Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 83)

J. H. McCarthy, Outline of Irish History, chapter 3.

IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175. The Anglo-Norman conquest.

"The conquest of Ireland is among the most important episodes in the reign of Henry II. … There were reasons, besides the mere lust of conquest, why an English king should desire to reduce Ireland. It had given harbours and recruits to the Northmen on their expeditions; Irish soldiers had fought at Brunanbeorh [or Brunnanburgh] against Athelstane; English exiles, like the sons of Harold, repeatedly fled to the island, and awaited the opportunity of reprisals upon their own government. Irish pirates infested the English coasts, and carried off prisoners, whom they sold as slaves. Accordingly, William the Conqueror had meditated subjugating Ireland, if he lived two years longer; William Rufus once declared, as he stood on the coast of Wales, that he would bridge St. George's Channel with a fleet of ships. But it was reserved for John of Salisbury to obtain from his intimate friend, the English pope, Adrian IV., a grant of Ireland to the English crown [by the Bull 'Laudabilitur'] as a hereditary fief (A. D. 1154). … Nevertheless, the difficulty of invading Ireland seemed greater than any profit likely to result from it. The king's council opposed the enterprise; and for some years the project was suffered to sleep. But the wretched disorders of Irish politics invited the invader." Diarmaid MacMurchad, king of Leinster, having been driven from his dominions, "repaired to the court of Henry II. in Aquitaine. The offer to hold Leinster, if Henry would reinstate him, as an English fief, procured Diarmaid free quarters in Bristol, to which he speedily returned, and letters patent authorizing any English subject to assist him. Diarmaid published these, and promised large rewards in land to those who would help him to win back his kingdom. The most powerful ally whom Diarmaid's offers attracted was Richard de Clare, surnamed Strongbow, earl of Pembroke, and distant cousin to the king. … Three other adventurers were enlisted. Two of them, Robert Fitz-Stephen and Maurice Fitz-Gerald, were sons, by different fathers, of Nest, a Welsh princess; the third was Maurice de Prendergast." In May, 1169, Fitz-Stephen, with a small following, crossed the channel and captured Wexford. Some other successes soon enabled Diarmaid to make peace with his enemies and recover his kingdom, even before Strongbow's expedition had left Wales. "Diarmaid was reinstated, and English subjects had no authority to carry on war on their own account in Ireland. Strongbow accordingly went to Normandy, and asked permission to push the advantages gained. Obtaining only an ambiguous answer from the king, he determined to consider it in his favour, and went back into Wales to prepare an expedition. In May, A. D. 1170, he sent over Raymond le Gros, Fitz-Stephen's half nephew, as his precursor." Raymond defeated the Irish with great slaughter, in a battle near Waterford, and savagely murdered seventy prisoners. "In August, A. D. 1170, as Strongbow was preparing to embark, he received an explicit order from the king not to proceed. Quietly disregarding it, he crossed with a little army of 1,200 men, out of whom 200 were knights. The storm of Waterford was his first exploit; and it illustrates the Irish architecture of the times, that the city walls were trenched by cutting away the wooden props of a house that was built into them. The frightful carnage of the storm was succeeded by the earl's marriage with Eva [daughter of King Diarmaid], who brought a kingdom as her dower. Then the united forces marched upon Dublin." The Danish city was treacherously stormed in the midst of a negotiation, and "the inhabitants experienced the worst miseries of the conquered. Hasculf [the Danish or Norse governor], and Asgall, king of the Northmen, escaped on board some small vessels to their countrymen in the Orkneys." The next year Hasculf reappeared with 60 ships from the Orkneys and Norway and laid siege to Dublin. He was defeated, taken prisoner and killed; but another fleet soon arrived and Dublin was again under siege. Reduced to a desperate strait, the small garrison sallied and routed the besiegers; but meantime Strongbow had lost ground elsewhere and Dublin and Waterford were the only possessions he retained. The anger of King Henry at his disobedience caused many of his followers to desert him, and he soon found it necessary to make peace with his offended sovereign. Crossing over to England, he succeeded in winning the royal pardon, and Henry returned to Ireland with him, to assist in the completing of the conquest. They were accompanied by a fleet of 400 ships and some 4,000 men. The appearance of the king was followed by a general submission of the Irish princes, and he made a royal progress to Cashel, where, in 1172, a synod was held to effect the Church reforms which were, ostensibly, the chief object of the conquest. "The court held at Lismore to establish order among the English settlers is better evidence than any synod of the real objects of the conquest. The country was partially distributed among Norman nobles; but as the English conquest of Ireland, more rapid than the Norman of England, had been effected by fewer men, and was more insecure, the changes in the property and laws of the nation were proportionately smaller. Meath, as the appanage of royalty, of course accrued to the English crown, and Henry assigned the whole of it to Hugh de Lacy, whom he made justiciary of the realm and governor of Dublin. The object of this enormous grant, no doubt, was to balance Strongbow's power. {1759} The families of Desmond, Ormond, and Vernon received other estates. But the number of those invested was small. … The slightness of the change, no doubt, mainly contributed to the readiness with which the supremacy of the English crown was accepted. In April, A. D. 1172, Henry was able to return to England, leaving only Ulster behind him nominally unsubdued. A series of petty wars between Irish chiefs and Norman nobles soon broke out. The precarious nature of the English dominion became manifest; and Henry was forced to publish the papal grant of Ireland, which he had hitherto suppressed. At last, in A. D. 1175, Roderic O'Connor [king of Connaught, and previously recognized over-king of Ireland] made a treaty with the English crown, and agreed to render homage and submission, and a tribute of every tenth hide, in return for royal rights in his own kingdom of Connaught. At the same time, the limits of the English pale, as it was afterwards called, were defined. This district, which was immediately subject to the king of England and his barons, comprised Dublin with its appurtenances, Meath, Leinster, and the country from Waterford to Dungarvon. … From the English point of view, the kings of England were henceforth lords-paramount of Ireland, with the fee of the soil vested in them, and all Irish princes in future were no more than tenants-in-chief. From the Irish point of view, the English kings were nothing more than military suzerains in the districts outside the pale."

C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 1, chapter 30.

ALSO IN: Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapter 8.

A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People, chapters 6-7.

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 2, chapters 1-2.

T. Moore, History of Ireland, chapters 26-29.

F. P. Barnard, editor, Strongbow's Conquest of Ireland: From Contemporary Writers.

IRELAND: 13th-14th Centuries. Under the Anglo-Norman conquerors.

"The feudal system as established in Ireland differed in important respects from that existing in England. It is usual for Irish writers to attribute much of the sufferings of Ireland to the misgovernment of England and the introduction of feudalism, whereas most of these evils may be referred rather to English non-government and to the peculiar anomalies of the Irish feudal system. The feudal system as introduced into Ireland, like most other institutions imported from England, was altered in such a manner as to retain all its evils, and lose all its advantages. The Crown in Ireland possessed no power of controlling its vassals. … In Ireland there were no manor or valuable estates that the Crown could appropriate—the entire country had to be conquered; and as the Crown did not assist in the conquest, it received no part of the spoils. Thus we find the Crown had absolutely no demesnes of its own, and, being deprived of any military force of its own, it had to rely upon such of the great feudal vassals as might remain loyal for the purpose of crushing those who might be in rebellion. The inevitable result of this policy was to kindle a civil war and excite personal feuds in the attempt to maintain order. … We have thus a feudal system, in which the Crown is powerless to fulfil its duties, yet active in preventing the greater nobles from exercising that influence which might have secured a reasonable degree of order. The whole energy of the nobles was turned away from government to war; and lest they should become local potentates, they were allowed to degenerate into local tyrants. But what, meanwhile, had become of the Irish nation? As the feudal system ignored their existence, we have permitted them to fall out of our view; but they still existed, and still were politically independent. The invaders had occupied the flat country, suitable for the operation of their forces, and the original inhabitants had retired into either the mountainous districts, impassable to cavalry, or into districts protected by the bogs, and difficult of access; nay, even in some parts of the island, where the Normans were not in force, they had re-occupied large portions of the open country. They did not retire as disorganised fugitives, but the tribes retreated, keeping their social organisation unbroken; and, although removed from their original habitations, still preserved their social identity. The remarkable point in the conquest was, that the Celtic population was not driven back upon anyone portion of the kingdom, but remained as it was, interpolated among the new arrivals. … The Celtic population possessed no definite legal position, filled no place in the feudal hierarchy, and was in the eyes of the English Government hostile and alien; the only exception to this was the case of the O'Briens, who, though not actually feudal vassals, had their estates secured by a charter, and five Irish families, through some unknown reason, were considered as the king's men and entitled to his protection; these were known as the five bloods, who enjoyed the law of England to the extent of the privilege to sue in the king's courts, viz., O'Neill, O'Molaghlin, O'Connor, O'Brien, and M'Murrough. … The Irish in Ireland were treated by the king's courts in Ireland as an alien and hostile nation; an Irishman out of the king's peace could not bring an action against an Englishman. … But, though legally ignored, the Irish tribes could not be politically disregarded. The English Government used their assistance to repress the rebellions of insurgent vassals. … They were called on to furnish assistance to the English armies, and on many occasions we find their chiefs summoned by writ of Parliament, as if feudal vassals; but the mode in which they were treated depended upon the immediate objects and want of the English Government, and the general course of conduct pursued towards them was such as has been previously stated. … We thus find the English and Irish races hopelessly at variance, and it would seem that one or other must have been crushed out in the contest; but such was not the result; they both survived, and, contrary to reasonable expectations, the Irish exhibited the greater vitality. The expulsion of the English colony was an effort beyond the power of the disunited Irish tribes; for in the darkest hours of the English settlement the power of England was ready, by some sudden effort, to reassert the English supremacy. But why did the Anglo-Normans wholly fail to subdue the Irish? …

1. The large extent comprised in the grants made to the first colonists led to a dispersion of the Norman nobles over the more fertile portions of the country. The English colony never formed one compact body capable of combined action. …

{1760}

2. The military equipment of the Normans, and their mode of carrying on war, rendered their forces wholly inefficient, when, leaving the flat country, they attempted to penetrate the fastnesses of the native tribes. …

3. From the absence of any central government, civil wars continually arose between the several Norman lords; thus the military power of the colonists was frittered away in dissensions. …

4. The English Government continually called upon the Irish barons for aids and military service, to be employed in wars elsewhere than in Ireland. …

5. Many of the estates of the Norman nobles descended to heiresses who married Englishmen already possessing estates in England: hence arose absenteeism.

6. Even the lords who resided constantly upon their Irish estates gradually lost their Norman habits, and tended to assimilate themselves to the manners, and to adopt the language, of the Irish."

A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People, chapter 8.

ALSO IN: P. W. Joyce, Short History of Ireland, part 3.

See, also, PALATINE, THE IRISH COUNTIES; and GERALDINES.

IRELAND: The Celticizing of the Anglo-Norman conquerors.

"Prior to experience, it would have been equally reasonable to expect that the modern Englishman would adopt the habits of the Hindoo or the Mohican, as that the fiery knights of Normandy would have stooped to imitate a race whom they despised as slaves; that they would have flung away their very knightly names to assume a barbarous equivalent [the De Burghs became Bourkes or Burkes, the M'Sweenies had been Veres in England, and the Munster Geraldines merged their family name in that of Desmond.—Foot-note]; and would so utterly have cast aside the commanding features of their Northern extraction, that their children's children could be distinguished neither in soul nor body, neither in look, in dress, in language, nor in disposition, from the Celts whom they had subdued. Such, however, was the extraordinary fact. The Irish who had been conquered in the field revenged their defeat on the minds and hearts of their conquerors; and in yielding, yielded only to fling over their new masters the subtle spell of the Celtic disposition. In vain the government attempted to stem the evil. Statute was passed after statute forbidding the 'Englishry' of Ireland to use the Irish language, or intermarry with Irish families, or copy Irish habits. Penalties were multiplied on penalties; fines, forfeitures, and at last death itself, were threatened for such offences. But all in vain. The stealthy evil crept on irresistibly. Fresh colonists were sent over to restore the system, but only for themselves or their children to be swept into the stream; and from the century which succeeded the Conquest till the reign of the eighth Henry, the strange phenomenon repeated itself, generation after generation, baffling the wisdom of statesmen, and paralysing every effort at a remedy."

J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 8 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1314-1318. Edward Bruce's invasion.

The crushing defeat of the English by the Scotch at Bannockburn (1314) rekindled a spirit of rebellion in Ireland, and the discontented chiefs made haste to solicit aid from Scotland, offering the sovereignty of their island to Edward Bruce, brother of king Robert, if he would come to their help and conquer it. "By consent of king Robert, who was pleased to make a diversion against England upon a vulnerable point, and not, perhaps, sorry to be rid of a restless spirit, which became impatient in the lack of employment, Edward invaded Ireland at the head of a force of 6,000 Scots. He fought many battles, and gained them all. He became master of the province of Ulster, and was solemnly crowned king of Ireland; but found himself amid his successes obliged to intreat the assistance of king Robert with fresh supplies; for the impetuous Edward, who never spared his own person, was equally reckless of exposing his followers; and his successes were misfortunes, in so far as they wasted the brave men with whose lives they were purchased. Robert Bruce led supplies to his brother's assistance, with an army which enabled him to overrun Ireland, but without gaining any permanent advantage. He threatened Dublin, and penetrated as far as Limerick in the west, but was compelled, by scarcity of provisions, to retire again into Ulster, in the spring of 1317. He shortly after returned to Scotland, leaving a part of his troops with Edward, though probably convinced that his brother was engaged in a desperate and fruitless enterprise. … After his brother's departure, Edward's career of ambition was closed at the battle of Dundalk, where, October 5th, 1318, fortune at length failed a warrior who had tried her patience by so many hazards. On that fatal day he encountered, against the advice of his officers, an Anglo-Irish army ten times more numerous than his own. A strong champion among the English, named John Maupas, singling out the person of Edward, slew him, and received death at his hands. … A general officer of the Scots, called John Thomson, led back the remnant of the Scottish force to their own country. And thus ended the Scottish invasion of Ireland, with the loss of many brave soldiers."

Sir W. Scott, History of Scotland, chapter 11 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. Moore, History of Ireland, volume 3, chapter 36.

IRELAND: A. D. 1327-1367. Oppressions of the reign of Edward III.

"Of all the legislative measures of this period the most notable was the Statute of Kilkenny, passed at a Parliament held in that town, in the last year of the decade, in the Lent session of 1367. This 'famous, or infamous,' enactment gathered up into one, and recapitulated with additional aggravations and insults, all the former oppressive, exasperating, and iniquitous ordinances by which English legislation for Ireland had hitherto been disgraced. … Among the earliest measures passed in the reign of Edward III. was a statute directed against absenteeism, obliging all Englishmen who were Irish proprietors either to reside on their estates or to provide soldiers to defend them. But this enactment was unproductive of good results. The O'Neills drove the colonists out of the 'liberty of Ulster,' and the English De Burghs, so far from helping to uphold English ascendency, appropriated to themselves the entire lordship of Connaught, made common cause with the native tribes, and adopting their dress, language, and customs, became 'Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,' threw off their allegiance to King Edward, and bade defiance to the King's authority. Thus it came to pass that before many years of this reign had elapsed more than a third part of the territories of the Pale was again in the hands of its original possessors. … Edward III. inherited the barbarous and iniquitous traditions of English rule in Ireland, but he improved upon them. {1761} He ordered all his officers in that country who had Irish estates to be removed and give place to Englishmen with no Irish ties. He next declared void every grant of land in Ireland since the time of Edward II., and made new grants of the lands thus recovered to the Crown. The tendency of this monstrous measure was to create two more antagonistic parties in Ireland, destined by their bitter dissensions to bring about the result that ere long 'all the King's land in Ireland was on the point of passing away from the Crown of England,'— viz., the 'English by blood,' as the established settlers were called, and the 'English by birth,' or new grantees. Some of the chief of the former, in despair of a career, or even of a quiet life, at home, were about to bid good-bye to Ireland and seek their fortunes elsewhere, when they were arrested by a proclamation making it penal for any English subject capable of bearing arms to leave the country. … The 'English by blood' became more and more intimately connected and identified with the native Irish, and the 'English by birth' became more and more powerless to maintain the English ascendency; till at last, in 1361, the King determined on sending over a viceroy of the blood royal, and appointed to the post his son Lionel, created shortly afterwards Duke of Clarence, whom he had married to Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter and representative of the last Earl of Ulster. But though Prince Lionel, on his arrival, took the precaution of forbidding any man born in Ireland to approach his camp, his position soon became so critical that the King issued writs commanding all the absentee Irish lords to hasten to Ireland to the assistance of the Prince, 'for that his very dear son and his companions in Ireland were in imminent peril.' The next step was the passing of the Statute of Kilkenny. It re-enacted the prohibition of marriage and foster-nursing, rendered obligatory the adoption of the English language and customs, forbade the national games of 'hurlings and quoitings,' and the use of the ancient Gaelic code called the Senchus Mor; a code by which the native brehons, or judges, of the Irish septs had decided causes among them since the time of the conversion of the race to Christianity in the fifth century."

W. Warburton, Edward III., 4th decade, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: W. Longman, Life and Times of Edward III., volume 2, chapter 1.

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 2, chapters 4-5 (volume 1).

IRELAND: A. D. 1494. Poynings' Laws.

During the Wars of the Roses, "if Ireland had any preference for either of the great contending parties in England, it was … for the House of York; and from this cause chiefly sprang the change of Henry VII.'s mode of governing the dependency which on ascending the throne he had found all but severed from his dominions. At first he had thought it best to employ the native nobility for this purpose, and had chosen for Deputy the Earl of Kildare—setting him, as the story ran, to rule all Ireland, because all Ireland could not rule him. When, however, he had time to reflect on the dangers springing from the Irish support of Simnel and Warbeck, from which he and his dynasty had escaped so narrowly, he perceived the necessity of bringing the country under a more regular government. Accordingly he sent over in 1494 (at the time when Warbeck was preparing for his descent on England) Sir Edward Poynings as Lord Deputy, a statesman and commander well experienced in the most important affairs of the time."

C. E. Moberly, The Early Tudors, chapter 6.

After some military operations, which he found to be beset with treacheries and difficulties, the new Lord Deputy held a Parliament at Drogheda—"perhaps the most memorable that was ever held in Ireland, as certainly no other Parliament in that country made laws which endured so long as two which were then enacted, and were known for centuries afterwards as the 'Poynings Acts.' By the first of these it was ordained that no Parliament should be held in Ireland in future until the king's Council in England had approved not only of its being summoned, but also of the Acts which the Lieutenant and Council of Ireland proposed to pass in it. By the second the laws enacted before that time in England were extended to Ireland also. Thus the Irish legislature was made entirely dependent upon England. The Irish Parliament had no power to originate anything, but was only free to accept or (if they were very bold) to reject measures drawn up by the Irish Council and approved already by the king and his Council in England before they were submitted to discussion. Little as this looks like parliamentary government, such was the state of subjection in which the Irish Parliament remained by virtue of this law for nearly three centuries later. Almost the whole time, that is to say, that Ireland had a separate Parliament at all it remained in this manner restricted in its action by the legislation of Sir Edward Poynings. … It should be remembered, however, that Henry VII. merely sought to do in Ireland what there is every reason to suppose he practically did in England. Legislation was not at this time considered to be the chief business of a Parliament."

J. Gairdner, Henry the Seventh, chapter. 8.

ALSO IN: R. Bagwell, Ireland Under the Tudors, chapter 8.

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 2, chapter 4, section 7.

H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 18 (volume 3).

IRELAND: A. D. 1515. The English Pale and the Clans and Chiefs beyond it.

"The events on which we are about to enter require for their understanding a sketch of the position of the various chiefs, as they were at this time scattered over the island. The English pale, originally comprising 'the four shires,' as they were called, of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Uriel or Louth, had been shorn down to half its old dimensions. The line extended from Dundalk to Ardee; from Ardee by Castletown to Kells; thence through Athboy and Trim to the Castle of Maynooth; from Maynooth it crossed to Claine upon the Liffey, and then followed up the line of the river to Ballimore Eustace, from which place it skirted back at the rear of the Wicklow and Dublin mountains to the forts at Dalkey, seven miles south of Dublin. This narrow strip alone, some fifty miles long and twenty broad, was in any sense English. Beyond the borders the common law of England was of no authority; the king's writ was but a strip of parchment; and the country was parcelled among a multitude of independent chiefs, who acknowledged no sovereignty but that of strength, who levied tribute on the inhabitants of the pale as a reward for a nominal protection of their rights, and as a compensation for abstaining from the plunder of their farms. … {1762} These chiefs, with their dependent clans, were distributed over the four provinces in the following order. The Geraldines, the most powerful of the remaining Normans, were divided into two branches. The Geraldines of the south, under the Earls of Desmond, held Limerick, Cork, and Kerry; the Geraldines of Leinster lay along the frontiers of the English pale; and the heads of the house, the Earls of Kildare, were the feudal superiors of the greater portion of the English counties. To the Butlers, Earls of Ormond and Ossory, belonged Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary. The De Burghs, or Bourkes, as they called themselves, were scattered over Galway, Roscommon, and the south of Sligo, occupying the broad plains which lie between the Shannon and the mountains of Connemara and Mayo. This was the relative position into which these clans had settled at the Conquest, and it had been maintained with little variation. The north, which had fallen to the Lacies and the De Courcies, had been wholly recovered by the Irish. The Lacies had become extinct. The De Courcies, once Earls of Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were reduced to the petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the Desmonds. The Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely than ever, the Irish habits and traditions. … The O'Neils and O'Donnells had spread down over Ulster to the frontiers of the pale. The O'Connors and O'Carrolls had recrossed the Shannon and pushed forwards into Kildare; the O'Connor Don was established in a castle near Portarlington, said to be one of the strongest in Ireland; and the O'Carrolls had seized Leap, an ancient Danish fortress, surrounded by bog and forest, a few miles from Parsonstown. O'Brien of Inchiquin, Prince—as he styled himself—of Thomond, no longer contented with his principality of Clare, had thrown a bridge across the Shannon five miles above Limerick, and was thus enabled to enter Munster at his pleasure and spread his authority towards the south; while the M'Carties and O'Sullivans, in Cork and Kerry, were only not dangerous to the Earls of Desmond, because the Desmonds were more Irish than themselves, and were accepted as their natural chiefs. In Tipperary and Kilkenny only the Celtic reaction was held in check. The Earls of Ormond, although they were obliged themselves to live as Irish chieftains, and to govern by the Irish law, yet … remained true to their allegiance, and maintained the English authority as far as their power extended. … Wexford, Wicklow, and the mountains of Dublin, were occupied by the Highland tribes of O'Bryne and O'Toole, who, in their wild glens and dangerous gorges, defied attempts to conquer them, and who were able, at all times, issuing down out of the passes of the hills, to cut off communication with the pale. Thus the Butlers had no means of reaching Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the home of their hereditary rivals and foes. This is a general account of the situation of the various parties in Ireland at the beginning of the 16th century. I have spoken only of the leading families. … 'There be sixty counties, called regions, in Ireland,' says the report of 1515, 'inhabited with the king's Irish enemies.'"

J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 8 (volume 2).

See, also, PALE, THE ENGLISH.

IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553. The reconquest under Henry VIII. and the fall of the Geraldines. The political pacification and the religious alienation.

"To Henry VIII. the policy which had been pursued by his father was utterly hateful. His purpose was to rule in Ireland as thoroughly and effectively as he ruled in England. … The Geraldines, who had been suffered under the preceding reign to govern Ireland in the name of the Crown, were quick to discover that the Crown would no longer stoop to be their tool. They resolved to frighten England again into a conviction of its helplessness; and the rising of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald followed the usual fashion of Irish revolts. A murder of the Archbishop of Dublin, a capture of the city, a repulse before its castle, a harrying of the Pale, ended in a sudden disappearance of the rebels among the bogs and forests of the border on the advance of the English forces. … Unluckily for the Geraldines, Henry had resolved to take Ireland seriously in hand, and he had Cromwell [Sir Thomas] to execute his will. Skeffington, the new Lord Deputy, brought with him a train of artillery, which worked a startling change in the political aspect of the island. The castles which had hitherto sheltered rebellion were battered into ruins. … Not only was the power of the great Norman house which had towered over Ireland utterly broken, but only a single boy was left to preserve its name. With the fall of the Geraldines Ireland felt itself in a master's grasp. … In seven years, partly through the vigour of Skeffington's successor, Lord Leonard Grey, and still more through the resolute will of Henry and Cromwell, the power of the Crown, which had been limited to the walls of Dublin, was acknowledged over the length and breadth of Ireland. … Chieftain after chieftain was won over to the acceptance of the indenture which guaranteed him in the possession of his lands, and left his authority over his tribesmen untouched, on conditions of a pledge of loyalty, of abstinence from illegal wars and exactions on his fellow-subjects, and of rendering a fixed tribute and service in war-time to the Crown. … [This] firm and conciliatory policy must in the end have won, but for the fatal blunder which plunged Ireland into religions strife at the moment when her civil strife seemed about to come to an end. … In Ireland the spirit of the Reformation never existed among the people at all. They accepted the legislative measures passed in the English Parliament without any dream of theological consequences, or of any change in the doctrine or ceremonies of the Church. … The mission of Archbishop Browne 'for the plucking-down of idols and extinguishing of idolatry' was the first step in the long effort of the English Government to force a new faith on a people who to a man clung passionately to their old religion. Browne's attempts at 'tuning the pulpits' were met by a sullen and significant opposition. … Protestantism had failed to wrest a single Irishman from his older convictions, but it succeeded in uniting all Ireland against the Crown. … The population within the Pale and without it became one, 'not as the Irish nation,' it has been acutely said, 'but as Catholics.' A new sense of national identity was found in the identity of religion."

J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 7, section 8.

ALSO IN: R. Bagwell, Ireland Under the Tudors, volume 1, chapters 9-15.

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapter 30.

{1763}

IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603. The wars of Shane O'Neil and Hugh O'Neil, Earls of Tyrone. The League of the Geraldines and the Ulster Confederacy.

"The Reformation begun under Henry VIII. was carried out with pitiless determination under Edward VI., and was met by the Catholics with unflinching opposition. Under Mary there was a period of respite, but the strife was renewed with greater fierceness in the succeeding reign. As authentic Irish history begins with St. Patrick, so with Elizabeth modern Irish history may be said to begin. … At her accession, Elizabeth was too much occupied with foreign complications to pay much heed to Ireland. Trouble first began in a conflict between the feudal laws and the old Irish law of Tanistry. Con O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, had taken his title from Henry VIII., subject to the English law of succession; but when Con died, the clan O'Neil, disregarding the English principle of hereditary succession, chose Shane O'Neil, an illegitimate son of Con, and the hero of his Sept, to be The O'Neil. Shane O'Neil at once put himself forward as the champion of Irish liberty, the supporter of the Irish right to rule themselves in their own way and pay no heed to England. Under the pretence of governing the country, Elizabeth overran it with a soldiery who, as even Mr. Froude acknowledges, lived almost universally on plunder, and were little better than bandits. The time was an appropriate one for a champion of Irish rights. Shane O'Neil boldly stood out as sovereign of Ulster, and pitted himself against Elizabeth. … Shane fought bravely against his fate, but he was defeated [A. D. 1567], put to flight, and murdered by his enemies, the Scots of Antrim, in whose strongholds he madly sought refuge. His head was struck off, and sent to adorn the walls of Dublin Castle. His lands were declared forfeit, and his vassals, vassals of the Crown. English soldiers of fortune were given grants from Shane's escheated territory, but when they attempted to settle they were killed by the O'Neils. Others came in their place, under Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, and did their best to simplify the process of colonization by exterminating the O'Neils, men, women, and children, wherever they could be got at. After two years of struggle Essex was compelled to abandon his settlement. But other colonizers were not disheartened. Some West of England gentlemen, under Peter Carew, seized on Cork, Limerick and Kerry, and sought to hold them by extirpating the obnoxious natives. Against these English inroads the great Geraldine League was formed. In the reign of Mary, that boy of twelve whom Henry VIII. had not been able to include in the general doom of his house had been allowed to return to Ireland, and to resume his ancestral honours, Once more the Geraldines were a great and powerful family in Ireland." Defeated in their first rising, "the Geraldines and their companion chiefs got encouragement in Rome and pledges from Spain, and they rose again under the Earl of Desmond and Sir James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. At first they had some successes, They had many wrongs to avenge. … Sir Francis Cosby, the Queen's representative in Leix and Offaly, had conceived and executed the idea of preventing any further possible rising of the chiefs in those districts by summoning them and their kinsmen to a great banquet in the fort of Mullaghmast, and there massacring them all. Out of 400 guests, only one man, a Lalor, escaped from that feast of blood. … With such memories in their minds, the tribes rose in all directions to the Desmond call. … Elizabeth sent over more troops to Ireland under the new Lord Deputy, Sir William Pelham, who had with him as ally Ormonde, the head of the house of Butler, hereditary foes of the Geraldines, and easily induced to act against them. Pelham and Ormonde cut their way over Munster, reducing the province by unexampled ferocity. Ormonde boasted that he had put to death nearly 6,000 disaffected persons. Just at this moment some of the chiefs of the Pale rose, and rose too late. They gained one victory over Lord Grey de Wilton in the pass of Glenmalure [August, 1580]. … Grey immediately abandoned the Pale to the insurgents, and turned to Smerwick [A. D. 1580], where some 800 Spanish and Italian soldiers had just landed, too late to be of any service to the rebellion, and had occupied the dismantled fort. It was at once blockaded by sea and by land. In Grey's army Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser both held commands. Smerwick surrendered at discretion, and the prisoners were killed by Raleigh and his men in cold blood. Flushed by this success, Grey returned to the Pale and carried all before him. The Geraldines were disheartened, and were defeated wherever they made a stand. … Munster was so vigorously laid waste that Mr. Froude declares that 'the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from Valentia to the Rock of Cashel.' Holinshed declares the traveller would not meet any man, woman, or child, saving in towns or cities, and would not see any beast; and Spenser gives a melancholy picture of the misery of the inhabitants, 'as that any stony heart would rue the same.' … The next step was to confiscate the estates of the rebellious chieftains. … The estates of Desmond and some 140 of his followers came to the Crown. The land was then distributed at the cheapest rate in large tracts to English nobles and gentlemen adventurers, who were pledged to colonize it with English labourers and tradesmen. But of these labourers and tradesmen not many came over, and those who did soon returned, tired of struggling for their foothold with the dispossessed Irish." During all this Geraldine or Desmond rebellion Ulster had remained quiet; but in 1594 it began to show signs of disturbance. "Hugh O'Neil, the grandson of that Con O'Neil whom Henry VIII. had made Earl of Tyrone, had been brought up at the English court, and confirmed in the lordship of Tyrone by the English Government. In the brilliant court of Elizabeth the young Irish chief was distinguished for his gifts of mind and body. When he came of age he was allowed to return to Ireland to his earldom. Once within his own country, he assumed his ancestral title of The O'Neil, and revived all the customs of independent Irish chieftains. For long enough he took no part in any plots or movements against the Crown; but many things, the ties of friendship and of love, combined to drive him into rebellion.

{1764}

… Tyrone in the end consented to give the powerful support of his name and his arms to a skilfully planned confederation of the tribes. On all sides the Irish chiefs entered into the insurrection. O'Neil was certainly the most formidable Irish leader the English had yet encountered. … Victory followed victory [that of the Yellow Ford, 1598, being the most important]. In a little while all Ireland, with the exception of Dublin and a few garrison towns, was in the hands of the rebels. Essex, and the largest army ever sent to Ireland, crossed the Channel to cope with him; but Essex made no serious move, and after an interview with Tyrone, in which he promised more than he could perform, he returned to England to his death. His place was taken by Lord Mountjoy, who, for all his love of angling and of Elizabethan 'play-books,' was a stronger man. Tyrone met him, was defeated [at Kinsale, 1601]. From that hour the rebellion was over. … At last Tyrone was compelled to come to terms. He surrendered his estates, renounced all claim to the title of The O'Neil, abjured alliance with all foreign powers, and promised to introduce English laws and customs into Tyrone. In return he received a free pardon and a re-grant of his title and lands by letters patent. Rory O'Donnell, Red Hugh's brother, also submitted, and was allowed to retain the title of Earl of Tyrconnel. Elizabeth was already dead, and the son of Mary Stuart [James I.] was King of England when these terms were made; but they were not destined to do much good."

J. H. McCarthy, Outline of Irish History, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: T. D. McGee, Popular History of Ireland, book 8, chapters 3-11 (volumes 1-2).

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapters 32-35.

R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, volume 2.

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 4, chapters 1-5 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1607-1611. The flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster.

"With the submission of the Earl of Tyrone terminated the struggle between the Tudor princes and the native Celtic tribes. No chieftain henceforward claimed to rule his district in independence of the Crown of England. The Celtic land tenure, the Brehon laws, the language, customs, and traditions of the defeated race were doomed to gradual yet certain extinction. … Before Elizabeth was laid in the grave, the object for which during so many years she had striven was thus at length accomplished; … but between the wars of the Tudors and the civil government of the Stuarts, still remain (the intermediate link, as it were, between the two) the fall of the able man who had created and so long conducted an almost national resistance, and the colonisation by English settlers of his demesnes and the adjoining parts of Ulster."

A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People, chapter 20.

"Lord Bacon, with whom ideas grew plentifully, had a suggestion at the service of the new king as profitable as the 'princelie policie' which he taught his predecessor. He was of opinion that a great settlement of English husbandmen in Ireland, able to guard as well as to till the land, would help to secure the interest of the Crown. Till this was done Ireland was not effectually reduced, as Sir Edward Coke afterwards declared, 'for there was ever a back-door in the north.' The only question was where to plant them. O'Neill and Tyrconnell had proved dangerous adversaries; they possessed a fertile territory, and as their 'loose order of inheritance' had been duly changed into 'an orderly succession,' they were quite ripe for confiscation. But they had been ostentatiously received into favour at the close of the late war, and some decent pretence for destroying them so soon was indispensable. It was found in a letter conveniently dropped in the precincts of Dublin Castle, disclosing a new conspiracy. Of a conspiracy there was not then, and has not been since discovered, any evidence worth recording. The letter was probably forged, according to the practise of the times; but where so noble a booty was to be distributed by the Crown, one can conceive how ill-timed and disloyal any doubt of their treason would have appeared at the Court of James, or of the Lord Deputy. They were proclaimed traitors, and fled to the Continent to solicit aid from the Catholic Powers. Without delay James and his counsellors set to work. The King applied to the City of London to take up the lands of the wild Irish. They were well watered, he assured them, plentifully supplied with fuel, with good store of all the necessaries for man's sustenance; and moreover yielded timber, hides, tallow, canvas, and cordage for the purposes of commerce. The Companies of Skinners, Fishmongers, Haberdashers, Vintners and the like thereupon became Absentee Proprietors, and have guzzled Irish rents in city feasts and holiday excursions to Ireland from that day to this. Six counties in Ulster were confiscated, and not merely the chiefs, but the entire population dispossessed. The fruitful plains of Armagh, the deep pastoral glens that lie between the sheltering hills of Donegal, the undulating meadow lands stretching by the noble lakes and rivers of Fermanagh, passed from the race which had possessed them since before the redemption of mankind. … The alluvial lands were given to English courtiers whom the Scotch king found it necessary to placate, and to Scotch partisans whom he dared not reward in England. The peasants driven out of the tribal lands to burrow in the hills or bogs were not treated according to any law known among civilised men. Under Celtic tenure the treason of the chief, if he committed treason, affected them no more than the offences of a tenant for life affect a remainder man in our modern practice. Under the feudal system they were innocent feudatories who would pass with the forfeited land to the Crown, with all their personal rights undisturbed. The method of settlement is stated with commendable simplicity by the latest historian. The 'plantators' got all the land worth their having; what was not worth their having—the barren mountains and trackless morass, which after two centuries still in many cases yield no human food—were left to those who in the language of an Act of Parliament of the period were 'natives of the realm of Irish blood, being descended from those who did inherit and possess the land.' Lest the frugality of the Celts should enable them to peacefully regain some of their possessions, it was strictly conditioned that no plantator or servitor should alienate his portion, or any part thereof, to the mere Irish. The confiscated territory amounted to two millions of acres. 'Of these a million and a half' says Mr. Froude, 'bog, forest, and mountain were restored to the Irish. The half million acres of fertile land were settled with families of Scottish and English Protestants.' It was in this manner that the famous Plantation of Ulster was founded."

Sir C. G. Duffy, Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition, pages 74-78 (or book 1, chapter 4, of "Young Ireland").

{1765}

"The City of London had taken in hand the settlement of Derry, which was now to be rebuilt under the name of Londonderry, and to give its name to the county in which it stood, and which had hitherto been known as the county of Coleraine."

S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapter 10 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. D'Arcy McGee, Popular History of Ireland, book 9, chapter 1 (volume 2).

J. Harrison, The Scot in Ulster, chapter 3.

C. P. Meehan, Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donel, Earl of Tyrconnel.

IRELAND: A. D. 1625. The Graces of Charles I.

On the accession of Charles I., "one more effort was made by the Irish gentry to persuade, or rather to bribe, the Government to allow them to remain undisturbed in the possession of their property. They offered to raise by voluntary assessment the large sum of £120,000 in three annual instalments of £40,000, on condition of obtaining certain Graces from the King. These Graces, the Irish analogue of the Petition of Rights, were of the most moderate and equitable description. The most important were that undisturbed possession of sixty years should secure a landed proprietor from all older claims on the part of the Crown, that the inhabitants of Connaught should be secured from litigation by the enrolment of their patents, and that Popish recusants should be permitted, without taking the Oath of Supremacy, to sue for livery of their estates in the Court of Arches, and to practise in the courts of law. The terms were accepted. The promise of the King was given. The Graces were transmitted by way of instruction to the Lord Deputy and Council, and the Government also engaged, as a further security to all proprietors, that their estates should be formally confirmed to them and to their heirs by the next Parliament which should be held in Ireland. The sequel forms one of the most shameful passages in the history of English government of Ireland. In distinct violation of the King's solemn promise, after the subsidies that were made on the faith of that promise had been duly obtained, without provocation or pretext or excuse, Wentworth, who now presided with stern despotism over the government of Ireland, announced the withdrawal of the two principal articles of the Graces, the limitation of Crown claims by a possession of sixty years and the legalisation of the Connaught titles."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 6 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1633-1639. Wentworth's system of "Thorough."

In the summer of 1633, Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. "It was during his tenure of office as viceroy that he attempted to establish absolutism in Ireland, in order that, by the thereby enhanced power of the monarchy, he might be enabled to turn the scale in favour of a despotic government in England. And, never at a loss in the choice of his expedients, he contended for his scheme with an energy and a recklessness characteristic of the man. In the prosecution of his ends, he treated some of the most influential English noblemen resident in Ireland with the utmost indignity, simply with the object of intimidating them, at the outset, from any further opposition. One of them, Lord Mountnorris, was even condemned to death on a charge of sedition and mutiny, merely for having made use of a disrespectful expression with reference to the lord-lieutenant, the representative of the sovereign. … Every longing of the Irish Protestant Church for independence was suppressed by Wentworth. According to his views, supreme authority in Church matters belonged absolutely and unconditionally to the king. He, therefore, abolished, in 1634, the 'Irish Articles,' which granted some concessions to Puritanism, and which had been introduced by Archbishop Usher in the reign of James I., and, at the same time, he united the Irish Established Church indissolubly with that of England. But above all things he considered it to be his duty to increase the army, which had hitherto been in a disorganised condition, and to put it in a state of complete efficiency; in order to do this, however, it was of the first importance to augment the revenue of the Crown, and in pursuance of this object he disdained no means. He extorted large sums of money from the Catholics by reminding them that, in case their contributions were too niggardly, there still existed laws against the Papists which could easily be put into operation again. The City of London Company, which some years before had effected the colonization of Londonderry, was suddenly called to account for not having fulfilled the stipulations contained in its charter, and condemned to pay a fine of £70,000. In the same spirit he conceived the idea of obtaining additions to the royal exchequer by a fresh settlement of Connaught; and, accordingly, he induced the Government, regardless of the engagements made some years previously at the granting of the 'graces,' to re-assert the claims it had formerly advanced to the possession of this province. And now, as in the worst days of James I., there again prevailed the old system of investigation into the validity of the titles by which the landed gentry of Connaught held their estates. Such persons as were practised in disinterring these unregistered titles were looked upon with favour, and as a means of inciting to more vigorous efforts, a premium of 20 per cent. on the receipts realized during the first year by the confiscation of property thus imperfectly registered was guaranteed to the presidents of the commission. With a cynical frankness, Wentworth declared that no money was ever so judiciously expended as this, for now the people entered into the business with as much ardour and assiduity as if it were their own private concern. … The collective titles of the province of Connaught were at the unlimited disposal of the lord-lieutenant; and, although, notwithstanding this result, he, at the last moment, recoiled from the final act, and shrank from ejecting the present owners, and re-settling the province, it was not from any conscientious scruples that he refrained from taking this last decisive step: to the man whose motto was 'Thorough,' such scruples were unknown. … Practical considerations alone … induced Wentworth to pause in the path upon which he had entered. {1766} Just at that time the Crown was engaged in a contest with Puritanism in Scotland, while, in England, the attempts of Charles to make his rule absolute had produced a state of public feeling which was in the highest degree critical. … In view of these considerations, therefore, Strafford postponed the colonization of the western province to a more favourable season. While we turn with just abhorrence from the contemplation of the reckless and despotic acts of this remarkable man, we must not, on the other hand, fail to acknowledge that his administration has features which present a brighter aspect. … In the exercise of a certain toleration, dictated, it is true, only by policy, he declined to meddle directly in the religious affairs of the Catholics. His greatest merit, however, consists in having advanced the material well-being of the country. He took a lively interest in agriculture and cattle-rearing, and by causing the rude and antiquated methods of husbandry which prevailed among the Irish agriculturalists to be superseded by more modern appliances, he contributed very materially to the advancement of this branch of industry. He also largely encouraged navigation, in consequence of which the number of Irish ships increased from year to year; and although it can not be denied that he endeavoured to suppress the trade in woollen cloth, from an apprehension that it might come into dangerous competition with English manufactures, he, nevertheless, sought to compensate the Irish in other ways, and the development of the Irish linen industry in the north was essentially his work. … The Irish revenue annually increased, and the customs returns alone were trebled during the administration of Lord Strafford. He was, accordingly, in a position to place at the disposal of his royal master a standing army of 9,000 men. … It was, therefore, no idle boast, but a statement in strict accordance with the truth, which he made when writing to Archbishop Laud on 16th December, 1634: 'I can now say that the king is here as truly absolute as any sovereign in the world can be.'"

R. Hassencamp, History of Ireland, chapter 3.

"Of all the suggesters of the infamous counsels of Charles, Laud and Wentworth were the most sincere:—Laud, from the intense faith with which he looked forward to the possible supremacy of the ecclesiastical power, and to which he was bent upon going, 'thorough', through every obstacle;—Wentworth, from that strong sense, with which birth and education had perverted his genius, of the superior excellence of despotic rule. … The letters which passed between them partook of a more intimate character, in respect of the avowal of ulterior designs, than either of them, probably, chose to avow elsewhere. … Laud had to regret his position in England, contrasted with that of the Irish deputy. 'My lord,' he writes to Wentworth, speaking of the general affairs of church and state, 'to speak freely, you may easily promise more in either kind than I can perform: for, as for the church, it is so bound up in the forms of the common law, that it is not possible for me, or for any man, to do that good which he would, or is bound to do. … And for the state, indeed, my lord, I am for Thorough; but I see that both thick and thin stays somebody, where I conceive it should not; and it is impossible for me to go thorough alone.' … Every new act of despotism which struck terror into Ireland shot comfort to the heart of Laud. 'As for my marginal note,' exclaims the archbishop, 'I see you deciphered it well, and I see you make use of it too,—do so still; thorow and thorow. Oh that I were where I might go so too I but I am shackled between delays and uncertainties. You have a great deal of honour here for your proceedings. Go on a God's name!' And on Wentworth went, stopping at no gratuitous quarrel that had the slightest chance of pleasing the archbishop, even to the demolishing the family tomb of the earl of Cork,—since his grace, among his select ecclesiastical researches, had discovered that the spot occupied by my lord of Cork's family monuments, was precisely that spot upon which the communion-table, to answer the purposes of heaven, ought to stand!"

R. Browning, Thomas Wentworth (Eminent British Statesmen, volume 2, published under the name of John Forster).

ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 5, section 4.

S. R. Gardiner, History of England, chapter 76 (volume 8) and chapter 90 (volume 9).

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, volume 2, book 3, chapter 1.

T. Wright, History of Ireland, book 4, chapters 22-24.

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 5, chapter 1.

IRELAND: A. D. 1641. The Catholic rising and alleged Massacres of Protestants.

"The government which Strafford had established in Ireland fell with him, the office of viceroy was entrusted to some of the judges, and shorn of the powers which gave it authority over the whole country. The Irish army, which had been formed with so much difficulty, and maintained in spite of so much opposition, was disbanded without any attention being vouchsafed to the King's wish that it should be allowed to enter the Spanish service. … Under the influence of events in England, government based on prerogative, and on its connexion with the English hierarchy, as it had existed in Ireland since Elizabeth's time, fell to the ground. This revolution however might entail important results. The Irish people was Catholic: while the Protestant settlers were split into two hostile factions, and thereby the highest authority in the land, which bore a really Protestant character, was systematically weakened and almost destroyed, the thought of ridding themselves of it altogether was sure to arise in the nation. The steed, never completely broken in, felt itself suddenly free from the tight rein which hitherto it had unwillingly obeyed. … It was the common object of all Catholics, alike of Anglo-Saxon and of Celtic origin, to restore to the Catholic Church the possession of the goods and houses that had been taken from her, and above all to put an end to the colonies established since James I. in which Puritan tendencies prevailed. The Catholics of the old settlements were as eager for this as the natives. The idea originated in a couple of chiefs of old Irish extraction, Roger O'More and Lord Macguire, who had been involved in Tyrone's ruin, but were connected by marriage with several English families. The first man whom O'More won over was Lord Mayo, the most powerful magnate of old English descent in Connaught, of the house of De Burgh. … The best military leader in the confederacy, Colonel Plunkett, was a Catholic of old English origin. … Among the natives the most notable personage was Phelim O'Neil, who, after having been long in England, and learning Protestantism there, on his return to Ireland went back to the old faith and the old customs: he was reckoned the rightful heir of Tyrone, and possessed unbounded popular influence. {1767} The plan for which the Catholics of both Irish and English extraction now united was a very far-reaching one. It involved making the Catholic religion altogether dominant in Ireland: even of the old nobility none but the Catholics were to be tolerated: all the lands that had been seized for the new settlements were to be given back to the previous possessors or their heirs. In each district a distinguished family was to be answerable for order, and to maintain an armed force for the purpose. They would not revolt from the King, but still would leave him no real share in the government. Two lords justices, both Catholic, one of Irish, the other of old English family, were to be at the head of the government. … The preparations were made in profound silence: a man could travel across the country without perceiving any stir or uneasiness. But on the appointed day, October 23, the day of St. Ignatius, the insurrection everywhere broke out." Dublin was saved, by a disclosure of the plot to the government, on the evening of the 22d, by a Protestant Irishman who had gained knowledge of it. "Several other places also held out, as Londonderry and Carrickfergus, and afforded places to which the Protestants might fly. But no one can paint the rage and cruelty which was vented, far and wide over the land, upon the unarmed and defenceless. Many thousands perished: their corpses filled the land and served as food for the kites. … Religious abhorrence entered into a dreadful league with the fury of national hatred. The motives of the Sicilian Vespers and of the night of St. Bartholomew were united. Sir Phelim, who at once was proclaimed Lord and Master in Ulster, with the title of the native princes, as Tyrone had been, and who in his proclamations assumed the tone of a sovereign, was not at all the man to check these cruelties. … With all this letting loose of ancient barbarism there was still some holding back. The Scottish settlements were spared, although they were the most hated of all, for fear of incurring the hostility of the Scottish as well as of the English nation. Immediately there was a rising in the five counties of the old English Pale: the gentry of Louth, under the leadership of the sheriff, took the side of the rebels. The younger men of Meath assembled on the Boyne, and commenced hostilities against the Protestants: so completely had their religious sympathies prevailed over their patriotism."

L. Von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 8, chapter 7 (volume 2).

"Some reference to the notorious story of the massacre of 1641 is required, not because the account of it is true and is a part of history, nor because it is false and needs refutation, but because it is a State fiction, a falsehood with a purpose, and as such deserves mention as much as the levying of troops or the passing of laws. The record of the period is not the history of a massacre, but of the deliberate invention of a massacre. … No word of massacre had been heard of in the first State document that referred to the so-called rebellion. The Catholic lords of the Pale would never have united their names and fortunes with those of murderers. … The royalists again and again urged in their treaties with their opponents that an investigation of the cruelties committed on both sides should be made, and the proposal was always absolutely refused."

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 3, chapter 1, section 5 (volume 2).

"There were few places of strength in Ulster which had not fallen by the end of the first week into the hands of the insurgents. Sir Phelim O'Neill already found himself at the head of some 30,000 men, as yet of course undisciplined, and but few of them efficiently armed; and it is not to be expected that such an irregular multitude, with wild passions let loose, and so many wrongs and insults to be avenged, could have been engaged in scenes of war, even so long, without committing some deeds of blood which the laws of regular warfare would not sanction. … Life was taken in some few instances where the act deserved the name of murder; but the cases of this nature, on the Irish side, at the commencement of the rebellion, were isolated ones; and nothing can be more unjust and false than to describe the outbreak of this war as a 'massacre'."

M. Haverty, History of Ireland, chapter 37.

"This [Sir Wm. Petty's] estimate of 37,000 Protestants supposed to have been murdered makes no allowance for those who escaped to England and Scotland, and never returned to Ireland. It seems to me more likely that about 27,000 Protestants were murdered by the sword, gun, rope, drowning, &c., in the first three or four years of the rebellion. The evidence of the depositions, after deducting all doubtful exaggerations, leaves little doubt that the number so destroyed could hardly have been less than 25,000 at all events. But the truth is that no accurate estimate is possible. After the Portnaw massacre the Protestants, especially the Scotch, took an awful vengeance on their enemies. Henceforward one side vied in cruelty with the other."

M. Hickson, Ireland in the 17th Century, introduction, page 163.

ALSO IN: T. Carte, Life of James, Duke of Ormond, book 3 (chapters 1-2).

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 6 (volume 2).

T. Leland, History of Ireland, book 5, chapters 3-4 (volume 3).

IRELAND: A. D. 1643. The king makes Peace with the rebels.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER).

IRELAND: A. D. 1645. King Charles' treaty with the Catholics.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JUNE-DECEMBER).

IRELAND: A. D. 1646-1649. The Rebels become Royalists.

"The truce [offered by King Charles to the rebels in 1643] appears to have been well observed by each party, and resulted in a treaty of peace which was signed in July, 1646, by which the Roman Catholics obtained every demand which they put forward. This peace was nevertheless at once broken, and Ormond (who had been appointed Lord Lieutenant in January, 1643) was closely besieged in Dublin by a force, headed by Cardinal Rinuccini, the Papal Nuncio, who had assumed the command of the Irish Catholics. Finding himself in so dangerous a position, Ormond, by express direction from the king, offered his submission to the English Parliament, to whom he surrendered Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk, and such other garrisons as remained in his hands. This transaction was completed on the 25th of July, 1647, when Colonel Jones took command of Dublin for the Parliament, and was made by them Commander-in-Chief in Ireland; his total force however amounted to but 5,000 men. The war now continued with varying success, the commanders for the Parliament being, in addition to Jones, Monk in Ulster and Lord Inchiquin in Munster; {1768} The latter in 1648 joined Ormond, who in September, upon the invitation of the Catholics, returned to Ireland, the Papal Nuncio having been driven from the country by his own party, who were alienated from him by his folly and insolence. At the end of 1648 there were therefore two parties in Ireland; the Parliamentary, which had been the English, holding Dublin and a few garrisons, and the Catholics, who, formerly rebels, were now held as Royalists, and whose new leader Ormond, on the death of Charles I., proclaimed the Prince of Wales, on the 16th of February, 1649, at Carrick, as King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland. The English Parliament now at last resolved to put an end to disorder in Ireland, and with this object, in March, 1649, appointed Cromwell to the supreme command." Before Cromwell arrived in Ireland, however, the Irish Royalists had reduced every garrisoned place except Dublin and Londonderry, defeating Monk, who held Dundalk, but being defeated (August 2) by Jones when they laid siege to the capital. Though fought at the gates of Dublin, this was called the battle of Rathmines, Ormond retreated with a loss of 4,000 killed and 2,500 prisoners.

N. L. Walford, Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War, chapter 7.

ALSO IN: T. Carte, Life of James Duke of Ormond, books 4-5 (volume 3).

D. Murphy, Cromwell in Ireland, chapters 1-3.

IRELAND: A. D. 1649-1650. Cromwell's campaign. The slaughter at Drogheda and Wexford.

'When Cromwell arrived in Ireland at the head of 12,000 men, he found almost the whole country under the power of the Royalists (August 15th). A Parliamentary garrison in Dublin itself had only escaped a siege by surprising the enemy on the banks of the Liffey (August 2nd). The general first marched against Drogheda, then called Droghdagh or Tredah, and summoned the garrison to surrender; Sir Arthur Ashton, the governor, refused; he had 3,000 of the choicest troops of the confederates and enough provisions to enable him to hold out till winter should compel the enemy to raise the siege. But within twenty-four hours the English batteries had made a breach in the wall, Oliver, after twice seeing his soldiers beaten off, led them on in person and carried the breach. A terrible massacre followed. 'Being in the heat of action I forbade them,' Cromwell wrote in his despatch to the Parliament, 'to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men.' Of these, one-half probably fell in the streets; the other half Cromwell describes as having been slain at early dawn in St. Peter's Church. This he looks upon as a judgment for their previous proceedings there. 'It is remarkable,' he writes, 'that these people at first set up the mass in some places of the town that had been monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent that, the last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church called St. Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very place near 1,000 of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all the friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two.' … Royalist accounts assert that many hundreds of women and children were slain in St. Peter's Church: It is, of course, possible that some of the townspeople, fleeing thither for safety, lost their lives in the general massacre of the garrison. There is, however, no trustworthy witness for any lives being taken except those of soldiers and friars. Cromwell did not sanction the killing of any but those with arms in their hands, though he seems to have approved of the fate of the friars. The fanatical zeal of his letter, and the fact that he takes the full credit, or discredit, for the slaughter of the garrison; makes it improbable that he concealed anything; and this substantiated by his subsequent declaration, in which he gives this challenge:—'Give us an instance of one man, since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning the massacre or the destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavoured to be done.' With the enemy's troops Cromwell carried out the determined mode of warfare which he began at Drogheda. They were mostly scattered over the country, occupied in garrison duty. Before whatever town he came he demanded immediate surrender, or threatened to refuse quarter. Town after town opened its gates to this grim summons. Wexford, which refused to surrender, was stormed, and the whole garrison, 2,000 in number, put to the sword (October 11th). … In other respects, while Cromwell's rigour and determination saved bloodshed in the end by the rapidity and completeness of his conquests, his conduct in Ireland contrasted favourably on many points with that of the Royalists there. His own soldiers, for ill-using the people contrary to regulations, were sometimes cashiered the army, sometimes hanged. When a treaty was made, he kept faithfully to its terms. Garrisons that yielded on summons were allowed either to march away with arms and baggage, or else to go abroad and enter the service of any government at peace with England. Before the war was over he had rid the country, on these terms, of some 45,000 soldiers. Taking advantage of the divisions of his enemies, he persuaded several garrisons of English soldiers to desert the cause of Charles Stuart for the Commonwealth. His conduct of the war was so successful that, during the nine months of his stay in Ireland, the forces of the Royalists were shattered, and the provinces of Leinster and Munster recovered for the Parliament. Cromwell returned to England in May, 1650, leaving his son-in-law Ireton to complete the conquest of the country. The last garrisons in Ulster and Munster surrendered during the course of the ensuing summer and autumn. Ireton crossed the Shannon and drove the Irish back into the bogs and mountain fastnesses of Connaught, their last refuge, where fighting still continued for two years after all the rest of the country had been reduced (1651-2)."

B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 12.

"No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and earnestness—no sympathy with the cause that he upheld in England—can blind us to the truth, that the lurid light of this great crime [the massacre at Drogheda] burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland; that it is one of those damning charges which the Puritan theology has yet to answer at the bar of humanity."

F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 8.

{1769}

"Oliver's proceedings here [at Drogheda] have been the theme of much loud criticism, and sibylline execration; into which it is not our plan to enter at present. … To those who think that a land overrun with Sanguinary Quacks can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these letters must be very horrible. Terrible Surgery this: but is it Surgery and Judgment, or atrocious Murder merely? That is a question which should be asked; and answered. Oliver Cromwell did believe in God's Judgments; and did not believe in the rose-water plan of Surgery;—which, in fact, is this Editor's case too. … Here is a man whose word represents a thing! Not bluster this, and false jargon scattering itself to the winds: what this man speaks out of him comes to pass as a fact; speech with this man is accurately prophetic of deed. This is the first King's face poor Ireland ever saw; the first Friend's face, little as it recognises him,—poor Ireland! … To our Irish friends we ought to say likewise that this Garrison of Tredah consisted, in good part, of Englishmen. Perfectly certain this:—and therefore let 'the bloody hoof of the Saxon,' &c., forbear to continue itself on that matter."

T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 5.

"Cromwell met with little resistance: wherever he came, he held out the promise of life and liberty of conscience; … liberty of conscience he explained to mean liberty of internal belief, not of external worship; … but the rejection of the offer, though it were afterwards accepted, was punished with the blood of the officers; and, if the place were taken by force, with indiscriminate slaughter."

J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 5, with foot-note.

ALSO IN: D. Murphy, Cromwell in Ireland.

IRELAND: A. D. 1651. The Massachusetts colonists invited to Ireland by Cromwell.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1649-1651.

IRELAND: A. D. 1652. The Kilkenny Articles.

"On 12th May, 1652, the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered on terms signed at Kilkenny, which were adopted successively by the other principal armies between that time and the September following, when the Ulster forces surrendered. By these Kilkenny articles, all except those who were guilty of the first blood were received into protection, on laying down their arms; those who should not be satisfied with the conclusions the Parliament might come to concerning the Irish nation, and should desire to transport themselves with their men to serve any foreign state in amity with the Parliament, should have liberty to treat with their agents for that purpose."

J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, part 1, section 2.

IRELAND: A. D. 1653. The Cromwellian Settlement.

"By the term Cromwellian Settlement is to be understood the history of the dealings of the Commonwealth of England with the lands and habitations of the people of Ireland after their conquest of the country in the year 1652. … The officers of the army were eager to take Irish lands in lieu of their arrears, though it does not appear that the common soldiers were, who had small debentures and no capital, and no chance of founding families and leaving estates to their posterity. But the adventurers [national creditors, who had loaned money to the government for the Irish War] must be first settled with, as they had a claim to about one million of acres, to satisfy the sums advanced for putting down the rebellion on the faith of the Act of 17 Charles I. (A. D. 1642), and subsequent Acts and Ordinances, commonly called 'The Acts of Subscription.' By these, lands for the adventurers must be first ascertained, before the rest of the country could be free for disposal by the Parliament to the army. … Towards the close of the year 1653, the island seemed sufficiently desolated to allow the English to occupy it. On the 26th of September in that year, the Parliament passed an Act for the new planting of Ireland with English. The government reserved for themselves all the towns, all the church lands and tithes; for they abolished all archbishops, bishops, deans, and other officers, belonging to that hierarchy, and in those days the Church of Christ sat in Chichester House on College-green. They reserved also for themselves the four counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork. Out of the lands and tithes thus reserved, the government were to satisfy public debts, private favourites, eminent friends of the republican cause in Parliament, regicides, and the most active of the English rebels, not being of the army. They next made ample provision for the adventurers. The amount due to the adventurers was £360,000. This they divided into three lots, of which £110,000 was to be satisfied in Munster, £205,000 in Leinster, and £45,000 in Ulster, and the moiety of ten counties was charged with their payment:—Waterford, Limerick, and Tipperary, in Munster; Meath, Westmeath, King's and Queen's Counties, in Leinster; and Antrim, Down, and Armagh, in Ulster. But, as all was required by the Adventurers Act to be done by lot, a lottery was appointed to be held in Grocers' Hall, London, for the 20th July, 1653. … A lot was then to be drawn by the adventurers, and by some officer appointed by the Lord General Cromwell on behalf of the soldiery, to ascertain which baronies in the ten counties should be for the adventurers, and which for the soldiers. The rest of Ireland, except Connaught, was to be set out amongst the officers and soldiers, for their arrears, amounting to £1,550,000, and to satisfy debts of money or provisions due for supplies advanced to the army of the Commonwealth, amounting to £1,750,000. Connaught was by the Parliament reserved and appointed for the habitation of the Irish nation; and all English and Protestants having lands there, who should desire to remove out of Connaught into the provinces inhabited by the English, were to receive estates in the English parts, of equal value, in exchange. … The Earl of Ormond, Primate Bramhall, and all the Catholic nobility, and many of the gentry, were declared incapable of pardon of life or estate, and were banished. … Connaught was selected for the habitation of all the Irish nation by reason of its being surrounded by the sea and the Shannon, all but ten miles, and the whole easily made into one line by a few forts. To further secure the imprisonment of the nation, and cut them off from relief by sea, a belt four miles wide, commencing one mile to the west of Sligo, and so winging along the coast and Shannon, was reserved by the Act of 27th September, 1653, from being set out to the Irish, and was given to the soldiery to plant. Thither all the Irish were to remove at latest by the first day of May, 1654, except Irish women married to English Protestants before the 2d December, 1650, provided they became Protestants; except, also, boys under fourteen and girls under twelve, in Protestant service and to be brought up Protestants; and, lastly, those who had shown during the ten years' war in Ireland their constant good affection to the Parliament of England in preference to the king. {1770} There they were to dwell without entering a walled town, or coming within five miles of some, on pain of death. All were to remove thither by the 1st of May, 1654, at latest, under pain of being put to death by sentence of a court of military officers, if found after that date on the English side of the Shannon." In the actual enforcement of the law—found impracticable in all its rigor—there were many special dispensations granted, and extensions of time.

J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, preface, and parts 1-2.

ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the 18th Century, book 1, chapter 2 (volume 1).

J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 6.

IRELAND: A. D. 1655. Cromwell's deportation of Girls to Jamaica.

See JAMAICA: A. D. 1655.

IRELAND: A. D. 1660-1665. The restored Stuarts and their Act of Settlement.

"On the fall of Richard Cromwell, a council of officers was established in Dublin; these summoned a convention of deputies from the protestant proprietors; and the convention tendered to Charles the obedience of his ancient kingdom of Ireland. … To secure the royal protection, they made the king an offer of a considerable sum of money, assured him, though falsely, that the Irish Catholics meditated a general insurrection, and prayed him to summon a protestant parliament in Ireland, which might confirm the existing proprietors in the undisturbed possession of their estates. The present was graciously accepted, and the penal laws against the Irish Catholics were ordered to be strictly enforced; but Charles was unwilling to call a parliament, because it would necessarily consist of men whose principles, both civil and religious, he had been taught to distrust. The first measure recommended to him by his English advisers, with respect to Ireland, was the re-establishment of episcopacy. For this no legislative enactment was requisite. His return had given to the ancient laws their pristine authority. … In a short time the episcopal hierarchy was quietly restored to the enjoyment of its former rights, and the exercise of its former jurisdiction. To this, a work of easy accomplishment, succeeded a much more difficult attempt,—the settlement of landed property in Ireland. The military, whom it was dangerous to disoblige, and the adventurers, whose pretensions had been sanctioned by Charles I., demanded the royal confirmation of the titles by which they held their estates; and the demand was opposed by a multitude of petitioners claiming restitution or compensation [protestant royalists, loyal Catholics, &c.]. … Humanity, gratitude, and justice, called on the king to listen to many of these claims. … From an estimate delivered to the king, it appeared that there still remained at his disposal forfeited lands of the yearly rental of from eighty to one hundred thousand pounds; a fund sufficiently ample, it was contended, to 'reprize' or compensate all the Irish really deserving of the royal favour. Under this impression, Charles published his celebrated declaration for the settlement of Ireland. It provided that no person deriving his title from the adventurers under the parliament, or the soldiers under the commonwealth, should be disturbed in the possession of his lands, without receiving an equivalent from the fund for reprisals; that all innocents, whether protestants or Catholics, that is, persons who had never adhered either to the parliament or the confederates, should be restored to their rightful estates." After much contention between deputations from both sides sent to the king, an act was passed through the Irish parliament substantially according to the royal declaration. "But to execute this act was found to be a task of considerable difficulty. By improvident grants of lands to the church, the dukes of York, Ormond, and Albemarle, the earls of Orrery, Montrath, Kingston, Massarene, and several others, the fund for reprisals had been almost exhausted." New controversies and agitations arose, which finally induced the soldiers, adventurers, and grantees of the crown to surrender one third of their acquisitions, for the augmenting of the fund for reprisals. "The king, by this measure, was placed in a situation [August, 1665], not indeed to do justice, but to silence the most importunate or most deserving among the petitioners. … But when compensation had thus been made to a few of the sufferers, what, it may be asked, became of the officers who had followed the royal fortune abroad, or of the 3,000 Catholics who had entered their claims of innocence? To all these, the promises which had been made by the act of settlement were broken; the unfortunate claimants were deprived of their rights, and debarred from all hope of future relief. A measure of such sweeping and appalling oppression is perhaps without a parallel in the history of civilized nations. Its injustice could not be denied; and the only apology offered in its behalf was the stern necessity of quieting the fears and jealousies of the Cromwellian settlers, and of establishing on a permanent basis the protestant ascendancy in Ireland. … The following is the general result. The protestants were previously [i. e., before the Cromwellian Settlement] in possession of about one moiety of all the profitable lands in the island; of the second moiety, which had been forfeited under the commonwealth, something less than two-thirds was by the act confirmed to the protestants; and of the remainder a portion almost equal in quantity, but not in quality, to one-third, was appropriated to the Catholics."

J. Lingard, History of England, volume 11, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).

T. Carte, Life of James Duke of Ormond, book 6 (volume 4).

IRELAND: A. D. 1685-1688. The reign of James II. Domination of Tyrconnel and the Catholics.

"At the accession of James II., in 1685, he found the native Irish, all of whom were Roman Catholics, opposed to the English rule, as to that of a conquering minority. … Of the settlers, the Scotch Presbyterians shared the feelings of their brethren in their native country, and hated Episcopalians with the true religious fury. In the Irish Parliament the Presbyterians and Episcopalians were nearly balanced, whilst the Protestant Nonconformists, in numbers almost equalling the other two parties, had but few seats in the Parliament. The Episcopalians alone were hearty supporters of the house of Stuart; the Presbyterians and Nonconformists were Whigs. James was in a most favourable position for tranquilising Ireland, for, as a Roman Catholic, he was much more acceptable to the native Irish than his predecessors had been. {1771} Had he followed his true interests, he would have endeavoured, firstly, to unite together, as firmly as possible, the English settlers in Ireland, and secondly, by wise acts of mediation, to bridge over the differences between the English and Irish. Thus he might have welded them into one people. James, however, followed a directly opposite policy, and the results of this misgovernment of Ireland are visible at the present day. The Duke of Ormond was at the time of the death of Charles II. both lord lieutenant and commander of the forces. … Soon after his accession James recalled him, and the office of lord lieutenant was bestowed on his own brother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, whilst the post of general of the troops was given to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel. Talbot … was a coarse, vulgar, truculent ruffian, greedy and unprincipled; but in the eyes of James he had great virtues, for he was devoted to the Romish Church and to his sovereign. 'Lying Dick Talbot,' as he was called, was raised by James to the peerage as Earl of Tyrconnel. Lord Clarendon was, from the time of his appointment, hampered by his associate," who, finally, in 1687, supplanted him, gathering the reins of government into his own hands, "not indeed as lord lieutenant, but with the power which Ormond had formerly held, although under a new title, that of lord deputy. The rule of Tyrconnel entirely subverted the old order of things. Protestants were disarmed and Protestant soldiers were disbanded. The militia was composed wholly of Roman Catholics. The dispensing power in the royal prerogative set aside the statutes of the kingdom, and the bench and privy council were occupied by Roman Catholics. Vacant bishoprics of the Established Church remained unfilled, and their revenues were devoted to Romish priests. Tithes were with impunity withheld from the clergy of the Establishment. … The hatred of the Irish Roman Catholics towards the Protestant settlers was excited to the utmost under Tyrconnel's rule. The former now hoped to mete out to the latter a full measure of retaliation. The breach was widened owing to the fear and distrust openly showed by the Protestants, and has never since been effectually repaired." Before the occurrence of the Revolution which drove James from his throne, in 1688, "Tyrconnel had disarmed all the Protestants, except those in the North. He had a large force of 20,000 men under arms, and of this force all the officers were trustworthy and Papists. He had filled the corporations of the towns with adherents of James. He had shown himself to be, as ever, tyrannical and unscrupulous. It was universally believed by the Protestants that a general massacre, a second St. Bartholomew, was intended. Even a day, December 9, was, they thought, fixed for the expected outbreak. The garrison of Londonderry had been temporarily withdrawn. On December 8, Lord Antrim arrived in command of 12,000 [1,200?] soldiers to form the new garrison. Without any warning, the Protestant apprentices ('the prentice boys of Derry') shut the gates of the city in his face. The inhabitants, in spite of the entreaties of the bishop and of the town council, refused to allow them to be opened. Antrim was compelled to withdraw. Thus one rallying-point was gained for the opponents of James. Another was found in Enniskillen, sixty miles south of Londonderry. Into these two towns poured all the Protestants from the surrounding districts. With these two exceptions, the boast of Tyrconnel that Ireland was true, was well founded."

E. Hale, The Fall of the Stuarts, chapters 10 and 13.

"He [James II.] deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire dominion of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments for setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of their race. The mother country justly regarded their cause as her own. Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake. … The contest was terrible but short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defence, but an excuse: for though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. … The momentary ascendency of Popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as made the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom. Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James."

Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 6 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: J. R. O'Flanagan, Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, chapter 28 (volume 1).

IRELAND: A. D. 1688-1689. Enniskillen and the Battle of Newton Butler.

Enniskillen, then a village, surrounding an ancient castle, was, in 1688-89, one of the two rallying points of the Protestant colonists in Ireland, who supported the Revolution by which James II. was dethroned and William and Mary were crowned. The chief stronghold of their cause was Londonderry; but Enniskillen bore a scarcely less important part. "In December, 1688, Tyrconnel's troops, being two companies of Popish infantry, advanced upon Enniskillen. The inhabitants, reinforced by 200 foot and 150 horse, contributed by the neighbouring gentry, marched out to oppose them. Tyrconnel's men fled to Cavan. The Enniskilleners, then, arming themselves as well as they could, and converting all the country-houses round Lough Erne into garrisons, appointed Gustavus Hamilton their governor and resolved upon defence. … Early in May, 1689, the Enniskilleners routed Tyrconnel's troops, sent from Connaught into Donegal. They next drove 1,500 men out of the County Cavan—destroyed the Castle of Ballincarrig—and then entered the County Meath, whence they carried off oxen and sheep. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was sent with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments of foot against the Enniskilleners, who, however, defeated them, and took Belturbet, where they found muskets, gunpowder, and provisions; but unfortunately they were unable to relieve Derry, then beleaguered and sorely distressed. The Enniskilleners held out against all attacks, and refused all terms of surrender. They were now assailed from various points; by Macarthy (then by James created Viscount Mountcashel) from the east, by another body from the west, and by the Duke of Berwick from the north. {1772} The Enniskilleners sent to Colonel Kirke [commanding the English forces first sent to Ireland by William of Orange] who had arrived in Lough Foyle, and received from him some arms and ammunition; and Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant-Colonel Berry came from him to their assistance. Colonel Wolseley took the command." Under Wolseley, the men of Enniskillen, 3,000 strong, encountered 5,000 of the enemy, under Mountcashel, near the town of Newton Butler, on the 31st of July, three days after Derry had been relieved. Their victory was complete. "The whole Irish force was totally and hopelessly routed. Their slaughter was dreadful—l,500 killed, and 500 drowned in Lough Erne, whither they were driven. Mountcashel was wounded and taken prisoner. The Enniskilleners lost only twenty killed and fifty wounded. They took 400 prisoners, some cannons, fourteen barrels of gunpowder, and all the colours and drums. … The victory became known at Strabane to the Irish army retreating from Derry, which thereupon broke up in confusion and fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont."

W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapter 21.

ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 12 (volume 3).

IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691. The War of the Revolution. The Orange conquest.

Supported by a French fleet, supplied moderately with French gold, and accompanied by a picked body of French officers, for the organizing and disciplining of raw Irish troops, James II. landed in Ireland, at Kinsale, on the 12th of March, 1689, to take personal possession of the government still maintained there in his name. From Kinsale he hastened to Dublin, "and summoned a Parliament, which met on May 7, 1689, and sat until July 18. This Parliament of James has been described as a Parliament of Irish Celts, yet out of the 228 members of the House of Commons about one-fourth only belonged to the native race, and even including members of families Anglicized or of doubtful origin, not one-third of the House of Commons belonged to the so-called Celts. Of the thirty-two lay peers who attended, not more than two or three bore old Irish names. The four spiritual peers were Protestant bishops."