Chapter XXVI: Part 26

"Ireland was now [immediately before Strongbow's conquest]
divided into four confederations of tribes. The O'Neils held
Ulidia, which is now called Ulster; the O'Connors Conacia, or
Connaught; the O'Briens and the M'Carthys Mononia, or Munster;
and the Macmurroughs Lagenia, or Leinster—all under the
paramount but often-disputed rule of a branch of the Ulster
O'Neils. The royal demesne of Meath, the appanage of the
Ulster family, which included Westmeath, Longford, and a part
of King's County, was sometimes counted a fifth kingdom. In
the wild north, O'Neil, O'Donnel, O'Kane, O'Hara, O'Sheel,
O'Carrol, were mighty names.
{1758}
On the northern-most peninsula, where the Atlantic runs into
Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly, O'Dogherty reigned supreme. In
Connaught, O'Rourke, O'Reilly, O'Kelly, O'Flaherty, O'Malley,
O'Dowd, were lords. In Meath and Leinster, MacGeogeghan,
O'Farrell, O'Connor, O'Moore, O'Brennan, Macmurrough, ruled.
In Munster, by the western shore, MacCarthy More held sway.
MacCarthy Reagh swayed the south, by the pleasant waters of
Cork Bay. O'Sullivan Beare was lord of the fair promontory
between Bantry Bay and Kenmare River. O'Mahony reigned by
roaring Water Bay. O'Donoghue was chieftain by the haunted
Killarney Lakes. MacMahon ruled north of the Shannon. O'Loglin
looked on Galway Bay. All Ireland, with the exception of a few
seaport towns where the Danes had settled, was in the hands of
Irish chiefs of old descent and famous lineage. They
quarrelled amongst themselves as readily and as fiercely as if
they had been the heads of so many Greek states. The Danes had
been their Persians; their Romans were now to come."

_J. H. McCarthy,
Outline of Irish History,
chapter 3._

IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175.
The Anglo-Norman conquest.

"The conquest of Ireland is among the most important episodes
in the reign of Henry II. … There were reasons, besides the
mere lust of conquest, why an English king should desire to
reduce Ireland. It had given harbours and recruits to the
Northmen on their expeditions; Irish soldiers had fought at
Brunanbeorh [or Brunnanburgh] against Athelstane; English
exiles, like the sons of Harold, repeatedly fled to the
island, and awaited the opportunity of reprisals upon their
own government. Irish pirates infested the English coasts, and
carried off prisoners, whom they sold as slaves. Accordingly,
William the Conqueror had meditated subjugating Ireland, if he
lived two years longer; William Rufus once declared, as he
stood on the coast of Wales, that he would bridge St. George's
Channel with a fleet of ships. But it was reserved for John of
Salisbury to obtain from his intimate friend, the English
pope, Adrian IV., a grant of Ireland to the English crown [by
the Bull 'Laudabilitur'] as a hereditary fief (A. D. 1154).
… Nevertheless, the difficulty of invading Ireland seemed
greater than any profit likely to result from it. The king's
council opposed the enterprise; and for some years the project
was suffered to sleep. But the wretched disorders of Irish
politics invited the invader." Diarmaid MacMurchad, king of
Leinster, having been driven from his dominions, "repaired to
the court of Henry II. in Aquitaine. The offer to hold
Leinster, if Henry would reinstate him, as an English fief,
procured Diarmaid free quarters in Bristol, to which he
speedily returned, and letters patent authorizing any English
subject to assist him. Diarmaid published these, and promised
large rewards in land to those who would help him to win back
his kingdom. The most powerful ally whom Diarmaid's offers
attracted was Richard de Clare, surnamed Strongbow, earl of
Pembroke, and distant cousin to the king. … Three other
adventurers were enlisted. Two of them, Robert Fitz-Stephen
and Maurice Fitz-Gerald, were sons, by different fathers, of
Nest, a Welsh princess; the third was Maurice de Prendergast."
In May, 1169, Fitz-Stephen, with a small following, crossed
the channel and captured Wexford. Some other successes soon
enabled Diarmaid to make peace with his enemies and recover
his kingdom, even before Strongbow's expedition had left
Wales. "Diarmaid was reinstated, and English subjects had no
authority to carry on war on their own account in Ireland.
Strongbow accordingly went to Normandy, and asked permission
to push the advantages gained. Obtaining only an ambiguous
answer from the king, he determined to consider it in his
favour, and went back into Wales to prepare an expedition. In
May, A. D. 1170, he sent over Raymond le Gros, Fitz-Stephen's
half nephew, as his precursor." Raymond defeated the Irish
with great slaughter, in a battle near Waterford, and savagely
murdered seventy prisoners. "In August, A. D. 1170, as
Strongbow was preparing to embark, he received an explicit
order from the king not to proceed. Quietly disregarding it,
he crossed with a little army of 1,200 men, out of whom 200
were knights. The storm of Waterford was his first exploit;
and it illustrates the Irish architecture of the times, that
the city walls were trenched by cutting away the wooden props
of a house that was built into them. The frightful carnage of
the storm was succeeded by the earl's marriage with Eva
[daughter of King Diarmaid], who brought a kingdom as her
dower. Then the united forces marched upon Dublin." The Danish
city was treacherously stormed in the midst of a negotiation,
and "the inhabitants experienced the worst miseries of the
conquered. Hasculf [the Danish or Norse governor], and Asgall,
king of the Northmen, escaped on board some small vessels to
their countrymen in the Orkneys." The next year Hasculf
reappeared with 60 ships from the Orkneys and Norway and laid
siege to Dublin. He was defeated, taken prisoner and killed;
but another fleet soon arrived and Dublin was again under
siege. Reduced to a desperate strait, the small garrison
sallied and routed the besiegers; but meantime Strongbow had
lost ground elsewhere and Dublin and Waterford were the only
possessions he retained. The anger of King Henry at his
disobedience caused many of his followers to desert him, and
he soon found it necessary to make peace with his offended
sovereign. Crossing over to England, he succeeded in winning
the royal pardon, and Henry returned to Ireland with him, to
assist in the completing of the conquest. They were
accompanied by a fleet of 400 ships and some 4,000 men. The
appearance of the king was followed by a general submission of
the Irish princes, and he made a royal progress to Cashel,
where, in 1172, a synod was held to effect the Church reforms
which were, ostensibly, the chief object of the conquest. "The
court held at Lismore to establish order among the English
settlers is better evidence than any synod of the real objects
of the conquest. The country was partially distributed among
Norman nobles; but as the English conquest of Ireland, more
rapid than the Norman of England, had been effected by fewer
men, and was more insecure, the changes in the property and
laws of the nation were proportionately smaller. Meath, as the
appanage of royalty, of course accrued to the English crown,
and Henry assigned the whole of it to Hugh de Lacy, whom he
made justiciary of the realm and governor of Dublin. The
object of this enormous grant, no doubt, was to balance
Strongbow's power.
{1759}
The families of Desmond, Ormond, and Vernon received other
estates. But the number of those invested was small. … The
slightness of the change, no doubt, mainly contributed to the
readiness with which the supremacy of the English crown was
accepted. In April, A. D. 1172, Henry was able to return to
England, leaving only Ulster behind him nominally unsubdued. A
series of petty wars between Irish chiefs and Norman nobles
soon broke out. The precarious nature of the English dominion
became manifest; and Henry was forced to publish the papal
grant of Ireland, which he had hitherto suppressed. At last,
in A. D. 1175, Roderic O'Connor [king of Connaught, and
previously recognized over-king of Ireland] made a treaty with
the English crown, and agreed to render homage and submission,
and a tribute of every tenth hide, in return for royal rights
in his own kingdom of Connaught. At the same time, the limits
of the English pale, as it was afterwards called, were
defined. This district, which was immediately subject to the
king of England and his barons, comprised Dublin with its
appurtenances, Meath, Leinster, and the country from Waterford
to Dungarvon. … From the English point of view, the kings of
England were henceforth lords-paramount of Ireland, with the
fee of the soil vested in them, and all Irish princes in
future were no more than tenants-in-chief. From the Irish
point of view, the English kings were nothing more than
military suzerains in the districts outside the pale."

_C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapter 30._

ALSO IN:
_Mrs. J. R. Green,
Henry the Second,
chapter 8._

_A. G. Richey,
Short History of the Irish People,
chapters 6-7._

_W. A. O'Conor,
History of the Irish People,
book 2, chapters 1-2._

_T. Moore,
History of Ireland,
chapters 26-29._

_F. P. Barnard, editor,
Strongbow's Conquest of Ireland:
From Contemporary Writers._

IRELAND: 13th-14th Centuries.
Under the Anglo-Norman conquerors.

"The feudal system as established in Ireland differed in
important respects from that existing in England. It is usual
for Irish writers to attribute much of the sufferings of
Ireland to the misgovernment of England and the introduction
of feudalism, whereas most of these evils may be referred
rather to English non-government and to the peculiar anomalies
of the Irish feudal system. The feudal system as introduced
into Ireland, like most other institutions imported from
England, was altered in such a manner as to retain all its
evils, and lose all its advantages. The Crown in Ireland
possessed no power of controlling its vassals. … In Ireland
there were no manor or valuable estates that the Crown could
appropriate—the entire country had to be conquered; and as
the Crown did not assist in the conquest, it received no part
of the spoils. Thus we find the Crown had absolutely no
demesnes of its own, and, being deprived of any military force
of its own, it had to rely upon such of the great feudal
vassals as might remain loyal for the purpose of crushing
those who might be in rebellion. The inevitable result of this
policy was to kindle a civil war and excite personal feuds in
the attempt to maintain order. … We have thus a feudal
system, in which the Crown is powerless to fulfil its duties,
yet active in preventing the greater nobles from exercising
that influence which might have secured a reasonable degree of
order. The whole energy of the nobles was turned away from
government to war; and lest they should become local
potentates, they were allowed to degenerate into local
tyrants. But what, meanwhile, had become of the Irish nation?
As the feudal system ignored their existence, we have
permitted them to fall out of our view; but they still
existed, and still were politically independent. The invaders
had occupied the flat country, suitable for the operation of
their forces, and the original inhabitants had retired into
either the mountainous districts, impassable to cavalry, or
into districts protected by the bogs, and difficult of access;
nay, even in some parts of the island, where the Normans were
not in force, they had re-occupied large portions of the open
country. They did not retire as disorganised fugitives, but
the tribes retreated, keeping their social organisation
unbroken; and, although removed from their original
habitations, still preserved their social identity. The
remarkable point in the conquest was, that the Celtic
population was not driven back upon anyone portion of the
kingdom, but remained as it was, interpolated among the new
arrivals. … The Celtic population possessed no definite
legal position, filled no place in the feudal hierarchy, and
was in the eyes of the English Government hostile and alien;
the only exception to this was the case of the O'Briens, who,
though not actually feudal vassals, had their estates secured
by a charter, and five Irish families, through some unknown
reason, were considered as the king's men and entitled to his
protection; these were known as the five bloods, who enjoyed
the law of England to the extent of the privilege to sue in
the king's courts, viz., O'Neill, O'Molaghlin, O'Connor,
O'Brien, and M'Murrough. … The Irish in Ireland were treated
by the king's courts in Ireland as an alien and hostile
nation; an Irishman out of the king's peace could not bring an
action against an Englishman. … But, though legally ignored,
the Irish tribes could not be politically disregarded. The
English Government used their assistance to repress the
rebellions of insurgent vassals. … They were called on to
furnish assistance to the English armies, and on many
occasions we find their chiefs summoned by writ of Parliament,
as if feudal vassals; but the mode in which they were treated
depended upon the immediate objects and want of the English
Government, and the general course of conduct pursued towards
them was such as has been previously stated. … We thus find
the English and Irish races hopelessly at variance, and it
would seem that one or other must have been crushed out in the
contest; but such was not the result; they both survived, and,
contrary to reasonable expectations, the Irish exhibited the
greater vitality. The expulsion of the English colony was an
effort beyond the power of the disunited Irish tribes; for in
the darkest hours of the English settlement the power of
England was ready, by some sudden effort, to reassert the
English supremacy. But why did the Anglo-Normans wholly fail
to subdue the Irish? …

1. The large extent comprised in the grants made to the first
colonists led to a dispersion of the Norman nobles over the
more fertile portions of the country. The English colony never
formed one compact body capable of combined action. …

{1760}

2. The military equipment of the Normans, and their mode of
carrying on war, rendered their forces wholly inefficient,
when, leaving the flat country, they attempted to penetrate
the fastnesses of the native tribes. …

3. From the absence of any central government, civil wars
continually arose between the several Norman lords; thus the
military power of the colonists was frittered away in
dissensions. …

4. The English Government continually called upon the Irish
barons for aids and military service, to be employed in wars
elsewhere than in Ireland. …

5. Many of the estates of the Norman nobles descended to
heiresses who married Englishmen already possessing estates in
England: hence arose absenteeism.

6. Even the lords who resided constantly upon their Irish
estates gradually lost their Norman habits, and tended to
assimilate themselves to the manners, and to adopt the
language, of the Irish."

_A. G. Richey,
Short History of the Irish People,
chapter 8._

ALSO IN:
_P. W. Joyce,
Short History of Ireland,
part 3._

See, also,
PALATINE, THE IRISH COUNTIES;
and GERALDINES.

IRELAND:
The Celticizing of the Anglo-Norman conquerors.

"Prior to experience, it would have been equally reasonable to
expect that the modern Englishman would adopt the habits of
the Hindoo or the Mohican, as that the fiery knights of
Normandy would have stooped to imitate a race whom they
despised as slaves; that they would have flung away their very
knightly names to assume a barbarous equivalent [the De Burghs
became Bourkes or Burkes, the M'Sweenies had been Veres in
England, and the Munster Geraldines merged their family name
in that of Desmond.—Foot-note]; and would so utterly have
cast aside the commanding features of their Northern
extraction, that their children's children could be
distinguished neither in soul nor body, neither in look, in
dress, in language, nor in disposition, from the Celts whom
they had subdued. Such, however, was the extraordinary fact.
The Irish who had been conquered in the field revenged their
defeat on the minds and hearts of their conquerors; and in
yielding, yielded only to fling over their new masters the
subtle spell of the Celtic disposition. In vain the government
attempted to stem the evil. Statute was passed after statute
forbidding the 'Englishry' of Ireland to use the Irish
language, or intermarry with Irish families, or copy Irish
habits. Penalties were multiplied on penalties; fines,
forfeitures, and at last death itself, were threatened for
such offences. But all in vain. The stealthy evil crept on
irresistibly. Fresh colonists were sent over to restore the
system, but only for themselves or their children to be swept
into the stream; and from the century which succeeded the
Conquest till the reign of the eighth Henry, the strange
phenomenon repeated itself, generation after generation,
baffling the wisdom of statesmen, and paralysing every effort
at a remedy."

_J. A. Froude,
History of England,
chapter 8 (volume 2)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1314-1318.
Edward Bruce's invasion.

The crushing defeat of the English by the Scotch at
Bannockburn (1314) rekindled a spirit of rebellion in Ireland,
and the discontented chiefs made haste to solicit aid from
Scotland, offering the sovereignty of their island to Edward
Bruce, brother of king Robert, if he would come to their help
and conquer it. "By consent of king Robert, who was pleased to
make a diversion against England upon a vulnerable point, and
not, perhaps, sorry to be rid of a restless spirit, which
became impatient in the lack of employment, Edward invaded
Ireland at the head of a force of 6,000 Scots. He fought many
battles, and gained them all. He became master of the province
of Ulster, and was solemnly crowned king of Ireland; but found
himself amid his successes obliged to intreat the assistance
of king Robert with fresh supplies; for the impetuous Edward,
who never spared his own person, was equally reckless of
exposing his followers; and his successes were misfortunes, in
so far as they wasted the brave men with whose lives they were
purchased. Robert Bruce led supplies to his brother's
assistance, with an army which enabled him to overrun Ireland,
but without gaining any permanent advantage. He threatened
Dublin, and penetrated as far as Limerick in the west, but was
compelled, by scarcity of provisions, to retire again into
Ulster, in the spring of 1317. He shortly after returned to
Scotland, leaving a part of his troops with Edward, though
probably convinced that his brother was engaged in a desperate
and fruitless enterprise. … After his brother's departure,
Edward's career of ambition was closed at the battle of
Dundalk, where, October 5th, 1318, fortune at length failed a
warrior who had tried her patience by so many hazards. On that
fatal day he encountered, against the advice of his officers,
an Anglo-Irish army ten times more numerous than his own. A
strong champion among the English, named John Maupas, singling
out the person of Edward, slew him, and received death at his
hands. … A general officer of the Scots, called John
Thomson, led back the remnant of the Scottish force to their
own country. And thus ended the Scottish invasion of Ireland,
with the loss of many brave soldiers."

_Sir W. Scott,
History of Scotland,
chapter 11 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN:
_T. Moore,
History of Ireland,
volume 3, chapter 36._

IRELAND: A. D. 1327-1367.
Oppressions of the reign of Edward III.

"Of all the legislative measures of this period the most
notable was the Statute of Kilkenny, passed at a Parliament
held in that town, in the last year of the decade, in the Lent
session of 1367. This 'famous, or infamous,' enactment
gathered up into one, and recapitulated with additional
aggravations and insults, all the former oppressive,
exasperating, and iniquitous ordinances by which English
legislation for Ireland had hitherto been disgraced. … Among
the earliest measures passed in the reign of Edward III. was a
statute directed against absenteeism, obliging all Englishmen
who were Irish proprietors either to reside on their estates
or to provide soldiers to defend them. But this enactment was
unproductive of good results. The O'Neills drove the colonists
out of the 'liberty of Ulster,' and the English De Burghs, so
far from helping to uphold English ascendency, appropriated to
themselves the entire lordship of Connaught, made common cause
with the native tribes, and adopting their dress, language,
and customs, became 'Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,' threw off
their allegiance to King Edward, and bade defiance to the
King's authority. Thus it came to pass that before many years
of this reign had elapsed more than a third part of the
territories of the Pale was again in the hands of its original
possessors. … Edward III. inherited the barbarous and
iniquitous traditions of English rule in Ireland, but he
improved upon them.
{1761}
He ordered all his officers in that country who had Irish
estates to be removed and give place to Englishmen with no
Irish ties. He next declared void every grant of land in
Ireland since the time of Edward II., and made new grants of
the lands thus recovered to the Crown. The tendency of this
monstrous measure was to create two more antagonistic parties
in Ireland, destined by their bitter dissensions to bring
about the result that ere long 'all the King's land in Ireland
was on the point of passing away from the Crown of England,'—
viz., the 'English by blood,' as the established settlers were
called, and the 'English by birth,' or new grantees. Some of
the chief of the former, in despair of a career, or even of a
quiet life, at home, were about to bid good-bye to Ireland and
seek their fortunes elsewhere, when they were arrested by a
proclamation making it penal for any English subject capable
of bearing arms to leave the country. … The 'English by
blood' became more and more intimately connected and
identified with the native Irish, and the 'English by birth'
became more and more powerless to maintain the English
ascendency; till at last, in 1361, the King determined on
sending over a viceroy of the blood royal, and appointed to
the post his son Lionel, created shortly afterwards Duke of
Clarence, whom he had married to Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter
and representative of the last Earl of Ulster. But though
Prince Lionel, on his arrival, took the precaution of
forbidding any man born in Ireland to approach his camp, his
position soon became so critical that the King issued writs
commanding all the absentee Irish lords to hasten to Ireland
to the assistance of the Prince, 'for that his very dear son
and his companions in Ireland were in imminent peril.' The
next step was the passing of the Statute of Kilkenny. It
re-enacted the prohibition of marriage and foster-nursing,
rendered obligatory the adoption of the English language and
customs, forbade the national games of 'hurlings and
quoitings,' and the use of the ancient Gaelic code called the
Senchus Mor; a code by which the native brehons, or judges, of
the Irish septs had decided causes among them since the time
of the conversion of the race to Christianity in the fifth
century."

_W. Warburton,
Edward III., 4th decade,
chapter 3._

ALSO IN:
_W. Longman,
Life and Times of Edward III.,
volume 2, chapter 1._

_T. Leland,
History of Ireland,
book 2, chapters 4-5 (volume 1)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1494.
Poynings' Laws.

During the Wars of the Roses, "if Ireland had any preference
for either of the great contending parties in England, it was
… for the House of York; and from this cause chiefly sprang
the change of Henry VII.'s mode of governing the dependency
which on ascending the throne he had found all but severed
from his dominions. At first he had thought it best to employ
the native nobility for this purpose, and had chosen for
Deputy the Earl of Kildare—setting him, as the story ran, to
rule all Ireland, because all Ireland could not rule him.
When, however, he had time to reflect on the dangers springing
from the Irish support of Simnel and Warbeck, from which he
and his dynasty had escaped so narrowly, he perceived the
necessity of bringing the country under a more regular
government. Accordingly he sent over in 1494 (at the time when
Warbeck was preparing for his descent on England) Sir Edward
Poynings as Lord Deputy, a statesman and commander well
experienced in the most important affairs of the time."

_C. E. Moberly,
The Early Tudors,
chapter 6._

After some military operations, which he found to be beset
with treacheries and difficulties, the new Lord Deputy held a
Parliament at Drogheda—"perhaps the most memorable that was
ever held in Ireland, as certainly no other Parliament in that
country made laws which endured so long as two which were then
enacted, and were known for centuries afterwards as the
'Poynings Acts.' By the first of these it was ordained that no
Parliament should be held in Ireland in future until the
king's Council in England had approved not only of its being
summoned, but also of the Acts which the Lieutenant and
Council of Ireland proposed to pass in it. By the second the
laws enacted before that time in England were extended to
Ireland also. Thus the Irish legislature was made entirely
dependent upon England. The Irish Parliament had no power to
originate anything, but was only free to accept or (if they
were very bold) to reject measures drawn up by the Irish
Council and approved already by the king and his Council in
England before they were submitted to discussion. Little as
this looks like parliamentary government, such was the state
of subjection in which the Irish Parliament remained by virtue
of this law for nearly three centuries later. Almost the whole
time, that is to say, that Ireland had a separate Parliament
at all it remained in this manner restricted in its action by
the legislation of Sir Edward Poynings. … It should be
remembered, however, that Henry VII. merely sought to do in
Ireland what there is every reason to suppose he practically
did in England. Legislation was not at this time considered to
be the chief business of a Parliament."

_J. Gairdner,
Henry the Seventh,
chapter. 8._

ALSO IN:
_R. Bagwell,
Ireland Under the Tudors,
chapter 8._

_W. A. O'Conor,
History of the Irish People,
book 2, chapter 4, section 7._

_H. Hallam,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 18 (volume 3)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1515.
The English Pale and the Clans and Chiefs beyond it.

"The events on which we are about to enter require for their
understanding a sketch of the position of the various chiefs,
as they were at this time scattered over the island. The
English pale, originally comprising 'the four shires,' as they
were called, of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Uriel or Louth,
had been shorn down to half its old dimensions. The line
extended from Dundalk to Ardee; from Ardee by Castletown to
Kells; thence through Athboy and Trim to the Castle of
Maynooth; from Maynooth it crossed to Claine upon the Liffey,
and then followed up the line of the river to Ballimore
Eustace, from which place it skirted back at the rear of the
Wicklow and Dublin mountains to the forts at Dalkey, seven
miles south of Dublin. This narrow strip alone, some fifty
miles long and twenty broad, was in any sense English. Beyond
the borders the common law of England was of no authority; the
king's writ was but a strip of parchment; and the country was
parcelled among a multitude of independent chiefs, who
acknowledged no sovereignty but that of strength, who levied
tribute on the inhabitants of the pale as a reward for a
nominal protection of their rights, and as a compensation for
abstaining from the plunder of their farms. …
{1762}
These chiefs, with their dependent clans, were distributed
over the four provinces in the following order. The
Geraldines, the most powerful of the remaining Normans, were
divided into two branches. The Geraldines of the south, under
the Earls of Desmond, held Limerick, Cork, and Kerry; the
Geraldines of Leinster lay along the frontiers of the English
pale; and the heads of the house, the Earls of Kildare, were
the feudal superiors of the greater portion of the English
counties. To the Butlers, Earls of Ormond and Ossory, belonged
Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary. The De Burghs, or Bourkes, as
they called themselves, were scattered over Galway, Roscommon,
and the south of Sligo, occupying the broad plains which lie
between the Shannon and the mountains of Connemara and Mayo.
This was the relative position into which these clans had
settled at the Conquest, and it had been maintained with
little variation. The north, which had fallen to the Lacies
and the De Courcies, had been wholly recovered by the Irish.
The Lacies had become extinct. The De Courcies, once Earls of
Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were reduced to the
petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the Desmonds. The
Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which
they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely
than ever, the Irish habits and traditions. … The O'Neils
and O'Donnells had spread down over Ulster to the frontiers of
the pale. The O'Connors and O'Carrolls had recrossed the
Shannon and pushed forwards into Kildare; the O'Connor Don was
established in a castle near Portarlington, said to be one of
the strongest in Ireland; and the O'Carrolls had seized Leap,
an ancient Danish fortress, surrounded by bog and forest, a
few miles from Parsonstown. O'Brien of Inchiquin, Prince—as
he styled himself—of Thomond, no longer contented with his
principality of Clare, had thrown a bridge across the Shannon
five miles above Limerick, and was thus enabled to enter
Munster at his pleasure and spread his authority towards the
south; while the M'Carties and O'Sullivans, in Cork and Kerry,
were only not dangerous to the Earls of Desmond, because the
Desmonds were more Irish than themselves, and were accepted as
their natural chiefs. In Tipperary and Kilkenny only the
Celtic reaction was held in check. The Earls of Ormond,
although they were obliged themselves to live as Irish
chieftains, and to govern by the Irish law, yet … remained
true to their allegiance, and maintained the English authority
as far as their power extended. … Wexford, Wicklow, and the
mountains of Dublin, were occupied by the Highland tribes of
O'Bryne and O'Toole, who, in their wild glens and dangerous
gorges, defied attempts to conquer them, and who were able, at
all times, issuing down out of the passes of the hills, to cut
off communication with the pale. Thus the Butlers had no means
of reaching Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the
home of their hereditary rivals and foes. This is a general
account of the situation of the various parties in Ireland at
the beginning of the 16th century. I have spoken only of the
leading families. … 'There be sixty counties, called
regions, in Ireland,' says the report of 1515, 'inhabited with
the king's Irish enemies.'"

_J. A. Froude,
History of England,
chapter 8 (volume 2)._

See, also,
PALE, THE ENGLISH.

IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.
The reconquest under Henry VIII. and
the fall of the Geraldines.
The political pacification and the religious alienation.

"To Henry VIII. the policy which had been pursued by his
father was utterly hateful. His purpose was to rule in Ireland
as thoroughly and effectively as he ruled in England. … The
Geraldines, who had been suffered under the preceding reign to
govern Ireland in the name of the Crown, were quick to
discover that the Crown would no longer stoop to be their
tool. They resolved to frighten England again into a
conviction of its helplessness; and the rising of Lord Thomas
Fitzgerald followed the usual fashion of Irish revolts. A
murder of the Archbishop of Dublin, a capture of the city, a
repulse before its castle, a harrying of the Pale, ended in a
sudden disappearance of the rebels among the bogs and forests
of the border on the advance of the English forces. …
Unluckily for the Geraldines, Henry had resolved to take
Ireland seriously in hand, and he had Cromwell [Sir Thomas] to
execute his will. Skeffington, the new Lord Deputy, brought
with him a train of artillery, which worked a startling change
in the political aspect of the island. The castles which had
hitherto sheltered rebellion were battered into ruins. … Not
only was the power of the great Norman house which had towered
over Ireland utterly broken, but only a single boy was left to
preserve its name. With the fall of the Geraldines Ireland
felt itself in a master's grasp. … In seven years, partly
through the vigour of Skeffington's successor, Lord Leonard
Grey, and still more through the resolute will of Henry and
Cromwell, the power of the Crown, which had been limited to
the walls of Dublin, was acknowledged over the length and
breadth of Ireland. … Chieftain after chieftain was won over
to the acceptance of the indenture which guaranteed him in the
possession of his lands, and left his authority over his
tribesmen untouched, on conditions of a pledge of loyalty, of
abstinence from illegal wars and exactions on his
fellow-subjects, and of rendering a fixed tribute and service
in war-time to the Crown. … [This] firm and conciliatory
policy must in the end have won, but for the fatal blunder
which plunged Ireland into religions strife at the moment when
her civil strife seemed about to come to an end. … In
Ireland the spirit of the Reformation never existed among the
people at all. They accepted the legislative measures passed
in the English Parliament without any dream of theological
consequences, or of any change in the doctrine or ceremonies
of the Church. … The mission of Archbishop Browne 'for the
plucking-down of idols and extinguishing of idolatry' was the
first step in the long effort of the English Government to
force a new faith on a people who to a man clung passionately
to their old religion. Browne's attempts at 'tuning the
pulpits' were met by a sullen and significant opposition. …
Protestantism had failed to wrest a single Irishman from his
older convictions, but it succeeded in uniting all Ireland
against the Crown. … The population within the Pale and
without it became one, 'not as the Irish nation,' it has been
acutely said, 'but as Catholics.' A new sense of national
identity was found in the identity of religion."

_J. R. Green,
Short History of the English People,
chapter 7, section 8._

ALSO IN:
_R. Bagwell,
Ireland Under the Tudors,
volume 1, chapters 9-15._

_M. Haverty,
History of Ireland,
chapter 30._

{1763}

IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603.
The wars of Shane O'Neil and Hugh O'Neil, Earls of Tyrone.
The League of the Geraldines and the Ulster Confederacy.

"The Reformation begun under Henry VIII. was carried out with
pitiless determination under Edward VI., and was met by the
Catholics with unflinching opposition. Under Mary there was a
period of respite, but the strife was renewed with greater
fierceness in the succeeding reign. As authentic Irish history
begins with St. Patrick, so with Elizabeth modern Irish
history may be said to begin. … At her accession, Elizabeth
was too much occupied with foreign complications to pay much
heed to Ireland. Trouble first began in a conflict between the
feudal laws and the old Irish law of Tanistry. Con O'Neil,
Earl of Tyrone, had taken his title from Henry VIII., subject
to the English law of succession; but when Con died, the clan
O'Neil, disregarding the English principle of hereditary
succession, chose Shane O'Neil, an illegitimate son of Con,
and the hero of his Sept, to be The O'Neil. Shane O'Neil at
once put himself forward as the champion of Irish liberty, the
supporter of the Irish right to rule themselves in their own
way and pay no heed to England. Under the pretence of
governing the country, Elizabeth overran it with a soldiery
who, as even Mr. Froude acknowledges, lived almost universally
on plunder, and were little better than bandits. The time was
an appropriate one for a champion of Irish rights. Shane
O'Neil boldly stood out as sovereign of Ulster, and pitted
himself against Elizabeth. … Shane fought bravely against
his fate, but he was defeated [A. D. 1567], put to flight, and
murdered by his enemies, the Scots of Antrim, in whose
strongholds he madly sought refuge. His head was struck off,
and sent to adorn the walls of Dublin Castle. His lands were
declared forfeit, and his vassals, vassals of the Crown.
English soldiers of fortune were given grants from Shane's
escheated territory, but when they attempted to settle they
were killed by the O'Neils. Others came in their place, under
Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, and did their best to simplify
the process of colonization by exterminating the O'Neils, men,
women, and children, wherever they could be got at. After two
years of struggle Essex was compelled to abandon his
settlement. But other colonizers were not disheartened. Some
West of England gentlemen, under Peter Carew, seized on Cork,
Limerick and Kerry, and sought to hold them by extirpating the
obnoxious natives. Against these English inroads the great
Geraldine League was formed. In the reign of Mary, that boy of
twelve whom Henry VIII. had not been able to include in the
general doom of his house had been allowed to return to
Ireland, and to resume his ancestral honours, Once more the
Geraldines were a great and powerful family in Ireland."
Defeated in their first rising, "the Geraldines and their
companion chiefs got encouragement in Rome and pledges from
Spain, and they rose again under the Earl of Desmond and Sir
James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. At first they had some
successes, They had many wrongs to avenge. … Sir Francis
Cosby, the Queen's representative in Leix and Offaly, had
conceived and executed the idea of preventing any further
possible rising of the chiefs in those districts by summoning
them and their kinsmen to a great banquet in the fort of
Mullaghmast, and there massacring them all. Out of 400 guests,
only one man, a Lalor, escaped from that feast of blood. …
With such memories in their minds, the tribes rose in all
directions to the Desmond call. … Elizabeth sent over more
troops to Ireland under the new Lord Deputy, Sir William
Pelham, who had with him as ally Ormonde, the head of the
house of Butler, hereditary foes of the Geraldines, and easily
induced to act against them. Pelham and Ormonde cut their way
over Munster, reducing the province by unexampled ferocity.
Ormonde boasted that he had put to death nearly 6,000
disaffected persons. Just at this moment some of the chiefs of
the Pale rose, and rose too late. They gained one victory over
Lord Grey de Wilton in the pass of Glenmalure [August, 1580].
… Grey immediately abandoned the Pale to the insurgents, and
turned to Smerwick [A. D. 1580], where some 800 Spanish and
Italian soldiers had just landed, too late to be of any
service to the rebellion, and had occupied the dismantled
fort. It was at once blockaded by sea and by land. In Grey's
army Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser both held commands.
Smerwick surrendered at discretion, and the prisoners were
killed by Raleigh and his men in cold blood. Flushed by this
success, Grey returned to the Pale and carried all before him.
The Geraldines were disheartened, and were defeated wherever
they made a stand. … Munster was so vigorously laid waste
that Mr. Froude declares that 'the lowing of a cow or the
sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from
Valentia to the Rock of Cashel.' Holinshed declares the
traveller would not meet any man, woman, or child, saving in
towns or cities, and would not see any beast; and Spenser
gives a melancholy picture of the misery of the inhabitants,
'as that any stony heart would rue the same.' … The next
step was to confiscate the estates of the rebellious
chieftains. … The estates of Desmond and some 140 of his
followers came to the Crown. The land was then distributed at
the cheapest rate in large tracts to English nobles and
gentlemen adventurers, who were pledged to colonize it with
English labourers and tradesmen. But of these labourers and
tradesmen not many came over, and those who did soon returned,
tired of struggling for their foothold with the dispossessed
Irish." During all this Geraldine or Desmond rebellion Ulster
had remained quiet; but in 1594 it began to show signs of
disturbance. "Hugh O'Neil, the grandson of that Con O'Neil
whom Henry VIII. had made Earl of Tyrone, had been brought up
at the English court, and confirmed in the lordship of Tyrone
by the English Government. In the brilliant court of Elizabeth
the young Irish chief was distinguished for his gifts of mind
and body. When he came of age he was allowed to return to
Ireland to his earldom. Once within his own country, he
assumed his ancestral title of The O'Neil, and revived all the
customs of independent Irish chieftains. For long enough he
took no part in any plots or movements against the Crown; but
many things, the ties of friendship and of love, combined to
drive him into rebellion.

{1764}

… Tyrone in the end consented to give the powerful support
of his name and his arms to a skilfully planned confederation
of the tribes. On all sides the Irish chiefs entered into the
insurrection. O'Neil was certainly the most formidable Irish
leader the English had yet encountered. … Victory followed
victory [that of the Yellow Ford, 1598, being the most
important]. In a little while all Ireland, with the exception
of Dublin and a few garrison towns, was in the hands of the
rebels. Essex, and the largest army ever sent to Ireland,
crossed the Channel to cope with him; but Essex made no
serious move, and after an interview with Tyrone, in which he
promised more than he could perform, he returned to England to
his death. His place was taken by Lord Mountjoy, who, for all
his love of angling and of Elizabethan 'play-books,' was a
stronger man. Tyrone met him, was defeated [at Kinsale, 1601].
From that hour the rebellion was over. … At last Tyrone was
compelled to come to terms. He surrendered his estates,
renounced all claim to the title of The O'Neil, abjured
alliance with all foreign powers, and promised to introduce
English laws and customs into Tyrone. In return he received a
free pardon and a re-grant of his title and lands by letters
patent. Rory O'Donnell, Red Hugh's brother, also submitted,
and was allowed to retain the title of Earl of Tyrconnel.
Elizabeth was already dead, and the son of Mary Stuart [James
I.] was King of England when these terms were made; but they
were not destined to do much good."

_J. H. McCarthy,
Outline of Irish History,
chapter 4._

ALSO IN:
_T. D. McGee,
Popular History of Ireland,
book 8, chapters 3-11 (volumes 1-2)._

_M. Haverty,
History of Ireland,
chapters 32-35._

_R. Bagwell,
Ireland under the Tudors,
volume 2._

_T. Leland,
History of Ireland,
book 4, chapters 1-5 (volume 2)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1607-1611.
The flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster.

"With the submission of the Earl of Tyrone terminated the
struggle between the Tudor princes and the native Celtic
tribes. No chieftain henceforward claimed to rule his district
in independence of the Crown of England. The Celtic land
tenure, the Brehon laws, the language, customs, and traditions
of the defeated race were doomed to gradual yet certain
extinction. … Before Elizabeth was laid in the grave, the
object for which during so many years she had striven was thus
at length accomplished; … but between the wars of the Tudors
and the civil government of the Stuarts, still remain (the
intermediate link, as it were, between the two) the fall of
the able man who had created and so long conducted an almost
national resistance, and the colonisation by English settlers
of his demesnes and the adjoining parts of Ulster."

_A. G. Richey,
Short History of the Irish People,
chapter 20._

"Lord Bacon, with whom ideas grew plentifully, had a
suggestion at the service of the new king as profitable as the
'princelie policie' which he taught his predecessor. He was of
opinion that a great settlement of English husbandmen in
Ireland, able to guard as well as to till the land, would help
to secure the interest of the Crown. Till this was done
Ireland was not effectually reduced, as Sir Edward Coke
afterwards declared, 'for there was ever a back-door in the
north.' The only question was where to plant them. O'Neill and
Tyrconnell had proved dangerous adversaries; they possessed a
fertile territory, and as their 'loose order of inheritance'
had been duly changed into 'an orderly succession,' they were
quite ripe for confiscation. But they had been ostentatiously
received into favour at the close of the late war, and some
decent pretence for destroying them so soon was indispensable.
It was found in a letter conveniently dropped in the precincts
of Dublin Castle, disclosing a new conspiracy. Of a conspiracy
there was not then, and has not been since discovered, any
evidence worth recording. The letter was probably forged,
according to the practise of the times; but where so noble a
booty was to be distributed by the Crown, one can conceive how
ill-timed and disloyal any doubt of their treason would have
appeared at the Court of James, or of the Lord Deputy. They
were proclaimed traitors, and fled to the Continent to solicit
aid from the Catholic Powers. Without delay James and his
counsellors set to work. The King applied to the City of
London to take up the lands of the wild Irish. They were well
watered, he assured them, plentifully supplied with fuel, with
good store of all the necessaries for man's sustenance; and
moreover yielded timber, hides, tallow, canvas, and cordage
for the purposes of commerce. The Companies of Skinners,
Fishmongers, Haberdashers, Vintners and the like thereupon
became Absentee Proprietors, and have guzzled Irish rents in
city feasts and holiday excursions to Ireland from that day to
this. Six counties in Ulster were confiscated, and not merely
the chiefs, but the entire population dispossessed. The
fruitful plains of Armagh, the deep pastoral glens that lie
between the sheltering hills of Donegal, the undulating meadow
lands stretching by the noble lakes and rivers of Fermanagh,
passed from the race which had possessed them since before the
redemption of mankind. … The alluvial lands were given to
English courtiers whom the Scotch king found it necessary to
placate, and to Scotch partisans whom he dared not reward in
England. The peasants driven out of the tribal lands to burrow
in the hills or bogs were not treated according to any law
known among civilised men. Under Celtic tenure the treason of
the chief, if he committed treason, affected them no more than
the offences of a tenant for life affect a remainder man in
our modern practice. Under the feudal system they were
innocent feudatories who would pass with the forfeited land to
the Crown, with all their personal rights undisturbed. The
method of settlement is stated with commendable simplicity by
the latest historian. The 'plantators' got all the land worth
their having; what was not worth their having—the barren
mountains and trackless morass, which after two centuries
still in many cases yield no human food—were left to those
who in the language of an Act of Parliament of the period were
'natives of the realm of Irish blood, being descended from
those who did inherit and possess the land.' Lest the
frugality of the Celts should enable them to peacefully regain
some of their possessions, it was strictly conditioned that no
plantator or servitor should alienate his portion, or any part
thereof, to the mere Irish. The confiscated territory amounted
to two millions of acres. 'Of these a million and a half' says
Mr. Froude, 'bog, forest, and mountain were restored to the
Irish. The half million acres of fertile land were settled
with families of Scottish and English Protestants.' It was in
this manner that the famous Plantation of Ulster was founded."

_Sir C. G. Duffy,
Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition,
pages 74-78
(or book 1, chapter 4, of "Young Ireland")._

{1765}

"The City of London had taken in hand the settlement of Derry,
which was now to be rebuilt under the name of Londonderry, and
to give its name to the county in which it stood, and which
had hitherto been known as the county of Coleraine."

_S. R. Gardiner,
History of England, 1603-1642,
chapter 10 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN:
_T. D'Arcy McGee,
Popular History of Ireland,
book 9, chapter 1 (volume 2)._

_J. Harrison,
The Scot in Ulster,
chapter 3._

_C. P. Meehan,
Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone,
and Rory O'Donel, Earl of Tyrconnel._

IRELAND: A. D. 1625.
The Graces of Charles I.

On the accession of Charles I., "one more effort was made by
the Irish gentry to persuade, or rather to bribe, the
Government to allow them to remain undisturbed in the
possession of their property. They offered to raise by
voluntary assessment the large sum of £120,000 in three annual
instalments of £40,000, on condition of obtaining certain
Graces from the King. These Graces, the Irish analogue of the
Petition of Rights, were of the most moderate and equitable
description. The most important were that undisturbed
possession of sixty years should secure a landed proprietor
from all older claims on the part of the Crown, that the
inhabitants of Connaught should be secured from litigation by
the enrolment of their patents, and that Popish recusants
should be permitted, without taking the Oath of Supremacy, to
sue for livery of their estates in the Court of Arches, and to
practise in the courts of law. The terms were accepted. The
promise of the King was given. The Graces were transmitted by
way of instruction to the Lord Deputy and Council, and the
Government also engaged, as a further security to all
proprietors, that their estates should be formally confirmed
to them and to their heirs by the next Parliament which should
be held in Ireland. The sequel forms one of the most shameful
passages in the history of English government of Ireland. In
distinct violation of the King's solemn promise, after the
subsidies that were made on the faith of that promise had been
duly obtained, without provocation or pretext or excuse,
Wentworth, who now presided with stern despotism over the
government of Ireland, announced the withdrawal of the two
principal articles of the Graces, the limitation of Crown
claims by a possession of sixty years and the legalisation of
the Connaught titles."

_W. E. H. Lecky,
History of England, 18th Century,
chapter 6 (volume 2)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1633-1639.
Wentworth's system of "Thorough."