Note 523 — Chapter XVIII · ON THE CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND

Davis's Reports, ubi supra; "Discovery of Causes," etc., 260; Carte's Life of Ormond, i. 14; Leland, 418. It had long been an object with the English government to extinguish the Irish tenures and laws. Some steps towards it were taken under Henry VIII.; but at that time there was too great a repugnance among the chieftains. In Elizabeth's instructions to the Earl of Sussex on taking the government in 1560, it is recommended that the Irish should surrender their estates, and receive grants in tail male, but no greater estate. Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 1. This would have left a reversion in the Crown, which could not have been cut off, I believe, by suffering a recovery. But as those who held by Irish tenure had probably no right to alienate their lands, they had little cause to complain. An act in 1569 (12 Eliz. c. 4), reciting the greater part of the Irish to have petitioned for leave to surrender their lands, authorises the deputy by advice of the privy council to grant letters patent to the Irish and degenerate English, yielding certain reservations to the queen. Sidney mentions, in several of his letters, that the Irish were ready to surrender their lands. Vol. i. 94, 105, 165.

The act 11 Jac. 1, c. 5, repeals divers statutes that treat the Irish as enemies, some of which have been mentioned above. It takes all the king's subjects under his protection to live by the same law. Some vestiges of the old distinctions remained in the statute-book, and were eradicated in Strafford's parliament. 10 & 11 Car. 1, c. 6.