JINIVERSITY OF ‘LLINOIS LIBRARY Al WROANA-CHAMPAIGN STACKS NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for each Lost Book is $50.00. The person charging this material is responsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN MAR 09 Aug 03 1] 35 tb L161—O-1096 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign https://archive.org/details/studentshistoryoOOgwyn THE STUDENT'S HISTORY OF IRELAND By STEPHEN GWYNN Mew Pork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1925 ay Z wi Y Cf }, x * / { f ae ~ i BP» a ee f ti *,.* "CHD tte & A ie’ Ai ‘4 PREFACE. THIS book is naturally based on the ‘‘ History of Ireland’’ which I published in 1923. But the necessity of telling the same story in less than one- half of the space made a complete re-writing in- dispensable—except at a few points where whole pages are embodied, as, for example, in the account of the battle of Clontarf. Writing definitely with a student public in view, I wished to give full detail to such passages in a complicated and, on the whole, depressing story as could be followed with exhilara- tion, even though this involved departing from the strict logic of proportion. But, apart from these considerations, re-writing in some measure was rendered essential by the appear- ‘ance of several works which I had not the opportunity of consulting before 1923. The ‘‘ Short History of The Irish People,’’ by Professor Hayden and Mr. - Moonan is one of them—like my own book, an attempt _ to summarise and popularise. I have profited in some -measure by this, but was held back by a reluctance -. to use work so exactly in competition with my own. If, however, any teacher uses this book for instruction, I may be permitted to hope that his own reading will be guided and enlightened by their volume. Professor Curtis’s ‘‘ History of Medizval Ireland ’’ - and Mrs. J. R. Green’s ‘‘ History of the Irish State to 5 6 PREFACE 1014’ are in a different category—works of research, which I have used to the utmost of my ability, wishing very heartily that they had been available when I first attempted the task of setting out in popular form a coherent view of Irish history as a whole. Very pro- bably both their authors will consider that my mind, working without their help, formed certain wrong judgments of which they have not been able to rid it. But I make them acknowledgments due from a learner to his teachers—and through them to the teacher of us all, Professor Eoin MacNeill. I add a note of gratitude to my friend Mr. G. V. Martyn for help derived from his studies in Connacht history which the ‘‘ Galway Journal of Archeology ”’ has published. Other acknowledgments are not so easily made. Persons engaged in teaching have read this book in proof, and, apart from other criticism, have assured me, from their varying standpoints, Catholic and Protestant, that it has achieved its purpose of re- counting the history without just offence to the susceptibilities of either side. I cannot make them publicly responsible for an opinion so likely to be challenged. But this I may say: they have probably realised that I deliberately tried to see the best in all parties to the long collision of forces which have made our history: condemning only what seemed inexcus- able even with full allowance for standards of the place and time. I am at least permitted to offer my thanks here to Mr. W. F. Butler, who read the book in proof, and helped me with much detailed correction and sugges- tion. My debt to his own published work (‘‘Confisca- PREFACE 7 tion in Irish History ’’) is one which every writer on Irish history during the long period of confiscations must have incurred. Miss Constantia Maxwell‘has most kindly consented to my using the maps made for her ‘‘ Short History of Ireland.”’ I have only one more thing to say. Whether this book finds readers in Ireland or no, it puts cheaply at the disposal of every one in the country an account of Irish history from the earliest times to the present day, written by one who loves Ireland as a whole. And I am convinced that most of the dissensions which divide us uncharitably and weaken us as a people would diminish to vanishing point if Irish people, North and South, knew even so much of their country’s history as is contained in this little volume. Whatever text-book be used, North or South, nothing is more important than to teach Irish history, and to teach it courteously and charitably. yn July, 1925. CONTENTS CHAP, I.—Pre-Christian Ireland II.—The Conversion of Ireland 4 a III.—Ireland After St. Patrick—Aa.D. 460—8oo .. IV.—The Island of Saints and Scholars V.—The Danes % VI.—The Battle of Clontarf VII.—The Reign of Malachy VIII.—The Norman Conquest Wh IX.—The Introduction of Norman Law X.—The Conquest of Connect and Rise of we de Burgos XI.—The Decay of the King’s: Cenc XII.—The Growth of the Middle Nation XIlI—The Rise of the Earls of Kildare XIV.—The End of Feudalism XV.—The Reformation and the Begins of Confiscation XVI.—Hugh O’Neill and Red Tato O'Donnell XVII.—The Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster hes XVIII.—The Great Rebellion XIX.—The Cromwellian Confiscations es XX.—The Wars under James II and William ... XXI.—The Period of the Penal Laws XXII. Dien Parliament and as Rete of 179 i XXIII.—The Union XXIV.—After the Union XXV.—Young Ireland and the Giant Famine XXVI.—From the Famine to Parnell XXVII.—The Land War XXVIII.—The Struggle for Home Rule XXIX.—The End of the Union Index). PAGE 18 25 43 AI 50 58 67 80 90 99 113 123 135 146 156 166 177 187 104 203 220 234 244 255 265 276 288 301 31r THE STUDENT'S HISTORY OF IRELAND CHAPTER I. Pre-Christian Ireland. Our distinct knowledge of Irish history begins about A.D. 400, because we have the written accounts of St. Patrick, a Roman citizen, born about A.D. 390, who converted Ireland to Christianity, and diffused the art of writing. Ireland was then in possession of the Gaels, and no language but Gaelic seems to have been spoken in it. But it was a country of mixed races. The Gaels had conquered it, probably about the time of Alexander of Macedon, and had reduced the older inhabitants to a state of subjection. Some of these earlier peoples were the Cruithni, or Picts, who, in St. Patrick’s day, still peopled and possessed most of what we call Scotland. But in the time of St. Patrick ‘‘Scotus ’”’ meant an Irishman, and Scotland was so called later because the Irish Gaels colonised it and finally con- quered the Picts. The Picts in Ireland were specially centred in North East Ulster. Another of the subject races was that of the Firbolgs, widely spread in the West. Their name, meaning ‘‘men of the leather bag,’’ may have been given to one class or group of the Picts. All that is certain is that the Gaels lived as a ruling 3 10 HISTORY OF IRELAND race among earlier peoples. Probably the earlier peoples were ‘‘ dark-whites,’’ smaller, black-haired, and sallow—like the Mediterranean peoples of to-day. The Gaels were tall, and generally fair-haired and blue-eyed. But the subject races were also great fighting men. The reason why the Gaels were able to conquer them was superior armament and equipment. As early as 700 B.C. the Celtic peoples, from whom the Gaels came, had learnt to work iron, in Upper Austria. | We know that the people who inhabited Ireland before the Gaels had advanced considerably in civilisation. They were able to construct the monu- ments of huge stone slabs, set upright in the ground, with others placed on them so as to make a roof: and we cannot tell how this was done without modern machinery. They had learnt to mine the copper which is found in Waterford and Cork, and later to mix it with tin, so as to get bronze: they wrought finely in bronze. But iron, when the secret of it is discovered, is far more plentiful than bronze, and makes stronger tools and weapons. The Gaels, having iron, could equip every man instead of only a few, and could equip them better. For war, they had as great advantage over users of bronze as gunmen over bowmen. And for working the land they had immense advantage. Ireland was, in its early state, covered with forest, and the axe cleared the way for tillage: and the iron plough replaced ploughs of wood. According to men of science, there is no trace of wrought iron in Ireland before about 350 B.C. Probably the Gaels had begun the conquest of Ireland seven or eight centuries before St. Patrick’s day— PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND II about as long as from the Norman invasion to our own time. In that time, Greek civilisation was at its height: the Roman state, which conquered and annexed Greek civilisation, was still fighting for its life against the Gauls, a Celtic people like the Gael. Rome drove the Gauls back, and civilisation spread from Greece along the shores of the Mediterranean until towns and houses in southern France were in many ways as well furnished as they are now. In Cesar’s day, before the birth of Christ, Rome had conquered Gaul—that is, France—and begun the conquest of Britain. Roman civilisation was established among the Celtic peoples of these countries: and when the Roman Empire became Christian, Christianity became also the Roman state religion. But the conquest did not reach Ireland. Ireland still adhered to the Druidic religion and to the institutions connected with it, which Czsar saw and described in Gaul. One of these was the maintaining of a class of learned men, specially trained in memory. It was their duty to compose songs commemorating events, and also to recite the songs composed by their forerunners. Czsar was amazed by the extent and accuracy of their memories. Through these men, history was preserved, genealogies were kept—a very important matter since the ruler had to be selected from a certain kindred: also laws were recorded, and, to make memory easier, laws were often put into verse. Great privileges were given to this order of learned men, who ranked with the nobles; and every chief poet was the head of a school of pupils to whom he 12 HISTORY OF IRELAND taught the same poems and records, so that each pupil’s memory was a check on the others. Through the tradition thus handed down by word of mouth—as in early Greece the epic poems were transmitted—we have knowledge of pre-Christian Ireland. Unfortunately, in later ages when those records were written down by men who had learnt the history of Europe from Latin literature and from the Bible, they were altered and added to. Our best knowledge comes from the epic stories, which are, like those of Homer, partly invention; but they describe to us the manner of life in ancient Ireland, as Homer describes the manner of life in ancient Greece. There are two main groups of these stories, and the first of them centres about Emain Macha, which was the royal fortress of Ulster. The great earthworks enclosing it can be seen near Armagh: they are now called Navan Fort. The main story in them tells of an attack upon Ulster from the rest of Ireland, led by Connacht. It is called the ‘‘ Tain Bd Cuailgne’’ or Raid for the Bull of Cooley. Cooley, the Omeath peninsula, south of Carlingford Lough, is now outside of Ulster; but Ulster then stretched from the Erne to the Boyne. Cuchulain, the great hero of Ulster, had his dun at Dundalk. Three things mark off this group of stories as being of an earlier period. The armies of Ireland are really led by a warrior queen, Maeve of Connacht. It is probable that the earlier peoples, of whom many survived in Connacht, were matriarchal, that is to say, women, not men, were the heads of families, and could be rulers of kingdoms. Secondly, the battles described are of chariot fighters, like those in Homer. PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND 13 When Cesar reached Britain he was met by chariot- fighting Celts; but the Gauls of the continent, who had long been in contact with Roman discipline, had given up this primitive way of war. Probably Ireland was in the same stage as Britain, and this is one of the reasons for believing that Conchobar MacNessa, the famous king of Ulster in whose reign Emain Macha flourished most, lived about the beginning of the Christian era—some fifty years after Cesar’s time. The third reason for dating this cycle earlier is that in these stories there is no trace of the High- Kingship or of Tara’s special importance. Ireland, in these early times, had five main kingdoms: Ulster, Connacht, Munster, North and South Leinster. ‘*Cuig ctigidhe na hEireann’’—the Five Fifths of Ireland—has always remained a traditional expression for the whole country: though even in the historic Ireland of St. Patrick’s day this division had been altered. The second group of historic stories is that which centres about Tara, in the reign of Cormac Mac Art, and is concerned with the deeds of Finn Mac Cool and the Fianna, a body of professional soldiers of whom Finn was chief. These soldiers were highly trained footmen, using spear, shield, and sword: chariots had disappeared. And Cormac Mac Art, king at Tara, is represented as King of all Ireland. According to modern historians, the kings of Connacht crossed their natural boundary, the Shannon, entered the central plain, and wrested part of it from the kings of North Leinster. The glory of establishing himself as king in Tara was traditionally 14 HISTORY OF IRELAND given to Cormac, whose date is placed about A.D. 275. In his reign was also won from Ulster the level country between the Boyne and the mountains about Dundalk. North Leinster ceased to exist as an independent kingdom, and a heavy tribute was imposed upon all Leinstermen, which they must pay to the King who bore rule at Tara and claimed the title of High King. It is probable that the stories of the Fianna are inventions based on the achievements of a standing army. In primitive societies every man must fight when he is called on, but he goes back then to his work. Regular soldiers constantly under arms have a tremendous advantage, and Cormac may well have spread his power by maintaining a regular force. He was, undoubtedly, a king who left his mark deep on Irish history, and he is said to have caused a code of laws to be drawn up by the learned men and the nobles; so that the laws of Ireland came to be spoken of as the Laws of Cormac Mac Art. The king at Tara ruled directly over his new kingdom, now called Meath; but he was superior to the king of Connacht, who succeeded, at first, to the throne of Tara when it fell vacant. Fifty years after Cormac’s time, about 330, the royal kindred of Tara pushed their conquests further into Ulster, when they destroyed the fortress of Emain Macha. The territory which is now Cavan, Monaghan, and Armagh was made into the kingdom of Oriel, and was ruled, like Connacht, as a separate kingdom, but by men of the ruling race who did not pay tribute to Tara. What remained of Ulster was still unsubdued: Leinster was tributary, though it always resisted payment. In the PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND 15 South of Ireland, the King of Tara never exercised real power. In Munster there were also several kingdoms. One of these received the name of Thomond—Tuadh Mumhan, North Munster. It comprised parts of Limerick and Tipperary which border on the Shannon and Lough Derg, and also Clare, which was won from Connacht. But the chief king of Munster ruled always from Cashel. The family which ruled here from before historic times to the age of Brian Boru were called the Eoghanacht, or descendants of Owen. By a very old tradition Ireland was regarded as divided into halves, along the line of eskers or sandy hillocks which runs from near Dublin to Galway Bay. Conn the Hundred Fighter was said to have arranged the division with Mogh Nuad. The northern half was always called Leth Cuinn, the southern Leth Mogha. In the time when Cormac Mac Art ruled, and from that onward, the Roman Empire was fast losing its power, and was hard set to fight the barbarians who raided its settled territories. Many Irishmen were enlisted among the Roman legions. Inscriptions have been found naming the ‘‘ Primi-Scotti,’’ that is, First Irish Regiment. But the Irish were more busy in attack. The four kings who ruled at Tara before the time of St. Patrick’s mission made expeditions by sea to fight and plunder. Most famous of them was Niall, called Nine Hostages, 379—405. He was killed during a fight in the English Channel. His successor, Nathi (405—-428), died somewhere in Gaul, from lightning stroke. One of the raids, at the end of Niall’s reign or the beginning of Nathi’s, swept off thousands of Roman 16 HISTORY OF IRELAND citizens into slavery. Among the captives was a boy in his sixteenth year, son of a Roman official; and he was sold as a slave to Milchu, lord of Dal Aradia, a petty kingdom lying west of the Antrim Glens. The boy was put to herd swine on the slopes of Slemish mountain, from which the Braid river runs into Lough Neagh. Miulchu’s house and dun were in the valley of the Braid. This boy was Patrick. He came from a civilised Christian society: he was a Roman, just as St. Paul was a Roman: he was a citizen of a great world State. “‘ Roman’’ meant then nearly the same as ‘‘ European ’’ does now. He was like a modern, European boy captured by people who, according to his idea, were barbarous. But the State from which he had been torn could do nothing to protect him. Rome’s armies were completely withdrawn from Britain before 411. Roman civilisation had broken down before Christianity reached Ireland. Christianity came first to Britain as the religion of the masters of the civilised world, who were then also masters of Britain. Rome had taught to Gaul, and less completely to Britain, all the lessons of material comfort and con- venience that go with civilisation. But Ireland had never been reached by Rome’s teaching, except perhaps, by the example of her military forces. Pre-Christian Ireland was only brought under the influence of the Roman world when Rome’s power was completely broken; and Roman civilisation, bring- ing with it rich stores of knowledge, came to Ireland through a captured slave. When we think of the pre-Christian Irish, it must always be remembered that they chose Christianity PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND 17 for itself. It came to them known as the religion of a beaten power whom they and their fathers had helped to overthrow. It did not offend their pride, but it did not enlist pride for it. They chose it, no doubt, partly because they knew it to have been the religion of those who were the most civilised people, partly because they loved learning, as they showed by the honour paid to learned men, and they probably associated Christianity with the possession of learn- ing. But chiefly they must have adopted Christianity because something in their own natures, and even in the pagan training that they had received, made them naturally inclined to be Christian. (D 574) B CHAPTER II. The Conversion of Ireland. THERE is no one in the early history of Ireland about whom we know so much as we know about St. Patrick, except, possibly, St. Columba and Brian Boru. And, in a sense, we know St. Patrick better, for we have his own written account of himself in the ‘* Confession,’’ which is the story of his spiritual life. There are also lives of him written down from tradition, two or three hundred years after his death. When captured he was barely sixteen, the son of well-to-do people. After six years’ captivity, prompted by his ‘‘ voices,’’ he fled, and went to where they told him he would find a ship. It was sailing with a cargo, and after three,or four days’ voyage they landed on the continent—somewhere im France or Belgium. All this country had been thoroughly settled by Rome, but now Patrick journeyed twenty-eight days through a desert which the barbarians had made; so complete was the ruin of Rome’s power. After a time he made his way back to his family in Britain, who pressed him to stay with them. But the visions haunted him, and he tells us that he heard the voices of the Irish calling him. He was now a young man of twenty-two or three, and he set to work to train for missionary work. Fourteen years he spent in study at Auxerre—an old Roman town—and he was no gifted student. Latin 18 THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND 19 was difficult for him; he never learnt to write it well or even grammatically. But his purpose was fixed. There were already some Christians in Ireland, and one of them, named in Latin Iserninus, from Leinster, was a fellow-student at Auxerre in Gaul. The Pope decided to send a Bishop to take charge of these scattered Christians, and one Palladius was conse- crated for the task. Patrick was preparing to join him when news came that Palladius was dead. Then Patrick was appointed bishop, and put in charge of the mission. He sailed for Ireland in 432, and is said to have landed, as Palladius had done, in the Wicklow estuary, much used as a haven. But he moved northwards, for his desire had been always to return to where he was a slave, and visions prompted him. JLanding in Strangford Lough, he made his first convert, Dicuil, who granted him as a place for worship a wooden barn at Sabhall or Saul. He is said to have founded other churches here in what is now County Down, and to have gone on a visit to his old master in the valley of the Braid, where miraculous ruin destroyed Milchu. But the clear thing in the story is that very soon he pushed straight for Tara, the centre of power, and arrived there at Easter time, in 433. Having lived in Ireland, he knew that since all authority was in the hands of the kings and their kinsmen, he must convert the rulers: and Tara was the centre of rule. But he knew also the great influence exercised by the druids, whom he must defeat, and also by the learned men associated with the druids. He probably determined to get the learned men on his side. 20 HISTORY OF IRELAND The High King at Tara was Laoghaire, or Leary, successor to Nathi. There are many legends of Patrick’s coming to Tara and of the means by which he triumphed over the druids. What we know is that he failed to convert the High King, but converted his brother, Conall, who gave a site on the Blackwater just above its junction with the Boyne: and here Patrick built his Domnach Mor, or Great Church. It was only sixty feet long. But the place is still called Donaghpatrick. Also, even more important, he con- verted Dubhthach, or Duffy, the king’s chief ‘“‘ file ’’ or poet. It was the beginning of Patrick’s alliance with the learned. The Irish had already their own literature of the pagan times: the stories of Emain Macha, and Conchobar Mac Nessa’s house there, and of the heroes Fergus Mac Roy, Cuchulain, and the rest: the stories of Tara, of Cormac Mac Art, and of Finn Mac Cool. Patrick did not ask his converts to give these up, although they were in praise of heathens. He was wise enough to understand that these works of art were wholesome, not harmful, like the ornaments handed down from old craftsmen. Neither did he ask them to give up the laws of which the learned were the keepers and interpreters. According to tradition, he helped to draw up a new code of laws, striking out only those which could not be reconciled with Christianity, but keeping all that could be considered ‘* Judgments of just nature.’’ Whether this tradition be true or no, Patrick did not try to Romanise Irish law or morals. For instance, Irish Christianity accepted the Irish custom that the slaying of a man should be punished by a fine proportioned to the worth THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND 21 of the man. He gave no offence to the pride of the people in their own institutions. On the other hand, he brought to the learned the knowledge of Latin, which was then the universal language of European science: and wherever he went he taught people to read and write so that they could read the prayers and the gospels. Also, he suited the organisation of the Church to the nature of the country. In the Roman world which centred about towns, every bishop had his seat in a city with control of a district about it. But the Irish were not town builders: they lived in scattered houses or groups of houses; and there were not clearly marked boundaries for each of the little kingdoms into which each of the greater kingdoms were divided. Patrick settled that wherever there was a ruler there should be a bishop: he is said to have created 350 of them. But there had to be a chief bishop, and Patrick fixed the Primate’s seat at Armagh. He ordained as its first bishop Benignus, or Benen, the young Irishman who was his first convert. This choice of Armagh was very singular. Perhaps if Leary had not remained pagan, Patrick would have fixed the primacy at Tara. Even as it was, Daire, king of Oriel, who offered him the site, was a member of the House of Tara. But Patrick must have known that the old legends made Emain Macha famous through all the land. No choice, at all events, could have better pleased the poets. During the thirty years of his work, Patrick moved about Ireland with a staff of helpers. Some were craftsmen, makers of bells; some, clerks, to write out copies of the catechism and other books; but some 22 HISTORY OF IRELAND were bishops, most of them Gauls or Britons. Patrick was training Irishmen to take the place of these; and he needed to, for both Britain and Gaul were overrun by the heathen, even while he was at work. There are traditions of his coming and going all through Ireland during the twenty-nine years of his mission, before he died in 461—at Saul, in County Down, where he made his first convert. He was buried close by at Downpatrick. All the special and most intimate associations of his life are with North East Ulster. We have two pieces of his writing: one, called his ‘“ Confession,’’ the account of his spiritual life; the other the ‘‘Epistle to Coroticus ’’—a British chieftain, and therefore, like Patrick, part of the Christian Roman world—who in a piratical raid on Ireland had carried off a number of Patrick’s converts the day after their baptism. In both of them he lays much stress on his own lack of learning, for which it seems he was much derided by educated Romans. This is the opening of his ‘‘ Confession,’ lated by Professor Lawlor: ‘*]T, Patrick the sinner, unlearned as everybody knows: I confess that I am a bishop, appointed by God, in Ireland. Most assuredly I deem that from God I have received what I am. And so I dwell in the midst of barbarians a stranger and an exile for the love of God.”’ And again:— ‘* Was it without God, or according to the flesh that I came to Ireland? Whocompelled me? I am bound in the spirit not to see any one of my kinsfolk. Is it from me that springs that godly compassion which I > as trans- THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND 23 exercise towards that nation who once took me captive and made havock of the manservants and maidservants of my father’s house? I was freeborn according to the flesh; I am born of a father who was a decurion; but I sold my noble rank—I blush not to state it, nor am I sorry—for the profit of others; in short, I am a slave in Christ to a foreign nation on account of the unspeakable glory of the eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”’ And again:— ‘16. Therefore in sadness and grief shall I cry aloud: O most lovely and beloved brethren, and sons whom I begot in Christ—I cannot reckon them—what shall I do for you? I am not worthy to come to the aid of either God or men. The wickedness of the wicked hath prevailed against us. We are become, as it were, strangers. Perchance they do not believe that we receive one baptism, or that we have one God and Father. It is in their eyes a disgraceful thing that we were born in Ireland. As He saith, Have ye not One God? Why do ye, each one, forsake his neighbour ? ““17. Therefore I grieve for you, I grieve, O ye most dear to me. But again, I rejoice, within myself. I have not laboured for nought, and my journey to a strange land was not in vain. And yet there happened a crime so horrid and unspeakable! Thank God, it was as baptized believers that ye departed from the world to Paradise. I can see you. Ye have begun to remove to where there shall be no night nor sorrow nor death any more; but ye shall leap like calves loosened from their bands, and ye shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under your feet.’’ 24 HISTORY OF IRELAND These are some of the actual words of the man who, fifteen hundred years ago, converted Ireland: the Gospel Christian who knew very little book knowledge except the Bible, but knew that by heart: his writings are full of phrases from it. But in the history of religion there have been few more successful apostles and none more lovable. The Irish poets loved him so well that, in after centuries, they linked him with the old pagan legends by inventing a story how Ossian, son of Finn Mac Cool, went away with a fairy woman, and when he came back found all his comrades dead and Ireland changed to Christianity, and himself an old worn-out giant. So they brought him to St. Patrick that he might be converted: but in the conver- sations between them, Ossian was made to tell all the old tales of love and war and adventure, which the saint did not always approve. But in the end St. Patrick converted Ossian: it was believed that he could convert anybody. CHAPTER III. Ireland After St. Patrick—A.D. 460—800. THE spread of Christianity altered the character of Ireland. Before it the main concern of all rulers was war and conquest, and the literature was entirely a glorification of battle. From Patrick’s day onward, for a period as long as from us to Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the ablest men were devoted to religion and learning. Except what has to do with them, very little needs to be learnt about Ireland between A.D. 450 and 800. We hear no more of great raids across the sea for plunder such as that in which Patrick was captured. There is very little mention at all of Munster, which was probably the most peaceable part of all Europe. In the Northern half, the dynasty ruling at Tara had to fight battles again and again for the oppressive tribute which they claimed from Leinster, and finally, in the seventh century, this claim was given up. But the rulers of Tara before St. Patrick’s death had spread their sway very wide. Their kindred were kings of Connacht: and before St. Patrick’s time they had bitten away a good half of the old Ulster Fifth. In his lifetime, descendants of Niall Nine Hostages conquered still more in the North. Briun annexed what is now Cavan and Leitrim: it was made into a lesser kingdom and called Tir Briuin. Later it was known as Breffny. After this a group of young princes, whose chief men were Eoghan and Conall Gulban, pushed right up to 25 26 * HISTORY OF IRELAND the north. The land between Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly became Inis-Eoghain (Owen’s Island); and all west of the Swilly, Tir Conaill (Conall’s Land). From Inishowen, they conquered east of the Foyle what is now Tyrone and County Derry—all this became part of Tir Eoghain. Later still, an adventurer of the famrly crossed the Bann, and made himself lord of the Glens of Antrim, the old sub-kingdom of Dal Riada. All descendants of Niall Nine Hostages were known as the Hy Neill. Nothing was left now of the original Ulidia to its hereditary rulers except part of Antrim between the Glens and Lough Neagh, and the modern county Down. But, until the Norman conquest, this lasted as a separate kingdom of Ulaidh. The names Ulster, Lemster, and Munster came from the Danes who put their word ‘‘ stadr,’’ or district, to the Gaelic Ulaidh, Laighean, and Mumhan. There were then many kingdoms, but of differing importance. Meath, with its centre at Tara; Connacht, with its centre at Cruachan in Roscommon; Munster, with its centre at Cashel, were the leading States. Lemster, whose capital came to be at Ferns, was tributary to the High King at Tara; so also was Ulster, whose centre came to be at Downpatrick. In Munster there were several sub-kingdoms, but the one most distinct was Thomond, with a hardy race of men, who needed to be hardy because Connacht always threatened their northern border. In the north, Oriel was a sub-kingdom, governed by a branch of the Hy Neill, and therefore paying no tribute. Tir Briuin, or Breffny, was in the same position. So were Tir Conaill and Tir Eoghain. But IRELAND AFTER ST. PATRICK 27 these latest of the conquests soon acquired a special rank for themselves. They had conquered, on the neck of Inishowen, the great fort of Aileach, built of unmortared stone, probably by pre-Gaelic peoples, which, after the destruction of Emain Macha was Ulster’s capital—and they were ambitious. | When King Leary died in 463, his brother, Ailill Molt, king of Connacht, succeeded him as High King. Twenty years later, Leary’s son, Lugaidh, allied himself with Murtough Mac Erc, ruler of Aileach, against the High King. Near Tara, at the battle of Ocha in 483, they defeated and slew Ailill, and Lugaidh became High King with the bargain that Murtough should succeed him, and that the High Kingship should remain in these two branches of the family. Henceforward, no ruler of Connacht became High King for six hundred years; but sometimes the ruler of Tara, sometimes the ruler of Aileach, had this chief office. For two centuries it simply went to the stronger king, but from 700 onwards to the time of Brian Boru, a bargain was in force by which the northern and the southern branch of the Hy Neill, or Niall’s descendants, held it alternately. This arrangement prevented the growth of a strong central monarchy even in the northern half of Ireland. That branch of this great family which held the Antrim Glens as a separate kingdom did not remain content with its narrow limits. Gaels had settled themselves in the Isle of Man, where their speech still remains. They were also scattered in settlements along the coast of Argyll, opposite to the Antrim Glens. In 470, Fergus Mac Erc led an expedition across to take command of these settlers, and to 28 HISTORY OF IRELAND establish his kingdom on both shores of the narrow sea. This was the beginning of Ireland’s great colony; within four hundred years the descendants of Fergus had conquered all the Pictish peoples of Alba; and the Scandinavian peoples who came in disputing possession with them gave the country the name of Scotland, since their chief opponents were the Scoti, or Irish. This colony had great importance in the spread of Christianity, for, after Patrick’s day, the Irish had to carry Christianity back to the lands from which it was brought to them. And this was done with the help of the Hy Neill. Those of the Irish who, after St. Patrick’s day, led their people in religion, were by birth hereditary rulers who in heathen times would have been battle chiefs and law-givers, or daughters and wives of kings—for women were foremost in this work from the first. St. Brigid, “ the Mary of the Gael,’’ was a princess. Born in St. Patrick’s day, she founded a convent in Kildare, beside which grew up a great monastery. But even more important was Enda, son of Daire, king of Oriel, who gave to St. Patrick the site near Emain Macha where, at Ardmacha, the primacy was fixed, and where eventually the greatest seat of learning grew up. Enda’s elder sister had been con- verted by Patrick, and had become a nun. By her advice Enda went for training to a British monastery. The heathen Angles and Saxons who had swept over and destroyed Roman civilisation in what we call England, did not penetrate into the mountains of Wales, and here British Christianity survived and remained in close intercourse with Irish Christianity. TRELAND AFTER ST. PATRICK 29 But Christianity in Ireland took on a special character. Perhaps because its leaders were nobles, they sought to set examples of humility. There are said to be three orders of saints in the early period of Irish Christianity. First, Patrick and his companions, many of whom were Gauls or Britons: and these were mostly bishops who went about making converts and conferring ordination— establishing the framework of a Church. The second order was of native Irishmen, and for the most part these were priests only, who lived as monks in communities which became the great centres of learning. The third order consisted of hermits who lived with incredible austerity in such places as the beehive cells on the Skellig islands. It was the work of the second order, continued through generations, that earned for Ireland the name of the ‘‘ Island of Saints and Scholars.”’ Enda, returning from Wales as a priest, began the practice of pushing out into a remote and desolate place. He was given a site in Aranmore, off Galway, by the King of Munster, who was married to his sister: and a community grew up about the devout young noble, in which nearly all the saints of the second order passed part of their noviceship. Another young prince was Finnian, of the Leinster ruling house, and he was trained first by Fortchern —artist-craftsman as well as religious teacher—a grandson of the High King, Leary; and later in Wales under St. David and St. Gildas. Then, coming to Ireland, Finnian founded a community at Clonard, on the Boyne. Like all these saints, he set an example of great austerity, and disciples flocked to him, As 30 HISTORY OF IRELAND many as three thousand were together at his school, where they lived like soldiers in a camp, setting up little huts made of upright posts planted in a circle, laced together with wattled ozier or hazel rods, and then daubed with clay, while the roof was covered with thatch or sod. A wooden church completed the settlement; and here, under Finnian, learning was taught as well as piety. Communities hke this grew up all over Ireland. They were more like towns than anything which had yet been seen. Neither Tara nor Aileach could ever have been a town properly called. They had no river by them. The monasteries were permanent settle- ments in which a great body of men could live together. There was, of course, no family life, but there was far more division of labour than in a scattered people of farmers and herdsmen, in which each does all for himself. | Above all these were centres for the production of books. Without books, the spread of learning was impossible, and books could only be multiplied by hand. The Gaels were great craftsmen, as their early work in bronze and gold shows, and they now applied this skill of eye and hand to writing, in which they came to surpass all Europe, both for neatness and clearness of penman- ship, and for the beauty of illumination which they lavished on their manuscripts. The Book of Kells is the most famous of many examples. In all the monastic schools, Latin was taught; and since it was then the universal language of European learned men, there came in with it not only the Scriptures and books of devotion, but also all the learning of Europe. Geometry and astronomy were IRELAND AFTER ST. PATRICK 31 studied, and, in the eighth century, Fergail, abbot of Aghaboe, known to Europe as Virgil the Geometer, was teaching that the earth must be round—a fact of science still in dispute seven hundred years later. CHAPTER IV. The Island of Saints and Scholars. EACH of the Irish monastic communities was governed at first by its founder, and after him by his chosen successor or ‘‘*coarb.’’ — The “‘ coarb) > generany came from the same kindred as the founder. It was like the succession of kingship; the fittest man in a limited group was chosen to succeed. These abbots could not confer ordination. That was a bishop’s right, and a bishop was often attached to the estab- lishment. But the peculiarity of the Irish Church was that these heads of monasteries were far more important than the bishops. The greatest of them all was Columba, born about 530, and brought up by an old priest at Kilmacrenan, on the Lennon, in Donegal. He was of the northern Hy Neill. His father’s grandfather was Conall Gulban, who founded the kingdom of Tyrconnell; his mother’s grandfather was Fergus Mac Erc, who founded the kingdom of Dalriada. The High King of Ireland was his uncle, and he might have become High King himself. Leaving Kilmacrenan, he was trained first at a monastery at Movilla, on Strangford Lough, and then it is said he went to a bardic school in Leinster to study Irish poetry and learning. Then he went on to Clonard, perfecting himself until finally he became a founder. His first church was established at Derry, then a wooded island in the Foyle. His kinsman, the king of Aileach, gave him the site. He went afield 82 THE ISLAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 33 then, founding communities all through Leth Cuinn. Kells, near Navan, and Durrow in Offaly became most famous of them. All recognised him as their founder, and he became a great power in the State, so much so, that, when he quarrelled with the new High King, Dermod, of the southern Hy Neill, he persuaded the northern Hy Neill to make war; and the High King was defeated at Cooldreyny in Sligo, between Ben Bulben and the sea. Two reasons were given for this quarrel, both of which illustrate Irish life at that time. The first is that the High King was holding the Feast of Tara, a great ceremony which took place on special occasions —once at least in each king’s reign. It was attended in the High King’s honour by the provincial kings and the ollaves or chief men of the learned professions —history, law, poetry and medicine—and also the ollaves of the skilled crafts. There were sports of all kinds, and there were also meetings for discussion; and to preserve the peace of the Feast, violence was forbidden under pain of death. But one noble at this feast, which was the last ever held in Tara, quarrelled with another, and killed him by the blow of a hurley club. The slayer fled to Columba, who took him under his protection; but King Dermod refused to recognise the protection, and put the offender to death. That, according to one account, is why Columba called out the Hy Neill clans of the north. The other reason given is that Columba went on a visit to St. Finnian of Movilla, with whom he had first studied; and he saw in Finnian’s possession a copy of the Psalter, borrowed it, and secretly (being a zealous and skilful scribe) copied it in the night. Finnian 34 HISTORY OF IRELAND found out, and insisted that he should have the copy; Columba refused, and the matter was referred to the High King, who gave his decree: ‘‘ With every bé (cow) her bdéneen (little cow, calf), with every leabhar (book) its leabhareen.’’ Columba thought the decision unjust and made war about it. The story first of all helps us to understand how rare and coveted a book was in those days. This particular book was recovered after the battle of Cooldrevny by Columba, and became the chief relic of Columcille in the territory of Kinel Connel; it was kept in a case of silver overlaid with gold, and before the army of Kinel Connel (that is, the people of Tyrconnell) went into battle, it was carried three times round the host to bring victory; so that it came to be called the “‘Cathach ’’ or battler. The case is preserved in the National Museum of Dublin. Secondly, it shows how an Irish king, in giving his award, consulted with his brehons, who told him from their knowledge of the law what should govern his decision. It was a settled principle that a calf belonged to the owner of the cow; Dermod applied this principle in a new way—laying down a law of copyright. Thirdly and chiefly, the story illustrates the power of the great churchmen. But it has a sequel which proves that this power might easily be resented. After the battle of Cooldrevny, some say by decree of a synod, some say by another saint whom he consulted, Columba was bidden to leave Ireland, in which he had caused so much bloodshed. And so, he set out from Derry for Western Scotland, the country in which his mother’s kinsfolk ruled. The King of Dalriada THE ISLAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 35 granted to him the little island of Iona, lying off coasts which were still occupied by the heathen Picts, to whom Columcille became a missionary—the first missionary sent out from Christian Ireland. A mission to England had been sent from Rome under St. Augustine, but it made no progress beyond Kent. The Christian Britons refused to have any intercourse with the heathen, and King Oswald of Northumbria,who had himself been converted in Iona, when he took refuge there, sent to Columba’s monastery for missionaries. St. Aidan came with companions. They founded in Northumbria the monastery of Lindisfarne, and from this centre they travelled over all England preaching and converting the people and teaching them to write. By 662 all the bishops of England were of Irish training and consecration, and from England students came ‘“‘ in fleetfuls ’’ to Ireland as the great centre of Latin learning. Armagh was divided into thirds, and one was known as the Trian Sacsan, or Saxon quarter. Books and teaching (and even food) were given free to these strangers. Irish missionaries in the seventh and eighth centuries went out far beyond the British Isles. St. Columbanus, educated at Bangor on Belfast Lough, travelled through Gaul, as a scholar and preacher. In Brittany he founded many monasteries, and at Bobbio in Italy a monastery established by him still keeps many manuscripts written by Irish scribes, with Irish notes beside the Latin text. St. Gall, after whom a Swiss canton is called, left about sixty foundations in Switzerland. St. Fiacre worked chiefly 36 HISTORY OF IRELAND in Alsace, but his name survives oddly in the French name for a cab. During all this time the old native schools of Irish learning went on, but they were very conservative, and for two centuries relied still on memory. About 650, a young noble, Cenn Faeled of the Kinel Owen (people of Tyrone), studied first in a monastic school, and then, going to a bardic school, was set as his task to learn by heart long passages by hearing them repeated. But at nights he used to write down what he had learned in the day; and so began the usage of recording native Irish literature and learning in the native tongue. Elsewhere in Europe, people at this time disdained to write down what was not in Latin; and that is how we have in Ireland a literature older than any of Europe, except the Greek and the Latin. We owe this to St. Patrick’s wise policy of making friends with native learning. St. Columba maintained it. In 574, he was sent by the King of Dal Riada as an envoy to the assembly of Ireland called by the High King at Drumkett, on the Roe. At this assembly was raised the question of the poet-class, who had grown enormously numerous and were exorbitant in their demands. An ollave poet went about with a retinue of thirty, the next grade with fifteen, and so on. They enforced their demands by the threat of composing and repeating wherever they went a satire on the refuser of what they claamed. The High King pro- posed to banish the poets altogether. ‘‘ Columcille said to the king that it was right to set aside many of the poets, as they were so numerous. But he advised him to maintain a poet as his own chief ollave, after the example of the kings who went before him; THE ISLAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 37 and that each provincial king should have an ollave, and, moreover, that each lord of a tuath should have an ollave.’’ The High King agreed, ‘‘ and each of these ollaves had land from his own lord.’’ Owing to this encouragement of learning, a great deal of writing in the native tongue was going on, and Columba himself was among the Irish poets. Poems attributed to him have come down to us, but philologists consider that they are in an Irish of a later date; for the Irish language, while remaining the same, has changed, as, for instance, Greek has changed, so that the old Irish or Greek is unintelligible to a speaker of the modern tongue without special study. But both laymen and clerics were writing in Irish on such subjects as were already traditional in Irish literature, and also on new subjects. There are poems not about war or revenge, but of delight in Nature, for instance, the description of birds singing —very like what might be written to-day. Also, religious biography began. A life of St. Patrick was written in Irish in Columba’s time. We have not got this, but we have the Life of St. Columba written in Latin by a successor of his at Iona. Saint Adamnan (in modern Irish pronounced as Funan) was, like Columba, of noble northern blood, descending by both father and mother from the sons of Niall. But there existed in Ireland already the institution of ‘‘ poor scholars,’’ which lasted up to the latter part of the nineteenth century. Boys set out from their homes to some centre of instruction, and for the sake of charity were lodged and fed in some neighbouring household, rendering such service as they could in return. It seems that noble boys 38 HISTORY OF IRELAND sometimes, as a discipline of humility, adopted this usage, and the young Adamnan went to Clonard in Meath as a poor scholar. Finachta the Festive, after- wards High King, was riding towards Clonard with his retinue when a boy with a jar of milk on his back, trying to get out of their way, stumbled, broke the jar, and lamented. ‘‘ Three noble students live in one house near the college,’’ he told Finachta, ‘‘ with three of us attendants who have to collect provisions by turns for the six; and it was my turn to-day.’’ The prince was kind to the boy, and so began a friend- ship between the future High King and the future abbot of Iona. Later in life, Adamnan made friends with Aldfrid, a prince of the Northumbrian Saxons, who was a fugitive in Ireland. Ireland, in the seventh century, was still one of the least disturbed countries in Europe; but its peace began to be troubled by inroads from the new conquerors of Britain. Raiding parties from England plundered Meath, and carried off cap- tives. But when the ruling King of Northumbria was killed in battle, Aldfrid succeeded him. Adamnan, then abbot of Iona, was asked by his friend Finachta, the King of Ireland, to go on a mission to his friend the King of Northumbria. He succeeded, and brought back the captives. This illustrates the power possessed by great churchmen; and in 697 Adamnan achieved a great reform. By Adamnan’s influence, a convention was held at Tara which passed ‘‘Adam- nan’s Law,’’ exempting women from all military service, and from being slainin war. The question of the clergy was not settled for another century, and THE ISLAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS 390 we hear more than once of one monastery going out to make war upon another. Adamnan wrote his Life of Columba partly from books, partly from the talk of old monks who remem- bered the Founder. He tells us of the saint, always cheerful of countenance, never a moment idle, always discoursing, reading, or writing, as a rule, in a shed which was built for his study and made of planks, not, like the rest, of wattles and daub. There is a characteristic story of a thief who used to row across to an island frequented by seals which the monks regarded as their property and, like the poacher, used for food. ‘‘ Why do you steal?’’ asked the saint. **When you are in want, come to us.’’ And he ordered a sheep to be killed and given, that the unlucky man might not go home empty-handed. There is a story, too, of a storm at sea, when the saint set to work actively with the rest baling, but the sailors at last told him that he would be more use to them by praying; so he prayed, and the storm went down. Many of the stories tell of strangers coming from afar off, sometimes by sea, sometimes hailing the island from the shore across the narrow water. It was solitude, yet a place of much resort, in Columba’s day and after. In Iona, Adamnan took down hastily on waxed tablets, and then copied out fairly on parch- ment, the experiences of Asculf, a Gaulish bishop, who had lived for nine months in the Holy Land. So was knowledge preserved for the community, and we still have this description of Jerusalem, written in the seventh century. The general name for a poet was “‘file,’’ which means sage. It was applied also to a chronicler. 40 HISTORY OF IRELAND ‘* Ollave ’? means poet who had passed the full tests for his grade—as we should say, Doctor in Poetry. The title was given also to a brehon or lawyer, or to skilled craftsmen, who had passed the settled tests. No one can judge from reading a code of laws as to how life is really affected by them, even in the most modern community; but it is clear that Irish life was most minutely regulated by laws which were preserved in writing and regularly interpreted. The rights of property, both for man and woman, were clearly defined. We find also cases laid down when the public interest must prevail over that of the individual— for instance, when water had to be led through a man’s land to work a mill, or when a road had to be made; and methods of compensation were prescribed. CHAPTER V. The Danes. For three centuries and a half from the time of St. Patrick, Ireland had something more like peace than was known in the rest of Europe. There were many internal wars, but these were no more than raiding forays. The centres of religion and learning had sanctuary and were respected. There was some slave raiding from across the Channel, but Ireland’s position as an island gave protection from any serious attempt. At the end of the eighth century, this protection disappeared. A new power had grown up to which the sea was a highway, not a barrier. 795 was the year in which the Scandinavian pirates, generally known as the ‘‘ Danes,’’ though they were mostly Norse and Swedes, first appeared on the Irish coast, plundering the shrines of Rathlin. Charle- magne, some twenty years earlier, had forced the Saxons to choose between death and conversion, and many thousands, driven out from the Rhineland, settled on the Scandinavian coast and struck back at Christianity wherever they could. They established themselves on Orkney and Shetland and down along the western Scottish isles: and from these bases they made expeditions to Ireland, plundering and burning, especially the sanctuaries, rowing up the rivers in their ships. In 830, they came with a great fleet under Turgesius (Thorgils) and attempted the conquest of 41 42 HISTORY OF IRELAND the country. Armagh was plundered, and for ten years the invader did as he pleased. He set up his -DANISH SETTLEMENTS i | ih | | } | | | | i i Nt “ee oe —_-* a pee MUNSTER Soft Ht ne ° Eby OVC “es " e7 tiene ! 3 ‘ H own throne in Armagh, and his queen occupied Clon- macnoise, and gave audience from the high altar. In short, they tried to re-establish paganism. THE DANES 43 They failed in this, though some of the Irish relapsed, and henceforward the sanctity of religious places was often violated by Christian Irish kings. But the foreigners—whom the Irish called Loch- lannaigh—accomplished one good thing: they made a capital at the crossing of the Liffey, known to the Irish as Ath Cliath, the Hurdle Ford. There was a bridge of piles and hurdles at the point where Bridge- foot Street now ends, but no town. All the shore about the Liffey’s estuary was flat, with much slob; but at the point where the Dodder falls in, a firm bank ran down beside the Dubh Linn, or Black Pool, where the waters joined; and here the Norsemen made their landing-place. It seems, too, that they set up a mark, for the place was known for centuries as the Steyne, or standing stone. After their custom, they hauled their long, light, flat-bottomed vessels up on land, and built a stockade round them. But they were determined on permanent settlement, so they built a regular fortress on the seaward end of the long ridge which runs from Kilmainham parallel to the Liffey. This commanded the Hurdle Bridge and the passage by the road Slighe Cualann, which led from Tara along the Wicklow coast; and from here all the rich lands of the present counties Dublin and Meath were in reach of their ravage. So was founded Dublin Castle. Turgesius was captured by Maelseachlain, King of Meath, in 845, and drowned in Lough Owel; but the stronghold of Dublin remained secure, and in 853, Olaf the White, ‘‘ son of the King of Lochlann, came and assumed rule over all the foreigners in Ireland.’’ This was the beginning of the Scandinavian king- 44. HISTORY OF IRELAND dom of Dublin, which lasted until the coming of Henry II. It was part of a power which extended north- wards by a long chain of posts, from the Isle of Man to the Hebrides, thence to Orkney and Shetland, and so even to Iceland. At its height it held England from Northumbria across to the Irish Sea. York, the capital of Northumbria, was ruled either by a repre- sentative or by a kinsman of the King of Dublin. Dublin was the chief seat of this great maritime power. It must be borne in mind that Ireland, though it suffered terribly from the Danes, lost less to them than other countries. In France they besieged Paris and _ plundered far beyond it into the heart of the country; they made themselves permanently masters of Nor- mandy. In Britain they became absolute rulers of all lying north of the Roman road from Chester to London, up to what we now call Scotland. In Scot- land, they succeeded in wresting from the successors of Fergus Mac Erc some of their possessions in Argyllshire and the Isles; and they held Caithness and Sutherland, as names like Wick and Thurso testify. Yet Kenneth Mac Alpine, King of the Scottish Dalriada, though he lost the coast-line, spread his power inland, and became really the first King of Scotland. The Irish Annals call him, in token of his WICLOnYs nine on the tinte, The foreigners now began to subject the natives to ‘‘ rent ’’—that is, tribute paid to prevent plunder— exactly as the Gaels had subjected the Picts and Firbolgs. They were oppressors, and because they hated Christianity, and also because the places of learning were places of treasure, they did great harm, THE DANES 45 destroying sacred works of art and books at a time when a book was treasure hardly replaceable. But they brought an important new element into Ireland. They brought the life of towns and _ sea-ports. Dublin, Wicklow, Arklow, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, were all established and founded by them. The Gaels in Ireland never created a town. There were indeed ecclesiastical settlements of theirs at Derry, for instance, and at Kilkenny, but the towns in those places are not of Gaelic making. Also, the Danes established trade centres on the Irish coast. There had always been some sea-borne trade to and from Ireland, but before the Danish period it cannot have been important, since there was no seaport town. All the Danish towns were store- houses of articles of commerce, and very soon the Irish rulers began to ally themselves with the new settlers. This was especially true of the kings of Leinster and of the sub-kingdom of Ossory. Leinster was still under tribute of the kings of Meath; Ossory, a border State, was liable to exaction from Munster, from Leinster, and from Meath. Kings so situated seek allies. There was, for a long time, no national resistance offered by the Gaels to this invasion. Ireland was too much divided under its separate rulers. But Maelseachlain, who slew Turgesius, attempted to make the High Kingship a real monarchy, and it may be said that one kmg after another attempted the same until it was accomplished by Brian Boru. For about forty years from 875 on, the power of the Danes was curbed; but no attempt was made to drive them 46 HISTORY OF IRELAND out of their seaport strongholds. Probably the trading stations were useful to the country. Early in the tenth century, the Danes came back in force to Waterford. In 930 they founded Limerick, on its island at the top of the tideway. But their military power was busily employed elsewhere: the Anglo-Saxon kings were striving to drive them out of England. In 937, Olaf Cuaran, King of Dublin, was defeated in England at the battle of Brunanburgh, and within twenty years after that the Danish rule of Northumberland ended. Driven out of England, the Danes now set themselves to complete the conquest of Ireland. Munster especially was terribly oppressed by the foreigners of Waterford, Cork, and Limerick, and in 965 there was actual famine. The kingdom of Munster had been held for centuries by the Eoghanacht, or Eugenian line, who ruled in Cashel, as the Hy Neill ruled in Tara and Aileach. At the close of the ninth century, the king was Cormac Mac Cullinan, a scholar and a cleric who devoted his main care to learning. He compiled a glossary of the words in old Irish poems which then had become obsolete and unintelligible, and in it he refers not only to Latin and Greek words, but to Hebrew and Danish, for purposes of etymology. He also wrote the Psalter of Cashel, a treatise on law, in which was contained the Book of Rights, setting out all the dues between king and sub-king, noble and commoner—a revised edition of the Seanchus Mér compiled in the time of St. Patrick. Unhappily, this peaceful ruler became embroiled in war, and was slain in battle against the King of Leinster at Ballaghmoon in 908. After this, the power of the Eoghanacht began to weaken, and a THE DANES 47 younger branch of the same line, the Dalcais, who possessed Thomond, began to claim their right to alternate sovereignty in Cashel, as the Hy Neill alternated their rule between northern and southern. Kennedy, their king, was constantly at war with the rulers of Cashel. He fell in battle, and was succeeded by his son, Mahon. Mahon’s first task was to defend his people against the oppression of the Danes, and he was notably helped by his younger brother, Brian. When Mahon made a truce with the Danes, Brian and a band of warriors refused to submit, and continued fighting till they were reduced to fifteen. Then Mahon sent for Brian, and the meeting between them is recorded in a poem: “* “Alone art thou, Brian of Banba, Thy warfare was not without valour— Not numerous hast thou come to our house— Where hast thou left thy followers?’ “ T have left them with the foreigners After being cut down, O Mahon: In hardship they followed me over every plain, Not like as thy people.’ ”’ So the dialogue continues, Brian relating his fights, and taunting his brother with cowardice unworthy of his race. Mahon answered that he would not like to leave the Dal Cais dead in following him, as Brian had left his men. Brian retorted that it was hereditary for the Dal Cais to die, but it was not natural or hereditary for them to submit to insult or contempt, because their fathers and grandfathers submitted to it from no one on earth. Inthe end, Mahon agreed to 48 HISTORY OF IRELAND leave the decision to a meeting of the Dal Cais, and the assembly voted for war rather than submission: ‘“ and this was the voice of hundreds, as the voice of one man.”’ So Mahon said that it was right for them to go to Cashel, ‘‘ for it was the Aileach of Munster and the Tara of Leath Mogha,’’ and to seek for support from the Eoghanacht. Munster then mustered round Mahon, and attacked the outlying posts and settle- ments of the foreigners. Ivar, King of the Danes of Limerick, called together the hosting of all those parts which were under his rule, to exterminate the Dalcais. Certain of the Munster rulers refused his order, and were put todeath. But Molloy, the King of Desmond, and Donovan, King of Carbery (that is, East Limerick), willingly joined the Danes; for, in their view, Mahon, in setting up his standard at Cashel, had usurped the right of the elder Eugenian line. The upshot was a great battle fought in the open at Sulcoit, or Sollohed, in the Golden Vein, near where Limerick Junction now is; and the fight lasted from sunrise to midday, when the Danes ‘“‘ fled to the ditches and the valleys and to the solitudes of that great sweet flowery plain.’’? The Dalcais followed them hard, chased them till dark, and, marching through the whole night, entered Limerick by surprise and sacked the foreign stronghold, which was also a traders’ magazine. Description of the booty shows what Danish merchants kept by them: ‘‘ Their jewels and their best property, their saddles, beautiful and foreign; their gold and silver; their beautifully woven cloth, satins and silks, both scarlet and green, THE DANES 49 pleasing and variegated.’’ Of the captives, all men fit for war were killed, the rest taken into slavery. This great victory was in 968. Mahon now asserted his rule over all Munster, and took hostages from all who had opposed him. When the Danes of Limerick and of Waterford joined forces and pillaged Munster, he routed them and burnt Limerick. But none the less they came back to their ports—doubtless, at first, as traders. Meanwhile, Molloy of Desmond, and Donovan, chief princes of the Eoghanacht, were furious at the growth of the Dalcassian power; and they entered into a conspiracy through which Mahon was decoyed to Donovan’s stronghold, and by him handed over to Molloy, who caused him to be murdered—eight years after the battle of Sulcoit. But Brian, who now at the age of thirty became king, ‘‘ was not a stone in the place of an egg, and he was not a wisp in place of a club; but he was a hero in place of a hero, and he was valour after valour.’’ Having defeated and slain Donovan and Molloy with their Danish allies, he found himself supreme in Munster, and the Danish menace in the south thoroughly broken. No expulsion of the foreigners from their towns was attempted by him: they were left free to live there and trade. (D 574) Cc CHAPTER VI. The Battle of Clontarf. IN 978, two years after Brian’s accession, another blow was inflicted on the Danes. Malachy, or Maelseachlain, King of Meath and High King (not to be confused with his forerunner, who slew Turgesius), defeated the foreigners and their allies, the Leinster- men, at Tara. Marching on Dublin, he occupied it, liberated six thousand prisoners, and proclaimed the general freedom of the Gaels. But he did not attempt to put the Danes out of Dublin: Olaf Cuaran fled, his wife Gormlaith, a Leinster princess, married Mael- seachlain, and her son became King of Dublin. Then began a struggle for supremacy between Brian and the High King. But after fifteen years, finding that the Danes were again becoming a menace, the two combined their forces against Dublin and defeated the Danes at Glenmama, near Dunlavin, on the west slope of the Wicklow mountains. Gorm- laith’s brother, Maelmordha, King of Leinster, was on the Danish side, and Brian’s eldest son Murrough pulled him out of a yew tree where he was hiding. Gormlaith’s son, Sitric, had fled, but made his submission—not to the High King but to Brian; and Brian put him back in power in Dublin, and gave his daughter to him for wife. And then Gormlaith left Maelseachlain and Brian took her. It is said in an Icelandic saga that she was the fairest 50 THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF 51 of women, and did well all things over which she had no power, but did evilly all the things in which she had any power. At last Maelseachlain was forced to submit to Brian, who in the eyes of all Ireland became an usurper. So after six centuries was broken the long succession of rule by the Hy Neill dynasty. Brian marched north to Armagh, where he confirmed certain privileges to the See of St. Patrick in its primacy over Ireland; and an entry was made recording this in the Book of Armagh, in a blank space in the parchment, where the words can still be seen, written by Brian’s secretary, ‘‘ In conspectu Briain Imperatoris Scoto- rum.’’ The new High King claimed for himself in Ireland imperial power, as other sovereigns were attempting on a grander scale in Europe. Brian’s High Kingship is dated from 1002, when he was sixty-one years old. It needed more than one expedition after this, however, before the kings of Tyrone and Tyrconnell resigned themselves to give hostages. During the twelve years of Brian’s sovereignty, Malachy appears to have supported him loyally, striking back whenever some _ outlying chieftain set up a little war. Brian’s abode and seat of Government was at Kincora, beside Killaloe, at the ford on the Shannon below Lough Derg; and he set himself to repair effectually the ravages of the long wars. “‘He restored and built churches,’’ says Keating, ‘“‘and gave every cleric his own temple according to his rank and his right to it. He built and set in order public schools for the teaching of letters and the sciences in general, and he also gave the price LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINGIS 52 HISTORY OF IRELAND of books and expenses to each one who could not defray the expenses and desired to devote himself to learning.’’ ¢ Brian built also ‘‘ many bridges, causeways, and highways,’’ and built and repaired fortresses all over the country; so that peace was established, and people could travel without fear of violence. It is noted, too, that he left the historic rights to each territory, dispossessing no sept or clan, but enforcing upon all his over-lordship—which was the price of peace, paid not merely in submission, but 1n tribute. Most of this came in cattle and swine—hence his name, Brian Bo-ramha, the kine-counting. But Tyrconnell paid five hundred mantles as well as five hundred cows; Tyrone sent three score bars of iron, Leinster three hundred, Ossory three-score, as well as their share of stock for each; while the Danes of Dublin paid one hundred and fifty barrels of red wine, and the Danes of Limerick three-hundred and fifty— five hundred good reasons why Brian never made a clean sweep of the Danish ports. The presence of the Danes, in truth, was always of service, but always a danger: and when Brian had been ten years in soverergnty the danger threatened again. Gormlaith is said to have been the chief cause of it. Brian, after some time, put her away and married another princess: Gormlaith was not hkely to submit in peace. Her son, Sitric, ruled in Dublin; her brother Maelmordha, in Leinster; both had suffered defeat by Brian, and between them they fomented a conspiracy to call in the whole Danish power to a thorough conquest of Ireland. The plotters sent first to Earl Sigurd of the THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF 53 Orkneys, and promised him in return for his help the Kingdom of Ireland and the hand of Gormlaith. Sigurd agreed, and the messengers came back with a tryst for the next spring. But Gormlaith said this was not enough. There lay off the Isle of Man a fleet of piratic adventurers under the command of two much dreaded Vikings, Ospak and Broder. To them also, Gormlaith and Sitric sent tidings, offering the same reward—lIreland, and Gormlaith in marriage. According to the story, Ospak refused to attack so good a king as Brian; but Broder, who had been a ‘“ Mass-deacon,’’ but relapsed to heathendom and become ‘‘ God’s dastard,’’ was fiercely for the war. Ospak escaped from him with ten of thirty ships, leagued himself with Brian, and became a Christian. The Danish power was trysted to meet in the week before Easter of the year 1014. We have the story told to us by both sides. ‘‘* The Wars of the Gael and the Gall,’’ is said to have been written by Brian’s ‘* file,’? MacLiag; and the Icelandic Saga of Burnt Nial ends with its account of this momentous battle. To the Danes, as to the Irish, it was a vast event. On Brian’s side, the core of the battle array was the Dalcassian army; but all the forces of Munster were there, and the troops of south Connacht, from the territories representing most of Roscommon and Galway. Malachy had with him the men of Meath; but the northern Hy Neill, the northern part of Connacht, and the old kingdom of Ulaidh, held aloof. There came, however, a body of Scottish Gaels under the high stewards of Mar and Lennox. We have no clear description of the battle. Both Sagas—for at this point the ‘‘ Wars of the Gael and 54 HISTORY OF IRELAND the Gall’ becomes poem rather than history—tell of signs and omens. The Icelander tells how Odin him- self was seen on a grey horse coming to the Danish war council; while the Irish chronicler carried to excess the Gaelic love for wild and distorted images in his telling of that day. Yet upon one point the record is clear. We are told that the fight began at dawn on Good Friday, and before sunset the Danes were driven back upon their ships, moored off the shore, and were drowned by hundreds because the tide was at flood. Mathematical calculation has shown that the tide in Dublin Bay on the evening of Good Friday, 23rd April, 1014, was full at five minutes to S1X. Apart from this, the account is like that of a battle in Homer, concerned solely with the deeds of the chieftains. | Brian, now in his seventy-fourth year, stood apart and watched it among a party of followers. The field was full of banners. One was that of Earl Sigurd, black, and so shaped that when unfurled it was like a raven’s wings; it brought victory to the host that it led, but death to him who carried it. Man after man was struck down under it, and at last Sigurd cried to another to take it. “‘ Bear thy own devil thyself,’’ retorted the Dane, and fled. Sigurd took the ensign and furled it under his coat, but was slain bearing it. But Brian’s concern was with another banner, that of Murrough, his son, who went into that fight with a sword in each hand. ‘“ He was the last man in Ireland that had equal dexterity in striking with right and left.’’ Beside him, his standard drove far through the battalions; and as Brian asked each time, THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF 55 he was told that in all the carnage Murrough’s banner was still standing. “‘‘ Then,’’ said Brian, ‘‘ all shall be well with the men of Erin.’’ Others watched too. The fight was along the slopes which fall from Mountjoy Square towards the sea and the Liffey; open ground in easy sight of the walls of the Danish citadel, standing where is now Dublin Castle. Here, on the walls, was Sitric, and with him his wife, Brian’s daughter. ‘‘ Well do the foreigners reap the field,’’ said Sitric. ‘‘ It is at the end of the day it will be seen,’’ answered Brian’s daughter. As the sun turned west, the fight spread down from the slopes to the flat shore where the tram- line runs to Howth—for all beyond that is reclaimed slob. On the left here Murrough’s son, Turlogh, was in hot pursuit, and after the fight men found this boy of sixteen in the mouth of the Tolka river, still in grips with a Dane, both drowned, each grappling the other by the hair. All along the battle front Danes were striving to get back to their ships, and Brian’s daughter said: ‘‘ It appears to me that the foreigners have gained their inheritance.’’ _—Sitric asked what she meant. ‘‘ They are going into the sea, where they belong to,’’ she said. ‘‘ I wonder is it heat that is on them; but they do not stay to be milked.’’ Sitric was so angered by her jibe that he struck her and knocked her tooth out. It was at this time that Brian from his station beyond the battle asked, for the last time, for news of the fight. He was told that the field was like a wood where seven battalions had been hewing away the underwood and the young trees, for only a few great ones were standing. <“‘ And the foreigners are 56 HISTORY OF IRELAND now defeated, and Murrough’s standard has fallen.’’ ‘‘ That is sad news,’’ said Brian, ‘‘ the honour and valour of Erin fell when that standard fell.’ Then, in the confusion of the rout, a party of. foreigners were seen making their way inland, and Brian’s people wished him to fly, but he refused. There were three of the strangers in blue armour, the remnant of a thousand iron-clad men who came with Broder. Broder was of these three, and one recognised Brian, and Broder turned and cut down the old king with his axe. The Irish story tells that Brian dealt a blow by which Broder also died; the Icelandic saga says that Broder was taken and disembowelled alive. But Iceland and Ireland agree that— £“Brian fell, but kept his kingdom Ere he lost one drop of blood.’’ The battle was over before he fell; and it decided for ever the Danish pretensions to mastery in Ireland. But the day of Clontarf left Ireland masterless; Murrough, as well as Brian, was dead. The High Kingship went back by consent to Malachy, who had not been so deeply engaged in the battle. The Dalcais had borne the brunt; and after it, in their weakened state, the rival line of Munster saw a chance to re-assert itself. © When the bodies of Brian and Murrough had been carried off the field on the road to Armagh, where it was decreed they should be buried, the men of Munster separated their camp from the Dalcais: and on their way south, Cian, son of Molloy, Brian’s old opponent, with another Eoghanacht prince, sent a message to Donogh, the surviving son THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF Sy of Brian, claiming hostages from him; for, they said, the kingship of Munster must revert to the Eugenian line by alternate right. Donogh answered that the Dalcais held sovereignty not by inheritance, but by conquest, for the whole of Munster had been wrested by them from the foreigners when the men of Desmond were unable to contest it. He then prepared for battle, which was threatened. But the two Eoghanacht princes, before giving battle, endeavoured to divide the spoil, and they quarrelled, and each went home his own way, leaving Donogh unfought. As the Dalcassians marched further south and reached Athy on the Barrow, the King of Ossory, whose father had been imprisoned by Brian, lay in wait for the weakened conquerors, and demanded their submission and hostages. Donogh returned a flercer answer than before, and marshalled his sound men, sending the wounded to the rear. But the wounded made a party of the others go tow wood, cut stakes, and fix them in the ground. Then, stuffing their wounds with moss, each crippled warrior had himself bound to a stake in the battle-line. When the men of Ossory saw this muster they ‘‘ avoided the Dalcais,’’ and gave them passage. But they harassed the retreat and cut off many scores of wounded stragglers. That was how the victors from Clontarf came back to Kincora. CHAPTER VII. The Reign of Malachy. AFTER Brian’s death, Malachy resumed the High Kingship, and held it till he died in 1022—forty-four years after he had defeated the Danes at Tara. This great man is overshadowed by Brian, but few other names in Irish history deserve to be so well remembered. He appears to have worked for his country like a soldier and a statesman; and he con- tinued Brian’s work of endowing learning and estab- lishing peace. During his reign and Brian’s there was one ruler of the whole country. Yet Brian’s example led all to believe that this position fell simply to the strongest king. For the next century and a half the High Kingship did not really exist. The kings of Thomond, the kings of the northern Hy Neill (for the southern branch was weakened), and the kings of Connacht all claimed it in turn. The Danes were not expelled: Dublin and Wexford and Waterford were still Danish cities, though Dublin often accepted the King of Leinster as its overlord. Cork and Limerick were made more Irish, and became the capitals of the two leading Munster royal families, the MacCarthys (by whom the Eoghanacht were re- presented from 1118 onward) having Cork, the O’Briens Limerick. From this time dates the usage of family surnames in the clans: they called them- selves after some leading figure. In Thomond they are O’Briens, in Meath, O’ Melaghlin’s—that is, ‘‘ Ua £8 THE REIGN OF MALACHY 69 Maelseachlain ’’: in Connacht, O’Conors, and so on. Tyrone and Tyrconnell, in the north, and the north- eastern kingdom still called Ulaidh, were unaffected by Danish influence and they had no towns or seaports. The Norse communities of seafaring merchants on the East Coast were much more closely in touch with Britain than the rest of Ireland, and when the Normans (who were simply Norsemen Romanised by two centuries in Roman Gaul), conquered England, the Norse of Ireland, who had become entirely Christianised, caused their first bishops (who were Gaels) to be consecrated by Anglo-Norman bishops. William the Conqueror’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, and his successor, Anselm, were both anxious to extend their jurisdiction over Ireland and bring the Irish Christians closer into connection with Rome. At this period, the idea of nations, as we under- stand them, was hardly known. France was many territories, not a nation. In a sense, all Europe was one Christian State, under a system of religious rule, whose centre was the Pope. In Ireland, discipline had been relaxed; Ireland had grown different from the rest of Christendom, though Irish missionaries had brought much of Europe to Christianity; and Irishmen as well as Roman ecclesiastics desired to see uniformity established. Murtough Mér O’Brien, King of Thomond at the end of the eleventh century, was the most powerful Irish ruler of his day. Partly no doubt, because he desired Limerick to be the capital of Munster, he bestowed Cashel on ‘‘ the re- ligious of Ireland in general.’’ He built a cathedral 60 HISTORY OF IRELAND in Limerick, and its first bishop was a travelled Irish- man, Gilla-easpuig, or Gilbert, who had known Anselm at Rouen. Murtough himself held long correspondence with Anselm, and Gilbert was named as the first Papal Legate ever appointed to Ireland. In this way Ireland was brought more closely into contact with the centre of Christian organisation, and under Gilbert’s auspices a synod was held which intro- duced the form of Church government familiar in all Europe. The bishops, who had been originally attached to the tribal divisions, were now given definite terri- tories corresponding to the main political divisions. Twelve bishops were allotted to Leth Cuinn, twelve to Leth Mogha, and two to Meath. Armagh and Cashel were declared archbishoprics, the primacy remaining in Armagh. Yet at this time things had grown so lax that the abbot of Armagh, St. Patrick’s coarb or successor, was frequently a layman. About the close of the eleventh century was born at Armagh, Malachy O’Morgair, son of a professor of learning in that seat of study. Kellach, then archbishop, heard of the youth’s zeal for learning and religion, and made him his vicar. Malachy introduced song into the services: Armagh began chanting psalms after the fashion of Christendom. Then the young priest went south to study in the great monastery of Lismore, and here he made friends with Cormac MacCarthy, afterwards King of Desmond (that is, South Munster), who built the famous chapel on the Rock of Cashel. Then Kellach recalled him and made him abbot of Bangor, in County Down, a monastery which had never been rebuilt since the Danes destroyed it. Malachy and THE REIGN OF MALACHY 61 his monks rebuilt it. Then he was made Bishop of Connor, and began to work like the saints of early Christian times, going about on foot, practising great austerities, preaching and teaching. His influence spread, and Kellach, failing in health, designed that Malachy should succeed him. He was chosen abbot, but Kellach’s kinsman, a layman, drove him out. This man died: another claimant, also a layman, succeeded; but at last Malachy was brought in. To show that he had no personal ambition, he went back to his first bishopric of Connor, and even this he divided, making a second bishopric of Down to correspond to the kingdom of Ulidia: and further, he cut off from the See of Armagh the diocese of Clogher to serve the kingdom of Oriel. Then, to obtain sanction for what he had done, he journeyed to Rome, asking there that the ‘‘ Palls,’’ or collars of lamb’s wool, sent by the Pope to every archbishop as a symbol of his right, should be given to the Archbishops of Armagh and Cashel. The division of Ireland for ecclesiastical purposes, carried out in the twelfth century, still lasts: and it is the best guide to a knowledge of the political divisions which then existed. Malachy’s journey is of immense importance as showing that the best Irish churchman of his day was fully aware that Ireland needed to be brought more closely in touch with the rest of Christian Europe: but it shows also that Irishmen were helping Ireland zealously along the path of civilisation. The Life of St. Malachy is written, not by an Irishman, but by St. Bernard, founder of the Cistercian Order. On his way to Rome, Malachy had turned aside to 62 HISTORY OF IRELAND visit St. Bernard at Clairvaux, and its beautiful archi- tecture and its complete ordering of monastic life so charmed him that he prayed the Pope for leave to spend the rest of his hfe at Clairvaux; but the Pope very wisely ordered him back to his own country. He visited Clairvaux again, and left four of his com- panions there to be trained after the Cistercian usage. In 1148, he was sent back again to Rome after a synod had been held by the Pope’s orders to demand the palls in due form. But on his way he fell ill, reached Clairvaux, and died there in the arms of St. Bernard. The monks whom Malachy had left came back to Ireland, with others from Clairvaux, and founded at Mellifont, near Drogheda, the first monastery belong- ing to any of the regular orders known in Europe. The building of it was the first Gothic architecture seen in Ireland. All Irish churches had been simple oblongs, divided into chancel and nave. This was cruciform: the chapels off the transepts are of elaborate and beautiful design. Malachy’s work was finally crowned in 1152, when the Pope sent an Italian legate, Paparo, to preside at a synod held in Kells, where it was settled that Ireland should have four archbishoprics—Tuam and Dublin being added—and the palls were bestowed on each. St. Bernard’s account of Ireland in St. Malachy’s days has often been quoted to show that the Irish were then in a condition of barbarism. He writes concerning the people of Ulaidh, in Malachy’s first diocese: — ‘* They were Christians in name; in fact, they were THE REIGN OF MALACHY 63 pagans. There was no giving of tithes or first fruits, no entry into lawful marriage, no making of con- fessions—nowhere could be found any who would either seek penance or impose it. Mi£nisters of the altar were exceeding few.”’’ St. Bernard certainly exaggerated the difficulties which his friend had to face. Probably, also, he over- estimated his success. ‘‘ Barbarian laws disappear,”’ he wrote, ‘‘ Roman laws are introduced. Every- where the ecclesiastical customs are received, their opposites rejected.’’ Plainly, what he was thinking of was the lack of strict church discipline. It is more important to remember that the Ireland of that day produced St. Malachy, whom St. Bernard so highly revered that, when his own time came to die, he chose to be dressed in the habit which the Irish saint had worn in his own hour of death. And St. Malachy was only the leading figure in a reformation which had begun when he was a boy, with the support of the most powerful king in Ireland, and which was accepted by full synod of the Irish Church. In point of civilisation, Malachy desired to bring Ireland abreast of what was being done on the continent, and it is true that Mellifont marked a great advance. But Irish architects, in his own life time, built Cormac’s chapel at Cashel (finished in 1134)— a little masterpiece of beauty and strength. They built also, for Turlough O’Conor, King of Connacht, the cathedral of Tuam, the arch of whose chancel has six concentric orders of arches within its span, wonderfully carved with figures. For the same king was made, probably by a monk in County Ros- common, the processional Cross of Cong, whose 64 HISTORY OF IRELAND filigree work, laid on metal, is a marvel for beauty and intricacy. Neither skill nor expense was spared in the service of religion. Monasteries were then in Ireland, as everywhere else over Europe, the great centres of art and learning. Flann, abbot of the new foundation of Monasterboice, composed in this century—probably before the Norman invasion—his book of Synchron- isms, which set out in parallel columns world history as he knew it. The story of the Irish is arranged side by side with the Assyrian, Median, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Outside the monasteries, there was in Ireland, the organisation of Irish secular learning: and even the Irish clerics also were busy at this time collecting and writing down the Irish epic poems. The Book of Leinster was written for Aedh MacCriffan, abbot of Terryglas, in the time of Dermot MacMurrough. It contains the most important manu- script of the ‘‘ Tain.’’ The Book of Rights, the chief authority on the laws, was almost certainly written afresh and revised in Brian Boru’s day, with alterations meant to magnify the position of the Munster kings. The schools also had filled up. A notable bishop of St. David’s, who died in 1098, had spent thirteen years of his youth in getting education among the Irish. But when all is said, Ireland was backward, and, in the eyes of civilised Europe, barbarous. The fault was not in the nature of the people. They had shown themselves eager for learning, devout and self- sacrificing in religion, clever and skilful in all the crafts they tried; and, in the three centuries after St. THE REIGN OF MALACHY 65 Patrick’s mission, they went ahead rapidly; for, having peace, they had the advantage. Later, when Europe settled down again to civilised order, Ireland, by its position, was remote from the sources of European civilisation, which came from the Mediter- ranean. Greece and Rome began all the fertile inventions in Government. They brought in the idea of democracy with the city State, and this never reached either Ireland or Germany or Scandinavia. Later, the Romans developed the idea of far-reaching monarchy, which extended common citizenship and the benefit of well-planned laws to many peoples. Also, Rome preserved something of the idea of demo- cracy in its organisation of towns. Those peoples of Northern Europe who came into contact with even the fragments of Roman power, found the city life existing. They became acquainted, also, with the idea surviving of wide-reaching rule, instead of a mere huddle of little States. Even by the time of St. Bernard, this idea was generally accepted in Europe, though it was still very imperfectly carried out. *‘Treland is not one kingdom,’’ he wrote, ‘‘ but is divided into many.’’ That was how St. Malachy had described it to him—yustly. There were at least seven major kingdoms in St. Malachy’s day. When the Pope decreed that there should be four archbishops, he recognised that the O’Conor dynasty, whose capital was in Tuam, had made themselves equal to any king of Munster. The O’Conors had, indeed weakened Munster by dividing it permanently into two kingdoms, Desmond (or South Munster), ruled by the MacCarthys, and Thomond, ruled by the O’Briens. Again, the semi-foreign State 66 HISTORY OF IRELAND of Dublin had grown to an importance that could not be overlooked, and it was not willing to be put under any other Irish See: and so it also received an archbishop. In short, Ireland was under a type of government that the rest of Europe was outgrowing, and that Ireland’s nearest neighbour had completely outgrown. Since the Norman Conquest, England was under the rule of a very able monarch, who governed almost an empire, stretching from the Scottish border down to the Pyrenees. It was natural enough that Henry II should think of conquering Ireland. To conquer territory in those days was a king’s chief glory; and it was natural that Pope Adrian IV, who was an Englishman, should give the English monarch authority to conquer it. For, by a fiction of medieval law, all Christian islands were supposed to be the Pope’s to dispose of. It is said that this Bull, or Missive of Adrian’s, was a forgery. We know, at all events, that the Irish kings believed it to be genuine, six hundred years ago. One thing would certainly cause the Pope to regard the Irish as partly outside of Christendom, and need- ing to be brought within it. They had taken no part in the Crusades, the war of Christendom against heathendom. Consequently their warriors were outside the pale of chivalry, which was an inter- national institution of Christendom. The English knight was bound to the French knight much more closely than to the English yeoman. The laws of chivalry were the equivalent to what we call the usages of civilised war. Ireland was outside the laws of chivalry, and this had disastrous consequences. CHAPTER VIII. The Norman Conquest. When the Normans conquered England they certainly did not regard the Saxons as belonging to their own class, or to their own civilisation. Scott’s ‘“Tvanhoe’’ gives an illuminating picture of the difference. But England, though it had passed to Saxon hands, was a country which had _ been Romanised, or, as we should say now, Europeanised, centuries earlier. It had then known a government something like that which the Normans brought. All governments constructed as the Roman differ from such a society as was in Ireland much as one of the great stores differs from a multitude of small shops. They are more highly organised; a central authority gives out orders which are passed on through various departments. In the little shop there is only one stage in the process. It must not be supposed that the Normans had developed their organisation to the point which it reached under Rome. Practically what happened was that each king, either in his own land or where he conquered, set up a number of little kings under him. They in their turn could pass on their favour to some one else. But in theory the king owned all the land, and could take back what he had given, and the power with it. In practice, the beginnings of freedom as we understand lay in the towns, because to them the kings gave right of self-government and 67 68 HISTORY OF IRELAND of electing their own magistrates who should fix their taxes. This element was lacking in Ireland. Yet Professor MacNeill has said that the little states in Ireland were really rustic cities, having a common life; and certainly there was in them much more freedom than under a feudal baron, like William the Conqueror, or one of his lesser lords. This is how Professor MacNeill describes the Irish states:— ‘An Irish tuath, or petty state, possessing a complete though simple form of government, with a popular assembly, a senate, and a king, with its dis- tinct citizenship and its separate jurisdiction, had the average extent of a square of twenty miles, with a population probably of 15,000 or 20,000. It was altogether a rural state, an “‘urbs in rure.’’ The civili- sation of early Christian Ireland was the aggregate of the life lived by these small rural communities, and by the still smaller monastic communities which they contained. ‘“‘Every Irish noble was an agriculturist. The typical freeholder owned a water-mill, or a share in one, for grinding his corn, a kiln for drying it, a barn for storing it. His house was always supplied with the milk of his own dairy and the ale of his own brewing, with a good supply of meal and malt, the produce of his own land, with salt for the curing of his own meat, with the bacon of his own pigs, with charcoal for the blacksmith. His stockyard had twenty milch cows, two bulls, six oxen for the yoke, two brood sows, twenty pigs; he had four hundred hogs in the forest, a sheep-fold and a park for twenty sheep. The gear of his husbandry included a cauldron for daily use and a cauldron for the feast, with spits and THE NORMAN CONQUEST 69 fire-irons, trays and mugs and other utensils, an ale- vat, a washing trough and a bath, tubs, candlesticks —the candles were of his own manufacture—knives for cutting rushes that took the place of carpets, ropes, an adze, an auger, a saw, shears, a trestle, an axe—‘ the tools for use in every season, every im- plement thereof unborrowed,’—a grindstone, mallets, a billhook, a hatchet, spears for killing cattle, a plough with all its outfit. His wife superintended the dairy and the fattening of pigs in the sty, the spinning and weaving of the wool and flax grown on his land, the dyeing with dyes grown or gathered on his land and prepared in the household, and she herself was a skilled embroideress. His sons at fosterage, and the sons of his friends fostered by him, were taught the care of lambs and calves and kids and young pigs, and kilndrying and woolcombing and wood- cutting; the girls were taught the use of the quern and the kneading-trough and the sieve. His tillage for corn took sixteen sacks of seed. “* The king of each one of those little states sat once a week in his house to give judgment in litigation. The matters about which he was expected to judge with knowledge were chiefly the valuation and measurement of land, the law of the division of land among heirs, of boundaries and fences, of guarantees against trespass and damage in husbandry, of rights to forest trees and common pasturage.”’ Moreover, each one of these little states had its own endowment of literature and learning: its poet, its historian and its lawyer. These were maintained from land assigned to them by the ruler; and each had pupils about him, and kept a school. 7O HISTORY OF IRELAND In the more highly organised states which the Normans represented, teaching and learning became centralised in the universities; and the Normans in England were great founders of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Yet it is doubtful whether in the twelfth century Oxford was a more real centre of learning than Armagh. Beyond doubt, however, the more centralised state was better fitted for war. It had its professional soldiers. In the lesser organised state, every man was expected to fight, but there were no trained bands. On the other hand, the loose knit nation was more difficult to subdue; because there was no central spring of authority to be crushed. It could only be con- quered piecemeal, little state by little state and the task in Ireland proved very laborious indeed. From the time of Brian Boru there had been con- stant efforts to bring Ireland under a single ruler. But each of the greater kingdoms desired the rule for itself. Up to 1100, power was disputed between Munster and the North. But Connacht grew in strength, and Turlough O’Conor, who became king in 1106, went far to make himself supreme. He sub- dued Meath, divided Munster, and, in 1152, he presided as High King of Ireland at the synod of Kells, to receive the Pope’s Legate. In a1s§Gesie son, Rory, succeeded him. Rory O’Conor’s chief ally was Tiernan O’Rourke, lord of Breffny, a sub-kingdom including Sligo, Leitrim and Cavan, which Tiernan extended over what is now Longford, and into the old kingdom of Meath, that was the prey of all ambitions. But Murtogh MacLoughlin, king of the northern Hy THE NORMAN CONQUEST 71 Neill, was now strong enough to claim and seize the High Kingship. By 1161, Murtogh was recognised as High King by Rory O’Conor. He received also the submission of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, who was recognised as lord of Waterford and Dublin. Dermot was an ambitious, plundering ruler, who, in 1152, had fought his way to Dromahair and carried off Tiernan O’Rourke’s beautiful wife, Dervorgilla. O’Rourke, and O’Conor, O’Rourke’s ally, were therefore Dermot’s foes. But Dermot’s alliance with the High King protected Dermot, till, in 1166, Murtogh MacLoughlin blinded his prisoner, the King of Ulaidh, for whose safety the King of Oriel and the Archbishop of Armagh had given guarantees. The High King’s own allies now turned on him, and finally slew him. Meanwhile, Rory O’Conor, with O’Rourke, marched into Meath, and received its submission: then to Dublin, where the Danes accepted him as lord in place of Dermot. He entered Oriel, and received its submission; he entered Leinster, and forced Dermot to submit. Having received the submission of both MacCarthys and O’Briens in Thomond and Desmond, he marched north to Tyrconnell and Tyrone, and was finally acknowledged over all Ireland as High King. But O’Rourke could not be content without vengeance on MacMurrough; he marched into Leinster, destroyed what was left of Dermot’s chief seat at Ferns, drove Dermot out, gave half Dermot’s territory, Hy Kinsella, that is, roughly, Wexford, to Ossory, and set up Dermot’s brother over the rest. Dermot, taking his beautiful daughter, Aoife (or Eva) with him, sailed from Wexford to Bristol in August, 1106. 72 HISTORY OF IRELAND In 1167, Rory presided at a great synod of the Irish Church held at Athboy, and thirteen thousand horse- men assembled in his honour. In 1168, the Fair of Tailtenn, near Tara—a great assembly, part fair, part parliament, part festival of music and poetry, which only the High King had the right to summon—was held in great state. Rory was, in short, more fully recognised as High King than any one since the death of Maelseachlain Mor, Brian’s successor. Yet Rory O’Connor had enemies in every quarter of Ireland. Neither Desmond, Thomond, Tyrone nor Tyrconnell submitted willingly to Connacht. Still, what they could do might be guessed and prepared for. But no one had ever thought of the step which the banished King of Leinster had taken. Dermot had found shelter with FitzHarding, a Bristol merchant prince, who knew the people of Dublin and the other Danish ports; and when Dermot asked for help, he advised his going to King Henry II, then in the south-west of France. After long journeyings, Dermot found Henry and offered to be his vassal, if restored to power; and Henry gave him letters authorising any subject of his to aid the King of Leinster. Dermot went back to South Wales, which lay nearest to his kingdom, and Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow, inclined to accept Dermot’s offer. This was, Eva’s hand in marriage and the succession to the kingdom of Leinster. But the first definite promise of help came from the sons and grandsons of Nesta, a Welsh princess, married to Gerald of Windsor. Her sons by him were called Fitzgerald; their half-brothers, by THE NORMAN CONQUEST 73 other fathers, were FitzHenry and FitzStephen. This whole kinship of Nesta’s descendants came to be known in Ireland as the Geraldines. They were well used to war and conquest in Wales, and they set to raising mercenaries from among the Norman-Welsh barons and the Flemish soldiers of fortune who were settled in and about Tenby. Dermot sailed back for Ireland in 1167, accompanied by a small troop under a Fleming. He was allowed by the High King to resume possession of Hy Kinsella, after giving hostages and paying a compensation to O'Rourke. In May, 1169, Dermot’s Norman Welsh auxiliaries arrived—only ninety mail-clad men with three hundred archers. But the bow was a novelty in Irish war, and the mail-clad knights struck terror. Wexford surren- dered, and Dermot gained local successes till, in 1170, another band of Normans under Maurice FitzGerald and Raymond Le Gros made good their footing on the Wexford coast; and, in August of that year, Strongbow, with a much larger force, landed near Waterford, and the city was taken by storm. Within its walls Strongbow was married to Eva. Dermot and Strongbow now marched on Dublin. The High King raised an army to hold the Wicklow passes, and the Danes manned the walls; but the city was taken by a sudden assault, and Rory’s army withdrew. Dermot now aimed openly at the High Kingship, but died early in 1171. Under his agreement, Strongbow became King of Leinster. But to this the Irish would not agree. Dermot had pledged what did not belong to him. Under Irish law, no man could inherit property by descent from a woman, or acquire 74. HISTORY OF IRELAND it by marriage to a woman, and the nobles of a province had the right to choose their king. There was a general rising against the foreigners. Fitz- Stephen, who had been left at Wexford, building on the Slaney the first of the castles by which the Normans secured their conquests, was captured. Strongbow, with the main body, was beleaguered in Dublin by levies from Connacht, Oriel, and Breffny, and perhaps also by forces from the south. The Normans were nearly reduced to submission by famine when a vigorous sally turned the fortune: the Irish host was broken up and dispersed. Strongbow moved south, but the garrison of Dublin was then attacked by a Scandinavian fleet gathered from Man and the Hebrides. This formidable onslaught was repelled by de Cogan. Asgill, the former ruler of Dublin, was captured and slain, and Dublin passed finally from the power of the Danes. Thus, all the kingdom of Leinster had been subdued, with the great ports of Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford. Henry II now set out for Ireland to assert his overlordship.. He landed in the Waterford river with five hundred knights and 4,000 archers—a force much greater than that which had effected the conquest, yet very small compared with the number of warriors in Ireland. He received Strongbow’s submission, naming him Earl of Leinster, but reserv- ing to the Crown the cities of Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford, as well as the country from Skerries to Arklow, which had long been the Daneland. MacCarthy of Desmond and O’Brien of Thomond and the lesser kings of Munster came to Henry and did homage, accepting the obligation to pay tribute. THE NORMAN CONQUEST 75 Then he marched to Dublin, and wintered there in a palace, specially built, after the Irish fashion, of woodwork and limewashed wattle. The kings of Oriel and Breffny made submission, but not the High King nor the kings of Tyrconnell, Tyrone, or of Ulaidh. Not a blow was struck in resistance. Also, there was held at Cashel a synod over which Christian, Bishop of Lismore, presided as the Pope’s representative. The Archbishop of Dublin, St. Laurence O’Toole, and the Church generally were present, and they accepted Henry as the monarch commissioned by the Pope to mes in’ September, 1172, a. letter from Pope Alexander III called on the Irish bishops to be loyal to Henry, and to assist him in continuing his good work. But, in April, 1172, Henry had left Ireland, appoint- ing Hugh de Lacy as his Justiciar, or Deputy. Also, he granted to de Lacy the whole land of Meath, part of which was then held by O’Rourke of Breffny, and part by O’Melachlin, a descendant of the Hy Neill. Both of them had submitted to Henry, and paid homage. This showed that the conquest was going to mean what the Irish rulers never understood when they submitted. Under Irish usage, if an Irish king submitted to another he was bound to pay tribute and give assistance in war; but the king to whom he submitted was bound to maintain him in possession of his territory. Now, Henry had set up a rival claimant to the kings whose homage he had accepted. De Lacy dealt with the difficulty in his own way by killing O’Rourke treacherously. Next, killing O’Farrell, lord of Conmaicne (Longford), 76 HISTORY OF IRELAND which O’Farrell held under O’ Rourke, he annexed this also. In the same way, Raymond le Gros plundered Lismore, in MacCarthy’s kingdom, though MacCarthy had made submission to Henry. The Munster king resisted, both with a fleet manned by the Danes of Cork, and with his own land forces; but Raymond defeated him by land and water, and carried off great spoil. Donal O’Brien of Thomond, seeing this, took the field against Strongbow, who was now acting as Lord Deputy, de Lacy having been recalled to England; and the High King helped O’Brien. Some reverses were inflicted on the foreigners; but the Irish always after a victory withdrew. When the Normans conquered, they made their hold solid by building motes, that is, steep mounds with flat tops, on which a wooden tower was erected. Asa rule they chose some Irish fort with its earth-works for a site. The defence of these blockhouses by bow and crossbow was strong against men who wore no mail and used only javelins. Later, as time served, they built great castles of stone, the like of which had not been seen in Ireland. After three years of this struggle, Rory O’Conor decided to submit to the stranger, and envoys from him—learned men—went over to England, and negotiated the Treaty of Windsor, in 1175. By it, Henry claimed as his own Dublin, with the Daneland along the coast, Meath, Wexford with Leinster, and Waterford with the coast as far as Dungarvan. Rory was recognised as King of Connacht and as High King of Ireland, apart from Leinster and the eastern sea-ports; while Rory recognised Henry as THE NORMAN CONQUEST 77 overlord of all Ireland, bound himself to pay tribute for his own kingdom of Connacht, and to collect tribute for Henry from the other kingdoms. The tribute was one hide from every ten cattle killed. The Irish in the lands which had been assigned to Henry’s English vassals were to pay to the Norman barons the same services as they had paid to their Irish lords. Also, the English lords might demand that an Irishman who had fled should be forced to return. By this treaty, Rory O’Conor kept his own kingdom of Connacht, which remained in Irish hands for some fifty years: and in name he secured the recognition of his High Kingship. But, in fact, the treaty was never observed by the English. On the Irish side some attempt was made to observe it. Rory used his right as High King to restrain Donal O’Brien of Thomond from extending his territory towards Cashel at the expense of MacCarthy; and he called in the Normans to help him. Thus, it was at the bidding of an Irish king that Raymond le Gros marched on Limerick and captured this Danish city, which had become the capital of Thomond. Great booty was secured. O’Brien recovered it next year, when the news of Strongbow’s death in 1176 induced Raymond to return hastily to Dublin. But Limerick, like all the old Danish cities, soon passed into Norman hands. The Irish had not learnt either to fortify towns or defend them; and they had no perception how important the sea-ports were. It is clear that Rory O’Conor lacked the power to enforce his position as High King. Donal O’Brien, indeed, made submission to him. But Tyrone and 78 HISTORY OF IRELAND Tyrconnell were outside his sway. It is uncertain whether the old kingdom of Ulaidh consented to allow him to collect its tribute: but here the Normans took the law into their own hands. In 1177, John de Courcy, a huge and adventurous knight, collected about three hundred Normans with some Irish allies, and marched north past Dundalk to conquer. He captured Downpatrick, and defeated the king, MacDonlevy, and his allies from Tyrone. He built castles at Carlingford and Down and Coleraine which are still standing, and he founded the port and town of Carrickfergus, which was for many centuries the most important stronghold in Ulster. He founded abbeys also, bringing in the Benedictmes and Cistercians: and under him Savages, Russells, Hacketts, and others became lesser lords. This settlement covered most of County Down and part of Antrim, and no other region, except the tracts about Dublin, was so completely Normanised and Anglicised. But, west of Lough Neagh, all Ulster remained Gaelic. It must be understood that these conquerors were not English. They had really no country. The Nor- mans were a race limited in numbers, whose chief business was conquest and rule, and the greater part of their possessions lay outside England. French was the language they had adopted, and they all belonged to and recognised the order of knighthood. But they were perfectly ready to intermarry and mix with the ruling stock of native Irish descent to further their work. Strongbow married Eva MacMurrough, Hugo de Lacy married Rose O’Conor, daughter of the High King. A Norman lady, Petronilla Bloet, was married to Dermot MacCarthy, King of Desmond. THE NORMAN CONQUEST 79 John de Courcy married outside of Ireland, but into a Gaelic State; his wife was daughter of the Norse King of Man, which was Gaelic in language. And as long as there were separate Gaelic States in Ireland, such marriages as these were made, even up to the reign of Elizabeth. CHAPTER IX. The Introduction of Norman Law. IN 1184, Prince John, to whom Henry had given the title ‘‘ Dominus Hiberniae,’’ came to Waterford where he and his courtiers insulted the Irish kings who came to do homage; and he gave away to Norman nobles the lands even of Irishmen who had supported the invasion. Yet, among those to whom he granted estates were the founders of two great Irish families —Theobald Walter, his ‘‘ botelier,’’ from whom the Butlers are descended, and William de Burgo, ancestor of the Burkes. These people became, eventually, Irish, part of the glories of Ireland. Still, even the de Burgos always remained Irish with a difference. The mixture of conqueror and conquered was never so complete in Ireland as it was in England. It went very far, but it was never com- pleted; because the rulers of England persisted in disregarding Irish ideas of what was just. Left to themselves, the Normans in Ireland would certainly have succeeded in making their rule acceptable, and many of them did so by adopting Irish law in dealing with their Irish subjects. But they were never allowed to mingle the two codes into one. The English Crown was never willing to adapt English law to Irish tradition, though in England the conquerors had greatly changed Norman law so as to reconcile their new subjects to the use of it. 80 THE INTRODUCTION OF NORMAN LAW SI The underlying idea of Irish law was that the land belonged to the whole people, who chose from among themselves a king to be over them. Choice must be made among certain privileged persons, and only certain privileged persons had the right to choose for the people: but the people made the king. According to English feudal idea, the king owned the land: no one could possess it except by grant from him. And in granting land, he claimed the right to grant to one man all of a king’s power over it. When the Irish submitted to Norman rule, there is no doubt that they expected to be ruled by new rulers but according to their old customs. The provincial kings believed that they would retain their provincial kingships under a new High King. But shortly after the Treaty of Windsor, Henry granted O’Brien’s kingdom of Thomond to a Norman, de Braose, and MacCarthy’s kingdom of Desmond to two of the original conquerors, FitzStephen and de Cogan. Thomond was far off, and difficult to reach: de Braose never took up the grant. But MacCarthy was not strong enough to resist, and he made a bargain, assigning about a fifth of his territory to the Normans. They divided this between themselves, and then sub- divided it among other knights—each of whom became absolute ruler in his particular district. | The people of the country who lived by the land remained on the land: there was no lack of land for farms, since the population was small, probably not more than a million over the whole island. The Normans were only a handful, better armed, and having behind them the strength of a great foreign power, like the British in India. Probably, the Irish did not like the change (D 574) Dp 82 HISTORY OF IRELAND of rulers, but they submitted. Soon, however, they found that it meant a change of laws. European peoples then were divided into many classes, having different degrees of right, and the Irish law recognised not only slaves but a great class of persons who were not free-men. These might have lost their freedom through being unable to pay a debt, or in other ways; and if their ife was taken, the fine would be lower than that for a freeman’s life. In a court of law, their evidence would not be taken against that of afreeman. But no one had a right to kill thern without punishment. There was also a great class, probably the greatest class of all, con- sisting of freemen, holding land for which they made a payment in service—for the Gaelic State had no coinage—and also holding cattle supplied by the ruler of the land, for which they paid in_ kind. According to the Treaty of Windsor, Irishmen who came under English rulers were only bound to pay to their new lords the same duties that they paid to the Gaelic lords. But it was left to the new lords to decide what these were: and the Norman barons began to claim that every Irishman belonged to the unfree class. By Irish usage even the unfree occupied land from which, as a rule, they could not be re- moved, or, as we say, evicted. They worked this land for the benefit of the ruler of the country, who owned it, while he was ruler. But the unfree Irish- man was, by Norman law, a serf who might be punished, or even killed, at the lord’s pleasure, and who could be evicted from his holding. Of course, this led to revolt; and even in territories which had voluntarily submitted, the Irish were treated as con- ee ee THE INTRODUCTION OF NORMAN LAW 83 quered enemies who had no rights, and might be slain or plundered at will. John, who, when he grew up became a wise states- man, knew very well the evils of setting up all these little rulers, each of whom might be tyrannous: and in England he was busy endeavouring to lessen the power of the barons. But in Ireland his rule was weaker. Yet he issued an edict that the customs of England should extend to his dominions. Unhappily, this was taken to apply only to the Norman-English. English law governed dealings between these; but the native Irish under Norman rule were left outside the law, except where those rulers either allowed Irishmen to purchase the right of English freemen, or allowed courts to judge them according to Gaelic law. Some of the Normans used the power in their hands with wisdom. Strongbow, in particular, did not attempt to destroy the Irish state of which he had become head, and he settled Dermot MacMurrough’s son, Donal, known as Kavanagh, in a part of Leinster, giving him a secure right to rule there according to custom. But Strongbow died in 1176, leaving no son; and by Norman law his possessions and power went to his daughter, and she became a ward of the king, who was entitled to choose for her a husband. Thus Leinster, which had passed into control of a foreigner by the act of an Irish king, against all Irish law, now passed to another lord by a law which Ireland did not recognise nor understand. Yet, in this case, a wise choice was made. The daughter of Strongbow and Eva became the wife of one of the best Normans; and under William Earl Marshal, Kilkenny became a fine city. Also, at the point where the Nore and Barrow 84 HISTORY OF IRELAND join, on a good channel for such ships as were then used, the town of New Ross was founded and prospered. Unfortunately, the line of the Marshals died out about 1230, and the lordship of Leinster was split up, so that it had not the benefit even of a strong foreign ruler. In East Munster, whatever hardships may have been inflicted, the Norman lords took root in the country and became part of it. FitzStephen granted to the de Barrys land from Fermoy to Midleton, and from Mallow to Charleville. FitzStephen himself died sonless, and his land finally passed (about 1300) to the Roches. Along the Blackwater was settled the Norman family of Canteton, whose name became Condon. The present county of Waterford was granted to Robert le Poer, from whom came the Powers. The greatest family of all, the FitzGeralds, got grants in South-East Cork from their uncle, Fitz- Stephen. Cogans, FitzGeralds, Barrys, Roches, and Condons are so plentiful in what was Desmond, that it is clear how largely Normanised was southern Ireland, and how Irish the Normans of southern Ireland became. The same process of mixing the races went on else- where in the eastern half of Ireland. But it did not go so far. In the north-east, de Courcy might have built up a strong Norman-Irish principality. But John was jealous of this growing power, and de Courcy was not submissive, and so finally the king ordered the de Lacys of Meath to make war on him. Hugo de Lacy, founder of this family, had been slain by an Irishman while he was building his castle at Trim. But his sons, Hugo and Walter, succeeded him, and they THE INTRODUCTION OF NORMAN LAW 85 defeated de Courcy and were given his land. Hugo was made Earl of Ulster, and Walter Earl of Meath. Yet, soon again, the king began to mistrust this new line of rulers, who proved no more obedient than de Courcy; and, in 1210, John came with a fleet of seven hundred ships to Waterford to make a royal progress and assert his authority. The de Lacys resisted at first, but then fled, falling back on Carrick- fergus. Cathal O’Conor, King of Connacht, marched at the head of his army to assist John in reducing the fortress. The de Lacys escaped by sea, and were afterwards pardoned and restored to their estates. From Ulster, John marched back to Dublin, where he had ordered a strong castle to be built, and held a court, and it is said that twenty Irish kings ‘‘ came into his house,’’ as the Irish phrase was, and received scarlet robes, to signify that they held kingship under him. The kings of Thomond and Connacht were among those who offered allegiance. But the north- west, Tyrone and Tyrconnell, stood out. John made a real effort to govern Ireland well. Before this, he had established the first Irish coinage, and either at this time or later he began the organi- sation into counties, each having a sheriff or king’s officer. In this shireland, all criminal charges or cases concerning the ownership of land must come before the king’s Court and be tried before one of the judges who went on circuit according to the common law. It was John’s policy to lessen the ‘‘Liberties,’’ or territories in which the ruling lord held all the powers of a sovereign, subject only to the obligation that he must supply so many knights for the king’s army. 86 HISTORY OF IRELAND But in the long run John was beaten in his struggle to put down the power of the barons, and Magna Charta, passed in 1215, reduced the royal authority to little more than a headship among other rulers. The feudal system spread in Ireland; nobles became almost independent of the crown, and shireland grew less and less. In some ways, this helped Ireland, for the best of these rulers used Irish law in their dis- tricts for cases which concerned the Irish. But in the region about Dublin, Gaelic influence was less and English influence stronger than in other parts of the country. Nugents in Meath, Tuites in County Long- ford, have remained where they. got their grants from de Lacy to our own day, but they never became an Irish clan, as the Powers, Barrys, and others came to be in Munster. Also, im the north, de Courcy’s settle- ment, for some reason not easy to explain, kept apart from Gaelic Ireland. The towns everywhere were centres of English influence, and sided with the English monarchy against the Norman lords or Irish kings. They had been Danish cities, with only an admixture of Irish, and from the first the Norman kings gave them charters which enabled them to raise taxes for their own defence, and to elect their own magistrates. It gave also the right to trade freely in the English dominions. Dublin’s citizens were given at once the same rights as those of Bristol: Waterford, Cork, and Limerick soon got the same. Drogheda soon grew to be an important place, and was also privileged. The great lords had the same right to bestow charters, and Kilkenny got its rights from the Earl Marshal. But the sea-ports were more essentially separate than THE INTRODUCTION OF NORMAN LAW 87 the inland towns, living their own lives under their own lords and growing into little republics as the generations went on. Yet the lords were not Irish lords; and the native Irish of all classes found that submission and com- pacts had brought them none of the things they hoped. The kings were attacked in their local kingdoms, by claimants to whom the English High King had granted away their rights. Desmond submitted to this, and the MacCarthys remained rulers only in west Cork. Donal Mér O’Brien, King of Thomond, resisted, and kept the line of the Shannon secure. Yet Limerick, his capital, very soon passed into Norman hands, and all between the Shannon and Cashel that had been part of Thomond was granted to new lords. In the north, Tyrone and Tyrconnell, hard to reach, remained untouched. Connacht also was attacked, in dehance of the Treaty of Windsor; but its kings resisted and protested, and it remained an Irish king- dom for nearly half a century—only to suffer worse in the end. In short, conquest meant taking away from the royal families of Ireland that right to local kingship which was theirs by ancient law, and which they believed that they had made safe when they accepted Henry IJ as overlord. Perhaps this was not due to the policy of English kings, so much as to the greed of their barons. Each of these made war on his own account against the Irish when he felt strong enough, and the English kings either could not control them or did not try to. They also made war on each other. Private war did not cease in Ireland until the reign of 88 HISTORY OF IRELAND Elizabeth; and so the conquest by this great Euro- pean power brought no peace to the country. The lower orders of the Irish suffered by the constant danger of pillage from these strifes between Norman and Irish rulers. But they suffered also because the new lords did not recognise Irish law. It is perfectly clear that the common people in Ireland, as well as the ruling class, regarded Irish law as giving them protection and justice, and detested the law brought from England; for, so long as any Gaelic State lasted, the people clung to Irish law. And as the Norman rulers began to understand the country, they saw the necessity for recognising Irish law, and they allowed it to run in their territory so far as the Irish were concerned. But the central government never was wise enough to do this. In England, the Norman conquerors combined the feudal usage with a great part of English law, and that is the reason why their rule succeeded. In Ireland, they would never bring them- selves either to make the native Irish rulers part of the English State or adopt, in governing Ireland, those principles of justice which the Irish had wrought out for themselves. Finally, although the Irish Church had submitted to Henry, and had even supported his rule, the Norman conquerors did their utmost to make it a Norman institution. Under the Irish kings, the great ecclesiastics had possessed strong influence, but they had no direct right of rule except over their own clergy. In the Norman feudal system, bishops were endowed with lands, which they ruled like barons. They had full power in their domains, and it became THE INTRODUCTION OF NORMAN LAW 89 the practice of the kings to make these ecclesiastical rulers great political personages. When St. Laurence O’Toole died, a Norman, Comyn, was appointed in his stead, and became a chief adviser of the king’s justiciars. Everywhere that the Normans had power, bishops were chosen from the ruling race, and became little sovereigns. Naturally, the Irish rulers re- sented this, and retaliated by endeavouring to keep Norman and English clergy out of all Irish dioceses and monasteries: so that Christianity, which had promised to be a link when Henry came with the Pope’s blessing to reform both Church and State, became a cause of division between Norman-English and Irish Gael. CHAPTER X. The Conquest of Connacht and Rise of the de Burgos. THE last High King of Connacht, Rory O’Conor, having resigned the kingship, retired to Cong Abbey, which he had founded, and died there in 1199. His son, Conor Maenmoy, had made a great attempt to combine Gaelic forces against the foreigner, but was murdered by a kinsman, and the whole combination broke up. Then came long disputes and struggles for rule, and the English made attacks; but Cathal Crov- derg, who assisted John against the de Lacys, remained in power over all Connacht till he died in Laney John had granted to William de Burgo the lordship of Connacht—meaning, as all these grants did, when he could take it. Wiuilliam’s power got no further than his settlement on the Limerick bank of the Shannon in the territory afterwards called Clan William. But he married the daughter of Donal O’Brien, King of Thomond, and died in 1206, leaving a young son, Richard, who had the backing of his uncle, Hubert de Burgh, then the chief man in England. Richard became Justiciar of Ireland in 1228. But he had lost this post before 1235, when, allied with the de Lacys and Fitzgeralds, he undertook the conquest of Con- nacht—assisted by the contentions between the O’Conors themselves. Any great change in the 90 THE CONQUEST OF CONNACHT Ol institutions of a country demoralises the inhabitants, and from the time of the Norman invasion, in every royal Irish house claimants for power were fighting for their own interest. The case is not exceptional: in the last fifteen years, the French have conquered Morocco by the same policy of coming in to support the claim of one Moorish pretender against another, both for the central rule and the rule of districts. Richard de Burgo made his chief settlement in the plains south-east of Galway which have been called Clan Rickard ever since. Very little except Ros- common was left to the O’Conors, and the whole country was parcelled out among the Norman lords, whose names have since become Irish. Piers de Bermingham got part of West Sligo and part of North Mayo. His descendants were known as MacPhiarais or Pearse. Even the O’Conors had granted land to a Norman knight, Jocelyn de Angulo, who was called in Irish Mac Coisdealbh. From him came the Costellos and the Nangles. This was the conquest of Connacht. It was made when the English crown was weak, and the conquerors had no intention of allowing the king’s law to come into it. They ruled it as kings in their own right. The settlement was very thin, and practically all Connacht under Norman rulers remained Gaelic. William de Burgo had married the daughter of Donal Mér O’Brien, so even the conqueror of Connacht was half Irish. In return for help, Richard de Burgo granted lands in the north of Connacht to de Lacy, who bargained them to Maurice Fitzgerald, baron of Naas. The branch of the Geraldines established in Kildare began g2 HISTORY OF IRELAND to grow immensely in power after the reign of John; and from his holding in Sligo, Maurice Fitzgerald projected the conquest of Tyrconnell. He built a castle at Sligo, and castles to command the fords of «the Erne. Moreover, de Lacy, Earl of Ulstem was threatening Tyrone from the east. He had a town and fortress at Coleraine near the Bann mouth; and in the old kingdom of Ulaidh, he flanked O’Neill’s territory along the whole line of the Bann. Thus, from east and west Norman conquest pressed in on the two unsubdued Ulster kingdoms. Meantime, the other branch of the Geraldines was spreading rapidly in the south; and, in 1239, John, surnamed FitzThomas, got a grant of all Déisi—that is, County Waterford—and of Desmond, including all Cork and Kerry. In Limerick, he was already estab- lished on the Lower Shannon, and from here he spread a line of castles along the sea coast of Kerry and West Cork, insinuating himself in the usual way by supporting some local claimant for power. For in this south coast there was much confusion. The O’Sullivans, who originally held a territory near Cashel, had been pushed out by the Normans, and, going west, imposed their rule upon other Gaels. Thus, by 1250, while the whole of eastern Ireland had been conquered, and in great part colonised, all the west was threatened with the same fate. Yet, in 1258, a great confederacy of the Irish was formed, and the representatives of the O’Conors, of the O’Briens, and of the O’Donnells agreed to recog- nise Brian O’Neill as High King, and to restore the Gaelic monarchy. The Irish had also strengthened themselves in a new manner. One of the ruling THE CONQUEST OF CONNACHT 03 O’Donnells had been reared in Gaelic Scotland, and had there married a lady of the Clann Suibhne: and he returned to Tyrconnell attended by a force of Scot- tish soldiery—gall-dglaigh (foreign soldiers)—who assisted him in many conquests. The Clann Suibhne or Sweeney, now became settled in Tyrconnell, and while the Gaelic order lasted, were its chief fighting men. This O’Donnell, after his first wife’s death, married one of the MacDonnells, Lords of the Isles, who held Rathlin as well as the Scottish islands; and they also helped him with professional soldiers. The ruling O’Conor followed this example, and, marrying another lady of the MacDonnells, got eight score gallowglasses (as they came to be called) in her dower. This new element of professional soldiery did much to diminish the superiority which the mail- clad Normans still held over the Irish. Yet, when Brian O’Neill as High King called out a hosting to attack the foreigners in Ulster, only Connacht joined him. O’Donnell and O’Brien stayed away; and, outside the stronghold of Down the Irish army was defeated by a levy of the colonists of de_ Courcy’s Ulster earldom. Brian O’Neill was slain. Yet it was a serious attack, and the defeated fought valiantly. The aggression in North West Ulster was checked, and O’Donnell, on his own account, pushed war across the Erne against the part of Sligo that had been granted to Fitzgerald. Also in another quarter, the Geraldine power was set back. Finian MacCarthy rose against them, des- troyed six castles in the west, and when John Fitz- Thomas came down backed by the Justiciar, or Lord Deputy, with a royal army, the Gaels met them at 94 HISTORY OF IRELAND Callan in the valley of the Roughty, near Kenmare, and inflicted the first great defeat that the invaders IN THE —————_ —_————————— _——— Oo po nan gyi -—anewagge Bmore ony marr Seca pena OO | | = XQ iat tas | | > —_—— —2 i il Hi i eT Hh \ | | | H | all | | WN i } Hl ¢ l i S .) ~ . MAAS . : Se AS | | | | ) eS ee es . oo, .- : aaa (06 LSE= NORMAN SETTLEMENTS EZ aw" | AAS a gap me —=_ —— AG = SS had known. John FitzThomas and his son were slain, with eight barons and twenty-five knights. But there was left a boy-child, son of Maurice, called THE CONQUEST OF CONNACHT Q5 Thomas an Apa, because a monkey had saved him from fire in the castle at Tralee: and the fortunes of the southern Geraldines, afterwards Earls. of Desmond, grew up about him, so that they had an ape on their coat of arms. Finian MacCarthy was killed the same year trying to destroy Ringrone Castle in Kinsale harbour: but the MacCarthy line established its hold strongly in all of West Cork, from Blarney and Mallow to Bantry. Thus, nearly a hundred years after the conquest, the Irish rulers had definitely given up as hopeless their original idea of submitting to the King of England as a High King of Ireland who would leave them their local rights. But they had also given up as hopeless the idea of sinking their jealousies and combining under one Irish leader as monarch. The kings of Norway still held the Hebrides and the Orkneys; and, in 1263, envoys from the Irish besought King Haakon, then lying with a fleet off the west of Scotland, to come and deliver them from the English thraldom and be their sovereign and_ overlord. Haakon parleyed, but meantime was defeated by the Scots, lost the Hebrides, and died that year. The MacDonnells of the Isles, already closely linked with Ireland, now became free of their allegiance to Norway, and were almost an independent kingdom. Yet now a new power, different in kind to any that had yet been known, began to rise in Ireland. The two de Lacys, Earls of Ulster and Meath, had died without male heirs, and the heiress of one had married Richard de Burgo’s son, Walter, lord of most of Connacht. In 1264 Walter was made Earl of Ulster by the king, and he ruled from Carrickfergus to 96 HISTORY OF IRELAND Galway. Yet he met with resistance, and was routed by Aedh O’Conor and Turlough O’Brien at Ath-an- _ Chip, a ford near Carrick-on-Shannon. A year later, he died, leaving his son, another Richard, heir to all his possessions. This Richard came to be known as the Red Earl. But he was only 14 at his father’s death, and the rule of Connacht fell to Earl Walter’s brother, known as Sir William Liath (the Grey). When the Red Earl came of age he found that by Irish custom Sir William was the chief, and he left him supreme in Connacht. But he claimed all Connacht, all Ulster, and held also the original de Burgo grant in Limerick and Tipperary, centring round Castle Connell—later known as Clan William. Even in Tyrone he gained a foothold, establishing castles in Inishowen and in the monastic settlement of Derry— places which could be reached by sea. This was a greater power than any Norman house had yet held in Ireland—its territory was peopled almost entirely by native Irish; and in Connacht William Liath was really lord by native Irish usage. From 1272 to 1306, all dominions of the English Crown were aware that a strong king, Edward I, was in power; and his aim was to strengthen the monarchy, to spread the common law, and to lessen the petty suzerainties of great nobles. But he had too much on his hands with war in Scotland and war in Wales. The Irish petitioned him to extend to them the liberties and laws of the English, but the Anglo- Irish nobles resisted, and Edward let them have their way, so far as the west was concerned. He did more. He added new trouble by granting to Thomas de Clare the ‘£ whole land of Thomond,’’ and —< THE CONQUEST OF CONNACHT 07 the O’Brien country was torn to pieces for fifty years by a terrible struggle. De Clare was helped by feuds between rival claimants for the kingship, and he may be said to have completed for a time the conquest of Thomond. Yet this conquest in county Clare was blotted out before long. It was only in the east that King Edward’s power was exercised directly, chiefly by Sir John Wogan, who was Justiciar from 1295 to 1307. In 1297, he summoned what was really the first Anglo-Irish Parliament. Archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors; earls, barons, and other nobles: two knights chosen to represent each of the shires of Dublin, Louth, and Kildare, Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, and Roscommon: two representa- tives each of the Liberties of Meath, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Ulster—these made the assembly. (A ‘‘Liberty’’ was a territory in which the local lord was supreme, exercising justice through his seneschal.) No native Irish attended except, possibly, among the ecclesiastics. And this Parliament passed a decree that subjects who wished not to be treated as Irish must not wear Irish dress, nor their hair long in the Irish fashion: otherwise they would be treated as Irish—that is, as people outside English law. But no Irish who were at peace, or who had made a truce with any English authority, were to be molested. In 1310, when Wogan was again Justiciar (1309— 1312) a more carefully constituted Parliament was held at Kilkenny. It consisted of eighty-eight magnates summoned personally (as peers) and two knights from each shire, with two members from each of several towns. This Parliament decreed that 98 HISTORY OF IRELAND no ‘‘merus Hibernicus,’’? that is, no Irishman of unmixed blood, should be received into any religious order among the English in the ‘‘ land of peace ’’ in any part of Ireland. There was no representative of Clare, nor any of Connacht, and only two for the whole of Ulster. But’ in 1301, O’Conor, O’Neill, O’Brien, ‘and MacCarthy had been summoned to help in Edward’s Scottish wars. Great quantities of food supplies and two thousand hogsheads of wine were ordered to be sent from Ireland to provision the armies. Except in Tyrconnell, one may say that the rule of Edward I was recognised and submitted to in every part of Ireland in some shape. It is clear also that the governing race, which had now definitely become English, began to fear that parts of it might become Irish rather than English. This very soon happened. Part of the conquering power desired to draw the two races together: part desired to keep them separate. And the Anglo-Irish Parliament from the first was for separation. English law was regarded as a privilege to be reserved for the English: it was in the interest of grasping men to keep the ‘‘ mere Irish ’’ outside its protection. This accounts for what happened as soon as the strong king, Edward I was succeeded by the weak one, Edward II. CHAPTER XT The Decay of the King’s Authority. By the end of the reign of Edward I, the Anglo- Norman conquest had reached its greatest extent. The O’Briens were curbed by the de Clares. Virtually all Connacht and Ulster were in the hands of the Red Earl, Richard de Burgo, who, in 1286, took hostages from both Kinel Connell and Kinel Owen (as the ruling clans of Tyrone and Tyrconnell were called. In the settled east, a Parliament had been established and the king’s law spread. Yet already the seeds of new trouble were sprout- ing. The new lords were growing Irish in their ideas. One of the ideas in English law which the Irish could least accept was that of succession to a female ruler. Another was the idea of feudal law that all land belonged to the king, and was held through direct grant from him to a ruler to whom he delegated his power. Where the king’s law prevailed in the shires, the king’s courts sat, and the king’s law alone ran. But in the great fiefs, or ‘‘ liberties,’’ the lord of the fief was in the king’s place: the courts were his courts. When such a ruler died, leaving no male heirs, his daughter inherited; but the king had a right to bestow her hand on whom he chose, and with her hand the lordship. The Irish could not understand this at all. They held that rule ought to pass in the 99 100 HISTORY OF IRELAND male kindred; and they held also that the land belonged, not to any monarch, but, in a general way, to the people of the land. They resented the rule of strangers replacing that of the lords to whom they had become accustomed. The Norman rulers living among the Irish, speaking Irish, began to share this resentment. Rule was more and more divided among their male kindred. The heritage of the de Lacys had, by English law, passed to other names. But there were men of the de Lacy name in Ireland who thought themselves entitled to what the earlier de Lacys had held, and they were discontented and disaffected. The de Burgos were still in full power. They had gained Ulster by marriage. But the Red Earl was making his seat in Ulster, and handing over Connacht to be ruled by his father’s brother, William Liath, who had married a daughter of the ruling O’Brien. Also, the Red Earl was making alliances for his house in a new quarter. His daughter had married Robert Bruce, and his sister was also the wife of a Scots noble—even when Scotland and England were at war. In 1314, the battle of Bannockburn was fought, and next year, Edward Bruce, brother of the vic- torious king, invaded Ireland. On their mother’s side, the Bruces traced descent from Fergus Mac Erc, the founder of the Gaelic colony from which the Scots kingdom grew. The invading force included Sir John Bisset, one of the Norman Welsh family settled on the Antrim coast, who had intermarried with the MacDonalds. They were soon joined by Donal O’Neill, King of Tyrone, son of Brian of the battle of Down; and before long by the two de Lacys. THE DECAY OF THE KING’S AUTHORITY IOI Landing at Larne, Bruce marched south, invested Carrickfergus, and captured Dundalk. Then the Red Earl withstood him and was defeated at Connor. Sir William Liath was captured in this fight. Bruce penetrated into Meath, and wintered there; and, in 13160, he was proclaimed High King of Ireland at Dundalk, Donal O’Neill resigning his claim. Once more the Irish kings accepted the idea of a High King from overseas. In the West a new effort was made. Felim O’Conor was declared King of Connacht, and raised a great hosting which included O’Melachlin of Meath, O’Rourke of Breffny, O’Kelly of Hy Many (on the border between Connacht and Thomond), and Donough O’Brien, who claimed to be King of Thomond. (But his rival Murtough took the other side.) Felim had succeeded in killing off several of the lesser Norman barons in North Mayo. The most powerful ruler, William Liath de Burgo, was a prisoner in Scotland. The Red Earl, seeing the danger, ransomed his kins- man, who hastened back to take command, and with Richard de Bermingham of Athenry, William the Grey raised a levy of settlers; and outside Athenry, Gael and Anglo-Norman fought it out in August, 1310. And once more the foreigner conquered. Felim O’Conor was slain, and fifty-six other chiefs. But the Anglo-Normans could not defeat the Scots, probably the most formidable soldiers of that day, and Robert Bruce joined his brother and they marched on Dublin. But the city withstood them. First and last, the towns stood by the English monarchy to which they owed their rights. The Red Earl was in Dublin, but the burghers, distrusting him, made him a prisoner: 102 HISTORY OF IRELAND and their firm defence drove off the Bruces who fell back on Ulster—near their base in Scotland. In 1317, O’Neill and the Irish kings sent to the Pope a formal Remonstrance, declaring that they had accepted Edward Bruce as their king, and giving their reasons. They recognised that Henry II had come to Ireland with the Pope’s mandate, but they explained this by saying that English prejudice had ‘ blinded the vision ’’ of Adrian IV, who gave the authorisation. Yet their argument was not that the Pope had no right to authorise the conquest, but rather that the English conquerors had not fulfilled the conditions of the papal Bull. They had destroyed where they were sent to civilise. They had curtailed and plundered the Church. ‘‘ Our bishops are indiscriminately arrested, yet are so slavishly timid that they never venture to complain to your Holiness.’’ As to the people, ‘‘ they have deprived them of the written laws according to which they have been governed for the most part in the past, and have introduced infamous new laws.’’? Then follow detailed grounds of com- plaint, of which the chief were: 1. Every Irishman may be summoned at law, but no Irishman except a bishop may summon another person before an English court. 2. No penalty is enforced for killing an Irishman; rather, the slayer is rewarded if the slain is noble. 3. Many perfidious murders have been committed on guests. It is generally asserted that to kill an Irishman is no more than to kill a dog—and even monks have been known to say this and act on it. The whole English population in Ireland regard it as allowable to take anything they can from an Irishman. THE DECAY OF THE KING’S AUTHORITY 103 Then comes a notable passage: *“ It is these people who by their deceitful scheming have alienated us from the monarchs of England, hindering us from holding our lands as voluntary tenants immediately under these princes, between whom and us they are now sowing everlasting dis- cords (especially between brothers and kinsmen) to get possession of our lands.’’ O’Neill adds that a letter had been addressed to the king in council praying that the Irish princes should hold their land directly of him ‘‘ according to the Bull of Adrian ’’; or that he should himself divide the land ‘‘ according to some reasonable method ”’ between them and the English invaders. No answer had been returned. ‘‘ We must therefore defend what the king has totally failed to secure to us.’’ As the best means of defence, he told the Pope that they had ‘resigned their right ’? to Edward Bruce—accepting him as their overlord. The Pope, Alexander III, however, as all Popes did till the Reformation, supported England. He denounced this rebellion, and particularly the mendi- cant friars who had encouraged it; and contented himself with forwarding the Remonstrance to Edward II, saying that if the allegations were true (and he said it in such a way as to imply that he had no doubt) the king should enforce a just and speedy correction of all the grievances, ‘‘ thus removing all grounds of just complaint, that so the Irish people may render you the obedience due to their lord; or, if they be disposed to persist in foolish rebellion, they may convert their cause to a matter of open injustice, while you stand excused before God and man.”’ 104 HISTORY OF IRELAND Something was done. Roger Mortimer, as Justi- ciar, granted definitely to O’Conor the seven cantreds in Connacht (most of County Roscommon), which had been reserved to the English Crown: and he recognised Murtough O’Brien as King of Thomond against his rival Donough, who had fought against the English at Athenry. Yet, even so, de Clare backed Donough O’Brien in an attempt to oust Murtough, till in May, 1318, at the battle of Dysart O’Dea, de Clare was slain. His castle of Bunratty was destroyed, and his line driven out of Thomond. It shows how disorganised the king’s government had become that a leading Anglo-Norman noble should ally himself with a recognised rebel to drive out the king’s ally at a time while Edward Bruce was still in Ireland. But the effect of Bruce’s invasion had been only to produce anarchy: and it was worse because 1316 and 1317 were years of scarcity. The Scots host, marching over the country, had pillaged and become detested; and the Irish, generally, fell away from them. In October, 1318, Robert Bruce having returned to Scotland, Edward was left with a small force. John de Bermingham—not the victor of Athenry—led an army against him, and Bruce over- boldly attacked them at Faughart, between the Moiry Pass and Dundalk: the fight went against him, and he fell. If the annalists are right, a cry of relief went up from the whole country. ‘‘No achievement had been performed in Ireland for a long time before from which greater benefit accrued to the country, for during the three and a half years that this Edward spent in it, a universal famine prevailed THE DECAY OF THE KING’S AUTHORITY 105 to such a degree that men were wont to devour one another.’’ Bruce’s invasion had perhaps discouraged the Irish from looking outside for help: yet no native State had grown stronger in this period, though Thomond was once more free. The ascendency of the de Burgos was shaken; but as they declined, the Geraldines rose. In 1316, while Bruce was in Ireland, John FitzThomas was raised to be Earl of Kildare. In 13209, the head of the southern branch was made Earl of Desmond. But another family now came on to a level with them. These were the Butlers, holding great part of Tip- perary, Kilkenny, and Carlow; and when FitzThomas was made Earl of Kildare, Sir Edmund Butler became Earl of Carrick, his strong town on the Suir. In 1329, when the southern Geraldines were ennobled, Butler got the greater title, Earl of Ormond. These three earldoms came to divide the power of Ireland east of the Shannon between them, up to the day of the Tudor sovereigns. West of the Shannon, the de Burgos remained in possession, as the battle of Athenry had re-established them. But a great change came over their fortunes. The Red Ear! died in 1326, having lost prestige by his defeat in Bruce’s invasion, yet still lord of Ulster and of Connacht. He was succeeded by his grandson, William, the Brown Earl, a young man who had been brought up in England. The Connacht territory was principally controlled by Walter de Burgh, son of William the Grey. Walter appears to have taken his own way without regard to the Earl, who finally ordered him to be imprisoned. He was starved to death in one of the 106 HISTORY OF IRELAND Earl’s castles in Inishowen: so far north had the de Burgh power spread. In 1333, the Brown Earl was murdered at Belfast by men who were employed to revenge Walter de Burgh’s death. This deed had far-reaching consequences. Earl William left one child, a daughter, by his wife, the Countess Matilda of Lancaster. To this infant, or rather to the husband whom the Crown would choose for her, the whole inheritance in Ulster and Connacht would pass. The Connacht-bred de Burgos in the west were not prepared to accept this submission to a stranger’s rule. Edmund Albanach, son of Sir Wiliam Liath, captured his cousin, Governor of Connacht (another Edmund, son of the Red Earl), and drowned him in Lough Mask. It is told that the Connacht de Burgos appeared before the castle of Athlone, and in sight of the garrison discarded their English dress and put on the Irish garb. Henceforth, they, who had been known as de Burghs, or in Irish, Burca, were now MacWilliam. Edmund Albanach took Lower Connacht, and was known as MacWilliam Iochtar (Lower); from him descend the Earls of Mayo. He was married to the daughter of O’ Malley, lord of a territory called the Owles in West Mayo, and he had an O’Breslin for his chief “‘ poet and ambassador.’’ His brother Ulick took the Galway territory as MacWilliam Uachtar; he was ancestor of the Earls of Clanrickard. Edward III pardoned Edmund Albanach, and so in a manner consented to these changes. But Connacht, for two hundred years, was nearly as much outside English law as Thomond. Meanwhile there was no Earl of Ulster to control the north-east, and threaten the north-west. O'Neill THE DECAY OF THE KING’S AUTHORITY 107 and O’Donnell grew stronger, and a branch of the O’Neills actually pushed out into the country which de Courcy had settled. They were called, after the father of their leader, ‘‘ Yellow Hugh’s Clan,’’ and the region between Belfast and Strangford Loughs was known as Clandeboye—Clann Aedh Buidhe. In Antrim, the Bissets, intermarried with the MacDonnells, became Irish like the de Burgos, and called them- selves MacKeown. South of Clandeboye, the Savages originally held the district of the Ards, but held it rather as an Irish clan. Except for South Down, and Carrickfergus—which held out as an English town— the whole of Ulster had now gone back to the Irish. The whole of Connacht was ruled either by Irish or by Normans who had become Irish. Thomond, east and west of the Shannon, was once more free. In the south, the Geraldines were lords of all from Mount Brandon to the Waterford river. But the MacCarthys held strongly in semi-independence to the west of Cork. Moreover, the Desmond power, lying far from Dublin, became more and more Irish, and more and more under Brehon, not English law. All the west was now almost purely Gaelic in custom. Between it and the English-settled parts of the east, Kildare and Ormond held great territories in the central plains. But they held these like petty kingdoms, and in them both Irish and English law were in use. The country which was directly governed by the English Justiciar did not extend north of Dundalk nor south of Waterford. But even in the east, English power was now sharply threatened. Wherever the country was diffi- cult to traverse and unfertile, the Irish were in 108 HISTORY OF IRELAND possession, and from their fastnesses they threatened the settled lands—worked by Irishmen for the profit of Anglo-Norman lords and gentry. The Dublin and Wicklow mountains were held by the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles: Glenmalure was their stronghold. South of them, in North Wexford, the line of the MacMur- rough kings was becoming powerful. Dermot MacMurrough’s son, Donal Kavanagh, had stood resolutely with the Normans, and Strongbow gave him large lands. His descendants, called Kavanagh or MacMurrough, were recognised by the Irish as the rightful lords of Leinster. In the great central bog- land, the O’Mores grew strong in Leix, and the O’Conors in Offaly. They were constantly at feud with the Earls of Kildare, as the Kavanaghs were with the Earls of Ormond. Further north, the MacMahons had become powerful in what is now Monaghan: and on the border between Ulster and Connacht, the Maguires had similarly grown great in Fermanagh, and were generally in alliance with the O’Donnells. Thus the country was more than ever a patchwork, and purely Irish patches abounded in the east, while the West was almost wholly Gaelic. But there was one great difference between the settled country and the rest: it had the life of towns. Drogheda, Dundalk, and Carrickfergus all remained strong communities. Belfast was still only a village at the ford of the Lagan near the sea: Coleraine was a town. But west of the Bann there was nothing really to be called a town till you came to Sligo, which owed its growth to the Lower Burkes and did not reach any great importance in medizval times. But Galway was a great town, and it was founded by the THE DECAY OF THE KING’S AUTHORITY 109 de Burgos. Richard de Burgo gave it a charter in 1270. This meant that the inhabitants had a right to govern themselves and to raise taxes, by which they paid for building and maintaining walls and for a town-guard; and they could also determine who should have the right of citizenship. Galway grew up under the protection of the de Burgos; but when it was strong, its walls were no less ready to keep out de Burgos if they came to pillage, than to repel the O’Flaherties of Connemara, who were their enemies in the west. For in that period petty war was universal through- out Europe, not in Ireland only: but it was specially bad in Ireland. Every Irish chief had, by custom, the right to make war; and so had every Anglo-Norman lord of a liberty. War meant pillage: and civilisation could only grow where there was either sanctuary or peace. The monasteries gave sanctuary. They were seats of learning and teaching as well as of religion; and Irish kings had always been founders of monas- teries in their possessions, and the custom continued wherever Gaelic rule lasted. The Abbey Knockmoy, near Tuam, was built by Crovderg O’Conor in thanks- giving when he repulsed the Normans in 1189. Quin Abbey in Clare was built for the Franciscans in 1402 by Macnamara, foremost of the Thomond urraghts, or lesser chieftains : its beauty can be seen even in the ruins. If Gaelic kings built, the Anglo-Norman lords nobly rivalled them. There are Geraldine and de Burgo and Butler foundations all over Ireland. But the life of towns and the protection of their walls gave something more than sanctuary. They gave security for trade, and the beginnings of liberty. IIo HISTORY OF IRELAND A merchant needed security to store up the cargo that he was collecting to take over sea, or the cargo that he had brought back to dispose of. The town walls which he and his fellow citizens manned gave that, and wealth could accumulate. Also there was a kind of popular rule. The town had its magistrates, and, though at first the lords tried tc name them, the citizens always ended by getting the right to choose them: and their common council made the bye-laws and settled the taxes. Life within walls was different from life in the open country to a degree that it is hard for us to realise. And the difference lay in greater security and greater freedom. The Norsemen had first brought this life of towns to Ireland, and the Anglo-Normans fostered it in the great Ostman ports. But they also granted charters freely to many new towns. They fostered the life of towns. Athenry, in Connacht, became a place of importance, and paid for building its walls with the spoils of the battle in 1317. Wherever there was a town there was a school—generally controlled by a religious order. But there was also the knowledge that has to do with commerce, and there was inter- course with oversea countries; for the merchants had the right of trading anywhere in the king’s dominions as freely as if they were citizens of the great port of Bristol. These advantages, however, were not extended equally to the mere Irish. In all the towns, there were undoubtedly some citizens of Irish race, as well as of the Ostmen. But the bulk of the citizens appear to have been English. The English, as distinct from the Normans, Welsh, and Flemings—who were warriors— THE DECAY OF THE KING’S AUTHORITY II! came to Ireland as townsmen. In Galway, a great settlement of them grew up under de Burgo’s pro- tection. But this strong middle class element every- where preferred to be independent of the local lord, and finally, in 1370, Galway got a rcyal charter, and had the same position as Limerick. These western ports did great trade with Bordeaux and Spain. Their situation helped them, for the prevailing winds being from the west, a ship could run either north or south easily. They exported very largely hides and wool. They brought back wine and choice cloths. The whole countryside brought in corn and meat. The fishers landed fish in their market, and a market due charged—for instance, a farthing on every salmon—helped to pay for the upkeep of the town and its walls. Native cloth as well as foreign was on sale. One important produce was honey, taxed a penny the horse load. There was no sugar in the fourteenth century. It was, of course, good for Ireland that there should be such towns; and people in them gradually became Irish. Using the language in their trade, they came to use it also among themselves. There was then no division of religion. The beautiful church of St. Nicholas in Galway began to be built about 1320 by the citizens (St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, is the patron of fishers as well as of children). But at the same time the townsmen distrusted the ‘‘ mere Irish,’’ just as people of the Scotch towns distrusted the Highland Gael; and outside the walls of every city there grew up an “‘ Irish town ’’ inhabited by the poor and working people. At Galway, it was the Claddagh, the fishermen’s quarter; the shipowners I12 HISTORY OF IRELAND lived within the walls. At Wexford, it was the Faythe (Faitche, a green). In Dublin, Irishtown is the old name for one of the poorest quarters. The towns were centres of an English civilisation in which the ‘“ mere Irish’? were admitted only to a small share. All over Ireland, except in the parts under purely Gaelic rule, the position of the Irish was uncertain and unfair. English rights were granted to indivi- duals who paid for them; and, on the whole, the Crown wanted to pacify by extending citizenship. But, from Edward II’s reign on, the Crown was not strong enough to control the nobles in Ireland, and the nobles did not want to pacify. They believed that the gains of war were greater than those of peace, and they wanted to keep the Irish in a state of revolt which would justify confiscations. They never brought themselves, as the Norman nobles did in England, to consider the natives of the conquered country as being completely their fellow-citizens. From the thirteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, those who re- presented the English power always regarded the Irish as existing on sufferance in their own country: not as fellow-subjects, but as enemies held down by force in the King’s dominions. CHAPTER XII. The Growth of the Middle Nation. FROM the Bruce invasion onwards, there begins the growth of a middle nation in Ireland, “‘ Irish to the English, but English to the Irish.’’ Up to that time, the ruling race in both countries had been Norman, habitually speaking French; but from 1350, English was becoming the Court language of England. Chaucer, a courtier, wrote an English which had been a good deal changed by the introduction of many borrowed words. Henceforward there was an English literature appealing to the English nobles. In Ireland also French was being discarded: the ruling class began to use the common tongue. But in Ireland, that was Irish; and in the fourteenth century the Irish tongue offered a literature much richer than the English. From the first, the Norman invaders had been charmed by Irish music. Gerald of Wales, a scholar of the Geraldine kin, who accompanied the conquerors and wrote a history of the conquest, praises the Irish harpers; and as the Norman lords established themselves in Ireland, they began to have their own harpers. Later, when they had learnt the language, they had their own poets like the Irish kings. There was also a tendency among these settlers to adopt the dress and fashions of the native Irish. All this was most marked in the west, where the English settlement was very thinly scattered. The de Burgos, or MacWilliams, as they were now (D 574) 113 E II4 HISTORY OF IRELAND called in Connacht, had become almost wholly Irish. In the south, the Earls of Desmond, holding a great tract of western country, were notable patrons of the Irish minstrels, and the Earls themselves became poets in the Irish tongue. Irish culture attracted them. They were cut off from the Norman-French culture, and they were not in touch with the new English culture that was springing up. Also, there were constant intermarriages. The de Burgos had taken wives from the O’Briens, and from the O’Conors: and the settlers were drawn into the Irish custom of fosterage, by which a boy was sent from his home to be reared in a friendly household. Wherever this was done, a tie was created which the Irish held to be almost stronger than blood-relation- ship. These things were less marked in the east of Ireland. The Earls of Kildare, whose seat at May- nooth was so near to Dublin, were always closely in touch with the government, and there was almost always some English official in high authority at Dublin. The Earls of Ormond, who in this century acquired Kilkenny and made it their chief stronghold, were between the northern and the southern Geraldine powers, and had to fear being crushed by a combi- nation of these. They were therefore driven to rely on maintaining a close dependence on the English Crown. But they also needed to have friendly relations with the Irish in their territory, and must use Irish speech and Irish custom. Yet neither Kildare nor Ormond ever became so Irish as Desmond, nor was Desmond ever so completely un- English as the MacWilliam lords of Connacht. THE GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE NATION 115 None of the great Anglo-Norman rulers ever showed the smallest disposition to come under the rule of a “‘ mere Irish’’ king. It cannot be said that any one of them ever attempted to establish an Irish kingdom for himself; and even the de Burghs, who broke away for a period, came back to the English con- nection. But they all of them, and the Earls of Des- mond most, encouraged the growth of Irish culture, and allowed in their dominions the use of Irish law. The English law ran side by side with it in their wide regions, and naturally difficulties arose. During the thirteenth century, Oxford was becoming a great seat of learning, and large numbers of Irish resorted there, very largely with the purpose of studying English law so that they might be able to protect the rights of their own countrymen, and explain to English courts how the two laws differed. They went there also to acquire the European learning from which Ireland had been too much separated: and in the reign of Edward II attempts were made to help this by establishing a university in Dublin itself—for the great Irish seat of learning in Armagh had been broken up. But the institution did not prosper. Those who held power in the east of Ireland, the English-settled portion, did not wish this movement to go on. They were more hostile to the Irish than the great Earls. They wanted to keep Ireland a possession of the settlers; and the weaker and less taught the native Irish were, the better for their purpose. In short, for purposes of plunder, they wanted the native Irish to be kept outside the law, and they wanted Ireland to be governed according to their ideas—neither according 116 HISTORY OF IRELAND to those of the native Irish, nor according to those of the English Crown. They had now got their Parliament, and they used it to maintain the rights of the settlers against the Crown on the one side, and against the native Irish on the other. The Great Earls stood in with the idea of a Parliament, as it protected their privileges against the Crown. But it is plain that they took part in passing laws by which they themselves did not intend to be bound in their own liberties. On the other hand, the Irish kings and rulers showed no desire to take part in these parliaments, which were entirely against their notions of law and custom. We have to remember that the Normans—first in France, then in England, and later in Jreland—came in as a conquering race, disregarding the laws of the country which they conquered, and making new laws where they came. But in France and later in England they adopted much of the law that they found prevalent. In Ireland, unhappily, it seemed to them unnecessary to take account of Irish ideas in law- making. But the Irish, whose country had been less altered by successive changes of rule than either Normandy or England, had their own system of laws —the laws of Cormac Mac Art—which came to them by immemorial usage; and they refused to admit that any assembly should have power to upset altogether this ancient tradition. The Norman parliaments, whether in England or in Ireland, were really Councils, in which those to whom the ownership of land had been allotted made general rules of government. The king took part as one of the Estates of the Realm; but he left THE GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE NATION 117 himself a dispensing power—power to decide that in a particular case the law should not apply. Apparently, the Great Earls claimed the like power for themselves. The towns, which were Anglo- Norman institutions, sent representatives to Parlia- ment, and accepted the idea of Parliament. But they were more interested in the decrees and work of their borough councils. The Irish stood completely outside this whole law-making machinery, which they did not understand or care about. The Great Earls understood the situation, and allowed the Irish in their lordships to regulate their affairs by Irish law, disregarding the laws which they themselves helped to make in Parliament. They were oppressive, but they oppressed the lesser Anglo-Normans just as readily as the Irish. Many of the settlers found that justice was more easily to be got in the Irish courts than in those according to Anglo-Norman law. But the Irish Parliament represented not only the Great Earls but also the lesser lords and the Anglo- Norman bishops, and various officials of the English court. And all this element in the middle nation was fearful lest the settlement, in ceasing to be Norman- French, should become Irish rather than English. They desired to keep solid possession of the land which had been conquered and settled: and from the time of Bruce’s invasion on, much of it had fallen back to the Irish. On the other hand, the Crown came to the conclusion that this excessive power of Anglo-Irish nobles was the cause of disorder, and in Edward III’s reign an ordinance was passed declaring that no Irish- born subject should hold any office in Ireland. This 118 HISTORY OF IRELAND roused the Middle Nation, and there was virtually a rebellion. Desmond summoned a Parliament on his own account, and the ‘‘ English by blood ’”’ protested against the intrusion of the ‘‘English by birth’’ who came over, strange to the country. The ordinance was withdrawn, and a different policy was adopted, which gave to the Irish chiefs something like the position of Norman lords of counties. Each ruler was recognised as ‘“ captain of his nation,’’ nation meaning kindred or clan, as in Latin. This term was used, not only of the ‘‘ mere Irish,’’ but of the Powers, Barrys, and others; for many of the Normans were really adopt- ing the Irish clan system: and even the first Earl of Desmond came to be in many ways an Irish king. He represented that part of the middle nation which stood nearest to the Gael, and the place of his burial when he died in 1350 was far west in Tralee. The Crown had tried to recover power in Ireland through its claim to the de Burgo inheritance. Maud of Lancaster, widow of Earl Walter murdered in 1333, married d’Ufford, who, in 1344, came over as viceroy to try to recover his wife’s lands. But he died after a year. In 1361, a greater effort was made. Earl Walter’s daughter, Elizabeth, had been married to no less a person than Lionel of Clarence, Edward III’s second son, and Clarence now came over to Ireland as viceroy, and remained five years. But he recovered neither Ulster nor Connacht. The great Irish lords did not support him with troops: the lesser ones could not. And under his presidency a Parliament was called at Kilkenny in 1366, which began its proceed- ings by formal complaint that the English now “‘ live and govern themselves according to the manners, THE GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE NATION 119 fashion, and language of the Irish enemies, and also have made marriages and alliances with them.’’ Such marriages were forbidden: the use of Brehon law was forbidden. Englishmen were forbidden to reward all Irish minstrels, rhymers and storytellers, or to use Irish speech or an Irish name. These laws were defensive, not offensive—bulwarks against a rising tide. Irish culture spread. The third Earl of Desmond sent his son to be fostered by Brian O’Brien, King of Thomond, and was himself known as Gerald the Poet,—writing in Irish. Such rulers began to be regarded by the Irish as part of Ireland and were popular. Brehon law was used everywhere in the great earldoms among the Irish, and ‘‘ March law,’’ a combination of it with the English law, was common along the marches, or borders. English power weakened only where it was deliberately anti- Irish, in the ‘‘ obedient counties,’’ which were those on the sea-board of modern Leinster and County Waterford. A practice began of paying to the Irish chieftains dwelling on the borders of English settle- ment ‘‘ black rent,’’ as a guarantee against raiding. Chief exactors of this rent were the MacMurroughs, who now claimed to be kings of Leinster. One Mac Murrough after another was captured by the English and slain. At last, in 1375, Art Oge MacMurrough Kavanagh became lord of Leinster, and from the Wexford mountains plundered Wexford, Kildare, Carlow and Kilkenny, till his yearly tribute was con- ceded. Further, he succeeded in making a marriage _ with a daughter of the Earl of Kildare. This lady, being a widow, held the barony of Kildare from her first husband. Art MacMurrough claimed the barony, 120 HISTORY OF IRELAND as he was entitled to, by English law. But the Statute of Kilkenny forbade his succession, because he was an Irishman. Yet, Kildare had allowed the marriage in defiance of the Statute. It was no wonder that Irishmen remained rebellious since their position under English law was uncertain and unfair. In 1394, Richard IJ did what no English king had done for nearly two centuries: he came to Ireland. With him was an army of thirty thousand archers and four thousand mail-clad men. Landing in Waterford, he wrote to his uncle, the Duke of York (using French as his tongue) that Ireland held three kinds of people: ‘‘ wild Irish, our enemies; Irish rebels (meaning the Norman-Irish); and obedient English.’’ No Irish were counted as obedient. But the Irish kings of Tyrone and of Thomond, and O’Conor, representing the Irish of Connacht, came in and did homage. MacCarthy did the same, recognising Desmond as his overlord; and so also did Art MacMurrough, who at Richard’s coming had resisted and burnt New Ross before him. The de Burgos also made submission. The Earl of Ormond acted as interpreter between Richard and the Irish kings. Every great Irish prince, and through them every lesser one, had now received the king’s guarantee for the lands he held, on condition of loyalty. But a special condition had been made with Art MacMurrough and the Irish of Leinster. They were to vacate Leinster and go to conquer land else- where. Richard left Ireland after eight months, and his Viceroy, the Earl of March, heir both of the earldom of Ulster and of the English throne, endeavoured to push the Irish of Leinster out of their holdings; THE GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE NATION I2I and in a petty skirmish he was slain by the O’Byrnes. Richard at once struck back at the King of Leinster, and declared his barony in Kildare forfeit, and in 1399 landed again in Waterford. But on his march to Dublin, Art harassed his army till a meeting was arranged between him and the Earl of Gloucester. Art came to it, galloping down hill without saddle or bridle on a horse that had cost him the price of four hundred cows. No terms could be arranged, for Art claimed to be rightful King of Ireland, by succession from Dermot MacMurrough: and Richard had to fight his way with difficulty to Dublin. There he learnt the news of Bolingbroke’s landing, and sailed back to England and defeat. Richard lost his kmgdom, and Art got back his wife’s barony. He maintained himself as King of Leinster throughout the reign of Henry IV, and though, in 1417, he admitted the suzerainty of Henry V, he died independent. But with him ended the power of his line. His son was captured and sent to he in the Tower of London for seven years. This was under the Viceroyalty of Sir John Talbot, one of the chief among Henry V’s victorious captains. HISTORY OF IRELAND 122 Sort ‘aiqna ‘Onse[d jO peld “WeueyNoY’T pio’] ‘19}S{0 pues yore jo [rey qNoWwda —__$_______ __—_ ewRR&»==—= | SEE ‘MOTIVD UT pal[fy ‘yueMezynor’T pio’] ‘19}S]Q pure yoIeyy jo [ey wAood ISI AIOD UI PetP OUM YB JO [AB ‘JomjJoW punwpy “W Wddl’IlHd | JIMIIVID jo ayxNG ‘TeuOrT ‘WW HLA ZITA | ELgl “A f1ejsvoue’] Jo vplyew sseyuno0) ‘IW [eH UMOIg euUL SPIVAIAUBYD JO STIVy ofeyy jo sjiey ST aig} Wary WoO” 20} pusosep Wy Wo WYITTIM | | Seel “ASEIT l DPISAIUCBID jo ADTIEIV.O SOAlBS Perley YSsnoy] Ul pouMoig IAyQVEQ WENT MIZIT OABYT JO 1ePWOOT Ue [MOP JAOeUUOD jo 1oN1sAOH waNod WoOria 4UMOd HOVNVHIV GNOKGA aqNoWwdse GQuvHold eA J yZE1 “P * OSZI “aa ‘a 9261 “P Pe at 3934810 JO [IBY pew e4yL WLLVI’ I WVYVIIM ‘Ill davHola l I | ILZ1 ‘a dypyo-GP-YF¥ 7 OLZ1 4! pert I9}8]10 JO [JB 4SIT 8roI ‘Aa WVITTIIA MAVIVM ‘Il GUVHOIa yz1 “A "I GUVHOId _ + GSR ee ae se AataNdMOD |, YSU 2} AG Snes ‘SOZI “P “UeTIG,O UB peliieWw HOUNnNA AG WVITTIM ais SE eo WALSTON AO STUVH AHL AO ATAVI IVOIDOTIVANAD CHAPTER XIII. The Rise of the Earls of Kildare. THE fifteenth century brought to Ireland something more like material progress and prosperity than it had yet known. It was the period in which the great earldoms reached their greatest power, and the English State apart from them fell to its lowest ebb. It was the progress of a Gaelic-speaking Ireland, under the rule of Anglo-Norman lords. Yet these lords now freely leagued themselves with the native Gaelic sovereigns, and abandoned the attempt to blot out the native sovereignties. There were, throughout the century, three wholly independent Gaelic States, and three great earldoms. FEarls and native kings alike acknowledged the overlordship of the English Crown, but in a very different spirit. The Earls, though they were patrons of Gaelic culture, never cut themselves away from English culture. They never thought of themselves as belonging to the same people as the Gaels, and they had an attachment to the English Crown. When sovereignty became disputed in England, they took sides passionately with the Red Rose of Lancaster or the White Rose of York. The native kings only troubled about the English Crown when a representative of it, especially a royal personage, came to Ireland with great power. Then they paid homage. The three leading native kingdoms were, Thomond 123 124 HISTORY OF IRELAND (stretching from Slieve Bloom to Loop Head) Tyr- connell, and Tyrone. The rulers of Thomond inter- married again and again with the Burkes, who were on their north in Connacht and held also Clanwilliam, east of Thomond, along the Shannon. At times also, the O’Briens made alliance with Desmond. In the north, Tyrone was the leading power up to the reign of Henry VI. But from 1460 to the end of the century, under a very able king, Hugh Roe O’Donnell, Tyr- connell became at least equal to Tyrone in importance. Extending its sway into Connacht, it grew at the expense of the Burkes. Thus all Ireland west of the Shannon was controlled either by O’Donnell, by O’Brien, or by the Burkes, who were almost com- pletely Irish. As to the position of the earldoms under Henry IV and Henry V, Kildare had less power than either Ormond or Desmond. But any one of these earls controlled far more territory than the king’s repre- sentative. In 1436, the Irish Parliament reported that the ‘‘land of peace,’’ in which the king’s summons could be freely issued and obeyed, was not more than thirty miles long by twenty deep. It did not extend south of Dalkey, nor north of Drogheda. This region, enclosed by a large defensive moat and dyke, of which a remnant can be seen in the grounds of Clongowes, came to be called The Pale. This shrinking of the king’s authority had one consequence. When a dozen shires of great extent (twice as large as the modern counties) paid tribute, a central army could be easily maintained. Now, most of Ireland that was not in Gaelic hands was part of some great Liberty, and paid no taxes to the Crown. THE RISE OF THE EARLS OF KILDARE 125 Ormond, Desmond, and Kildare each maintained his own standing force of troops—mostly Irish. So did every Irish king or lord keep up his force of gallowglasses and levy tribute for them on his subjects—supplemented by such levies as he could force from his neighbours. It was recognised that Ireland was ‘‘ aland of war ’’—scores of rulers having the right to make war when and where they dared. The Crown must maintain troops; but, not having enough taxes to pay them in the English fashion, it adopted the Irish usage of ‘‘ coign and livery,’’ charg- ing individual citizens with the duty of keeping a soldier and his horse. This was against the law of the Irish Parliament; but it had been first done as an emergency measure by the Earl of Desmond, just after Bruce’s invasion, and it was done repeatedly by those who ruled in the king’s name. It was also done everywhere in the “‘ liberties ’’ under the great lords. The result was that the English settlers, disliking this practice foreign to their customs, left the country in increasing numbers. In short, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Ireland was steadily becoming more Irish and less English. At the end of the fifteenth century, the laws passed by the Parliament of Kilkenny in 1366 were again enacted. But it was found necessary to drop that against Englishmen speaking Irish. On the other hand, when the King of England or his heir came to Ireland, the independent Gaelic rulers paid him such observance as would have been paid to the High King. The idea of having a Gaelic High King had disappeared. Indeed, Munster treated the Earl of Desmond much as the subordinate kings had 1260 HISTORY OF IRELAND treated the King of Cashel; and for a long period Kildare was virtually High King over all that used to | be ruled from Tara. Matters were complicated by the position of the Earls of Ormond. They also spoke Irish perfectly, and had Irish courts sitting in their territory. But, owing to a marriage, they had acquired great possessions in Wiltshire, and were therefore much more interested in England; and, during the Wars of the Roses the head of the family was much absent from Ireland. But Ormond, like the others, was always ready to treat with the Gaelic rulers. Indeed, through the whole of the fifteenth century and down to the middle of the sixteenth, no attempt was made to break up any Irish State. Ireland became once more a country of many kingdoms—the greatest of them, however, being ruled by Norman-Irish. The Pale about Dublin was little if at all bigger than the Daneland had been before the Norman conquest. But Dublin was now the capital and stronghold of a foreign power claiming the whole country: and there was there a Parliament which had the right to make laws binding the whole country. This Parliament represented only those who were now called English. It had no right to interfere with the authority of the earls in their own ‘‘ liberties.’’ The earls must administer the laws there. But the laws which it passed were binding on the earls, and the earls could be accused before the Parliament, tried, and sentenced. In England at this period there was the same confusion. The rights of the barons were still in conflict with those of the Crown. But in Ireland there was this complication—that the King THE RISE OF THE EARLS OF KILDARE 127 claimed everybody in Ireland as his subject, yet Parliament legislated as if all the native Irish were foreign enemies. At the same time, half of the country was ruled by English subjects who made treaties of friendship and alliance with the native Irish chiefs, and had Irish lawyers administering Irish law throughout their territories. It must always be remembered, that though the Irish Parliament existed from about 1300, it was not a Parliament of Ireland; it was not, for at least three hundred years, intended to give protection of law to the Irish. Government according to the laws which the Irish Parliament passed in the fourteenth century broke down completely in the fifteenth. The government of the Great Earls, which followed, was government according to Irishideas. It was personal rule conducted with respect to Irish custom. It differed, however, in one respect from Irish rule: the earl was always succeeded by his eldest son. The Irish saw that this custom had the advantage of avoid- ing disputes about succession by which they them- selves were much weakened; and, though they did not abandon their own practice of choosing the fittest man, they adopted about this time the plan of naming a “‘tanist ’’ or successor while the king lived. This, however, unhappily, did not put an end to disputes. But the Anglo-Irish lords found the necessity of abandoning the English custom by which a daughter could inherit land and lordship if there was no son. In Connacht, the Burkes made it a rule of their family that only a male heir should succeed. The Desmonds, Kildares, and Ormonds always appear to have been provided with sons; but a female heir would 128 HISTORY OF IRELAND scarcely have been allowed to inherit, because the Crown would have had the right to choose her husband, who would rule, and lordship would pass out of the clan. In the case of the Desmonds, some- thing like Irish custom was asserted. James of Desmond, having deposed his nephew Thomas in 1411, was accepted as Earl in defiance of English law of succession, and became in reality King of Munster. It was natural that he should act according to Irish ideas, for he was the foster son of O’Brien of Thomond, and his wife was a Burke of Clanrickarde. Everything about him was Irish. He had an hereditary captain of his gallowglasses, the MacSheehys (lke the Sweeneys, a family half-Norse, half-Scot, from the Western Isles), and his hereditary bard was O’Daly. All the ports of Munster were in his control, and the fame of his greatness spread to Florence, whence his ancestors were reputed to have come. The Secretary to the Republic of Florence sent a young Florentine noble of the Gherardini to open up friendship and an alliance with him. During his long rule, James of Desmond was in close alliance with the White Earl of Ormond, then the leading person in Dublin as well as in his own principality. In 1449, the two stood sponsors to the Duke of Clarence, son of Richard Duke of York, who had come to Dublin. But when Richard was recalled to England for the war, the White Earl’s successor sided with Lancaster, and, being also Earl of Wilt- shire, was constantly engaged in England until, after the defeat of Lancaster at Towton, he was beheaded. And, though the earldom was restored to his successors, the next two earls were constantly absent THE RISE OF THE EARLS OF KILDARE 129 from Ireland. The Butler clan in Ireland was, how- ever, led by Sir Piers Rua Butler, who was practically adopted as ruler by the clan after he had killed his rival, the natural son of one of the earls. Power thus fell to the two Geraldine earls, who had been steadily Yorkists. At first, Thomas Earl of Desmond was the chief. This remarkable man founded and endowed in Youghal a college on the type of those at Oxford. There was the more need, because the projects for founding a University m Dublin in the fourteenth century had fallen through; and, to complete the calamity, from the reign of Henry V on, Irish-born students—of whatever race—were forbidden resort to England, except under difficult conditions. In 1465, Desmond being then the Lord Deputy, it was proposed by the Irish Parliament that there should be a University at Drogheda. Unhappily, the idea was not carried out. Throughout the fifteenth century all English statesmen had been jealous of the native-born Anglo- Irish, and had actually once introduced an edict that no Irish-born should hold office in Ireland: also, the lesser Anglo-Irish of the Pale were jealous of the great lords, and detested their tendency tomake friends with the Irish ‘‘enemy.’’? While Desmond held his Parliament in Dublin, MacWilliam of Clanrickarde, and even Hugh Roe O’Donnell of Tyrconnell attended in Dublin, accompanied by their gallowglasses. The lesser nobles and the English officials saw this with dislike. Also, O’Brien of Thomond had successfully invaded Limerick, and forced Desmond to buy him off by ‘‘ black rent.’’ And, like every other Anglo- Irish overlord, Desmond had exacted “‘ coign and 130 HISTORY OF IRELAND livery,’’ quartering his soldiers on English subjects. In 1467, Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, was sent over as Deputy. He called a Parliament at Drogheda at which both Kildare and Desmond were impeached for treason. They were charged with making alliance and fosterage with the Irish enemies of the king, and supporting them by gifts of horses and armour. These gifts were, no doubt, made by the earls as ‘““ wages’? after the Gaelic fashion; thus the Irish chiefs who accepted them were pledged to pay tribute and furnish levies in war. Desmond was executed out of hand; but Kildare, escaping to England, went straight to the king and so pleaded that this same Parliament sitting at Drogheda was forced to annul the sentence against him and to restore Desmond’s rights. But Desmond’s son had already at once assumed the title in defiance of the Parliament’s Act annulling it, and had declared that he and his people would never again attend Parlia- ment, nor enter any walled town at the king’s command. Henceforward Desmond was more than ever un-English: and all effective power in the capital passed to the house of Kildare. The earl being Deputy, Parliament granted him a permanent body- guard amounting, finally, to nearly five hundred men. In 1477, the Great Earl Gerald, or Garret Mor, succeeded and ruled till 1513. | Within that period came the decisive change in England from wars of succession to settled order, and from a kingship limited by the power of great barons to absolute monarchy, ruling through servants selected at the king’s pleasure. It is necessary to consider what part of Ireland THE RISE OF THE EARLS OF KILDARE 131 Kildare really controlled. All of Munster under the Earl of Desmond was little interfered with by the king’s representative, and was a flourishing country. Gaelic lords—the MacCarthys, and the O’Sullivans, and others—ruled in the west, but acknowledged the Desmond as overlord. Its ports, from Tralee and Dingle round to Youghal and Waterford, did much trade with France. West of the Shannon, English power hardly reached. Thomond was independent under the O’Briens, and their power generally supported and was supported by the Burkes of Clanrickarde. Galway was very nearly independent —a most thriving city. Limerick served Thomond for a port, but was controlled by the Norman-Irish lords and by English citizens. In the north of Connacht, the Mayo Burkes and the O’Conors disputed territory, and both were eventually made subject to the growing power of Tyrconnell. Tyrconnell and Tyrone were independent, like Thomond. In the east of Ulster, Coleraine was in English hands; so was Carrickfergus, and also Ard- glass in County Down—at this time a main trading centre. But except in these towns, Kildare had no authority in Ulster. The branch of the O’Neills which held Clandeboye, that is, the land between Strang- ford Lough and Belfast Lough, was quite indepen- dent. On the Antrim coast, Scots had settled in great number, owing to a marriage between John MacDonnell, Lord of the Isles, and Marjory Bisset, heiress of the Norman-Welsh family that had held the glens for so long. Kildare’s power, which was based on Dublin and on his own great stronghold in Maynooth, was ringed 132 HISTORY OF IRELAND about with smaller Irish principalities. The Mac Mahons now held power in Monaghan, and they often threatened Dundalk. But, lying where they did, it was -worth their while to have help from Kildare against O’Neill of Tyrone. The most formidable threat to the Pale came from the O’Conors of Offaly and from the O’Mores of Leix. Further south, the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles in the Wicklow mountains, and the MacMurroughs on the borders of what is now Wexford and Carlow, gave much anxiety. Kildare’s hand was heavy on all the borderers; yet he punished, but never sought to destroy. He never attempted to wipe out any Irish power. And in his dealings with the two greatest Irish kings he spared no pains to make friends of them. Henry O’Neill of Tyrone had ruled since 1455. In 1480, Kildare gave his sister Eleanor in marriage to Conn O’Neill, Henry’s heir. With Hugh Roe O’Donnell, ruler of Tyrconnell from 1461 to 1505, he made lasting alliance, and sent his son to be fostered with him—that is, to be brought up and educated in O’Donnell’s house. He married also one of his daughters to a MacCarthy and another to an O’Carroll, lord of Ely in Tipperary. Kildare and Desmond were two of the leading nobles in Europe of that day. No king had greater subjects. They did not send their sons to be brought up in barbarous households, nor give their womenfolk in marriage where they could not live with some splendour. At this time, the culture or training of Irish and Norman-Irish nobles had much in common. _ Every- where Irish literature was studied. Manus O’Donnell, THE RISE OF THE EARLS OF KILDARE 133 son of Hugh Oge, was a poet and a scholar in Irish: so were two at least of the Earls of Desmond. Gaelic IRELAND IN THE XVTH.CENTURY | i HTT Ht THE PALE 11) RR ee DEGENERATE ENGLISH =, naTive RisH (_] : go°™ A ae | it l | CG —— r4 = £ a3 7s fo Ae TN | ly | | ; | | il literature was now being enriched by translations from other languages, including English. In addition to Gaelic, in the sixteenth century Latin was commonly 134 HISTORY OF IRELAND used among the Irish for intercourse with the outside world. It was taught in Irish schools as a spoken language even in Elizabeth’s day, when Irish civilisa- tion had been much broken up. In Kildare’s time, all the greater Irish kings endowed learning and religion. Hugh Roe built in Donegal a strong castle; but he, with his wife, Finola O’Brien, also built and endowed a great monastery. Beautiful work of the Gothic school was plenty in Gaelic Ireland, as well as strong works of defence. And everywhere the professional learned classes— poets, historians, and lawyers—were held in honour and richly rewarded. The real blame for lack of civilisation in this period falls on the government which left Ireland without a university. Desmond did his best at Youghal: Kildare endowed a college at Maynooth: Ormond founded a school at Kilkenny, which, unlilce the two others, escaped destruction. In this matter, the kings of England and their representatives fell far short of the Irish tradition which had always insisted that learning should be endowed. One of the first things the Normans did was to destroy the great school at Armagh, in King John’s day. They never replaced it. They fell short in the first duty of any government which claims to improve civilisation. CHAPTER XIV. The End of Feudalism. WHEN Henry VII came to the throne of England, after the defeat of Richard III, Ireland was on the side of the Geraldines, and so was ill-pleased by the victory of a Lancastrian. But the new king was too insecure and too politic to quarrel with Kildare. On the other hand, Kildare, seeing that the Ormond faction must return to power, made a marriage between his sister, Lady Margaret Fitzgerald, and Sir Piers Butler, lead- ing man of the Butlers in Ireland—the earl still remaining away. But apparently, few in Ireland believed that Henry would be able to hold the English throne, and when the boy Lambert Simnel, was brought to Dublin and presented as Earl of Warwick, true successor of Edward of York, the Irish lords and bishops, with Kildare at their head, accepted him and crowned him in Dublin as King Edward VI. The only people in Ireland who stood to Henry were the Butlers, and the city of Waterford—which shut its gates against Desmond’s brother. Waterford lay so near the Butler stronghold of Carrick-on-Suir and the county of Kilkenny that it was always under Butler influence. After Lambert Simnel’s partisans were defeated, Henry issued his pardon to those in Ireland who had supported him. But, in 1491, there came to Cork a new pretender, Perkin Warbeck, claiming to be King 135 136 HISTORY OF IRELAND Edward’s second son. All Munster, led by Desmond, accepted him before he moved off to Flanders. Henry now thought it was time to depose Kildare from his office of Deputy. Next year, Kildare’s ally, Hugh Roe O’Donnell, went to the Scottish court, whose king was supporting Perkin, and, it is said, urged him to invade Ulster. At all events, Kildare was naturally suspected; and, in 1494, Sir Edward Poyn- ings was sent over as Deputy, and under his auspices a Parliament was held at Drogheda which found the Earl guilty of treason. Kildare was sent to the Tower of London. This Irish Parliament passed what is known as Poynings’ Law. In 1460, when Richard of York was Lord Lieutenant and eager to conciliate the Anglo- Irish nobles, the Irish Parliament passed an Act de- claring that Ireland could only be bound by laws of its own Parliament. Under Poynings, it was enacted in 1494, first, that all Acts of the English Parliament passed up to then should hold good in Ireland; and next, that no Parliament should be held in Ireland unless the King were first informed what laws were to be proposed in it and gave his consent to their intro- duction—in this way leaving it much less free than the English Parliament. Poynings stayed for two years in Ireland. But Kildare’s partisans created much disorder in the Pale, and in 1495, Warbeck landed again at Cork and was again backed by Desmond—while, for a second time, Waterford resisted. Henry came to the conclusion that things had been better under Kildare’s rule, and caused the Earl to be confronted with his accusers Hot-tempered, outspoken, and courageous, Earl THE END OF FEUDALISM ts Garrett evidently had the personal charm which was hereditary in his house. The line which he took is indicated by the famous story. ‘‘Being charged before Henry for burning the church of Cashel, and many witnesses prepared to avouch against him the truth of that article, when it was looked how he would justify the matter, ‘ By heaven,’ quoth he, ‘ I would never had done it, had it not been told me that the archbishop was within.’ And because the archbishop was one of his accusers then present, the king merrily laughed at the plainness of the noble man.’’ The last article of the attainder ran in these terms: ““ Finally, all Ireland cannot rule this Earl!’’ ‘‘No,”’ quoth the King; ‘* then in good faith shall the Earl rule all Ireland.’’ These stories, whether accurate or no, were written down within the following century, and they put dramatically the truth, which is, that Henry VII de- termined to try in Ireland personal government by the strongest Anglo-Irish nobleman. Kildare was restored and sent back to Ireland as Lord Deputy. He had been accused of treachery for acting in consort with ‘‘ Irish enemies,’’ but he now made his bond closer than ever with Hugh Roe O’Donnell. There was discord among the O’Neills. Conn, Kildare’s brother-in-law, was slain by a rival, and in the strife for succession that followed, O’Donnell backed one claimant, and Kildare came down with all the Crown’s forces to support O’ Donnell. The O’Neill stronghold had been for long fixed at Dungannon, the centre .of their territory; and here, like all the Irish chieftains of that day, they had built a strong castle. But Kildare brought against it the 138 HISTORY OF IRELAND new arm, cannon, and quickly breached it. This marks an epoch. Attack now had the better of defence in sieges: but the means of attack was so costly that only the great powers could have it, Central government was strengthened by this invention, and could no longer be thwarted for months by some petty baron or chief with a strong well- situated piece of masonry. O’Donnell, who was now by far the most important Gaelic king, acted steadily with Kildare. The Deputy had a quarrel with Burke of Clanrickarde, for mis- using his wife, Kildare’s daughter, and for oppressing the O’Kellys, who appealed for justice. O’Donnell had for forty years been making war on the Galway Burkes, and now, in 1504, he marched against them, having with him the Burkes of Mayo. O’Conor and MacDermot from Roscommon, O’Reilly from Cavan, O’Farrell from Longford, and O’Conor Faly from Offaly—the last being connected by marriage with both O’Donnell and Kildare—supported O’Donnell. The O’Neills came also, led by a son of Kildare’s sister; and this Irish host made its junction with Kildare and his English at Knocktoe, eight miles east of Galway, in Clanrickarde’s country. Clanrickarde had with him the ‘‘rising out’’ of Thomond—O’Briens . and Galway Burkes were generally allies against out- siders, though they fought each other—and there were O’Carroll of Ely and other chiefs from the region between Thomond and Ormond’s domains. The Butler power took no hand in this great battle. Clanrickarde and Munster were wholly defeated by Kildare and Leath Cuinn—the northern half of Ireland. THE END OF FEUDALISM 139 The town of Galway apparently stood neutral, and next day opened its gates to the victors. Hugh Roe died in the following year, 1505. He had reigned since 1461, and had made Tyrconnell fully the equal of Tyrone. In his own territory, the peace was so well established, say the Annalists, “* that there was no defence made of houses except to close the door against the wind only.’’ His son, Hugh Oge, who succeeded him, kept up his tradition; and in 1510 he was strong enough to leave his king- dom and go on a journey to Rome, where he was honourably received by the Pope. And he spent four months going, and four months coming, on visits to London, where the young King Henry VIII entertained him and knighted him. Throughout his life, Hugh Oge, and his son after him, adhered to Hugh Roe’s policy of supporting an English central power that treated the Irish rulers as friends. When the Great Earl died, his son, Garrett Oge, continued his father’s policy, and was a great man of war, punishing the Irish lesser kingdoms severely when they attacked the English settlements. But he remained in close friendship with O’Donnell, and the son of the Great Earl’s sister, Conn Bacagh (the lame) O’Neill, was now lord of Tyrone. But the monarchy of Henry VIII, guided by Wolsey, an able churchman of low origin, was now seeking to end the existence of subject powers that were too powerful. Undoubtedly, an Earl of Kildare could at any time from 1470 onward have rebelled with great hope of success: and in the south of Ireland Kildare’s kinsman, the Earl of Desmond, was almost indepen- dent. In 1519, Earl Garrett Oge was summoned to 140 HISTORY OF IRELAND London to answer charges of treason, and for four years he was detained. But things went ill in his absence, and when he came back in 1523, restored to his office, Conn O’Neill acted as his sword-bearer. But the English Crown had some reason to fear the greatness of all these kings and earls. Hugh Oge O’Donnell had been on a visit to the court of Scotland, like his father; and though it is said that he advised James IV against invading Ireland, no doubt the project was discussed. There was more danger in Munster. Henry VIII being at war with France in 1523, the ruling Earl of Desmond entered into corres- pondence with the French king, Francis I. News of this came to the English court, and Desmond was ordered to London. When he refused to appear in London, Kildare as Deputy was ordered to make him prisoner. But Desmond retreated before him, and Kildare was again accused of allowing his kinsman to escape: and in 1528, Desmond was again intriguing abroad, this time with the Emperor Charles V, for an expedition from Spain. Desmond claimed that he could put ten thousand men into the field. He had a trading fleet of his own, worked by Irish seamen. But he admitted that he lacked artillery. The emperor sent an envoy who reported that Desmond’s guard was admirably furnished with mail, and that his dominions seemed to be the best governed in Ireland. In short, he was a formidable independent Norman- Irish prince, not a subject; and he was allied by marriage to the independent kingdom of Thomond, his wife being an O’Brien princess. And Thomond again was allied to the Burkes of Clanrickarde. It is not surprising that England was uneasy. THE END OF FEUDALISM IAI In 1527, as before, Kildare, who was in truth perfectly loyal to the king, succeeded in downfacing his accusers and returned to his office. In 15209, the rebellious Earl of Desmond died, leaving no son, and the danger in Munster lessened. But meantime, Kildare, besieging a castle on the borders, got a bullet wound which partly paralysed him and affected his speech. Meantime also, the quarrel was growing up which had so disastrous results in Ireland. Henry VIII had quarrelled with the Pope, and set up his claim to be head of the Churchin his own dominions. The house of Ormond was connected by marriage with Sir Thomas Boleyn, Anne’s father, and could naturally be expected to side with the king, who wanted to make their cousin his queen. But neither Kildare nor Desmond could be so counted on. Wolsey’s successor, Thomas Cromwell, was eager to destroy the Geraldine power, and, in 1534, the earl was once more accused and brought to London. He appointed his son to act as Deputy in his absence. This young man, only twenty one, was splendid in appearance, and much loved by all the Geraldine clan, who called him Silken Thomas. The Earl in London, ill able to speak, lacked his former power to rout his accusers. He was long detained, and in summer Sir Thomas Skeffington one of his enemies, was appointed Deputy. A deep plot was laid, and one of the Geraldine clan received a letter reporting, falsely, that the earl had been executed, and that his son would presently suffer the same. Silken Thomas took the advice of those who urged rebellion. While the Council, or Cabinet, was sitting in St. Mary’s Abbey, he rode up from Maynooth with his troop of horse, 142 HISTORY OF IRELAND entered the Chamber, and flung down the Sword of State. ‘‘I am none of Henry’s Deputy, I am his foe,’’ he said. The Archbishop of Armagh, then Lord Chancellor, pleaded with the young man. But Thomas’s retinue laughed at his ‘‘ preaching,’’ and the hereditary bard of the Kildares, O’Kennedy, chanted a song in Irish describing the glory of the Geraldines in war. And so the rebellion began. Silken Thomas then wrote to the head of the Ormond family in Ireland, offering to divide the kingdom with him. But the Butler answered that he would rather die his enemy than live his partner. All the Irish of Leinster, and Thomas’s cousin, Conn O’Neill of Tyrone, took the freld. But they were not strong enough to capture Dublin; and the Butlers, though defeated, still resisted. The Desmond earldom was in feeble hands; yet its rulers and Conor O’Brien, the last independent King of Thomond, renewed their correspondence with the emperor, asking for help, especially for munitions. Help did not come, and artillery proved decisive. After many months of desultory war, Skeffington, the Deputy, brought cannon against Maynooth, which all Ireland believed to be impregnable. But the guns breached it. The Kildare stronghold fell, and all the garrison were put to death. After this, support fell away from Silken Thomas. He was now the Earl, for his father had died in prison; and when Lord Leonard Grey came over to carry on the war, he surrendered, hoping for protection because Grey’s sister had been second wife to Earl Garrett Oge. He was sent to London, and there, after some months, he and five of his father’s brothers were put to death. Yet there THE END OF FEUDALISM 143 was still a male heir to the Geraldines—the twelve- year old son of Garrett Oge by his second marriage; and this boy was living in Offaly, where O’Conor’s wife was also of the Kildare house. He had small- pox, but in spite of his illness he was carried across the Shannon to Thomond, where Conor O’Brien gave him protection. For two years this war went on. The king’s forces under Grey—a very able soldier— allied to Butler, were employed to capture the young Geraldine, but the whole of Gaelic Ireland gave him protection. When Thomond was attacked, he was passed into Desmond, and thence to MacCarthy Reagh’s country: later again, back through Desmond, and into Thomond, and through Clanrickarde, up to the Mayo Burkes, who passed the fugitive across the Erne to Tyrconnell. So completely had the Earls of Kildare won Ireland to their side. Finally, however, when Grey had defeated the com- bined forces of O’Neill and O’Donnell, with allies also from North Connacht, the league broke up. Gerald Fitzgerald was smuggled out to Flanders, and one by one the Irish rulers made submission. On the other hand, Henry’s government introduced a new policy. sir Anthony St. Leger came over in 1540 as Deputy, and began negotiations. There had been a disputed succession in Desmond, and the claimant whom the English supported was killed. But now the Irish claimant made full submission and was accepted as earl. Then MacWilliam Burke of Clan- rickarde also gave allegiance, and asked for an earldom. He was told that he must come to London, where Henry desired to impress the Irish with the splendour of his Court. Thomond now found itself 144 HISTORY OF IRELAND left by its allies. Conor, the last independent king, had died in 1539, and the new ruler, Murrough, decided also to submit. O’Neill did the same, and was solemnly invested as Earl of Tyrone by Henry in person. Burke and O’Brien were in the same way made Earls of Clanrickarde and of Thomond. O’ Donnell also submitted. A Parliament was held in Dublin in 1541, at which nearly all the leading Gaelic chiefs were present, though not as members of it. This was an immense change. It meant that the sovereignty of the English king was admitted in every part of Ireland, and also that the Irish kings renounced their own kingship and accepted the position of territorial nobles under the English Crown, having titles that would pass according to the English law of succession. Thus the right which the peoples in their territory possessed of choosing their ruler was abolished. Also, it meant that the ruler was now given as his personal property the land which he enjoyed as chief. The only power given to him in his country was the power of 4 landlord; but by English law the landlord had power over the tenants and tillers of the soil which no Irish ruler possessed. But these changes were not really accepted in Gaelic Ireland. They were resisted by the nobles in each kingdom, who thought they had a chance of becoming rulers, and were now cut out by the new law. In Thomond, after a long struggle, the earldom %yecame a settled thing. In Tyrconnell, it was not accepted. In Tyrone, resistance to the principle caused fierce wars. But the real cause why Henry VIII’s policy of THE END OF FEUDALISM 145 conciliation Failed, was that he did not enlist the Irish people as a whole on his side. It was never made the law that Irish men of the native race should have equal rights before the law with the settlers and their descendants. All that had been done was to give a certain number of Irish chieftains the same rights as were possessed by English nobles in their territory. They acquired the same rights as English nobles had against the “‘ mere Irish.’?~ But the ‘‘ mere Irish’’ received no advantage to compensate them for the protection which they had from Irish law under a native Irish ruler. Also, the new trouble had begun, that was to lead to horrors in Ireland far worse than any yet. When all Ireland outside the Pale and the Butler territory rose in defence of the young Geraldine, priests and friars inflamed the resistance by preaching that Henry was a heretic, and that resistance was a sacred duty. Yet the conflict did not become extreme at once. When submission was made in 1541, those Irish and Norman Irish who attended the Parliament agreed to recognise the king’s sovereignty, and to renounce ‘the Bishop of Rome.’’ They admitted Henry’s claim to be head of the Church, and Henry VIII emphasised it by changing his title. Henry II had claimed to hold Ireland by the Pope’s grant, and had adopted the title ‘‘Dominus Hiberniz.’’ Henry VIII changed this to ‘« King of Ireland.’’ But it is certain that when the Earl of Desmond, the rulers of Tyrone, Tyrconnell, Thomond, and the rest agreed to ‘‘ renounce the Bishop of Rome,’’ they had no sort of idea that they were asked to change their religion. (D 574) F CHAPTER XV. The Refermation and the Beginnings of Confiscation. THE close of Henry VIII’s reign is the middle point in the history of England’s rule in Ireland. Even at the end of the first three hundred and seventy years, con- quest was not complete. But under the Great Earls, Gael and Anglo-Irish had drawn closer together: and now St. Leger’s rule was recognised as just. When he was accused, the Norman-Irish Earl of Desmond with the Irish Earls of Tyrone and Thomond as well as other Gaelic nobles, wrote to praise him, saying that the oldest man in Ireland had not seen the country so peaceful as under his rule. From this time onward, the history changed terribly for the worse. Religion embittered the whole. In England, as in Scotland, a popular movement among the poor had spread the new teaching very widely, but this had no counterpart in Ireland; and no attempt was made in Henry VIII’s reign to convert Ireland to Protestantism or to introduce it by force. During the centuries of Norman rule, Ireland showed no special religious fervour, though the monks and friars, especially the Franciscans, did much good work; and they were not accused, even by their opponents later, of such faults of morals as were charged against them elsewhere. But in Europe the Reformation had produced a Counter-Reformation, 146 THE BEGINNINGS OF CONFISCATION 147 and the Jesuit Order was founded by Ignatius Loyola. In 1542, some of his companions, chosen by him, undertook a mission to stir up religious zeal in Ireland. They got no encouragement, and in six weeks were forced to quit the country.. But under the boy king, Edward VI, active Protestants came into power; and, by a simple order in the king’s name, the saying of Mass was forbidden, and the use of the Anglican service ordered. Very few Protestant divines made any attempt to teach the new doctrines, and those who did, knew no Irish. It is not sur- prising that Protestantism made no advance, and that Catholics in Ireland began to be anti-English. Then came the reign of Queen Mary. No Protes- tants in Ireland were persecuted for their belief, for there were none to persecute. Some of the Catholic bishops who had been deprived were put back. These were nearly all English, for the order had had no effect in Gaelic Ireland. As for the right to make and unmake bishops, the Catholic Queen Mary claimed it just as her father did; and she restored nothing to the monasteries, much of whose property had been confiscated under Henry VIII. Also, in the reign of this Catholic sovereign, the policy was begun which led to sixty years of almost continuous war and to another century of war at intervals. Under Edward VI, English forces had driven out ‘the chiefs of the O’Mores from Leix, and of the O’Conors from Offaly, and posted garrisons there. It was now proposed to ‘‘ plant’’ these countries with English. Speculators undertook to pay rent for tracts of the land and settle them with colonies of English farmers—who must be armed men. O’Mores and O’Conors were put out of their hereditary lands. 148 HISTORY OF IRELAND This was a terrible injustice, because these Irish were the queen’s subjects, whose rulers had made sub- mission lawfully under Henry VIII. Leix was turned into Queen’s County, with Maryborough for its chiet town; and Offaly into King’s County, and Fort Dangan became Philipstown. This was a very different way of dealing with Ireland either from that of Kildare—who had married his sister to the chief of Offaly—or of St. Leger, who proposed that O’Conor Faly should get a peerage. Neither O’Conors nor O’Mores submitted, and the war to drive them out lasted fifty years. Other causes of war broke out in Clanrickarde and in Thomond, where the earls created by Henry VIII died. Their sons now inherited by law; but in both regions a rival claimant had popular support, and was by Gaelic law entitled to be chosen as chief. In each case, however, this was finally settled according to English law, and the Earl of Thomond and the Earl of Clanrickarde both became a support to the English rule. But in Tyrone it was not so. When Conn Bacagh O’Neill was created earl, he insisted that his legitimate son, Shane, then an awkward, backward boy, should be passed over, and that an elder son, Mathew, of illegitimate birth, should be created Baron of Dungannon, with right to succeed to the earldom. But Shane grew up into a formidable youth, and asserted his title and made war on Mathew the Baron, who was killed. Next year, the old Earl Conn died, and Shane was chosen O’Neill by the people. But Mathew had left two sons, and by English law the elder was entitled to inherit the earldom. Thus, when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1550, she found her first great Irish war ready made. THE BEGINNINGS OF CONFISCATION 149 Shane was asserting himself on all sides. He attacked the O’Donnells, who at first inflicted a great defeat on him by the ford at the head of Lough Swilly at Letterkenny—the scene of many battles. But two years later he surprised Calvagh O’Donnell, and carried him off a prisoner, and took his wife. Having crippled Tyrconnell, Shane struck south as well, and soon made himself lord of all Ulster—and even to the very Boyne at Drogheda. But he was hampered by having on his flank the growing power Seine we ocottish:’ }Gaels* and) their chiefs the MacDonnells, who now held the Antrim coast from Dunluce, their great fortress, to Island Magee. Also, Shane had the greater part of the old Anglo- Irish against him, and some of the Irish. On one expedition, Elizabeth’s Deputy took the field, atterrded by five Irish earls: Gerald of Kildare (who had been pardoned and restored in Mary’s reign): Ormond (Elizabeth’s cousin and friend whom she called ‘‘Black Tom’’), Desmond, Clanrickarde, and Thomond. But they could effect nothing; and Sussex, having also failed to induce one of Shane’s servants to poison his master, made terms. On a safe conduct signed by the five Irish earls, Shane went to London, attended by his gallowglasses, who, with their moustaches, leathern mantles, long swords and axes, made a great sensation. For a year he was kept at Elizabeth’s Court, and meanwhile in Ireland the elder son of Mathew Baron Dungannon was murdered. Elizabeth ordered the surviving son to be fetched and brought up at her Court. This was the famous Hugh O’Neill. Then at last Shane was allowed to return. His power grew fast, and he inflicted heavy defeat on the 150 HISTORY OF IRELAND MacDonnells and then forced them to surrender Dun- luce by threatening to starve their chief, Sorley Boy, who was his prisoner. He refused the Earldom of Tyrone with contempt. His ancestors, he said, were kings of Ulster, and he would keep their lands. ‘* With this sword I won them, and with this sword I will keep them.’’ The English admitted that they could do nothing to curb this hard fighter. But Shane fell by his own countrymen. A new O’Donnell, Hugh Dubh, had succeeded to Calvagh, Shane’s prisoner; and, in 1567, Shane advanced to conquer Tyrconnell. Hugh had only four hundred men to stand against the enemy when Shane and his men forded the Swilly at low tide. But they fought so bitterly that they routed the O’Neill host, whose retreat was now cut off by the rising flood. Shane escaped almost alone, and he had foes everywhere. By a desperate resolve he pushed to the encampment of the MacDonnells, near Cushendun in the Glens. He had Sorley Boy with him, still his prisoner, and hoped to be saved in exchange. But in a quarrel after dinner the MacDonnells stabbed him to death, and his head was taken to Dublin Castle. So ended Elizabeth’s first great war; or rather, so it was ended for her. Shane O’Neill fought for his own hand, but also for the traditional Gaelic order which had been surrendered by all Gaelic Ireland under Henry VIII. The later wars in this reign were made by men fighting for two things: to keep their land and to keep their religion. Elizabeth the Protestant approved the policy of ‘‘ plantation ’’ as thoroughly as did the Catholic Mary, and carried it out as ruthlessly. THE BEGINNINGS OF CONFISCATION 15! In considering this very horrible period in Irish history, we have to try to be fair. No one can reasonably blame Elizabeth or any other of the English sovereigns for keeping possession of Ireland, or using all honourable means to put down rebellion. No prince would have felt justified then in surren- dering territory. But it was understood that a prince should do justice between his subjects: and treachery was condemned. It shows a lowered standard of morals that Elizabeth’s Deputy should write to her of his repeated attempts to poison Shane. And as the reign advanced, treachery grew blacker and more murderous. The only explanation, and it is not an excuse, is that the Englishmen of Elizabeth’s day did not admit that Irishmen had the right to fair dealing. This was very different from Kildare’s standard: and indeed, even in this reign, Ormond, on the Queen’s side, always dealt fairly. But it was an age of adventurers. The world had run mad with hearing the tales of Spain’s conquests in America. And Elizabeth’s courtiers, vying with the Spaniards in enterprise, vied also with them in ruthlessness and cruelty. It may be said with justice that Elizabeth had no choice but to fight Shane O’Neill. He rebelled against the policy which had been accepted by the whole of the Irish nobles in the day of Henry VIII; and he refused to accept the position of an Irish noble hold- ing rank from the English Crown. But the later and far more destructive wars of her long reign were wars into which the Irish were driven. Her government was the worst that Ireland had yet known because it was the most unjust. 152 HISTORY OF IRELAND Mary had begun the policy of confiscating the lands of the native Irish and allowing English adven- turers to buy them for settlement. Elizabeth carried this much further. In Ireland, which for nearly four hundred years had been under the British Crown, she gave license to private adventurers to occupy and settle tracts of it by force of arms. This was done even in cases where the chief occupying the territory had stood by the English. Sir Bryan MacPhelim O’Neill, chief of the O’Neills of Clandeboye, who had fought hard against Shane, was in this way driven into revolt. Then he submitted; his surrender was accepted; but finally he and his nobles were invited to a banquet by Essex, Elizabeth’s favourite courtier, then Governor of Ulster. The whole—over two hundred people—were treacherously massacred. Three years later, a section of the O’Mores in Leix who had made terms with the English, were summoned for a peaceful parley to the Rath of Mullaghmast. Again there was a sudden attack by a concealed body of soldiers, and the whole party was slain. In both these cases, those who organised the butchery were rewarded with the lands of those who were slain. It is true that the original Norman conquest was a series of confiscations after killing. But these things happened under Elizabeth in a land which Elizabeth’s predecessors had claimed to rule for centuries. Naturally, all the Irish were led to believe that they could expect no justice from the English Crown; and the English Crown was now undertaking to govern Ireland directly through its own appointed ministers, and no longer through the great Anglo- Irish nobles, who shared Irish feelings. THE BEGINNINGS OF CONFISCATION 153 Even after the fall of the Kildares had abolished such rule in the northern half of Ireland, the Earl of Desmond remained supreme in Munster. For the greater part of Elizabeth’s reign, up to 1578, the Lord Deputy was Sir Henry Sidney, father of the famous Philip, and also a man of high honour and ability. Understanding that Munster and Connacht could not be governed like the Pale, his policy was to set up a government in each of these provinces under a President named from England, but having a local Council. When the Earl of Desmond caused trouble, he arrested him and sent him to London. Desmond himself would have submitted; but a rebel- lion of the Geraldines was headed by the earl’s cousin, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. Sidney dealt with this by prompt action, without slaughter. Peace seemed to be restored. But Fitzmaurice fled to Spain. Here, two things must be remembered. On the one hand, Fitzmaurice could never have stirred up the rebellion, for Sidney was both feared and respected, were it not that the treatment of the Kildares, and much more lately of Sir Bryan O’Neill and of the O’Mores, had led everyone in Ireland to expect barbarous injustice from Elizabeth’s Government. On the other hand, Elizabeth had a reason to fear Ireland which no English sovereign ever felt before her. Under her reign, England had become a great Protestant power; and the great Catholic powers in Europe, especially Spain, were urged by the Catholic Church to crush England. Religion was by no means their sole motive, but it was one of their motives. Now, Ireland was entirely Catholic. So far as the mass of the people was concerned, no one had tried 154 HISTORY OF IRELAND to convert them to Protestantism. Their leaders, both Irish and Norman-Irish, were Catholic—except Elizabeth’s cousin, the Earl of Ormond. But by an order of the Government, Protestant clergy had been put in possession of their churches wherever the English rule was strong, and a law was passed for- bidding celebration of Mass. As a consequence, missionaries from Rome, especially the Jesuits, were working among them with great fervour; and these men, risking their lives for what they believed, had a great effect. Elizabeth was bound to assume that Ireland was hostile to her, as a Protestant sovereign. And she knew also that Spain would gladly help revolt in Ireland. Yet nobody seriously attempted to force the re- formed religion on Connacht, or on Munster outside of the towns; and, in Ulster, Tyrone and Tyrconnell were still independent. In Connacht and Thomond a commission was set up to distribute authority and fix the ownership of land. The Earls of Clanrickarde and Thomond guided the settlement, and though the English system was substituted for the Irish, a numerous gentry of small landholders, mainly Gaelic, was put in possession. It may be regarded as the first Land Act—an attempt to do justice by English ideas. This ‘‘ Composition of Connacht’’ was cer- tainly accepted by Connacht generally. Munster might also have been pacified; but, in 1579, James Fitzmaurice landed in Kerry from Spain—accom- panied by priests who preached rebellion as a sacred duty. After hesitation, the Earl of Desmond joined. Even in the Pale, an Anglo-Irish Catholic lord—Lord THE BEGINNINGS OF CONFISCATION 155 Baltinglass—fell in. Insurrection spread in Ulster. But Hugh O’Neill, Baron of Dungannon since his brother’s death, refused to join it. A small force of Spaniards landed at Smerwick in the Dingle peninsula, and entrenched themselves at a place called Fort del Oro—Dutnandir. But they were not strong enough to take the field: and the Lord Deputy, Grey, came down with cannon and breached the defences. The Spaniards surrendered, and were all put to the sword. After this, Grey set himself to beat down war by destroying all food in West Munster; and Desmond, at large in the northern part, did the same by Ormond’s territory. Famine was universal. Inthe end, the Government and Ormond triumphed, and Desmond was captured and slain. Then peace was restored. In 1585, a Parlia- ment was summoned by the Lord Deputy Perrott, at which nearly all the chiefs of Gaelic Ireland were present, and Hugh O’Neill was made Earl of Tyrone. Once more Ireland might have been pacified by jus- tice. But injustice was done. The country over which Desmond had _ ruled was treated as forfeit and divided up among English adventurers. Over 200,000 acres were granted to ‘undertakers ’’ who undertook to plant none but English. Yet, in point of fact, though men could be found in plenty to own land and charge rent for it, English settlers ready to work it were few; and the Irish crept back, illegally, paying bribes to return and till the land as before. But there was this difference, that their new masters could exact from them what- ever they chose, CHAPTER XVI. Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell. HISTORY teaches everywhere that in the rule of one race by another, injustice produces rebellion. It teaches also that such rebellion is held, by those who have done the injustice, to prove wickedness in those who rebel, and to justify other and greater severities. Relations between England and Ireland, which in the reign of Henry VIII seemed turning to something better than they had been, were under Elizabeth made worse than ever; and the poet Spenser, who lived some years in Ireland, though a gentle and humane man in his poetry, did not hesitate to recommend killing out the whole native Irish race. By general agreement, England’s dealings with Ireland have been the least creditable thing in England’s history—and students ought to understand why. At this period the actions of the ruling power were not only unjust, but brutal and treacherous to a degree which cannot be excused even by the stan- dards of that time. And when the stronger and more civilised power is unjust, brutal, treacherous, to the weaker, one of the worst results is that the weaker also is demoralised. We may as well seek to justify the proceedings of the Inquisition in Spain as those of Elizabeth’s Government in Ireland: and each injustice, being committed and condoned, led always to worse. 156 HUGH O’NEILL AND HUGH O’DONNELL_ 157 In Connacht, Sir Richard Bingham was President of the Province. Sir John Perrott, the Lord Deputy, appointed a Commission to enquire into his conduct, which found him guilty of breaking faith in his public actions and of permitting his troops to commit outrages. But Bingham appealed to the queen, and was kept in his position. Meanwhile in the north a gross act of public treachery had been committed. For more than a hundred years the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell had been in alliance with the English Crown, though retaining their independence. Hugh Dubh O’Donnell, who still reigned, had overthrown Shane O’Neill. In 1585, he had attended Perrott’s Parliament. He was old now, and had been twice married. His second wife was daughter of MacDonnell of the Glens, and grand- daughter of the Earl of Argyll; and his eldest son by her was a youth of great promise. It was intended that this son, called Red Hugh, should succeed Hugh Dubh, and everything was done to strengthen his influence. He was sent to be fostered in several households, not in one only. Among them was that of O’Cahan, chief among the chieftains in Tyrone. Finally, while still a mere boy, he was betrothed and married to Hugh O’Neill’s daughter. All this showed an intention to league together the three Gaelic powers of the north which had always been weakened by fighting among each other. And so Perrott, Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy, was anxious to. get possession of the boy. He therefore chartered a ship, loaded it with wine and ale, and sent it round to Lough Swilly. He probably had knowledge that Red Hugh was at this 153 HISTORY OF IRELAND time staying with his foster-father, MacSwiney Doe, whose castle on Sheephaven was within an easy ride of Rathmullen, where the ship lay off the castle held by another MacSwiney. Hugh, as was expected, came over to the port on an excursion, and the MacSwiney of Rathmullen sent down to the ship for wine to entertain him and his company. Answer came that all the wine for sale was sold, but that if some of the gentlemen would come to the ship they should get entertainment. The party rowed out to the vessel, and only a few were allowed on board; wine was served in the cabin, and while the guests were drinking, the hatchway was shut down, sail was got on the ship, and she went out of Lough Swilly with the kidnapped prisoners. The boy was put into Dublin Castle. There he lived with a score of other hostages of the Irish. and Anglo-Irish, kept in durance like himself. They talked together, naturally, of England’s injustice, and the wrongs of the Irish. At this time, Hugh O’Neill had never drawn sword against the queen, but often against her enemies. He had been brought up at the English Court, had learnt soldiering in England, and was the personal friend of Elizabeth’s counsellors, to whom he wrote asking that his son-in-law should not be unjustly imprisoned. But Elizabeth herself directed that Red Hugh and the other young nobles who had been captured in his company should on no account be released. Perrott’s stroke of policy pleased her. In the meantime, FitzWilliam, Perrott’s successor, sent a force of soldiers, who occupied the monastery of Donegal and committed much violence on the people. Red Hugh lay in prison for three vears. HUGH O’NEILL AND HUGH O’DONNELL ~ 159 Then he broke out with two other Donegal lads, a MacSwiney and an O’Gallagher, and escaped to the mountains where O’Toole, who held Glencullen, sheltered him, and sent for support to a stronger chief, Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne from Glenmalure. A flood stopped the O’Byrnes, and the fugitives were retaken. Hugh was now kept inirons. More than a year later, choosing Christmas night, he broke out again, this time with two sons of Shane O’Nelill. Feagh MacHugh had a guide to meet them. But snow fell, they were in no marching trim, and their guide had to leave them and fetch help. By the time he got back, one of the O’Neills was dead, and Hugh was at death’s door. Both his feet were frozen, and his great toes had to be cut off. He was indeed so ill that the escape north from Wicklow was doubly painful and difficult. Skill and courage accomplished it. All the fords of the Liffey were closely watched, but no one thought of his crossing where he did, at the very gate of Dublin Castle. He got shelter at Mellifont, which, after the dispossession of the monks, had been made over to Sir Garrett Moore; made his way through Dundalk, and so to Tyrone, where O’Neill received him secretly and forwarded him home to Ballyshannon. Immediately, this remarkable young man gathered a force and drove the English garrison out of Donegal. After this, Hugh Dubh resigned the power, and Red Hugh was solemnly chosen as chief. Hugh O’Neill had many bitter enemies, chief among them Bagenal, Provost Marshal of the queen’s armies. His sister had met Tyrone at the house of some English nobles in the Pale, had fallen in love with the 160 HISTORY OF IRELAND earl, who sought her in marriage. When Bagenal refused his consent, she eloped with her lover and they were married. But O’Neill did his utmost to avoid war against the queen. It is probable that he desired to have in Ulster such a position as Ormond had in the south. When the’Lord Deputy called for forces to subdue Maguire of Fermanagh who had revolted, Tyrone prevented Red Hugh from joining Maguire, and took the field himself with the English army; but Bagenal, who commanded the English, quarrelled violently with his ally. Very soon O’Donnell was actively at war in support of Maguire: Enniskillen was recovered, and Red Hugh invaded Sligo and destroyed the castle there and thirteen others. By this time, both Red Hugh and O’Neill were negotiating with the King of Spain, and Red Hugh pushed his conquests in Connacht right down to Galway. A new military governor, Clifford, marched on the Erne to reach Tyrconnell, and he had the support of both Clanrickarde and Thomond, Catholic Irish chieftains, with whom fair dealing had been used. They crossed the Erne, and besieged Bally- shannon Castle, but could not take it, and O’ Donnell cut off their supplies and blocked all the regular fords over the Erne. The whole army must have surren- dered but that Clifford, a fine soldier, led his army across a most perilous passage above the salmon leap at Assaroe, which is called The Ford of the Heroes. He lost men there; he lost more in the retreat; but for his skill he would have lost all. The result was a severe check for the English. Finally, in 1598, an attempt in great force was made to reduce Tyrone, who was now openly supporting O’Donnell. The HUGH O’NEILL AND HUGH O’DONNELL 161 command of the army—four thousand foot, three hundred and twenty horse, with four guns—was entrusted to Tyrone’s' brother-in-law, Bagenal, Marshal of Ulster. They met little serious opposition till they reached Armagh, which had been throughout this year in English hands. Their objective was to relieve an important fort recently erected called Port- more, which commanded the ford of the Blackwater, and so gave access to the heart of Tyrone’s country. Tyrone’s army was drawn up and entrenched at a place called the Yellow Ford, about three miles out of Armagh; O’Donnell was present, and provided about half the Irish force. The English had to pass through a bog before they reached the main trench, and they were attacked from both flanks. Struggling over the trench, they were sharply attacked and driven back on it. Bagenal was shot dead. The heaviest gun stuck in the bog, and its gun-team of oxen was shot down by O’Donnell’s marksmen. Finally, a powder- cart blew up, and all was confusion. About half the force were lost. No such defeat had been inflicted on the English in Ireland since the day of the Bruces. Insurrection now spread all over Ireland, though there was no general rising of the Irish. Thomond was divided. In Connacht, some of the O’Conors were opposed to O’Donnell. Of the old Norman-Irish, Clanrickarde was active for the queen; and so, of course, was Ormond. Yet some of the Butler stock, including Lord MountGarrett, because they were Catholics, jomed Tyrone, who by this time definitely took the lead. In Munster, the Geraldines rose and made James FitzThomas their leader. Tyrone, assuming a sovereign right, gave him the title of Earl 162 HISTORY OF IRELAND of Desmond. English partisans called him the ‘*Sugane’’ (or Hayrope) Earl. All the English plantation in Desmond was swept away. Its fate in- cluded Spenser, who had received a castle and lands at Kilcolman, near Buttevant. The queen sent over strong forces under Essex as Lord Lieutenant, but they effected nothing of impor- tance, and suffered considerable reverses. Clifford, now Governor of Connacht, was cut off by Red Hugh in the Curlew mountains, and slain. His men gave way to the terror which the Irish leaders had now inspired. Then Essex decided to parley. Tyrone said: ‘‘ They that are joined with me fight for the Catholic religion and liberties of our country.”’ There is no evidence that he claimed the withdrawal of English sovereignty. He did claim the restoration to their owners of all lands forfeited by confiscation for high treason. This meant undoing the plantations of Mary’s reign as well as of Elizabeth’s. But now Essex was recalled in disgrace, and Lord Mountjoy, a much abler man, was appointed. Sir George Carew, another stout soldier, became Presi- dent of Munster: and they had immense advantage in the possession of better cannon and more powder than Tyrone could procure. Also, in the north an impor- tant move was made which led to the foundation of a city as well as to the crippling of Red Hugh. During the war against Shane O’ Neill, an expedition occupied the hillock of Derry and built a fort there from which expeditions were launched against Shane. But after the explosion of a powder store the place was deserted. Now, in 1598, Sir Henry Docwra was sent to establish a fort there, and he soon built HUGH O’NEILL AND HUGH O’DONNELL 163 housing for a thousand men. Sea-power thus enabled the English to establish themselves in a point to strike at O’Neill and O’Donnell from the rear. Red Hugh, who had gone down to attack Thomond and Clanrickarde, lest they should crush the Desmond revolt, left Derry to be besieged under his cousin, Niall Garbh O’Donnell, an able soldier, but one who thought he had a better right than Red Hugh to be chief. Docwra learnt this and won over Niall, who helped the English to capture the castle at Lifford, commanding the important crossing where the Finn and Mourne meet. Red Hugh had now revolt even in Tyrconnell: and in Munster, Carew hunted down the Sugane Earl, and with Mountjoy was destroying all crops. Then, in 1601, when Tyrone’s power seemed shaken, there came the promised help from Spain. Don Juan de Aquila, a famous general, landed at Kinsale with two thousand five hundred troops, and fortified himself in the town. Pedro Zubiaur, with a thousand men in six ships, having been driven apart from the main body, landed in Castlehaven. O’Sullivan Beare instantly marched from Bantry Bay to join Zubiaur, but the rest of Munster was cowed, and Tyrone and Red Hugh were in the north. Mountjoy and Carew were able to draw their armies together against Kinsale—Clanrickarde and Thomond joining them. Their forces consisted very largely of Irishmen who had been professional soldiers in the service of Irish chiefs, and had been driven to seek their fortunes as mercenaries. The city of Cork was strongly for the English. Tyrone made his way south through the east of the country. Red Hugh had first to put down Niall 164 HISTORY OF IRELAND Garbh’s party in Tyrconnell, and then march down along the Shannon. Carew was detached with strong forces to attack him before he could join Tyrone, but O’Donnell, by a march of forty miles, eluded him. Carew fell back on Mountjoy’s army before Kinsale, and the Irish army drew a line between it and Cork. Tyrone was for waiting till lack of supplies forced the English to move out, but Aquila pressed for an attack, eager to get in Zubiaur’s men. O’Donnell supported his view, and it was settled that the Irish army, having moved by night into its positions, should attack at dawn in three bodies. The movement was ill executed, and when battle was joined, the Irish, who for years had been success- ful, failed hopelessly. There was no great slaughter, but a general rout. Tyrone fell back on his own country, his allies leaving him in all directions. O’Donnell, foreseeing that the Spaniards would be forced to surrender, as it came to pass, decided that the only chance was to go to Spain and urge Philip to renew the attempt. He sailed at once, and was well received with good promises. But Spain delayed long, and, in October 1602, Red Hugh died at Simancas, poisoned by an Irish agent whom Carew had sent out for the purpose. In the north, Tyrone held out in his own country, then densely wooded and almost impassable, especially in the region west of Lough Neagh. The English generals pushed on with their campaign of starvation till Ulster was full of dead bodies—men, women and children. There are horrible descriptions of it. | But Elizabeth was dying, and it was known that her successor, James I of Scotland would make HUGH O’NEILL AND HUGH O’DONNELL 165 easier terms than she with Tyrone. The English authorities, who hated Tyrone, were driven to give him terms that he could accept. Even before the surrender was complete, the queen died, and James of Scotland succeeded. Tyrone abandoned all right to rule as an Irish king, and he got no pledge of equality for the Catholic religion. But he was left Earl of Tyrone, with great possessions. At the same time, Red Hugh’s brother was created Earl of Tyrconnell. So, in 1003, ended the last independent Gaelic king- ship. CHAPTER XVII. The Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster. THE reign of James I marks the turning point in Irish history. Gaelic kingdoms and Norman lordships with their local armies were all at an end. Over the whole country the only army permitted was the army of the Crown, and the same law was administered by the same machinery of courts. One good came of it: there was peace. For nearly forty years, Ireland was free of war except for one brief rising. But it was not a peace that could last, because it was not a peace founded on justice. There was one great difficulty for which the English Government could not be blamed. Ireland had for centuries been “‘ a land of war,’’ with many petty rulers having the right to keep armed men in their employ, and it had become the custom to consider that a man of the class from whom the chiefs came could not honourably be anything but a fighting man. To work was held a degradation. Consequently, the country was full of swordsmen who could be nothing else. Some of them, as was natural, took to robbery; but very many, and especially the best of them, began to go to the continent and find employment in the armies of France or the Netherlands or Spain. The leaders by birth formed regiments from among the poorer people—and the English Government was glad 166 THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER 167 to see this going on. At first they tried to enlist soldiers for the armies of Sweden, then a great Protestant military power—or for the Polish armies, to fight against the Turks. But the Irish, being Catholics, very naturally preferred the Catholic armies, and also liked to make their career somewhere in the nearer parts of Europe instead of going away to the Polish frontier. And gradually a practice grew up of allowing the agents of France and Spain to send over recruiting officers to raise Irish regiments for service under a foreign power. It was a bad expedient, however, that forced a king to try to get tid of his subjects, and if equal chances had been open to them at home, many of the Irish nobles would have settled down either to farm or to enter the professions. But here the way was stopped. In order to enter the professions, they must get education, and there was no education provided in Ireland for Irish Catholics. | Worse than that, Irish Catholics were not allowed to supply themselves with education. For education, also, they had to go abroad. In the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, the English Government had done what should have been done two or three centuries earlier. It established the University of Dublin, and Trinity College was set upon the pattern of a famous college in Cambridge. 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