The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

parts of the island together, Ireland lost all power of exercising any combined action.

ter, with the exception of the minor differences existing between the native clergy and the English dignitaries, was generally considered as out of the question in their wranglings and contentions. We shall s

lance a moment at the state of the country prior

the 0'Kavanaghs, O'Byrnes, O'Moores and others, retained their customs, their brehon laws, their language and traditions, often

e few Englishmen who had long ago settled in the country had become identified with the natives, ha

he kind in Ireland; not only because it became the occasion of establishing for a lengthy period a real unanimity among the people-giving birth to the nation as it were-bu

." By the enactment of new laws they pronounce the simple attachment to the old religion of the country a denial of sovereign right, and consequently an act of overt treason; and the Irish shall be butchered mercilessly for the

throes of anguish, will lessen their atrocity in the mind of the re

few years before the revolt of Luther, the island was divided into more than six

en easily shaken off. The policy so constantly adopted by England in after-times-a policy well expressed by the Latin adage, Divide et impera-preserved the English power in Ireland, and finally brought the island into outward subjection at least, to Great

n the work of the spoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earl of Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the Dublin Council, to England, to report that "the English laws, manners, and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow compass of twenty miles

silken Thomas" excited the wrath of Henry VIII., and brough

rchbishop of Canterbury, the Reformation began in England with the divorce of the king, who shortly after assumed supremacy i

tter for the destruction of Catholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the English power in Ireland by forcing on that country the supremacy of the king in

s of attaining his object-the subjection of the country. Their report is preserved among the state papers, and some of their suggestions deserve our attentive consideration. If H

g was to exterminate the people; but Henry thought it sufficien

sal. They knew the Irish nation well, and that the only way to sepa

or driven away. Their operations, it is true, were limited to the borders of the Pale. The gentle Spenser, at a later period, proposed to exten

Ireland. Take first from them their corn, and as much as cannot be husbanded, and had into the hands of such as shall dwell and inhabit in their lands, to burn and destroy the same, so

e, condensed, as it were, in a nutshell, and coolly and carefully set forth, the system which was adopted later on, and almost crowned with a fi

te as it was, was fa

t time for "rooting

dergast, in his "

n Settleme

forty years, their firm persuasion in the reign of Henry VIII. was, that the original design was not abandoned. 'Irishmen are of

far as already to contemplate their utter extirpation; but "there was no precedent for it found in the chr

properties," according to some of those projects, "and they only were t

erce and bloody though he was, there was something lion-like in his nature; notwithstanding all those promptings, he left t

ion of the Kildares. We believe that he never contemplated the extirpation of the people, because such a political element could not enter into his

m to his design of having his new title of "Head of the

from end to end, and make "the people," in course of time, really one. These measures were acts of Parliament: 1. Establishing 'the king's spiritual s

See of Dublin, a rank Lutheran at heart, had been commissioned by the king and by Cranmer, his consecrator, to establish the new doctrine at once. His want of success, is

s in their blindness than the saints and martyrs in truth, in the beginning of th

the Archbishop of Armagh, an Englishman himself! So that those prelates of England, who, with the exception of the noble Fisher, had all yielded without a murmur of opposition

the 1st of May, 1536; but, being prorogued, it met again in 1537, and did not complete its work until once more summoned in 1541, when the old Irish element

tly to Dublin again." The chief cause of these interruptions was the difficulty of bringing an Irish Parliament, even when composed of Englishme

each diocese possessed also the right to send there three ecclesiastical proctors, who, by reason of their office, owned neither benefice nor f

scheme devised by Browne and executed by Cromwell. Accordingly, we are not astonished to find that, by an act of despotism not uncommon dur

y was finally obtained; and, lowing the lead of the English Parliament, Henry VIII. and his successors were confirmed in the title of "Supreme Head of the Chu

, conceived the idea of summoning the great Irish chieftains to a new meeting of Parliament, from which he expected that a moral revolution would be effected in the island. Sir Anthony St. Leger, created deputy in August

accept titles. Con O'Neill, the head of the house of Tyrone, went to England, accompanied by O'Kervellan, Bishop of Ologher, and was admitted to an audience by the king. Henry adopted toward those proud Irishmen a policy utterly different from that he had used with the English lords. These l

l. Both received back the lands which they had offered to the king, and their example was followed by a great number of inferior lords. Among them, two Magenisses were dubbed knights; Murrough O'Brien, of North Munster, was mad

lands which had come into their possession from a long line of ancestors, and which really belonged not to them personally, but to the clans whose heads they were

the confiscation of a still greater number on the part of the king was a thing not altogether incompatible with the religion of the monarch, and that the fact o

wished- -and the last session of the previous Parliament of 1536 and the

seats in person, the addresses of the Speaker and of the Lord- Chancellor being interpreted to them in Irish by the Earl of Ormond. An act was unanimously passed, conferring on Henry VIII. and his successors the title of King of Ireland, instead of that of Lord of Ireland, which the English kings, since the da

t in the various sessions that followed, including that of 1541; and yet the Irish chieftains were supposed to have sanctioned it, inasmach as it was a measure previously passed in the same Parliament: and the suppression of various abbeys and monasteries having been openly decreed in the final session, as a result of the king's supremacy-Rome not having been consulted, of course-all the signers of the last decree were supposed to have thereby sanctioned and adopted the previous ones. Thus O'Neill, O'Reilly, O'More, and the rest, without being aware of the fact, became

s, the people, their clansmen, prompted by the vivid impressions and unerring instincts of religious faith and patriotic nationality, which were ever living in their breasts, resented t

us houses, and who had taken any part in the destruction of the religious orders so dear to the Irish heart, were soon made to feel the indignation which those events had excited among the native clansmen, north and south. And those of the chieftain

f O'Neill, but content himself with the title of Earl of Tyrone; while O'Brien was being created Earl of Thomond; McWilliams, Earl of Clanricard; O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell; Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyann; and Fitzpatrick, B

tead his son John the Proud, better known as Shane O'Neill; O'Donnell, on his arrival, met most, of his clan, headed by his son, up in arms against him;

y in their favor. Thus, unanimity no longer marked the decisions of the clans; two parties were formed in each of them, the one national, comprising the great bulk of the people, t

ecame worse confounded. How could the shanachies, bards, and brehons, any longer agree in their pedigrees, songs, and legal decisions? England had thus early adopted in Ireland the stern and coldhearted policy which, centuries later

was always, either in Dublin or London, a sufficient supply of materials out of which crown's chiefs might be manufactured; the government made it part of its po

would have utterly destroyed Irish national feeling, to set up in its place, not only English manners, language, and customs

ing good sense of the people. The national spirit revived among the upper classes, both

rather embracing, clanship, well-nigh destroyed the English power, kept Elizabeth, during the whole of her reign, in constant agitation and fear, and would have succeeded in recovering their independence, and securi

to the vastly-increased and constantly-increasing English power, grew at last to such proportions, and became so discouraging t

of their chieftains, and the determination to repudiate that policy by deposing its supporters

ct, their nationality, and became English subjects. The action of the clansmen reversed all the fatal consequences resulting from those acts. They remained a nation distinct from the English, whose laws they had never either admitted or accepted. And, as the clan spirit declined, under the policy of England, it only made way

ry VIII. acted constantly as though the Irish nation had really subjected itself to English kings and English rule, as though the acceptance of a few titles by a few chieftains (who were deposed by their people as soon as the fact was known) signified an acknowledgment on the part of the Irish people of their absorption by the English feudal

eless. Those Irishmen who subsequently entered into the various Geraldine and Ulster confederacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid, were neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independent state, possessing thei

c feeling of these, nothing remained for the English but to punish the Irish people for their resolve of holding to their religion, and to declare a religi

, a ruling power in the state. And, lest any of our readers should not be convinced that such really was the case, we mention here a fact, which will come more prominently before us in the next chapter, that, at the end of Elizabeth's

en surprised at this, to judge by wh

istinguish its peculiar features, so persistent, so enduring, we may say, indestructible. We shall find that what this people was three hund

t will by the despot. The Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mere oligarchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slaves for mercantile or warlike purposes. In the republics of Greece and Italy, the aris

surging of waves raised to mountain-height by the fury of a sudden storm, but soon allayed and subdued beneath the inflexible will of stern rulers. The people was a mere mob, whose violence, when successful, fatally carried destru

time, kept alive the remnants of slavery which it had found in Europe at its birth, or at best invented serfdom as a somewhat milder substitute for the former degradation of man. But feudalism itself was not strong enough to prevent the natural consequences of the vigorous Christianity which at tha

had an early existence in Italy, where every city almost became a centre of freedom and activity, notwithstanding strife and continual feuds. Thus the people had its life in France, where the learned men of Catholic universities determined with precision the limits of kingly power, and where the o

codes, or at least local customs for its safeguards. It gradually grew into a great power, and took the name of the "Third Estate," ranking directly after the clergy, and nobility. Its members knew and respected the gradations of

e above their order, except through the Church, this unfortunate inability often prevented dangerous and subversive ambitions, and was thus really the source and cause of, happiness to a

n subject to slavery or serfdom, possessed all the liberties which the ordinary class of men can claim. They had always borne their share in the affairs of their own territory, at least by the willing help they afforded to their leaders, during the Danish wars chiefly, and afterward throughout the four hundred years of struggle with the Anglo-Normans. The peo

n considered the right, they were ready to express their disapproval of his actions b

us persecution welded them into one people, yet they were divided and often at war among themselves. But no sooner did the work of perversion make itself felt among them, than w

before, as it could scarcely have originated and swollen to such proportions all at once; but as the stroke of the hammer reveals the spark, so the force of opposition

be. Thus arose a true fraternal union with all their countrymen of whatever county or city. The old antagonism between family and family

nations; and, to a certain extent, it has achieved this task. Differences of character, which are deeply impressed in the nature of various branches of the human family, are indeed never totally obliterated by it; but such diffe

olic existence, and, if the word is self-applied by certain sects, the world laughs at it as a

sh, in their struggle with England, could summon no religious thought to their aid, since England was Catholic also, and the Norman nobles established among them followed the same calendar, possessed the same churches, the same creed, the

castle of the chieftain or the hut of the peasant through the length and breadth of the land. Any Irishman, subject to fine, imprisonment, or torture, for the sake of his religion, did not find sympathy restricted to his own circle of friends or acquaint

ough it was the special object of attack, they were to be stripped one by one of their old customs, their own chieftains, their houses of study and of prayer, their religious and secular teachers, nay, of the chance even of educating their children, of the right to possess not merely their own soil, but eve

t it was their religion, to deprive them of which, all the wealth, resources, armies, laws of a powerful nation, were to be strained to the utmost during long ages. How, then

uctible strength and unwearied energy manifested by Irishmen, from the middle of the sixteenth century down

uch had been the divisions among the people and the chieftains hitherto, that England could attack one sept without fearing the revolt of the others, nay, was often assisted by an adverse clan. And so thoroughly had the Anglo-Normans adopted the native manners, that the Kildares were frequent

ken up were they by the affairs of their own particular locality. And this state of feeling had existed from the beginning, even among holy men. The songs of Columba, of Cormac

t Henry VIII., and Elizabeth after him, gained their successes by directing their attacks agains

irth, before coming forth, and it was only during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign that th

religion was attacked; and therefore do we

tty quarrels and local prejudices in losing their chieftains; they began to look for leaders among themselves, and, understanding at last

n weeping over the fate of her children, calling, with the voice of a stricken mother, those who survive

globe, wherever they may choose their place of exile. And if there still exists among them something of that former predilection for the place where they first sa

as a people, have been oppressed and held in bondage by a stern and powerful nation. They had to defend themselves in turn against the most open and the most in

ses and desolate moors, could we only enter into their feelings and see the working of their minds, we might catch a faint conception of the affection which they must have felt for brothers waging t

struggle of too long duration, their morality too genuine and too pure. For their aim has constantly been to rescue their country; their struggle has lasted nearly three hundred years; their morality has ever been directed by the sweetest religion. Extreme cases of oppression such as theirs may have occasionally given rise to violent o

h manners - a unanimity which the Lutheran Archbishop Browne had foreseen and openly denounced beforehand. This was the man who had unwittingly borne testimony to the Irish that "the common people of this isle are more zealous in their blindness than the saints and martyrs were in the trut

ession, the old natives have been craving foreign powers to assist and raise them; and now both English race and Irish begin to oppose your lordship's ord

ally came to pass only toward the middle of Elizabeth's reign, and what the horrors of the Cromwellian wars were to complete - the thorough fusion of Irish and Anglo-Norman Catholics, both tra

her measure of the English Government - the suppression o

land, the effect of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of a variety of scientifi

is reign, to the king. They ruined the orders who were permitted to hold worldly possessions, namely, monks, canons regular, nuns, and Brethren of the Cross, etc . . . . They broke into the

ablished their power, persecuted and banished the nine religious orders, and particularly

he restoration of the

be restored in Irelan

ts had, almost wit

sly des

write a history of monasticism, and therefore we do not intend entering into details on this point, interesting though they are. But we may add that, gradually, the old monasteries - from the Norman invasion chiefly - as well as the new ones which were established, were placed under the rule of the various congregations, acknowledged by the Holy See. It seems that the monasteries founded by St. Columba himself a

of Saints. In the idea of the natives, their very names had ever been synonymous with holiness and all Christian virtues, and so they continued to enjoy the most unbounded popularity. The fact of the English Government selecting them as a special point of attack is in itself sufficient to vindicate their character from any aspersion. Two m

character of the nation. It is, therefore, fitting to give an idea of the extent to which the monastic

"Monks of the West: Bollandists, Oct.," tome xii., p. 888.) At the time we speak of, indeed, such was no longer the case; but the previously-existing state of reciprocal subordination between abbots and bishops during several centuries, in Ireland,, had left deep traces in the nature of the institutions and of the people itself. It may b

are to suppose that the hagiography of the island was intrusted to the care of idiots incapable of ascertaining current facts. The vast literature of the island, greater indeed than that of any other Christian country at the time, was either the product of monastic intellect and learning, or at least had been translated and preserved by monks. The gifted Eugene O'Curry could fill numbers of the pages of his great work with the bare titles of the books which are known to have issued from the Irish monasteries, of

arnished truth; yet it is but yesterday tha

lue which the nation possessed. As they were found everywhere, there was not room for much else in the department they filled in the island. Take them away, and the country is a blank. So well we

had been unable to enrich the country with monuments of art and wealthy palaces; the Church alone had accomplished whatever had been effected in this way, and in the Church the monks rather than

tered down, the more valuable edifices might be converted into dwellings for the new Protestant aristocracy, their prope

ge. They have often been destroyed, and seem to have utterly disappeared, when the world has been surprised by their speedy resurrection. The fact is, the Church needs them, and the practice of evangelical counsels must forev

of a corrupt society, and add religious degradation to the immoral filth of the world. Those religious houses, within whose walls the spirit of God had not ceased to dwell, were indeed closed and emptied; but their inmates endeavored to live their lives of religion in some unknown and obscure spot, until the madness of the Convention, and the Reign of Terror which soon followed, rendered the continu

better times return to those now distracted countries, and the extr

n monks, priests, and people, contributed also in no small degree to that union among all, which henceforth became the characteristic feature of a people hitherto split up into hostile clans. Nothing probably tended so much toward effecting th

the voice of the monk came to be heard in the midst of contending passions, and real miracles were often performed by them in changing into lambs men who resembled roaring lions or devouring wolves; but their action became much more effica

d them succor. Sometimes also the humbler dwelling of the farmer or the peasant offered them a sure asylum, wherein they could practise their ministry in almost perfect freedom, owing to the sure and inviolable secrecy of the inmates and neighbo

set a seal on their lips. For years frequently, large numbers of priests and religious could not only exist, but move and work among them, without their place of abode becoming known to the swarms of enemies who surround

on throughout the mountainous districts of Leinster. Many families of Carlow, Wicklow, and Wexford, had been compelled to take a refuge in the mountains from the fury of the English troops. The good Franciscans shared in all their perils, travelling about from place to place,

ule among the wandering people of three large counties, receiving in return the substance, the love, and loving secrecy of their flock! We have only to figure to ourselves this scene, or similar, repeated in every corner of the land, and we may then

constituted the occasion and origin of it; and, although his reign never witnessed that perfect union of the people which came later

se fastnesses, the holy men, who had been driven from their dwellings and their churches, could rest in peace and attend to the duties of their office. They could even recruit their shattered forces, admit novices, and train them up; and thus their rule continued to be observed, and their existence as a body protracted, long after their enemies imagined that

name of their lost monastery, was their convent. It was thus the brothers O'Cleary, and their companions, lived for years, editing the work of the "Four Masters," until, at length, they succeeded in publishing their extraordinary "Annals." The manuscripts which, in spite of the raging persecution, and the "penal laws," they traversed the whole island to collect, were preserved, with a reverend care,

nevertheless, of their liberty and lives. What their ancestors had done during the Scandinavian invasions, when the monasteries wer

and "before the feast of the Nativity of our Lord, we built up a little house on the site of the monastery, and there we dwelt who were left after the flight . . . . . Afterward, Father Nehemias Gregan, the father guardian, began to build a church, and to repair the monastery, and for this

Franciscans throughout the persecution, so that to this day the old church has been restored by th

privately and singly among their friends, and receiving no novices, the order of St. Francis alone ever remained, as it were, unshaken. For, though they were violently driven out of some convents to the great towns, and the convents were profanely turned into dwellings for seculars, and some of the fathers suffered violence, and even death; yet, in the country and other remote places, they ever remained in the convents, celebrating the divine office ac

he Stuarts some relaxation in the execution of the laws, and, as all at the time were fighting for Charles I. against the Parl

the General Chapter of the Dominicans, held in Rome in 1656, referring to the same persecution of Cromwell, state that, when it began, there were forty-three convents of the order, containing about six hundred inmates, of whom only one-fourth survived the calamity. The Jesuits were eighty in numbe

d which had been the cradle of so many families of religious. They succeeded only in intensifying the determination of Irishmen not to allow their nationality to be absorbed in that of England. If any thing was calculated to nourish and keep alive that sentiment in their hearts, it was their daily communing with the holy men who shared their distress, their mountain-retreats, their poverty in the bogs, their wretchedness in the woods and glens. If monasticism had created and nurtured the

such events impressed upon the Irish nation. Every day saw it more compact; every day the resolve to fight to the death for God's cause, grew stronger; the old occasions of division grew less and less, and that unanimity, which suffering for a noble cause n

likewise for their English Catholic brethren, the British statesmen, who finally consented to such a tardy measure of justice, steadily refused, nevertheless, to extend the boon to the religious orders. These remained under the ban, and

the open violation of these "laws." Dr. Madden, in his interesting work on "Penal Laws," gives prominence to this fact by warmly taking up the old theme of thorough-going Irish Catholicity, by asserting, with force, that

asteries and took their share in the sacrilegious plunder. But a few chieftains cannot be said to constitute the nation, and doubtless many of those who yie

had been seized on by one of the neighboring gentry, who was sheltered in his usurpation by the edict of Elizabeth. The abbot . . . went boldly to the usurping nobleman, admonishing him of the guilt he had incurred; and the malediction of Heaven, which he would assuredl