Ireland under the Tudors Part 8

Edward III. repeated his grandfather's mistake, and drew away many of the colonists to his Scotch and Continental wars. An Anglo-Irish contingent fought at Halidon Hill, and it was while making preparations for that campaign that the Earl of Ulster lost his life. Ireland was also well represented at Crecy, and many brave men fell victims to disease at Calais. The Viceroys sent over from time to time seem to have been regarded as licensed oppressors, and it is recorded of many that they left Dublin without paying their debts. Sir Thomas Rokeby, who was Deputy in 1349 and 1356, is praised by the contemporary chronicler Pembridge for beating the Irish well, and for paying his way honestly. 'I will,' he said, 'use wooden cups and platters, but give gold and silver for my food and clothes, and for the men in my pay.' That this golden saying, as Davies calls it, should have been thought worth recording shows what the general practice was. The three great pestilences which ravaged England ran their course in Ireland also. It was to the first of these visitations that the annalist Clyn succ.u.mbed. 'I have,' he records, 'well weighed what I have written, as befits a man who dwells among the dead in daily expectation of death; and lest the writer should perish with the writing, and the work with the workman, I leave parchment for a continuation, if by chance any of the race of Adam should escape this plague and resume my unfinished task.' On the whole, the reign of Edward III. must be regarded as one of the most disastrous in the annals of the English in Ireland.

[Sidenote: Richard II. determines to visit Ireland.]

[Sidenote: His first visit, 1394.]

The reign of Richard II. is mainly remarkable for the King's two visits to Ireland. But that step was not taken until many others had failed.

James Butler, third Earl of Ormonde, was Viceroy when the old King died.

He continued in office, and held a Parliament at Castle Dermot, whose deliberations were interrupted by an invasion of Leinster on the western side. The O'Briens were bought off with 100 marks, but there were only nine in the treasury, and the residue was supplied by individuals who gave horses, a bed, or moderate sums of money. Ormonde resigned an office which there was no means of supporting properly, and the Earl of Kildare refused the post. In 1380 Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who claimed Ulster through his wife Philippa, the daughter of Duke Lionel, agreed to accept the burden for three years. He covenanted for 20,000 marks and for absolute control over the revenue of Ireland. The Irish scarcely ventured to oppose him openly; and he recovered Athlone, built a bridge at Coleraine, put down rebels in southern Leinster, and might have extended his power still further had he not died of a chill, caught in fording a river near Cork. Ormonde and Desmond refused to accept the vacant government, and the Irish continued to enlarge their borders. In 1385 Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the King's favourite and grandson of Ralph d'Ufford and the Countess of Ulster, was appointed Viceroy for life, and created first Marquis of Dublin, and then Duke of Ireland. All the attributes of royalty, such as the right to coin money and issue writs in his own name, were conferred on him, and he undertook to pay the King 5,000 marks a year, which the latter agreed to remit until the conquest of Ireland was complete. De Vere did not visit Ireland; but the government was carried on in his name for some years, during which the colony grew weaker and weaker. Nor did his disgrace make any more difference than his appointment had done. Limerick and Cork could scarcely defend themselves. Waterford was hara.s.sed by the Le Poers and their Irish allies. Towns in Kildare were burned, and the English Bishop of Leighlin was unable to approach his diocese. Galway threw off its allegiance, and sought the protection of MacWilliam. In 1391 the Earl of Ormonde was again persuaded to undertake the government with a salary of 3,000 marks; but he could do little more than temporise. Payments to the Irish were frequent, and as they constantly advanced the dispossessed settlers carried the story of their woes to England. Proclamations against absentees were of small effect, and at last the King determined to go himself. He landed at Waterford on October 2, 1394, with 4,000 men at arms and 30,000 archers. As soon as Art MacMurrough, whom the Leinster Irish accepted as their king, heard of Richard's arrival, he attacked New Ross, 'burned its houses and castles, and carried away gold, silver, and hostages.'

[Sidenote: Richard has but little success.]

Richard II.'s army, augmented as it was by the forces of the colony, was the largest seen in Ireland during the middle ages, and has hardly been exceeded in modern times. William III. had about 36,000 at the Boyne.

Nothing was performed worthy of so great a host or of the King's presence. One division of the royal army was defeated with great loss by the O'Connors of Offaly, and another by the O'Carrolls. Richard saw that his troops were unfit for war in bogs and mountains, and could not but confess that the natives had many just causes of complaint. He adopted a conciliatory policy, and induced O'Neill, O'Connor, MacMurrough, and O'Brien, as representatives of the four royal Irish races, to do homage and to receive the honour of knighthood at his hands. These four, and a great number of other chiefs, bound themselves to the King by indenture; but no money was actually paid, and for all practical purposes Caligula's sh.e.l.ls were quite as good a badge of conquest. The German princes had a right to say that Richard was not fit for empire, since he had been unable to subdue his rebellious subjects of Ireland. He remained nine months in the island, and left the government to Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, heir-presumptive to the Crown, and claiming to be Earl of Ulster in right of his mother, the only child of Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

[Sidenote: The Irish grow continually stronger. Richard's second visit, 1399.]

Besides the earldom of Ulster, Mortimer claimed enormous estates all over Ireland, but possession had been completely divorced from feudal ownership. He attacked the Wicklow clans, but was defeated with loss. In 1398 he made a final attempt to recover some portion of his Leinster inheritance, but was defeated and slain in Carlow by the O'Tooles, O'Nolans, and Kavanaghs. In the following year Richard again visited Ireland in person. His army was nearly as large as on the first occasion, and vast quant.i.ties of stores had been collected. The Crown jewels were carried with the King, as was a yet more precious flask of oil which had been transmitted straight from heaven to Archbishop Becket while praying at the shrine of Columba. But neither arms, nor gems, nor even the sacred chrism had any effect upon Art MacMurrough. The King again landed at Waterford, and after a few days' rest moved forward to meet the redoubtable Irishman, who was posted in a wood with 3,000 men. An open s.p.a.ce having been secured by burning houses and villages, Richard knighted young Henry of Lancaster, the future victor of Agincourt, and ordered a large number of labourers to fell the wood which sheltered the enemy. Aided by the ground, MacMurrough held the royal army in check for eleven days. The communications were cut, and the men at arms had nothing but green oats for their horses. It was early in July; but the weather was wet, and the whole army suffered from exposure and hunger. A convoy which arrived at Waterford rather added to the disaster. 'Soldiers,' says a contemporary chronicler, 'rushed into the sea as if it were straw.'

Casks were broached, and more than 1,000 at a time were seen drunk with the Spanish wine. Abandoning the hope of attacking the Kavanaghs in their fastnesses, Richard made his way to Dublin, the Earl of Gloucester having failed to treat with MacMurrough.

[Sidenote: Richard's failure.]

The Leinster chieftain had married an Anglo-Norman heiress, and through her claimed the barony of Narragh in Kildare. He demanded to be put in full possession of his wife's lands, and to be left unmolested to enjoy his chiefry. Otherwise he refused to come to any terms with the King.

Richard threatened, but his Irish plans were interrupted by the news that Henry of Lancaster had landed in England. He lingered for some weeks in Ireland, and that delay was fatal to him. He reached Milford only to find that he had no longer a party, and thus Art MacMurrough may be said to have crowned the House of Lancaster. The Irish chief continued irreconcilable, and defied the Government until his death in 1417.

[Sidenote: Ireland neglected by Henry IV.]

With a bad t.i.tle and an insecure throne Henry IV. could not be expected to pay much attention to Ireland. The strength of the colony continued to decline during his reign. He made his second son, Thomas, Viceroy, but a child in his twelfth year was not the sort of governor required. The treasury was empty, and the young prince's council had soon to announce that he had p.a.w.ned his plate, and that not another penny could be borrowed. The soldiers had deserted, the household were about to disperse, and the country was so much impoverished that relief could scarcely be hoped for. The settlement was only preserved by paying black mail to the Irish. The towns defended themselves as they best could, and sometimes showed considerable martial enterprise. Thus Waterford was several times attacked by the O'Driscolls, a piratical clan in West Cork, who habitually allied themselves with the Le Poers. In 1413 the citizens a.s.sumed the offensive, and armed a ship, in which the mayor and bailiffs with a strong band sailed to Baltimore, where they arrived on Christmas Day. A messenger was sent to say that the Mayor of Waterford had brought a cargo of wine, and admission was thus gained to the chief's hall. 'The Mayor,' we are told, 'took up to dance O'Driscoll and his son, the prior of the Friary, O'Driscoll's three brethren, his uncle, and his wife, and having them in their dance, the Mayor commanded every of his men to hold fast the said persons; and so, after singing a carol, came away bringing with them aboard the said ship the said O'Driscoll and his company, saying unto them they should go with him to Waterford to sing their carol and make merry that Christmas; and they being all aboard made sail presently, and arrived at Waterford, St. Stephen's day at night, where with great joy received they were with lights.'

This exploit seems to have tamed the O'Driscolls for a time, but they invaded Waterford in 1452 and 1461. On the first occasion the citizens had the worst, but on the second they gained the victory, and took the chief with six of his sons.[37]

[Sidenote: Henry V. makes Talbot Viceroy.]

In the first year of his reign Henry V. made the famous Sir John Talbot Viceroy. He was ent.i.tled to lands in Westmeath in right of his wife, and the lordship of Wexford had devolved upon his elder brother. He adopted the plan by which Bellingham and Sidney afterwards reconquered the greater part of Ireland. The array of the counties was called out under heavy penalties, and Talbot remained six days in Leix, which he so ravaged as to bring O'More to his senses. The bridge of Athy, which had been of use to none but the a.s.sailants of the Pale, was rebuilt and fortified, so that the cattle of loyal people might graze in safety, which they had not done for thirty years. Pa.s.ses were cut in the woods bordering on the settled districts, and there seemed some hope for the shrunken and shattered colony. But Talbot's salary of 4,000 marks fell into arrear, and his unpaid soldiers became a worse scourge than the Irish had been. The Viceroy and his brother, the Archbishop of Dublin, were constantly at daggers drawn with the White Earl of Ormonde, and the feud continued nearly till the Earl's death in 1450. It was, however, due both to Sir John Talbot and to Ormonde, his antagonist, that the Irish were kept at bay. Shakespeare's hero was the bugbear with which French mothers quieted naughty children, and he was no less feared in Ireland.

With the colonists he was not popular, because the Crown refused him the means of paying his debts, and Irish writers stigmatise him as the worst man who had appeared in the world since the time of Herod.

[Sidenote: Drain of colonists to the English civil wars.]

'France,' says Sir John Davies, 'was a fairer mark to shoot at than Ireland, and could better reward the conqueror.' The latter part of his statement is questionable, but such was the view taken by the kings of England from Henry II. to Henry VII. Thomas Butler, Prior of Kilmainham, who ought to have been engaged in the defence of the Pale, took 1,500 men to help Henry V. at the siege of Rouen in 1418. The contemporary chronicler, Robert Redman, says they did excellent service with very sharp darts and crossbows. Trained in the irregular warfare of Ireland, they easily outran the Frenchmen, to whom they showed extraordinary animosity, but were less honourably distinguished by their practice of kidnapping children and selling them as slaves to the English. James, Earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire, also raised troops in Ireland for foreign service, and it is probable that many other contingents were furnished of which no record has been preserved. These forces consisted of Anglo-Irish, or at least of Irishmen settled in obedient districts, and their absence from home must have had a constant tendency to weaken the colony.

[Sidenote: Richard of York made Lord-Lieutenant for ten years, 1449.]

In 1449 Richard of York visited Ireland as Viceroy. He accepted the office for ten years, in consideration of 4,000 marks for the first, and 2,000_l._ for each succeeding year, and of the whole local revenue.

Richard was Earl of Ulster, but he preferred conciliation to any attempt at reconquest, and was, consequently, able to command the services of many Irish clans, including Magennis, MacArtane, MacMahon, and O'Reilly.

The O'Byrnes were put down with the help of the Northern chiefs, O'Neill himself sent presents to the Duke, and most of the central districts became tributary. The Anglo-Normans of Munster, who had partially degenerated, renewed their allegiance, and it was generally supposed that the task of making Ireland English would at last be accomplished. The Viceroy's son George, the 'false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,' of later years, was born in Dublin, and his sponsors were Ormonde and Desmond. But very soon the fair prospect was clouded. The stipulated salary was not paid. The Irish discovered that Richard had no greater force than his predecessors, and the MacGeohegans, who had submitted, openly defied his power. He left Ireland suddenly in the autumn of 1450, and did not return for nine years.

[Sidenote: Richard is popular, and creates a Yorkist party. Ireland almost independent.]

Richard had not done much to increase the King's power in Ireland, but he created a Yorkist party there. At the time he was accused of prompting Cade's rebellion, and Jack himself was said to be a native of Ireland.

The fact that both Simnel and Warbeck afterwards found their best support among the Anglo-Irish seems to show that the Kildare and Desmond partisans were already familiar with the notion of a Yorkist pretender.

It is very probable that the adherents of the White Rose saw their opportunity in the fact that the Earldom of Ulster belonged to their chief, and Cade must have had an object in calling himself Mortimer. All this is plausible conjecture; but about the significance of Richard's second viceroyalty there can be no reasonable doubt. In 1459, after Salisbury's defeat at Blore Heath, the Duke of York was forced to fly, and he took refuge in Ireland, where he seized the government in spite of the Coventry Parliament. The local independence of Ireland was now for the first time seriously attempted. Richard held a Parliament, which acknowledged the English Crown while repudiating the English Legislature and the English Courts of Law. The Duke of York's person was declared inviolable, and rebellion against him was made high treason. The royal privilege of coining money was also given to him. William Overy, a squire of the Earl of Ormonde, who was already acknowledged as head of the Irish Lancastrians, attempted to arrest the Duke as an attainted traitor and rebel; but he was seized, tried before Richard himself, and hanged, drawn, and quartered. After the victory of his friends at Northampton the Duke returned to England. He took with him a considerable body of Anglo-Irish partisans, and he committed the government to the Earl of Kildare.

[Sidenote: The Yorkist faction headed by the Earl of Kildare.]

Richard of York fell at Sandal Hill, but the popularity which he had gained in Ireland descended to his son. In the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of Towton the flower of the Anglo-Irish Lancastrians fell, and their leader, the Earl of Ormonde, was taken and beheaded. His house suffered an eclipse from which it was destined to emerge with greater brilliancy than ever, and the rival family of Kildare became for a time supreme in the Pale.

The native Irish everywhere advanced, and English law rapidly shrunk within the narrowest limits. A Parliament, held by the Earl of Desmond in 1465, enacted that every Irishman dwelling among the English in Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, should dress in the English fashion, shave his moustache, take the oath of allegiance within a year, and a.s.sume as a surname the name of a town, of a colour, or of a trade. In the Parliament of 1480, held by the Earl of Kildare, all trade between the Pale and the Irish was forbidden by law. The Parliament of Drogheda in 1468 had already pa.s.sed an Act which declared that the castle of Ballymore Eustace, 'lying between the counties of Dublin and Kildare, among the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles, Irish enemies,' should be garrisoned by Englishmen only. The Eustaces, it was explained, had given it in charge to 'one Lawrence O'Bogan, an Irishman both by father and mother, who by nature would discover the secrets of the English.' Other Acts to a similar effect might be cited, and it may be said that the main object of Edward IV.'s government in Ireland was to separate the two races more completely.

[Sidenote: George, Duke of Clarence, twice Viceroy.]

[Sidenote: Execution of Thomas, Earl of Desmond, 1467.]

George, Duke of Clarence, was Viceroy from 1461 to 1470, and again from 1472 till his mysterious death in 1478. Though born in Dublin, he never visited Ireland as a man, and the government was administered by a succession of Deputies. The fate of one of these Deputies, Thomas, eighth Earl of Desmond, deserves particular mention. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, whose beautiful Latinity had moved Pope aeneas Sylvius to tears, was entrusted with the government in 1467, and he a.s.sembled a Parliament in which Desmond and Kildare were attainted. Kildare escaped to England, and procured a reversal of the attainder, but Desmond was enticed to Drogheda, and there beheaded. The ostensible cause for this severity is declared by an unpublished statute to have been 'alliance, fosterage, and alterage with the King's Irish enemies, and furnishing them with horses, harness, and arms, and supporting them against the King's loyal subjects.' The Anglo-Irish tradition attributes it to the vengeance of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, whose marriage Desmond had opposed. According to Russell, he told Edward that Sir John Grey's widow was too mean a match for him, that he needed allies sorely, and that he had better cast her off and link himself with some powerful prince. By this account the Queen stole the royal signet, and transmitted a secret order for the Earl's death to Ireland. Three years later Worcester was taken and beheaded during the short Lancastrian restoration; and this quite disposes of Russell's statement that King Edward 'struck his head from his neck to make satisfaction to the angry ghost of Desmond.' What is historically important in Desmond's execution is that it gave his successors an excuse for not attending Parliaments or entering walled towns. Their claim to legal exemption was not indeed allowed, but it may have had considerable effect on their conduct.[38]

[Sidenote: Under Edward IV. and Richard III. the House of Kildare is all-powerful. The Butlers overshadowed.]

After the death of Clarence, Edward made his sons, George and Richard, Viceroys, and Richard III. conferred the same office on his infant son Edward. The government was carried on by Deputies, and during the last twenty years of the Yorkist dynasty almost all real power centred in the House of Kildare. It was the seventh Earl who established the brotherhood of St. George for the defence of the Pale. The thirteen members of this fraternity were chosen from among the princ.i.p.al landowners of the four obedient shires, thus excluding the Butlers, who formed a small Pale of their own about Kilkenny. The brothers of St. George had rather more than 200 soldiers under them, who were paid out of the royal revenue; and that const.i.tuted the entire standing army. The cities and towns maintained a precarious existence by themselves. In the charter which Richard III.

granted to Galway it was specially declared that the Clanricarde Burkes had no jurisdiction within the town which their ancestors had taken and fortified. An Act pa.s.sed in 1485 declares that various benefices in the diocese of Dublin were situated among the Irish, that English clerks could not serve the churches because they could not be understood or because they refused to reside, and that it was therefore necessary to collate Irish clerks; and power was given to the Archbishop to do so for two years. The statute of Kilkenny and the Acts subsidiary to it had had their natural effect. The English, in trying to become perfectly English, had shrunk almost to nothing; and the Irish, by being held always at arm's length, had become more Irish and less civilised than ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] The quarrels of Waterford with the O'Driscolls are given in the _Calendar of Carew MSS._, _Miscellaneous vol._ p. 470. Smith refers to a MS. in Trinity College.

[38] Besides those in the Statute Book many Irish Acts of Edward IV.'s reign may be studied in Hardiman's _Statute of Kilkenny_.

CHAPTER VII.

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.

[Sidenote: The Irish Parliament a close copy.]

The history of the Irish Parliament in the middle ages corresponds pretty closely with that of England. The idea of the three estates is plainly visible as early as 1204, when John asked an aid from the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, archdeacons, and clergy, the earls, barons, justices, sheriffs, knights, citizens, burgesses, and freeholders of Ireland. The Common Council of the King's faithful of Ireland is afterwards often mentioned, and in 1228 Henry III. ordered his justiciary to convoke the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls and barons, knights and freeholders, and the bailiffs of every county, and to read Magna Charta to them. 1254 has been fixed as the date at which two knights from each shire were regularly summoned to the English Parliament. In the confusion which followed, the precedent slept for a while, but in Simon de Montfort's famous Parliament in 1264 burgesses as well as knights had seats. The evidences of regular election in Ireland are scanty at this early period; but legislative enactments and pecuniary aids were more than once made by the whole community of Ireland before the close of Henry III.'s reign. The germs of a Parliamentary const.i.tution were not planted in purely Irish districts; but it is probable that ecclesiastics attended Parliament even from them, and that the natives were thus in some degree represented. In 1254 the King called by name upon the Kings O'Donnell, O'Neill, O'Reilly, and O'Flynn, upon MacCarthy of Desmond, O'Brien of Th.o.m.ond, O'Phelan of Decies, and fourteen other Celtic chiefs, to help him against the Scots. He confides in their love for him to furnish such help, and promises them thanks; pointedly separating their case from that of his lieges of Ireland.[39]

[Sidenote: Growth of representative inst.i.tutions.]

Accepting 1295 as the date at which English Parliamentary representation settled down into something like its modern shape, we find that the great Plantagenet was not unmindful of Ireland. In that same year the justiciary Wogan issued writs to the prelates and n.o.bles, and also to the sheriffs of Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Connaught, and Roscommon, and to the seneschals of the liberties of Meath, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Ulster. The sheriffs and seneschals were ordered to proceed to the election of two good and discreet knights from each county or liberty, who were to have full power to act for their districts. It does not appear that cities and boroughs were represented on this occasion; but in 1300, Wogan being still justiciary, writs were directed to counties for the election of three or four members, and to cities and boroughs for the election of two or three. The King's princ.i.p.al object was to get money for his Scotch war; and, with this view, Wogan visited Drogheda and other places and extorted benevolence before the Parliament met. A certain supremacy was not denied to the English Parliament, for in 1290 a vast number of pet.i.tions were made to the King in Parliament at Westminster. Among the pet.i.tioners was the Viceroy, John Sandford, Archbishop of Dublin, who begged the King to consider the state of Ireland, of which he had already advised him through Geoffrey de Joinville, a former Viceroy, who was sitting in Parliament with others of the King's Council in Ireland. Edward I.

answered that he was very busy, but that he had the matter much at heart, and that he would attend to it as soon as he could.[40]

[Sidenote: Parliament of 1295.]

Of the Parliament of 1295 a particular record has fortunately been preserved. Each sheriff was ordered to make his election in the full county court, and each seneschal in the full court of the liberty, and they were to attend Parliament in their proper persons--to verify the returns no doubt. The personal attendance of the sheriffs was required in England until 1406. The magnates who were summoned to Wogan's Parliament behaved as we might expect to find them behave. The Bishops of the South and East came. The Archbishop of Armagh and his suffragans sent proctors with excuses for non-attendance. The Archbishop of Tuam and his suffragans neither came nor apologised. The absence of Hugo de Lacy, one of those elected by the county of Limerick, is particularly noted, whence we may infer that the other shires and liberties were duly represented.

Richard, Earl of Ulster, was present. This Parliament princ.i.p.ally occupied itself with making regulations as to the treatment of the Irish, and in devising means for checking their inroads upon the colonised districts. The descendants of the first conquerors were already beginning to adopt Celtic customs.[41]

[Sidenote: Parliaments of Edward II. and Edward III.]

Under Edward II. Parliaments were frequent; and writs are extant which show that he, as well as Edward III., intended them to be held annually.