The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

nce of the local wars, they had lost the concentrating power of the Ard- Righ-when treachery in their own ranks op

o be confronted by a new system which had just conquered Europe, and spread itself round about the apparently doomed island. Of all places it had taken deep root

stion, and its mighty issues, we must state briefly what the chief ch

as the captain of a conquering army; that it had been distributed by him among his followers on c

and political rights were derived from the possession of land; that those who possessed no

es of citizenship; the masses, deprived of all rights, having no share in the government, n

m Germany. The question of its origin is too extensive to be included within our present limi

ess. In course of time the idea of settling down on some territory which they had devastated and depopulated, presented itself to the minds of the rovers. The sea-kong did by the land what he had been accustomed to do by the plunder: he parcelled it out among his faithful fol

um conferred by him, to which certain indispensable conditions were attached. Military duty was the first, but not the onl

ble to carry destruction so far, the inhabitants who survived were reduced to serfdom, and compelled to till the soil for the conquerors; they were thenceforth called villeins or ascripti glebae. It is clear that such on

Normans-followers of William the Conqueror; and, when the time came for treachery to summon the Norman knights to Irish soil

key-stone to the feudal masonry. Not an inch of ground in England was owned save under his authority, as enjoying the supremum dominium. All the land had been granted by his predecessors as fiefs, with the right of reversion to the crown by forfeiture in case of the violation of feudal obligations. Here was no allodial property, no cen

rt. Two of these, Robert Fitzstephens and Maurice Fitzgerald, sailed to the aid of the Ir

that is, successor to the crown, while the Irish, accustomed for ages to admire valor and bow submissively to the law of conquest, admitted the claim. The English adventurer they looked upon as one of themselves

, in the eyes of the Irish, merely a consequence of their own clan system. They understood the homage rendered to him in a very different sense from that attached to it b

igion-the race governed patriarchally by chieftains allied to their subordinates by blood relationship; no unity in the government, no common flag, no private and hereditary property, nothing to bind the tribes together except religion. It was not a nation properly, but rather an agglomeration of small nations often at war each with each, yet all strongly attached to Erin- a mere name, including, nevertherless, the dear idea of country -the chieftains elective, bold, enterprising; the subordinates free, attached to the chief as to a common father, throwing themsel

bishop, the shanachy, head poet, and other civil officers each in his degree, such property was attached to the office and not to the man who filled it, but passed to his elected successor and not to his own children; while the great bulk of the territory belonged to the clan in common. No one possessed the right to al

thousand years. Their ancestors had lived happily under such social con

y introduced among them. Yet, being refined in their tastes, fond of ornament, of wine at their feasts, loving to adorn the persons of their wives and daughters w

hroughout the rest of the island, a fortress or a large town was not to be seen. The people, being all agriculturist

s when used for dwellings; of duns when constructed with a view to resisting an attack. In both cases, they were, in part

al. The Norman invaders, clad in heavy mail, were surprised, therefore, to find themselves face to face with men in their estimation unprotected and naked. More astonished were they

nobility and the poorest of their kinsmen, so different from the haughty bearing of an a

tock, which was destined to give to Europe that great character so superior in our times to that of southern or eastern nations. The natives possessed that strong attachment to their time-hono

struggle between clanship and feudalism. The Irish, as we have seen, knew nothing of individual property in land, nor of tenure, nor of rent, much less of forfeit

ared to consent, because they did not understand it, attaching, as they did, their ow

or submission to temporary conditions guaranteed by hostages. But that the person doing homage became by that act the liegeman of the suzerain for life and hereditarily in his posterity, subject to be deprived of all privileges of citizenship, as well as t

arge and powerful for that time, the Irish people and their chieftains, hoping that he would put an end to the crying tyranny of the Fitzstephens, Fitzgeralds, De Lacys, and others, went to meet him and acknowledge his au

ged by many as monarch of Ireland, thought at first of fighting, but, as was his custom, he ended by a treaty, wherein, it is said, he acknowledged Henry as his suzerain, and thus placed Ireland at hi

These two operations, which we now turn to, opened the eyes of the Irish to the deception which had been

s by Henry II. cantonized among ten of the English nation; and, though they had not gained possession of one-third

grant may be seen in Ware, and it is worthy of perusal as a sample of the many grants which followed it, whereby Henry attempted a total revolution in the tenure of land. The charter givin

ssession of the greatest part of the island, and once the real purpose of the Normans showed itself, they were no longer

emainder was, therefore, to be conquered. And if in Desmond, where the whole strength of the English first fell, they possessed on

rough revolution was intended. The two systems were so entirely antagonistic to each other that the success of the Norman project involved a change of land tenure, laws, customs, dress-every thing. Even the music of the bards was to be silenced, the poetry of the files to be abolished, the pedigrees of families to be discontinued, the very games of the people to be interrupted and forbidden.

which they set about putting it in practice, we have only to extract a few passages f

ish were driven from

astle was in process

r Mas

at Kenlis, the key of those parts of Meath, against t

Meath, and fortified the country with many castles,

ndefinitely; we conclude with the foll

onquered the greater part of Ireland for the English, and of whose English castles all Meath, from the Shannon to the sea, was full, after having finished the castle of Der Magh

r drive out the native race, or at best to make slaves of as many of them as they chose to keep. Thus they had prophecies manufactured for the purpose, and Cambrensis, in his second book, chapter xxxiii., says confi

art of their large estates to their followers that so they might occupy the whole. McGeohegan compiles from Ware the best view of this very interesting and comparatively unexplored subject. Curious details are found there, showing t

d and often captured and destroyed. Strongbow was shut up and besieged in Water- ford, which fell into the hands of the Danes. The latter sided everywhere with the Iri

hlin first tried persuasion, but in conference with De Lacy he dared inveigh loudly against the King of En

ers to invade my patrimony. Avaricious and sparing of his own possessions, he is lavish of those of others,

ger from the hand of Raymond Legros, and, after being

peared on the scene, beat the English at Thurles,

shop of Tuam, Lawrence O'Toole, of Dublin, and Concors, Abbot of St. Brendan, the Treaty of Windsor was concluded, which wa

as pay only tribute, though they are placed by Bodin in the first degree of subjection, yet are not properly subjects, but sovere

reign Lord over the Irish, yet did he not put those thin

ch King Henry II. had not in Ireland, but the Irish lords did still retain all those prerogatives to themselves. For they governed their people by the Brehon law; they appointed their own magistrates and

they could enjoy their customs in peace, as far as the letter of the law went. Many acts of Irish par

meeton their ancient accustomed hills, where they debated and settled matters according to the Brehon laws, between f

ings, and seen "the crowds in long lines, coming down the hills in the wake of each chi

lishing the "Senchus Mor" in which the Irish law is contained. It is known that it existed previous to the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and that the laws of tanistry and of gavelkind, the customs of gossipred and of fostering, were of pagan origin. Patrick revised the code an

hereat they begin children, and hold on sixteen or twenty years, conning by rote the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Civil Institutes, and a few other parings of these two faculties. I have seen them where they kept school, te

t, or the inferior one of a single noble family-sat at certain appointed times, in the open air, on a hill g

hey preferred their own, as not coming from cold and pagan Scandinavia, but from the warm south, the greate

erior to Henry II., and which the English derived chiefly from the Christian civil and canon law; but of those feudal enactments, w

upreme ruler became really owner of the integral soil, which he distributed

t in that country since the days of William the Conqueror, and in Ireland since the English "planta

sense, to wardships and impediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to what English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times more strictly observed in

l exchequer, and a correspondingly heavy tribute laid on the vassal. So profitable did the English kings find this law, that they speedily introduced it into Church affairs, every bishop's see or

laws, which forbade any man to hu

d, which Sir James Ware comp

gh him, the chief rights of sovereignty over the whole island, except Leinster and, perhaps, Meath. But, at the same time, a passage o

long as they remained faithful to their oath of allegiance. We see here the same confusion of ideas, which we remarked on the meaning given to the word homage by either party. The

uently, all the horrors of the times subsequent to the Protesta

selves two races of m

he one side, and th

having concluded su

esolved to push its

itter

ate the whole island. Yet they are bound to allow the Brehon Irish to live in their midst, governed by their own customs and laws. Moreover, they acknowledge that the former great Irish lords of the very cou

at of war; subject only to tribute. But, at the same time, this independence is rendered absolutely insecure by the imposition of conditions, whose m

ich raged for four centuries, until a new and more powerful incentive to slaug

ious Irish lords at Waterford, where he landed. "The young English gentlemen," says Cambrensis, who was a witness of the scene, "used the Irish chieftains with scorn, because," as he says, "their demeanor wa

s, and Ireland, took good care to limit the authority of this prelate to those parts of Ireland which lay under the jurisdiction of the Earl of Moreton- that is, of John, brother to Richard. He had power to exercise his

ing the latter to effect the conquest of the island in the king's name. This was assuredly a last resource, which history has never recorded of any other nation warring on a rival. But even in this

ictorious over all, without blood or sweat; only that little canton of land, called the English Pale, containing

he Liffey, subject to the constant annoyance of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, and O'Cavanaghs. A

the Northmen, into the most distant parts, modified and mitigated in some instances by the innate power of resistance left by former institutions. In this small island alone, where clanship still held its own, feudali

ally overcome and won over by the example of their antagonists, renouncing their fe

Thomond salutem." The same English monarch was compelled to give O'Neill of Ulster the title of Rex, after having used, inadvertently perhaps, that of Regulus.-(Sir John Davies.) Both O'

o their customs of gossipred, fostering, tanistry, gavelkind, and other usages, which the parliaments of Drogheda, Kilkenny, Dublin, Trim, and other places, were soon to

as to choose wives from among the native families. In fact, there lay a great example before their eyes from the outset, in the marriage of Strongbow with Eva, the d

rn in the island, and soon came to be known as degenerate English.-That degeneracy was merely the moral effect of constant intercourse wit

wedding Irish wives, sent their own children to be fostered by their Irish friends; and the children naturally came from the nursery more Irish than their fathers. They objected no long

English castle as well as in the Irish rath.1 (1 The process of gaining over an Englishman to Irish manners is admirably described in the "Moderate Cavalier," under Cromwell, quoted by Mr. J.

l exactions and penalties from the impossibility of enforcing the feudal laws on Irish territory, alarmed the Anglo-Normans by birth, in wh

on of it by Ware is under the year 1333, as late as Edward III., more than one hundred and fifty years after the Conquest. But the need of stringent rules to keep the Irish at bay, and prevent the English from "degenerating

English institution in the manner described by Ware under the year 1413: "On the 11th of the calends of February, the morrow after St. Matthias day, a Parliament began at

which go by the name of the "Statutes of Kilkenny

rrived; for all its acts were directed against the Irish and the degenerate English-against the latter particularly. How the members composing these Parliaments were elected at that time we do not know; but they were not summoned from more than twelve co

nctly than any thing else could do the points at variance between the two nations. Our space, however, and indeed our purpose, forbids this. In order to

tter ruin and destruction of the commonwealth." And then the Statutes go on to enact -we cull from various chapters: "The English cannot any more make peace or war with the Irish without special warrant; it is made penal to the English to permit the Irish to send their ca

what degree the posterity of the first Norman invaders of Ireland

ound nothing but what was contemptible in this nation, so strange to their eyes, who looked upon them as an easy victim to be despoiled of their land, and that land to be occupied by them, that posterity adopted, within, comparatively speaking, a few years, the life and manners of the mere Irish in their entirety. Feudalism they renounced for the clan. Each of the great English families that first landed in the island had formed a new sept, and the clans of the Geraldines

er the crown of England intended to make a perpetual separation and enmity between the English settle

on, at a period, too, when the English power was considerably increased, under Henry VIII., a very curious discussion of this possibility, which took place at the time, did not by any means promise an easy realizatio

many subjects to depart out of his regions. . . . But to enterprise the whole extirpation and totall destruction of all the Irishmen of the lande, it would be a marvellous and sumptuous charge and great diffi

rpation of the Irish has been entertained for centuries by a class of English statesmen, and confidently looked

at for a certain time after that Parliament there was peace in the island-leads us to believe the contrary; for if, as he himself justly remarks before, the intention of the legislators was to create a perpetual sepa

laws frequently in subsequent Irish Parliaments proves that they were not

dines of Desmond, who pretended, even after their enactment, to be as independent of them as before, and refused to attend the Parliament when convoked, claiming the strange privilege "that the Earls of Desmond shou

country with instances where some English prelate in Ireland had been prosecuted for having conferred orders on mere Ir

progressed so favorably in this friendly direction, that at length the descendants of Strongbow and his followers became, as is well known, "Hibernis Hiberniores," and the judges sent from England could ho

within their territories and seigniories, but in place thereof both they and their people embraced the Irish customs, then the state of things, like a game at Irish, was so

acter, making headway against apparently insurmountable obstacles, shows itself conspicuously in the Irish, i

ly to occupy the whole territory, subject it to the feudal laws, give to Englishmen the position of f

ds in the other districts of the island. Yet none of his former grants, by which "he had cantonned the whole island between ten Englishmen," were recalled; the continued a

utside of Leinster and Meath had justly forfeited their estates by not fulfilling the conditions virtually contained in the Windsor Treaty, in which they had professed homa

es were no laws at all, and which the Parliament of Kilkenny had declared to be "lewd customs." Henceforth, then, the natives were out of the

with the Irish race and the Irish nature; so that at all times, peace or war, even when the Irish fought in the English ranks, aiding the Plantagenets in their furious contests wi

kill, even though serving under the English crown, at a risk of being fined five marks, to be p

mination in order to see if, at least, it had the merit of finally

lish legists will tell us that those laws were only for the inhabitants of English blood. The mere Irish were always reputed aliens, or, rather, enemies

o be of noble blood-the O'Neills of Ulster, the O'Melachlins of Meath, the O'C

they found themselves on so many occasions ranked as mere Irish, that individuals of those septs, induced by sheer necessity, were often driven, in spite of an almost invincible repugnance, to apply for and accept special

s enjoying the full rights of the lowest English vassals, although their ancestors had been acknow

heir farms, outraging their wives and daughters, killing them, could not subject the guilty to any civil or criminal action at law. In fact, as we have shown, such acts were in accordance with the spirit, even with the letter of the law, so that the criminal, as we should cons

in all works which treat of the subject. Sir John Davies, that great Irish hater, evidently takes a genuine delight in depicting several such inst

insecure, but that the soil would remain in the grasp of the strongest. Any Anglo-No

such measures-a nation, the most ancient in Europe, dating their ownership of the soil as far back as man's memory could go, civilized before Scandinavia became a nest of pirate

over the past, to ignore it, to let the dead bury their dead-all which would be very well, could it be done, and could writers forget to stamp the Irish as unsociable, barbarous, and bloodthirsty, because with arms in their hands, and a fire ardent and sa

sh at first gained on the natives and extended their possessions beyond the Pale, a reaction soon set in-the Irish had their day of revenge, and entered again into possession of the land of which they had been robbed. In order to repair

d purposes of those enactments, we must re

ute, in the usual style, among his followers. He distributed large estates as fiefs among those who had followed his fortunes, but he could not forget his Irish relatives, to whom he had become strongly attached. He secured, therefore, to many Irish families the territory which was formerly theirs, and many of his English adherents, who, like himself, h

Connaught, and around the seaports of Ulster, wherever the English

rritory by the withdrawal of the Anglo-Norman holders of fiefs. Constant border wars, the necessary consequence of the English policy, could not but discourage in course of time many Englishmen, who, owning large possessions also in Engla

l or social alliance with their enemies, these men could not consent to starve and perish on their own soil, in the island which they loved and from which they could not-had they so chosen-escape by emigration. One

it to the grinding feudal laws and exactions, could prevent the English judges, sheriffs, escheators, and other king's officers from exec

y the Irish, if not to extend the English settlements. They saw no other remedy than acts of Parliament, which they thought would at least

of the law, were declared aliens and enemies, and were consequently denied the right of bringing act

ed to the few Irishmen who applied for them, it was expressly stated that they could purchase land for themselves and their heirs, which, without this special provision, they could not do; while for an Englishman to dispose of his landed property by will, gift, or sale to an Irishman, was equivalent to forfeiting his estate to the crown. The officers of the ex

ply a trust for a third person of English race. And the great number of cases in which the inquisitions were set aside, as appears from the Parliament-rolls, for the finding having

rew and increased upon the English, and the Celtic customs overspread the feudal, until at length the administration o

, at the result of more than fou

, and this at a time when Europe had been com

ws on the few every thing meant for all. The Brehon law was in full force all over the island, and if the Irish allowed the English judges to ride on their circuits within the four counties, it was on the full understanding that they would administer their justice only to English subjects, and levy their feudal dues, and pronounce their forfeitures and confiscations on such

d, Thomond, and Connaught. If they chose, they went; if they chose not, they remained at home; and obeyed

anners. In their halls all the old customs of Erin were preserved. One saw therein groups of shanachies, and harpers, and Brehon lawyers, all conversing with their chieftain in the primitive language of the country. Hence were they called degenerate by the "foreigners" living in Dublin Castle. The mansions of the Desmonds, of the Burgos, of the Ormonds, were the headquarters of their respective clans, not the inaccessible fortresses

sm, even when consenting to admit its presence and phraseology. It is a fact not sufficiently dwelt upon, that the few Irishmen, who subsequently consented to receive English titles from the king, were regarded by their countrymen with greater abhorrence than the English them

e of taxation which failed

just allowed what sufficed to support their own life and that of their families, and consequently they could bear no additional tax. But, in the complicated state of society brought about by feudalism, the inferior lord was taxed by his su

of those burdens, and aided the English settled

enuity of the English who were established among them and admitted to all the rights of clanship. We see by documents which have been better studied of

he preface to his edition of the "B

, so that, according to it, man was made for the land rather than the land for man. He was placed on the land with the beasts of the field as far as tillage and production went, until the system should round to perfectio

of new clans, and opened their territories to all who chose to send their horses and kine to graze in the chief's domains. In vain did Irish Parliaments issue writs of forfeiture against the Eng

breach of some new law or ordinance, for the safety of which sheriff he would be held responsible, he replied: "You will do well to l

thing else to give a clear reason fo