The Irish Race in the Past and the Present Part 21

It is true that those posterior Acts of Parliament did not merely rely for their strength on the first doc.u.ments, but on the pretence that the Irish chieftains and people outside 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 homage and submission to the English king. It is clear that, lawfully or unlawfully, the Anglo-Normans were determined to gain possession, sooner or later, of the whole island.

To secure their end, they declared that the natives would not be subject to the English laws, but retain their Brehon laws, which in their eyes 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 pale of the law, could not claim its protection, but became subject to the crown of England, without political, civil, or even human rights.

They were soon, by reason of the constant border wars all around the Pale, declared "alien and enemies." And these expressions became, in the eyes of the English lawyers, identical 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 with the Scotch or the French, they were still "Irish enemies;" "aliens" unworthy human rights, villeins in whose veins no n.o.ble blood could flow, with the exception of five families.

All the rest were not only ign.o.ble, but not even men; nothing but mere Irish, whom any one might kill, even though serving under the English crown, at a risk of being fined five marks, to be paid to the treasury of the King of England, for having deprived his majesty of a serviceable tool.

This (to modern eyes) astounding social state demands a closer examination in order to see if, at least, it had the merit of finally procuring for the English the possession of the land they coveted.

We find first that Henry II., John, and Henry III., would seem on several occasions to have extended the laws of England all over the island. But all English 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 to the crown, so that it was, " by actual fact, often adjudged no felony to kill a mere Irish in time of peace," as Sir John Davies expressly points out.

Five families alone were excepted from the general category and acknowledged to be of n.o.ble blood--the O'Neills of Ulster, the O'Melachlins of Meath, the O'Connors of Connaught, the O'Briens of Munster, and the McMurroughs of Leinster.

Those five families, numerous certainly, but forming only as many septs, were, or appeared to be, acknowledged as having a right to their lands, and as able to bring or defend actions at law. We say, appeared to be, because 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 charters of naturalization from the English kings. Thus in the reign of Edward IV., O'Neill, on the occasion of his marriage with a daughter of the house of Kildare, was made an English citizen by special act of Parliament.

In reality then, even the most ill.u.s.trious members of the "five bloods" were scarcely considered as enjoying the full rights of the lowest English va.s.sals, although their ancestors had been acknowledged kings by former Anglo-Norman monarchs in public doc.u.ments: "Rex Henricus regi O'Neill," etc.

But if there was some shadow of doubt with regard to the political and social rights of those great families, such doubt did not exist for the remainder of the Irish race. They were absolutely without rights. Depriving them of their lands, pillaging their houses, devastating their 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 consider him, had but to plead that the man whom he had robbed or killed was a mere Irishman, and the proceedings were immediately stopped, if this all-important fact were proved; and in case of homicide the murderer escaped by the payment of the fine of five marks to the treasury.

To modern, even to English ears, all this may sound incredible.

Many striking examples of the truth of it might be produced.

They are to be found in all works which treat of the subject.

Sir John Davies, that great Irish hater, evidently takes a genuine delight in depicting several such instances with all their aggravating details, scarcely expecting that every word he wrote would serve to brand forever with shame Anglo-Norman England.

Under such legislation it was clear that life on the borders of the Pale was not only insecure, but that the soil would remain in the grasp of the strongest. Any Anglo-Norman only required the power in order to take possession of the land of his neighbor.

But it is not in man's nature to submit to such galling thraldom as this, without at least an attempt at retaliation. Least of all was it the nature of such a people to submit to 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 pirates, Christianized from the fifth century, and the spreader of literature, civilization, and the holy faith of Christ through England, Scotland, Germany, France, and Northern Italy.

If we have dwelt a little, and only a little, upon the intensity of the contest waged for four hundred years previous to the added atrocities introduced by the Reformation, we have done so advisedly, since it has become a fashion of late to throw a gloss 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 sacred in their souls, they strove again and again to reconquer the territory which had been won from them by fraud, and because they thought it fair to kill in open fight the men who avowed that they could kill them even in peace at a penalty of five marks.

The contest, therefore, never ceased; how could it ? But, in that endless conflict between the two races, the loss of territory leaned rather to the English side. If, with the help of their castles, better discipline, and arms, the English 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 their losses, the Anglo-Normans had recourse to acts of Parliament, which could bind not only the English of the Pale, but also those of other districts, who, enjoying the privileges of English law, were likewise bound by its provisions.

In order rightly to understand the need and purposes of those enactments, we must return a moment to the days of the conquest.

The case of Strongbow will ill.u.s.trate many others. He married Eva, the daughter of McMurrough, and thus allied himself to the best families of Leinster. On the death of his father-in-law, he received the whole kingdom as his inheritance. The greater part of his dominions, which he either would not or could not govern himself, he was compelled to distribute, 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, had married daughters of the soil, did the same in their more limited territories. This explains fully why Irish families remained in Leinster after the settlement of the Anglo-Normans there, who established their Pale in it, as also why they continued to possess their lands in the midst of the English as they had formerly done in the midst of the Danes.

The same thing took place in the kingdom of Cork, on the borders of Connaught, and around the seaports of Ulster, wherever the English had established themselves and erected castles and fortifications.

But, over and above the Irish families, which, by their alliance by marriage and fosterage with the English, retained their lands and gradually increased them, many others, natives of the soil, reentered into possession of their former territory 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 England and Wales, preferred to return to their own country rather than remain with their wives and children in a constant state of alarm, compelled to reside within their castles, in dread of an attack at any moment from their Irish neighbors.

Moreover, the vast majority of the Irish, who did not enjoy the benefit of these special privileges, who, deprived of their lands at the first invasion, had remained really _outlaws_, and never entered into matrimonial 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 resource remained to them, and they grasped at it. They had their own mountain fastnesses and bogs to fly to, and from those recesses they could hara.s.s the invader, and inch by inch win back their lawful inheritance.

They were often even encouraged in their attacks and depredations by the English of the Pale and out of it, who, unwilling longer to submit to the grinding feudal laws and exactions, could prevent the English judges, sheriffs, escheators, and other king's officers from executing the law against them, and thus they held out in their mountains, bogs, and rocky crags, in the midst of the invaders of their soil.

A necessity arose then, on the part of the English rulers, of adopting measures calculated to prevent a further acquisition of territory by the Irish, if not to extend the English settlements.

They saw no other remedy than acts of Parliament, which they thought would at least prevent the subjects of English blood from a.s.sisting the Irish to reenter into possession, as was then being done on so extensive a scale.

To effect this they revived the former statutes by which the Irish were placed without the protection of the law, were declared aliens and enemies, and were consequently denied the right of bringing actions in any of the English courts for trespa.s.ses on their lands, or for violence done to their persons.

They soon advanced a step beyond this. The Irish were forbidden to purchase land, though the English were at liberty to occupy by force the landed property of the Irish, whenever they were strong enough to do so. An Irishman could acquire neither by gift nor purchase a rood of land which was the property of an Englishman. Thus, in every charter afterward granted 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 exchequer were directed by those acts of Parliament to hold inquisitions for the purpose of obtaining returns of such deeds of conveyance, in order to enrich the king's treasury by confiscations and forfeitures; and the statute-rolls, preserved to this day in Dublin and London, show that such prosecutions often took place, with the invariable result of forfeiture.

The decision of the courts was always in favor of the crown, even in cases where the deed of conveyance or will was of no benefit to the person in whose favor it was drawn, but simply 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 been malicious and untrue--the parties complained of not being Irish but English-- prove what we allege, namely, that an Irishman could not take land by conveyance from an Englishman.

Yet, as Mr. Prendergast justly says: "Notwithstanding these prohibitions and laws of the Irish Parliament, the Irish grew and increased upon the English, and the Celtic customs overspread the feudal, until at length the administration of the feudal law was confined to little more than the few counties lying within the line of the Liffey and the Boyne."

Let us now glance, in conclusion, at the result of more than four centuries of feudal oppression.

Ireland rejected feudalism from the beginning, and this at a time when Europe had been compelled to adopt it, more or less, throughout.

The distinction between lords and villeins, so marked in all other countries, remained at the end as it was at the beginning of the contest, a thing unknown in the island. Even in the Pale, the presence of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, O'Kavanaghs, and other septs, protested against and openly denied, from moor and glen and mountain fastness, that outrage on humanity, which bestows 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 p.r.o.nounce their forfeitures and confiscations on such only as acknowledged the king's right on the premises. The laws enacted in the pretended Irish Parliament were only for such as called themselves English by birth; for even the English by blood, whose ancestors had long resided on the island, frequently refused to submit to the laws of Parliament, where they would not sit themselves, although possessing the right to do so.

In vain was the threat of compulsion held up again and again before the eyes of the great lords of Desmond, Th.o.m.ond, and Connaught. If they chose, they went; if they chose not, they remained at home; and obeyed or disobeyed at will the laws themselves, according as they were able or unable to set them at defiance.

The castles which had been built all over the country by the first invaders, as a means of awing into subjection the surrounding districts, were at the beginning of the fifteenth century no longer feudal castles. They had either been destroyed and levelled to the ground by the Irish, or they were occupied by Irish chieftains; or, stranger still, if their holders were English lords, they were of those who had been won over to Irish manners. 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 of steel-clad warriors, who alone were possessed of social and civil rights. If the master of the household held sometimes the t.i.tle of earl, or count, or baron, he was careful never to use it before his retainers, whom he called his clansmen. When he went to Dublin or to London, he donned it with the dress of a knight or a great feudal lord; on his return home he threw it aside, resumed the cloak of the country, and was Irish again.

The subject of feudal t.i.tles in Ireland has not been sufficiently studied and elucidated. A clearer light thrown on this question would, we have no doubt, show more conclusively than long discussions with what stubbornness the Irish refused to submit to the reality of feudalism, 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 t.i.tles from the king, were regarded by their countrymen with greater abhorrence than the English themselves, though in most cases the t.i.tles were empty ones, which affected nothing in their mode of life. Yet were they looked upon as apostates to their nation, and after the Reformation such a step was often the first to apostasy of religion, the deepest stain on an Irish name.

Feudalism had also its mode of taxation which failed with the rest in Ireland.

In feudal countries the lord imposed no tax on his villeins; these were mere chattels, ascripti gleboe, who tilled the land for their masters, and, as good serfs, could own nothing but the few utensils of their miserable hovels. They were 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 superior, a system that ran down the whole feudal scale, and it would take a lawyer to explain aids, talliages, wardships, fines for alienation, seizins, rents, escheats, and finally forfeiture, the heaviest and most common of all in England.

The Irish fought valiantly against the imposition of those burdens, and aided the English settled among them to repudiate them all in course of time.

It must be said, however, that they did not succeed in preventing their own taxes, according to the Book of Rights, from becoming heavier under the ingenuity of the English who were established among them and admitted to all the rights of clanship. We see by doc.u.ments which have been better studied of late, that the great Anglo-Irish lords had succeeded in increasing the burdens in the shape of exactions, which were never complained of by the Irish.

On this subject Dr. O'Donovan, in the preface to his edition of the "Book of Rights," is worthy of perusal.

But it is chiefly in the very essence of feudalism that the failure of the Anglo-Normans was most signal. Feudalism really consisted in the status given to the land, the possession of which determined and gave all rights, 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 perfection and finally bring to the surface the new principles of social economy, according to which the greater the number of cattle and the fewer the number of men, the more prosperous and happy might the country be said to be.

The Irish staked their existence against those principles, and won. So complete was their victory that the feudal barons who first came among them finally yielded to clanship, became the chiefs 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 English lords who acted thus, for between the law and its execution the clans intervened, and no sheriff or judge could step beyond the bounds of the four counties of the Pale to enforce those acts.

It is told of one of the Irish chieftains that on receiving intimation from a high English official of a sheriff's visit on the next 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 let me know at the same time what will be the amount of his _eric_, in case of his murder, that I may beforehand a.s.sess it on the clan."

This story may tend better than any thing else to give a clear reason for the failure of feudalism in Ireland.

CHAPTER VII.

IRELAND SEPARATED FROM EUROPE.-A TRIPLE EPISODE.

While the struggle described in the last chapter was raging, Ireland could have little or no intercourse with the rest of Europe. Heaven alone was witness of the heroism displayed by the free clans wrestling with feudal England. It was only during the internecine wars of the Roses that Erin enjoyed a respite, and then we read that Margaret of Offaly summoned to peaceful contest the bards of the island, while the shrines of Rome and Compostella were thronged with pilgrims, chiefs, and princes, "paying their vows of faith from the Western Isle."

In the mean time Christendom had been witness of mighty events in which Ireland could take no part. The enthusiastic impulse which gave birth to the Crusades, the uprising of the communes against feudal thraldom, the mental activity of numerous universities, starting each day into life, form, among other things, the three great progressive waves in the moving ocean of the time: