THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND[30]

THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND[30]

The most indefatigable student of the history of Ireland is, at some time or another, sure to become wearied of, if not positively disgusted at, the interminable series of foreign and domestic wars, base treachery, and wholesale massacre which unfortunately stain the annals of that unhappy country for nearly one thousand years; and were it not that the study of profane history is a duty imposed upon us not only as an essential part of our education, but as a source rich in the philosophy of human nature, there are few, we believe, even among the most enthusiastic lovers of their race or the most industrious of book-worms, who would patiently peruse the long and dreary record of persistent oppression and unfaltering but unavailing resistance.

The few centuries of pagan greatness preceding the arrival of St. Patrick, seen through the dim mist of antiquity, appear to have been periods of comparative national prosperity; and the earlier ages of Christianity in the island were not only in themselves resplendent with the effulgence of piety and learning which enshrouded the land and illumined far and near the then eclipsed nations of Europe, but were doubly brilliant by contrast with the darkness that subsequently followed the repeated incursions of the merciless northern Vikings, to whom war was a trade, and murder and rapine the highest of human pursuits.

The ultimate defeat of those barbarians in the early part of the eleventh century brought little or no cessation of misery to the afflicted people; for, with the death of the Conqueror, the illustrious King Brian, in the moment of victory, no man of sufficient statesmanship or military ability appeared who was capable of uniting the disorganized people under a general system of government, or of compelling the obedience of the disaffected and semi-independent chiefs. The evils of the preceding wars were numerous and grievous. The husbandman was impoverished, commerce had fled the sea-ports before the dreaded standard of the carrion Raven, learning had forsaken her wonted abodes for other climes and more peaceful scenes, and even the religious establishments which had escaped the destroyer no longer harbored those throngs of holy men and women formerly the glory and benefactors of the island. It was in this disintegrated and demoralized condition that the enterprising Anglo-Normans of the following century found the once warlike and learned Celtic people; and as the new-comers were hungry for land and not overscrupulous as to how it was to be obtained, the possession of the soil on one side, and its desperate but unorganized defence on the other, gave rise to those desultory conflicts, cruel reprisals, and horrible butcheries which only ended, after nearly five hundred years of strife, in the almost utter extirpation of the original owners.

Had the Norman invasion ended with Strongbow and Henry II., or had it been more general and successful, as in England, the evil would have been limited; but as every decade poured into Ireland its hordes of ambitious, subtle, and landless adventurers, who looked upon Ireland as the most fitting place to carve their way to fame and fortune, new wars of extermination were fomented, and the wounds that afflicted the country were kept constantly open. To facilitate the designs of the new-comers, the mass of the people were outlawed, and the punishment for killing a native, when inflicted, which was seldom, was a small pecuniary fine. The efforts of the "Reformers" to convert by force or fraud the ancient race and the bulk of the descendants of the original Anglo-Normans, who vied with each other in their attachment to the church, perpetuated even in a worse form the civil strife which had so long existed between the races, and terminated, at the surrender of Limerick, in the complete prostration of the nation. But it was only for a while. The extraordinary revival of the faith in Ireland, and its substantial triumphs in recent years, almost make us forget and forgive the persecutions of "the penal days," and not the least of these auspicious results is the appearance of the noble book before us, written by a distinguished gentleman of the legal profession of the ancient race and religion.

In his voluminous work, Mr. O'Flanagan, avoiding all matter foreign to his subject, and touching as lightly on wars and confiscations as possible, while relating succinctly and carefully the lives of the numerous lord chancellors of Ireland, necessarily gives us a history of English policy and legislation in that country in an entirely new form, and fills up in its historical and legal records a hiatus long recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. In ordinary histories, we see broadly depicted the effects of foreign invasion and domestic broils: in the Lives, we are permitted to have a view of the most secret workings of the viceregal government and of the managers of the so-called Irish Parliament; of the causes which governed British statesmen in their treatment of the sister kingdom, and the motive of every step taken by the dominant faction of the Pale, supported by the wealth and power of a great nation, to subdue a weak neighboring people, who, though few in numbers, isolated and disorganized, possessed a high degree of civilization and a vitality that rose superior to all defeat. The book has also this advantage, that, while it supplies the links that bind causes with effects and develops in a critical spirit the true philosophy of history, it neither shocks our sensibilities uselessly with the perpetual narration of mental and physical suffering, nor tires us with vain speculations on what might have been had circumstances been different. The author is content to accept the inevitable, and deals exclusively with the subject in hand.

The partial success of Strongbow in conjunction with the Leinster troops induced Henry II. to project a visit to Ireland, partly from a fear that his ambitious subject might be induced by the allurements of his newly acquired greatness to forget his pledge of fealty and allegiance, and partly in the hope that his presence with an armed retinue would so overawe the native princes that their entire submission would follow as a matter of course. He therefore landed at Waterford, in 1172, and after visiting Lismore, where a provincial synod was being held, entered Dublin on the 11th of November of that year. But though he remained in that city during the greater part of the winter, surrounded by all the pomp of mediæval royalty, his blandishments were only partly successful in winning any of the prominent chieftains to acknowledge his assumed title of Lord of Ireland. He rested long enough, however, to establish a form of provincial government for the guidance and protection of the Anglo-Normans, and such of the Irish of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Wexford, and of the surrounding counties as acknowledged his jurisdiction, and these became what was long afterwards known as the English Pale. The head of this system was the personal representative of the monarch, appointed and removed at his pleasure, and called at various times lord deputy, viceroy, chief governor, and lord-lieutenant, and in case of his absence or death a temporary successor was to be chosen by the principal nobles of the Pale, until his return or the appointment of his successor by the king. In the year 1219, during the reign of Henry III., the laws of England were extended to the Anglo-Norman colony, and a chancellor in the person of John de Worchely was appointed to assist the viceroy in the administration of the laws and public affairs.

The office of chancellor, or, as he was afterwards styled, lord high chancellor, was known to the Romans, and many of its peculiar duties and powers are directly derived from the civil law. In England, its establishment may be considered as contemporary with the Norman conquest, and from the first it assumed the highest importance in the state. "The office of chancellor or lord keeper," says Blackstone, "is created by the mere delivery of the great seal into his custody, whereby he becomes the first officer in the kingdom and takes precedence of every temporal peer. He is a privy counsellor by virtue of his office, and, according to Lord Ellismore, prolocutor of the House of Lords by prescription. To him belongs the appointment of all the justices of the peace throughout the kingdom. Being formerly, usually, an ecclesiastic presiding over the king's chapel, he became keeper of his conscience, visitor in his right of all hospitals and colleges of royal foundation, and patron of all his livings under the annual value of twenty pounds, etc. All this exclusive of his judicial capacity in the Court of Chancery, wherein, as in the Exchequer, is a common law court and a court of equity."[31] In Ireland, while the chancellor exercised the same functions within a more contracted sphere, his political power and duties were more directly and frequently felt. The viceroys, particularly those of the early periods, were generally soldiers expressly deputed to hold the conquests already gained, and to enlarge by force of arms the possessions of the Anglo-Norman adventurers. They were little skilled in the arts of government, and, from their short terms and frequent removals, knew little of and cared less for the people they were temporarily sent to govern.[32] The chancellors, on the contrary, were the reverse, being from the first up to the reign of Henry VIII., with a few exceptions, ecclesiastics, generally men well versed in law and letters, and having been usually at an early age selected from the inferior ranks of the English clergy and promoted to the highest positions in the church in Ireland, as a preliminary step to their appointment to the most important judicial and legislative office in the colony, they had every inducement to become familiar with its affairs and with the dispositions and influence of the people among whom their lot in life was cast. "Learned men were those chancellors," says O'Flanagan, "for the most part prelates of highly cultivated minds, attached to the land of their birth, while exercising important sway over the destinies of Ireland."

For the first two hundred years after the creation of the office of chancellor, very little can be gleaned by the author of the Lives, except the mere names, date of patents, and a few dry facts usually connected with well-known historical events. The destruction by fire of St. Mary's Abbey in Dublin, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and of the Castle of Trim, in both of which valuable public records were kept, accounts to some extent for this paucity of materials, while, as he says, "others were carried out of the country, and are met with in the State Paper Office, the Rolls Chapel, Record Office, and British Museum, in London; others are at Oxford. Several cities on the Continent possess valuable Irish documents, while many are stored in private houses, which the recent commission will no doubt render available"—a sad commentary upon the way in which everything relating to the history of the country has been neglected by that government which so frequently parades its paternal inclinations.

The want of judicial business during this period was amply compensated for by repeated but vain efforts to reconcile the different factions into which the colonists of the Pale were divided, and to prevent the followers of the rival houses of Ormond and Kildare from open warfare whenever the slightest provocation was offered by either side. While the power of England was expended in foreign wars or in the internecine struggles of the Roses, her grasp on the dominion of Ireland was becoming every day more relaxed, and it was only by the judicious pitting of one party against another, by alternate threats and bribes, that even the semblance of authority could be maintained at all times. Thus, in 1355, Edward III., writing to the Earl of Kildare, uses the following emphatic words:

"Although you know of these invasions, destructions, or dangers, and have been often urged to defend these marches jointly with others, you have neither sped thither nor sent that force of men which you were strongly bound to have done for the honor of an earl, and for the safety of those lordships, castles, lands, and tenements, which, given and granted to your grandfather by our grandfather, have thus descended to you. Since you neither endeavor to prevent the perils, ruin, and destruction threatening these parts, in consequence of your neglect, nor attend to the orders of ourselves or our council, we shall no longer be trifled with," etc.

This was strong language, but fully justified by the unsettled condition of affairs in and outside the Pale. Chancellor de Wickford, Archbishop of Dublin, who was appointed in 1375, found that his sacred calling and official dignity were no protection to him even in the vicinity of the capital, and was therefore allowed a guard of six men-at-arms and twelve archers, while the lord treasurer had the same number. Nor was this precaution taken against the Irish enemy alone, for we find that Thomas de Burel, Prior of Kilmainham, when chancellor, while holding a parley with De Bermingham at Kildare, was, with his attendant lords, taken prisoner. The lay noblemen were ransomed, but the prior was kept a prisoner only to be exchanged for one of the De Berminghams then confined in Dublin Castle. This family seem to have held the judicial officers somewhat in contempt, for we read at another time that Adam Veldom, Chief Chancery Clerk, was captured by them and the O'Connors, and obliged to pay ten pounds in silver for his release. When John Cotton, Dean of St. Patrick's, was appointed chancellor in 1379, and commenced his tour, accompanied by the viceroy, from Dublin to Cork, he was allowed for his personal retinue, independent of his servants and clerks, not very formidable opponents, it is to be presumed, "four men-at-arms armed at all points, and eight mounted archers," a circumstance which shows that the Irish and many of the Anglo-Irish of the country had very little reverence for the person of even an English chancellor.

In 1398, Dr. Thomas Cranley was sent over to Dublin as its archbishop and chancellor of the colony, and from his high position and known ability it was expected that he would not only remedy the disorders of the Pale, but bring back the great lords to a sense of their duty to the king, and devise measures for the collection of his revenues, which these noblemen did not seem inclined to pay with the alacrity befitting obedient subjects. After several years of fruitless endeavors to effect these objects, he was obliged to write to King Henry IV. for funds to support his son, who was then acting as viceroy. "With heavy hearts," says the chancellor, speaking for the privy council, "we testify anew to your highness that our lord, your son, is so destitute of money that he has not a penny in the world, nor can borrow a single penny, because all his jewels and his plate that he can spare of those that he must of necessity have, are pledged and be in pawn. All his soldiers have departed from him, and the people of his household are on the point of leaving him." And he further significantly adds, "For the more full declaring of these matters to your highness, three or two of us should have come to your high presence, but such is the danger on this side that not one of us dare depart from the person of our lord." This was indeed a sad condition for the son of the reigning monarch and his council to find themselves in, while the Talbots, Butlers, and Fitzgeralds were feasting on the fat of the land surrounded by thousands of their well-paid followers. Again, in 1435, when Archbishop Talbot was chancellor, the council through that prelate addressed a memorial to the king, in which the following remarkable passage occurs:

"First, that it please our sovereign lord graciously to consider how this land of Ireland is well-nigh destroyed and inhabited with his enemies and rebels, insomuch that there is not left in the northern parts of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, that join together out of subjection of the said enemies and rebels, scarcely thirty miles in length and twenty miles in breadth, as a man may surely ride or go, in the said counties, to answer to the king's writs and to his commandments."

This extraordinary admission, made two hundred and sixty-six years after the landing of the Normans, would be almost incredible did it rest on less weighty authority. This was the time for the Irish people to have regained their freedom, and, had they had half as much of the spirit of nationality and organization as they possessed of valor and endurance, a decisive blow might easily have been struck that would have for ever ended the English power in their island. But the propitious moment was allowed to pass, and dearly did they pay in after-times for their supineness and folly.

The dissensions were not confined to the natives. The quarrels and bickerings of the nobles and officials of the Pale seemed to invite destruction. Rival parliaments were held; viceroys who were attached by policy or affection to the houses of York and Lancaster contended in the Castle of Dublin for the legitimacy of their respective factions; and even the Lord Chancellor Sherwood, Bishop of Meath, and the members of the privy council, whose office and duty it was to preserve the peace between all parties, were found the most turbulent; "the chancellor and chief-justice of the king's bench requiring the interposition of the king to keep them quiet, while the Irish so pressed upon the narrow limits of the English settlements that the statute requiring cities and boroughs to be represented by inhabitants of the same was obliged to be repealed upon the express ground that representatives could not be expected to encounter, on their journeys to parliament, the great perils incident from the king's Irish enemies and English rebels, for it is openly known how great and frequent mischiefs have been done on the ways both in the south, north, east, and west parts, by reason whereof they may not send proctors, knights, nor burgesses."[33] Such was the condition of Ireland in A.D. 1480, just three centuries after the advent of Henry II. to her shores.

One of the principal duties of the Irish lord chancellors, even to the very moment of its extinction, was the management of the Irish parliament. The body that for so many centuries bore that pretentious title, but which never spoke the voice of even a respectable minority of the people, is said to have owed its origin to the second Henry, though according to Whiteside, who follows the authority of Sir John Davies, no parliament was held in the country for one hundred and forty years after that king's visit.[34] Except in an antiquarian point of view, the matter is of little importance, as such gatherings in Ireland, even more so than those of England, could not at that time be called either representative or deliberative bodies, for their members were not chosen by even a moiety of the people, and they were mere instruments in the hands of the governing powers, who moulded them at will when they desired to impose new taxes or unjust laws on the people, ostensibly with their own sanction. From the days of Simon de Montfort to those of George IV., the English parliamentary system has been an ingeniously devised engine of general oppression under the garb of popular government.

Of the ancient parliaments, the most famous was that held at Kilkenny during the chancellorship of John Trowyk, Prior of St. John, in 1367, at which was passed the statute bearing the name of that beautiful city. Though the name only of the chancellor, who doubtless was the author ex officio, has come down to us, that delectable specimen of English legislation is doubtless destined to survive the changes of time, and expire only with the language itself. It prohibited marriage, gossipred, and fostering between the natives and the Anglo-Irish under penalty of treason, also selling to the former upon any condition horses, armor, or victuals, under a like penalty. All persons of either nationality living in the Pale were to use the English language, names, customs, dress, and manner of riding. No Irishman was to be admitted to holy orders, nor was any minstrel, story-teller, or rhymer to be harbored. English on the borders should hold no parley with their Irish neighbors, except by special permission, nor employ them in their domestic wars. Irish games were not to be indulged in, but should give place to those of the English, as being more "gentlemanlike sports." Any infraction of these provisions was to be punished with rigor, for, says the preamble to the act, "many of the English of Ireland, discarding the English tongue, manners, style of riding, laws, and usages, lived and governed themselves according to the mode, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies," etc., whereby the said "Irish enemies were exalted and raised up contrary to reason." This enactment is perhaps without a parallel in the history of semi-civilized legislation, if we except that passed at a parliament held at Trim in 1447, and for which we are indebted to no less a person than the Archbishop of Dublin, lord chancellor at that period. It enacts "that those who would be taken for Englishmen (that is, within the protection of law) should not wear a beard on the upper lip; that the said lip should be shaved once at least in every two weeks, and that offenders therein should be treated as Irish enemies." As no provision was inserted in the statute providing for the supply of razors, or mention made of the appointment of state barbers, we presume it soon became inoperative.

By such penal legislation it was weakly supposed the evils of the country could be cured most effectually, but, unfortunately for the lawmakers, it was easier to pass statutes than to enforce them. On the mass of the people they had no effect whatever, except, perhaps, to bind them faster to their ancient laws and customs, and he would have been a bold officer indeed who would have attempted to carry them out, even among the Anglo-Irish families outside of the Pale; for we find that, at a parliament held in Dublin in 1441, under the supervision of Archbishop Talbot, a strong request was made to the king to furnish troops for the defence of the colony, the privy council having some time previously represented "that the king should ordain that the Admiral of England should, in summer season, visit the coasts of Ireland to protect the merchants from the Scots, Bretons, and Spaniards, who came thither with their ships stuffed with men of war in great numbers, seizing the merchants of Ireland, Wales, and England, and holding them to ransom."[35]

The selfish but sagacious policy of Henry VII. had done so much to remedy the evils inflicted on England by the wars of the Roses that when his son, Henry VIII., ascended the throne in 1509, he found a united and contented people, a well-filled treasury, and a subservient parliament. The character of this notorious ruler is too well known to need comment, and the effects of his crimes are still perceptibly felt by the country that had the misfortune to have given him birth. His influence on Irish affairs, though more disastrous in its immediate results, has happily long since been obliterated. Dr. Rokeby, Bishop of Meath, and afterward Archbishop of Dublin, first appointed chancellor in 1498, was retained in his office by the new king. He is represented as a man of marked piety and learning, but he would have been unfitted to fill an office under the English crown had he allowed any scruples of conscience to stand between him and the behests of his royal master. What these were may be judged from a passage in a private letter from Henry to his viceroy. "Now," he writes, "at the beginning, political practices may do more good than exploits of war, till such time as the strength of the Irish enemy shall be enfeebled and diminished; as well by getting their captains from them, as by putting division among them, so that they join not together"[36]—an advice eminently suggestive, but by no means new, for the policy of arraying the Irish against each other had been practised long before with fatal effect. Rokeby held the great seal for twenty-one years, and his long term was marked by his successful efforts to reconcile the hostile Anglo-Irish factions, his negotiations with the native chiefs, for the purpose of inducing them to acknowledge the sovereignty of Henry, and the consequent extension of the functions of the courts over the greater part of the island. The success of the first and last of these measures was mainly due to the personal efforts of the lord chancellor, and the submission of the Irish party resulted from the loss of the battle of Knocktough, in 1504, and the favorable promises held out by the chancellor and viceroy, inducements, it is needless to say, which were never fulfilled. He was succeeded by the two St. Lawrences, father and son, of whom nothing notable is recorded, but that they were laymen and natives of the soil; and by Archbishop Ingle, who, however, held office for but one year.

The next ecclesiastical chancellor was Dr. Alan, commissioned in 1528. This distinguished official was remarkable not only for his great mental capacity, but as a not unfavorable sample of the English political churchmen of the era immediately preceding the so-called "Reformation"—men who, by their laxity of faith and worldly ambition, paved the way for the subsequent grand march of heresy and immorality. Born in England in 1476, he studied with credit both at Oxford and Cambridge, and at an early age entered the priesthood. His varied acquirements and experience of mankind gained him, in 1515, the degree of doctor of laws and the confidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Lord Chancellor of England, by whom he was sent to Rome on a special mission. On his return, he was appointed chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey, and judge of his legantine court. In both capacities he appears to have given satisfaction, particularly in the latter, in which he materially assisted the ambitious cardinal in suppressing certain monasteries, and appropriating the revenues, it is more than suspected, to his own and his patron's use. For these services he was rewarded with the archbishopric of Dublin and the Irish chancellorship. His two great vices, avarice and the love of intrigue, became now fully developed. When not begging for increase of salary or emoluments, he was writing scandalous letters to his friends at the English court, complaining of the conduct of the viceroy, the unfortunate Earl of Kildare, and it was mainly through his instrumentality, supported by Wolsey, that that nobleman was called to England and committed to the Tower of London. His next step was to circulate a false report that the earl had been executed. This led, as he anticipated, to the rebellion of Kildare's son and deputy, better known as Silken Thomas, and a number of Irish chiefs with whom the Fitzgeralds were allied, and, upon its suppression, to the confiscation of vast estates in Leinster and Munster. But Alan did not live long enough to behold the result of his sanguinary policy. Alarmed at the storm he had raised, he endeavored to escape from the country, but the elements seem to have conspired against him, for he was cast ashore near Clontarf, and, on being discovered by some of Thomas's followers, he was put to death. He was succeeded as chancellor by Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, who was, however, shortly after deprived of his office for his unflinching opposition to Henry's absurd pretensions of being considered "Head of the Church." It was of this prelate that Browne, the king's Archbishop of Dublin, wrote to Lord Henry Cromwell, in 1635, "that he had endeavored, almost to the hazard and danger of his temporal life, to procure the nobility and gentry of this nation to due obedience in owning his highness their supreme head, as well spiritual as temporal; and do find much oppugning therein, especially by his brother Armagh, who hath beene the main oppugner, and so hath withdrawn most of his suffragans and clergy within his see and diocese."[37]

Unable to coerce or cajole the Pope, Henry at length threw down the gauntlet to the Holy Father, and, emboldened doubtless by the ready submission of the English, resolved to enforce his new ideas of religion on the people of Ireland. The parliament of that country, pliant as ever, voted him king of Ireland and head of the church, and would as willingly have conferred on him any other title, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, had he desired it. Archbishop Browne, of Dublin, was a Christian after the king's own heart, and, in his way, as consistent and as zealous a reformer; and with the chancellor, Lord Trimblestown, at the laboring-oar, the task of converting the Irish to the new faith was considered quite easy. Here and there a stubborn recusant was anticipated, but were there not monasteries and nunneries enough to be confiscated, and lands and revenues to be given away, to satisfy those benighted adherents to the old faith? A grand tour of proselytism throughout the country was therefore projected, and the lord chancellor, the archbishop, and the other members of the privy council sallied out, accompanied by their men-at-arms, procurants, clerks, and retainers, to expound the Gospel according to King Henry, and to enforce their doctrines, if all else failed, by the carnal weapons of the lash and halter. They visited in succession Carlow, Kilkenny, Ross, Wexford, and Waterford, where they are mindful to acknowledge "they were well entertained." The archbishop on Sundays "preached the word of God, having very good audience, and published the king's injunctions and the king's translation of the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, the Articles of Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English," while on week-days the chancellor took his share of the good work; for, continues the report, "the day following we kept the sessions there (Waterford) both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four felons, accompanied by another, a friar, whom, among the residue, we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly."[38] This judicious mixture of preaching and hanging, the Lord's Prayer and the statute of Kilkenny, it was thought, would have a salutary effect on the souls and bodies of unbelievers, and was a fitting form of introducing the Reformation to the consideration of the Irish people.

The war on the faith of the nation having been thus openly and auspiciously inaugurated, we must henceforth look upon the chancellors of Ireland not only as the persistent defenders of the English interest in that country, but as the most dangerous because the most insidious and influential enemies of Catholicity.

Sir John Alan was appointed chancellor in 1539, and in the following year we find him at the head of a royal commission for the suppression of religious houses. The authority to the commissioners sets forth, with a mendacity never surpassed in a state paper, and rarely paralleled, even in the worst days of anti-Catholic persecution, the following pretexts for striking a deadly blow at the bulwarks of charity, religion, and learning:

"That from information of trustworthy persons, it being manifestly apparent that the monasteries, abbies, priories, and other places of religious or regulars in Ireland are, at present, in such a state that in them the praise of God and the welfare of man are next to nothing regarded, the regulars and others dwelling there being addicted, partly to their own superstitious ceremonies, partly to the pernicious worship of idols, and to the pestiferous doctrines of the Roman Pontiff, that unless an effectual remedy be promptly provided, not only the weak lower order, but the whole Irish people, may be speedily infected to their total destruction by the example of these persons. To prevent, therefore, the longer continuance of such religious men and nuns in so damnable a state, the king, having resolved to resume into his own hands all the monasteries and religious houses, for their better reformation, to remove from them the religious men and women, and cause them to return to some honest mode of living, and to true religion, directs the commissioners to signify this his intention to the heads of religious houses," etc.[39]

It is unnecessary to say that this measure of wholesale spoliation was promptly and thoroughly carried out. The thousand ruins that dot the island attest it, and the title-deeds of many a nobleman's broad acres bear date no earlier than this edict of the greatest monster that ever disgraced the British throne.

From this time forth, the lord chancellors found their best passport to royal favor in devising measures for the destruction of the popular faith. Being generally needy adventurers, with nothing but their legal knowledge and facile consciences to begin the world with, they neither loved the country nor respected the people, and their titles and wealth depended simply on their zeal for Protestantism. Of the hundreds of penal laws which disgrace the statute-book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every one of them owes its inception and enactment to one or another of those subtle-minded officials who, as the head of the lords, president of the privy council, and the dispenser of vast judicial and executive patronage, had a potent influence in all public affairs. They continued industriously to carry out the designs of Henry during the successive reigns of his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the Stuarts, William, Anne, and the House of Brunswick. Even when the fears of foreign invasion in 1760, and the noble resistance of the fathers of our republic some years later, had awakened the fears of the British authorities and induced them to relax somewhat the chains of the Catholics, the voice of the lord chancellors was still for war. Apart, however, from this spirit of intolerance which seemed to be naturally attached to the office, it must be confessed that from the days of Henry the great seal was held by many able lawyers and distinguished statesmen, some of whom were not unknown in the world of letters as authors and liberal patrons of learning and science. The names of Curwan, Loftus (who founded Trinity College University), Boyle, Porter, Butler, Cox, Broderick, Bowles, and many others, occupy honored positions in the legal annals of Great Britain and Ireland, and their lives, full of incident and variety, are fully and fairly placed before us by Mr. O'Flanagan.

The treaty of union in 1800, by which Ireland lost her parliament, and legislatively became a province, deprived the Irish chancellors of much of their original political power; though, strange as it may appear, this object was effected mainly through the exertions of Lord Clare, who at that time held the office. In this man's character, distinguished as it was for many private virtues, and for every public vice that it is possible to conceive, were united the good and bad qualities of all his predecessors, joined to a wonderful mental capacity which far surpassed them all. Born in Ireland, he was of English extraction and more than English in feeling, and, though of an exemplary Catholic stock, he was the son of an apostate clerical student, a most violent Protestant and a rancorous proscriptionist. A profound jurist and an upright judge in purely legal matters, his anti-Catholic prejudices seemed totally to have warped his judgment whenever the question of religion presented itself, and, though a steadfast friend in private of those who agreed with or did not care to differ from him, he never failed to carry into official life the hatreds and animosities engendered in political struggles or domestic intercourse. A powerful orator, full of strong legal points, logical propositions, and keen, and sometimes coarse, sarcasm, he ruled his party with a rod of iron, and, when persuasion and threats failed, he hesitated not to use bribes and cajolery. His mental energy was equal to any amount of labor, and his physical courage was beyond question, even in a country and age where bravery was ranked among the highest of virtues. Such was John Fitzgibbon, first Earl of Clare, born near Dublin in 1749, a man pre-eminently fitted by Providence to adorn his country and benefit mankind, but who perverted his great gifts and employed them with too much success in destroying that country's remnant of independence, and in devising new methods of persecution for his Catholic relatives and countrymen. He died in the plenitude of his power in 1802; his name when mentioned is reprobated by all good men in the nation he betrayed; his title, so ingloriously won, is extinct; and his bench in Chancery and his seat in the House of Lords are filled by one of that race and creed which he so cordially detested and so ruthlessly persecuted.[40] Sic transit gloria mundi.

Mr. O'Flanagan brings down his Lives to the time of George IV., but this latter portion of his valuable collection of biographies belongs more to the domain of law than of history. Indeed, the entire work is full of curious and interesting information which will be highly prized by the legal profession. What the late Lord Campbell has done so well for the English chancellors, the author has endeavored to do for those of Ireland, and with equal success, notwithstanding the scarcity of materials and the loose manner in which the Irish records have been kept. One of the most attractive features of this book is the total absence of passion or prejudice in the narrative of events and estimation of character; but every necessary circumstance is detailed in a plain, lucid, and intelligible style, and with something of judicial gravity and impartiality befitting so important a subject. As far as the author's own political predilections are concerned—and we suspect that they are by no means intensely national—the tone of the book may be said to be colorless, a peculiarity in modern biography which, while it may detract from its vivacity, will certainly add much weight to its value as an authority. We are promised a sequel to the chancellors, containing the lives of the lord chief-justices, which we hope will soon appear, for the more light that is shed on those darkened pages of Ireland's history, the better for the cause of truth, justice, and humanity.