputy. _Id._ 112. Every parish, as we find by Bedell's _Life_, had its priest and mass-house; in some places mass was said in the churches; the Romish bishops exercised their jurisdiction, which was fully obeyed; but "the priests were grossly ignorant and openly scandalous, both for drunkenness and all sort of lewdness."--P. 41, 76. More than ten to one in his diocese, the county of Cavan, were recusants.

[535] Some at the council-board having intimated a doubt of their authority to bind the kingdom, "I was then put to my last refuge, which was plainly to declare that there was no necessity which induced me to take them to counsel in this business, for rather than fail in so necessary a duty to my master, I would undertake upon the peril of my head to make the king's army able to subsist, and to provide for itself amongst them, without their help." _Strafford Letters_, i. 98.

[536] _Id._ i. 183; Carte, 61.

[537] The protestants, he wrote word, had a majority of eight in the Commons. He told them, "it was very indifferent to him what resolution the house might take; that there were two ends he had in view, and one he would infallibly attain--either a submission of the people to his majesty's just demands, or a just occasion of breach, and either would content the king; the first was undeniably and evidently best for them."--_Id._ 277, 278. In his speech to the two houses, he said, "His majesty expects not to find you muttering, or to name it more truly, mutinying in corners. I am commanded to carry a very watchful eye over these private and secret conventicles, to punish the transgression with a heavy and severe hand; therefore it behoves you to look to it."--_Id._ 289. "Finally," he concludes, "I wish you had a right judgment in all things; yet let me not prove a Cassandra amongst you, to speak truth and not be believed. However, speak truth I will, were I to become your enemy for it. Remember therefore that I tell you, you may easily make or mar this parliament. If you proceed with respect, without laying clogs and conditions upon the king, as wise men and good subjects ought to do, you shall infallibly set up this parliament eminent to posterity, as the very basis and foundation of the greatest happiness and prosperity that ever befell this nation. But, if you meet a great king with narrow circumscribed hearts, if you will needs be wise and cautious above the moon [sic], remember again that I tell you, you shall never be able to cast your mists before the eyes of a discerning king; you shall be found out; your sons shall wish they had been the children of more believing parents; and in a time when you look not for it, when it will be too late for you to help, the sad repentance of an unadvised heart shall be yours, lasting honour shall be my master's."

These subsidies were reckoned at near £41,000 each, and were thus apportioned: Leinster paid £13,000 (of which £1000 from the city of Dublin), Munster £11,000, Ulster £10,000, Connaught £6,800. Mountmorres, ii. 16.

[538] Irish Statutes, 10 Car. 1, c. 1, 2, 3, etc.; _Strafford Letters_, i. 279, 312. The king expressly approved the denial of the graces, though promised formerly by himself. _Id._ 345; Leland, iii. 20.

"I can now say," Strafford observes (_Id._ 344), "the king is as absolute here as any prince in the whole world can be; and may still be, if it be not spoiled on that side."

[539] _Strafford Letters_, i. 353, 370, 402, 442, 451, 454, 473; ii. 113, 139, 366; Leland, iii. 30, 39; Carte, 82.

[540] It is, however, true that he discouraged the woollen manufacture, in order to keep the kingdom more dependent, and that this was part of his motive in promoting the other. Vol. ii. 19.

[541] Leland, iii. 51. Strafford himself (ii. 397) speaks highly of their disposition.

[542] Carte's _Ormond_, 100, 140; Leland, iii. 54 _et post_; Mountmorres, ii. 29. A remonstrance of the Commons to Lord-Deputy Wandesford against various grievances was presented 7th November 1640, before Lord Strafford had been impeached. _Id._ 39. As to confirming the graces, the delay, whether it proceeded from the king or his Irish representatives, seems to have caused some suspicion. Lord Clanricarde mentions the ill consequences that might result, in a letter to Lord Bristol. Carte's _Ormond_, iii. 40.

[543] Sir Henry Vane communicated to the lords justices, by the king's command, March 16, 1640-1, that advice had been received and confirmed by the ministers in Spain and elsewhere, which "deserved to be seriously considered, and an especial care and watchfulness to be had therein: that of late there have passed from Spain (and the like may well have been from other parts) an unspeakable number of Irish churchmen for England and Ireland, and some good old soldiers, under pretext of asking leave to raise men for the King of Spain; whereas, it is observed among the Irish friars there, a whisper was, as if they expected a rebellion in Ireland, and particularly in Connaught." Carte's _Ormond_, iii. 30. This letter, which Carte seems to have taken from a printed book, is authenticated in _Clarendon State Papers_, ii. 143. I have mentioned in another part of this work (Chap. VIII.) the provocations which might have induced the cabinet of Madrid to foment disturbances in Charles's dominions. The lords justices are taxed by Carte with supineness in paying no attention to this letter (vol. i. 166); but how he knew that they paid none seems hard to say.

Another imputation has been thrown on the Irish government and on the parliament, for objecting to permit levies to be made for the Spanish service out of the army raised by Strafford, and disbanded in the spring of 1641, which the king had himself proposed. Carte, i. 133; and Leland, 82, who follows the former implicitly, as he always does. The events indeed proved that it would have been far safer to let those soldiers, chiefly catholics, enlist under a foreign banner; but considering the long connection of Spain with that party, and the apprehension always entertained that the disaffected might acquire military experience in her service, the objection does not seem so very unreasonable.

[544] The fullest writer on the Irish rebellion is Carte, in his _Life of Ormond_, who had the use of a vast collection of documents belonging to that noble family; a selection from which forms this third volume. But he is extremely partial against all who leaned to the parliamentary or puritan side, and especially the lords justices, Parsons and Borlase; which renders him, to say the least, a very favourable witness for the catholics. Leland, with much candour towards the latter, but a good deal of the same prejudice against the presbyterians, is little more than the echo of Carte. A more vigorous, though less elegant historian, is Warner, whose impartiality is at least equal to Leland's, and who may perhaps, upon the whole, be reckoned the best modern authority. Sir John Temple's _History of Irish Rebellion_, and Lord Clanricarde's _Letters_, with a few more of less importance, are valuable contemporary testimonies.

The catholics themselves might better leave their cause to Carte and Leland than excite prejudices instead of allaying them by such a tissue of misrepresentation and disingenuousness as Curry's _Historical Account of the Civil Wars in Ireland_.

[545] Sir John Temple reckons the number of protestants murdered, or destroyed in some manner, from the breaking out of the rebellion in October 1641, to the cessation in September 1643, at three hundred thousand, an evident and enormous exaggeration; so that the first edition being incorrectly printed, and with numerals, we might almost suspect a cipher to have been added by mistake (p. 15, edit. Maseres). Clarendon says forty or fifty thousand were murdered in the first insurrection. Sir William Petty, in his _Political Anatomy of Ireland_, from calculations too vague to deserve confidence, puts the number massacred at thirty-seven thousand. Warner has scrutinised the examinations of witnesses, taken before a commission appointed in 1643, and now deposited in the library of Trinity College, Dublin; and, finding many of the depositions unsworn, and others founded on hearsay, has thrown more doubt than any earlier writer on the extent of the massacre. Upon the whole, he thinks twelve thousand lives of protestants the utmost that can be allowed for the direct or indirect effects of the rebellion, during the two first years, except losses in war (_History of Irish Rebellion_, p. 397), and of these only one-third by murder. It is to be remarked, however, that no distinct accounts could be preserved in formal depositions of so promiscuous a slaughter, and that the very exaggerations show its tremendous nature. The Ulster colony, a numerous and brave people, were evidently unable to make head for a considerable time against the rebels; which could hardly have been, if they had only lost a few thousands. It is idle to throw an air of ridicule (as is sometimes attempted) on the depositions, because they are mingled with some fabulous circumstances, such as the appearance of the ghosts of the murdered on the bridge at Cavan; which by the way, is only told, in the depositions subjoined to Temple, as the report of the place, and was no cold-blooded fabrication, but the work of a fancy bewildered by real horrors.